Sandra Porter
sporte
Posts by this author
April 21, 2007
If you've ever looked at an evolutionary tree, contemplated phylogeny, cladistics, or the like, you're probably aware that Joe Felsenstein is one of the leaders of the pack.
And you will certainly enjoy, this interview that Blind Scientist has posted.
I wouldn't advise reading the interview to…
March 31, 2007
Science labs are not for all people.
I've always enjoyed teaching lab courses, so some of you might find it strange that I agree with some of the comments from Steve Gimbel and fellow Sb'ers on the questionable benefits of laboratory courses in introductory physics. But you see, I wasn't very…
March 26, 2007
It's dyscalculia.
The curse of math instructors everywhere.
A few years ago, students at the community college, where I taught, petitioned to have math removed from the list of courses that were required for a degree. Part of the reason, they argued, was that one student claimed that he shouldn't…
March 14, 2007
From NWABR:
Would you like to integrate ethics into your science classroom, but aren't sure which topics to address or teaching methods to use?
Do you feel that ethics is important to include in science education, but feel uncomfortable with your own lack of background knowledge?
Have you…
March 13, 2007
Blogging from the NW ASM branch meeting, part II
Yesterday, I wrote about the some of present (and future) methods that are (or will be) used in clinical labs to identify pathogenic microbes. In these next two posts, I want to describe the talks I attended on antibiotic resistance, from Xuan Qin…
March 12, 2007
It looked like just any other rainy Saturday morning in the Pacific Northwest, but no, this Saturday was a day for microbiology. Reluctantly, I crawled out of my warm bed and headed over to the University of Washington to attend a meeting of the Pacific NW branch of the American Society for…
March 11, 2007
I don't often play these meme games but since none of the other female SciBlings have jumped on the bandwagon, and I've read at least as much science fiction as some of the other Scibs in the game (PZ, Mark, Afrensis, Orac, Joseph, Bora, and John), I just had to join in.
First, for the record, I…
March 10, 2007
It must be spring. Summer course announcements are popping up everywhere and this site is no exception.
Last Friday, I posted an announcement about our summer bioinformatics course in Alaska, June 27-29th.
This week, I have a couple more conferences to announce. Naturally, I'll be at both of…
March 9, 2007
Registration has opened a bit late this year, but it's always tricky when large programs change hands. The Chautauqua Short Course program for College Teachers is no different. In fact, as far as I know, we may still be waiting for the National Science Foundation to make a final decision on…
March 8, 2007
Maybe a little squid told him that tomorrow is PZ's birthday.
Happy birthday PZ!
The fish and I wish you 50 more!
February 21, 2007
Grasses at Yellowstone National Park are able to grow temperatures (65°; C) that would toast most living things.
Step right up! Watch original research, as it happens, on the web!
I'm going to use bioinformatics to see if I can find that answer to the puzzle of heat-tolerant plants.
Previous…
February 17, 2007
How do microbiologists determine which microbe caused a disease?
As Tara has eloquently described (I, II), we are covered with bacteria and other microbes. A reasonable question then, is when we get sick, how do we which little devil deserves the blame?
In many cases, pathogens (disease-causing…
February 17, 2007
Yes, yes, I know Darwin Day was Februrary 12th. Nevertheless, the Alliance for Science is sponsoring an essay contest in Darwin's honor and, if you're a high school student you can still celebrate by writing an essay.
And if you're a high school teacher, and your student wins, you win $$ for…
February 16, 2007
It's not too late. You can do research on cool topics, get paid, and even live in Las Vegas for the summer. If I were a student, I'd go.
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas is still taking applications for students to come do research in the desert.
The microbiology faculty at UNLV and the Desert…
February 16, 2007
Sometimes I think the field of biology suffers from collective amnesia. Like the girl in the movie "50 first dates," we discover things over and over and every time we find something, we forget that it's ever been found before. This is especially true if a phenomenon has been discovered in a…
February 13, 2007
I received a mysterious file last week, via e-mail from one of my students. According the e-mail, the file contained the answers to an assignment.
