vlicata
Posts by this author
August 29, 2010
The existence of the drug Latisse is clearly a harbinger of the end of modern civilization, in more ways than one, but it is also intensely fascinating and creepy. When I first heard of it, about a year ago, I really thought it was some sort of satirical article about the current status of big…
August 15, 2010
Part 1 of "Do You Like the Big Bang Theory?", addressed whether one emotionally "likes" the scientific theories one works on - and how or if that should impact one's work. Here I'd like to talk about the television show.
"The Big Bang Theory" has been highly touted and praised as being the best…
August 7, 2010
Our lab has a new paper coming out this week in the Journal of Molecular Biology (JMB):
The Glutamate Effect on DNA Binding by Pol I DNA Polymerases: Osmotic Stress and the Effective Reversal of Salt Linkage
I'm going to talk about a few highlights here, but if you actually want the full article,…
July 31, 2010
There is one month to go to submit to the 2010 "Dance Your Ph.D" Contest! Entries are due by September 1st. My lab previously won in the Professor category, so I get to be one of the judges for the 2010 contest. This is our dance from the 2009 contest:
And what we won was: a real dance! Jenn…
July 27, 2010
As much as I abhor war, the way that the military handles soldier deaths is (usually) quite admirable (although the same might not hold for its handling of post-service medical problems). When a soldier is killed in service, the family gets a personal visit and often one or more personal phone…
July 11, 2010
BP has released the first slug of oil-spill hush money to LSU: $2 million for research on the Effects of the Oil Spill and it's Cleanup. Sounds like a lot of research money, until you realize that LSU does about $200 million dollars of research a year. So, it's kind of like if your next door…
June 30, 2010
This just in from the upcoming edition of The Journal of Zombie Studies. A must have experimental checklist for any Faculty Senate Subcommittee on Monitoring of Upper Administrative Activities.
Experiment: Administrator A was asked why he/she is paid such a high salary, even though he/she has not…
June 29, 2010
By some estimates, more than 40% of the birds that seasonally migrate in North America do so via the Mississippi Flyway. Large numbers of both land and water birds use this route, including ducks, geese, blackbirds, sparrows, and numerous shorebirds, along with the rare white pelicans that migrate…
June 4, 2010
I've started to write a few different posts in the past few weeks, but their different topics just don't seem to matter in the face of the death of the Gulf of Mexico, especially the affectionately named Redneck Riviera - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle - these areas are…
May 9, 2010
Going to a party at Tony Stark's house would be awesomely fun, and Iron Man 2 has its fair share of highly enjoyable scenes, though not as many as Iron Man 1, but it definitely could have used some science consulting help. Despite Tony Stark's apparently scientifically flawless use of a soldering…
May 2, 2010
While driving to the Astrobiology 2010 Conference last week, I and a graduate student from my lab briefly discussed Stephen Hawking's recent declaration that humans should try to avoid contact with what would surely be hostile aliens. It seemed odd to be attending a conference where a primary aim…
April 18, 2010
Astrobiology is an amazingly interesting, highly interdisciplinary, and relative new field of science. Basically, it's both the search for life elsewhere in the universe, and it's the study of how to sustain human life in space and on other planets (and how to protect other planets from Earth life…
April 5, 2010
The National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences each are spearheading programs designed to get more accurate science into the movies, and they have two somewhat different approaches to this same "problem". Each presented its plan during a couple of sessions at this year's AAAS…
March 22, 2010
Too much listening to Tea Baggers (their most appropriate name?), and the 100% Republican opposition to the Health Care Bill that just passed the House (hooray!!!), and fear of violence in the streets of Haiti as justification for the slow US response there, and the many bizarre responses to what I…
March 14, 2010
Well, here's my son and my entry for the Scienceblogs + Serious Eats Pi Day Contest:
(Warning: this entry may be frightening to children or people who know how to make pies.)
Tony and Vince's "Chocolate Pudding Meringue Pi Pi Pie (not quite)". It was designed to have the following dimensions:…
March 10, 2010
In the Feb 26 issue of Science, the Chief Patent Counsel for GlaxoSmithKline has written a "Policy Forum" article outlining the reasons that the pharmaceutical industry needs longer and stronger patent protection on its new drugs (to fend off those nasty generics). I was kind of shocked to see…
March 8, 2010
I gave two "public science" talks, back to back this past week to two groups of 200 9th graders at Walker High School, which is about 20 miles east of Baton Rouge. (Two because their auditorium only holds 200 students at a time). I give public science lectures in a program run by the Louisiana…
February 28, 2010
Does it bother you when people say: "Wow, it's been so cold this winter, so much for global warming."? And you have to remind them that global warming means that the average temperature of the earth is increasing, and that, in fact, the average temperature of North America is predicted to get…
February 23, 2010
I was just in San Diego for the 2010 AAAS National Meeting - that's the American Association for the Advancement of Science - the parent organization that publishes the journal Science. This year's theme was "Bridging Science and Society". As part of this, I organized and chaired a session…
February 9, 2010
Between the Saints and Mardi Gras time: Louisiana is in full celebration right now. Some of the "cultural" elements on view during the Super Bowl reminded me of parallels in the culture of science:
1. The Super Bowl champions are always called the "World Champions" - even though this is a solely…
January 31, 2010
When the most recent LSU budget cuts were handed down by the Louisiana governor a couple of weeks ago, one of the items that went on the chopping block was the Louisiana State Science and Engineering Fair, which has long been sponsored and hosted by the university. In a state with a creationist…
January 21, 2010
Although it's not Dr. Forbin's Colossus (one of the first AI systems to attempt to destroy the world on film --note the "on film" please), it is quite irritating, and the result might eventually be the same: We recently replaced our oven - why? the computer went out on it. We recently replaced…
January 16, 2010
A next step beyond believing in it (or any well established theory -- e.g. Evolution) is to ask: do you like it? (and here I'm talking about the real thing, we'll deal with the television show later).
Einstein didn't like it. So much so he made his self-proclaimed "biggest mistake" trying to work…
January 12, 2010
Writing about gravitational waves and the fact that waves from the big bang might still be bouncing around the universe (see January 10th post) reminded me of an odd science-and-religion overlap that happened in one of my classes recently. We were studying a play about Ralph Alpher's work on Big…
January 10, 2010
Greetings from Louisiana State University. By some odd fluke, I've been asked to blog here at the World's Fair (who says the world is fair?) while the venerable Ben goes emeritus for a while. Don't worry, you still have Dave!
Anyway, just so you're not too surprised, here's the usual kind of…