Daily Archives: January 9, 2025

There’s More to Versailles Than Gilded Opulence. A New Show Reveals Its Secret Role in Shaping Science

When we think of Versailles, we think of Marie Antoinette, opulence, and the last hurrah of the aristocratic high life before the French Revolution put an end to such folly in 1789. We may also think of philosophers like Voltaire and the age of the enlightenment, but less well-known is the palace’s crucial role in supporting the sciences.
As a new exhibition, “Versailles: Science and Splendour” at the Science Museum in London until April 21, 2025, shows, the French court was motivated to sponsor scientific research as a means of consolidating power and expanding colonial rule. In 1666, Louis XIV established the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, which, unlike peer institutions in Italy or Britain, paid members a salary and covered their lodgings and equipment, meaning their endeavors were all done in the king’s service.
Subsequent kings Louis XV and Louis XVI were so keen on science that they even carried out experiments themselves. At court, they were routinely presented with the latest inventions or discoveries, sometimes even watching live demonstrations, and to receive this opportunity was the greatest mark of distinction for an ambitious scientist in France. Unsurprisingly, the Crown tended to favor advantageous developments, such as chemistry for artillery, astronomy for navigation, cartography for the mapping of French territories, and medicine for public heath.

Henri Testelin, “Fondazione dell’Accademia delle Scienze e dell’Osservatorio, a Parigi nel 1666”. pic.twitter.com/idECbBWr7v
— Leo Corneli (@gandalf1948) January 19, 2023

As such, Versailles became a hub of knowledge-sharing that attracted many different kinds of scientists, then known as “savants” or “natural philosophers.” Even Benjamin Franklin shared his theories about electricity and the lightning conductor with French scientists during a diplomatic visit to the palace in 1778.
But how to get the message out about this impressive bustle of learned activity, and promote France’s role in the advancement of scientific research? The answer, of course, was to commission paintings that would document these developments and emphasize the Crown’s role in them.
One example was Henri Testelin’s Establissement de l’Académie des sciences et fondation de l’Observatoire, 1666 (1673-1681), an imagined scene in which Louis XIV, in all his finery, meets with members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, among them are Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens and Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini. The men are surrounded by the accessories of serious study, including books, papers, celestial and terrestrial globes, a pendulum clock, an armillary sphere, and animal skeletons.
Gabrielle-Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet, from the private collection of Marquis de Breteuil. Photo: © Château de Breteuil.
From Testelin’s painting, you’d be forgiven for believing only men practiced science at Versailles, but there were a few remarkable women scientists who also made important contributions. The most notable of these was Emilie du Châtelet, a mathematician who, in writing the standard French translation of Isaac Newton’s basic law of physics from 1687, added her own commentary, including important contributions to our understanding of kinetic energy.
Du Châtelet’s intellectual collaborator and romantic partner Voltaire once described her as “a great man whose only fault was being a woman.” A painting of her by an unknown artist reveals something of her attempts to balance her ambitions with societal expectations of her gender. Though she is dolled up in a ladylike manner with elaborate dress and a gentle, pensive expression, she holds in her right hand a mathematical instrument for measuring distances known as a divider. A hefty copy of Newton’s Principa Mathematica (1687) lies open on her desk and an armillary sphere, used to map celestial constellations, can be seen in the background.
Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Pineapple in a pot (1733). Photo: © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN © Christophe Fouin.
As France expanded its imperial reach, budding French naturalists and botanists received new specimens to study from across the world. One fruit that never failed to impress European colonialists was the pineapple, which they “discovered” in South American and the Caribbean in the late fifteenth century and brought back home. These spiky, oval fruits soon became highly fashionable objects coveted by royals who wanted to grow them in their own gardens. In order to pull this off in less than optimal weather conditions, horticulturists in the Netherlands invented the greenhouse and were soon being imitated by their neighbors.
The first homegrown pineapples reached maturity in France in 1733, and were presented to the king on Christmas Day. The momentous feat was recorded by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, a French painter renowned for his still lifes. By the 1750s, hundreds of pineapples were being cultivated and their distinctive form continued to intrigue artists of all kind, becoming a popular subject for paintings or a common design for textiles and decorative arts.
Pierre-Denis Martin, View of the Marly machine and of the Louveciennes castle (1722-23). Photo: © Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN, © Jean-Marc Manaï.
In order to convert Versailles from a mere hunting lodge for the king’s leisure and sports into France’s principal seat of power in the late 17th century, Louis XIV wanted his gardens to be filled with magnificent fountains and waterworks. This was a big ask, given the lack of adequate water source nearby, but engineers managed it by building the largest mechanical device of their time, known as the Marly Machine. This hydraulic system could miraculously raise water in the opposite direction of gravity, over 500 feet up from the Seine to a reservoir, where it would eventually be transported to Versailles.
Though the Marly Machine no longer exists, it survives via various modes of documentation, most notably a painting by the artist Pierre-Denis Martin, who produced many sweeping landscape paintings recording battlefields or architectural arrangements. The  composition gives a sense of the machine’s scale and impressive presence within the natural topography, and we can just make out various paddle wheels and a rod system leading up the hill behind.
As with so many other sophisticated technological achievements at Versailles, the Marly Machine’s invention was ultimately co-opted for political purposes, becoming a proud expression of the king’s extravagant wealth and power.
“Versailles: Science and Splendour” is on view at the Science Museum in London until April 21, 2025.

