terrasig
Posts by this author
October 4, 2008
DrDrA just posted on a currently 37-comment-long thread of a post by PhysioProf at DrugMonkey based on a quote from a post by Dr Brazen Hussy (opening sentence almost as long and convoluted as the title, eh?).
The short summary: postdocs and other academic job candidates are disqualifying…
October 2, 2008
As I alluded to in the previous post, many science bloggers like us are currently running challenges to readers to donate to projects at DonorsChoose.org.
This great organization has been a sponsoring clearinghouse for all kinds of educational projects proposed by US public schoolteachers, many…
October 2, 2008
I am completely crushed, hammered, and otherwise incapacitated at work right now - apologies to readers who are looking for some natural products and pharmacology wisdom. It is in my brain but just not making it into pixels right now.
In the meantime, I did want to let readers know that we are…
September 30, 2008
This morning's post from Molecule of the Day reminds me to ask "cyanuric acid question."
With the recent adulterations with melamine of Chinese milk and milk products (like White Rabbit chocolates) and foods with other milk-derived ingredients, we wonder if we will ultimately hear that a compound…
September 29, 2008
My apologies, dear readers, for having little time to write proper natural products content.
I just got home and was watching Olbermann with the Family Pharmboy where clips from Tina Fey's faux Katie Couric interview were mashed up with Sarah Palin's actual one. (See Orac for the SNL clips).…
September 26, 2008
I received this tip earlier in the week from a former PharmD student and Pharmboy lab alum who now lives in the SF Bay area. In saving it for The Friday Fermentable, I am now just another of the literally hundreds of media outlets covering the story.
If you haven't heard, there is a Chilean…
September 24, 2008
Any of you working in academic programs that offer forensic sciences training are well aware that CSI has been a boon this multidisciplinary area of biology, chemistry, engineering and materials sciences.
However, we don't yet have any television programs glorifying a career in pharmacology or…
September 23, 2008
As you may have heard elsewhere, the third annual major (and free) US science blogging conference, ScienceOnline'09, began accepting registrations last Monday. The meeting will be held 16-18 January 2009 in Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
As of 10 am EDT today, there are already 78 registrants on…
September 22, 2008
I had to laugh, through my tears of course, that the Bush administration's bill requesting $700 billion for the Treasury Department to purchase failing mortgage assets is not even three pages long.
Where did the idea come from for such a concise funding request???
Those of us with NIH research…
September 22, 2008
Here's an update on E. coli-gate in Tularosa, NM:
Okay, so it's more than fluid - it's about a pint of sludge left in front of each house where the garbage truck stopped. But this is ridiculous:
[Tularosa resident Ken] Riedlinger took samples from the sludge puddle to the Diagnostic and Technology…
September 20, 2008
Dr Ernest Eliel, a past-president of the American Chemical Society, passed away in Chapel Hill, NC, on Thursday evening. Dr Eliel was 86.
His obituary notes:
Born December 28, 1921, in Cologne, Germany, Dr. Eliel was the son of the late Oskar and Luise Tietz Eliel. He moved to the United States in…
September 20, 2008
Dear PharmMom,
Your daughter-in-law found this one on your local TV news station:
TULAROSA, N. M. (KRQE-KBIM) - Fluid leaking onto city streets from a contract garbage truck has tested positive for the E. coli bacteria, according to the town's mayor.
Alamo Disposal has been picking up the trash for…
September 18, 2008
Tom Levenson at The Inverse Square blog recently lost his uncle and godfather, Daniel D Levenson.
I've been lucky enough to meet Tom once and yet he still answers my e-mails. Beyond his current position as a prof in the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Tom is a prolific author and…
September 15, 2008
The Japanese scientist who grew fascinated by fungi as a boy is one among five of this years' recipients of a Lasker Award. Endo was specifically given the Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award.
Dr Akira Endo first isolated the hypocholesterolemic compound, mevastatin or compactin, from…
September 15, 2008
I'll be a little light on blogging this week so I'll mostly be sharing a couple of quick reads I've stumbled upon recently.
