I’m looking forward to being on the Canadian science blogging panel that’s taking place at the Northern Voice Conference, May 13 – 14, 2011 at the University of British Columbia’s Life Sciences Centre. The presentation panel I’m on is slated for Friday, May 13, 2011, from 1:45 pm to 2:30 pm and it’s called: The Naked Truth: Canadian Science Blogging Scene.
The other panelists include:
Beth Snow of The Black Hole. In one of her most recent postings, she tackles a topic most of us don’t think about when we’re talking about careers in science, Academic Couples. Excerpted from the post,
I can think of a few people right now who are in some stage of dealing with this issue [both partners are academics]. In addition to the friend I mentioned above, I know a dual-academic couple who both work at the same university, I know a couple where both partners are former-academics (they did their PhDs at the UBC, found their first postdocs together in another city, came back to UBC for second postdocs each and then both left academics for non-academic jobs) and I know a couple where the academic partner is seriously considering leaving academics because of a variety of reasons, with family being one of the big ones.
Eric Michael Johnson of The Primate Diaries in Exile recently blogged this intriguing piece, The Allure of Gay Cavemen, which was cross posted on the Wired magazine website,
In 1993 the reputable German weekly Der Spiegel reported a rumor that Otzi, the 5,300-year-old frozen mummy discovered in the Otztal Alps two years earlier, contained evidence of the world’s earliest known homosexual act. “In Otzi’s Hintern,” wrote the editors, referring to the Iceman’s hinterland, “Spermien gefunden worden.” (If you require a translation, chances are you didn’t want to know anyway.) The rumor quickly spread on computer bulletin boards as the recently unveiled World Wide Web inaugurated a new age in the free flow of misinformation. The origin of the rumor, as Cecil Adams discovered, turns out to have been an April Fool’s prank published in the Austrian gay magazine Lambda Nachrichten. The joke about our ancient uncle being penetrated deep in the Alps was then picked up by other periodicals, but with a straight face.
Twenty years later it appears that little has changed.
Rosie Redfileld of RRResearch talks about mutant cells amongst other things in My experiments: might I have a plan?
Classes have been over for a month and I have yet to do an experiment! For shame. But after going over everyone else’s projects I think I have a clear idea of what I should be doing.
1. Measure starvation-induced competence for each of the competence-gene knockouts: This will be replicating measurements done by an undergraduate over the past 6 months. I’ll just do each strain once, provided my results agree with hers. I’ll also freeze some of the competent cells.
2. Assay phage recombination in the competent and non-competent mutant cells: Old experiments using temperature-sensitive mutants of the H. influenzae temperate phage HP1 showed that recombination between the ts loci is more frequent in competent cells and completely dependent on the host RecA pathway (undetectable in a rec1 mutant). Phage recombination is much more efficient in competent cells than in log-phase cells; this is true both when competence is induced by starvation of wildtype cells (in MIV medium) and when it is induced by the presence of the sxy1 hypercompetence mutation (in rich medium).
The panel moderator, Lisa Johnson is a CBC journalist specializing in science and environment stories. She also has her own blog where her Oct. 14, 2009 posting, Squid surveillance, in several ways proves sadly timeless,
I find squid pretty inherently interesting. They’re believed to be smart, and I’d call them beautiful, but they’re also so alien to our terrestrial, vertebrate selves.
Even more interesting, or perhaps alarming, is what’s happening with the Humboldt squid in B.C. waters.
First, why are they here? They’re native to northern Mexico, but in the past ten years have spread northward, first to California, and now all the way to southeast Alaska. That is a big change in such a short time.
Secondly, they’re washing up dead on beaches in large numbers.
Then, there’s me. Maryse de la Giroday, FrogHeart. If you keep scrolling down this page, you’ll probably find something of interest.
We will all be there on Friday and we look forward to discussing science and science blogging in Canada. See ya there.