As gangs plunge Haiti into anarchy, people ask: Where in the world is the prime minister?

It’s the one question on the minds of all Haitians ever since armed gangs plunged the long-suffering Caribbean nation into near anarchy: Where in the world is Prime Minister Ariel Henry

ByEVENS SANON Associated Press and JOSHUA GOODMAN Associated Press
March 5, 2024, 



PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- It’s the one question on the minds of all Haitians ever since armed gangs plunged the long-suffering Caribbean nation into near anarchy: Where in the world is Prime Minister Ariel Henry?

The embattled leader, who assumed power following the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, has been notably absent since the country's latest and most serious outbreak of violence started last week. Henry has stayed silent as he crisscrosses the world, from South America to Africa, with no announced date of return.

Meanwhile, armed groups have seized on the power void. They tried to take control of Haiti’s main international airport on Monday and exchanged gunfire with police and soldiers. The explosion of violence also included a mass escape from the country’s two biggest prisons.

Even a decree declaring a state of emergency and curfew to restore order lacked Henry's imprint. It was signed by his finance minister, who is serving as acting prime minister.

“It’s the million-dollar question,” said Jake Johnston, a research associate at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Nobody knows where he is or when he’ll return. The fact that he hasn’t even opened his mouth since the violence began has stoked all sorts of speculation.”

Gangs opened fired on police late Monday outside the Toussaint Louverture International Airport, where Henry would likely land should he return home.

An armored truck could be seen on the tarmac shooting at gangs trying to enter the airport as scores of employees and other workers fled from whizzing bullets. The airport was closed when the attack occurred, with no planes operating and no passengers on site. It remained closed Tuesday.

Schools and banks were also closed Tuesday, and public transport had ground to a standstill. Across the city, several police installations were abandoned.

“Haiti is now under the control of the gangs. The government isn’t present,” said Michel St-Louis, 40, standing in front of a burned-down police station in the capital. “I’m hoping they can keep Henry out so whoever takes power can restore order.”

While Haiti's problems run deep and defy any quick fix, Henry himself is increasingly unpopular. His inability to govern effectively has stoked calls for him to step aside that the gangs are also embracing, if only to advance their own criminal interests, Johnson said.


Henry's exact whereabouts are unknown. Dan Foote, who served as the Biden administration's special envoy to Haiti following Moise's assassination, said he understands the prime minister is in New York weighing his next moves and whether it's safe to fly home. The Associated Press was unable to verify that account.

“I don't know if he's going to make it home,” Foote said.

Henry was last seen Friday in Kenya on a mission to salvage a multinational security force the east African nation was set to lead under the auspices of the United Nations. He left Haiti more than a week ago to attend a meeting of Caribbean leaders in Guyana, where a deadline was announced — by others, not Henry — to delay repeatedly postponed elections yet again. The balloting was pushed back to mid-2025.

That announcement is what appears to have triggered the latest explosion of violence. It began with a direct challenge from a powerful gang leader, Jimmy Chérizier, a former elite police officer known as Barbecue who fashions himself as a Robin Hood crusader. Chérizier said he would target government ministers in an effort to prevent Henry's return and force his resignation.

“With our guns and with the Haitian people, we will free the country,” he said in a video message announcing the offensive.

He appeared to make good on that threat over the next few days as gangs launched attacks on the central bank, the airport, even the national soccer stadium. The culmination of the coordinated offensive came over the weekend when a jailbreak at the National Penitentiary and another prison released onto the streets of the capital more than 5,000 inmates, many of whom had been serving time for murder, kidnapping and other violent crimes.

The prime minister's office did not respond to repeated requests for comment, nor has it said where the prime minister is and when he expects to return.

Henry, a soft-spoken neurosurgeon, positions himself as a transitional figure and peacemaker who has the backing of the U.S. government — long Haiti's dominant foreign ally and the key to any stabilization effort.

But the Biden administration's support has not translated into popularity at home, where Henry is reviled. Since he took power more than two years ago, the economy has been in free fall, food prices have skyrocketed and gang violence has surged.

Last year, more than 8,400 people were reported killed, injured or kidnapped, more than double the number reported in 2022. The U.N. estimates that nearly half of Haiti's 11 million people need humanitarian assistance.

