Rexin G: Targeted Biological Agent
This award-winning animation is a high-sheen advert for Rexin G, a nanoparticle combined with a gene to target tumour cells. Is this part of a new wave of targeted medicine? Time will tell. For now, just enjoy the animation.
This animation was produced by Hybrid Animation, who have a series of animation on their site, all very high quality. Go on – have a look!
Many of them are pretty advanced, but this one is about antigenic shift in the bird flu virus.
By JoVE, it’s Science on video!
While searching for videos on the use of a hemocytometer, I happened upon the Journal of Visualised Experiments. Go on… have a look.
They also have a sister site here:
dnatube.com
It’s a blog/youtube site for Science only, and has some decent videos sorted into categories. I’m still trying to work out how to save or embed these videos, but it’s well worth a look. Great for introducing up-to-date Science topics in class.
Blood: because it’s Halloween soon.
Here’s an old-skool video clip about the journey of an erythrocyte through the body:
Respirocytes: Nanobot Technology Aiding Respiration
I still can’t get my head around nanobots and mini-medicine: I think I was spoiled by watching ‘Innerspace’ at my seventh or eighth birthday party. It’s amazing what can be done, and respirocytes are a great example.
Teaching idea: get your group to write a narrative for this short clip, outlining in brief how respirocytes work. They might want to import the clip into SMART Notebook and include more diagrams and the like in their presentation.
The Foresight Nanotech Institute has some good, though heavy, background information on the subject. It might also give some of the Bio/Phys fence-straddlers food for thought in their uni choices. I’d be interested to know what kinds of degree pathways bring you into this field – it seems to be where the money is. Biomedical Engineering? Medical Materials Engineering? Robotics?
Some cool blood biochemistry
This video is almost too cool:
oxidation of blood by hydrogen peroxide
Comes from ETH Experiments online (Zurich), link courtesy if bogstandardcomp from the TES Science boards.
To watch, you need to download the RealVideo file (small file)
Matchbox 20 – How Far We’ve Come
So it’s not ‘Science’ per se – but it’s a great song with a cool video tracking some of the big impacts made on the Earth by us wee humans over the past century. It’s all a bit MYP, if you like that sort of thing.
PhET Simulations
PhET have some good simulations on their website (Physics and Chem):
Well worth trawling through to find some good ideas (like this skate-ramp) for the SMART board.
EDIT: this site’s helpfulness rating is boosted by the ‘run offline’ button next to each sim – they actually want us to download these and use them for free. Rock on. Needs Java.
“Carboxyl groups: really important. Don’t forget those bad boys – ooh!”
Thanks to Karen Smith for this link: Thinkwell virtual textbooks. 
They have a sample video online here:
http://www.thinkwell.com/marketing/demos/play.cfm
It’s about 10mins long, is about functional side-groups and is actually pretty entertaining.
EDIT:
Here’s the link Karen intended – an animation about protein synthesis:
Ultrasound technology: the next generation
Philips electronics have some good clips of their 4D ultrasound technology in action at their website:
Worth a look in the reproduction topics.
–
–
This video is a great clip for comparing the old-school ultrasounds with the new 4D technology. She’s expecting triplets, too, which makes it more amazing. And here’s the clincher: listen to the soundtrack song carefully.
i-Biology 