Discovering The Daily Life During Jomon Period - 縄文人の生活再現 

Joan Beauchamp Procter: her best friend was a Komodo dragon and if that doesn’t entice you to read this, I don’t know what will

Joan Beauchamp Procter is a scientist every reptile enthusiast should admire.

Joan was an incredibly intelligent young woman who was chronically ill (and as a result of her chronic illness, physically disabled by her early thirties). Her health issues kept her from going to college, but that did not stop her from studying and keeping reptiles. She presented her first paper to the Zoological Society of London at the tender age of nineteen, and the society was so impressed that they hired her to help design their aquarium. In 1923, despite having no formal secondary education and despite being only 26 years old, she was hired as the London Zoo’s curator of reptiles. Now, that in and of itself is an awesome accomplishment, but Joan was absolutely not content to maintain the status quo. Nosiree, by the age of 26 Joan had already kept many exotic pets (including a crocodile!) and knew a thing or two about what needed to be done to improve their lives in captivity. So Joan got together with an architect, Edward Guy Dawber, and designed the world’s first building designed solely for the keeping of reptiles. She had some really, really great ideas. Her first big idea was to make the building differentially heated- different areas and enclosures would have different heat zones, instead of having the whole building heated to one warm temperature. She also set up aquarium lighting- the gallery itself was dark, with dim lights on individual enclosures to make things less stressful for the inhabitants. She also insisted on the use of special glass that didn’t filter out UVB. This meant that reptiles could synthesize vitamin D and prevented cases of MBD in her charges. 

But advances in enclosure design weren’t Joan’s only contribution to reptile keeping. She was also one of the first herpetologists to study albinism in snakes- she was the first to publish an identification how albinism manifests in reptile eyes differently than in mammal eyes, and stressed the importance of making accurate color plates of reptiles during life because study specimens often lose pigmentation. She also was really hands-on with many species, including crocodiles, large constrictors, and monitor lizards. Joan had this idea that if you socialize an animal and get it used to handling, then when you need to give it a vet checkup, things tend to go a lot better. This really hadn’t been done with reptiles before. She was able to identify many unstudied diseases, thanks to her patient handling of live specimens, and by being patient and going slow, she managed to get a lot of very large, dangerous creatures to trust her. One of them (that we know of) even came to like her- a Komodo dragon named Sumbawa. 

In 1928, two of the first Komodo dragons to be imported to Europe arrived at the London Zoo. One of them, named Sumbawa, came in with a nasty mouth infection. His first several months at the zoo were a steady stream of antibiotics and gentle care, and by the time he’d recovered enough for display, he had come to be tolerant of handling and human interaction. In particular, he seemed to be genuinely fond of Joan. She was their primary caretaker and wrote many of the first popular accounts of Komodo dragon behavior in captivity. While recognizing their lethal capacity, she also wrote about how smart they are and how inquisitive they could be. In her account published in The Wonders of Animal Life, she said that "they could no doubt kill one if they wished, or give a terrible bite" but also that they were “as tame as dogs and even seem to show affection.” To demonstrate this, she would take Sumbawa around on a leash and let zoo visitors interact with him. She would also hand-feed Sumbawa- pigeons and chickens were noted to be favorite food, as were eggs. 

Joan died in 1931 at the age of 34. By that time she was Doctor Procter, as the University of Chicago had awarded her an honorary doctorate. Until her death, she still remained active with the Zoological Society of London- and she was still in charge of her beloved reptiles. Towards the end of her life, Joan needed a wheelchair. But that didn’t stop her from hanging out with her giant lizard friend. Sumbawa would walk out in front of the wheelchair or beside it, still on leash- she’d steer him by touching his tail. At her death, she was one of the best-known and respected herpetologists in the world, and her innovative techniques helped shape the future of reptile care. 

If this Tibetan padlock looks massive that is because it is! And it has not one but THREE equally ginormous keys to open it! It is definitely a very intriguing padlock and indeed something of a puzzle as all three keys must be fitted simultaneously for it to open. There is one lock at the top underneath a panel, another on the side, and a third under a hinged panel on the back. Quite impressive!

We think it dates from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century and was purchased for the museum by Emslie Horniman, who was the son of our founder Frederick Horniman.   

Object no. 13.223

IT’S FOLLOW A LIBRARY DAY!! (according to Twitter)

In honor of this excellent bookish occasion, allow us to give special shout outs to all of the libraries that we have followed and/or have followed us here on Tumblr. For all of you bookworms and library cats out there that can’t get enough Booklrs, make sure to check these pages out and #followalibrary!!

