World Congress on Animal Testing Alternatives

We are seeking a better way

I just started following the Humane Society on Twitter + stumbled across the fact they’ve just wrapped up this conference [yay them!]:

“From August 30 through September 3, 2009, scientists and others committed to the advancement of alternatives to animal testing and experimentation—including senior staff from Humane Society International and our sister organizations—will gather in Rome, Italy for the Seventh World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences.

The motto for this Congress is “Calling on Science,” a title that emphasizes the fact that scientific advances are the foundation of progress towards the ultimate replacement of animals in safety testing and other types of laboratory experiments. This year marks a number of key milestones and setbacks along the road to replacement, including the 50th anniversary of the book that launched the modern alternatives movement, the second phase of the European Union marketing ban on animal-tested cosmetics, and first wave of testing under the EU’s “REACH” chemicals regulation, which is projected to spell suffering and death for up to 20 million animals.”

Adorable Microbial Plushies

Microbial Plushies

Museum of Animal Perspectives

“The Museum of Animal Perspectives sticks cameras on the heads of animals and uploads the resulting videos to Flickr. Wolfcam. Cowcam. Pigcam (hamcam). Goatcam. One wishes for catcam.”

Rapid Protoyping in Ice

“At McGill University (Montréal, Québec) engineers and architects are working together to explore the possibilities of rapid prototyping (RP) systems for construction with ice.

Ice structures built by the FAB@HOME desktop rapid prototyping machine.

In 2006, Professors Pieter Sijpkes (School of Architecture) and Jorge Angeles (Department of Mechanical Engineering and Centre for Intelligent Machines) received a three-year $173,000 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) research creation grant for a project entitled New Architecture of Phase Change: Computer-Assisted Ice Construction. Based in the School of Architecture, this three-year study focuses on computer-controlled techniques for constructing objects at varying scales out of ice.”

Read more about the Computer-Assisted Ice Construction Project here.

Bee Genome Linked To Colony Collapse Disorder

Colony Collapse Disorder is a devastating disease that’s been wiping out bees colonies all over the world. As yet there is no clear-cut scientific explanation as to the cause of this disorder. However, good news may be on the scientific-horizon:

“Now insights from the honeybee genome could overthrow guesswork in the effort to diagnose the cause of the die-offs.May Berenbaum at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and her colleagues looked for genetic differences between bees from US colonies that have suffered CCD and bees that were sampled before colony collapses shot up in 2006. CCD killed off about a third of US honeybees in 2007 and 2008. The team found 65 genes that were distinctly different in CCD bees. They also discovered unusual snippets of genetic material that are typical of infection with the RNA viruses known as picorna-like viruses. They found no evidence to suggest that pesticides or bacterial infection are the primary cause of CCD. Berenbaum thinks picorna-like viruses may be the root cause, making the bees highly vulnerable to other viruses, pesticides and bacteria.”

Read more about this research: http://u.nu/9iu33

Hooked on the Net?

The video game market is big business, worth around 2 billion dollars in Australia last year. The best games draw people into an exciting world where anything is possible; demons are slain, riches are made and worries about the real world left far behind. It’s great entertainment, but for a minority of players and net users who get hooked it can be a disaster. ‘Addicts’ deprived of computer access exhibit rage, distress and even violence. Should video game and internet ‘addiction’ be acknowledged as a recognised clinical condition? Pauline Newman’s documentary examines the scale and depth of this worldwide problem, and the drastic measures that some countries are employing to combat it.

Saturday 25th July 12pm
repeated Monday  27th July 7pm
Radio National

Artnodes e-journal on art, science and technology

Artnodes is an impressive e-journal promoted by the Universitat of Oberta de Catalunya which analyses the intersection between arts, science and technology. It fosters a number of projects, such as Yasmin and Labs.

LABS
International database of abstracts of doctorate theses and essays on art, science and technology. Artnodes-UOC Project, Leonardo-ISAST and Pomona College.

YASMIN
Network, debates and news list on the intersections between art, science and technology in the Mediterranean basin. Artnodes-UOC Project, Leonardo-ISAST, OLATS, University of Athens and Unesco Digiarts.