Memorial Day

Uhhh ...

... am I missing something out of this article?

Inside many undersea hydrothermal vents, magnesium-rich rocks react with sea water. Such reactions create a heat source that could drive miniature convection currents in nearby pores in the rock, claim Christof Mast and Dieter Braun of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. They propose that such convection could concentrate nucleotides, strands of DNA, and polymerase, providing a setting that would promote replication.

Supposed model for DNA replication without life. Reading this it looks like they've found an environmental equivalent to the conditions found in PCR. Yippee. Only problem is ... where is that naturally-formed, pre-life polymerase coming from?

Back from the ASM 110th General Meeting

And all I have to say at the moment is ... I love San Diego, but the meeting was a huge disappointment.

So sad ...

... Boyzone news. I don't really care about Boyzone, honestly, I don't ... but this section had me a bit perplexed and amused.

The band reformed in 2007 and 2008, and the following year group member Stephen Gately died suddenly aged 33 while on holiday on the Spanish island of Majorca.

I didn't know death by "sudden aging" was possible! I'm not sure what the number 33 has to do with it ... just that whoever wrote this article was probably as enthused writing it, as I was reading it.

Crickets nom nom nom

Bugs as food.

Tuesday Video (May Not Be SFW)

Maybe smallpox wasn't so bad after all?

Found a link to the following article in my ASCP "Daily Diagnosis" e-mail newsletter.

The worldwide eradication of smallpox may, inadvertently, have helped spread HIV infection, scientists believe.

Experts say the vaccine used to wipe out smallpox offered some protection against the Aids virus and, now it is no longer used, HIV has flourished.

For reals?

To test if the events may be linked, the researchers looked at the white blood cells taken from people recently immunised against smallpox and tested how they responded to HIV.

They found significantly lower replication rates of HIV in blood cells from vaccinated individuals, compared with those from unvaccinated controls.

The smallpox vaccine appeared to cut HIV replication five-fold.

How?

The researchers believe vaccination may offer some protection against HIV by producing long-term alterations in the immune system, possibly including the expression of a receptor called CCR5 on the surface of white blood cells, which is exploited by the smallpox virus and HIV.

I wonder if it's possible to revive the smallpox vaccination program. Immunize those most at risk for the disease and then see if we can detect a drop in HIV rates of infection.

Environmental collapse by 2050

Fishless oceans by 2050.

"If the various estimates we have received... come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish," Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, told journalists in New York.

What?!?!

Seriously?

During sleep, the brain is in its most active state; anesthesia, on the other hand, depresses central nervous system activity. On the operating table, your brain is less active and consumes less oxygen -- a state of unconsciousness nothing like normal sleep.

Doctors do not know exactly how general anesthesia produces this effect.

Bold emphasis mine.

Note to self: Remain healthy.

I had not looked at it ...

... from this perspective.

BP’s incentives are obvious. A deep-sea oil well costs hundreds of millions of dollars to drill, so the company prefers to bumble through never-before-tried recovery efforts than destroy its investment. Furthermore, BP is probably hedging its bets—if it loses this well, lawmakers will likely ban it from drilling there again. In other words, if BP loses the well, it loses both the enormous sunk costs of drilling it and the expected cash flow from all the remaining oil. Thus, even in the midst of this crisis, BP appears to be just as concerned with protecting its shareholders as with stopping this catastrophe.

This is probably dead-on, and it annoys me to no end. Time to force BP to pull the plug on this whole operation and shut down that well immediately, using whatever means necessary.

Like a rainbow in the dark ...

... Ronnie James Dio dead at 67.

Tuesday Video

Idiot

Typical Phillies fan. Got himself tasered for going onto the field. I bet the cop was a Mets fan.

Warranted? Heck yeah.

Should I be honored?

So, I was recently asked to write a book chapter for a new book in the series "Methods in Molecular Biology". Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with the request:

1. The book chapter deals with work I did about 5 years ago, which means I'm 5 years behind on the literature.
2. In my line of work, book chapters count for ZILCH. Since it's not peer-reviewed, the bean counters at my agency don't care, and at this point I've already pretty much established my impact in this area so a book chapter won't help further.

Now, I've never written a book chapter and my ego is a bit pleased about the invitation. Plus, it's Methods in Molecular Biology, and I've poured over these volumes for my entire career. However I also know what a slog they can be, which really gives me pause. So I'm leaning towards rejecting the offer. However, if someone can give me a valid reason to consider it, I'm all ears (or eyes as the case may be).

Through the looking glass ...

Article found on Science Daily.

Understanding the behavior of Antarctica's ice sheets plays a fundamental role in our ability to build robust, effective global climate models, which are used to predict future climate. "These models rely on constraints imposed by data from the field," the co-chiefs pointed out. "Measurements of parameters such as age, temperature, and carbon dioxide concentration provide invaluable inputs that help increase the accuracy of these models. The more we can constrain the models, the better they'll perform -- and the better we can predict ice sheet behavior."

--. ..- . ... ... / .-- .... .- - / - --- -.. .- -.-- / .. ...

