550-million-year-old fossils provide new clues about fossil formation

A new study from University of Missouri and Virginia Tech researchers is challenging accepted ideas about how ancient soft-bodied organisms become part of the fossil record. Findings suggest that bacteria involved in the decay of those organisms play an active role in how fossils are formed -- often in a matter of just a few tens to hundreds of years. Understanding the relationship between decay and fossilization will inform future study and help researchers interpret fossils in a new way.

"The vast majority of the fossil record is composed of bones and shells," said James Schiffbauer, assistant professor of geological sciences in the College of Arts and Science at MU. "Fossils of soft-bodied animals like worms and jellyfish, however, provide our only views onto the early evolution of animal life. Most hypotheses as to the preservation of these soft tissues focus on passive processes, where normal decay is halted or impeded in some way, such as by sealing off the sediments where the animal is buried. Our team is instead detailing a scenario where the actual decay helped 'feed' the process turning the organisms into fossils -- in this case, the decay of the organisms played an active role in creating fossils."

Schiffbauer studied a type of fossil animal from the Ediacaran Period called Conotubus, which lived more than 540 million years ago. He noted that these fossils are either replicated by, or associated with, pyrite -- commonly called fool's gold. The tiny fossils are tube-shaped and believed to have been composed of substances similar at least in hardness to human fingernails. These fossilized tubes are all that remain of the soft-bodied animals that inhabited them and most likely resembled worms or sea anemone-like animals.

"Most of the animals that had once lived on the Earth -- with estimates eclipsing 10 billion species -- were never preserved in the fossil record, but in our study we have a spectacular view of a tinier fraction of soft-bodied animals," said Shuhai Xiao, professor of geobiology at Virginia Tech and a co-author on this study. "We asked the important questions of how, and under what special conditions, these soft-tissued organisms can escape the fate of complete degradation and be preserved in the rock record."

Schiffbauer and his team performed a sophisticated suite of chemical analyses of these fossils to determine what caused the pyrite to form. They found that the fool's gold on the organisms' outer tube formed when bacteria first began consuming the animal's soft tissues, with the decay actually promoting the formation of pyrite.

"Normally, the Earth is good at cleaning up after itself," Schiffbauer said. "In this case, the bacteria that helped break down these organisms also are responsible for preserving them as fossils. As the decay occurred, pyrite began replacing and filling in space within the animal's exoskeleton, preserving them. Additionally, we found that this process happened in the space of a few years, perhaps even as low as 12 to 800. Ultimately, these new findings will help scientists to gain a better grasp of why these fossils are preserved, and what features represent the fossilization process versus original biology, so we can better reconstruct the evolutionary tree of life."

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Missouri-Columbia . The original article was written by Fran Webber. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Protection of mouse gut by mucus depends on microbes

The quality of the colon mucus in mice depends on the composition of gut microbiota, reports a Swedish-Norwegian team of researchers from the University of Gothenburg and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Oslo. The work, published in EMBO reports, suggests that bacteria in the gut affect mucus barrier properties in ways that can have implications for health and disease.

"Genetically similar mice with subtle but stable and transmissible intestinal microbiota showed unexpectedly large differences in the inner colon mucus layer. The composition of the gut microbiota has significant effects on mucus properties," says Malin E.V. Johansson from the University of Gothenburg who led the study.

By sequencing the microbiota and examining the 16S ribosomal RNA genes, the researchers discovered that two mouse colonies maintained in two different rooms in the same specific pathogen-free facility had different gut microbiota. They also had a mucus structure that was specific for each colony. Whereas one colony developed mucus that was not penetrable to bacteria, the other colony had an inner mucus layer permeable to bacteria.

Each group of mice had a stable population of bacteria that could be maternally transmitted: The group with impenetrable mucus had increased amounts of Erysipelotrichi bacteria, while the other group had higher levels of Proteobacteria and TM7 bacteria in the distal colon mucus. Free-living mice from the forest had mucus similar in composition to that found in mice in the non-penetrable colony. The authors also showed that the bacterial composition could be modulated to a small extent through the diet.

