- Discovery News reports that a “Dinosaur Freeway” has been discovered in Colorado. The 98 million year-old highway consists of over 350 tracks from dinosaurs that traveled along what was then coastal plains. Read all about the discovery and how dinosaurs roamed by clicking this link.

A theropod dino foot from the exhibit.

- Across the pond in Germany, a prehistoric marine reptile from the order Ichthyosauria was found by a private collector looking for fossils alongside a (human) freeway construction site. German newspaper, the Local, describes the importance of the discovery – the newly unearthed reptile lived between 65 and 145 million years ago and up until its discovery, scientists had thought that the Ichthyosauria was extinct by then.

- The Smithsonian reports that long before the first paleontologist sat behind a desk studying fossils, mysterious tracks and bones were shaping folklore around the world. As recently as the 1950′s, villagers in small Chinese towns had traded stories about mythical birds and creatures that traveled near the villages and brought good luck. Read the full article to learn how these folktales help paleontologists make new discoveries. 

Come visit the dinosaurs before they become extinct!

- Biologists and engineers at UC Berkeley are learning a thing or two about balance from dinosaurs and modern lizards. The research team tested a hypothesis that theropod dinosaurs used their tails to stabilize themselves while they ran and leaped. Students created a robot, named Tailbot, that uses its tail to keep balance. Find pictures and more information by reading the full article.

- And we’ll close out our dinosaur news cast with a heartwarming human interest story… a 4 year-old Canadian girl has found some internet fame with a video where she analyzes the inaccuracies of a model dinosaur in a toy shop. Her video got special attention from the Canadian Museum of Nature who sent her a more anatomically correct dinosaur model. Watch Stella explain why the triceratops toy is anything but and read about her interest in science over at the Ottowa Citizen’s site.

But recently, with a cutting-edge blend of brain imaging and computer simulation, scientists at the University of California-Berkeley, have gotten closer to this impossible idea.

Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) (brain scans) and a computer, UC Berkeley researchers reconstructed people’s visual experiences. Their computer program recreated an image from inside someone’s mind.

So far, the technology can only reconstruct movie clips people have already viewed. However, the breakthrough is the first step towards reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as dreams and memories. It’s like opening a window into the movies in our minds.

Eventually, the technology could help to understand what goes on inside the minds of people who cannot communicate verbally, such as stroke victims, coma patients or other people with neurodegenerative diseases (loss of brain functions).

In the experiment, they watched two separate sets of Hollywood movie trailers, while fMRI was used to measure blood flow through the visual cortex (the part of the brain that processes visual information). The brain activity was recorded by a computer program that learned to associate visual patterns in the movie with the corresponding brain activity. The computer program then produced a blurry reconstruction of what was seen inside the brain.

Check out the image that was seen (on the left) and the blurry reconstructed image from the computer program (on the right). It looks like a painting, pretty amazing right?

If you find the brain as fascinating as we do, then check out this website: The Secret Life of the Brain they show all the techniques used to look inside the brain, such as the fMRI we mentioned above.

What would your brain movies look like? Would your movie show an action sequence or a cartoon, or something never seen before? Tell us what your brain thinks.

Before there were 3D and Imax movies there were silent movies. These started as short movies that only lasted 30 minutes and only cost 5 cents! The movies would have a piano to go along with the soundless images, and sometimes even a full orchestra. Movies didn’t have sound until around 1927 with the first film “The Jazz Singer” which was called a “talkie“.

Buster Keaton in "Sherlock, Jr." photo by John McNab on Flickr

Until that point, films were silent and had to tell a story without sound. The actors had to be over-dramatic (like when you play charades) in order to tell the story right, they sometimes used heavy makeup too. If something was thought too difficult for the audience to understand, they would use title cards. Title cards were shots of written words that would portray what the actor was saying, or tell of the place they were, or sometimes even tell part of the story.

One of my favorite silent film actors was Buster Keaton. Buster Keaton was a comedian who grew up acting in Vaudeville shows, which were similar to circus acts. His background Vaudeville acting came in handy with his silent film career as a comedian. Buster would perform daring and funny stunts all without the use of sound. He even directed his own silent films!

If you want to be like Buster Keaton and direct your own silent film, all you have to do is make a flipbook. A flipbook is a book which has pictures that vary from page to page, so that when you turn the pages fast it makes an animation.