Bainbridge lab scientist shares thoughts on national med tech. shortage

Medical agencies are reporting a national shortage of medical laboratory technicians.Job seekers could study to become a lab tech by attending local programs that offer two-year degrees.Watch the story to learn what’s causing the shortage and how the need impacts local hospitals. BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT: It’s a hidden gem in this local job market.”It’s because it’s a hidden job in the hospital. We’re behind the scenes,” medical laboratory scientist Donna Weathersby.There are programs in neighboring cities that can help job seekers qualify for open positions and fill a growing need in the medical field.”Since the day I’ve been in the field… We’ve been short,” said Weathersby.Weathersby started her career as a medical laboratory technician back in September of 1977 and she said that’s how long she’s seen a shortage in the lab.The now laboratory scientist echoes reports from agencies like the American Society of Clinical Laboratory Scientists.The ASCLS reports that nearly half of all medical laboratories report difficulty filling medical technician positions.”The problem with the shortage is that there are fewer schools than they have been [in the past],” according to Weathersby.Medical lab tech programs are deemed as rare but there are a few programs scattered in neighboring cities like Dothan, Thomasville, Albany, and Tallahassee.Tallahassee State College created a two-year medical technician program in 2023.”One of the things we saw with COVID-19 is that a lot of the medical facilities needed more medical laboratory technicians for all of the testing that was taking place. So they called on us to help meet that need,” said Calandra Stringer, the VP of Academic Affairs for Tallahassee State College.But due to the shortage, the college has put the course on hold as they work to fill their own need.”The program is open and ready. We have not started enrolling students because I need a faculty member,” said Stringer.:The Association for Diagnostics and Laboratory Medicine has endorsed the Medical Laboratory Personnel Relief Act.The legislation would use federal funding to support the education and training of MLTs.Weathersby said MLTs are connecting with patients every day and understand they are making a vital difference in people’s healthcare.”These are the people on the front lines of finding things that make a difference in our community,” said Weathersby.Memorial Hospital and Manor is currently looking to hire MLT’S.Lab tech salaries are based on education and experience.

