In the recent volume of Lab times I read about the (bad) effect of beer on number of publications by scientists! (You can read the online version here Page 14). Well, honestly sometimes if there was no hope of one (or a few) cold beer after work scientific work could’ve been much more difficult don’t you agree? So Cheers! ;))
With 100 days to go until the Beijing Olympics, Amnesty International today (30 April) launched the first in a series of four hard-hitting animated films highlighting human rights abuses linked to the Chinese authorities’ hosting of the Games, in particular the risks of peacefully protesting in China. Watch the first animation here:
When I was doing my B.Sc. and M.Sc. I can say the only resource of learning we had were books. Nowadays there are so many scientific resources available online most of which are free (at least for educational and research purposes), that can make learning easier for students. I came across this award winning animation by BioVision at Harvard which is graphically reproduction of some of the important phenomena’s inside the cell. It is called The Inner Life of a Cell. I’m sure this short version with the amazing music you see bellow, anyone can enjoy even if you’re not a biologist. As a biologist/Molecular biologist I suggest that after watching the short form also watch the complete version with the explanation on their homepage. I love the part showing the Motor protein carrying a vesicle along the microtubules. I also use this opportunity to introduce this valuable webpage: MolecularMovies is an amazing collection of cell and molecular animations, you can surf through them and enjoy.
25 January, 2008 (10:05) | Humor, Science | By: Ali
Those of you who have something to do with biology know the importance of PCR in molecular biology today, for those of you who don’t know what Polymerase Chain Reaction is (or don’t care), in short one can say PCR did the same thing to Molecular Biology research that Transistor did to electronics! This is a video-song called PCR song, watching it you can also know a bit more what PCR can do! The song was made as an advertisement for Bio-Rad PCR machines and similar to USA for Africa song! In the rest of this post I also attach the Lyrics. Here you can find the original video and download it. I like it when at the end one of the guys is dancing with a PCR machine! ;))
Interesting news in Stem Cell Research: Nature News, A California company has brought human cloning research to a new level with efficient production of cloned human blastocysts. If you want to be updated about stem cell research news, Nature Reports Stem Cells is a valuable resource.
One of the great advantages of the growth of internet especially for scientists is the amount of freely available resources that one can find. Many of these resources are freely available for non commercial and educational purposes, like the valuable power point goldmine I introduced here! When I was doing my bachelor so many online resources were not
available and I do remember that even an important database like Medline was
not freely available (you could buy them on CD’s) as it is now in PubMed. I’ll share the useful pages I find or I’m using in this weblog so that the friends and colleagues can also use them. If you find them useful or know other resources please leave a comment.
DNA Interactive is a page with valuable information for students and teachers. I’m sure you’ll enjoy going through the pages. You can go to the players section to watch interviews with scientists in each research area.
DNA from the beginning is another useful page for students and those want to learn about DNA.
The first Biodiesel powered Jet: Scientific Americal: A 1968 L-29 Czechoslovakian jet—dubbed BioJet 1—flew up to 17,000 feet
(5,180 meters) over 37 minutes powered 100% on cooking oil. A three minute, 15-second test the day
before was the world’s first flight entirely fueled by cooking oil.
Talking about Fuel and alternative energy sources, in Nature collections, you can find Energy collections (Accessible for free), which is a collection of articles on different sources of energy. I’m sure you can find useful information there. These collections are really valuable one just has to find the time and surf through them.
Nikon has an annual competition called International Small World Competition which is meant for those involved in photography through the light microscope. The following picture is the second place winner. Real beauty, isn’t it? The picture is a fluorescent picture of a 3 day old embryonic zebra fish brain. Michael Hendricks, has taken this picture as part of his PhD work.
For more great pictures go to the web page of this competition and watch these amazing photo’s. On the other hand some of my colleagues might wanna take part in the next year’s competition.
I'm a Biochemist currently living and working in Germany. Here I write about science, technology, Human rights and daily life. If you want to know "a little" more about me you can read my about page!
