Sisters With Transistors: inside the fascinating film about electronic music’s forgotten pioneers

They turned drawings into symphonies and made black boxes sing. Why were they never given their due? The maker of a new film, full of revealing archive footage, aims to put this right

Turned down Hitchcock … Clara Rockmore, virtuoso of the theremin 

Photograph: University of New Hampshire/Gado/Getty Images

Jude Rogers
@juderogers
Fri 23 Apr 2021 

Wearing a black cocktail dress and a foil-bright silver headscarf, a woman stands in the corner of a drawing room performing The Swan by Saint-Saëns, while a group of men look on. Although the scene has a sedate Edwardian air to it, this is actually 1976. The woman whirls her red nails around a mysterious black box, making it sigh and lament, whisper and sing. This is Clara Rockmore, the first virtuoso of the theremin, and her audience – all there to learn – includes Robert Moog, inventor of the synthesiser.

A year later, aged 66, Rockmore would release her first album, recorded by Moog, 35 years after she made her concert debut on the instrument at New York’s City Hall, where she arranged spirituals for a black male sextet with composer Hall Johnson. Rockmore also toured widely with the bass baritone Paul Robeson in the 1940s, and turned down a request to perform on the spooky soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 thriller Spellbound, as she wanted her instrument to be valued, not treated like a novelty.

Rockmore is one of 10 electronic music pioneers featured in Sisters With Transistors, Lisa Rovner’s debut documentary, released this weekend. Aiming to connect these women’s disparate, noisy stories, the film teems with spliced-together archive footage that recalls the mash-up style of Adam Curtis: nuclear tests and beauty competitions swirl around the many revealing clips of the musicians.

Composer at work … Wendy Carlos in her New York recording studio in 1979.

EARLY TRANSEXUAL FORMERLY WALTER CARLOS OF SWITCHED ON BACH. 

Photograph: Len DeLessio/Corbis/Getty

One of the first performers Rovner became captivated by was Daphne Oram, co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who she saw in the 2003 documentary The Alchemists of Sound. Oram was a pioneer in making music from tape and developed her own compositional method, Oramics. “A quote of hers really spoke to me,” Rovner says. It came from Oram’s 1972 book, An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics. “It said, ‘Do not let us fall into the trap of trying to name one man as the “inventor” of electronic music. As with most inventions, we shall find that many minds were almost simultaneously excited into visualising far-reaching possibilities.’ I wanted my film to show all those connections.”

We hear Private Dreams and Public Nightmares, Oram and fellow workshop co-founder Desmond Briscoe’s groundbreaking 1957 work, the first radiophonic composition played in full on the BBC, on the Third Programme (which became Radio 3). It was their first “attempt to convey a new kind of emotional and intellectual experience”. We then see Oram – a dead ringer for the young Margaret Thatcher – in 1963, having been awarded £3,500 (the equivalent of £62,400 today) by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Her manner is frightfully polite as she’s interviewed by a reporter, and almost apologetic. “I’ve got some little grasp of this sort of equipment,” she says, before introducing Oramics, which converts drawings into music.

There’s also a rare clip of Wendy Carlos from 1969, explaining her modular synthesiser to a French TV network, as well as 8mm footage of Pauline Oliveros that Rovner acquired from one of her old lovers. Oliveros is fascinating on screen and off. Born in 1932 and openly gay from the start of her career, she was a pioneer of the concepts of “deep listening” and “sonic awareness”. These asked the listener to spend time focusing on the depths and layers of sound, a concept Oliveros developed later in her career, recording in cathedrals and caves.

Daphne Oram, co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Photograph: National Media Museum/Daily Herald Archive/Getty Images

“There has to be a complete change of consciousness throughout the musical field,” said Oliveros in 1970, calling for the teaching of “music that’s written by women as well as men as well as all colours”. She added: “It will effect a great change. Listening is the basis of creativity of culture.” Although she co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center, one of the first electronic music collectives, she’s not listed as such on its Wikipedia entry. (Its male co-founders Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender get top billing.)

Oliveros wrote a piece for the New York Times in 1970 titled And Don’t Call Them Lady Composers, focusing on the difficulties of women being noticed and taken seriously in her field. It’s still online and could have been written yesterday. “Men do not have to commit sexual suicide in order to encourage their sisters in music,” is one of many compelling phrases.

Some of them wanted to do nothing less than change the way people listened

Laurie Anderson

Rovner’s big coup for Sisters With Transistors is getting Laurie Anderson to narrate: the avant-garde composer signed up, delighted to hear that Oliveros and French composer Éliane Radigue would be properly getting their dues. Anderson’s 1981 hit O Superman used a vocoder and a polyphonic synthesiser and her delivery – knowing, icy and inviting – connects the parallel marches of technology, modernity and women’s liberty. “The spirit of modern life was a banshee,” she says, “screeching into the future.”



