NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 30th September 2005 07:46 PM GMT] Microarray data quality is an issue that has been covered extensively in The Scientist (see, for instance, here and here). The basic issue is this: how reliable are the sometimes-subtle changes in gene expression levels these experiments yield, and how reproducible are they.
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 28th September 2005 11:05 PM GMT] A second first amendments rights case broke out amidst the brouhaha over the legality of teaching intelligent design in a Dover school district. But this battle, over the freedom of the press, is nearing a denouement that?s left me a bit ambivalent. The Thomas More Law Center, which has been defending the Dover school district had subpoenaed two freelance reporters, Joseph Maldonado for the York Daily Record and Heidi Bernhard-Bubb for... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 28th September 2005 06:15 PM GMT] Four weeks after Erich Wanker?s team published its human interactome paper, Marc Vidal?s group at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston has followed suit.
In today?s (Sept. 28) online edition of Nature Vidal?s team reports its analysis of interactions between 8,100 or so human open reading frames corresponding to some 7,200... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 28th September 2005 12:45 AM GMT] In the weeks before the battle over first amendment rights ramped up in Dover, the Discovery Institute folks said they didn?t support intelligent design mandates in science curricula, saying that such cases will only be politically divisive. Now, lawyers representing the school board are apparently happy to hear it. The York Daily Record, which has nicely covered some of... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 26th September 2005 11:09 PM GMT] Looks like I can harden my reserve to never again eat Domino?s pizza ? not that I liked it much anyway. The Thomas Moore Law Center, founded by ?za magnate Thomas Monaghan, is representing the defending Dover school board that tried passing off intelligent design as real science. As a card carrying Pennsylvanian, I?ll be closely watching the proceedings in our neighbor county. But I actually have little faith that the A.C.L.U. will be able to successfully convince district judge John E.... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 17th September 2005 11:32 PM GMT] On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that mice carrying Yersinia pestis ? the bacteria that cause bubonic plague -- had disappeared from a laboratory at the Public Health Research Institute, part of the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. The university says it does not know what happened to the mice, first discovered missing two weeks ago.
According to the AP, health experts reassured... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 16th September 2005 04:36 PM GMT] I never thought I'd say this, but I participated in a flash mob last night (Sept. 15). We didn?t congregate on a street corner and start chanting or anything like that. Instead, we solved a molecular dynamics problem.
?Flash mob computing?, the brainchild of Patrick J. Miller, of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, is a way to build ad hoc supercomputers from unused desktop and laptop computers. Arrayed in the M. Carey Thomas Library at... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 16th September 2005 04:14 PM GMT] I was talking Katrina aftermath with a yeast scientist, George Santangelo, at the University of Southern Miss in Hattiesburg. Things were ?a little nasty? he said, even that far inland -- he?s roughly 50 miles from the Gulf. But he ?obviously has no complaints relative to folks further south.? The gulf coast campus apparently suffered significant damage. In Hattiesburg things fared rather well, but it will take until the next rainfall to see if roof repair holds up. It?s nice, Santangelo said,... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 15th September 2005 03:34 AM GMT] Many colleagues, friends and former co-workers have contacted me following my last two blog entries to express sympathy and offer help. These days scientists from New Orleans who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina have many options. I, for example, could relocate my group to a hosting institution anywhere from California to New York. Universities and government laboratories are helping out. Sometimes the conditions in the hosting institution are so great that it is likely that our displaced... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 14th September 2005 11:01 PM GMT] The Science Times section of the New York Times ran a story yesterday describing how the increasingly popular documentary ?March of the Penguins? is being used by conservatives to justify their positions on abortion, monogamy and intelligent design. One conservative film critic is calling the film ?Passion of the Penguins.?
Huh? I?ve seen this movie, and what are these people talking about?
Here?s the evidence the Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 13th September 2005 05:55 PM GMT] It has been said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Functional genomicists took that proverbial step earlier this month when a group led by Erich Wanker, of Berlin?s Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine, reported the first yeast two-hybrid-derived human interactome (or protein-protein interaction) network in the September 1 online issue of Cell.
Wanker was one of... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 10th September 2005 09:50 PM GMT] Since my last entry, all the faculty members of the chemistry department at University of New Orleans (UNO) have been found. The department established an alternative e-mail network to deliver information to faculty and students about UNO issues. Our associate chair, Ray Sweany, and Scott Whittenburg, who recently assumed a position in the UNO administration, have been working in Baton Rouge in the effort to rebuild the university. Both are exhibiting extraordinary leadership under very... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 8th September 2005 03:55 AM GMT] Like the entire city of New Orleans, the University of New Orleans chemistry department -- of which I am a member -- was blown away by Hurricane Katrina. Most of the faculty and students evacuated the city ahead of the storm. This is a routine for most New Orleans residents during hurricane season. Some of the faculty, particularly the more senior ones, became complacent over the years and decided to ride out the storm.
The local media has a lot to do with this irrational decision. I... Click to continue
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NewsBlog: [Entry posted at 1st September 2005 05:45 PM GMT] So says a leading character in the just-released movie ?The Constant Gardener.? Having seen the film, I can tell you that he means big pharmaceutical companies, not very large pills. The message that pharma is evil is drilled home repeatedly, like a new type of cramming video for some high school social sciences exam. It?s even the focal point of the television trailer.
But that?s not what I took from the movie at all. I enjoyed The Constant Gardener as a piece of escapism. It is centered... Click to continue
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