Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Choosing an Animation School


So, you want to be an animator? Are you ready for the endless hours slaving away as an assistant to an assistant’s assistant? Are you ready to spend every waking hour living, breathing, and drawing animation? If you answered “yes” to those questions, then it’s time to start your career and find an animation school or training program. But with so many schools out there, how do you choose one?
The Fundamentals
First of all, you need a solid foundation in drawing — undoubtedly, the most important element of an animator’s education. All the computer skills in the world can’t mask a bad artist, so make sure that you find a program where you’ll spend the long, necessary hours honing your craft. Ideally, you’ll want a program that offer a combination of drawing opportunities — including life drawing, layout animation, and fundamental drawing studies.
In addition to drawing skills, you’ll need a program that covers the requisite animation skills like storytelling, layout, character design, direction, design, editing, acting and visual communication. Animation skills should include not only a knowledge of fundamentals (weight, movements, timing, reversals, motivational forces and thinking time, etc.), but development in posing, breakdowns, in-betweening, clean-up and special effects (wind, rain, shadows, water, explosions, etc.) as well. A general background in visual communication — including design, composition, texture, color theory — is also key.
And don’t forget science! Creating believable animation requires that you understand the properties and effects of gravity, momentum, inertia, friction, fluid dynamics, and so on. Knowledge of mechanical engineering principles and a thorough understanding of physics and mathematics are absolutely necessary. For example, the more you understand about mechanical linkage, sliding and rotational joints, power transmission, and so forth, the more realistic your machines will be. The same holds true for the anatomy and kinesiology of humans and animals.
The Secret about Software
Everywhere you turn, you hear about how computers are revolutionizing the industry. Computer animation — led by films like “Toy Story”, “Monsters, Inc.” and “Shrek” — have dominated Hollywood’s box office the past few summers. So it makes sense that any prospective animator should concentrate on learning the latest animation software packages, right?
Well… not really. The truth is that, while computers have become an increasingly large part of animation education, they’re no substitute for the fundamentals — learning the nuances of drawing, shading, lighting, and storytelling. While you should know enough about computer graphics to know how they work in general, you should avoid just learning packages of software. Today’s packages will be rendered obsolete as quickly as you learn them, and many studios use proprietary software that you can’t learn in school anyway.
Focusing on Film, Multimedia
If you intend to pursue a job animating for television or film, then you should probably look for a program that matches that interest and provides the background the potential employers are looking for. Check for programs that focus on traditional skills like drawing, painting, and sculpture, as well as “film knowledge” such as cinematography and composition. Find out how the school will help you build an effective portfolio of your work: not just a collection of assignments, but a well-developed presentation of your unique point of view, and your technical skills. You should also check to see how well integrated the school’s theatre and film departments are with their 2D and 3D art departments.
Likewise, if you want to focus on producing multimedia animation, you should find a program that covers the constraints and peculiarities of producing animation for the web, CD-ROM, and various other media.
Other Factors
There are numerous other factors to consider — the quality of faculty and facilities, school reputation, access to hardware and software, and, perhaps most importantly, cost (don’t forget: you need to eat too!). But as long as you keep these various factors in mind and remember to ask questions of school representatives, you’ll undoubtedly find a school from which to launch your animation career. Good luck!

Break into Showbiz


First thing is first, to break into show business, whether you wish to model or act, you need to get some experience in front of a crowd. Local theatre and school theatre is a good place to start. Take classes on public speaking or get involved with Toastmasters. This is an organization geared to help people learn to speak in front of large groups – an essential skill.

Then, if you are serious about finding an agent, get a good set of headshots. Two different looks for Acting. Headshots not 8″ x 10″ are regarded as unprofessional. Please remember to staple your headshot to the back of the headshot, text opposite from the back of the picture.

For Modeling (that’s if you want to dabble in to commercial print modeling) you’re going to want a composite card, this can be a mix of B&W and color. A headshot usually goes on the front and 3 to 4 pictures on back along with your measurements. You can find places that print comp cards online. An agent can usually do comps without getting in trouble with the unions as they are not making a profit on them. My logo does not go on a comp card unless I am the person sending it out to the printer.

You aren’t going to want your photo’s to look like they came from JC Penny’s. They do portraits and it’s an entirely different ballpark here. So no portraits. Again NO “Glamour Shots.” Dynasty has been off the air for years. Comps can have a glamour look to it on one of the shots, but your headshots have to be something else. And don’t just submit a snap shot. Trust me, I do not have time to sort through snapshots, neither do other agents.


Don’t work with ANY agent that makes you use their photographer, in order to be represented. Don’t work with anyone that pressures you into utilizing any of the services they may offer in order to be represented. If an agent wants a fee to represent you, turn around and walk out of their office. They will never get you anything that makes it worth your while for what they charge.

In my opinion, once you do get your headshots done, the best route to go is with a UNION FRANCHISED Agent. A union franchised talent agent can work with both union and non-union talent. AFTRA is the union that works with TV – Commercials and TV Shows – basically shows in a videotaped format.

To find AFTRA and SAG franchised talent agents, visit Actingland.com. Actingland provides contact information for thousands of AFTRA agents and every SAG agent.


Beware of agents that don’t have real offices. The unions will not franchise anyone who works from home. An agency needs a professional office in order to interview clients. I’d be concerned if my niece/sister-in-law/daughter went to interview with someone calling themselves an agent who works out of their home.

Be sure the person you are dealing with as your potential agent is ethical. The BBB is a good place to start but here’s an even better route. Call the state Attorney General’s office if it’s someone you’ve never heard of before. (I started out as an actress myself and learned the hard way.) You’d be surprised how a company can appear clean from the BBB and have a rather large (and active) file in the Attorney General’s office. Still do not neglect calling the BBB.

Try the local Consumer Affairs office too – it never hurts! Many states regulate agencies through the department of Consumer Affairs or Protection. CT regulates through the Dept of workplace Standards.

Standard agency percentages are 10% MAXIMUM on any union work and between 15-20% on non union work if it is outside of union governance. (I have seen model managers take up to 25%, OUCH!)

What is outside of Union Governance? Print, Runway and Promotional Modeling. Don’t let any one take more than 10% for your acting work. Be prepared to spend $$ on GOOD Photos and Printing costs for your headshots. These are your expenses, make sure the photographer you pick is a good one.

Ultimately, please remember, that no matter how difficult it is to get an agent, they work for you, not the other way around. Best of luck in all your careers, and remember to send agents your headshots with the contact info attached. You’d be surprised at the amount of people who send in photos to my agency with no contact info on it at all.

Overcoming Stage Fright


You are the next dancer in a show—large or small, it doesn’t matter. Your palms get sweaty. Your mouth goes dry. You feel sick to your stomach. Your knees feel wobbly. You have a sudden urge to go to the bathroom (and perhaps not come out!). Stage fright is a common ailment for performers new and seasoned. But it doesn’t have to cripple your performance or ruin the joy you derive from dancing. Here are a few techniques I’ve learned over the years to alleviate stage fright.

BE PREPARED Whether you’re improvising or performing a choreography, if you are confident in what you are presenting, you’ll be less inclined to panic beforehand. This means knowing your music inside and out. A good way to train your ear to recognize every nuance in the music is to start it in random places and try to decipher where in the song you are. If you’ve choreographed your dance, this will also help you learn to match your moves to the music rather than remembering the choreography as one long string. Decide what you want the audience to feel when they see your dance and concentrate on that while you’re backstage instead of thinking of your teacher sitting in the front row.


