October 2009

Last week, Computerworld carried an interview with futurist Ray Kurzweil, who predicts that in 30 or 40 years from now nanomachines will travel through our bodies, repairing damaged cells and organs, effectively wiping out diseases:

The full realization of nanobots will basically eliminate biological disease and aging. I think we’ll see widespread use in 20 years of [nanotech] devices that perform certain functions for us. In 30 or 40 years, we will overcome disease and aging. The nanobots will scout out organs and cells that need repairs and simply fix them. It will lead to profound extensions of our health and longevity

What’s interesting is not whether the prognosis is right or wrong, naïve or realistic. Like all med-tech forecasts it probably better reflects our own time than it predicts the future.

What’s interesting is that it is said by Kurzweil. Or more generally speaking: Much forecasting about health and longevity comes from people in the computer and IT world, whereas medical doctors rarely indulge in such frivolous mental activities (see also the earlier ‘What makes the human enhancement movement tick?’ post). Why are IT people more wedded to the idea of enhancement and longevity than medical and health scientists are?

In continuation of last week’s post about protein art — here is a (somewhat dated) YouTube-movie about the making of such a beast:

[biomed]LqsQYVFAgPo[/biomed]

It’s an interview with German physicist-turned-artist Julian Voss-Andreae working on his antibody sculpture ‘Angel of the West’, now placed in front of the Scripps Research Institute in Florida.

Voss-Andreae comments in Leonardo, vol. 38: pp. 41-45, 2005:

The main idea underlying these sculptures is the analogy between the technique of mitered cuts and protein folding. The sculptures offer a sensual experience of a world that is usually accessible only through the intellect.

As some of you may have noticed, the online Image & Video Library of The American Society for Cell Biology has been closed since February, and nobody knew whether it would be opened again.

Last Thursday the ACSB announced, however, that the site will be re-opened and developed further by means of a $2,5 million ‘stimulus grant’ from the NIH (one of the consequences of the new Obama administration).

According to ACSB’s press release, the present image and video collection will be turned into “a comprehensive, international digital library” and furthermore, by “developing a systematic protocol for acquiring, reviewing, annotating, and uploading the images”, the ASCB will create “an efficient platform for building the library at a rapid rate”.

These are exciting news for all cell image fans!

Ever noticed that the uniform resource locator (a.k.a. url) of this blog is www.corporeality.net/museion? I’ve just realised there is a url-alike in the same business as ours, namely www.CORPOrealities.org.

CORPOrealities is the website of a research project “situated on the very boundary of visual and performative arts and biomedicine”, which free-lance Viennese sociologist and artist Christina Lammer has carried out together with a team of visual artists, curators, historians and caregivers at the Medizinische Universität Wien (MUW) during the last five years.

The project is interesting in a ‘Biomedicine-on-display’-perspective because Lammer and her co-workers have used video as an ethnographic method for translating human experiences of illness and suffering into aesthetic expression. She claims that these visual ethnographic and body art interventions can “enhance complex processes of translation and mediation and strengthen the empathy, sensitivity and emotional competence in health care work” (quoted from C. Lammer, ‘Translating experience: The creation of videos of physicians and patients in the environment of an Austrian university hospital’, Int. J. of Multiple Research Approaches, vol 3: 264-75, 2009, abstract here).

Would like to see more of that kind of studies, because its feeds into the ‘Health Promotion and Innovation’ research program that we are developing together with the ethnologists here at University of Copenhagen within the frame of the Center for Healthy Ageing (see announcements for phd and postdoc positions here).

The CORPOrealities project is scheduled to end this October. Then Lammer is planning two other projects: one called ‘Features: Vienna Face Project’ and another called ‘Surgical Wrappings’. Keep an eye open!

Medicinsk Museion søger en publikumsmedarbejder med tiltrædelse snarest muligt (HK-stilling).

Vi er et lille men dynamisk universitetsmuseum med i alt syv faste medarbejdere, der arbejder tæt sammen. Dine hovedopgaver vil være at sælge og organisere omvisninger og andre faglige arrangementer samt stå for en række administrative opgaver, herunder:

• bookning, fakturering og kasseansvar
• telefon- og personkontakt med kunderne/publikum
• koordinator for museets ca. 20 studenteromvisere
• kontor- og serviceopgaver som støtte til husets funktioner
• medvirke til udførelse af publikumsarrangementer
• salgsopgaver, herunder webannoncering m.m.

