Ari Helenius is intrigued by the deceptive simplicity of a virus: "You can understand it on a molecular level, know every component of it, but its interaction with host cells turns on extremely complicated biology." This veteran virologist at ETH Zurich has spent a career tracking the complex interactions of pathogen and host (see "Foundations: Viral Cell Entry"). In "The Orange and the Circus Tent", Helenius charts his life-long love affair with virology. "The construction of the human system can hardly be understood unless considered from the point of view that it's a target."
Kathryn Campbell is a freelance writer and mother of two based in Philadelphia. Her work - about topics ranging from seismic communication in elephants to sex and the female mind - has appeared in The Boston Globe, People Magazine, and The Philadelphia Business Journal, among other publications. For this issue, Campbell...
Now a Brooklyn-based illustrator, Grady McFerrin got his start drawing rock posters at the Fillmore, a historic music venue in San Francisco. "It's one of the original places where psychedelic posters came on the scene. It has a long history of cool art," he says. His art has been published in the New York Times, the American Medical News, and L.A. Magazine, among other publications. In this issue, McFerrin brings the microscopic world of viruses to life with a circus metaphor (see "The Orange and the Circus Tent"). "I've actually used a lot of circus imagery in the past," he says. "I love the colors and the vibrancy of it."
James Williams loves his students, but he hates their misconceptions. "I still find that students, even when they've gone through the whole process of learning [the definitions of scientific] laws, facts, etc, still misuse them," he laments. "It's so deeply engrained." Williams is a lecturer in science education at a one-year program at the University of Sussex which prepares students with undergraduate science degrees to teach high school science. In "What Makes Science 'Science'?", he argues that a scientific education should include an immersion in the history and philosophy of science. It's important students understand "what is science and what is not."
As a young Fine Arts student, Cynthia Turner met internationally known medical illustrator Tom McCracken, and then began piling pre-med classes on to her schedule - a prerequisite for graduate school in medical illustration. "We have to know what we're drawing," says Turner. Today, the Florida-based illustrator's work appears in the annual RxClub Show - Best in Medical Advertising in New York and the annual salons of the Association of Medical Illustrators. A traditionalist at heart, for this month's cover, Turner was inspired by classical figure painting. "I think of human body as never-ending, fascinating subject," she says.
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