apalazzo
Posts by this author
July 6, 2007
If you haven't heard, on July 2nd the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency placed a hold on visas for highly skilled foreign workers. Yes the US government is so crippled, it can't even manage to process the paper work for foreigners it wants to keep in the country. Over lunch I learned…
July 5, 2007
Last week I posted an entry on Nature Publish Group, scientific publishing and web2.0. I'd like to add a couple of points, and throw out some links.
I would like to emphasize two points:
1) Feasibility. Yes we all want open information, but how to do it? And how to make it financially feasible?…
July 4, 2007
I finally read the huge Nature paper that everyone has been talking about, the ENCODE project, or the encyclopedia of DNA Elements. ENCODE is a large scale concerted effort whose goal is to understand how the genome is used, maintained and conserved. In other words, what parts of the genome get…
July 3, 2007
After the last miRNA post, I was alerted to this paper that appeared in the June 15th edition of Nature:
Thimmaiah P. Chendrimada, Kenneth J. Finn, Xinjun Ji, David Baillat, Richard I. Gregory, Stephen A. Liebhaber, Amy E. Pasquinelli & Ramin Shiekhattar
MicroRNA silencing through RISC…
July 1, 2007
I'm out of the lab and planning to enjoy the rest of the afternoon...
(thanks BTM)
June 29, 2007
Yes, a new home for the NERD club. I just finished it last night:
http://www.newenglandrna.org/
Any suggestions?
June 29, 2007
Although I do not own a television set, my wife and I watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report every night, online. A couple of days ago Colbert had Daniel Gilbert on. Gilbert is a professor of Psychology at the Harvard main campus and has recently written a great book, Stumbling on Happiness. I…
June 28, 2007
Last night was nice. I dragged some buddies to Tavern at Central to hang out with the folks at NatureNetworks Boston. There we chatted with a few bloggers and some of the individuals responsible for NatureNetworks Boston (like Corie Lok.)
One interesting tid bit I'd like to share with you - I had…
June 27, 2007
I just read in Corie's blog that Nature's new online local community (NatureNetwork Boston) is having a pub night.
I'll try to be there. Click here for details.
June 27, 2007
Whiteboards are a staple of scientific laboratories ... often they are filled with ideas, diagrams, models and plenty of arrows. But they often contain doodles and other creative white noise generated by our active and restless brains.
In that vain vein, here's a clip that has been circulating in…
June 25, 2007
miRNA and RNA interference is so hot right now ...
I'm not in the field, but I do keep an eye on it. Right now the there is quite a few papers on how miRNAs regulate translation. There is some data that indicate that miRNA and the associated RISC complex (RNA Interference Silencing Complex)…
June 25, 2007
Is the question asked by Jack Parker. So are we really taken advantage of, or are we just a bunch of whiners?
A study from 2002 says it all. (Keep in mind that the study is 5 years old and that postdoc salaries have gone up.)
First off, some comparisons:
Compared with their peers in engineering,…
June 23, 2007
I was watching Science Saturday, over at bloggingheads.tv, where Horgan & Johnson were talking about the origin of life and RNA (among other things). Also mentioned was Robert Shapiro's article in Scientific American. Shapiro is an advocate of the cell first theory, which I have to say that I…
June 23, 2007
Check out the new What's up postdoc? Next edition will be hosted right here. If you have any entries on postdoc-hood, send 'em to me.
Also the next Mendel's Garden will be held at Eye on DNA on July 8th (it was moved to make way for the July 1st edition of Gene Genie). Send your best genetic (or…
June 23, 2007
Yeah it's been a while since my last entry, but in my defence, my thinkpad died and I simultaneously got back the reviewers comments from my submitted manuscript.
Although my boss was a tad disappointed, I'm quite pleased. I have to say that writing this post is kinda strange, are my reviewers out…
June 20, 2007
From Thomson Scientific's ISI Web of Knowledge ... the latest impact factors for most of the journals I read, i.e. those that publish cell biology & molecular biology manuscripts. Note that the list does not contain neuroscience or review journals.
(Inspired by Coturnix' entry.)
June 20, 2007
To all those who are getting married tomorrow, on the longest day of the year, congratulations.
Below the fold: more Web2.0, a book on the history of cell biology, trashy science journalism in WIRED, and the latest on stem cell legislation.
From Coturnix I learn of this great site, Scitalks, that…
June 19, 2007
Nature has been busy diving into the "web 2.0".
Now it looks as if the folks at Natiure have two new projects for the science masses:
- Nature Precedings, a website where people can dump all their spare data, unpublished manuscripts, powerpoint slides, posters, images and where readers can leave…
June 19, 2007
We'll be having talks by Hong Cheng from the Reed lab (click here for my summary of her recent paper), Changchun Xiao from the Rajewski lab on miRNAs and B cell differentiation, and Peter Boag from the Blackwell lab on P-bodies and development.
The talks will be held in the Cannon Room in building…
June 18, 2007
The boss is out of town.
My green card just got approved.
It's beautiful outside.
Enough blogging for today.
June 15, 2007
This story sounds like it comes from the plot of a bad movie.
A couple of days ago the Globe reported that FBI agents will be visiting labs in the New England area.
I'm not kidding. They've already visited MIT, U Mass and BC. From the article:
Agents plan to visit many more New England colleges in…
June 14, 2007
When I was a lowly grad student at Columbia U, I was part of a small and cozy department headed by Michael Gershon. Now Professor Gershon is an expert of the enteric nervous system, or the nerve system of the gut. He gained celebrity status due to the fact that he had written a book called The…
June 12, 2007
For once I got home early, but I'm too tired to realy blog (instead go read this fine synopsis of the Stem Cell Papers at denialsim). So instead I'll offer this quote that I heard the other night at the pub:
Researcher #1: Life is more important than science.Researcher #2: What made you say that?…
June 12, 2007
I heard this last night. With Marius, John Gearhart, and William Hurlbut.
Or if you like stupid conspiracy theories, read Larry Moran's summary of the stories spun by people with too much time on their hands. (BTW there is no way that the timing of the three stem cell papers had anything to do with…
June 11, 2007
Remember how I met this fellow Mike, from the Gilliland lab?
Well he had told us that he had a blog full of poetry with a slight tinge of ... translational-research.
Here's a taste from his blog (at his myspace page):
Wonka bars
She was not simple to attain
But once she arrived she fed me
She was…
June 9, 2007
So last night we went out to watch the American Repertory Theatre's version of Eugene Ionesco's The Killing Game. Afterwards we ended up at Grafton Street for food, drinks and discussion.
Of course with Marius Wernig in attendance, the talk turned to this week's big news.
[In attendance as well…
June 9, 2007
Wow. Using the collective memory of everyone on earth we can reconstruct a virtual imprint of our civilization. (+ it would be a nifty way to read the newspaper!)
[HT: biocurious]
June 8, 2007
Here's another video for you where Dr. Jaenisch discusses this week's incredible findings:
Also check out this new feature at the Nature website on stem cells and a new stem cell blog called the niche. (NT: pimm)
PS I'll be meeting up with Marius tonight if you have any questions you would like…
June 7, 2007
I got in this morning and the place is buzzing with yesterday's news. So the big question is whether this technology will be useful for stem cell therapy?
One professor was willing to wager that these new findings will not lead to therapeutic stem cell therapy. In the lab, we were actually split…
June 6, 2007
Today three papers came out, two in Nature, and one in the inaugural edition of Cell Stem Cell, that basically confirm the results from last year's landmark manuscript by Kazutoshi Takahashi and Shinya Yamanaka (for details on this paper, see this post).
Just to remind you, in that original…