PRACTICE IN YOUR COSTUME This is one of my performance-prep mantras which I drill into all my students because dancing in a costume is completely different than dancing in leggings and a t-shirt! You don’t need to have the stress of worrying if your costume will stay put (or on!) while you’re waiting to dance. Your costume should give you power, not make you worry.

SMILE! Did you know some telemarketers are trained to smile while they talk on the phone? That’s because its nearly impossible to project negative feelings when you have a genuine smile on your face! Start smiling backstage. Dancing is FUN! The more you remind yourself of it, the happier you’ll feel and the happier you feel, the more relaxed you’ll be. Even if you haven’t convinced yourself backstage that you’re having a great time and are completely relaxed, you’re audience will never know the difference if you are smiling brilliantly at them.

PERFORM OFTEN…AND THEN SOME MORE I guess this advice is rather like “the hair of the dog that bit you…” Granted, there are some professional performers (dancers, actors, singers) who still freak out before their shows. However, for most people, familiarity with backstage nerves reduces their impact. Once your first performance is out of the way, sign up to dance again right away! Take every opportunity to dance—ask your teacher if your class can perform for each other. For me, the most intimidating audience is when I perform for my fellow troupe members!

ANALYZE THIS If you’re still nervous despite being prepared, well costumed, smiling brilliantly, and being on your 34th performance, its time to analyze why you’re still suffering from stage fright. The most common reason people get so nervous is fear of failure and being embarrassed by that failure. This is a valid concern. No one wants to fail in front of a group of people, be they friends or strangers. And certainly no one wants to look foolish, especially when they’re wearing a sparkly costume that reveals more than your average street clothes do! But you have to remind yourself that only by taking a risk—be it performing, starting a new job, or getting married—only then will you grow!

ADRENALINE So this leads me to the best advice I can give you. There is no physiological difference between excitement and fear. The same adrenaline courses through your veins whether you love roller coasters or hate them. So instead of viewing those butterflies in your stomach as fear, tell yourself, “Wow! Am I excited to perform!” It won’t take long for you to convince yourself and then you will welcome that adrenaline rush as proof that you are ready to go out and wow your audience!

Are You a 24/7 Eco Warrior?


For those who truly care about the environment many consider themselves eco-warriors and work countless hours in their chosen cause. As a retired entrepreneur from the car wash business I always understood how important clean water is. As a runner I always realized how important clean air is. So am I an environmentalist by profession, observation or choice?
Well generally I do not consider myself an environmentalist at all, although my action appear to point to that? Additionally in my retirement and the author of over 6000 online articles; I will often write on environmental issues and have been called a 24/7 Eco Warrior? Do I like this title? Well it is interesting that perception one might get from their observations of my various activities.
However as far as a 24/7 Eco warrior; I am a 24/7 type of guy indeed, Eco Warrior, well I am a realist and believe in the cycles, flows and patterns of the Earth Systems and realize it will take care of its self, while the little human ants upon its surface do their thing. The issue really is that we need to be wise and not exacerbate the pendulum swings of the normal cycle flows. And we must maintain clean water and air if we want our own bio-systems to work right.
Indeed I feel the “Eco-Movement” often takes things too far and the doom and gloomers are not helping any real cause to change human behavior to prevent thru “noise canceling theory” to keep the normal frequency cycles of mother earth in line with what she has done for billions of years. I am not a Global Warming Alarmist, looking for a more balanced approach without destroying the flows of civilization to get there. I am a realist and have no problem debating in the real world, that’s where I live. Think on this in 2006 and ask yourself where do you fall on the environmental issues?

Boxshot Updated for Realistic Cover and Container Creation

The application for creating 3D book and product covers has added a new lighting option and several image manipulations.

Purists will say, "Why do I need this, I can do it all in Photoshop?" While this is true, creating realistic illustrations of books, CDs and similar objects can take time unless you're a Photoshop whiz. And for those without Photoshop or a similar image editor, well, something like Boxshot is simply essential.
You begin by selecting a shape for your products, with the supplied library providing more than 50 that include DVD cases, books, stacks of books, brochures, paper bags, cans and bottles. You can also import a shape in the FBX, 3DS and Collada (DAE) file formats. Then you import the image you want applied to the product, such as the cover of a book. The final step is to hit the Render button, with Boxshot employing ray-tracing to generate a realistic illustration. The program can load JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF and PSD files (both in RGB and CMYK), complete with a transparency channel, with rendered images saved to JPEG, BMP, PNG or TIFF.
The ability to load height and specular maps and create a relief-effect on the flat sides of shapes adds to the creative possibilities, as does the control of box reflection, transparency and depth on the floor, as well as the blur level of reflections. The quality of the rendered image can also be adjusted, to generate everything from a fast draft to a highly detailed rendition. Boxshot supports resolutions up to 8000x8000 when running in 64-bit mode, about A4 size at 300 dpi.
The latest version restores the simple lighting approach used in Box Shot 3D. It's also possible to now rotate and flip images. A new shape has also been added, the Doy Pack pouch.
The Home version of Boxshot 4.0.22 for Mac and Windows can be purchased on the Applications For Life site for $49. The Professional and Ultimate versions are priced at $179 and $199, respectively. A trial version is also available for download.

 

AKVIS Refocus Adobe Photoshop Plugin/app Updated for Photo Sharpening


Whether you're working with photos you've taken yourself or have purchased from a stock image supplier, rare is the shot that can't benefit from some degree of sharpening, whether to the overall image or to selected areas. And beyond just making it look its best, certain parts of the image may be candidates for some creative application of sharpness or blur to enhance the mood or lead the viewer's eye to the desired focus of interest.
Photoshop, of course, provides an array of sharpening techniques, to the degree that entire books have been devoted to the topic, such as Real World Image Sharpening (Peachpit Press). But where there's complexity there are always plugins or dedicated applications standing by. In this case plugins such as Nik Software's Sharpener Pro, Topaz InFocus and The Plugin Site's FocalBlade are mature products that provide robust sharpening functionality.
Veteran plugin developer AKVIS has contributed Refocus, which places an emphasis on ease of use and works in Refocus, Tilt-Shift or Iris Blur modes. The plugin/application allows users to sharpen or blur entire images, as well as selected areas, by choosing a preset or manually determining parameters. Specifying the areas to be sharpened or blurred is accomplished by simply drawing lines directly on the image.
With version 3 users can add bokeh and lens blur effects to their photos. Image View Modes provide a range of options for displaying the original and processed images, with Before and After states. This version also adds improved RAW processing, with support for images from Canon cameras (CR2): Canon EOS 6D, Canon EOS 600D, Canon EOS 1100D, Canon PowerShot S100.
The Business version of AKVIS Refocus for Mac and Windows, which includes the plugin and applications and can be used for commercial work, can be purchased on the AKVIS site for $72. A trial version is also available for download.

