apalazzo
Posts by this author
January 28, 2007
First you destroy those who create values. Then you destroy those who know what the values are, and who also know that those destroyed before were in fact the creators of values. But real barbarism begins when no one can any longer judge or know that what he does is barbaric.
Ryszard Kapuscinski,…
January 28, 2007
The article is here. A snippet:
For a six-month fee of $300,000 to $500,000, Dezenhall told the association's professional and scholarly publishing division, he could help -- in part by simplifying the industry's message to a few key phrases that even a busy senator could grasp.
Phrases like: "…
January 27, 2007
First the former Enron chief Jeffrey Skilling hired him, then ExxonMobil, now ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS?
This ain't good.
From Nature News:
The consultant advised [Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society] to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship". He…
January 27, 2007
Yeah, it's going to happen.
From Corie Lok's blog:
The 69-page report - PDF, submitted [Jan 11th] to the Boston Redevelopment Authority for review, proposes some pretty big changes to the Allston landscape. Here are the highlights:
-putting part of Soldier's Field Road, the road that snakes…
January 26, 2007
OK I give up.
Actually Muftafa's comment reminded me of a recent development that I had let slip by ... and so I'll use Map that Campus as an excuse to post it and to collect your thoughts on the new project. Here it is:
Click here for a larger image.
Leave your answers or general thoughts on the…
January 26, 2007
This week I've spoken too much (I got to pitch my work to a couple of visiting seminar speakers), but written so little, so in some cosmic way my total quota of verbal diarrhea has been met. On top of that I haven't read a single paper in the last two weeks ... I've glanced at a few, but not really…
January 25, 2007
That must be how it is.
It can't be any other way.
Just prove it.
Hilarious, n'est ce pas?
January 22, 2007
Look at this beauty:
Go kiddies! Now you can be the proud owner of a Gilbert Polarizing Microscope. This must have been inspired by Shinya Inoue! ;)
For more see: A microscope is a scientific instrument. Think of it like a musical instrument: practice, practice, practice.
January 22, 2007
OK I'm a cell biologist. I spend my time at a 'scope (as we microscopists like to say). And I have one thing to say to you and only one thing ... my brain is fried.
Here is my theory, if you sit in front of a microscope in the dark for more than four hours, energy is sucked out of your body,…
January 19, 2007
Spotted in the "Elle Beauty News" section:
(The only question left is ... telomerase????)
January 19, 2007
This one should have been posted Monday.
hint: Encyclopedia Galactica?
Leave your answers in the comment section (or email me).
January 18, 2007
Want to impress your fellow coworkers? Send your prettiest photos and micrographs to the European Molecular Biology Organization's Journal (aka EMBO Journal) and you may get your own EMBO J cover. Last year a grad student from our lab, got a couple of covers.
For details read the following email:…
January 17, 2007
It looks like many cell biologists are ditching positions where they are at the mercy of decreased NIH funding for grants. Late last year Claire Waterman-Storer told me that this was in part why she moved from the Scripps to the NIH, where she would have a stable source of funding (no grant writing…
January 17, 2007
A couple of weeks ago I was happy to see that Cell had launched a podcast. From my experience with Nature and Science, podcasts are a good way of keeping up-to-date with the latest papers published in these journals while performing mind numbing activities, like mini-preps or cell quantitation.…
January 16, 2007
It's late at night, I have to read a manuscript that we're reviewing for MBC, and what am I doing? Watching Little Mosque on the Prarie. Here's part 1 of episode 1:
Get the rest on Youtube.
January 16, 2007
Coturnix has announced that the Anthology of the Best Science Blogging, 2006 is now available. Click here to get the paper back and/or PDF file from lulu.com. For more details visit A Blog Around the Clock.
PS Two of my posts (combined into a super post) were selected for the publication: The Worst…
January 14, 2007
Inspired by amnestic, I was perusing the videocasts of lectures given at the NIH, when I bumped into this lecture given by Thomas Silhavy on how the outer membrane of gram negative bacteria is synthesized. At the end of the lecture Dr Silhavy brought up some interesting statistics. In 1997, 38% of…
January 13, 2007
(I saw this on Abel's blog.) Get yours at the Catalog Card Generator.
January 13, 2007
As you can guess from my name, I am of Italian heritage. My mother was born in Italy and moved to Montreal when she was 9, my father's parents came from Italy after WWI. Food has been an important part of my life. When I travel to Montreal, almost all our activities revolve around food. When I come…
January 12, 2007
This year is a special one for this week's mystery campuses (campi?)
Leave your answers in the comment section.
January 12, 2007
I am the ideologue. The world is as I say. Little do you know that the universe follows the laws set down by my intellectual forefathers. It follows the rhythms of the idea that is swimming in my head. You may call me stubborn, but I am steadfast. You may call yourself "realists", but you are…
January 10, 2007
About a week ago I posted the original Powers of 10, here is the updated version:
Note that we can actually figure out where Springfield is ... and it ain't Springfield Massachusetts. Springfield Indiana perhaps? Or is it Illinois?
[HT: Jannet]
January 10, 2007
Well the latest paper from the Reed lab (squeeking into Cell on its last issue of 2006) demonstrates that the cap is indeed promoting nuclear export of mRNA in vertebrate cells. (For more on mRNA export, click here.)
This idea that each step of mRNA metabolism is "coupled" to the following step of…
January 8, 2007
From today's NY Times: Headhunters at Harvard May Put a Woman in Charge
(I know it's just wild speculation.) Here's an interesting bit:
There are suspicions, on the other hand, that the committee might be leaning toward the selection of a scientist to oversee the expansion of research in stem cells…
January 8, 2007
[Start dictation]
Believe it bore not this sentence was never typed by meet by a Secretary for a knee other human but by my trusty boys recognition system now this program is a meal fight and that's will make plenty of dictation Amherst but eventually it will learn to recognize my voice and…
January 6, 2007
From the latest issue of Science:
We demonstrated that despite their small size, specific miRNAs contain additional sequence elements that control their posttranscriptional behavior, including their subcellular localization. We showed that human miR-29b, in contrast to other studied animal miRNAs,…
January 5, 2007
OK this week there is a theme ...
(Yeah I know, campus #3 has it's name in big white letters on a rooftop ... but it looked great on Google Earth, so I included it anyway ... and it seems like campus #3 has one of these too! Is there an infestation of such organisms in this area?)
As usual,…
January 4, 2007
There is one particular comment written by BC with regards to a patent owned by Archemix that covers all RNA aptamers that I'd like to share with you:
My data point is talks with key a key scientific advisory board member of the company - they bought it from Gold's company, Gilead, IIRC (see…
January 4, 2007
I saw this video while surfing on Sciencesque. It gives quite a ... perspective on our day to day existence.
January 3, 2007
First the Wakefield scandal on a bogus link between MMR vaccine and autism, then the Chang scandal where a program error led to several erroneous x-ray crystal structures and five retractions. The first one caused by greed, the second by sloppiness.
(I'm trying to start the year on a good note,…