“It’s very interesting,” Anderson says today, “that a lot of that early work in electronics was done by women. Some of them wanted to do nothing less than change the way people listened, which is telling. They wanted to think about how sound could recalibrate our body and mind.” They also wanted to make their own machines to express themselves as music-makers and performers, as Anderson did. Her inventions include a tape-bow violin, which has magnetic tape where the bow’s horsehair should be, and a 6ft “talking stick”, a wireless instrument that can replicate any sound.

Some clips in Sisters With Transistors are more familiar, such as the much-played BBC footage of Delia Derbyshire explaining her tape machines. (A more inventive film about the composer – Caroline Catz’s Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes – premiered to acclaim at the London film festival last year, and airs next month on the BBC.) Indeed, the status of many female electronic artists has rocketed in recent decades: Oram’s name sits on a Performing Right Society prize, and her 1949 composition Still Point, written for orchestra and turntable, was performed at the 2018 Proms.

‘Don’t call us lady composers’ … Pauline Oliveros. Photograph: Mills College




Isn’t there a risk that by saying these women are still unsung, we might be discrediting the singing that has already been done? Or that we might be fetishising them as a specialist interest? “Some people know them, but others don’t,” Rovner says bluntly. “Plus their stories quickly get forgotten again.” Suzanne Ciani, who forged a successful commercial career in electronic music from the 70s, says this explicitly in the film: “It’s two steps forward, one step back. To this day, it irks me to turn on my favourite radio station and it’s just this male parade.”

Ciani revolutionised the sound of US commercials, inventing an electronic bubbling sound for a bottle of Coke, and became the first woman to score a Hollywood film: Joel Schumacher’s 1981 comedy The Incredible Shrinking Woman. “I didn’t know it would be 14 years until another woman was hired,” she says. “We are casualties of a day-to-day system that operates without awareness that we’re even there.”

This is still an industry problem. Hildur Gudnadottír was the first woman to win a best original score Oscar for Joker, but another composer, Hannah Peel, said to me recently in the Observer: “We have to remind ourselves the number of female composers [in film] is something ridiculous. It’s gone down this year from 6% to 4%. We need to know why.”

Because of the nature of the instruments, electronic music-making is often an isolated pursuit. Nevertheless, one artist featured in Sisters With Transistors, Laurie Spiegel, tells me how struck she was by the fact that the women in the film barely knew of each other. “How different would things have been if we had?” Spiegel studied composition in London in the late 60s but heard of Oram and Derbyshire only in the past decade or so. That said, she never thought explicitly about being a female musician. “It wasn’t about me. It was about the tech, the freedoms it gave me, and the musical vistas it opened up for me to explore.”
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Technology, says Spiegel, can be a liberator: “It blows up power structures.” The younger women who populate the film give weight to this statement – from producer Marta Salogni (Björk/the xx) who does its sound design, to such artists as Ramona Gonzalez (AKA Nite Jewel) and Holly Herndon who provide glowing voiceovers. Towards the end of the film, Herndon talks of the psychological thrill “that happens when you can see yourself in the people who are being celebrated”. As she speaks, you hear other women turning up the volume, powering up for the future.

Sisters With Transistors is released on 23 April via Modern Films. Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and Legendary Tapes is on BBC Four in May as part of the BBC’s spotlight on Coventry, UK city of culture.

‘It has never been more pertinent’ – Margaret Atwood on the chilling genius of Laurie Anderson’s Big Science

‘A refugee from within America’ … Anderson in the early 80s. Photograph: Leon Morris/Getty Images

The seminal album, with its extraordinary hit single O Superman, was unlike anything the writer had ever heard. As Big Science returns, Atwood pays tribute to its prophetic dissection of 80s America

Margaret Atwood
Thu 8 Apr 2021 

Here come the planes. They’re American planes! Musicologists and the less young will recognise those lines, which are from Laurie Anderson’s 1981 unlikely voice-synthesiser hit O Superman. This song, if it is one – try humming it in the shower – led to Anderson’s first multi-song album, 1982’s Big Science.

Big Science is being reissued at a very timely moment: America is reinventing itself again. It’s a self-rescue mission, and just in time: democracy, we have been led to believe, has been snatched from the jaws of autocracy, maybe. A New Deal, leading to a fairer distribution of wealth and an ultimately liveable planet, is on the way, possibly. Racism dating back centuries is being addressed, hopefully. Let’s hope these helicopters don’t crash.

