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Download the Protein Blotting Guide
Download the Stem Cell Guide for Life Science Researchers
The cure for cancer comes down to this: video games.
In a research lab at Wake Forest University, biophysicist and computer scientist Samuel Cho uses graphics processing units (GPUs), the technology that makes video game images so realistic, to simulate the inner workings of human cells.
“If it wasn’t for gamers who kept buying these GPUs, the prices wouldn’t have dropped, and we couldn’t have used them for science,” Cho says.
Now he can see exactly how the cells live, divide and die.
In a very interesting study on Principle Investigator demographics, Dr. Sally Rockey, Director of Extramural Research at the NIH, found that over the last 32 years the average age distribution of NIH principle investigators has increased significantly. Watch the video below to see a shocking visual representation of the data. As a note to our PI population, although hearing loss is common in the elderly, your inability to hear what’s being said in this video is not a sign of aging. The video does not have any sound!
Sit back and relax with some popcorn as you watch this interesting talk by Professor Bonnie Bassler of Princeton University talk about the social world of bacteria. And you thought that only human’s had Facebook!
If you don’t have enough patience (or popcorn) to watch the 50 minute version of her talk, checkout her 20 minute 2009 TED talk on the same subject below.
In a very entertaining talk, Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert explains the “real” reason for brains and how evolutionary evidence proves that the brain has evolved to control movement and not as a thinking or feeling organ.
Perhaps one of Wolpert’s best lines is when he compares tenured professors to Sea Squirts. Appartently, Sea Squirts swim around the ocean as juveniles and then implant themselves on a rock where they remain indefinitely. Once they no longer need to move, they digest their brains which, Wolpert contends, is proof that their brain was only necessary for movement. As Wolpert so eloquently put it:
Once you don’t need to move, you don’t need the luxury of that brain. This animal is often taken as an analogy to what happens in universities when professors get tenure…
