purepedantry | July 18, 2006We have all been talking about this to death, but I figured I would add my two cents. Ben Barres wrote an editorial in the most recent issue of Nature about the issue of gender disparity in science. He mentions the comments of Larry Summers among others things and that he felt that those comments were out of line.
What happens at Harvard and other universities serves as a model for many other institutions, so it would be good to get it right. To anyone who is upset at the thought that free speech is not fully protected on university campuses, I would like to ask, as did third-year Harvard…
purepedantry | July 18, 2006Grand Rounds is up at ChronicBabe. It is also all about the ladies, and it is pink. I do not believe the two are necessarily related.
purepedantry | July 18, 2006I am doing Western blots today, and none of them are working.
For those of you who do not know what a Western blot is, a Western blot is a technique to detect proteins in a sample of cell lysates. First the proteins are purified. Then the protein in the sample are suspended in loading buffer that contains a detergent called SDS and boiled. This denatures the proteins and coats them in a negative charge (SDS is negative). The proteins are then separated by weight in an electric field (bigger proteins move more slowly through the gel) and transferred to a sticky membrane. Finally the…
purepedantry | July 18, 2006I actually care little about Paris Hilton's antics. I find it difficult to become interested in someone's career when the origins of that career are based on a sex tape that shows that she performs oral sex poorly. There I said it. I have seen that tape, and Paris Hilton is not gifted. Not that anyone was describing Paris Hilton as gifted in any regard. In my opinion, the only reason she isn't riding the short bus is that Daddy has a bagillion dollars.
However, I did not bring you together today to talk about Paris's limited mental acumen. Rather I have a more productive proposal. In…
purepedantry | July 17, 2006Sleep is an underappreciated thing. Not only does it improve your memory, but now we find it would appear lowers your risk for obesity:
Research by Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick has found that sleep deprivation is associated with an almost a two-fold increased risk of being obese for both children and adults.
Early results of a study by Professor Francesco Cappuccio of the University of Warwick's Warwick Medical School were presented to the International AC21 Research Festival hosted this month by the University of Warwick.
The research reviewed current evidence in…
purepedantry | July 17, 2006I love that there is somebody even researching this, but what I love more is that it is imminently more interesting than anything I do. The next time I am at a cocktail party, I am not talking about oligodendrocytes; I am talking about this:
You're ordering dessert and know exactly what you want -- the lavender crème brulee that was reviewed in your favorite food column. Even if it's the most expensive item on the dessert menu, you'll probably order it. But what about those times when you don't come armed with advance recommendations? A study in September issue of the Journal of Consumer…
purepedantry | July 17, 2006God is so tricky. New research reveals that the structure of a DNA replication molecule is similar across all three domains of life:
In two papers that will be concurrently published in the August edition of the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology (now available on-line), the researchers report the identification of a helical substructure within a superfamily of proteins, called AAA+, as the molecular "initiator" of DNA replication in a bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli), and in a eukaryote, Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly. Taken with earlier research that identified AAA…
purepedantry | July 16, 2006Evil Monkey from Neurotopia posts on face blindness or prosopagnosia, and how they have found a gene that results in a heritable form. They have not, to my knowledge, found a gene for why I can't remember the girl who woke up in my bed's name. He also has an article on pesticide-induced Parkinson's disease complete with nifty histology. OOOOOOoooo...neat.
Shelley at Retrospectacle covers paralyzed rats that can walk after stem cell therapy. Ummm...Senators, maybe you should keep that in mind when you vote this week. She also provides yet another reason not to go to Kiss concerts: you may…
purepedantry | July 15, 2006If you go in for a mammogram and they see something that looks suspicious, odds are you are going to have to undergo a procedure called ductal lavage. Ductal lavage uses a fine needle to rinse the ducts of the breast with saline, and then has a pathologist look at the cells that come off to see if they are abnormal -- thus helping to detect breast cancer. One of the reasons that we do this is because mammography does not always detect cancers, and we would like to make sure that you do not have cancer. Ductal lavage is also less invasive than the alternative -- which is breast biopsy…
purepedantry | July 15, 2006Surgeons are experimenting with ways to use cryogenics to aid in surgery. If you can put someone in suspended animation, it would make the process of surgery much easier. Here is a description from Wired Magazine about such an experiment in a porcine test subject:
"Make the injury," Alam says. Duggan nods and slips his hands into the gash, fingers probing through inches of fat and the rosy membranes holding the organs in place. He pushes aside the intestines, ovaries, and bladder, and with a quick scalpel stroke slices open the iliac artery. It's 10:30 am. Pig 78-6 loses a quarter of her…
purepedantry | July 14, 2006So back in college, Kevin Smith came to talk to us. It has to be one of the funniest things I have ever seen. He came with no prepared material and spoke expositorily for about 4 hours, just telling stories. All of his stories were absolutely hilarious, and he is just a really personable guy. He was very unpretentious for someone who has become as famous as he has. Anyway, about a year later, a DVD was released that has footage of him doing this all over the nation.
