READING	NAME	AGENDA ITEM
Ottino, J.M.: 2003, ‘Is a Picture Worth 1,000 Words?’, Nature, 421, 474-476.	Grant Boucher	"The necessary requirement that no physics is violated is broken by Fig. 5, which shows shadows, reflections, and so on as they would occur in everyday life, which most definitely do not occur in quite the same way at the nanoscale." pg 3 And about the nanolouse - "The image looks so real that it is easy to imagine a viewer being fooled into believing it has already been built" pg.3 It's surprising the author makes both of these arguments. The first states art is not being real enough and the second states art may look too real. Anyone smart enough to realize the first would not be concerned with the second and anyone concerned with the second would not be smart enough to realize the first. I agree that graphics in scientific research papers should be accurate, but artistic license is completely acceptable and should be expected when the goal is to generate buzz and sell magazines.
	Jim McKenna	"There is a real concern that the practice of using artists’ impressions or mock-ups denies the physics of the situation, or is so convincing that the line between fantasy and reality is blurred" -Who is really that concerned? I'm not convinced the science world is concerned over artists images going to far. Companies like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics add visual 'eye candy' to make their products attractive and colorful in order to increase sales.
	Heather Lautman	"Visual imagination is a central element of scientific imagination." "In addition, colour would not show up in a scanning electron miscroscope. So if this picture is 'real', it must also be heavily enhanced and manipulated." I understand that representation of scientific findings need to be as accurate as they can be in order to present valid findings; however, with these critisisms, I feel as though he forgot about this first quote, 'scientific imagination.' If a picture is a little over the top, a simple caption could just be required. This way imagination and creativity do not need to be sacrificed to represent our world. - Every drawing/figure contains a slight bias. http://www.nokia.com/A4879144
	Alex Lamparski	A lot of information is sent to us through television these days, has this influenced the way we read any form of paper or essay. I can safely say Images and pictures entice me and bring me into an article. Colors and papers broken down into small paragraphs/sections are also much easier to read when compared to long scientific essays. However, the radio still has a large amount of listeners. shouldn't this make it easier to get through a paper with no colors or pictures? Also science fiction readers are able to convey ideas and worlds never seen by the human eye without images. I'm scatter brained at the moment as these thoughts continue to come.
	Rachel Ferebee	"Figures influence people, sometimes subconsciously. Would an image such as Fig. 3 influence someone trying to design a nanolouse?" This is similar to how people read a book and create their own mental images of the characters. However, when the movie comes out, it is easy to adopt that new image of the characters rather than adhere to the one created while reading. It seems as though this would stifle creativity and the pursuit of alternative approaches, since the published figures would be generally accepted and strongly associated with the scientific idea, leaving little room for imagination.
	Galen Frechette	I don't really agree with the authors criticism. Yes, maybe there are some images that could be made more scientifically accurate and not detract from what the "inaccurate" image was attempting to do. However, the use of images for purposes of representation and conceptualization is very effective when communicating, especially to a lay person. Most created images have an intended message to communicate, and it may not always be one of scientific accuracy. I think the images should be judged on how well the intended message is conveyed.
	James Johnston	Ottino's remark on how scientists and artists should work more closely together, along with the rest of the articles tone in my mind seems to hint at a bais for the lyangchaster model by the author. I was wondering if anyone felt the same way.
	Matt Naples	A picture is worth 1000 People. Pictures are wildly important in conveying and working out details and overall ideas of new concepts. People are not only drawn to pictures but are able to visualize concepts faster with pictorial aids. The notion that pictures should be more realistic and follow rules like actual scale shadows and 'fuzzyness' is the complicating the author wants to avoid.
	Adam Neisius	Something that the author didn't quite fully get into is that sometimes the common misrepresentations in mass published science art lead to or reinforce misunderstandings of science and technology. His nitpicky critiques focused more on journals miss the bigger issues of how some basic scientific knowledge is misrepresented in more popular publications.
