Alex Palazzo is a postdoctoral fellow working in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School.
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March 31, 2006
Weird things are afoot. It all started last time the crazies got together. We had our fill of food and drink. The conversation had turned to nudist beaches and the next thing we knew, books were stolen, a member was...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 8:46 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Lab Life
So a couple of weeks ago, I wrote an entry about gender and science. I encourage you not only to read the post but also the comments. In that post I mentioned a 2003 Caltech postdoc survey that parsed some...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 11:21 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Education
Harvard announced yesterday that it would waive tuitions for undergrads whose families earn less than $60,000 annually. From the Harvard Crimson: The newly expanded financial aid program, which will also reduce the contributions of families with annual incomes between $60,000...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 8:20 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 30, 2006
Category: Science & Society
If you haven't, go and read to evolgen's entries on the Specter-Harkin Amendment that successfuly passed in the Senate to increase the NIH budget. Next up is the House. If you care about basic research in the biomedical sciences contact...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 10:02 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Lab Life
Last night I was at another party in Cambridge, a good friend of mine is leaving Boston to go work for Pfizer in NYC. (Aside - why does it seem like anyone in Cambridge who is not a student or...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:04 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 29, 2006
Remember that special moment when everything changed. Were you listening to a particular song? Or was it some food? Well a couple of friends just posted about such associations. The first is from Tall Med Student, a former Harvard postdoc...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 6:59 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Pure Biology
OK after making fun of System Biologists out comes Peter Sorger's latest paper in Cell. In this paper, Sorger's team collected almost 8000 intracellular measurements (they collected some of the data directly and got the rest from the literature -...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:32 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 28, 2006
Category: Retrospective
(from the archives) Once upon a time, we made the necessary chemicals from scratch to purify DNA from bacterial cultures. These days, for a couple of dollars, you can get all the reagents you need all packaged in a nice...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:33 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 27, 2006
Category: Pure Biology
The van Oijen lab (here at HMS) had a nice paper in Nature where they indirectly observe single T7 DNA polymerase complexes copying DNA. How do they do it? One end of the DNA is fixed while the other side...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 6:40 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Misc
Want to be a Cell Biologist? Take a look at this phase image of a rat hepathocyte (liver cell) that I took sometime last year. Try to identify the three mystery organelles A through C And to be totally clear:...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 1:19 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Lab Life
Well after that mRNA song, I got wind that there is an x-ray crystallography poem floating out there. So we searched, and searched. Finally undercover agents from the Steitz lab emailed the sought-out credo to our contacts. Allegedly, this poem...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 11:12 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 26, 2006
Category: Science & Society
So I've been bumping into this idea on several blogs (idea? or is it a cult? ... I refuse to call it a meme, sorry Richard). I have some trouble understanding what it all means. Is it hard, as in...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 4:39 PM • 2 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
Category: Retrospective
(from the archives) Prodded on by my father, I read David Wick's Infamous Boundary, an account of the history of Quantum Mechanics and of the EPR controversy. In the book, there is a nice passage about mentorship ... for those...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 7:50 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 25, 2006
Category: Science & Society
In today's Boston Globe, Derrick Jackson echoes what we in the sciences have been worrying about. From his OpEd: Nobel laureate and Princeton physics professor Joseph Taylor this month said on Capitol Hill that budget cuts will drive future astronomers...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:27 AM • 4 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
March 24, 2006
Category: Lab Life
We've noticed that our cumulative knowledge of any individual process is inversely proportional to the number of researchers striving (i.e. contaminating) to gather data. Take APC, no not that APC, but the Adenomatous Polyposis Coli ... too many people study...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 4:46 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Misc
Damn those Intellectual terrorists!
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 1:52 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 23, 2006
Category: Lab Life
Well lets see where are budding endeavour has gone. 4 Scienceblog bloggers are heading this joint project. So far we have collected a measily 4 entries, a ton of comments/emails from disgruntled scientists, and a rusty can openner. My favorite...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 5:46 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science & Society
Very interesting video (actually snipets from Al-Jazeera)....
