First off, I would like to apologize for not posting as recently as I would have liked to on LabSpaces. I've been with LabSpaces blogs since the very beginning, and I would never stop posting ... but, life got in the way.

Over the past few months, I've been busy writing and working, and I let a few things fall away.
So, I apologize for my absence, but I'm back now and will post more frequently. And, I have a very interesting post to share. I hope you enjoy!

Fear is one of the most powerful emotions that a human can experience, and it can affect every human being on the planet. However, how do you categorize an emotion? People feel emotions in different ways, and some are more affected by them than others.

The etymology, or origin of the word, is not well known. According to Merriam Webster’s online dictionary, it comes from the Middle English fer or the Old English fǣr, which stands for sudden danger. This describes the event that caused the emotion, but not the emotion itself. The emotional state of fear was first noticed and defined in the late 12th Century, and is the same definition that we know of today. But is there a better one out there?



To define an emotion is a complex task, but to describe one . . . More

I hope that some of you folks can give a few dollars towards improving scientific literacy! My fav is "Do Plants Wear Genes?" It's too bad there isn't something like this for Canadian schools - or maybe there is and I just don't know about. Details and links below.

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This is not about Steve Jobs, although I do find a certain irony in the prolific repetition of so many of his quotes about free thinking, creativity and not living someone else’s life. But it’s not a new irony. We see it all the time. Another oft-requoted personality that comes to mind in recent years is Seth Godin; but there’s no shortage of people whose quotes today would have graced the actual hardcopy framed motivatonal posters of twenty years ago. Facebook and Twitter make that obvious. Sometimes painfully so…it’s flabbergasting how mindlessly some of this stuff can spread. There’s a Jobs quote about the value of individuals vs. the value of groups….but I bet you’ve read it three or four times today already, so I won’t bother. ;)

It isn’t that some of these people don’t have something valuable to say. The problem is that we get so caught up in the cleverness of the revelation that we don’t bother to pause long enough to internalize it. It’s so much easier to appreciate the execution than it is the actual thought behind it. It’s the ‘package vs. content’ problem all over again.

There is a deeper problem, of course, one that no one wants to consciously face: true wisdom doesn’t come in neat, 140 character packages. It comes w . . . More

Today's featured DonorsChoose project is: Launch a Rocket of Success. Mr. Bradham is looking to buy rocket kits for his science class to teach his students about physics and space exploration. He says that his students are, "eager for knowledge. Unfortunately, they lack the adequate financial means to provide for supplies that could further their understanding of science concepts." Mr. Brandham is looking for a "hook" to get students interested in and excited about science and from past experience with rocketry programs he has found that students are captivated by rocket launches and this provides a stepping stone for him to teach other science concepts in the classroom.

I can't argue with Mr. Bradham's logic. I remember when I was a kid and I got a hold of my first rocketry set. It was a basic ESTES model that I had to glue and assemble myself. I really enjoyed learning about the physics and chemistry of the launches. Launching the rockets in my local park was always a blast, but the hobby was expensive! The engines for my rockets were like $5 and for a grade schooler with a tiny allowance of a couple dollars a month it was hard to fuel my obsession. I think it's very sad that Mr. Bradham can't get the funding from his school for this project because he teaches in a high poverty district. I see enormous value in this type of activity as a teaching tool. The excitement of a rocket launch can quickly translate into student fervor in the class room to try to understand how to make the rockets fly higher and faster.

Mr. Bradham has a long way to go to fund his project though, so we need your help! Every little bit counts, so please donate whatever you can to make this happen.

You can view more projects by visiting our giving page.

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I know, know, paper is so 1990 but I just wanted to pull a paper over at Nature to read during seminar later. Unfortunately I used the big fat "Print" button on the manuscript page. This is what I got:

I guess next time I'll just download the PDF and print it that way. However, even I know that if you stick blocks of text and figures in DIV or P code blocks, they won't get hacked off by the browser print renderer. I think some web developer was sleeping at the keyboard. A good example of this on LabSpaces can be seen if your try printing this page. You'll notice that in the browser rendered view, all 3 images butt up on one another, however in the print preview, the third image is moved to the bottom of the second page. This is because the image is in a DIV and the browser knows to not cut images in DIVs in half.

