This is a uncommon job in uncommon conditions, as usual.
Maybe you heard about, but I 'm currently under a chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment for leukemia. I've been hospitalized for few month for marrow transplant. The treatment, though long, heavy and painful, is going well so far.
One of the luckiest thing I had during this adventure is the fact that marrow is compatible between my brother and I. The operation is therefore simplier than finding a donor.
My brother is a scientist, he leads a research lab in Strasbourg within the IGBMC - Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology. He was - of course - very excited by the adventure, and had to spend some times with me in the hospital. He and his crew were on the way to publish a paper on a specialized magazine named "Developmental Cell". Subject of the research they wrote about is the creation, shaping and development of a little spheric bone: the otolith (similar to the one we have in the ear.)
He was on the run and had to propose a cover. There is a competition between the most important articles in the magazine. I saw a chance to do the thing I love to do: graphics. Moreover, this would occupy time in the hight tech room where i'm locked and artificially maintained to life.
I did 18 proposals. 17 were handrawn, 1 done in Inkscape. The IGBMC crew met, voted and chose the inkscape one. They really liked the crispness of the spiro curves and the fluidity of movement they wanted to show in the article.
The cover was submitted to Cell, and happily chosen. It's the current issue, 15 Feb. 2011, Volume 20, Issue 2.
OSP is credited as such:
"On the cover: An artistic rendering of advections generated by cilia, which control the shape and growth of the developing zebrafish otolith. Harrisson generated this image with Inkscape open source software, using the vectorial curves algorithm Spiro. For more information, see Wu et al., pp. 271–278. Credit: Harrisson/Open Source Publishing."
As science text can't be closed, the full pdf is available here.
Mechanistic Basis of Otolith Formation during Teleost Inner Ear
Development
This is how the cover was done. It was payed with an organ. I'm now a living example an open source body, as since the marrow transplant, I've changed blood sign and I'm generating my brothers. I got 2 dna in my same body. I'm a merge of different codes.
Funny, isn't it? Guess OSP impact factor is rising!
"Free as a Bone Marrow Transplant"