Additionally, Henry has been unable to bring Haiti's disparate political actors into an agreement on general elections, which have not been held since 2015.

The recent surge in violence has renewed pressure on the U.S. and other foreign powers to quickly deploy a security force to prevent further bloodshed. The Biden administration has pledged funding and logistical support for any multinational force but has steadfastly refused to commit U.S. troops.

Foote, who as the Biden envoy opposed calls for any American boots on the ground in Haiti, said a U.S.-led military intervention can no longer be avoided.

“It's an absolute necessity now,” Foote said in an interview. “We've let this slide from worse to worst all the while abdicating our responsibility to others. But nobody can argue that Haiti isn't a failed state when the penitentiary gets emptied out.”

While elections remain the best way to stabilize the country once the security is restored, the U.S. will have to abandon its support for Henry for an intervention to succeed, he said.

“Any elections administered by Henry won't be accepted by the Haitian people,” he said. “If not for our backing, Haitians would’ve thrown Henry out long ago.”

___

Goodman reported from Miami.

Haiti’s Leader Nowhere to Be Found as Forces Converge on Capital

Jim Wyss, Bloomberg News

A man ducks to avoid nearby gunfire after a prison break in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Monday. 

Photographer: Clarens Siffroy/AFP/Getty Images , 

(Bloomberg) -- Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who’s been missing in action as the nation descended into chaos, arrived in Puerto Rico as he attempted to make his way back to his country.

Henry, who left Haiti on Feb. 25, landed in San Juan on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Puerto Rico governor’s office said. 

His reemergence comes after gangs turned the capital of Port-au-Prince into a war zone. In recent days they’ve freed thousands of prisoners, burned police stations and continue to attack Haiti’s main international airport. 

The prime minister had traveled to Guyana for a meeting of Caribbean leaders and then continued to Kenya, where he signed a document paving the way for a multinational security force. But his prolonged absence from Haiti emboldened groups that say he’s illegitimate and shouldn’t be allowed to return.

Henry’s destination was the Dominican Republic but flight records suggest he was unable to complete that journey. A Gulfstream IV Jet that left Teterboro, New Jersey on Tuesday, was originally slated to land in Las Americas International Airport, just outside of the capital of the Dominican Republic. FlightAware shows that the aircraft circled just north of the the Dominican Republic before it was ultimately diverted to San Juan.

Henry was swept into power in the wake of the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise and with the backing of the international community. But he has yet to follow through on repeated promises to hold long-overdue elections as the opposition accuses him of clinging to power and gangs tighten their stranglehold on the country. 

On Tuesday, the Gazette Haiti newspaper reported that Guy Phillipe, who was behind a 2004 coup and spent time in US prison on money laundering charges, would attempt to install himself as president and lead a transitional government. 

A state of emergency was declared late Sunday, after gangs raided two prisons over the weekend and freed thousands of hardened criminals. Among those who chose not to escape were 17 Colombians — many of them former soldiers — who were accused of being hired guns for Moise’s murder. Their lawyer told El Tiempo newspaper that they’ve all been transferred to a police station. 

The Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, has reinforced its border and closed its airspace with Haiti. On Monday, President Luis Abinader said that if any of the thousands of prison escapees tried to cross, his government would take “drastic” measures to stop them. 

Henry’s appearance in Puerto Rico, a US territory of 3.2 million people, raises questions about how he will eventually return to his country, though that remains the preferred option of the US government. 

“It’s our understanding that the prime minister is returning to the country,” US Department of State Spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday in a briefing. “We think it’s important that he do so and that he be allowed to do so.”

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

 

Infotainment is coming for your news, warns Concordia Ph.D. student Robert Marinov

Personal foibles and horse races competed with substantive coverage and discourse during the 2019 federal election, according to a new analysis of Canadian newspaper coverage

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

ROBERT MARINOV: “THE INFOTAINMENT APPROACH CAN HAVE IMPORTANT IMPACTS ON HOW VOTERS ARE BEING INFORMED DURING AN ELECTION.”

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CREDIT: ROBERT MARINOV

There are plenty of reasons to worry about the quality of contemporary Canadian journalism, beyond shrinking newsrooms and attention spans.

