New animations

COVID-19 in the Nordic countries (in different age groups)

Posted on

Another 3D visualization showing the development of COVID-19 in different age groups in the five Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland) in the period from week 1 to week 46.

The bars shows the number of COVID-19 positive per 100.000 in the age groups.

Data source:

Data source: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control  ( https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/data)

New animations

3D-visualization of COVID-19 in different age groups in Denmark

Posted on

This animated graph (data-visualization) shows the development of the weekly, COVID-19 incidence (infected per 100.000) in 9 different age-groups in Denmark in the period from week 1 to 45 in 2021.

Info on the graph is in Danish! ‘Uge’ means ‘week’. If you think that it is too slow, you can drag it to week 39 (at 1:18), where it speeds up!

At last, I show how big a part of the population, the different groups make up.

Data sources:

  • COVID-19 numbers: Statens Serum Institut, SSI (ssi.dk)
  • Population numbers: Danmarks Statistik (dst.dk)
New illustrations

Marie Hammer – a brilliant, Danish Zoologist!

Posted on
Marie Hammer by Ann-Louise Bergström

Another* forgotten and overlooked, brilliant female scientist from the 20th Century:

Marie Hammer (1907-2002) was a Danish zoologist, who – by her extensive collections and studies of microscopic tics named Oribatides and Collemboles – finally confirmed the theory of continental drift, formulated by Alfred Wegner in the early 20th century . The theory of continental drift was extremely controversial at that time, but Marie Hammer discovered the same insect species on five different continents (Europe, North America, South America, Asia and Oceania) and proved that they could not have been spread by water, air, animals nor humans. The only explanation for their dispersed distribution was that the continents had once been together in one great ancient supercontinent; Pangea.

Marie Hammer travelled to an extensive number of countries all over the world (often alone), where she collected samples that she brought home for analysis. She was the only female scientist ever to join the famous, Danish polar explorer Knud Rasmussen, on one of his expeditions to Greenland.

Although she was able to get some (sparse) funding for her travelling activity, she was never offered employment as researcher at any university – even though her extensive contributions were widely acknowledged by the scientific community. Her immensely great work of studying and classifying all the collected species, writing scientific articles and theses, was thus performed at home with her family (husband and four children) around her.

She is surprisingly unknown, searches on the internet do no reveal much about her, although she even wrote a book herself about her adventures. Being a biologist myself, I was very surprised that I – until recently – had never heard of her. I came across her by reading the brilliant book “Kvinden, der samlede verden” by Eva Tind.

Illustration by Ann-Louise Bergström, 2021.

References:

* Also read my earlier post about Inge Lehmann.

New animations

Nobel Prize in medicine/physiology 2021: Receptors of the sensory systems

Posted on

WHY is it painful to eat strong chili peppers?

Chili peppers contain the compound CAPSAICINE, which binds to a receptor named TRPV1 in nerve cells. This receptor is not only activated by capsaicine, but also by heat (temperatures about 43° C). Our sensory system is thus tricked to think that we eat or drink something very hot, which is painful.

This discovery is central to this years’ Nobel prize in physiology/medicine (awarded to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian), which acknowledges the discoveries of the receptors for the somatosensory systems. These systems translates real, physical signals like temperature, pressure or chemical substances into meaningful signals in the brain.

Watch this animated explainer to learn more

New animations

Animation about EEG for Lundbeck

Posted on

I have recently made a second version of an animation film about EEG (electroencephalography) for a research group at Lundbeck. This image below shows a snapshot from it (it shows cortical, pyramidal cells firing with different frequencies behind some other, unspecified neurons). The film was shown as part of a presentation at the international IPEG meeting this week (week 43) – and the presenter won a prize for the presentation!