SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 3
2013 Board of Directors
A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
Greetings SV-‐AALAS Members,
believe how quickly this year has flown by. We have had several amazing guest lecturers so far this year and I can’t two to go! Many of you are helping with the planning for the 2014 District 8 meeting and we are truly thankful for your input and h ard work. Don't forget to cast your vote in the upcoming 2014 Board elections. The voting ballots will be sent out soon! Sincerely, Rhonda 8 Trustee Report District By Morag Mackay and Amber Carte, District 8 Trustees We hope you were able to experience a great National AALAS meeting this year in Baltimore! As usual the meeting offered an exciting agenda that made it hard to choose what to attend and our commercial members worked hard off their phenomenal wares. The AALAS Foundation horse race was an astounding success and the many to show submissions demonstrated that our field is full of creative and inspiring minds. We are also a competitive group and the bidding was fierce, in the end the horse race raised over sixteen thousand dollars so retire your racers with pride! At the Board of Trustees meeting held in Baltimore updates were approved to the AALAS Policies and Procedures to reflect the new governance structure. This new governance structure alters the configuration of the BOT Manual to consist of one Trustee elected per district and 4 At-‐Large Trustees elected by the National and International membership. The first At-‐Large Trustees will be elected in 2015. Additional updates were made to the policies and procedures to facilitate the candidate selection processes and forms. Please contact us if you have any questions about these changes. In addition the October Board of Trustees voted to approve changing the name of our own Utah Branch to the Mountain West Branch which better represents their total membership. Welcome Mountain West Branch members old and new! We w ould like to thank Gene Ruckavina and Vickie Riojas for their recent service as District 8 Trustee and Alternate Trustee, may their next adventures be just as grand. Branches please update your mailing lists to include our n ew Trustee, Amber Carte and Alternate Trustee, Penny Noel so we may all keep up on all of the exciting happenings within this great district! If you have any questions, concerns, complaints or need assistance please don’t hesitate to contact us. We are here to help and will work as a team to find you answers. to see you all at either your local branch meetings or the District 8 meeting in San Francisco. We hope Morag and Amber Morag Mackay Amber Carte Penny Noel
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Rhonda Oates-‐O’Brien, President
[email protected] Kristin Evans, Vice President
[email protected] Emily Slocum, Secretary
[email protected] Susanne Lim, Treasurer Margaret Tam, Director
[email protected] Sherri Goss, Director
[email protected] Roy Hoglund, Director
[email protected] Shannon Powell, Past President
[email protected]
Save the Date SVAALAS Lecture
11/20/13 5:30 – 7:30 PM U C Davis Mouse Biology Program Conference Room 2795 Second St, Suite 400 Davis, CA 2014 District 8 Meeting April 16-‐18, 2014 South San Francisco Conference Center
Join us on the web at
and be sure www.svaalas.org to page at
our Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/SVA ALAS
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 3
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 3
SAVE THE DATE Annual Sacramento Valley AALAS Awards Banquet Date: Friday February 7, 2014 Time: 6-‐10 PM Location: Heidrick Ag History Center 1962 Hays Lane Woodland, CA 95776
Dr. Neil Goodwin, PhD
“Tumorgraft Avatar Platform for Clinical Advancement” Neal Goodwin, PhD serves as Vice President Corporate Research and Development for Champions Oncology. His responsibilities include development of the patient derived xenograft tumorgraft pharmacology portfolio for both the personalized oncology and translational oncology solutions. He previously served as the Director Research and Development and the founding Program Director of JAX Cancer Services. Dr. Goodwin was the co-‐founder and Chief Scientific Officer of ProNAi Therapeutics, an advanced clinical trial-‐ staged oncology therapeutics firm. He also previously served as a senior research scientist in genomic technologies at Pharmacia. Dr. Goodwin received a Ph.D. in Microbiology from The University of Montana and served a postdoctoral fellowship in functional genomics at The Jackson Laboratory with John Schimenti (now at Cornell).
