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Just doing it
My inverse PCR reaction using the Q5 High Fidelity polymerase (creates blunt ends) worked on the first try! I now have the antitoxin-deletion fragment I can ligate to a SpecR cassette to create the...
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Agonists and antagonists, and why drug discovery is hard (again)
Here's a valuable and comprehensive review on one of the most glaring pieces of evidence for why drug discovery is so hard - the fact that very small structural changes in molecules can lead to drastic...
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Perils of lawn mowing
Our lawns need mowing in spite of the dry conditions interspersed with a couple of deluges. It's been nearly 3 weeks since they were last mowed, but the last thing a lawn needs in lolly-coddling. Crab...
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Friday Fabulous Flower - White butterfly ginger
It's been quite awhile since the last FFF. This plant may have been featured before, but so what? TPP knew the second he entered the greenhouse that this plant was in flower because of its fragrance,...
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Freedom and truth in mathematics
The very essence of #mathematics is its freedom. (Georg #Cantor)The way we deal with today's numbers in schools is essentially the same manner used by our ancestors Pythagoreans, who saw the numbers as...
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Troubleshooting
Yesterday I kinased my SpecR PCR fragment, ligated it to the inverse-PCR fragment and transformed this into E. coli DH5alpha. But my transformations gave only the same tiny colonies as the negative...
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Kitchen garden - late summer, early fall
In late September there isn't much to do with your kitchen garden except clean up and recap. On the whole it was an OK year, considering all the garden neglect, but why the zucchini stopped producing...
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What's the correct vintage for an apocalypse?
White wine with fish is a no brainer, but the assembled dinner party was largely drinking red wine in honor, no doubt, of the evenings' entertainment, the appearance of a "blood moon". The party took...
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Water on Mars
"Our quest on Mars has been to 'follow the water', in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we've long suspected. This is a significant...
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Fearful things!
Fear is a powerful motivator and so its use in political rhetoric is so common, but unfortunately people can come to fear the wrong or even imaginary things. Tom Tomorrow explains what fears keep...
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3 Quarks Daily annual science writing prize
I am honored and frankly a bit stunned to hear that my post on the "fundamental philosophical dilemma" of chemistry was awarded first place in the annual 3 Quarks Daily science writing prize contest. I...
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2015 Nobel Prize predictions
The nice thing about Nobel Prizes is that it gets easier to predict them every year, simply because most of the people you nominate don't win and automatically become candidates for the next year (note...
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Cichlids are Not the Only Radiation
The Congo River catfish Chrysichthys brevibarbis, copyright John P. Sullivan.With their long barbels around the mouth and lack of scales, the catfish of the Siluriformes are one of most instantly...
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Fall fell, so autumn
Today really felt like the first real autumn day, cool, crisp, dry (too dry!), and cool enough over night to require a light blanket with the optional two black kitty-girl warmer, but only for Mrs....
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Botanical art - Van Gogh's Olive trees
TPP loves botanical art, and this is just freaking amazing! An artist plants a 1.2 acre plot to recreate a Van Gogh painting. This is simply wonderful! Mrs. Phactor adds a "Wow! Van Gogh would be...
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FieldNotes: Circadian Rhythms in the brain, body and sea
Tracking the Ocean’s Circadian Rhythm by Christina Reed at Simons Foundation: To a distant observer on the Pacific waters north of the island of Oahu, Hawai’i, two ships seemed to be engaged in an odd...
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FieldNotes: water on Mars, less in California.
The Economic Ornithology of Sunflower Seeds by Ben Young Landis at See. Food. Write.: Under the yellow pallor of a smoke-filled sky, I walked along the edge of an underworld of sunflowers. I was...
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Bye, bye styrafoam! Hello, mealworm brownies!
Some things decompose readily; some things decompose slowly; some thing essentially decompose so slowly that they essentially don't decompose; a very few things are forever. Waxes decompose very...
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Positive control problem solved
I did the test experiment described in the previous post, and then spent the past few days figuring out why my positive control transformation didn't work any more.The test experiment was to kinase,...
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Some geometrical aspects of 3- and 4-spaces
A couple of abstracts about the geomtery of space: Historically, there have been many attempts to produce the appropriate mathematical formalism for modeling the nature of physical space, such as...
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