Science In My Fiction

Clearly it has been too long since I’ve visited the good folks at Science in My Fiction. I’ve forgotten how to insert pictures and videos. Do make with the clickie though folks. You will not be disappointed. I promise. I’ve found you some interesting reading accompanied by cool pictures. Our editor here recommended a few topics for me as I get myself back in the groove. My first choice of those topics was “animal pigmentation patterns.” Of course it was! I love any excuse to talk a bit about my beloved cephalopods.

David Gallo: Underwater astonishments  (YouTube) I’ve enjoyed several TED talks. This one covers several sea creatures but also one octopus in particular that does a stellar job of making like algae. I was hunting a video of one octopus I saw ages ago that kept changing from one thing to another. If you happen to see it or remember it, please leave a link in the comments.

Octopus Escape (YouTube) This is another example of an octopus blending in quickly with its environment. You will see the blanket like spans between its tentacles also change color. Here is a cool article about a blanket octopus (RealMonstrosities). It even has a neat video with it.

When you start looking into camouflage  and more specifically animal coloration, you find a history of study going back hundreds of years.  The Wikipedia articles linked in the previous sentence do a great job of discussing the how, why, types, and applications of the topics. I encourage you to read them and chase down the links. Yes, I will make you tangent hounds yet.  Seriously though, much of what I want to cover in this post involves the new things I learned, some comparisons I had between animals and humans, and some loose story ideas.

Now about the title of the post,  when you visit the animal coloration article, the first thing you see is the spotted finned and tailed, striped oriental sweetlips fish hanging out while two  striped cleaner wrasse clear off parasites. According to the article, the sweetlips’ spots signal sexual maturity. While  ”the behaviour and pattern of the cleaner fish signal their availability for cleaning service, rather than as prey.” So much of this leaves me wondering exactly how. In human behavior, uniforms often help convey our participation in a specific profession.

The concept of mimicry was one I recalled from middle school science. In Batesian Mimicry, harmless species imitate the harmful ones. In Müllerian Mimicry, the harmful creatures look like each other. Think bees and wasps here. In everyday life you can convert this to think of various law enforcement agencies resembling each other. Not that they are harmful, but the uniforms are meant to convey authority.

I learned that some frogs change their skin color to regulate body heat. There has to be something here to work with. While others have use melanin to tint their bodies to protect from sunburn. Sound familiar?

Here are three new things I learned from How Animal Camouflage Works (HowStuffWorks):

Chameleons might not only change their color to match their environment and as a matter of signaling, but also to broadcast their mood. My clothes, my hair style, my makeup often are affected by my mood. I wonder what it would be like if I could choose to shift my skin color and hair color by my mood. I wonder what it would be like if these parts of me gave away my feelings. Now imagine what that would be like in the political and diplomatic arenas. I read an anthology a while back about alien life. It had more than one story in which a person communicated with another by changing the tones of their skin.

Nudibranches change their color gradually thanks to a change in diet. I love pizza. I had bad acne as a teenager and young adult. Make of that what you will. I can assure you I turned red while deciding to share it.

Some fish change their appearance by released hormones that react to a change in environment. I know some couples start to look alike after being together a while. I really don’t think I’ve taken on the appearance of the cities I’ve lived in. It could be interesting though. I mean think about the folks that get painted up to support their local sports teams. On a scarier note, I am back to thinking about hormones that can change the way you look without your input on the matter.

One more article for the road: Why do some organisms glow? (KSL.com)This one also includes a cool video. This has to be one of my favorite aspects of this topic. I have always been fascinated with deep sea creatures. I am thinking of covering this topic separately in my next post. Interested? Leave me a comment. Also, share with me some stories in which camouflage played a role. Does this post inspire some story ideas for you? What neat things did you learn from making with the clickie?

Thanks for reading; it’s so nice to be back.

*All links are to Wikipedia unless otherwise noted.

Last spring, I put out a call on my public journal for topic suggestions. A friend of mine and traumatic brain injury [Wikipedia] (TBI) survivor suggested I explore what TBI [Mayo Clinic] has taught us.

Like many of the topics I’ve written about here, I had much to learn before I could begin. Once I researched TBI [Neurologic Rehabilitation Institute at Brookhaven Hospital], I had difficulty breaking the vast topic [Open Directory] back down into a streamlined piece. I have my former editor, Kay Holt, to thank for some of the links I will be including and also for the flow of the piece. As usual, the links will take you to articles that explore the main and related topics more thoroughly. Please have a look beneath the surface.

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Tis the season to NANOWRIMO. Fa la la la la la la la lahhhh.

For several years in a row, I’ve signed up to write fifty thousand words in the month of November. I do so knowing that my life is not conducive to such output. I am not setting myself up for failure. I am hoping to foster the habit of writing daily. I am not alone, and while I’ve already seen some of my friends cross the 50K finish line, I know many more of them are trucking along or even puttering along with a mumble mumble current word count. Read the rest of this entry »

As I write this, I have a Halloween soundtrack playing behind me. It does a great job of setting the mood. Every now and then, it will get to a screaming child sequence from a long ago movie. I know rationally what this is, yet it triggers something in me and I find myself anxious and creeped out just a bit.

