Brief Bio

I was born and raised in Kalamazoo MI. I earned my bachelors of science in biology from Western Michigan University. I met and fell in love with a big goof of a man named Cliff. I have a fat lazy cat named Kerby and a dog named Bear.

Folding @ Home

March 20th, 2007 at 10:10 pm (News, Science)

I am a Folding@home user. So the news from Sony that the PS III will have an icon on the network menu is exciting. Now even more science will be spread out over more computing power.

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That Evolution Thing

March 20th, 2007 at 9:59 pm (Evolution, News, Origin of Life, Thoughts)

So Rogers AR maybe the new Dover. Parents there seem to want “critical thinking” about evolution. But I doubt that any critical thinking about “creation science” will be allowed.

Cool shit in OZ. The South Australia Museum will be displaying fossils from the Ediacaran period. These PreCambrian fossils are some of the oldest animal fossils.

And finally, some help for the RNA World hypothesis. The discovery of a RNA enzyme that acts like RNA polymerase(meaning that it can join pieces of RNA together) is big news. Abstract

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Evolution News

March 15th, 2007 at 10:09 pm (Evolution, News)

A couple of items:

From Reuters.com, in China the fossil ear bones of a mammal have been found. It fills the gap between the earliest mammals and modern mammals. And proves the theory that the mammal ear bones came from its ancesteral reptile’s jaw.

From the National Geographic, hybridization many be more common in animals than previously thought. The recent finding of a grizzly bear and polar bear hybred, may be the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

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Weeding in Libraries

March 1st, 2007 at 10:52 pm (News)

From MLive.com, this looks at how the local libraries handle their collections. I’m a voracious reader when I have the time, so knowing how my library gets rid of its older books is interesting.

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Soil Bacteria news

March 1st, 2007 at 9:44 pm (Geology, Microbiology)

From Biocompare, so engineers have been looking for ways of stopping liquefaction. The solution: bacteria. Using common soil bacteria with nutriants and oxygen, scientists have lab-tested bacterial metabolism to create calcite from sand.

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Milk and Penicillin G

March 1st, 2007 at 12:36 am (Food, Microbiology)

An abstract talks about how the combination of a milk protein, Lactoferrin and pennicillin G on pennicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

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