"The results from the free-living mice strongly argue for the importance of a well-developed inner mucus layer that efficiently separates bacteria from the host epithelium for the overall health of the mice," says Johansson.

The different mucus properties were recreated by transplanting the microbial communities into germ-free mice. "After recolonisation of germ-free mice with the different microbiota we observed the same structural and functional differences in their mucus properties," added Johansson.

Mucus is our outermost barrier to our microbiota in the gut. If the mucus fails to offer a protective barrier it can allow more bacteria to come in contact with our epithelium in a way that can trigger colon inflammation. Diseases such as ulcerative colitis show an increased incidence in the Western world and this study emphasizes the importance of the composition of the microbiota for an impenetrable protective mucus barrier.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by EMBO - excellence in life sciences . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Researchers discover protein protecting against chlorine

Chlorine is a common disinfectant that is used to kill bacteria, for example in swimming pools and drinking water supplies. Our immune system also produces chlorine, which causes proteins in bacteria to lose their natural folding. These unfolded proteins then begin to clump and lose their function. RUB researchers headed by Prof Dr Lars Leichert have discovered a protein in the intestinal bacterium E. coli that protects bacteria from chlorine. In the presence of chlorine, it tightly bonds with other proteins, thus preventing them from coagulating. Once the danger has passed, it releases them again and the proteins can continue to work as usual. The researchers report their findings in the current issue of Nature Communications.

Cells under oxidative stress

The researchers look into oxidative stress, which affects cells when they encounter so-called reactive oxygen species. Oxidative stress plays a role during cell aging and in the immune defence. By producing reactive oxygen species, immune cells subject bacteria to oxidative stress. But what happens inside those bacteria, and more specifically, what happens to their proteins? The researchers searched to answer this question by looking for proteins that change due to oxidative stress. This is how they discovered the protein RidA.

RidA changes its function in the presence of chlorine

"Each protein has a function," explains Lars Leichert. "RidA's function is to ensure that intermediates occurring during the generation of certain amino acids get broken down more quickly." In order to find out what happens to RidA under oxidative stress, researchers subjected RidA to a variety of reactive species normally generated by immune cells, including chlorine. Certain reactive species deactivate RidA, i.e. the intermediate would no longer be degraded by RidA, just as expected. But when RidA was treated with chlorine, the intermediate was not generated at all. "This means that chlorine-treated RidA must bind tightly to the protein that generates the intermediate," explains Alexandra Müller from Leichert's team. In other words: in the presence of chlorine, RidA transforms into a so-called chaperon.

With RidA the protein solution remains clear

As a chaperone it can protect other proteins: when proteins unfold -- they do so, for example, if they are subjected to chlorine or are heated -, they coagulate. As a result, the protein solution becomes cloudy. "In an egg, this is particularly impressive. When cooked, the transparent egg albumen turns white and opaque as proteins unfold," describes Lars Leichert. The researchers are able to measure this cloudiness precisely with a fluorescence spectrometer. If chlorine-treated RidA is added, the same solution remains clear. Coagulated proteins do no longer function -- no chick will hatch from a cooked egg. A chaperon can prevent this coagulation, thus protecting the cell.

Sticky protein bonds with all other proteins

The researchers moreover discovered that, after the threat posed by chlorine has passed, RidA has the capacity of releasing the proteins again, so that they can regain their function. If chlorine poses a threat once again, RidA bonds with proteins once again. Furthermore, the researchers examined, how exactly RidA becomes a chaperon. Experiments showed that so-called N-chlorination causes RidA to become more hydrophobic. The more hydrophobic a protein is, the "stickier" it becomes and the better it can bind unfolded proteins. In its sticky state, RidA protects the proteins in the bacteria cells from coagulation.

