apalazzo | May 27, 2006Hi Folks,
Sorry for the delay. It's been a busy week for me. Being swamped with work, the Daily Transcript was ignored. I've thought about it all this week ... life writing a blog and living the life of a postdoc. It's stressful. I enjoy both however the combination does not leave enough time in the day for other ESSENTIAL activities. From this point on I will be limiting myself to 3-4 posts per week. With the number of excellent blogs covering the big ticket science items, my blog will be refocused on NON-media items ... such as the life of a postdoc, comments about the machinations of…
apalazzo | May 23, 2006Sorry, I haven't been writing much in the past few days.
Here are some cool ER papers I've seen recently:
Direct membrane protein-DNA interactions required early in nuclear envelope assembly Sebastian Ulbert, Melpomeni Platani, Stephanie Boue, and Iain W. Mattaj JCB (2006) 173:469-476
When the nuclear envelope reforms after mitosis, ER vesicles must bind to the condensed chromatin, but how does this occur? Well about half of the nuclear envelope (NE) proteins have basic luminal domains that mediate electrostatic interactions with the DNA itself. (In comparison about 4% of general ER and Golgi…
apalazzo | May 21, 2006I am back in Montreal for the weekend. Anyone who grows up in Canada is subjected to 3 things:
1- Hockey
2- Winter
3- CBC
And a great show that I used to watch as a kid on CBC was The Nature of Things hosted by David Suzuki.
Well I was just reading in the Montreal Gazette that Dr. Suzuki has a new autobiography (sorry I could not find a link to the Gazette's review).
For more on Dr. Suzuki click here.
apalazzo | May 19, 2006This week's question:
If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be?
That's tough. Perhaps the meaning of the word HUBRIS? But that's not really "scientific". I guess the easy answer would be evolution or global warming ... but to be honest I would be happier if Americans would show a little more curiosity with regards to the world we live in. This drive to find out more is what science is all about. I do believe that humans are inherently curious; however all too often that drive to learn and find out more is quashed at a very young age.
Why?…
apalazzo | May 19, 2006About two weeks ago I wrote an entry on what I hated about scientific journals. I intentionally did not include the issue of public access to publicly financed research, but it came up in the comment section. Interestingly Maxine, an editor at Nature, replied:
On the access problem mentioned here in the comments -- can't speak for other publishers but institutions almost always have site-license access to Nature which gives complete online access.
Nature ran a debate on this topic a while back which is free-access and can be see at:
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/index.html…
apalazzo | May 19, 2006Good news from RPM:
I just got word that the House of Representatives passed the FY2007 Budget Resolution which includes an amendment that ensures that all programs within the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill will be funded at FY2006 levels, including a 2% increase for inflation. This will mean the NIH budget will receive a $600 million increase. It is not the $7 billion proposed increase that passed in the Senate, but it's better than nothing.
To read more and to read a from the Genetics Society of America, see his latest post.
apalazzo | May 18, 2006While preparing for my talk, I guess I really missed the boat on this one.
So the question was:
Will the 'human' race be around in 100 years?
Well if it isn't around, it's only 'cuz it went somewhere else. (That would be a resounding yes.)
As for predicting the future. What shall I say?
- Major source of energy in 100 years? Fusion.
- Food will be mostly synthetic. With the excess energy from the fusion power plants we can easily produce organic compounds from CO2, N2 and H2O. Only the rich will be able to afford biologically derived food. The term organic will take on a new meaning.
- Will…
apalazzo | May 18, 2006Yesterday I gave a talk. Everything was fine although I thought I was a little wordy.
So instead of writing something I'll throw you a few pictures.
Here is a picture of a two cells that were microinjected with mRNA. The mRNA encodes a protein that is cotranslationally inserted into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and thus the mRNA itself is targeted to this same intracellular location. The cells were fixed 2hrs post-injection and then stained using a fluorescent probe the hybridizes against the exogenous transcript. This technique of labelling mRNA is called fluorescence in situ…
apalazzo | May 16, 2006From RamblingsThoughts of Prof Bil the Man: Protein Synthesis the film (it's a 37MB file off of a slow server, be prepared to wait).
Some background on the film from Bil's blog entry:
I gather that it was made in the early 70s and we have clearly learned a lot about protein synthesis since then. The funniest part for me is the description of the ribosome as an amorphous mass that assembles on the mRNA chain.
The introduction is by Paul Berg, future Nobel laureate, and he illustrates the state of the art in the understanding of protein synthesis. At the time, Professor Berg was the chairman of…
apalazzo | May 15, 2006You got a love blog entries that start like this ... "there are two types of scientists"
Yes I know I do it too. But categorizing is what the human mind does best and so in this vein I'll present to you "Robots and Independent Thinkers"
A friend from Columbia told me about this particular type of division of grad students and postdocs.
Robots do what they are told.
Independent thinkers do what they want regardless of what they are told.