- --- -.. .- -.-- / -- .- .-. -.- ... / - .... . / .- -. -. .. ...- . .-. ... .- .-. -.-- / --- ..-. / - .... . / ..-. .. .-. ... - / -- . ... ... .- --. . / ... . -. - / -... -.-- / -- --- .-. ... . .----. ... / -.-. --- -.. . .-.-.-

..-. --- .-. / .- / .... .. ... - --- .-. -.-- / --- ..-. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . --..-- / -.-. .-.. .. -.-. -.- / .... . .-. . .-.-.-

.--- ..- ... - / -.-. --- .--. -.-- / .- -. -.. / .--. .- ... - . / - .... . / - . -..- - / .. -. - --- / - .... . / - .-. .- -. ... .-.. .- - --- .-. / - --- / --. . - / - .... . / --. .. ... - / --- ..-. / .-- .... .- - / .. .----. -- / ... .- -.-- .. -. --. .-.-.-

- .-. .- -. ... .-.. .- - --- .-.

Uhhh ...

... not much I can say about this one. So here's the link.

Phooey!

My first bad bit of news for the new year. I didn't win the election for Division Chair in one of my societies. Of course, that is not necessarily a bad thing, given the increased work load I would have experienced, but it does hinder a bit my ability to establish impact in my field. Getting elected would have shown that a majority (of those who vote at any rate) of my peers appreciate my efforts, enough to place me into positions of thankless and never-ending work.

I'll have to panhandle for some other position now I suppose. Anyone looking for an Associate Editor? Yeah, I'm a glutton for punishment.

I was for it ...

... but now I'm against it. We don't need more off-shore drilling if these sorts of things cannot be guaranteed to not happen. I cannot believe there are not more fail-safes on these rigs to prevent this exact thing. I mean honestly ... what part of 210,000 gallons of oil released a day into the ocean doesn't raise enough concerns to ensure that a FAIL-SAFE is put into place properly?

Read the following article ...

... today, about the tree that this little girl mentioned three times, and I've decided that I'm going to grab a new copy of Anne Frank's diary and read it again.

All of this ...

... over a phone?!?!

Sheesh.

Bio-diversity: Why does no one seem to care?

Or at least, none of the people who can really effect the outcome of the problem?

But they clearly haven't worked too well. The problem, says Butchart, is that while there have been lots of plans on paper, "they have been inadequately targeted, implemented and funded". There are lots of protected areas, but they haven't been given enough money and are not in the most biologically important places. More than 80 per cent of governments have promised to tackle invasive alien species, but fewer than half have done anything.

The report can be found in the April 29, 2010 issue of Science (PDF, 9 pages). And what does the report say? The factors leading to loss of biodiversity continue to trend upward, with no promise of slowing down. The major factors? They are as follows:

The majority of indicators of pressures on biodiversity show increasing trends over recent decades, with increases in: (i) aggregate human consumption of the planet’s ecological assets; (ii) deposition of reactive nitrogen; (iii) number of alien species in Europe; (iv) proportion of fish stocks over-harvested; and (v) impact of climate change on European bird population trends. In no case was there a significant reduction in the rate of increase ...

They also mention habitat fragmentation and mentioned a pretty alarming trend there as well:

... 59% of large river systems are moderately or strongly fragmented by dams and reservoirs ...

Fifty-nine percent? Ouch!

So what is their conclusion?

Our results show that, despite a few encouraging achievements, efforts to address the loss of biodiversity need to be substantially strengthened, by reversing detrimental policies, fully integrating biodiversity into broad-scale landuse planning, incorporating its economic value adequately into decision making, and sufficiently targeting, funding and implementing policies that tackle biodiversity loss, among other measures. Sustained investment in coherent global biodiversity monitoring and indicators is essential to track and improve the effectiveness of these responses.

Let us hope that this report does not fall on deaf ears.

Stop the madness!

New Arizona anti-immigration law will impact MLB.

Take, for example, this scenario: An 18-year-old from Venezuela playing in the rookie league jumps in a friend’s car to head to the grocery store. The friend rolls through a stop sign. A police officer witnesses the infraction. The law, signed last week by Gov. Jan Brewer, requires that “where reasonable suspicion exists … a reasonable attempt shall be made … to determine the immigration status of the person.” The Venezuelan player, accordingly, is asked to furnish paperwork proving his legal residence, a new burden of proof under SB 1070. If he happens to have forgotten his passport and work visa at home, his friend would get a traffic ticket and the player would get significantly more.

“Under that scenario,” said Mike Philipsen, the communications advisor for the Arizona Senate Republicans, who drew up the bill, “he could be detained.”

In other words, hauled off to jail, even though he is in the United States legally.

“I’ve never seen anything like that in the United States, and Arizona is part of the United States,” Kansas City Royals designated hitter Jose Guillen said. “I hope police aren’t going to stop every dark-skinned person. It’s kind of like, wow, what’s going on.

“I was 17, 18. I’d forget things. Kids do.”

Here is my question, under pre-SB 1070 laws, at what point could there be an inquiry into the legal status of someone? Was it only after they committed (or were suspected of committing) a crime? Seems that would have been sufficient, no? This new law seems to go a bit over the top.

Just imagine, you're a tourist in some country and you leave your passport in your hotel room. You get stopped on the street for no apparent reason and get hauled off to jail because you're suspected of being in the country illegally. That would suck, no? Same difference with SB 1070 if you ask me. When I've traveled out of the country, I didn't always carry my passport with me. If it got stolen or was lost, I'd be screwed, so I kept it locked up back in my room.

