Follow @Sci_Arts on Twitter
Featured Stories
Show Me The Science
This week Science magazine unveiled the winners of the 2011 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge (sponsored by the AAAS and the NSF). The award “honors recipients who use visual media to promote the understanding of scientific research.” That sounds … Continue reading
Posted in Blogs, Features, Frontpage, Science Journal, Slideshow, Uncategorized, Visual Art
Tagged AAAS, NSF, Photography, Science magazine
3 Comments
Beauty In Brains
Whenever I yank meat from a lobster or crack a crab claw, one thought always pops into my head: these look like giant spiders. It doesn’t stop me from eating them (delicious giant spiders), but it does make me think … Continue reading
Posted in Blogs, books, Features, Frontpage, Uncategorized, Visual Art
Tagged arthropod, insect, Microphotography, Microscopes, natural history, Nicholas James Strausfeld, Photography
2 Comments
Because Science Is Forever
Science writer Carl Zimmer is back on the show this week, to talk about his new book Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed (Sterling, 2011). While he doesn’t have any tattoos himself (or any plans to get one) Zimmer … Continue reading
Posted in Blogs, books, Features, Frontpage, Radio Segments, Slideshow, Uncategorized, Visual Art
Tagged books, Carl Zimmer, tattoos, Visual Art
2 Comments
Picturing Medicine’s History
The Art of Medicine: Over 2,000 Years of Images and Imagination by Julie Anderson, Emm Barnes, and Emma Shackleton. (University of Chicago Press, 2012.) Coffee table book alert. Actually I probably wouldn’t put The Art of Medicine on my coffee … Continue reading
Posted in Blogs, books, Features, Frontpage, History, Slideshow, Uncategorized, Visual Art
Tagged art, art history, History, Medicine, nurse
1 Comment
What’s (Not) In A Name
As a published author and successful painter, James Prosek has more tools than most artists for communicating what he sees in nature. But he’s dissatisfied. Mostly with Linnaeus and his eponymous system for naming the natural world. (Remember? Kingdom, Phylum, … Continue reading
Posted in Events, Features, Frontpage, Radio Segments, Slideshow, Uncategorized, Visual Art
Tagged exhibitions, fish, James Prosek, natural history, Nature
1 Comment
The Sky’s The Limit
This week Science Friday talks with Kate Ascher, author of the new book “The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper.” This is a true coffee table book–big and beautiful, with lots of interesting graphics. Page through it for some tidbits to … Continue reading
Posted in Blogs, books, Features, Frontpage, Radio Segments, Uncategorized
Tagged Architecture, engineering, Kate Ascher, skyscrapers, Technology
5 Comments
Found: The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott
Next month marks the 100th year since the first Antarctic expedition reached the South Pole. (Congratulations, Mr. Amundsen.) This week Science Friday talks with the authors of two books about those famous first expeditions. Edward Larson’s Empire of Ice reexamines … Continue reading
Posted in Blogs, books, Features, Frontpage, History, Radio Segments, Slideshow
Tagged Amundsen, Antartica, David M. Wilson, Edward Larson, Ernest Shackleton, History, Robert Falcon Scott, South Pole
6 Comments
Stone Age Paint Shop Discovered in South Africa
Once upon a time, a paint-maker in South Africa stacked up his (or maybe her) tools inside a mixing bowl–actually an abalone shell–and left them in his workshop. No one’s sure what happened to him after that, or why his … Continue reading
Posted in Features, Frontpage, Visual Art
Tagged abalone, archaeology, Blombos Cave, Christopher Henshilwood, early humans, ochre, paint, Stone Age, toolkit, tools
3 Comments
The Art and Science of High-Tech Cuisine
Former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold is a man of many passions: he studied cosmology with Stephen Hawking, discovered T. Rex fossils in Montana with Jack Horner, and has won awards for his wildlife and nature photography. After that, some people … Continue reading
Accidental Art, from the Vaults of the Natural History Museum
Sometimes art happens by accident. Entomologists, ichthyologists, arachnologists, geologists, and more all rely on imaging technologies to learn more about the fish, coral, bugs, and landscapes they study. The images they create communicate important information, but they can also be … Continue reading
The Quark’s Literary Origins
Happy Bloomsday! Each year on June 16, literary geeks worldwide honor the life and work of Irish writer James Joyce (Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). In celebration, artist and writer Jonathon Keats shares … Continue reading
Posted in Features, Frontpage, History, Literature
Tagged History, language, Literature, physics, Quantum Physics
3 Comments
Afraid of Commitment? Try Quantum Entanglement.
Jonathon Keats calls himself an “experimental philosopher.” His strange and surprising thought experiments are often based on scientific ideas. He established a temple for the worship of science; he collaborated with geneticists in an attempt to determine the DNA of … Continue reading
Posted in Features, Frontpage, Video
Tagged Conceptual Art, physics, Quantum Physics, thought experiment
1 Comment
Office Hours with Michio Kaku
In the latest Desktop Diaries video, we take a trip to the office of theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku. Kaku’s office is full of decades’ worth of books, awards, and bygone technology. He says, “it’s pointless to have a … Continue reading
Tips and Tricks for Your DIY Pinhole Camera
Guest blogger Brendan Monroe shares tips and images from his mooncake tin pinhole camera. Brendan is also a brilliant illustrator; check out some of his science-inspired drawings at http://www.brendanmonroe.com/. If you are interested in photography and want to try something … Continue reading
Health for Sale: Medicine Meets Advertising
As a chemical engineering student in the mid-1950s, Bill Helfand enrolled in an art appreciation course to expand his educational horizons. He was so taken with it that he would skip engineering courses to attend the art class instead, and … Continue reading
Posted in Features, Frontpage, Visual Art
Tagged Advertising, art history, Health, Medicine
Leave a comment
Evidence: Forensic Photography as Art
Artist Angela Strassheim began her career as a forensic photographer in a crime lab. She soon left to focus on art full-time, but she didn’t entirely leave the field behind. Her body of work, Evidence, is a documentary art project … Continue reading
A Spacesuit Ballet
Of the spacesuit he wore on the moon, Neil Armstrong wrote, “it was tough, reliable, and almost cuddly.” But that cuddly suit, made by the company Playtex (yes, that Playtex), had some stiff competition (literally) from rival rigid, metal designs. … Continue reading
Posted in Features, Radio Segments, Video
Tagged Apollo, Fashion, music, NASA, space, videos
8 Comments
Desktop Diaries: Brian Greene
Desktop Diaries is back! Starting with the premise that we spend more time at our desks than almost anywhere else, this series take trips to workspaces of brilliant minds. This time, we visit the tidy office of string theorist Brian … Continue reading
Posted in Features, Radio Segments
Tagged Brian Greene, Desktop Diaries, physics, String Theory
1 Comment
Illustrations from Science/Art History: Buffon’s Histoire naturelle
Before Darwin’s finches, even before Audubon’s birds, there were Buffon’s elephants, leopards, and bats. A key figure in the French Enlightenment, naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon produced 44 volumes of lavishly illustrated natural history called Histoire naturelle. The volumes, … Continue reading
Posted in Features, Frontpage, History, Visual Art
Tagged History, illustration, natural history
4 Comments
Frank Netter, the “Michelangelo of Medicine”
Born in 1906, Frank Netter always wanted to be an artist. But according to curator and Netter scholar Anne Wood Humphries, Netter’s mother told him, “the artist’s life is dissolute!” So he went to medical school. When he graduated in … Continue reading
Posted in Features, Frontpage, History, Visual Art
Tagged History, illustration, Medicine
10 Comments
