Sunday Studio

Ginkgo Leaves

                                                            You paint the earth gently

                                                            With thousands of yellow fans,

                                                            Side by side

                                                            To meet white frost.

  

                                                        - Photography and poetry by Yang Cai           

Sunday Studio

"Landscaspes are more emotional than figures!" my art friend said  as we met at the park behind CMU. "Certainly at this sunset moment," I said, "Let's skip the studio tonight and paint the scene." I couldn't find a pastel paper. So I used a stretched frame to draw. My camera did a good job to catch the subtle blue dramatic tune.

At the Studio, I split the slate into halves, showing interesting mirrored images. Shall we call this camp fire dancing? Only two natural dialogs in one hour on this beautiful Sunday.

Sunday Studio

Sunday Studio

Dialog

Rorschach Test? OMG, it's all natural on two slates!

Figure

Monk

Bacio

Sunday Studio

 

Sunday Studio

Studio Work

Steve Jobs in China

Steven Jobs now is very popular in China! My father told me that his autobiography really inspired people. "His most expensive belongings were a pair of glasses and a mattress." Sounds like a saint. "My first office computer was Apple II," my father recalled.

"The success of silicon valley costs lives!" my friend commented.   

Cubicles

Office cubicle is an American invention. It's boring and inhumane. Here is a nice essay: "Death to the Cubicles!"
Gervais Tompkin says "simply designing a better cube is like putting lipstick on a pig." 

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/95/open_essay.html

There are also some ideas for new designs:

http://www.cubiclearticle.net/cubicle-design/

12 coolest work spaces:

http://www.oddee.com/item_96903.aspx

Figure Studio: S.O.T. Series

Politics Forum

Today, Andy, Reto and I went to the Institute of Politics for Politics Forum. The theme was Future Intelligent Transportation. We demonstrated our video analytics project. Andy did a great job to create a looping video of several demos. The Institute provided 32" monitor and table. Everything seems perfect. The audiences were great. Some comments and suggestions were very helpful.

The Alumni Hall in Pitt is majestic. The staffs dressed very well and pleasant. There were formal speeches and demo sessions at both ends.

We had a lot of Swedish meat ball leftovers. I told the staffs that I am going to make an meat ball art on the largest poster panel there. "Oh, you will make a Jack Pollock?""Why not?""Let's sell it and split the money. I want to go Bohamas."

After the party was over, here we go to start with meat balls and splashes of soup. Looks like 3D painting, isn't it? 

Here is the final product. I used hand to scratch the painting surface and picked up those meant balls.

The director and my colleagues spotted what I was doing from distance and finally walked over to the door. "You made a painting that can be tasted," one of them said to me politely. 

Sniffing Sensor Prototype

We made a sniffing sensor last week to sense Volatile Organic Compound smells. It works! 

Sense of smell drove brain evolution

Paleontologists have now discovered that an improved sense of smell jumpstarted brain evolution in the ancestral cousins of present-day mammals. The research appears in the 20 May 2011 issue of the journal Science.
    The findings may help explain why mammals evolved such large and complex brains, which in some cases ballooned 10 times larger than relative body size. By reconstructing fossils of two Early Jurassic Period mammals--Morganuocodon and Hadrocodium--the authors provide new evidence that the mammalian brain evolved in three major stages: 
- first by improvements in sense of smell or olfaction; 
- next by an increase in touch or tactile sensitivity from body hair; 
- and third by improved neuromuscular coordination or the ability to produce skilled muscle movement using the senses.
    Paleontologists pondering why mammals, including humans, evolved larger brains than other animals say it may have been to facilitate an acute sense of smell.
    In a paper published in the journal Science, researchers say they also noticed enlargement in the areas of the brain that correspond to the ability to sense touch through fur, a sense acutely developed in mammals.
    Zhe-Xi Luo of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh was part of a team that used high-resolution CT scans to study rare 190-million-year-old fossil skulls of Morganucodon and Hadrocodium, two of the earliest known mammal species.
    The scans revealed the tiny mammals from the Jurassic fossil beds of China had much larger brains than expected for specimens of their period, a Carnegie release reported Thursday.
    "Our new study shows clearly that the olfactory part of the brain and the part of the brain linked to tactile sensation through fur were enlarged in these early mammals," Luo said. "A sophisticated sense of smell and touch would have been crucial for mammals to survive and even thrive in the earliest part of our evolutionary history.
    "I have spent years studying these fossils, but until they were CT scanned it was impossible to see the internal details unless you were willing to destroy the skulls to look inside," Luo said. "I was absolutely thrilled to see the shape of the brain of our 190-million-year-old mammal relatives."
Even that long ago, the researchers said, the brains of the earliest mammals were notably large relative to body mass, with brain-to-body sizes approaching the proportions seen in modern mammals.


Read more: 
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/05/19/Sense-of-smell-drove-brain-evolution/UPI-44821305848041/#ixzz1NWn8f000
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/05/19/Sense-of-smell-drove-brain-evolution/UPI-44821305848041/
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2011/05/19/sniff.sniff.smelling.led.smarter.mammals.researchers.say
http://www.digimorph.org/

What Does Urine Tell You?

Glucose Test Strip	Urine Glucose Test Strip
Measures the glucose level at the moment you took the blood sample	Measures an average glucose level since the last time you urinated
Gives an exact reading	Gives a rough reading
Measures both high and low glucose levels	Measures only high glucose levels
Is appropriate for both type 1 and type 2 diabetics	Is not appropriate for type 1 diabetics and for type 2 diabetics on insulin
Can be used for adjusting insulin levels	Cannot be used for adjusting insulin levels

What Your Hands Reveal About Your Health

Your bodies are pretty good at sending out red flags when something’s wrong with our health—such as a fever due to infection or itchy hives from an allergic reaction. But sometimes the signs are misleading or easy to miss, even when they’re on one of the body parts you look at most: your hands! For instance, did you know that the length of your fingers, the state of your nails and even the shade of your palms can help predict you how healthy you’ll be in the future?
Swollen Fingers 
Red Palms
Pale Fingernails
Numb, Blue Fingertips
Discolored Nails
Short Index Fingers 
http://health.yahoo.net/experts/healthieryou/what-your-hands-reveal-about-your-health

Cute Drawing

Spirit

There were three basic attitudes of spirit: the scientific, the artistic and the religious.

- David Bohm, On Creativity

Stuffing or Starving

Research budget in a university is often in a stuffing or starving state. In January, we were urged to spent a lot of money or we would loss it. In March, we were told that there was no budget left.

My former colleague Dannise said "we work like drug addicts....we alway look for the next stimulus."

Cheers.