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 3 Save the Date AALAS District 8 Meeting April 17-18, 2014 Hosted by the Sacramento Valley and Northern California AALAS Branches
H ave fun w hile you learn! Join us in South San Francisco for the 2014 A A LA S D istrict 8 M eeting Featuring K eynote Speaker Cindy A . Buckm aster, PhD , R LA TG She w ill inspire and m otivate you to “step out from the shadow s and stand up for the im portant w ork you do every day to advance m edical progress through anim al research”. Presentation tracts w ill include: Saving Lives – Bench to Bedside and A djusting to/M anaging the N ew R egulations (Changes in the Guide, rodent housing, aquatics, CO 2 euthanasia/A V M A , disaster Planning) W e w ill also offer exciting interactive w ork shops such as: suturing, necropsy, anesthesia, m icro -surgery, and euthanasia. A nd so m uch M ore! For m ore inform ation please visit:
www.District8.org
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 3
LAB HEROES AND VILLAINS Villain: The Hexing Herp Perp Name: Feline Herpes Virus
Hero: The Whiskered Wonder Name: Felis catus Superpowers: An easily mapped neurological system allows this hero to dominate the road to sensory research Mild Mannered Alter Ego: Domestic cat Personal Quote: “It takes a lot of nerve to be a lab hero!” Notable for helping with: emotion studies, cardiac disease, spinal cord injury, cataract surgery, glaucoma, lupus, diabetes, spina bifida, cancer, HIV and more
Superpowers: Able to cause sneezing, inflammation, discharge, ulcers, fever, congestion and many other respiratory symptoms Weakness: Symptomatic treatments hold FHV-‐1 at bay for a little while, but as soon as he’s on the scene, there’s no getting rid of him. Personal Quote: “Think your super senses are so fancy? Not while I’m around!” Notable for: One of the causes of upper respiratory infections, this virus can remain dormant for the life of the cat. It can appear during times of stress and cause mild to severe symptoms.
VS Information creatively adapted from the Merck Veterinary Manual, www.animalresearch.info, and the AALAS Learning Library by Megan Bevis
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 3
ARTICLES OF INTRIGUE AND WONDER FROM THE CORNERS OF THE INTERNET “Even the prettiest faces are built using junk. In mice, the shapes of the face and skull are finely tuned by junk DNA, so called because it was initially thought to lack function since it doesn't encode proteins. The same junk DNA sequences are found in humans, so they are probably also shaping our faces. This finding could help us make sense of some congenital conditions, such as cleft palates, that can develop even when the genes that shape the face appear to be working normally”
“An experimental drug called 3K3A-‐APC appears to reduce brain damage, eliminate brain hemorrhaging and improve motor skills in older stroke-‐afflicted mice and stroke-‐ afflicted rats with comorbid conditions such as hypertension, according to a new study from Keck Medicine of USC.” Discover more at: http://news.usc.edu/#!/article/56646/experim ental-‐drug-‐reduces-‐brain-‐damage-‐in-‐rodents-‐ afflicted-‐by-‐stroke/ With a tiny clump of cells from a man's scalp, scientists have grown new human hair in the laboratory. But don't get too excited. A magic cure for baldness isn't around the corner. The experimental approach is quite limited and years from reaching the clinic — for many reasons
Continue reading at New Scientist’s article found here:
http://www.newscientist.com /article/dn24462-your-facemay-have-been-sculpted-byjunkdna.html#.UmrWPXBeaul
See these reasons at http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/21/ 239121782/scientists-grow-new-hair-in-alab-but-dont-rush-to-buy-a-comb
An experimental vaccine given to monkeys triggered a lasting immune attack that eliminated all traces of an AIDS-causing virus after a year or more. The finding points to a possible new strategy in the search for an effective AIDS vaccine. first few hours or days after exposure to the virus.
What is this strategy? Read on at http://www.nih.gov/r esearchmatters/septe mber2013/09232013S IV.htm
Discovered something on the web? Email a link to mbevis@ucmerced and it may be featured here. Please include “It came from the web” in the subject line.
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 3
READ ALL
ABOUT IT!
Interesting reads for interesting people!
This month’s “Read all about it!” feature has four great books for your enjoyment. Not only are these amazing stories great for those of us invested in research, but they can be great educational tools to help others around us appreciate the value and wonder of biomedical research. Check out these four books!
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee, a leading cancer physician and researcher, selects the year’s top science and nature writing from journalists who dive into their fields with curiosity and passion, delivering must-‐read articles from a wide array of fields.
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 5, Issue 3 The debate is as old as physical competition. Are
stars like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Serena
Williams genetic freaks put on Earth to dominate their respective sports? Or are they simply normal people who overcame their biological limits through sheer force of will and obsessive training?
WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES. Nobody’s perfect. Not even some of the greatest geniuses in history, as Mario Livio tells us in this marvelous story of scientific error and breakthrough. Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein were all brilliant scientists. Each made groundbreaking contributions to his field—but each also stumbled badly. Darwin’s theory of natural selection shouldn’t have worked, according to the prevailing beliefs of his time. Not until Gregor Mendel’s work was known would there be a mechanism to explain natural selection. How could Darwin be both wrong and right? Lord Kelvin, Britain’s leading scientific intellect at the time, gravely miscalculated the age of the earth. Linus Pauling, the world’s premier chemist (who would win the Nobel Prize in chemistry) constructed an erroneous model for DNA in his haste to beat the competition to publication. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle dismissed the idea of a “Big Bang” origin to the universe (ironically, the caustic name he gave to this event endured long after his erroneous objections were disproven). And Albert Einstein, whose name is synonymous with genius, speculated incorrectly about the forces that hold the universe in equilibrium—and that speculation opened the door to brilliant conceptual leaps. These five scientists expanded our knowledge of life on earth, the evolution of the earth itself, and the evolution of the universe, despite and because of their errors. As Mario Livio luminously explains, the scientific process advances through error. Mistakes are essential to progress. Brilliant Blunders is a singular tour through the world of science and scientific achievement—and a wonderfully insightful examination of the psychology of five fascinating scientists.
In this controversial and engaging exploration of athletic success, Sports Illustrated senior writer David Epstein tackles the great nature vs. nurture debate and traces how far science has come in solving this great riddle. He investigates the so-‐ called 10,000-‐hour rule to uncover whether rigorous and consistent practice from a young age is the only route to athletic excellence. Along the way, Epstein dispels many of our perceptions about why top athletes excel. He shows why some skills that we assume are innate, like the bullet-‐fast reactions of a baseball or cricket batter, are not, and why other characteristics that we assume are entirely voluntary, like an athlete’s will to train, might in fact have important genetic components. Through on-‐the-‐ground reporting from below the equator and above the Arctic Circle, revealing conversations with leading scientists and Olympic champions, and interviews with athletes who have rare genetic mutations or physical traits, Epstein forces us to rethink the very nature of athleticism.
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 5, Issue 3
When the woman he loved was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer, science writer George Johnson embarked on a journey to learn everything he could about the disease and the people who dedicate their lives to understanding and combating it.
READ ALL ABOUT
IT! …continued
Deftly excavating and illuminating decades of investigation and analysis, he reveals what we know and don’t know about cancer, showing why a cure remains such a slippery concept. We follow him as he combs through the realms of epidemiology, clinical trials, laboratory experiments, and scientific hypotheses— rooted in every discipline from evolutionary biology to game theory and physics. Perhaps most fascinating of all is how cancer borrows natural processes involved in the healing of a wound or the unfolding of a human embryo and turns them, jujitsu-‐like, against the body. Throughout his pursuit, Johnson clarifies the human experience of cancer with elegiac grace, bearing witness to the punishing gauntlet of consultations, surgeries, targeted therapies, and other treatments. He finds compassion, solace, and community among a vast network of patients and professionals committed to the fight and wrestles to comprehend the cruel randomness cancer metes out in his own family. For anyone whose life has been affected by cancer and has found themselves asking why?, this book provides a new understanding. The Cancer Chronicles is endlessly surprising and as radiant in its prose as it is authoritative in its eye-‐opening science.
In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman—chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a leader in the field—gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years, even as it shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning this paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease. Lieberman proposes that many of these chronic illnesses persist and in some cases are intensifying because of “dysevolution,” a pernicious dynamic whereby only the symptoms rather than the causes of these maladies are treated. And finally— provocatively—he advocates the use of evolutionary information to help nudge, push, and sometimes even compel us to create a more salubrious environment.
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 5, Issue 3
Coming soon!
Call to Arms
The District Eight meeting is fast approaching Plans and ideas are forming, budgets are being set and drawn from, and an exciting panel of speakers and vendors are being wooed into arriving in San Francisco in April of 2014.
As some of you may remember this past April offered a new outreach device that the kiddies loved: the SVAALAS coloring books. However, designing and implementing these books took a lot of time, effort and help. So, for the upcoming Picnic Day I am trying something new-‐ reaching out for aid from all of you, my fellow SVAALAS members.
