Life-size chocolate skulls

Whilst browsing on Firebox I noticed these chocolate Skulls and they reminded me of my previous post on Chocolate skulls with walnut brains. I thought that these too were small treats but what is in fact on offer is 2.5kg of life-size chocolate cranium molded on an actual human skull offering exceptional likeness to life. The team say "Each skull is cast by hand in intricate detail, displaying the ravages of age as well as various timeworn scars and bumps". One of these will set you back a hefty £350 but the look on people's faces as you nibble away at it would be priceless.

Nike's x-ray tights

Nike released these pretty cool x-ray leggings at the end of last year and I keep meaning to post about them. So here they are - Nike thinking outside the box.

 

The say in some admittedly effusive 'brand' speak:

 "The new Nike Women’s Exclusive Print tight is a performance based pant for the athlete unafraid to make a statement. On the outside, she might be the girl next door, but on the inside, her body has survived grueling workouts, often pushing through pain, broken bones, pulled muscles and harsh tears."

Still, despite over-egging the campaign behind the tights, they look pretty awesome.

Tiny, tiny baby mouse. How cute.

When I say baby, what I really mean is embryo. This 18.5-day-old double transgenic mouse embryo (transgenic simply meaning that it contains genes from another species) was taken by Gloria Kwon and it won 1st place in the annual Nikon Small World photomicrography competition back in 2007.

photo by Gloria Kwon, copyright of Nikon Small World

The image was taken at 17x magnification. The green that you see is the in-tact yolk sac with green fluorescence  The rest of the embryo, including the placenta, have red fluorescence.

The image was taken using widefield microscopy with various lighting conditions under brightfield as well as green and red fluorescent filters in darkfield which enable her to show up details of the embryo that would be difficult to see or document otherwise.

Chocolate skulls with walnut brains

Ruth and Sira García Trigueros are twin sister illustrators and graphic designers from the north of Spain. They are currently selling these handmade chocolate skulls with walnut or candy brains on etsy and they look delicious!

Ruth and Sira say that they "love the smell of damp earth, the mountains, the woods, walking around barefoot and eating directly from the saucepan. We listen to black metal. We are quiet. We smile a lot, sometimes people freak out. We play drums and bass in a band that doesn't exist". They seem cool.

Mouse intestines on twitter

#Super resolution image of mouse intestine from @API_DeltaVision stained with #Phalloidin & #DAPI #microscopy #biology twitter.com/GECellBiology/…

— GE Cell Biology (@GECellBiology) February 20, 2012

Sciartist spotlight: Stephen Gaeta

I came across a series of creative prints over at the Street Anatomy store the other week and keep meaning to write about the artist, Stephen Gaeta. Stephen is a physician-scientist currently completing his internal medicine residency. After completing his phd dissertation on cardiac arrhythmia he said he wanted to "display his accomplishment without hanging a certificate on the wall". He therefore used the words of his dissertation in a print of a heart (similar to the print below) to display his achievement. From this, he continues to create typographical imagery from classic scientific masterpieces.

Click each image for a close-up.

Beat poetry

Text from the seminal 1809 work of cardiology Cases of the Organic Disease of the Heart, with Dissections and Some Remarks Intended to Point Out the Distinctive Symptoms of These Diseases, by John Collins Warren. In this work, Warren describes the symptoms of 11 of his patients with heart disease as they presented in his office and, later, on his dissecting table. 

Transgenic
Text from Chromosome 1 of the human genome.

Extraocular

Text from Zoonomia, the 1794 masterpiece of Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles), in which he attempted to catalog and explain human anatomy, pathology, and physiology, including the visual system.

Reactant
Text from the The Sceptical Chymist by Robert Boyle (1661), in which he provided the foundations of modern chemistry by proving that matter is comprised of individual atoms.

Anatomical kissing

Anatomical kissing by Alex Grey

 

The intricacies of life: animating the cell

Drew Berry, a biomedical animator, is helping researchers and laymen alike to see the unseeable. We have no ways to directly observe molecules and what they do but at TEDxSydney Berry shows his scientifically accurate and aesthitcally rich animations that are helping researchers to visualise and further understand the unseeable processes within our own cells.

 

ps. If you are not familiar with TED.com it is time you were. Their tag line is "Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world" and that is exactly what they are. Focusing on science, technology, arts and business. Go explore >>

Sick: Candice Coust's knitted anatomy

Candace Coust is a Calgary-based mixed-media artist whose recent work has involved knitting anatomical works including full bodies, pulled apart at the threads and this stop-motion video of a faciful voyage through our mysterious innards.

