Wednesday, July 30, 2014

France 2014 50th Anniversary of INSERM

The French Post released on 7 July 2014 a stamp to celebrate 50 years of INSERM (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale) or the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, that comprises 10 institutes covering the area:

  • Neurosciences, cognitive sciences, neurology & psychiatry
  • Cancer
  • Circulation, metabolism & nutrition
  • Immunology, hematology & pulmonology
  • Public health
  • Health technologies
  • Molecular and structural basis of living organisms
  • Cell biology, development & evolution
  • Genetics, genomics & bioinformatics
The stamp is illustrated with the image of mice motor nuclei highlighted using the Brainbow technique, a process by which individual neurons in the brain are distinguished from neighbouring neurons using fluorescent proteins to express different ratios of red, green, and blue, flagging each neuron with a distinctive colour.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Mexico 2013 25 Years of CONADE (Comisión Nacional de Cultura Física y Deporte)

Mexico released on 13 December 2013 a single stamp to mark 25 Years of CONADE, or Comisión Nacional de Cultura Física y Deporte, or National Commission for Physical Culture and Sport, in English. The stamp features cycling, taekwando, boxing and athletics, with the silhouette of Mexican female athlete silhouette, Ana Gabriela Guevara Espinoza (born March 4, 1977, in Nogales, Sonora), a retired bemedallioned track and field athlete who became a Mexican Senator. A central circle features scientific methodology for monitoring athletic performance and body vital signs, hence the stamp background is decorated with biorhythmic graphs with various icons; one of these icons, the top one on the left features a double helical representation of DNA.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Mali 2013 Nobel Prize for Medicine 2012

Shinya Yamanaka and Sir John B Gurdon were  awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery that mature cells can be converted to stem cells. The backgound of the souvenir sheets issued to commemorate them contains the helical DNA representation.