Ode to an Autumnal Hangover
Ah, the causal thread linking ale to Ibuprofen in the ruddy wake of a Autumn (that's "Fall" in Americanese, reader) ale festival in rural England. It's gone through various iterations, but here we see a young, undergraduate Dr. Samways simultaneously establishing his interest in the area of neuroscience whilst expressing his profound artistic incompetence at poetry. A Cuttlefish I aint, madam, 'tis true.There appears to be a Wildebeest inside my skull a'frolicking,Bouncing 'tween the bones and giving my brain a bollocking.It must have been there hiding in that cask of Old Peculiar -It’s not unlike a cow, you see, 'though...
Source: Across the Bilayer - September 18, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Source Type: blogs
The best email I've had all week...
It's Saturday night. I'm in the office in a particularly frenetic state of hyper-caffeinated anxiety trying to submit an almost-but-not-quite-satisfactorily-complete review by today's putative deadline. And then this lands in my Inbox:"I am pleased to inform you that Dr *****, ****, ****, ******* have recently extended the manuscript submission deadline ... to the 14 Oct 2013"I'm off home to have a story and tell my kids a bedtime beer. (Source: Across the Bilayer)
Source: Across the Bilayer - September 15, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Source Type: blogs
Underwater Daughter... new experiments in aquatic self-portraits
The one foto out of about 124 that actually looked adequate for a new Facebook profile picFoto Phail!bubbles...Fotobomb...Da, na, na, Da, nanana, da, nana!Humming bird impression. (Source: Across the Bilayer)
Source: Across the Bilayer - September 12, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Source Type: blogs
"I wish either my father or my mother...
... or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing; that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind; and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost: Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, I am ...
Source: Across the Bilayer - August 27, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Source Type: blogs
Pro (forward) crastinus (belonging to tomorrow)
Figure 1. A representative experiment in molecular frivolity.When it comes to serious during-work-hours procrastination, I'm willing to bet that among the protein structure function geeks, Pymol wipes the floor with Facebook, Twitter, the blogopshere, Angry Birds et al. combined.It's trick, of course, is to provide us with the self-justifying sensation that what we're actually doing is work. The illusion usually maintained until, in a moment of lucidity, one realizes that one has spent the last forty minutes creating something that looks like Figure 1: an ion channel's bottom in technicolor. I have no recollection as to wh...
Source: Across the Bilayer - August 27, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Source Type: blogs
Nearly took out Bambi's mom driving home from Syracuse last night...
Bambi had hung back, clearly on the instruction of his Mother, while she took on The Road first to test the tarmac. She was clearly a veteran, though, because she kept her head down and kept moving in defiance of my highbeams. No lights-in-the-deer-heads for this doe.Reckon you could barely squeeze a credit card between the gap separating her rump from the bumper of The Batmobile* it was that close. The nerves of every mammal involved in this scene were jangled to the point that I'm pretty sure it was the deer's life that flashed before my eyes and, I like to imagine, it was my life that flashed before hers (What did she m...
Source: Across the Bilayer - August 19, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Source Type: blogs
Understanding ion channels: The Cysteine Scanning Accessibility Method for eejits - Part The First (in which I don't actually talk about the Cysteine Scanning Accessibility Method)
Figure 1. Topology of a P2X receptor subunitWhen a protein strongly suspected of being a plasma membrane ion channel is isolated and cloned, one of the first things we want to find out about it is which parts form the water-filled pore responsible for conducting ion passage across the otherwise water-unfriendly lipid bilayer into and out of the cell.In the absence of a 3-dimensional crystal structure for the ion channel, this requires a bit of detective work. First, various techniques are used to determine the approximate topology of individual ion channel subunits, telling us which parts of the protein are extracellu...
Source: Across the Bilayer - August 18, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Source Type: blogs
The Cysteine Scanning Mutagenesis Method for eejits: Part The First (in which I don't actually talk about the Cysteine Scanning Mutagenesis Method)
Figure 1. Topology of a P2X receptor subunitWhen a protein strongly suspected of being a plasma membrane ion channel is isolated and cloned, one of the first things we want to find out about it is which parts form the water-filled pore responsible for conducting ion passage across the otherwise water-unfriendly lipid bilayer into and out of the cell.In the absence of a 3-dimensional crystal structure for the ion channel, this requires a bit of detective work. First, various techniques are used to determine the approximate topology of individual ion channel subunits, telling us which parts of the protein are extracellu...
Source: Across the Bilayer - August 18, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Source Type: blogs
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Well, sadly the readership of this humble blog has a precipitous tumble taken. Circulation is down 50% and it's not clear that a recovery is manageable without drastic measures. What's this, I hear you say? Has there been a tsunami? A zombie apocalypse? Surely only a cataclysm of Old Testament proportions could be responsible for such a sudden dive in the ratings of a renown scientific diary as this? No, Dear Reader, 'tis not so. As shocking as this news might be to you, Reader, the truth is that I have only ever had two regular visitors: your good self and Mum (and she never actually read it according to her, she ju...
Source: Across the Bilayer - August 17, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Source Type: blogs
Can't blog, writing literature review... and grant... &c, &c
this is my office bin...this is me...Res Ipsa Loquitur..[Update: My wife just called. She's on vacation with the Wee-Uns in DC and has given me specific instructions to get out of my office and relax. I said that I would, but I was lying through my caffeine-clenched teeth, readers, there's no denying that now. The truth is I intend to ride this crazy horse all the way into the sunset and through 'till dawn if that's what it takes to wrestle this beast out of my head and onto my humble p00ter screen, which as I speak is a wild collage of Word, PyMol, Excel, EndNote, and assorted .PDFs. Somewhere in there is some sense, and ...
Source: Across the Bilayer - August 16, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Source Type: blogs
