Blog | Draw Science

SOCIAL HUMANOID ROBOTS

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Article:
Xiao, Y., Zhang, Z., Beck, A., Yuan, J., & Thalmann, D. (2014). Human-robot interaction by understanding upper body gestures. Presence, 23(2), 133-154. Full Text

SEEING WITH BIONIC EYES

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Article:
Fine I, & Boynton GM (2015). Pulse trains to percepts: the challenge of creating a perceptually intelligible world with sight recovery technologies. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 370 (1677) PMID: 26240423

HUMIDITY POWERED ENERGY

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Article:
Xi Chen, Davis Goodnight, Zhenghan Gao, Ahmet H. Cavusoglu, Nina Sabharwal, Michael DeLay, Adam Driks & Ozgur Sahin. (2015). Scaling up nanoscale water-driven energy conversion into evaporation-driven engines and generators. Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8346

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

(Click to zoom on image)

It's been a year since I started Draw Science. Can't believe it. The idea's come a long way, from just a blog that I started for fun, to an open-access journal in the works. Now, I'm travelling while I set up the journal and doing a study on behalf of my other organization, #IndieSci. Tell me if you'd like to meet up and grab a coffee. Keep track of travels at blog.drawscience.org!

ARCS CONFERENCE POSTER

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

(Click to zoom on image)

Extremely excited to attend the ARCS Conference 2015 on behalf of Draw Science. A huge thanks to ARCS for their gracious scholarship covering all travel, lodging, and food expenses!

HUMAN EVOLUTION

Yisela Alvarez Trentini

Founder, Designer

Geek Gift

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Article:
W. Howard Levie, & Richard Lentz (1982). Effects of text illustrations: A review of research Educational Technology Research & Development, 30 (4), 195-232 : 10.1007/BF02765184

PICTURES, NOT PARAGRAPHS.

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Article:
W. Howard Levie, & Richard Lentz (1982). Effects of text illustrations: A review of research Educational Technology Research & Development, 30 (4), 195-232 : 10.1007/BF02765184

PUT THE ART IN ARTICLE

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Science communication is broken. Let's fix it.
I've already ranted about the problems with science communication. Even when a layperson gets access to a paper despite all the pay-per-view journals, the use of esoteric jargon makes it practically impossible for the public to read fresh-from-the-lab-bench science. For the last few months, I've been working on a solution through Draw Science. Now it's time to take off the band-aid and treat the wound.

I want to make an open access infographic journal.
We're talking the whole sha-bang: trademarks, corporation filings, DOI's, CLOCKSS archival, etc. By the end of this, Draw Science will have the same legal legitimacy of PLOS or any other online scholarly journal. The barrier is that this costs a little bit of cash; cash that a college student like myself doesn't have.

PS. Sorry for disappearing for a while. I was busy trying to make this happen!

HOW TO UNBOIL AN EGG

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Article:
Yuan, T., Ormonde, C., Kudlacek, S., Kunche, S., Smith, J., Brown, W., Pugliese, K., Olsen, T., Iftikhar, M., Raston, C., & Weiss, G. (2015). Shear-Stress-Mediated Refolding of Proteins from Aggregates and Inclusion Bodies ChemBioChem DOI: 10.1002/cbic.201402427

MUCUS: IT'S SNOT WHAT YOU THINK

Thomas Crouzier

Founder

Connected Researchers

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

FigShare:
Crouzier, Thomas; co, Julia (2014): Mucus, it's snot what you think. figshare. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1277545

SPACE EXPLORATION 2.0

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Article:
Genta, G. (2014). Private space exploration: A new way for starting a spacefaring society? Acta Astronautica, 104 (2), 480-486 DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2014.04.008

2014: THE YEAR IN SCIENCE

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Article:
Qiu, X., Wong, G., Audet, J., Bello, A., Fernando, L., Alimonti, J., Fausther-Bovendo, H., Wei, H., Aviles, J., Hiatt, E., Johnson, A., Morton, J., Swope, K., Bohorov, O., Bohorova, N., Goodman, C., Kim, D., Pauly, M., Velasco, J., Pettitt, J., Olinger, G., Whaley, K., Xu, B., Strong, J., Zeitlin, L., & Kobinger, G. (2014). Reversion of advanced Ebola virus disease in nonhuman primates with ZMapp Nature, 514 (7520), 47-53 DOI: 10.1038/nature13777[Full Text (PDF)]

Labbé, C., & Labbé, D. (2012). Duplicate and fake publications in the scientific literature: how many SCIgen papers in computer science? Scientometrics, 94 (1), 379-396 DOI: 10.1007/s11192-012-0781-y

S. W. Hawking (2014). Information Preservation and Weather Forecasting for Black Holes arXiv arXiv: 1401.5761v1

Obokata, H., Wakayama, T., Sasai, Y., Kojima, K., Vacanti, M., Niwa, H., Yamato, M., & Vacanti, C. (2014). Stimulus-triggered fate conversion of somatic cells into pluripotency Nature, 505 (7485), 641-647 DOI: 10.1038/nature12968

Bougher, S., Cravens, T., Grebowsky, J., & Luhmann, J. (2014). The Aeronomy of Mars: Characterization by MAVEN of the Upper Atmosphere Reservoir That Regulates Volatile Escape Space Science Reviews DOI: 10.1007/s11214-014-0053-7

