I feel really bad for leaving readers in a lurch. I think I may have taken on a bit more than I could handle these past few weeks. But, I did run across this really cool article on MAKE on how to make your own immersion circulator. They call it a "sous vide machine," which is fine. The upside is that it costs about $75 to make. Versus spending $400 for the "SousVide Supreme." And anyone with a lab catalog handy can tell you how much a new immersion circulator or water bath can cost. About a grand. Starting. Unless you know of a lab closing that you'd feel comfortable snagging. Not that I'd ever condone or suggest theft.

The absolute great thing about a circulator is that it maintains a constant temperature. There is no fluctuation. There is no overcooking. You can stick your food in a vacuum sealed bag and let it sit at temperature for several hours. It will maintain that temperature. Want roast beef for dinner, but don't want to wait 2-3 hours for it to cook in the oven? Pop it in a vacuum bag in the bath before you leave for work, even better the night before, with the bath set to 55C . . . More

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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

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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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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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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I’m a molecular biologist trapped in the body of someone with a physics degree. I’m a member of a bacteriology lab trapped in a college of “Nanoscale Science and Engineering”. As such, while I try to do cool nanoscale things with biological materials, I’m surrounded by physicists and electrical engineers along with their research projects and problems.

Don’t get me wrong, it is often very interesting and downright “cool stuff”. For now I’ll skip hot electrons and ballistic transport, or density functional theory calculations and focus on some buzz words you might have heard:

• Carbon nanotubes (CNTs)
• Graphene
• Buckyballs

In a word, they’re called fullerenes. These materials are made of one thing: carbon. Just carbon, and nothing but carbon. Why are different formulations of carbon so exciting and worth spending millions if not billions of dollars on? As with just about anything in nanotechnology, matter behaves differently at the nanoscale. Graphite (in pencils) is pretty boring. Diamonds, while pretty (and apparently friendly to women) are pretty inert and solid. The carbon allotropes have little to do with their nanoscale cousins, although that’s not to say we can’t turn on into the other.



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I've spent the last few nights buried in Facebook's API figuring out how to use their system to login new users. I finally figured it all out and you can now Login to the site and register new accounts using Facebook. The coolest thing is that we can import your data in here for editing to make the registration process essentially hassle free. No one likes constantly entering their work and education information at each new network...

Existing users can now login to the site using Facebook AS LONG AS the primary email address on their facebook account is the same as their email address here. Just click the Facebook Login button, give the login app access to your account, and voila!

I've done some testing of the system but please let me know if you run into any errors and I'll be sure to fix them!

Next on the facebook list is to sync comments on the facebook page with the articles/blogs on the website and vice versa.


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NOTE: To avoid TL;DR responses, I'm going to break this story into two parts.

I think the experience I am about to relate is far enough passed that I can speak with a little more objectivity than I could have even a couple of weeks ago. I should note that, in the end, things did work out for the better ... for the most part.

The story starts about a year ago when a manuscript of mine was accepted for publication. It appears that the reviewers recommended the manuscript for "Featured Paper of the Issue" which meant that in addition to getting the manuscript published (the major goal), I'd get some press out of it as well. Totally win-win!

I was told that as the article approached the publication date I would be contacted by a member of the journal staff about what I would need to do in regards to the press release. I figured that eventually I would receive a call from a staff science writer who, having read the paper, would ask me some questions to flesh out the final details and proof what they had written.

So I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited some more. Ten days before the issue was to be released I was sent an email that contained a long list of items to consider for writing a press release. I was asked to get back to the . . . More

The University of Iowa will be holding s science writing symposium tomorrow (April 27th). The symposium will be webcast LIVE at this address from 1PM to 5PM CST:

https://webapps1.healthcare.uiowa.edu/webcast/Default.aspx

There's a login screen now, but that will disappear once the talks start.

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The NYTimes has recently implemented a paywall system where users will be charged for access after a certain number of page views. Whatever your opinions of this system are, there is an easy way around it. I heard rumors on twitter that following a link from twitter or facebook to an article would not count against your "free" pageview limit. Someone has started a twitter feed that links to every new NYTimes article. This seemed a little excessive to me so I tried changing the web referrer in firefox instead. Essentially, whenever you visit a website, your web browser tells the webserver where you last visited. It's really easy to lie about where you've been using the FireFox plugin RefControl. All you need to do is:

1. Install the plugin.

2. Go to -> Tools -> Add-ons

3. Scroll down to RefControl and click on it

4. An Options button will appear. Click it.

5. In the new window click Add Site.

Fill out . . . More

This update was a long time coming but I finally sat down and coded in the ability to authenticate blog and news article comments using Facebook Connect. It was actually really easy once I started coding. It only took two hours!

