Anyone with strong bioinformatics skills looking for a job with a fantastic energetic new PI at the University of Arizona?

Today I spent time with a friend and new PI at the University of Arizona talking about her metagenomics projects. She's been advertising for an opening for a computational biologist for quite a while.  She tells me that she can't find anyone to fill this position because they are in such high demand and there are so few people who have the skills so they are all getting jobs fast. She is looking for a postdoc or would even support a grad student for their PhD if they wanted to do the work.

Apparently a research associate with bioinformatics expertise can get a job in industry for as much as $90K a year, making it hard to find qualified candidates who want to work in academics labs.

So if you are looking to increase your marketability with a highly valued skill set in popular demand, then computational biology looks to be the way to go.

And if anyone is interested in the position at U of A, email me.

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A paper published by Zietsch and Santtila (2011) has recently caused a bit of a stir in the science-blogging community. Heavy-weights such as PZ Meyers, Scicurious and Greg Laden have posted regarding the paper with various levels of criticism. The paper, published in Animal Behaviour, and entitled 'Genetic analysis of orgasmic function in twins and siblings does not support the by-product theory of female orgasm' was published by a scientist I have come to know over the past year or so.

It's always exciting to see someone you know make a splash, and I've had some interesting conversations with Dr. Zietsch regarding the criticisms. I'm a small-fry in the blogging community, but I offered Dr. Zietsch this forum to respond (if he felt so inclined).

The following are not my words, it is the work of Dr. Zietsch. I suspect he'll be paying attention to comments, but I would like to stress that the author of the post that . . . More

The Monday broadcast of the US Open Men's final is on in the background. Rafael Nadal, the undisputed King of Clay, squaring off against Novak Djokovic, the man who has a 5-0 record against Nadal in 2011. This morning, Serena Williams' tirade against the chair umpire during yesterday's Women's Final made sports news everywhere. If you hadn't seen or heard the exchange, here it is:



Now, Serena berating an official? Kind of crass, but here's where I will excuse her. Yes. She did yell and interrupt the point. But, Stosur had no real action on the ball. Her racket could not make a controlled return. At all. Yes, the rules state that interfering with your opponent's fair play is an automatic point against the person who returned the ball. But, here's my problem...

The rules are horribly, horribly enforced in tennis. Don't believe me? Take a stopwatch to a Nadal or Djokovic match. From the time the last point ends to the start of the next point, the player has 25 seconds OR until the server is at the baseline and ready to return. How many seconds do you count between points? Especially when Nadal or Djokovic (or Ferrer or Murray or Verdasco...) are down? 30 seconds? 45 seconds? You bet. Heck, in Ferrer's seco . . . More

This lovely image is from here.

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In a culture where women are already experiencing devasting effects because of the sex ratio bias, the Chinese government goes ahead and does this.

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I’m a student at the College of Nanoscale SCIENCE and ENGINEERING (emphasis mine). While we’re clearly not the only college of any kind of science AND engineering, I can’t help but reflect on what unlikely bedfellows such a joint college creates. What follows is an immense amount of opinion and impressions that I get.

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This about sums it up. Wouldn't you say?



Thanks to brilliantly smart-ass responses to completely well-meaning signs.

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I was first exposed to this paper via Radiolab with their episode on 'Cities'. I wasn't quite sure how accurately Radiolab was portraying the finding (this was the very first episode I had listened to), but it certainly captured my attention.

A few months later the same paper was brought up again (in class, I think), and re-ignited my interest.

More recently still, a film-student friend of mine was searching for a documentary topic, and this paper jumped to the fore of conversation.

When I finally sat down to find the primary source I was surprised to find that one of the authors, Ara Norenzayan, was someone who's research I had profiled in a previous blog post.

The paper looks at the idea of profiling cities. Not in a GDP kind of way, not in a population density kind of way, not even on size or any other measures you're probably used to. It's a strange kind of behaviour-level analysis. It measures the Pace of Life* that each of its inhabitants are subject to. If those that live in a city can b . . . More

I am having an amazing time working as a visiting postdoc at BigEasternU. It has made me appreciate what I need as a postdoc to thrive. The biggest factor is the nature of the PI.



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Usually it takes me a few days to write a post after I've done all my research. I've been trying (not very successfully) to sit on a post and read it cold some time after it's been written. I'm told this is called 'drafting', but I don't do it very often (or well).

So I'm going to try something new that will hopefully help me with this.

Here's what I'm going to do. If I find an interesting graphic relating to an up-coming entry, I'm going to post it for some initial thoughts a few days before the post-proper. The idea is that people can throw around some ideas regarding what it's about, what kind of questions could be worth asking the research, etc,... just to open up a forum and give myself a reason to sit on an entry before posting it.

So here's number one:






Discuss...




