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The world's smallest Mona Lisa is made from DNA
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa painting isn't actually that big (30 inches tall), but Caltech researchers have found a way to make that seem downright gargantuan. They've used DNA to construct the smallest known Mona Lisa. At several hundred nanometers across, they're roughly as large as a lone E. coli bacterium -- the iconic smile is just 100nm wide. The trick was an adaptation of a DNA "origami" method that got the gene strands to fold and assemble into the right shape.
NASA sends the Mona Lisa to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter with lasers
NASA is no stranger to shooting lasers at spacecraft orbiting the moon (seriously), but it's now moving beyond "basic" tasks like tracking their location. The space agency announced yesterday that it has successfully demonstrated one-way laser communication with a satellite orbiting the moon for the first time. For that milestone, NASA chose to send an image of the Mona Lisa, which was transmitted to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in a series of laser pulses beamed from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Not surprisingly, that means of communication introduced its share of challenges, including interference from turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere. To compensate for that, NASA used what's known as Reed-Solomon coding to reconstruct the image (pictured after the break), which is the same process used for error correction in CDs and DVDs. You can find more details from NASA, and a video explaining the whole process, at the source link below. [Image credit: NASA, Tom Zagwodzki/Goddard Space Flight Center]
Manipulate the masterpieces
If you're going to do a jigsaw puzzle (or ten), then why not learn the details of a great masterpiece of art at the same time? We're not saying this DS puzzler is educational or anything, but it probably can't hurt. This is probably another of those games it's safe to import regardless of your comfort level with Japanese, and a great idea for the touchscreen.
Brain Age owners flaunt their art [update 1]
One part of the popular DS game Brain Age is the drawing mini-game where players are required to draw a picture of, to name a few examples, Mona Lisa, Henry VIII or a bulldozer entirely from memory. As the above examples demonstrate, results may vary! Check out the Flickr pool of Brain Age drawings and don't forget to add your own "creations".[Via Wonderland]Update: I misspelled "Brain" in the title. What? It's early!
