Blogs

The Medical Historical Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, is pleased to announce the following recipients of the Ferenc Gyorgyey Research Travel Award for 2016-2017: Whitney Wood, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birbeck, University of London A New Way to Birth?  Herbert Thoms and the International Natural Childbirth Movement Whitney Wood’s research explores the natural childbirth movement in Canada.  As part of this research, Wood will be examining the Herbert Thoms papers (https://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/mssa.ru.0656), as Thoms was an international leader in the movement and produced quite a bit of material on the topic of natural childbirth. Whitney Wood is planning to come to the Medical Historical Library in Spring 2017. Erin Travers, Doctoral Candidate, History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara Boundaries of the Body: The Art of the Anatomy in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands Erin Travers will be examining Dutch anatomies, particularly Jacob van der Gracht’s drawing book, Anatomie der wtterlicke deelen van het menschelick lichaem.  These anatomies form the basis of her dissertation.  She will at the Medical Historical Library July 18th-23rd, 2016. Many thanks to the selection committee: John Warner and John Gallagher.

Spotlight on the Humanities in Medicine Collection Check out the newest book in the Humanities in Medicine Collection, The Gene: An Intimate History. Excerpt from the book cover: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies—a magnificent history of the gene and a response to the defining question of the future: What becomes of being human when we learn to “read” and “write” our own genetic information? Siddhartha Mukherjee has a written a biography of the gene as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as his extraordinarily successful biography of cancer. Weaving science, social history, and personal narrative to tell us the story of one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of modern times, Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices. Throughout the narrative, the story of Mukherjee’s own family—with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness—cuts like a bright, red line, reminding us of the many questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. In superb prose and with an instinct for the dramatic scene, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation—from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Morgan to Crick, Watson and Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome. As The New Yorker said of The Emperor of All Maladies, “It’s hard to think of many books for a general audience that have rendered any area of modern science and technology with such intelligence, accessibility, and compassion…An extraordinary achievement.” Riveting, revelatory, and magisterial history of a scientific idea coming to life, and an essential preparation for the moral complexity introduced by our ability to create or “write” the human genome, The Gene is a must-read for everyone concerned about the definition and future of humanity. This is the most crucial science of our time, intimately explained by a master. Humanities in Medicine Collection is located across from the Circulation Desk.

The spring 2016 issue of Nota Bene: News from the Yale Library is now available online. This issue has a particular focus on the work of the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library as it marks its 75th anniversary this year.  In addition to telling the story of the Medical Library, the issue profiles some of the current projects, resources, collections, and exhibits that are making an impact at Yale and in the medical community worldwide.

In January 2016, ORCID announced that a number of publishers - eLife, PLOS, the Royal Society, IEEE, AGU, EMBO, and Science - plan to require submitting authors to register for and provide ORCID IDs.   In its own words, ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. ORCID is unique in its ability to reach across disciplines, research sectors and national boundaries. It is a hub that connects researchers and research through the embedding of ORCID identifiers in key workflows, such as research profile maintenance, manuscript submissions, grant applications, and patent applications.   ORCID provides two core functions: (1) a registry to obtain a unique identifier and manage a record of activities, and (2) APIs that support system-to-system communication and authentication. As ORCID puts it, Benefits for researchers, in addition to improved discoverability of their works, include single sign-on across journals and streamlined data entry.  The recent launch of Crossref’s auto-update functionality means that researchers can opt to have their ORCID record automatically updated when their papers are published, which in turn means that university and other systems can receive updates directly and reduce reporting burden on researchers. To learn more about the benefits of ORCID and how to get started, contact your departmental librarian. 

(by Rolando Garcia Milian and Terry Dagradi) Last summer we invited Yale biomedical researchers (undergrads, graduate students, postdocs, faculty, associate researchers, etc.) to share results from their work where they felt the images produced in search of science crossed over to art.  We thank all of you who submitted and appreciate your willingness to share with the community.  The images were reviewed by a committee including New Haven sculptor Gar Waterman, Sarah Fritchey (Curator / Gallery Director at Artspace New Haven), and Dr. Derek K. Toomre, Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Director of the YALE 'CINEMA’ Laboratory. Together, they selected many of the images currently on exhibit in the foyer of Cushing/Whitney Medical Library as well as the three 1st Honor awardees. The 1st Honor Awardees are: Marco Onorati, Department of Neurobiology Neurons in a Dish, 2015 Juror comments: “Neuron: Good rendition, dreamy quality”  “The fantastic crystalline structure in the center of this composition is very powerful. The sense of pull and energy is so forceful that it almost suggests a big bang moment.” (Click to view larger image) Neurons differentiated in a dish from stem cells.  Microphotograph, fluorescence.    Mustafa Khokha, Department of Pediatrics Frog Head, Year: 2015 Juror comments: “Great composition and detail.”  “Just a cool thing, whatever it is” (Click to view larger image) Xenopus laevis tadpole (frog). Brain (green) and Actin (red) and nuclei (blue) View from the back of the head over the Imaged with Leica Sp8 Confocal by Helen Rankin Xenopus Cold Spring Harbor Course.   Kate Henderson, Department of Pathology Stones Dreaming, 2013 Juror comment: “My favorite - love this one - fabulous color and pattern” (Click to view larger image) Abstract digital composition of microscopy endocrine images. Image description: I create environments from natural elements to give people a sense of place, describing emotional essence and energy that connects us to each other and everything around us. My images both describe and celebrate the intrinsically aesthetic structure of the natural world and the ever-present duality in all things. I invite the viewer to see and feel the world both within us and around us, experiencing the macro vs microelements common to all. Painting-with-cells is how I describe the cyto-Illusions series. I start by using microscope images of human cells and also images of abstraction “found” in nature. Through layering and manipulation techniques, I create an image that mirrors micro images on a macro level. On one level the images are a colorful abstraction that allow the viewer to freely explore and experience the image on their own. Many images are suggestive of a specific element such as water, but others are more environmentally placed. On another level the images are about the reality of nature; cells of disease, the growth structure of plants, and the patterns of light filtered through the leaves.   The Viewers’ Choice Award This was determined by all those who voted (404 votes total) on an exhibition album created on the Medical Library Facebook page. Laura Pappalardo – Department of Neurology Astrocytes display robust intracellular calcium response in model of astrogliosis, 2013 (Click to view larger image) Astrocytes, a non-neuronal type of cell in the brain and spinal cord, respond to central nervous system insult through the incompletely understood process of reactive astrogliosis, which is a hallmark in pathologies such as multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury. While the ramifications of astrogliosis are debated, it is agreed that in its extreme forms, this process leads to the formation of a scar, which is long-lasting and can inhibit the regeneration of injured neurons. While the molecular drivers of astrogliosis are an area of active investigation, a clearer understanding is needed. Here, we show that after a scratch injury, there is a robust intracellular calcium response, which propagates through the syncytium of confluent astrocytes (red indicates high intracellular calcium). This calcium transient leads to downstream signaling that can regulate the astroglial response to injury. We are currently working to investigate the mechanisms behind this phenomenon, paying particular attention to voltage-gated sodium channels. Color scale represents the ratio of fluorescent signals induced by 340 and 380 nm excitation in cells loaded with Fura-2 AM. Scale bar, 50 ╡m. In collaboration with Stephen Waxman, Joel Black, Mark Estacion, and Omar Samad.