This year’s theme, Bench to Bedside, will focus on “Translational Research” which is scientific research that helps to make findings from basic science useful for practical applications that enhance human health and well-‐being. This view on how biomedical research is having a real and wonderful affect in achieving life changing therapeutic results couldn’t be set in a more spectacular setting. Some of the planned activities up for grabs include a wine tasting tour, an Alcatraz tour, a trip to the Marine Mammal Center, or a Giants game. If any (or all!) of these potential events sound exciting, you can vote for them at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JJBQVL8 .
This November I will give a demonstration on how to help make the coloring books. It will start at 5:00 pm on Wednesday, November 20th at UC Davis Mouse Biology Program Conference Room (before the scheduled presenter begins their talk). I will bring supplies for any who rsvp by the 18th to try their hand at making the books, but any who don’t rsvp are welcome to watch the demonstration. If anyone cannot make the demonstration, but still wishes to help in the construction of the coloring books for the upcoming picnic day, they may email me for detailed written instructions at
[email protected]. Thank you, -‐Britnee Pannell
The planning for our annual banquet has begun. Keep your eye out for more updates coming soon!
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 5, Issue 3
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 5, Issue 3
Finally! Less Ammonia, more absorbency, and affordable enrichment! Welcome to the Science of Quality Care! Absorption Corp is pleased to introduce the BioFresh family of lab bedding products. Our soft cellulose Comfort Bedding (formerly sold as CareFRESH Lab Bedding) is a trusted solution that is great for burrowing. New to the BioFresh family is our Performance Bedding and Performance Bedding Plus. Our new low-‐abrasive, low-‐dust cellulose pellets, offered in 1/8" and 1/4" diameter, both with and without included soft cellulose enrichment, provide outstanding odor control. These absorbent, lightweight pellets are also perfect for automated dispensing systems, even with the enrichment included, providing a cost effective solution for drier, healthier animals. In addition, BioFresh offers new Crinklets enrichment, a super thin shred that helps animals build better nests that won't spring back like a lumpy mattress! The 10 pound boxes are super easy to handle and provide enrichment for about 180 cages. For more information, or to order samples, visit www.biofreshlab.com or contact us at
[email protected].
See the Comfort Bedding in action on the next page!
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 5, Issue 3
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 5, Issue 3
SVAALAS Newsletter
Volume 5, Issue 3
16
SVAALAS Newsletter Become Somebody in AALAS
How can you get involved in AAL AS …from the Branch Level to the National Level.
Volume 5, Issue 3
How do I get involved at the Branch Level? § § § § § § §
Most branches welcome new “blood” someone that has new ideas and a fresh outlook. Attend meetings regularly, meet new people and get a feel for how the branch is run. Become Involved. Run for a council position. Some branches may call this a trustee. Once your feet are wet and you are ready for a challenge, run for Secretary, Treasurer, President-‐Elect, or even President. Another route you can take is to run for your branch TBR. This will keep you in touch with your local AALAS community as well as the National Office. Join National AALAS at one of the three membership levels to receive more benefits and services from AALAS. If your branch hosts a District Meeting, work on the planning committee in some capacity such as local arrangements, registration and scientific program to name a few. The sky is the limit, so reach for the stars!
Some things to consider on your way to a Leadership Position: § §
§
Achieve certification through AALAS at the highest level. ALAT, LAT, LATG, CMAR – it’s a great personal accomplishment. Attend the Leadership Academy held annually at the National Meeting. This is a training seminar geared toward preparing attendees for leadership positions at the Branch and National Levels. Attend ILAM and other AALAS sponsored training sessions and programs.
How do I get started at the National Level?
Contact the National Office to volunteer for a committee that interests you. From here you may be asked to serve as the committee chair for that committee. § If you have been a National Member for 5 years you are “Leaders are not born. Leaders are made, and they are made by effort and hard work” §
§
Vince Lombardi qualified to run as Trustee or Alternate Trustee. It is recommended that you have served at your local branch and/or district level in some Leadership capacity. Other positions you may run for are President-‐Elect and Secretary/Treasurer.
This is your professional association. The more you know about what AALAS offers, how it operates and the people who are involved – the better informed you will be to choose the right committee or leadership position for you.
Maintaining Leadership Maintain strong sense of purpose Maintain a positive atmosphere Remain persuasive by showing commitment Be persistent
For more information contact your AALAS Branch President, District Trustee, or the AALAS National Office. By: Michelle Tussing, AS, RVT, RLATG; District 5 Trustee (2004-‐2006);
[email protected]
