Posts

November 26, 2012

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5:34 PM | Wherefore Science Writing? An Interview of Richard Wintle

Several wonderful interviews between authors in the anthology The Best of Science Writing Online 2012 (Scientific American/Farrar, Strauss and Giroux) have been posted here. As a newbie to the anthology, I felt humbled to have the opportunity to interview another newbie, although a more experienced writer than me.Richard F. Wintle, the assistant director of The Centre for Applied Genomics at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, joined me for an email chat over […]

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4:05 PM | Fourier Piggy

I got sent this photo from Piggy who has a blog about exciting things he finds in science and maths. There are actually lots of fun whiteboards amongst his blog posts; for example this one about using mathematical analysis to design a strategy for hitting on the opposite sex. In this photo, Piggy had to [...]

November 22, 2012

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8:57 AM | Why scientists should care about art

Last week, I attended an environmental science conference with an evening reception that featured a short talk on art/science collaborations in the context of environmental science. The talk was followed by a musical performance – inspired by the fragility of …

November 21, 2012

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10:01 PM | Hello!? This is Your Conscience Speaking…

Good ol’ visual.ly. They always know how to ruin a perfectly good Thanksgiving binge! I wonder where mom’s pecan pie fits in… by visually.Browse more infographics.

November 19, 2012

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8:42 PM | Magic squares

This blackboard comes from the website Blackboard of the Day or BBOTD. If you click on ‘Mathematics’ at the top of the page you get taken to loads of wonderful mathematics blackboard photos, and from time to time I will post my favourite pictures on this blog too. This board was the result of a [...]

November 15, 2012

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4:41 PM | Children Exploding Out of Stars

As the worlds of science and illustration continue to show, sometimes non-traditional forms of illustration – the whimsical, the mysterious, the abstract – are the best ways to draw in a new audience to scientific ideas. The book You Are Stardust by author Elin Kelsey and illustrator Soyeon Kim (hey! We were students together!) transcends typical illustration [...]

November 12, 2012

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5:54 PM | Illustrate Your Science Blog Using An iPhone

Okay so you’re blogging about science, putting your expertise out there, hoping to reel people in so they can see how cool everything you do really is. Show ‘em. Right. Typetypetypepublish. But it doesn’t look right. You’re looking at your favourite science blogs and they all have these cool images. Copyright scares you a little. [...]

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5:07 AM | Arthropod Meeting

Sometimes I forget just how useful warm-up sketches and painting can be. Enjoying taking old pencil sketches and digitally watercolour painting them with ArtRage to get my engine running for commissioned projects. I tend to build up a lot of neurotic "all conditions must be perfect in life, studio and mindset" hang-ups before I get started on things. It's good to visually slap myself out of it by working on pieces like this that are already decent drawings, and just play loose with the […]

November 11, 2012

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12:06 AM | An Inventory of the Invisible

When you come to think of it, so much of what matters in the world is invisible. Time. Gravity. Thoughts. The human genome. Atoms. Energy. Electricity. The past. The future. In this animated TEDTalk from 2009, comedy writer and TV producer John Lloyd gives a guided tour around everything that’s impossible to see. It’s well worth [...]

November 10, 2012

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3:01 AM | Greeting Cards

Jen and I drew really nerdy Greeting Cards today. It was enormously fun. Permalink | Leave a comment »

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1:04 AM | Art On The Wall

As much as I feel satisfied when I create something(satisfied the twitchy itch to draw or paint has been sated temporarily, that is), I feel excited about seeing that someone is enjoying the finished art.Here's journalist Tyler Dukes' (@mtdukes) art wall, featuring a print of my Darwin Took Steps, an image by Alex Wild, and many others:Tyler Dukes' science-art wall.Entomologist and insect photographer Morgan Jackson (@BioInFocus) of the Biodiversity in Focus blog has my original […]

November 08, 2012

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2:59 PM | Temple mathematics

This is the board of José Figueroa-O’Farrill at the University of Edinburgh, who is working on a project related to ‘temple mathematics’ with his Year 4 undergraduate project group. In 17th century Japan, tablets inscribed with mathematical problems would be hung in temples as gifts to the gods. The problem being discussed on this board [...]

November 07, 2012

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5:21 PM | Get Your Hands Dirty To Do Important Work

Sowing Seeds & Fossils © Glendon MellowGet your hands dirty to do important work. Dive in, take chances, don't expect shortcuts. Be driven by dreams and sweat through labour. Like sowing seeds with fossils in the earth. Sometimes something astonishing will grow. Ammonite Flax Flower © Glendon Mellow- - - - - - - -Prints available. - - - - - - - -Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite © to Glendon Mellowunder Creative Commons Licence. […]

November 01, 2012

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9:02 PM | Hurray!:)))

My entry has been chosen as one of the top 10 in its category in the International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge! Now I need your help: If you vote for me, my entry may be designated the People’s Choice! The 2013 winning entries will be published in a February 2014 issue of the journal [...]