Du vil indgå i et tæt samarbejde med de øvrige medarbejdere, især AC-formidlingsmedarbejderen.’

Vi leder efter en person som har følgende kvalifikationer:

• en relevant uddannelse
• en åben personlighed og gode samarbejdsevne
• serviceorientering, selvstændig og med ordenssans
• behersker både dansk og engelsk i skrift og tale
• god til Word og Excel samt lyst og evne til at arbejde med både fakturering/kasse og email-baseret
• publikumskommunikation
• lyst til at videreudvikle kontaktfladen med sundhedsvæsnet og det almene publikum
• evne til at holde mange bolde i luften samtidigt

Løn og ansættelsesvilkår
I henhold til gældende overenskomst mellem Finansministeriet og Statsansattes Kartel samt Organisationsaftale for Kontorfunktionærer i Statens Tjeneste. Stillingen aflønnes i løngruppe 3, sats 1, hvor basismånedslønnen p.t. udgør kr. 21.203,17 md. ved en ugentlig arbejdstid på 32 timer.

Stillingen er en deltidsansættelse, pt. med en ugentlig arbejdstid på 32 timer. Arbejdstiden kan gøres fleksibel. Der kan også være perioder med overarbejde, som honoreres efter gældende takster.

For nærmere oplysninger, ring formidlingsmedarbejder Bente Vinge Pedersen, 3532 3821 eller museumschef Thomas Söderqvist, 2875 3801.

Ansøgning
Send din ansøgning bilagt CV samt dokumentation for uddannelse elektronisk — se link her. Vi skal have modtaget din ansøgning senest onsdag den 21. oktober 2009 kl. 12.00. Vi modtager kun elektroniske ansøgninger.

Instituttet ønsker en medarbejdersammensætning, der afspejler det omgivende samfund, og opfordrer alle interesserede uanset alder, køn, race, religion eller etnisk tilhørsforhold til at søge.

Medicinsk Museion, www.museion.ku.dk, er en del af Institut for Folkesundhedsvidenskab, Det Sundhedsvidenskabelige Fakultet, Københavns Universitet. Museet driver forskning, kulturarvsarbejde og udstillingsvirksomhed med fokus på den moderne biomedicin i samspil med kultur og samfund og rummer en af Europas rigeste medicinhistoriske samlinger i det gamle Kgl. Kirurgiske Akademi og tilstødende bygninger i Bredgade.

The art of animation of cellular and molecular processes has developed immensely in the last decade. One of the interesting trends is the increasingly sophisticated practice of mixing scientific footage with animation procedures.

A nice example is ‘The Golgi apparatus’ movie (Sougrat R. The Golgi apparatus. ASCB Image & Video Library. 2008;VID-142) that was awarded 1st Place Public Outreach Video at Celldance 2008, the annual cell film and image contest for members of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), organised “to open the eyes of the world to the best in visually stunning videos and images that illuminate cell biology”. See it here: http://cellimages.ascb.org/ 

The Golgi movie animation takes you inside a mammalian cell where you can see the nucleus and its envelope that is connected to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Transition electron microscopy and tomography was used to create an animated image of a portion of a Golgi ribbon, where the trans-Golgi network peels off from the cisternae while a new component from the ER enters the cis-element of the Golgi. Very dynamic — very instructive — even looks nice!

This video is the first project by the Biovisualization program at the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. Computer science and animation students collaborated with researchers to produce this visualization. As they say: “While the main focus was scientific accuracy, aesthetics were also considered”:

To convey the sense of scale, a progression is made, from actual confocal microscopy into an SEM style animation and then into non-photorealistic rendering of what can be seen at TEM level magnification. The software tools utilized for this project include Autodesk Maya, Adobe Photoshop and After Effects, Final Cut Studio, Mercury Amira and Imod. 

The winner of the 2009 Celldance contest will be announced at the ASCB meeting in San Diego, 5-9 December.

Don’t forget to see ‘Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination’, the major interdisciplinary exhibition at the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, when you are in town (45 mins from Stansted airport).

The exhibition explores some of the different ways that bodies are imagined, understood and transformed in the arts, social and bio-medical sciences. The project is part of the Leverhulme Research Project ‘Changing Beliefs of the Human Body’ (2004-2009), which has brought together researchers in archaeology, ancient history and social anthropology.

A series of special events and activities for a wide range of audiences is running throughout the period of the exhibition, until December 2010. For further details, see the exhibition website: http://maa.cam.ac.uk/assemblingbodies/exhibition.