Invensys Foxboro

Maintenance personnel are responsible for the maintenance of thousands of devices daily all while maximizing plant uptime. Foxboro Evo Maintenance Response Center helps you move from reactive to predictive maintenance to reduce downtime and wasted maintenance efforts. All in all, Foxboro Evo gives improved operational insight and aids team members in making better decisions.

CLIENT: Invensys
ART: Peter Durand
ANIMATION: Evan Barnett
PROJECT MANAGEMENT: Patricia Fonner

What is a Flame?

What Is A Flame? from Alphachimp Studio Inc. on Vimeo.

"As a curious 11-year-old, Alan Alda asked his teacher, “What is a flame?” She replied: “It’s oxidation.” Alda went on to win fame as an actor and writer, became an advocate for clear communication of science, and helped found the Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. He never stopped being curious, and he never forgot how disappointing that non-answer answer was." http://www.flamechallenge.org/

For this challenge, Alda tasked scientists with explaining flame. Entries will be judged by a panel of eleven-year-old judges. This compelling opportunity, which puts the power of determining what's effective in education into the hands of students themselves, really moved Alphachimp, and we accepted the invitation from Jeanne Garbarino and Deborah Berebichez of The Fabulab to collaborate on another fun video! (Check out our first collaboration with Jeanne Gabarino: Cholesterol, Friend Before Foe: http://vimeo.com/28475498) 

CLIENT: The Fabulab ART & DIRECTION: Perrin Ireland EDITING: Betsy Dodd PROJECT MANAGEMENT: Perrin Ireland 

Open Research

Open research is research conducted in the spirit of free and open source software.

Much like open source schemes that are built around a source code that is made public, the central theme of open research is to make clear accounts of the methodology freely available via the internet, along with any data or results extracted or derived from them. This permits a massively distributed collaboration, and one in which anyone may participate at any level of the project.

Cholesterol: Friend before Foe

This short animated painting created for Scientific American tells the other half of the story about the natural chemical that the media loves to hate. 

Cholestrol: Friend Before Foe

Text by Jeanne Garbarino
Images by Perrin Ireland
Video by Nick Navatta

Scientific American: Cholesterol from Alphachimp Studio Inc. on Vimeo.

Mention the word cholesterol in front of my grandmother and she’ll automatically clutch her chest and say a little prayer.  It is because she, along with almost one-fifth of the American population over 20 years of age, is battling high blood cholesterol – a condition tightly linked to heart disease.  As a means to try and curb these undoubtedly dangerous cholesterol levels, which are generally the result of a poor diet, various organizations such as the American Heart Association (AHA) have unleashed anti-cholesterol campaigns, ultimately demonizing this unknowing molecule.

Yes, when in excess, cholesterol can be very detrimental to your health and is often the culprit behind heart attacks and strokes.  However, behind the seemingly dangerous exterior lies a molecule that is essential for human life.

FULL ARTICLE & VIDEO

ABOUT:
Jeanne Garbarino is a mother of two young girls, aged 2 and 4. In her other (easier) gig, Jeanne is a postdoc at Rockefeller University in the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism. There, she studies how cholesterol moves inside of our cells and relates this information to human health and the development of cardiovascular disease. In addition to being a scientific researcher, Jeanne is a self-proclaimed scientist-communicator, often blogging about relevant scientific issues on her blog The Mother Geek, as well as co-organizing a monthly science discussion series, Science Online NYC (# SoNYC ), which is open to anyone who is interested about how science is conducted. You can find her tweeting as @ JeanneGarb or can follow The Mother Geek on Facebook. 

Perrin Ireland is a graphic science journalist who currently serves as Science Storyteller at Alphachimp Studio, Inc. She uses art and narrative to facilitate scientists sharing their stories, and creates comics about the research process. You can find more of Perrin's work here, and follow her on Twitter at  @experrinment.