Gallery: The Design of Science: 10 Great Research Graphics
01a-wave-goes-rogue
Figures and graphs are an essential part of scientific literature, but few will ever be noticed by graphic artists or information design gurus. They're uncelebrated and utilitarian, a means to an end — but some, however, stand out. Though lacking in post-production polish, they convey complex messages with elegance and directness. They might even be considered the scientific world's folk art. On the following pages are some of Wired Science's favorite research graphics from the past year. __Above:__ A Wave Goes Rogue ----------------- So-called rogue waves — also known, per Wikipedia, as "freak waves, monster waves, killer waves, extreme waves, and abnormal waves" — form unpredictably and destructively, obeying laws and responding to circumstances that are only partly understood. A [review of rogue-wave science](http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.5818 ) yielded this depiction of a wave's spread across the Sea of Japan. *Image: Slunyaev et al./arXiv* *Citation: "Rogue waters." By Alexey Slunyaev, Ira Didenkulova, Efim Pelinovsky. arXiv, July 28, 2011.*
02fish-out-of-water
Fish Out of Water ----------------- On the rocky, wave-pounded shores of Micronesia [resides the leaping blenny](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/leaping-blennies/), a fish specialized for an intertidal life in which leaping between rocks is more convenient than swimming. The graphic above shows the amount of time female blennies spend feeding at different temperatures and tide levels. Compared to males, seen below, the ladies are far less picky. [](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2011/12/male_blennies.jpg) *Images: Tsieh et al./Ethology* *Citation: "A Highly Social, Land-Dwelling Fish Defends Territories in a Constantly Fluctuating Environment." By Terry J. Ord and S. Tonia Hsieh. Ethology, Vol. 117 Issue 10, October 2011.*
03the-honeybee-dance
The Honeybee Dance ------------------ When foraging honeybees return with news of food, they perform a complicated series of movements and steps that convey its exact location to their hivemates. Called the [waggle dance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance), it's a marvel of animal communication, and after decades of study scientists are still learning its intricacies. The image above represents the combined motions of individual bees in 742 waggle dances; it was [assembled by computer scientists](http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0021354) who hope to design honeybee-inspired robots. *Image: Landgraf et al./PLoS One* *Citation: "Analysis of the Waggle Dance Motion of Honeybees for the Design of a Biomimetic Honeybee Robot." By Tim Landgraf, Raúl Rojas, Hai Nguyen, Fabian Kriegel, Katja Stettin. PLoS One, August 3, 2011.*
04good-fences-make-good-neighbors
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors ------------------------------- [](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2011/12/switzerland_language.jpg)To most people, Switzerland seems pleasantly bland and homogeneous. But that's a legacy of prosperity. In fact, the country is as religiously and linguistically mixed as Northern Ireland, or even parts of the former Yugoslavia. What makes Switzerland different is at least partly [a matter of geography and politics](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/peace-boundaries/ ). Where mountains don't separate potentially conflicting groups, political borders do. Arranged clockwise from top left in the images above is the religious distribution of Switzerland's population; a map of the country's cantons; risks of violence as calculated without accounting for canton borders; and violence risks with administrative borders included. At right, a similar analysis is made for language differences, with topography introduced as a barrier factor. The modeling accurately predicts the one region where ethnic violence existed until recently: the northwest, where the Jura mountains formed porous boundaries between historically French and German-speaking communities. *Image: Rutherford et al./arXiv* *Citation: “Good Fences: The Importance of Setting Boundaries for Peaceful Coexistence.” By Alex Rutherford, Dion Harmon, Justin Werfel, Shlomiya Bar-Yam, Alexander Gard-Murray, Andreas Gros, Yaneer Bar-Yam. arXiv, Oct. 6, 2011.*
05all-the-worlds-a-sponge
