bioephemera

Knight Fellow Geoff McGhee created this polished video documentary series about how data visualization is infiltrating and transforming journalism. Interviews with Many Eyes creators Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg, Amanda Cox of the New York Times, and other dataviz luminaries are coupled…

Hippocampus: Broad Overview Tamily Weissman, Jeff Lichtman, and Joshua Sanes, 2005 from Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century by Carl Schoonover The first time I created a transgenic neuron, it was in a worm, C. elegans -- a tiny, transparent cousin of the…

Poor, outnumbered moderates. . . I decided to wait until the election mayhem abated before reviewing Carl Schoonover's EXTREMELY outstanding new book Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century. If you're tired of looking at red and blue Rorschach tests, drop…

Wildlife of Vietnam, by Brendan Wenzel This bundle of exotic animals by Brendan Wenzel is whimsical, yet unsettling. On the one hand, it would be perfect for a children's book; I imagine a tale in which the animals overcome their natural animosities, cooperate to free themselves, dump a hapless…

Just plain awesome: Thanks to Jennifer Ouellette for the heads-up.

Have e-books killed tree-books? I hope not - I love hefting a brand-new book in my hand and letting the pages fan open. It's sensual and anticipation-laden, like opening a bottle of good wine. But perhaps science writer and blogger Carl Zimmer is hedging his bets on the future of paper books: he's…

Just in: the 2010 Imagine Science Films Festival's Nature Scientific Merit award, given to "a short film that exemplifies science in narrative filmmaking in a compelling, credible and inspiring manner," is An Eyeful of Sound, a short film about audio-visual synaesthesia by Samantha Moore. Here's…

detail of "Williamsburg Bridge Plaza," Brooklyn, NY, circa 1906 Source: Shorpy I'm just saying, I don't think that's a speck on the negative. But maybe I'm too cynical.

A couple of days ago, the New York Times reported on an undergraduate class at Harvard that teaches the science of cooking. It's called "Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science," and it's popular: if you're a Harvard undergrad, you have about a 43% chance of winning a seat…

And now for a completely different type of glass art: this time from sculptor Luke Jerram. His deceptively beautiful glass malaria parasite (see video below) will be auctioned off to benefit Malaria No More. Via Medical Museion. The "malaria parasite" is also known as Plasmodium falciparum. Read…

Reader Miles suggested Danny Cooke's graceful documentary about ornamental glass & sign artist David A. Smith, who uses traditional techniques like gilding, silvering, and etching to create ornate glass signs and windows with aesthetics from Victorian to Art Nouveau. Time-lapse sequences offer…

"Mandelbrot Set," by Jonathan Coulton, via Wired.

What do you get when you ask Harvard physicist Lisa Randall to curate an art show? A Los Angeles gallery found out, and Wired has the story. My favorite quote: I asked Mays whether the artists gained an appreciation for physics. "Oh god, yes!" he said. "I've seen them carrying books around about…

This, this and this all came close, but in the end, it took a book: a yummy new neuroscience, history of science, beauty of science, wow-brains-are-beautiful book. The other day I heard about something that I just HAD to blog, hiatus/retirement be damned! Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the…

In the New York Times, a quick article on a study in the journal Neurosurgery by two Johns Hopkins professors. The abstract argues that Michaelangelo concealed another neuronanatomic structure in the final panel of this series, the Separation of Light From Darkness, specifically a ventral view of…

Don't be downhearted! Try some of these blogs: A Journey Round My Skull Makezine SPGRA via NOTCOT Coilhouse Street Anatomy Urban Omnibus Daily Art Muse Wouldn't You Like To See Something Strange? Bottled Monsters

Everything is ephemeral - including bioephemera. As of today, May 31, I'm going on hiatus for at least this summer - and probably longer. While I've met many wonderful fellow bloggers and faithful readers through the blog, keeping BioE going has become a significant investment of time that I just…

So cute, so bioephemeral: designer Wes Thomas created a laser-cut business card that snaps out to assemble a little giraffe. He's also done a gorilla. Via Notcot.

The God Particle, 2008 Andy Harper does amazing work with oils: fantastic gardenscapes populated with unanticipated plants. Many of his works incorporate dramatic symmetry, reminiscent of a Rorschach blot or the patters on a flowerhead. Half Devil, Half Buccaneer Read an interview with Andy…

Here's a big time want: a sterling silver necklace cast from a frog spine and skull, by Elizabeth Knight. Wow. You can find it at Catbird! While you're there, check out Knight's spin on pearl earrings (the pearls are held by skeletal frog hands!), the 14K paired ant necklace by Jezebel, which I…

Wired published a gallery a few months back featuring the art of Nikki Graziano, a math and photography student at Rochester Institute of Technology, who combines photos with equations. Her Found Functions series is awesome - I love the way she spots functions and patterns in nature.

I recently stumbled across an interesting post (don't ask how I got there; how do you ever end up anywhere on the Web?) about how the octopus has been used as a propaganda symbol, from WW2 to Big Oil, to represent the terrifying Other. Fascinating stuff - read more here for starters, and here is…

Joanna Ebenstein of Morbid Anatomy has just unveiled a new website, the Secret Museum, to house her "exhibition of photographs exploring the poetics of hidden, untouched and curious collections from around the world." So if you can't make it to her show in NYC (through June 6), you can browse her…

So I had the pleasure of meeting the awesome Dr. Isis a few weeks ago. It turns out she is even more awesome in person than she is in pseudonymity. And she brought me a fabulous thing: a scarf from A Slice of Life Scarves. Creator Eve Reaven, a Bay Area cell biologist, "has continuously marveled…

"Fossil geometry" (detail) Based on Eschschottzia Californica seeds collected by Mr W Reeves, April 1864. From the collection of the Royal Microscopic Society. UK sci-artist Heather Barnett has created a line of wallpapers using micrographs of cells, crystals, seeds, nanofibers, etc. They'd be…

Lately Ms. Humble of Not So Humble Pie, "your typical nerdy biological anthropologist turned stay at home mom and baker of sometimes strange goodies," has cornered the market on science cookies. Check out her beautiful gel electrophoresis cookies (above): they are amazingly convincing AND ethidium…

DC area artist Michele Banks works with wet-in-wet watercolor to create abstract paintings of biological subjects - lots of cells, mitotic spindles, etc. You can see more of her work at her Makers Market shop (under the nom d'art Artologica), or at the SoWeBohemian Festival in Baltimore this…

This is what I miss out on by not reading the physical copy of the New York Times: ads! I recently picked up a copy of the Times science section and saw an ad for these wonderful vintage patent office models from the 1900s. As if they're not steampunky enough, each one comes with a little yellowed…

Susan Silas takes photos of fallen birds - and they're oddly touching. It's very strange how songbirds remain graceful, even when broken and half-decayed. . .

My friend Shana mentioned this one to me: it's an LED sculpture that opens at night and folds closed during the day, like a light-sensitive flower. The creator, Wendy Legro, says: "The sun is our natural light source. Our homes are filled with artificial light replacing it, undeliberately…