‘Dan Da Dan’ and the Magnificent Science SARU

A little over a year ago, I visited the anime studio Science SARU in Tokyo. Like many such studios, its colorfully flamboyant work is made in an anonymous building. Science SARU is situated well away from Tokyo’s neon-lit center, in a quiet residential neighborhood without giant screens or pachinko parlors. When I went there, the only sign of the building’s identity was a metal plate beside the door, depicting a critter with rubber-hose legs. It’s SARU’s mascot.
I visited the studio before Science SARU announced it was making the show that would become one of the main anime hits of 2024, the madcap action-romcom-lunatic Dan Da Dan. Still, SARU’s President, Eunyoung Choi, was in bullish mood. When I asked her where she thought SARU was now, she pointed up how the studio was diversifying. It was using in-house talent and outside directors; it was making original stories and ambitious collaborations.
“We’re really moving forward,” Choi said, “and sending projects to the world in the next few years.”
Take-off with Scott Pilgrim
Back then, the studio was just releasing its Netflix miniseries Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. It was a riff on the strip and film versions of Scott Pilgrim, originally created by the Canadian artist Bryan Lee O’Malley. O’Malley co-wrote the anime too; it takes his characters into a radically new timeline. Science SARU seamlessly translated his designs into motion, with snot-bubbles, button eyes and silly mouths.
“It was a We get it feeling,” Choi said of the property. “A great match with the team, and a good vibe about the project… The visuals are really fun, and also very creative. The character design style is not like an anime style, but on the other hand, it was, Yeah, we can adapt this.” According to Choi, the staff were especially galvanized about animating Scott Pilgrim’s fights. “A lot of animators were really motivated, and sometimes the animation turned out to be something we didn’t expect.”
As with many streaming shows, we can only guess how well the show did commercially. But it won critical kudos among outlets that would normally never think of covering anime. The Scott Pilgrim name was vital; it gave mainstream pundits a way into the series that few other anime offered. The show was reviewed as a Scott Pilgrim series, not as an anime.
Ghosts! Aliens! Ghosts! Aliens!
Science SARU’s new series, Dan Da Dan, has no such broad accessibility. Helmed by Fuga Yamashiro in his series director debut, it’s brash. It’s anarchic. It has a ton of dick jokes. It subjects the heroine to a slapstick sexual threat in Part One (even if it’s so absurd it hardly registers as a threat at all). Many Western media outlets would hesitate to give such a show exposure, but it didn’t need them to get buzz.
In an extraordinary move, Dan Da Dan’s first three episodes were previewed in cinemas in more than 50 territories around the world this past September, including North America. (I was in London at the time, catching them in a West End multiplex.) Even more brazenly, the third part, which concluded the screening, ended just before a huge battle.
To be continued, the preview might as well have said, on the small screen! It was reckless fan-bait, and it worked. The subsequent episodes streamed across Netflix, Hulu and Crunchyroll. As of writing, anime websites are awash in fan raves, and a second anime season is confirmed for next July.
Here’s the Season 2 teaser released earlier this week:
First look at #DANDADAN Season 2 Science SARU will continue to lead the production, with two talented directors at the helm: Fuga Yamashiro and Abel Gongora, who directed the opening animation for Season 1.Momo and Okarun’s paranormal hijinks continue July 2025! pic.twitter.com/nwllVnntEf
— DAN DA DAN Anime EN (@animeDANDADANen) December 21, 2024
Most of Dan Da Dan’s ingredients are familiar from a host of other anime, old and recent. The story has a brash girl and a geekish boy, Ayase and Takakura, who find Japan teeming with ghosts and aliens, many of which target the pair after they’re powered up supernaturally in Part One. There are frequent frantic fights and chases, new characters to meet (though far fewer than in many fight anime), and a last episode that closes, naturally, on another cliff-hanger.
