sporte | January 21, 2007I read about this in Science and immediately had to check it out. Instant gratification on the internet is such a wonderful thing!
The Ed Kravitz lab has made movies of fights and even put them on the web for your viewing pleasure.
You can see the following fly fights that might suit your fancy:
Fighting flies
Male Drosophila melanogaster aggression (with music)
Female Drosophila melanogaster aggression page
Or if you prefer battling sea life, you can watch the lobsters duke it out. Now I know why the lobsters in the grocery store tank always have rubber bands around their claws.
Lobbing…
sporte | January 19, 2007Imagine yourself curled up and cozy, a glass of wine (or pop) in your hand, a blazing fire, and a wonderfully entertaining book in your hand.
Hmmmm. What are you reading?
Oh, of course! It's the open laboratory edited by our very own Science Blogger, Bora Zivkovic, who really does seem to (a) Blog Around the Clock. The secrets out, now you can have a pleasant time reading science blogs and you don't even need a computer.
But if you do have a computer, there are carnivals awaiting. Mendel's Garden is in bloom over at Neurotopia.
And if you really want to dig into a carnival, check…
sporte | January 19, 2007The American Society for Human Genetics is sponsoring the second annual DNA Day Essay contest. If you are a high school teacher here's your chance to combine an interesting assignment along with a contest.
This year's essay questions are:
If you could be a human genetics researcher, what would you study
and why?
In what ways will knowledge of genetics and genomics make changes
to health and health care in the US possible?
The rules are here at GenEdNet.org
I also have an animated tutorial at Geospiza Education that might be of some help. The tutorial is titled Allelic Variants of Human…
sporte | January 13, 2007Are there scientific terms or concepts that you'd like to know more about? Looking for a bit more of an explanation? Confused about the difference between DNA and RNA?
Some of my fellow SciBlings, Tara, Chad, John, Janet, and Bora; have proposed that we consider going back to basics. Others have pointed out that we ScienceBloggers might be a little clueless ourselves about which basics that you'd like us to define.
Here's my proposal:
You can ask me a question in the comments here - or via e-mail (digitalbio at gmail.com) and I will pick one every week or so and try to answer it. Or,…
sporte | January 12, 2007The bioinformatics classes that I teach use web services and web sites as much as possible, but I still find that it's helpful to have programs on our classroom computers. Here is a list of my favorite desktop programs for those of you who might want to add some bioinformatics activities to your biology courses.
Why not use the Web?
Before going on, I should probably explain, why we use desktop programs, we have so many things available on the web. We do use the web whenever we can. Web services are nice because you can shift the computation burden to someone else's computer. (I think this…
sporte | January 10, 2007I was frantically getting ready for class when I happened to glance out the window. What did I see? Big fluffy white flakes rapidly falling from above. You can't say we weren't warned. The newspapers have been predicting snow since Monday. It's just, well, unusual. And Seattle is never prepared to deal with it.
Even the kids aren't looking too happy about it, though. By this time of the school year, they've caught on that every snowday has a price. And, they will pay that price IN JUNE. Already the last day of school has been postponed until the 25th of June.
Who knows? The kids…
sporte | January 9, 2007It's true. Chimeras are out and walking among us. These aren't quite the chimeras that RPM is obsessed with, but they're certainly bothersome to some.
From Genome Technology Online, we have a report that James Derr, at Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine, wants to sequence the genome from a real buffalo, but those buffalo are hard to find.
To quote Genome Technology:
Problem is, that legacy has been mingled with domestic cattle in efforts to "make a better beef animal." Meatier, more docile hybrids are known as cattelo, if you were wondering.
Where do real buffalo roam?
Maybe not…
sporte | January 9, 2007There's nothing like the first day of class to make you appreciate the difference between the equipment you end up using at schools and the equipment that you get to use on the job.
For the month of January, I'm teaching a night class in bioinformatics at a local community college. We're introducing lots of web-based programs, and databases, and concentrating on the sorts of activities that biotechnology technicians are likely to use on the job. It's fun. It's practical. And I don't have to suffer through any lectures about the Semantic Web.
I'm also getting reminded (although not for…
sporte | January 8, 2007Our goal for this course (BioSci256) is to introduce you to some of the tools and databases that are widely-used in bioinformatics and give you lots of hands-on practice in using these tools to look at some questions in biology. Since many of you are either studying biotechnology or working in a health-related field, we will focus quite a bit on practical applications.
I posted tonight's topics here since I've been told that some of you might not have access to Blackboard for a couple of days. Feel free to look around the place. ScienceBloggers discuss lots of topics that you might find…
sporte | January 6, 2007
Decan Butler, the Reveres, and Nature have written that verdict is in. The scientific evidence has been shunted aside. The nurses and doctor who traveled to Tripoli on a humanitarian mission have been sentenced to death. There is still a chance, but it seems to be slim.
Two articles in Nature, with free access (I think) discuss the case and present some additional shocking news.
