apalazzo | March 16, 2006Early last year when the whole Larry Summers saga broke out, I posted some data on gender and science that was floating in the public sphere.
Here I've reposted some of this data. THEN I'll tell you some recent data from Harvard ...
From a NY Times article Feb 22nd, 2005Women in Physics Match Men in Success Dr. Ivie said the main reason fewer women made it to the top in physics was simply that fewer started at the bottom. At each job level, she said, the fraction of women matched what would be expected for women advancing at the same rate as men. And at top-tier universities, the percentage…
apalazzo | March 16, 2006(From a previous entry on my old blog)
After having written about the worst, why not write about the best things about science? Here goes:
1 - Discovery. One of the greatest feelings I've ever had as a researcher was peering down at the microscope and seeing something that I know has never been seen in the history of mankind. It's funny, the first thing you want to do is ... tell somebody. When my thesis advisor discovered that cells have different types of microtubules (a truly unexpected finding) it was the middle of the night. Apparently, he rushed off to explain the big discovery to the…
apalazzo | March 15, 2006The lack of posts in the past 3 days was caused by our departmental retreat, that takes place on the cape (i.e. Cape Cod) in March ... we usually aim to have the retreat during a blizzard, however this year we only had mild rain. All the talking and drinking with my peers in the Cell Biology department, made me think of a couple of posts that appeared in my previous blog ... The Worst Things About Science. So here they are (in no particular order):
1 - Being scooped. There is nothing worse than working your ass off for 4 years (much of it in the coldroom) when BANG! a paper comes out making…
apalazzo | March 15, 2006My brother posted some videos of the autonomous sumo wrestling competition he holds every year at Concordia University in Montreal. To see the videoclips from the 2006 (and previous) competition(s) visit robowars.ca.
apalazzo | March 14, 2006Ever wanted to see a minimally-invasive thoracic aortic aneurysm repair? Visit OR-Live, tomorrow starting at 4:00pm EST to see the whole operation live.
Yes live.
Not only can you watch them slice through the tissues but you can actuyally email the surgeon any questions you may have.
apalazzo | March 12, 2006
Fatty acid synthesis consists of tethering an an acetyl group (2 carbons) to ACP (Acyl Carrier protein) that then bounces around to 5 different enzymes to add 2 carbons to the end of the acetyl group. This process is repeated, each cycle resulting in the addition of two extra carbons. Eventually the long lipid chain is released from ACP resulting in a free fatty acid that is 16 (palmate), 18 (Stearate) or some other number of carbons long. To learn more on fatty acid synthesis, follow this link to a great summary from the Chemistry department at the University of Arkon.
In fungi these 6…
apalazzo | March 11, 2006I was way too busy to go to Jared Diamonds three talks, however I know someone who attended two of them. To read about "Master Diamond's" lectures, visit Tulula's Blog.
apalazzo | March 10, 2006BC has a new video (it took me a whole freakin week to notice!)
Check it out at the Bartholomew Cubbins on RNA blog.
apalazzo | March 10, 2006Last night, my wife and I had dinner with a friend of ours from the Szostak Lab (yes at Buddha's Delight - I had the "beef" taro stirfry).
There we discussed Capote (we just saw the movie) and the existence of ribose in a pre-biotic earth. Apparently it is unlikely that sugars, such as ribose, would have been in high concentrations in the hypothetical chemistry of primitive earth (see her PNAS paper). Although sugars are easily generated (spontaneously from formaldehyde), they decay very rapidly - thus at steady state it's likely that there wasn't much sugar around. Sugars form the backbone…
apalazzo | March 10, 2006My first retrospective!
OK, here is a collection of interviews I conducted over the past couple of months over Instant Messenger. No animals were harmed in this production (this statement was inspired by last night's dinner at Buddhas' Delight).
Have fun ...
Interview with Bil (aka The life of a new PI)Interview with a Crazy Scientist (aka The life of a wannabe PI)Interview with a Tall Medstudent (aka The life of someone who wanted to be a PI, and wokeup one day in the midst of his postdoc and said "that life is for suckers")Interview with my Dad (aka What is all the fuss about being a PI in…
apalazzo | March 9, 2006Ok time for a corny entry,
Some cuttlefish are red
Some octopods are blue
But PZ, on your B-Day,
This squid's for you!
apalazzo | March 8, 2006You can clearly divide scientists into two categories, those who build new models and those who prove old models. The explorers and the crusaders. Usually the former are seeking the truth, or something close to it, while the latter are trying to confirm their own theories as if the idea was more important than reality.
