Sandra Porter
sporte
Posts by this author
November 6, 2008
What kind of dead animals are in your freezer? I used to be skeptical about the whole notion of cloning wooly mammoths. But this recent article in PNAS (1), makes the whole idea seem less far fetched.
Wakayamaa et. al. describe an amazing technical advance where scientists in Japan were able to…
November 4, 2008
There are tears of joy and relief in my eyes. It's like the most emotional New Year's Eve in my life.
My neighbors are even shooting off fireworks!
Mr. McCain's speech was wonderful. Let's move forward!
Update: I am watching Mr. Obama now on TV with tears in my eyes. I have never been so…
November 4, 2008
This quarter, I'm using a wiki with my bioinformatics class and posting sometimes about the things that I learn.
Two things I've been experimenting with are:
Setting up pages for individual students so they can take notes while they're working.
Embedding a Google form into one of my wiki pages…
November 3, 2008
Want to learn more about Parkinson's disease? See why a single nucleotide mutation messes up the function of a protein?
I have a short activity that uses Cn3D (a molecular viewing program from the NCBI) to look at a protein that seems to be involved in a rare form of Parkinson's disease and I…
November 2, 2008
I heard some intriguing presentations this week about education in Second Life, but I happen know that there is an open-source, free (?) alternative called "Croquet."
Do any of you have experience with Croquet vs. Second Life? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
I attended two talks, hoping…
November 1, 2008
I was in in Washington D.C. this last week attending the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technology Education conference. During the conference, I attended one workshop and one talk on Second Life. Both of the presentations were focused on Teen Second Life, which was interesting, but…
October 31, 2008
What strange things happen in the lab on Halloween? Read part I and part II to find out what's going on. (Reposted in honor of Halloween)
"All those beauties in solid motion
All those beauties, gonna swallow you up
Hi hi hi hi hi hi
One time too many
Too far to go
I - we come to take you home"
-…
October 31, 2008
Strange things happen when it's Halloween week in the lab.
(reposted in honor of Halloween)
Catch up on the story by reading part I.
I came back the next day, hoping to see dead cells in the culture dish.
Quickly, I pulled the dish from the incubator. Yikes! Yellow media, again! I carefully…
October 30, 2008
Reposted in honor of the holiday.
What's it like when you work in the lab on Halloween?
It started out innocently enough.
"Go get some BHK cells," he said, "then transform the cells with these plasmids and use G418 to kill the cells that didn't get transformed."
Cautiously, I ventured upstairs…
October 29, 2008
A bit of unsolicited advice for workshop presenters
I'm currently in Washington, D.C. at the Advanced Technology Education conference co-sponsored by National Science Foundation and the American Association of Community Colleges. The people here are an interesting mix of instructors teaching high…
October 26, 2008
Experimenting with on-line worksheets
I know some people who always teach their classes the same way, semester after semester, year after year.. Not me. I always want to experiment and try new things.
This fall, I'm experimenting with using a wiki in the classroom, in addition to my blog. This…
October 25, 2008
Why should professional scientists have all the fun?
Researchers have been engineering glowing cats, and selling glowing fish at pet stores. High school kids can do genetic engineering too, if they have the right equipment. And you can help them get the equipment by contributing to our…
October 24, 2008
I probably shouldn't find this amusing, but...
Back a few years ago, a friend of mine worked at a biotech company in Seattle that had large windows looking out onto Puget Sound. They always cheered when the Navy ships came in, 'cause they knew it meant they'd have more work.
Tom Joe has a funny…
October 23, 2008
This video from WDSU shows Mr. Green Genes, the transgenic kitty, in the dark and in the light.
There's also an interview with Dr. Betsy Dresser, who very briefly talks about the work at the Audubon Center for Research on Endangered Species.
Other than clips of the cat, and Dr. Dresser, the…
October 23, 2008
Two interesting events are happening, Monday night, Oct. 27th.
At the UW: Josh Rosenau from the National Center for Science Education will be speaking at 6 pm about Creationist attacks on science education. (Josh is also a Science Blogger).
