CScienceDaily (July 4, 2011) - Tree frogs have specially adapted self-cleaning feet which could have practical applications for the medical industry.
"Tree frog feet may provide a design for self-cleaning sticky surfaces, which could be useful for a wide range of products especially in contaminating environments -- medical bandages, tyre performance, and even long lasting adhesives," says researcher, Niall Crawford at the University of Glasgow who will be presenting this work at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Glasgow on 3rd of July, 2011.
Tree frogs have sticky pads on their toes that they use to cling on in difficult situations, but until now it was unclear how they prevent these pads from picking up dirt.
"Interestingly the same factors that allow tree frogs to cling on also provide a self cleaning service. To make their feet sticky tree frogs secrete mucus, they can then increase their adhesion by moving their feet against the surface to create friction. We have now shown that the mucus combined with this movement allows the frogs to clean their feet as they walk," says Mr. Crawford.
The researchers placed the White's tree frogs on a rotatable platform and measured the angles at which the frog lost its grip. When the experiment was repeated with frogs whose feet were contaminated with dust they initially lost grip but if they took a few steps their adhesive forces were recovered. "When the frogs did not move the adhesive forces recovered much more slowly," says Mr. Crawford. "This shows that just taking a step enables frogs to clean their feet and restore their adhesion ability."
White's tree frogs have tiny hexagonal patterns on their feet, which allow some parts of the pad to remain in contact with the surface and create friction, whilst the channels between allow the mucus to spread throughout the pad. This mucus at once allows the frog to stick and then, when they move, also carries away any dirt. If this can be translated into a human-made design it could provide a re-useable, effective adhesive.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Society for Experimental Biology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use the following format.
MLA Society for Experimental Biology (2011, July 4). Tree frogs' self-cleaning feet could solve a sticky problem. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 6, 2011, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110703132531.htm
Showing posts with label scientific experimentation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scientific experimentation. Show all posts
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Living, biological raygun produced in lab
Glowing mammal-jellyfish chimera-blob emits laser beam
By Lewis Page
Posted in Biology, 13th June 2011 11:52 GMT
Beings or creatures able to emit beams of focused energy from their own living bodies: fiction, right? Comic-book, X Men stuff, right?
Wrong. Boffins in America have announced that they have successfully produced laser light from living cells under laboratory conditions, paving the way - they say - for living lasers to be implanted or grown within human patients, or for the production of living machinery able to interface with optical communications networks.
"Since they were first developed some 50 years ago, lasers have used synthetic materials such as crystals, dyes and purified gases as optical gain media, within which photon pulses are amplified as they bounces back and forth between two mirrors," says Seok Hyun Yun, a top boffin from the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
"Ours is the first report of a successful biological laser based on a single, living cell."
Yun and his colleague Malte Gather created their lasercyte by meddling with some unspecified mammal cells to make them produce suitable amounts of green fluorescent protein (GFP). GFP, originally discovered in jellyfish, does what it says on the tin - it emits light. In order to make this light coherent, the two boffins placed a lasercyte inside a tiny spherical device rigged with mirrors at the ends, as in a regular laser.
According to a statement issued by Massachusetts General:
Gather, on the other hand, is thinking more of making biological machinery that might one day let you plug an optical fibre straight into your brain, or similar.
"One of our long-term goals will be finding ways to bring optical communications and computing, currently done with inanimate electronic devices, into the realm of biotechnology," explains the scientist. "That could be particularly useful in projects requiring the interfacing of electronics with biological organisms."
Yun and Gather's study is published online by Nature Photonics. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/13/lasercyte/
By Lewis Page
Posted in Biology, 13th June 2011 11:52 GMT
Beings or creatures able to emit beams of focused energy from their own living bodies: fiction, right? Comic-book, X Men stuff, right?
Wrong. Boffins in America have announced that they have successfully produced laser light from living cells under laboratory conditions, paving the way - they say - for living lasers to be implanted or grown within human patients, or for the production of living machinery able to interface with optical communications networks.
"Since they were first developed some 50 years ago, lasers have used synthetic materials such as crystals, dyes and purified gases as optical gain media, within which photon pulses are amplified as they bounces back and forth between two mirrors," says Seok Hyun Yun, a top boffin from the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
"Ours is the first report of a successful biological laser based on a single, living cell."
Yun and his colleague Malte Gather created their lasercyte by meddling with some unspecified mammal cells to make them produce suitable amounts of green fluorescent protein (GFP). GFP, originally discovered in jellyfish, does what it says on the tin - it emits light. In order to make this light coherent, the two boffins placed a lasercyte inside a tiny spherical device rigged with mirrors at the ends, as in a regular laser.
According to a statement issued by Massachusetts General:
Not only did the cell-based device produce pulses of laser light [but] the researchers also found that the spherical shape of the cell itself acted as a lens, refocusing the light and inducing emission of laser light at lower energy levels ... The cells used in the device survived the lasing process and were able to continue producing hundreds of pulses of laser light."The ability to generate laser light from a biocompatible source placed inside a patient could be useful," comments Yun, though at the moment he is thinking more of medical imaging and such like as opposed to the ability to emit deadly energy rays from one's eyes or similar.
Gather, on the other hand, is thinking more of making biological machinery that might one day let you plug an optical fibre straight into your brain, or similar.
