Today Canadians go to the polls, in fact, those in Eastern Canada, probably already have voted.  And I am holding my breath.  I will be checking the interwebs frequently today to find out as much information as I can but there is a 73-year old law in Canada that prevents the media from presenting early election results.  Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act says that "no person shall transmit the results or purported result of the vote in an electoral district to the public or another electoral district before the close of all the polling stations in that other electoral district."  This provision essentially means that if I lived in Western Canada I couldn't use the election results of Eastern Canada to influence how I would vote .  This is because Eastern Canada's poll's (Newfoundland and Labrador) close 4 1/2 hrs ahead of Western Canada.

But because the provision was written prior to the invention of the internet and social media, it's unclear whether tweeting results is a transmission of results or simply communication between two individuals.  You can be fined up to $25,000 for transmission of results, but communication between two individuals is not illegal.  Is tweeting transmission?   Elections Canada says it is considered transmission of results i . . . More

I'm still around. I promise.



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Can you believe April is over? Where does the time go?

My fabulous female musician is an artist I've never heard before until very recently. Perhaps, if you are Danish, you are already a fan. It is Asteroid Galaxy Tour and the song is The Golden Age. Haven't heard of that song before you say? I think you have.

From Copenhagen, this six piece band is classified as psychedelic pop and acid jazz (ooookayyy) and led by female vocalist Mette Lindberg. They launched their first single in 2008 and became best known for one of their other singles being featured in an iPod Touch commercial (Around the Bend).

But the song featured today is not that one. However, you may have heard this on a TV commercial too....for Heineken! This tune was driving me crazy so I googled it to find out, who is this girl with this unusual voice?

Here it is for you to enjoy. I am posting the official video and below that is a really cool acoustic version.



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My Fabulous Female musician post for last week wasn't finished in time because of my travel schedule, but Nina Simone was and still is my choice. This month I am honoring musicians who battled cancer. Nina Simone died in 2003 from breast cancer at the age of 70.

Nina was a very accomplished singer and songwriter, recording more than 40 albums during her career. Her music spanned the genres of jazz, folk, blues, and gospel with some classical music mixed in. Her first musical inspiration was Bach and she wanted to be the first black concert pianist. Her plans didn't work out, due to poverty but also racial discrimination. She was denied a full scholarship at the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, despite being qualified, so instead went to New York and studied at the Juilliard School of Music.

She received several honorary degrees in her life, one of which from the very school that rejected her application for admission, the Curtis Institute....two days before she died.

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I've been working on this project on and off for a few months now. You may remember my previous post about attempting sonication trials. Unfortunately, things in lab have been busy trying to get a new graduate student started and troubleshooting problems with other experiments so I haven't had as much time to devote to this project as I would like. I've spent the past month or so trying to optimize my sonication conditions on a sonicator that's in my building, and I've gotten less than spectacular results (I've tested at least 10 different conditions on this machine ex: buffers, cell densities, sonication intensity, sonication duration). I'm looking to break my DNA up into short 100-300 base pair fragments and previously I was only able to get them down to about 600. I decided it was time to test other sonicators and here are the results.

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I'm really excited to be joining Labspaces as a blogger. The idea of a social scientific network really appeals to me especially as someone who wants to have a space to discuss scientific concepts and ideas with researchers from very different backgrounds.

Let me introduce myself to you.

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Continuing with featured singers who have survived cancer, in honor of all the hard working scientists leading the fight to uncover the processes behind cancer, today's Friday Fabulous Female is the great Carly Simon.

Carly Simon was born in New York City and raised in the Bronx. Her father is the co-founder of Simon & Schuster and her mother was a civil rights activist.

Carly's music career began in 1971 at the age of 26, but her biggest success came with the release of the song "You're so Vain" in 1973. Carly dated many egotistical men and no one knows which man was the inspiration for that song. The top contenders are Mick Jagger and Warren Beauty, although Kris Kristofferson is a close third. In 2003, the name of that man was auctioned off at a charity function for $50,000 with the condition that the winner could not reveal who it is.

"You're so Vain" was one of the best selling songs of the decade, staying at #1 for six consecutive weeks when it came out. It achieved Platinum status 25 years later in 1997.

Also, in 1997, Simon underwent chemotherapy and a mastectomy for breast cancer in 1997 and 1998. She had the lump in her breast for several years but her doctors advised against surgery. Finally one doctor said, . . . More

It's spring. A time of year that evokes confusing emotions for me. A two month window where I become manic about the weather. On the one hand, I suffer from terrible seasonal allergies and rant and rail about everything from wanting to claw my eyes out and rinse them with TRIS buffer to dreaming about slashing and burning every last plant on the planet. If you follow me on twitter, you may have seen recent rants on the matter. On the other hand, it is also a time where we start to see long stretches of dry weather in Northern California. The threat of constant rain starts to become a distant memory. As April gives way to May, the threat becomes a weirdly hazy memory. Something akin to a nightmare from two nights ago that your mind can no longer grasp or recall. This constant dry period lends itself well to one of those other passions in my life - tennis.



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This week I will be attending the American Association for Cancer Research conference in Orlando, FL. This is a pretty big conference with long booth hours and plenty of networking opportunities.

In honor of all the hard-working scientists in cancer research, this month will feature female musicians who have battled cancer. I haven't decided who all the fabulous females for April will be yet, so it will be a surprise for both of us.

For this first week of April, I have chosen a female singer whose music I am totally unfamiliar with. Her name is Anastacia.

Anastacia hails from Chicago, Illinois and grew up in a showbiz family but her music is most popular in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In fact, her song “Not That Kind” was the biggest Australian single in 2000 and was in the top ten in eight different countries. Worldwide she has over sold over 20 million albums.

Anastacia was diagnosed with breast cancer identified during a routine mammogram in 2003 (at age 35) and she has successfully completed her treatment and is doing fine. Anastacia also suffers from Crohn’s disease, diagnosed at age 13, but has never . . . More

... it's time to bid adieu.

As people may have noticed, I haven't been blogging much lately. A lot of it has to do with work -- I'm slammed here writing papers and analyzing data -- but I also haven't been into the scene here at LabSpaces as much lately. There are a number of reasons for my feeling this way, but I don't think I really want to get into them because I do appreciate Brian giving me the opportunity to blog here. He allowed me to bring my backwater blog into the light and get some traffic, and for that I will always be grateful.

However, now it's time to turn over a new leaf. I hope not to bounce around too much (for fear of losing what little readership I have), so I hope that my next stop is my last before I eventually hang up my blogging shoes for good. With that, I'm happy to announce that I will be joining Scientopia!

See you on the flip side!

And when my new digs are ready, I'll come back and post a link.

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... in the meantime. The evolution of Apache.







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The next artist to enter my video archive of the world's most fabulous female musicians is New Yorker Cyndi Lauper. I picked her famous song "True Colors" but from The Body Acoustic album. The original reached #1 in 1986 and this 2005 version is a quieter, more mellow rendition.

The second video is Cyndi singing "Time after Time" on the TV show Australian Idol in September 2008.

I'm stickin' with slow, soft music again this week because I'm feeling a bit melancholy and need to chill. How about you? Hope it's a good day for the rest of you.

Enjoy this Friday's Fabulous Female.

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