The beauty of natural forms
Anna Franklin is a British self-taught visual artist, classically trained pianist, and music teacher. Her art is nature inspired with a focus on climate awareness, where she blends traditional art and craft techniques.
Why do humans deteriorate with age? It’s a biological puzzle
Owen Jones is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark.
“My primary interests are explaining and describing demographic patterns across the ‘tree of life’. However, my research interests are varied and range from climate change, macroevolution and macroecology, to senescence and population dynamics.
Before my appointment at the University of Southern Denmark I spent a couple of years working on similar things as a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. In addition, I spent some time working with Dr Jinliang Wang at the Institute of Zoology (London) on population genetics.
My first post-doc, based at Imperial College London, was on the LITS project, a database of UK-based long-term individual-based time series data sets.”
NILS-UDO: Towards Nature
NILS-UDO is a German artist from Bavaria who has been creating environmental art since the 1960s when he moved away from painting and the studio in 1972 and began to work with, and in, nature. He began as a painter on traditional surfaces, in Paris, but moved to his home country in Bavaria and started to plant creations, putting them in Nature’s hands to develop, and eventually disappear. As his work became more ephemeral, he introduced photography as part of his art to document and share it. In this interview with art and ecology author, John K. Grande, he discusses his ideas and work.
Whales- a Deeper Dialogue
Tessa Campbell Fraser is a British painter and sculptor based in Oxfordshire UK. Born in Edinburgh, she studied at Chelsea School of Art and afterwards established herself as one of the country’s leading animal artists. Her exhibition, ‘Whales- a Deeper Dialogue’ seeks to unravel the interspecies communication between man and animal that is currently a hot topic in scientific research.
The whole story of human evolution – from ancient apes via Lucy to us
John Gowlett is Professor of Archaeology and Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool.
A British Archaeologist born in the Isle of Man, based in the University of Liverpool, he is collaborating with colleagues on projects in Kenya. He has worked on archaeological sites around the world for many years, and has particular interests in fire and in the evolution of form in tools. He is currently mainly involved with research on the extinct volcano of Kilombe in Kenya, which has a record 2 million years long.
A Vulnerable Border
Chantal Pollier is a visual artist who prefers to work with stone. (and in wax, glass, drawings, and photography) All her work holds references to temporality and transience. Many are rooted in science, with a particular interest in geology, biology, anatomy and morphology. The way in which collaborating artists and scientists can enter each other’s territory, and the extent to which they can thereby add new dimensions to both their own work and that of their partners, leads to refreshing perspectives.
Do mushrooms really use language to talk to each other? A fungi expert investigates
Katie Field is Professor in Plant-Soil Processes, University of Sheffield.
“I have two key research interests. The first is plant-fungal symbioses and their applications in sustainable agriculture. Today, it is estimated that more than 80% of land plants, representing over 90% of plant families, form nutritional symbioses with soil-dwelling fungi. My research aims to expand our understanding of these symbioses with important applications in sustainable agriculture.
I’m also interested in the evolution of plant-fungal symbioses, and in particular how the biotic and abiotic environments interact to drive plant evolution and the development of the terrestrial biosphere. This key question underpins my research into the interactions between ancient land plant lineages and symbiotic soil fungi. Plant-fungal symbioses date back to when plants first colonized Earth’s landmasses more than 475 million years ago, and we are only just starting to understand the diversity, structure and physiological function of the relationships between early branching lineages of land plants and their symbiotic fungi. My research aims to shed new light on the role fungal symbionts may have played in the development of Earth’s ecosystems”.
The Encounters Trilogy
Garry Kennard is a painter, writer and founding director of Art and Mind (www.artandmind.org). A fascination with how the brain reacts to works of art has lead Kennard to research, write and lecture on these topics. With Rita Carter and Annabel Huxley he devised and directed the unique Art and Mind Festivals which attracted leading artists and scientists to explore what light the brain sciences can throw on contemporary culture.
From glowing corals to vomiting shrimp, animals have used bioluminescence to communicate for millions of years – here’s what scientists still don’t know about it
Danielle DeLeo is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Florida International University and a Research Associate at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, using genomic techniques to study the evolution of bioluminescence and vision in the deep sea. “My additional projects harness the power of genomics to better understand how marine invertebrates respond and adapt to both natural and anthropogenic environmental conditions.”
Andrea Quattrini is a Research Zoologist and Curator of Anthozoa in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology. She studies the ecology and evolution of corals and associated communities, and often focuses her questions on those that live in the most poorly studied environment on earth—the deep sea. Andrea strives to work on projects that directly connect with resource managers in order to help effectively conserve vulnerable marine ecosystems in the face of global ocean change
Vital Signs: another world is possible
‘Vital Signs: another world is possible’ is Science Gallery London’s new, free exhibition and events programme. It brings together artists, designers and researchers to explore how the health of the natural world is intimately connected to our own health and wellbeing from the waterways and atmosphere to the ocean floor. Revealing unique perspectives on our surrounding environments through multimedia installations, research collaborations and A Living Library, Vital Signs reinforces that humans are fundamentally a part of nature rather than apart from it.