People are sometimes surprised to hear that I am both a research scientist and an artist, but I see them as quite similar in purpose, only different medium. They both involve imagination, visualization, and communication of those ideas in a way that makes it accessible and interesting for an intended audience. For me, they go hand-in-hand.


The cover of this year's Open Laboratory 2010, designed by myself, Andrea Kuszewski.

Mnookin's site

Offit's site    



Vaccine Epidemic's site

When I was a lad, we were taught that carbon had two allotropes, graphite and diamond.  Although they’re both covalently connected, in neither of these is there anything that one would regard as a ‘molecule’. 

Among environmental activists and their supporters, the use of genetic modification is a bad thing.   Obviously, tomatoes would be the size of our thumbs if our ancestors did not genetically modify plants so research continues.   A group of researchers has announced that plants have for the first time been cloned as seeds, a major step toward making hybrid crop plants that can retain favorable traits from generation to generation - something to which even the most anti-science people can object.

A study just published in the journal Nature by researchers in France, Portugal and Spain looks for the first time at the effects of climate change on the tree of life (that aggregates species according to their evolution/genetic similarity) to find that the whole of it will be affected. But this is not all bad news because even if the tree is to become “thinner” it keeps its structure as there will be no major losses of biodiversity contrary to what other studies had suggested (this would occur if localized “branches” were totally eliminated).

Some of the most naturally appealing stories in the autism world (and our wider world) are those stories that reinforce the myth of the self-made man (a concept I coincidentally taught this week in American Literature). We like movies like Rudy, All the Right Moves, and the Mighty Ducks series because they feed the myth, the feel-good notion that no matter how far behind one is, how disadvantaged, that plucky teamwork, determined effort, and good fortune will be enough to overcome all obstacles, make the team, win the game, and the woman (or man), and get out of the miserable situation you were originally in.

                                                         

A preliminary study in JAMA (JAMA. 2011;305[8]808-814.) has found that 50-minute cell phone use was associated with increased brain glucose metabolism, a marker of brain activity, in the region closest to the phone antenna, but that is not known to have any clinical significance.

I am back from attending the February-scheduled ongoings of the International Year of Chemistry, IYC 2011, as all the chemists and chemical educators are preparing the usual science stuff-------- presentations, seminars, workshops, industrial visits and even short films.

Does anybody remember that film, Mission to Mars? Its a good one. Basically, this band of astronauts tootle off to Mars to find their buddy, against all odds find him and, moreover, find that he seems to be doing just fine by growing tomatoes in a make-shift greenhouse. They then all decide to pop out to see the Face of Mars after he recounts having heard a weird sound near there.

(By the way, there's a bit of a spoiler alert coming, but it is 10 or so years after the film came out, so it's fair game!)



So, moving on, they go to the face and, lo and behold, the face opens, and they step inside.