This is scary. I think they are developing weapons, but haven't yet. Maybe in a year or two. After that, their tune will change radically, as did north korea. "who us, build nukes, never!" to "yeah, we have nukes, and we're not afraid to use them".

This is funny

Got some results on my phosphorylation project. Our mass spec people have identified one of two sites on a phospho-peptide. This site has also been identified by a previous mass spec effort but mislabeled, causing me to look at the wrong site. Turns out they just couldn't count. So 2 efforts have identified this site, I think it's bona fide, even though my work doesn't suggest it. It's an important site too, with immediately obvious functional indications, meaning I won't have to go hunting around and guessing. I'm pretty dang happy after last weeks thing about another project dumped, with 'high priority'.

I'm feeling better about that one too, it will likely lead to another first author paper for me. These two papers, coupled with a likely second author and 4th author paper, that's 3 strong papers from this lab, plus 2 from my last lab. OF course none of these three have been written or submitted, but they are all likely to be publishable.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein

This is grad school to the T.

Sigh, where to begin. I thuoght I was close to finding this phosphorylation site, which is the bulk of my project. I'm not, it's likely more complex than we realized. I think it's doable but may take another 2-3 months. So then a guest speaker came who is a friend of Jians, and we three sat down and talked about my project. Todd (the guest) asked about the biological significance of the phosphorylation, which we haven't shown yet. I am working on cloning a bunch of partner proteins to test this idea, but that's hopelessly screwed up too - it's been 6 months and I've gotten 2 clones out of 6, one turned out to be wrong. So I have 1 of 6 working. So that project is screwed up but there is hope.

Then she says that I need to do *another* project for the dissertation, which is looking at tyrosine phosphorylation and mapping tyrosine phosphorylation sites. This is actually more doable on the surface, because we have known candidate kinases (things that phosphorylate other proteins) and likely phos. sites. So this is the backup to it.

Then there was discussion of post-docs. She doesn't want me to stay in the lab to finish up my work and get papers published. The plan was to submit a paper (which is required for graduation), and revise it afterwords. Maybe will take 1/2 year to a year. Now she doesn't want me to stay in the lab, and wants to push me off to her old, retiring friend. I don't want to do that, but if I want to get the papers published, I will have to stay around this lab to get the experiments done that the paper reviewers will ask for.

So my current thinking is graduate December next year (next year), spend a few months finishing up the papers, then leaving town, since none of the labs around here so far have appealing post-doc prospectives.

On one hand I am of course frustrated that my graduation date has been pushed back yet again by my advisor. On the other hand this other project has more likelyhood of success (on the surface), and will result in another paper.

Argh. Today started off swell. I got in my car to do some errands, was backing up, and some person hit me from behind. I guess he wasn't going that fast. There was just some paint damage to my bumper, and his was dented in. Hopefully the insurance company won't find me at fault. I called it in and they said they'll assign a traffic investigator to see if it was my fault or not. THe thing of it is, he didn't stop, swerve, honk, or anything. He just hit me, on a sunny day, with very good visibility. I should have paid more attention, but i guess he was going fairly fast, because I didn't see him when I backed up. Oh well, lesson learned, look more carefully. People in our parking lot drive so fast anyway. So that pretty much ruined my day.

Several states have decided against it (Virginia, New Hampshire, and Indiana). One factor that may influence: A study in Virginia saying that when red light cameras were installed, total accidents increased 8-17%. Red-light running accidents did decrease, but they were only a small percentage (3.3% in '98) of total accidents. Harris County is trying to get authorization to set up red light cameras here in Houston. The TX legistlature doesn't seem to support the idea. HT: Instapundit

Story here

Doesn't surprise me. Either the assassin was a wacko or working for a state agency.

Here. Somehow the MSM (mainstream media) doesn't like to talk about Iraqi/US forces successes.

He's enroute to his PhD, too. Story here.

So I'm working on identifying the phosphorylation sites of my protein, Xp95. I got it narrowed down to a roughly 100 amino acid region, which contains about 15 possible phosphorylation sites, about half of which are conserved (and more likely to be phosphorylated). I finished a mutation screen, making four new mutants. All four are still phosphorylated, which is pretty bad for me, i was 99% sure I'd find it in one of the four. I have 2 conserved and 3 non-conserved sites left to examine. Since this is the entire thrust of my thesis I now wonder if/when I will graduate. Certainly not good news.

Pat, meet salad dressing

This is my wife's alma mater.