"One of our long-term goals will be finding ways to bring optical communications and computing, currently done with inanimate electronic devices, into the realm of biotechnology," explains the scientist. "That could be particularly useful in projects requiring the interfacing of electronics with biological organisms."
Yun and Gather's study is published online by Nature Photonics. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/13/lasercyte/
Friday, June 10, 2011
Spitting and urinating chimps 'replay Aesop's fable'
9 June 2011
By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News
Chimps have "replayed" an ancient fable, a team says in Plos One journal.
In Aesop's 2,000-year-old tale, a crow uses stones to raise the water level in a pitcher to reach the liquid so as to quench its thirst.
But when given a similar set up, chimps were able to attain an out-of-reach, floating peanut by spitting water taken from a dispenser into a vertical tube.
One hungry chimp went even further by urinating into the vessel to get hold of the prized snack.
"He was spitting water into the tube, then got frustrated," explained lead researcher Daniel Hanus from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig, Germany.
"So he started peeing and then he realised: 'Wait a minute, if I move in that direction, that fills up the tube'."
The chimp's unusual method proved successful, the scientist said. The fact that the peanut was urine-sodden did not deter the animal from eating it, he added.
The study was carried out with gorillas and chimpanzees.
The primates were presented with a vertical glass tube, which was secured to a cage so it could not be moved or broken. At the bottom was a peanut, floating on a small amount of water.
They were also given access to a water dispenser.
The idea was that the animals would take water from the dispenser in their mouths, and then spit it into the tube to raise the water level.
It would take several visits back and forth between the dispenser and tube to gather enough water to get to the peanut.
The team found that none of the five gorillas was able to complete the task.
Chimps however were more successful. Out of 43 chimps, based in the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, in Uganda, and Germany's Leipzig Zoo, 14 worked out that they needed to take the water in their mouths and spit it into the tube, and seven did this enough times to successfully obtain a peanut.
Dr Hanus said the study highlighted the chimps' ability to solve problems.
He explained: "You cannot explain it by trial-and-error learning. They weren't just spitting water around the room and some fell in by accident.
"Instead, they were standing in front of the problem, trying to work out the solution - at first by trying to use their fingers, or trying to break it.
"But some, then went to the drinker and got the mouthful of water and came back and spat it directly into the tube, and a few did it enough times to get the peanut."
He added: "I think it is quite impressive - I call it insightful behaviour."
The urinating chimp, he said, was an interesting case.
The animal had initially solved the problem using the standard spitting technique, but when tested again, he was struggling to direct the water into the tube.
The urine did the trick, said Dr Hanus.
He said: "He seemed like he understood. He was like: 'That's cool, this helps me'."
Child's play
The team also repeated the study with children of varying ages.
Dr Hanus said: "Whenever we talked to people about this task, they'd say: 'Well, this is a demanding task, it is tricky - I don't know if I could solve that'.
"So we decided to test four, six and eight-year-olds."
This time, the subjects were given a watering can to fill up the tube rather than rely on a water dispenser and a refined spitting technique.
The researchers found that the four-year-olds were outperformed by the chimps: only two out 24 younger children could solve the problem.
Six-year-olds did better, with 10 out of the 24 managing to work out they needed to use the water. And eight-years-olds did the best, 14 children - 58% - completed the task.
Dr Hanus said: "Even the older children found it hard. It was interesting and impressive to see how difficult it was for them."
This research follows a similar study carried out with orangutans in 2007. They were very good at solving this problem: five out of the five primates tested could successfully complete the task.
The team said the difference between the three primate species was striking - although they plan to test the gorillas again using a slightly different set-up.
Birds too have been able to carry out this task.
A paper published in 2009 revealed that rooks were highly successful at working out a solution to this problem.
With a slightly different experiment design, where the birds had to drop stones into the water, and a peanut exchanged for a floating maggot, the team found that all four of the rooks tested could complete the task.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13560247
By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News
Chimps have "replayed" an ancient fable, a team says in Plos One journal.
In Aesop's 2,000-year-old tale, a crow uses stones to raise the water level in a pitcher to reach the liquid so as to quench its thirst.
But when given a similar set up, chimps were able to attain an out-of-reach, floating peanut by spitting water taken from a dispenser into a vertical tube.
One hungry chimp went even further by urinating into the vessel to get hold of the prized snack.
"He was spitting water into the tube, then got frustrated," explained lead researcher Daniel Hanus from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig, Germany.
"So he started peeing and then he realised: 'Wait a minute, if I move in that direction, that fills up the tube'."
The chimp's unusual method proved successful, the scientist said. The fact that the peanut was urine-sodden did not deter the animal from eating it, he added.
The study was carried out with gorillas and chimpanzees.
The primates were presented with a vertical glass tube, which was secured to a cage so it could not be moved or broken. At the bottom was a peanut, floating on a small amount of water.
They were also given access to a water dispenser.
The idea was that the animals would take water from the dispenser in their mouths, and then spit it into the tube to raise the water level.
It would take several visits back and forth between the dispenser and tube to gather enough water to get to the peanut.
The team found that none of the five gorillas was able to complete the task.
Chimps however were more successful. Out of 43 chimps, based in the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, in Uganda, and Germany's Leipzig Zoo, 14 worked out that they needed to take the water in their mouths and spit it into the tube, and seven did this enough times to successfully obtain a peanut.
Dr Hanus said the study highlighted the chimps' ability to solve problems.
