kbonham
Posts by this author
November 16, 2011
To do science, we need government funding. However you feel about the free market, there just isn't a way for the free market to work on basic research. It's too risky, with not enough profitability. The things I discover in lab next week will never make me rich, and I'm not aware of many Nobel…
November 15, 2011
One of my favorite places on the internet is r/askscience, a place on reddit where people come and ask questions, and a panel of scientists answer. People can ask follow-up questions, and there is often some great back-and forth (to be honest, part of the reason I haven't been writing as much here…
November 1, 2011
Well, this is going to be embarrassing.
This year, some friends and I are participating in "Movember," an effort to raise money for prostate cancer research by having men embarrass themselves with ridiculous mustaches This is a shot of me this past weekend:
But alas, that fine follicular growth is…
October 28, 2011
Last month, I linked to an article written by Harvard graduate student Laura Strittmatter about Resveratrol, a compound in red wine that had been linked to anti-aging effects in studies on rodents. Recently, a paper was published in Nature calling that research into question. This isn't a problem…
October 15, 2011
Disclosure Note: I was given a free digital copy of this book for review.
Thrillers aren't typically my cup of tea. I most often stick to non-fiction, and when it comes to novels, I tend to favor books that use the plot to develop characters, rather than the other way around. But when Amy Rogers…
October 13, 2011
While researching my recent post on the Nobel Prize, I discovered that the website has a series of "educational productions," including games and written/illustrated primers on different topics. I've been playing the malaria game all morning - you have to fly a mosquito around drinking the blood of…
October 12, 2011
"We're all violent inside, we're all Hilter inside, and we're all Christ inside. Just try to work on the good bit..."
October 6, 2011
Monday's announcement for the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine should have been a happy occasion for my lab. On the one hand, it was given for early discoveries in the field of innate immunity - my field! On the other hand, it was given to a scientist that many* feel is undeserving of the…
September 29, 2011
Christie Wilcox has a great post over at Science Sushi about why scientists should be on social media. I don't disagree with anything she says, and I try to do it myself (see: the twitter and G+ links to the left... I also recently signed up for tumblr which is kind of fun). But sometimes the…
September 27, 2011
In other words, you're more likely to catch a cold from shaking their hand than to get an STI from Sitting on the same bench.
There isn't much reason to fear getting a sexually transmitted disease from naked sitters. These infections are most commonly the result of vigorous and prolonged exposure…
September 27, 2011
For anyone in the Boston Area, two of my colleagues and I will be giving a talk on how the immune system recognizes and responds to pathogens, and how understanding this will allow scientists to design better vaccines and more effectively treat illness.
How to Spot a Virus: The origins of an immune…
September 22, 2011
I pledged to donate a bit every month for the next 6 months. I've been so cynical about politics recently, but I decided if I hear something I believe in, I should put my money where my mouth is.
I'll have to cut back on the coffee though...
Via Slog.
September 20, 2011
Jad Abumrad, co-host of the amazing "Radiolab" just won a McArthur genius grant - a $500,000 prize with almost no limits on how to spend it.
If you've never listened to Radiolab, stop reading blogs, go download an episode sit back with a good pair of headphones. It's beautifully produced, a joy to…
September 20, 2011
Harvard Science in the News begins its fall lecture series this week with a talk on the interface between human brains and machines:
I went to the practice talk last week, and it's going to be great! From retinal implants to controlling robots with your mind, Harvard neuroscience graduate students…
September 15, 2011
The latest Science in the News Flash is up, and it examines the anti-aging research surrounding the molecule resveratrol, which is present at low concentrations in red wine:
If resveratrol were able to mimic the lifespan-extending effects of caloric restriction in people without requiring such an…
September 13, 2011
When folks in my lab think about biological problems, we think about basics. A pathogen has some molecular component that trips a sensor on the outside of a cell. That sensor (the receptor) grabs on to some adapter proteins and starts a cascade of chemical reactions catalyzed by various enzymes,…
September 1, 2011
And speaking of milestones, the Harvard Science in the News Flash - a student written and student edited writing series just posted their 100th article:
Sleep clears the mind: How sleep prepares the brain for new learning
Despite the fact that sleep is essential to our health, its function and…
September 1, 2011
I got this e-mail from the president of my school yesterday:
Dear Members of the Harvard Community:
Starting this October, Harvard will celebrate its 375th birthday. Such milestones encourage us to reflect on our institution's remarkable past--to remember that all we aspire to today finds…
August 24, 2011
I'm a little behind on TV, so I was catching up on the Daily Show this morning. Last Thursday had one of the best segments I've ever seen (and that bar is pretty high):
The Daily Show - World of Class Warfare - Warren Buffett vs. Wealthy ConservativesGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political…
August 24, 2011
A 5.8 magnitude earthquake rocked the east coast yesterday, freaking everyone out, causing schools and offices to close, and causing general mayhem:
(Source)
I didn't feel it, and growing up in California, it might not have even registered. Then again, the reaction (general fear, disbelief, and…
August 20, 2011
I'm on vacation this week, but was working on a post about the evolution of antibodies to be posted yesterday. Unfortunately, what greeted me when I turned on my computer thursday was this:
(source)
I'm actually a little surprised at how well I'm handling it, I would have expected that I'd be a…
August 10, 2011
I took my first immunology class at UCSD in the spring of 2004. I've always been interested in signaling (how cells take information from the outside and translate that to the inside) but the subject matter of this class was set to disappoint - in terms of signaling, it more or less stopped at the…
August 9, 2011
I've refrained from commenting on #elevatorgate snafu, mostly because I feel like I can't add anything original and neither side is making any sense any more. Or at least, the extremests on both sides are drowning out the people who are making sense. For my part, it seems to me like everyone did…
July 29, 2011
While researching Wednesday's post, I ran into a number of strange case studies. They didn't quite fit into that post, but I thought they were too interesting to ignore. If you're interested, follow me down the pubmed rabbit hole.
When I typed "semen allergy" into google scholar last week, the very…
July 27, 2011
There's this NPR show I really like called "On the Media," and I've listened to just about every episode for the past 8 years through the podcast. As it's name implies, the show is about the media, and is a wonderfully meta way of getting the news through the prism of analyzing the way the news is…
July 27, 2011
For about two years in high school, I would occasionally break out into pretty severe hives. I would first notice a mild itch on my wrists or ankles, and I would know that the hives were coming if I gently scratched my forearm and raised red streaks were left behind (I have a picture somewhere of a…
July 25, 2011
Antibodies are often thought of as magic bullets, and as far as bullets go, they are about as magic as you can get. Antibodies are proteins that are manufactured by specialized "B-cells," and their main feature is that they stick to things. At first glance, biochemical stickiness does not seem all…
July 12, 2011
In some ways, I'm kinda jealous of the research Heather does. I love my macrophages, but studying the bugs that live in the extreme environment of deep sea hydrothermal vents has always fascinated me.
As a consequence of the stuff she studies, Heather also has to (gets to?) take multi-week sea…
July 8, 2011
The field of immunology has a few quirks. I'm sure this is no different than other fields of study, but one of the most puzzling (and sometimes infuriating) of these quirks is an obsession with categorizing different types of cells. Case in point, a recent paper in Nature Immunology:
A semi-…
July 5, 2011
There's a great post at the Sciam guest blog describing the science of antimicrobial cleaners, and it doesn't look promising:
perhaps the most comprehensive study of the effectiveness of antibiotic and non-antibiotic soaps in the U.S., led by Elaine Larson at Columbia University (with Aiello as a…