Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Science Art Work of the Month: January 2015
The paraSITE shelter of Michael M. on 26th Street and 9th Avenue in
New York.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
American Museum of Natural History | Shelf Life
The American Museum of Natural History invites you to dive deep inside the its collection to discover the past, present, and future of approximately 33 million artifacts and specimens in this new series with original monthly videos.
Head over to amnh.org/shelflife, where you can watch the first three episodes and learn more about the project. You can also follow the Museum on Tumblr and Twitter, where they’re constantly adding new Shelf Life content.
EPISODE FOUR | PREMIERES FEBRUARY 17, 2015.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Science Art Work of the Month: December
Following Luke Jerram's HIV (series 2) and Rob Kesseler's Sphagnum moss, we are so pleased to have yet another wonderful and inspiring artist, Jennifer Wen Ma, accept to be a part of our kNow-Science Artwork of the Month series.
Below, Inked Garden by Jennifer Wen Ma, currently on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Inked Chandelier
courtesy of Jennifer Wen Ma's studio
Inked Chandelier (2014), a large-scale installation composed of more than 700 live plants, mostly native to Canada’s West Coast, is painted completely black with Chinese ink. Suspended from the oculus of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s rotunda, the plants continue to grow as green buds sprout from the blackness. The site-specific work is a dialogue between the past and present, in which Ma pays homage to the legacy of ink painting by emphasizing time as an element of the composition: viewers observe the live installation transform over the duration of the exhibition.
For further information on the work of Jennifer Wen Man please visit littlemeat.net
courtesy of Jennifer Wen Ma's studio
Inked Chandelier (2014), a large-scale installation composed of more than 700 live plants, mostly native to Canada’s West Coast, is painted completely black with Chinese ink. Suspended from the oculus of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s rotunda, the plants continue to grow as green buds sprout from the blackness. The site-specific work is a dialogue between the past and present, in which Ma pays homage to the legacy of ink painting by emphasizing time as an element of the composition: viewers observe the live installation transform over the duration of the exhibition.
For further information on the work of Jennifer Wen Man please visit littlemeat.net
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Girl's own immune system engineered to fight leukemia
Cancer free thanks to a new Immunotherapy for Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: Emily's story.
9-year-old Emily Whitehead is the first girl to be cured, as of 2012, of a highly aggressive form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) via a novel form of immunotherapy against leukemias. The girl did not respond successfully to chemotherapy before she entered as the first patient of a new trial by study leader Stephan A. Grupp, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatric oncologist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. What the team did was to bioengineer T cells to work not against pathogens, viruses, bacteria etc. but to recognize and kill the leukemia cells that normally evade regular T cell surveillance.
What is a T cell?
T-cells are a type of white blood cell that circulate around our bodies, scanning for cellular abnormalities and infections.
 |
| Adding a receptor on T-cells allow them to recognize the target cell - in this case the cancer cell - and kill it. Our immune system often struggles to recognize cancer cells as foreign, because the cancer cell is actually very similar to many other cells in our body. |
Researchers first extracted the patient's own T cells and added a receptor to them that specifically recognize an antigen, an antenna that specifically marked these cancer cells. Once the T cell receptor binds to the cancer cell antigen, the T cell is able to kill the cancer cell as effectively as our immune system kills many viruses and bacteria. This is a powerful method to utilize patient's own arsenal in their immune system against cancer.
This past July, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration designated the so called CTL019 approach as a Breakthrough Therapy, helping to expedite its progress into broader clinical trials. While it's very early days, the future looks promising for such therapies. Source of the news can be found here.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Giving Tuesday 2014
Dear kNOW-SCIENCE Supporters,
Did you know that giving money to a worthwhile cause can make you happier?
Make kNow-Science your worthwhile cause this year.
As 2014 draws to a close, we can look back on a successful year of kNow-Science growth. A great series of talks at Genspace, The birth of kNow-Science Kids and an active Mythbusters Blog dispelling, or confirming, those old wives tales. To all who have attended talks and events have helped keep us going with your enthusiasm, support and smiles, we thank you and look forward to seeing you again in the future.