Once considered a vital pillar of a healthy democracy, the country’s biggest newspapers have been embracing the type of content critics refer to as “infotainment,” which uses entertainment-style methods to communicate politically relevant information.

In a new paper published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, PhD candidate Robert Marinov examines, measures and evaluates the scope and nature of infotainment in Canada’s largest newspapers. Using the 2019 federal election as a case study, Marinov analyzed news stories from the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, the National Post, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald and the Vancouver Sun. Given the high volume of duplicated articles between the latter four Postmedia newspapers, they were grouped together for the purposes of analysis.

Marinov collected 969 distinct hard news items over the campaign’s 41 days. Using a mixed-methods mode of discourse analysis, he assigned them a score of one to five, one being predominantly informative and five being predominantly entertaining.

He found that 51 per cent — more than half — of all hard news articles showed clear evidence of substantial infotainment traits (rating three to five), and 42 per cent demonstrated strong to very strong infotainment characteristics (four or five).

On the other end, almost 49 per cent of the articles in the dataset showed no (rating one on five) or few (two on five) entertainment characteristics.

Articles with significant infotainment characteristics (four to five rating) comprised 52 per cent of Postmedia hard news items. That number drops to 39 per cent for the Toronto Star and 35 per cent for the Globe and Mail.

“There is a fair amount of research that shows more conservative or right-wing political narratives tend to engage in more emotional discourses compared to more left-wing discourses, which tend to be more rationalist,” Marinov says. “We did hypothesize that these ideological differences might contribute to some of the results we found in Postmedia, which is typically more right-leaning than the Globe and Mail or Toronto Star. But it is hard to quantify by how much or to confirm this without further research.”

Still ‘a strong amount’ of analytical and investigative coverage

Marinov synthesized previous literature on infotainment to create a comprehensive framework that could stand up to robust investigation. Three categories emerged.

The first was personalization. This entails a focus on politicians and their personal characteristics, their private lives, their appearances, their manners of speaking, their behaviour and actions during an election campaign.

The second is sensationalization. This focuses on gaffes, scandals, the sensational framing of topics and emotionally driven narratives.

Both combine to serve the third category, decontextualization, where the focus is on speculation and strategic game-framing — who is ahead in the latest poll, who scored points on the campaign trail, who performed a good trick or stunt — without any focus on actual policy options.

Despite the large volume of infotainment found in mainstream Canadian newspapers’ political coverage, Marinov says he is still somewhat relieved that it is not any higher.

“It is promising to see that there is still quite a strong amount of coverage that adopts an analytical or investigative tone, that presents more concrete, substantive information about policy options and debates,” he says. “But the numbers also show that the infotainment approach has a lot of purchase in Canadian newspaper coverage. This can have important impacts on how voters are being informed during an election.”

Paul Saurette of the University of Ottawa co-authored the study.

This article drew on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Read the cited paper: “Infotaining Canadian Politics? Measuring Infotainment in English-Language Newspaper Coverage of the 2019 Canadian Federal Election

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JOURNAL

Canadian Journal of Political Science

DOI

10.1017/S0008423923000586 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Infotaining Canadian Politics? Measuring Infotainment in English-Language Newspaper Coverage of the 2019 Canadian Federal Election

 

Photosynthetic secrets come to light

JOHN INNES CENTRE

 

IMAGE: 

SEEING THE POLYMERASE MOLECULE THAT TRANSCRIBES PHOTOSYNTHETIC GENES IN THE PLANT CHLOROPLAST. IMAGES OF INDIVIDUAL MOLECULES COLLECTED WITH AN ELECTRON MICROSCOPE WERE SORTED AND ALIGNED TO REVEAL DETAILS OF THE STRUCTURAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE PROTEIN COMPLEX.

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CREDIT: MICHAEL WEBSTER & ISHIKA PRAMANICK

Secrets of photosynthesis have been discovered at atomic level, shedding important new light on this plant super-power that greened the earth more than a billion years ago. 

John Innes Centre researchers used an advanced microscopy method called cryo-EM to explore how the photosynthetic proteins are made. 