This is similar to how a film reel works with movies, only they have lots more pictures which are called frames, and are much faster. An easy way to start is to use a writing pad that already has blank pages stacked together. You can start with a title like the silent movies do with their title cards. Then begin your story by drawing something like a stickman, go to the next page and redraw the stickman, but have some part of him be slightly moved, like his legs. Keep drawing, each page a little different and once you flip the pages it looks like he’s walking. Check out our flipbook below:

And tell us how your silent movies turn out!

This year Frankenstein Friday falls on the 28th. Celebrate by dressing up as a monster, or honor the writer and creator of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and write your own monster story. Can you describe a monster scarier than Frankenstein?

October 30th, isn’t just the day before Halloween, it’s also Candy Corn Day. Did you know that candy corn is actually made with corn? These yummy confections are made with a very precise method using a corn starch molding process.

Photo by ScrambledHenfruit.blogspot.com

And don’t just celebrate Halloween by dressing up. You can also commemorate this day with caramel apples! Caramel apple day falls on Halloween each year, and you can celebrate by making your own caramel apples. Or you can follow our recipe below to make caramel apple cookies!

Have fun with all of these wacky holidays by printing out this neat coloring activity (pictured above): October Holidays Coloring Sheet

Are you still October Obsessed? To get the most out of the end of October, you can also visit the Texas Memorial Museum Oct. 30th for their Fright at the Museum event. You can explore the mysterious side of Texas’ natural history. Feel frightful fish from the ocean depths, be rattled by slithery snakes of Central Texas. Feast your eyes on bizarre bugs while they serve up creepy, crawly critters for your culinary delight.

Have an odd October!

And follow the link below for instructions on how to make your own caramel apple cookies

Ingredients:

• Any basic sugar cookie recipe: from scratch or store bought
• Our cookie package called for: one egg, 1/2 cup of butter, and flour
• Chewy caramel candies (hard candies won’t work)
• Apple cider drink mix (you can find this next to the hot chocolate)

Start by following the instructions for your sugar cookies, ours needed one egg added to the powdered mixture. We cracked the egg into a cup to make sure no shell got into the cookie dough. We whisked it before adding it to the cookie mix to help incorporate it better.

   Then we added the butter and began mixing the dough, at first with a fork, but then we found that using our hands made it easier, and it was more fun!

Once it is all mixed together, add two packets of the apple cider drink powder and mix again.

We added flour to our cookie dough to make it less gooey, so that it would be easier to shape around the caramel candies. You can also try putting the dough in the fridge for a couple of minutes to help it set and make it easier to mold.

Make a cookie dough ball a little smaller than the size of a golf-ball, then press a caramel candy into the center.

Mold the dough over the candy so that it is completely covered with cookie. You want to make sure no candy is showing so that it doesn’t spill out while baking. If done correctly, when it is done it will make an oozy caramel filling.

Bake for the specified time the sugar cookie recipe suggests. Serve the cookies warm so that the filling is still melty and delicious.

Here is how our caramel apple cookies turned out, they were amazing!

Happy Caramel Apple Day!

Have you ever been bored on a road trip? Then you’ve probably played the I-Spy game. I-Spy is a guessing game, sometimes played in cars, where the fun is in the observation. There are many variations of the game, and right now at ACM, our newest favorite is the I-Spy Bottle. This fun craft is extremely easy to make and the possibilities of I-Spy combinations are endless!

Here’s the first one we made using random objects, an old water bottle, and plain white rice:

Some tips for making the bottle:

• Gather items that you know will fit through the opening of the bottle
• Use a funnel or make a paper one, so the filler (the rice) doesn’t spill
• Try to add the filler and the objects in increments so the objects don’t all lump together
• You can hot glue gun the top of the bottle if you want to avoid the contents spilling out in the excitement of I-Spying

You can make all sorts of themes with your I-Spy Bottles, use shells for an ocean theme, or creepy objects for a Halloween one. You can even vary the types of fillers you use: rice, pasta, beans, birdseed, lentils, beads, sand… it all works.

If you want to add another fun step in your I-Spy Bottle creation, try dyeing the filler you use, Momtastic has a great tutorial for coloring rice (it works on beans, pasta, and lentils too!) maybe you could make a rainbow themed bottle?

We even made a Dino-Spy Bottle in honor of our exhibit Dinosaurs: Land of Fire and Ice! Check it out:

We used assorted beans to represent soil. It looks like the tiny triceratops is being excavated from the rocky remains!

Tell us how your bottles turned out, what theme did you choose?