Thejoyofscience - This Is For All The Nerdy Girls

Connective tissue

Anne Weston, London Research Institute, Cancer Research UK

This false-coloured scanning electron micrograph shows connective tissue removed from a human knee during arthroscopic surgery. Individual fibres of collagen can be distinguished and have been highlighted by the creator using a variety of colours. The horizontal field width of the image is 16 microns.

via asapscience:

Could We Stop An Asteroid From Hitting Earth?

Bill Nye the Science Guy and AsapSCIENCE team up to answer this burning question. Do we stand a chance against a giant rock, on a collision course for Earth?

Well, that’s a pretty special guest there, guys! 

New goal: Do IOTBS video with Bill Nye.

Nothing spices up your love life like the scientific method!

Steering Stem Cells with Magnets

Magnets could be a tool for directing stem cells’ healing powers to treat conditions such as heart disease or vascular disease.

By feeding stem cells tiny particles made of iron oxide, scientists at Emory and Georgia Tech can use magnets to attract the cells to a particular location in the body after intravenous injection.

The results are published online in the journal Small and will appear in an upcoming issue.

Human Adipose Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells

More…

Colleen Conway-Welch (1944-2018) was an American nurse, known for her public health advocacy and numerous projects. She served as Dean of the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing for almost 30 years.

She received her doctorate from New York University and went on to work in various hospitals and universities throughout the United States. Under her leadership at VUSN, the university introduced an accelerated master’s programme and a PhD programme. She was named a Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing.

panic! at the lab

ft hit songs such as

i write scribbles not lab reports

nine in the afternoon (nine in the evening? morning?) (oh it’s a 12 hr time point)

mad as grad students

high hopes (dissertation version)

Monochrome image of a victorian butterfly tongue captured by Gregg Kleinberg with a Paxcam microscope camera under the microscope at 400x.

drowning in that lovin gendrya and braime juice

New project!

I received a new research project in my lab today on concurrent ehrlichia infections in dogs! All the happy feels! 

Recognising silent acute pain in animals - assorted species grimace scales:

Development of the Horse Grimace Scale (HGS) as a Pain Assessment Tool in Horses Undergoing Routine Castration 

The composition and initial evaluation of a grimace scale in ferrets after surgical implantation of a telemetry probe 

The Assessment of Facial Expressions in Piglets Undergoing Tail Docking and Castration: Toward the Development of the Piglet Grimace Scale 

The Sheep Grimace Scale as an indicator of post-operative distress and pain in laboratory sheep and the  Coding and quantification of a facial expression for pain in lambs 

Mouse -  How to be a pain management advocate for exotic and zoo animals (full text available - includes additional species)

The Rat Grimace Scale: A partially automated method for quantifying pain in the laboratory rat via facial expressions 

Evaluation of EMLA Cream for Preventing Pain during Tattooing of Rabbits: Changes in Physiological, Behavioural and Facial Expression Responses 

Pain evaluation in dairy cattle 

Pain is subtle - we cannot depend on vocalisations or extreme abnormal behaviour to determine if an animal is on pain - animals can cover up pain while going about their daily life. Grimace scales have been found to be reliable indicators of pain (full text available)

Unfortunately, I could not find a clear visual grimace scale for dogs, cats or birds :(  

Which is a shame, because perhaps I could have recognised my own dog’s discomfort for the acute pain it was sooner:

(left: dog in pain. See eyes, tension, cheeks, whiskers, ears compared to the multiple species grimace charts above. right: tired but not in pain dog)

Perhaps my new books that arrived today might have some on dogs at least. There’s this visual blog post of a stressed dog at the vet - stress in the absence of a trigger looks very much like pain.

Here is a small comparative cats, with the link going into more detail. Not a scale but better than nothing:

Bonus round - you can get free A3 posters on recognising pain for Rabbits, Mice and Rats from the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research. My rabbit specialist vet has the rabbit one!