pLast month I was fortunate enough to be able to attend Illuminate: The Association of Medical Illustrators meeting here in Toronto. In addition to astonishingly good illustrations #8211; and we#8217;re talking about art that has the potential to save real human lives here remember! #8211; what I found surprised me. Medical illustration as a discipline is in turmoil./ppIt shouldn#8217;t have surprised me. We live in times for great upheaval in the publishing world. Online, the current topsy-turvy economy consists of creators making less money than sites aggregating illustrator#8217;s work into curated collections. New models for a viable career in all levels of illustration are starting to emerge, tentatively, through crowdfunding and ebook sales. The problems medical illustrators face in their industry are no different than comic book creators, cartoonists, children#8217;s book illustrators, street artists, fine artists, sf/fantasy illustrators and concept artists. It#8217;s the same problematic turtles all the way down./p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=illuminate-the-association-of-medical-illustrators-meeting[More]/a
pnbsp;/p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bring-science-home-sour-preference-age[More]/a
pFrom Nature magazine/p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=doctors-debate-safety-starch-used-iv-drips[More]/a
p Dear EarthTalk : I understand there is good news about the recovery of bird species like the peregrine falcon, bald eagle and others owed to the 1972 ban on DDT. Can you explain? -- Mildred Eastover, Bath, Maine /p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rachel-carson-silent-spring-1972-ddt-ban-birds-thrive[More]/a
p Excerpted from The Forgotten Cure: The Past and Future of Phage Therapy , by Anna Kuchment . (Copernicus Books, 2011. Reprinted by nbsp; permission of Springer Science+Business Media) /p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=are-phage-viruses-forgotten-cure-for-superbugs[More]/a
pBy Alister Doyle/ppOSLO (Reuters) - The vital tasks carried out by tiny engineers like earthworms that recycle waste and bees that pollinate crops are under threat because one fifth of the worlds spineless creatures may be at risk of extinction, a study showed on Friday./ppThe rising human population is putting ever more pressure on the spineless creatures that rule the world including slugs, spiders, jellyfish, lobsters, corals, and bugs such as beetles and butterflies, it said./ppOne in five invertebrates (creatures without a backbone) look to be threatened with extinction, said Ben Collen at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) of an 87-page report produced with the International Union for Conservation of Nature./ppThe invertebrates are the eco-system engineers, he told Reuters. a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=spineless-creatures-under-threat[More]/a
p /ppHurricanes are typically associated with loss of life, loss of property, and economic devastation. Hurricane Katrina, which blew through the gulf coast in summer 2005, brought all those things and more. It also brought lots of baby dolphins. Hurricanes and other major storms tend to be related to increased strandings of marine mammals, so why might a hurricane be associated with more dolphins, rather than fewer?/p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=what-do-hurricanes-mean-for-dolphins[More]/a
David Hu and colleagues filmed 33 wet mammals as they shook themselves dry. Watch their slow-motion footage and find out what they learned about shaking frequencies.
pThis may come as painful news to parents: toddlers are more likely to copy the actions of a crowd than those performed by one person, according to new research in Current Biology ./p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=peer-pressure-starts-early[More]/a
pIf you thought whooping cough went the way of beriberi and other 19th-century diseases with fanciful names, think again./p a href=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cdc-recommends-booster-shoots-whooping-cough-outbreak[More]/a