The study, published in Cell, presents a model and resources to stimulate further fundamental discoveries in this field and assist longer term goals of developing more resilient crops. 

Dr Michael Webster, group leader and co-author of the paper said: “Transcription of chloroplast genes is a fundamental step in making the photosynthetic proteins that provide plants with the energy they need to grow. We hope that by understanding this process better - at the detailed molecular level - we will equip researchers looking to develop plants with more robust photosynthetic activity.” 

“The most important outcome of this work is the creation of a useful resource. Researchers can download our atomic model of the chloroplast polymerase and use it to produce their own hypotheses of how it might function and experimental strategies that would test them.” 

Photosynthesis takes place inside chloroplasts, small compartments within plant cells that contain their own genome, reflecting their past as free-living photosynthetic bacteria before they were engulfed and co-opted by plants. 

The Webster group at the John Innes Centre investigates how plants make photosynthetic proteins, the molecular machines that make this elegant chemical reaction happen, converting atmospheric carbon dioxide and water into simple sugars and producing oxygen as a byproduct. 

The first stage in protein production is transcription, where a gene is read to produce a ‘messenger RNA’. This transcription process is done by an enzyme called RNA polymerase.  

It was discovered 50 years ago that chloroplasts contain their own unique RNA polymerase. Since then, scientists have been surprised how complex this enzyme is. It has more subunits than its ancestor, the bacterial RNA polymerase, and is even bigger than human RNA polymerases.  

The Webster group wanted to understand why chloroplasts have such a sophisticated RNA polymerase. To do this they needed to visualise the structural architecture of the chloroplast RNA polymerase. 

The research team used a method called cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to image samples of chloroplast RNA polymerase purified from white mustard plants.  

By processing these images, they were able to build a model that contains the positions of more than 50,000 atoms in the molecular complex.  

The RNA polymerase complex comprises 21 subunits encoded in the two genomes, nuclear and chloroplast. Close analysis of this structure as it performs transcription allowed the researchers to start explaining these components' functions. 

The model allowed them to identify a protein that interacts with the DNA as it is being transcribed and guides it to the enzyme's active site.  

Another component can interact with the mRNA that is being produced that likely protects it from proteins that would degrade it before it is translated into protein.  

Dr Webster said: “We know that each component of the chloroplast RNA polymerase has a vital role because plants that lack any one of them cannot make photosynthetic proteins and consequently cannot turn green. We are studying the atomic models carefully to pinpoint what the role is for each of the 21 components of the assembly.” 

Joint first author Dr Ángel Vergara-Cruces said: “Now that we have a structural model the next step is to confirm the role of the chloroplast transcription proteins. By revealing mechanisms of chloroplast transcription, our study offers insight into its role in plant growth and adaptation and response to environmental conditions.”  

Joint first author Dr Ishika Pramanick said: “There were many surprising moments in this remarkable work journey, starting with the very challenging protein purification to taking stunning cryo-EM images of this huge complex protein to finally seeing our work in a printed version.”  

Dr Webster concluded: “Heat, drought, and salinity limit a plants’ ability to perform photosynthesis. Plants that can produce photosynthetic proteins reliably in the face of environmental stress may control chloroplast transcription differently. We look forward to seeing our work used in the important effort to develop more robust crops.” 

Structure of the plant plastid-encoded RNA polymerase appears in Cell. 

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JOURNAL

Cell

DOI

10.1016/j.cell.2024.01.036 

ARTICLE TITLE

Structure of the plant plastid-encoded RNA polymerase

 

A model for the evolution of intelligence

McGill study finds ability to solve food puzzles is the only predictor of innovation, brain size in wild birds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MCGILL UNIVERSITY

When certain species of wild birds and primates discover new ways of finding food in the wild, it can serve to measure their flexibility and intelligence.

In the largest experimental study ever conducted on this topic, a team of researchers from Rockefeller University headed by postdoctoral fellow Jean-Nicolas Audet have shown, in collaboration with McGill’s Louis Lefebvre, that foraging problems requiring overcoming obstacles, such as removing the lid off a container of food, are the only predictors of brain size and innovative behaviour in the wild.

They also studied two other cognitive traits but did not find them to be associated with innovation rate in the wild.