He explained: "You cannot explain it by trial-and-error learning. They weren't just spitting water around the room and some fell in by accident.
"Instead, they were standing in front of the problem, trying to work out the solution - at first by trying to use their fingers, or trying to break it.
"But some, then went to the drinker and got the mouthful of water and came back and spat it directly into the tube, and a few did it enough times to get the peanut."
He added: "I think it is quite impressive - I call it insightful behaviour."
The urinating chimp, he said, was an interesting case.
The animal had initially solved the problem using the standard spitting technique, but when tested again, he was struggling to direct the water into the tube.
The urine did the trick, said Dr Hanus.
He said: "He seemed like he understood. He was like: 'That's cool, this helps me'."
Child's play
The team also repeated the study with children of varying ages.
Dr Hanus said: "Whenever we talked to people about this task, they'd say: 'Well, this is a demanding task, it is tricky - I don't know if I could solve that'.
"So we decided to test four, six and eight-year-olds."
This time, the subjects were given a watering can to fill up the tube rather than rely on a water dispenser and a refined spitting technique.
The researchers found that the four-year-olds were outperformed by the chimps: only two out 24 younger children could solve the problem.
Six-year-olds did better, with 10 out of the 24 managing to work out they needed to use the water. And eight-years-olds did the best, 14 children - 58% - completed the task.
Dr Hanus said: "Even the older children found it hard. It was interesting and impressive to see how difficult it was for them."
This research follows a similar study carried out with orangutans in 2007. They were very good at solving this problem: five out of the five primates tested could successfully complete the task.
The team said the difference between the three primate species was striking - although they plan to test the gorillas again using a slightly different set-up.
Birds too have been able to carry out this task.
A paper published in 2009 revealed that rooks were highly successful at working out a solution to this problem.
With a slightly different experiment design, where the birds had to drop stones into the water, and a peanut exchanged for a floating maggot, the team found that all four of the rooks tested could complete the task.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13560247
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Nazis tried to build army of talking dogs to help win World War Two
 |
| Dr Jan Bondeson's dog research has revealed Nazi canine to human telepathy experiments (Pic: BNPS) |
Daniella Graham - 24th May, 2011
Adolf Hitler apparently felt man's best friend could be the Allies' worst enemy with a little bit of help, so a special 'dog school' was set up by the Germans where gifted mutts could hone their talents.
The Nazi canine recruits were trained to speak and tap out signals using their paws, with one reportedly able to say 'Mein Fuhrer' when asked to identify the Nazi dictator himself.
The Daily Telegraph reports that the school, named the Tier-Sprechschule, was set up in the 1930s and ran throughout the war period.
And while the dogs were intended to help officers in concentration camps, one plucky canine decided he had other priorities – barking the German for 'Hungry! Give me cakes.'
Dr Bondeson uncovered the extraordinary story while researching for his latest book, Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities.
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/864232-nazis-tried-to-build-army-of-talking-dogs-to-help-win-world-war-two
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Ecological Adaptation Likely to Influence Impacts of Climate Change (Via HerpDigest)
Ecological Adaptation Likely to Influence Impacts of Climate Change
ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2011) -
Animals' capacity to adapt is a factor in how they are likely to respond to changing climate conditions.
This conclusion of a new study published March 2 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B is not especially surprising, says author Brandon Barton, but confirms the importance of accounting for local adaptation when determining the likely ecological effects of climate change.
The work shows that the ability of the top predator in a well-studied food web to adapt to local temperatures can preserve the ways the species in the web influence one another across a range of climate conditions. Barton, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, completed the work while a graduate student at Yale University.
Barton focused on a food web composed of a predatory spider, a grasshopper, and the plants the grasshopper eats. The spider's predatory behavior is temperature-sensitive: if things get too warm, it retreats to the shade and does not hunt, freeing the grasshoppers to eat more plants. Thus, in warm weather the spiders exert a larger -- though indirect -- effect on the plants.
This much was known. But Barton found that the temperature-dependence is relative. The warmer the usual conditions in a spider's home turf, the better it is able to tolerate warm temperatures. For example, at the same temperature that would drive a cool-adapted spider into the shade, a warm-adapted spider would still be on the hunt.
The new work overcomes a common limitation of many climate change experiments, in which an organism is suddenly exposed to a new set of conditions to see how it fares. Such an experimental design does not account for the ability of the species to adapt to changing conditions gradually over time.
Instead, Barton studied populations that already live in different climes. The spiders and grasshoppers he studies thrive along most of the eastern seaboard, so he compared populations in Vermont, Connecticut and New Jersey, using the warmer temperatures farther south as a proxy for the changing conditions expected in Vermont over the next 100 years as projected by common global climate models.
By comparing spider-grasshopper-plant communities in the three states, he was able to look at the same ecosystem under three different sets of environmental conditions. He found that the New Jersey spiders are better able to function at warmer temperatures.
"A Vermont spider at home in Vermont and a New Jersey spider in New Jersey function the same in terms of how much the predator influences the plants," Barton explains. "But if you take that Vermont spider and move it to New Jersey -- basically a warming experiment -- you increase the effect on the plants." Interestingly, moving Jersey spiders to Vermont had no effect.
"This shows experimentally that these predators are locally adapted -- in the south, they're used to the higher temperatures," he adds.