Niu, Y., Shen, B., Cui, Y., Chen, Y., Wang, J., Wang, L., Kang, Y., Zhao, X., Si, W., Li, W., Xiang, A., Zhou, J., Guo, X., Bi, Y., Si, C., Hu, B., Dong, G., Wang, H., Zhou, Z., Li, T., Tan, T., Pu, X., Wang, F., Ji, S., Zhou, Q., Huang, X., Ji, W., & Sha, J. (2014). Generation of Gene-Modified Cynomolgus Monkey via Cas9/RNA-Mediated Gene Targeting in One-Cell Embryos Cell, 156 (4), 836-843 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2014.01.027

Quintana, E., Barclay, T., Raymond, S., Rowe, J., Bolmont, E., Caldwell, D., Howell, S., Kane, S., Huber, D., Crepp, J., Lissauer, J., Ciardi, D., Coughlin, J., Everett, M., Henze, C., Horch, E., Isaacson, H., Ford, E., Adams, F., Still, M., Hunter, R., Quarles, B., & Selsis, F. (2014). An Earth-Sized Planet in the Habitable Zone of a Cool Star Science, 344 (6181), 277-280 DOI: 10.1126/science.1249403

A.K. Geim, & K. S. Novoselov (2010). The rise and rise of graphene Nature Nanotechnology, 5 (11), 755-755 DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2010.224

MIND-CONTROLLED PROSTHETICS

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Article:
Collinger, J., Wodlinger, B., Downey, J., Wang, W., Tyler-Kabara, E., Weber, D., McMorland, A., Velliste, M., Boninger, M., & Schwartz, A. (2013). High-performance neuroprosthetic control by an individual with tetraplegia The Lancet, 381 (9866), 557-564 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61816-9

BUILDING THE BEST COMPUTER

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Article:
Holmes, D., Ripple, A., & Manheimer, M. (2013). Energy-Efficient Superconducting Computing—Power Budgets and Requirements IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, 23 (3), 1701610-1701610 DOI: 10.1109/TASC.2013.2244634

AMNH PRESENTS: SHELF LIFE

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

The American Museum of Natural History recently created Shelf Life, an original series about the history and importance of scientific collections. They asked me to share the series with other science enthusiasts via social media, but after watching the video for the first episode, "33 Million Things," I couldn't resist talking a little more about what Shelf Life is. Read the infographic below to get a short preview of what you can see and learn from Shelf Life.

GRAPHENE IS THE NEW KEVLAR

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Article:
Lee, J., Loya, P., Lou, J., & Thomas, E. (2014). Dynamic mechanical behavior of multilayer graphene via supersonic projectile penetration Science, 346 (6213), 1092-1096 DOI: 10.1126/science.1258544 [Full Text (HTML)]

SLEEP AND LIFE

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Article:
Troxel WM (2010). It's more than sex: exploring the dyadic nature of sleep and implications for health. Psychosomatic medicine, 72 (6), 578-86 PMID: 20467000 [Full Text (PDF)]

Putilov, A., Donskaya, O., & Verevkin, E. (2015). How many diurnal types are there? A search for two further “bird species” Personality and Individual Differences, 72, 12-17 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2014.08.003 [Full Text (HTML)]

Wang, C., Sun, Y., & Zang, H. (2014). Music therapy improves sleep quality in acute and chronic sleep disorders: A meta-analysis of 10 randomized studies International Journal of Nursing Studies, 51 (1), 51-62 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2013.03.008

WASH YOUR HANDS!

Emily Galloway

Columnist

The Wannabe Scientist

Viputheshwar Sitaraman

Founder, Blogger

Draw Science.

Until the late 19th century, it was odd for doctors, let alone people in general, to wash their hands. But in 1847, Dr. Semmelweis discovered that the spread of puerperal fever, a fatal disease commonly contracted by women in labor, was reduced when obstetric nurses disinfected their hands. Dr. Semmelweis proposed that microbes transferred between people could spread infection, and his solution was the invention of hand disinfection (2).

Good hygiene leads to less disease? This sounds like a no-brainer to us in the 21st century, but a lot of people are not taking advantage of the simplest way to minimize the spread of disease: hand-washing. In a study of college students, “63% washed their hands, but only 38% used soap. Then, 32% used soap between 5 and 10 seconds, and a microscopic 2% used soap to wash for more than 10 seconds” (1). These statistics are not only disgusting, but also frightening when you think about how many diseases can be spread by unclean hands.

Clean hands are especially important in healthcare environments. Health care associated infections and multi-drug resistant bacteria are slowly becoming more prevalent and difficult to treat (3). Dr. Wilson’s study at University College Hospital in London attests to the importance of hand washing in fighting against multi-drug resistant bacteria. He demonstrated that hand washing was more effective in controlling MRSA, a superbug spread in hospitals, than patient isolation (5).If doctors’ first line of defense against disease is hand washing, then we could all use some of their tips to effectively clean our hands.

Wet your hands with clean, running water.
Lather your hands by rubbing them together with soap. Make sure to get those easy-to-forget areas like in-between your fingers, the backs of your hands, and under your fingernails.
Scrub your hands and the same easy-to-forget areas for at least twenty seconds.
Rinse off all of the soap under clean, running water.
Dry off your hands with a clean towel, paper towels, or an air dryer, not the legs of your pants (4).

It’s an added bonus if you wash with your hands up and your wrists pointing down, just like a surgeon! This method causes the bacteria to flow away from your fingertips and hands, the most important areas to keep clean.

Washing your hands is a simple, yet effective way to fight the spread of disease. For the sake of Dr. Semmelweis, who was not even recognized for his radical discovery that helped save countless lives, please take the time to wash your hands correctly!

http://lifehacker.com/5810761/am-i-washing-my-hands-correctly

https://explorable.com/semmelweis-germ-theory

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3249958/

http://www.cdc.gov/features/handwashing/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090330200708.htm