Everyday Scientist

reece roth

Finally, the US is prosecuting the real terrorists: University professors!

Prof. Reece Roth of University of Tennessee was found guilty of exporting secret data to China and Iran because he had some Iranian grad student and he took his laptop to China when he went on a lecture series.

This is way worse than outing a CIA operative for political purposes. I hope he gets the death penalty.

Seriously though, this makes me sad. He looks like my grandfather. The one who was a spy for the Japanese during the war. jk.

attila szabo’s autobiography

If you want a fun and inspiring story, read Attila Szabo‘s autobiography for his JPCB Festschrift (here). It’s only 4 pages.

Here’s a great except:

How could I get my hands on a little red phosphorus? Who would sell some to a 14 year old boy? Well, Fisher Scientific would.

Enjoy!

political science: McCain vs. Obama

NPR had a good piece yesterday about how the two candidates plan to heal the wounds science has suffered after 8 years of the Bush Administration. The good news: they’re both more pro-science than Bush. The main difference between candidates is that Obama backs up his support with promises of more money for science.

Here’s an excerpt:

Obama: He would reverse policy adopted by President George W. Bush that placed restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. Obama has also said that he would double the amount of federal money available for scientific research, in hopes of giving American high-tech companies a leg up. Obama has not said over what time period he would double funding, nor where the money would come from.

McCain: He has said that he would support legislation that would expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research and place fewer restrictions on it. But in a nod to the anti-abortion community, his adviser also has said that he hopes to not have to rely on embryonic stem cells in the future. In terms of scientific funding, McCain is sympathetic for the need to fund basic research, but is not sure where the government would find that money.

I understand what McCain is saying: doubling the budget for science means less money for something else. However, I think that we do need to better fund science—in order to promote technological progress and American prosperity. Maybe Obama won’t be able to convince Congress to fully double science funding, but I’d prefer Obama’s breakable promise to McCain’s no-offer-at-all.

[Update: Nanoscale Views beat me to the punch!]

best podcast … ever

JACS^β is ACS’s attempt at going Web2.0, but I’m not too impressed, yet. The strangest thing is the JACS podcasts, which is nothing more than someone reading a JACS Comm word-for-word … literally! Seriously, they even read the submission date and describe the figures.

You can’t really get the full effect of a scientific article unless it’s narrated. Back in my day, we had all papers read to us out loud; I’ve never picked up a journal or read a paper on a computer screen. I’ve just hired someone to read anything I hand to him.

Seriously, though, I challenge you to go listen to the two podcasts they have at the JACS^β website. See if you can listen to and understand the articles all the way through.

Craziness.

UPDATE: My labmate pointed out the following: “The best thing is that according to the website, the JACS podcast is ‘Free for a limited time.’ Limited!?! Like we’ll pay for it after?” Ha!

UPDATE 2: This should have received an EDSEL in Literature.

godly love!

How much does research on “Godly Love” cost? If you said $150,000 per project, you’d be right!

To what extent can emotionally powerful experiences of a “divine flame of love” move us beyond our ordinary self-interests and help us express unconditional, unlimited love for all others, especially when our human capacities seem to reach their limits?

The Flames of Love Project at the University of Akron is trying to answer this and other such questions important to science and humanity. The FOLP is currently accepting proposals for the $150,000 research grant, so get going!

I have to say, I find the image on the homepage sorta creepy: like hands scrambling to escape something. I like life—this life. Do you need to believe in a godly, infinite, ultimate love in order to like this life? I think we live in a benevolent—or at least not malicious—Universe, what is godly love?

Anyway, I’m not a big fan of mixing religion and science. They simply approach questions differently. Doesn’t testing religious feelings make them less emotionally powerful? Anyway, “proving” faith is a contradiction in terms.

That’s my flow-of-unconsciousness.

dignity in a curious context

The “dignity” of plants? I don’t get it.

This Nature news article discusses a legal quagmire that has resulted from a Swiss law requiring the “dignity” of creatures be considered in funding research.

By Merriam-Webster’s definition, dignity is “the quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed” or “formal reserve or seriousness of manner, appearance, or language.” The latter definition hardly applies, unless you think that one can determine when a plant appears reserved or serious—or when it doesn’t.

As far as being esteemed, I understand that some people would prefer to see a sapling on the forest floor than in a test tube, but scientific research in a laboratory has no effect on the natural beauty of a woods.

The bottom line is that, because plants are not sentient, we should not be concerned about their “well-being” or “dignity.” That’s not simply anthropomorphizing, that’s animopomorphizing.

Now, I might be biased, because I’m a vegetarian. In my more naïve days, I opposed animal experimentation. (Of course, I have always opposed violence or crimes against animal researchers or labs.) Today, I feel that the subject is too complex to blindly oppose all vivisection, or to stubbornly support cruel animal experimentation. The complications arise from the fact that animals are sentient—feel pain and have desires. Meanwhile, there are benefits to humanity as a result of animal experimentation that cannot be denied. While I hope that vivisection will be phased out over the next several decades, I do not support a ban.

