kbonham
Posts by this author
July 5, 2011
Been working hard on lab science, so I haven't had as much time for blog science, but I thought I'd share something else I'm proud of:
My friend Matt and I hiked to the top of Mount Jefferson in northern New Hampshire this past weekend with a table, 2 chairs, a bottle of wine, glasses, camera and…
June 21, 2011
Abbie over at ERV has a really great summary of a new Nature Medicine paper, in which the authors managed to turn a mouse's immune system against prostate tumors by infecting them with viruses engineered to express prostate proteins. Some of the results struck her as a bit counterintuitive, but I…
June 18, 2011
Over at Pharyngula, PZ mentions a media criticism paper in the journal Public Understanding of Science. The paper shows that media outlets frequently make scientific claims that are dubious at best. I suppose this isn't very surprising, but PZ makes another great point:
It isn't open access, though…
June 17, 2011
Anthony Weiner is an idiot. I think we can at least all agree that if you're going to use a social networking site to spread illicit photos of yourself, you damn well better learn the difference between direct messaging and displaying your crotch to all of your followers. That said, all of us are…
June 15, 2011
In my first year of graduate school, Professor Sam Behar was giving us a lecture about phagocytes, a group of cells that includes macrophages, neutrophils, and a number of other immune cells that tend to gobble things up. These cells are all over the place, and some can stay in the same place for…
June 14, 2011
Attention: Boston-based Beasties
Tomorrow is the second Tuesday of June, and you know what that means: an all new Science by the Pint. From the organizers:
As always, Science by the Pint is at 7:00pm on the second Tuesday of the month (June 14th) at Tavern in the Square in Porter Square. Tavern in…
June 9, 2011
Someone is wrong on the internet:
I love that nomenclature, "the God particle". It is a sign that scientists sometimes are unabashed about acknowledging what atheists are often reluctant to grasp: that "believing" in science involves faith too.
Faith in science is far more practical than faith in…
June 9, 2011
In the wild, as I wrote about last week, some strains of commensal bacteria in mosquitoes seem to confer some resistance to infection with Plasmodium, the parasite that causes malaria in humans. Not content to wait for for nature to get around to it, researchers at Johns Hopkins University decided…
June 2, 2011
This was the scene from my front porch last night:
Pictures of lightning are cool and all, and I've been in thunderstorms before. The crazy thing about this storm was the shear frequency of it.
Here in Boston, we went outside and enjoyed the light show. Throughout the neighborhood, we could hear…
June 1, 2011
You've all heard of Malaria. It's bad. It infects hundreds of millions of people, mostly in developing nations. It rarely leads directly to death*, but the resulting illness can lay people out for days or weeks, increasing an already heavy economic burden on many of the poorest countries in the…
May 11, 2011
Maryn McKenna has a typically great post about the rise and spread of a strain of multi-antibiotic resistant Staph aureus. It arose in Holland, where it spread to pigs, picked up resistance to the antibiotic tetracycline, and then jumped back into humans. Then it spread across the EU and into the…
May 10, 2011
Over at the Cambridge Science Festival blog, there's a great write-up of the science journalism event that Heather and I attended last week. Author Jordan Calmes* has good summary and a lot of praise for the panel discussion, but also notes some potential shortcomings:
The panel convinced me that…
May 9, 2011
Way back in high school bio, I learned about the 2 main ways that eukaryotic organisms (everything other than bacteria and archaea) make their metabolic living: photosynthesis and oxidative phosphorylation (also known as respiration). These two processes are fundamentally related - photosynthesis…
May 4, 2011
Last night, Heather and I got to attend a dinner and panel on science journalism and new media. In addition to getting to meet two of my science blogging heros, Carl Zimmer* and Ed Yong, it was a great opportunity to interact and hear from lots of folks far more tuned into the writing and…
May 3, 2011
[A while back, I received a question from a reader via e-mail.