As with Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, many of the show’s virtues presumably reflect the source material, a manga by Yukinobu Tatsu. The caliber of the adapter is also worth noting. The show’s writer is the vastly experienced Hiroshi Seko, whose anime credits include Vinland Saga, Attack on Titan, Chainsaw Man and Mob Psycho 100.  Despite the madness of the first episodes, and the aggressive raucousness of much of the humor, it’s soon clear this is a sweet-hearted story. The series never strays far from the central youngsters, their charmingly clunky friendship, and their innate sense of honor.
Like most anime series, Dan Da Dan doesn’t mock its audience for caring about the characters. That’s a stark contrast to American shows like Rick & Morty and Family Guy, which bury their moments of caring deep in mockery, like a hedgehog in prickles.
If the show’s charm reflects the source material, then the action scenes reflect anime’s industrial state of the art in 2024. They’re spectacular and stylish – for example, the bold use of monochrome for several set-pieces, such as red for an extended chase-battle scene with a colossal crab. But other studios do just as well. What stands out more in Dan Da Dan are the non-action scenes, especially those that sell unpromising set-ups through determinedly interesting visuals.
For example, when a hyper-annoying male love-rival for Takakura appears, his relentlessly crazy gestures are unbearable at first. But then they become horribly fascinating. His extended introduction is also broken up by a completely different kind of scene. Set at night, it’s an exquisitely awkward “see you tomorrow” between Ayase and Takakura. The characters’ words carry far less weight than Ayase’s exasperation and Takakura’s miserable dissembling… and the scene is allowed to run on and on, for what seems forever. (It’s about 90 seconds of screen time.)
Dan Da Dan also has a whole episode, Part 7, which starts as a standard-seeming fantasy battle, then turns into a raw, non-magical drama about a financially struggling mum and daughter, which itself runs the gamut from joy to bloody horror. On one level, you watch it playing out as a stunt, and yet the guilelessness of the whole series makes you surrender to the strings as they’re pulled.
Like some other classic anime, the overwhelming feelings in this episode are expressed not in song but in dance. A dead mother who’s lost everything in her world pirouettes exquisitely beneath stars, before becoming a monster. It has shades of another standout episode of a brash action anime; namely, Part Eight of last year’s Chainsaw Man, by the MAPPA studio. Then, the flamboyant action suddenly gave way to messy, clumsy realism, the heroes’ cool fight moves on the battlefield suddenly replaced by fumbling micro-movements in the bedroom.
The Yamada factor
If Dan Da Dan was ignored by mainstream outlets, then Science SARU can court them with its other new anime. The film The Colors Within will open in American and British cinemas in January 2025. Infinitely gentler than Dan Da Dan, it’s a feelgood drama about oddball teens. The director is the feted Naoko Yamada, who’s best known for her work with Kyoto Animation, including A Silent Voice.
I’ve seen The Colors Within, and it’s fascinating to watch Yamada’s style, overwhelmingly familiar to her league of fans, rendered by another studio. There’s the same delicacy of movements and linework; there’s the same focus on hands and legs.  The continuity is obvious if you compare a Colors Within trailer with one for Yamada’s 2018 film Liz and the Blue Bird, which was made at Kyoto Animation. And yet Colors Within’s colors feel hazier, its lines bouncier.
