Life Science Tools of the Trade

Walking into work today I noticed the new notice on the boards. Looks like Jorge Cham is coming here to Duke next week.

If you haven’t heard of Cham, he is the man behind the comic, Piled Higher & Deeper (PhD comics). He began drawing the comic while working on his Ph.D at Stanford. Piled Higher & Deeper is a reflection on academia and the people who work in it. Its success and popularity are evident by its syndication and books!

His talk, “The Power of Procrastination” should be an interesting recount of Chams experiences in academia.

www.phdcomics.com

We’ve got a Nanodrop loaner in the lab and I’m more or less impressed. The Nanodrop, using the latest in fiber optics and nanotechnology (I just made that up-I have no idea how it works), allows you to quantitate DNA without making a dilution or using a cuvette. It seems a bit more reproducible than our old random number generator (UV spec). Unfortunately, when we arranged for the loaner the price was about $6000 and now the price is $7900-OUCH (and that doesn’t include the price of the PC you need to run it)! It is nice, but that nice? I’m not sure about that.

Note: for some reason when you go to use the Nanodrop, the computer often can’t recognize the device (USB connection). For nearly $8000 someone should work out that bug in the Nanodrop software. I wonder if it is compatible with Vista?

Well, tomorrow’s the day.  The rep is dropping off a Nanodrop for us to demo.  Everyone seems to be raving about the drop here on SAB.  Soon, we’ll have our own opinion how good it is!

I’m thinking of doing a statistical analysis of my daily success rate. Not that I have or even expect a daily success. No honest scientist has success on a daily basis. Failure is expected. It is the norm for research. Everybody knows Saturday and Sunday experiments are doomed to fail or at least seem like they are. What I propose to do is figure out the day of the week when my experiments are most likely to work. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. I wonder if I have a lucky day?  

Three talks on a Monday night with a warm Coke and a chewy almost warm slice of pizza. What a way to start the week! Settle into your seat-the shows is about to begin and you can be pretty sure (tonight’s odds were 2 out of 3) included in the introductory powerpoint slide will be  a graphic photo of an example of the disease you’re about to hear about.  The talk immediately turns to basic research/molecular biology after the shock grabs or diverts your eyes and attention. The physical deformity and/or diseased sexual organ photo allows the speaker to believe, if only for one short shining moment, that their basic research is a clinical trial………..

NEXT SLIDE!!!

Ugh, I’m not hungry anymore and that pizza sauce looks way too much like………….