Charles Manson Facebook

Materials Today - Technique reveals buried image in famed illustrator’s painting

Technique reveals buried image in famed illustrator’s painting

06 September 2009

Scientists have reported use of a new X-ray imaging technique to reveal for the first time in a century unprecedented details of a painting hidden beneath another painting by American illustrator N.C. (Newell Convers) Wyeth. The non-destructive look-beneath-the-surface method could reveal hidden images in hundreds of Old Master paintings and other prized works of art, the researchers say. The scientists reported the research at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Jennifer Mass and colleagues note in the new study that many great artists re-used canvases or covered paintings with other paintings. They did this in order to save money on materials or to let the colors and shapes of a prior composition influence the next one, she says. Art historians believe that several of Wyeth’s most valued illustrations have been lost from view in that way.

One of these so-called lost illustrations depicts a dramatic fist fight and was published in a 1919 Everybody’s Magazine article titled “The Mildest Mannered Man.” Using simple X-ray techniques, other scientists previously showed that Wyeth had covered the fight scene with another painting, “Family Portrait.” But until now, the fine detail and colors in the fight scene have been lost from view. Nobody has seen the true image except in black and white reproductions.

The new instrument, called a confocal X-ray fluorescence microscope, was developed at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) national X-ray facility. The instrument reveals minute details in hidden paintings without removing paint samples. It shoots X-ray beams into a painting and then collects fluorescent X-ray “signals” given off by the chemicals in the various paint layers. Scientists can link each signal to specific paint pigments. In addition to revealing the original image, the method is providing new information on Wyeth’s materials and methods. The same technique may ultimately reveal hidden images in paintings by other famed artists, the researchers say.

Materials Today - Technique reveals buried image in famed illustrator’s painting

materials

Our current Top Ten

1. Aerogel- lightest solid on earth
2. Aluminium Nitride Wafer - cuts ice like butter
3. Bioglass Scaffold.- cells turn into bone on contact
4. Rapid Prototpye Nylon Chainmail - the ultimate in machine art
5. Silicon Nitride Ball Bearing - smashes concrete without a scratch
6. Ferro fluid - a liquid that is not a liquid
7. Thermochromic Paper - a retake on the colour of heat
8. Tin Stick - a metal that cries
9. Shape Memory Alloy - metal that remember its shape
10. TV Rock - a natural version of transparent concrete

materials

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Mannequins aid maternity training

Mannequins aid maternity training

The study showed complications were dramatically reduced

A new way of training staff using mannequins has dramatically reduced complications from childbirth, a study of maternity units has found.

The new method involves using an artificial mother and child and has proved so successful that it may be taken up in the United States.

The hospitals that took part in the study were in Taunton, Exeter, Truro, Southmead, Gloucester and Cheltenham.

A spokesman said staff had proved very good at managing the new techniques.

Jo Crofts of Southmead Hospital added: "What we were doing in the study was actually assessing people on a very difficult situation.

"People across the south west region were exceedingly good at managing the initial stages which normally work.

"But when it came to more difficult, internal manipulations, that's where the training's needed because you can't practise that in real life and you need to get it right at the time."

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Mannequins aid maternity training

Whole Body Phantom

	Tuesday 22 September 2009

Whole Body Phantom Part No: KKMPBU-50      The Whole body phantom PBU-50 is a life-size, full body anthropomorphic phantom with a state-of-the-art synthetic skeleton, lungs, liver, mediastinum and kidneys embedded in KYOTOKAGAKU original soft tissue substitute. Movable joints allow basic positioning for plain X-ray and training/research applications can be enriched by disassembling the phantom into 10 individual parts (head, limbs and trunk). There are no metal parts or liquid structures. Features -Patient positioning: Right shoulder rotates side ways, abducting to a horizontal position. Left shoulder rotates forward, up to a horizontal position. Elbows bend inward to approx. 90 degrees. Hip joints rotate forward up to 90 degrees, then rotate outward up to 45 degrees, respectively. Knees bend to approx. 90 degrees. The phantom can be held in the supine frog leg position. The limbs and head are detachable at joints and neck for wider applications. The head supporter facilitates various head positions. -Anatomy: Life size synthetic skeleton Hands and feet with bone trabeculae Lungs with pulmonary vessels Mediastinal space Liver Kidneys -Original phantom materials: Radiology absorption and Hounsfield number approximate to human body. -Materials and features: Soft tissue and organs: Urethane base resin (SZ-50) Synthetic bones: Epoxy base resin Joint attachments: Epoxy, urethane with carbon fiber Screws: Polycarbonate Package supplied 1 whole body phantom PBU-50 (separable into 10 parts) Synthetic bones, pulmonary vessels, mediastinal space, liver, kidneys are embedded 1 head supporter 1 set of replacement joint connectors and screws (1 piece for each) 1 flat head screwdriver 1 set of sample X-ray films 2 carrying cases

INCREDIBLE BBC RADIO EMBED OBAMA MEDIA ETC. Mon, 21 Sep 09 - Americana: inside the USA - BBC - Podcasts

• 20/09/2009

  Mon, 21 Sep 09

  Duration:
  28 mins

  Matt Frei talks to Tom Friedman about President Obama's busy media schedule.