All the World's a Sponge ------------------------ While almost any geological map [is a thing of beauty](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/geological-maps-of-volcanoes/), this one is notable for its subject matter: permeability. Colors correspond to the ease with which fluids can flow through rock and soil. Thanks to satellite imagery, the map [reaches to a depth of 300 feet](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/geological-maps-of-volcanoes/) below Earth's surface, deeper than any previous permeability map. [](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2011/12/global_permeability.jpg) *Images: Gleeson et al./Geophysical Research Letters* *Citation: "Mapping permeability over the surface of the Earth." By Tom Gleeson, Leslie Smith, Nils Moosdorf, Jens Hartmann, Hans H. Dürr, Andrew H. Manning, Ludovicus P. H. van Beek, A. M. Jellinek. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 38, Jan. 21, 2011.*
06frogs-across-the-mountains
Frogs Across the Mountains -------------------------- A combination of geography, genetics and long-term field work informs this representation of [migration between scattered populations of Columbia spotted](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2010.04723.x/abstract) frogs in Idaho's Salmon River Mountains. *Image: Murphy et al./Molecular Ecology* *Citation: "Landscape genetics of high mountain frog metapopulations." By M.A. Murphy, R. Dezzani, D.S. Pillod and A. Storfers. Molecular Ecology, Vol. 19 Issue 17, September 2010.*
07birds-of-a-feather
Birds of a Feather ------------------ [](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2011/12/sparrows_spring3.jpg)A quintessential urban bird, song sparrows are so ubiquitous as to seem interchangeable. But each sparrow is an individual, its life and habits and relationships established across space and time. Above are the overlapping movements of two juvenile sparrows in Seattle's Discovery Park, [tracked across the summer and fall of 2004](http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/09/30/beheco.arr167.full.pdf+html ). In the spring of 2005, seen at right, they established territories in the same neighborhood, so close they could practically be roommates. *Image: Templeton et al./Behavioral Ecology* *Citation: "Spatial movements and social networks in juvenile male song sparrows." By Christopher N. Templeton, Veronica A. Reed, S. Elizabeth Campbell, and Michael D. Beecher. Behavioral Ecology, Sept. 30, 2011.*
08off-the-clock-around-the-world
Off the Clock, Around the World ------------------------------- For this inquiry into global mood patterns, linguists analyzed 509 million tweets generated over two years by 2.4 million people in 84 countries. There were limitations to the method, but the sheer volume of communication was extraordinary, and it [revealed a universal flow to modern life](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/twitter-global-mood/ ): Regardless of where they are, people tend to be happiest on weekends, mornings and evenings, and grumpy while at work. [](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2011/12/global_mood2.jpg) *Image: Golder and Macy/Science.* *Citation: “Diurnal and Seasonal Mood Vary with Work, Sleep, and Daylength Across Diverse Cultures.” By Scott A. Golder and Michael W. Macy. Science, Vol. 333, Sept. 30, 2011.*
09happiness-and-the-english-language
Happiness and the English Language ---------------------------------- The words in four massive text databases — 361 billion words in 3.29 million books on Google Books, 9 billion words in 821 million tweets issued between 2008 and 2010, 1 billion words in 1.8 million *New York Times* articles published from 1987 to 2007, and 58.6 million words from the lyrics of 295,000 popular songs — were analyzed, collated and distilled into a list of most-used words, then scored on their emotional resonance. The result: [English seems to be a happy language](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/english-positivity/), with positive words used more often than negative. In these graphs, negativity and positivity flow from left to right along the x-axes, and word frequency is measured on the y-axes. *Image: Kloumann et al./arXiv* *Citation: “Positivity of the English language.” By Isabel M. Kloumann, Christopher M. Danforth, Kameron Decker Harris, Catherine A. Bliss, Peter Sheridan Dodds. arXiv, August 29, 2011.*
10global-flows-of-bacteria
Global Flows of Bacteria ------------------------ To an eye that perceived life purely by volume, independently of physical size, ours would be a bacterial world, with animals existing as fringe organisms in a sea of gene-swapping, form-changing microbes. The graphic above represents the first attempt to [measure gene flow between bacteria around the world](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/horizontal-gene-transfer/), as organized by ecological niche and with an eye towards antibiotic resistance — something that's flowing out of farms at alarming rates. *Image: Smillie et al./Nature* *Citation: "Ecology drives a global network of gene exchange connecting the human microbiome." By Chris S. Smillie, Mark B. Smith, Jonathan Friedman, Otto X. Cordero, Lawrence A. David & Eric J. Alm. Nature, Dec. 8, 2011.*
