Some verbiage

This is a random thought that occurred to me but interesting nevertheless.

I recently saw V for Vendetta. I was (and still am) preparing slides for my talks and on one of the slides, I had lots of words. Looking at the slide afterwards, suddenly the noun ‘verbiage’ came to my mind (some might say, this blog can inspire similar feelings ). From verbiage, I remembered this self-introduction of ‘V’ from the movie.  Then, I recalled another verbiage that used to be my screen-saver:

“Those who are perforce constrained to be domiciled in vitreous structures with patent frangibility should on no account employ petrous formations as projectiles unto others.”

I think I read the above first at one of the vocab competitions at IIM-Ahmedabad and here is its analysis:

• perforce constrained to be domiciled = forced to live in
• vitreous structures = glass buildings
• patent frangibility = easily broken
• petrous formations = stones!
• employ…as projectile = throw!

Simply put: People who live in glass houses should not throw stones!

If you would like to read more, this is the place.

Alright, I am going back to slides.

Century old color photographs of the Russian empire

I always thought color photography was a relatively recent invention, perhaps around the first world war. I was amazed to find this digital exhibit on Library of Congress website that shows color photographs that were taken by a photographer to the Tsar (Prokudin-Gorskii), who was also an accomplished chemist. These photos evoke very lively and rich perception of history – the people and places suddenly acquire the details that were not appreciated before. The description of his color camera and how it was put to use are equally fascinating. Subsequent reading of Wikipedia revealed that James Maxwell is the first person in the recorded history to have taken a color photograph.

Beauty tip: Apply the moisturizer along Langer’s lines on your face.

This sequence of thoughts was triggered by an observation by Prof. Peter Lee during a biomechanics class.

Many students of biology or anatomy would know that our skin’s dermis (inner layer) is a connective tissue whose largest constituent is collagen. Collagen is a type of extra-cellular protein that looks like three ropes wound around each other at microscopic level. Two interesting facts about skin and collagen are in order: 1) Skin is the largest connective tissue and the largest organ of our body. 2) Collagen is the second most (after meat) animal produce consumed by human beings (if you exclude milk). All of the gelatin used in in food, pharmaceutical, photography, and cosmetic industry comes from animal connective tissues.

During the class, we came to know that the strings of collagen permanently orient themselves along specific directions. This orientation of collagen produces cleavage lines on the surface of skin, and that is what gives rise to all lines seen on our skin. These lines are the cause of wrinkles at elder age. In fact, only few parts of our body do not have clearly defined cleavages and our skin is *stretched* all the time along these lines.

These lines (sort of field lines of a very complex electric or magnetic field) were first mapped out by an Austrian anatomist Carl Langer (1819-1887). He systematically made fine cuts on the cadaver skin and observed in which direction the cuts elongate. The direction of elongation reveals the direction in which the skin is stretched and hence the orientation of underlying collagen. These lines of tension on skin are named after him as Langer’s lines.

Here is what these lines look like..

If you experience a cut along the Langer’s lines, the scar will not be very visible and the wound will heal fast. But if the cut is perpendicular to the Langer’s lines, the wound will tend to open up and the scar will be more visible. Surgeon’s (especially those involved in plastic surgery and beauty services) must respect these lines when making incisions on patient’s skin.

And perhaps these lines are the reason (as Prof. Lee remarked) wives ask their husbands to rub moisturizer on their face not randomly but along certain directions

Any comments from ladies? Do you think the lines in the image above are preferred directions for rubbing creams?

Something about rapid prototyping

Hi world,

Currently, I am writing from Institute of Armament Technology (IAT), Pune. Here I have joined as a sci-B in DRDO and undergoing the post-induction training. It is a different but equally interesting envrionment as IITB. Lots of water has flown since I left IITB, but I don’t think I can outline all of it here.

We had a great lecture on rapid prototyping (RP in short) from a scientist at GTRE (Gas Turbine Research Establishment), Bangalore.

The idea is to crate a physical model out of epoxy resin straight from the CAD model. Epoxy resin (areldite fame) has a property of solidifying on exposure to laser.

RP relies on very simple but powerful method – get the co-ordinates of the object from the CAD model, slice the model in very small (few tesns of microns) slices. The laser beam hovers over the epoxy resin filled platform. The platform shifts downward in discrete steps of few microns. In each step, laser beam is guided to sketch out a particular slice. In this way, the complete 3D prototype gets built in no time.

The most terrific aspect of this is that, this method works independent of geometrical complexity of component.

On medical front also, there is a great application. The remarkable example of this is a successful operation of tweens conjoined at head. In this case, the doctor had to disjoin the tweens who had separate brains but common blood supply and skull. The doctors took CT-scan images and created a 3D model of the head out of it. This 3D model was realised in epoxy-rasin using RP technology. The doctor could practice on this model before performing the actual operation.