Every historian’s/curator’s wet dream is to find the door to a forgotten attic with all sorts of so far unseen historical documents and artefacts. This is what two former staff members at the Willard Psychiatric Center in New York State and a New York State Museum curator did in 1995 when they opened a hidden door to an attic with almost 400 suitcases with photos, letters etc. that had belonged to former patients. This unique material was turned into a very popular exhibition at the New York State Museum (“Lost Cases, Recovered Lives: Suitcases From a State Hospital Attic”) in 2004, and now it has been turned into a wandering exhibition and website, see http://www.suitcaseexhibit.org. Has anybody thought of going through the attics of the Copenhagen hospitals?

There has been some controversy in recent years about the possible beneficial vascular effects of drinking moderate amounts of red wine. Is it in the alcohol or in some other molecules in the complex wine soup? A report in this week’s issue of Nature confirms what we all thought — viz. that the effect can be correlated to a set of molecules called procyanidines which are in higher concentrations in wines from the southwestern area of France than in wines from other regions of the wine world. Here’s the abstract:

Regular, moderate consumption of red wine is linked to a reduced risk of coronary heart disease and to lower overall mortality, but the relative contribution of wine’s alcohol and polyphenol components to these effects is unclear. Here we identify procyanidins as the principal vasoactive polyphenols in red wine and show that they are present at higher concentrations in wines from areas of southwestern France and Sardinia, where traditional production methods ensure that these compounds are efficiently extracted during vinification. These regions also happen to be associated with increased longevity in the population.

(See futher R. Corder et al., “Oenology: Red wine procyanidins and vascular health”, Nature vol. 444, p. 566; 30 November 2006)

And what about beer? Come on, British Medical Journal!

Take a look at the brand new Journal of Visualized Experiments which wants to publish video films of experimental work to help apply laboratory protocols. The “YouTube for test tubes”, as news (at) nature writes.

The editors’ explicit aim is to help researchers reproduce biomedical experimental procedures, but it certainly has museological applications as well. These videos is a reminder how thoroughly materially grounded these practices are. We are very far from inscriptions á la Latour & Woolgar here. This is laboratory work in its original meaning of manual labour.

See also Gustav Holmberg on the same topic (in Swedish) + another post 

Another interesting aspect of multi-participant-generated scientific papers is that they will make it more difficult to retain traditional means (e.g.,co-authorship in articles in high impact peer-reviewed journals) for evaluating scientific research performance. As one report to the National Science Foundation said already six years ago:

“the shift from multidisciplinary to integrated research … will require changes in the way individuals are evaluated at their home institutions and by funding agencies. The emphasis on integration and collaboration leads to more collaborative research projects and multi-authored papers which will challenge traditional mechanisms of assessment for tenure and promotion”

(Report to the National Science Foundation From the Third Workshop on the Development of a National Ecological Observatory Network … 2000).

Tonight I am going to bed in company with a month-old (26 October) issue of Nature which carries the article that reports on the sequence of the honeybee genome. There are about 50 different species genomes sequenced or in the process of sequencing at the moment, but this is clearly one of the more interesting because of its potential power to elucidate the genetics of social behaviour.

What’s equally fascinating (as others have perhaps already observed in other multiauthor scientific papers) is that the 197 “participants” from 90 institutions all over the world are listed according to their functional position in the Honeybee Genome Sequencing Consortium, like “principal investigators” (2 persons), “DNA sequencing” (“only” 26 persons), “data management”, “genome assembly”, etc. Even “funding agency management” staff is listed in the paper. (It reminds me of the end credits of a movie: producers, instructors, 1st camera crew, gaffers, key grip, postproduction, catering etc. Will next step for consortium-produced scientific articles be to list IT service and kitchen staff as well?) Read More

The Office of NIH History has posted a job listing for their new Director. For more information go to www.usajobs.gov and search for vacancy #OD-07-146557-DE. The job closes on January 26, 2007, and is expected to be filled next spring. See also the new issue of their Newsletter.

Just got this from one of the organizers — looks like an interesting meeting to all of us who work on visualisation:

Visualising Nature: Making Images and the Production of Biological Knowledge from Early Modern Natural History to Contemporary Life Sciences

Ischia Summer School on the History of the Life Sciences Ischia, 3 July – 10 July, 2007. Read More

Apropos the recent debate about the reliability of Wikipedia — take a look at the Uncyclopedia which already has about 175 articles on science (including a very instructive one on “intelligent rotation”). The Uncyclopedia is perhaps not as subtle as The Onion, but with a little help from its friends it could be turned into the hilarious counterpart of the Wikipedia.

The ultimate Google project is to turn all textual and numerical representations of the world – all books, manuscripts etc. – into searchable digital format. Great! But what is lost in the process? In a commentary in the 6 October issue of the TLS (“Such attics cleared of me: Saving writers’ manuscripts for the nation”, pp. 14-15), my old favourite poet Andrew Motion discusses my not-so-favourite poet Philip Larkin’s view on the collection of manuscripts.

“All manuscripts have two kinds of value”, says Larkin: “what might be called the magical value and the meaningful value”. Adds Motion: “I love Larkin’s distinction between the magical and the meaningful”. There is “a primitive, visceral thrill in thinking: ‘My god, Keats’s hand rested on this piece of paper’”.

Meaningful value has almost completely dominated historians’ valuation of collections. The neglect of the magical value has probably also underscored the (otherwise very useful) avalanche of projects for the digitalisation of collections.

Andrew Motion’s/Philip Larkin’s point about the magical value of collections is a reminder, however, of the fact – which everyone who has worked in an archive knows – that the physical remains add a dimension to the historian’s work which easily gets lost when one only has access to documents in html- or pdf-format.

Der bliver afholdt et PhD-kursus om “Kroppen som æstetisk og medicinsk fænomen” den 20.-22. november på Københavns Universitet (KUA og Medicinsk Museion).

De seneste års interesse for sammenhængen mellem kunst og videnskab er baggrunden for dette kursus om kropsbilleder i medicin og kunst. Ved nedslag i forskellige historiske perioder vil vi på kurset undersøge forbindelser mellem nyorienteringer i den medicinske diskurs om kroppen og samtidige æstetiske kropsudtryk. Også i den medicinske videnskab er kroppen blevet et tegn, der skal læses og tydes, og den videnskabelige omgang med kroppen er ikke blot indlejret i og udtryk for almene samfundsmæssige forhold, den mærkes også i den kunstneriske skabelse af kroppen. Hvilke kropsdiskurser følger med medicinen, og hvordan trækker disse spor i de kunstneriske universer? Hvilke billeder og forestillinger eksisterer der i medicinen af henholdsvis den sunde og syge krop og hvordan er gestaltningerne af samme modsætningspar i den æstetiske og litterære praksis? Når der er et misforhold, en usamtidighed mellem den medicinske videnskab og de æstetiske former: hvad kan da forklare denne spænding? Kurset vil selvsagt være tværfagligt forankret og forelæserne vil komme fra såvel historievidenskab og idehistorie som fra de æstetiske videnskaber: litteratur og kunst

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