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 12:33 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Pure Biology
I was notified of this review in PLoS-Biology by Richard Robinson. It gives a nice outline of the current thought in the field and delineates the genes first vs. metabolism first views (although in my not-to-much-of-an-expert opinion, I don't think...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 7:25 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 22, 2006
Category: Lab Life
Evolution biologists, ecologists, epidemiologists, earth scientists, herpetologists ...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 5:40 PM • 7 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
Category: Science & Society
Here's a site for you - Visualcomplexity.com...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:03 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Misc
Yes this video has been going around. But if you haven't seen it ... from the vaults of SubGenius .... here's ...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 7:36 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 21, 2006
Category: Science & Society
I just read this interview with Allegra Goodman, author of the new book Intuition. What is the book about? From the NY Times: A postdoctoral student at the Philpott Institute in Cambridge, Mass., has an astonishing result: a virus he...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:43 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Lab Life
I have been often asked what the differences are between the various subdisciplines of the biomedical (or "life") sciences. That's a tough question - but I'll give it a try ... Biochemist: Basically biochemists play with proteins. Usually this involves...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:02 AM • 20 Comments • 7 TrackBacks
March 20, 2006
Category: Pure Biology
Although there is a trend in the life sciences towards big Biology, recently all the greatest insights have come from studies of single molecules. Some of the best work has come from Stephen Kowalczykowski's group. They have used single particle...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 10:55 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 19, 2006
Category: Misc
Well I finally posted photos from the last bookclub meeting, although some call it the food orgy club. Then someone alerted me that a new challenge was posted on the Socart blog. Paint and burn. Cool. Can't wait....
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 3:31 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Misc
I'm not a big fan of March Madness (for non-Americans March Madness is the term used to describe the huge college basketball tournament held this time of year). Why? Perhaps because I'm Canadian. Perhaps because I don't think the lure...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 11:28 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 18, 2006
Category: Misc
OK a pet peeve of mine is how scientists are portrayed in the mass media (especially biologists aka those mad lab coat dressed, atheists who play god and create GMOs). Having said that, I just love Pinky and the Brain...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 1:09 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Lab Life
I got this email about the ribosome waltz, click here to listen to the mp3. And there's a lot more from where that came from, like this sweet song. These ditties were composed and performed by Greg Crowther from...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 10:15 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 17, 2006
Category: Pure Biology
After posting some microtubule stuff, it's time for an entry about mRNA. RNA granules are very intriguing. They are thought to transport RNA in some cell types such as neurons or Oocytes, and store/degrade mRNA in other cell types. Recently...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 1:24 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Pure Biology
From the archives, here's a micrograph of a fibroblast (connective tissue cell) adherring to fibronectin coated coverslip. The cell was immunostained for regular microtubules (red) and modified detyrosinated microtubules (green, although since these are only partialy modified red+green = yellow)....
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 10:09 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 16, 2006
Category: Science & Society
Early last year when the whole Larry Summers saga broke out, I posted some data on gender and science that was floating in the public sphere. Here I've reposted some of this data. THEN I'll tell you some recent data...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 8:50 AM • 16 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
Category: Lab Life
(From a previous entry on my old blog) After having written about the worst, why not write about the best things about science? Here goes: 1 - Discovery. One of the greatest feelings I've ever had as a researcher was...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 8:09 AM • 5 Comments • 5 TrackBacks
March 15, 2006
Category: Lab Life
The lack of posts in the past 3 days was caused by our departmental retreat. All the talking and drinking with my peers in the Cell Biology department, made me think of a couple of posts that appeared in my previous blog ... The Worst Things About Science. So here they are (in no particular order):
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:08 AM • 9 Comments • 8 TrackBacks
Category: Misc
My brother posted some videos of the autonomous sumo wrestling competition he holds every year at Concordia University in Montreal. To see the videoclips from the 2006 (and previous) competition(s) visit robowars.ca....
