- David Ng is Director of the AMBL at the University of British Columbia - fancy speak for a science teacher. Follow Dave on twitter @dnghub.
- Vince LiCata is a faculty member in Biological Sciences and Chemistry at Louisiana State University (LSU). His laboratory studies protein-ligand interactions, protein folding, and biothermodynamics. He also writes plays that have been produced in a number of different US cities, and, oddly enough, in Thailand.
Wow! Either it's an odd coincidence, or the Latisse marketers are highly vigilant monetizers, because in less than 24 hours after I posted yesterday's rambling little piece about the eyelash wonder drug, a tasteful little ad for it showed up on the Scienceblogs homepage (cue spooky music now). Robot voice: "Oh yes, I will go buy Latisse now." I will try it on my cats, because I have always thought that cats with long eyelashes are wickedly beautiful.
But, Latisse, your ad says "ask your doctor about Latisse" -- I'm a bit disappointed. How could you pass up such a ripe possibility for pun-itization: i.e. "see your doctor about Latisse today".
Actually, ever since Warner music went in and hatcheted all of its songs out of youtube videos, I've believed that monetizing is the more rational business approach. Latisse, you are so lusciously poofy, and yet so business savvy too. Awesome.
PS: I'm guessing it almost certainly was SEED who initiated the monetizing, but the image of a bunch of people with great eyelashes vigilantly searching the web for mentions of Latisse is just so wonderful.
The existence of the drug Latisse is clearly a harbinger of the end of modern civilization, in more ways than one, but it is also intensely fascinating and creepy. When I first heard of it, about a year ago, I really thought it was some sort of satirical article about the current status of big pharma and their slow but steady drift towards more (and more profitable) "lifestyle" medications. But no...it's frickin' real! Its original use was (is) to control glaucoma, but it was noticed that a side effect of such treatment was long and luxurious eyelashes. So, since about the beginning of 2009 it has been sold, without a prescription, specifically as an eyelash enhancement drug. A number of celebrities (including Claire Danes and Brooke Shields) have used it and allowed their lash growth to be documented (see their photos at www.latisse.com -- I don't really want to clickably link it here, so am just giving the address).
There are only a few minor problems with Latisse...
Part 1 of "Do You Like the Big Bang Theory?", addressed whether one emotionally "likes" the scientific theories one works on - and how or if that should impact one's work. Here I'd like to talk about the television show.
"The Big Bang Theory" has been highly touted and praised as being the best science-in-fiction on regular television, but it has also been criticized for being its rather demeaning portrayal of science grad students. I think the show is extremely funny - and I mostly enjoy watching it for that reason. Other than "2.5 Men", it's probably the funniest show on regular tv (and comes from the same producer, who apparently has a somewhat misogynist reputation).
However, I personally have to agree with those who criticize its much touted "science content". Sure the equations on the white board are (mostly) correct, and sure there are scattered references to real science - but the much ballyhooed science content seems to be quite problematic to me: it's rare to finish watching a show and actually be able to describe any real science. Much of it is what we called "techno-babble" in the "Science in the Theater and on Film" course that I teach. "Techno-babble" = where the words the character says, and the facts given, are technically correct (often because they were vetted by a scientific consultant), but where no real scientific information is actually conveyed to the audience.
I'm going to talk about a few highlights here, but if you actually want the full article, say so in the comments or email me directly and I'll send you a reprint, because unless you or your university has a subscription to the Journal of Molecular Biology, you'll only be able to see the abstract.
The paper comes primarily from the Ph.D. dissertation of Daniel Deredge and osmotic stress data from John Baker and Kausiki Datta. Daniel got his Ph.D. recently and is now a postdoc at Case Western, John was an undergraduate researcher and is now in Med School at Tulane, Kausiki was a former student who is now a postdoc at University of Oregon.
Josh Keyes was born in Tacoma, Washington. He received a BFA in 1992 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in 1998 from Yale. Eighteenth-century aesthetics and philosophies, particularly those of the Neoclassical and Romantic movements, shape his work. Keyes is drawn to the clinical and often cold vocabulary of scientific textbook illustrations, which express the empirical "truth" of the world and natural phenomena. He infuses into a rational stage set many references to contemporary events along with images and themes from his personal mythology and experience. These elements come together in an unsettling vision, one that speaks to the hope, fear, and anxiety of our time. Keyes currently lives and works in Portland Oregon with his wife, graphic designer Lisa Ericson.
