Uncategorized

Last week Nature carried a fascinating advance online article* written by a research group at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) lead by Jack Szostak. They have created a simple artifical protocell in the form of a single-stranded DNA-template within a shell of such fatty acids that were likely to have been present in early life […]

After the minisymposium with Jens Hauser and Sepp Gumbrecht on the concept of ‘presence’ here at Medical Museion last spring, our research group has repeatedly come back to the relation between mediated visualizations of biomedical objects, on the one hand, and the immediacy of touching them, on the other (see, for example, Jan Eric’s earlier post on Condillac’s statue). As an anecdotal illustration […]

As previously reported on this blog, Medical Museion set up a very temporary exhibition at the Bella Center congress center in Copenhagen this weekend. The occasion was the annual meeting of ESA, the Europan Society for Anesthesiology, and the exhibition focussed on the events, outcomes and legacies of a few very dynamic years in anesthesiology in […]

The medical faculty at the University of Oslo has announced a full/associate professorship in medical history, with a focus on Norwegian history. The candidate shall have a research background in Scandinavian/Norwegian medical history, which sort of narrows the field of possible applicants. Read more here. Deadline for applications is already 1 August 2008.

Suggestive calls for papers to interesting seminars and conferences appear in the inbox almost daily. Usually I understand what these messages mean, but sometimes I’m in doubt. For example, I just received one for “Thinking and Making Connections: Cybernetic Heritage in the Social and Human Sciences and Beyond”, a conference to be held at Södertörn University College […]

Yesterday, we had a whole-day meeting with our new advisory board, appointed by the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences for a three-year period. After a short resumé of our Annual Report for 2007 (which will be on-line soon) the ten Board members engaged in a very lively discussion about our work — from research and […]

As Science Daily reports, researcher from the University of Washington have developed a computer game that turns protein folding into a competitive sport. The free game is called Foldit, and will, perhaps, one day lead to the first Nobel Prize won by a gamer. The game targets a huge problem for protein research, namely the […]

Some medical objects, like stethoscopes or mechanical hearts, are almost 100% ‘medical’. They are not made for other purposes, they are rarely used for other purposes, and they are almost always understood by others as ‘medical’ objects. But what about this worn-out keyboard?   It was produced as a multipurpose keyboard, clones of it are used in a variety of professions and […]

What makes these everyday things—a food storage container, a measuring cup, a cake keeper, a beverage bottle, etc—potential contemporary medical museum objects? Well, it turns out they all contain bisphenol A, a rather simple organic molecule used as a key monomer in the production of polycarbonate plastics. In addition to being a very useful hard plastic ingredient, however, BPA is […]

Today’s edition of SurgXperiences (nr 121)—organised by The Sterile Eye under the title ‘Tools of the trade’—is illustrated with some of Øystein Horgmo‘s photos of surgical instruments. A nice collection which reminds us of the visual aesthetic qualities of surgical things. Here are some examples:           More here.

Earlier this week we mentioned the MoMA exhibition ‘Design and the Elastic Mind‘. One of the art works on show is (sorry: was) Oron Catt’s and Ionat Zurr’s ‘Victimless Leather’ a small ‘leather’ jacket made of stem cells on a polymer matrix. Was, because last week an exhibition curator pulled the plug on its life-support system, thus killing the project. ‘Victimless Leather’ was originally created to last at […]

Speaking of artificial organisms: the Roskilde Science Sunrise Conference 2008 (‘Surviving Ourselves: The Human Condition’) to be held at Roskilde University, Denmark, 13-15 August, will deal with the possible impact of the laboratory creation of primitive life and the possibility of genetic recreation of dead DNA (the Jurassic Park theme). The organising committee is bringing in a […]