当数据遭遇艺术：十幅精妙绝伦的科学视图
计算机时代催生了海量的科学数据，但如此让人仰止的信息大山也是要付出代价的。你积累的数据越多，要去领会它背后的深意就越难。
In a push for better perspective, a group of information scientists in 2005 created a decade-long competitive art exhibit called Places & Spaces: Mapping Science. From artistic pop-culture plots to illustrations of the state of scientific collaboration (above), the founders hope winning entries inspire researchers to present their troves of data in clever and digestible ways.
为了争取对数据进行更好的解读，2005年，一个由信息科学家组成的研究小组创建了一个名为“位数和空间：绘图科学（Places & Spaces: Mapping Science）”的竞赛艺术展。从艺术化的流行文化作图到诠释科学合作的现状，艺术展的创办者希望获奖作品能激励研究者将自己搜集的数据以一种聪明易懂的方式呈现出来。
"Good science maps give you a holistic understanding of how the data is structured," said information scientist Katy Börner of Indiana University, a founder and curator of the exhibit. She is also author of the Atlas of Science, a collection of the maps gathered over the years. "You don't just have to use maps to find your way home. They can be ways to get global overviews on topics."
“优秀的科学作图会让你更全面的去了解数据的构建方式，”印第安纳大学的信息科学家凯蒂·伯尔纳（Katy Börner）说，她是竞赛艺术展的创始人兼管理者。伯尔纳同时也是《科学图集》（Atlas of Science）的作者，这是一本收集了很多科学绘图的专著。“也许它们无法帮你到回家之路，但却能让你纵观某些主题的全球视角。”
The exhibit's advisory board follows a theme and some core criteria to pick 10 winners each year. This year's winning entries for the theme "science maps as visual interfaces to digital libraries" were announced this week. Exhibit-ready versions of the maps are scheduled for display in mid-June.
艺术展咨询委员会每年都会根据主题和某些核心标准来挑选出十幅获奖作品。今年的“从视觉接口到数字图书馆的科学作图（science maps as visual interfaces to digital libraries）”主题类获奖作品于本周公布，而绘图的展示版预计将于六月中旬进行展出。
We showcase some of our favorite winners here, in addition to a few that didn't make the final cut. Some maps are too small to properly appreciate here, but we include links to high-resolution versions for each of them.
《连线》从十幅获奖作品中挑选出一些精品之作，与几幅没有最后入围的作品结集在一起，共同呈现给读者。下面有些图片的尺寸过小，无法正常欣赏，但我们将每幅图片高清版的链接一一罗列在了文中。
Scientific Collaboration
科研合作
Inspired by a map of 500 million Facebook friends published in December 2010, research analyst Olivier H. Beauchesne created this winning visualization of international collaboration that occurred from 2005 through 2009.
2010年12月，有研究者公布了一份5亿Facebook用户的交友展示图，受此启发，研究分析师奥利维尔·博谢纳（Olivier H. Beauchesne）创作了这个展示国际性合作的可视化图，时间跨度从2005年到2009年，这份可视化图为获奖作品之一。showcase
Each arc represents a collaboration between scientists in different cities mined from studies, books and trade journals found in Elsevier's Scopus database. Dense nodes of science emerge in the Americas, Europe and Japan.
图中的每条弧线代表了不同城市科学家们之间的合作关系，相关资料来自于爱思唯尔（Elsevier）斯高帕斯（Scopus）数据库收集的研究论文、书籍和行业刊物。图中的美洲、欧洲和日本都出现了高密度的科学节点。
Image: Olivier H. Beauchesne/Science-Metrix [high-resolution version]
图片来源：奥利维尔·博谢纳/Science-Metrix【高清版本】
Science's Genealogy
科学谱系图
About 39,000,000 papers were published in scientific journals between 1817 and 2010. To map the explosion of research, technology analyst M'hamed el Aisati graphed unique publications based on information in Elsevier’s Scopus database.
从1817年至2010年，全世界的科学期刊上一共发表了约3900万篇论文。为了展示研究的爆发性，技术分析师默罕默德·艾尔·爱萨提（M'hamed el Aisati）根据爱思唯尔的斯高帕斯数据库制作了这份独特的论文发表可视图。
Although the map was not a winner, it’s among our favorites. Aisati hopes to show journal pedigrees, as well as the rise and fall of specific scientific fields, in future iterations.
虽然这份可视图并不是获奖作品，但无碍我们去欣赏它。爱萨提希望能通过图片表现出期刊的起源，以及特定科学领域在未来的兴衰涨落。
Image: M'hamed el Aisati/Academic and Government Products Group (Elsevier), Amsterdam; Katy Börner and Angela M. Zoss/Indiana University [high-resolution version]
图片来源：默罕默德·艾尔·爱萨提/Academic and Government Products Group（爱思唯尔），阿姆斯特丹；凯蒂·伯尔纳和安吉拉·佐斯（Angela M. Zoss）/印第安纳大学【高清版本】
Tree of Life
生命之树
Another of our non-winning favorites, this map shows a sample of 76,425 recognized species — just a fraction of the 5 to 100 million estimated life forms in existence.
另一幅没有入围的佳作，这幅示意图展示了76425个已知物种的样本，科学家们估计地球上现存的生命形式有500万到1亿种，图片中标注的不过是九牛一毛。
The data was pulled from the Tree of Life project, an effort to document the lineage of Earth's organisms through time. Life's origin and humans, aka Homo sapiens, are labeled in red.
图片数据来自于“生命之树”工程（Tree of Life project），这是一项旨在记录时间维度下的地球生物体谱系。图中的生命起源和智人（Homo sapiens）都被标上了红。
Image: Yifan Hu/AT&T Labs/Tree of Life [high-resolution version]
图片来源：胡一凡（Yifan Hu）/AT&T Labs/生命之树【高清版本】
Wikipedia vs. the Universal Decimal Classification
vs国际十进分类法