Cesar Millan Launches New Magazine

Known by millions as the “Dog Whisperer,” Cesar Millan has been helping problem canines and their owners for the last twenty years — and has become a media sensation in the process. There’s his wildly popular show “The Dog Whisperer” — about to launch its sixth season on the National Geographic channel on October 9 — multiple best-selling books, and a foundation that Cesar and his wife of 15½ years, Ilusion Wilson Millan, created to rescue dogs across the country.

Now, the Millans can add a magazine to their list of achievements.

Entitled Cesar’s Way, the magazine is a joint venture between IMG Publishing and the Millans. The glossy bi-monthly publication, which debuted its first issue yesterday, features training articles penned by Cesar, health tips, real life tales, and celebrity profiles.

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Moths As Good As Mice For Many Drug Tests

Moths, caterpillars and fruit flies could soon take the place of millions of mice used every year by scientists testing drugs, researchers said Tuesday. Biologists have discovered that certain key cells in mammals and insects react in the same way when attacked by infections and produce similar chemical reactions to fight them off.The findings could mean up to 80 percent of the mice used for testing new pharmaceutical compounds may no longer be needed, offering drug firms sizeable time and cost savings.

“It is now routine practice to use insect larvae to perform initial testing of new drugs and then to use mice for confirmation tests,” said Kevin Kavanagh, a biologist from the National University of Ireland, who presented his research at a Society for General Microbiology meeting in Edinburgh.

“This method of testing is quicker, as tests with insects yield results in 48 hours whereas tests with mice usually take 4 to 6 weeks. And it is much cheaper too.”

Kavanagh and his colleagues found that neutrophils, white blood cells that form part of the mammalian immune system, and haematocytes, cells that carry out similar work in insects, react in the same way to infecting microbes.

BioArts Pet Cloning Company To Discontinue Cloning Services

After delivering healthy cloned dogs to five clients, BioArts International has decided to discontinue their cloning practice.We first reported on BioArts when Trakr, a heroic 9/11 search and rescue dog, was cloned after his owner won BioArts’ Best Friends Again contest. Since then, however, several problems have become apparent, which CEO Lou Hawthorne outlined in a company press release.

Hawthorne reveals that the pet cloning market is even tinier and more specialized than he assumed. Although he spent over 10 years studying animal cloning and knew the subject was controversial, he was surprised at the number of people who refused to clone a pet even if the price was zero. With demand so low, it was impossible for BioArts to keep prices low enough for people to even consider having their beloved cloned.

A larger problem is the unlicensed competition. Though BioArts possesses a license to clone dogs (which they hoped would protect their technology), it’s proven to be largely pointless, as other companies, notably RNL Bio, plan to offer the same cloning services at a discounted price and without paying the license. The company that holds BioArts’ license has yet to go after unlicensed cloners, leading to a relatively free cloning market.This brings up another issue — ethics.

Evidence Points To Conscious ‘Metacognition’ In Some Nonhuman Animals

Smith makes this conclusion in an article published the September issue of the journal Trends in Cognitive Science (Volume 13, Issue 9). He reviews this new and rapidly developing area of comparative inquiry, describing its milestones and its prospects for continued progress.

He says “comparative psychologists have studied the question of whether or not non-human animals have knowledge of their own cognitive states by testing a dolphin, pigeons, rats, monkeys and apes using perception, memory and food-concealment paradigms.

“The field offers growing evidence that some animals have functional parallels to humans’ consciousness and to humans’ cognitive self-awareness,” he says. Among these species are dolphins and macaque monkeys (an Old World monkey species).

Smith recounts the original animal-metacognition experiment with Natua the dolphin. “When uncertain, the dolphin clearly hesitated and wavered between his two possible responses,” he says, “but when certain, he swam toward his chosen response so fast that his bow wave would soak the researchers’ electronic switches.