It never ends ...

... so I was telling a friend that I was trying to finish up a lot of busy work this week, so I could hammer out this manuscript. I made mention of the fact that I KNEW, just KNEW, that once I finished my busy work, more would crop up.

So, I handled my two reviews and sent them off. Next day? Two more show up in my email. Fortunately, one is a re-submit of one I have already reviewed, so I'll take it on, but damn. Does anyone ASIDE FROM ME review manuscripts any longer?

Ethanol is dead, long live butanol

Butamax.

BD: What about the production economics?

BuMx: Using our process, a 100 MGy corn ethanol will make 80 Mgy of biobutanol, but every fuel molecule will have 25 percent more energy, so its a balance. Also, with 16 percent butanol, you are getting higher concentrations of a higher energy molecule, so you are getting real improvements in fuel economy and efficiency.

Butanol vs. Ethanol (Infrastructure)

And I will readily admit to being a bit biased. I've already said I think our best bet would be to focus on butanol and scrap the entire ethanol talk.

I want ...

... N8. Sexy.

To screen or not to screen

So in my copious spare time, I've been approached to co-write a metagenomics grant. We have the RFA and we have our system (rhizosphere). Now comes the fun part. Sketching out years 1 through 5, experimental design, and budget. If we're successful (we need to get past the "Letter of Intent" stage first), we hope to fund a post-doc to run with this project. I'm thinking that we start off with a good 16S rDNA deep sequencing run or two to establish the major players in our system, and follow that up with a metagenomic sequencing run. I favor the shotgun approach, just sequence everything we come up with and take it from there. I know other folks like the screening approach and only going for things that they think will be beneficial to know about. Off the top of my head, I can't think of an easy screen for our system, and while it'll be a lot of extraneous info to mine (and a more expensive proposition) I think it'll be worth it. From there, I hope to move us into transcriptomics which I think has the benefits of metagenomics while also giving us "real time" data on how the organisms are responding to environmental conditions.

Should be fun. Now I have a couple of days to put my letter of intent together.

Snippets

1. Good! So a Navy SEAL punched a terrorist, and the first SEAL was up for charges of not stopping it. Big whoop. Good news is, the tribunal wasn't phased. The only thing he should have been charged with IMNSHO is not letting the low-life get punched more! RIP Scott Helvenston.

2. Really Arizona? Really? If you wanted to be the laughingstock of the US, kudos. You earned it!

3. NEWSFLASH! The Sun is hot. Like, totally hot.

I like it ...

... remove divisions from baseball entirely.

Relax ...

... too many deadlines. Too much self-inflicted anxiety, too much, too much, too much. But not enough blogging. I'll get to it eventually. I hope. :)

I just love when ...

... in the beginning of your paper you talk about processes A & B and how they can negatively impact the environment, then you perform biological assays to measure A & B and show that in this particular instance, they don't amount to much ... but then you have to go on and say "Well, despite showing that there is almost nothing here, we went ahead and quantified just how much of the genes which encode for processes A & B were present anyways."

I mean, as if it makes any damn difference. Well, I suppose that's what I need to figure out now ... where COULD it make a difference? Maybe if we tweaked environmental condition X, and/or Y, and/or Z? I suppose I'm in a somewhat interesting position because while processes A & B don't appear to be going on at any high rate, the genes which are responsible are found in fairly high abundance. Why? In at least one case I have no idea, but I'll be damn sure to pull something out of my butt before all this is said and done.

This is why I hate projects that I walk into when half of the data has already been collected and they want me to get one of those "quick pubs". No doubt it'll go in somewhere, but it's not really what I wanted to be futzing with.

And to compound the fun ... another review showed up in my mailbox yesterday! Just two attachments ... not even text in the body of the email they were delivered in. Fortunately for them, I didn't just delete the email ... which I usually do when nothing but an attachment from a person I don't know shows up in my email box.

Dirt!

Just received this in my email today:

Dirt! The Movie is coming to you on PBS - Tuesday, April 20th at 10pm!

Check it out if you can.

You know what's a pain in the rear?

Buying flowers. DO. NOT. LIKE.

ETA: And by "DO. NOT. LIKE." I mean "thrilled with the response they generated". Lesson learned ... don't sweat the specifics and go with the flow.

Vid

What's wrong with me?

Why, when I'm trying to finish a manuscript, did I accept two manuscripts to review? Could I really be this desperate to put off writing?

On the plus side, I received a promotion last week. Woo hoo! What does it mean? It means I'm now eligible for international travel, and can submit proposals for agency post-doc lines. Doesn't mean I'll get either, but it's nice to know I can throw my hat into the ring now.

ETA: One review down. One more to go (fortunately it's a resubmit).

Day three ...

... of work in the field.

Today, I found out that I'm pretty much immune to fire ant bites. Didn't exactly set out to test that theory, but I managed to step onto a mound when collecting soil samples. Had ants covering my leg up to my knee by the time I realized it, had a few bites and stings but they haven't welted up yet (6 hours later) and I doubt they're going to at this point.

