Jan 03 2013
Here’s a cool science photo from the lab: What we’re looking at is whole blood that is separating into its various components. Blood is made up of red blood cells (RBCs), white blood cells (WBCs) and plasma. If fresh, whole blood is left sitting in a tube, the denser RBCs will slowly fall to the …
Sep 25 2012
I love doing protein concentration determinations. There’s something calming about calculating dilutions, pipetting precise volumes, being able to trust the objective evidence of the OD280 readings. … Oh, the lies I tell myself when the work day runs long. Yay! Moar dilutions, moar reps! Blarg. I mean…Oooooohm.
Dec 02 2011
I opened up the Star Tribune to a sad story. From the Star Tribune: Thursday morning, ninth-graders in the second-hour science class at Maple Grove Junior High School had turned their desks toward the science table where teacher Matthew Achor conducted experiments for the class final. The first time the teacher dropped a match into …
Nov 09 2011
I headed right up to the lab when I arrived at work this morning, which is a different pattern than I’ve had over the past several weeks. My most recent project has been a long-term study that I’ve been testing it in the later part of the day just because it’s a simple assay that I can throw on as …
Oct 21 2011
If you’ve ever been camping or hiking or hunting or had an outdoor pet or gone anywhere near a tree or have a TV or know anyone who fits any of these situations, you’ve probably heard of Lyme Disease. I live in Minnesota, land of forests and lakes, big-ass mosquitos and lots and lots of …
Oct 17 2011
This morning I saw one of my Facebook Friends showing off a t-shirt that really annoyed me: Image shows a cartoon frog with the words “cut class, not frogs!” and “Don’t dissect.” “peta2″ Of course it’s a PETA shirt, which is one mark against it, but it’s the joyous anti-intellectualism of the message that first …
Feb 03 2011
A nice woman named Amy was giving away postcards. You receive the postcard, take a picture with it and then send the picture back to her. It sounded like kind of a fun pen-pal deal-eo and I decided to do it. Here’s the postcard she sent me: So I took a picture. Or six. And may …
Jan 26 2011
This video from Zheng Lab just made my day. Been there, people! Well, I haven’t been in the lab bench diapers and the biohazard dresses, but the indecipherable lab notebook and untraceable data, finding unlabeled, smelly samples fermenting in the cooler for months or years. Blech! Thanks to blog visitor Jim for the heads up.
Jan 12 2011
To be fair, in my line of work most of these are valid reasons to be bumped from an instrument. It just means that I have a lot of “hurry up and wait” “”free”” time. In which I have chosen to doodle. Double quotations means that if I were speaking I would have given this word …
Dec 22 2010
Work is crazy today; I’m probably going to be pulling a 16-hour shift today. Yikes! At my work we’ve got these high-demand instruments. I signed up to use two of them on this date, so I get them for today. Tomorrow some other lucky scientist gets to use them. But my studies just keep going wrong…and by “my …
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