The results of the study – which included 203 individual animals from 15 species, 13 of which were wild-caught – integrate observational studies of animal intelligence in the wild and experimental studies in captivity.

“Our results provide an effective way to study innovations in the lab using appropriate behavioral tasks in controlled conditions, allowing future investigations on their precise neurobiological, psychological, and ecological underpinnings,” said Audet. “We now have a more valid model to study the evolution of intelligence.”

About the study

Problem-solving skills are predicted by technical innovations in the wild and brain size in Passerines by Jean-Nicolas Audet, Louis Lefebvre et al., was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

When certain species of wild birds and primates discover new ways of finding food in the wild, it can serve to measure their flexibility and intelligence.

In the largest experimental study ever conducted on this topic, a team of researchers from Rockefeller University headed by postdoctoral fellow Jean-Nicolas Audet have shown, in collaboration with McGill’s Louis Lefebvre, that foraging problems requiring overcoming obstacles, such as removing the lid off a container of food, are the only predictors of brain size and innovative behaviour in the wild.

They also studied two other cognitive traits but did not find them to be associated with innovation rate in the wild.

The results of the study – which included 203 individual animals from 15 species, 13 of which were wild-caught – integrate observational studies of animal intelligence in the wild and experimental studies in captivity.

“Our results provide an effective way to study innovations in the lab using appropriate behavioral tasks in controlled conditions, allowing future investigations on their precise neurobiological, psychological, and ecological underpinnings,” said Audet. “We now have a more valid model to study the evolution of intelligence.”

About the study

Problem-solving skills are predicted by technical innovations in the wild and brain size in Passerines by Jean-Nicolas Audet, Louis Lefebvre et al., was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

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JOURNAL

Nature Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1038/s41559-024-02342-7 

ARTICLE TITLE

Problem-solving skills are predicted by technical innovations in the wild and brain size in passerines

 

8 in 10 lizards could be at risk due to deforestation

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

In Colorado, people flock to the Rocky Mountains when the summer heat gets unbearable. Animals seek shelter too when temperatures become extreme, and forests serve as critical sanctuaries for small tree-dwelling animals like lizards.

In a new study published March 5 in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder and Tel Aviv University in Israel revealed that deforestation combined with climate change could negatively impact 84% of North America’s lizards by the end of the century. Nearly one in five could face population decline. 

Unlike mammals that can maintain their body temperatures in a variety of ways—sweating when it gets too hot and relying on warm fur when it gets too cold—cold-blooded animals like lizards have limited strategies to thermoregulate. Tree-climbing lizards move around tree trunks to bask in the sun for warmth. When the ground gets too hot, they climb higher or move into the shade. 

“What's really interesting about lizards is that they just need to be able to move a short distance around the tree trunk to get to a very different climate and habitat environment,” said Keith Musselman, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and CU Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. “These microhabitats are particularly important when we think about how we modify our natural environment and make conservation decisions.” 

Using computer simulations, the team showed that global warming can actually benefit lizards living in colder regions or at higher latitudes in North America. Warmer weather increases the animals’ activity time, meaning they have more time to look for food or mates during the day. However, deforestation would largely reverse these positive effects by reducing opportunities for shade in hotter climates that help them cool down. 

The team simulated lizard models for different climate regions across North America. They found that tree loss could decrease lizards’ activity time by an average of 34% by the end of the century. Without trees, the animals would have to hide under rocks or in caves to avoid overheating. The impact would be especially prominent for species that already live in warmer regions, where future summers will become too warm for activity on the ground.  

The team estimated that deforestation would accelerate population declines for 18% of lizards in North America.

“Our work provides new insights into the mechanisms by which deforestation may cause population declines in the face of climate change,” said Ofir Levy, a zoologist and Musselman’s collaborator at Tel Aviv University. “The decline in lizards can lead to a cascading effect as they are an important part of almost every ecological system.” 

Despite international pledges to halt deforestation, tree clearing continues to happen globally. From 2001 to 2022, about 459 million hectares, or 12%, of global tree cover disappeared.  