I do have a nice bruise underneath my ribcage, and blisters on both hands though. With the lack of rain those soils were dry and compact!

Thursday Funny

Thursday Video

Honestly ...

... what were these people thinking?

They had given him the trip as a graduation present. Anne Rucker told CBS4.com she knew about the reported violence in Mexico, but she thought her son would be safe in such a populated tourist area.

They're killing people in Mexico in BROAD DAYLIGHT! What made you think a crowd of people would make things any safer?

Sheesh.

Stay out of Mexico.

A lot of writing ...

... but very little blogging. The push is on to get my latest manuscript ready for submission. All the figures and tables have been polished to a nice sheen, and now the text needs to be brought into line. Add to this that mid-year evaluations need to be submitted by the end of the month and I'm a busy fellow. Which means a drop in my blogging rate.

I'm sure I'll blurt something out now and again, but it won't pick up in earnest until this paper is out the door.

You ever have ...

... one of those moments where you do something (it was harmless, honest) you were probably better off not doing, and then following it up with saying something totally stupid because you were then massively flustered?

Yah, that explains the first half of my weekend. The second half was spent kicking myself.

Antibiotics ... Bueller?

They are no longer the "cure all" people think they were. Illustrated by this article.

By late March, Mr. Armbruster, then 78, was dead. After a series of postsurgical complications, the final blow was a bloodstream infection that sent him into shock and resisted treatment with antibiotics.

Not until the day Mr. Armbruster died did a laboratory culture identify the organism that had infected him: Acinetobacter baumannii.

The germ is one of a category of bacteria that by some estimates are already killing tens of thousands of hospital patients each year. While the organisms do not receive as much attention as the one known as MRSA -- for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- some infectious-disease specialists say they could emerge as a bigger threat.

Also ...

Meanwhile, New York City hospitals, perhaps because of the large numbers of patients they treat, have become the global breeding ground for another drug-resistant Gram-negative germ, Klebsiella pneumoniae.

For Gram-positives we need better drugs; for Gram-negatives we need any drugs. - Dr. Brad Spellberg, author of Rising Plague

Smart Cookie

This post isn't as much a rag on Tim Tebow, as it is a brag on Sam Bradford.

According to The Palm Beach Post, Tebow scored a 22 (out of 50) on the Wonderlic test, supposedly a barometer for intelligence. The average for NFL QBs is 24, though expected starters in 2010 averaged out close to 28.5. The last seven Super Bowl winners? They come in at 30.1

Bradford? A 36.

If anyone claims to have had ...

... West Virginia, Butler, Michigan State, and Duke in their Final Four, I'd say you were a liar.

Who did I have?
Kansas (winning it all)
Kentucky (in the Championship against Kansas)
Duke
Vanderbilt

Yah, I was close!

Two words ...

... why I'm stoked to be getting my NetFlix disc for my Wii today.

Lucy Lawless

NetFlix has a Starz channel with instant view. Already saw the first episode of Spartacus, and it's alright.

See! I told you Facebook is not good for you ...

Use Facebook, Get Syphilis.

Professor Peter Kelly, director of Public Health for NHS Tees, said: "There has been a four-fold increase in the number of syphilis cases detected, with more young women being affected."

He said staff had found a link to social networking sites among those infected.

Prof Kelly said: "I don't get the names of people affected, just figures. And I saw that several of the people had met sexual partners through these sites.

"Social networking sites are making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex. There is a rise in syphilis because people are having more sexual partners than 20 years ago and often do not use condoms."

Ebay

The site which allows you to replace* the memories of your youth that your parents callously discarded.

*For a fee.

But what are we going to eat?

In two years, you won't be eating Atlantic Bluefin Tuna.

Unworkable and unfair? In two years lets revisit the issue and see how unfair it really was ... to the tuna.

Athabasca depends ...

Don't you want to see how it ends?

An expert on the fate of the cosmos and co-author with Greg Laughlin of The Five Ages of the Universe (Touchstone Books; 2000), Adams predicts that all this dead matter will eventually collapse into black holes. By the time the universe is 1 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years old, the black holes themselves will disintegrate into stray particles, which will bind loosely to form individual "atoms" larger than the size of today's universe. Eventually, even these will decay, leaving a featureless, infinitely large void. And that will be that—unless, of course, whatever inconceivable event that launched the original Big Bang should recur, and the ultimate free lunch is served once more.

Bummer, huh? It gets better ... as the universe is 30 times more "run down" than previously predicted.

Dr Lineweaver said that the next step in the research is to out how close we are to maximum entropy, how much entropy is being produced and how much time we have left before the universe and all life in it dies in the inevitable heat death.

That quote was what led me to the originally cited/quoted article in this blog entry.

Of course, as mentioned ... we're still a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years from this happening. Then again, we could always sterilize the Earth a few trillion years ahead of schedule making the universe a very empty place for all that remaining time.


*Blog entry title is a hat-tip to the Tragically Hip and their song "The Depression Suite".

The stupid ... it still burns.

Woman wants to weight 1,000 pounds.

Read the following quote, and at first I omitted the first "and" in the quote, which sort of made things a bit humourous and caused me to stop at "people" (but honestly, at her weight, it's quite feasible).

“I love eating and people love watching me eat,” she says. “It makes people happy, and I’m not harming anyone.”