In Ravenna, at Third Place Pub: Ted White from the…
October 22, 2008
Are you interested in global health?
The Washington Global Health Alliance is looking for an education professional, with a life science or science education background (BS or higher) to help train faculty and students at the high school level.
The complete announcement is below, the appointment…
October 22, 2008
I've heard that all cats are grey in the dark, but I guess that's no longer true in New Orleans. Scientists at the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species have made a cloned kitty that glows lime green.
Some of you already know my fascination with glowing fish, fluorescent cats, and…
October 21, 2008
Maybe you did it for the extra cash. Maybe you wanted to be part of the sperm cube public art project. Whatever the reason, it's possible, just possible, your sperm took on a life of it's own, once you left it.
And now that a genome is no longer an entirely personal bit of information, you may be…
October 20, 2008
What happens when a group of streptococci stick to cells in your throat and start to make toxins?
Your body fights back by making clones.
The animated video, Fighting Infection by Clonal Selection, from Etsuko Uno and Drew Berry is so good that if I didn't know better, I would almost think it's…
October 18, 2008
Yes, that's right, another Medicine 2.0 blog carnival has been posted for your enjoyment.
And the host, Ivor Kovic, has done an amazingly creative and interesting thing with images from all the past hosting places..., and well, you just need to go see it yourself.
October 18, 2008
Sometimes I'm thankful for all extra restrictions on air travel that got imposed after 9/11. Not the ones involving personal searches, taking your shoes off, or putting all your liquids in plastic bags, but I do like having to arrive at the airport 2 hours ahead of any scheduled trip.
The reason…
October 17, 2008
I used to get e-mails from relatives that were filled with cute pictures of kittens and puppies. It's luck they didn't know about this site:
http://www.zooborns.com/
These are the some of the absolutely cutest baby pictures I have ever seen!
I hear Raffi songs in my head when I look at these (can…
October 17, 2008
The Galápagos islands rank high on my list of places that I really, really, really want to visit. But for many reasons, it's always looked like a trip to the Galápagos would be at least a decade or two away.
Now, I'll be able to go in January and so will all of you.
Thanks to the University of…
October 15, 2008
Every year students in the Puget Sound area gather together at the Biotech Expo to celebrate the life sciences and compete for prizes. Although their projects are diverse in nature, they compete in categories like research, art, journalism, drama, music, and others, all the students learn about…
October 14, 2008
Like many people I know, I suffer from allergies, and sometimes asthma. I take drugs to control the symptoms, but they don't cure the condition. Plus, I know there can be side effects that might not be so pleasant.
This is why I like hearing about sequencing projects that target the VDJ-ome.…
October 13, 2008
Last week, while attending the ISB "DNA of Innovation" symposium in honor of Lee Hood's 70th birthday, I decided to try live-blogging for the first time. Unbeknownst to others in the audience, except my husband, I quietly typed away, collecting notes and uploading impressions.
But battery power…
October 10, 2008
The second speaker was Eric Davidson who talked about gene regulatory networks.
He works on sea urchins and showed us this amazing diagram that looked like a computer chip. The diagram describes the inputs and outputs of 50 genes during the first 30 hours of development.
And, it convinced me…
October 10, 2008
The first talk was by Irving Weissman, one of the pioneers in immunology and stem cell research. He talked about the stem cells that form blood, also known as HSCs or hematopoietic stem cells.
These cells are great because they can self-renew, and they can divide and differentiate. That is, they…
October 10, 2008
Right now, I'm sitting in the audience at a symposium on Science, Engineering, and Business at the Leading edge. The symposium is sponsored by the Institute for Systems Biology and it's Lee Hood's 70th birthday. Every speaker is beginning with a wish for a happy birthday.
I'll have updates, as I…
October 10, 2008
Sometimes words fail me. Luckily, we have videos.
Many of you have probably read about Roger Tsien receiving the Nobel Prize this work for his work with the green fluorescent protein (GFP), but I bet some of you are wondering, why a jellyfish protein is worth a Noble Prize.
I think one of the…