Researchers suspect it plays a role in immune defence

However, this has no consequence for using chlorine as a disinfectant: RidA helps bacteria only when the chlorine concentration is very low. Unlike with antibiotics, there are no resistances against disinfectants. "We believe that chlorine-activated chaperons play a role when bacteria and immune defence collide," says Lars Leichert.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Gadget Lab Podcast: We Say Goodbye to a Good Friend and Traitor

Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

This is the last Gadget Lab podcast of 2014, and our last until mid-January—we have the holidays coming up, and then the grand explosion of electronic devices at CES in Las Vegas right after the new year.

It’s also Mat Honan’s last show as co-host. He’s leaving WIRED to go to Buzzfeed, so what better way to see him off than with a Buzzfeed-style quiz? That’s the entirety of this episode: Question time for Mat. Well, not the entirety. The hosts also discuss the current state of the media, which is also the topic explored in the cover story for this month’s issue of WIRED magazine.

Listen to this week’s episode or subscribe in iTunes.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds (Mat Honan is @mat and Michael Calore is @snackfight) or to the main hotline at @GadgetLab.

Big Data, Smaller Wage Gap?

Women and tech: Computing pioneer Jean Bartik (left) at ENIAC’s console with co-worker Frances Bilas, circa 1945. U.S. Army/Army Research Laboratory's Technical Library

I have a niece. Several, actually, but I’m thinking about one in particular. I helped deliver her at the hospital, and over the past 18 years I’ve watched her grow into a woman I admire.

My niece is smart and conscientious. She knows politics and wants to fight the world’s injustices. She reads. She sings. She loves movies. She plays volleyball. But what defines her most is her determination: She works for what she wants, and she lets nothing get in her way.

Now of course my niece is special to me, but we all know young women who are just as driven and idealistic. And that’s why I am so alarmed about the continuing gender wage gap, which tells us that somewhere along the way, bright, promising women will have an employer decide their potential and contributions are somehow worth less than those of their male counterparts.

Paychecks Today

Women hold just 5 percent of the CEO offices in Fortune 1000 companies, the nonprofit Catalyst reported in October. The salary story is equally bleak: Women earn 82 cents for every dollar a man makes, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mothers with careers fared even worse, pulling 75 cents on the dollar.

Those figures alone are discouraging, but what’s truly depressing is that they’ve been about the same for decades. The gender wage gap everybody keeps talking about is closing at a glacial pace. My niece — and yours — won’t see wage parity until 2058 in the United States, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Globally, the gap won’t close until 2095, according to the World Economic Forum. An entire generation of women, maybe two, will make less at work for no reason other than their gender.

Solutions at Our Fingertips

We need ideas to accelerate the pace of change, and I think data analytics is the answer.

The retail industry already has this down: A coat I clicked on once — once! — has popped up on every website I’ve visited ever since. I walked into the hardware store and received a text from a competitor soon after. I bought a single low-calorie frozen entrée at the grocery store, and — voila! — the next day I got a promo for a weight-loss program.

Analytics and microtargeting aren’t just for retailers and politicians — they can help us grow the ranks of executive women and close the gender wage gap. Employers analyze who clicked on internal job postings, and we can pursue qualified women who looked but never applied. We can go beyond analyzing the salary and rank histories of women who have left our companies. We can use big data analytics to tell us what exit interviews don’t.

Facebook posts, Twitter feeds and LinkedIn groups provide a trove of valuable intel from ex-employees. What they write is blunt, candid and useful. All the data is there for the taking — we just have to collect it and figure out what it means. We can delve deep into whether we’re promoting the best people, whether we’re doing enough to keep our ranks diverse, whether potential female leaders are being left behind and, importantly, why.

Fast-Forward to a Better Future

Which brings me back to my niece. Ultimately, I hope she alone controls what she does, where she works and how well she’s paid. I hope when she faces discrimination or disadvantage, she works to change it.

If she feels stuck in her job, I’ll advise her to look for promotions or other opportunities. If she’s not being paid what she’s worth, I want her to advocate for a raise. Better still, I want her to build a strong support team of women — and men. I want her to find diverse leaders from outside her comfortable network who will tell her how they got where they are and maybe help her along her own path.