'I can't do this anymore': Mario Falcone breaks down over split from Lucy Mecklenburgh as he maintains that he DIDN'T cheat


They've have to cope with their fair share of cheating allegations during their two-year relationship.
But it seems Mario Falcone and Lucy Mecklenburgh's romance has finally come to an end following claims that the Essex tailor cheated on his stunning brunette girlfriend with a Sugar Hut honey.
In scenes from Wednesday night's episode, Mario is seen breaking down in floods of tears as he opens up to his mother following Lucy's announcement that she is moving out of the home they shared to stay with Sam Faiers following the split.
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Inconsolable: Mario Falcone breaks down in front of his mother after split with Lucy Mecklenburgh
Inconsolable: Mario Falcone breaks down in front of his mother after split with Lucy Mecklenburgh
However, while Lucy seems to have taken Amy Broadbent's claim that she slept with Mario as gospel, the 25-year-old reality star is maintaining that he remained faithful to his 21-year-old girlfriend.
Sitting at his mum's kitchen table, Mario is seen struggling to control his emotions as he said: 'This is going to be the worst day of my life.
'Lucy's my whole life. I haven't done anything, it just keeps happening every single time she always believes someone over me. I can't do this anymore.'
Shoulder to cry on: Mario's mum Kim is there for moral support
Shoulder to cry on: Mario's mum Kim is there for moral support
Heartbroken: Mario says Lucy is his world and claims 'it's the worst day of his life'
Heartbroken: Mario says Lucy is his world and claims 'it's the worst day of his life'
Keeping her head down: Lucy looked stony-faced as she was spotted out in Brentwood, Essex, on Tuesday
Keeping her head down: Lucy looked stony-faced as she was spotted out in Brentwood, Essex, on Tuesday
Keeping her head down: Lucy looked stony-faced as she was spotted out in Brentwood, Essex, on Tuesday
Mario's mother Kim is then seen telling her handsome son: 'This relationship you've got, that thing that you're lacking is trust.'
While it is not clear what will happen with Lucy and Mario's relationship, it seems as though Wednesday night's episode will be an emotional one.
A show insider said: 'Mario’s relationship is in turmoil and he pours his heart out to his mum Kim, telling her he is adamant that he never cheated.'
Over again: In their two year relationship the couple have split on numerous occasions, mainly of cheating claims against him
Over again: In their two year relationship the couple have split on numerous occasions, mainly of cheating claims against him
Honest: Mario's mum says trust is the issue in their relationship
Honest: Mario's mum says trust is the issue in their relationship
Trust: Th 25-year old cries that Lucy always believes the rumours rather than trusting him
Trust: Th 25-year old cries that Lucy always believes the rumours rather than trusting him
But the Italian gent isn't the only heartbroken one in the relationship, with a source telling The Sun, 'Lucy is so upset about this. Even though her and Mario have had their ups and downs, she thought they were behind them and they had a future together.
'As soon as she heard, she went to Sam Faiers’ house and hasn’t gone home since.'
The Only Way Is Essex broadcasts every Wednesday and Sunday night on ITV2 at 10pm.
Happier times: The pair celebrated Valentine's Day with a romantic trip to Paris, France


Paris Fashion Week autumn/winter 2013 Post: day one


All the action from day one of Paris Fashion Week including Lily Cooper's comeback, Kanye West's arrival, a view Paris Fashion Week in the Fifties and more...
27 FEBRUARY 2013
Lily Allen performing at the Etam show at Paris Fashion Week.
Lily Allen performing at the Etam show at Paris Fashion Week. Photo: Vladimir Potop
CATWALK MOMENT
She's back ladies and gentlemen. Four years after retiring from the music business, and two children later, Lily Allen took to the Paris catwalk yesterday for the Etam Lingerie show - no, not to model their collection of cut-price undies, but to perform her 2006 debut single 'Smile'. The 'Girls Only' show was directed by her old mucker, Mark Ronson who also called in favours from his showbiz contacts Rita Ora, M.I.A and Lykke Li. The Etam lingerie show has been moving in on Victoria's Secret territory for a few years now, with an extravagant Paris Fashion Week showcase boasting a star-studded front row and live performances on the catwalk. We must confess, the lingerie isn't quite as 'classy' as VS (and that's saying something) but the whole she-bang is a load of fun - not something that can be said about many Paris shows...
PARIS FASHION WEEK IN THE FIFTIES
As PFW gets underway, we take a nostalgic look back at simpler times with this news film from 1952. A land before street style photographers, bloggers, TV crews and hundreds of hangers-on, Paris Fashion Week in the Fifties was a time when "black was the colour; the dresses are longer, fringes are rife and tweed is flourishing". As the excitable announcer says: 'Paris may not change, but Paris fashions? Certainement!'Enjoy...
FROW-VERHEARD:
Hey Kanye... 


Photo: @Booth1
Kanye West has made his first appearance at Paris Fashion Week, taking in Anthony Vaccarello's show yesterday. No sign on Kim K and the the KK foetus though, or Kanye's eponymous label (wherever has that gone?).
LOOKS WE LOVE
Pretty in pink at Cedric Charlier; Ground Zero serves up a space odyssey; at Julian David we got minimalist daywear; Devastee gave us a reality check; classic camel was to be found at Veronique Branquinho and Anthony Vacarello was back to black.
RE-MODELLED: Isabeli Fontana
Brazilian beauty Isabeli Fontana treated Paris Fashion Week to her sunshine-honed skin on the opening day, showing it off in a racy gown at Anthony Vacarello, and then wearing even less at the Etam lingerie showcase.
BEAUTY MOMENT: CEDRIC CHARLIER
If you're going to do an up-do next season, give it a new spin. Just as they did at Cedric Charlier with this up-turned number, (and we noted at Temperley, Roksanda Illinic and Meadham Kirchoff), this time around the classic chignon comes with a whole new set of rules on angles, height and shape for something all together more detailed and interesting for autumn/winter 2013.

Is Dennis Tito planning a manned mission to Mars in 2018? Tito's Inspiration Mars Foundation will announce audacious plans on Wednesday for a mission to the red planet


In March 2001, Dennis Tito, a US millionnaire, was an unpopular man in some corners of Nasa. Tito, an engineer by training, had offered the Russians $20m for a ride into space. That prompted an outburst from Daniel Goldin, then Nasa administrator. "We don't have time to hand-hold tourists that don't have the proper training," he raged.

A month later, Tito blasted off on a Russian Soyuz mission and spent nearly eight days in orbit on the International Space Station. He fell around the planet, looked out the windows, and did some experiments. But what matters for the history books is that he became the world's first private space tourist.

Now Tito is back in the news. His new Inspiration Mars Foundation holds a press conference on Wednesday to launch audacious plans for a mission to Mars. The foundation's press release doesn't mention a crew, but reports in NewSpace Journal claim the mission will take two people, in a modified SpaceX Dragon capsule, launched by a Falcon Heavy rocket. What is striking about the plans is not so much the stated intention – though that in itself is ambitious – but the timescale. Tito wants to ride a slingshot mission around Mars in a window that opens in 2018. That's only five years away.

The reaction from the space community has ranged from bemusement and disbelief to encouragement and awe. "Even if this was Nasa saying it was sending a crew to Mars, I would be amazed if they thought they could pull it off so soon. But we are talking about a private individual," says Kevin Fong, director of the Centre for Space Medicine at UCL, and author of the book Extremes: Life, Death and the Limits of the Human Body, which is published next month.

