The Consequences of a Heavy Snowfall

Yesterday, Wisconsin was walloped with several inches of wet, heavy snow. In fact, my city received some of the heaviest snow totals, ~19 inches, mostly from the overnight snowfall. Confounding the heavy snowfall situation, I have a steep driveway and a corner lot. While I do not have sidewalks on both sides of my property, the corner of my lot that lacks a sidewalk is also the dumping grounds for the snow cleared from the side street. Therefore, clearing out my driveway and the sidewalk can be time-consuming, even with a more moderate snowfall, because I am equipped with a shovel and a small electric snowblower with a cord that does not quite reach the corner.

Rhythm and Flow in Writing

Getting What You Want from Your Science Writing Part VIII

For a while now I have made a living knitting words, stringing them together with a rhythm and flow to create a finished piece that has some kind of meaning. Recently I started learning how to knit yarn together with a rhythm (ideally) that will bring the loops and knots together into some kind of finished whole that has meaning: a scarf, a hat, a dish rag (hey, I’m a beginner here). And just like the clacking of knitting needles can relax and de-stress you, the clicking of the keyboard when your writing is in rhythm can be a joyful experience.

The rhythm and flow of language is important in all types of writing, not just in poetry and dramatic monologues but also in prose and—gasp!—scientific writing as well.

The Benefits of Hindsight

One of the nice things about working in a biotechnology company is the opportunity to learn about new products as they are developed and to get exposed to scientific disciplines outside of my original area of expertise. Since I came to Promega I have had the opportunity to learn about a large number of products for widely differing research applications including cell biology, forensics, nucleic acid purification, and drug screening.

Over the years I have seen quite a few products that made me think “I wish I had that back when I was in the lab”. Even although there are a lot of “sexier” products around, the number 1 item that would have made my life in the lab better is still the 10-minute plasmid prep kit. In the labs I worked in we tried to save money and do our own minipreps, and it was tedious indeed. It turns out I am not alone in this sentiment, home-made plasmid minipreps came in at #9 on this list of “techniques we are most glad we don’t have to do any more” on BiteSize bio.

Home made minipreps. I may not have been the greenest-fingered scientist that ever lived but the failure rate of my home-made minipreps was pretty big, especially when I did many of them at once. Thank goodness for miniprep kits.

I can add a hearty Amen to that.

Biology Basics, Tools and More on Our Technical Resources Web Site

In my previous incarnation as a Technical Services Scientist, I spent a lot of time on www.promega.com, finding information to answer questions and sending links to customers. Much of the information I needed could be found on www.promega.com/techserv, our Technical Resources site. From the Restriction Enzyme Resource Guide to the citations database, an array of Tools and listing of all our vectors, current and discontinued, this Web site contains a wealth of information that has only expanded in the time since I left TechServ to join the Scientific Communications department. I wanted to highlight a few of the resources I found myself referring to repeatedly as well as discussing some of the newest resources available.

The ‘Podium Grabbers’: Winners Who Have Medaled With Biology

As many of us commence our holiday festivities toasting the year’s end while earnestly drawing up personal lists of events that have shaped our lives, I would like to take a brief look at three achievements in the biological sciences—two historical and one more recent—that have struck me as nothing short of momentous in their significance. The first is the publication of a book that today continues to be an outstanding and extremely readable overview of the state of research in the genetics of animal embryology. The second is a landmark study that has brought into sharp focus the molecular mechanisms through which specific epigenetic factors modulate animal behavior. The third is the functional characterization of recBCD, a DNA-unwinding protein complex that plays a crucial role in bacterial recombination.  I consider the scientists involved in each of these achievements to be pioneers— ‘podium grabbers’ if you will who have performed medal-winning science in their respective fields of expertise.