apalazzo | March 26, 2006So I've been bumping into this idea on several blogs (idea? or is it a cult? ... I refuse to call it a meme, sorry Richard). I have some trouble understanding what it all means. Is it hard, as in hard core?
To help us understand the meaning of all this rhetoric, they (a bunch of hard core German Science bloggers) even have a manifesto:
I am a hard bloggin' scientist.
This means in particular:
1. I believe that science is about freedom of speech.
2. I can identify myself with the science I do.
3. I am able to communicate my thoughts and ideas to the public.
4. I use a blog as a research tool.…
apalazzo | March 26, 2006(from the archives)
Prodded on by my father, I read David Wick's Infamous Boundary, an account of the history of Quantum Mechanics and of the EPR controversy.
In the book, there is a nice passage about mentorship ... for those of you not in science, a large chunk of a scientist's career takes place under the gaze of a supervisor (or mentor), whose role is to guide and teach their underlings. Some cynics may add that mentors also claim credit for their underlings' findings ... but let's not go there ...
From the Infamous Boundary:
In collaborations among scientists at various stages of…
apalazzo | March 25, 2006In today's Boston Globe, Derrick Jackson echoes what we in the sciences have been worrying about. From his OpEd:
Nobel laureate and Princeton physics professor Joseph Taylor this month said on Capitol Hill that budget cuts will drive future astronomers to other fields or out of science altogether and ''other bright people will decide not to enter." Last week, Granger Morgan, the chairman of the Environmental Protection Agency's science advisory board, said on the hill, ''We all want environmental decision-making to be based on sound science. However, our nation is not investing adequately in…
apalazzo | March 24, 2006We've noticed that our cumulative knowledge of any individual process is inversely proportional to the number of researchers striving (i.e. contaminating) to gather data.
Take APC, no not that APC, but the Adenomatous Polyposis Coli ... too many people study the damn thing and ... who knows what it does.
And the Golgi? Who knows where it goes in Mitosis? (and frankly who cares)
But if our theory is correct, we're in big trouble. From the not so latest Molecular Cell:
The biomedical literature is growing at a double-exponential pace; over the last 20 years, the total size of MEDLINE (the…
apalazzo | March 24, 2006
Damn those Intellectual terrorists! Click here to read the rest of this episode of Dinosaur Comics.
apalazzo | March 23, 2006Well lets see where are budding endeavour has gone. 4 Scienceblog bloggers are heading this joint project. So far we have collected a measily 4 entries, a ton of comments/emails from disgruntled scientists, and a rusty can openner.
My favorite comment (so far) comes from a lab blog (Wow! I didn't know that some labs blog about freezer space journal clubs and other lab business). Here is what this self described molecular biologist has to say:
biochemists are friends of mine...and you can tell that Alex Palazzo at the Daily Transcript isn't a biochemist. Consider his biochemist entry in his…
apalazzo | March 23, 2006I was notified of this review in PLoS-Biology by Richard Robinson. It gives a nice outline of the current thought in the field and delineates the genes first vs. metabolism first views (although in my not-to-much-of-an-expert opinion, I don't think that the "metabolism first" theory is likely ... but what do I know.)
Ref: Richard Robinson. Jump-Starting a Cellular World: Investigating the Origin of Life, from Soup to Networks. PLoS Biology (2005) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030396
apalazzo | March 22, 2006Evolution biologists, ecologists, epidemiologists, earth scientists, herpetologists ...
I obviously didn't know what I was getting into when I posted the first of many Geek Taxonomy entries. This led to many disgruntled comments and emails from all the non-bench biologists. People wanted to know why I omitted their particular specialty. Look I can only make fun of those I know. Others complained "I'm a geneticist studying biomechanics of Xenopus eye deformation, with an interest in evo-devo". (more below the fold)
Very nice, but you used the word "geneticist" - that term implies a certain…
apalazzo | March 22, 2006Here's a site for you - Visualcomplexity.com
This site is the brain child of Manuel Lima who is now living in NYC (Edgar, you know this guy?). From the website:
Goal
VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web. I truly hope this space can inspire, motivate and enlighten any person doing research on this field.
