Something to worry about…

So, we talked in class today about transposons. For those who don’t know what they are, I’m going to give a brief description. For those who usually stop reading by now when I start talking science, keep reading ’cause there’s a relatively important point toward the end that warrants discussion…

A transposon is also known as a “jumping gene.” They are pieces of genetic information that can code for the machinery to either copy itself to another location in a genome, or even excise itself from one location and move itself to another. Cool, eh?

Well, think of it this way. Let’s say a transposon lands at some location in a bacterial cell that’s pretty close to a gene that codes for tetracycline resistance (that’s an antibiotic…). Let’s say another transposon lands on the other side of this resistance gene. Now, what you have is a bigger transposon that, at either side, can cut itself out and move the whole thing (including resistance) to another location, or replicate itself.

Why is this bad? Well, that’s one easy (and scary) way that antibiotic resistance is spread between bacteria. Apparently, for example, there’s a transposon in the fruit fly that is found in all fruit flies…but wasn’t there 50 years ago…so within a span of 50 years, all fruit flies on Earth got this gene. Do you know how fast bacteria divide? It’s insane to think of how fast bacteria can get these “jumping genes” and then become resistant to all of our antibiotics.

Know what else is bad? And this is the point of the discussion… The government is more concerned with developing defenses for smallpox and anthrax than they are about protecting us from resistant strains of flu, or pneumonia, etc. How many people do smallpox and anthrax kill every year? Not that many. Now, flu and pneumonia (etc…)? How many? Lots. And those guys aren’t resistant to all of our antibiotics…yet…

So yeah, at this point, it’s likely that within the next 20-30 years (or sooner?), all of our current antibiotics won’t be effective against common ailments that are curable today. And we’re wasting our money “protecting” ourselves from dangers that barely blip on the radar in the natural world.

Believe you me…I’m more worried about an antibiotic-resistant strain of influenza than I am about anthrax…and you should be, too…

Update (12/2/05): Case in Point. Here’s an article about a new strain of bacteria that is proving difficult to fend off… Be afraid…be very afraid…

Rotation #3

So, here’s Nathan’s “what’s Andy doing in his rotation this time” blog posting (i.e. he’ll be the only one to comment because no one else cares…). Regardless, I’m working in Dr. Scott Zahm’s lab in the Pharmacology and Physiology department until the end of this semester. He works with neuroanatomy in rats, generally trying to “map out” sections of the brain that are integral to motivation and, consequently, motor skills. By “motivation,” I mean a lot of things. For example, he is currently focusing on the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) in the rat brain, which is involved in motor function. More specifically, consider this: when we’re hungry, we have a few different competing ideas going through our brain, one of which is “where do I get food” and the other is “how do I survive while I try to get this food” (self-preservation). Our VTA works in concert with other parts of the brain to weigh each competing idea and then control our “need” for things like food, warmth, TV, drugs, whipped cream, etc.

Zahm, et al. are working to map the neurons that come in and go out of the VTA (and other structures) in the rat brain. Specifically, they want to better understand the brain “circuits” and how something that is signalled in one part of the brain can signal another part of the brain. They do this using “tracers” that can label neurons in a certain area (injected into the rat’s brain…) and then the neurons take up the tracer and transport it to other areas of the brain.

The cool pharmacological part of this is two-fold. First, his lab deals with reward systems. So, if you are taking a drug and you become addicted to it, you’ll have more motivation to try and get that drug back. The drug itself could completely rearrange different neurons in your brain as well, connecting something to the VTA that wasn’t connected before (thereby leading to addiction). This leads into the second part: we don’t know how the brain works, but perhaps more importantly, we don’t know how a lot of drugs (like Prozac) really work… The brain needs to be mapped so we know where things happen, what’s connected to what, and how a change in one area can affect transmission to another area. My interests in neuropharmacology are somewhat contingent on this fact…you can’t effectively develop new drugs unless you know how the brain is set up. We’ve found lots of drugs that have an effect…but we don’t necessarily know why… We could be prescribing drugs for ADHD that are “re-mapping” the brain of our children and not really know it… This research, and studies like it, will help us better understand how the brain is set up and how a drug can affect its organization.