  Download 25MB (right click & "save target as")

Terms of Use

The BBC Podcasts are for your personal non-commercial use only.

All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to the BBC Podcasts shall remain the property of the BBC or third parties. You may not edit, alter, adapt or add to the BBC Podcast in any way. The BBC Podcasts are made available by the BBC on an "as is" and "as available" basis and the BBC gives no warranty of any kind in relation to the BBC Podcast. To the maximum extent permitted by law the BBC will not be liable for any loss or damage which you may suffer as a result of or connected to the download or use of the BBC Podcasts.

See the full Standard Licence Terms here.

Play recent episodes

Related links

BBC - Podcasts - Americana: inside the USA

Laudanum, Sago and Glue for the Father of his Country

Laudanum, Sago and Glue for the Father of his Country

Two hundred and fifty years ago, on September 20th 1759, a young member of the landed gentry in Virginia sent an order for supplies to London.

The document, now held in the Wellcome Library as WMS/Amer.91, is an interesting indication of the degree to which the colony, although now well over a century old, still relied heavily on imports from the (then) mother country. Medical supplies rub up against hardware, veterinary supplies and cookery ingredients. Adding particular interest to the shopping list is the identity of its author: the young gentleman farmer is George Washington, and twenty years later he will be embarking on his first term as President of the newly-independent United States.

Of this, of course, Washington could have no inkling at the time: he could have been forgiven for believing that the dramatic chapters of his life were over and he was now settling down. Born into the Virginia gentry in 1732, in the early 1750s he was beginning a career as a planter in an economy driven by large slave-worked tobacco plantations. He was also an officer in the Virginia militia. During the 1750s, tensions between the French and British settlements in North America, over who would control the Ohio valley beyond the Appalachians, erupted into war, and the young Lieutenant-Colonel Washington had distinguished himself: in 1755 General Braddock’s Monongahela offensive ended in disaster and Braddock’s death, but his aide Washington rallied the remaining forces to minimise damage and effect an orderly retreat. In 1758 British forces returned to the Ohio valley, with Washington - now a General – taking part in the expedition that expelled the French forces and turned their Fort Duquesne into the new British base of Pittsburgh.

After these wars in the Ohio valley Washington, now 26, resigned his commission and settled down. In January 1759 he married Martha Custis, a wealthy widow, whose dowry, combined with lands he had been granted beyond the Appalachians, made him a wealthy man: the newly-married couple settled at Mount Vernon, overlooking the Potomac downstream of the recently-founded town of Alexandria (and downstream of the site of the capital city that was to bear his name, years later). The order for supplies held at the Wellcome Library dates from the early months of their life at Mount Vernon and demonstrates the pattern of trade from the Virginia plantations: luxuries and infrastructural supplies imported from Britain, paid for from the proceeds of a cash crop (tobacco at this stage, although in the mid 1760s Washington moved over to cultivating wheat).


The order Washington sent out nine months after his marriage is a long and detailed one, and the sheet held at the Wellcome Library may not even be the whole of it. There is a long list of tools at the start, for surveying, joinery and so forth. Items plucked from the list include "2 long plains [planes]", "1 handsaw, 1 Pannel ditto, 1 Tenant ditto…", "6 dozen steel compasses", "1 dozen augers sorted from 2 Inches to ½ ditto", "25 lb Glew [glue]" and "12 inch chizzels". It is an indication of the equipment needed on the plantation and of the way that the colony was not yet able to match the workshops of Sheffield and Birmingham in supplying it.

Below this Washington moves to medical and culinary ingredients. Interestingly, these are mingled together in a style similar to that of the 17th and 18th-century recipe books held in the Library, without clear distinction between food and medicine. Some ingredients, of course, clearly belong in one category or the other: "6 Bottles Turlington's Balsam", "5 oz. liquid laudanum" and "5 oz. spirits sal ammoniac" are obviously medical, whilst four pounds each of pearl barley and sago and five pounds of white sugar candy leads us to the kitchen. But there are other items that could be for either purpose – "4 oz. best rhubarb" is almost certainly there as a medicine rather than a foodstuff, and one might surmise the same about "12 oz. Venus treacle", but there is no clear distinction.

At the end of the order comes a distinct section of veterinary supplies, in which Washington allows his supplier to use their discretion: "40/- worth of Medicine proper for Horses – among which let there be - 4 lb. flower of Brimstone; 4 lb. Anniseeds… & such others as are most proper." It is to be hoped, however, that the list of medical/culinary supplies prior to this also includes things ordered for veterinary purposes: in it we find "4 oz. Spanish flies", which are chiefly used when encouraging farm animals to mate (when crushed the beetles irritate the lining of the urethra) but also have a long and often disreputable history as a purported aphrodisiac for humans.

One sheet of paper, signed one afternoon 250 years ago by a soldier who thought his fighting days were over: but it opens vividly the world of the Virginia plantations and the colonial society whose last days were ticking away.