Mark "Monty" Montague's Journal

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TONMOCon III
In the past 3 days, I have watched the dissection of a 3 foot long squid, petted a giant pacific octopus, heard a day of cephalopod-themed lectures, and generally hung out with people who like suckers and tentacles as much as I do. A very awesome weekend! (Yes, I'm kind of a weirdo)

Current Mood: excited

protein synthesis shown by hippie interpretive dance
This was actually shown in my high school biology class! Trippy, man! I've been looking for this on the intertubes for a while...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9dhO0iCLww

Obama / Cheney Audio Smackdown
This isn't really that deep, but it does typify both speakers in under 3 minutes. And I wanted to use this title for a post.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/05/in_their_own_voices_obama_chen_1.html?sc=fb&cc=fp

Star Trek mini-review (no spoilers)
I enjoyed the new Trek movie. I found the acting and the effects did it justice enough to be worth going. For some reason, though, I found it lacked dramatic tension, so it was sort of more like a Universal Studios ride than an enthralling drama. But that didn't stop me from having a good time.

Elsevier Fake Journals part II
more journalvertisments from Elsevier. Note that this is particularly uncool since Elsevier also "bundles" journals so libraries must subscribe to a bunch of schlock journals to get the high-end ones... I wonder if they include these fake journals in their bundles? Even if they don't do this, one of the links points out that we often forward the PDFs of articles around and preprints and stuff, so it's insidiously easy for sales droids to include bogus "journal reprints" as part of their propaganda to doctors and such.

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/09/1514235

comment letter on Obama's science and public policy
You may want to consider signing this, if you agree with it. I did.

http://sharp.sefora.org/ostp-letter/

Elsevier made a fake scientific journal
http://scienceblogs.com/bioephemera/2009/05/fake_journals_the_internet_and.php

I don't have time for a full rant, but this would seem to shoot some holes in the idea that commercial scientific publishers are valuable guardians of the integrity of the process.

(possibly) cool biofuels technology
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE53K4UU20090421

of course, it has the usual "carbon neutral not carbon replacement" problem. Still, bio-gasoline sounds like a useful stepping stone.

solar geek question
My dad is asking me if I can find out what the output of PV cells is on overcast days. Anyone have a good reference?

Depressive Realism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism

Apparently, the idea that depressed people have a more accurate view of reality is sufficiently popular that it has a name. How depressing.

neural control of seashell shapes and pigmentation
This is really cool stuff:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090402092714.htm

and preprint of actual paper here:

http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~goster/pdfs/Shells.pdf

The brief version is that the shape and color of shells is controlled by the nervous system of the animal, rather than by some gene expression or similar as most animal body plan features. Interestingly, another example of this is that the shape of stags' antlers is also controlled by the nervous system, so even though the antlers are shed every year, they grow back with identical branching through memory.

it's nice to have a president who's articulate and forthright
OBAMA: It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/24/AR2009032403036.html?hpid=topnews

has the transcript for all of Obama's press conference, and I guess video although I didn't hit play... I caught most of it on NPR

Alzheimer's breakthrough from basic research
Researchers have found a correlate to Alzheimer's in embryonic development ( link.) In addition to the promise this may have for finding cures and treatments, it offers a chance for me to get on a soapbox:

I believe that understanding fundamental processes in biology is often skipped over in favor of "looking for a cure" funding, to the point where the potential for the fundamental research to provide a "roadmap" that would lead to cures is woefully underfunded. I believe that if we better understood how healthy development and physiological regulation occurs in the body, and in other biological systems, we would have a lot more tools at our disposal to prevent problems of when this regulation goes haywire and causes cancer or autoimmune disease or other such conditions where the body's own tissues are broken, as well as to recover from things which damage tissues in ways that don't natively regenerate.

top of the list of restaurants not to go to for "chef's choice" sushi
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20090127p2a00m0na012000c.html

"I don't have a blowfish chef's license. This was the first time I had served it raw," he said. "I've never eaten it before myself, but I heard it was good, so I served it."