As far as what I personally am doing, it’s relatively small stuff. So far, I’ve worked with putting brain sections on slides, staining brain sections with antibodies, seen the surgeries for injection of tracer into the brain and, consequently, the brain’s removal. Starting tomorrow, I’ll work on the actual mapping using light microscopes (and electron microscopes, eventually…) to take a look at the neurons and see where they go.

Nifty, eh?

Craziness…

So yeah, do you remember hearing about crazy fools fighting at Wal-Marts at 5:00 am on Nov. 26th? Well, Brooke and I joined in the fun… We saw that Wal-Mart had a cheap-o laptop for sale at just under $500 in the ad on Thanksgiving day…didn’t think much of it… Well, then I went by Slickdeals.net and saw that the deal was actually $378…which is insane for a laptop that has a decent AMD processor in it, a burner and wireless networking… Brooke is getting to the point where she needs a different computer (since her HP is 5 years old and a 1 GHz desktop will only do so much with WinXP installed…), so we decided to make the attempt…

Well, we got there at 4:50 am…and the parking lot was pretty full. We walked inside and everyone was back at the electronics department in a line…like…40-50 people in each of two lines. One line was for the laptop…the other was for a $50 GameBoy Advance… We come to find out that they only had 18 of the laptops. We didn’t get one. We were back in bed and sleeping by 5:30… 😛

Anyway, the weekend overall was pretty good. Got to visit with both sides of the family and got to see friends in Columbia, so that was really good…hadn’t seen Jeff or Jason in about a year (not my fault… :-P), so good times were had.

Now, I just have to get back in the “finish this semester before your head explodes” mentality…

New Quotes

I’ve added some new quotes to the New-ish Quotes section…here’s a sample:

“Let’s be honest – this electorate has switched because that Christian right has taken over the Republican Party. They started it in the 80s with Reagan and Pat Robertson. And like a parasite on a host, they now own it. Let’s examine what ‘moral values’ are. Because I don’t think religion always corresponds with moral values. To me, and they’re very good at conflating morality with religion, just the way George Bush won election by conflating integrity with monogamy. He ran against Bill Clinton and his terrible blowjob by saying ‘I have integrity.’ That’s different than monogamy. Okay, the same way, when we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That’s something I value. Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. That’s different. When they talk about values, they’re talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values.”
— Bill Maher; “Real Time with Bill Maher”

…so, so true…glad he got another show after ABC canned his ass for speaking the truth…

Score one for the Catholics…

So, Tony sent me this link from FOX News…ironically… Apparently, an astronomer from the Vatican has said that Intelligent Design has no place alongside evolution in the science classroom. He’s the highest-ranking Catholic to make such a statement.

a). FOX News finally put out some useful information that isn’t conservative in nature.
b). The Catholics apparently aren’t completely incompetent in leadership as previously believed
c). Now, we just need to get the Catholics to admit that open communion and women in the clergy are alright and we’ll be making some progress…

Hey, it’s a step in the right direction, right?

Soccer = Pat Robertson

So, Thursday night, I went to Praise Band practice and, at the same time, some yearly pre-school event was going on…the parking lot was full of vehicles…and therefore, I come to the following conclusion:

Soccer moms will cause the end of the world.

Let me explain… Soccer moms drive mini-vans…and more recently, because they didn’t like the stigma surrounding them and their bretheren, they started driving SUVs. More and more SUVs. The largest ones possible. The more soccer moms there are, the more SUVS and mini-vans that drive on the roads, and it is those vehicles that cause greenhouse gases to knock down the ozone layer and increase global warming.

Therefore, rather than killing off all the soccer moms to solve this problem, I say that we eliminate soccer as a sport. It isn’t that entertaining anyway. And we’d save the world while doing it…literally…

Who’s with me?

