Of Schemes and Memes Blog

Best of Nature Network, nature.com blogs and Scitable: 28 – 4th May

Video Special: Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci is arguably the greatest polymath of all time; renowned for his art, science and invention, as Joanna Scott discusses in the London Blog. This is all relevant now as his work is about to go on display in London! As part of the Royal Collection, his anatomical drawings were kept in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. However, they have now been moved to The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace where they will be open to the public until September. The Nature Video team were lucky enough to secure an invite to view the collection at Windsor Castle and have produced a video with senior curator of the collection, Martin Clayton, talking us through some of the most important pieces.

So if you are unable to attend in person, enjoy the video below:

Oral contraceptives

Scitable’s blogger,  Tara Tai reveals in her post that oral contraceptives (OCPs) have been available since the late 1950s, yet in the past few weeks, the question of whether insurance plans should be mandated to cover contraception has sparked a nationwide debate:

The arguments have extended beyond the sphere of politicians and their commentators, to include medical practitioners, religious leaders, and even twenty-something year-old law school students. Why all the hype, when the U.S. has so many other issues to solve? What happened to the economy, the environment, the education system? That’s not an answerable question, or at least it’s not one I’m seeking to address here. After all, women’s health and the relationship between a woman and her womb (or what may reside within her womb) have always been controversial, to say the least. Instead, I was curious about how and what percentage of women use OCPs for reasons unrelated to contraception.

Find more fact and figures in her post and feel free to join in the conversation.

First plant-made drug on the market

Amy Maxmen reports in the News Blog this week that for the first time, the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) today has approved a drug produced in a genetically engineered plant cell. Amy explains that among those cheering the news are scientists who have advocated ‘bio-pharming’:

The drug, Elelyso (taliglucerase alfa), soothes the symptoms in most patients of the rare lysosomal storage disorderGaucher disease, which causes problems ranging from bone infections to anaemia. Scientists at the Israeli biotechnology company Protalix Biotherapeutics developed a method to create the human enzyme that these patients lack in carrot cells, by inserting a gene that encodes the protein into the cells. Patients treated with the resulting enzyme (taliglucerase alfa) in clinical trials fared at least as well as those given another enzyme-replacement therapy on the market, Cerezyme.

Continue to the post to find out more.

NIH Centre aims to match scientists with discarded drugs

Also in the news this week, the NIH joined forces with drug companies to launch a new initiative to give new life to drugs abandoned during the development process at big pharmas.

A cache of at least 24 drugs abandoned during development by three major pharmaceutical companies will become available to scientists seeking novel therapeutic uses for them under a new competitive awards program. NIH, through its National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), will spend up to $20 million in 2013 to finance competitively-awarded projects by scientists aiming to “teach old drugs new tricks,” as Collins’ boss, Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, put it at the press conference.  Applications for the pilot program, “Discovering New Therapeutic Uses for Existing Molecules,” will be welcomed from academics, non-profits groups, biotechnology companies and others.

Read all the details on the News blog.

The Vagina Catalogues

In this intriguingly titled piece, A Spoonful of Medicine blog reports on some intriguing developments of the study of the vaginal microbiome – the bacteria living in the vagina – that could have positive implications for personalised treatment of yeast infections and other complaints where the microbiome is disturbed. The bacterial life in the vagina had previously been thought to be relatively stable, disturbed when an infection was present, but the latest study from University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore suggests that in fact, this is not the case. Results from volunteers for the study who self-swabbed twice a week for three months showed that in fact, the microbial balance of the healthy vagina can change completely even in a few days.

Read more details of the study at A Spoonful of Medicine.

#ToolTales

Science Online celebrated its first birthday on Wednesday evening. To complement the celebrations, over the last two weeks we hosted a series of guest posts on Soapbox Science where a range of scientists shared details about what’s in their online science toolkits.

You can follow the online conversation on Twitter with the #ToolTales hashtag. You can also find a summary of the event, including a Storify here.

Why do old books smell?

This week Nature Network’s blogger GrrlScientist has been asking a rather odd question: Why do old books smell? She explains that that “old book smell” brings back so many memories, but what creates that smell:

Basically, a book is made of organic materials — a variety of different papers and inks, as well as glues and fibers used to bind the book together. These organic components react to heat, light and moisture in the environment and with the chemicals used to make the book itself. Specific odours are the result of the particular blend of volatile compounds released by the sum total of the book’s organic materials. These odours also include those contributed by outside influences encountered by the book during its life — influences that impart the familiar stench of old cigarettes or cigars that is often associated with old books, for example.

That old books smell is the smell of death.

Follow into GrrlScientist’s post to find out more.

Motivation

Can you increase your motivation simply by paying attention? ask Nature Network’s Eric-Wubbo Lameijer:

The most interesting implication of the ‘motivation through attention’ hypothesis would be that if you can direct your attention well, you can become motivated for/interested in almost anything. If that is true, however, most people apparently either do not know how to do direct their attention well enough to become motivated in their lives or their jobs, or for some reason choose not to do so.

Pick up some top tips in Eric-Wubbo’s post and feel free to leave your own.

 

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