Oh, it gets better ...

Simpson’s main source of income to support herself financially is by appearing on a Web site where men pay to watch videos of her gorging on food and showing off her hundreds of pounds of extra bulge in a bikini.

I think I may lose a few pounds after I barf.

The article does a good job ripping into her. Too bad it won't have an effect on her weight.

ETA: Yah, I guess I need to add the link.

ETA: Oh sweet Jesus ... whatever you do, do NOT click on the slideshow. Damn you FOXNews!

PS: What's the over/under on her remaining lifespan? I'd say we put it at 6 years. Now who's going to remember to check?

Box plots

So I am in the process of putting together a manuscript my lab has been working on over the course of the past few months. We've done a lot of quantitative PCR to get at an integral question about an environment we've (the royal 'we') been interested in for years. So, the first order of business I do is put together all my figures and tables. The tables were easy peasy, and most of the figures were too. I've come to the qPCR data however and I had a couple of options. I could do the data as tables or I could do figures. The journal I'm sending the manuscript to has no problem with an excess of tables (I've seen manuscripts with up to nine tables and no figures) but I don't like them.

Now, if you look at a lot of qPCR manuscripts, people use columns, which I suppose is fine because you'll see the mean and standard deviation ... but you also lose a lot of data. I mean, say your Y axis goes from 1 to 100, and the mean goes to 65. You know, probably for a fact, that you didn't have a reading of 0, or 1, or 2 ... but there is that area ... shaded out as a part of your column. Not really accurate, right?

So I've become enamored with box and whisker plots. They really do give you more information than your traditional columns graph. Just take a look at the figure below as an example.

Which one gives you more information?

Now, there are ways to make the box and whisker plot even more descriptive (I'm using the Analyze It! plug-in for Excel), but on the face of it, I think the box and whisker plots are a great tool for presenting qPCR data. So I looked to see who presents their data that way ... and almost no one does.

So, what am I missing here? Is it really a good way to present qPCR data, or isn't it? If it is, why isn't anyone else doing it? If not, what is the best way to present the data?

So much for those ...

... relaxing walks on the beach.

The man was walking or jogging along Palmetto Dunes when the Experimental Lancair IV-P plane hit him Monday evening, said Hilton Head Island fire and rescue spokeswoman Joheida Fister.

What a way to go.

Currently ...

Listening To

If this school district really is worried about ...

... student safety, then I hope they don't plan on having a prom next year, or the year after, or the year after that. You know, to be consistent.

"However, at this time, we feel that it is in the best interest of the Itawamba County School District, after taking into consideration the education, safety and well being of our students."

There are lots of articles detailing after prom tragedies, so it's only prudent that this school district ban proms henceforth.

I went to the prom my junior year. It stunk. I skipped it my senior year to run in our sectional track and field championships (200m, 800m, 1600m - a very strange combo, I admit). I don't regret it for a second.

I seriously doubt my dogs ...

... would appreciate traveling with me in this fashion.

Whatever it takes?

Why can't politicians give a straight, honest answer? Have recent scandals not taught Pelosi anything? Just say you knew about things in October when asked. No need to lie and say you didn't find out until February. I'm sure Pelosi will try to wriggle her way out of this little jam, but it just goes to show ... Congress isn't about doing the ethical thing, it's about doing the agenda thing.

Could this be a good thing?

Campaign finance reform, lobbying reform, and clean-up of governmental corruption key to 2010 elections.

He came to the White House on Wednesday for a quiet meeting with the president's senior adviser, David Axelrod, to express a fear that Republicans are seizing the high ground on cleaning up Washington, on issues such as the ethics probe of Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-New York.

Having both the Democrats and Republicans working on this issue is a "Good Thing" if you ask me. My hope is that they can put together some bipartisan efforts to enact real reform instead of delivering us nothing more than soundbytes and worthless legislation.

Pressed on whether the president is doing enough on lobbying and campaign finance reform, Hildebrand said, "I don't think anyone in Washington is doing enough on this."

You got that right.

Think about it

Huh?

Furor over milk-aholism.

Lindsay Lohan is suing New York financial company E-Trade, insisting that a boyfriend-stealing, "milkaholic" baby used in its latest commercial is modeled after her, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

I've seen the commercial, but until I read this story, I never linked the baby milk-aholic named Lindsay to the trainwreck that goes by the name Lindsay Lohan.

Of course, now that Lohan has made that connection for me, everytime I see the commercial, I now will make that connection.

Good job!

Food for thought

How to monitor your diet.

What?

Similar items?

I wonder ...

... how easy it would be to cut China out of the internet. They're obviously a bit of a problem. Perhaps a month or two of being cut out would force their hand to crack down on the issue (or as the case probably is ... of decreasing their cyber-warfare).

Get Over It

by: OK Go

Lot of knots, lot of snags, lot of holes, lot of cracks, lot of crags.
Lot of naggin' old hags, lot of fools, lot of fool scum bags.
Oh it's such a drag, what a chore ... oh your wounds are full of salt.
Everything's a stress and what's more, well it's all somebody's fault.

Hey!
Get, get, get, get, get over it!
Get over it, get over it.

