Crude Matter

Parkinson's disease patients get free lifetime access to 23andMe personal genome service.

23andMe are offering free lifetime access to their personal genome service to people who have been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease for their participation in their Parkinson's disease research initiative.

Chemistry teachers: Request a free chemistry activity kit from ACS

The following is an e-mail I received from the ACS Kids & Chemistry Program Manager. I'm re-posting it here to spread the word. If you know any chemistry school teachers who might benefit from this program, please forward them the relevant info.

How a cup of coffee a day may help to keep type 2 diabetes at bay.

Black coffee: Probably what Paula Deen should have been drinking instead of all that sugar and trans fat. Many of us, especially the current or former graduate students among us, are addicted to our breakfast caffeinated beverage of choice.

Links Post - January 15, 2012

Pigs like video games too! Interspecies gaming to combat boredom, aggression in livestock.

I like video games (I will rip up some Assassin's Creed whenever I get a long weekend, do NOT get me started). My cat likes video games too, even though she doesn't understand that she's playing them.

The Research Works Act would deny taxpayers access to federally funded research.

The short of it (covered in depth by Michael Eisen, and Razib tipped me off to the issue) is that Carolyn Maloney, a congresswoman funded by Elsevier, which is a major for-profit publishing company, is trying to pass the Research Works Act, which would deny Americans free access to research funded by taxpayer money.

Memorable links from the second half of 2011

As I expected, this set of links is a bit shorter than the last. Also, I just discussed my new year's resolution with Kedar, and it is to blog more often.

Video: The science of champagne

If you're reading this post, congratulations! You've made it to the end of 2011! You may be going out tonight to ring in the new year with friends and family, and if so, there's a good chance that you'll be sipping some champagne when the clock strikes midnight.

Memorable links from the first half of 2011

2011 was an exciting, stressful, occasionally scary, and very fruitful year for me, personally and professionally. I hope you are all pleased with the way life treated you this year.

The Guppy Project is not wasteful, Sen. Coburn.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has a degree in medicine, so I would expect that he's had some rudimentary biology education at some point in his life. However, you wouldn't know it just from glancing through the entries in his "Wastebook", a list of projects funded by the government that he considers wasteful.