For most of the month, I’ve been planning to write on memory and fear to celebrate Halloween with you. When I started the research, I was quite surprised on how deep this goes. I was considering where fears might be stored. Yet, I hadn’t given any thought to PTSD, depresssion, or how memory factors into conditioned responses. Read the rest of this entry »

With emphatic thanks to Jay Lake, I bring you this link: Suicide by Roller Coaster posted up at Discovery News.  Julijonas Urbonas, a PhD candidate at London’s Royal College of Art’s Design Interactions department, has developed a voluntary euthanasia roller coaster. I highly recommend you take the time to read the entire article.

I have a few reaper stories creeping around in my brain. In some of those cases, I consider how a reaper might deal with an assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia situation. I have many more stories that involve death and  leave out the reapers altogether. I’ve studied rituals related to dying and burial. I’ve studied the technology involved in cryonics. I’ve also followed with great interest the various issues and movements related to voluntary euthanasia.

One of my favorite story ideas involves a place where people can go to die in just this kind of way. It is on their terms and is representative of the lives they’ve lead. An industry has grown around it. When I saw mention of and then read the roller coaster article, I was very excited. Other ideas also sprouted.

This is just a short snipit today. Most of the links take you to Wikipedia as usual (for my post). I encourage you to check out many of the resources linked below the Wiki articles. Certainly some of the information includes links to how these topics are treated in culture and more specifically in fiction. I hope you check those out.

In the meantime, share your thoughts. I’d love to hear them. Does the roller coaster bring any stories to mind either in your own writing or something you’ve read?

Yesterday was Pay Day. Today is Friday. Most days, I drink kitchen coffee. Today, I wanted a treat. I hadn’t been to Starbucks in a very long while despite the fact it resides on the first floor of my office building. I convinced a couple of coworkers to join me and off we went. I am ashamed to admit this, but as soon as I walked in the door, I smelled it and knew that the Pumpkin Spice Latte was back! It only took one glance up at the center of the menu board to see the swirly, pastel chalk letters validating my glee.

The smell brought back the memory of the taste. The memory of consumption coupled with the chilled feeling as we strolled back to the office brought back the sense of the season. In a flash, last fall unfolded in my mind. I recalled which friends  heralded the arrival of  these drinks in their blogs last year. Then I was remembering more details I associate with them. My mind shifted again, and I thought of other times I had enjoyed the drink with my husband and reflected on the intensity of our shared coffee joy. Read the rest of this entry »

I think this is the first time in my life, I have been completely blocked as a writer when approaching a topic. I couldn’t see a way to approach it. Eventually I decided instead to figure out why this leg of the series became the most difficult to complete. Life, Death, and Water Mythology involved symbolism and myth; topics I love to research. The Fountain of Snake Oil was just plain fun. Live Long seemed like a less playful and more realistic extension of the topic. I ended with the intention of discussing placebos and the consequences of aging or not.  However, during this series two people that I cared about passed away. At some point, with permission, I will tell you more about those wonderful people. For now I can tell you that the second death occurred last month. I found myself struggling on a deep level with this topic. I choked. With the gracious permission of my editor, I took a moment and collected my writer self. Read the rest of this entry »

In my last post, The Fountain of Snake Oil, I explored the Fountain of Youth, the Elixir of Life, and the Philosopher’s Stone and their place in our quest for longevity. The latter involves alchemy which was a predecessor of modern chemistry.

Science still plays a role in this search as it has continued. There are many fields of study, many approaches to the question, Can We Prevent Aging? Some researchers study the endocrine system for answers. Some researchers study cellular structure and genes. Read the rest of this entry »

Want eternal youth? There’s a fountain for that. It is said that anyone who drinks from  The Fountain of Youth will have their youth restored.

The legend became particularly prominent in the 16th century, when it became attached to the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, first Governor of Puerto Rico. According to an apocryphal story that features a combination of New World and Eurasian elements, Ponce de León was searching for the Fountain of Youth when he traveled to what is now Florida in 1513. Since then, the fountain has been frequently associated with Florida.

Tales of such a fountain have been recounted across the world for thousands of years, appearing in writings by Herodotus, the Alexander romance, and the stories of Prester John. Stories of a similar waters were also evidently prominent among the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean during the Age of Exploration, who spoke of the restorative powers of the water in the mythical land of Bimini. (Fountain of Youth)

Want eternal life? There’s a potion for that.  Have a swig of the elixir of life and legend has it that the drinker will be granted immortality.

Many practitioners of alchemy pursued it. The elixir of life was also said to be able to create life. It is related to the myths of Enoch, Thoth, and Hermes Trismegistus, all of whom in various tales are said to have drunk “the white drops” (liquid gold) and thus achieved immortality. It is also associated with the Qur’an’s Al Khidr (‘The Green Man’), and is mentioned in one of the Nag Hammadi texts. (Elixir of Life, follow the link to read more about its treatment in various cultures)

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I’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides for some time. The movie is loosely based on Tim Power’s  novel by the same name. In anticipation of this event, I talked my fearless editor into letting me celebrate with a post or two.

While chatting about potential topics related to the movie centering around water and the fountain of youth, she mentioned water myths in the context of space travel. I was surprised at first. I so seldom think about such things when I consider space exploration. Sure on alien lands, encountering alien cultures I can absolutely see it. I just don’t think of any kind of belief system in relation to spaceships and travel. The one exception might be John Scalzi’s  The God Engines.

Ok so let’s try an experiment. I am going to share with you locations, creatures, and ideas both real and fantastic that belong to our collective human mythology involving water. They will be direct quotes from various sources.  As you read over them, try and think how they might fit into stories involving space travel. Are you with me? Good. Read the rest of this entry »