[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] money, photos, and nanotecnology

[Lisa Yayla]

Hi,
Two articles about photo exhibitions, excerpt about Georgian currency 
and from the University of Wisc a "nanotactile". Combination of nano 
technology and rapid prototyping with of aim of making science an 
interesting chose career choice for VI.
Regards,
Lisa

article excerpt
http://www.messenger.com.ge/issues/1329_april_3_2007/n_1329_2.htm

"The banknote has up to twenty unique anti-forgery features. For 
example, running down it is a broken thread with the inscription GEL 
200. Such tactile features will also help blind people to recognize the 
banknote," Giorgi Kalandadze, a spokesperson for the National Bank, told 
The Messenger.
excerpt
http://www.jhguide.com/article.php?art_id=1591
Siaght unseen - “Shooting Blind: Photo-graphs by the Visually Impaired” 
features two dozen photographs taken by artists who can’t see well, or 
at all. On display through May 11 in Teton County Library’s Exhibit 
Gallery, the show captures the unique visions of members of a New York 
City art collective called Seeing with Photography.
article
http://www.sfist.com/archives/2007/03/29/sfist_tonight.php

Seeing beyond Sight
What happens when you give visually impaired children cameras and ask 
them to capture their everyday life? Come find out at this exhibit for a 
new book by Tony Deifell, Seeing Beyond Sight: Photography by Blind 
Teenagers. Accompanying the revelatory photographs is commentary and 
reflections by the artists. If you can't make it tonight, the show runs 
until May 12 but stop by around 6 until 8pm to catch a glimpse of the 
photographs in the book, meet the author and see clips from an upcoming 
documentary film. SF Camerawork, 657 Mission St.

article
http://nanotechnologytoday.blogspot.com/2007/04/unique-models-help-teach-nanoscience-to.html


Unique models help teach nanoscience to the blind

Unique models help teach nanoscience to the blind
An enlarged, 3-D model of "NanoBucky," a nanoscale version of Bucky 
Badger made entirely from tiny carbon nanofiber "hairs." To create the 
3-D model, Mohammed Farhoud, a senior in biochemistry, converted the 2-D 
information contained in a scanning electron microscopy image of the 
original NanoBucky into 3-D, and then used these data to "print" the 
model in plaster with an engineering tool known as a rapid prototyping 
printer.
The 3-D version is tens of thousands of times larger than the original 
NanoBucky -- 9,000 of which can fit on the head of a pin -- but still 
faithfully replicates the nanofibers composing the nano-mascot's 
structure. Photo: Aaron Mayes.
At the root of scientific study are observations made with the eyes; yet 
in nanoscience, our eyes fail us. The smallest object we can see still 
looms thousands of times larger than a typical nano-sized structure. 
Even the most powerful microscopes can't peer into the nanoscale directly.

That's why nanoscale experiments offer such great opportunities to teach 
blind and visually impaired students about science and pique their 
interest in the field, says Andrew Greenberg, education and outreach 
coordinator for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nanoscale Science 
and Engineering Center (NSEC) and the Institute for Chemical Education.

"The fact is, we're all blind at the nanoscale," he says. "So the 
message to blind students is, 'This is something you can do, this is a 
field you can enter. You have the ability to understand what's going on 
at the nanoscale just as much as anyone else.'"

To give blind students a feel - literally - for nanoscience and 
technology, Greenberg and Mohammed Farhoud, a senior biochemistry 
student working with UW-Madison Center for Biology Education (CBE) 
Director Dave Nelson, are building three-dimensional models of 
nano-surfaces that are large enough to be explored with the hands. Their 
first attempt replicates "NanoBucky," a nanoscale version of the 
UW-Madison mascot, Bucky Badger, made entirely from tiny carbon 
nanofiber "hairs."

Greenberg and Farhoud are presenting the work, funded by the National 
Science Foundation, on March 27 at the 233rd National Meeting of the 
American Chemical Society.

Created by UW-Madison chemistry professor Bob Hamers to demonstrate a 
method for controlling the growth of nanomaterials, the original 
NanoBucky is so tiny that approximately 9,000 of him can fit on the head 
of the pin. Though Greenberg and Farhoud's plaster 3-D models are 
several inches long and tens of thousands of times larger, they aim to 
faithfully reproduce every last nanofiber of Bucky's being.

"We want to get across that NanoBucky is made up of individual carbon 
nanofibers standing on end," says Greenberg. "If the students' fingers 
were small enough, this is what a surface would feel like at the nanoscale."

The pair is still perfecting the modeling method, which employs an 
engineering tool called rapid prototyping. But eventually, Greenberg 
plans to test whether the models help blind students grasp nanoscience 
concepts, especially the complex ways in which data are collected to 
produce 2-D images of nanoscale surfaces.

He also wonders whether 3-D models might help sighted students - or the 
public, for that matter - also appreciate the nanoscale. "A 
two-dimensional image is great," he says. "But if you can touch 
something - everyone enjoys that."

Greenberg first conceived of the models during a visit to the Indiana 
School for the Blind, where a colleague showed him 3-D models of 
molecules that blind students handled to learn chemical structures. Soon 
afterward, he contacted Farhoud, master of the rapid prototyping printer 
in the UW's Biology New Media Center. To help professors convey 
difficult concepts in the classroom, Farhoud routinely builds 3-D models 
from computer-generated images of tiny things, including molecules and 
cellular structures.

NanoBucky, though, was on a scale all his own. Starting with a 2-D, 
grey-scale picture of the nano-mascot taken with scanning electron 
microscopy (SEM), Farhoud first reversed the image, making the blacks 
appear white and vice versa. Next, he used the various shades of grey in 
the image to confer heights on the carbon nanofibers: the blackest black 
was assigned a maximum height, white got a value of zero, and the 
computing program MATLAB calculated all the values in between.

Farhoud then sent these newly acquired 3-D data into the rapid 
prototyper, which lays down plaster layer-by-layer to "print" 3-D models.

Greenberg and Farhoud are confident they can construct models from data 
generated by other common tools of the nanotechnology trade, such as 
atomic force microscopy (AFM). In fact, AFM output has proven easier to 
work with than SEM images, says Farhoud, because the data are already 
3-D. They also plan to replicate other nanoscale surfaces, such as those 
made from materials called block copolymers.

Besides being fun to touch and handle, Greenberg hopes the models will 
encourage more blind and visually impaired students to pursue science, 
technology and engineering. Because current learning and research tools 
don't allow them to experience science on their own, many blind students 
don't consider science an attractive career choice.

"One of the goals of our program is to build diversity into science and 
engineering," he says. "We really want to open these careers to anyone 
who is interested."

Contact: Andrew Greenberg greenberg at chem.wisc.edu 608-890-1534 
University of Wisconsin-Madison