And what I want for my niece tomorrow, I also want for you… today. Change has come slowly in the past few decades, but the pace of technology and the power of data analytics can propel us forward. The answers are right in front of us. We just need to open our eyes.

Pam Wickham is vice president of Corporate Affairs and Communications for Raytheon Company.

Science Graphic of the Week: Scientists Map Seaside Terrain at Titan’s North Pole

Birch, S., et al, “Geomorphology of Titan’s Polar Regions”, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO—Saturn’s moon Titan is a wet world, the only other place in the solar system that we know has flowing liquid on its surface. The colorful geomorphic map (above left) combines radar and topographic data of Titan’s north pole to show different features around a large sea called Ligeia Mare. The map, presented Dec. 15 here at the American Geophysical Union meeting, defines four different major regions according to colors: orange, dark green, and yellow for plains, pale green for small depressions, blue for seas, and pink for ridge and valley networks. Radar imagery of the same area is seen on the right.

Titan is a cold place, with surface temperatures averaging -300 degrees Fahrenheit. Its lakes and rivers and seas carry not water, which would be frozen hard as a rock on the surface, but liquid hydrocarbons like methane and ethane. Most of this liquid pools at the moon’s north pole, where enormous seas known as mare dominate the landscape. In contrast, the south pole is a relatively dry place, with a few small lakes and many giant basins, likely the remnants of ancient Titanean seas. Scientists think that long term cycles analogous to Earth’s Milankovitch cycles—where changes in our planet’s axial tilt have caused glaciers to advance and retreat—move large amounts of liquid from pole to pole roughly every 50,000 years.

Geologists like to know the features on a planet’s surface because it tells them something about its history and composition. Both poles show highland regions cut through with river channels that drain into wide basins. If you were standing at Titan’s poles, the view might look something like the U.S. Southwest, with rivers winding around steep-sided mesas and vast plains. At the north pole, there is evidence that catastrophic floods occurred when lakes broke their shorelines and spilled out into the plains. In the drier south pole, mountain ranges are more prevalent as well as long valley networks.

The data for this map comes from NASA’s Cassini mission, which has been flying around the ringed giant and its moons since 2004. During close flybys, Cassini shoots Titan with radar and analyzes the returning beams to figure out surface features. But radar data can’t tell researchers what the different terrains of Titan are made of. Water ice is likely to be the bulk of the material, which gets broken down into smaller particles that are the equivalent of earthly gravel and sand. But because scientists don’t know exactly how such materials erode and evaporate, much of Titan’s geologic history remains a mystery. Perhaps one day NASA will send a mission to the icy moon that can sample its surface and help identify its exact composition.

Gadget Lab Podcast: We Say Goodbye to a Good Friend and Traitor

Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

This is the last Gadget Lab podcast of 2014, and our last until mid-January—we have the holidays coming up, and then the grand explosion of electronic devices at CES in Las Vegas right after the new year.

It’s also Mat Honan’s last show as co-host. He’s leaving WIRED to go to Buzzfeed, so what better way to see him off than with a Buzzfeed-style quiz? That’s the entirety of this episode: Question time for Mat. Well, not the entirety. The hosts also discuss the current state of the media, which is also the topic explored in the cover story for this month’s issue of WIRED magazine.

Listen to this week’s episode or subscribe in iTunes.

Send the hosts feedback on their personal Twitter feeds (Mat Honan is @mat and Michael Calore is @snackfight) or to the main hotline at @GadgetLab.

Big Data, Smaller Wage Gap?

Women and tech: Computing pioneer Jean Bartik (left) at ENIAC’s console with co-worker Frances Bilas, circa 1945. U.S. Army/Army Research Laboratory's Technical Library

I have a niece. Several, actually, but I’m thinking about one in particular. I helped deliver her at the hospital, and over the past 18 years I’ve watched her grow into a woman I admire.

My niece is smart and conscientious. She knows politics and wants to fight the world’s injustices. She reads. She sings. She loves movies. She plays volleyball. But what defines her most is her determination: She works for what she wants, and she lets nothing get in her way.