But Tito is no crank. And nor are the people he is working with. One is Jonathan Clark, a former Nasa flight surgeon and now a space medicine adviser at the National Space Medicine Biomedical Research Institute in Houston. The pedigree of the team matters, and has forced the rest of the space community to take the plans seriously. Or at least more seriously than they might have. "These aren't people who've done nothing more than read a few copies of Dan Dare in the 1950s," says Fong.

John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, says he doesn't know what to make of Tito's potential announcement, as too many details are missing. But he cautions against dismissing Tito. "One thing to remember," he told the Guardian, "when Tito first planned to go to Mir as a fare-paying person, there was almost universal dismissal of the idea, but he did it. So I think a high degree of scepticism is warranted, but not yet a judgement of impossibility."

So how plausible is the mission? The journey aims to take advantage of the close alignment of Earth and Mars in 2018 to make the mission as swift as possible. But even then, a round trip will take around 500 days. That's a long time to spend in a small space capsule.

We can break the mission down into separate elements and look at each in turn. First up, fuel and energy: can a manned rocket make a round trip to Mars? The answer is almost certainly yes. As Fong points out, it takes more energy to get from Earth to low Earth orbit, than from there out to Mars. Other challenges are not so easily dismissed.

The body adapts to space. No longer burdened by its weight, the muscles that support us on Earth weaken and waste. The heart doesn't have to work as hard to push blood to the brain, so it atrophies too. The bones thin, through a process that resembles osteoporosis on Earth. The loss of bone dumps calcium into the blood. That can lead to kidney stones and raise the risk of depression, not to mention constipation. Astronauts exercise daily in space, but this only slows the wasting, and it is not clear how much room Tito's capsule will have for the crucial equipment.

Then there is radiation. Space is aglow with radiation from the sun, other stars and other celestial objects. There are energetic cosmic rays that zip through spaceship hulls. Dozing astronauts have reported seeing flashes of light through unopened eyes, as cosmic rays strike their retinas. The radiation takes its toll on the body, causing gradual damage to certain organs, raising the risk of cancer, and perhaps accelerating Alzheimer's disease.

Here Tito has an advantage. He is 72 years old. The background radiation he might experience on a round trip to Mars would doubtless cause damage, but this is more worrying in younger astronauts, who have most of their lives before them. There is, perhaps, an ethical argument for older people venturing out into space.

But all radiation is not alike. The more serious problem is what astrophysicists call "cosmic particle events". These include deadly blasts of radiation that are flung from the sun during a solar flare or coronal mass ejection, like this one recorded on 31 January this year. "If you are exposed to a solar flare in a thin-skinned vehicle, you are going to have a bad day in space. That sort of radiation can kill you in short fashion," says Fong. Lead lining is not practical for a small, light spaceship, but would be of questionable help anyway. On slamming into a shield, the initial pulse of radiation would spark a wave of dangerous secondary particles that flood out the other side.

Besides the physiological response to spacefaring, there are serious psychological challenges to consider. Iya Whiteley, deputy director of the Centre for Space Medicine at UCL, worked with the European Space Agency on the recent Mars500 simulated mission to the planet. "We've uncovered more than 2,000 potential issues for long duration missions, in terms of psychological, relationships and organisational issues; how they deal with superiors, their family, what kind of support they might need and what countermeasures might help them. Of those there are only a quarter we have some idea about," says Whiteley.

Her work with the European Space Agency exposed changes in behaviour that have cropped up before on space missions. There is the "third quarter effect", where motivation slumps mid-way through the long journey home. There is the "pale blue dot effect", where people experience a shift in perspective and priorities, linked with their remoteness from the world and separation from the trivialities of everyday life. As the astronauts move away from Earth, they may lose touch even more.

Denis Tito and a Russian cosmonaut in a Soyuz capsule

"They might feel that whatever their priorities – be they social, psychological, personal, interpersonal, which were connected to Earth and the society they come from – might become very distant and hard to relate to. Whatever mission control says they have to do, they might not see as necessary to do," says Whiteley.

If the mission does take a crew of two, and one of them is Tito, the duo will be united in their separation from Earth. Such long confinement with so limited company causes strains on relationships. Small quirks of character can become major problems. But far worse could happen. What if one of the crew dies mid-trip? What does the other do? What if the ship is lost, either by shooting past Mars, or impacting on its surface, as has happened with scores of Mars probes in past decades? Would that set back future international missions to the planet?

On this, Whiteley raises the unthinkable, even though I'm sure she's not serious. "It's strange to consider whether people might not want to come back," she says. "Maybe they have a plan to be the first people to disappear into space."

Tito's stated aim for his "Mission for America" is to "generate knowledge, experience and momentum for the next great era of space exploration". The nationalism in the press release provokes a little queasiness: "[The mission] is intended to encourage all Americans to believe again, in doing the hard things that make our nation great, while inspiring youth through science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and motivation."

For all the unknowns, Whiteley is in favour of a manned mission to Mars, and would love to work with Tito on the adventure. "We are explorers. It's the natural thing for us to do if it's technologically possible. We are ready when we are ready," she says. "What is important is to send them as investigators rather than us investigating them."

A gripping tale: scientists claim to have discovered why skin wrinkles in water Puckered skin may have helped our ancestors grasp slippery food and keep their footing on treacherous ground


Thousands of years after the invention of the bath, scientists have come up with a theory to explain why our fingers and toes wrinkle when steeped in water.

Puckered skin gives a better grip and may have helped our ancestors uproot wet plants when foraging for food, or be more sure-footed in a slippery, wet environment, they say.

The familiar wrinkles on wet fingers and toes may also have benefited early humans in their first forays into technology, said Tom Smulders, an evolutionary neurobiologist at Newcastle University.

"It might have helped handling tools in wet conditions," he said, such as fixing hunting weapons in the rain, or fishing with harpoons.

It is popularly believed that fingertips absorb water and swell, making the skin ripple with tiny folds. But this was ruled out by studies that showed the effect disappeared when nerves in the fingers were damaged.

Rather than swelling up, fingertips shrink when they wrinkle because the blood vessels inside them contract. The effect is controlled by the autonomic nervous system, which also governs breathing and heart rate.

Smulders investigated the benefits of wrinkled fingers after reading a paper by Mark Changizi, director of human cognition at 2AI Labs in Idaho. Changizi's report in the journal Brain, Behavior and Evolution suggested that wrinkles on fingers resemble car treads and the drainage networks seen on mountains.

In the latest study, Smulders had 20 people move 45 submerged marbles and fishing weights from one container to another. The objects were plucked one at a time, with the forefinger and thumb of the right hand, passed through a hole in a screen separating the containers, and into the thumb and forefinger of the left hand.

Smulder timed them on the task, once when they had dry and unwrinkled hands before starting, and again after they had soaked their hands in water for half an hour.

The task took between 90 and 150 seconds to complete, but those with wrinkled fingers moved the wet objects 15 seconds faster on average, compared with those who began with dry hands. Wrinkles made no difference to the time it took to do the task with dry objects, according to the study reported in Biology Letters.

"It could be working like treads on your car tyres, which give you a better grip," said Smulders.

The findings raise the question of how, and from which species, humans inherited their wrinkling skin. "My guess is that all primates have pruney fingers, but our only evidence at the moment beyond humans is from macaques," said Changizi.

At his lab in Idaho, Changizi has done a similar, though more rudimentary, experiment and reached the same conclusions as the Newcastle team.

