I hope you all had a lovely turkey-filled Thanksgiving, and that no one trampled anyone to death on Black Friday (I am ashamed of people who would fail to notice they were running all over someone. That squishy feeling under your shoes? Notice it. And breaking down the doors to a WalMart? Have some dignity.) My heart goes out to his family, that’s a terrible way to die.
Sci hereby issues an apology for her relative lack of blogging over the last few days (though I suppose it hasn’t really been that long). I had a committee meeting to evaluate my grad student progress on Monday, and preparing for those, and recovering from them, takes more than the usual amount of stress and alcohol. But now, we’re BACK. Well, sort of.
The fact is: Sci is tired. She’s also beginning a nasty cold. And she also has to catch up on the fifty million things she didn’t do while she was preparing for her big seminar and committee meeting. Lab things, personal things, things. And so today is blog catch-up day.
First off: InaDWriMo. I did in fact get my two manuscripts done! 21/20 papers read! The two drafts still need a lot of work, unfortunately. I don’t consider this completed, as the papers just aren’t submission-worthy shape. So, better luck next year. The beatings will continue until morale improves and until those papers (at least, one of them) are out the door.
And next: links! I think I mentioned the new blog on “What’s new in Life Sciences”. Well, there have been a series of beautiful, interesting, and incredibly well-thought-out articles on stem cell research. They are all great food for thought and definitely were heavy reading for me at Thanksgiving.
The Frontal Cortex offered up a recent post on drugs, such as naltrexone, which are used in treatment of drug addiction. I will have to go in to this issue at greater length sometime, but in the meantime, I recommend his post. Heck, I recommend anything at the Frontal Cortex.
And finally, there have been a couple of posts on out of body experiences! Out of body experiences was one of my very first posts on my very first science blog. It was a paper published in Science on inducing out of body experiences in humans by using the rubber hand illusion. Now, scientists at the Karolinska Institute have induced an out of body experience with another body, similar to the work that the first study did, only this time, giving the patient and out of MIND experience as well, by giving him the vision of the other body. It sounds complicated, but it makes for some cool reading.
And now, Sci’s taking her Nyquil and going to bed. We’ll see if I can talk some of my own science in the morning.
