apalazzo
Posts by this author
April 27, 2006
(from my old blog)
Every subject has its lingo and its share of strange terms. Add abbreviations and acronyms, and certain areas of expertise can be almost incomprehensible. Then there is Biology.
Life has a diversification machine, evolution. Thus those who study life (i.e. Biologists) have lots…
April 26, 2006
(This entry was from 12/22/05 thus the Xmas reference)
Well here I am in rainy Seattle visiting the inlaws. Last night we prepared artichokes for dinner. Naturally the conversation turned to how the consumption of artichoke has a curious effect on the sense of taste: everything tastes sweet even…
April 25, 2006
(Just to remind you all - I'm away on holiday and I've pre-scheduled the publication of several posts from my old blog at blogspot. This next entry was one that I got a lot of 'tsks, tsks" for - it was intrended tio be a tad toungue & cheek. Incidentally the values of the various h-indexes…
April 24, 2006
(from my old blog)
OK here's a post geared mostly to cell biologists. My big pet peeve about reading the scientific literature is ... colored fluorescent images.
Why do people insist on pseudo-coloring their images? I know that you want pretty pictures and as every kid knows the more colorful the…
April 23, 2006
(from my old blog)
OK this week I've been obsessed with the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). This organelle is comprised of a continuous network of membranous tubes (and sheets) that extends to the cell periphery. In addition ER sheets also envelopes the nucleus - forming a bilayered nuclear envelope…
April 23, 2006
Non-cell biologists have often viewed the cell as a bag of molecules. Over the years as cell-biology has developed, it became clear that this was a simplistic generalization. Cells are organized by a dynamic cytoskeletal network that can organize the cellular architecture. Cells are also subdivided…
April 22, 2006
(from my old blog)
Portuguese (tissue) culture:
Looks like she's mouth pipetting, or drinking (we're not sure) some yummy tissue culture media. I hope that this newspaper clipping won't spark riots.
April 21, 2006
(from my old blog)
Just read an article in the last issue of JCB, where the authors used a nifty new technique to investigate when and where certain RNA binding factors associate together.
What's neat, is that this technique, bimolecular fluorescence complementation (or BiFC) works by fusing each…
April 20, 2006
So it looks like ... my laptop dying + rejected paper + a resubmitted paper = vacation to the west coast.
Does this mean that you'll be stuck reading about how cephalopods perform really cool tricks (from the CBC, not some other blog)?
Fear not!
In the next week and a half, some posts from the…
April 19, 2006
A new paper out in Nature, brakes through the diffraction barrier to see things that have never been seen before. Using this novel fluorescence-microscopy technique called STED (stimulated emission depletion), Willig et al., see Kiss and Run. And yes they see it!
OK ... I know, you have 2 questions…
April 19, 2006
Remember that Open Letter to Canadian PM on Climate Control? Well there is a counter-letter out. From the CBC:
A group of 90 of Canada's most senior climate scientists have sent an open letter to the prime minister, warning that global warming is happening now and the federal government needs to do…
April 18, 2006
Well remeber the entry about the Templeton Prize Winner John Barrow?
If you missed it here it is:
When Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins challenged physicist John Barrow on his formulation of the constants of nature at last summer's Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship lectures, Barrow…
April 18, 2006
OK I haven't been writing anything on papers I've read recently, to make up for this here is a brief summary of a neat paper on Sad1:
1- Sad1 is a homologue of the SUN proteins in S. pombe (fission yeast). In higher eukaryotes the SUNs are inner-nuclear membrane proteins that link to KASH domain…
April 18, 2006
There is an OpEd on Stem Cell Research Support in today's Boston Globe by Christopher Thomas Scott and Jennifer McCormick.
From the OpEd:
The consequences of the Bush policy [on stem cell research] are profound and unambiguous. NIH officials admit the agency has ceded leadership in the field.…
April 16, 2006
There is a review in this week's NY Times book section: The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite,' by Ann Finkbeiner.
