Jill Bolte Taylor scientist with stroke

An interesting video on this scientists experience during a stroke that allowed her to better understand what appears to be affects of the left and right brains.

Extensive chromatin fragmentation improves enrichment of protein binding sites in chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2577354/

As you guys know, yesterday I performed quite a few sonications and I started looking (again, as I do often) at papers that indicate the optimal size for sonicated DNA.

I found this paper. And it makes sense. It basically points out that with more sonications (~200bp) you increase the fold enrichment of your target by reducing the background or non-specific binding. But, you'll ip less (and probably purify less because the %efficiency we get back from the kits goes down with smaller fragments).

Happy ChIP'in!

Best Scientific Abstract I’ve Read in a Long Time

Why Scientists Are Smarter than Politicians

A nice article

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2095264,00.html

Race to Stop MS Fundraiser

Hey guys, I would really appreciate it if you guys could make it out to our fundraiser for the MS Society in honor of my sister-in-law. We're trying to raise $3000 and we're doing a dinner and live auction, it's going to be nice.

It's SAT Sept 24, 2011 from 3-6pm!

You can purchase tickets here (use the student price):

http://sugarplumbyz.ticketleap.com/auction/

We're having:
-LIVE JAZZ FROM STICKBONES AND THE BONE SQUAD
-UNLIMITED FOOD AND DRINKS
-DESERT BAR AND CUPCAKES
-GUEST SPEAKER FROM THE MS SOCIETY
-SPECIAL VIDEO TRAINING PRESENTATION
-LIVE AUCTION INCLUDING:
VACATION PACKAGES TO THE POCONOS,
VACATION PACKAGES TO NEW ORLEANS,
2 HOUR PHOTO SESSION,
STUDIO SUITE PROVIDED BY AFFINIA HOTELS,
PURSE COLLECTION BY BLEU JONES,
CLOTHING COLLECTION BY LILLY WHITE
AND MUCH MORE!

If you can't make it but still want to support we have a direct donation link too. Thanks!
http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/sugarplumbyz

In Utero Intraventricular Injection and Electroporation of E15 Mouse Embryos

So, I'm planning to do this experiment with Freddy (my collaborator) to look at the effect of GR phospho-mutants in an invivo mouse model (instead of doing a knock-in mouse which takes much much longer).


http://www.jove.com/details.php?id=239

Work ethic: The 24/7 lab

 Working weekends. Leaving at midnight. Friday evening meetings. Does science come out the winner?

Not that we under- (or over-) work...but the article provides an interesting perspective.

"an analysis of survey data collected by the US National Research Council on 11,231 PhD scientists...found that the average scientist worked about 50 hours a week, and in general the more hours an individual put in, the more publications he or she cranked out."