This one is presented in light of my post last week on National HBCU Week and the accompanying post from my colleague, DrugMonkey (whose referral generated even more…
September 14, 2008
Oy vey! So this is how to handle them bloggers? Thanks for my morning chortle walking back from the driveway this morning with the Sunday New York Times:
And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor's career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to…
September 12, 2008
I can't believe that it's only been a year.
Back in March I wrote about the importance of local wine shops, community resources just as important as your library or local farmer. Therein I sang the praises of my local heros, Seth Gross and Craig Heffley, proprietors of Wine Authorities in Durham,…
September 11, 2008
. . .and I thank you for your support.
I'm not a huge blog traffic addict and, in fact, I mostly keep a SiteMeter counter below because I get to see the geographical distribution of our readers. They have a great map feature where you can look at the locations of the last 100 or 500 hits and I…
September 11, 2008
[Here is why I will always remember. This was posted here originally on 11 September 2006. ]
Let me tell you about John Michael Griffin, Jr.
Griff, as he was known in high school, was a friend of mine.
Late in the first half of our lives, he stood up for me physically and philosophically, for…
September 10, 2008
Despite having to employ biophysical methods in my day job, I must admit my woeful understanding of physics as a discipline. I wasn't like my high school grease monkey friends using torque wrenches on their cars with Springsteenonian dedication and my lowest grade in undergrad came in physics. For…
September 9, 2008
When I went away to college after the summer when MTV was first launched, I had never heard of the term, "Historically Black Colleges and Universities." But during the following summer while taking organic chemistry, I lived in a dorm with two visiting HBCU students who were doing internships at a…
September 7, 2008
I just received a lovely e-mail from Dr Chris Patil, blogger at Ouroboros and postdoc fellow in the lab of the well-known aging researcher, Dr Judith Campisi at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Chris dialed me up to submit one of my posts to Hourglass, a monthly blog carnival he launched in…
September 6, 2008
If you ever have been so bored as to scroll down the blogroll on the sidebar to the left, you'll see a category of links for "Other Stuff I Care About." The Southern Law Poverty Center (SPLCenter) is amongst that stuff and the renewal form sitting beside me here at the home office tells me I've…
September 6, 2008
When one serves on NIH grant review panels, or study sections, one must now register with the US government as a government contractor in order to get reimbursement for hotel and meals, plus the staggering $200 honorarium for each day of the meeting (for which you have spent between two and four…
September 5, 2008
It wasn't triskaidekaphobia that kept me from submitting to the Cancer Research Blog Carnival - I just thought I hadn't written a useful cancer post in quite some time.
But thanks to Walter at Highlight Health, our discussion on the relevance of an article on in vitro antileukaemic activity of…
September 4, 2008
Today is the second anniversary of the passing of Steve Blackwell, a Midwestern transplant who came to the Sunshine State as a high school English teacher and became a fixture in the Florida folk music scene. My path crossed with Mr Blackwell in the months before his untimely departure from…
September 3, 2008
You are an assistant professor in the biomedical sciences and are three or four years in, trying to really hammer on your productivity before the tenure dossier goes in a couple of years from now. Professor MegaMentor, editor of your society's second-tier journal (impact factor of 2.5), approaches…
August 28, 2008
To coincide with the Nature Science Blogging 2008 conference this weekend in London, we present this guest post from Coracle, the away-from-the-bench scientist who writes the Science and Progress blog. I've long been a fan of Science and Progress and Coracle shares my love of natural products…
August 28, 2008
All of us at Terra Sig world headquarters are sending out hearty congratulations to the boys over at Deep Sea News - Peter Etnoyer, Craig McClain, and Kevin Zelnio - on the announcement of their September move to the Discovery Channel online.
I've had the good fortune of meeting all three…
August 28, 2008
A couple of colleagues turned me on the other morning to a press release by researchers at the University of Warwick who recently published in PNAS that their data apparently overturns the Meyer-Overton Rule regarding solubility of a compound in olive oil and its propensity for crossing biological…