Makes you sick, makes you ill, makes you cheat ...
Slipping change from the till.
Had it up to the gills ... makes you cry while the milk still spills.
Ain't it just a bitch? What a pain...
Well it's all a crying shame. What left to do but complain?
Better find someone to blame.

Hey!
Get, get, get, get, get over it!
Get over it, get over it.

Got a job, got a life, got a four-door and a faithless wife.
Got those nice copper pipes, got an ex, got a room for the night.
Aren't you such a catch?
What a prize! Got a body like a battle axe...
Love that perfect frown, honest eyes...
We ought to buy you a Cadillac.

Hey!
Get, get, get, get, get over it!
Get over it, get over it.

Tuna?

Maybe, maybe not.

Currently ...

Playing

A fun RPG. In my opinion, the NDS seems to be one of the best ways to present RPGs*, though I really did love the Baldur's Gate and Champions of Norrath games on the PS2. Heck, IMNSHO nothing beats a well done RPG on any platform.

*Of all the games I've played on the NDS, for me the NDS is best suited for RPGs and turn-based tactical games.

Duuuhhhhhh

When you multi-task, you become dumber.

The cult of multitasking would have us believe that compulsive message-checking is the behavior of an always-on, hyper-productive worker. But it’s not. It’s the sign of a distracted employee who misguidedly believes he can do multiple tasks at one time. Science disagrees. People may be able to chew gum and walk at the same time, but they can’t do two or more thinking tasks simultaneously.

I have dual monitors on my desk (well three actually, if you count my linux box that I use for bioinformatics) and one of them has Outlook open on it essentially 24/7. Perhaps I need to rethink having constant access to my email. That would also mean shutting down my BlackBerry Bold 9700 -- a truly sweet little device -- but it may be a sacrifice I need to make for the sake of productivity.

According to a study done by Oklahoma State University (PPT, 28 slides), checking email four times a day, at prescribed times (regime C4, see slide 19), led to the most efficient handling of email and work.

That Chilean earthquake ...

... really made a mess of things!

“The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second),” Gross told Bloomberg in an email. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 3 inches.”

If my university ...

... decided to make Admiral Ackbar its mascot, I have no idea what I'd do.

Making asparagus a choice for mascot also isn't high up on my list either ... and it doesn't appear to be high up on the school's list either.

How?

I do not get.

Two Royal Air Force (RAF) Typhoon jets were scrambled to assist an American Airlines passenger plane shortly before it landed at London's Heathrow airport on Tuesday after a woman attempted to gain access to the flight deck.

How exactly do air force jets "assist" a commercial plane? Or by assist do they mean "hang around to see if they have to shoot the commercial plane down in case the cockpit is breached by a crazy" type of assist? Got to wonder how much it cost to scramble those jets, and if having an air marshal on board would have been the better -- and more economical -- option.

Totally ...

... hilarious.

PS: May only be funny if you're a Mets fan.

Mr, Klein gets it wrong ...

... right here. At least where it pertains to the cost of freedom. I agree with his assessment that we're putting too much of a burden on our soldiers, and this is at least a factor -- if not the most important one -- in the increased suicides of those in our military. Where he runs off the rails though, IMO, is with this comment:

... there is no way that a democratic Iraq can be worth the losses that we, and the Iraqi people, have already sustained.

Really? If the citizens of the United States suddenly were stripped of all their freedoms, Mr. Klein would argue that the cost would probably be too high to regain those freedoms? Or does it only apply to Iraqis?

What are you reading?

Effects of plant and influent C:N:P ratio on microbial diversity in pilot-scale constructed wetlands (pdf, 9 pages)

Abstract
Microbial processes within the rhizosphere of constructed wetlands are crucial to wastewater treatment, but the relation between microbial community diversity in rhizosphere, plant growth and water quality are unclear at present. The effects of plant growth, water C:N:P ratio and their interaction on microbial diversity in the rhizosphere were studied in synthetic wastewater in planted and unplanted wetlands during three different seasons. The physiological profile of microbial community-level in each wetland was assessed using substrate utilization patterns gathered via BIOLOGTM ECOplates. Plant had a significant effect on AWCD parameter, since the planted wetlands usually had a higher the total microbial activity than the unplanted over the study period. The Shannon, Simpson and McIntosh indices in the planted wetlands were apparently higher than those in the unplanted wetlands under any C:N:P ratio influent condition especially in summer. It was also shown that the unplanted wetlands have a greater shift of the interstitial microbial community than the planted at different seasons, since plant rhizospheres produce a more ecologically stable system in order to resist against shifts in microbial community composition in response to C:N:P ratio change in wastewater. Principal component analysis and clustering analysis indicated that influent C:N:P ratio would induce similar microbial species in the planted wetlands and detach them from the unplanted wetlands.

Stewardship

Companies have an obligation to the people who surround their holdings. The government has an obligation to the people to make sure the company honors its obligations. Unshackle the EPA.

Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.

Totally unacceptable.

How did this happen?

The court rulings causing these problems focused on language in the Clean Water Act that limited it to “the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters” of the United States. For decades, “navigable waters” was broadly interpreted by regulators to include many large wetlands and streams that connected to major rivers.

However it's being argued that ...

