Tag Archives: Science

big right turn: analysis of mitochondria

I’ve been running capillary electrophoresis for days looking for a particular chemical reaction. I never found it.In the interest of getting something useful before I leave, I’m switching away from the synaptic vesicle (SV), the subject of my work to date. I have a great deal of emotional attachment to the SV. It’s hard to let go.The SV is what I’ve worked for these last 5 years. The mitochondrion is great, but I know little about it.

To change gears at this stage is terrifying. I’ve never made such a huge turn with so little time to get the task done. We’ll see how it goes. I need to prepare mitochondria, label them, and see what’s inside today. It’s been done, I’m sure, but I should also get some standards and more reagent for the stuff we expect to see inside. It’s going to be exciting!

Here’s something amusing: this is what I first saw in my sample. You want to make sense of that? Because I did. It was Thrilling.

There are lots of different kinds of grad school experiences. There are ones where the goal is to make it work. Other grad students know before starting that it will work but they don’t know until after what it means. In my line of work, we’re contending with both.

If you are a prospective grad student looking for a research program, I offer this advice: figure out which one you like before you start. Then make sure the project you are working on is the one you prefer. Only attempt a project that requires both if you are insane.

-Peter

the next month's topic, stress, personal life, and a strange article about biomimetics

Dear kind reader,

Thank you for being here. This is a strange time in the life of your host, myself, Peter. I am trying to get the last data for my dissertation. I have 21 days, if I include today which is technically tomorrow. So I won’t be sleeping much in the foreseeable future. Rather than track my interests in the scientific literature, I’m going to chronicle for you the life of a Ph.D candidate in its pupal (pupil?) stages. Shortly I will metamorphose, but until then, stay tuned.

Today, I got up at 7:30 AM and went to the dentist. I got back at 3:30PM and felt a desperate need to acquire a glue stick. I wanted to stick into my notebook a printout of a procedure I wanted to run. It’s the repeat of the procedure I spend 40 hours on this long holiday weekend. And I need it to be stuck in my notebook neatly and securely. So I got a glue stick. And Coffee. The Coffee had nothing to do with sticking things in my notebook.

The 10 cups of coffee may have something to do with the violent diarrhea at 5:00, however. That and the stress.

In any case, I got the procedure into my notebook, and then I had to actually run it. I’m still running (AT 12:43 AM!) it thanks to a crappy epoxy bond. I’m also attempting to apply for a second job to pay for my impending trip to Europe. I am going to Europe to see my sweetie who will be in Germany in August. But right now I am tired and a little lonesome.

I’m running on caffeine, leftover pizza, and sheer determination.

We’ll see if I can keep this up for 21 days.

-Peter

P.S. What do dolphins, humans and bonobos have in common?

Along the leading edge of their lifting surfaces, they form Large vortices behind troughs whereas flow behind the tubercles forms straight streamlines! Check out the article at Eurekalert!

Actually, this doesn’t apply to bonobos at all.

mercury and table salt

I want to briefly talk about mercury. Mercury is a metal found in nature. It is as natural as sea-salt. It’s a wonderful example of why the word “natural” is not the same as “good.”

How toxic is mercury? According to its Material Safety Data Sheet at Fisher Scientific, it has a toxic dose of about 400 mg per kilogram body weight. At that level it causes tumors in 50% of lab rats. Nobody wants tumors, so I don’t recommend coming into contact with mercury at all. But at the same time let’s put that in perspective.

Table salt has a lethal dose of salt (not tumors – death) only about 8 times as high. that’s right, 3000 mg of salt per kg body weight can kill you (~50% chance of living). Should you avoid salt? No, you need salt. Just don’t gag down grams of it.

Mercury? You don’t need mercury for anything. So avoid it, especially if you are considering having children in the next month or two. But at the same time, don’t freak out about it. Compact fluorescent light bulbs contain a few milligrams of mercury. The post to which I linked is ridiculous. For instance, it quotes a air quality standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter (of air!) and extrapolates that to soil concentration. Absurd.

The big upshot is that exposure to mercury is an increased risk factor, but so is a well made burger.

-Peter

A biography of T. Edison, comparisons to Tesla, and TANSTAAFL

This little snippet of a book review is 100 years old. It was written about Thomas Edison while he was still alive.

Thomas Alva Edison: Sixty Years of an Inventor’s Life. By Francis Arthur Jones. From Nature 11 June 1908: This biography should do much to disillusion the impressions which are so commonly formed about successful men, that they only have to invent something to make a fortune. It shows clearly that the only road to success is through failure. His career as a telegraph operator was most precarious, and one of his first inventions—a vote-recording machine for election purposes—was refused, really because it was too ingenious and perfect; in fact, it could not be tampered with.

Common wisdom holds Edison above Tesla in terms of fame and historical import. Edison certainly made a great deal more money. Scientifically, it is probably a fair statement that Tesla was the more gifted. The underground conspiracy culture holds Tesla in high regard and supposes that his inventions were so good that they were suppressed so that Edison (and his like) could make more money. Of course, they are not called the conspiracy culture for nothing. I think that the comparison between the two inventors illustrates this: that the balance between science and what we would now call marketing is as fine as a razor’s edge.

Tesla lacked the marketing savvy to get credit for his science. Edison had talent, but also a shrewdness that allowed him to capitalize on it. Ironically, the conspiracy culture that idolizes Tesla is the embodiment of his opposite: they are all savvy and no science. The market for free energy devices is as active as it was 800 years ago, and its success is as imminent now as it was then. It’s too bad that Tesla’s name is caught up with those memes.

-Peter

P.S. TANSTAAFL is the universal principle that There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.  So don’t you forget it.

Getting enough sleep is key, but how much is enough?

I posted about some gumption traps before, and I mentioned caffeine as one of my favorite solutions. The underlying issue, of course, is sleep. Not too long ago, I made a note of the fact that even the simplest creatures imaginable have something like sleep. Evidently, it is pretty important.

According to this article over at news.yahoo.com, most people perform best on about 7.5 hours per night. My experience is consistent with the results presented in the news bit. Too little sleep leaves me uncreative and groggy; too much and I am lethargic. There is a balance to be struck. My problem is mornings. I hate getting up. I always feel less tired when I go to sleep than I do when I wake. That makes no sense. It drives me crazy. I’ll be rearing to go at midnight, and I force myself to go to bed then have to meditate to calm down enough to fall asleep. Then I wake up 8 hours later when the alarm goes off and I fell like my world will cave in if I don’t get 4 more hours of sleep. It’s absurd.

I’ve tried polyphasic sleep (I live a 7 min walk away from my work, so I can go home to sleep if I want). I’ve tried the rolling 28 hour day. They both left me with horrific nightmares. I felt like I was on a fast track to a mental breakdown. It was not good. So I muddle along.

I have mentioned nootropics here as well. I have not tried anything except caffeine. Maybe that’s why people get into them. Matt (that other guy on this site) sent me the sleep article; he also tells me that the use of nootropics is common among pharmaceutical representatives (he used to be one). Go figure. Think of science as the Sport of the Mind, except that there’s no rule against doping. Makes me want to go get a bottle of Nerve Tonic.

-Peter