Category Archives: Science

Alcohol is a carcinogen? Solution: more coffee!

I figure if booze increases cancer risk, then I’ll drink plenty of antioxidants in my coffee to counter the effects. There’s no way around it – I would never make a good mormon. I’m not all broken up over it. But the fact is that I see using one indulgence to ward off the ill effects of another as clever rather than immoral.

That means I’d be a bad catholic, too. I figure even though adultery is a bad sin, and condoms are (supposedly) are a bad sin, the two (in this particular case) partially cancel each other out. I mean, if you have to explain to your wife how you gave her the herpes you caught from a prostitute but it’s not as bad as it could be because you avoided the sin of using a condom… I’ll bet that won’t go over well.

What was I saying? Oh – coffee and booze. Not sins. Cancer. Right. So, alert reader Jason wrote me a note saying that the NIH lists alcoholic beverage consumption as known to increase the risk of cancer. On the other hand coffee seems to help for breast cancer, anyway. And I love coffee! So maybe they cancel.

Wishful thinking?

-Peter

Death from overwork – Karoshi

The Japanese have a word, Karoshi, for “Death from Overwork.” This was sent in by alert reader Robert, who (unlike the Jester) cares about my welfare. I’m not going to work myself to death. I’m going to work myself to exhaustion, then go to Germany. I worked all night last night. I did not get the data I need. I will have to do it again. I have had 9 hours of sleep in the last 48. I have no sense of humor about this fact.

On the other hand, punctuation is hilarious! Gabe and Tycho know! And I agree. What about this phrase “What is f___ing natural?” Is it an intensifier for “natural” in the sense of “What does ‘natural’ even mean?” Or are we to infer a question about the existence of natural coitus? Is there a punctuation solution?

Ah, conversations in lab. I’m so tired. I feel like Ze Frank expresses it best.

-Peter

too tired. will do better soon.

I have not updated this week because I have been trying to get the data I need to graduate. And I need it in 10 days. It’s like playing roulette with hours of my life: “3 hours on Black 23 to win!”

I am making progress, but will it be enough? The funny thing is that if you work 16 hours a day, the second 8 is actually really good work. Nobody interrupts the second 8 hours. It’s kind-of refreshing.

On a slightly related note, check out that Dounce Homogenizer. Sounds sexy doesn’t it?

I once knew a physicist with a keen sense of irony. Good sense of humor. Then he got to Quals. Quals are like the Board Exam or the Bar Exam, except after those you get to be a Doctor or Lawyer. After Quals you get to keep being a student. You earn the right to keep going. Thank the powers, my program didn’t have quals. After his quals, my friend had no sense of irony. I would make perfectly absurd statements. Things contrary to common sense and all factual data available. Right by him. Not even register.

I’m getting there. I feel like life is giving me the Dounce Homogenizer Treatment.

-Peter

destroying glass, slow progress, testing to destruction

Todays activities were… marginally productive. I saw more-or-less what I need to see in the model system. Even better, I saw it at slightly less intense conditions than I had originally suspected would be necessary. Then, when I went to repeat the experiment and get the data that will make or break my thesis, my chip died. Of course.

So I did what anyone would do. I troubleshot it to destruction. It turns out that my chips literally explode at about 10-15 kilovolts. I figure that’s good information to have. Here’s an image of the glass surface that blew up. It was a small explosion, but satisfying. Now I need it to work again without blowing up.

That means it’s back to fabrication hell. More hydrofluoric acid will be used. I’m not going to lie: I hate hydrofluoric acid. Not only is it corrosive, but it is also highly toxic. And, even better, it tends to have a numbing effect. So if you get it on you, it will burn and poison you and you won’t know it until it’s too late to get the antidote. Delightful.

I love science!

-Peter

isolating mitochondria, strange science, turkey sperm

I tried a kit for collecting mitochondria today. It didn’t work, but it failed in an interesting way, it turns out. Not interesting in a scientific way, unfortunately for me, but it ended up being… humorous…

This kit is supposed to take cells in one end and spit their mitochondria out the other. But there were no mitochondria on the other side. I don’t know if anyone else would go looking though the samples for whole cells, so maybe it wasn’t obvious to other people why it wasn’t giving good yields for the cell type we like. But I did go looking, and I found cells that were not lysed. If they don’t lyse, then they don’t give up the mitochondria.

So I went looking for ways to lyse cells in a way that doesn’t lyse the mitochondria.

Arriaga uses digitonin (detergent) and a cell disruption bomb. The Thurston group isolated turkey sperm mitochondria (I’m too tired to really appreciate how awesome that is) using a combination of Dounce homogenization and sonication. That was back in 1993.

I’d like to share a quote from their paper: “Semen was collected from turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) by abdominal massage (Burrows and Quinn, 1937).” What I want to know is: who are these Burrows and Quinn characters? And how does someone in 1937 get the job of inventing a procedure to acquire turkey semen?

There’s a story there, by god.

-Peter