I downloaded the file and double-clicked it. Nada.
I did notice that the file had an unusual extension. Most Word documents have ".doc" at the end.…
February 13, 2007
Evolution!
Wow! A jolt of electricity went down my spine. I feel like Harry Potter saying "Voldemort."
Apparently, in biomedical journals, drug resistance and other phenomena can "emerge," "arise," or "spread." It can "appear", "develop", "become common", or "be acquired."
As long as you don't…
February 9, 2007
I found it in the MeSH database.
Really!
Looking for a quick answer? Don't ask a scientist
It doesn't take long to realize that scientists can spend countless hours debating the meaning of words. Our very own ScienceBlogs is a great example, just look at the many ways we can define (and debate)…
February 8, 2007
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
- from Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll
I'm certain that if we ever sequenced DNA from the frumious Bandersnatch it would match hypothetical and putative proteins…
February 7, 2007
Yesterday, both Joshua and I wrote about grasses that grow in the unusually hot soil at Yellowstone National Park.
Now, I knew that hot springs bacteria can tolerate high temperatures, but I was really surprised to learn that plants could.
It was even more surprising to learn that this amazing…
February 6, 2007
Are viral and fungal infections always a bad thing?
Maybe not if you're a plant.
In fact, if you're a plant trying to grow in the hot (65°; C) soils of Yellowstone National Park, you're going to need all the help you can get.
A new study by Márquez, et.al. (1) found that a type of grass (…
February 5, 2007
How to win the X PRIZE in genomics
In October, 2006, the X PRIZE foundation announced that second X prize would focus on genomics. The first team to successfully sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days will win $10 million dollars.
And I would venture to guess, that the winning team would also win…
February 3, 2007
`When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, `I always pay it extra.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
In biology, we often ask our words do a lot of work.
In what other field would we write direction like this
"Transfer 10 lambda of lambda phage DNA into a…
February 2, 2007
Vizzini: He didn't fall? Inconceivable!
Inigio: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
- William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Excuse me while I temporarily interrupt the genome sequencing series to define a word.
Artifacts in the classroom
It's disorienting.…
February 2, 2007
BioHacking is not listing in Wikipedia but it can still be found in the blogosphere. In Bio::Blogs 7, Paraschopra muses about biomathematics, synthetic biology, conferences, and bioinformatics entrepeneurship in in India. He must have seen the news about Accelrys shutting down their R&D shop…
February 1, 2007
To the ancient Greeks, a chimera was a kind of monster, with the body of a goat, the tail of a dragon, and a lion's head. To geneticists, a chimera can be an animal that's derived from two embryos, such as a transgenic mouse. Or if the organism is a plant, it can be a plant with a graft. We have…
January 31, 2007
The general steps in genome sequencing were presented in the earlier installments ( there are links at the bottom of the page), but it's worth repeating them again since each of the earlier steps has a bearing on the outcome of those that come later.
These are:
Break the genome into lots of small…
January 30, 2007
"How much do I love you?
I'll tell you no lie.
How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?"
- Irving Berlin
The other installments are here:Part I: IntroductionPart II: Sequencing strategiesPart III: Reads and chromatsPart V: checking out the library
We all know that sequencing a genome must be…
January 29, 2007
The University of Nevada in Las Vegas is looking for a few good undergraduates to come do research this summer in environmental microbiology. Environmental microbiology goes way beyond hot springs bacteria and Yellowstone Park. At UNLV, you can do science in the desert.
It almost makes me wish I…
January 28, 2007
Shotgun sequencing. Sounds like fun.
Speculations on the origin of the phrase
I think that this term came from shotgun cloning. In the early days of gene cloning before cDNA, PCR, or electroporation; molecular biologists would break genomic DNA up into lots of smaller pieces, package DNA in…