That flexibility suggests that this food web will withstand a warming climate in Vermont, but the implications go well beyond spiders and grasshoppers. Similar principles are likely to apply to many other species as well, and adapting to changing conditions over time may buffer some ecological impacts.
However, species will probably only adapt within certain ranges and those limits will vary species to species. So we're not completely off the hook as far as climate change goes, Barton says, but it's important that ecologists have a realistic understanding of all the factors at play when forecasting the possible effects of regional changes.
"Species do adapt to their local environment, and in this system that all worked out okay," he says. "But that does not mean that adaptation will completely eliminate the negative effects of climate change."
Editor - Think about this about herps. With their need for certain tempertures, and the speed at which temperatures are going to change (and habitats) what herps will be able to adapt, which ones go extinct. Answer-Probably the rarer the herp, the more limited to one area, say an island a mountain top or valley the quickest it will go. The more common, ones like wood frogs found all the way to Alaska, down to the lower 48 some populations will survive.)
ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2011) -
Animals' capacity to adapt is a factor in how they are likely to respond to changing climate conditions.
This conclusion of a new study published March 2 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B is not especially surprising, says author Brandon Barton, but confirms the importance of accounting for local adaptation when determining the likely ecological effects of climate change.
The work shows that the ability of the top predator in a well-studied food web to adapt to local temperatures can preserve the ways the species in the web influence one another across a range of climate conditions. Barton, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, completed the work while a graduate student at Yale University.
Barton focused on a food web composed of a predatory spider, a grasshopper, and the plants the grasshopper eats. The spider's predatory behavior is temperature-sensitive: if things get too warm, it retreats to the shade and does not hunt, freeing the grasshoppers to eat more plants. Thus, in warm weather the spiders exert a larger -- though indirect -- effect on the plants.
This much was known. But Barton found that the temperature-dependence is relative. The warmer the usual conditions in a spider's home turf, the better it is able to tolerate warm temperatures. For example, at the same temperature that would drive a cool-adapted spider into the shade, a warm-adapted spider would still be on the hunt.
The new work overcomes a common limitation of many climate change experiments, in which an organism is suddenly exposed to a new set of conditions to see how it fares. Such an experimental design does not account for the ability of the species to adapt to changing conditions gradually over time.
Instead, Barton studied populations that already live in different climes. The spiders and grasshoppers he studies thrive along most of the eastern seaboard, so he compared populations in Vermont, Connecticut and New Jersey, using the warmer temperatures farther south as a proxy for the changing conditions expected in Vermont over the next 100 years as projected by common global climate models.
By comparing spider-grasshopper-plant communities in the three states, he was able to look at the same ecosystem under three different sets of environmental conditions. He found that the New Jersey spiders are better able to function at warmer temperatures.
"A Vermont spider at home in Vermont and a New Jersey spider in New Jersey function the same in terms of how much the predator influences the plants," Barton explains. "But if you take that Vermont spider and move it to New Jersey -- basically a warming experiment -- you increase the effect on the plants." Interestingly, moving Jersey spiders to Vermont had no effect.
"This shows experimentally that these predators are locally adapted -- in the south, they're used to the higher temperatures," he adds.
That flexibility suggests that this food web will withstand a warming climate in Vermont, but the implications go well beyond spiders and grasshoppers. Similar principles are likely to apply to many other species as well, and adapting to changing conditions over time may buffer some ecological impacts.
However, species will probably only adapt within certain ranges and those limits will vary species to species. So we're not completely off the hook as far as climate change goes, Barton says, but it's important that ecologists have a realistic understanding of all the factors at play when forecasting the possible effects of regional changes.
"Species do adapt to their local environment, and in this system that all worked out okay," he says. "But that does not mean that adaptation will completely eliminate the negative effects of climate change."
Editor - Think about this about herps. With their need for certain tempertures, and the speed at which temperatures are going to change (and habitats) what herps will be able to adapt, which ones go extinct. Answer-Probably the rarer the herp, the more limited to one area, say an island a mountain top or valley the quickest it will go. The more common, ones like wood frogs found all the way to Alaska, down to the lower 48 some populations will survive.)
Scientists Create a One of Kind Frog (Via HerpDigest)
Scientists Create a One of Kind Frog
by Wynne Parry
LiveScience Senior Writer
3/7/11
A newly bred hybrid frog - the offspring of two species of tropical leaf frogs - is one of a kind and even rarer than its endangered parents.
A scientist at The Manchester Museum inEngland allowed the two species of endangered Central American leaf frogs housed within the same chamber to interbreed to better understand how closely these parents are related. Understanding the genetic relationships between, and even within, species is important when trying to protect them.
This was a match made in lab heaven. The parents, Agalychnis annae and Agalychnis moreletii, wouldn't cross paths on their own, since they occupy different regions in Central America. In the past 30 years, populations of endangered leaf frogs have completely disappeared, particularly at cooler, high elevations. The amphibian-devastating chytrid fungus is implicated.
Frogs that have adapted to less fungus-friendly habitats are likely to be less at risk, making it important to identify the differences between populations, writes Andrew Gray, the museum's curator of herpetology, in a study that appeared in February in arXiv, an open archive maintained by Cornell University.
"There is also real concern that certain populations may disappear before their distinctiveness has even been established," Gray writes.
The parents look very much alike - in fact their skulls are nearly indistinguishable - but they have different coloration. Their love child resembles both, but is also distinct. It has dark red irises like the papa frog A. moreletii, and the purple-to-blue coloration along its flanks and thighs, like most A. annae, the mama frog. However, its hands and feet are more intense orange than seen in either parent.