But the two decisions suggested that waterways that are entirely within one state, creeks that sometimes go dry, and lakes unconnected to larger water systems may not be “navigable waters” and are therefore not covered by the act — even though pollution from such waterways can make its way into sources of drinking water.

Bold emphasis mine. This pollution will still make its way into sources of drinking water.

I repeat again: HSUS is a farce

I'm on record as saying before that the HSUS is a farce. They're a lobbying group, they are not a humane society. Any money you give to them, in the hopes that it will improve animals lives, will be completely wasted.

h/t: GrrlScientist

Ugh

Comment posted over at VWXYNot?

Total heartbreak of a hockey game. After regulation, I thought momentum was on our side, and hoped that if we could at least get through overtime, Miller would make the difference in a shoot out. Alas, it was not meant to be. *sigh*

Congratulations Canada, and while we leave with the most medals, Canada certainly owned the top of the podium with a record setting number of gold medals. You hosted a fabulous Winter Olympics, and you should be proud.

Well, there's always next ye ... uhhh, Olympics.

Go for the Gold!

Canada has locked up the gold medal count for the Olympics, and a "Congratulations" is in order for them. However, that does not mean that we need to let them finish with another in Hockey. It's the 50th Anniversary of the US upset of Canada at the Olympics in Squaw Valley, and it's the 30th Anniversary of the US shocking of the world to win the Olympics in Lake Placid in 1980. It's time for another upset (even though they're all professional hockey players now). Come on USA! Win one more gold for the USA in these Olympics!

Natural Disaster Juxtaposition - Haiti and Chile

Good read here. How does the world ensure that such things cannot happen again? Do we pick up Haiti by its bootstraps and ensure that everything meets acceptable codes as the country rebuilds? Where does Haiti find the money and appropriate manpower to enact such rebuilding efforts?

I cannot see Haiti being anything but a mess going forward for a long time. It's also possible, IMO, that Haiti may wind up falling into total chaos and governmental collapse. Who steps in then? The United Nations? The United States? I think we simply cannot afford to "take over Haiti" though I would hazard a guess that a majority of Haitians are hoping that we do that very thing.

Haiti as the 51st state anyone?

And before people start claiming "The end times are here!", I came across this page at the USGS yesterday. The earth is rocked by at least one quake of the magnitude that Chile experienced a year. Over a dozen rock the earth at the magnitude of what happened in Haiti ... so the sky isn't falling.

Why I love astronomy ...

... it's because of things like this. Around 6 seconds in, you can see a couple of Saturns moons pass in front as well. Perhaps other people don't get geeked up about things like this, but I'm just amazed that we live in such a dynamic universe.

Video of the Week

This funk band is hilarious. Song isn't really suitable for children though.

I did not ...

... like reading this article. Why? Because it's too darn sobering.

Even according to the White House's new budget projections, the gross federal debt in public hands will exceed 100 per cent of GDP in just two years' time. This year, like last year, the federal deficit will be around 10 per cent of GDP. The long-run projections of the Congressional Budget Office suggest that the US will never again run a balanced budget. That's right, never.

Twenty political idiots ...

... most you'll have heard of, some maybe not. All are responsible for digging this country -- and all of us -- into a great big mess it'll take years, possibly decades, to dig out of.

Not a fan of the IRL

But I'd watch a few races to see this car in action.

Algae at the pump

Two to ten years away.

There’s a material divergence of opinion on the timelines for algal commercialization. Groups are generally in the 10-year camp or the 2-3 year camp. In the ten year camp we find researchers such as Ron Pate, but also companies such as ExxonMobil and Sapphire Energy. Sapphire’s commercialization path aims for 1 billion gallons in the 2020s, while ExxonMobil’s biofuels chief Emil Jacobs has candidly discussed algae in 10-year timelines. Although the National Labs have occasionally been chided for thinking in “elongated timelines,” there are major commercial players thinking in the same time frames.

PLFA

Does anyone know of a core facility/commercial lab that does PLFA analysis?

Tap water safety

A study out of Canada is hypothesizing that tap water could be a source of at least one virus that annually plagues Canadians: Norwalk virus.

University of Toronto researchers, comparing Norwalk outbreaks to river water flow and lake temperatures, theorize that a near-endless "feedback loop" sends the virus from human waste to surface waters, then to water treatment plants that are unable to eliminate the bug, and finally back into household faucets.

How to stop the cycle?

The theory, if proven, raises the question of whether tap water should be treated with ultraviolet exposure, virtually the only way to kill the hardy viruses, the researchers say.

Yet another reason for me to eschew water and stick to drinking Coke Zero.

1000!

I simply cannot believe that this is my one thousandth post! It's hard for me to fathom that I've had this much to say in the past few years that I've been blogging. Additionally amazing is that over the past two plus years I've actually averaged over a blog post a day. Now, most of it is rather inconsequential ... but it's still a bit amazing that I've stuck at it for this long!

When I started this blog I was finding my way along in the agricultural/environmental sciences. Coming from a medical microbiology background I knew more about the Krebs Cycle than the Nitrogen Cycle (I still have a diagram I made my first week at work taped next to my monitor ... right next to a soil texture triangle) and I was more than a bit intimidated by my new surroundings. At that time I was also being transitioned in biofuels research, and this blog started out as Biofuels! to serve as a repository for links on the subject that I found interesting. During these couple of years I've found firmer footing in my research areas and I don't feel weird calling myself an environmental microbiologist at this point (though I'd stop short of calling myself a microbial ecologist ... that is going to take a lot more training).