"The obvious application here are biologically inspired rain treads for your shoes," Changizi said. "We'd ideally like to have shoe treads with the right wrinkle shapes for our foot topography. And we'd ideally like to have the treads flatten so that the entire shoe bottom grips the ground once the water is squirted out through the channels."

One question that remains is why fingers are not wrinkled all the time, even when they are not in water. The answer may be that wrinkling comes at a cost: the loss of sensitivity in our hands, Smulders said.

Childhood adversity affects adult brain and body functions, researchers find Poverty can impair working memory while physical abuse can raise risk of cardiovascular disease, scientists claim


Adversity in early childhood – in the form of anything from poverty to physical abuse – has measurable changes in the function of the brain and body well into adulthood, according to researchers.
Growing up in worse socioeconomic circumstances can impair working memory as an adult and affect the size of different parts of the brain, while abuse can lead to a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease in later life, they report.
In a series of presentations at the annual meeting of the Society ofNeuroscience in New Orleans on Tuesday, scientists reported on work studying critical periods of development for the brain. Eric Pakulak, at the University of Oregon, found that people who grew up in homes with a lower socioeconomic status had greater deficits in working memory, compared with those from wealthier homes, even when he controlled for the participants' education.
Working memory, Pakulak said, was broadly associated with general intelligence. "As a four- or five-year-old, if you have very good attention and regulations skills, it's a foundational skill that would spill over into other areas of cognition – if you're trying to learn your letters, or to read, or learning numbers or math or a musical instrument. When you're learning a musical instrument, you're really training attention."
He asked 72 adults to complete a test of working memory, where they had to remember the final words from a series of sentences. On average, adults from lower socioeconomic backgrounds could remember two words whereas those from more wealthy backgrounds, on average, got up to four words.
Suzanne Houston, of the University of Southern California, showed thatthe size of different parts of the brain could be affected by growing up in different homes. "We found higher parent education, smaller amygdala. The higher the income, the larger the hippocampus."
The overall size of brain regions was not of primary significance, she said, but the fact they were measurably different would allow scientists to tease out what sorts of differing environmental factors might be affecting the brain development of children from different backgrounds.
Understanding environment can also help scientists to modify it. Pakulak said his work had informed the development of teaching courses that could, by working with parents and pre-school children from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds, improve aspects of parents' behaviour and reduce their stress, as well as improving children's behaviour and cognition within weeks.
"Most powerfully, we've shown that, after eight weeks, children in our intervention training group show the same [result for] brain function for selective attention that their higher [socioeconomic backgrounds] peers show," Pakulak said.
Layla Banihashemi, of the University of Pittsburgh, focused on the enduring effects of physical abuse in childhood. She found that adults who suffered physical abuse as children had greater increases in blood pressure when they engaged in stressful tasks as adults. Overall, she said, this would put them at greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
She asked 155 healthy adults, who were 40 years old on average, to complete a childhood trauma questionnaire, a standard way of assessing the level of physical abuse someone may have suffered as a child. "As physical abuse scores increased from none to moderate to severe levels, we saw significant increases in the change in blood pressure in response to stress," said Banihashemi.
The mean arterial blood pressure in people who had suffered no abuse during childhood changed by 2.73mmHg, from a baseline of around 90mmHg, when they were stressed in Banihashemi's experiment. In the low abuse group, the average change was 4.71mmHg, and moderate or severe abuse in childhood elicited an average change of 5.45 mmHg. "People that have these heightened blood pressure responses, in magnitude and duration, are more at risk at developing cardiovascular disease," she said.
Banihashemi added that most of the participants in her study were not in the severely abused category. "They are primarily within the minimal range – I think this is unique because it indicates that even minimal to moderate levels of abuse can influence stress responses of the brain and body."
Andrea Danese, a clinical lecturer in child and adolescent psychiatry atKing's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said the series of studies addressed important questions in the understanding of how childhood experiences shape adult lives.
Pakulak's work, he said, was particularly interesting because it showed how it was possible to remediate the consequences of a lack of opportunity early in life. "These changes might support upward social mobility and improve family environment across generations."
He added that replication of developmental studies would be crucial in working out which effects are real and which are not. "A key limitation is that human studies linking early experiences to later brain, psychological, or health outcomes are observational in nature," he said. "For ethical and practical reasons, researchers can seldom actively manipulate children's experiences and more often have to passively observe differences in experiences and relate them to certain outcomes.
"However, because different experiences or vulnerabilities – poverty, insufficient stimulation, maltreatment, parental mental illness, low IQ – often occur together in the same children, it is challenging to confidently point to the effects of one specific experience without its active manipulation."
Previous meta-analyses have shown that being sexually or emotionally abused as a child can affect the development of a part of the brain that controls memory and the regulation of emotions. In addition, people with a history of abuse or maltreatment during childhood are twice as likely to have recurrent episodes of depression in adulthood. These individuals are also less likely to respond well to psychological or drug-based treatments.

Childhood adversity affects adult brain and body functions, researchers find Poverty can impair working memory while physical abuse can raise risk of cardiovascular disease, scientists claim


Adversity in early childhood – in the form of anything from poverty to physical abuse – has measurable changes in the function of the brain and body well into adulthood, according to researchers.
Growing up in worse socioeconomic circumstances can impair working memory as an adult and affect the size of different parts of the brain, while abuse can lead to a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease in later life, they report.
In a series of presentations at the annual meeting of the Society ofNeuroscience in New Orleans on Tuesday, scientists reported on work studying critical periods of development for the brain. Eric Pakulak, at the University of Oregon, found that people who grew up in homes with a lower socioeconomic status had greater deficits in working memory, compared with those from wealthier homes, even when he controlled for the participants' education.
Working memory, Pakulak said, was broadly associated with general intelligence. "As a four- or five-year-old, if you have very good attention and regulations skills, it's a foundational skill that would spill over into other areas of cognition – if you're trying to learn your letters, or to read, or learning numbers or math or a musical instrument. When you're learning a musical instrument, you're really training attention."
He asked 72 adults to complete a test of working memory, where they had to remember the final words from a series of sentences. On average, adults from lower socioeconomic backgrounds could remember two words whereas those from more wealthy backgrounds, on average, got up to four words.
Suzanne Houston, of the University of Southern California, showed thatthe size of different parts of the brain could be affected by growing up in different homes. "We found higher parent education, smaller amygdala. The higher the income, the larger the hippocampus."
The overall size of brain regions was not of primary significance, she said, but the fact they were measurably different would allow scientists to tease out what sorts of differing environmental factors might be affecting the brain development of children from different backgrounds.
Understanding environment can also help scientists to modify it. Pakulak said his work had informed the development of teaching courses that could, by working with parents and pre-school children from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds, improve aspects of parents' behaviour and reduce their stress, as well as improving children's behaviour and cognition within weeks.
"Most powerfully, we've shown that, after eight weeks, children in our intervention training group show the same [result for] brain function for selective attention that their higher [socioeconomic backgrounds] peers show," Pakulak said.
Layla Banihashemi, of the University of Pittsburgh, focused on the enduring effects of physical abuse in childhood. She found that adults who suffered physical abuse as children had greater increases in blood pressure when they engaged in stressful tasks as adults. Overall, she said, this would put them at greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
She asked 155 healthy adults, who were 40 years old on average, to complete a childhood trauma questionnaire, a standard way of assessing the level of physical abuse someone may have suffered as a child. "As physical abuse scores increased from none to moderate to severe levels, we saw significant increases in the change in blood pressure in response to stress," said Banihashemi.
The mean arterial blood pressure in people who had suffered no abuse during childhood changed by 2.73mmHg, from a baseline of around 90mmHg, when they were stressed in Banihashemi's experiment. In the low abuse group, the average change was 4.71mmHg, and moderate or severe abuse in childhood elicited an average change of 5.45 mmHg. "People that have these heightened blood pressure responses, in magnitude and duration, are more at risk at developing cardiovascular disease," she said.
Banihashemi added that most of the participants in her study were not in the severely abused category. "They are primarily within the minimal range – I think this is unique because it indicates that even minimal to moderate levels of abuse can influence stress responses of the brain and body."
Andrea Danese, a clinical lecturer in child and adolescent psychiatry atKing's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, said the series of studies addressed important questions in the understanding of how childhood experiences shape adult lives.
Pakulak's work, he said, was particularly interesting because it showed how it was possible to remediate the consequences of a lack of opportunity early in life. "These changes might support upward social mobility and improve family environment across generations."
He added that replication of developmental studies would be crucial in working out which effects are real and which are not. "A key limitation is that human studies linking early experiences to later brain, psychological, or health outcomes are observational in nature," he said. "For ethical and practical reasons, researchers can seldom actively manipulate children's experiences and more often have to passively observe differences in experiences and relate them to certain outcomes.
"However, because different experiences or vulnerabilities – poverty, insufficient stimulation, maltreatment, parental mental illness, low IQ – often occur together in the same children, it is challenging to confidently point to the effects of one specific experience without its active manipulation."
Previous meta-analyses have shown that being sexually or emotionally abused as a child can affect the development of a part of the brain that controls memory and the regulation of emotions. In addition, people with a history of abuse or maltreatment during childhood are twice as likely to have recurrent episodes of depression in adulthood. These individuals are also less likely to respond well to psychological or drug-based treatments.