I didn’t understand, back in 1981, that O Superman was about the mission to retrieve embattled Americans during the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis, in which 52 US diplomats were held by Iran for more than a year. Anderson herself has said that the song is directly related to Operation Eagle Claw, a military rescue operation that failed: a failure that included a helicopter crash. This catastrophe demonstrated that the American military-industrial Superman was not invincible, and that the automation and electronics mentioned in the song would not always win. The helicopter crash, said Anderson, was the initial inspiration for the song or performance piece. When O Superman became a hit, first in the UK and then elsewhere, Anderson claims to have been astonished. What were the chances? Very slim, you would have said ahead of time.

‘An eerie sound came over the airwaves’ … Atwood in the early 80s. Photograph: Wally Fong/AP

You can always remember what you were doing at certain key moments in your life. Such moments are different for everyone. Some of my moments have been attached to public tragedies: when Kennedy was assassinated, I was working at a market research company in downtown Toronto; when 9/11 struck I was in Toronto airport, thinking I was about to fly to New York. Some of my moments have been weather-related: witnessing hurricanes, caught in ice storms. And some have been musical. I was four, sitting in an armchair in Sault Ste Marie ineptly sewing my stuffed bear into its clothes, when I first heard Mairzy Doats on the radio. Blue Moon came to me sung by a live band, while I was oozing across a high-school dance floor in the clinch favoured in those days. Bob Dylan revealed himself to me in 1964, curly-headed and be-mouth-organed, on a Boston stage with barefoot Joan Baez, queen of the folkies.

Jump cut. It was 1981. Time had passed. Unsurprisingly, I was older. Surprisingly – or it would have been a surprise to me in 1964 – I now had a partner and a child, not to mention two cats and a house. Ronald Reagan had just been elected president, and the morning he was promising for America was going to be a lot different from the new age of hippiedom and feminism we’d been living through in the 70s. The religious right was on the rise as a political force. I’d already had the idea for The Handmaid’s Tale, and was struggling with whether or not I should write it. Surely it was too far-fetched?

Had I known Laurie Anderson then, she might have said: “There’s no such thing as too far-fetched.”

‘Like something out of a sci-fi movie’ … Anderson’s album. Photograph: Nonesuch

So, 1981. We had the radio on while cooking dinner, when an eerie sound came pulsating over the airwaves.

“What was that thing?” I said. It was not the sort of music, or even sound, that you ordinarily heard on the radio; or anywhere else, come to think of it. The closest to it was when, back in the days of record-players and vinyl, we teenagers used to play 45s on 33 speed because it sounded funny. A soprano could be reduced to a slow, zombie-like baritone growl, and often had been.

What I’d just heard, however, wasn’t funny. “This is your mother,” says a chirpy midwestern voice on an answering machine. “Are you coming home?” But it isn’t your mother. It’s “the hand, the hand that takes”. It’s a construct. It’s something out of a sci-fi movie, such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers: it looks human but it’s not human, which is both creepy and sinister. Worse, it’s your only hope, Mom and Dad and God and justice and force having proved lacking.
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“That thing” I’d been mesmerised by was O Superman. As you can see, I’ve never forgotten it. It was not like anything else, and Laurie Anderson was not like anyone else, either.

Or anyone you would ordinarily think of as a pop musician. Up until her breakout single, she’d been an avant garde performance artist and inventor, trained initially in the visual arts, and collaborating with like-minded artists such as William Burroughs and John Cage. The 70s – remembered not only for wide ties, long coats and high boots, and the ethnic look, but also for active second-wave feminism – was a period of high energy for performance art events. These were evanescent by nature, emphasising process over product. They had roots that went back to dada in the teens of the 20th century, to Group Zero, a late 50s attempt to create something new from the rubble of the second world war, and to Fluxus, active in the 60s and 70s.

Double visions … Anderson, left, and Atwood in 2019. Photograph: Hillel Italie/AP

Anderson’s large project in Big Science was a critical and anxious examination of the US, though not exactly from without. She was born in 1947, and was thus 10 in 1957, old enough to have witnessed the surge of new material objects that had flooded American homes in that decade, 15 in 1962 during a highly active period of the civil rights movement, and 20 in 1967, when campus unrest and anti-Vietnam war protests were in full swing. The upending of norms, for a person of that age, must have seemed normal.

But although New York became her cultural base camp, Anderson was not a big-city girl. She grew up in Illinois, the heart of the heart of America. She came by her perky Mom voice and her “Howdy stranger” tropes honestly. She was a refugee, not to America but from within America: a Mom and apple pie America, an America of the past that was being rapidly transformed by material inventions, and by the freeways, malls, and drive-in banks cited in the song Big Science as landmarks on the road to town. What might be bulldozed next? How much of the natural matrix would be left? Was America’s worship of technology about to obliterate America? And, more largely, in what consisted our humanity?