I can't be the only person that's ever tried using that button, right?

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Well I did it.  I wrote the crappiest piece of shiza manuscript I have in a long time.  But the reason I made myself do this is I have a perfectionism problem.   This was an experiment to see if I could find a way to overcome that challenge. 

Now I have what I like to call the pseudocode for a manuscript.  All I have to do is work on it just 1 paragraph or 1 figure a day (and/or 1hr a day) and pretty soon I'll have a manuscript worth sending to RedBull.  We'll see how it goes.....

So peeps did anyone else do a #madwriting fest?  Do they find it helps or hinders their writing (of any kind!)?

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Well, it's that time of year again. It's the annual Donor's Choose drive to promote scientific literacy in grade school classrooms. The LabSpaces crew has once again teamed up to select a variety of projects to to fund to help bring new materials into classrooms to enrich students and their scientific education. Yesterday, we gave $60 to a project in Naples, FL to obtain microscopes and slides for an underpriviliged grade school classroom. The email message from the teacher was exceedingly heartwarming:

Dear Brian, Shanna Hodgson, Lauren Ledesma and CenturyLink,

I cannot thank you enough for your generous donation to my classroom! I can't wait to see the looks on my student's faces when I tell them what is on the way to our classroom! My students will be so excited to use this microscope! You just opened their eyes to science. We can't wait to get these great resources and put them to work in our classroom. Your genorosity means so much to my students and myself! Once again, thank you so much for opening up your hearts to my classroom. Words cannot express how grateful we are!

With gratitude,
Mrs. I

Giving to Donor's Choose is simple and every little bit helps. I ask you to please visit our giving page where we have selected 70 projects to highlight and hopefully get funded by the end of the month. I will be spotlighting my favorites over the coming weeks and working hard to bring science into these children's lives. Please help me by donating and forwarding this link to as many people as you can. It's for science :)

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[Check out Post 1 if you haven't already.]

I was hoping to do a more science-based post, but I couldn't really find any research on the topic.... but I'm doing one anyway. What's life without a little whimsy?

Our campus Skeptical group has a fairly active Facebook group that discusses all kinds of things. One member posted the comic found here (Sorry, I can't post it. Plus this guy deserves the page view...do it...).

The comic found at the link above had a very brief blog post which describes the actions of an Atheist group offering freshly baked cookies in exchange for one's soul. The comment was made on the skeptical facebook group that we should do the same.

Everyone took to the idea. A few of us discussed the nuances of how and why over lunch, and as a result a few changes were made. Our goal was not to alienate the devout, or offend anyone who holds that souls exist. Our goal is simply to make one question the concept. If one decides that they have a soul - then great; the point is they were actually confronted by the idea and devoted a few minutes of thought (at a . . . More

In case you haven’t heard, memristors are a big deal (see NanoLetters, ACS Nano, and Nature). So what are they and why are researchers in academia and industry so interested? Are they going to change life as we know it?

Scientists, at least folks like me working at the intersection of biology and technology, are really interested in memristors because they are a fully electronic component that act (broadly speaking) like neurons. That is, they have the capacity to “remember” based on the current that flows through them. So, just like you might develop muscle memory from touching a hot pan (and hopefully learn to pull your hand away fast) memristors can learn. What caught my eye recently was this article that touted protein based memristors. That is, an electronic component that can mimic biological circuits, using biological molecules. Woah.

So let’s back up. What is a memristor? The typical spiel is that memristors are the fourth fundamental circuit element besides the resistor, capacito . . . More

So I've been thinking about religion and beliefs again. More specifically, souls...

I'll get to writing a full-length post, and explaining my recent interest, early next week.

