The Eyes Have It

Sun Babies

I really like the way Jennifer Ormerod's illustration reflects the subject of this interview with Gregory Stock, the director of the UCLA Program on Medicine, Science and Technology focusing on "our shiny happy clone future." It also kind of captures the whole Teletubbies thing.

Most telling quote from the interview: "When I look at the world of the future I'm not so sure that it will be a place that I'll be entirely comfortable with, if I were alive. If I'm lucky enough to live long enough to see it, maybe I wouldn't be comfortable there. But that doesn't mean that our children are not going to be comfortable there."

More on Presentation Posters

"It takes intelligence, even brilliance, to condense and focus information into a clear, simple presentation that will be read and remembered. Ignorance and arrogance are shown in a crowded, complicated, hard-to-read poster."
--Mary Helen Briscoe

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Databases

A Map That Maps Gene Functions (Wired News)

"The database can be viewed as a physical map that shows the metabolic pathways as lines and the metabolites (products or key biochemicals of metabolism) that connect them as geometric shapes."

"Each line represents a function -- drug companies want to ask 'which line can we cut to kill the organism?'"

What's in a name?

"whonamedit.com is a biographical dictionary of medical eponyms. It is our ambition to present a complete survey of all medical phenomena named for a person, with a biography of that person. Eventually, this will include more than 15.000 eponyms and more than 6.000 persons. Hard numbers: 5523 eponyms described in 2627 main entries. These eponyms are linked to 2263 persons: 67 female and 2196 male."

Scientific Posters: Teaching House Cats to Perform Cold Fusion

One of very few up-to-date sites offering pointers for creating good scientific presentation posters. Sounds like the author has graphic design experience. Well put together page that somehow manages to be entertaining as well. Lots of good information here.

Little Brown Bottles

I get it. Drug patent expirations. Put little brown bottles in the back. A pun. But otherwise, I'm not sure it buys anything other than thematic embellishment. Do the bottles convey anything that couldn't be accomplished with plain, clean boxes or even just thoughtful spacing? If graphics are required, maybe a way could be found to indicate how much of a hit each company is taking with each expiration.

Faster, Photoshop, Faster - Intel Releases New Chipsets

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) released a trio of new chipsets Monday intended to step up the richness and speed of digital media, gaming, and broadband for its Pentium 4 and Celeron processor users.

"With the introduction of these products, we are enabling stable, robust PCs that offer easier connections to digital devices as well as faster transfer and manipulation of digital photos, music, and video."

More.

My Abstract 1.0

If you do design and layout of presentation posters for your research clients, this Palm-OS application may be of interest to them:

My Abstract 1.0

"This palm application (My Abstract) was designed to highlight an abstract written by our COPD Case Managers, which she presented at this years American Thoracic Society (ATS) (poster presentation). The intent of the application is to instantaneously offer interested colleagues an electronic copy of the abstract by beaming the abstract to their Palm, while they are reviewing and discussing the poster presentation. This application was well received. If you would like a similar application for your next abstract, please feel free to contact me to discuss development."

Video wall displays fantastic 3D voyage

From ZDNet News:

BOSTON--Researchers at Boston University are out to prove that a picture is worth a thousand databases. The university's Scientific Computing and Visualization Group recently opened a new front in the techno revolution: creating oversized and extremely detailed 3D images out of reams of data and mathematical models to better study phenomena such as solar wind, electrical pulses or particle interaction.

"It's a mechanism for new discoveries," said Glenn Bresnahan, adjunct professor and director of the Computing and Visualization Group.

During a demonstration of how a pacemaker interacts with a patient's tissues, a giant rib cage appears on the screen. Inside are a heart and a green rectangle representing the pacemaker. Webs of red, yellow and blue lines extend from the device, showing how electrical currents travel through the tissues of the chest. By observing the currents, researchers can easily determine the best location for the device.

Let them see cake...

Just the sight of food lights up brain. Kinda makes you wonder what other effects the visual envirornment has on our brain chemistry. Effects that are largely invisible, expressed in behaviors that, unlike being made hungry when you see food, might not seem directly connected to what caused them.

