You might remember that back in May i was throwing seedballs all over Amsterdam along with Adam Zaretsky, the Waag society and other eco-enthusiast.
The VivoArts School for Transgenic Aesthetics Ltd. comes back to town in September and this time the focus will be biology and bacterial transformation. VASTAL is a temporary research and education institute that Zaretsky has created in Amsterdam following an invitation by the Waag Society. The lectures and workshops aim to show the public what it means to work both artistically and scientifically with living organisms and materials. VASTAL also aims to make this form of art-science accessible for a broader audience and invite them to discuss the ethical and aesthetic issues at stake.
Topics include:
Alt-Biology: Solar Transgenics, Synthetic Biology, Nanotech Biomimicry, Post-Natural History and Green Biofuel
Tissue Culture Lab
Growing Politics: Tissue Culture and Art meets Urbanibalism
Rebooting your sleep cycle? Totally possible, according to Harvard researcher Clifford Saper:
Harvard researcher Clifford Saper explains that one’s body has more than just a single clock dictating some magical eight-hour sleep period. Sleep needs are regulated in part by exposure to light, but also by food intake. By fasting for 16 hours before your breakfast in a new time zone or on a new sleep/wake schedule, or perhaps after some really rough sleep nights, one can “override” the body’s other sleep clocks that have a really aggravating way of demanding obedience. The Wise Bread blog suggests 12 hours might be a decent compromise if you can’t hold off for 16 hours, though Saper seems to suggest 16 is the magic number.
Fifteen minutes after researchers intentionally paralyzed this rat by dropping a weight on its back, they injected the rodent with Brilliant Blue G dye, a derivative of common food coloring Blue Number One. The dye reduced inflammation of the spinal cord, which allowed the rats to take clumsy steps—but not walk—within weeks, a new study says.
In both rats and people, secondary inflammation following spinal cord trauma causes more lasting damage than the initial injury: Swelling sparks a small “stroke,” which stops blood flow and eventually kills off the surrounding tissue.
Other than blue skin and eyes, “we can find no clinical effect on the rat,” said Maiken Nedergaard, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York.
Six weeks after injecting the blue dye, the research team killed and dissected the treated rat to inspect its spinal cord …. —though not entirely without regrets. “It was so cute, that rat,” study co-author Nedergaard said.
The team was surprised to find that the spinal cord was still blue—the rat’s skin and eyes had returned to normal after one week.
With a blue complexion as the only side effect, the substance may someday be the first major intervention available for people with spinal cord trauma, Nedergaard said.
“The problem is we don’t have any treatment now,” she said, adding that steroids are currently the most common medication used to help spinal-trauma patients. “That was really what prompted the search. … As far as I can see, every patient can receive the blue food dye, because there’s no downside.”
The acrylic intraocular lenses are implanted into animals’ eyes when their vision has clouded to the point of total impairment, and are fitted for various species, from cat-eye-sized to fist-width for rhinos.
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Since its launch in 2008, the firm has fielded calls from Sea World in San Diego (a sea lion who had trouble performing his tricks due to severely blurry vision), an Australia nature park (a blind kangaroo) and a Romanian zoo (a visually impaired lioness).
The German lenses have helped turn the lights back on for dozens of house pets, racehorses, circus animals, guide dogs — literally preventing the blind leading the blind — and even wild creatures roaming nature reserves.
Special lenses that absorb UV rays can also be used to help horses afflicted with “head shaker syndrome”, an excruciating and ultimately life-threatening ailment.
Featuring 260 dinosaur specimens, the display makes us of a virtual reality viewer — one for each person roaming round the exhibit — putting the dinosaurs at a “distance” of about 5 meters
Created by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye, his tattooed pigs can grace your home! The pigs are treated humanly and given sedatives before being tattooed with their intended design. A person can pick and choose which pig or skin to purchase by visiting his website.
Representing the next phase of prosthetic technology, osseointegrated prosthetics are faux limbs that knit themselves with the person’s bone. Since the prosthetic is attached to the bone itself, it creates a more natural movement for the wearer. Last January, we reported on the first dog candidate Cassidy, to receive the new technology. This week, National Geographic is reporting that the German shepard is doing well with his new limb.
Okay, so they’re just bone growths. And they don’t flap. Nor can the cat fly. But look at it! Mutant kitty!
Irrational exuberance on my part aside, it seems no one knows how this cat, who was born normal, grew these bone ‘wings’. It’s just one of those awesome mutations that happen every now and then that makes so so happy that nature makes ‘mistakes’.
I, for one, welcome our new winged kitty overlords.
Keeping bees in New York City is illegal, so for years beekeepers have flown below the radar of the health code. They keep their hives on roof tops or in community gardens.
If a neighbor makes a complaint, the owners must disassemble their hives or face steep fines and exterminator fees. Flouting the law seems to have not dissuaded these would be beekeepers.
The New York City health department maintains that bees are a threat due to the possibility of swarming and that stings for some can be fatal.
A city council bill has been introduced to legalize beekeeping in the city.
South Korean researchers have created a genetically modified pig whose organs can be used for transplanting into human patients. The researchers have predicted the mass production of these hybrid pigs capable of producing humanized organs and organ parts, including pancreatic islets of Langerhans, heart valves and entire hearts. But they have yet to prove the organs can be transplanted into human patients without risk to life.
Scientists, working for six years with only one piglet to show for it. This seems to be an expensive trial and error experiment in the short term. The pigs could be very profitable in the long term if the organs prove to be truly human compatible.
