April 15, 2009
Category: Science & Society
This is an attempt to get back into blog-writing mode. My time has become split in a thousand different ways. There are a multitude of items that need to be accomplished before I leave for Toronto.
Here's a few of them: I would like to wrap up three ongoing projects, or at least get most of the lab work done. I need to find a place to live in my hometown-to-be. I need to set up the lab-to-be. I need to set up my new lab website, to attract students and postdocs. I need to plan ahead for the next few years, or get into that mind set.
(Excuse me, I'm at home today with the kid and he just peed all over me. It's time for a diaper/clothes change.)
Read on »
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 11:41 AM • 11 Comments
March 20, 2009
Category: art, food, music, citylife and other mental stimuli
As you can see, juggling lab and fatherhood has left me no time to blog. So now that I'm waiting for the centrifuge to cool down I'll take this opportunity to quote a great musician whose words have some resonance these days:
Cranium implants, false debt, funny money, dead sat heart, signs of the empire in decline, stretching the bottom line without regard to time or limits of mankind, paying no attention to the laws of cause and effect, advance and decline, the ways of ancient biorythms, science, no conscience.
-Steve Coleman, from the song No Conscience, off of Steve Coleman and the Five Element's CD, Rhythm People: The Resurrection Of Creative Black Civilization.
To download any Steve Coleman and the Five Element recordings pre-2002, visit the "Sounds" page on M-base.
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:05 AM • 5 Comments
March 6, 2009
Category: Misc • art, food, music, citylife and other mental stimuli
Monday, our son Xander was born. Since then I've been getting to know who this new human being is. I've been taking care of most of his, and my wife's, needs. We've shared many moments and lived a life without distractions. Like Zen Buddhist monks our only concerns are food, sleep and poop. The first few days I shunned my laptop, but now that my parents are in town we've been able to request and obtain the high technology items that permeate every action performed within the 21st century. Now as my wife, and son sleep I am quickly typing this post. Soon they will be awake and a new set of tasks will be have to be performed.
While I have the time I just wanted to mention one anecdote. Many instances I've heard that the greatest moment of one's life is that first glance at your new born child. To be honest, that moment was surreal, hard to believe, hard to digest. I didn't know quite what to expect and suddenly there he was. It was all very quick, and the sights and sounds of the OR reminded me of being at the lab. So it was in a sense a letdown. But that magic moment did arive ... the next night at 3AM. Xander, after being fed, could not sleep and was crying with a distinct dry scream that babies do oh-so-well. I was calmly trying to ease his fright, and found that the only to sooth him was to stick my pinky in his mouth. There I was the human pacifier. After 20min I tried to let go of him and pull out my finger, but he instantly started to cry again. What to do? I decided to bring his small shaking body to my cot and lay him down next to me. I knew at the time that this was not an "accepted practice", but lying next to me, our two warm bodies comforting each other, I was able to calm him down and get him to sleep. We stay that way until 6AM. I won't even try to describe that feeling. All I will say is that these were by far the best 3 hours of my entire life.
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 11:59 AM • 20 Comments
February 26, 2009
Category: Science & Society • art, food, music, citylife and other mental stimuli
Today's quote is from the first two lines of a research manuscript about the neuroscience of Schadenfreude that appeared in a recent issue of Science.
Envy is one of the seven biblical sins, the Shakespearian "green-eyed monster," and what Bertrand Russell called an unfortunate facet of human nature. It is an irrational, unpleasant feeling and a "painful emotion" characterized by feelings of inferiority and resentment produced by an awareness of another's superior quality, achievement, or possessions.
It's not very often that you read flowery language in a scientific paper. Note that five of the six authors have Japanese names. Did they pen this? Or perhaps the author was some ghost writer with an English major? Also note that the authors chose a great title for their manuscript: When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude
Ref:
Hidehiko Takahashi, Motoichiro Kato, Masato Matsuura, Dean Mobbs, Tetsuya Suhara, Yoshiro Okubo
When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude
Science (09) 323:937 - 939
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 3:32 PM • 2 Comments
Category: Lab Life • Pure Biology
Well after a bit of a holiday, the New England RNA Data Club is back. We'll be meeting next week here at HMS. Here's the latest email:
Read on »
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 11:13 AM • 0 Comments
February 24, 2009
Category: Science & Society
An article appeared in today's Science Section under the title, Beaker-Ready Projects? Colleges Have Quite a Few
Here's a passage that highlights what I've been harping about:
The acting director of the National Institutes of Health begged university administrators on Wednesday to avoid even applying for stimulus money unless the universities planned to hire people almost immediately.
"It would be the height of embarrassment," the official, Dr. Raynard S. Kington, said, "if we give these grants and find out that institutions are not spending them to hire people and make purchases and advance the science the way they're designed to do."
Not a problem, the administrators said, in interviews.
Now I'm not against hiring people, but we should do this responsibly. It would be insane to shuttle a whole generation into academia with no future plan. What we need is to create good stable long term careers not another boom-bust cycle that will reinforce everything that is wrong with how we train our up-and-coming scientists.
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 11:32 AM • 4 Comments
Category: Lab Life
Natural human pathological variation can be readily identified by highly trained professionals, in other words doctors. Pathological variations of other model organisms are usually eaten.
- Stephen O'Rahilly, Co-Director of IMS and Director of IMS Metabolic Research Laboratories, Cambridge University UK, on the advantages of studying humans who have rare metabolic diseases.
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 11:21 AM • 1 Comments
February 23, 2009
Category: Lab Life • Science & Society
If you have happened to browse DrugMonkey, you'll have noticed a discussion about how the NIH should spend its share of the stimulus package (~$10 billion). (For more info click here.) Unfortunately the plan, according to the NIH statement is the same usual BS - all quick fixes and no forethought about how to use this opportunity to repair some endemic problems with how we train our academic scientists. But within the cloudy depths of the comment section of DrugMonkey's PhysioProf's post, fellow Scibling Abel Pharmboy raises a key point:
Read on »
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 11:00 AM • 7 Comments
February 21, 2009
Category: Tib Bits • art, food, music, citylife and other mental stimuli
One common feature of bench work is downtime. Some activity, such as cutting and pasting DNA, require the researcher to incubate their samples for various periods of time. What to do? Well ideally the scientist in question should take advantage of this time to either, perform other experiments, make reagents such as buffers, or catch up on the scientific literature. I tend to use Google Reader to scan the RSS feeds from various journals.
Of course I scan through blogs as well. Sometimes though your day is filled with some brain-draining activity, such as microinjecting tissue culture cells. The fuel level in my tank sinks during these events and afterwards I no longer have the capability to concentrate. At this point I visit brainless websites to help kill time as I wait for my restriction enzymes to finish digesting my PCR product.
Read on »
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 11:06 AM • 1 Comments
February 19, 2009
Category: Lab Life
Yesterday I and a few local PhDs had a chat with a reporter from [insert name of big newspaper here] and we started talking about the life of a gradstudent and/or postdoc in the biomedical sciences. At the end of the conversation I brought up the academic blog scene and the reporter asked for a list of blogs written by gradstudents and or postdocs. I've started to compile a list of blogs that convey the zeitgeist of life in the lower rungs of the academic ladder, but I am also soliciting your help.
What am I looking for? As an example, I'll point to Ambivalent Academic who posted an excellent set of entries on the joys and pains of academic life.
If you blog yourself or have a favorite gradstudent/postdoc blog - and it really has to be about academic life - let me know.
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 3:26 PM • 13 Comments
Alex Palazzo is a postdoctoral fellow working in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School.
