One night, when I was definitely completely sober in every way possible (of course!), it struck me that while both the European and Chinese zodiacs (ones I’m familiar with) display a nice variety of animals with and without backbones (I happen to be spineless according to the European one, and scaly and flame-breathing according to [...]

For me, the second more relaxing activity after microscopy is vector art. And then regular art. (This excludes non-activities, such as napping in the sun, and staring at life passing by. That’s all I’d do if one didn’t have to work — watch things.) Since I’m not often creative with my subject matter, the art [...]

If I only had a private jet at my beck and call, I could zip around the country to all these fine exhibits… sigh! _____________ EXHIBITS: NORTHEAST REGION Princeton University’s ART of SCIENCE May 10, 2013 – Atrium, Friend Center Engineering Library Princeton University 35 Olden Street Princeton, NJ The Art of Science exhibition marks [...]

As Gwenn Seemel points out in her richly illustrated book, Crime Against Nature, the non-human animal kingdom is chock-full of examples that challenge many of our deeply held beliefs about what is “natural” behavior in everything from sexual preference to lifestyle choices to gender roles and even gender identity. A third gender, male pregnancy and [...]

Science communication has seldom had a better champion than Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield who just returned to Earth last night. Astronauts tweeting and talking from space is not a new phenomena, and though interesting scientific experiments abound way up on the ISS, they weren’t what caught the public’s imagination this go round. It was [...]

Science-artist creator and connoisseur Hayley Gillespie is chasing down a goal that until now I’ve only daydreamed about: she and the rest of her crew at Art.Science.Gallery are attempting to make a real, bricks & mortar science-art gallery come true!  And there’s less than 24 hours left to do it! * Some of the prizes are gorgeous, [...]

I really don’t enjoy playing Internet Police. After this happened and this needed to be said, I don’t want to write another story about image misappropriation. About another brazen misuse of some science illustration. Le sigh. Oh wait, first rule of writing something impactful: start positive. Ok. Ahem. Once more unto the breach! In a [...]

The promised Information Economy based on creative culture is a sweatshop. Award winning illustrators, fine artists, photographers, cartoonists and animators are routinely ripped off, mashed-up, and reshared without attribution, let alone money. “But it’s always been this way!” “Good luck changing the whole internet!”  It wasn’t supposed to be this way, and creators don’t have [...]

Any evolutionary biologist will tell you that flight has evolved independently several times in the history of life on earth, but can they tell you how many times muscle leggings have evolved? We don’t generally talk fashion here at Symbiartic, but many consider high fashion to be art, so you’ll forgive me for a moment [...]

James Prosek is a person who continually challenges the neat categories we create to delineate where one discipline ends and another begins. In his own words: I want to be able to be a writer and a painter and an illustrator and a sculptor and not have to be confined by the taxonomies of art [...]

No William Morris didn’t design this 18th century simulacrum – it’s “a microscopic image of lung surfactant, a lipid-protein material that aids in respiration by reducing the amount of energy needed”. And it’s elegantly fantastic. In a recent issue of BioMedical Beat, authors Prajnaparamita Dhar, Elizabeth Eck, Jacob N. Israelachvili, Dong Woog Lee, Younjin Min, Arun [...]

[It's with great pleasure the Symbiartic team is featuring this Guest Post by illustrator Nathaniel Gold. Gold is the artist behind the wonderful illustrations found on The Primate Diaries by Eric Michael Johnson, and has twice been featured as Image of the Week (once, twice) here on the Scientific American Blog Network. I was excited [...]