Now of course my niece is special to me, but we all know young women who are just as driven and idealistic. And that’s why I am so alarmed about the continuing gender wage gap, which tells us that somewhere along the way, bright, promising women will have an employer decide their potential and contributions are somehow worth less than those of their male counterparts.

Paychecks Today

Women hold just 5 percent of the CEO offices in Fortune 1000 companies, the nonprofit Catalyst reported in October. The salary story is equally bleak: Women earn 82 cents for every dollar a man makes, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mothers with careers fared even worse, pulling 75 cents on the dollar.

Those figures alone are discouraging, but what’s truly depressing is that they’ve been about the same for decades. The gender wage gap everybody keeps talking about is closing at a glacial pace. My niece — and yours — won’t see wage parity until 2058 in the United States, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Globally, the gap won’t close until 2095, according to the World Economic Forum. An entire generation of women, maybe two, will make less at work for no reason other than their gender.

Solutions at Our Fingertips

We need ideas to accelerate the pace of change, and I think data analytics is the answer.

The retail industry already has this down: A coat I clicked on once — once! — has popped up on every website I’ve visited ever since. I walked into the hardware store and received a text from a competitor soon after. I bought a single low-calorie frozen entrée at the grocery store, and — voila! — the next day I got a promo for a weight-loss program.

Analytics and microtargeting aren’t just for retailers and politicians — they can help us grow the ranks of executive women and close the gender wage gap. Employers analyze who clicked on internal job postings, and we can pursue qualified women who looked but never applied. We can go beyond analyzing the salary and rank histories of women who have left our companies. We can use big data analytics to tell us what exit interviews don’t.

Facebook posts, Twitter feeds and LinkedIn groups provide a trove of valuable intel from ex-employees. What they write is blunt, candid and useful. All the data is there for the taking — we just have to collect it and figure out what it means. We can delve deep into whether we’re promoting the best people, whether we’re doing enough to keep our ranks diverse, whether potential female leaders are being left behind and, importantly, why.

Fast-Forward to a Better Future

Which brings me back to my niece. Ultimately, I hope she alone controls what she does, where she works and how well she’s paid. I hope when she faces discrimination or disadvantage, she works to change it.

If she feels stuck in her job, I’ll advise her to look for promotions or other opportunities. If she’s not being paid what she’s worth, I want her to advocate for a raise. Better still, I want her to build a strong support team of women — and men. I want her to find diverse leaders from outside her comfortable network who will tell her how they got where they are and maybe help her along her own path.

And what I want for my niece tomorrow, I also want for you… today. Change has come slowly in the past few decades, but the pace of technology and the power of data analytics can propel us forward. The answers are right in front of us. We just need to open our eyes.

Pam Wickham is vice president of Corporate Affairs and Communications for Raytheon Company.

Science Graphic of the Week: Scientists Map Seaside Terrain at Titan’s North Pole

Birch, S., et al, “Geomorphology of Titan’s Polar Regions”, 2014

SAN FRANCISCO—Saturn’s moon Titan is a wet world, the only other place in the solar system that we know has flowing liquid on its surface. The colorful geomorphic map (above left) combines radar and topographic data of Titan’s north pole to show different features around a large sea called Ligeia Mare. The map, presented Dec. 15 here at the American Geophysical Union meeting, defines four different major regions according to colors: orange, dark green, and yellow for plains, pale green for small depressions, blue for seas, and pink for ridge and valley networks. Radar imagery of the same area is seen on the right.

Titan is a cold place, with surface temperatures averaging -300 degrees Fahrenheit. Its lakes and rivers and seas carry not water, which would be frozen hard as a rock on the surface, but liquid hydrocarbons like methane and ethane. Most of this liquid pools at the moon’s north pole, where enormous seas known as mare dominate the landscape. In contrast, the south pole is a relatively dry place, with a few small lakes and many giant basins, likely the remnants of ancient Titanean seas. Scientists think that long term cycles analogous to Earth’s Milankovitch cycles—where changes in our planet’s axial tilt have caused glaciers to advance and retreat—move large amounts of liquid from pole to pole roughly every 50,000 years.

