General Science

Mentoring

Curtis — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 11:08:17 -0700

This article is from June, but I had missed it. It's a very in depth article about what makes a good mentor. It's a bit of a long read, but it has lots of good information to think about.

p53 mutations

Curtis — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:03:32 -0600

Here's a new review about the functions of p53 mutations that also discusses the role of genetic background and cell type on the outcome of certain mutations. This review really exposes the complexity of p53 biology. I wonder if this much complexity is unique to p53 or just known about p53 because there have been so many studies?

Health 2.0

Curtis — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 11:50:18 -0600

The Economist has an article about "Health 2.0". They discuss online forums for discussion of health issues.

Neurocognitive correlates of "flip-flopping"

hal.berman — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 13:04:40 -0600

Not to be too political, but now we have the ability to screen young "potential-conservatives" and intervene before it is too late.

Remove Pecha Kucha and turn your presentations in poetry (and then sit the heck down)

hal.berman — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 15:14:59 -0600

Talk about a cure for head-nodding and auditorium slobber. How many people do you know that need to add a little Pecha Kucha to their presentations? I challenge all of you out there, next time you are up for a 45-min presentation, pull the "PK" card and then spend the remaining 38:20 minutes trying to actually have a little meaningful discussion.

Think outside the box (and yourself)

hal.berman — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:11:46 -0600

You have to love the occasional Science article that comes out of no where and involves relatively simple off the shelf equipment. This one is mind blowing for its implications. For most of us, and for the most part, our sensory perceptions are fairly accurate. And we experience few optical illusions during routine living. But this is now about to change. The day will soon arrive when all of us will be wearing computerized info-goggles. When this day comes, imagine the implications of a "sensory virus." In the short term, this technology may have a lot of commercial implications such as sensory rewiring for those in chronic pain.

Zotero - Replacement for EndNote?

Geoff — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:57:02 -0600

Zotero is a new extension for Firefox that looks like a great new challenger to EndNote. It is a free, open-source, platform-independent reference mananger that looks like it has a lot of great features. I haven't played around with it much yet, but when I do I will post a review in the blog section. I'd be interested to hear an opinion from anyone who has tried it.

Neolithic Gingivitis

hal.berman — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:11:42 -0600

Student finds 5000 year old chewing gum that may have been just the thing for those rotting, festering, purulent gums that come with never brushing your teeth. A little phenol probably did the trick and quite possibly came with bonus buzz. Nice field work.

Pilferage. In the Pipeline:

Geoff — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:34:28 -0600

Funny blog post about people "borrowing" reagents in the lab during grad school. My favorite experience with this was discovering that the "lab stock" of protease inhibitors was actually a post doc's private stock. This was discovered after I asked her if I could borrow some since the lab stock was gone. She promptly went to the same box I had been looking in (and taking from) and found that it was gone. My famous last words were, "Oops, I thought that was the lab stock......."

Sex and intelligence

Curtis — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 13:30:52 -0600

This link references quite a few studies about intelligence and sex. In short, smart and dumb people have less sex. The article discusses the possible reasons, both obvious and not so obvious.

On another note, the NY Times has an article about 237 reasons to have sex.