Publicity

The July 25th issue of The Independent, often just referred to as "the Indy", has a story on biological research. It's titled in their inimitable way as "Biotech or Biohazard?". The story is about the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, a new 520,000-square-foot federal laboratory designed to research and combat the world's deadliest germs and potential biological weapons. One of the short list of locations for the lab is in nearby Butner NC, around 30 miles from the RTP area.

The reason I mention this is that in a sidebar article about local Biosafety Level 3 facilities, the building I work in gets mentioned! Eeek. There'll be crowds of protestors descending down upon us. Wonderful!

By the way, if this sorta thing gets you worried--this list is so incomplete... there's dozens not listed on here. Fortunately I just have to deal with level one and two biohazards.


DURHAM
Duke University
* Cancer Center Isolation Facility, Research Drive—Studies cancer biology and treatment
* Global Health Research Building, Research Drive and Erwin Road—Researches and develops vaccines, drugs and diagnostics against emerging infections such as tuberculosis, SARS and influenza

RALEIGH
State government
* N.C. State Laboratory of Public Health (two facilities), 306 N. Wilmington St.—Tests for common infectious diseases as well as bioterrorism agents
* Rollins Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab, N.C. Dept. of Agriculture and Consumer Services, 2101 Blue Ridge Road—Satellite facility of the National Animal Health Laboratory Network; tests classical swine fever, avian influenza and exotic Newcastle disease
N.C. State University
* College of Veterinary Medicine, 4700 Hillsborough St.— Two labs research animal diseases

CHAPEL HILL
UNC
* Carolina Vaccine Institute, 99 Manning Drive—Researches contagious viruses, such as Venezuelan equine encephalitis
* Mary Ellen Jones Building, Manning and West drives—Venezuelan equine encephalitis
* Medical Biomolecular Research Building, 103 Mason Farm Road—No public record of research
* School of Public Health (two facilities), 135 Dauer Drive—Researches primarily HIV

RTP
* AlphaVax Vaccine Development Lab, 2 Triangle Drive—Researches HIV and SARS; in early production of biodefense vaccines for the Marburg virus, encephalitis,botulism and smallpox

Comments

kenju said…
Those are the perks of living in our high-bio-tech area, huh? You forgot to mention the nuclear energy facility just down tyhe road apiece. LOL
6:02 PM
rosemary said…
EEKKK is right. That is quite a list of unwantables!
7:14 PM
Anonymous said…
What a list! BTW, I had to come here as you were kind of missed. Now we can't have that!
11:20 AM
utenzi said…
Thanks for the visit, Gautami. Wordnerd was bad--and not for the first time. She's not very good with rules.
11:43 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nitroflex at home

Image
I mentioned a few days ago that I'd purchased off of Craig's List an exercise machine. A Nitroflex, to be more specific, for the grand sum of $75. The boxes you see to the left were bought by the seller as discontinued merchandise over a year ago and stored in his back yard storage shed. You might be able to see some of the bugs and such that had made their homes on these boxes. I left them out on my deck for a few days before opening them to allow the insects to leave gracefully or die in the sun. The picture to the left is the pieces from the box, unboxed, and up in one of my upstairs bedrooms. For the most part it wasn't difficult to move it around though two pieces were heavy and a number of them were kinda long and bulky to be wandering about the house with. Surprisingly, this kit didn't require any extra tools. There were two allen keys and one combo wrench included in the boxes and that was all it took to put it together. The whole thing only took about half an h
Read more

flea!

Image
Yep, that's one of those damn blood suckers. Renee's revenge on my neglecting her feelings, no doubt. We guys just have it so tough! LOL This here is a picture of my ankle and while it's not very obvious, I guess, there's a bunch of flea bites on there. Itches a bit, dammit. The annoying part is that the damn fleas can't use my blood--fleas are mostly species specific and don't have the proper enzymes to make meals out of blood from other critters--so they're not getting anything out of biting me. It's just frustration and starvation driving their biting. Well, I guess the real annoying part is the bites themselves, but I wanted to seem a little sensitive there for a moment. But no more of that. Kill the fleas! While most of the bites are on my ankles and calves, there's an occasional bite up higher like these 4 on my thigh. They're kinda hard to see through the hair but I wasn't able to focus on the skin with all the hair in the way. Sorry.
Read more

ankles: the sequel

Image
I've heard rumors that one post about my sprained ankle wasn't enough so here's more pictures to satisfy a public hungry for swollen flesh... This was taken the morning after I sprained the ankle. There's starting to be a black and blue mark from the blood vessels leaking At this point the swelling is still very localized to the lateral side of the left ankle and presumably that's the tendon that was affected (very likely since I really screwed it up 15 years ago and it's got extra play in it) In this picture, taken on Sunday evening about 25 hours after the injury, you can see the edema, or swelling, has spread out over the top and entire lateral side of the foot. There's also more evidence of hematoma at the skin above the metatarsals. At the same time, there's still significant swelling at the original site to the point that it totally eclipses the left ankle. Here's a lateral view taken at the same time as the photo above to show the hematoma bet
Read more