I used to belong to an übergeeky organization called the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). I haven’t thought about ACM in a very long time until my son sent me a link of a video he watched in his biology class. This video was developed at Harvard University. The animation conception and scientific content are by Alain Viel and Robert A. Lue and the animation is by John Liebler/XVIVO. It won an award at the 2006 SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival. SIGGRAPH is the Special Interest Group for Graphic Computing within ACM.
Click here to see the high-resolution video:
If your computer does not have the horse power for you to view the above video, here is the YouTube version, but it’s much lower resolution:
You don’t have to be a cell biologist to be at awe of this achievement. When I was studying biology at Berkeley back in the stone ages, we studied cell physiology mostly from two-dimensional illustrations and an occasional video of electron microscope images. This animation would have been immensely helpful! Maybe I wouldn’t have switched to computer science. Nah, computers would have found me one way or another.
For those of you interested to learn what exactly you are viewing here is the same video with the science dude narrating (as my son puts it):
It is pretty mind-boggling to think that these intricate systems are inside all living cells. I am in awe of the universe’s beauty on a grand scale and on a microscopic scale.
5 comments:
Wow. Cool.
Dear Red Shoes,
Glad you enjoyed it!
I am totally totally all over this. Wow!
Dear Tangobaby,
Mind-boggling isn't it?
btw, thanks for sending the lovely ms. red shoes this direction :-)
This is really cool looking whats the song called?
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