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Sandra Porter

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January 6, 2012
This morning, I learned that congress wants to reverse the advances made by NIH and go back to restricting access to scientific publications. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (New York) and Congressman Darrell Issa (California) are co-sponsoring a bill to restore the limits on public access to NIH-…
December 6, 2011
In simple Mendelian genetics, a single change in one gene can produce a large change in mortality. The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) will be funding genomics studies on Mendelian traits using a similar strategy. NHGRI will fund a small number of centers, dominant centers you…
November 28, 2011
Like everything else, if we want to know what's going on, we have to ask. So, it's time once again for the 2011-2012 National Biotechnology/Life Sciences Program Survey. Yes, indeed. Federal and state agencies will use the results to determine how best to support programs like yours. This study…
November 25, 2011
What roles should community colleges play in training the bioeconomy workforce of the future? Send your answers to bioeconomy@ostp.gov by Dec. 6th. One night towards the end of October, we happened to meet with someone who could tell us more. We asked him about a request for information (RFI)…
October 2, 2011
For the past few days I've been avidly following Daniel MacArthur's tweets from the Personal Genome Conference at Cold Spring Harbor(@dgmacarthur #cshlpg). The Personal Genomics tweets aren't just interesting because of the science, they're interesting because MacArthur and others have started to…
May 6, 2011
"It's all about saving Aunt Millie" Bob Swanson Co-Founder of Genentech I just learned today that Jim DeKloe, who wrote this post as a guest author a few years ago is giving a webinar on May 11th on protein purification from industrial enzymes to cancer therapy. Jim's webinar, offered through Bio-…
May 6, 2011
The National Science Foundation recently announced an ambitious plan to transform biology education across the United States called "Vision and Change." Funding for this mission is being provided by a new NSF grant program called "TUES" for Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science. This…
May 2, 2011
It only takes a quick trip to the grocery store to see that familiar jobs are vanishing. Unless you're in Oregon, grocery store checkers are going the way of gas station attendants, travel agents, and secretaries. Jobs are changing, new jobs require different skills, and even those jobs will be…
May 1, 2011
Last night we went to see "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" by Mike Daisey. Two hours vanished as we sat riveted and listened to interspersed stories of Apple and Shenzhen. Mike spoke of Apple and computers as a lover, familiar with the details, and knowledgeable in the special language…
February 14, 2011
This morning I attended a "bloggers-only" conference call with Dr. Eric Green and the folks from the NIH Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to hear about NHGRI's new strategic plan. The new plan represents a shift away from viewing the genome through a lens marked "for research use only" and…
February 9, 2011
Have you ever wondered if creationism was intelligently designed? Most of my colleagues tend to dismiss creationism as generally nutty and not worth bothering about. But, every now and then, we did get the odd situation with a few students who disagree or state legislatures that get a little…
February 7, 2011
Disclaimers - just so you know... This information is cross-posted at www.bio-link.org All the data and graphs in this post were obtained from Simplyhired.com.  I do not have any kind of commercial affiliation with this company I found their site via GenomeWeb. Having worked around biotechnology…
January 8, 2011
I had the good fortune on Thursday to hear a fascinating talk on deep transcriptome analysis by Chris Mason, Assistant Professor, at the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Cornell University.  Several intriguing observations were presented during the talk.  I'll present the key points…
January 6, 2011
About mid-morning, my 16yr old daughter called me from school and asked me to help her get an interview transcript that was on her computer. Four years ago, when my older daughter was in high school, I would have printed that document and driven to the school to deliver it. Not today. Today, I…
December 14, 2010
It's been interesting to watch as microbiology's own cold fusion debate has been raging. It began with an extraordinary claim about bacteria using arsenate as a replacement when phosphate concentrations are low (1).  It progressed when at least two scientist / bloggers ( here, and here) (not…
November 8, 2010
Wired Campus shared an interesting story this morning about a career site for female science / engineering professionals. The site is called ASU CareerWISE and its mission is to help women with problem solving. I like the idea and I like that they built the site in Drupal, since I've become a big…
November 1, 2010
My heart sank as I stood on the Metro platform at the Zoo stop and watched the second completely full train pull away. All those stories of people in Japan pushing people into trains started to make sense. It seemed there was no other way to get on the train and getting the rally looked…
November 1, 2010
Funding raising drives come and go but the need to educate the coming generations in science and math never goes away. With your help, teachers can help their students. DonorsChoose.org is an online charity that connects individuals, like you, to classrooms in need. The average public school…
October 5, 2010
We often hear talk these days about failure in leadership and gutless congress people. I understand wanting to keep out of the fray. Last year, I wrote about a reasonable proposal to help young people and unwittingly tapped into a strain of people out there with an amazing amount of hatred…
October 3, 2010
Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) shared this wonderful Lady Gaga lab spoof on Twitter the other day. It rocks. And, it makes me wonder if my pals who've been thinking about getting students interested in careers by having scientists talk on camera might be going at this the wrong way. Sure,…
September 28, 2010
Theo chocolate is situated in a neighborhood called Fremont, in the city of Seattle, in the former Redhook brewery. I used to consult for Redhook in my microbiology days, when I had access to a -80°C freezer and a proper microscope, so the building has a comfortable feel and some pleasant…
September 23, 2010
It's been exciting to see the progress in getting the Theobroma cacao genome sequenced and off to the databases. But.... I've toured the Theo chocolate factory twice now, and there's a crucial piece in the story that appears to be missing. photo by S. Porter 2010 You see, chocolate is like wine…
August 4, 2010
This summer, Seattle's weather has been cloudy and cold. Luckily, "cloud" has another meaning. For those of you wondering, what "cloudy" means, Eric Nilsson, from Insilicos, has a great article in Xconomy on Seattle and cloud computing. A quick description of cloud computing would is to think of…
July 12, 2010
If you're a high school or college student with an interest in biomedical sciences, or healthcare careers, the NIH has set up an electronic mentoring program to help you find a guide. The mentoring happens via email and students must be 16 yrs or older. The site claims the mentors are carefully…
June 24, 2010
One of my hobbies lately has been to get either RNA seq or microarray data from GEO and do quick analyses. Not only is this fun, I can find good examples to use for teaching biology. One of these fun examples comes from some Arabidopsis data. In this experiment, some poor little seedlings were…
June 22, 2010
Last summer, I had the good fortune to attend a conference in Washington D.C. on Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology education. There were lots of inspiring speeches, cool videos, and talks about building more student-centered classrooms and strategies for change. Surprisingly, many of the…
March 17, 2010
Every June, an incredible event takes place. Biotechnology educators gather in Berkeley, California, from across the US, to discuss new trends in biotechnology education, learn from each other and share information about educating students for the biotechnology workforce. There are tours of local…
January 19, 2010
One of the many interesting sessions I attended at ScienceOnline 2010 (#scio10) covered the questions of trust and critical thinking. Sitting in the audience, I couldn't help but think of a mash-up (like on Glee!) between this session the one on Fact checking. Granted, I know I'm a nitpicky…
January 18, 2010
Have you ever wanted to volunteer your talents and help with fun projects like these: * Refurbish computers for schools * Teach students how to use popular software or online services * Build a database for a nonprofit * Help out in your school's computer lab * Become an online…
January 18, 2010
ScienceOnline 2010 was one of the most amazing meetings I've attended in a long time and it's going to take some time to process it all, but in the mean time, it seems other bloggers (phylogenomics, CogSci, and Ed) have started one of those meme things and so, here goes.  At ScienceOnline 2010, I…