Posts

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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2:18 PM | 9 Years

The Flying Trilobite http://glendonmellow.blogspot.com Art in Awe of Science by Glendon Mellow Follow me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/flyingtrilobite

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1:12 PM | Nanobody

Protein Data Bank ID: 1MEL Protein Name: Nanobody Organism: Camelus dromedarius Title of Drawing: “Bedouin Riding a Camel“ It is not only the drawing showing a dromedary, but also the inspiring protein originates from a dromedary camel. This small protein is called nanobody. Sounds cool, but what is a nanobody? It is a fragment of [...]

October 17, 2012

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9:43 PM | The Honorable Mr. Tiktaalik

When a big fossil discovery is announced, the initial imagery that floods the news outlets is carefully controlled by the lab responsible for the discovery. That is usually followed by a period of rougher, often inaccurate attempts to reconstruct the animal by aspiring illustrators or adoring geeky fans around the globe. But then an amazing [...]

October 16, 2012

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1:42 PM | Petroplague: Oil-eating Microbes

For the most part, I prefer walking along rows and rows of books in bookstores to online shopping. Ebooks, not being on real bookshelves, don’t currently have much of a chance with this non-nook, non-kindle, non-ipad, I-want-to-turn-an-actual-page reader. However, I may need to change. Many great science ebooks and many works of fiction with science are available only in digital format, and Petroplaguehas gotten my attention. There are no zombies. There is gas and a petrol-feasting […]

October 15, 2012

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11:03 PM | Out of the Forest and onto an Airplane

This concludes our virtual nature walk. Thanks for coming on a forest explore!In just a few days, I'll be heading to Lubbock, Texas for The Society for Environmental Journalists Conference (http://www.sej.org/initiatives/sej-annual-conferences/AC2012-main). I'll see you guys in Texas! Permalink | Leave a comment »

October 13, 2012

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1:40 AM | Redwood Sorrel

As I was hiking up the mountain for the last time this afternoon, I was hoping to find some creatures to draw. The weather today however, is cold and rainy and the forest is quiet. I can hear a few birds in the canopy, but I don't see them, and I'm not seeing even banana slugs out to play. As I crossed across Merrill Meadow I saw scratching tracks left by a Mountain Lion. Alex described them to me a few days ago, he has been keeping notes on them up in the meadow. "Here... kitty, kitty, […]

October 11, 2012

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9:40 PM | Fern Sex

So, we are talking about plant reproduction already a bit on this nature walk, and I see little black dots on the undersides of some of the fern fronds. It reminds me that a few weeks ago, a fern frond kept poking Arthur in the back of the head as we sat in an outdoor coffee shop. He noticed the black dots and didn't know what they were. I pulled the wood fern from the previous drawing (Dryopteris sp.) under a dissecting microscope, and here's what I saw on it's underside... […]

October 10, 2012

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7:38 PM | PDCA – Public Displays of Cephalopod Affection

Sometimes the easiest way to spark discussion about science is to bring it into everyday situations – like by wearing it as jewellery. This week polymer clay sculptor Noadi a.k.a. Sheryl Westleigh aims to increase the conversation about cephalopods – and it’s Cephalopod Awareness Days! Cephalopod Awareness Days are organized around the number of limbs [...]

October 05, 2012

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6:48 PM | Shoot To Kill or Aim To Embarrass?

As I’ve pointed out before on Symbiartic, before the modern naturalist movement, nature lovers would shoot and kill the objects of their fancy to get a better look. Audubon himself would take dead specimens and pin them into life-like poses before drawing them and turning them into the prints that are so treasured today. But [...]

October 04, 2012

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5:20 PM | Planetary Artistry

For me, the highlight of this past week’s science news was the images beamed back from the Curiosity rover, providing conclusive geologic evidence that water flowed on Mars. Of course, this wasn’t exactly a surprise; for decades, planetary scientists have …

October 02, 2012

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11:32 PM | What Did You Miss?

Last month, we posted a wide variety of science-art here at Symbiartic. We thought it’d be nice to post an overview in case you missed or wanted to revisit any. Enjoy!

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10:28 PM | Book review: Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?

To be fair, this book could have been given any number of equally provocative titles. Why do we have pubes? Why do some people fall in love with horses? What’s in a fetish? Because, as well as the eponymous love organ, Why is The Penis… covers an ambitious array of eyebrow-raising topics: bestiality, cannibalism, self-gratification… [...]

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8:40 PM | Moving into the Wisconsin Idea

Dear Readers, it’s been quite awhile since I last wrote. In the intervening time, North Carolina Central University deemed me a Master of Biology, I traveled to see friends and family, and I moved to Madison, Wisconsin to start school in the Neuroscience and Public Policy program (NPP) at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. [...]

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4:59 AM | High Five

High Five - Flying Trilobite and Tiktaalik © Glendon MellowThis high five goes out to my bloggy buddy-cop policing science-art, Kalliopi Monoyios. Kalliopi and I co-blog on Symbiartic, the art + science blog on the Scientific American blog network.For the month of September 2012, we set out to post 30 pieces of science-art, in a SciArt of the Day feature - and we made it. At times it was a bit of a marathon, but the wealth of art out there and the graciousness of the many fine artists, […]

October 01, 2012

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8:23 PM | Collagen

Protein Data Bank ID: 3HON Protein Name: Collagen XVIII Trimerization Domain Organism: Homo sapiens Title of Drawing: Allusion to Walter Moers’ “Alter Sack” from “The Little Asshole” This is a trimerization domain from human collagen XVIII. Collagens are well known for their function as structural proteins. We all know that collagen is an important component [...]