@alachualibrary (The Alachua County Library District)

@badgerslrc (The Klamath Community College’s Learning Research Center)

@bflteens (Baker Free Library’s Tumblr For Teens)

@bibliosanvalentino​ (Biblioteca San Valentino [San Valentino Library])

@boonelibrary (Boone County Public Library)

@cheshirelibrary (Cheshire Public Library)

@cmclibraryteen​ (Cape May County Library’s Teen Services)

@darienlibrary (Darien Library)

@dcpubliclibrary (DC Public Library)

@detroitlib (Detroit Public Library Music, Arts & Literature Department)

@dplteens (Danville Public Library Teens)

@fontanalib (Fontana Regional Library)

@gastonlibrary (Gaston County Public Library)

@glendaleteenlibrary (Glendale Public Library Teens)

@hpl-teens (Homewood Public Library For Teens)

@myrichlandlibrary (Mansfield/Richland County Public Library)

@othmeralia  (Othmer Library of Chemical History)

@petit-branch-library (Petit Branch Library)

@pflibteens (Pflugerville Public Library Teenspace)

@schlowlibrary (Schlow Centre Region Library)

@southeastlibrary (Southeast Branch Library)

@tampabaylibraryconsortium-blog (Tampa Bay Library Consortium)

@teencenterspl (The Smith Public Library Teen Center)

@teensfvrl (Fraser Valley Regional Library)

@teen-stuff-at-the-library (White Oak Library District)

@ucflibrary (University of Central Florida Library)

@waynecountyteenzone (Wayne County Public Library’s Teen Space)

Hopefully we didn’t miss anyone! (And, you know, if you’re not already following US, now’s a good a chance as any. ;) Just putting it out there.)

The math trick that college will never teach you! : Parametric Integration

Parametric integration is one such technique that once you are made aware of it, you will never for the love of god forget it. It goes by many names : ‘Differentiation under the Integral sign’, ‘Feynman’s famous trick’ , ‘Parametric Integration’ and so on.

Let me demonstrate :

Now this integral might seem familiar to you if you have taken a calculus course before and to evaluate it is rather simple as well.

Knowing this you can do lots of crazy stuff. Lets differentiate this expression wrt to the parameter in the integral – s (Hence the name parametric integration ). i.e 

Look at that, by simple differentiation we have obtained the expression for another integral. How cool is that! It gets even better.

Lets differentiate it once more: 

.

.

.

If you keep on differentiating the expression n times, one gets this : 

Now substituting the value of s to be 1, we obtain the following integral expression for the factorial. This is known as the gamma function.

There are lots of ways to derive the above expression for the gamma function, but parametric integration is in my opinion the most subtle way to arrive at it. :D

This is a really powerful technique and I strong suggest that if you have taken calculus, then please do read this article.

Have a great day!

EDIT:  It had to be gamma(n+1) not gamma(n) .Thank you @mattchelldavis

Fuji-Ya Restaurant, Second to None

In 1968, Reiko Weston opened her new Fuji-Ya restaurant built atop the limestone foundation of a 19th-century flour mill overlooking the Mississippi River and the Stone Arch Bridge. The original Fuji-Ya restaurant operated near 8th St. and LaSalle beginning almost a decade earlier, in 1959, and served fine Japanese food including Charcoal-Broiled Teri-Yaki dinners, seafood dishes, soups, rice plates, and more. Fuji-Ya translates to “second to none” and the new restaurant offered a dining experience like no other in the Twin Cities.

Weston’s restaurant business expanded over the years with Taiga, a Chinese Szechwan restaurant in St. Anthony Main, and The Fuji International in Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, which featured Korean, Chinese, and East Indian food in addition to Japanese food. Her restaurants received numerous awards and Weston herself was named Minnesota Small Business Person of the Year in 1979.

After Reiko Weston passed away in 1988, her daughter Carol stepped in to manage. But in 1990, the City of Minneapolis bought out the historic restaurant in order to make way for the newly designed parkway. About a decade later, Fuji Ya was brought to life again in Uptown in the trendy Lyn-Lake area, where it remains today.

Recently, Fuji-Ya has gained renewed attention as the Park Board makes plans for a $12 million riverfront refresh. Plans include the teardown of the old Fuji-Ya building, expansion of green space, improved pedestrian crossings, and the addition of a new riverfront restaurant. It was announced last week that Sioux Chef owners Sean Sherman and Dana Thompson will open Owamni: An Indigenous Kitchen on the site.

Menu from the original Fuji-Ya restaurant at 814 LaSalle Ave. from the Minneapolis History Collection Menu Collection. Photos from the Star Tribune Photograph Collection at the James K. Hosmer Special Collections, Hennepin County Library.

