Blog

Just want to draw your attention to an interdisciplinary conference on “Concepts of Infection” to be held 29-31 March, 2007 at the University of Bristol (UK). See below or: http://www.bris.ac.uk/arts/birtha/conferences/concepts_infection/index.html

Given all these tens of thousands of public and private medical clinics around the world that all look the same — how can one separate the functional trivia from the truly chic. Now Bill T. at Cool Hunter has found the true nugget: Singapore’s The Clinic, which doesn’t look, smell or sound (or work) like any other clinic: Upstairs, The Clinic offers a dining experience like […]

I don’t know what to think about the neon artwork depicting proteins related to deadly diseases displayed in the windows of the Wellcome Trust’s headquarters on Euston Road in London: The neon art “is mesmerising passers-by in the centre of London, and acting as a bittersweet reminder of the devastation of serious medical conditions”, says the […]

A five-day residential course in “Oral History in the History of Medicine” will be given at the University of Manchester 26-30 March 2007. The course is intended for postgraduates and others who are interested in using oral history to explore the history of medicine and offers a mix of theoretical perspectives and practical sessions. As well as a […]

University Museums and Collections (UMAC) holds its 7th international conference in Vienna, 19-24 August 2007 under the umbrella of ICOM’s general conference on the theme “Museums and Universal Heritage”. UMAC’s subtheme — “Universities in Transition – Responsibilities for Heritage” — focuses on universities in transition effect university museums and collections and the attitudes to cultural heritage. Here’s UMAC’s call for […]

Another highly influential buzz-phrase in contemporary medical discourse is ‘evidence based medicine’ (EBM). Many medical people believe this is a fairly recent step in the history of medical progress; historians on the other hand have questioned the novelty of the phenomenon and pointed to its long durée and that evidence based (i.e., empirical) medical practice is in principle going back all the way to […]

There is an interesting grey area of linguistic units somewhere between icons, acronyms, short phrases and brands that function as goads to action in the field of science, technology and medicine. The best known and most over-exploited at the moment is probably ‘Web 2.0’, coined by O’Reilly Media to denote “perceived or proposed second generation of […]

This year’s ‘bonus’ theme issue of The Lancet (vol. 368, supplement 1, December 2006) has several articles about medicine, art and creativity; it can be read online in this smart browsable version until early February 2007.

This micro-well tray, a proto-type produced in the early 1970s by Nunc A/S, was recently added to the collections of the Medical Museion. The tray, referred to as the Kissmeyer-Nielsen tray, was developed by Flemming Kissmeyer-Nielsen, head of the Tissue Type Laboratory at Århus Kommunehospital (now Skejby Sygehus). Kissmeyer-Nielsen was the leading Danish figure in […]

The Science Communication Group at Imperial College, London invites to a conference on Science & the Public, May 19, 2007. Science studies research tends to focus on “the lab”, being chiefly concerned with the internal workings of the scientific community. This conference aims to bring together the strands of academia that consider science as it intersects with non-scientific […]

The Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences and the University of Maryland are inviting to a virtual (sic!) meeting on “Visual Culture and Bioscience”, March 5-13, 2007. This international event will create a virtual meeting space for experts from many disciplines to discuss the intersections between visual culture and […]

I promised to come back to Michael Crichton’s Next. I didn’t expect much — but was nevertheless sort of positively surprised. Not because of Crichton’s writing skills. I’ve always been ambiguous about his books (The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Prey, etc.) because their literary value is, in my humble mind, not overwhelming. His characters only seem to have one emotion (in Next they invariably “frown” […]