On the DVD, he tells the story of how he was asked to write a new Superman movie, and his interactions with the producer…
purepedantry | July 14, 2006I had wanted to avoid being an activist with this blog, but I think it is important enough when it relates to a directly scientific issue to break that rule.
The Society for Neuroscience has issued a petition request via email asking its members to petition their Senators to vote YES for the current Senate resolution reauthorizing stem cell research. Here is the email:
Support Stem Cell Research Legislation!
On Monday and Tuesday of next week, the Senate will consider bipartisan legislation, called The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (H.R. 810). This bill would expand federally funded…
purepedantry | July 14, 2006Apparently today will be poetry day. I found this poem in a book I was reading. It is by a man named Mortimer Collins (1860):
Life and the Universe show spontaneity:
Down with ridiculous notions of Deity!
Churches and creeds are all lost in the mists;
Truth must be sought with the Positivists.
Wise are their teachers beyond all comparison,
Comte, Huxley, Tyndall, Morley and Harrison.
Who will venture to enter the lists
With such a squandron of Positivists?
There was an ape in the days that were earlier;
Centuries passed and his hair became curlier;
Centuries more gave a thumb to his wrist…
purepedantry | July 14, 2006Just a reminder that I am accepting submission for the other neuroscience carnival on the web called Encephalon. It is due to be published on July 17th (Monday). If possible, please get me the submissions by Sunday night. You can submit here via Blog Carnival, or you can email me at encephalon DOT host AT gmail.
Check back on Monday for neuroscience goodness.
purepedantry | July 13, 2006As I have promised to do some sort of regular Friday movie review here goes. Incidentally, I don't know if this will be entirely regular -- sometimes I don't see movies. So we will see how it goes.
Pirates of the Caribbean passed swimmingly the low expectations test: everyone thought with good reason that a movie inspired by a Disney ride would suck; therefore, when it did not suck, people were substantially impressed. Similarly, Johnny Depp exposes one to the awesome spectacle of what would happen if someone so addled by decades of drug use that reality often eludes them were to engage…
purepedantry | July 13, 2006This week's Ask a Scienceblogger is as follows:
Is every species of living thing on the planet equally deserving of protection?...
In response, I hath composed the following:
An Ode to the Cuter Mammals
If I were Noah, roused from drunken slumber,
forced to choose the duos of animals
of such a sad and limited number
to reside within the Ark's stalls,
thus protecting them from the squalls
of the righteous Lord's impending wrath,
you can bet that I would choose
only the most cutest of creatures;
for I could not bear to lose
those most adorable of features
that are the kitten's whiskers
or the…
purepedantry | July 12, 2006The most recent issue of Nature has a paper by the Donoghue lab at Brown about their project implanting an ensemble of electrodes into the motor cortex of a paraplegic. Signals from the electrodes were decoded and used to run a computer program so the patient can literally move the cursor with their mind. This is really incredible stuff. The day is rapidly approaching when we can really help these people.
You can read the article, but the most interesting part is the videos available (without a subscription) here. My favorite is a game of Pong.
Hat-tip: Mind Hacks (by one of the authors…
purepedantry | July 12, 2006Ronald Bailey from Reason Magazine has an article covering one of the more pernicious arguments against genetically modified foods:
Long time anti-biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin has come out in favor of a biotechnology technique. Should beleaguered biotechnologists break out the champagne and start celebrating? Not hardly. Earlier this week, Rifkin wrote an op/ed in the Washington Post in which he declared his support for marker assisted selection (MAS) for use in plant breeding. So far, so good.
MAS is a molecular technique in which researchers identify sections of DNA in a plant or animal…
purepedantry | July 12, 2006Is this really necessary?
Castrati played heroic male leads in Italian opera from the mid-17th to late 18th century when the bel canto was the rage in Europe. Farinelli, born Carlo Broschi in 1705, was the most famous of them all, in a stage career lasting from 1720 to 1737.
Carlo Vitale of the Farinelli Study Center in Bologna said they had recovered the bodies on Wednesday of the singer and his great-niece, who moved his body from a first grave destroyed in the Napoleonic wars.
His final resting place in Bologna's Certosa cemetery was only recently discovered.
"They are in a middling state…
purepedantry | July 12, 2006Nerdcore is a new genre of music created by nerds for nerds. Feel that music underrepresents your strong feelings about your +2 Chain Mail...well now you have no need to fret. Nerdcore is what happened when people who know what a Hidden Markov Model is started rapping about it. I hadn't heard about this until today but I have been perusing about and some of this stuff is just fantastic.
Here is a description from Wired Magazine:
Tupac and Biggie, move over. A new hip-hop feud is brewing that glamorizes not guns and 'hos but Java and secure encryption algorithms.
While gangsta rap is seen…