Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Geometry Links - June 23, 2020

"A rose engine lathe is a specialized kind of geometric lathe. The headstock rocks back and forth with a rocking motion or along the spindle axis in a pumping motion, controlled by a rubber moving against a rosette or cam-like pattern mounted on the spindle, while the lathe spindle rotates. Rose engine work can make flower patterns, as well as convoluted, symmetrical, multi-lobed geometric patterns. The patterns it produces are similar to that of a Spirograph, in metal."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_engine_lathe
I learned about it through this interview with Brittany Cox, an antiquarian horologist and proprietor of Memoria Technica
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/brittany-cox-of-memoria-technica-10-questions

How to make two far-flying paper airplanes
https://youtu.be/fgdBaOqlmvw
Every Friday Mahir Cave shows how to make a paper airplane - cool paper planes, from origami easy to complex.
Paper airplanes that fly far are his specialty and his goal is "How to make the best paper airplane in the world.”
https://www.youtube.com/user/AWorldOfPaperr/featured

Leonardo Criolani - Italian designer 
https://www.leonardocriolani.com/index.html
hat tip:  core77.com

Degrees of Freedom - origami inspired mechanical engineer and his designs
https://www.instagram.com/degreesoffreedomco/
https://enjoydof.com

The work of Hadieh Shafie
https://www.hadiehshafie.com
https://globalvoices.org/2020/06/10/the-magic-of-paper-and-ink-a-conversation-with-iranian-american-artist-hadieh-shafie/

Gömböc - a shape which has "only two equilibrium points—one stable and one unstable, instead of the usual minimum of 4.  It is self-righting no matter how you set it down."
https://youtu.be/rvVF5QWSYF4

Flipo Flip™ — Pocket Size Kinetic Skill Toy
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2107879482/flipo-fliptm-pocket-sized-kinetic-skill-toy

Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Rhombic Dodecahedron Infinity Box with Matt Parker!
https://youtu.be/65r_1TzJXaQ

Isamu Noguchi’s ashtrays
https://www.artandobject.com/news/isamu-noguchi-masters-art-ashtray

Optical Illusion:  Ninio’s Extinction Illusion - what you see is not what you get
https://www.core77.com/posts/100230/Optical-Illusion-You-Can-See-All-the-Dots-in-This-Image-But-Not-All-at-Once

John Kostick’s work on polar zonahedra - be sure to check out the 3D models linked to his paper
http://www.kosticks.com/polar-zonohedra.html
https://sketchfab.com/search?q=jjkostick&sort_by=-pertinence&type=models


Corona Virus
The most important jigsaw puzzle right now is the way the CoV-2 spike, a 3 part structure, attaches to the human ACE2 protein through which it can enter the cells of our bodies and figuring out how to stop it.

FoldIt (https://fold.it) is a citizen science crowdsourcing site on protein folding.  They’ve been up and running for over a decade and currently host a series of CoV-2 protein folding puzzles.  

These two papers, after a cursory search, are the clearest of representations of the spike and the protein I’ve seen:
Cryo-EM structure of the 2019-nCoV spike in the prefusion conformation
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6483/1260
Structural basis for the recognition of SARS-CoV-2 by full-length human ACE2
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6485/1444.long

Another way to approach the Coronavirus puzzle may be through sound.  There are sonic representations of the Coronavirus spike made by Markus Buehler (mbuehler@mit.edu) and his team at MIT.  They translated the 20 amino acids into tones based upon their spectra and used duration and volume to indicate other features like curvature into helices and stretching out into flatness.  

The Sonification of the Coronavirus Spike Protein (Amino Acid Scale) is about 35 minutes long 
(https://soundcloud.com/user-275864738/sets/protein-counterpoint) and 
The Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein (2019-nCoV) 
(https://soundcloud.com/user-275864738/viral-counterpoint-of-the-coronavirus-spike-protein-2019-ncov) is nearly two hours long and has three distinct movements, (one for each strand of the spike?).

I’ve listened to both and played along with parts of both of them wondering if jamming with the virus could jam the virus or whether noise cancelling algorithms could cancel the CoV-2 spike, that is if the MIT amino acid to sound notation can go from sound to amino acid as well as amino acid to sound.

Naive or crazy as that may sound.

In any case, if you see anything on the Geometry Links of COVID-19 or ACE2, please let me know.  Would be good if we could focus more attention on this critical point, where virus meets human cell, as a whole species conversation because we just might need a whole species conversation right now, and not just on COVID19.

Stay safe, be well.