hypertelie-blog

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Stunning examples. Really.

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Escherichia Coli 'outbreak' or THE SOURCE

E. Coli.

Such a cute name. Human's good friend, in life and in research. Not only does it help us digest but it has also accompanied us through innumerable bio-medical breakthroughs, thanks to it's wide spread, convenient size for study and rapid reproduction system. Ironically, it was discovered by a German pediatrician and bacteriologist Theodor Escherich...

But sometimes this friendly companion mutates and starts being what we call 'pathogenic', meaning detrimental to our well-being. These new 'strains', cousins of the initial bacteria, evolve into something that is not compatible with the initial place and functions of the common strain. So they cause digestive complications and eventually internal bleeding, kidney failure that can be fatal (called haemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS). The distinct feature of the recent strain that has spread is that it produces a very high dose of a chemical compound, a sort of 'glue', that helps it adhere better to the gut and colonize more parts, increasing the amount of toxins, killing not just the elder or children.

Here's a comprehensive list of previous E.Coli 'outbreaks' (remember the movie?). It was only a matter of time until one of the strains became deadly and resistant.

What's most interesting about this recent outbreak (loving this term), is that we are all eagerly looking for 'the source' (sounds like a bad hollywood movie). As far as we know, 'the source' could be anything. Some German guy might not have washed his hands and then manipulated cucumbers before selling them in Hamburg. Or the bacteria might just have made its way from a septic tank to some irrigation system. But what's the point here? Do we really think we are going to retrace all the 'infected lettuces' from the market? Or do we think that by knowing, we are going to avoid some future outbreak? Makes me think of the whole fuss in the 80's about 'the source' of AIDS (and this crazy book, probably true, where the guy proves on some 1200 pages that AIDS came from a polio vaccine distributed in Africa made from infected monkey kidneys). Would that be true or not, does it really matter?

Well actually it does. We humans think origins and causally efficacious (hi)stories have some power called explanatory power. It's amazing how much pleasure and satisfaction we get from these explanations. I can still feel the rush flowing through my body the day I learned about evolutionary psychology. It's probably the only way we can familiarize ourselves with things in order to better control them eventually.

Well, best of luck trying to control e.coli...

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The world's largest dinosaurs exhibition opened a couple of months ago at the American Museum of Natural History.

For some time now, I've been quite annoyed and intrigued by how much natural history exhibitions were unaesthetically driven. Everywhere in the world, natural history museums are wrecks (no exaggeration). I mean, ok, you have to teach people something, ok kids should be able to understand and ok, it should be accessible to anyone no matter their background. But come on... It's still a museum, it's still a exhibition and science is definitely taking on a big part in art today. So, what's holding us back??? The research behind the above mentioned exhibition is astonishing. The tagline: "the science behind their size". They have reconstructed sauropods, physiological details about them, their heart, their huge lungs. The eggs, the nest, reproduction strategies. Their eating behaviors, and so much more. They even have interactive activities like getting you to pump an elephant's heart in order to make you realise how much power is needed to get the blood throughout the body of large animals; excavation games for children and so on.

So I ask, after all this effort, why stop at the most important part: the way all this is presented. Check out the video and take a look at the typography, the colors, the way the whole space is arranged... even behind my screen, it looks horrendous. Hire an graphic designer, an artist, an architect, a landscaper, anyone! Just hire some random design student he would have done a better job than you guys...

All this got me thinking I really should start another master next year, museology of natural history.

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12:31 project edited this video from cryosection or frozen section procedure data of the visible human project. I can't stop rolling it over, and over and over, and over... over and inside.

I always thought that to be medically oriented you must be in some way very twisted and/or lacking some empathy abilities. This confirms it. 

The result is as beautiful as the procedure is ingeniously horrific.

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Steve Frank is great, this guy masters the skills to mix biology, economy and ethology and comes up with these fresh naturalistic grounds for new theories on the living. 

His three books are super insightful (its rare to say this about a book...) although I have only read one of them, I'm sure the others are also packed with meaning and new perspectives. You can read all his publications (books included!) on his site.

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legislation and lobotomy

the USSR was the first country to legally ban lobotomy in 1950, the US did not before 1977 and many coutries like Belgium, the UK and others still perform the procedure until this date.

maybe the manichean history they teach us in school should be revised after all...

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Jeffrey Braun's Morphing Cutlery. Human/tool interface or how behaviour are linked to functions.

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city of ants.

for the whole documentary.

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Humans have a tendency to think there are the only ones on earth mastering the ability to stretch their boundries onto the surrounding world. True, humans go to Mars, travel by car and modify DNA strands. But seldom do we think that the way we perceive and act on this world is human-specific and that many other instances of perception are not accessible to us, rendering us just another specie on this planet. Whiskers are one example of these instances. Which reminds me of a seminal paper by Thomas Nagel, What is it like to be a bat?, The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4 (October 1974): 435-50.

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disturbing esthetics. seems familiar yet has never been seen. seems natural yet so repetitive. quite like electronic music.

from the geniuses at festo.

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With every technological ‘upgrade’ we relinquish a piece of our selves. A pelt for a coat, hunting for farming, singing for writing, memory for web search.

Koert van Mensvoort from NEXT NATURE

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Making bacteria into drug blimps

This article "Making bacteria into drug blimps" from the MIT tech review got me thinking. There really are two ways of conceiving medicinal practices.

At one point, probably just after WW2, biological identity was conceived with the help of a quite comforting duality: the self and non-self. An organism's immunity was as an entity which definition was a set of 'normal' components that were 'attacked' by 'foreign' bodies and that needed to 'preserve' its identity in order to survive. What I realised is that this notion of the biological realm is the precise foundation of occidental medicinal and more broadly hygienic practices. Yes. The human organism is a privileged being that must eradicate the unwanted, destroy it, by all means possible. From chemotherapy to antibiotics and pest control, all point in this direction. And this poses not only scientific issues but also ethical ones.

However, this view of life is now since the 1980's under serious attacks, targeting not the simplicity but the validity of the model. Why? Because immunity is not something static, nor defined; it is a system, constantly redefined by its external and internal environment. We are not one but all what we live and encounter. So we started acknowledging the importance of 'alternative' medicine, eastern practices and more global approaches to the living. And this is the second way to conceive of healing, as operating from within and with the help of the body that is healed. But it does not all have to be shamanic or acupunctural. It can also be highly technological, like these blimp-bacteria specifically targeting other cells to produce proteins they do not usually do. It might seem more insidious than other methods, but the point is that the body and its components are the ones acting upon themselves. It might therefore raise other ethical issues but this is for another post. 

Not so long ago, in fact a couple of weeks ago, I lost a friend to brain cancer. And I can not shake off the idea that maybe, if he had not been aggressively exposed to highly toxic levels of radiations and chemical compounds, he would not have died so soon (or at all maybe). So this probably psychoanalytically explains the drift from this seemingly random article to a pamphlet against 'me-vs-the world' view of the self.

i miss you D.

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ULI WESTPHAL. 'My work evolves around magnificent natural phenomena, as well as human conceptions and misconceptions of nature.'