are you SmarterThanThat?

Prove it by joining the SmarterThanThat.com facebook fan page (if you have one) here.

Posted in link out | No Comments »

Warning to all Youtubers

The legal battle between Google and Viacom seems to have fallen on the side against ‘the people.’  Google is being forced to turn over the veiwing records of every user (including IP addresses) to Viacom to ensure that no copyright infringments are taking place.

Because these infringements are almost assuredly taking place, a word of warning to all Youtubers out there, your privacy may be at risk.

Posted in business, link out, news | No Comments »

I heart Eppendorf

Definitely one of my favorite biotech supply companies, and they have a great sense of humor too.  I have a pipet-style pen and tee-shirt I got from my dad, who’s ex-student works for their US branch.

And this video is just too funny:

via The World’s fair

Posted in humor, link out, video | No Comments »

It’s about time

Why did this take so long anyway?

Posted in link out, politics | No Comments »

Competition in the Science Blogosphere

As science blogging is becoming an ever more popular way for scientists to communicate and express themselves, the pressure is mounting to bring the best bloggers to a particular site, as Coturnix has noticed.

I’m glad ScienceForums.net has a slice of science blog pie, and have watched with pleasure as Swans on Tea, and even my own little blog, have begun to grow some popularity.

I think the market is quickly becoming saturated with new bloggers, however, fairly soon only people who already have ‘celebrity’ status, and bloggers with original ideas will be able to capture the share of readership.

Currently, sources like Discover magasine are trying to capture on the success of Scienceblogs.com, and even recruiting their writers.  Blog hosting sites may have start offering greater incentive for bloggers to stay (*cough*).

Judging from the success of Scienceblogs.com, it appears that having a collaborative source for blogs seems like the way to go, especially for start-up bloggers.  There seems to be little point in investing in a domain name if nobody reads the blog.

This also brings up the interesting thought, that I expect we will have to deal with soon, of who owns the content posted in a blog, if the blog’s hoster isn’t the writer of the blog.

These types of issues and competition between blogging sites seems to be another thing that limits what blogs can do.

Posted in link out, musings | 3 Comments »

Science pessimism

Orac is pessmistic and depressed about the future of science and science-based medicine.  I share his concern, but am significantly more optimistic.  This is exactly the reason why I want to become an MD/PhD; to apply research directly to medicine.  I even wrote about it on my application essay.

I didn’t write it explicitly, but Orac and some other science bloggers played a big role in this decision.  So, Orac, don’t slip into dispair, you’re doing great work and reaching a lot of people in important ways.

Posted in link out, musings | No Comments »

Project: Make McCain exciting

As part of the the new Colbert report’s greenscreen challenge, the goal is to make presidential nominee seem more interesting. These are my two favorites:

Blue suede shoes edition:

This one is my absolute favority (vogue edition)

Posted in entertainment, humor, video | 3 Comments »

Research happiness

A while ago I posted a bit about my research woes.  Well, I’m happy to report that my efforts since then have been fruitful.  Creating the new constructs seem to have done the trick.  There must have been something wrong with the original recombinant plasmid I was using (one that I didn’t actually create myself, by the way).

I’d never thought I would be so happy about seeing a little purple band appear on a little peice of paper before, but that band indicates the right protein is getting expressed and I can see it via western blot.

Posted in microbiology, my research | No Comments »

DaveScot on Lenksi

DaveScot, an IDiologist who writes for the uncommondescent blog has claimed to have found a mistake in Richard Lenski’s paper. (which I first talked about here)

He points to a statement made by Lenski: (DaveScot’s emphasis)

However, selection requires heritable variation
generated by random mutation, and even beneficial mutations
may be lost by random drift.

And then points to a study done by the Scripps institute that would seem to contradict this statement:

The bold portion is patently wrong. Selection operates on any heritable variation whether random or not… The Scripps researchers, in a nutshell, discovered that E. coli, when stressed (such as running out of food as in Lenski’s experiment or in the presence of antibiotics in the Scripps experiment) selectively increases the mutation rate on certain genes.

What DaveScot has wrong (and I believe he was refering to this experiment) is that the study says that mutations are purposefully induced on specific genes.  However, the doesn’t say that only beneficial mutations are induced or that mutations were localized only to specific genes.  This is a case of an organism increasing the rate of random mutations, which is a good survival strategy for a population to increase its genetic diversity.  However, it does not appear to be the case, that the bacteria is select for their own survival.

So DaveScot is wrong in saying:

Thus the mutations in this case are not random but rather directed at a certain area in an attempt to solve a certain problem.

There is no basis to this teleological statement.  Bacteria aren’t attempting to solve a problem, not in the same humans do when we create a new medicine or drug.  They are simply increasing their genetic diversity (and probably not on purpose either, more likely in response to selection pressures), so that when antibiotics are around, the probability of a random mutation conferring antibiotic resistance is increased.

DaveScot FAIL

Posted in creationism, evolution, genetics, link out, microbiology | 9 Comments »

Richard Lenski responds

Thanks to bascule at SFN for this link.

Richard Lenski, whose groundbreaking work witnessed the evolution of citrate-using E. coli in a mere 44,000 generations over 20 years of work.

He responds directly to conservapedia’s ignorant creationism populace published by conservapedia (amazingly enough) here:

Lenski’s second letter is particularly good, filled with lots of good biochemistry, scientific philosophy and general good sense. A highly recommended read.

Discuss the exchange here.

Posted in biochemistry, creationism, evolution, link out, microbiology | 3 Comments »