The man whose brain ignores one half of his world


Alan Burgess doesn't need a rhyme to remember the 5th of November. He'll never forget the day he had his stroke. It left him with a syndrome known as hemispatial neglect and a strange new perspective.

I asked him how he explains this to other people. "I say it's two different worlds," says Burgess. "My old world finished on 5 November 2007 and the new world started the same day."

His stroke damaged the parietal lobe on the right side of his brain, the part that deals with the higher processing of attention. The damage causes him to ignore people, sounds, and objects on his left.

"Hemispatial neglect typically occurs after a stroke," says Dr Paresh Malhotra, senior lecturer in neurology at Imperial College London. "It is not blindness in one eye, and it's not damage to the primary sensory cortex, it's a process of ignoring, for want of a better word, one side of space."

Burgess, 64, originally trained as a tool design draughtsman and, before his stroke, he was working as a driver. His visual neglect makes driving impossible, and he was forced into early retirement. He had never painted before his stroke, but it became an important outlet for him afterwards.

Look at his artwork, though, and it is not only the vivid colours that grab your attention. He hands me a sketch of a pig that has half its head missing, and then produces two robins copied from a Christmas card - the robin on the right is full of rich detail, but the one on the left remains unfinished.

"Vision is most strikingly affected because we are visual creatures, but hearing, touch, representation and sense of self are also affected," says Dr Malhotra.

People with hemispatial neglect are often unaware of their condition. Friends or relatives might suggest they look to their neglected side but that instruction misunderstands the problem they have with navigating the space around them. Burgess, and people like him, are not aware that something is missing, so why would they seek it out?

Patients might bump into things on their neglected side, shave or apply makeup only on one side of their face, or leave half of the food on their plate.

Alan often has to stop and think to make sense of the world around him. Walking down a street, he hugs the right side of the pavement, brushing up against walls and hedges. He won't notice any potential dangers coming from the left, so he cannot go out on his own.

"I can't describe how the world looks to neglect patients," says Dr Malhotra. "Part of the reason it's so difficult is because we don't really appreciate how the world looks to ourselves. We think it's just a nice screen and you can see everything, but that's something that your brain is computing and telling you you're seeing.

"In fact you're attending to specific things at specific times. Your eyes are darting all over the place, but you have a sensation of a static world."

After his stroke, Burgess was assessed by Dr Malhotra, who tested the severity of his condition by asking him to mark the centre of a 25cm line on a piece of paper. During his first meetings, Burgess marked approximately 2cm from the right edge - he simply did not attend to the left side of the line. Nowadays, after regular practice, his mark is more accurate, approximately 10cm from the right.

"It's in the middle of my line, not the middle of your line," Burgess told Dr Malhotra during one consultation.

Dr Malhotra says that people with visual neglect do realise something is wrong when it is pointed out to them over and over and over again. "So in a way I think for them it's slightly abstract that they know there's some problem on the left hand side, and they use strategies to try and overcome the problem, without really being able to appreciate it in its fullness."

His most recent work has looked at how patients might reduce this bias to the right. Previous research suggests that people with normal vision perform better at visual attention tasks when they are rewarded for good performance and Dr Malhotra and his team have found the same thing in neglect patients.

In the experiment, he asked patients to circle images of coins and buttons on a piece of paper covered with lots of other similar symbols. On their first visit, patients performed equally badly with coins or buttons. When they returned for a second test, they were told they would get a pound for each coin they circled.

Their performance subsequently improved on the coins test, but not on the buttons test – where they were told there was no reward – suggesting that motivation could be used in the rehabilitation of stroke patients.

Burgess is going from strength to strength in his rehabilitation. As I shook his hand to leave I remarked on his muscular grip. This somehow ended up with our having an arm wrestle. He is 37 years older than me, and yet he won hands down.

Fake mission to Mars leaves astronauts spaced out

Trip to Mars in pretend spaceship on Moscow industrial estate affects sleep, activity levels and motivation of six-man crew