Excerpt from "Animal Planet", by George Melrod
Alternately passionate and playful, outraged and absurd, the artwork of Josh Keyes is memorable both for its resonant imagery and the haunting themes those images convey. Vividly imagined and exquisitely realized, his work is at once highly personal and very much of its time. While it spans a variety of approaches, Keyes' overall subject matter remains consistent, evincing a fascination with the intersection of the animal realm and the built human landscape, and the imperiled role of wilderness in a rapidly changing global environment.
Perhaps these pictures aren't really all about animals but about the conflict between nature and society within our own human consciousness. Keyes' images, in their way, suggest that the division between an intricately self-absorbed society and the connection to nature within us is an artificial one that can no longer be sustained. One can read his work as a plea to let the natural collective consciousness within us emerge, to find a balance within ourselves that contains a place for the other creatures of this planet, with whom we are more connected and co-dependent than we may care to admit.
Keyes' artworks are neither optimistic nor nihilistic. If anything, they seem to hover between fear and fury, between sorrow and acceptance. But they do contain a level of urgency, addressing such exigent issues as the extinction of species and the emergence of a new global topography. In grafting a dreamlike pictorial language to a passionate ecological concern, he has not only carved out a fertile chunk of postmodern art world territory, but found his own bully pulpit, and catharsis.
George Melrod, editor of Art Ltd. Magazine. He has written extensively about contemporary art and culture for Art News, Art in America, Art & Antiques, among many other publications.
There is one month to go to submit to the 2010 "Dance Your Ph.D" Contest! Entries are due by September 1st. My lab previously won in the Professor category, so I get to be one of the judges for the 2010 contest. This is our dance from the 2009 contest:
And what we won was: a real dance! Jenn Liang Chaboud, a real choreographer in Chicago, created a dance based on one of our lab's publications in JBC, here is the dance she created:
The two muscular guys are Klenow and Klentaq DNA polymerases, the women are all DNA.
THIS YEAR's CONTEST:
This time, instead of doing student, postdoc, and professor categories they are doing discipline specific categories: physics, chemistry, biology, and social sciences. Winners each get $500 and will have their videos screened at this year's Imagine Science Film Festival (ISFF) in New York.
This ongoing science-and-dance experiment was started by John Bohannon several years ago - starting at only one university and now going worldwide thanks to help and sponsorship from the AAAS (aka the journal Science). And now he's teamed up with Alexis Gambis of ISFF in what seems a natural collaboration.
How can you help support this experiment in science and the arts? SUBMIT!
Don't worry about technical quality of the video, don't worry about dance skills, don't worry about looking silly (look at our video) - this "contest"/experiment is about communicating science through one of the most esoteric of the arts. If science can be communicated through dance, then it most certainly can be communicated through plays, film, visual art, and (gasp) public lectures. It is a very exciting ongoing experiment - so go to gonzolabs and watch them and push through that activation barrier and submit something!
Great illustration for children, even though it may not be anatomically correct.
By Peter Slight - Larger version can be found here.
Seeing piece like this makes me think a wonderful art project would be to create a whole new design driven anatomy book - one that may even be as comprehensive as Gray's Anatomy (the book not the TV series).
This video of a talk I gave at Northern Voice got completed whilst I was away. Anyway, if I remember (I'm one of those people who can't stand seeing themselves on video or hearing themselves on audio!), it's a pretty decent overview of what the Phylo project is all about, as well as general thoughts on things of that nature worth pursuing. Here's the byline that was given with my speaker profile:
David Ng describes Phylo, a cool trading card game to teach biodiversity. A study showed that children could easily identify and describe a large number of Pokemon characters, yet knew very little about the real world of plants and animals all around them. Inspired by the success of Pokemon, David Ng's group at UBC has successfully leveraged a web community to rapidly develop Phylo, and to draw attention to 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity.
Anyway, hope you enjoy!
P.S. If you need a little more bait to check out the video, check this pictorial synopsis from Rob Cottingham:
As much as I abhor war, the way that the military handles soldier deaths is (usually) quite admirable (although the same might not hold for its handling of post-service medical problems). When a soldier is killed in service, the family gets a personal visit and often one or more personal phone calls from higher officers, congressmen, or even the President.
Earlier today I heard an interview on our local NPR interview show with the father of an engineer who was killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion. He said that BP had not spoken to him nor contacted him or his family in any way since the disaster - had never even offered condolences - including one time when he and his other son were in the same room with BP execs at a hearing. There seems only one appropriate response to this: un-fucking-believable.
