Posted by Armadillo under blog's category : Communications & media

Animals have been used to understand the inner workings of the brain since the very beginnings of neuroscience. Famously, Leonardo da Vinci injected the brain of a freshly killed ox with melted wax to reveal its complex inner workings.

Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century by Carl Schoonover reveals the latest science of brain imaging through sumptous pictures.

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Posted by Armadillo under blog's category : Research & medical benefits

Smoking or drinking while pregnant can damage the unborn child. Toxic chemicals such as alcohol, nicotine and carbon monoxide enter the mother's bloodstream and then pass through the umbilical cord to the growing baby. But less obvious are the effects of the mother's lifestyle choices on a baby before it is even conceived.

So far, there is no clear advice about how we can live to reduce health risks to the next generation, but no doubt in another decade or so it won't just be cigarettes and alcohol that are on the banned list.

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Posted by Zebedee under blog's category : Animal welfare & alternatives

Our attention was drawn this week to a relatively new European initiative called AXLR8, a consortium which aims to accelerate progress in developing alternatives to animals for safety testing. It has just released a 300-page progress report detailing achievements in replacing and reducing (two of the 'three Rs') animals in research and testing.

Alternative Testing Strategies Progress Report 2010 runs to 300 pages; its content is quite technical and it includes realistic recommendations from a scientific panel. It explores approaches that may reduce or replace animals, including the use of embryonic stem cells to create heart tissue for medicines testing and computer programs that can predict the effect of a medicine in the body. It also discusses technologies that are already widely used, such as robotic pre-screening of potential medicines.

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