resources
visualizations
presentations
lunch break
Distractions and amusements, with a sandwich and coffee.
data visualization + art
Art of the Personalized Oncogenomics Program
Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.
— Richard Feynman
How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.
— Isaac Asimov, The Roving Mind (Ch 25)
Desktops are available for various display aspect ratios.
For the 4k 16:9 desktop, I've included a few remixes of the original art.
An explanation of how these images were generated, along with a printable legend, is available in the Methods section.
1280 × 960 (4:3)
1920 × 1080 (16:9)
1920 × 1200 (16:10)
3840 × 2160 (4k 16:9)
remixes
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news + thoughts
Virus Mutations Reveal How COVID-19 Really Spread
Genetic sequences of the coronavirus tell story of when the virus arrived in each country and where it came from.
Our graphic in Scientific American's Graphic Science section in the June 2020 issue shows a phylogenetic tree based on a snapshot of the data model from Nextstrain as of 31 March 2020.
Cover of Nature Cancer April 2020
Our design on the cover of Nature Cancer's April 2020 issue shows mutation spectra of patients from the POG570 cohort of 570 individuals with advanced metastatic cancer.
The cover design accompanies our report in the issue Pleasance, E., Titmuss, E., Williamson, L. et al. (2020) Pan-cancer analysis of advanced patient tumors reveals interactions between therapy and genomic landscapes. Nat Cancer 1:452–468.
Modeling infectious epidemics
Every day sadder and sadder news of its increase. In the City died this week 7496; and of them, 6102 of the plague. But it is feared that the true number of the dead this week is near 10,000 ....
—Samuel Pepys, 1665
This month, we begin a series of columns on epidemiological models. We start with the basic SIR model, which models the spread of an infection between three groups in a population: susceptible, infected and recovered.
We discuss conditions under which an outbreak occurs, estimates of spread characteristics and the effects that mitigation can play on disease trajectories. We show the trends that arise when "flattenting the curve" by decreasing `R_0`.
This column has an interactive supplemental component that allows you to explore how the model curves change with parameters such as infectious period, basic reproduction number and vaccination level.
Bjørnstad, O.N., Shea, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2020) Points of significance: Modeling infectious epidemics. Nature Methods 17:455–456.
The Outbreak Poems
I'm writing poetry daily to put my feelings into words more often during the COVID-19 outbreak.
That moment when you know a moment.
Branch to branch, flit, look everywhere, chirp.
Memory, scent of thought fleeting.
Distant pasts all ways in plural form.
Deadly Genomes: Genome Structure and Size of Harmful Bacteria and Viruses
A poster full of epidemiological worry and statistics. Now updated with the genome of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 case statistics as of 3 March 2020.
Bacterial and viral genomes of various diseases are drawn as paths with color encoding local GC content and curvature encoding local repeat content. Position of the genome encodes prevalence and mortality rate.
The deadly genomes collection has been updated with a posters of the genomes of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Using Circos in Galaxy Australia Workshop
A workshop in using the Circos Galaxy wrapper by Hiltemann and Rasche. Event organized by Australian Biocommons.
Galaxy wrapper training materials, Saskia Hiltemann, Helena Rasche, 2020 Visualisation with Circos (Galaxy Training Materials).