Hybridization experiments like this are helpful in better understanding the inheritance of genes in amphibians, including those determining color patterns, the researchers
by Wynne Parry
LiveScience Senior Writer
3/7/11
A newly bred hybrid frog - the offspring of two species of tropical leaf frogs - is one of a kind and even rarer than its endangered parents.
A scientist at The Manchester Museum inEngland allowed the two species of endangered Central American leaf frogs housed within the same chamber to interbreed to better understand how closely these parents are related. Understanding the genetic relationships between, and even within, species is important when trying to protect them.
This was a match made in lab heaven. The parents, Agalychnis annae and Agalychnis moreletii, wouldn't cross paths on their own, since they occupy different regions in Central America. In the past 30 years, populations of endangered leaf frogs have completely disappeared, particularly at cooler, high elevations. The amphibian-devastating chytrid fungus is implicated.
Frogs that have adapted to less fungus-friendly habitats are likely to be less at risk, making it important to identify the differences between populations, writes Andrew Gray, the museum's curator of herpetology, in a study that appeared in February in arXiv, an open archive maintained by Cornell University.
"There is also real concern that certain populations may disappear before their distinctiveness has even been established," Gray writes.
The parents look very much alike - in fact their skulls are nearly indistinguishable - but they have different coloration. Their love child resembles both, but is also distinct. It has dark red irises like the papa frog A. moreletii, and the purple-to-blue coloration along its flanks and thighs, like most A. annae, the mama frog. However, its hands and feet are more intense orange than seen in either parent.
Hybridization experiments like this are helpful in better understanding the inheritance of genes in amphibians, including those determining color patterns, the researchers
Friday, December 24, 2010
Carsten Höller: deer of perception
What could be more festive than spending a night locked in an art gallery with a dozen reindeer and a fridge full of psychedelic drugs? Soma, Carsten Höller's current installation in a former railway station in Berlin, purports to be offering exactly that. A pen running the length of the Hamburger Bahnhof, now the city's contemparary art museum, contains 12 reindeer, 24 canaries, eight mice and two flies. Giant toadstool sculptures are planted on a mushroom clock that the reindeer can turn with their antlers, and at the centre is a mushroom-shaped "floating hotel" – a bed on a platform complete with minibar, yours for €1,000 a night. (There's also a raffle giving away free places.)
The twist is that this is meant to be a scientific experiment, in which half the reindeer have been fed "fly agaric" mushrooms, which they consume naturally in the wilds of Siberia. It makes their urine hallucinogenic (some people believe that this is the origin of the story of Santa Claus's sleigh being pulled by flying, red-nosed reindeers).
The urine is collected by handlers and stored in fridges by the walls, which also hold both dried and fresh fly agaric mushrooms. By day they're locked, but at night the fridges are opened, allowing people staying over to sample the contents. However, because only half the reindeer are fed the mushrooms, it's impossible to know which bottles, if any, contain hallucinogenic urine.
Tanja Klein, 28, won a competition to spend the night in the museum with her boyfriend, Sachar Kriwoj, 30. "I wasn't going to go and drink six bottles of reindeer urine to find out," says Klein. "I'm not into drugs, I'm into art."
Höller hasn't tried the urine, but he has tried the mushrooms. "They're very unpleasant," he says, speaking from his home in Stockholm. "And you throw up. The first four times I tried it, I became comatose. Then you wake up, throw up, and you don't know where you are, or how long you've been asleep. The sixth time, I started to chant like a Tibetan monk."
The title Soma comes from the name of the sacred libation drunk by the Indo-Persian followers of the Vedic religion, Hinduism's 5,000-year-old parent. Its ancient text, the Rigveda, contains 114 hymns to "creative juice", supposed to offer immortality. The recipe was lost, but in the 1960s researcher Robert Wasson hypo-thesised that soma was based on the fly agaric mushroom.
Höller's installation sets out to test this hypothesis – and the possibility that art may change perceptions even more effectively than drugs. It takes the form of an experiment set in a playground: from that giant "double mushroom clock" the reindeer move with their antlers, to the "mice square", based on an actual playground in Paris designed by sculptor Pierre Székely.
One side of the hall is the "test", the other the "control". Reindeer on the test side are fed the mushrooms. ("At least in principle," says Höller, helpfully.) On each side, the reindeer urine is spread on the food of the other animals. From observation posts, visitors watch the behaviour of the canaries, mice and houseflies for signs of intoxication and form their own conclusions. "The experiment is completed in the minds of the visitors," says Höller. "It's very unscientific." In other words, it's an open question whether the reindeer are even fed the mushrooms at all: the power of suggestion makes you likely to observe something that may not take place.
Experimentation has been a part of Höller's work since he began his career as an artist while still an agricultural research scientist in the early 1990s. He went on to install 2006's Test Site, in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, which allowed gallery-goers to throw themselves down double-helix slides.
Overnight visitors to Soma have reported some strange events. Florian Wojnar, a friend of Höller's, spent the night in the museum with his 11-year-old son. "He was really excited, because at some point, there were seven reindeer on one side and five on the other. In the morning, we counted again and there were six on each. I never saw them move."
Dorothée Brill, the museum's lead curator, says: "As far as we can tell, nobody's done anything they shouldn't have." Staff at the restaurant, however, report that some guests "drink the minibar dry".