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 7:37 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 14, 2006
Category: Misc
Ever wanted to see a minimally-invasive thoracic aortic aneurysm repair? Visit OR-Live, tomorrow starting at 4:00pm EST to see the whole operation live. Yes live. Not only can you watch them slice through the tissues but you can actuyally email...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 10:30 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 12, 2006
Category: Pure Biology
Fatty acid synthesis consists of tethering an an acetyl group (2 carbons) to ACP (Acyl Carrier protein) that then bounces around to 5 different enzymes to add 2 carbons to the end of the acetyl group. This process is...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:03 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 11, 2006
Category: Science & Society
I was way too busy to go to Jared Diamonds three talks, however I know someone who attended two of them. To read about "Master Diamond's" lectures, visit Tulula's Blog....
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 8:38 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 10, 2006
Category: Lab Life
BC has a new video (it took me a whole freakin week to notice!) Check it out at the Bartholomew Cubbins on RNA blog....
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 10:56 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Pure Biology
Last night, my wife and I had dinner with a friend of ours from the Szostak Lab. There we discussed Capote (we just saw the movie) and the existence of ribose in a pre-biotic earth. Apparently it is unlikely that sugars, such as ribose, would have been in high concentrations in the hypothetical chemistry of primitive earth ...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:02 AM • 9 Comments • 2 TrackBacks
Category: Retrospective
OK, here is a collection of interviews I conducted over the past couple of months over Instant Messenger. No animals were harmed in this production (this statement was inspired by last night's dinner at Buddhas' Delight) Have fun ...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 7:50 AM • 0 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
March 9, 2006
Category: Misc
Ok time for a corny entry ...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 8:51 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 8, 2006
Category: Lab Life
You can clearly divide scientists into two categories, those who build new models and those who prove old models. The explorers and the crusaders. Usually the former are seeking the truth, or something close to it, while the latter are...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 7:41 AM • 13 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
March 7, 2006
Category: Science & Society
Want to study lava? From the NY Times ... Fudge, corn syrup, and whiskey will do. And I love this quote about science conferences: The poster session, which resembled a science fair for professional scientists, was dedicated to innovative lecture...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:10 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 6, 2006
Category: Pure Biology
... These organelles are usually aligned in long chains that orient along the earth's magnetic feild and help these criters to swim north or south! This comment reminded me that there was this great paper in Science from a couple of weeks ago where researchers from Caltech describe how MamK, a homologue of the cytoskeletal proteins MreB and actin, forms long filaments that act to lign up magnetosomes...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 8:08 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 5, 2006
Category: Science & Society
For those of you in the Boston area, the author of Guns Germs and Steel, and Collapse is giving 3 talks at Harvard this week. Wednsday, March 8 Continental differences in human history Jared Diamond, University of California, Los Angeles...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 5:02 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Lab Life
This topic is discussed in a recent article in Science. Currently, the only postdoc union is at the University of Connecticut Health Center. And what happened there? ...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 7:28 AM • 3 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
March 4, 2006
Category: Lab Life
Well I am trying to decide whether to attend this year's RNA Society Conference. As I'm a neophyte to the field (my PhD thesis was on microtubules in migrating cells), I learned quite a bit at last year's meeting. But...
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 9:16 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 3, 2006
Category: Science & Society
Well some discoveries are flashier than others. And to get the media's interest make sure your finding can be summarized with some catchy slogan and/or pun. From a post on my old blog: So my blog's been suffering from neglect....
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 1:24 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Pure Biology
I just read a fascinating "hypothesis" in the latest issue of Nature entitled Introns and the origin of nucleus cytosol compartmentalization. The greatest divide in the living world exists between prokaryotes and eukaryotes (yes I know, there are viruses ......
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 12:01 AM • 21 Comments • 3 TrackBacks
March 2, 2006
Category: Misc
Being plagued by creationist ads, I moved my blog from Tripod to Blogspot. Then, as one person later said, I was Degoogled. Finally after being invited to move to Scienceblogs, I ditched my old blog. So I'm finally here.
Posted by Alex Palazzo at 12:00 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