As you can guess, I do not have a high regard for the latter group. Unfortunately there are a lot of crusaders around. In some way we all are part of this second group to some extent, but inevitably it's always the first group, the explorers, who win in the end.
The problem…
apalazzo | March 7, 2006Want to study lava? From the NY Times ... Fudge, corn syrup, and whiskey will do.
And I love this quote about science conferences:
The poster session, which resembled a science fair for professional scientists, was dedicated to innovative lecture demonstrations.
New study out in PLoS on the spread of gene variants across the human population - NY Times article. I still have to look at the original article, but I'm sure others at Scienceblogs will comment on it (Evolgen).
OK on to local news. Two good OpEds in the Boston Globe on state support for biotech/biomedical/life sciences and the…
apalazzo | March 6, 2006Well in a previous entry I wrote:
Generally, prokaryotes are devoid of membrane-bound organelles (including the nucleus, mitochondria, the endoplasmic reticulum), and their cytoskeletal systems are quite simple.
And I got a comment about magnetosomes, small membrane bound organelles found in certain bacteria that contain magnetite crystals. These organelles are usually aligned in long chains that orient along the earth's magnetic field and help these critters to swim north or south. (Some examples of magnetosomes are shown on the left).
This comment (and my quote) reminded me of this great…
apalazzo | March 5, 2006For those of you in the Boston area, the author of Guns Germs and Steel, and Collapse is giving 3 talks at Harvard this week.
Wednsday, March 8
Continental differences in human history
Jared Diamond, University of California, Los Angeles
8:00 PM
Hall B, The Science Center, Harvard University
1 Oxford Street
Thursday, March 9
Problem solving by human societies
Jared Diamond, University of California, Los Angeles
12:00 PM
Fairchild Lecture Hall, Harvard University
7 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
Friday, March 10
A Surprise -- final lecture
Jared Diamond, University of California, Los Angeles
5:00…
apalazzo | March 5, 2006This topic is discussed in a recent article in Science.
And why would postdocs want to Unionize? Here's a survey of postdoctoral fellows done by the Sigma Xi Society (and my summary).
And from my "Worst Things about Science" (also see Part II).
Why do we tolerate the low pay, the long hours, the pain? (OK it's not that bad.) The reply goes like this "Dear student/postdoc/underling, one day you'll be a great PI (principal investigator, i.e. professor) and all your hard work will have paid off. I went through this, we all have to go through this stage, so now it's your turn to go through…
apalazzo | March 4, 2006Well I am trying to decide whether to attend this year's RNA Society Conference. As I'm a neophyte to the field (my PhD thesis was on microtubules in migrating cells), I learned quite a bit at last year's meeting. But it's going to be a hectic spring and summer for me. What to do?
As I'm flipping through the RNA Society newsletter, what do I see ... the mRNA song. Apparently this first appeared in Scott Gilbert's Developmental Biology.
The mRNA Song
Tune: YMCA
Student! I was once in your shoes;
Got no staining
On my Coomassie Blues,
All my training
Was just paying my dues;
I could not get…
apalazzo | March 3, 2006Well some discoveries are flashier than others. And to get the media's interest make sure your finding can be summarized with some catchy slogan and/or pun.
From a post on my old blog:
So my blog's been suffering from neglect. (I'm writing up a paper.) Hopefully it'll get in some journal, then I'll be a happy scientist! Speaking of happy scientist, check this photo out (to the right).
And why is he happy?
He not only just published a paper, but is on front page of Harvard's website. Check out the Harvard article, and the original article in Nature Chemical Biology. What a golden moment!
{…
apalazzo | March 2, 2006I just read a fascinating "hypothesis" in the latest issue of Nature entitled Introns and the origin of nucleus cytosol compartmentalization.
The greatest divide in the living world exists between prokaryotes and eukaryotes (yes I know, there are viruses ... but lets not get off topic!).
Generally, prokaryotes are devoid of membrane-bound organelles (including the nucleus, mitochondria, the endoplasmic reticulum), and their cytoskeletal systems are quite simple. These critters' genes do not have introns (aka junk DNA) and their genome does not undergo much recombination. If prokaryotes had a…
apalazzo | March 2, 2006A brief history of my life as a blogger.
I started about a year ago. Then being plagued by creationist ads, I moved my blog from Tripod to Blogspot. Everything was fine until (as one person later said) I was Degoogled. Finally after being invited to move to Scienceblogs, I ditched my old blog and ...
here I am.
Think of this blog as a daily "water cooler chat" with a Cell Biologist.
The focus of my current research is mRNA, the product of activated genes that is used as a template for protein production. Since mRNAs are copied from genes, they're known as transcripts, and hence the title…