Report on iGEM 09, from a newbie
This iGEM was my first. I’d read about it, talked about it, but this is the first time I’ve been immersed in it. OK, so I wasn’t part of a tea...
Category: Science
Vestiges of the past in our tools: Fruit fly culture bottles
In a previous post, I discussed how we've forgotten techniques and instruments of the past. These techniques and instruments could come in handy as garage ...
Oh, what we’ve forgotten…
In this new era of natural philosophers (neo-natural philosophers?), where the cost of buying science kits and instruments can be an obstacle to amateur science...
Great overview of synthbio and diybio in WIRED UK
Ben Hammersley, from Wired UK, wrote up an excellent article on synthetic biology with a bit of diybio mixed in (link below). Of course, the Knight and Shetty B...
Molecular Playground: Architectural Scale Interactive Molecules
I just found out that my thesis advisor is working on a cool project. There's a new science building going up at UMass Amherst (where I got my PhD) and Cra...
What can we learn from Asilomar?
There was a flurry of indignation recently on the DIYbio discussion group over an article in the Wall Street Journal over the safety of bio hackers (with added ...
Video: The Future of Science Publishing
In February, in a Barcelona restaurant, Mark Kramer caught up with me and asked me what I would be speaking about at the 3rd WLE Symposium (notes from the talk ...
Talk: The Future of Science Publishing
I think about the fusion of mobile and Web all the time. And I’ve been talking about and thinking about designing services and software for years. But I also wa...
Changing the journal impact factor through real-time transparent statistics
I've mentioned Mendeley before. They refer to themselves as a Last.fm for science papers, but I think it'll be much more. One thing they realize they ...
When the Central Dogma is not enough – microbial small RNAs
One thing that has always bugged me was a sort of pendatic repetition of what's called the Central Dogma of molecular biology – that DNA goes to RNA ...