All you…
apalazzo | March 22, 2006Yes this video has been going around. But if you haven't seen it ... from the vaults of SubGenius .... here'sReproduction Cycle In Lower Life Forms Under the Rocks of Mars
apalazzo | March 21, 2006I just read this interview with Allegra Goodman, author of the new book Intuition. What is the book about? From the NY Times:
A postdoctoral student at the Philpott Institute in Cambridge, Mass., has an astonishing result: a virus he engineered seems to cure breast cancer in mice.
Now the two lab directors, cautious Marion Mendelssohn and politically savvy Sandy Glass are arguing about what to do. Dr. Mendelssohn wants to take her time and make sure the results are correct before discussing them; Dr. Glass wants to make his move now, before a competitor hears about his work and beats him to…
apalazzo | March 21, 2006I have been often asked what the differences are between the various subdisciplines of the biomedical (or "life") sciences.
That's a tough question - but I'll give it a try ...
Biochemist:
Basically biochemists play with proteins. Usually this involves fancy machines that cost a ton of money. Proteins are subjected to centrifugation, electrophoresis, fast protein liquid chromatography .... Incidentally these techniques are just sophisticated ways of pushing and shoving proteins around. If enough proteins clump together, biochemists get excited and call the clump a complex. If the complex is…
apalazzo | March 20, 2006Although there is a trend in the life sciences towards big Biology, recently all the greatest insights have come from studies of single molecules. Some of the best work has come from Stephen Kowalczykowski's group. They have used single particle imaging to monitor how a single RecBCD complex unfold DNA.
Now in the latest issue of Nature, the Xie group, monitor the expression product of single genes in E. Coli. They perform this Herculean task by affixing the cells to small wells. When the gene (beta-galactosidase) is turned on, mRNA is produced and then translated into a secreted enzyme. In…
apalazzo | March 19, 2006Well I finally posted photos from the last bookclub meeting, although some call it the food orgy club.
Then someone alerted me that a new challenge was posted on the Socart blog. Paint and burn. Cool. Can't wait.
apalazzo | March 19, 2006I'm not a big fan of March Madness (for non-Americans March Madness is the term used to describe the huge college basketball tournament held this time of year). Why? Perhaps because I'm Canadian. Perhaps because I don't think the lure of entertainment money and collegial athletic glory is good for a school. The greed that comes with these programs brings havoc to the infrastructure of these educational institutions.
And there are the scandals to prove it.
So in a column by Derrick Jackson, in yesterday's Boston Globe, I wasn't surprised to see that the graduation rates for black college…
apalazzo | March 18, 2006OK a pet peeve of mine is how scientists are portrayed in the mass media (especially biologists aka those mad lab coat dressed, atheists who play god and create GMOs). Having said that, I just love Pinky and the Brain (although it's been about 5 years since I've seen an episode). But through the wonders of the internet (and random blog surfing) I present Brainie the Pooh via Youtube.
apalazzo | March 18, 2006 I got this email about the ribosome waltz, click here to listen to the mp3. And there's a lot more from where that came from, like this sweet song.
These ditties were composed and performed by Greg Crowther from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle and member of the band Science Groove.
And they say that scientists are boring ...
apalazzo | March 17, 2006After posting some microtubule stuff, it's time for an entry about mRNA.
RNA granules are very intriguing. They are thought to transport RNA in some cell types such as neurons or Oocytes, and store/degrade mRNA in other cell types. Recently the RNAi machinery is thought to localize to some of these dense structures too. How are the granules/processing bodies formed? Well it turns out that proteins thought to have prion like properties (TIA-1 and CPEB) may serve as scaffolds that support these granules. To read more check out this review in the latest JCB.
Ref: Paul Anderson and Nancy Kedersha…
apalazzo | March 17, 2006From the archives, here's a micrograph of a fibroblast (connective tissue cell) adherring to fibronectin coated coverslip. The cell was immunostained for regular microtubules (red) and modified detyrosinated microtubules (green, although since these are only partialy modified red+green = yellow).
Here are some strange crystals that appeared on my coverslip one day, I had just to take a picture: