Culturing Bioscience


Book Description

Culturing Bioscience is an accessible case study that looks at the role bioscience plays both in the academy and within broader society. The book focuses on the scientific community at a biomedical facility situated on a North American university campus, offering a fascinatingglimpse into scientific culture and the social and political context in which that culture operates. Nesting the discussion of scientific culture within a series of "levels," the ethnography explores a number of topics: the social impact of technology and the way researchers interact with sophisticated equipment; what scientists actually do in a laboratory; the role science plays in the contemporary university; and the way bioscience interacts with local, regional, and global governments.




Culturing Life


Book Description

How did cells make the journey, one we take so much for granted, from their origin in living bodies to something that can be grown and manipulated on artificial media in the laboratory, a substantial biomass living outside a human body, plant, or animal? This is the question at the heart of Hannah Landecker's book. She shows how cell culture changed the way we think about such central questions of the human condition as individuality, hybridity, and even immortality and asks what it means that we can remove cells from the spatial and temporal constraints of the body and "harness them to human intention." Rather than focus on single discrete biotechnologies and their stories--embryonic stem cells, transgenic animals--Landecker documents and explores the wider genre of technique behind artificial forms of cellular life. She traces the lab culture common to all those stories, asking where it came from and what it means to our understanding of life, technology, and the increasingly blurry boundary between them. The technical culture of cells has transformed the meaning of the term "biological," as life becomes disembodied, distributed widely in space and time. Once we have a more specific grasp on how altering biology changes what it is to be biological, Landecker argues, we may be more prepared to answer the social questions that biotechnology is raising.




Visual Culture and Bioscience


Book Description

Edited by Suzanne Anker, JD Talasek. Preface by David Yager. Foreword by JD Talasek. Introduction by Suzanne Anker.




The Question of Animal Culture


Book Description

Fifty years ago, a troop of Japanese macaques was observed washing sandy sweet potatoes in a stream, sending ripples through the fields of ethology, comparative psychology, and cultural anthropology. The issue of animal culture has been hotly debated ever since. Now Kevin Laland and Bennett Galef have gathered key voices in the often rancorous debate to summarize the views along the continuum from “Culture? Of course!” to “Culture? Of course not!” The result is essential reading for anyone interested in the validity of animal culture, and what it might say about our own.




Science as Practice and Culture


Book Description

Science as Practice and Culture explores one of the newest and most controversial developments within the rapidly changing field of science studies: the move toward studying scientific practice—the work of doing science—and the associated move toward studying scientific culture, understood as the field of resources that practice operates in and on. Andrew Pickering has invited leading historians, philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists of science to prepare original essays for this volume. The essays range over the physical and biological sciences and mathematics, and are divided into two parts. In part I, the contributors map out a coherent set of perspectives on scientific practice and culture, and relate their analyses to central topics in the philosophy of science such as realism, relativism, and incommensurability. The essays in part II seek to delineate the study of science as practice in arguments across its borders with the sociology of scientific knowledge, social epistemology, and reflexive ethnography.




Freshney's Culture of Animal Cells


Book Description

FRESHNEY’S CULTURE OF ANIMAL CELLS THE NEW EDITION OF THE LEADING TEXT ON THE BASIC METHODOLOGY OF CELL CULTURE, FULLY UPDATED TO REFLECT NEW APPLICATIONS INCLUDING IPSCS, CRISPR, AND ORGAN-ON-CHIP TECHNOLOGIES Freshney’s Culture of Animal Cells is the most comprehensive and up-to-date resource on the principles, techniques, equipment, and applications in the field of cell and tissue culture. Explaining both how to do tissue culture and why a technique is done in a particular way, this classic text covers the biology of cultured cells, how to select media and substrates, regulatory requirements, laboratory protocols, aseptic technique, experimental manipulation of animal cells, and much more. The eighth edition contains extensively revised material that reflects the latest techniques and emerging applications in cell culture, such as the use of CRISPR/Cas9 for gene editing and the adoption of chemically defined conditions for stem cell culture. A brand-new chapter examines the origin and evolution of cell lines, joined by a dedicated chapter on irreproducible research, its causes, and the importance of reproducibility and good cell culture practice. Throughout the book, updated chapters and protocols cover topics including live-cell imaging, 3D culture, scale-up and automation, microfluidics, high-throughput screening, and toxicity testing. This landmark text: Provides comprehensive single-volume coverage of basic skills and protocols, specialized techniques and applications, and new and emerging developments in the field Covers every essential area of animal cell culture, including lab design, disaster and contingency planning, safety, bioethics, media preparation, primary culture, mycoplasma and authentication testing, cell line characterization and cryopreservation, training, and troubleshooting Features a wealth of new content including protocols for gene delivery, iPSC generation and culture, and tumor spheroid formation Includes an updated and expanded companion website containing figures, artwork, and supplementary protocols to download and print The eighth edition of Freshney’s Culture of Animal Cells is an indispensable volume for anyone involved in the field, including undergraduate and graduate students, clinical and biopharmaceutical researchers, bioengineers, academic research scientists, and managers, technicians, and trainees working in cell biology, molecular biology, and genetics laboratories.




Biological Abstracts


Book Description




From Water to Wine


Book Description

From Water to Wine explores how Angola has changed since the end of its civil war in 2002. Its focus is the middle class - defined in the book as those with a house, a car, and an education - and their consumption, aspirations, and hopes for their families. It is a book that takes as its starting point 'what is working in Angola?' rather than 'what is going wrong?' and makes a deliberate, political choice to give attention to beauty and happiness in everyday life in a country that has had an unusually troubled history. The book is uniquely structured: each chapter focuses on one of the five senses (smell, touch, taste, hearing, and sight, respectively) with the introduction and conclusion provoking reflection on proprioception (kinesthesia) and empathy respectively. A variety of media are employed - poetry, recipes, photos, comics, and other textual experiments - to engage readers and the senses. Written for a broad audience, this text is an excellent addition to classes on Africa, the Lusophone world, international development, sensory ethnography, and ethnographic writing.




Resource Sharing in Biomedical Research


Book Description

The United States is entering an era when, more than ever, the sharing of resources and information might be critical to scientific progress. Every dollar saved by avoiding duplication of efforts and by producing economies of scale will become increasingly important as federal funding enters an era of fiscal restraint. This book focuses on six diverse case studies that share materials or equipment with the scientific community at large: the American Type Culture Collection, the multinational coordinated Arabidopsis thaliana Genome Research Project, the Jackson Laboratory, the Washington Regional Primate Research Center, the Macromolecular Crystallography Resource at the Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source, and the Human Genome Center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The book also identifies common strengths and problems faced in the six cases, and presents a series of recommendations aimed at facilitating resource sharing in biomedical research.




Bioscience Entrepreneurship in Asia


Book Description

This work illustrates how Asia is using biology to create innovative products, services and technologies to meet the goals of poverty reduction, food security, livelihood improvement and wealth creation in future years.