I had never heard of The Jasons. From the review:
Jason (the term refers both to the group as a whole and to individual members) was conceived in the late 1950's,…
April 16, 2006
Yesterday we made a quick stop in central park with our photoblogger friend.
To see the result of these action photos click here.
We then went to the Whitney for the Biennial. The main theme for most exhibits - anti-war. Overall it was weaker than the last show.
Some photos we managed to take when…
April 15, 2006
After the death of my computer I decided to take the Chinatown express (15$ buys you a ticket from Boston to Chinatown NYC) and visit some old friends. Last night, what we call the Portuguese Mafia (aka the Federation of Portuguese Scientists living in New York) came over for drinks (and it's was…
April 14, 2006
Sorry I promised you all some thoughts on "WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?". Last night my laptop was disintegrating, and now it's on the verge of a coma. Having said that let's see what some notable thinkers answered:
[Short aside - this type of Q&A was initiated…
April 13, 2006
Talking to some people about Dyson, I was told to take a look at this open letter in the National Post (the conservative national newspaper in Canada): Open Kyoto to debate
Sixty scientists call on Harper to revisit the science of global warming.
From the article:
As accredited experts in climate…
April 13, 2006
Yesterday I attended Seed/Harvard Bookstore/The Edge's sponsored event: What do you believe to be true even though you cannot prove it. The discussion narrowed down to key topics ... consciousness, free will ... etc.
Here's a link to a Harvard Crimson article about the whole affair: Profs Debate…
April 12, 2006
Spurred on by some comments left by Coturnix on the Three Types of Experiments entry, and by the Microparadigm paper (see my entry, and another discussion of this paper at In the Pipeline), I now present to you ... the significance of negative data.
Now most of the older (and well read)…
April 11, 2006
What a great title for a book. Here's a review of Nick Lane's latest from the March 31st edition of Science (subscription required). From the review:
Lane [a science writer whose previous book Oxygen (1) was well received and whose doctoral research involved free radicals and mitochondrial function…
April 11, 2006
(From PhD Comics)
Well I've been preparing for labmeeting so instead of giving you another long diatribe about the significance of negative data I'll list some interesting current events:
Today Harvey Lodish is giving a very interesting talk about how to set up a biotech company while staying in…
April 10, 2006
I just came back from a Wade Harper talk where we were subjected to an obscene amount of ubiquitin biology and even more ubiquitin nomenclature. This blasting of your brain with technical terms is becoming more and more common with big Biology talks.
But to be honest Prof Harper gave a good talk…
April 9, 2006
Just saw a glowing review in the NY Times' Suday Book Section on Eric Kandel's new autobiography: In Search of Memory.
Prof Kandel is one of the nicest people in science (and one of the most enjoyable lecturers). And this book seems to convey his love of work and of life. From the Ny Times review:…
April 8, 2006
Well just came back from the lab, after a day of failed experiments (on a Saturday no less) when I read this great commentary on Confessions of a Community College Dean.
The post discusses an article in Inside Higher Ed that I don't agree with. (Whiny GenX faculty?? Please.) And scrolling down the…
April 8, 2006
There is an interesting entry over at In the Pipeline about a recent paper in PNAS: Microparadigms: Chains of collective reasoning in publications about molecular interactions.
In this paper, the authors analyzed summaries of papers as processed by Geneways - a fancy database of factual statements…
April 7, 2006
So one of the most important stories over the past week (besides the immigration bill in congress), was the health insurance bill in Massachusetts.
I won't give you a summary of what's been going on but instead give you some links to articles & opinions on the whole topic. Then I'll give you…
April 7, 2006
If you've ever read or saw The Last Temptation of Christ, you'll somehow recognize some of the passages from the newly discovered Gospel according to Judas. From the NY Times article:
In this text, scholars reported yesterday, the account of events leading to the Crucifixion differs sharply from…
April 6, 2006
I had one interesting thought about the Seed dinner that I've been wanting write about for a while - the isolation of biomedical sciences from the rest of the scientific academic community. This fact was apparent at the Seed dinner - of the dozen people from Harvard or MIT, I was the sole…