I interviewed Yamada for Anime News Network in 2022, soon after she joined Science SARU. At that time, she commented that Kyoto Animation trained her to portray human emotions, and to treat characters as “real” beings. In contrast, she said, “Science SARU really embraces the pleasure of making animation; everything is about being happy creating animation. I was curious about how those two [approaches] would marry up.”
This year, I would interview Yamada again after she’d finished Colors Within. I asked her if SARU’s looser style had made a difference, for example, to the characters’ funnier movements and facial expressions? “I don’t think it’s a case of the studio,” she replied. “It’s what the film required. If I say this is the kind of freedom I need to create this film, then that would be possible at either studio [Science SARU or Kyoto Animation].”
Taking Yamada’s two comments together, they suggest that Science SARU has a distinctive style and ethos, but it’s subtler than funny faces or a particular palette.
Masaaki Yuasa and Beyond
This bears out Choi’s earlier comments about Science SARU diversifying. But she might have also been reflecting on how Science SARU has managed a very difficult feat for an animation studio – namely, to emerge from a star creator’s shadow.
When Science SARU was founded 11 years ago, in 2013, its purpose seemed to be to showcase the work of one “star” director. That director was Masaaki Yuasa, who’d built up a formidable reputation in the decades before SARU, in anime for film and television. For readers who don’t know Yuasa’s work, his proclivities include splashy colors, loose lines and transformations comic and casual. “I want to see more relaxed animation coming from Japan,” he once declared.
For many years, Science SARU’s productions (barring below-line work) were almost always Yuasa-directed. They included cinema films such as 2017’s Night is Short, Walk on Girl, which is an excellent stand-alone film (think A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Kyoto with more booze). But it’s also a stylistic sequel to a pre-SARU classic by Yuasa, the 2010 TV series The Tatami Galaxy. Science SARU’s other films include Yuasa’s Lu Over the Wall (also 2017), Ride Your Wave (2019) and Inu-Oh (2022).
Over the same period, SARU also released Yuasa-directed serials made for TV or streamers. The first was Ping Pong The Animation in 2014 (brilliant!), followed by the apocalyptic horror series Devilman Crybaby (2018). The latter was for Netflix, with Yuasa capitalizing on that to include far more explicit sex and violence than TV would allow. He followed that with the delightful Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (2020), about young animators. Then he returned to the apocalypse with the same year’s Japan Sinks: 2020, for Netflix.
And yet, in almost a blink, Yuasa’s dominance ended. In 2020, he retired as President of Science SARU, giving the position to his long-time collaborator Choi, who’d co-founded the studio with Yuasa back in 2013. Like Yuasa, Choi had begun as an animator; in 2020, she spoke of bridging anime and Western animation styles.
And in the years since, and especially after the release of Inu-Oh in 2022, SARU has moved rapidly away from being “the Masaaki Yuasa studio.” This is significant because of how other great studios have failed to detach themselves from their most famous star. There’s Aardman Animations in Britain, still forever associated in the public mind with Nick Park, creator of Wallace & Gromit.
In America, when Walt Disney died in 1966, his company struggled for two decades to find a new identity, finally forging one from Broadway and princesses. But the starkest example of the syndrome is in Japan. Studio Ghibli is still popularly known as “the Hayao Miyazaki studio,” despite trying to find successors to him for the last 30 years. SARU has shaken off its association with Yuasa in less than three.
As of writing, Science SARU’s next productions will include the second season of Dan Da Dan next July, as well as another action series, Sanda, in the Fall. But the studio also has another TV series already confirmed for 2026. It’s SARU’s take on a decades-old cyberpunk classic, The Ghost in the Shell. After what it’s done for Scott Pilgrim, Dan Da Dan and Naoko Yamada, that should be worth seeing.