Geologists like to know the features on a planet’s surface because it tells them something about its history and composition. Both poles show highland regions cut through with river channels that drain into wide basins. If you were standing at Titan’s poles, the view might look something like the U.S. Southwest, with rivers winding around steep-sided mesas and vast plains. At the north pole, there is evidence that catastrophic floods occurred when lakes broke their shorelines and spilled out into the plains. In the drier south pole, mountain ranges are more prevalent as well as long valley networks.

The data for this map comes from NASA’s Cassini mission, which has been flying around the ringed giant and its moons since 2004. During close flybys, Cassini shoots Titan with radar and analyzes the returning beams to figure out surface features. But radar data can’t tell researchers what the different terrains of Titan are made of. Water ice is likely to be the bulk of the material, which gets broken down into smaller particles that are the equivalent of earthly gravel and sand. But because scientists don’t know exactly how such materials erode and evaporate, much of Titan’s geologic history remains a mystery. Perhaps one day NASA will send a mission to the icy moon that can sample its surface and help identify its exact composition.

New Orphan Black Teaser Hints at the Clone Wars to Come

It’s been so long since we saw the many faces of Tatiana Maslany, we almost forgot what they looked like. But in the latest teaser, they’re all back: Alison, Sarah, Cosima, and Helena. OK, maybe that’s not all of them, Tony—the trans clone—seems to be sticking to his plan to stay gone and Rachel is missing, like her eye after last season’s finale.

But the clones that are back are ready for war. In the latest teaser for the show, released today, each of the women—accompanied by new “Scarface” boyclone, Rudy (Ari Millen), and Project Leda’s only successful clone, Charlotte—attest to the fact that no one ever gave up power easily, but they’re ready to take it. Guys, clone wars are comin’!

Sadly, this teaser doesn’t offer any new footage for Season 3, but that’s probably because it’s still a ways off. The next season of Orphan Black hits BBC America April 18, 2015.

Meet the Guy Who Designed the Elegant Branding for Serial

NYC-based designer Matt Dorfman crafted the Serial logo. Image: Matt Dorfman

Serial has been dissected from almost every conceivable angle, down to the mispronunciation of the sponsor’s name, but as Sarah closes the case on Adnan, Jay, and the rest of the Woodlawn characters, one mystery remains undiscussed—who designed the the black, beige, and red “S” that has popped up on millions of iPhone screens over the last three months?

Thankfully, that mystery is easier to solve than the horrific murder at the center of Serial. The logo was crafted by Matt Dorfman, an award-winning designer who was worked for NPR, Vanity Fair, and Time, and is currently the art director of the New York Times’ Op/Ed page.

“My process in working with the Serial team played out in an eerily similar way as one of the show’s episodes,” writes Dorfman. “We talked, we kicked some questions around, we extrapolated some ideas based upon those questions and chased down a mark without any preconceived impression of where it should land.”

The accent lines of the “S” aren’t meant to line up—a nod to the hand-lettered, olden days of radio.

Dorfman started working with Serial’s production manager,Emily Condon, back in February 2014. “All I was told about the story in the brief was that it involved a murder in Baltimore in 2000 that involved high school kids,” says Dorfman. “To the producers’ credit, the specifics of the story didn’t factor into the logo at all—families’ pain shouldn’t be branded.”

After experimenting with a variety of concepts, Dorfman focused his creative energies creating a graphic representation of the show’s distinctive format and decided each letter should occupy its own block to suggest the weekly episodic reveal. “Our principal focus in establishing the show’s identity became landing on a typographic statement that would suggest the brick-by-brick nature of the show and hint at what a mid-century radio serial might look like in the age of the internet.”

To that end, Dorfman focused on details like slightly mis-registering the black and red, harkening back to the printing technology that was common during the era of the original radio serials. “The agony in handling little touches like that for Serial was always to refrain from going too far into the past—because time is such a sensitive component of the show’s DNA and also of its success,” says Dorfman. “The meat of the story took place almost 15 years ago and the spirit of the show is rooted in mid-century radio programs but the podcast itself is very much a product of the present day so it’s a logo that has to straddle a lot of time and a lot of history without looking ‘vintage.'”

