Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Thursday Meeting

Hello all,

Does Thursday evening (say around 5, or possibly earlier) work for everyone for this week's meeting?

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Meeting Cancelled

Hello everyone,

Matt P and I would like to take a raincheck today and reschedule for next week (possibly Wednesday). Hope that works for everyone.

Sorry for the late notice.

GG

Thursday 1700 hours? Does this work

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Here's the paper, sorry for the delay

Hello fellow science-discussers/beer-drinkers!

I had some difficulty this week but have finally selected a paper that highlights some topics I am interested in, namely: Aging, Immunity, and associated Trade-Offs. This paper addresses these topics fairly broadly but should hopefully stimulate some interesting discussion on how we can live longer and if we should be trying to do so:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W7H-4WK469M-3&_user=955653&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000049301&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=955653&md5=62681f32f61f5f114590631874bcd937

What time are we meeting tomorrow?

PS - Again, sorry it took me so long to get around to doing this.
PPS - In case the link doesn't work the paper is called: An evolutionary perspective on the mechanisms of immunosenescence (Shanley et al, 2009)

Monday, January 18, 2010

Thursday?

I'm only able to meet on Thursday this week, but I'm free anytime after 9:30. Does this work for others or should someone else choose a paper for a different day?

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Not Science But Important

Hi friends,

I don't usually advocate publicly for causes but never-the-less I would ask you guys to consider donating to the earthquake relief in Haiti; this is just an absolutely terrible situation. Doctors Without Borders is a good option if you are interested. I know that they do excellent work.

Matt

Meeting This Week

So it sounds like everyone who posted will be able to make it on Friday after 5. Should we meet then or is there a better time?

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Awesome (if you are an evolution nerd).

Here is a video tribute to UBC's Dolph Schluter set to the Lonely Planet's "I'm on a boat". If you know his research, you will agree it is pretty much the greatest thing ever.

Monday, January 11, 2010

The Definition of Influence

This is pretty random (actually extremely random and probably entirely uninteresting to everyone except me) but I thought I would just pass on this observation. For my honors project, I have been reading a few papers by the evolutionary biologist Joe Felsenstein at the University of Washington. I knew he was a genius and was very influential in the field but I didn't realize just how influential. Out of curiosity, I ran a citation report on Web of Science.

Total number of papers which site him: 33,136

Most cited paper: Felsenstein 1985 with 14,191 citations (1985 was a particular good year; he had a second paper which has been cited a very respectable 3,065 times)

I am thinking that outside of Darwin, he is probably the most cited researcher in the life sciences.
Others who come close: Francis Crick (21, 619), James Watson (14, 984), Motoo Kimura.

Something to aim for.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Das Papier für diese Woche

Gutentag meine Freunde! I will stop writing in German now. Here is the paper for this week:

http://cdli.asm.org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/cgi/content/abstract/CVI.00290-09v1

Some parts are fairly MBB heavy, but I think it is still a great mini-review that we could all benefit from reading. I think you will be surprised, or at least hope you will be, by the cleverness of some of the new and upcoming vaccines.

Meeting on Wed may be a problem for me this week.... how does Thursday or Friday work for people?

Friday, January 8, 2010

Thursday, January 7, 2010

A Paper for the Future (in more ways than one!)

Although someone else is choosing a paper for next week, I thought I would post this anyways just because it is so provocative. The paper is by the evolutionary biologist Michael Lynch and is on the accumulation of potentially harmful mutations that we, in industrialized societies, are building up throughout our genomes due to our health care. He predicts a decline in human fitness in the coming centuries. It might be interesting to read this in journal club sometime in the future. Crazy stuff.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Let's Try this Again

Here is a new link to the zinc finger article in the post above. The link worked yesterday but for some reason the url has changed (perhaps this is because it is an advance online publication--i.e. it hasn't been put in the journal yet).

If this link doesn't work, do the following to access the article:
-Go to lib.sfu.ca
-Click on electronic journals
-Search "Trends in Biotechnology"
-Search the journal for "Zinc Finger"
The paper is by Le Provost et al. and was published online on Dec. 14

I think Wednesday at 530 (lower section of the pub) seems like it works for people.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

The First Paper of 2010?

After reading this article in the nytimes science section, I thought it might be interesting to discuss the possibilities of using zinc fingers for genetic therapy. This seems like it is a pretty hot topic of research and something that I know nothing about.

Here is a link to a recent review that I think looks pretty good. Thoughts?