January 21, 2025
4 Pain read
Helpers American scientificFebruary 2025
Writers, artists, photographers and researchers share the stories behind the stories
Mark Ross
New understanding of the cell
Where Mark Ross (in addition to) grew up in rural Connecticut, where winters were often cold and dreary. “When you’re an artist, it’s good to have bad weather,” he said. “You stay inside and work, and you don’t feel bad about not being outside.” It inspired him to paint the new English landscape, and his skills as an illustrator have taken over his skills. In Austin, TeX, Ross has illustrated more than a dozen American scientific Coverage of topics ranging from atmospheric storms to nuclear fusion. For the article cover and article opening art, he depicted molecular blobs that have been modified by scientists who have understood cell biology. With so many subjects seen, “nobody can see any of these things, really,” he said. This gives him a lot of room for creativity when designing his fascinating images.
Ross loves to depict these cutting-edge scientific subjects, but every week he also makes it a point to draw a more classic one: the human body. “It’s like working out, really,” she paints her weekly picture. During these three-hour sessions, his focus is on depicting the person in front of him: “The painting is much more alive and immediate than if you are working from a photograph.”
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Philip Ball
New understanding of the cell
Science writer Filip Ball sees blobs everywhere. About a decade ago, visiting a laboratory in Germany, scientists discovered a strange mechanism in the cells of worm embryos. These so-called biomolecular condensations have been important for all aspects of cell function. “He’s an extraordinary type,” says Ball. “It feels like every week I look for papers (where) there’s a new type of paper for condensates.”
In his cover story, he explores how the mysterious and essential balls operate in our narratives. Traditionally, the cell has been described as a machine, but Ballek has been suspicious that it was that simple by getting his Ph.D. in condensed matter physics. “It felt like there’s more going on in cells than we recognize.”
After enjoying writing his thesis (“it’s weird, because most people hate it,” he says), Balla decided to pursue a career as a science writer and has written 30 books. His most recent, How life worksexplores this new and rich view of the inner workings of biology. “I really think we need to get away from this machine metaphor when we’re talking about the cell,” he said. “No machine has ever been built that works the way these entities appear.”
Drawing a wolf
Graphic science
In college, Zane Wolf’s career plan was to say yes to everything he enjoyed. That’s how they ended up working in five labs, studying abroad in Australia and doing field work in Antarctica. Otsoa studied biology and applied physics, and a Ph.D. They married the two fields by developing soft robotic systems that mimic how fish swim. “I love being driven by curiosity, digging into the data, finding out what the story is, and then sharing what I learn,” Wolf explains.
This unstoppable curiosity has led them to data visualization and graphing for practice American scientific. For the graphic science of the topic, written by Clara Moskowitz, Wolf the growth of one of humanity’s coolest clubs: people who have gone to space. This is “one of the most exclusive groups of humans on planet Earth,” they say. The wolf once dreamed of being an astronaut (since childhood, they went to space camp “not once, at least three times”). They expanded it with subtle visual metaphors. “There are mountains, there are fogs, there are routes to market rockets,” says Wolf. “It’s a lot of fun to make it look like a data type.”
Moriba Jah
How to recycle space junk
Moriba Jah then joined the US Air Force, where he was stationed in Montana guarding nuclear weapons. “That’s the darkest night I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “The sky is full of stars,” he added, and with satellites. Seeing satellites with the naked eye inspired him to become a space scientist on man-made objects in orbit. Then, after having a “profound spiritual experience” on a trip to Alaska with his son in 2015, he called his research into allowing humans to use permanent space. “Orbital space around the Earth is part of the Earth,” he said. “Earth, land, ocean, space – they are all connected.”
In the past century, people have treated land and oceans like space, as dumping grounds. In his feature article, JAH argues that space is creating a circular economy. “Everything we’re going to launch is a single-use satellite, and it’s as bad as single-use plastic,” he said. “When (the machines) die, they stay in orbit for many years.”
This problem has escalated in the last decade, he warned, and it is becoming increasingly common for pieces of space junk to fall to Earth, threatening life. “Until we get into orbit using reusable and recyclable satellites,” Jah said, “we’re going to have more and more challenges ahead.”