Laurie Anderson: where to start in her back catalogue

As the 20th century has morphed into the 21st, as the consequences of the destruction of the natural world have become devastatingly clear, as analogue has been superseded by digital, as the possibilities for surveillance have increased a hundredfold, and as the ruthless hive mind of the Borg has been approximated through online media, Anderson’s anxious and unsettling probings have taken on an aura of the prophetic. Do you want to be a human being any more? Are you one now? What even is that? Or should you just allow yourself to be held in the long electronic petrochemical arms of your false mother?

Big Science has never been more pertinent than it is right now. Have a listen. Confront the urgent questions. Feel the chill.

A new red vinyl edition of Big Science is released on 9 April on Nonesuch.

 

Four themes identified as contributors to diseases of despair in Pennsylvania

PENN STATE

Research News

IMAGE: FINANCIAL INSTABILITY, LACK OF INFRASTRUCTURE, A DETERIORATING SENSE OF COMMUNITY AND FAMILY FRAGMENTATION ARE KEY CONTRIBUTORS TO DISEASES OF DESPAIR IN PENNSYLVANIA COMMUNITIES, ACCORDING TO PENN STATE COLLEGE OF MEDICINE... view more 

CREDIT: PENN STATE

Hershey, Pa. -- Financial instability, lack of infrastructure, a deteriorating sense of community and family fragmentation are key contributors to diseases of despair in Pennsylvania communities, according to Penn State College of Medicine and Highmark Health researchers. The researchers conducted four focus groups in Pennsylvania communities identified as having high rates of despair-related illnesses.

Diseases of despair are medical diagnoses involving alcohol-related disorders, substance-related disorders and suicidal thoughts and behavior. Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton proposed the concept of deaths of despair in 2015 after observing a decline in life expectancy of middle-aged white men and women between 1999 and 2015 -- the first such decline since the flu pandemic of 1918. They theorized that this decline is associated with the social and economic downturn in rural communities and small towns over the last several decades, leading to feelings of despair and loss of hope for the future.

"The crisis in recent years has broadened past this initial demographic that Case and Deaton established, and we are now seeing rising excess mortality in other groups of working-class Americans, including people of color," Daniel George, associate professor of humanities and public health sciences, Penn State College of Medicine, said. George is a researcher with a Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute project looking at diseases of despair in Pennsylvania.

The first phase of this project analyzed Highmark Health insurance claims and found that the rate of diagnoses related to diseases of despair -- alcohol-related disorders, substance-related disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors -- increased significantly in the past decade.

"Nearly one in 20 people in the study sample of 12 million people were diagnosed with a disease of despair in our earlier research," Emily Brignone, Highmark Health, said. "Following Case and Deaton's findings, we saw the most substantial percentage increase in disease of despair diagnoses among men ages 35 to 74, followed by women ages 55 to 74 and 18 to 34. The issue is one of great importance that we are proud to be addressing with Penn State."

Using the data from the first study, the researchers then identified hotspots in Pennsylvania with a high rate of diagnoses related to diseases of despair for the second phase of the project. A disease of despair rate was determined by dividing the number of unique members with a qualifying diagnosis during that year by the total number of members. Researchers selected communities in Dauphin and Lebanon counties and conducted focus groups through existing community partnerships. Researchers report their results in the journal JAMA Network Open.

"Most of the research on deaths and diseases of despair have been at the epidemiological level; in other words, looking at large data sets and trying to identify patterns over time," George said. "There has been less done qualitatively - basically exploring the perceptions and beliefs of people who are affected by diseases of despair, trying to understand what is happening on the ground."

Four focus groups included a total of 60 participants. Focus group members were both residents and community health workers who interact with those affected by diseases of despair. The research team analyzed transcripts of the focus groups to identify themes.

The first theme researchers identified was the role of financial instability and how United States domestic policy contributes to self-harming behavior.

"One of the main findings was that financial distress is at the heart of it," George said. "It is something that has been driving instability in people's lives and increases the risk for drug abuse and escape through drugs and drink. People identified jobs with full benefits and a living wage not being as available as they used to be and people having to choose groceries over medical care and their anti-anxiety medications."

The second theme that researchers identified was a lack of infrastructure, especially in rural communities.

"Focus group participants noted a lack of public transportation that could help people get to their jobs or to their health care appointments, and the role that played in compounding distress in people's lives," George said. "They also identified failures in our school systems that were resulting in schools not preparing kids to have trades or skills to make them competitive in a 21st-century economy."

The third theme that researchers identified was a deteriorating sense of community. Participants discussed fragmentation over the last several decades that has led to rising isolation and distrust, and a lack of neighborly support. These trends have been worsened, in part, by social media.

"There was a really interesting perception that there has just been a general decline in the community," George said. "There is more loneliness, more alienation, a loss of trust among people, less neighborly interactions. People talked about just feeling an absence of actual human connection online with technology and electronic devices, and that it has taken the place of tangible, real human connection-- and that that compounds loneliness."