	Jonathan Amazon	On the subject of how scientific illustrations may stray from the realm of scientific plausability; We do this all the time in academia. Countless example of over simplified diagrams and examples are used to showcase pupils to complex ideas. Its a nescessary evil! The ball and stick model of molecular organization, the bohr model of the atom. To some extent these can be considered complete fallacies with respect to modern knowledge, but sometimes over simplifications are required! imagine trying to teach a 1st grader about rings and symmetric binary operators, after all, adding integers is just an oversimplification of this concept. Iv heard of experiments that were done in trying to eliminate some of these simplifications from early education with disasterous results.
“Images in NanoScience/Technology“	Christine O'Rourke	"Richard Jones to make the point that:The public’s often skewed view of nanotechnology is shaped by illustrations like this speculative—and, to a physicist, highly implausible—rendition of a ‘nanorobot’ inside a human vein." This is just an example of how images could be harmful to the field of nanotechnology,overall though I was just wondering if everyone thought images could be more beneficial or harmful to the field.
	Andrew Starr	"These days, of course, text and figures are handled in different ways. In many instances, figures are left in the hands of artists and illustrators (Fig. 2). There is a real concern that the practice of using artists’ impressions or mock-ups denies the physics of the situation, or is so convincing that the line between fantasy and reality is blurred. Examples abound in science, most lately in the emerging discipline of nanotechnology." Haven't we learned since childhood to look at art merely as a way to express a feeling rather than a direct scientific image. No one expects a Picasso image to be scientifically accurate. Does it not serve a purpose of getting laypeople an interesting way to look at the issue. If looked at this way, and you accept people can understand its not a scientific image, can't these images be useful. Or am I too desensitized to what essentially amount to marketing?
	Tracy Breslin	"Will we ever be able to confirm the nanoscale with our naked eye and do we need visual confirmation?" I believe that most people need visual confirmation. This is why a lot of these artistic images have been created. This is also where interest and popularity is generated from. Part of the reason why high school students lose interest in science is due to the boring text books which lack exciting images.
	Molly Danskin	"It is interesting to note that the images seem to recapitulate the development of Western art, starting with marks, images of our environment, moving to representations of self, and finally seeking more creative and visually exciting variations."
	Grant Kovach	"The design of the instrument, the questions that interest the investigator, the skill of the operator, the information sought, the portion of the sample selected, and even the depth of focus all affect the resulting appearance."
	Mike Pennisi	I think there are legitimate reasons for taking "artistic license" with scientific images. Simplification helps to clarify the important/relevant parts of the image. This is especially important for public education, where unnecessary visualization can promote confusion. Practices like colorization help to make images more informative, and I believe the public can be trusted to understand this. While dramatization is often the most misleading of these practices, it also serves a legitimate purpose. It helps initially catch the eye or excite interest. When dramatization is used for educational purposes, there is reason to be skeptical. In all cases, unless the public is learning about technology through some comic book medium, it is the responsibility of the author to clearly explain the realities of the issue.
	Andrew Nelson	"Tour laments that many elementary school, but few high school students are excited about becoming scientists, and one wonders where and how the interest is lost." That may just be a normal variation in what interests students. High school students may also be more influenced by pop culture.

Nerlich, Brigitte(2008)'Powered by Imagination: Nanobots at the Science Photo Library',Science as Culture,17:3,269-292_Jul08.pdf	Sarah Petzold	"Visualizing what is invisible is an art", artist representations depict ideas or best guesses of what something will or might look like. I remember in a biology class the artist had depicted something wrong and we had to relearn. Representations are just that, they represent something and don't just show what it actually looks like. At times it is not possible to see what it actually looks like, so artists guess or represent. Reading this article it is amazing how much of what we see in articles that has been altered to make it visually appealing or colors added because an artist thinks that is how it should look.
	Joyce Chow	We already see this type of artistic depiction (nanobots with pincers, motors, and propellers) of science in biology textbooks. Colored pictures of viruses, dna, cells and parts of cells in textbooks, all aid students in visualizing and understanding science they cannot see. Seeing that nanotechnology is a futuristic idea, I feel these “imagined” images are a great first step to introducing what nanotechnology can do, but not necessarily how it does it. In other words, the images can serve as metaphors in making the “unfamiliar familiar.”
