This love loves love. It's a strange love, strange love.find a way to lovemore quotes
very clickable
music + art
If you like space, you'll love my the 12,000 billion light-year map of clusters, superclusters and voids. Find the biggest nothings in Boötes and Eridanus.The largest map there is shows the location of voids and galaxy superclusters in our visible universe.

# There is no sound in space, but there is music

The first 12 seconds of a 1-bit encoding of a 128 mel 3-bit spectrogram of Flunk's Down Here / Moon Above

## 1 · How data are organized

The discs contain the full genome of a female and male as well as the human proteome and metabolome.

The breakdown of sex, genome, proteome and metabolome data on the four Sanctuary discs.

## 2 · The genome encoding

The genome sequence is organized into panels of 203 × 203 pixels. Each panel contains 202 × 202 = 40,804 data pixels. The last row and column are dedicated to error correction — registering whether the sum of a row or column pixels is even.

Each disc contains about about 70,000 such panels comprising about 2,800,000,000 pixels. For every 1,024 panels, there is an error check panel that works like the row/column error check except that it sums across panels.

Each base is encoded by two pixels so each panel stores 20,402 bases. Each disc therefore stores about 1.4 Gb of sequence. This capacity is just enough to store the fully sequenced haploid genome of an individual on two discs.

A close crop of four data grids, each encoding 20,402 bases of the genome.

## 3 · The proteome

The proteome is stored in smaller panels of size $n$ × 32 where $n=2-32$. These panels are placed near the edge of the disc to make full use of the space on the disc.

The proteome is stored in smaller grids. See the instruction manual for full details.

The proteome ends close to the start of the last disc. From this point on, the small panels are used to store the chemical structures of compounds that participate in metabolic reactions.

## 4 · The metabolome

Each compound is a jigsaw puzzle — its structure is stored across one or more panels and it's up to you to piece the panels together. Hint: the first panel of a structure has its pixels inverted.

The metabolome is depicted by chemical structures. See the instruction manual for full details.

## 5 · Jigsaw puzzles

Each disc also includes a jigsaw puzzle — four in total.

You put it together. And by you I mean they. And by they I mean (possibly) aliens.

If you like these puzzles, see my 1-bit 10 gigapixel space maps.

### 5.1 · She looks like the Moon

The first female disc has a moon map puzzle. The “She looks like the Moon” is a reference to Like the Moon by Future Islands.

Moon puzzle legend.
Map of the moon used for the puzzle on the first disc.

### 5.2 · In her orbit

The second female disc has the solar system. Not everything in it but closeish to it.

Solar system legend.
Map of the solar system used for the puzzle on the second disc.

### 5.3 · No man's sky

The north celestial hemisphere is the puzzle on the first male disc. Hence, ‘No Man's Sky’. Except that there is a man — on the disc. But it's not his sky. This is what I meant.

North celestial hemisphere legend.
Map of the north celestial hemisphere used for the puzzle on the third disc.

### 5.4 · No man's other sky

‘My God, it's also full of stars.’ Keep coruscatling, little buddies!

South celestial hemisphere legend.
Map of the south celestial hemisphere used for the puzzle on the third disc.

## 6 · Les p'tits cueilleurs d'étoiles

The first disc also contains a collection of 124 artworks by children undergoing treatment in Paris hospitals.

This was organized by Jean-Philippe Uzan who is part of the Les p'tits cueilleurs d'étoiles program (The Little Star Gatherers), designed to bring space to hospitalized children.

You can browse the full gallery.

Artwork by the Les p'tits cueilleurs d'étoiles.

## 7 · Other art

There are many other curious things to find on the first disc. Here are some of them.

Brain cages of some of our historical neighbours.

### 7.3 · Eye check

The first off-planet eye exam.

Tom and Cikcik.
news + thoughts

# Annals of Oncology cover

Wed 14-09-2022

My cover design on the 1 September 2022 Annals of Oncology issue shows 570 individual cases of difficult-to-treat cancers. Each case shows the number and type of actionable genomic alterations that were detected and the length of therapies that resulted from the analysis.

An organic arrangement of 570 individual cases of difficult-to-treat cancers showing genomic changes and therapies. Apperas on Annals of Oncology cover (volume 33, issue 9, 1 September 2022).

Pleasance E et al. Whole-genome and transcriptome analysis enhances precision cancer treatment options (2022) Annals of Oncology 33:939–949.

My Annals of Oncology 570 cancer cohort cover (volume 33, issue 9, 1 September 2022). (more)

Browse my gallery of cover designs.

A catalogue of my journal and magazine cover designs. (more)

# Survival analysis—time-to-event data and censoring

Fri 05-08-2022

Love's the only engine of survival. —L. Cohen

We begin a series on survival analysis in the context of its two key complications: skew (which calls for the use of probability distributions, such as the Weibull, that can accomodate skew) and censoring (required because we almost always fail to observe the event in question for all subjects).

We discuss right, left and interval censoring and how mishandling censoring can lead to bias and loss of sensitivity in tests that probe for differences in survival times.

Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Survival analysis—time-to-event data and censoring. (read)

Dey, T., Lipsitz, S.R., Cooper, Z., Trinh, Q., Krzywinski, M & Altman, N. (2022) Points of significance: Survival analysis—time-to-event data and censoring. Nature Methods 19:906–908.

# 3,117,275,501 Bases, 0 Gaps

Sun 21-08-2022

See How Scientists Put Together the Complete Human Genome.

My graphic in Scientific American's Graphic Science section in the August 2022 issue shows the full history of the human genome assembly — from its humble shotgun beginnings to the gapless telomere-to-telomere assembly.

Read about the process and methods behind the creation of the graphic.

3,117,275,501 Bases, 0 Gaps. Text by Clara Moskowitz (Senior Editor), art direction by Jen Christiansen (Senior Graphics Editor), source: UCSC Genome Browser.

# Anatomy of SARS-Cov-2

Tue 31-05-2022

My poster showing the genome structure and position of mutations on all SARS-CoV-2 variants appears in the March/April 2022 issue of American Scientist.

Deadly Genomes: Genome Structure and Size of Harmful Bacteria and Viruses (zoom)

An accompanying piece breaks down the anatomy of each genome — by gene and ORF, oriented to emphasize relative differences that are caused by mutations.

Deadly Genomes: Genome Structure and Size of Harmful Bacteria and Viruses (zoom)

# Cancer Cell cover

Sat 23-04-2022

My cover design on the 11 April 2022 Cancer Cell issue depicts depicts cellular heterogeneity as a kaleidoscope generated from immunofluorescence staining of the glial and neuronal markers MBP and NeuN (respectively) in a GBM patient-derived explant.

LeBlanc VG et al. Single-cell landscapes of primary glioblastomas and matched explants and cell lines show variable retention of inter- and intratumor heterogeneity (2022) Cancer Cell 40:379–392.E9.

My Cancer Cell kaleidoscope cover (volume 40, issue 4, 11 April 2022). (more)

Browse my gallery of cover designs.

A catalogue of my journal and magazine cover designs. (more)

# Nature Biotechnology cover

Sat 23-04-2022

My cover design on the 4 April 2022 Nature Biotechnology issue is an impression of a phylogenetic tree of over 200 million sequences.

Konno N et al. Deep distributed computing to reconstruct extremely large lineage trees (2022) Nature Biotechnology 40:566–575.

My Nature Biotechnology phylogenetic tree cover (volume 40, issue 4, 4 April 2022). (more)

Browse my gallery of cover designs.

A catalogue of my journal and magazine cover designs. (more)