The final theme researchers identified was the fragmentation of the family.

"There is more pressure on two-earner families, and that was leading to kids being less bio-psychosocially developed and leaving home at greater risk for despair-related behaviors," George said.

Researchers will next consider potential solutions, including the role of health care facilities in identifying despair-related risk factors, partnerships with community organizations that work with those most at risk and the use of big data analysis and machine learning to identify at-risk communities and guide state-level policy changes. Focus group attendees shared their beliefs that more needed to be done at the local and state levels to address the causes of despair, including non-profit initiatives, peer support, infrastructure building, economic development and rebuilding a sense of community as well as social safety nets.

"A key message is really that we do not want to blame the victims here," George said. "Despair is something that is an indictment of the way that we have organized our society rather than a personal failing or an individuated sense of despair that somebody may feel. People are responding to objectively worsening material circumstances in their lives. What we are trying to do with the diseases of despair construct is essentially create a parameter whereby we can measure it, study it, try to understand what is going on and then address root causes."

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A podcast with George about this research is available at pennstatectsi.libsyn.com.

National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences through Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute (grant numbers UL1TR002014; UL1TR002014-03S1) funded this research. Community groups Better Together: Lebanon County, Dauphin County Human Services and Faith and Family Coalition of Harrisburg contributed to this research.

Other researchers on this project were Dr. Lawrence Sinoway, Charity Sauder, Andrea Murray and Dr. Jennifer Kraschnewski, Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute; Bethany Snyder and Dr. Lauren Van Scoy, Penn State College of Medicine; Emily Brignone and Robert Gladden, Highmark Health; Alana Ernharth, Shayann Ramedani, Neha Gupta, Savreen Saran, all medical students, Penn State College of Medicine.

 

Child mental health services lacking in high-income countries: SFU study finds

Researchers found that less than half of the number of children with a mental health disorder have received services to address their needs

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

Research News

Most children with a mental health disorder are not receiving services to address their needs--according to a new study from researchers at Simon Fraser University's Children's Health Policy Centre. Their research was published this week in the journal Evidence-Based Mental Health.

Researchers found that of the one in eight children (12.7 per cent) who experience a mental disorder, less than half (44.2 per cent) receive any services for these conditions.

"We have illuminated an invisible crisis in children's mental health and unacceptable service shortfalls in high-income countries -- including in Canada -- to a degree that violates children's rights," says study author Charlotte Waddell, an SFU health sciences professor and centre director.

"Many countries will need to substantially increase, and protect, their children's mental health budgets. This is particularly urgent given documented increases in children's mental health needs since COVID-19--needs which are predicted to continue."

Using systematic review methods, the researchers examined 14 prevalence surveys conducted in 11 high-income countries that included a total of 61,545 children aged four to 18 years. Eight of the 14 studies also assessed service contacts. The 14 surveys were conducted between 2003 and 2020 in Canada as well as the US, Australia, Chile, Denmark, Great Britain, Israel, Lithuania, Norway, South Korea and Taiwan.

Researchers note that mental health service provision lags behind services available to treat physical conditions in most of these countries. "We would not find it acceptable to treat only 44 per cent of children who had cancer or diabetes or infectious diseases," says Waddell.

The costs of not providing adequate childhood mental healthcare are also high. Mental health disorders typically begin in childhood and adolescence and if not prevented or treated early, they significantly interfere with wellbeing and development--with the impact extending across the lifespan.

This study found that the most common childhood mental disorders were anxiety (5.2 per cent), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (3.7 per cent), oppositional defiant disorder (e.g., argumentative behaviour) (3.3 per cent), substance use disorder (e.g., problematic use of alcohol or cannabis) (2.3 per cent), conduct disorder (1.3 per cent) and depression (1.3 per cent).

Crucially, Waddell says effective treatments are well known for all of these disorders, as are effective prevention programs, "so we know how to help children."

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The study was funded by the British Columbia Ministry for Children and Family Development, Child and Youth Mental Health Branch.

 

High school student presents on oral-health impact profile 5: analyzing a private practice adult population's distribution

INTERNATIONAL & AMERICAN ASSOCIATIONS FOR DENTAL RESEARCH

Research News

Alexandria, Va., USA - Hiba Nasir, Wayzata High School, Plymouth, Minn., presented the poster "Oral-Health Impact Profile 5: Analyzing A Private Practice Adult Population's Distribution" at the virtual 99th General Session & Exhibition of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR), held in conjunction with the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental Research (AADR) and the 45th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research (CADR), on July 21-24, 2021.

