I'd like it if y'all would join me in wishing a happy birthday to Gregor Mendel.

Born 22 July 1822; died 6 Jan 1884.

Today is the 22nd anniversary of R. Buckminster Fuller's death and the 34th anniversary of Sir Lawrence Bragg's death. A moment of silence, please.

*moment*

Boss has shown more of an interest in my work over the last week than in the previous six months. Normally, this would not be an occasion for me to go on the warpath. He is still, however, in a mental place that encourages total amnesia for every part of his grad students' projects. Yesterday, he came in to talk about how things were going three times. Each time, I had to start over at the beginning and explain every. single. detail. again. I know that I shouldn't burn bridges when I'm still standing on them, but fer chrissakes, I'm getting sick of this.

I also want to throw the 'puter out the window. I'm not sure why it's so difficult to take a stack of image files and make them into a movie, but it's giving me fits. Quicktime Pro won't load when I'm connected to the network and my shared drive (where the files are stored), the files have mysteriously turned black and white even though I made sure to save them as a color overlap (red+green=yellow), and the tower is making noises like it wants to eat the CD. Again. I'm starting to think that the whole idea of making time-lapse videos was a mistake.

I managed to totally piss off, offend, and emotionally distress a friend last night. I know I'm not the most socially adept person on the planet, and I get less able to effectively deal with people when my mental reserves are running on fumes. It didn't really help matters any that she's very extroverted, loud, and loves being the center of attention. I figure I'll apologize as soon as I feel I can do so, mean it, and extricate myself from the ensuing conversation without causing a repeat performance. I knew it was a lost cause last night when she flounced out of the room and my only thought was, "'bout time. *sigh of relief*" I know I need to remember how to tell people that, no, really, I require some alone time if you want to see me at all.

I read about Justice O'Connor's retirement from the Supreme Court this morning. This fills me with no small amount of unspecific dread. I didn't want Dubya to be able to install any of his cronies in the committee that broadly interprets the legality of laws. I can't see anything good coming from this, so I'm restarting my quest to look for a villa on Mars.

Today is the 147th birthday of the publishing of the Darwin-Wallace theory of evolution. Yay! I'd like to take the next few moments to do the Happy Chair Dance of Society-Altering Science.

*happy dance*

I managed to finally finish reading Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician Wednesday night before the concert. I liked the book, because it's Roman history; I'm not sure that I agree with the author's claim of Cicero's importance and power. It was a very different view of the man than I'd ever been taught. Of course, I wouldn't be on Nerdtown's city council if the following exchange hadn't been so easy...

jrug: So, Bush could be prosecuted and impeached because of *these reasons*.
exlibris11235: But, that's leaving out that *other facts*
Me: But, we wouldn't be able to prosecute Bush for another couple of years, since he'll still have immunity as a proconsul. What province would he be getting, anyway?
jrug: *blinks*
exlibris11235: Syria
Me: Yes, that makes sense.

Yes, typing for the last while has made me feel better. I'm going to be leaving work in 15 minutes to drive to Chicago to spend the holiday with downwood and visit with bexdragon, too. I also am about halfway though Guards! Guards!. I read the following section on the bus this morning and just had to share it. *grin*

"A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?"
The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like "What's so bad about genocide?"

Yesterday I told Boss that I'm not going to register for school again in the fall semester. I expressed my desire to leave grad school and that I think a Real Job is what's best for me right now. He didn't snap at me with the "That's fine, if you have no problem working fast food for the rest of your life" speech that he gave other grad students, so I didn't have to use the "If your goal is to not have grad students, you're doing an excellent job" retort that downwood suggested I prepare.

I can add three new states to my List of Places I've Been, even though two of those were only driven through. I got to spend four glorious days in Pittsburgh for the wedding of czar_victaar and She of No LJ. bexdragon warned me in advance that I'd need to bring extra tissues to the ceremony. She was right. It was absolutely beautiful and I'm so glad that I was able to be there. Outside of the wedding preparations, I was very happy to get to spend time with the Rev. Bex and galieth. Much booze, dancing, and playing of morbid card games was had.

If I can figure out how to do it, I might end up posting some of the data I've been gathering in lab to this space. It's pretty interesting time-lapse microscopy. It almost makes me wish that I were staying to see this thing through to the end. Almost. Yes, I'm still scared out of my mind. Yes, I still think it's the right decision.