Toshiba's New Thin, Flexible LCD

All Toshiba is saying is that "Applications for the new display will include TVs with curved screens that can be mounted in publics and information displays in trains or buses." Thay have to have more up thier sleeves than that. At least I hope so. Maybe they're just playing thier cards close to their chest until patents are submitted. Just looking at the thing makes you think of all sorts of really cool, really cutting edge kind of stuff you can do with it. Like, you could... Or maybe,... Uh, any ideas anyone?

Other coverage.

Optical Microscopy

"The Molecular Expressions Pharmaceuticals Collection contains over 100 drugs that have been recrystallized and photographed under the microscope." Caffeine is picture below. The photographs on the Molecular Expressions Website are available for licensing to commercial, private, and non-profit institutions, or for personal use on the Web. The site includes about two dozen other galleries as well as in-depth Optical Microscopy primers and tutorials.

The Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour

A couple weeks ago, I attended a session of the The Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour (Tour 3) at the Javits Center. The content was well worth the hundred bucks and train fare into NYC. A couple of the tips even earned a round of applause from an otherwise quiet crowd. The workbook documents 99% of tips the moderator (Scott Kelby - Editor-in-chief of Photoshop User) demonstrated and he went out of his way to tell us when to write something down because it wasn't in the book. We got there late and our seats weren't great but we were still able to see everything Kelby did on one of the two projection screens they had set up on either side of the screen. Kelby's performance was energetic despite a bad cold and he made himself very available during the breaks for questions not covered in the seminar proper.

I only had two problems with the event. (1) They spent way too much time shilling Photoshop 7. I mean, come on, they're preaching to the choir here. I do have to say most of the material covered applied to both 6 and 7. (2) They make a big deal on the website about their "now famous Photoshop Goodies CD-ROM" that was supposed to be "packed with images used in the seminar, plus the coolest Photoshop actions and latest plug-ins". All I found on the disk were the images used in the seminar, some Quicktime movies of the tips we saw at the seminar and some software demos. I couldn't find a single action or plug-in or anything else of real use on the disk. Pretty lame.

These issues were relatively minor and in general it was well worth every penny of tuition and every minute spent out of the office.

Attention Job Seekers

Boston Area Sees Influx Of Big Drug Makers

"BOSTON -(Dow Jones)- Novartis AG's (NVS) plan to build its worldwide research headquarters in Cambridge has brought new attention to the Greater Boston region as one of the fastest-growing, leading centers of drug and medical research."

"While the region has long been known for its strong medical care, the decision by several big pharmaceutical companies to move or expand operations here recently shows the importance the companies place on being near the institutions and each other...."

Slice of Life: The Visible Human Project®

Once you get past the way they were created, the images of The Visible Human Project® take on an unexpected beauty and power. In this most graphic visualization of the human body, spatial relationships remain more intact than they would be using other, more ordinary methods of exploring the body's structure. Anatomy becomes map-like, a series of hidden and secret inner topologies.

"The Visible Human Project® is an outgrowth of the National Library of Medicine's 1986 Long-Range Plan. It is the creation of complete, anatomically detailed, three-dimensional representations of the normal male and female human bodies. Acquisition of transverse CT, MR and cryosection images of representative male and female cadavers has been completed. The male was sectioned at one millimeter intervals, the female at one-third of a millimeter intervals."

"The long-term goal of the Visible Human Project® is to produce a system of knowledge structures that will transparently link visual knowledge forms to symbolic knowledge formats such as the names of body parts."

Gallery of still and animated visuals.

"If you can't ...

get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

OTC Drug Label Redesign

CNN article. Sample label. "The old labels listed the information in paragraph form so you had to fish through them to find the information you need," said Shapiro. "The old labels were OK; these will be better." Behold the power of thoughtful design.

coreynahman.com

coreynahman.com a "Pharmaceutical News Harvest ™ - -Updated Daily By Human Editors" is a great source for pharma news and information. Often posts FDA/regulatory-related content. Claims five million hits a year withour any marketing. Sounds like a blogger's dream.

Not quite as clever as I thought...

The Eyes Have It

Being Visual

Check out the serialization of Being Visual: A Guidebook for Strategic Presentation in the Rich-media Communications Era by Robert L. Lindstrom (a fellow member of the ICIA Presentations Council's steering committee). Explores the idea that "The transition from text and speech to graphics and images goes to the core of best practices, organizational philosophy and competitive strategy." Could help us develop ways to explain what's going on out there to our clients.

Here we go...

Just what we need. Another graphic designer with a blog.