Life Science
Category archives for Life Science
Silly Poll: Scary Creatures
Posted by Chad Orzel on October 14, 2009 SteelyKid has a fever, and can’t go to day care, so I’m staying home with her. This pretty much rules out significant serious blogging, so here’s a poll to keep you amused: Which of these threats is most threatening?(survey) Choose only one.
Congratulations to Ramakrishnan, Steitz, Yonath, and Curious Wavefunction
Posted by Chad Orzel on October 7, 2009 The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.” I know just about enough to recognize this as something biochemical, but I’m sure there will be plenty of commentary about this around science blogdom. “Curious…
DonorsChoose: Now That’s a Noble Cause
Posted by Chad Orzel on October 2, 2009 We’re currently in the early stages of the annual DonorsChoose fundraiser, helping to raise money for educational projects. This is especially important in the current economic climate– even before things went south, many schools and classrooms were strapped for cash, but now it’s even worse. But I can understand if that’s not a noble enough…
Labor Day Blogging Is for the Birds
Posted by Chad Orzel on September 7, 2009 It’s Labor Day today in the US, and Emmy and SteelyKid have both categorically refused to work on the holiday. So here’s a picture of some pretty yellow birds.
CSI: Ambiguous Sentences
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 18, 2009 The New York Times yesterday had a story with the dramatic headline DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show, explaining that, well, there are nefarious tricks you can pull to falsify DNA evidence, provided you have access to a high-quality biochemical laboratory. The story is a great boon to conspiracy theorists everywhere, especially with this…
What You Might Not Know About (Biomedical) Journals
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 17, 2009 Via I-no-longer-remember-who (the tab’s been open for several days), there’s a list of What You Might Not Know About Scientific Journals, outlining some of the facts about scientific publication. There’s some good stuff, but as you can tell from my title, a lot of it is fairly specific to biomedical journals, and doesn’t really apply…
PNAS: Alric, Veterinary Pathologist
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 7, 2009 (On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This…
PNAS: David Syzdek, Wildlife Biologist
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 6, 2009 (On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This…
Mysteries of Back Pain
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 11, 2009 Everybody I know who has back problems swears up and down that sleeping on a really firm mattress is key. My father used to have a big plywood board under his side of the mattress, so that his side of the bed would be less soft (I think they have since bought a new mattress…
Preventative Bacon
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 6, 2009 I’m waiting for the toaster when the dog trots into the kitchen. “You should give me some bacon!” she says. “Why is that?” I ask. “To prevent swine flu!” “Look, there’s no chance that I’m going to get swine flu from eating pork products. I know you saw some people on the Internet saying that…