Nasir, a high school student, along with Sheila Riggs, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA, performed an observational study to understand the distribution of the Oral-Health Impact Profile (OHIP5) scores in a general adult population that seeks care in a private, suburban dental clinic. Participants were adult patients seeking care in a clinic who were administered the OHIP5 survey upon arrival. This survey was filled out as a paper copy and additionally included demographic questions (race, ethnicity, gender and age) for additional analysis.

A chi-square test for homogeneity was performed and determined that there was not a difference between the score distributions between females and males. Understanding the distribution of OHIP5 scores between men and women of an adult population seeking care in a private, suburban dental clinic allows for dental practitioners to further improve the care that they provide and allows for them to enhance their treatment plans.

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View this poster presentation in the IADR General Session Virtual Experience Platform.

View a PDF of this press release.

International Association for Dental Research

The International Association for Dental Research (IADR) is a nonprofit organization with over 10,000 individual members worldwide, with a mission to drive dental, oral and craniofacial research for health and well-being worldwide. To learn more, visit http://www.iadr.org.

 

Researchers uncover fatal flaw in green pigmented concrete

Certain green pigments could weaken the strength of architectural concrete

XI'AN JIAOTONG-LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY

Research News

As Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University researchers completed their research on coloured architectural concrete, they found a surprising result--green pigmented cement had impurities that produced porous, poor quality concrete. Meanwhile, red and blue pigments had little effect.

The research was conducted by Mehreen Heerah, a graduate of XJTLU's Department of Civil Engineering, Dr Graham Dawson of XJTLU's Department of Chemistry, and Isaac Galobardes of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University.

Pigmented architectural concrete is used as a visually appealing alternative to grey concrete, such as in Barcelona's Ciutat de la Justícia, explains Dr Dawson. As the demand for pigmented architectural concrete grows, so does the importance of this research.

Not easy being green

"The characteristics of red and blue pigments used in the study were established in the existing research literature. However, the characteristics of the green pigment was not usual," says Dawson.

"The results for the red and blue pigments were quite close to our expectation," Heerah says. "On the other hand, we did not expect the drastic effect of green pigment on the properties of the mortar. In fact, we expected that a greater increment in strength with the green pigment compared to the other two."

That's because green pigment in products is based upon chromium oxide, which increases the strength of the mix when hydrated.

So why was green concrete found to be substandard?

The answer lies in how it was produced with damaging impurities, says Dr Dawson.

"Chemical products are used to produce pigments," he explains. "Sometimes, pigments present simple chemical components and other combinations of them to obtain different colours."

The offending impurity that weakened the green concrete was muscovite; a mineral used to produce green pigment for other industrial uses. When hydrated with cement, muscovite generated significant quantities of a component that causes excessive porousness, which results in a reduction in strength and longevity.

"However, other studies have found that there is no adverse effect when using green pigment consisting solely of chromium (III) oxide, with no muscovite," says Heerah.

Mix it up

The cement samples were produced with three different pigments--blue cobaltous aluminate, green chromium oxide and red iron oxide pigment--at three different levels: 1, 5 and 10%. The researchers tested two types of cement to understand how these admixtures and by-products affect the properties of the resulting concrete.

The four-part experiment first tested water absorption to evaluate the change in physical properties, and then determined the hydration properties of the samples.

Next, the kinetics of hydration were studied through the evolution of the temperature of each mix. Finally, the researchers examined the flexural and compressive strength to understand the effect of pigment on mechanical strength.

The research established that the morphology of hydration products and kinetics was related to the samples' compressive strength.

The poor performance of the green pigment stood out compared to the minimal effects of the red and blue.

The research also discovered that the cobaltous aluminate oxide (blue) and iron (III) oxide (red) pigments could be used with both Portland and Portland Composite cement without weakening the concrete's strength.

Less impact

Researchers also improved upon an existing equation used for estimating the real-time compressive strength of the pigmented mortar, Heerah says.

Dr Galobardes explains: "Using this equation avoids making the destructive tests used to estimate the mechanical properties of concrete.

"This eliminates waste and lowers carbon dioxide emissions and costs related to the production of the samples used in the tests."

While pigments themselves do not reduce carbon emissions produced by concrete, the research indicates that they are safe to use with eco-cements.

Cement mixes such as Portland Composite Cement, which includes ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS) and fly ash are expected to achieve reduced carbon emissions in coming years.

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How the brain paints the beauty of a landscape

Researchers investigate how our brains proceed from merely seeing a landscape to feeling its aesthetic impact

MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT

Research News

 

IMAGE: A RESEARCH TEAM FROM THE MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EMPIRICAL AESTHETICS INVESTIGATED HOW OUR BRAINS PROCEED FROM MERELY SEEING A LANDSCAPE TO FEELING ITS AESTHETIC IMPACT. view more 

CREDIT: MPI FOR EMPIRICAL AESTHETICS

How does a view of nature gain its gloss of beauty? We know that the sight of beautiful landscapes engages the brain's reward systems. But how does the brain transform visual signals into aesthetic ones? Why do we perceive a mountain vista or passing clouds as beautiful? A research team from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics has taken up this question and investigated how our brains proceed from merely seeing a landscape to feeling its aesthetic impact.

