Scientific Illustration Research Articles

La representación gráfica del virión del SARS-CoV-2 en España: comparación entre la prensa impresa y los informativos televisivos

Introducción: Los medios de comunicación tradicionales están desempeñando en España un papel destacado en la cobertura informativa de la COVID-19. Objetivo: Estudiar las representaciones del virión del SARSCovid-2 en los informativos de televisión y prensa, las motivaciones que subyacen en su diseño y su relación con las imágenes científicas del mismo. Metodología: Se ha utilizado una metodología mixta cualitativa-cuantitativa con entrevistas a expertos y análisis mediante el estadístico Chi-cuadrado de sendas muestras de 1.732 noticias, extraídas de la versión impresa de 19 diarios españoles, y de 121 representaciones del virión en 37 programas informativos de televisión. Resultados: Un 36,02% de las imágenes de la prensa en papel son ilustraciones científicas, mientras que en los informativos de TV sólo un 11,57%. Conclusiones: Se demuestra que la prensa ha sido más fiel a las imágenes científicas que los informativos televisivos. Las principales cadenas utilizan en sus informativos ilustraciones en 3D del virión donde frecuentemente destacan espículas alargadas terminadas en tentáculos, lo que responde a una motivación estética y de atraer la atención del espectador.

Towards integrating art and freshwater science

Towards integrating art and freshwater science

The software that powers scientific illustration.

The web-based tool BioRender has become a staple of biomedical research drawings. The web-based tool BioRender has become a staple of biomedical research drawings.

An homage to Khayyam and Pascal

I am a multidisciplinary artist with an interest in the taxonomy of image-text relationships. For the past several years I have been studying scientific illustrations and texts in medieval Persian ...

Science‐telling through art

Science‐telling through art

“The Shape of a Four-Footed Animal in General”: Kant on Empirical Schemata and the System of Nature

In this article, I argue that although Kant’s account of empirical schemata in the Critique of Pure Reason is primarily used to explain the shared content of intuitions and empirical concepts, it is also informed by methodological problems in natural history. I argue that empirical schemata, which are rules for determining the spatiotemporal form of objects, not only serve to connect individual intuitions with concepts but also concern the very features of objects on the basis of which they were connected and ordered in taxonomic systems based on similarity of form. I then suggest that Kant likely had scientific illustrations in mind in his discussion of empirical images in the Schematism chapter and that his account of schemata can help explain the epistemic function of these images in early modern science.

Dinosaur art evolves with new discoveries in paleontology

Under soft museum lights, the massive skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex is easy to imagine fleshed out and alive, scimitar teeth glimmering. What did it look like in life? How did its face contort under the Montana sun some 66 million years ago? What color and texture was its body? Was it gauntly wrapped in scales, fluffy with feathers, or a mix of both? Among the earliest examples of paleoart, this 1830 watercolor painting, called Duria Antiquior or “A more ancient Dorset,” imagines England's South Coast populated by ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and pterosaurs. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche. Increasingly, paleontologists can offer answers to these questions, thanks to evidence of dinosaur soft tissues discovered in the last 30 years. Translating those discoveries into works that satisfy the public’s imagination is the purview of paleoartists, the scientific illustrators who reconstruct prehistory in paintings, drawings, and sculptures in exhibit halls, books, magazines, and films. Those creations necessarily require some artistic license, says freelancer Gabriel Ugueto, who’s based in Miami, FL. As new discoveries offer artists a better sense of what their subjects looked like, the findings also constrain their creativity, he says, by leaving fewer details to the imagination. Even so, he and other artists welcome new discoveries, as the field strives for accuracy. The challenge now is sifting through all this new information, including characteristics that are still up for debate, such as the extent of T. rex’s feathers, to conjure new visions of the prehistoric world. Paleoartists often have a general science background or formal artistic training, although career paths vary. “There is no one way that people get into paleoart,” says Mark Witton, a paleoartist and paleontologist at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, who recently wrote a paleoart handbook (1). Regardless of their …

Progressive Colorization via Iterative Generative Models

Colorization is the process of coloring monochrome images. It has been widely used in photo processing and scientific illustration. However, colorizing grayscale images is an intrinsic ill-posed and ambiguous problem, with multiple plausible solutions. To address this issue, we develop a novel progressive automatic colorization via iterative generative models (iGM) that can produce satisfactory colorization in an unsupervised manner. In particular, the generative model is exploited in multi-color spaces (e.g., RGB, YCbCr) jointly and enforced with linearly autocorrelative constraint. This is regarded as the key prior information to pave the way for producing the most probable colorization in high-dimensional space. Experiments on indoor and outdoor scenes reveal that iGM produces more realistic and finer results, compared to state-of-the-arts.

