Nerdy Science Blog

Who say biologists are nerd and bore? We too can produce “LOL” and “ahem…” type of “professional jokes”, from molecular biologists to molecular biologists, and only molecular biologists can catch it. Sit back and have fun~

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“I’ve been single-stranded too long! Lonely ATGCATG would like to pair up with congenial TACGTAC.”

“Menage a trois! Ligand seeks two receptors into binding and mutual phosphorylation. Let’s get together and transduce some signals.”

“Some dates have called me a promotor. Others have referred to me as a real operator. Personally, I think I’m just a cute piece of DNA who is still looking for that special transcription factor to help me unwind.”

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Say you have done all the possible troubleshoot / trial & error / repetition etc, no matter what you have done, your PCR result still driving you nut. There is one PCR-goes-wrong hypothesis you might miss out and most probably will love to try out.

The hypothesis known as “bad karma hypothesis” by author, I fall in the love with it at the first sight~

Bad karma hypothesis.

Background:
This is basically the “God is punishing you” hypothesis. It sometimes gains a great deal of favor.

Symptoms:
i) All rational explanations have been exhausted and yet PCR still is not working for you.
ii) Persistent feelings of guilt (if you are a Catholic, this symptom could be misleading).

Tests and solutions:
i) Try bungee jumping. If you survive, God must not be too hacked-off at you.
ii) Atone for your sins and start over at the top of the flow chart.
iii) If you end up here next time, have someone watch you next time you set up your PCR reactions.

I’m sure you’ll like it to!

Research is all about getting a right kit and do it right way; even a non-technical person also can get the result right.

If not all, most.

Just realize that Jobstreet has a feature call salary report, data are generated through their jobseekers’ database.

Interestingly, the report also included Research Assistant (RA) position. I am personally do not consider RAs involve in institutional research centers a real job; in Malaysia, it’s rather a transitional positions for graduate students under a supervisor and funded by a research grant before official registration as a MSc/PhD candidates. The bond duration can be months to year(s), depending on agreement between the graduate and his/her supervisor. Due to research’s budget constrains, payments are always expected low, average of RM1500/mth. Perhaps lower.

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Years ago;

“I wanna be a virologist, combating deadly viruses at the frontline, save life, save the world!”

Later;

“I wanna win a Nobel Prize, I wanna my family, my friends, even the country proud of me!”

“I wanna publish papers in famous journals, in Nature, in Science… etc, I wanna make great research discoveries and breakthroughs!”

and then…

“arghhh… I just wish I could get my bench work done, and figure out why my plasmid gone!”

“Abstracts, papers, conferences… nagging, dragging, dying…”

“Wish I could finish my MSc / PhD thesis… God, give me strength~~~”

Now;

“I want money, I want happiness, I want my life back!”

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No, it isn’t me, it’s just a thought since the word “evolution” has become top-five-tag in Nerdy Science.

Happy research!

A brief yet beautiful 3D animation on introduction of stem cells, worth to have a look.

Another good presentation on “Everything You Wanted To Know About Stem Cells”, quite informative but I manage to watch only half of it as it is 51 minutes long!

I shall come back to this later.

I can’t stop the funny feelings and feeling like laughing out when I read the one of the highlight in nature news: Swiss dignity law is threat to plant biology.

The Swiss federal government’s ethics committee on non-human biotechnology has mapped out guidelines to help granting agencies decide which research applications deeply offend the dignity of plants — and hence become unfundable.

The funny feelings are just like when I see the fact we are having not enough money but Deputy Prime Minister insisting our second space tourism is on, and the fact where our CSI graduates are jobless after following courses designed by related government departments.

Except when I read the sentence “dignity of plants”, I can laugh it out.

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I’ll like to take a break from jobless forensic science graduates and second space tourism issues.

Was real tired of searching of informations, so I start surfing around science blogs for fun.

I surfed one of my subscribed blog, Bitesize Bio, which was introduced by WTJ, admin of this blog. I couldn’t agree anymore seeing this three posts:

• 15 Reasons to Be A Scientist;
• 10 Reasons NOT to be a Scientist.

I’m not a scientist. But apparently, it apply perfectly to a researcher. Here’s the third post.

• Alternative Careers For Scientists. (this one should perfectly apply to our forensic science grads as well.)

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Came across this blog post and it grab my attention – a true story of a cancer survival, twice. For 2 more days, on 24^th April, it will be the cancer survival, Benjamin Rubenstein’s bone marrow’s 5 year old birthday, also his 5 years anniversary of cancer free life. Congratulate to Benjamin.

His wrote his cancer survival story but no publisher wants it. Thanks to blogger.com, he published it in blogspot, have a read when free.

I’ve Still Got Both My Nuts

• ch.1 The Golden Age
• ch.2 Teeter Totter of Life
• ch.3 Welcome to the Good Life
• ch.4 Welcome to the Cancer Life
• ch.5 Bombs Over September
• ch.6 Again
• ch.7 Fix Me

He life was saved by stem cells obtained from a little girl’s umbilical cord. One more true case of stem cell’s treatment saved life.

Read this from kj’s blog, a fellow blogger I’d know for sometime through online. He was asking why are we (Malaysia) cannot be down-to-earth in sciences, in respond to one of our previous posts, Malaysian Cabinet Really Wanted To Send Another Space Traveller, wrote by WTJ.

I attended a seminar talking about the management and policy in science area. Too bad I don’t have management background to understand all the management and policy terms/thingy, I can barely understand what were they talking about. Otherwise I would have share it.

But the Q&A section was pretty fun, some of the audiences pointed out certain general issues that have long bothering us.

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