Today we unveil our new account on Pinterest, the pinboard-style, photo-sharing website which enables users to create and manage image collections. Think of it as a set of online scrapbooks, called boards, where you can browse, share and collect images. You can find the Nature Publishing group page here : we’ve created over a dozen boards showcasing some of the cover art, photos and diagrams from our website and journals.
The Boards
- Nature Video – This board hosts a select number of Nature Videos: take a sneak peek at Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings, learn how bats echolocate to hunt insects, or find out how the online game Foldit helps to predict protein folding.
- Nature Covers– A stunning collection of the latest Nature covers.
- Journal Covers – This board assembles a selection of The EMBO Journal covers.
- Climate Change – Want to see how extreme heat can accelerate wheat ageing, or diagrams depicting the influence an ecosystem has over our climate? Then make sure you check out this board.
- Nature Blogs – A bookmarking board hosting links to the nature.com blogs, which include the News Blog and the nature.com guest blog Soapbox Science.
- Cancer / Oncology – A board of illustrations, diagrams and graphs about cancer research.
- Dermatology – For pictures of unusual skin conditions, graphics of cells, and images of tissue engineering, take a look at this collection.
- Dinosaurs – Menacing Tyrannosaurs, super-sized fleas adapted to feed off dinosaurs, the largest feathered dinosaur ever – this board is certainly not extinct!
- Genetics & Evolution – What does the butterfly genome look like? What cellular pathways are implicated in the ageing process? Find out using this board.
- Immunology – How do cells react to vaccines? What does the malarial parasite look like? Learn about this here, plus lots more.
- Microbiology – From scanning electron micrograph images of gonorrhoea, to pictures of a sperm packet, this board looks at microscopic organisms.
- Neuroscience – What does the brain look like in a Huntington’s disease sufferer? What are the neural mechanisms in Williams syndrome? Discover these answers and more in this brainy board.
- Stem Cell – How are stem cells involved in the ageing process? What happens when DNA is damaged? Find out more using this board.
Pinterest for science
There has been a lot of talk in the blogosphere about whether Pinterest can be used to communicate science effectively. Soapbox Science even hosted a guest post by social media expert, Susanna Speier on the subject: Tool Tales: Don’t completely write off Pinterest! Susan’s concluding thoughts were as follows:
“Grouping different objects is not unique to Pinterest or the Internet. Darwin was building beetle boards as a student at Cambridge. 19th century naturalist’s specimen cabinets helped pave the way for modern biology. This isn’t to say Pinterest is en route to becoming the digital era’s poster child for biogenetic genetic engineering. There is something to be said, however, for investigating its potential as an online interactive science communication tool.”
This is exactly what we are doing, “…investigating its potential as an online interactive science communication tool.” Our account is an experiment and we are very keen to hear your feedback and happy to adapt things as we go along – do let us know your suggestions.
Finally, if you are already a Pinterest user, do follow us and get re-pinning!