Визуальная интерпретация в изучении европейской архитектурной графики XVII–XVIII веков

The article deals with the methods of visual interpretation in the context of the problems of “newart history” for the study of works of European drawing and printed graphics of early Modern times. It aims atthe possibilities of expanding the methodological and source base of art studies through the introduction of interdisciplinary approaches to the material. Modern culture generates the new of historicism of thinking focused on the value of memory — from a personal experience and intragroup constant to a social function and collective phenomenon. Actualization of methods of cultural reconstruction and interpretation of visual practices allows usto consider graphics as works of art and as documents of the era, revealing the scope of aesthetic preferences, customer expectations, ideas of landscape design, concepts of the relationship between architecture and nature. The study has introduced the principles of complex analysis of graphic works, and paid special attention to the ideas of visual rhetoric in the interpretation of images of architecture. The role of the customer’s personality, the question of goal-setting in the creation of graphic cycles, and the features of cartography and travelogues raised the issue of social role and political representation in the selection of visual motifs. A new set of approaches to the analysis of the subject field, the principles of interpretation of the composition, and spatial structures of architectural studies have been suggested, restoration materials and historical reconstructions, scientific and book illustrations, graphic“travel” and species engravings, historical and topographic publications. Methods for visual interpretation of the patterns of realization of architectural forms in a chart help to identify a comprehensive principle of existence of such images in European culture 17th‑18th centuries. Appeal to the images of Gothic creates not only a negative assessment of aesthetic features of the style, but the interpretation of the principles of using of motives for rhetorical indications of the antiquity of the tradition and commitment to the ideals of power and faith.

Charles-Alexandre Lesueur in Philadelphia: His Remarkable Contributions to Natural History and Scientific Illustration

Here the nearly forgotten contributions of Charles-Alexandre Lesueur (1778-1846) to natural history during his stay in Philadelphia are reviewed. He was a self-taught artist and naturalist whose first occupation was that of an illustrator working for Nicolas Baudin, the commander of a Napoleonic expedition to explore the Austral regions in the early 1800’s. Through his work with the naturalist Francois Peron, both during and after the expedition, he became a reputed naturalist in his own right. Following the demise of Peron, Lesueur traveled to America in 1815 as an assistant for William MacLure, a geological explorer and philanthropist. Although his contract was for but two years, Lesueur resided in North America from 1816 to 1837. He first lived in Philadelphia, from 1816 to 1825, and there he made his critical contributions to the establishment of the one of the first and major societies of natural history in America and its journal, the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. During this time, Lesueur published on a wide variety of taxa, created important contacts for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia with renowned French naturalists, provided illustrations for other naturalists, and even aided in the printing of the journal. Although Lesueur is recognized as one of the key figures of science in 19th century America, his American scientific work is actually little known. This illustrated essay is an effort to shine a light on his neglected natural history work and his striking scientific illustrations from his time in Philadelphia.

Источники по истории Сибири первой половины XVIII в.: рисунки художников Второй Камчатской экспедиции

The article based on complex analysis of geographical, naturalistic (botanic, zoological, mineralogical), archaeological and ethnographic drawings performed by artists of the academic detachment of the Second Kamchatka expedition J. Ch. Berckhan, J. W. Lürsenius, J. C. Decker is shown importance of these works as subject-matter and disciplinary scientific illustrations representative of development the Russian science. It is revealed that the images of the named artists are realistic visual representations of the past of Siberia and should be used together with the scientific works of the participants of the Second Kamchatka Expedition to study the history of the region. The qualitative characteristics of naturalistic and archaeological drawings allow for the reconstruction of museum collections that have not preserved to this day. It is concluded that drawings of J. Ch. Berckhan, J. W. Lürsenius, J. C. Decker are picturesque memorial monuments of the Russian pictural art, valuable sources on the history of exploration of Siberia and visual history of Russia in the modern period.