In their study, the research team presented artistic landscape videos to 24 participants. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they measured the participants' brain activity as they viewed and rated the videos. Their findings have just been published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. First author A. Ilkay Isik encapsulates:

"We would have expected the aesthetic signals to be limited to the brain's reward systems, but surprisingly, we found them already present in visual areas of the brain while the participants were watching the videos. The activations occurred right next to brain regions deployed in recognizing physical features in movies, such as the layout of a scene or the presence of motion."

Senior author Edward Vessel suggests that these signals may reflect an early, elemental form of beauty perception:

"When we see something beyond our expectations, local patches of brain tissue generate small 'atoms' of positive affect. The combination of many such surprise signals across the visual system adds up to make for an aesthetically appealing experience."

With this new knowledge, the study not only contributes to our understanding of beauty, but may also help clarify how interactions with the natural environment can affect our sense of well-being. The results might have potential applications in a variety of fields where the link between perception and emotion is important, such as clinical health care and artificial intelligence.

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Original Publication:

Isik, A.I. and Vessel, E.A. (2021). From Visual Perception to Aesthetic Appeal: Brain Responses to Aesthetically Appealing Natural Landscape Movies.

Front. Hum., 21 July 2021 Neurosci. 15:676032.

 

Research 'final nail in the coffin' of Paranthropus as hard object feeders

Long-held eating habits beliefs debunked

UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO

Research News

New research from the University of Otago debunks a long-held belief about our ancestors' eating habits.

For more than 60 years, researchers have believed Paranthropus, a close fossil relative of ours which lived about one to three million years ago, evolved massive back teeth to consume hard food items such as seeds and nuts, while our own direct ancestors, the genus Homo, is thought to have evolved smaller teeth due to eating softer food such as cooked food and meats.

However, after travelling to several large institutes and museums in South Africa, Japan and the United Kingdom and studying tooth fractures in more than 20,000 teeth of fossil and living primate species, Dr Ian Towle, an Otago biological anthropologist, working with Dr Carolina Loch, of the Faculty of Dentistry, says this "neat picture is far more complex than once thought".

"By individually studying each tooth and recording the position and size of any tooth fractures, we show tooth chipping does not support regular hard food eating in Paranthropus robustus, therefore potentially putting an end to the argument that this group as a whole were hard food eaters," he says.

Dr Towle says the findings challenge our understanding of dietary and behavioural changes during human evolution.

"The results are surprising, with human fossils so far studied - those in our own genus Homo - showing extremely high rates of tooth fractures, similar to living hard object eating primates, yet Paranthropus show extremely low levels of fracture, similar to primates that eat soft fruits or leaves.

"Although in recent years there has been a slow acceptance that another species of Paranthropus, Paranthropus boisei, found in East Africa, was unlikely to have regularly eaten hard foods, the notion that Paranthropus evolved their large dental apparatus to eat hard foods has persisted. Therefore, this research can be seen as the final nail in the coffin of Paranthropus as hard object feeders."

The fact that humans show such contrasting chipping patterns is equally significant and will have "knock on" effects for further research, particularly research on dietary changes during human evolution, and why the human dentition has evolved the way it has, he says.

"The regular tooth fractures in fossil humans may be caused by non-food items, such as grit or stone tools. However, regardless of the cause, these groups were subjected to substantial tooth wear and fractures. So, it raises questions to why our teeth reduced in size, especially compared to groups like Paranthropus."

Dr Towle's research will now focus on if our dentition evolved smaller due to other factors to allow other parts of the skull to expand, leading to evolution then favouring other tooth properties to protect it against wear and fracture, instead of increased tooth size.

"This is something we are investigating now, to see if tooth enamel may have evolved different characteristics among the great apes. Our research as a whole may also have implications for our understanding of oral health, since fossil human samples typically show immaculate dental health.

"Since extreme tooth wear and fractures were the norm, our ancestors likely evolved dental characteristics to not just cope with but actually utilise this dental tissue loss. For example, without substantial tooth wear our dentitions can face all sorts of issues, including impacted wisdom teeth, tooth crowding and even increased susceptibility to cavities."