The question is, if you were a Principle Investigator, which would you prefer? When current postdocs were asked this question they responded "independent…
apalazzo | May 14, 2006I'm in the lab on a rainy Sunday. This week I was too busy to really blog.
Fortunately other people had interesting stories ...
Ed Brayton discusses an interesting (but flawed) OpEd in the Wall Street Journal on the misplaced support of Inteligent Design by NeoCons.
Speaking of ID, here's an OpEd in Friday's NY Times on evolution and ID in the classroom.
Although some think that nuclear energy was a bad idea, I think that it's the undeniable future of our powersupply. And it's green. The NY Times editorial staff seems to agree. WIRED as well:
Solar. Wind. Hydro. As replacements for fossil…
apalazzo | May 12, 2006Well a good friend of mine is starting a virtual journal club, Science Sampler. We'll be 3 to 5 contributors and the entries will be about articles from the current scientific literature. From the website:
We read them so you don't have to!!! Comments on recent works in Cell Biology, from the cytoskeleton to membranes. And we also read yeast papers...
So far there are two articles reviewed on the site, including a review of the same STED microscopy paper that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.
The format of this virtual journal club will be based on the 5 minute men, a club at Columbia U.…
apalazzo | May 11, 2006I missed this. From the March edition of the Scientist. The top 10 in North America:
1. The J. David Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco
2. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle
3. US Environment Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC
4. Emory University, Atlantic, GA
5. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, NC
6. Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia
7. National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases, NIH, Bethesda, MD
8. Wadsworth Center, Albany, NY
9. Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
10. USDA…
apalazzo | May 11, 2006(from Daily Zeitgeist) There's a new Halliburton product for any CEO concerned about the upcoming apocalypse: SurvivaBall.
What is this crazy Brave-New-World device? From Halliburton's web site:
Most scientists believe global warming is certain to cause an accelerating onslaught of hurricanes, floods, droughts, tornadoes, etc. and that a world-destroying disaster is increasingly possible. For example, Arctic melt has slowed the Gulf Stream by 30% in just the last decade; if the Gulf Stream stops, Europe will suddenly become just as cold as Alaska. Global heat and flooding events are also…
apalazzo | May 11, 2006Gubernatorial Candidate, Chris Gabrieli, who made a fortune in the biomedical industry, has made a new pledge to support Stem Cell Research in Massachusetts. From today's Boston Globe:
Democratic candidate for governor Chris Gabrieli today will propose that the state invest $1 billion in embryonic stem cell research and life science research and create a new position of science and technology director, who would report directly to the governor.
''Stem cell research holds out the promise to be truly groundbreaking in treating diseases which are the most difficult and widespread such as…
apalazzo | May 10, 2006Blogs = web+log. I started writing one to force myself to write. Although each entry is stored out there in the either of the net, blogs tend to be transient creatures. But how about all those great entries those that are read for a week then ignored?
Well in my "About" section I've now included a list of such posts ... the Essential Transcripts.
Enjoy.
apalazzo | May 9, 2006Ah, back to work.
One thing I miss about being at the microscope is listening to NPR. A couple of hours ago there was a good piece on Here & Now about the gap between rich universities and poor universities. And it's not only that the endowment gap has increased, but the composition of the schools has also changed. With every passing year, students from lower income families make up less and less of the freshmen class.
Why?
Tuition, better pre-college preparation ...
We should be alarmed that in this day when education is a good predictor of unemployment and income that it's tougher…
apalazzo | May 8, 2006A great review of Dan Gilbert's first Book: Stumbling On Happiness in the NY Times Book review.
Gilbert is an influential researcher in happiness studies, an interdisciplinary field that has attracted psychologists, economists and other empirically minded researchers, not to mention a lot of interested students. (As The Boston Globe recently reported, a course on "positive psychology" taught by one of Gilbert's colleagues is the most popular course at Harvard.) But from the acknowledgments page forward, it's clear Gilbert also fancies himself a comedian. Uh-oh, cringe alert: an academic who…
apalazzo | May 7, 2006Seed is disseminating questions to its bloggers (I guess a la www.edge.org) so this week the question is:
If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?
The invention I would choose to uninvent? I spent the weekend asking some friends. Some answers were machine guns, the atomic bomb, spam, cars ...
Cars did strike something deep in me. Along the lines of Heathcote Williams' Autogeddon:
If an Alien Visitor were to hover a few hundred yards above the planet
It could be forgiven for thinking
That cars were the dominant…
apalazzo | May 6, 2006Yes it's the speech that has gone around the world via email.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias
And did you see that Colbert thanked Bill Kristol for helping him write the address? I personally got 7 emails with links to the ifilm's compendium of Colbert's little gig at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. And someone very dear to me has fallen in love with Colbert and his young dshing looks.
Here are various blog entries on the subject.
Mike the Mad Biologist and comments on Richard Cohen's OpEd (another comment on Pharyngula)
Dispatches From the Culture Wars
Strange Fruit I and II…