150 years of scientific citations in a really cool graph Last month, the scientific publication Nature celebrated its 150th anniversary, so to celebrate they looked back through their own archive. The result is a beautiful collection of essays, papers and charts, but the real highlight is their interactive website. The "co-citation network" shows relationships between scientific papers through citations. Different colours represent different fields, and the whole this is just stunning. Explore the interactive on your own, or watch the video to be guided through the graph. (Heleen, creative developer) Nature: A century and a half of research and discovery (reading time: as long as you like)
Diving down into the deep sea This interactive visualisation of the deep sea is one of the reasons I am thankful for social media. Sometimes a little gem like this one goes viral, and I am so happy that I can join in the fun too. This is an immersive journey deep down into the sea – really deep, as far as humankind has every reached. As you scroll down, you encounter dozens of types of sharks and scary, lonely sea creatures you have most likely never heard of before. You go deeper than the height of Mount Everest, until you reach the Challenger Deep at 10,924 metres! Creative coder Neal Agarwal made this interactive story with the help of Harri Pettitt-Wade, a postdoctoral fellow in marine biology. Despite being a simple example of "scrollytelling", this is strangely addictive. It will keep your interest all the way down. (Irene, First 1,000 Days correspondent) Neal: The deep sea (reading time: 15 minutes)
On preserving corals and one’s self Corals are home to 25% of marine life, but what exactly are they? The answer, as Ologies podcast host Alie Ward, learns is "it’s like a skeleton with a transparent skin over it – which is the animal itself". Mixing science and comedy, this podcast episode is actually from this summer, but I wanted to share the work of Shayle Matsuda, a coral biologist and cnidariologist, who is interviewed about a species whose survival is under threat. Matsuda is based at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology/UH Mānoa. Hear more about his route to marine biology – specifically cnidariology – from 06:55 minutes in. There is much covered: the effect of climate change, overfishing and pollutants on corals – even about Matsuda’s gender transition and sexism in Stem disciplines. He says: "The thing that sucks about being a coral biologist is watching something you love die, and not being able to do anything about it ... so much of my research is about keeping them around." (Nabeelah, conversation editor) Ologies: Cnidariology with Shayle Matsuda (listening time: 1 hour 21 minutes)

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