For all of you anony bloggers and people who fly under a different "name" I've also given you the option to OPT OUT of displaying your real name and facebook page. Just enter a new handle and webpage URL and those will be used instead. Entering a different name will also prevent the posting of your facebook page link so you can stay anonymous yet skip the hassle of dealing with the CAPTCHAs.

And for all of you CAPTCHA lovers out there, you can still login that way. I just figure Facebook is much easier for everyone. I probably won't be adding google, openID, or twitter support any time soon.

Please test it out and let me know if you have any issues.

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I'm finally coming out of my Scio11 coma. It was a super exciting weekend filled with talks about technology, blogging, and new media. On Saturday, Kristy Meyer, Dr. Isis and I led a panel discussion on the use of new communication tools in academic and industry science.

The discussion covered a wide range of topics. One of the first that was brought up was how new media tools might be used to increase collaboration between science and industry. One participant stated that she was surprised by the lack of collaboration between academic and industry scientists in the Research Triangle Park area. She said there really was no resource for expert discovery and thought that the creation of a local database would be helpful in finding connections.

Expanding on this researcher database idea, I asked the audience to talk about their use of currently available social networking tools like LabMeeting, MyNetResearch, BioKM, Mendeley, ResearchGate, etc. One biotech researcher said that his company was open to using these tools privately, and that's really what I have seen and heard of over the years. Companies and institutions want to find bette . . . More

Ever wonder how a hybrid rocket motor gets lit up?

You may recall from my previous post about hybrid motors, that they consist of 2 separate parts - a hollow tube-like component filled with solid (in itself inert) fuel, and a tank of oxidizer fluid with some plumbing that forces the fluid to get flushed through the aforementioned hollow part of the tube-like solid fuel.

That's cool and all, but without the presence of a spark that can light this whole thing up, and start the chemical reaction, all you are left with is what we in the biz call a 'cold flow'.

A 'cold flow' means just that, no spark, no fire, no reaction, just some cold fluid flowing through some solid rocket fuel. To the observer, this is typically rather uneventful. Though it is kinda cool to watch.

*This entry contains a YouTube video*

Cold Flow test. The mass flow rate change was the testing of different positions of valve opening settings.

Now, cold flow tests are great to have. They prepare you for the real deal. You get to test all your instrumentation, validate your sensors, make sure your timing sequences are . . . More

After 4 weeks of heated discussions and friend recruiting, our first iPad contest comes to a close with Jane De Lartigue coming out as the winner. In a close second was Nikkilina with Will rounding out third place. Nikki wins the LabSpaces runner up junk package while Will takes home the EtonBio junk package. Please message me your mailing information and I'll try to get those (and last month's, whoops) prizes out the door! For T-shirt selections, view the original prize package blog post here.

I'll be in contact with Jane to distribute her Apple Gift Card!

Stayed tuned for details on our next contest!

Again, thanks to BioKm for their generous contribution to this contest. You will be hearing more about them and their awesome on-line LIMS system, BioData, over the next few weeks as I review their product! Check it out, and . . . More

There has been a lot of criticism again about why I post press releases on this website and what purpose they serve. PalMD of WhiteCoatUnderground and ComradePhysio Prof have been very vocal about their contempt for this practice on my website.

Let me first start off by saying that I entirely see where PalMD and CPP are coming from, although I think it’s disingenuous to comment about my intentions without first reading my post about why I post press releases. I’m trying to develop a site where the public and experts can come to discuss science. I would love to have experts rate the releases so that visitors can be better informed on their veracity. The fact is that thes . . . More

With the completion of the September contest, I would like to up the ante a bit. Over the last few weeks I've been talking with the bloggers about ways we can increase readership and inspire greater interaction on the blog posts. We decided that it might be fun to try a high stakes contest. This month's contest will be for a basic Apple iPad! The bloggers have very generously donated over $300 to fund this contest and BioData the creators of BioKM are sponsoring us for the rest!. This is also my birthday month, so I thought it might be nice to do something extra special!

This contest will work similarly to the last one in which the user with the most points at the end of the month will win the grand prize. The two runners up will get the standard novelty junk package! So it's a win-win for everyone.



How Do I Earn Points

Earning points on the site is easy. First of all, you must be a . . . More

The winners of the September contest are Thomas Joseph in first place and Nikkilina in second!

Please pick your shirts and message me your address so I can get these prizes shipped out to you ASAP :)


L - For research only
M,L,XL - Got DNA

Please take some time to stop by the contest sponsors:

IDT DNA - http://www.idtdna.com - . . . More