“Deforestation is a worldwide problem, and our conclusions can help decision-makers on other continents in designing conservation and habitat restoration programs that consider climate change,” said Omer Zlotnick, the paper’s first author and a Ph.D. student at Tel Aviv University. 

Lizard populations are already at risk because of climate change. In one study, scientists estimated that 54% of lizard populations in Mexico would go extinct by 2080 because of their inability to adapt to the rapidly warming planet. 

Deforestation would further exacerbate the threat by taking away these animals’ refuges. 

“Here in the Rocky Mountains, elevation provides an escape for animals that can travel longer distances, including us humans. On those summer days when it hits 100 degrees, many of us will go into the mountains. But small animals like lizards can’t travel far. They heavily depend on the refuge provided by the local landscape, including tree trunks,” said Musselman. “The study highlighted the importance of understanding which elements in the environment can serve as refuges for other organisms on this planet.”
 

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JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-024-01939-x 

ARTICLE TITLE

Deforestation poses deleterious effects to tree-climbing species under climate change

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Mar-2024

 

Call for articles: Trends in Peace and Sustainability

HIROSHIMA UNIVERSITY

The Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS) at Hiroshima University is inviting submissions for Trends in Peace and Sustainability (TRENDS), an innovative academic platform dedicated to exploring the complex interplay between peace and sustainability. TRENDS aims to become a forum for scholars, professionals, and advocates to share their research, insights, and viewpoints on the pursuit of peace amid sustainability challenges. It aims to promote interdisciplinary engagement, stimulating conversation and catalyzing efforts towards a sustainable and peaceful future.

Contributors are invited to submit short articles, analyses, and commentary that explore the peace and sustainability nexus. More details are available through the TRENDS submission portal: https://bit.ly/nerpstrends. Submissions will undergo a thorough review and editorial process. The editorial team consists of Dahlia Simangan, John Lee Candelaria, and Joshua Fisher.

Check out the submission guidelines here.
Download TRENDS' call for submissions flyer here.

###

About Hiroshima University

Since its foundation in 1949, Hiroshima University has striven to become one of the most prominent and comprehensive universities in Japan for the promotion and development of scholarship and education. Consisting of 12 schools for undergraduate level and 4 graduate schools, ranging from natural sciences to humanities and social sciences, the university has grown into one of the most distinguished comprehensive research universities in Japan. English website: https://www.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/en

 

Beyond the ink: Painting with physics

Scientifically-proven suggestions for crafting a masterpiece.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

OKINAWA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (OIST) GRADUATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

JAPANESE ARTIST AKIKO NAKAYAMA MANIPULATES ALCOHOL AND INKS TO CREATE TREE-LIKE DENDRITIC PATTERNS DURING A LIVE PAINTING SESSION.

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CREDIT: PHOTO CREDIT: AKIKO NAKAYAMA

Falling from the tip of a brush suspended in mid-air, an ink droplet touches a painted surface and blossoms into a masterpiece of ever-changing beauty. It weaves a tapestry of intricate, evolving patterns. Some of them resemble branching snowflakes, thunderbolts or neurons, whispering the unique expression of the artist's vision.

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) researchers set out to analyse the physical principles of this fascinating technique, known as dendritic painting. They took inspiration from the artwork of Japanese media artist, Akiko Nakayama. During her live painting performances, she applies colourful droplets of acrylic ink mixed with alcohol atop a flat surface coated with a layer of acrylic paint. Beautiful fractals – tree-like geometrical shapes that repeat at different scales and are often found in nature – appear before the eyes of the audience. This is a captivating art form driven by creativity, but also by the physics of fluid dynamics.

“I have a deep admiration for scientists, such as Ukichiro Nakaya and Torahiko Terada, who made remarkable contributions to both science and art. I was very happy to be contacted by OIST physicist Chan San To. I am envious of his ability ‘to dialogue’ with the dendritic patterns, observing how they change shape in response to different approaches. Hearing this secret conversation was delightful,” explains Nakayama.

“Painters have often employed fluid mechanics to craft unique compositions. We have seen it with David Alfaro Siqueiros, Jackson Pollock, and Naoko Tosa, just to name a few. In our laboratory, we reproduce and study artistic techniques, to understand how the characteristics of the fluids influence the final outcome,” says OIST Professor Eliot Fried of OIST’s Mechanics and Materials Unit, who likes looking at dendritic paintings from artistic and scientific angles.