Dear Beasties:
If you had a mutation in either C4 or C5 which one would be worse... I guess the question is is it more important to have the ability to opsonize or the ability to lyse cells with the MAC complex?
I could have done some…
May 2, 2011
If you don't live in/around Boston, feel free to move along. Otherwise:
Dear SITN followers,
For a number of years, Science in the News (SITN) has organized a free public lecture series in the Brigham Circle/Longwood Medical area. This spring, due to high demand, we are delighted to announce that…
May 1, 2011
Last year, I was awarded an NSF graduate research fellowship. This fellowship pays my tuition and stipend for 3 years, so that my boss doesn't have to. This is a great help to our lab, though I don't really get much in the way of direct benefit* (other than a great line on my CV). Anyway, every…
April 21, 2011
I wrote awhile back about an incredible book, Being Wrong by Kathryn Shultz. The author recently have a talk at a TED conference, and her talk has just been posted. I was honestly a bit disappointed by the talk, but it gives me a chance to highly recommend the book again. Read it, seriously.
April 21, 2011
When I first got into blogging, I thought I could carve out my niche talking about the microbiome - that enormous ecosystem of trillions living inside and on every one of us. However, it's become increasingly clear that writers far more skilled than I have also decided to tackle this weighty (2-…
April 14, 2011
I'm in the process of reading All the Devils are Here, and just got The Big Short for my birthday.
It would seem that the story of the financial crisis, the resulting economic slump, and the battles over how to fix it are stories of human greed, striving for self-interest and reckless (self-imposed…
April 13, 2011
Yesterday was my birthday, and I tend to use this time in April to re-up my commitment to all of those resolutions that I failed at around Jan 5th.
And add a new one: Data is the name of the game.
- Millions of cells in the incubator? Check!
- Freshly-made solutions and buffers? Check!
- 10-15…
April 13, 2011
I couldn't have said it better myself:
I believe in love and kindness,
I believe in helping hands
I believe in strong opinions
I believe in taking stands
I believe cooperation
Overcomes the steepest odds
I believe we have a fighting chance
I don't believe in gods.
Go read the whole thing - it's…
April 12, 2011
If you're in the greater Boston area, go get your beer on and learn some great science!
This is a reminder that Science by the Pint is tonight at 7pm at Tavern in the Square in Porter Square. As usual, we'll raffle off a $10 gift certificate for every 10 attendees.
We're bringing Welkin Johnson and…
March 26, 2011
Our immune system needs to be on a hair-trigger. When you breathe in a virus or a bacterium enters a cut on your arm, you don't want to mess around:
(disclaimer: most of what George Carlin says in the rest of that clip is not supported by the science (though it's funny as hell))
But all of that…
March 22, 2011
I feel like I've seen this movie before. A group of thieves need to gain entry to a highly secured vault. The vault door is nearly impregnable, and once inside, there are motion sensors, security cameras and laser trip lines, all of which sound the alarm. When the security guards hear what's…
March 20, 2011
I've been to Washington DC on a number of occasions, but this was a totally new experience. Starting at 10am, I had a meeting every hour on the hour with congressional staff, and I asked them all the same thing: Don't cut the budget of the NIH.
You may know that the government is struggling to keep…
March 14, 2011
Tomorrow, as part of the @ASBMB "Hill Day," I'm headed to capitol hill to meet with my congressman and my senators (or more likely their staff) in order to plead for science funding. If you pay any attention to politics, you know that congress has been locked in budget battles for months, and since…
March 11, 2011
For those of you don't already have some affliction (facebook, reddit etc) that sucks up all the time you should really be working, try:
The Power of Research!
I didn't get very far, but only because I have real lab work to do. It seems silly to procrastinate by doing a virtual research project. It…
March 9, 2011
I saw this link on a friend's facebook page, and left that tab open in my browser for a while, intending to write a post on it.
Professor Charles Gerba, the lead researcher, swabbed the handles of 85 carts in four states for bacterial contamination.
Gerba says 72% of the carts had a positive marker…