Research on plants is a simple issue: plants are not sentient. The values we see in plants—independence, natural life, etc.—are only emotions that we place on them. Again, I understand the desire to see majestic trees in their natural habitat, but that should not interfere with our desire to learn. Anyway, it’s not as if plant researchers go clear-cut forests and do little experiments!

Whatever, I just needed to rant.

Plaigiarise an American? The French would never do that!

I was recently doing a bit of reading and happened to have two papers on the same subject, short pulse amplification, on my desk at the same time. As I was reading the more recent paper I kept having the feeling that I had just read something very similar. Upon comparison I found that almost the entirety of the more recent paper was plaigiarised from the earlier paper. The French authors even stole a figure from the earlier paper, all without referencing. Ironically the figure that they stole happened to be figure 6 in the original and in their paper, so the text that I copied from the two manuscripts even has the same figure numbers in it! Check out the papers yourself to see just how low people can go in science.

[UPDATE: I wanted to put in the copied figures. See my addition to David’s post below.

From the first paper:

From the later paper:

And there you have it. -Sam]

nas

Steve Boxer has been inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. (At last! I had just assumed that he was already a member.)

Other notable names include Ken Dill, Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, Timothy Swager, and Frances Arnold. Protein people are certainly well represented here!

Stanford Professors Speak Out about Bush’s Climate Strategy

A few Stanford profs that were attending the GCEP workshop on Carbon Management in Manufacturing are featured in an ABC 7 News story.  This includes one chemistry professor interviewed, and another makes a cameo at the very end.  It’s only 2 minutes long and worth watching.

Watch News Story Here

(If anyone knows how to embed this rather than just linking to it, please let me know).

This is Your Brain on … SCIENCE!

Quite a brouhaha building over at Nature and in the blog-o-babble about this little commentary that appeared in the magazine: Professor’s Little Helper. So Nature ran an informal online poll and here’s the result:

Shocked me a little. Am I too naive? I liked some of the more amusing comments to that article.

The Assault on David Baltimore

All NIH fellows have to take a course on Ethical Scientific Conduct, so I’ve become quite familiar with all the rights of lab rats. Never mind that down in the subway, just a few floors below the 24hr rat veterinary facility, they’re throwing rodenticide out like candy wrappers.

Amidst the jetsam of the course’s various “case studies” we sometimes get an interesting nugget; the David Baltimore affair was one of them.  Its a very interesting case because of the grayness of the accusations and the high level of the involved parties (Baltimore is a Nobel laureate and was president of Rockefeller at the time). Eventually, Congress and the Secret Service got involved!

If anyone is interested, checkout a New Yorker article about the case (abstract only). I’ve just ordered a book (ISBN: 0393041034) by the author of the New Yorker piece. Another excellent overview can be found in this Ethics & Behavior article.

political science: APS asks us for grassroots help

APS is asking for grassroots help in the next couple days to call your Senators and Representative and encourage them to include additional funding for science in the FY08 supplemental:

I am calling today to voice my support for including additional funding for scientific research and science education in the supplemental appropriations bill for fiscal year 2008 that Congress and the President will soon be considering.

Consider it, if you appreciate spending tax money on science.

(Thanks for the tip, LSC.)

Social Networking for the Geek Set

Recently I went to a talk on networking that was put on by the people behind Nature Network. It was interesting to see how the editors of Nature saw the future of social networking in the sciences.

I’m generally not a big fan of social networking. Had a Friendster account when it was still in early beta (2000?). That’s about it. Sites like LinkedIn and Nature Network make sense to me though, I just signed up. Do you folks use social networking sites for scientists? Any other suggestions?

Oh, and please drop by my profile if you sign up.

who would patent the atomic bomb?!?!

The US Government would. Alex Wellerstein at Harvard has compiled some of the 2,100 patents that came out of the Manhattan Project … secret patents. Here’s a great one:

Ah, the METHOD FOR PRODUCING, SEPARATING, AND PURIFYING PLUTONIUM. Better patent that one so no one else does it in their basement and sells plutonium on their own. Right.

I hear an interesting piece on NPR about this story. My favorite part was the realization that spies could have taken advantage of these patents, even though they were secret, by submitting their own patents: the Patent Office would then basically reveal they already have a similar patent. Ha! Good luck for the US that no one was smart enough to try that!

I’m sure there’s a smart reason to patent the frikkin’ atomic bomb while you’re making it, but I still don’t know that reason.

filter your RSS feeds using Pipes

I read all my TOCs via RSS in Google Reader. Normally, this is just marvelous. However, some journals (e.g. Science and Nature) include a lot of junk along with the real science articles: news and whatnot. Also, PNAS has so many articles, it’s really hard to get through them all.

So I’ve started filtering some of those TOC RSS feeds using Yahoo! Pipes. (Click the image above for an example—the filter function is found under “Operators.”) So PNAS was easy, because they include the subject category in the title of each feed item. For Nature and Science, I need to find a way to filter out the news and fluff pieces somehow. Maybe there’s a keyword in those entries I can find.

Anyway, I just wanted to pass this along, because it’s really helpful. I know there are other RSS filters, but I like the versatility and ease of Yahoo! Pipes. Lemme know if you find any cool tricks!

Here’s a library of my edited feeds.