See a video of experiments with acrylic paint fractals here.

In dendritic painting, the droplets made of ink and alcohol experience various forces. One of them is surface tension – the force that makes rain droplets spherical in shape, and allows leaves to float on the surface of a pond. In particular, as alcohol evaporates faster than water, it alters the surface tension of the droplet. Fluid molecules tend to be pulled towards the droplet rim, which has higher surface tension compared to its centre. This is called the Marangoni effect and is the same phenomenon responsible for the formation of wine tears – the droplets or streaks of wine that form on the inside of a wine glass after swirling or tilting.

Secondly, the underlying paint layer also plays an important part in this artistic technique. Dr. Chan tested various types of liquids. For fractals to emerge, the liquid must be a fluid that decreases in viscosity under shear strain, meaning it has to behave somewhat like ketchup. It's common knowledge that it's hard to get ketchup out of the bottle unless you shake it. This happens because ketchup's viscosity changes depending on shear strain. When you shake the bottle, the ketchup becomes less viscous, making it easier to pour it onto your dish. How is this applied to dendritic painting?

“In dendritic painting, the expanding ink droplet shears the underlying acrylic paint layer. It is not as strong as the shaking of a ketchup bottle, but it is still a form of shear strain. As with ketchup, the more stress there is, the easier it is for the ink droplets to flow,” explains Dr. Chan.

“We also showed that the physics behind this dendritic painting technique is similar to how liquid travels in a porous medium, such as soil. If you were to look at the mix of acrylic paint under the microscope, you would see a network of microscopic structures made of polymer molecules and pigments. The ink droplet tends to find its way through this underlying network, travelling through paths of least resistance, that leads to the dendritic pattern,” adds Prof. Fried.

Each dendritic print is one-of-a-kind, but there are at least two key aspects that artists can take into consideration to control the outcome of dendritic painting. The first and most important factor is the thickness of the paint layer spread on the surface. Dr. Chan observed that well-refined fractals appear with paint layer thinner than a half millimetre.

The second factor to experiment with is the concentration of diluting medium and paint in this paint layer. Dr. Chan obtained the most detailed fractals using three parts diluting medium and one part paint, or two parts diluting medium and one part paint. If the concentration of paint is higher, the droplet cannot spread well. Conversely, if the concentration of paint is lower, fuzzy edges will form. 

This is not the first science-meets-art project that members of the Mechanics and Materials Unit have embarked on. For example, they designed and installed a mobile sculpture on the OIST campus. The sculpture exemplifies a family of mechanical devices, called Möbius kaleidocycles, invented in the Unit, which may offer guidelines for designing chemical compounds with novel electronic properties.

Currently, Dr. Chan is also developing novel methods of analysing how the complexity of a sketch or painting evolves during its creation. He and Prof. Fried are optimistic that these methods might be applied to uncover hidden structures in experimentally captured or numerically generated images of flowing fluids.

“Why should we confine science to just technological progress?” wonders Dr. Chan. “I like exploring its potential to drive artistic innovation as well. I do digital art, but I really admire traditional artists. I sincerely invite them to experiment with various materials and reach out to us if they're interested in collaborating and exploring the physics hidden within their artwork.”

Instructions to create dendritic painting at home

Everybody can have fun creating dendritic paintings. The materials needed include a non-absorbent surface (glass, synthetic paper, ceramics, etc.), a brush, a hairbrush, rubbing alcohol (iso-propyl alcohol), acrylic ink, acrylic paint and pouring medium.

1. Dilute one part of acrylic paint to two or three parts of  pouring medium, or test other ratios to see how the result changes
2. Apply this to the non-absorbent surface uniformly using a hairbrush. OIST physicists have found out that the thickness of the paint affects the result. For the best fractals, a layer of paint thinner than half millimetre is recommended.
3. Mix rubbing alcohol with acrylic ink. The density of the ink may differ for different brands: have a try mixing alcohol and ink in different ratios
4. When the white paint is still wet (hasn’t dried yet), apply a droplet of the ink with alcohol mix using a brush or another tool, such as a bamboo stick or a toothpick.
5. Enjoy your masterpiece as it develops before your eyes. 

