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Bioscreen growth curves for H. influenzae
We're using the lab next door's Bioscreen incubator to generate growth curves for our H. influenzae competence mutants. This machine collects optical density (OD) data from cultures growing in wells...
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Harsh reviews of the postdoc's DNA uptake manuscript
We finally (after two months) got the reviews back for the postdoc's manuscript about DNA uptake bias. It's a rejection - the reviews were quite negative. The first reviewer was very unfair; they...
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Eat more chocolate! Lose weight!
It's a holiday weekend, and many of us will be eating chocolate, especially chocolate bunnies and chocolate eggs. (Where does that come from, anyway? Bunnies don't lay eggs.) We don't really need an...
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Sunday priorities - not such a tough choice
Today, Sunday, was a beautiful day, and quite a few lawn & garden chores needed attention, and so did a pile of student papers (write a position paper on evolution for our dept). After thinking...
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Eadweard J. Muybridge & Google Doodle
Today's Google Doodle is a fantastic tribute to Muybridge. I haven't found a permalink, but people looking after today can find it archived in a fashion on youtube.
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Another tropical Monday - in my office!
The more seasonal weather of the past few days has been a joy. Garden and field work have not been so sweaty. The longevity of spring flowers has greatly increased. So what a shock to walk into my...
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Late breaking news - Faculty member was not whiny; thermostat was actually...
Last week the Phactor registered his complaint that 85F was a bit too warm in his office, and it was filed in the whiny faculty complaint drawer rather than being sent to the physical plant. The...
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Google Searches Give Away a Country's GDP
Anytime we travel through the Internet we leave piles of data behind us, like Pigpen shedding his cloud of filth. It's too bad if you're concerned about privacy. But if you're a mathematician, that...
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Jack Frost threatens
Frosts in April are no surprise, and very hard frosts can occur as late as the middle of the month, and five years ago, after a warmish March, such a frost (mid-20s F) damaged lots of plants that...
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Goofy botanical questions
Probably because the Phactor does such a good job of it, all of the goofy, off-the-wall botanical questions that one way or another arrive at our university get routed to my office. So you never know...
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The Grapsidae: From Sea to Shore
Sally Lightfoot, Grapsus grapsus, photographed by Victor Burolla. The vernacular name refers to their walking on the points of their legs. In a post from back in 2008, I wrote about the group of crabs...
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Pretty interesting money
In his many travels around the world in pursuit of plants, (for income tax purposes all travel is for professional reasons, of course) the Phactor has observed that virtually every other country in the...
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In search for life through the twists of light
Finding Earth-like planets is common place now. What about detecting life on them? Two centuries ago a French engineer noticed something special about light from the sun. As it reflected from the...
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Single mumps vaccine jab (versus MMR) in the UK - back again?
The "Children's Immunisation Centre" has recently announced that it plans to start administering the single mumps vaccine sometime in the 2nd quarter of this year in the UK. When I rang them up asked...
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Titles
As a new feature mostly intended for my own benefit, I will start posting titles of new papers that I come across in the ToCs that I get emailed every week. I practically never have time to read the...
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Dodged a bullet
Tuesday night's frost warning predictions varied from 28-32 degrees depending upon the source. Wednesday night's frost warning had a pretty uniform prediction of 28 degrees. That is more than cold...
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How much would you pay to the universe?
There are some who question the relevance of space activities in a developing nation. To us, there is no ambiguity of purpose. We do not have the fantasy of competing with the economically advanced...
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Disassociate Galaxy Clusters
A dissociative galaxy cluster is a cluster of galaxies that just can't keep it together any longer. This may sound like an unnecessary anthropomorphication of galaxies, but it is actually a description...
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Religious people believe in a just world
Believers in a just world think that things happen for a reason. In particular, they are more likely than other people to think that victims of crime are in some way responsible for what happened to...
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Friday Fabulous Flower - Fern-leafed peony
With your kind indulgence, the Phactor shall feature another species of peony (it was either that or another Magnolia). Actually the most spectacular floral display in our gardens right now is the...
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