Joys of Grad School

Recent Articles

• Sequencing Ancient Mitochondrial Genomes

  August 21, 2008 in Uncategorized

  In June, Gilbert et al published “Intraspecific phylogenetic analysis of Siberian woolly mammoths using complete mitochondrial genomes.”  While the sample size is necessarily small, given the age, the study presents five new complete mitochondrial sequences dating from 14,000 to greater than 63,000 years ago.
  The authors note that three of the sequences represent a distinct clade [...]

• Spook

  August 2, 2008 in Books, Science

  Spook is the third of Mary Roach’s books that I’ve read this summer. As with her other two books, Spook examines the scientific approach to the paranormal phenomena, such as hauntings and psychics. The history of paranormal investigation is fascinating, including exposure of mediums at the turn of the century. Some [...]

• Online Literacy

  July 28, 2008 in Critical Thinking, Education, Technology

  I read an article this morning on the New York Times - Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?

  The entire article was interesting, discussing different skills gained by reading online vs. reading books, as well as the concern that online reading may fracture attention spans, making reading books that much more difficult.
  What really jumped out [...]

• labmeeting.com

  July 25, 2008 in Science, Technology

  I ran across labmeeting.com earlier this week.  The site is a cross between LinkedIn and Endnote:
  Labmeeting is a tool for scientists. It was created to help with those things that make doing science needlessly difficult. These include:

  Finding someone at Wisconsin who works on aging in yeast
  Remembering whether the paper about helix bundles was 8753.pdf [...]

• Happy People Dancing

  July 23, 2008 in Anthropology, Critical Thinking, Education

  This video was NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day yesterday. I’ve heard of Matt before, dancing his way around the world. But this video is something special. It’s a wonderful illustration of the anthropological perspective: celebrating our differences, but never forgetting just how much we have in common. Like happiness…and dancing.
  Where the Hell is [...]