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Reference:

Wirtz, P. & Ries, G. (1992) The Pace of Life - Reanalysed: Why Does Walking Speed of Pedestrians Correlate with City Size? Behaviour, 123, 77 - 83.

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Bachmann Says She'd Consider Everglades Drilling by associatedpress

God caused the hurricane and now this shit? It saddens me that these people are top political candidates.

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So this has been floating around twitter this morning - People Who Doodle Learn Faster. The primary source is this document, published in Science [Fulltext unavailable, Abstract here]. The original document is less than two pages long and very easy to read.

I really want to take the 'Doodle' article to task. It's just plain wrong.

At no point does the Science article make the claim that 'People Who Doodle Learn Faster'. The Author of the 'Doodle' post, Tim Barribeau , should be embarrased. The title of the original paper is 'Drawing to Learn in Science'. I suppose if that's all you read then you might be mistaken for thinking that doodling leads to learning (if drawing = doodling); but really? Faster learning? The word 'Fast*' is not even in the original article.

The paper in question is completely theoretical. In saying that, I'm being generous. It is theoretical inasmuch as it presents no data; but as far as theories go, there's not mu . . . More

A few weeks ago I approached the student radio people on campus and proposed getting Psychobabble on the air. I had been toying with the idea for a while but hadn't seen the full potential of the idea until someone mentioned that, if we were on the air, we would have access to their studio...

And so I'm pretty excited to announce that Psychobabble will now be recording on professional equipment. No more static scratches and p-p-pops. Not only that, but having four people in the studio at the same time (instead of skyping from different places) should help build some excellent banter and rapport.

As it stands we'll just be pre-recording and releasing as normal (plus being on the radio 3 times a week). However, they did ask if we'd consider a live-show too. The crew has expressed interest in the idea, but that's a while away yet (if at all).

At any rate I'm excited to be bringing much higher production values to the show, and I'm hoping this will pull more listeners, more reviews, and some more word-of-mouth recommendations.

Thanks to everyone who continues to download and support the show!

Stream the student radio here - JACradio

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Yesterday Jack Layton died.



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Last week, 2007 chemical newsmaker 1,4-butanediol made it back on the front page with a US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruling on a lawsuit involving 1,4-butanediol contaminated children’s toy ‘Aqua Dots’ (left). In 2007, Aqua Dots contamination story first hit the news when Australia banned the product. The adhesive 1,5-pentanediol was normally used in Aqua Dots, but 1,4-butanediol was mistakenly used in the toy's manufacturing process. The one methylene group (‒CH2‒) difference between 1,5-pentanediol and 1,4-butanediol (below) led to Aqua Dots going from the most popular toy of 2007 to the most recalled toy of 2007-2009.

Why would using a chemical with one less a ‒CH2‒ cause such trouble? As . . . More

Last week the biotech community in San Diego suffered a tough blow as many positions were eliminated as part of a plan to save $20 million dollars in the hopes that Life Tech will please their investors. People who lost jobs included veterans with the company, many who were loyal and hard-working to the almighty borg of biotechs, sacrificing their nights, vacations, and weekends to promote the success of an organization that never sleeps.

Life Tech was formed out of a merger of two companies; Carlsbad-based Invitrogen and Foster City-based Applied Biosystems. The acquisition of ABI by Invitrogen in 2008 resulted in the $6.7 billion dollar company renamed Life Technologies, which holds some of the hottest IP in the world, including lucrative patents on PCR, qPCR, and market domination in Human ID/forensics. With a portfolio this powerful, how could they fail?

Life has not reported how many people were sent home last week and they have not updated their numbers on the State Employment Development Department website which tracks company layoffs, according to the . . . More

Hermitage at Scientopia has a carnival on women in science. But it's sans bebes. She elicited questions and sent them to us. Here are my answers.

1. When you were looking for your post-doctoral position, how (if you knew) did you know that your PI would treat you fairly?

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Last week I reported on a strange illusion I had in the middle of the night. Upon waking early in the morning I experienced a sensation where I felt as though I had been asleep for 5 or 6 hours, but had actually only been asleep for an hour and a half. The experience disappeared for about a week, and returned for a single night 8 or 9 days later. I'm pretty sure no-one was sneaking LSD into my milo, so I wanted to figure out what was going on.

I asked people what they thought in my last post. Commenter Beauness said that our timekeeping was regulated by our circadian rhythms. Commenter Kate pointed me in the direction of an article about the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (wiki link). The SCN plays a role in regulating the circadian rhythms.

Now every school kid knows we have Circadian Rhythms, and that they are basically our 'body clock'. But knowing that isn't very useful. What is a Circadian Rhythm? How does it work? and is it grounded in something beyond our biology?

In my last post I posed three questions that I thought would help illuminate my strange sensation. I'm addressing them here, briefly, as be . . . More