Hearing with your eyes – A Western style of speech perception

Which parts of a person’s face do you look at when you listen them speak? Lip movements affect the perception of voice information from the ears when listening to someone speak, but native Japanese speakers are mostly unaffected by that part of the face. Recent research from Japan has revealed a clear difference in the brain network activation between two groups of people, native English speakers and native Japanese speakers, during face-to-face vocal communication.

It is known that visual speech information, such as lip movement, affects the perception of voice information from the ears when speaking to someone face-to-face. For example, lip movement can help a person to hear better under noisy conditions. On the contrary, dubbed movie content, where the lip movement conflicts with a speaker’s voice, gives a listener the illusion of hearing another sound. This illusion is called the “McGurk effect.”

According to an analysis of previous behavioral studies, native Japanese speakers are not influenced by visual lip movements as much as native English speakers. To examine this phenomenon further, researchers from Kumamoto University measured and analyzed gaze patterns, brain waves, and reaction times for speech identification between two groups of 20 native Japanese speakers and 20 native English speakers.

The difference was clear. When natural speech is paired with lip movement, native English speakers focus their gaze on a speaker’s lips before the emergence of any sound. The gaze of native Japanese speakers, however, is not as fixed. Furthermore, native English speakers were able to understand speech faster by combining the audio and visual cues, whereas native Japanese speakers showed delayed speech understanding when lip motion was in view.

“Native English speakers attempt to narrow down candidates for incoming sounds by using information from the lips which start moving a few hundreds of milliseconds before vocalizations begin. Native Japanese speakers, on the other hand, place their emphasis only on hearing, and visual information seems to require extra processing,” explained Kumamoto University’s Professor Kaoru Sekiyama, who lead the research.

Kumamoto University researchers then teamed up with researchers from Sapporo Medical University and Japan’s Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) to measure and analyze brain activation patterns using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Their goal was to elucidate differences in brain activity between the two languages.

The functional connectivity in the brain between the area that deals with hearing and the area that deals with visual motion information, the primary auditory and middle temporal areas respectively, was stronger in native English speakers than in native Japanese speakers. This result strongly suggests that auditory and visual information are associated with each other at an early stage of information processing in an English speaker’s brain, whereas the association is made at a later stage in a Japanese speaker’s brain. The functional connectivity between auditory and visual information, and the manner in which the two types of information are processed together was shown to be clearly different between the two different language speakers.

“It has been said that video materials produce better results when studying a foreign language. However, it has also been reported that video materials do not have a very positive effect for native Japanese speakers,” said Professor Sekiyama. “It may be that there are unique ways in which Japanese people process audio information, which are related to what we have shown in our recent research, that are behind this phenomenon.”

These findings were published in the journal “Scientific Reports” on August 11th and October 13th, 2016.

A newspaper you can blow your nose on

Here are some pages from Berthold’s Political Handkerchief, a political newspaper printed on cotton to avoid the government’s tax on paper.

Henry Berthold was later arrested, charged with shoplifting a boa and dismissed to Australia.

Fairyland, or, Through the Enchanted Forest.

[Gloucester, England], [Roberts Brothers], [ca. 1890-1915].

Bryn Mawr College Special Collections GV1469.F221 T4 1890z

This whimsical board game, with its blinding powder, cabbage, meat, and cake tokens, has it all! Wild two-headed animals ravage the forest and hapless children must make it through armed only with odd grocery items! The game is a new addition to the Bryn Mawr College Special Collections as part of the Ellery Yale Wood Collection of Children’s Books.

Ernst Mach, Chuck Yeager, and supersonic flight

Today is the 70th anniversary of the first supersonic flight. On 14 October 1947, Air Force Captain Charles Yeager piloted the experimental Bell X-1 plane named Glamorous Glennis and “broke the sound barrier,” reaching what scientists call “Mach 1.”

Yeager’s historic flight came thirty-one years after the death of Ernst Mach, the Austrian physicist and philosopher whose research on sound particles remained obscure until aviation capabilities began to approach the speed of sound. Mach lends his name to Mach numbers, used to describe faster-than-sound travel, and Mach angles, which measure the angle of the shock waves caused by flight. In addition to his work with sound, Mach’s rejection of Newton’s ideas on space and time influenced Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Image credits: 1) Chuck Yeager next to experimental aircraft Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis, 1940s. US Air Force, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 2) Ernest Mach from the Journal of Physical Chemistry, Volume 40, 1902. H. F. Jütte. Uploaded by Armin Kübelbeck, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 3) Chuck Yeager at Nellis Air Force Base on the 65th anniversary of his flight, 14 October 2012. Master Sgt. Jason Edwards, US Air Force, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Smuggling salt is Slovenian culture!

Be proud of smuggling salt, people! We certainly are!