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Paranthropus robustus tooth chipping patterns do not support regular hard food mastication, co-authored by Dr Towle and Dr Loch, was published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Tooth chipping prevalence and pattern in extant primates, co-authored by Dr Towle and Dr Loch was published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Chipping and wear patterns in extant primate and fossil hominin molars: 'Functional' cusps are associated with extensive wear but low levels of fracture, co-authored by Dr Towle and Dr Loch was published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Study shows environmental link to herbicide-resistant horseweed

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Research News

IMAGE: UPRIGHT (LEFT) AND ROSETTE (RIGHT) TYPE HORSEWEED PLANTS EMERGING SIMULTANEOUSLY IN A FIELD IN MICHIGAN DURING MID-SUMMER. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY JOHN A. SCHRAMSKI

WESTMINSTER, Colorado - July 23, 2021 - Horseweed is a serious threat to both agricultural crops and natural landscapes around the globe. In the U.S., the weed is prolific and able to emerge at any time of the year.

Fall emerging horseweed overwinters as a rosette, while spring emerging horseweed skips the rosette stage and grows upright. In some instances, both rosette and upright plants emerge simultaneously in mid-summer. These unpredictable growth patterns create challenges for growers as they try to develop an appropriate weed management plan.

In a study featured in the journal Weed Science, a team from Michigan State University explored whether environmental cues could be used to predict horseweed growth type. They found that variations in temperature, photoperiod, competition, shading, and soil moisture resulted only in the rosette growth type. Upright plants emerged, though, when seeds were exposed to dry conditions, followed by a prolonged cooling.

Researchers also determined that upright horseweed plants from known glyphosate-resistant populations are three- to four-fold less sensitive to glyphosate than their rosette siblings, which makes them much harder to control.

"Our results suggest that when horseweed populations shift from winter to summer annual lifecycles, concurrent increases can be expected in glyphosate resistance," says researcher John Schramski of Michigan State University.

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To learn more, read the article "Environmental cues affecting horseweed (Conyza canadensis) growth type and their sensitivity to glyphosate" online, available Open Access.

About Weed Science

Weed Science is a journal of the Weed Science Society of America, a nonprofit scientific society focused on weeds and their impact on the environment. The publication presents peer-reviewed original research related to all aspects of weed science, including the biology, ecology, physiology, management and control of weeds. To learn more, visit http://www.wssa.net.

Disclaime

Scientists identify five new plant species in Bolivia

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Research News

IMAGE: JACQUEMONTIA BOLIVIANA. CREDIT: JOHN WOOD view more 

CREDIT: JOHN WOOD

Scientists have identified five new plant species in the Bolivian Andes.

The species are all part of the genus Jacquemontia, which are twining or trailing plants with pretty blue flowers.

With rapid biodiversity loss taking place across South America and worldwide, identifying plant species is a vital step towards protecting them.

The new study, which classifies and describes the 28 Jacquemontia species now known to live in Bolivia and Peru, was carried out by the universities of Exeter and Oxford, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

"Many plant species have not been identified and classified, especially in the tropics," said Rosie Clegg, of the University of Exeter and Kew.

"If you don't know what a species is, you can't conserve it.

"Working with local collaborators in Bolivia, we have identified five new Jacquemontia species - and our work so far suggests most of them are relatively rare."

Jacquemontia plants often grow in open, bushy or grassy habitats, however, even widespread species are often scattered in their distribution and some species are highly specialised, growing even on bare rock with very little soil or water, while some require fire to stimulate seed germination. The researchers now want to discover more about these species, and where each can be found as - at present - some are only known to exist in a single location. Plants limited to a small area are highly vulnerable to threats such as the arrival of invasive species and habitat destruction for agriculture, mining and road and reservoir construction. Clegg's current work focusses on rock outcrops, where some Jacquemontia species are found, although the new species described in the paper are found on Andean slopes. "Rock outcrops come in many forms across South America, with different geologies and different plants living on them," she said. "As well as identifying plants, we want to learn more about these habitats and the role they play in wider ecosystems. "Jacquemontia and other plants on rock outcrops are able to survive in very harsh conditions, so through them we can learn more about how plants might respond and adapt to climate change."

John Wood, of the University of Oxford and Kew, said: "Collaboration between UK institutions working alongside colleagues in Bolivia is important for the identification and conservation of species and their habitats."

Clegg's research at the University of Exeter is funded by the NERC GW4+ Doctoral Training Programme.

The five newly described species are named: Jacquemontia boliviana, Jacquemontia cuspidata, Jacquemontia longipedunculata, Jacquemontia mairae and Jaquemontia chuquisacensis.

The paper, published in the journal Kew Bulletin, is entitled: "Jacquemontia (Convolvulaceae) in Bolivia and Peru."

CAPTION

Jacquemontia longipedunculata. Credit Alfredo Fuentes

CREDIT

Alfredo Fuentes

The University of Exeter has launched a 'Green Futures' campaign and website to drive action on the environment and climate emergency. To find out more please visit https://greenfutures.exeter.ac.uk.

CAPTION

Jacquemontia cuspidata. Credit Julia Gutierrez

CREDIT

Julia Gutierrez