banner
You are not using a standards compliant browser. Because of this you may notice minor glitches in the rendering of this page. Please upgrade to a compliant browser for optimal viewing:
Firefox
Internet Explorer 7
Safari (Mac and PC)
Recent Comments
Jun 24, 2013, 8:39am
Jun 19, 2013, 11:00pm
Comment by Carniwhore_hater in Vegans Piss Me Off
Apr 02, 2013, 4:11pm
Comment by Moderates_Rule in Politics piss me off
Mar 26, 2013, 11:56am
Feb 26, 2013, 12:13am
Feb 25, 2013, 10:20am
Feb 25, 2013, 8:01am
Feb 24, 2013, 2:13pm
Feb 24, 2013, 1:01pm
Feb 23, 2013, 9:27pm
Author: Angry Scientist | Views: 887 | Comments: 4
Last by Custom labels on Mar 18, 2011, 12:52am
I've gotten extremely busy lately, and so I decided to start a bumper sticker series for science geeks and politicians. Here's #1 in the series. Maybe I'll convince Brian to Zazzle them if you demand, no promises though. He's kind of up tight. This of course is inspired by all of those ridiculous pro-life/focus on the family unintelligent garbage hillbilly moron bumper stickers I see disgracing our roadways.

. . . More
Author: Brian Krueger, PhD | Views: 13034 | Comments: 0
The Advances in Genome Biotechnology conference starts tomorrow in Marco Island, FL. Twitter and the blogs have been a flurry of speculation about what the major vendors will present at this years’ meeting. In previous years we’ve seen the introduction of new, “disruptive” technologies such as the ion torrent platform, the Oxford Nanopore Minion and the PacBio RS. Like many, I have mixed emotions about this conference. It’s more CES than science. Given the history of the major announcements and where those products are now 3 and 5 years out it’s hard to get excited about a show stopper. While technically impressive, the MinIon is still mired in problems that were glossed over in the fanfare of the original announcement and PacBio is FINALLY starting to deliver on the promises it made eons ago. I should also mention my disappointment with Ion Torrent here. This is yet another company that made a major announcement at AGBT and failed spectacularly. Keith Robison thinks they still have a sho . . . More
Author: Brian Krueger, PhD | Views: 23941 | Comments: 0
Yesterday marked the kickoff of the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. Following last years’ lead, Illumina once again used this platform as an opportunity to announce the release of a number of new products including 4 “New” sequencing systems ahead of the more scientifically focused Advances in Genome Biotechnology conference in February. At this same time in 2014, Illumina presented the HiSeq X ten sequencing system which is a system for population scale genomics composed of ten HiSeq X sequencers. Illumina touted this system’s reduced reagent price, increased speed, and expanded capacity. It has now taken much of the technology from this HiSeq X system and put it into two new lower tier models: the HiSeq 3000 and HiSeq 4000.

. . . More
Author: Brian Krueger, PhD | Views: 4903 | Comments: 2
Last by Brian Krueger, PhD on Jun 29, 2010, 8:48am
One of the biggest problems facing the eradication of hard to kill viruses such as HIV is that viruses mutate readily. A standard technique for creating lasting immunity against viruses is the creation of vaccines. These have been used for years to eradicate a multitude of viruses. There are three standard types of vaccines that have been used in the past. There are attenuated viral vaccines which use a weakened form of the virus to challenge the immune system, killed virus vaccines which use dead viral particles to trigger the immune system, and finally there are peptide vaccines which use the expression of a specific viral protein to trigger the immune system. Although these approaches work readily for many viruses, in the case of a small subset of human pathogens, such as for HIV, these techniques cannot be used to create lasting immunity. In these cases, the virus mutates so readily that any immunity gained is quickly lost because the immune system can no longer recognize the virus.

. . . More
Author: Brian Krueger, PhD | Views: 30693 | Comments: 9
Last by Michael Schatz on Feb 26, 2013, 12:13am
Aside from the dubstep pumping out of the Roche and Agilent booths, the volume of AGBT has been somewhat muted. There was no grand offering of new hardware or over the top promises of sequencing genomes on what now appear to be vaporware USB thumb drives. This is my first in person experience of AGBT, so as a virgin it seems for the most part to be rooted in the science despite the ridiculous parties and “showgirl” casino nights. The atmosphere here is unlike any other science conference I’ve attended. It’s like the bastard child of a Gordon Conference and a Las Vegas Porn Convention. I really hope that the deep pockets of Sequencing Centers are more influenced by the science than the free dinner parties and alcohol, but I have pretty low confidence in humanity. Regardless, I think everyone in attendance today was overwhelmed by a stunning talk from PacBio and the dramatic advancements of their long read technology.

The PacBio talk came on the heels of what felt like a warm-up opening act from Jeremy Schmutz of the Hudson Alpha Institute. Schmutz has been working with a start-up that was recently acquired by illumina called . . . More
Author: LabSpaces.net | Views: 1592 | Comments: 0
I spent the last month or so researching some good ways to promote the site. I had been using google adwords, but I got very mixed results and had few users stick around for more than one or two clicks (that was also back when the site was the "green monster" so who knows if I'd have better luck now).

More recently, I have read a bunch of blog articles about how using a PRweb news release drove new users to their site during their initial launch. I figured I'd give it a try. And wrote a news release: See it here. It got a 5 out of 5 editorial score which I'm not completely sure what that means, but I assume its good (or just a result of me spending $200 on the release...). The release went live this morning at 12am and I've seen a marginal increase in the amount of traffic to the site, and unfortunately most of them are one clickers :(

Hopefully things pick up a bit over the next few weeks as a result of the news release being posted to multiple news feeds. I'd hate to think I blew $200 :( I'll save my final verdict for next Monday. So stay tuned and I'll post the stats! Cross your fingers for me though, I think I� . . . More
Author: LabSpaces.net | Views: 1855 | Comments: 2
Last by Brian Krueger, PhD on Apr 22, 2008, 2:00pm
I initially got 300 extra clicks from my $200 investment. That's about $1 a click or a really bad day with google Adwords. I guess I shouldn't have expected a whole lot out of the release, but I was hoping it'd be picked up by at least a few science blogs or something.

The next phase of my advertising campaign is going to be a little more local I think. I e-mailed my press release to all of the area newspapers. I remember a few weeks back the Des Moines Register ran a story about some guy's car washing business. Hopefully they'll be interested in some graduate student's internet business :) I'm also looking to do some table spamming on Monday all over the medical campus. Look for my signs. My latest plan is to get a local following from Iowa on the site and then maybe that will attract other users to stop by and comment or sign up for an account.

Looks like it's back to Yahoo!, Google, and Fark ads :(

. . . More
Friends