sporte | November 1, 2008I 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 neither presentation did a very good job of illustrating how I would use Second Life as a teaching tool.
Julian Lombardi's blog has a short YouTube movie that comes pretty close. Be patient, the marketing pitch doesn't last forever.
sporte | October 31, 2008What 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"
- Swamp by the Talking Heads
The lyrics of Swamp were pounding in my brains as I cleaned up what I could and threw the rest of the mess into the autoclave bag. At least I hadn't knocked over all the flasks. Maybe there was some hope for this experiment.
"Poor cells," I crooned, "you don't know I'm…
sporte | October 31, 2008Strange 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 set the dish on the stage and took a look.
Oh no! The cells were piling on top of each other. I fed the cells and ran to elevator to find the scruffy guys from Howard Hughes.
"What do I do?" I moaned, "Aren't these cells supposed to die?"
Scruffy #1 just laughed.
Well, I guess you'll have…
sporte | October 30, 2008Reposted 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 to the Howard Hughes floor on top of an adjoining building. I nervously glanced through the hallway, expecting someone to challenge my presence and ask me what I was doing wandering around their floor.
Nothing. The halls were still.
I walked into a lab room and found two scruffy looking guys.
"…
sporte | October 29, 2008A 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 tech stuff and instructors who sometimes seem more advanced in age than technological know-how.
Mind you, people are doing amazing things. Some colleges have nanotechnology, some microfabrication, some biotechnology, computer forensics, but some of the high tech programs are managed by some very…
sporte | October 26, 2008Experimenting 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 wont be my first wiki experience. We've long used wikis where I work, and I've used them to collaborate with people in different locations, but this is the first time that I'll try one in a teaching situation.
The wikis in my past
My earlier experiences with wikis had convinced me that they would…
sporte | October 25, 2008Why 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 DonorsChoose fund drive.
If you're willing to help students, they'll be able to do biotechnology in the class room and learn about DNA. They'll put genes for green fluorescent protein into bacteria and see how that bit of invisible liquid in a test tube gets used to make a glowing protein.
Even better,…
sporte | October 24, 2008I 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 post about the same topic, with a different twist. He's not talking about learning your status through any sort of laboratory test. He suggests using e-mail.
UPDATE: Since Bora pointed out the PLoS article in the comments, I thought I should add some of the pictures from the article. I love the…
sporte | October 23, 2008This 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 video mostly shows people taking frozen samples out of liquid nitrogen, but there's an interesting bit towards the end where they show a pipette transferring material into the nucleus of an egg cell. Mr. Green Genes is certainly a cute cat.
You can see more pictures from the Times Picayune: here and…
sporte | October 23, 2008Two 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 Seattle Biomedical Research Institute will be talking at 7 pm about infectious disease.
If you're interested hearing Josh, contact Kristy Brady, kbrady at u.washington.edu.
If you're interested in infectious disease, just show up at the pub.
It would be hard to choose which event to attend, but I won'…
sporte | October 22, 2008Are 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 would be at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute in the BioQuest program.
The Washington Global Health Alliance is pleased to announce the
commencement of the WGHA Ambassadors Program: a collaboration of leading
state global health institutions and four Washington State high schools
to design a…
sporte | October 22, 2008I'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 cloned puppies. This New Orleans cat is interesting too, partly, because it's the first transgenic cat made in this country, and partly because of the work that ACRES has been doing to try and rescue endangered species.
ACRES has made the headlines before. Dr. C. Earle Pope and Dr. Martha Gomez,…
sporte | October 21, 2008Maybe 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 in for a surprise meeting someday, with the end result.
That's right.
Male adoptees are getting their DNA tested and getting information about their possible surnames.
According to the BBC news:
At least 30 men registered with US consumer genetic testing firm Family Tree DNA have found their…
sporte | October 20, 2008What 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 really capturing clonal selection on film.
What is clonal selection?
We call this process "clonal selection" because only some lucky cells get selected for cloning. These cells have proteins on their surface that are able bind to bits of stuff from bacteria or viruses. We call that stuff "antigens…
sporte | October 18, 2008Yes, 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.
sporte | October 18, 2008Sometimes 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 is that I'm a sucker for airport book stores. Almost every time I go on a trip, I bring home more books than I packed. Sometimes surprisingly, as in the case of "Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's" by John Elder Robison, I even have to fight with my children to get the book back.
I don't…
sporte | October 17, 2008I 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 you sing Baby Beluga?)
sporte | October 17, 2008The 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 Cincinnati, we'll be able to follow in Darwin's historic steps, and experience some of his amazing journey.
The only difference is we'll do this trip as avatars in Second Life.
The University is stocking this intriguing exhibit with photos and images from the Galápagos, as part of a 150 year…
sporte | October 15, 2008Every 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 science as part of their work.
You can help a high school student learn about science by being a mentor for the Biotech Expo. It is especially helpful to students if they can bounce questions off of a real-live person who works in a scientific field.
The Northwest Association for Biomedical…
sporte | October 14, 2008Like 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.
I have this fantasy about the things we could do with that information
In a normal immune response (diagrammed below), antibodies on the surface of immature B cells bind to allergens (pollen, dust, whatever). That binding event, plus some help from T cells, stimulates those immature B cells and…