Science is still spiffy, though. jrug pointed out this article to me today. I would love to be able to work on this system. If they can figure out the mechanism by which the viruses target cancerous cells, they're sitting on a fortune and a couple of Nobels. I'd be worried about the possibility of contamination, the effects of the entire body on the activity, and non-specific killing, but those are things that will get figured out with more research.

If you have a subscription to Science Online, you may want to check out this article. I've put the full text and picture behind a cut for those without the ready cash or university connection. They think they've found photosynthetic bacteria at the bottom of the ocean that use bioluminescence, carbon dioxide, and sulfur to stay alive. This flies in the face of much that scientists had considered "fact". I think that it's insanely cool.
( Deep-Sea Bacterium Breaks All the Rules )

WTF?

I'm pretty sure this isn't real, but I can't exactly prove it.

If it's real, it's pretty cool.

x-posted to wtf_inc

Boss told me yesterday to come up with a couple of protocols. One I pretty much knew how I could do it. The second's taken me reading several papers, but I've got the general idea, though I'm not sure how some of the individual steps will work. The third has me stumped. Before I dive back into PubMed to try to figure this out, I'd like to open this question up to y'all.

How does one go about wrapping inside-out or rightside-out vesicles derived from mammalian cells around purified nuclei (either Xenopus or purified from the same cell line)?

I don't even care if an answer makes scientific sense. I'm stuck and an off-the-wall comment may be just what I need to snap me out of the mental rut this damn thing's put me in. *frustrated smile*

There's nothing like someone being rational to take all of the fun out of wanting to cause mayhem, destruction, and chaos. Drat. I keep having to remind myself that it's okay to feel angry and irritated and that I'm not required to be nice to everyone all the time. It's sort of disturbing when I get in these extremely violent moods. I don't so much like myself when I start figuring out how to precisely take a person apart so far that they may never put themselves back together. It is interesting, however, how I choose the targets of my vengeful rage - those who catch the full blast of my vindictive fury. I was told this afternoon that I was not blaming the person truly at fault. I don't believe him; I think I'm assigning proper accountability. *phbbt*

The weekend was wonderful. I got to spend much time with downwood, yay! We trekked over to MN over the weekend to see bexdragon and galieth. The Ren Faire was fun, but Mother Nature expressed her displeasure at my attire by causing it to rain profusely. Drat. I so didn't want to come to work today. That's okay, I'll survive, and I may even get some useful data out of it. *grin*

While discussing our weekend events with my Cool Coworker, he asked if I'd seen The Passion yet. I responded that I have no desire to sit through a 2-hour snuff film. He commented, "You know that sound that a cow pie makes when you step in it? That sound shouldn't be involved in a movie where there are no cows." I winced, then laughed.

And, on the "this is really spiffy" front, you know you want to read the article that generated the quote, "They're the kind of scientists you would like to be but never quite dared to."

I saw this license plate the other day. If you can tell me why it's funny, I'll give you a cookie.

"AUG UGA"


I'm pretty sure most of you saw the story about the guy who got a new jaw implanted that the doctors grew in his back. This is really spiffy science. Me, being a nerd, saw it on CNN and went straight to the original paper to read the "real story". Here are some selected quotes from the article. The translation from Science Jargon to English is given in italics after each selection.

"Even with his edentulous jaws, he was now able to undertake a small amount of mastication."
He doesn't have teeth, but he can chew.

"The patient was also satisfied with the aesthetic outcome of the procedure."
He likes the way his new jaw looks. Well, wouldn't you? Sheesh...

"Although this method was clearly successful, we cannot conclude whether regeneration of bone tissue was attributable to the bone-marrow cells or BMP7 - it is likely to have been a combination of the two."
We're not exactly sure how this worked, but IT WORKED!! The man has a jaw! We can go back and figure out the mechanism later. The important part is that it worked!! *happy dance*

The paper was extremely cool. The citation is as follows, if you've got access to online journals (meaning, primarily university-type people).
Warnke, PH, Springer, ING, et al. (2004). "Growth and transplantation of a custom vascularised bone graft in a man." Lancet 364: 766-770

Maybe I should've joined a microscopy lab. I swear, the pretty pictures are my favorite part of the job. Getting to write and edit is really secondary at this point. Hm, maybe I should shift my dream job from being an editor at Nature to being an editor at a microscopy journal. That'd be fun...



( Cut for loading ease )

Spiffy, no?