Monthly Archives: December 2015

The Latest on BRCA1, Supercomputers, Pigeons Spotting Cancer and More…

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Surfing the Web uncovered these news items worth sharing:

  • Researchers at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco have linked the BRCA1 protein, a product of the BRCA1 gene, to normal learning and memory functions. The new study, published in Nature Communications, demonstrates that Alzheimer’s disease is associated with a depletion of BRCA1 in neurons and that BRCA1 depletion can cause cognitive deficits.
  • According to a study led by researchers at King’s College London, survival rates are lower in women with breast cancer treated for depression. The study, published in Psycho-Oncology, analyzed cancer registration and hospital records for 77,173 women in South East England diagnosed with breast cancer between 2000 and 2009.
  • Scientists at the University of Toronto used CRISPR to turn off, one by one, nearly 18,000 genes – that is, 90% of the human genome – to identify the “core” 1,500 genes that are essential for cell survival. Read more on their findings in Cell.
  • Battling cancer with supercomputers; meet Amanda Randles, Assistant Professor of Biochemical Engineering at Duke University, who is looking into applying her supercomputing expertise with biomedical research. Her next research project involves the stimulation of cancer cells through circulation to predict tumor progression.
  • According to a study published in PLOS ONE, pigeons can be trained to spot cancer just as well as human experts. A total of 12 pigeons were observed in 3 experiments.

Art in Agar

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The worlds of art and science have always been linked.  Before the advent of photography, early medical practitioners and students had to be able to accurately sketch their subjects in order to retain and study the images.  Many of these works are beautiful pieces of art in their own right.  Sometimes it’s not just the images of subjects that can be beautiful, sometimes the subjects themselves can be used as the artistic medium.  In this month’s Do You Know, I thought I’d delve into the world of Agar Art.


Credit: www.microbeworld.org/component/jlibrary/?view=article&id=14478

Scientists typically use agar in Petri dishes to grow and study bacteria and fungi.  Some scientists use this method to create works of art, painting bacteria on a canvas of agar.  Agar art was the cover story of a recent issue of New York Magazine.  The story featured an art project which grew subway line letter “signs” from bacteria collected on the corresponding subway lines.  The images of Petri dishes against a black background are eerily beautiful and almost make up for the fact that our morning commute is spent mingling with E. coli and Salmonella. Continue reading →

Finding Copyright-Free Images

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We’ve all been there… you are putting together a presentation and need to find some poignant images to really drive your message home. Or you are working on a paper/poster where some relevant images would help it to look more engaging and polished. The following are two tips to learn that can up your image searching game.

  1. Run a search in Google Images for radiation therapy. Below the search box, click on Search Tools -> Usage Rights -> Labeled for reuse. This will display only those images that are labeled as copyright-free by the creator, have a Creative Commons license, or derive from a federal source/agency.
  2. Retrieve only government/federally-derived images by searching Google Images using the domain-specific tag: “radiation therapy” site:.gov. The site:.gov portion tells Google to only search website domains ending in .gov for the phrase “radiation therapy”. (Just replace “radiation therapy” with any word of phrase related to your topic for a personalized experience).

You can also visit our Images LibGuide for links to more image searching databases and resources, or Ask Us for assistance with an image-related search or copyright question.