It's hard to resist the suspicion that the exhibition is intended as a microcosm of society, an allegory for democracy, with extra privileges and more fun for those able to pay. And, if this is an experiment, make no mistake: it's you in the lab. Meanwhile, those tempted to make a Christmas visit should bear in mind that the Hamburger Bahnhof is closed on Christmas Eve. "The reindeer have somewhere else to be that day," the museum explained.
• Soma is at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, until 6 February. Details: somainberlin.org
__._,_.___
The twist is that this is meant to be a scientific experiment, in which half the reindeer have been fed "fly agaric" mushrooms, which they consume naturally in the wilds of Siberia. It makes their urine hallucinogenic (some people believe that this is the origin of the story of Santa Claus's sleigh being pulled by flying, red-nosed reindeers).
The urine is collected by handlers and stored in fridges by the walls, which also hold both dried and fresh fly agaric mushrooms. By day they're locked, but at night the fridges are opened, allowing people staying over to sample the contents. However, because only half the reindeer are fed the mushrooms, it's impossible to know which bottles, if any, contain hallucinogenic urine.
Tanja Klein, 28, won a competition to spend the night in the museum with her boyfriend, Sachar Kriwoj, 30. "I wasn't going to go and drink six bottles of reindeer urine to find out," says Klein. "I'm not into drugs, I'm into art."
Höller hasn't tried the urine, but he has tried the mushrooms. "They're very unpleasant," he says, speaking from his home in Stockholm. "And you throw up. The first four times I tried it, I became comatose. Then you wake up, throw up, and you don't know where you are, or how long you've been asleep. The sixth time, I started to chant like a Tibetan monk."
The title Soma comes from the name of the sacred libation drunk by the Indo-Persian followers of the Vedic religion, Hinduism's 5,000-year-old parent. Its ancient text, the Rigveda, contains 114 hymns to "creative juice", supposed to offer immortality. The recipe was lost, but in the 1960s researcher Robert Wasson hypo-thesised that soma was based on the fly agaric mushroom.
Höller's installation sets out to test this hypothesis – and the possibility that art may change perceptions even more effectively than drugs. It takes the form of an experiment set in a playground: from that giant "double mushroom clock" the reindeer move with their antlers, to the "mice square", based on an actual playground in Paris designed by sculptor Pierre Székely.
One side of the hall is the "test", the other the "control". Reindeer on the test side are fed the mushrooms. ("At least in principle," says Höller, helpfully.) On each side, the reindeer urine is spread on the food of the other animals. From observation posts, visitors watch the behaviour of the canaries, mice and houseflies for signs of intoxication and form their own conclusions. "The experiment is completed in the minds of the visitors," says Höller. "It's very unscientific." In other words, it's an open question whether the reindeer are even fed the mushrooms at all: the power of suggestion makes you likely to observe something that may not take place.
Experimentation has been a part of Höller's work since he began his career as an artist while still an agricultural research scientist in the early 1990s. He went on to install 2006's Test Site, in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, which allowed gallery-goers to throw themselves down double-helix slides.
Overnight visitors to Soma have reported some strange events. Florian Wojnar, a friend of Höller's, spent the night in the museum with his 11-year-old son. "He was really excited, because at some point, there were seven reindeer on one side and five on the other. In the morning, we counted again and there were six on each. I never saw them move."
Dorothée Brill, the museum's lead curator, says: "As far as we can tell, nobody's done anything they shouldn't have." Staff at the restaurant, however, report that some guests "drink the minibar dry".
It's hard to resist the suspicion that the exhibition is intended as a microcosm of society, an allegory for democracy, with extra privileges and more fun for those able to pay. And, if this is an experiment, make no mistake: it's you in the lab. Meanwhile, those tempted to make a Christmas visit should bear in mind that the Hamburger Bahnhof is closed on Christmas Eve. "The reindeer have somewhere else to be that day," the museum explained.
• Soma is at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, until 6 February. Details: somainberlin.org
__._,_.___
Carsten Höller: deer of perception
What could be more festive than spending a night locked in an art gallery with a dozen reindeer and a fridge full of psychedelic drugs? Soma, Carsten Höller's current installation in a former railway station in Berlin, purports to be offering exactly that. A pen running the length of the Hamburger Bahnhof, now the city's contemparary art museum, contains 12 reindeer, 24 canaries, eight mice and two flies. Giant toadstool sculptures are planted on a mushroom clock that the reindeer can turn with their antlers, and at the centre is a mushroom-shaped "floating hotel" – a bed on a platform complete with minibar, yours for €1,000 a night. (There's also a raffle giving away free places.)
The twist is that this is meant to be a scientific experiment, in which half the reindeer have been fed "fly agaric" mushrooms, which they consume naturally in the wilds of Siberia. It makes their urine hallucinogenic (some people believe that this is the origin of the story of Santa Claus's sleigh being pulled by flying, red-nosed reindeers).
The urine is collected by handlers and stored in fridges by the walls, which also hold both dried and fresh fly agaric mushrooms. By day they're locked, but at night the fridges are opened, allowing people staying over to sample the contents. However, because only half the reindeer are fed the mushrooms, it's impossible to know which bottles, if any, contain hallucinogenic urine.
