I have been meaning to write about the generation of new influenza strains for some time (in part because I thought that doing so would remind me to get a flu shot). Someday, I will write that post.
For now, I will direct you to The Royal Journal of Found Art, a strangely fascinating site that catalogues letters, notes, and signs that people have run across. I'm rather fond of the MASH game.
Will blogs on tie fashions, asking, "Does anybody know if the fashion for how to wear one's necktie has changed dramatically in the past 60 years?" The reader whose email Will mentions is correct in citing the Windsor knot as one of the tie-shortening factors. The Windsor knot, which replaced the smaller four-in-hand knot, owes its name to Edward VIII, who popularized it when he wasn't busy abdicating or having friends named Fruity Metcalfe. There exist also half-Windsor knots (which, ironically, are about 3/4 the size of a regular Windsor knot) and Pratt knots (a more recent invention).
I prefer to think that the use of the Windsor knot is one of the reasons that menswear looked better back in the day, though perhaps four years of Catholic school biased me against clumsily tied four-in-hands (not worn by me, thank God for small mercies). But since I'd better leave the sartorial arguments to those who are better informed than I, I'll leave you with an amusing Nature article on designing tie knots by random walks (requires subscription or proxy server access).
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7:30 PM
11.09.2003
video killed the radio stars
Shameless self-promotion: Ed and I will be appearing on Extension 720 (on WGN, AM 720) at 9:00 on the evening of November 11 (Tuesday). It seems we will be clashing with representatives from Northwestern's quizbowl team in an academic showdown. Should be interesting. There is apparently a call-in segment to this program, so you can harass us by calling 312-591-7200.
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8:52 PM
11.05.2003
hurrah!
The grant is finished, proofread (choice sample caught in final proofreading: "I hope to be a educator ...." oops.), and submitted. Also, our celebratory pub trivia outing earned us about forty dollars each.
For once something interesting came up in proteins: catalytic antibodies (exhaustive review here). The chemistry behind it is really neat. Basically, enzymes work by reducing the change in free energy between the substrate and its transition state. This is why a good enzyme binds preferentially to the transition state in the reaction; binding to the substrate lowers its ΔG and increases the change in free energy between the substrate and the transition state. It has been discovered that antibodies that bind specifically to a reaction's transition state (thereby stabilizing it--lowering its ΔG) can act as enzymes to speed up the rate of reaction. This presents a relatively simple way to make designer enzymes--well, simple compared to designing novel proteins--with the major problem one needs to know the structure of the transition state to create the antibody. This usually involves rational chemical design, since transition states are usually very high-energy and nearly impossible to isolate. Rational chemical design isn't foolproof, of course. Catalytic antibody design seems to be terribly expensive and guesswork-heavy presently, but it could prove to be an interesting therapeutic tool.
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12:39 AM
I'm a cancer biology grad student at the
University of Chicago. Born nearPittsburgh,
grew up in Naperville, and I now live in Chicago. This
is my blog, which appears to be mostly, though not exclusively, about biomedical things, education, Catholicism, Chicago, and complaining. Questions? Comments? Complaints? Email me at srferrar at uchicago.edu.
