This week’s news includes the finding that UN peacekeepers unleashed the cholera epidemic in quake-ravaged Haiti, a report that finds living close to nuclear power plants does not cause leukemia in children, a French court decision that clears scientists in a growth hormone scandal, fungus-resistant GM corn, another hit to the XMRV-chronic fatigue link, and…
Section Head Ken Baldwin is a physiologist and biophysicist who studies the regulation of motor protein gene expression in muscle. Transcription of myosin isoforms is affected by exercise and hormones. Intriguingly, epigenetic mechanisms appear to be involved, and Ken is particularly interested in the effects of low gravity on the expression of heavy chain myosin…
Last night I had the pleasure and privilege to be at the London Zoo for BioMed Central’s Fifth Annual Research Awards, hobnobbing with Strix uralensis and watching wallabies.
It is with regret we note the death of George William Moore, pathologist and pioneer of medical informatics, and Associate Faculty Member to Grace Kao. His obituary appears in the Baltimore Sun.
Two people I don’t know got married last Friday, and his grandmother graciously gave the country the day off. Whatever you think about the monarchy or, indeed, the institution of marriage, it was a lovely day off and on the whole, even apparent republicons appeared to enjoy it.
Completely shutting down–‘making safe’, you could say–the damaged Fukushima reactors is likely to take years. The work will put dozens, even hundreds, of people at risk of further exposure to radiation. What is the best way to protect these people? A paper in the Lancet, Safety of workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,…
Being happy seems to be important to a lot of people. The pursuit of happiness (if not its attainment) is stated to be an ‘unalienable Right’ in the American Declaration of Independence. But what makes us happy? According to a report in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry getting older doesn’t necessarily make you curmudegeonly,…
Good biochemists should be good chefs, yes? After all, cooking–mixing together the right quantities of the right ingredients in the right order and heating (or cooling) at the right temperature for the right amount of time–is just edible chemistry, surely? If you can follow a recipe for extracting DNA from bacteria you should be able…
This week’s news includes a federal court’s decision to continue federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research, an update from the first patient of the first human embryonic stem cells trial of paralysis, ground zero reports of a tornado’s effect on the University of Alabama, a report claiming that chronic diseases have supplanted infectious diseases…
O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. –William Blake Peter Lawrence has weighed into the debate on the state of research in an article for Lab Times, boldly…
2