Tanja Klein, 28, won a competition to spend the night in the museum with her boyfriend, Sachar Kriwoj, 30. "I wasn't going to go and drink six bottles of reindeer urine to find out," says Klein. "I'm not into drugs, I'm into art."
Höller hasn't tried the urine, but he has tried the mushrooms. "They're very unpleasant," he says, speaking from his home in Stockholm. "And you throw up. The first four times I tried it, I became comatose. Then you wake up, throw up, and you don't know where you are, or how long you've been asleep. The sixth time, I started to chant like a Tibetan monk."
The title Soma comes from the name of the sacred libation drunk by the Indo-Persian followers of the Vedic religion, Hinduism's 5,000-year-old parent. Its ancient text, the Rigveda, contains 114 hymns to "creative juice", supposed to offer immortality. The recipe was lost, but in the 1960s researcher Robert Wasson hypo-thesised that soma was based on the fly agaric mushroom.
Höller's installation sets out to test this hypothesis – and the possibility that art may change perceptions even more effectively than drugs. It takes the form of an experiment set in a playground: from that giant "double mushroom clock" the reindeer move with their antlers, to the "mice square", based on an actual playground in Paris designed by sculptor Pierre Székely.
One side of the hall is the "test", the other the "control". Reindeer on the test side are fed the mushrooms. ("At least in principle," says Höller, helpfully.) On each side, the reindeer urine is spread on the food of the other animals. From observation posts, visitors watch the behaviour of the canaries, mice and houseflies for signs of intoxication and form their own conclusions. "The experiment is completed in the minds of the visitors," says Höller. "It's very unscientific." In other words, it's an open question whether the reindeer are even fed the mushrooms at all: the power of suggestion makes you likely to observe something that may not take place.
Experimentation has been a part of Höller's work since he began his career as an artist while still an agricultural research scientist in the early 1990s. He went on to install 2006's Test Site, in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, which allowed gallery-goers to throw themselves down double-helix slides.
Overnight visitors to Soma have reported some strange events. Florian Wojnar, a friend of Höller's, spent the night in the museum with his 11-year-old son. "He was really excited, because at some point, there were seven reindeer on one side and five on the other. In the morning, we counted again and there were six on each. I never saw them move."
Dorothée Brill, the museum's lead curator, says: "As far as we can tell, nobody's done anything they shouldn't have." Staff at the restaurant, however, report that some guests "drink the minibar dry".
It's hard to resist the suspicion that the exhibition is intended as a microcosm of society, an allegory for democracy, with extra privileges and more fun for those able to pay. And, if this is an experiment, make no mistake: it's you in the lab. Meanwhile, those tempted to make a Christmas visit should bear in mind that the Hamburger Bahnhof is closed on Christmas Eve. "The reindeer have somewhere else to be that day," the museum explained.
• Soma is at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, until 6 February. Details: somainberlin.org
__._,_.___
The twist is that this is meant to be a scientific experiment, in which half the reindeer have been fed "fly agaric" mushrooms, which they consume naturally in the wilds of Siberia. It makes their urine hallucinogenic (some people believe that this is the origin of the story of Santa Claus's sleigh being pulled by flying, red-nosed reindeers).
The urine is collected by handlers and stored in fridges by the walls, which also hold both dried and fresh fly agaric mushrooms. By day they're locked, but at night the fridges are opened, allowing people staying over to sample the contents. However, because only half the reindeer are fed the mushrooms, it's impossible to know which bottles, if any, contain hallucinogenic urine.
Tanja Klein, 28, won a competition to spend the night in the museum with her boyfriend, Sachar Kriwoj, 30. "I wasn't going to go and drink six bottles of reindeer urine to find out," says Klein. "I'm not into drugs, I'm into art."
Höller hasn't tried the urine, but he has tried the mushrooms. "They're very unpleasant," he says, speaking from his home in Stockholm. "And you throw up. The first four times I tried it, I became comatose. Then you wake up, throw up, and you don't know where you are, or how long you've been asleep. The sixth time, I started to chant like a Tibetan monk."
The title Soma comes from the name of the sacred libation drunk by the Indo-Persian followers of the Vedic religion, Hinduism's 5,000-year-old parent. Its ancient text, the Rigveda, contains 114 hymns to "creative juice", supposed to offer immortality. The recipe was lost, but in the 1960s researcher Robert Wasson hypo-thesised that soma was based on the fly agaric mushroom.
Höller's installation sets out to test this hypothesis – and the possibility that art may change perceptions even more effectively than drugs. It takes the form of an experiment set in a playground: from that giant "double mushroom clock" the reindeer move with their antlers, to the "mice square", based on an actual playground in Paris designed by sculptor Pierre Székely.
One side of the hall is the "test", the other the "control". Reindeer on the test side are fed the mushrooms. ("At least in principle," says Höller, helpfully.) On each side, the reindeer urine is spread on the food of the other animals. From observation posts, visitors watch the behaviour of the canaries, mice and houseflies for signs of intoxication and form their own conclusions. "The experiment is completed in the minds of the visitors," says Höller. "It's very unscientific." In other words, it's an open question whether the reindeer are even fed the mushrooms at all: the power of suggestion makes you likely to observe something that may not take place.
Experimentation has been a part of Höller's work since he began his career as an artist while still an agricultural research scientist in the early 1990s. He went on to install 2006's Test Site, in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, which allowed gallery-goers to throw themselves down double-helix slides.