Of principles and $$$…

So yeah, I got to thinking today… I use Linux and various other open-source programs instead of Windows for a variety of reasons, but one of those is that the information contained within is freely available to anyone who wants it. What does that mean? Well, it means that if you download the “source code” of the Linux kernel and other “open-source” programs, you can edit it and tweak it to your heart’s content. If you decide you don’t like the way a certain function of the program works, you can (assuming you know some programming…) change it to fit your purpose. The reason why this is cool is that it allows knowledge to travel freely between different groups; what one person starts with a program can be learned from and transferred to another application, allowing for the programming itself to improve over time.

Now, switch gears into science. My plan has been to get my Ph.D. and then work in industry for awhile, making some cash, and then maybe switch back into academia and teach for a few years to alleviate boredom around retirement time. The correlation is that academia is like “open-source,” where information is published and freely available for other scientists to learn from and take a step further, while industry is like “closed-source” where you work toward patents that can allow you to make money and prevent y our opponents from coming up with a solution to a given problem that’s better than yours.

So, the question remains: am I hypocritical in using open-source software, believing in what it stands for, and then getting a job and making a career in industry where I will work in a “closed-source” environment? I mean, I have relatively expensive hobbies (computers/electronics, etc.) and I’d like to be able to finance them, and to do so, I need a job in industry so I can afford that 1969 Shelby Mustang…but is it right to compromise principles in doing so?

I dunno…I guess there’s no simple answer to the question…but I’ve got 5 years to figure it out…

gDesklets

So, I discovered gDesklets this past week… It’s been out for awhile, but I just now found out how badass it is… Here’s what my desktop looks like on the laptop:

Screenshot

As you can see, the bar at the bottom functions like the one in OS X, so when you highlight an icon, it has this nifty animation on it…and you can set up different windows that are on your desktop, such as weather, a Gmail checker, or even an RSS (news…) reader or little “Post It” notes to mark things on… Here’s a more close-up look at the launcher at the bottom:

Launcher

The only thing I can complain about is how much RAM the damned thing takes up…I mean, 512 MB can run it just fine, but much below that may not be a good call…

So yeah, here’s the deal: install Linux on your computers. It’ll look pretty. Prettier than WinXP. You can install it on your desktop as a secondary OS so you can run WinXP by default and boot up Linux when you feel like toying around. seriously. Do it. I’ll install it for you.

“It is your destiny.”

Good vs Evil

You know, I tend to try avoiding preaching when I post on here…as in, trying to talk about Christianity as a religion in any way, shape or form…yet, the subject does enter into my opinions on things like teaching Intelligent Design in our public (non-Christian) schools. Therefore, let me digress from “the norm” a bit…and in light of that, let me quickly propose my definition of a “good Christian:”

One who believes not only that Jesus Christ is the son of God and that He gave His life for us, but also that this person lives their life as an example of what God envisions for His people.

If you have an addendum to that statement, please post a comment. Personally, I think it’s the latter part of that definition that gives people some contention, since many of us tend to disagree as to what “God envisions for His people.”

I, therefore, wish to put forth a statement from someone I consider to be a “bad Christian:”

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover (Pennsylvania): if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.”

This statement is not an example of what a “good Christian” would say, for obvious reasons. A good Christian does not wish ill will upon others. As the Bible dictates, Jesus was all about living his life and being an example of what we should be doing, even though that may be difficult. At no point in my recollection of the Bible (and I could be wrong…and I’ll correct this if proved otherwise…) does Jesus ever wish God’s wrath upon anyone. Note: the statement written above does not explicitly express “ill-will,” but I think it’s implied…again, perhaps I’m wrong on that…

Pat Robertson, you are indeed a terrible Christian and a very bad example of what Christians are taught and seeking to accomplish. You are, however, doing an incredible job of putting lies in the heads of non-Christians who now, due to your innate stupidity, have no good reason to change their minds about the religion. Good job, you worthless, lying, bastard.