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BOOK S in Brief OPINION NATURE|Vol 464|15 April 2010 O To what extent UDI Creating wetlands around ST are we in control Manhattan could protect the AND of our actions? city from rising waters. L E/D Not as much as C we think, says neuroscientist OFFI H RC EA Eliezer Sternberg S in My Brain RE E R Made Me Do U CT E It (Prometheus Books, 2010). T Exploring thorny issues of moral HI responsibility in the light of recent ARC developments in neuroscience, Sternberg asks how the brain operates when we exercise our will, whether future criminals might be spotted from their brain chemistry and how consciousness might have evolved. Artificial reefs to buffer New York The Little Book Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s by the Brooklyn-based Bergen Street Knitters. of String Theory Waterfront A dredged-up oyster shell sits beside (Princeton Univ. Museum of Modern Art, New York Matthew Baird Architects’ model of ‘Working Press, 2010) Until 11 October 2010 Waterline’, a scheme for the low-lying lands by theoretical of Bayonne, New Jersey, and the Kill van Kull, physicist Steven the tidal strait that separates them from Staten Gubser puts Within the next 40 years, projected sea-level Island. The company proposes creating an arti- into words the rises of up to a third of a metre threaten coastal ficial reef and breakwater by sinking thousands abstract maths cities, including New York. By 2100, rising sea of 75-centimetre-high recycled-glass ‘jacks’ of some of the most challenging levels could inundate 21% of Lower Manhattan (shaped as in the game) into the sea bed. Accu- areas of physics, from energy and at high tide and warmer ocean temperatures mulated sediment, explains ecologist and artist quantum mechanics to branes, could bring more frequent hurricanes, accom- Nim Lee, would host algae and create habitats supersymmetry and multiple panied by storm surges 7 metres high. for marsh grasses and marine life. dimensions. Describing the field as On show until October at New York’s Local warehouses and piers could be “promising” rather than esoteric, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) are five pro- converted to recycle the necessary materials: Gubser emphasizes string theory’s posals for shielding low-lying areas of the city New Yorkers discard nearly 3,000 tonnes of links to other areas of physics and from encroaching waters. Each addresses a dif- glass each week, of which only around half is anticipates forthcoming results from ferent zone, from Lower Manhattan to the New recycled. Bayonne’s ‘tank farm’ of industrial the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Jersey coast, using principles that have global containers — used in an infamous 1960s Europe’s particle-physics laboratory applications. Rather than relying on defensive ‘salad-oil swindle’, in which a commodities near Geneva, Switzerland, that will barriers, such as levees and sea walls, the local trader conned banks out of US$150 million by test the theory. design teams participating in Rising Currents pretending the mostly water-filled tanks were suggest using wetlands, artificial islands and liv- full of soybean oil — could be turned into a IEF In Elegance ing reefs to absorb water and attenuate waves. sewage-fertilized algae farm producing algal in Science In the project Oyster-Tecture, Kate Orff and oils for biodiesel as a project by-product. (Oxford Univ. her team from the urban design studio SCAPE/ Water overflow is a persistent problem in Press, 2010), BR Landscape Architecture plan to seed oysters in New York: thanks to outmoded sewers, more physiologist Ian the waters of the Bay Ridge Flats off Brooklyn than 100 billion litres of raw sewage and pol- Glynn examines to recreate a long-lost natural oyster reef. The luted storm water are discharged into the har- why we find a SCAPE project also encompasses the Gowanus bour each year. In their project ‘A New Urban good experiment Canal, a former industrial waterway polluted Ground’, Architecture Research Office (ARO) IN or theory so by pesticides and heavy metals. Oyster beds act and designers dlandstudio suggest filling the satisfying. Detailing a range of as a natural filtration system, and could clean streets of Lower Manhattan with ‘greenways’ — beautiful and imaginative discoveries millions of litres of harbour water each day — a freshwater wetlands and saltwater marshes that across the history of science, from single oyster can filter 3 litres of water an hour. act as sponges. “We didn’t envision it to be an Johannes Kepler’s determination “The project doesn’t require a billion-dollar apocalyptic scene of nature overtaking the city,” of the laws of planetary orbits to investment, just biology in the form of the oys- says Adam Yarinsky of ARO. “It’s very much elucidation of the structure of DNA, ter,” says Orff. A model of Oyster-Tecture, a rope about