Overnight visitors to Soma have reported some strange events. Florian Wojnar, a friend of Höller's, spent the night in the museum with his 11-year-old son. "He was really excited, because at some point, there were seven reindeer on one side and five on the other. In the morning, we counted again and there were six on each. I never saw them move."
Dorothée Brill, the museum's lead curator, says: "As far as we can tell, nobody's done anything they shouldn't have." Staff at the restaurant, however, report that some guests "drink the minibar dry".
It's hard to resist the suspicion that the exhibition is intended as a microcosm of society, an allegory for democracy, with extra privileges and more fun for those able to pay. And, if this is an experiment, make no mistake: it's you in the lab. Meanwhile, those tempted to make a Christmas visit should bear in mind that the Hamburger Bahnhof is closed on Christmas Eve. "The reindeer have somewhere else to be that day," the museum explained.
• Soma is at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, until 6 February. Details: somainberlin.org
__._,_.___
Friday, August 20, 2010
Monkey farm nixed again at Guayama hearing (via Sally Tully-Figueroa)
August 17, 2010
The committee which opposes establishing a farm to breed monkeys in Guayama objected Monday to Senate Bill 1628 that seeks to legalize the raising of these animals on the island.
Community leader Roberto Brito reported that hundreds of residents from Pueblito del Carmen in Guayama showed up at the Guayama Convention Center, where the Federal Affairs Committee heard testimony on the measure that “would allow the breeding of wild monkeys for the sole purpose of scientific experimentation.”
The committee’s operations were supervised by Sen. Melinda Romero, of the New Progressive Party, Popular Democratic Party Sens. Juan Hernández Mayoral and Eder Ortíz.
The panel comprised Brito, Dr. Eduardo Ibarra (president of the Health Rights Foundation) and municipal legislators Angel Sanabria ,of the PDP and Rey Catalino of the NPP, among others.
“We are against this bill, because if it is approved it will allow the breeding of monkeys, serpents, crocodiles, lions, and all kinds of exotic animals,” said Brito.
The community leader indicated that the Bio Culture company “wants to open its doors here in our town and is trying to intimidate us by filing a million dollar lawsuit, but that doesn’t scare me because I know it is a
pressure tactic.”
In the meantime, Ibarra, medical adviser for the committee in Guayama, said “there is a movement afoot [in the world] to eliminate the use of animals for experimentation purposes. [Such a movement] favors not
breeding these animals in Puerto Rico, as the Senate is proposing.
“Recently a scientific congress in Europe unanimously approved the elimination of experimenting on animals for medical or cosmetic purposes. Therefore, we understand that the Puerto Rican government should not make an alliance with a company from Israel involved in this unethical practice.”
Municipal legislators Sanabria and Catalino agreed that if a catastrophe like a hurricane occurred in Guayama, as many as 17,000 monkeys could escape.
Brito indicated “this bill sent to the Senate of Puerto Rico by the “Fortaleza is a sly way to approve a measure that would overthrow all the rules and regulations that would prevent people from raising monkeys in P.R.”
He said the Senate should “not promote a measure to please a special interest group of people from Israel while creating a negative effect on Puerto Rico.”
http://www.prdailysun.com/news/Monkey-farm-nixed-again-at-Guayama-hearing
The committee which opposes establishing a farm to breed monkeys in Guayama objected Monday to Senate Bill 1628 that seeks to legalize the raising of these animals on the island.
Community leader Roberto Brito reported that hundreds of residents from Pueblito del Carmen in Guayama showed up at the Guayama Convention Center, where the Federal Affairs Committee heard testimony on the measure that “would allow the breeding of wild monkeys for the sole purpose of scientific experimentation.”
The committee’s operations were supervised by Sen. Melinda Romero, of the New Progressive Party, Popular Democratic Party Sens. Juan Hernández Mayoral and Eder Ortíz.
The panel comprised Brito, Dr. Eduardo Ibarra (president of the Health Rights Foundation) and municipal legislators Angel Sanabria ,of the PDP and Rey Catalino of the NPP, among others.
“We are against this bill, because if it is approved it will allow the breeding of monkeys, serpents, crocodiles, lions, and all kinds of exotic animals,” said Brito.
The community leader indicated that the Bio Culture company “wants to open its doors here in our town and is trying to intimidate us by filing a million dollar lawsuit, but that doesn’t scare me because I know it is a
pressure tactic.”
In the meantime, Ibarra, medical adviser for the committee in Guayama, said “there is a movement afoot [in the world] to eliminate the use of animals for experimentation purposes. [Such a movement] favors not
breeding these animals in Puerto Rico, as the Senate is proposing.
“Recently a scientific congress in Europe unanimously approved the elimination of experimenting on animals for medical or cosmetic purposes. Therefore, we understand that the Puerto Rican government should not make an alliance with a company from Israel involved in this unethical practice.”
Municipal legislators Sanabria and Catalino agreed that if a catastrophe like a hurricane occurred in Guayama, as many as 17,000 monkeys could escape.
Brito indicated “this bill sent to the Senate of Puerto Rico by the “Fortaleza is a sly way to approve a measure that would overthrow all the rules and regulations that would prevent people from raising monkeys in P.R.”
He said the Senate should “not promote a measure to please a special interest group of people from Israel while creating a negative effect on Puerto Rico.”
http://www.prdailysun.com/news/Monkey-farm-nixed-again-at-Guayama-hearing
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