Radiant: understanding endometrial cancer, vaginal brachytherapy and motherhood through words and images

Este artigo resulta de uma análise antropológica centrada na experiência do diagnóstico e tratamento de um adenocarcinoma do endométrio vivida por uma mulher portuguesa. A dimensão incorporada do seu conhecimento e narrativa permite-nos compreender um conjunto específico de problemas enfrentados por mulheres com câncer ginecológico, mostrando como concepções de doença, tratamento, corporeidade, sexualidade, maternidade e resistência se interligam. A doença e o seu filho de três anos emergem como dois elementos opostos da história, veiculando a noção de uma resistência construída pela parentalidade, ou pela condição de mãe, usando-se esse vínculo contra as violências e sofrimentos produzidos pelo câncer e seu tratamento. Metodologicamente, esta análise combina narrativa oral, antropologia e ilustração científica criativa, ou seja, pintura e desenho etnográfico potenciados pelo uso da metáfora e da imaginação. Este exercício híbrido e colaborativo implicou uma mistura nivelada de fala, texto e imagem, partindo das palavras da mulher entrevistada. Conceptualmente, estas práticas visuais criativas são entendidas como recursos ontológicos, epistemológicos e performativos, ampliando a forma como a ciência social pode produzir conhecimento e ação em questões de saúde e doença. Lua aceitou contar a sua história preservando a sua identidade sob um pseudónimo, não encontrando abertura social para relatos sobre úteros cancerosos e sessões de braquiterapia vaginal. Respondendo ao seu desconforto, esta análise ilustrada também pretende desmantelar estereótipos enraizados na forma como vemos e entendemos as mulheres, as doenças ginecológicas e os órgãos sexuais, trazendo para a discussão um tipo de câncer que, apesar de frequente, permanece ausente da discussão pública e da imagética coletiva, sendo igualmente descurado pela ciência social.

150 years of scientific illustration

Image-making, research and visual technologies have shaped each other over the past century and a half, argues Geoffrey Belknap, marking Nature’s anniversary. Image-making, research and visual technologies have shaped each other over the past century and a half, argues Geoffrey Belknap, marking Nature’s anniversary.

Scientific Illustration in Biology: Art for Education and Science

The article discusses the importance of scientific illustration, particularly in biological research. The authors dwell on the quality criteria for scientific illustration, highlight the peculiarities of drawing microscopic objects, and give practical recommendations for drawing of biological objects. The necessity of introducing courses on scientific illustration in the educational programs of Russian universities is noted.

Portraits of Human Monsters in the Renaissance: Dwarves, Hirsutes, and Castrati as Idealized Anatomical Anomalies

Portraits of Human Monsters in the Renaissance: Dwarves, Hirsutes, and Castrati as Idealized Anatomical Anomalies

Automatic geometry, metrology, and visualisation techniques for 3D scanned vessels

The CVA is an international project for research of ancient pottery. Presently, CVA-Austria plays a key role in the use of non-invasive digital documentation of antique vessels. An online database for ancient pottery with born digital assets, with a special focus on 3D models of vessels and their capacities, is set up by the ODEEG project. To this end, more than four hundred ancient Greek and Cypriot vessels (10th-4th c. BCE), stored at different museum collections, have been 3D scanned. Calculating the capacity of ancient vessels is an important question for many archaeologists, as this helps understanding manufacture, function, transportation, and trade issues. In this paper, we address this problem by presenting the ODEEG App Package, which enables to compute automatically the capacity and wall thickness of vessels, to automatically reconstruct the inner surfaces of incomplete 3D scanned vessels, and to (semi-)automatically generate profile sections and scientific illustrations.

The chairs of hereditary cancer: understanding time and illness using creative ethnographic drawing

Using scientific illustration, this article aims to examine how time is experienced, understood, and managed in hereditary malignancies, analysing the breast cancer story of a Portuguese woman with BRCA1/2 mutations. Blending lived experience, anthropology, and art, this text results from a transdisciplinary qualitative exercise, incorporating embodied knowledge, speech, and creative ethnographic drawing at the core of the research, using them as methodological and heuristic resources. Based on a narrative collected in an informal interview, it suggests the use of visual and creative methodologies aimed at a reinforced understanding of cancer. Combining text and images, we will analyse the multiple meanings of time that permeate this story, searching for the experiences, uses, and meanings of moments of waiting, interruption, slowness, delay, urgency, and acceleration, before, during and after illness and treatment, using and drawing chairs, as concrete objects and metaphors, to give them form. Waiting emerges as the most relevant experience to understand her hereditary cancer story, linking past, present, and future within a form of suffering that minimizes physical pain.

