29 September 2010

One of the world's most important caches of Greek manuscripts is going online, part of a growing number of ancient documents to hit the Web in recent years. The British Library said Monday that it was making more than a quarter of its 1,000 volume-strong collection of handwritten Greek texts available online free of charge, something curators there hope will be a boon to historians, biblical scholars and students of classical Greece alike.

Although the manuscripts — highlights of which include a famous collection of Aesopic fables discovered on Mount Athos in 1842 — have long been available to scholars who made the trip to the British Library's reading rooms, curator Scot McKendrick said their posting to the web was opening antiquity to the entire world.

Although millions of books have been made available online in recent years — notably through Google Books' mass scanning program — ancient texts have taken much longer to emerge from the archives. They don't suffer from the copyright issues complicating efforts to post contemporary works to the Web, but their fragility makes them tough to handle. They have to be carefully cracked open and photographed one page at a time, a process the British Library said typically costs about 1 pound ($1.50) per page.

The British Library has worked aggressively to put much of its collection on the Internet, from 19th-century newspapers to the jewels of its collection — The Lindisfarne Gospels, a selection of Leonardo da Vinci's sketches and the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest surviving complete copy of the Christian Bible.

Another batch of about 250 documents is due to be published online in 2012.

Source: China Daily

10th Oct

Russian-born Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both from Manchester University, today won the prize for their 'groundbreaking experiments' with graphene - a microscopic flake of carbon.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that their experiments with graphene could lead to the development of new materials and 'the manufacture of innovative electronics'.

Since its discovery in 2004 by the pair, graphene has rapidly become one of the hottest topics in materials science and solid-state physics.

Geim, 51, is a Dutch national while Novoselov, 36, holds British and Russian citizenship. Both are natives of Russia and started their careers in physics there. Geim said he was shocked by the announcement but planned to go back to work as usual today.'My plan for today is to go to work and finish up a paper that I didn't finish this week,' he said. 'I just try to muddle on as before.'

Professor Konstantin Novoselov said: 'I was really shocked when I heard the news and my first thought was to go to the lab and tell the team.'

The pair extracted the super-thin material from a piece of graphite such as that found in ordinary pencils using sticky tape.

The bonds between the carbon atoms are the strongest in nature and the free electrons are highly mobile. It not only promises to revolutionise semiconductor, sensor, and display technology, but could also lead to breakthroughs in fundamental quantum physics research.

Scientists believe it could one day be used to make transparent conducting materials, biomedical sensors and even extremely light, yet strong, aircraft of the future.

Source: Daily Mail

12 Oct, 2010

The floor is entirely covered with a deep layer of what appear to be grey pebbles. It is like a bleak Suffolk beach, and a toddler, getting into the spirit of it, has shed her shoes and is having a sit-down in her stockinged feet. Adults are not so comfortable: as if caught out by a freak snowstorm in the wrong shoes, several are picking a distinctly wobbly way over the crunchy, uneven surface, suddenly looking out of place in autumnal London clothes.

This is the latest installation in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall – a series of wow-factor installations that have, over the past decade, included Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, a deep fissure running through the concrete floor of the building, and Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project, which filled the space with mist and mirrors.

There is more to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's installation than meets the eye, however. Bend and pick up one of the "pebbles" and you can see that it resembles a sunflower seed encased in its striped husk. In fact, each one – and there are 100 million of them, covering an area of 1,000 square metres – is handmade from porcelain and has been individually handpainted.

Ai – a bearded, impassive, black-clad figure, who snapped the photographers surrounding him at today's press view almost as busily as they did him, and posted the results on Twitter – had the "seeds" made in the southern Chinese city of Jingdezhen.

Harnessing traditional craft skills, each seed was moulded, fired, and painted with three or four individual brush strokes, often by women taking the objects home to work on them. One thousand six hundred people were involved in the process. "Even taxi drivers were talking about it," he said.

He said that the workers had been paid a living wage – in fact slightly more than customary – to work on the project. "Now they are asking when we can start again," he said. "I shall have to think of a new project."

Sunflower seeds, he said, had a particular significance in recent Chinese culture and history. During the cultural revolution, Mao Zedong was often likened to the sun and the people to sunflowers, gazing adoringly at his face. But sunflowers were also a humble but valued source of food in straitened times, a snack to be consumed with friends.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

21 Oct

Graduates earning between £35,000 and £60,000 a year are likely to have to pay back more in fees and interest than those earning more than £100,000, according to an analysis of plans due to be unveiled tomorrow by Lord Browne on the future of university education.

Browne's long-awaited review is expected to propose that universities in England be allowed to raise tuition fees to a maximum of £6,250 a year while protecting lower earners by raising the salary threshold for repayment of loans to £21,000.

On the assumption of a real interest rate of 2.2% and a maximum repayment period of 30 years, this will hit middle-income groups most since they will be unable to pay back the debt as quickly as those on £100,000.

Nearly 30 Lib Dem backbenchers are prepared to rebel by voting against the government over a rise in tuition fees, the National Union of Students claimed tonight. At the time of the election, all sitting Lib Dem MPs, including Nick Clegg and Vince Cable, signed up to a pledge to vote against any increase in fees. The coalition agreement allows the Lib Dems to abstain.

David Cameron admitted at a Downing Street press conference today that the issue was "very difficult" for the coalition. "Everybody has to compromise because the truth is that we all want the same thing," Cameron said.

Source: Daily Mail

Frieze - The Best Art Event in London Now

20 Oct.

Frieze Art Fair is an international contemporary art fair that takes place every October in London's Regent's Park. The fair is staged by Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover, the publishers of frieze magazine. Frieze Art Fair features more than 150 contemporary art galleries, and the fair also includes specially commissioned artists’ projects, a talks programme and an artist-led education schedule.

Although staged for the purpose of selling work, the fair has become a cultural entertainment and out of its 68,000 visitors it has been suggested that 80% attend purely to spectate. Frieze Art Fair released sales figures following the first three fairs. However, Sharp and Slotover came to regard such results to be misleading and inaccurate, as many sales are completed post-fair, and many galleries choose to keep their sales figures private. From 2006 the fair has not released sales figures.

This year’s fair took place from 14 to 17 Oct. From stuffed dogs to archaeological digs, here is some of the weird and wonderful work on display at the world-famous fair for new and established contemporary artists.

Lighten up ... a woman walks past Daniel Firman's Butterfly, a spectacular work in neon.

Bad day at the office? Alex Buldakov's Files (2010) does what we've all wanted to do.

Darren Lago's Happy Shopper, an intriguing marriage of vintage bike and alien lifeform.

Marcus Coates's Shamanic Costume, for Consultation in Elephant and Castle. Coates's work often references the natural world; he once employed a cast of humans to sing specially commissioned birdsong

Jon Pylypchuk's The Pack will no doubt resonate with anxious ex-smokers everywhere. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

Nathaniel Mellors' The Preface, a typically droll sculpture. Mellors is tipped as a young(ish) British artist to watch.

Spartacus Chetwynd's A Tax Haven Run By Women: two teams perform mime and dance routines to compete for the prize of a ride on the Cat Bus, a character from Studio Ghibli’s anime film My Neighbour Totoro. Adrian Searle  described it as 'delightful, stupid, faintly nightmarish and carnivalesque'

Think contemporary art is a load of rubbish? Wolfgang Ganter and Kaj Aune agree. This is Trash (2010), an installation in the Frieze sculpture park. It's not as straightforward as it seems: three times a day, the whole lot begins to perform for the crowds