♠	Jason Bernardo	Because the art is futuristic, it is left open to the imagination of the artist. At the same time, the artist incorporates a biased into the images. If the images are all positive and fascinating, what effect will that have on the public? Is it right to only portray certain ideas and views? Would it be beneficial to include images of negative uses of nanotechnology in the future? If the public only sees good things being portrayed by the art, would they ever suspect or be open to anything different?
	Andrew Cunningham	(p 272) "If, for example, scientists or journalists were to conceptualize genes 'as' tiny miracles maintained by an intelligent designer, rather than 'as' codes or blueprints, subsequent discoveries in genetics would be exploited quite differently to the way they are today." I know most of you in the class probably don't believe in God or in an intelligent designer, but why do codes or blueprints prove that there is no creator? Wouldn't something as complex as a code or blueprint be proof of a creator? Couldn't He be using the code he created to "maintain" the genes?
	Andrew Krushelnyski	Images and art is all based on how it is viewed. It could be anything and everything. From the world to the smallest nanoparticle. This is why I am not surprised art is being found throughout the world of science and nanotechnology. These images and art could be used to relate to the public. Or at least different types of people. This article is very user/reader/viewer based like I was saying earlier is the exact reason for why art and science could go hand in hand.
	Charlie Senness	"These include super-adhesives that mimic the byssal threads of mussels and can stick to nearly anything, tapes that emulate the van der Waals forces found in the setae of a gecko’s foot, anti-reflective materials that mimic the structure of a moth’s eye, synthetic membranes that efficiently filter water in the same way as kidneys, selfhealing synthetic systems that sense damage and then mend the defect, “nastic materials” that respond to external stimuli, and strong, stretchy nanocomposites that have the desirable properties of spider silk."
	Dan Schaffer	"The colors in Hubble images, which are assigned for various reasons, aren’t always what we’d see if we were able to visit the imaged objects in a spacecraft. We often use color as a tool, whether it is to enhance an object’s detail or to visualize what ordinarily could never be seen by the human eye" Artificial color is everywhere. It can make things more attractive, more obvious or more important. I think back to biology, using dyes to color cells to make them more interesting to see, or to add contrast. Alternatively, non-visible wavelengths represent a huge amount of information we can't recognize. Tools like the hubble and the imaging programs they use allow us to "see" things that are completely out of the visible spectrum. In this case, the colors we choose to define what we cannot see may be arbitrary. I wonder if progress could have been altered if our images were simply colored differently?

Shamans of Small (for thurs.)	Heather Lautman	In the beginning, the author writes, "The question 'What if...?' lies at the heart of science fiction, but what comes after the ellipsis and the answers that stories give are ultimately not science but literature-that strange mix of entertainment and meaningful enrichment of life." "Curiously, on the other hand, these stories reveal some of the actual technical challenges that molecular nanotechnologiests might confront if they ever were to execute their designs fo real-world nano
	Grant Boucher	Many of the societies found in these SciFi novels are “desensitized” compared to our society (for example the popularity of bleeding skin-like gift wrap in Maursek’s book). At first I dismissed much of this as never being able to happen because our society would not allow it. But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that all that is separating us from these demented SciFi communities is the technology. We’ve already been convinced to accept cars, cell phones, plastic surgery, fast food, violent video games, etc.

	Jim McKenna	"And isn’t that, in the end, what much of nanotech is about? A quasi-scientific way to get what you want effortlessly and at minimal cost." -I agree with the author's underlying theme that nano technology is a way to get what you want effotlessly at minimal cost. But is this really a bad thing? Isn't that the goal of all technology, to get what we want faster and easier? (faster computers, cars, cell phones, etc)
	Andrew Starr	With regards to the Star Trek example on page 88, I find it interesting that the author is so willing to accept the writers intentions of the risk yet so easily dismiss the solution provided. It is too easy to nitpick specific examples from science fiction, and effort should at least be made to keep stories in context.