Andrew Osmond is a British author and journalist, specialising in animation and fantasy media. His email is [email protected].

This week in science: hula hoop science, vaccine longevity and 2025 space missions

NPR’s Juana Summers talks with Jessica Yung and Emily Kwong of Short Wave about the physics of hula hooping, why some vaccines last longer than others, and a few moon launches to watch for in 2025.
Sponsor Message

Tonga eruption likely the world’s largest in 30 years – scientist

Early data from Tonga’s violent volcanic eruption suggests it is the biggest blast since Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines 30 years ago, volcanologist Shane Cronin says.
The eruption of the underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, about 65km north of Nuku’alofa, on Saturday shot thick ash and steam 20km skywards.
University of Auckland volcanologist Professor Shane Cronin said scenes on the ground would have appeared apocalyptic after the eruption: ash clouds blotting out the sun, thunderclaps of booming shockwaves and thousands of lightning strikes.
“The clouds that people could see in the distance, the booming noises and then the waves coming from the first tsunami…The next step is when the ash clouds spread across Tongatapu, and that ash cloud is so dense with fine ash particles that it blocks the sun completely, so it gets really dark.”
Cronin said rain, small pebbles and many centimetres of ash would have rained down.
“This is an eruption best witnessed from space,” he said.
The ash clouds ballooned over the island after the eruption, forming an umbrella with a diameter of 260km.
“The large and explosive lateral spread of the eruption suggests that it was probably the biggest one since about the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo,” Cronin said.
NOAA’s GOES West satellite captured another explosive eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, located in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga. According to local officials, the eruption had a radius of 260 km (161.5 miles) and sent ash, steam, and gas 20 kilometres (12.4 miles) into the air on 13 January 2022. Photo: NOAA
He said early data suggested the eruption could measure as high as five on the volcanic explosivity index (VEI).
The index estimates the strength and potential impact of an eruption on an eight-point scale, with each successive interval representing a tenfold increase in energy.
Cronin said a VEI-5 eruption would happen once or twice in a decade globally.
The Mount Pinatubo eruption, which had a VEI of six, pumped 15m tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere and cooled the earth by one degree for the next year and a half.
Cronin said Tonga’s water supply and agriculture could be severely affected in the fallout from the eruption and international aid will be critical.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday said the Defence Force’s top focus was delivering clear water to Tonga.
Cronin said as well as being a health hazard, volcanic ash could produce acid rain and leachates which can destroy crops.
“The acid associated with the volcanic ash can burn the leaves of crops, leafy vegetables, things like that.
“It’s pretty bad for a lot of crops, particularly broadleaf crops – bananas and squash, things like that.
“Acid rain can cause the burning of plant leaves and so on, as well.”
He said drinking ash-contaminated water could cause an upset stomach and health issues.
NIWA hydrodynamics scientist and tsunami expert Dr Emily Lane said the devastating tsunami that followed the eruption was also a rare occurrence.
Most tsunami are triggered by underwater earthquakes, and only about 5 percent of historical tsunamis have been caused by volcanic eruptions, she said.
“We haven’t seen a volcanic tsunami of this magnitude in over 100 years,” she said.
“This is pretty much shattering the mould. One of the tricky things about tsunamis is that they happen very infrequently; think about the Japanese tsunami and its predecessor was over 1000 years beforehand.
This Ash RGB imagery above shows the eruption in a different way, using infrared channels to detect volcanic ash and sulfur dioxide gas. Credit: NOAA
“We haven’t seen very many volcanic tsunamis. We’ve certainly never seen a volcanic tsunami that has affected the entire Pacific in this way.”
Lane said the only similar volcanic tsunami event was Indonesia’s Krakatau eruption in 1883, which killed tens of thousands of people and obliterated the island.
Atmosphere pressure disturbances from the volcano saw sea level disturbances recorded across the Pacific afterwards, including in New Zealand, where tsunami waves higher than one metre above sea level were recorded in areas including Warkworth and the upper reaches of Waitemata harbour.
“Tsunami scientists are literally going, ‘Wow’, about this,” Lane said.
SOURCE: RNZ PACIFIC/ PACNEWS

Social Artist Helen Storey on Working on the Boundary of Fashion and Science

In this episode, we talk to social artist, designer and researcher Helen Storey about a career that has taken her from fashion runways to scientific collaborations to, most recently, refugee camps in the Middle East and Africa.Storey is professor of fashion and science at the London College of Fashion in the Center for Sustainable Fashion at the University of the Arts London (UAL). In May, she donated her 30-year Helen Storey Foundation Archive of about 2,000 digital and physical pieces to UAL. In this interview, she discusses her journey – how she transitioned from award-winning commercial fashion designer to working with scientists on projects that, among other explorations, translate the first 1,000 hours of human life into textiles – and how she hopes the archive will benefit students.Storey, who was awarded an MBE for Services to Arts in 2009, also shares insights from her humanitarian work. From creating Dress 4 our Time to becoming the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ first designer-in-residence, she explains how these experiences are now intertwined with her work at UAL.The conversation covers what the arts and science bring to each other, the value of the tactile, and how art can be a conduit for people to connect with overwhelming issues such as climate change, plastics pollution and global displacement.  This episode is sponsored by Schmidt Science Fellows. Listen to this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts or Google podcasts.