Make kNow-Science your worthwhile cause this year.
We rely on volunteers and also your generosity to keep growing and developing on the path we have thus far travelled.
So why not take the opportunity and show your support of kNow-Science with a donation, and help us continue to bring you the knowledge you didn't know you needed.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Are e-cigarettes harmless?
Are e-cigarettes harmless?
E-cigarettes,
this unknown.
Using our Ask the Expert form, Matthew Guidetti asked KNow Science about e-cigarettes.
Astonishingly, scientists have published more than 300 scientific papers on e-cigarettes since 2009. Probably right after the first e-cigarette set foot on the market, when it was just a niche habit or an alternative to cigarettes for the elite, scientists all over the globe were already busy experimenting with e-cigarettes i. Data ranges from their modes of action, how routes of administration change their effects and whether they are ultimately safer than conventional cigarettes.
Are they healthy or not?
Are they worse or better than normal cigarettes?
What are their side effects?
Astonishingly, scientists have published more than 300 scientific papers on e-cigarettes since 2009. Probably right after the first e-cigarette set foot on the market, when it was just a niche habit or an alternative to cigarettes for the elite, scientists all over the globe were already busy experimenting with e-cigarettes i. Data ranges from their modes of action, how routes of administration change their effects and whether they are ultimately safer than conventional cigarettes.
Why has all this science not reached the public? Why are people still uncertain about e-cigarettes when we [scientists[ know so much?
kNow-Science put two of our scientists, cancer expert Dr. Simona Giunta and brain biologist Dr. Ilaria Ceglia on the task of extracting comprehensible information from the jungle of published data.
So, what's the consensus?
Here are three main conclusions. Some are predictable, others definitely worth knowing!
1 – E-cigarettes are a great way to stop smoking.
2 – E-cigarettes are dangerous in a different way to normal cigarettes. While tarmac and other toxic substances are gone, the metal
mechanisms in many e-cigarettes produced upon vaporization have been shown to
release heavy metals, which you inhale with each puff 1-2. A much better choice is all-ceramic
e-cigarettes, which do not contain metallic parts, and hence have less risk of
releasing heavy metals.
3 – E-cigarettes still have all the side effects of
nicotine use. Changes to heart rate and blood pressure and propensity to cause lung
cancer are still there 3-4. Ingesting large quantities of nicotine,
whichever the route, is not advisable from a health perspective.
The benefit of e-cigarettes over conventional
cigarettes is that they can facilitate smoking cessation 5-6.
Lung cancer is the number one killer cancer in the
world for both men and women. It accounts for 13% of all new cancers, and a
recent, extremely well controlled study showed convincingly that about 90% of
lung cancers are due to smoking. [i]i
Doing the simple math, this means that if the all the
smokers quit tomorrow the incidence of cancers overall would decrease by over
10%.
Now that you know the [scientific] truth about
e-cigarettes, will you embrace the [scientific] truth about health and change
your life accordingly?
Thanks for reading from the kNow-Science team.
4.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24343348
i http://www.ecigalternative.com/ecigarette-studies-research.htm
i[i] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Health Consequences of Smoking: A Report of the U.S. Surgeon General, 2004.
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Science Art Work of the Month: November
kNow Science' connection with amazing artists continues with our Winter piece of artwork on display on our website for November and December.
Sphagnum moss
Close up view of a stained leaf. The 'tile' pattern is made up of hyaline cells; dead cells capable of holding large amounts of water.
Rob Kesseler 2010
Developed in conjunction with the Gulbenkian Science Institute, Portugal
It's a true honor to have London-based artist Rob Kesseler display one of his art pieces for kNow-Science. Rob is the Chair of Arts, Design and Science at the University of the Arts in London and his beautiful pieces follows our October artwork, an HIV (Series2) sculpture from the glass Microbiology series by Luke Jerram.
Are you an artist that finds inspiration in science and the natural world? Submit your entry by emailing us at info@kNow-Science.org. We'd love to hear from you!
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