In the meantime, check out this informative and sometimes even hilarious collection of books and films that may quench a first thirst of knowledge right away.
Get inside your Immune system through amazing pictures and videos!To celebrate this year's Day of Immunology (29 April 2011) and promote immunology to a large public, the EFIS launches a web-exhibition composed of scientific pictures and videos. Like a photo-exhibit, short captions come with the fabulous pictures selected from two institutions – the Pasteur Institute and the INSERM) to explain what is the immune system made of, how it combats pathogens. The story told throughout the visuals is the story of a never-ending fight between the good ones, our white cells, and the bad ones, the viruses, bacteria, parasites and so on. If the immune system doesn't win each time, hopefully there are immunologists to help. This is the morality of this virtual exhibition. The idea of this project came from the fact that research institutes produce incredible images and videos of what is going on inside our body. They are strongly appealing, and when the caption explains that what looks like a painting is actually a macrophage swallowing bacteria like this one, then the picture becomes fascinating. There are also little videos where we can see lymphocytes checking a reticulocyte, or the invasion of the bacteria on a respiratory tissue when the immune system is impaired.
Watch the exhibition online :
www.inside-immunity.orgThe large public has too few occasions to see these striking pictures or videos of life at a cellular level, this is why this exhibition is virtual, accessible for everyone and targeting a large audience. Feel free to spread the word!
Your Amazing Immune SystemDownload a free pdf (5,6 MB) of the book "Your Amazing Immune System – How It Protects Your Body". This book is designed to help you better understand how the immune system works. It has been compiled by the Japanese Society for Immunology for the Day of Immunology 2008. Recognising a good idea and a good book, researchers working in immunology in Europe thought such a publication would also be of interest to experts and laypeople in Western countries. The European Federation of Immunological Societies (EFIS), the umbrella organisation of European immunologists, provided financial support for the translation, printing and electronic distribution of this book.
To download the book, you need to fill out a
form.