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8:02 AM | WeatherDataMusicSculpture

Foremost in the minds of many of us this past week has been Hurricane Sandy, which has been battering the eastern coast of the United States and which, as I write this, is now on its way up through Canada. …

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1:50 AM | Halloween with a Turtle

Our son is almost 2 and loved Hallowe'en. Even ventured up to a couple of houses on his own while we waited at the walk. My wife read him "Goodnight Goon" to send him off to bed. Happy Hallowe'en brave turtle! The Flying Trilobite http://glendonmellow.blogspot.com Art in Awe of Science by Glendon Mellow Follow me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/flyingtrilobite

October 31, 2012

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4:31 PM | Glycogen Synthase Kinase 3 (GSK-3)

Protein Data Bank ID: 1Q3W Protein Name: GSK-3 Organism: Homo sapiens Title of Drawing: “Kitti’s hog-nosed bat“ This protein was drawn for a friend working on the same floor as I do. The enzyme Glycogen Synthase Kinase 3 (GSK-3) mediates the transfer of phosphate groups to specific amino acid residues (serine or threonine) of its [...]

October 30, 2012

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6:45 PM | If Audubon Had Painted His Dreams…

Have you ever tried to draw what you see in your dreams? Sometimes even the act of describing a dream in words makes it evaporate, as though imposing the order of grammar and syntax is too much for its fragile structure to bear. Tiffany Bozic does not paint her dreams, per se, but she does [...]

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4:21 PM | Lemurs in North Carolina

Here are Chloris and Comet, two of the residents at the Duke Lemur Center. The Center is nestled inside a green and yellow forest of oak, maple and tulip poplars. On warm days, many of the Lemurs live in the forest to mimic their natural habitat. Today was chilly and both me and the lemurs are enjoying the warmth inside. Permalink | Leave a comment »

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1:23 PM | Frankenstein: the Birth of a Monster

When it comes to horror stories, Frankenstein is probably the most famous of them all. Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece has sent shivers of fear through generations of readers, inspired countless adaptations, and become the gold standard for tales of terror and suspense. It’s a story that becomes even more unsettling, though, when you realise it [...]

October 29, 2012

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4:16 PM | Vaccine in a Soybean

Kenneth Bost and Kenneth Pillar are experimenting with transgenic soybeans to create plant protein based vaccines. I think this is an exciting idea because current vaccine production practices involve animals, are expensive and not shelf-stable. With this technique a single soybean seed could contain up to 240 doses of vaccine. Not only would this new production technique would likely change all of those factors, but wouldn't it be innocuous to drink some soymilk to get vaccinated? For […]

October 28, 2012

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11:20 PM | Out drinking with Science Writers

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October 24, 2012

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12:18 AM | Windmills

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12:07 AM | Hoedown

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October 23, 2012

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6:00 PM | Secrets of a Paleoart Rockstar: Julius Csotonyi

One of the most popular fields of science with children and adults alike is paleontology. And there’s a very good reason for this. Since the first fossil was recognized and found, it inspired imaginations to envision what the animal was like when it was alive. From the myths of giant cyclops to sinewy dragons, fossils [...]

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12:00 PM | Monocyte Fashion

Hyperbolic Blood Cells,by Cyberxaos; Feb. 2008 Monocytes play a role in infection-fighting and in inflammation. However, they are only one type of cell that run the body's immune system. But they do it with style.Each monocyte has different abilities to react to and release chemokines (chemicals that cause action), and each has a different surface, a surface decorated with different types of CD molecules. There are three basic types of monocyte: classic, non-classic […]

October 22, 2012

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12:44 PM | Illustrated Five Word Stories

Last Friday, I was messing around on my iPhone while waiting to see my respirologist. I became fascinated by the #FiveWordStories hashtag on Twitter, masterfully being played around with by comic book writer Gail Simone and many other people.I decided to try a few of my own, and attach some past artwork. I wasn't sure at first if attaching the art was cheating, but judging from the favourites and retweets, I kept going. [View the story "Illustrated FiveWordStories" on Storify] It was a […]

October 20, 2012

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1:33 PM | Yay, I'm in Texas!

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October 19, 2012

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12:00 PM | Short Story Science: Stone Link

Red Granite Stones at Braewick BeachA section of a photograph by Mike PenningtonRichard usually liked staring out the window, but not this evening. His neighbor, Mrs. Gerkart, was standing still at her door, with her key in her hand. Richard didn’t like what he saw. He ran to her, but she disappeared. A small red granite stone lay on the stoop as her substitute.“Okay. That was not real. No more coffee so late in the day,” he stuttered to no one but Sam, his red Persian. Sam looked at him […]

October 18, 2012

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4:17 PM | Fantastic voyage: The strange journey of a graphite pencil

I have a fond memory of my mineralogy class in university: it was a lab session in which we were studying metamorphic minerals and were presented with boxes of samples to identify. My eyes gravitated towards a darkish silvery lump …

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