You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2009.
Here’s adorably corny Diane Bunce, a chemistry professor at the Catholic University of America, talking about the chemical science behind Thanksgiving dinner.
Description from the American Chemical Society (which produced the video):
The video, produced by the ACS Office of Public Affairs, focuses on traditional Thanksgiving foods, including topics such as:
• How does the pop-up timer in a turkey work?
• Why do muffins rise, even when made without yeast?
• Which antacids neutralize the most stomach acid?
Whole-genome sequencing is truly amazing. If every one of us were decoded tomorrow, scientists would no doubt figure out the cause of a slew of now-mysterious diseases.
The trouble is, doing it right (that is, thoroughly) is pretty expensive: the cheapest option right now is Complete Genomics, which does genome sequencing for $20,000 a pop for institutes willing to buy in bulk.
Researchers are now considering a cheaper option. Rather than sequence the 3 billion basepairs of the entire genome — 99% of which is ‘junk’ DNA — why not focus only on the regions that code for proteins, called exons?
This story falls into the category of ‘probably more amusing than it should be’. From the Wall Street Journal:
The list of things to avoid during flu season includes crowded buses, hospitals and handshakes. Consider adding this: your doctor’s necktie.
Neckties are rarely, if ever, cleaned. When a patient is seated on the examining table, doctors’ ties often dangle perilously close to sneeze level. In recent years, a debate has emerged in the medical community over whether they harbor dangerous germs.
Several hospitals have proposed banning them outright. Some veteran doctors suspect the antinecktie campaign has more to do with younger physicians’ desire to dress casually than it does with modern medicine. At least one tie maker is pushing a compromise solution: neckwear with an antimicrobial coating.
One afternoon last November, Joe Lucia and the 11 other students in the Islamic Art and Architecture course met in a drab corner of the ground floor of the Walsh Library, the inconspicuous home of the University Archives at Seton Hall University.
A few months earlier, rare books historian Todor Petev had discovered two boxes there, each holding about 20 loose pages from old Islamic manuscripts. Petev selected half that he found particularly interesting — for their age, place of origin, or religious significance — and it was these that his students had come to see. For the ever-curious Lucia, now a junior, the ancient leaves would lead to some remarkable discoveries, and a taste for life as an art historian.
The group sat at tables in the conference room, surrounded by iron busts, ornately framed maps, and carts of dusty books. The students delicately thumbed through the two boxes, marveling at the faded script from a 12th-century copy of the Qur’an and the torn edges of a 19th-century Arabic text about hygiene.
A 3-by-6 inch piece of glazed linen stood apart from the other items. It was the only leaf that showed not just text, but also an illuminated illustration: seven people gathered on a lush hill. On the opposite side of the print were a dozen black and gold lines of script.
Meet ‘The Novack Experience’, a Philadelphia cover band of earnest rockers who, oh yeah, just happen to be doctors and medical students. The energetic lead is Dennis Novack, 63, an internist and an associate dean at Drexel University College of Medicine. All of the bands featured in the clip competed recently in a med school ‘battle of the bands’ concert, covered by The Scientist.
How do they find time to practice?? Here’s what members of one of the other bands, ‘Freaks of Nurture’, said:
Despite the intense pressure of PhD programs and demands of med school, the band members have found support for their music among their academic mentors. After hearing the band play, “the chair said I should spend more time on my music,” laughed [band leader Alec] Schmaier. Being known as the scientist or resident who plays in a band has its benefits, say band members. In the sea of medical school students, having a unique hobby allows you to stand out in the crowd, said singer Ehimare Akhabue. The dual identity can have other benefits, added bass player Rob Fenning. Rather than getting grilled on the difficult questions during med school interviews, questions invariably veer to what it’s like to play in a band, he said.
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a cheap Zooborns knock-off post, right? Sorry, just can’t resist…
This is 3-month-old Kai, a baby hyena from the Denver Zoo. Despite their bad rap, hyenas are both intelligent and affectionate, Andrew says!
One night last month, on my way from Penn Station to Brooklyn, I came across two very different types of New York talent. I didn’t think it was possible, but these two made me love my city just a little bit more. Enjoy.
Researchers from Signature Genomics, a private clinical genetic testing company in Spokane, Washington, have found, for instance, that many children with autism inherit deletions in the 16p11.2 chromosomal region — famously linked to autism — from healthy parents with no sign of the disorder.
The findings debunk previous hype that any one variant is crucial for a particular disorder, the researchers say.
Everyone knows the shape of DNA: the iconic, graceful figure-8s of the double helix. If that ladder weren’t folded into some tight, three-dimensional structure, then the code for every cell in our body would be six feet long! Obviously, that just wouldn’t do.
Until recently, scientists had assumed that DNA folds into a sphere that looks like a tangled ball of yarn (above left). With this arrangement, it would be possible for genes that are close together on the ladder to actually be quite distant in 3D space. But last month, a team of researchers from Massachusetts — including Eric Lander, one of the leaders of the Human Genome Project, and now one of Obama’s lead science advisers — reported in Science that the structure is actually much more smartly organized (above right). From the MIT news office:
This architecture, called a “fractal globule,” enables the cell to pack DNA incredibly tightly while avoiding the knots and tangles that might interfere with the cell’s ability to read its own genome. Moreover, the DNA can easily unfold and refold during gene activation, gene repression and cell replication.
“Nature’s devised a stunningly elegant solution to storing information — a super-dense, knot-free structure,” says senior author Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute, who is also professor of biology at MIT and professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School.
For a lot more info about how this work was done, check out Science‘s podcast interview with first author Job Dekker, of UMass.
