Articles
A Portrait of the Artist as an Industrial Citizen
“Once upon a time and a very good time it was”¹, industry flourished in Queensland. And, perhaps unexpectedly, so did art.
When thinking of inspirational sources for artists, industry is not the first thing that comes to mind. Smoke and pollution, gears and technologies, machines and construction sites – these are not on average the scenes one would expect an artist to investigate as topics for creativity. Yet the muses are exceptionally adaptable, as are their protégés.
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When thinking of inspirational sources for artists, industry is not the first thing that comes to mind. Smoke and pollution, gears and technologies, machines and construction sites – these are not on average the scenes one would expect an artist to investigate as topics for creativity. Yet the muses are exceptionally adaptable, as are their protégés.
Read more.
Genetics and Pet Food
Feeding your pet is not rocket science, right? It is plain and simple and easy to understand and involves no great thinking skills, right? Well, yes. And no. And maybe. For you, the pet owner, it might not be, but animal diets just got even more scientific with the advent of nutrigenomics. Which, depending on your attitude towards science, could make you a very happy pet owner, although maybe a bit confused as well.
With genes and genetics the new frontier in human medicine, it is no great wonder that this field of study has now seriously hit the pet world as well. Call it the genetics of nutrition – how to feed your pet’s genes for optimal health and well-being, specifically applied to certain disease processes. Read more.
With genes and genetics the new frontier in human medicine, it is no great wonder that this field of study has now seriously hit the pet world as well. Call it the genetics of nutrition – how to feed your pet’s genes for optimal health and well-being, specifically applied to certain disease processes. Read more.
The emotiveness of food and the laws of the kitchen
Society, with all its complicated rules, traditions and assumptions in tow, runs on its stomach. Wherever people are, there is food, and of necessity also some rules regarding food, largely unwritten and unspoken.
Of course, there is the expectation that food should be consumed with a certain amount of decency and delicacy, at least when in the company of others. Don’t talk with your mouth full. Ask for something out of reach (please pass the salt). Don’t slurp or burp or belch. What you do with the butter knife when you’re home alone is your problem, but in polite society you use it to serve a pat of butter.
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Of course, there is the expectation that food should be consumed with a certain amount of decency and delicacy, at least when in the company of others. Don’t talk with your mouth full. Ask for something out of reach (please pass the salt). Don’t slurp or burp or belch. What you do with the butter knife when you’re home alone is your problem, but in polite society you use it to serve a pat of butter.
Read more
Nutrigenomics – inviting genetics to the meal
History has seen many food revolutions, movements and ideologies. Ever since Eve bit into that first apple, food has been just as much about beliefs, economy, science, art and all other aspects of society than it has been about fuel for the human body. Now science has taken nutrition to the next microscopic level – human genetics.
Geneticists have had their fingers in the nutrition pie since genetic engineering managed to transfer DNA between organisms, creating anything from virus-resistant squash and herbicide-resistant corn to delayed-ripening tomatoes and non-browning apples. The relatively new field of nutrigenomics thankfully proffers no glow-in-the-dark meals or similar Frankensteinian foods. It is merely the scientific proof of what your grandmother knew instinctively – what you eat can change what you are. Read more.
Geneticists have had their fingers in the nutrition pie since genetic engineering managed to transfer DNA between organisms, creating anything from virus-resistant squash and herbicide-resistant corn to delayed-ripening tomatoes and non-browning apples. The relatively new field of nutrigenomics thankfully proffers no glow-in-the-dark meals or similar Frankensteinian foods. It is merely the scientific proof of what your grandmother knew instinctively – what you eat can change what you are. Read more.
More than one way to kill a vet
An inside story on stress and suicide in veterinarians
Death is like an automatic teller machine – available 24/7. Veterinarians, as much as their counterparts in human medicine know this only too well. But except for the obvious meaning – that a life-threatening emergency can come knocking at any moment – there is a more sinister aspect to this statement. Death does not only stalk your patients; it can crawl under your own skin, insinuating itself into the deep recesses of your mind, to start singing its siren song when your resistance is at its weakest.
Melodramatic? Maybe so. Yet few people are aware of the darker side of veterinary science, the other side of the smiling animal doctor image. Take it from the horse’s mouth: being a veterinarian in private practice must rate as one of the most stressful jobs. Read more
Death is like an automatic teller machine – available 24/7. Veterinarians, as much as their counterparts in human medicine know this only too well. But except for the obvious meaning – that a life-threatening emergency can come knocking at any moment – there is a more sinister aspect to this statement. Death does not only stalk your patients; it can crawl under your own skin, insinuating itself into the deep recesses of your mind, to start singing its siren song when your resistance is at its weakest.
Melodramatic? Maybe so. Yet few people are aware of the darker side of veterinary science, the other side of the smiling animal doctor image. Take it from the horse’s mouth: being a veterinarian in private practice must rate as one of the most stressful jobs. Read more
The poetry of broken rules
As a lover of words as much as of animals, I have been known to write incensed letters to publications concerning the quality of their linguistic editing. Apologies having duly been made and accepted, I then feel like an owner who, having scolded a puppy for chewing up a shoe, wonders whether the shoe wasn’t old anyway and the chew marks not so noticeable from a distance. But where is the line between old and new and at what distance do imperfections disappear? In other words, if there are rules, when is it allowable and indeed recommendable, to bend them? Read more
