Academic research is pretty much funded by investigators panhandling, using the medium of grant applications. These suck up more than 50% of ones effort in times of poor funding. I’d like to propose a new method of grant applications: the 140 character limit Tweet. Dear Funding Body, Plz gimme sum munny. My lab iz broke […]
Sometimes I wonder where the breakdown in communication between scientists and journalists lies. In this article about a recent study on a DNA damage checkpoint enzyme, the Beeb describes the study as such: Research into how the human body repairs damaged DNA has been described as a “major breakthrough”. The way that cells protect themselves […]
All the elements of a good article: a horror story, some recent headway into the problem and written in plain English, albeit with the occasional technobabble. Plain english synopsis here.
While we’re blathering about science, the recent award of a Nobel prize to Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies made me remember how much I used to curse their blasted brains during the PhD years. You guys deserve a Nobel prize for making 3 years of my nascent scientific life hell. Then again, without […]
I’ve been thinking about the future1, my place in it, and my place in scientific research. Having bored myself silly with self-centeredness, I looked further afield. Back in July2, Professor Greenfield was deploring the lack of female scientists in the higher echelons of her profession. She makes a few fair points, but, as can only […]
Win what? Well, nothing more than a few months of hard work, hopefully followed by a nice wee paper… We’re in the mood for science on akatsuki talks rot. Perhaps this has come about since I’ve acknowledged that I will always be a mediocre blogger, but I could become a better science communicator if I […]
While I’m in a mini talk-about-science mode, have a look at the female hammerhead who didn’t need a male (Is anyone else bothered by the way these news articles never provide a link to the scientific article being quoted? I’ve had a cursory look at Biology Letters and can’t find it. This bugs me because […]
BBC picks up on the hot jet-lag study of the day: Sildenafil accelerates reentrainment of circadian rhythms after advancing light schedules, PNAS U S A, 2007. Some initial thoughts: It’s not so much that Viagra, saviour of many a marriage, is the new wonder-drug that will eradicate jet-lag a la melatonin, but that it works […]
Can anyone tell me what the hell an akatsuki enzyme is and why it keeps popping up in my keyword search1? Is this predicting the day that I discover a new enzyme and egotistically name it after myself? Or is it some crappy New Age bullshit treatment2? You will be sorely disappointed if you’re here […]
So, the kryptonite story is old hat now. But the article made me wonder why the makers of Superman Returns used “sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide” as the chemical formula for kryptonite when we already have an element named krypton (Kr), which they could easily have faked a compound name with. They missed a trick […]
akatsuki ra-ra-ra 