Better Living through Cell Biology

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Research/Narration by Amro Hamdoun
Images by Perrin Ireland


There are many persistent industrial chemicals that accumulate in marine life and in our bodies. For many years we have had problems predicting which industrial chemicals will be persistent in the environment.

Artist Perrin Ireland worked with Amro Hamdoun to explain how current research in cell biology might be used to to prevent this problem from happening in the future. Click the link below to watch Perrin’s beautiful watercolor art unfold.
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Cholesterol: Friend Before Foe

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Scientific American: Cholesterol from Alphachimp Studio Inc. on Vimeo.
Text by Jeanne Garbarino. Images by Perrin Ireland. Video by Nick Navatta

Yes, when in excess, cholesterol can be very detrimental to your health and is often the culprit behind heart attacks and strokes. However, behind the seemingly dangerous exterior lies a molecule that is essential for human life.

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Insights from the Science and Public Leadership Fellows Program

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At the PopTech Science and Public Leadership Fellows retreat at National Geographic headquarters earlier this month, the program’s faculty provided key insights to help equip the 2011 Fellows with enhanced leadership, collaboration and communication skills.

2011 PopTech Science and Public Leadership Fellows

Member of this group are high-potential early- and mid-career scientists working in areas of critical importance to the nation and the planet. They represent a corps of highly visible and socially engaged scientific leaders who embody science as an essential way of thinking, discovering, understanding and deciding.

Jeff Nesbit, Dennis Dimick and Lisa Witter on storytelling

For a taste of their ideas, have a look at...
  1. Graphic Record produced by Alphachimp: http://bit.ly/PopTechSciFellows11scribe
  2. The Full Story on the PopTech blog: http://bit.ly/PopTechSciFellows11
  3. Video of 2010 Science Fellows at: http://poptech.org/sciencefellows/

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Humans Closest Relative

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"It is a world full of conflicts." notes Jon Stewart in his intro to this report. "Some are more important than others. And some are much, much less."

In the contentious field of science, there are many accepted truths. These two ape scientists duke it out over who is our closest ancestor. Fortunately, The Daily Show correspondent John Oliver is there to conduct an evidence-based debate: Chimps vs. Orangutans.

(A 'must-see' in that you must see the scientist with a mohawk who lacks any capacity for self-deprication or free-style rap skills.)

Comparing the Human and Chimpanzee Genomes

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(via FlowingData)

Comparing the Human and Chimpanzee Genomes

As part of the Explore Evolution exhibit at the University of Nebraska State Museum, Judy Diamond displays a segment of the human genome in line with that of the chimpanzee that matches very closely. The point is to show how similar two are with the few differences represented by a drawing of a man, distinguished geneticist Svante Paabo.

See video of scintist Richard Dawkins explaining the exhibit.

 

Monkey See, Monkey Duplicate

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Researchers get stem cells from cloned monkeys.
clipped from www.reuters.com
Photo

U.S. researchers have cloned monkeys and used the resulting embryos to get embryonic stem cells, an important step towards being able to do the same thing in humans, they reported on Wednesday.

Shoukhrat Mitalipov and colleagues at Oregon Health & Science University said they used skin cells from monkeys to create cloned embryos, and then extracted embryonic stem cells from these days-old embryos.

This had only been done in mice before, they reported in the journal Nature. Mitalipov had given sketchy details of his work at a conference in Australia in June, but the work has now been independently verified by another team of experts.