Real life thread

[SampanViking]

I would just to test some attitudes from the range of members of Chinese origin.

If Mrs Sampan has a vision of hell, it takes the form of a cold buffet, eaten with fingers.
The presentation of Cold food (esp meat) and finger food always illicit a wave of complaint from my dear lady.
Of course neither of us are Spring Chickens any more, so is this attitude still prevalent, irrespective of your generation or where you live/have been brought up.

Just curious.

 

[Jeff Head]

My parents (both of them chemists) always say people like us become completely useless outside of a lab.

Ah, but what you do in the lab makes life better for all of us.

Without serious research, and very, very smart people involved with it, there is no end to the diseases, maladies, inconvienences, troubles, and too many other ills to list that mankind would still be plagued with.

That counts for a lot more than any other areas you simply do not have, or find the time to focus on, my friend.

 

[Air Force Brat]

While you are getting the Icy Blast and Heavy Snow, the same weather driver is sending mild but very wet air across the Atlantic which is hitting the UK as a series of severe storms, with high winds, torrential rain and now extensive flooding on saturated ground.

This morning the latest storm caused serious problems as its surge coincided with the some of the highest tides expected this year and of course already near to overflow rivers caused by previous rainfall. Next storm due on Sunday.

-4 F this morning, but a balmy 20 degree F at present, come on down, I was in Chi-town this morning delivering 6 new cop-rods to Chicago Toll Authority, I had a semi give me a blast as I "sqooze" my "police interceptor" into a slot right ahead of him in order to keep the team together, looked a lot like the fast and the furious as you don't wanta get shut out in all that traffic, it was a zoo, but we got it all there to there in one piece. This ISP chick asks me, why did you drive them up, I said Lady, thats how we save the state of Illinois Money, and keep our local citizens employed, she said I thought you were shipping them, NO LADY, these are them, and now they are YOURS, CHECK PLEASE???? Give a chick a gun and a UNIFORM, and ya got Barney Fife???? Sheesh!!

 

[kwaigonegin]

My parents (both of them chemists) always say people like us become completely useless outside of a lab. I tend to agree with them on this. I can tell you all about how a particular protein folds and changes its location in a cell, how a cell functions and how a disease works, but I would be less than useless if anyone asks me how to actually treat a patient... Much like those in the tv show the Big Bang theory. They can tell you all about the universe, but lack the most fundamental skill and understanding of the real world.

Don't sell yourself short. This world needs people like you even more so than they do me... like in Hollywood movies folks like you work on the cure while folks like me fend off the marauding hoard of zombies.

 

[asif iqbal]

-4 F this morning, but a balmy 20 degree F at present, come on down, I was in Chi-town this morning delivering 6 new cop-rods to Chicago Toll Authority, I had a semi give me a blast as I "sqooze" my "police interceptor" into a slot right ahead of him in order to keep the team together, looked a lot like the fast and the furious as you don't wanta get shut out in all that traffic, it was a zoo, but we got it all there to there in one piece. This ISP chick asks me, why did you drive them up, I said Lady, thats how we save the state of Illinois Money, and keep our local citizens employed, she said I thought you were shipping them, NO LADY, these are them, and now they are YOURS, CHECK PLEASE???? Give a chick a gun and a UNIFORM, and ya got Barney Fife???? Sheesh!!

Hey thats nothing we walk around in T-shirts when it's zero thats nice mild climate for us but then again Scots are a breed apart! lol

 

[asif iqbal]

Not any more. I got my PhD (in biophysics/ bioengineering) almost 7 years ago and did two postdoctoral fellowships following that (one in physiology and one in biochemistry/ molecular biology) and got a faculty position two years ago. I know of Bob Clegg from studying his publications on FLIM, but do not know him in person. He was a leading expert in FLIM. It's very sad that he has left us.

I use many quantitative imaging techniques, like EM, FLIM-FRET, FRAP, TIRF and plain ole confocal, etc. got some cool pictures of mammalian cells and fly brains...

Nice to hear vesicles, it's ironic my single molecule FRET was done using vesicles encapsulation where you encapsulate your bio molecule inside a lipid and measure the dynamics, we also have a confocal microscope you can do much shoter time scales but I never used it it will eventually have optical tweezers so you can pull molecules apart and measure the energys and unwinding propertys of helical nucleic acids

The two dyes I used were Cy3 and Cy5, red and blue respectively makes for nice samples!

 

[vesicles]

Nice to hear vesicles, it's ironic my single molecule FRET was done using vesicles encapsulation where you encapsulate your bio molecule inside a lipid and measure the dynamics, we also have a confocal microscope you can do much shoter time scales but I never used it it will eventually have optical tweezers so you can pull molecules apart and measure the energys and unwinding propertys of helical nucleic acids

The two dyes I used were Cy3 and Cy5, red and blue respectively makes for nice samples!

I did my PhD on lipid vesicles, studying the mechanical and electrostatic properties of cell membranes. I guess you know why my name is "vesicles". The kind of vesicles we used is the giant unilamellar vesicles, GUVs. It sounds like you guys used the same kind of vesicles. Another kind of vesicles that I used a lot in my PhD years is the large unilamellar vesicles, LUVs. The joke in the lab was that I made LUV in the lab a lot... I've used optical tweezers as well, mainly for pulling membrane tethers so that we could measure the bending rigidity of the membrane. Spent a lot "fun" time in front of the optical trap... Hate it so much that I would not go near another one of those...

The main fluorescence tags that we use now are the typical fluorescent proteins, like GFP. It has a stable liftetime and the DNA constructs for GFP-tagged proteins are all widely available so that we don't have to do a lot of cloning work. I'm lazy...

 

[Jeff Head]

I did my PhD on lipid vesicles, studying the mechanical and electrostatic properties of cell membranes.

The main fluorescence tags that we use now are the typical fluorescent proteins, like GFP. It has a stable liftetime and the DNA constructs for GFP-tagged proteins are all widely available so that we don't have to do a lot of cloning work.

Sounds like you and Asif should collaborate.

Maybe start a thread about the ideas the two of you come up with.

Who knows, maybe one day we would be looking at the two of you winning a Noble Prize or a Life Science Prize of some sort.

 

[vesicles]

Sounds like you and Asif should collaborate.

Maybe start a thread about the ideas the two of you come up with.

Who knows, maybe one day we would be looking at the two of you winning a Noble Prize or a Life Science Prize of some sort.

That is an excellent idea! Asif, let's collaborate! Btw, do you go to the Biophysical Society meetings? I won't be able to go this year, but I usually go to the Biophysical society meetings. We can shoot some bulls and who knows something big might come up, as Jeff suggested.

 

[Jeff Head]

That is an excellent idea! Asif, let's collaborate! ...who knows something big might come up, as Jeff suggested.

Hehehe...Vesicles and Asif, please remember your lowley servant when you both become famous! LOL!