Hey, bro. Hey. What’s up? Not much. You? Not much. Just had a burrito. Cool. Yeah. … … Was it good? Was what good? The burrito. Oh, right. Yeah, it was. Cool. Yep. … … What kind burrito was it? Veggie. Cool. Yeah, it was a pretty cool burrito, bro. Where’d you get it? Get what? The burrito. Oh, right. I got it at Gary’s party. Gary had a party? Yep. It just ended. Was a blast. I didn’t hear anything about it. You didn’t? No. Hmm. I was wondering why you weren’t there. Why didn’t Gary invite me? Oh,…
The Science Creative Quarterly
From February, 2006
BREAKTHROUGH BREAKDOWN
(graphic altered from Kadivar et al., 2006) If it’s not new, you can’t publish it; it is an axiom that illustrates a sickness in science. Doing biological research is not cheap, it takes time and money, and there is not enough of either to go around for everyone to fulfil their Nobel Prize dreams. If a scientist wants stability and adequate funding, i.e. a career, they have to produce. But these days knowledge is not enough; it has to be something that can turn into a “breakthrough”, a patent, or a pill. The pressure to produce, and for experiments to…
CHILD’S PLAY
My brother sent me a subscription to the British magazine New Scientist last Christmas. I love it. It arrives once a week and sits, like a center piece, in the middle of the kitchen table. Everyone in the family takes turns reading it, each finding, at different times during the week—over coffee and toast, before soccer practice, while the spaghetti sauce simmers—bits of articles that are so awesome we are compelled to read them aloud to one another. Oh my god, one of us will say, you have to hear this. Over the past year conversations at the kitchen table…
RESURRECTING DAMAGED NEURONS: ARE WE FIGHTING A HOPELESS BATTLE?
Spinal cord injury (SCI) has been documented throughout history. Early physicians described patients with this affliction to be conscious and aware yet unable to innervate their limbs. Up to the mid 1960s the proper course of treatment for SCI was to stabilize the spinal cord to avoid further injury. Repair, however, was deemed impossible. It wasn’t until recent developments in molecular biology and biotechnology over the past decade that an understanding of the true molecular mechanisms behind SCI has been unraveled to provide a small glimpse of hope. To this day, there is not a cure for SCI but studies…
HEADS UP: RAMEN
(In which we present this piece to acknowledge that a bevy of FSM contest pieces will soon be presented in the upcoming weeks. This, of course, includes the one that will win $100 worth of Ramen noodles) – – – In the beginning, there was nothing. What happened thereafter has come under great debate, until now. Recent archeological finds and the forefront of scientific discoveries have aligned to reveal to us that He created all. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is set apart from average deities and is certainly not your average flash-in-the-frying-pan David Koresh or Heaven’s Gate Doctrine. No, as…
A FABRICATED PAPER: MITOCHONDRIAL EVOLUTION: SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?
(This paper was designed by a group of students for a class project, and as such is completely fabricated) TITLE: Mitochondrial Evolution: Should I stay or should I go? ABSTRACT: The distinction between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell structure is still accepted today as the most fundamental discontinuity in the living world. In the process of analyzing the newly sequenced bacterium Rickettsia prowazekii it was discovered through a BLAST search that a non-coding region of DNA showed high homology to the importin-α gene of eukaryotes. The genomes of Rickettsia canada and Rickettsia rickettsii were both found to contain a sequence homologous…
HISTORY’S GREATEST MINDS TACKLE SCIENCE’S GREATEST UNSOLVED MYSTERIES
Dark Matter En route to Daphne’s uncle’s seaside cabin, Scooby Doo and the rest of the Mystery Inc. gang are waylaid at an abandoned amusement park – which, according to the kindly local innkeeper, is haunted by matter that cannot be detected from the light which it emits. So mysterious is this ‘dark matter’ that its presence can only be indirectly inferred from motions of astronomical objects. Unclear as to how this would constitute the type of adventure the gang is usually involved with, Freddie remains in the Mystery Machine while the rest of the team begin to investigate. Whilst…
A LESS THAN FORMAL TREATMENT OF BIOLOGY CONCEPTS FOR THE BUDDING BIOINFORMATICS WANNABE
As a student assistant, I have been learning about bioinformatics for the last three months. During this time, I have found it to be an organization-obsessive rationalist in the house of sciences. It is not enough to get things right; you also have to arrange them in the proper order, and then try to make some sense out of them. Not so strictly speaking, bioinformatics brings molecular biology and computer science together, often with the help of the unifying power of the mighty Internet. It stores the onslaught of biological data coming out of research labs and provides tools for…
HARMONY IS ALWAYS HERE
The SCQ would like to introduce a new category, which we have tentatively called “impressions.” Think of it as an avenue to reflect on the music, words, or film that affect your relationship to science or your relationship to something that entails a small link to science. Hmmm, is that vague enough? – – – – – I’m not entirely sure if I became a rational scientific person by nature or nurture. Whether it is genetic or whether it is the obvious result of too many years of study. Whatever the case may be, I am a slave to my…