General Science

This is great news! I don't need to diet, I can just hang out with skinny people. Curtis has volunteered for anyone in need of skinny friends.

Here's a very nice article about p53 and aging. This group has crossed a mouse with 3 copies of p53 to a mouse with 3 copies of p14ARF. This enhances p53 signaling but maintains normal regulation. These mice have less cancer and an extended life span, possible through reduced ROS. It's a very thorough and extensive piece of work.

Maybe it is a sign that I'm getting a little long in the tooth, but I am astonished the day has arrived where an undergrad science project can be to sequence a genome. Wow.

I found this in the NY Times...a good description of some of the basic prinicpals underlying statistics. And, an interesting read about the end of humanity. What's not to love?

The scientist has a short editorial about tenure that has generated a lot of comments from readers. Do you think that tenure needs to change?

The Open Library just launched! This is a free and open library project brought to us by the people from Internet Archive. This is a very ambitious project to make books freely available online. Check it out.

This paper from Craig Venter's lab came out a few couple of weeks ago in Science Express. Many people have declared this a great breakthrough for science, while others have tried to downplay it's significance. I think it is a promising step forward in synthetic biology, as genome transplantation is key to the whole process.

This blog made me aware of a nice resource for cancer researchers. This NCI site lets you search for funding opportunities but also lets you search for grants that are already funded. For example, find out who has been funded to study breast cancer prevention.

I'm a strong proponent of electronic lab notebooks. I'm sorry that I missed this when it first came out, but the Nature editorial recently promoted the utility of electronic lab notebooks. Now all we need is one that is usable for academic labs.

A new study finds that oldest children have higher IQ's than their younger siblings. The article gets into some interesting details of the analysis.

What is your birth order?

I'm the younger of 2, so I don't necessarily agree with this study.