the city perpetuating, not diminishing.” Glynn concludes that economy and and timber “mosaic landscape for marine life Population growth is another factor to take creativity are the qualities that bring and people” populated by wooden birds, turtles, into account: New York City is projected to us most aesthetic pleasure. BOOKS fish and human figures, has been hand-knitted grow by 800,000 people by 2030. Extending the 982 © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved NATURE|Vol 464|15 April 2010 OPINION city into the water is the goal of ‘New Aqueous storm surges. In ‘Water Proving Ground’, LTL them to become like [French architect Etienne- City’, which covers Sunset Park, Bay Ridge and Architects propose a series of landscaped Louis] Boullée’s late-eighteenth-century paint- Staten Island. Designers nArchitects’ solution finger-shaped piers for the zone that includes ings in which a seemingly impossible future is is to build an archipelago of concrete islands Liberty State Park and the Statue of Liberty. projected. We want them to percolate into real connected by inflatable storm barriers that Curator Barry Bergdoll of MoMA hopes projects or into public policy.” ■ accumulate silt and provide resilience against that the projects will be realized: “I don’t want Josie Glausiusz is a journalist based in New York. Q&A: John Sims on mathematical art While pursuing his doctorate in dynamical systems, John Sims was drawn to explore the connections between mathematics and art. Now curating a year-long series of maths–art shows at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, the conceptual artist explains the cultural significance of maths. What is mathematical art? Jackson Pollock’s paintings. Paulus Gerdes, IM OR It is art that embraces the spirit, language an educator and mathematician from M A E and process of mathematics. Both maths and Mozambique, has written extensively on how D . art are concerned with truth, but they differ native mathematical thinking can inspire D in their ways of searching for it. Maths uses contemporary work. I have translated a knot analysis and proof; art uses the senses and diagram that Gerdes designed — inspired emotions. But maths can harness the spirit of by African and Celtic sources — into a rope creativity and art can be analytical. Together sculpture. For the last show of the series, we they form a great alliance for understanding will create a wall of mathematical quilts from the world around us. all over the world. How did you come to straddle What will you work on next? both worlds? I am finishing a project featuring 13 quilts I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and became based on visualizations of pi and Pythagorean interested in maths through a high-school triples, in collaboration with Amish quilters science-fair project on Pythagorean triples. from Sarasota. After that, I am developing an It was in graduate school that I started to online virtual Museum of Mathematical Art. connect maths and art. I taught a calculus course where I allowed the students to make a that exposes beam and brick. Mark Strand, the Who has influenced you? ‘cheat sheet’ of notes and formulae to take into former US Poet Laureate, responded to the I am inspired by Pythagoras, who saw maths the exam. One was visually stimulating, so I pairing in verse. sitting at the centre of art, life and nature. I bought it. Later, I met mathematician John admire the work of the sixteenth-century Horton Conway and sculptor Brent Collins Can art be useful in teaching maths? painter Albrecht Dürer, particularly his who got me excited about visual maths and Sometimes. However, I think maths education use of magic squares [number grids in art. Soon after, I went to Ringling College is failing marginalized groups such as artists. which every row, every column and the of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, to It would be better if maths was presented less diagonals sum to the same constant]. I develop a maths curriculum for art students. as a slave to science and more as a partner to like the way that M. C. Escher was able to art. Our next set of shows engages students draw on the tradition of Islamic geometric Why run a series of maths–art shows and teachers. A class at the Brooklyn Academy art in a representational context, and this year in New York City? of Science and the Environment is preparing I like his lithograph of an impossible The aim of the Rhythm of Structure series is a giant tessellation, inspired by M. C. Escher, waterfall inspired by the work of British to create an opportunity for call-and-response that will cover a wall. Later, we will open that mathematician Roger Penrose. In the across maths, art and poetry — where wall to mathematicians and maths educators, conceptual realm, I like the surrealist artist mind meets hand meets heart.
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