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Snapshots of the ink droplets containing 50 vol% alcohol (isopropanol) as they spread on a surface coated with 400 μm-thick acrylic paint with different paint concentrations (11%, 20% and 33%), captured over approximately 40 seconds. The images on the rightmost column show the zoomed-in views of the droplet edges. Higher paint concentration leads to increasingly refined and fractal-like droplet edges.

Images courtesy of Akiko Nakayama.

Fractal-like branches created with dendritic painting.

CREDIT

Dr. San To Chan (OIST)

JOURNAL

PNAS Nexus

DOI

10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae059 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Marangoni spreading on liquid substrates in new media art

Predicting who will experience aesthetic chills

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PNAS NEXUS

Researchers built a model that can predict with 73.5% accuracy when a person will experience aesthetic chills: shivers, goosebumps, or a feeling of cold down the neck or spine elicited by aesthetic stimuli, such as beautiful music or an inspirational speech. Felix Schoeller and colleagues surveyed 2,937 people from Southern California, through an online platform, gathering data on their personalities, demographic backgrounds, and emotional state. The authors then exposed survey respondents to 40 emotion-evoking audiovisual clips sourced from social media, selected because commenters had reported experiencing aesthetic chills while watching and listening. The clips included choral performances, a commencement speech by a minister, readings of poems by Charles Bukowski and Mary Oliver, pop songs by Radiohead and Sigur Rós, and scenes from the films Hunger Games and Everything Everywhere All At Once, along with many others. The authors then built a model that identified demographic, psychological, and contextual factors that would predict whether a given person would experience aesthetic chills when watching or listening to a clip. People who reported being alert and in a good mood were more likely to feel chills than those who were tired or in a bad mood. Other factors that correlated with high probabilities of experiencing chills were being 35–44 years old, being male, being a Democrat, and having a graduate degree. Psychological characteristics such as extraversion and conscientiousness were also predictive of experiencing chills, as were high scores on specialized psychological scales that measure a person’s propensity to be emotionally moved (the Kama Muta Frequency Scale) and absorbed in the moment (the Modified Tellegen Absorption Scale). According to the authors, additional research into how emotional experiences are shaped by psychological, demographic, and cultural variables could eventually inform the use of aesthetic chills as a non-pharmaceutical treatment for affective disorders such as depression.

Examples of goosebump-inducing stimuli are available at the project website: http://chillsdb.com.

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JOURNAL

PNAS Nexus

ARTICLE TITLE

Predicting individual differences in peak emotional response

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Mar-2024

AI art and human creativity

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PNAS NEXUS

Text-to-image generative AI systems like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E can produce images based on text prompts that, had they been produced by humans, would plausibly be judged as “creative.” Some artists have argued that these programs are a threat to human creativity. If AI comes to be relied on to produce most new visual works, drawing on what has been done before, creative progress could stagnate. Eric Zhou and Dokyun “DK” Lee investigated the impact of text-to-image AI tools on human creativity, seeking to understand if these tools would make the human artists less or more creative. The authors examined art made with and without AI on an online art-sharing platform. Artists who adopted AI showed increased productivity, compared to their pre-AI pace, and adopters tended to see an increase in favorable responses to their work on the platform after adopting AI. While artists who used AI showed decreasing average novelty over time as compared to controls, both in terms of the content of their images as well as pixel-level stylistic elements, peak content novelty among AI adopters is marginally increasing over time, suggesting an expanding creative space but with inefficiencies. Still, artists of all levels of creative ability are evaluated more favorably after adopting AI if they successfully explore new concepts but are generally penalized for using AI for exploring novel visual styles. According to the authors, this result hints at the potential complementarity between human ideation and filtering abilities as the core expressions of creativity in a text-to-image workflow, thus giving rise to a phenomenon they term as “generative synesthesia” – the harmony of human idea exploration and AI visual exploitation to discover new creative workflows.

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JOURNAL

PNAS Nexus

ARTICLE TITLE

Generative artificial intelligence, human creativity, and art

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Mar-2024