The Futile Cycle

I’ve read a lot of Obsidian Wings over the past few years; I read it less now than I did in college, but I definitely loved the back and forth that went on there. So it made me quite sad to see that one of the bloggers (it’s a group blog) has passed away, leaving a final post that was uploaded after his death by his fellow blogger, hilzoy. For those that don’t know him, he’s quite an interesting guy: a libertarian American soldier, and a huge Babylon 5 lover. Clearly, a man who defies easy classification. Even though I’d never met him, I certainly will miss him. The internet is odd that way…

Derek Lowe has an excellent blog post on the scam of touting “natural” remedies as somehow better than “artificial” ones. Shame on the New York Times for not doing its groundwork; then again, what do you expect of the mainstream media, facts?

For all of you geneticists out there, here’s a nice quip from David Botstein, a yeast and former bacterial geneticist:

In Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes” and Endnote are synthetic lethals.

For the non-geneticists, a synthetic lethal pair of genes are two gene variants that alone are fine, but when combined into the same organism, cause it to die.

One thing that’s fascinating about the human brain is how adaptable it is. Whether it’s surviving being squeezed into a thin layer around a huge hole, or in this case, having images be piped through touch-sensing nerves on the tongue. (via Freakonomics)

2008. The past year’s been quite a blast!

Let’s see, I applied to three fellowships and eight graduate schools, visited four graduate schools and chose one of them, graduated from college with a degree (well, two) in chemistry, attended the first wedding I’d ever been to, took a trip to Madrid, moved from Boston to New Jersey, and entered graduate school to go for a Ph.D. in biology!

Along the way, I learned a whole heck of a lot of biology, from biophysics to cell biology to genetics and computational biology. I also discovered what may be differentially regulated protein localization in yeast gametes versus newly-formed zygotes. All in all, a very productive year!