To quote the main article (Europe condemns Libyan trial verdict):
The six medical workers were sentenced to death on 19 December by the Benghazi Criminal Court for deliberately infecting more than 400 children…
sporte | January 6, 2007My dog has an interesting (okay, disgusting!) habit of rolling in the smelliest stuff she can find when we go on walks. Everything that I've read about dogs - and this probably includes fiction - explains her behavior as "the dog is hiding her scent."
I know it seems odd that my dog rolling in smelly stuff should remind me of a post on Evolgen (Lab coats & Gloves), but he did make me wonder if he might have missed a reasons for some people dressing as they do. RPM looks at this issue from a very logical standpoint. Since he works in a lab, he thinks that the people wearing in lab coats…
sporte | January 5, 2007GenomeWeb reports that OKCC and the University of Utah's Genetic Science Learning Center received NIH funds for genomics and bioinformatics education projects, respectively. Congratulations are certainly due to the University of Utah.
For a community college, on the other hand, to get NIH funding is very unusual and OKCC should be commended.
From GenomeWeb:
The NCRR said it will fund the Oklahoma City Community College $540,000 for the "Biotechnology/Bioinformatics Discovery" program, which focuses on professional development in life sciences informatics teaching techniques, particularly…
sporte | January 4, 2007I'm tempted to joke and say "Recruit hotter guys?" but that would be just as wrong as Razib's charming notion of what cute women read for fun or our uncertain physicist's misconception that there's nothing that he can do to improve the situation for female students at his small college. Of course our physicist friend has tenure, now, so perhaps he'll study up on Zuska's suggestions. Besides, I don't really think there's a shortage of hot geeky guys, Zuska and I both found them, so I know they're out there.
Making a real difference requires a climate change. Life science enrollment is…
sporte | January 4, 2007The wind storms and heavy rains that hit Seattle recently, demonstrated why a bypass mechanism can be a helpful thing - for both bacteria and motorists.
Under the bridge on Mercer, from the Seattle Times
When the weather is nice, I bike to work. But when the weather gets bad, (I consider rain and 69 mph winds to be BAD), I take the easy way out. On the day of the big windstorm though, driving home was not so easy. A mudslide covered one of my usual paths, blocked two lanes on a very busy street, and stopped traffic well into the depths of the city.
Since we had to get to a soccer…
sporte | January 3, 2007You can spend all day staring at irreducibly complex patterns in the sand (wow! it's a pattern! Evidence for intelligent design? Or created by random acts of water?).
Or, you can do something even more fun and enjoy a treat at Tangled Bank #70. As they say in Spain, Viva La Evolución!
sporte | January 3, 2007This is the fifth part of a multipart series on antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
The previous installments:
1. A primer on antibiotic resistance: an introduction to the question of antibiotic resistance.
2. Natural vs. synthetic drugs: what is the difference between an antibiotics and synthetic drugs.
3. How do antibiotics kill bacteria? a general discussion of the pathways where antibiotics can act and one characteristic that helps some bacteria survive.
4. Are antibiotics really only made by bacteria and fungi? It depends on what you'd like to call them.
Before we go on, I think it's time…
sporte | January 2, 2007After reading Kevin C.'s question in the comments on my last antibiotic post, I decided to look into this question a bit further.
As far as I can tell, most of the commercially producted antibiotics are made by bacteria, fungi, and a bit chemistry (more on that in a moment). It appears, however, that compounds with antimicrobial properties are made by just about everything. Just to make things complicated, these molecules are sometimes called "antibiotics" in the literature and sometimes they're not.
Many of the molecules with antimicrobial activity are short peptides- chains of amino…
sporte | January 1, 2007It's been quite a year since I joined ScienceBlogs in June and there've been many interesting things to write about.
Here's a sampling of your favorites (and some of mine) from month to month.
June:
Hello Kitty! or Don't Eat Me, I Study Genetics!
The story of the endangered Florida Panthers and the danger of getting confused between preserving the signs of inbreeding and preserving a species.
I also gave a workshop for teachers in June at the Bio-Link conference. So, June has quite a few posts about Bio-Link.
July:
Am I really related to Cleopatra? Qualitatively measuring DNA…
sporte | January 1, 2007When computers first entered the mainstream, it was common to hear them getting blamed for everything. Did you miss a bank statement? that darned computer! Miss a phone call? - again the computer!
The latest issue of Science had a new twist on this old story. Now, instead of a researcher failing to take responsibility for doing sloppy science, we're back to blaming the computer. Never mind that the lab was using home made software that they "inherited from someone" (and apparently didn't test it) the five retracted papers were the fault of the software! Not the scientists who forgot to…
sporte | December 31, 2006When two different people sent me this link, I realized that it had to be shared.
The Eye of Science gallery has all kinds of pictures taken by microscopists.
I am a great fan of microscopic crystals. Here are crystals of every shape and kind - with some lovely views of snowflakes. Plus, there are wonderful pictures of bacteria (E. coli, Leptospira, Streptococcus pneumoniae) the SARS virus, diatoms, pollen, fungi, parasites, cat embryos, hornets, bone tissue, nylon, and more.
Enjoy!