BioData

     Back in 2007, Joel Gilmore created the following video of the well know 007, James Bond, as a Graduate Student. The video was an invitation he made for a party celebrating the completion of his PhD.

     Thanks to @nparmalee, @LadyScientist, and @scicurious of the twitterverse for bringing this great video to my attention.

      SciencegeekGirl recently compiled a list of all sorts of science geek resources. On her list is Biocompare’s Funniest Science Videos. I suggest checking these funny and informative videos out when you have a minute.

      My personal favorite is this GTCA song from BioRad:

I recently read an interesting blog post which lists the “Ten Things” that Dr. Ronald Vale, Professor and Chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology at UCSF, loves about his academic job in the sciences.

     All she needed to know to fall in love with molecular biology, Dr. Tora Smulders-Srinivasan learned at 15 years old, in her tenth grade biology class. While she had been aware of basic hereditary concepts, Tora hadn’t been exposed to DNA, genetics, RNA, translation, or transcription until then. In that classroom, Tora says, she fell in love. “I loved the whole idea of DNA. The fact that there is a molecule that transfers between generations – and that is what sets up the whole organism. It just fascinated me. The whole idea of making RNA and proteins – I loved it, I thought it was the best thing.”

Our weekly compilation of science news for the week of October 4, 2009.

Americans, Israeli Win Nobel Chemistry Prize: Americans Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz and Israeli Ada Yonath won the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for mapping ribosomes.

     Christie Wilcox is now passionate toward conservation biology, although she didn’t originally start off that way. While she always had an affinity to nature and animals, she didn’t realize that she wanted to be a biologist until she “stumbled” upon it in college. “When I’m at the beach and everyone is running away from jellyfish, I get excited and run up closer to check it out!”

     Hana Kucera has always had an interest in science. Kucera credits her scientific fascination to her parents who first introduced her to the observation, exploration and study of living things in their natural habitats. She graduated from British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University in 2004 with a B.Sc. in Biology. As a Master’s student at the University of New Brunswick in the fall of 2004, Kucera began her research in Dr. Gary Saunders’ lab studying the diversity of marine intertidal seaweeds of Canada using variation in DNA barcode sequences. Kucera subsequently transferred to the PhD program, where she is currently finishing the “last bits of lab work” to complete her PhD.

      Known for his work in plant aquaporins, Dr. Menachem Moshelion has published many papers concerning his research. He has been running a lab for the past five years at Hebrew University’s Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics in Agriculture located in Rehovot. Moshelion’s interest in science began at the age of five, “I’ve always been interested in science. I knew it, somehow… I didn’t have excellent marks [in school], but in Biology – I always got an A.” Moshelion “always knew” he wanted to be involved in the biology field. Although he started in animal science, one course in plants was enough to change his direction. After completing all of his degrees at Hebrew University, Moshelion did his post-doctorate in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium – a small city 30 kilometers from Brussels.

      Referred to as “the most significant scientific discovery of recent time,” Darwinius masillae also referred to as “Ida” has created quite a media frenzy. “The Missing Link,” Ida is a 47-million-year old female adapid primate discovered in the well known Messel deposits in Germany. The discovery has resulted in a flurry of promotional activity beginning with an elaborate event at The American Museum of Natural History, as well as a History Channel documentary, book release, and a web site. A television teaser’s slogan proclaims, “This changes everything!” and has compared the discovery to landing on the moon. Ida has also been referred to as the holy grail of paleontology, the lost ark of archeology and has even been compared to the Rosetta Stone.