Candice describes Sick as 'a fanciful, endoscopic journey through the knitted body that is violently disrupted by the discovery of a malignant malady'.

The human body as a tube map

You're gonna have to click this one to make it big. soz.

The Human Body as  Subway System by Sam Loman

Another old classic that has made its way around the cyberverse* is this map of the inner workings of the human body in the style of a tube map (or subway to my readers from across the pond).

Illustrated by Sam Loman, it depicts the arterial, digestive, musculoskeletal and five other systems with junctions where they intertwine, for example the kidney and the heart.

It's pretty, no doubt and it contains 8 of the 11 human systems. But... It does not include the integumentary system (skin, hair, nails), reproductive or endocrine systems; it includes only the central nervous system and not the peripheral nervous system; and there are junctions where there is no meeting of systems, for example at the humerous and radius. However, I don't think Sam intended the map to be used in a biology exam.

It's a visual metaphor and looks awesome so lets not get picky about the details.

*Sometimes I like to try and think of as many words for internet as possible.

Bombay Bicycle Club's anatomical cover art

I caught a glimpse of a poster whilst rushing for the jubilee line today and fell just a little bit in love with an artist. It was for the new Bombay Bicycle club album, A Different Kind of Fix, and the cover (below) is an artistic impression of the brain, oesophagus and nasal passage.

I came home to research the artisit and found that it is by illustrator Katie Scott. On her blog she also has photos of the album interior (below) which I think is also beautiful and can imagine similar prints adorning the walls of my new flat!

Katie has amassed an eclectic collection of anatomical and nature-themed illustrations, some intended to be more accurate interpretations than others. I particularly like the intricate detail in her work and her subtle use of colour. There are loads of illustrations to look through on her blog or website and you can also show your support for her work or see what she's up to by following her on twitter.

Katie Scott at her Degree Show in Brighton in June

Let's hug!

One of my fave images from I Love Doodle byt he uber-talented Lim Heng Swee

I wear my heart on my sleeve

Just a little doodle on a rainy Wednesday

You are the rose of my heart

Tattoo and fine artist, Michele Gonzalez, created this beautiful print of a recent watercolor painting on an old music sheet, entitled Rose of My Heart.

Anatomical audio book covers for Penguin

Today I stumbled upon these beautiful anatomical audio book covers for the Penguin Children's Classics range. They are the work of the advertising agency Y&R in Malaysia.

Visions of the heart

I love photomicrography and spend a lot of time on the Nikon Small World website perusing snapshots of the scientist's trade. Today's photographs, however, come from the projects funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF). BHF asked the researchers of it's 1200 projects to submit the best images that they have produced in the course of their work for their Reflections of Research competition. Here's what they came up with -

Winner: Feeding the heart
Professor Nicolas Smith, Kings College London and University of Oxford
This virtual model shows the blood flow through vessels serving the heart. During the heartbeat, different amounts of pressure are put on the different blood vessels that feed the heart – shown here in different colours.

Runner up: What colour is your heart?
Dr Vanessa Ferreira, Dr Stefan Piechnik, Dr Theodoros Karamitsos and Professor Stefan Neubauer, University of Oxford
This collage of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the heart is inspired by a new imaging technique called T1-mapping. T1-mapping uses colour to give more information about heart disease than standard black and white MRI scans.

Shortlisted: A fatty plaque
Professor David Greaves (University of Oxford) and Professor Ed Fisher (NYU & Eastman Visiting Professor in Oxford)
This image is a cross-section of a "fatty plaque" from a mouse artery. Fatty plaques are a mixture of "bad" LDL-cholesterol, immune cells and other material, which can build up in arteries and eventually rupture, releasing a blood clot which can cause a heart attack or stroke. This image was created using a technique called immunoflourescence microscopy.

Dr Patrizia Camelliti, Imperial College London
This image shows human heart cells growing on a bioengineered "scaffold". Cells have been stained with fluorescent molecules to identify the nuclei in blue, and the cell body, in pink. The research behind this image involves working out the roles that different cells play in heart structure and function, and particularly the relationship between cells and their surrounding environment.

Dr Elisabeth Ehler, Kings College London
Beating heart cells – called cardiomyocytes – sit within a "scaffold" that keeps the heart in shape. Problems with this scaffold are a hallmark of some types of heart disease. This image shows a green cardiomyocyte in a Petri dish. It appears to be making contact with another type of cell, called a fibroblast, shown in red. Fibroblasts help produce the scaffold that holds the heart in shape. Understanding how these different types of cell interact will aid our understanding of how heart disease develops.

