Bloomington Parks and Recreation holds annual skull workshop\nReal animal skull remains will be examined in detail during Bloomington Parks and Recreation's program demonstrating how animals' skeletal adaptations are key to their survival. The program will run from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Twin Lakes Lodge, located at 2350 W. Bloomfield Rd. The program is for ages 6 and older, with a $3.50 per person fee. Registration is required by Thursday and can be done online at www.bloomington.in.gov/parks or by calling 349-3700.
New Indiana law to require food handlers\nBeginning Jan. 1, 2005, Indiana food establishments will be required to have at least one certified food handler on staff responsible for overseeing food safety in the restaurant, the Indiana State Department of Health reports.\nThe new law requires every restaurant to employ a food handler, but the employee does not necessarily have to be present at the food establishment during all hours of operation. With the placement of handlers, the State Department hopes to see reduced instances of food-bourne illness in the future.\nSixty-seven food-borne outbreaks occurred in Indiana from 1999 to 2003, according to data collected by the State Department. The department has defined a food-borne outbreak as an incident traceable to the ingestion of a contaminated food where two or more persons have been affected and there is a time, place or person association among these people.\nThe Indiana General Assembly passed legislation for this food law in 2001 to create the certified food handler requirement, and the four-year grace period to allow the industry to develop the training and examination infrastructure is nearly at an end. \nA one-day food-handler certification class will be taught in Bloomington Nov. 18 at the American Legion Post 18 by Kimberly Blakeley.\nFor more information about the new law and a list of sources of training and testing, visit www.statehealth.in.gov.
'Grossology' exhibit offers unique views of animal digestion\nCHICAGO -- "Animal Grossology," the new exhibition at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, easily could have been a lot grosser.\nSure, there's plastic excrement in the exhibit room, skunk scent for spritzing and robot animals that use cutesy terms like "barf" and "dookie" while talking about hairballs and digestive tracts. It's a 10-year-old's dream.\nBut the exhibition is also built in a way adults can stomach, even after a hearty breakfast. And the younger visitors are learning something.\nThe show is the work of Advanced Exhibits, a division of Advanced Animatronics of Bloomfield Hills, Mich. It's based on the second in a popular series of science books for children by author Sylvia Branzei, who coined the word "grossology" for the gleeful study of bodily functions.\nIt's a successor to "Grossology: The (Impolite) Science of the Human Body," an exhibition that drew large crowds to the Notebaert several years ago.\n"The Slime Game" features a sea cucumber, snail and hagfish eel competing in a television game show for the title of world's slimiest creature, with the visitors casting the deciding votes.\nAnother display shows a life-size cow chewing her cud while a clear plastic bubble in her side reveals a mechanized model of her four-stomach digestive tract.\nThe exhibition, which opened Oct. 8, will run through the end of the year at the Notebaert. A national tour is planned.
New vaginal gel may thwart HIV virus\nWASHINGTON, D.C. -- A chemical specially designed to thwart how the AIDS virus invades during sex offers scientists a new lead in the long quest for a vaginal gel that women could apply to protect themselves when men don't use a condom.\nThe experimental drug isn't ready for human testing yet, but it provided potent protection to female monkeys exposed to large amounts of an AIDS virus, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science.\nThe chemical prevented HIV from invading vaginal tissue by blocking its preferred cellular doorway, the first evidence that targeting that portal is sufficient to prevent infection.\n"This work gives us a single molecule to target" in creating so-called topical microbicides, HIV-blocking vaginal gels or creams, lead researcher Dr. Michael Lederman of Case Western Reserve University said Thursday.\nAIDS specialists called the discovery a promising lead.\n"There's been a lot of difficulty in getting microbicides to be both effective and non-irritating," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "This is a step forward."\nLederman partnered with Swiss researchers who created a man-made RANTES version thousands of times more potent at blocking CCR5. They gave 30 monkeys a hormone to make them more vulnerable to HIV infection. Then they sprayed their vaginas with the new chemical, called PSC-RANTES, and 15 minutes later squirted in high doses of a monkey-human strain of AIDS virus.\nMonkeys who received the highest dose of PSC-RANTES were completely protected; a lower dose provided 80 percent protection. There were no detectable side effects.\nThe research was funded by the U.S. and Swiss governments.