Members of the Mars500 crew relax on the fake spaceship in Moscow
Members of the Mars500 crew relax on the fake spaceship in Moscow. Photograph: AFP
As the cheerless skies and grim economy sap all will to return to work, take heart that even on a trip to Mars, it is hard to get out of bed in the morning.
The drudge of interplanetary travel has emerged from research on six men who joined the longest simulated space mission ever: a 17-month round trip to the red planet in a pretend spaceship housed at a Moscow industrial estate.
Though chosen for the job as the best of the best, the would-be spacefarers spent more and more time under their duvets and sitting around idle as the mission wore on. The crew's activity levels plummeted in the first three months, and continued to fall for the next year.
On the return leg, the men spent nearly 700 hours longer in bed than on the outward journey, and only perked up in the last 20 days before theyclambered from their capsule in November 2011. Four crew members suffered from sleep or psychological issues.
"We saw some problems," said Mathias Basner, of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies the effects of sleep-loss on behaviour. "There were no major adverse events, but there could have been if the stars were aligned in a certain way."
The $10m (£6.2m) Mars500 project, run by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems, launched, metaphorically, when the hatch to the mock-up spaceship closed behind three Russians, two Europeans and a Chinese man in June 2010. The men spent the next 520 days in windowless isolation. Their only contact with the outside world was over the internet and by phone lines that carried a delay of up to 20 minutes, to mimic the time it takes radio waves to reach Mars from Earth.
Throughout the mission, the men endured daily medical, physical and psychological examinations, to help space agencies learn how humans cope with the stress, confinement and limited company that astronauts will face on future voyages. The crew fought boredom by watching DVDs, reading books and playing Guitar Hero on a games console. Mission controllers faked a fire and a power outage to keep them alert.
The ESA selected the crew from thousands of highly qualified applicants, and put them through a year of intensive training. But despite embodying "the right stuff" that underpins the astronaut corps, the men struggled with the tedium of the mission.
"The monotony of going to Mars and coming back again is something that will need to be addressed in the future. You don't want your crew hanging around doing nothing," Basner said.
On a real mission, sedentary astronauts would be at greater risk of bone and muscle wastage.
According to the study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, some crew members fared worse than others. One began living a 25-hour day, and quickly fell out of routine with the others. "If you live on a 25-hour day, after twelve days it's the middle of the night for you when it's daytime for everyone else," Basner said.
Another crew member slept at night but took ever longer naps during the day. Taken together, the two men spent a fifth of their time, or 2,500 hours, asleep when the rest of the crew were awake, or vice-versa. "That cannot be good for mission success, because mission-critical tasks will be scheduled for the day," Basner said.
A third crew member slept so badly he suffered chronic sleep deprivation and single-handedly accounted for the majority of mistakes made on a computer test used to measure concentration and alertness. "He was falling apart in terms of his attention system," Basner said. In a second study, not yet published, the team describes a fourth crew member who was developing mild depression.
"Only two of the men adapted well to the mission. Of the other four, there was at least one major reason for concern, where we would ask, should we really send someone like this on a long mission," Basner said.
For the 17 months of the mission to nowhere the crew had control over the amount of exercise they took, their meals, and the levels of ambient lighting. The right lighting is crucial to keep people on a regular sleep and wake cycle.
Improved lighting to mimic day and night could help some astronauts cope with long missions, but the results point to a need for tests that can spot astronauts who are vulnerable to sleep disorders, Basner said.
Steven Lockley, a neuroscientist who specialises in sleep medicine at Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston, said the study raised concerns about long-term space missions.
"Having some of the six crew members with different schedules, and different amounts of sleep, would likely make for poor team performance and increased risk of accidents and injuries in a real-life situation," he told the Guardian.
Astronauts on a trip to Mars would probably face even worse problems if they spent time on the surface of the planet, because the length of the Martian day is slightly longer than an Earth day. "The deleterious effects on sleep, performance, psychological health and physical health would likely have been much worse had the subjects been required to live on a 24.65-hour day," Lockley said.

20 amazing facts about the human body

Many of the most exciting discoveries in all fields of science are being played out in the human body

APPENDIX TO LIFE

body appendix
The appendix gets a bad press. It is usually treated as a body part that lost its function millions of years ago. All it seems to do is occasionally get infected and cause appendicitis. Yet recently it has been discovered that the appendix is very useful to the bacteria that help your digestive system function. They use it to get respite from the strain of the frenzied activity of the gut, somewhere to breed and help keep the gut's bacterial inhabitants topped up. So treat your appendix with respect.

SUPERSIZED MOLECULES

Practically everything we experience is made up of molecules. These vary in size from simple pairs of atoms, like an oxygen molecule, to complex organic structures. But the biggest molecule in nature resides in your body. It is chromosome 1. A normal human cell has 23 pairs of chromosomes in its nucleus, each a single, very long, molecule of DNA. Chromosome 1 is the biggest, containing around 10bn atoms, to pack in the amount of information that is encoded in the molecule.

3 ATOM COUNT

It is hard to grasp just how small the atoms that make up your body are until you take a look at the sheer number of them. An adult is made up of around 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (7 octillion) atoms.

4 FUR LOSS

body chimp
It might seem hard to believe, but we have about the same number of hairs on our bodies as a chimpanzee, it's just that our hairs are useless, so fine they are almost invisible. We aren't sure quite why we lost our protective fur. It has been suggested that it may have been to help early humans sweat more easily, or to make life harder for parasites such as lice and ticks, or even because our ancestors were partly aquatic.
But perhaps the most attractive idea is that early humans needed to co-operate more when they moved out of the trees into the savanna. When animals are bred for co-operation, as we once did with wolves to produce dogs, they become more like their infants. In a fascinating 40-year experiment starting in the 1950s, Russian foxes were bred for docility. Over the period, adult foxes become more and more like large cubs, spending more time playing, and developing drooping ears, floppy tails and patterned coats. Humans similarly have some characteristics of infantile apes – large heads, small mouths and, significantly here, finer body hair.


5 GOOSEBUMP EVOLUTION

body goosebumps
Goosepimples are a remnant of our evolutionary predecessors. They occur when tiny muscles around the base of each hair tense, pulling the hair more erect. With a decent covering of fur, this would fluff up the coat, getting more air into it, making it a better insulator. But with a human's thin body hair, it just makes our skin look strange.
Similarly we get the bristling feeling of our hair standing on end when we are scared or experience an emotive memory. Many mammals fluff up their fur when threatened, to look bigger and so more dangerous. Humans used to have a similar defensive fluffing up of their body hairs, but once again, the effect is now ruined. We still feel the sensation of hairs standing on end, but gain no visual bulk.

SPACE TRAUMA

body astronaut
If sci-fi movies were to be believed, terrible things would happen if your body were pushed from a spaceship without a suit. But it's mostly fiction. There would be some discomfort as the air inside the body expanded, but nothing like the exploding body parts Hollywood loves. Although liquids do boil in a vacuum, your blood is kept under pressure by your circulatory system and would be just fine. And although space is very cold, you would not lose heat particularly quickly. As Thermos flasks demonstrate, a vacuum is a great insulator.
In practice, the thing that will kill you in space is simply the lack of air. In 1965 a test subject's suit sprang a leak in a Nasa vacuum chamber. The victim, who survived, remained conscious for around 14 seconds. The exact survival limit isn't known, but would probably be one to two minutes.

ATOMIC COLLAPSE

The atoms that make up your body are mostly empty space, so despite there being so many of them, without that space you would compress into a tiny volume. The nucleus that makes up the vast bulk of the matter in an atom is so much smaller than the whole structure that it is comparable to the size of a fly in a cathedral. If you lost all your empty atomic space, your body would fit into a cube less than 1/500th of a centimetre on each side. Neutron stars are made up of matter that has undergone exactly this kind of compression. In a single cubic centimetre of neutron star material there are around 100m tons of matter. An entire neutron star, heavier than our sun, occupies a sphere that is roughly the size across of the Isle of Wight.

ELECTROMAGNETIC REPULSION

The atoms that make up matter never touch each other. The closer they get, the more repulsion there is between the electrical charges on their component parts. It's like trying to bring two intensely powerful magnets together, north pole to north pole. This even applies when objects appear to be in contact. When you sit on a chair, you don't touch it. You float a tiny distance above, suspended by the repulsion between atoms. This electromagnetic force is vastly stronger than the force of gravity – around a billion billion billion billion times stronger. You can demonstrate the relative strength by holding a fridge magnet near a fridge and letting go. The electromagnetic force from the tiny magnet overwhelms the gravitational attraction of the whole Earth.