Biodiversity Literature Repository (BLR), a repository for FAIR data and publications

Scholarly publications in taxonomy are used as the sole carrier of the communication channel to publicize the description of new species, more generally any kind of taxon, their augmentations in form of re-descriptions to small notes such as additional observation records, or deprecations when the name of a taxon is changing. This is communicated in a highly standardized way. For nomenclatural issues, the Codes (e.g. International Code of Zoological Nomenclature) require certain elements, and for comparative reasons, highly formalized language, document structure, illustrations and citation systems are used. This estimated corpus of 500M printed pages includes all we know about the biodiversity in the sciences as well as what has been processed in terms of specimens in the natural history collections. This includes tens of millions of scientific illustrations, taxonomic treatments, i.e. parts of articles that are clearly delimited and headed by a label including a taxonomic name, materials citation, citations of articles and treatments, specimens by their specimen codes, collections by their collection codes, and collectors by their name. Implicitly, the entire catalogue of life is waiting to be liberated. Only recently, with the advent of text and data mining and of publishing, a change is taking place to make all this data after publishing immediately widely accessible and digitally accessible knowledge in terms of findability, accessibility, interoperability and reuse (FAIR). The Biodiversity Literature Repository (BLR) is a community in Zenodo, the open science repository at CERN and part of the European project OpenAIRE. Its goal is to provide a long-term, stable, open access repository for the long tail, preferably FAIR research data. Together with Plazi (http://plazi.org)and Pensoft, BLR has been created to allow deposition of taxonomic articles enhanced with links to data extracted from therein and deposited in BLR, such as illustrations or taxonomic treatments. The metadata for these deposits is enriched with extensive links to cited sources, or the source article. For each of the deposits, a DataCite DOI is minted, unless one exists already. The deposits can be found using either the search functionality of Zenodo, or the BLR website, which makes use of the millions of facts extracted from the publications via the Plazi workflow. A prime user of the BLR data is GBIF which is using the taxonomic treatments and the figures in their respective view of the taxonomic articles. The input of new taxa allows updating the GBIF taxonomic backbone almost instantaneously and keeping it up-to-date with publishing of new taxa or synonymies. Currently, 35,600 articles, and 190,000 images are available, with an expected 300,000 taxonomic treatments by Fall 2019 and almost 30% of the annually new described species are accessible online, both in human and machine readable format. With the support of the Arcadia Fund, the goal is to provide access to over 50% of the annually described new species, from the necessary number of taxonomic journals, over 600,000 taxonomic treatments and 350,000 illustrations by 2021, hopefully with an increasing community adding to this new resource as author, publisher, or data liberator.

昆虫標本作製法・撮影法・活用法（1）昆虫形態図の描画法

昆虫標本作製法・撮影法・活用法（1）昆虫形態図の描画法

Hypertrichosis in the Socio-Cultural Space of Russia (Late XIX – Early XX Centuries)

This article considers the evolution of ideas about otherness between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the imperial civilizational paradigm was replaced by the revolutionary proclamation of the New Man. The emphasis in this case is on the tradition of description of excessively hairy people in Russian culture and its scientific, anthropological, and literary illustrations. Referring to examples from cultural life and from the works of Anton Chekhov, Evgeny Zamyatin, Alexander Belyaev, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Andrei Platonov, the author demonstrates that in the context of the debate about the disappearance of old civilizations and the construction of new ones, “hairy people” served as an impetus for discussions about personal, collective, social, or even national identity. The work considers various exhibitions of such “monsters” or “freaks”, such as Julia Pastrana, Adrian Evtikhiev, Fyodor Petrov or Vasilisa Fyodorova, who were shown to the public in the second half of the nineteenth century because of their excessive hairiness during travelling shows and at anthropological exhibitions. The second part of the work analyses memoirs and reminiscences about hairy and furry people in both the utopian and dystopian literature of the early twentieth century. Addressing the topic of “hairy people”, literature questions the uniqueness and radicality of the project meant to create a new man in Soviet Russia. Although the Soviet civilizational model was built in declarative opposition to the previous imperial model, the motif of the “hairy man” shows that it was still based on the previously formed image of the Other.