You can see all the photos at the BHF website and also the Best Video Awards.

All photographs copyright of British Heart Foundation. Descriptions of photos from British Heart Foundation.

Colours of the brainbow

by Jean Livet, Harvard University

Brainbow-ing involves neurons of the brain being mapped with flourescent proteins, allowing them to glow with specific colours under a light source. By controlling the proteins involved it is possible to give each neuron a different colour.

In 2000 Jeff Lichtman and Joshua Sanes began playing around with the neurons of mice, and after crossing different genetic lines, created mice with three different shades of cells, blue, green and yellow. By 2007 the Brainbow technique was developed.

Tamily Weissman, "Brainbow” transgenic mouse hippocampus (40X)

The Havard Gazette describes the process in full detail if you're interested.

The person you love is 72.8% water

Teagan White, based on a quote from 'The Art of Looking Sideways' by Alan Fletcher 

Rat seminipherous tubule

This photo, taken by Alan C. Opsahl of Connecticut is a 40x magnified picture of a rat seminiferous tubule. Who knew rats harboured such beauty?!

Miroslav Holub

Miroslav Holub, 1923-1998

Without a doubt my favourite scientist-poet, Miroslav Holub, was an immunologist by vocation and poet in his spare time. He considered his poetry very much a pastime but I personally find his work exceptional. I thought I would share my favourite poem with you.

Collision

To think I might have been dead,
he said to himself, ashamed, as if this were
a curse of the heart, raising a bundle of bones
to a man’s height. As if it were suddenly
forbidden to touch even words that had dropped to the ground.
Besides, he was afraid of finding
his body in a metal press.Embarrassing
down to the capillaries.

the tram stood jammed above him
like an icebreaker’s prow and all that was left of the car
was a grotesque pretzel with a chunk bitten off
by the dentures of a demented angel.
Something dark was dripping on the rails,
and a strikingly pale wind was leafing
through a book still warm.

People were forming a circle and with deaf-mute
sympathy awaited the play’s catharsis,
like maggots emerging from
under the wings of a beheaded chicken.
From afar came the approaching wail of sirens,
congealing in the jinxed air-conditioning of that day
and that minute. Dewdrops were falling
on the back of the neck like remnants of
atmospheric dignity. Embarrassing down to the capillaries.

No, thank you, he said, I’ll wait;
for a silent film had started to run
without subtitles, without colour and without answers.

     And what about the magnetic monopoles
escaping seconds after the Big Bang,
protons violating the irreversibility of the flow of time?

     What about the giant molecular clouds
under the galaxy’s shoulders, conceiving
the embryos of stars?

     What about the loneliness of the first genes
accumulating amino acids in shallow primeval pools
at the expense of entropic usurers?

     What about the desiccated starfish
like proto-eagles’ talons dug into the bed
of a vanishing sea?

     What about the mortal migrations of birds
observing the sun’s inclination
and the roar of sex hormones?

     What about the caged half-crazed
orang-utan who vomits because
he has nothing else to do?

     What about the mice which for a thousand years
have learned to sing and the frogs balancing
on one leg like the thigh
of a beauty queen from Mesopotamia?

     What about poetry, an enterprise
so disorderly it twists the rulers
and increases the squint of school inspectors?

     And what about the little girl
in the leukemia ward who, on the toilet,
tried to show what kind of moustache the kind doctor has,
but as her skinny sticks of hands let go of
the edge of the bowl, she falls in and so
tried again and again?

     And what about the weak-kneed intellectual,
the professor who understood the approximate universe
but forgot the traffic rules?

No, thank you, he said to some uniform,
I don’t need anything. My papers are in my pocket
but I can’t reach there. And he tried
to smile a little at this embarrassment of complicated creation.
It’s all my fault, he said,
thank you.
                 And then he died.

By Miroslav Holub

Another of my favourites is Interferon but it's a weighty tome and this isn't the place to showcase it, however, if you like this little taster of his work I am in no doubt you would enjoy his translations, a particular favourite of mine is the book Poems Before and After: Collected English Translations, it is insanely brilliant.

While we're at it, and if you do nothing else after reading this, may I please recommend you check out Brief Thoughts on Cracks and if you don't like his work after that then I give up my case, please continue you with your day.