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12:01 PM | Lipoate-Protein Ligase A (LplA)

Protein Data Bank ID: 2AAI Protein Name: Lipoate-Protein Ligase A Organism: Escherichia coli Recently two students who used to work in our lab asked me to draw a special protein. Lipoate-protein ligase A (LplA) is an enzyme which catalyzes the attachment of lipoic acid to specific enzymes. This allows lipoic acid to act as a [...]

September 30, 2012

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12:59 PM | SciArt of the Day: Hyperdimensional Suffering

As our month of SciArt of the Day winds down, I had to share this image. For me, this is a touchstone of what makes wonderful science-art: marrying metaphors from past and present, science and myth. The idea that art and science represent two cultures, as C.P. Snow described is a curious one. Art, or [...]

September 29, 2012

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5:38 PM | SciArt of the Day: Fermented Teeth?

First, fermented fashion, now fermented teeth? Ok, ok, foul ball?! Halloween is a month away and already, kids everywhere are beginning to dream of the loot they’ll collect in one night of frantic bliss. So what better time for a reminder of the perils of periodontal disease!? But seriously, in our September jaunt through science [...]

September 28, 2012

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12:00 PM | SciArt of the Day: Eye Heart Yew

Everyone loves a rebus! It all began with a painting of crumpled paper and an eyeball. You’re welcome for this look into Lis Mitchell’s creative mind. - - Eye Heart Yew by Lis Mitchell / Pixelfish 2002, digital painting. For more about this painting, see Elizabeth’s DeviantArt entry. Portfolio Gallery Blog DeviantArt Twitter: @pixelfish - [...]

September 27, 2012

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4:05 PM | On Scientific Imagery, Art, and Science

Welcome to At the Interface. Here, we will explore the exciting edge between Art and Science—examining the space where science and visual culture meet and establishing how, and on what terms, these seemingly disparate fields can mix and interact …

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3:00 PM | Windows on Evolution – can you outdo “March of Progress” imagery?

Charles Darwin’s grand discovery of evolution by natural selection (oh and hey – what’s up, Wallace!) has been with us for over 150 years and transformed medicine, society and any number of scientific disciplines. Paleoart and nature illustration are thriving, lively fields. So why are we still stick with the Ascent of Man, March [...]

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12:00 PM | SciArt of the Day: Blood of a Hero

Artist Paolo Rivera captures the blood of superhero Daredevil, the blind vigilante with superhuman senses, in much the way his radar-sense must detect the pulsing network within his own body. Yeah, yeah- the horns are his costume, and so wouldn’t have blood vessels. That’s the type of artistic licence that makes a science-art image more [...]

September 26, 2012

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5:04 PM | SciArt of the Day: Fermented Fashions

What happens when you take a bag of sweaty hockey gear and throw it in a vat of beer for a week? I’m not sure (although I’m sure this must have been tried before), but a researcher and an artist at the University of Western Australia are trying their own fermented fashion experiment. Using a [...]

September 25, 2012

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9:42 PM | SciArt of the Day: Best. Dinosaur. Art. Ever.

When it comes to dinosaur art, it takes a lot to rise to prominence. The field is saturated with everyone and their brother who never lost their obsession with the terrible lizards they fantasized about as kids. So it is with no small amount of gravitas that Steve White makes this proclamation in the subtitle [...]

September 24, 2012

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12:00 PM | SciArt of the Day: The Painting that Inspired Sagan’s COSMOS

“Young stars burst forth from a nebula, like seeds spreading through the galaxy. Just as seeds grow flowers that make more seeds, nebulae form stars that eventually form new nebulae. Cosmic cycles of life and death are apparent at all scales. This painting was the inspiration for the dandelion motif that runs through the TV [...]

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11:53 AM | Sufficient criterion for pulling

This is the whiteboard of my officemate Alexandra Tzella, a postdoc at the University of Edinburgh working on fluid dynamics with Professor Jacques Vanneste. I liked the board for many reasons: the different colours that appeared after each new conversation, the lovely combination of algebra, analysis and ad-hoc diagrams, and of course the brilliant and [...]

September 23, 2012

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12:30 PM | SciArt of the Day: Cretaceous Critter Coffee Co.

Following our SciArt of the Day tradition of having something silly on the weekends (we’ve only been doing this 3 weeks – we have traditions?!?) I bring you Raven Amos’s Cretaceous Critter Coffee Company, starring the lovely caramel-brown Tropeognathus that also features as Raven’s blog banner. This image makes me crave coffee on a hot dusty day. [...]

September 22, 2012

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1:09 PM | There's a Trilobite loose in the App Store!

That's how this oil painting:© Glendon MellowBecame this:© Glendon MellowUsing Manga Camera, Halftone and Instagram, respectively. I love seeing my images in different versions.- - - - - - - -Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite © to Glendon Mellow under Creative Commons Licence.PortfolioBlogPrint ShopFind me on Symbiartic, the art+science blog on the Scientific American Blog Network!The Flying Trilobite http://glendonmellow.blogspot.com Art in Awe of Science by Glendon Mellow Follow me […]