Now, as the long wait for season two begins, we can only console ourselves with this message from Dorfman. “These producers are comfortable in all respects with letting the territory draw the map, which bodes well for the show’s future.”

A Massive Indoor Flood, Created for a Piano Concert

From now until January 4, New York City's Park Avenue Armory's 55,000 square feet has a standing pool of water. James Ewing

From now until January 4, New York City's Park Avenue Armory's 55,000 square feet has a standing pool of water.

James Ewing

The manmade flood is part of a new installation-meets-performance piece, Tears Become…Streams Become…. James Ewing

The manmade flood is part of a new installation-meets-performance piece, Tears Become…Streams Become….

James Ewing

It required some serious engineering: the Armory worked with Arup to turn the floor into a massive pond, and then build a new set of floorboards on top. James Ewing

It required some serious engineering: the Armory worked with Arup to turn the floor into a massive pond, and then build a new set of floorboards on top.

James Ewing

Come performance time, a series of nine pumps will add water that will rise .75 inches above the surface, pooling around the lone piano player. James Ewing

Come performance time, a series of nine pumps will add water that will rise .75 inches above the surface, pooling around the lone piano player.

James Ewing

The illusion is startling: even with less than one inch of standing water, the lighting and reflectivity make the pool look 100 feet deep. James Ewing

The illusion is startling: even with less than one inch of standing water, the lighting and reflectivity make the pool look 100 feet deep.

James Ewing

New York City’s Park Avenue Armory is flooding. Not because of a nor’easter or rising sea levels in Manhattan or anything like that—it’s for art. The Armory’s latest installation-meets-performance piece Tears Become…Streams Become…required its staff to slowly, over the course of a 10-minute piano piece, fill the 55,000 square feet of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall with a standing pool of water that would mirror the hall’s gilded ceilings.

“When artists get these visions it’s our job to build them,” says Rebecca Robertson, the President and Executive Producer of Park Avenue Armory. In this instance, the vision belongs to the Scottish video and installation artist Douglas Gordon. Gordon has lit a piano on fire before, but for Tears Become…Streams Become…, he’s resurrecting a personal memory: one time he saw a boy playing the piano, crying, and wiping away tears while he played. In this piece, however, French pianist Hélène Grimaud will play. And the tears won’t flow from her; they’ll seep up from the floor boards.

James Ewing

It goes without saying the Armory couldn’t just take a firehose and actually flood the Drill Hall. “We went through various ways of thinking, would you depress the floor? Would you raise the floor on the bottom?” Robertson says. The Armory took the problem to Arup, the architectural-engineering powerhouse, who designed a false floor to be built on top of the Drill Hall’s regular floor, which is being treated like a massive pond. By lining the area with a heavy pond liner and sealing it with a blowtorch, the Armory staff can keep four inches of standing water just below the manufactured floor’s surface. Come performance time, a series of nine pumps will add water that will rise .75 inches above the surface, pooling around the lone piano player.

Turning a historic industrial shed into a body of water invites some complications. For one thing, every inch of the floor had to be surveyed and leveled, so that uneven floorboards wouldn’t botch the illusion of water percolating up from below. Water also creates humidity—kryptonite to pianos. “The felt on the hammers will just absorb that moisture, so it’s very important for these beautiful Steinway pianos that we keep the humidity within a particular range,” Robertson says. This meant keeping the water at 55 degrees and the air at 70 degrees. If the weather in New York changed, the Armory team would get in touch with Arup right away.

Even with less than one inch of standing water in the massive Drill Hall, Robertson says the illusion is startling. “It’s so sharp and so perfect that it literally looks like you’re looking down over 100 feet into this structure. You could easily think you could easily dive into it,” she says. On the other hand, though, “we’ve had people come to the edge and get vertigo, and have to step back.”

Tears Become…Streams Become…will run until January 4, 2015.