Suffering from heart disease? Perhaps a daily dose of Monty Python will help. Do I sound crazy? Well, I guess that’s beside the point, so don’t answer that. But really, a good giggle might be just what the doctor should order.
Flyceum: Your Science. Your Career.
We’re following in the tradition of open discussions among scientists that has resulted in important advances in both science and society.
Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine
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Can We Skip the GRE Subject Test If It’s Too Expensive?
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Dear Dora,
Is it appropriate to contact a school and ask them (delicately) how much one of their criteria really matters? More specifically, I’m grappling with the GRE subject test. I’m working as a lab tech right now for a very miserly boss and coming up with another $150 on top of the many hundreds of dollars in application fees I’m going to have to pay is not going to be easy. I don’t want to lose out on one of my top choices because I couldn’t come up with the money for some silly test but at the same time it’s hard to justify the cost when I know I have other significant expenses coming. What should I do?
– Grant, Lab Tech
Sexual Identity and Autocrine Stimulation: Oh, To Be Teenage Yeast
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I picked today’s topic based on personal interest. As an overzealous undergraduate I came to Brown to work on a very similar problem, and so I was excited (yes, I still get excited despite staring down the barrel of my seventh year in graduate school) to see this article title in Current Biology:
Tearing It Up: Glycogen and Its Chemical and Biochemical Breakdown
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Not long ago, I was tasked with assaying for levels of glycogen in animal tissue. In most labs nowadays, glycogen is assayed by enzymatically hydrolyzing glycogen down to its component glucose monomers, and then enzymatically oxidizing that glucose in turn, producing hydrogen peroxide which can then react with a number of chromogens to produce a colored product.
How to Spot Sensational Headlines (Hint: They’re Everywhere…)
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This month for “Sensational Science” I wanted to dig into some of the nuances of what makes a claim “sensational” and how you can start to tell right off the bat. On the internet, we often look at the source. For example, an article from ACS Nano (where scientists converted dog poop into graphene) carries more weight than a chain email. The sensationalism comes from intermediaries. For example, a blog linking to the ACS Nano paper that says: “Alchemy is real! Poop converted to valuable nano material!” That’s where some of the digging and investigation needs to start happening. To illustrate this point here are three posts from the same intermediary source- a technology blog Gizmodo.
The Ethics of Mooching
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Dear Dora,
I go to a lot of seminars around campus that I have no interest in, many of which are outside of my department, simply to get food. Even though I sit through the talks, is there any ethical or karmic reason to stop doing this?
Mooch, grad student
On Wine, Sunburn, and the Tendency of Headlines to Mislead…
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If you’ve been reading “Mind the Gap” for a while now, you are probably aware of the fact that I am a fair-skinned lass from England. You will therefore understand my excitement when I saw the headline “Wine consumption can help prevent sunburn”. Not only am I fond of a corked cocktail every now and then, but I burn in the sun like an over-achieving moth in a flame.
Lab Safety Inspections: Passing the Torch to an Irresponsible Labmate
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Dear Dora,
Since she has been hired, my fellow research assistant has not showed up for or helped to prepare for a single lab safety inspection or audit. She is especially sloppy, and always leaves an un-kosher mess which if I do not have time to clean up before inspections, the lab suffers for. Her standard excuse is “I haven’t been feeling well” or “my memory has been bad lately”, and she has never responded to any of my requests or reminders. While I do care about her and empathize with her medical struggles, I have my own and even when I am not well it falls on me to pick up her slack, or take the heat when I forget to. I am leaving the lab in a few months to enter graduate school and am worried about who will pick up after her when I am gone so that my boss doesn’t have to take the heat. I have spoken to my boss, but he has not done anything. What more can I do to convince her to improve her habits?
–concerned technician
Which Came First: The Opossum or The Snake?
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The other day I was idly perusing the science and nature section on Netflix, trying to decide between people, animals, or dramatic landscapes. I settled on National Geographic’s Australia’s Deadly Dozen, and less than an hour later was utterly terrified of the continent. There are a gajillion venomous beasties there! Spiders, octopuses, fish, in the water, on land, in the wood shed, in your laundry, everywhere. And these things don’t mess around; their venoms usually kill within hours unless you get your bitten self to the ER in time to receive anti-venom (N.B. not available all colors or sizes).
Enzymes and the Problem with Cosmo Kramer’s Levels
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If I were to ask you- yes, all of you out there- what you thought was the cornerstone method for assessing changes in metabolism, and metabolic regulation as a whole, what would your answer be?