So now, four years (I did start the blog at the end of 2006) into this "experiment" I'd say I'm entirely on a different road than I was when I started. Tenured, maybe a bit more mature, and definitely more seasoned ... I'm looking forward to continuing onward for as long as I can (I'm still considering my resolution to strive to post more relevant material).

I'd like to thank everyone who has come along and contributed to the discussion, I appreciate it ... and it has certainly helped me continue on this journey. Thank you!

Currently ...

Listening To


Here Come the Mummies, a great funk band I just stumbled upon as I was driving to Omaha to catch an airplane.

I do not Facebook ...

... but if I did, I would follow this advice.

Do you need this guy to help you through V-Day?

He's based in New York.

Death Bear will take things from you that trigger painful memories and stow them away in his cave where they will remain forever, allowing you to move on with your life. Give him an ex’s clothes, old photos, mementos, letters, etc. Death Bear is here to assist you in your time of tragedy, heartbreak and loss.

I guess this is Death Bear's website. I don't think he travels cross country. Bummer.

Also see: Date with Death Bear.

ETA: This is Death Bears (aka Nate Hill) website.

Can you guess ...

... where I was this past weekend?

Hint

The Olympics are this year?!?!

I usually get excited for the Olympics. This year ... meh. There just doesn't seem to be a compelling storyline for me to latch onto to make me care enough to want to watch.

For reals?

Nice SNAFU here by the State Department. This woman has spent her life thinking she was an American citizen.

A State Department spokeswoman, Adriana Gallegos, declined to discuss Boneva's situation, citing confidentiality laws. She sought to clarify the overall matter in an e-mailed comment, saying, "We don't revoke citizenship; we revoke documents." But she declined to elaborate on what that means for Boneva.

What the heck is that supposed to mean? You don't revoke citizenship, just documents. Sheesh.

Just Shoot Me

The bullet-proof tailor. Interesting read and watch.

Hubble captures mystery object ...

What could it be?

The weirdest thing, however, is not only the prettyful X-shaped debris pattern, but the fact that its 460-foot-wide nucleus is outside the dust halo and separated from the trail. This behavior is something which has never been seen before in a comet or any other solar-system-swooshing object.

I wonder how far away this thing is ... to get that good of a resolution (capturing detail on a 460 foot wide object) is pretty impressive. Yet another reason to keep Hubble up and running.

Here is NASA's press release on the object.

At the time of the Hubble observations, the object was approximately 180 million miles from the sun and 90 million miles from Earth. The Hubble images were recorded with the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

Ok, so that answers my question ... a resolution of 460 feet (probably can go lower) from 90 million miles away. Makes you wonder exactly what spy satellites can do, huh? Probably read your text messages on your phone from outer space. You better shield your iPhone from prying eyes when you're outside!

Food for thought ...

How we access and store data is critical.

In 2008, for instance, it emerged that the US had "forgotten" how to make a secret ingredient of some nuclear warheads, dubbed Fogbank. Adequate records had not been kept and all the key personnel had retired or left the agency responsible. The fiasco ended up adding $69 million to the cost of a warhead refurbishment programme.

I'll see your humans, and raise you two turtles and a mouse

Iran *ahem* enters space race.

"The scientific arena is where we could defeat the (West's) domination," Ahmadinejad said in remarks broadcast live on state TV.

Launching worms (along with the aforementioned critters) into space is a step, I suppose, in that direction. I think they have a long way to go though.

The Mediteranean is a cesspool ...

... and it appears that organized crime has taken killing to a whole other level.

That African nation possibly holds clues to the kinds of health hazards Italians might face. “My committee heard from Somalians who said many people in that area had symptoms of poisoning and some died,” Scalia attests, referring to a stretch of highway along which Alpi and Hrovatin may have witnessed the offloading of toxic substances. The tsunami of December 2004 dredged up giant metal containers from the seabed and placed them on Somali beaches—proving that the country’s coastal waters had also received questionable trash. A United Nations report blamed fumes from these unidentified objects for internal hemorrhages and deaths of local people.

In April 2007 Calabrian authorities had temporarily halted fishing in waters off Cetraro (where the Cunski lies, according to a turncoat from the ’Ndrangheta mafia) because of dangerous levels of heavy metals in marine sediment. In the region around Amantea, mortality from cancer between 1992 and 2001 exceeded that in neighboring areas, a study found; just as worrisome, hospitalizations for certain malignancies have risen in recent years.

Why can't we treat the Earth better than we have?

It has begun ...

... my foray into P90X territory has started. I've been taking notes on my diet, have a shopping list for the next few nights dinner (very high in protein, low in carbohydrates), and a one hour date with my DVD player this evening. Wish me luck!

Haiti the 51st state?

I think a number of Haitians would want that.

"I want the Americans to take over the country. The Haitian government can't do anything for us," said Jean-Louis Geffrard, a laborer who lives under a tarp in the crowded square.

Currently ...

Playing


If you love strategy games, you have to try the Advance Wars series. Two Gameboy Advance titles, and two DS titles.

Listening To