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29 April 2022

#AntarcticLog: A small piece about a big deal

Artist Karen Romano Young explains through SciArt why tiny krill are a big deal for Antarctic food webs (and penguins, seals, orcas–and scientists).

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22 April 2022

#AntarcticLog: Watch Your Language

#AntarcticLog is a series of comics by Karen Romano Young. You can find the originals here. Last week I posted about how I try to find the best visual image to convey the main point of a comic or visual story.  This week I’m sharing just one image — an introduction to the JOIDES Resolution and Expedition #379, in which I took part three years ago, in 2019. I continue to …

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1 April 2022

#AntarcticLog: A Lite-Brite of SciArt

I got my start at Scholastic News, a classroom magazine for 11 and 12-year-olds that covered everything — so I had to interview everyone who was making news. I quickly realized that the people I liked talking to the most were scientists. They were the most passionate, the most enthralled, and they had the biggest lives — even as they focused on a small research topic or specific geographic area. To me they were dots of light that — like the Lite-Brite toy I’d grown up with — formed pictures. 

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18 March 2022

#AntarcticLog: (Climate) refugees

Sometimes there just aren’t words to express my response to what’s going on. That’s what led me to comics in the first place — a grievous story of walrus stranded by climate change — and it’s what leads me on. What “does not compute” in words can make a connection in visuals. 

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18 February 2022

#AntarcticLog: Being a Roughneck

Meet Ian Cortez, a roughneck (driller) working to bring sediment up from the seafloor to give scientists data that will allow them to tell the story of Antarctica’s deep past. Ian’s a second-generation roughneck, inspired by his father, who did as Ian is doing — leaving home and family in the Philippines to work at sea aboard the JR. 

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4 February 2022

#AntarcticLog: The Melting Continent

#AntarcticLog is a series of comics by Karen Romano Young. You can find the originals here. Here are a few questions I get asked:   Who are you writing for?  Why do you draw as much as write?  Who is the audience for these comics?  The underlying assumption, at times, is that comics are for kids.  After all, the other arm of my work is creating books for audiences ages 8 …

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28 January 2022

#AntarcticLog: How much? How Fast?

How Much? How Fast? 

That’s the big question International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration scientists are digging into as they explore above, below, and beyond this immense, powerful, thawing glacier. 

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21 January 2022

#AntarcticLog: Giant glaciers & robotic friends

My post last week included a big comic about Julia Wellner and the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC).  It featured a tiny comic showing Ran, the Hugin AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) that would become the first robot to explore under the glacier. 

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7 January 2022

#AntarcticLog: Happy New Year!

New Year’s is a great time for a life review — a look at past, present, and future.  First, here’s a peek at Antarctic auld lang syne, in the form of ancient penguins. 

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24 December 2021

#AntarcticLog: In appreciation of dogs

It can be far easier for furry, four-footed friends to cross treacherous Antarctic ridges and formations than people or vehicles. Time was, back in the age of the heroic explorers, dogs were helpful for transport, warmth, companionship — and sometimes, food. 

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