Current events

(From PhD Comics)

Well I've been preparing for labmeeting so instead of giving you another long diatribe about the significance of negative data I'll list some interesting current events:

Today Harvey Lodish is giving a very interesting talk about how to set up a biotech company while staying in academia - I'll see if I can go to that. Thne talk is at 6:00 or 7:00 somewhere in the Longwood Medical Area - TMEC I think (I'll update this when I find out).

Also today - The Royal Society webcasts biologist Steve Jones talking about the evidence for evolution. Tune in at 1:30 pm EDT! (from Daily Zeitgeist)

Tomorrow, Seed is hosting a panel discussion featuring John Brockman, Daniel C. Dennett, Daniel Gilbert, Marc D. Hauser, Elizabeth Spelke and Seth Lloyd (see ad =>). The event is co-hosted by that great Cambridge institution the Harvard Bookstore. For more info on this event click here. I'll try to be there.

Also tomorrow is Tangled Bank - if you have any interesting blog entry whose topic is of a scientific nature, submit it to Discovering Biology in a Digital World. I haven't sent something to Tangled bank in a while, but I'll try this time 'round.

And Seed has also announced a writing contest:

The contest invites essays up to 2,000 words on the future of science in the U.S.:
"Amidst emerging competitive threats from abroad (China and India in particular) and heated debates over intelligent design, stem cells and climate change: What is the future of science in America? What should the US do to preserve and build upon its role as a leader in scientific innovation?"

The contest is open now and runs until June 30. Four winning entries will score money and a chance to have their essays and/or excerpts from their essays published in Seed Magazine and on seedmagazine.com.

For more info see http://seedmagazine.com/writingcontest/

And last, here's my not so weekly (or in this case is it weakly?) eye candy:

OK it ain't high art, but it's kind of symbolic of the current phase of my research project, constructing genes (or as we say here molecular biology). I must say that cutting and pasting DNA is kind of dreary. But at least my gel is much more interesting and representative of my state than what is being passed on as art elsewhere.

Incidentally I've discovered the greatest ligation kit ever: Takara. It's so simple and since I've started using it, I have never failed to subclone (i.e. paste DNA together) successfully on the first shot. When I was a grad student, gene construction was painful and mind numbing, now thanks to Takara, it's only mind numbing.