In the mean time here's an episode of Radiolab with a reading of the story 'Metamorphosis'. It's written by a neuroscientist by the name of David Eagleman. If there's ever a version of the afterlife I could get on board with, it's this.



[Skip to 6:30; The reading lasts only 4 minutes]



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If you're feeling a little bummed out by the last story, try this next one. It's written by the same guy, and is a little more light-hearted and whimsical...



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Well so far I'm doing pretty good at meeting my writing goals. I sent out my Research and Teaching Stmts to 4 different people in my field and one who was only remotely related. When I get comments back, I'll edit and send out my t-t applications.

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Normally I avoid writing about things I learn in class. I try to use this blog, and the associated podcast, to research topics outside of the boundaries of my normal schooling.

This topic struck me, however.

There's a phenomenon called the False Consensus Effect (FCE) which basically states that we, as individuals, view our own preferences, behaviours and judgements as being typical, normal and common within a broader context; it also suggests we find alternative characteristics as being more deviant and atypical than they actually are.

I asked my tutor, 'Is this a kind of logical fallacy?', being new to the topic and a little surprised I'd never heard of it before...

He responds, 'No, not really. It's basically just a cognitive error. Once you know about it, you really won't ever feel confident in offering an opinion again'. Or something to that effect.

And he's right.

As a self-identified Skeptic, a member of the campus Skeptic's group, and a consumer of the Skeptic media (SGU, Skeptically Speaking, . . . More

So yesterday, I went and bought extra space in my DropBox because I was running low on space on my laptop hard drive.  I'm storing data that requires 40GB of memory.  Because of the way DropBox works, ie it syncs your computer, it turns out that in order to use that extra space, I have to have extra space on my laptop.  But the reason I bought the extra space was because of a LACK of space on my computer.

Any suggestions?

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In my last post I asked you to take a brief survey. Many of you did, in fact, within about 13 hours I had nearly 150 responses. However, the survey host, Surveymonkey, only provides the first 100 responses. This is not really a big deal, and given that the survey itself was a bit rough-and-ready, it got the job done.

I asked 10 questions in total on four different topics. The topics themselves were arbitrary. They were simply accessible constructs which most people have an opinion about.

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The military's odious Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was repealed as of 11:59pm 9/19/11. Finally. I don't have much to say on this. I'll leave it to those service members who are coming out to share their stories, but I saw this video and couldn't help but to share it.



That was an incredible video. And one badass dad. Period.

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Life as a postdoc is hard, but I try harder to remember this.

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With approximately 74.8 million owned in the United States and 38% of US households having at least one, dogs truly are man's best friend. And rightfully so, as the benefits of owning a pet are many, including decreased risks for stress and cardiovascular disease, as well as increased heart attack survival rates and improved psychological and physical well-being. Among children, owning a pet has been associated with reduced risk of asthma and allergies, and improved social skills, self-esteem, and empathy. But what most dogs owners don't realize is the potential dogs have to spread zoonotic diseases (a disease transmitted between animals and humans), and not just rabies, but parasites and pathogens such as roundworm, Q fever, brucellosis, and leptospirosis. Even more, novel canine zoonotic diseases continue to emerge.

Canine zoonoses can be spread by:

direct contact oral route of transmission (e.g. eating with contaminated hands) a fomite (object contaminated with an infectious disease that can then be transmitted, e.g. door knob) aerosol/respiratory transmission vector-borne (e.g. ticks and fleas) Recently canine influenza virus and canine respiratory coronavirus appeared on the scene. Historically influenza and corona viruses in other . . . More

Made it back home safe.  Got my fellowship application in on time - 2 hrs to spare.  Yeah me! 

Went into the lab today and saw RedBull for the first time in two months. Our conversation went like this"

"Hey RedBull. Just came by to say, hello and I'm back!"

"Oh okay.  Your priority over the next two months is to get that analysis on the Alphabetum done and turned into a manuscript." 

Not even a 'hello how are you' or 'welcome back'. Seriously? Well, at least it's not forever.  In fact, if I have it my way, I could be doing something else next year.
 

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