STARDUST TO STARDUST

body atoms
Every atom in your body is billions of years old. Hydrogen, the most common element in the universe and a major feature of your body, was produced in the big bang 13.7bn years ago. Heavier atoms such as carbon and oxygen were forged in stars between 7bn and 12bn years ago, and blasted across space when the stars exploded. Some of these explosions were so powerful that they also produced the elements heavier than iron, which stars can't construct. This means that the components of your body are truly ancient: you are stardust.

10 THE QUANTUM BODY

One of the mysteries of science is how something as apparently solid and straightforward as your body can be made of strangely behaving quantum particles such as atoms and their constituents. If you ask most people to draw a picture of one of the atoms in their bodies, they will produce something like a miniature solar system, with a nucleus as the sun and electrons whizzing round like planets. This was, indeed, an early model of the atom, but it was realised that such atoms would collapse in an instant. This is because electrons have an electrical charge and accelerating a charged particle, which is necessary to keep it in orbit, would make it give off energy in the form of light, leaving the electron spiralling into the nucleus.
In reality, electrons are confined to specific orbits, as if they ran on rails. They can't exist anywhere between these orbits but have to make a "quantum leap" from one to another. What's more, as quantum particles, electrons exist as a collection of probabilities rather than at specific locations, so a better picture is to show the electrons as a set of fuzzy shells around the nucleus.

11 RED BLOODED

body blood cells
When you see blood oozing from a cut in your finger, you might assume that it is red because of the iron in it, rather as rust has a reddish hue. But the presence of the iron is a coincidence. The red colour arises because the iron is bound in a ring of atoms in haemoglobin called porphyrin and it's the shape of this structure that produces the colour. Just how red your haemoglobin is depends on whether there is oxygen bound to it. When there is oxygen present, it changes the shape of the porphyrin, giving the red blood cells a more vivid shade.

12 GOING VIRAL

body dna
Surprisingly, not all the useful DNA in your chromosomes comes from your evolutionary ancestors – some of it was borrowed from elsewhere. Your DNA includes the genes from at least eight retroviruses. These are a kind of virus that makes use of the cell's mechanisms for coding DNA to take over a cell. At some point in human history, these genes became incorporated into human DNA. These viral genes in DNA now perform important functions in human reproduction, yet they are entirely alien to our genetic ancestry.

13 OTHER LIFE

On sheer count of cells, there is more bacterial life inside you than human. There are around 10tn of your own cells, but 10 times more bacteria. Many of the bacteria that call you home are friendly in the sense that they don't do any harm. Some are beneficial.
In the 1920s, an American engineer investigated whether animals could live without bacteria, hoping that a bacteria-free world would be a healthier one. James "Art" Reyniers made it his life's work to produce environments where animals could be raised bacteria-free. The result was clear. It was possible. But many of Reyniers's animals died and those that survived had to be fed on special food. This is because bacteria in the gut help with digestion. You could exist with no bacteria, but without the help of the enzymes in your gut that bacteria produce, you would need to eat food that is more loaded with nutrients than a typical diet.

14 EYELASH INVADERS

body mite
Depending on how old you are, it's pretty likely that you have eyelash mites. These tiny creatures live on old skin cells and the natural oil (sebum) produced by human hair follicles. They are usually harmless, though they can cause an allergic reaction in a minority of people. Eyelash mites typically grow to a third of a millimetre and are near-transparent, so you are unlikely to see them with the naked eye. Put an eyelash hair or eyebrow hair under the microscope, though, and you may find them, as they spend most of their time right at the base of the hair where it meets the skin. Around half the population have them, a proportion that rises as we get older.

15 PHOTON DETECTORS

body eye
Your eyes are very sensitive, able to detect just a few photons of light. If you take a look on a very clear night at the constellation of Andromeda, a little fuzzy patch of light is just visible with the naked eye. If you can make out that tiny blob, you are seeing as far as is humanly possible without technology. Andromeda is the nearest large galaxy to our own Milky Way. But "near" is a relative term in intergalactic space – the Andromeda galaxy is 2.5m light years away. When the photons of light that hit your eye began their journey, there were no human beings. We were yet to evolve. You are seeing an almost inconceivable distance and looking back in time through 2.5m years.

16 SENSORY TALLY

Despite what you've probably been told, you have more than five senses. Here's a simple example. Put your hand a few centimetres away from a hot iron. None of your five senses can tell you the iron will burn you. Yet you can feel that the iron is hot from a distance and won't touch it. This is thanks to an extra sense – the heat sensors in your skin. Similarly we can detect pain or tell if we are upside down.
Another quick test. Close your eyes and touch your nose. You aren't using the big five to find it, but instead proprioception. This is the sense that detects where the parts of your body are with respect to each other. It's a meta-sense, combining your brain's knowledge of what your muscles are doing with a feel for the size and shape of your body. Without using your basic five senses, you can still guide a hand unerringly to touch your nose.

17 REAL AGE

body ovum
Just like a chicken, your life started off with an egg. Not a chunky thing in a shell, but an egg nonetheless. However, there is a significant difference between a human egg and a chicken egg that has a surprising effect on your age. Human eggs are tiny. They are, after all, just a single cell and are typically around 0.2mm across – about the size of a printed full stop. Your egg was formed in your mother – but the surprising thing is that it was formed when she was an embryo. The formation of your egg, and the half of your DNA that came from your mother, could be considered as the very first moment of your existence. And it happened before your mother was born. Say your mother was 30 when she had you, then on your 18th birthday you were arguably over 48 years old.

18 EPIGENETIC INFLUENCE

We are used to thinking of genes as being the controlling factor that determines what each of us is like physically, but genes are only a tiny part of our DNA. The other 97% was thought to be junk until recently, but we now realise that epigenetics – the processes that go on outside the genes – also have a major influence on our development. Some parts act to control "switches" that turn genes on and off, or program the production of other key compounds. For a long time it was a puzzle how around 20,000 genes (far fewer than some breeds of rice) were enough to specify exactly what we were like. The realisation now is that the other 97% of our DNA is equally important.

19 CONSCIOUS ACTION

body mri
If you are like most people, you will locate your conscious mind roughly behind your eyes, as if there were a little person sitting there, steering the much larger automaton that is your body. You know there isn't really a tiny figure in there, pulling the levers, but your consciousnessseems to have an independent existence, telling the rest of your body what to do.
In reality, much of the control comes from your unconscious. Some tasks become automatic with practice, so that we no longer need to think about the basic actions. When this happens the process is handled by one of the most primitive parts of the brain, close to the brain stem. However even a clearly conscious action such as picking up an object seems to have some unconscious precursors, with the brain firing up before you make the decision to act. There is considerable argument over when the conscious mind plays its part, but there is no doubt that we owe a lot more to our unconscious than we often allow.

20 OPTICAL DELUSION

The picture of the world we "see" is artificial. Our brains don't produce an image the way a video camera works. Instead, the brain constructs a model of the world from the information provided by modules that measure light and shade, edges, curvature and so on. This makes it simple for the brain to paint out the blind spot, the area of your retina where the optic nerve joins, which has no sensors. It also compensates for the rapid jerky movements of our eyes called saccades, giving a false picture of steady vision.
But the downside of this process is that it makes our eyes easy to fool. TV, films and optical illusions work by misleading the brain about what the eye is seeing. This is also why the moon appears much larger than it is and seems to vary in size: the true optical size of the moon is similar to a hole created by a hole punch held at arm's length.