Evolution rap: 3.5* til infinity #music

Well, after a rough day I am in need of some lightness. And thanks to Eric Lowe, an undergrad. working in my lab, I got a giggle out of this:

Scary and funny: fake researcher Peter Uhnemann on OMICS group Editorial Board #JournalSPAM

OMG.  This is both hilarious and terrifying.

Many out there know there are journals out there that border on SPAM.  I have written about this often before (e.g., see For $&%# sake, Bentham Open Journals, leave me alone and Yet another SPAMMY Science publisher: Scientific and Academic Publishing and The Tree of Life: Really sick of Bentham Open Spam) as have many others (e.g., Open and Shut?: The Open Access Interviews: Matthew Honan and Academic spam and open access publishing - Per Ola Kristensson). UPDATE: forgot to include this link: Science SPAMMER of the month: OMICS publishing group

But this one takes the cake.  There is a journal called "Molecular Biology" from the OMICS Publishing Group (for more on this publisher see Open and Shut?: The Open Access Interviews: OMICS Publishing ...).  It seems new - as I cannot find any publications - but you never know - maybe they have been around a while and just have not gotten any submissions.

But I recommend everyone check out their Editorial Board.  In addition to listing Peter Deusberg (the controversial HIV denialist) there is an amazing person on their Board - Peter Uhnemann. He is listed as being from the "Department of Oximology at Daniel-Duesentrieb Institute, Germany".  Sounds a bit strange right?  Well check out his Bio

And check out his research interests

It is pretty wacky right?  Well it turns out, as some might have guessed - it is made up.  The reason I know this is - is that Burkhard Morgenstern from the University of Goettingen let me know (in fact he is the one who alerted me to the whole story).

He sent me something he wrote on Facebook which I am posting here:

Hi,

I'm delighted to inform you that Peter Uhnemann from the
 Daniel-Duesentrieb Institute in Germany was just appointed
 editor of the OMICS journal "Molecular Biology":


http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/editorialboardMBL.php
 

For those of you who don't know Peter Uhnemann: he is a fake
 person invented by the German satirical magazine Titanic.
 They created an FB account for him to make fun of social
 networks (he soon befriended on FB with various German
 politicians).

 

For those of you who don't know Daniel Duesentrieb: this is
 the German name of the Walt Disney comic figure Gyro Gearloose.

 

For those of you who don't know the OMICS journals: these
 are junk journals spamming around invitations to join their
 editorial boards. 

On their web page they say that

 "election of the “right” editor for a journal is one of the
 most important decisions made by OMICS Publishing Group ...
 Editors, Executive Editors & Editor-in- Chief of journals
 must be senior researchers, e.g. chaired professors."

 As it looks, Peter Uhnemann from the Daniel-Duesentrieb
 Institute meets these criteria.

It is both hilarious and a bit terrifying.  Now - mind you - it is possible that this journal could end up with some papers worth looking at.  But clearly, the Editorial process at this journal is probably going to be a bit, well, circumspect.


UPDATE: finally - as of 2/16/12 he is no longer listed on the editorial board ...

Draft post cleanup #15: Now this is how to write a scientific paper

Yet another post in my "draft blog post cleanup" series.  Here is #15, from May 2010.

I had written:

Just found an old fax I received from my brother of a paper published in 1974 in Scientia Sinica. "Studies of the insulin crystal structure: the molecule at 1.8Å resolution." Sounds pretty straightforward right? But then you read the paper: Here is the abstract (could not find a PDF so scanned in the fax I got).

I note, I stopped here because I could not figure out how to upload a PDF here.  But I did figure out how to upload it to FriendFeed.  But I think in the end it would be good to have a version of this post on my blog.  So, well, here it is.  And now I have included scans of the fax:

If only scientists were as important as Rupert Murdoch

(CNN) -- A synthetic life scandal may have cost J. Craig Venter the nobel prize in medicine in 2011, but the maverick science mogul managed to end the year with a modest addition to his empire -- an account on Twitter.

Within 48 hours of debuting with tweets about family, work and his dogs, Venter had pulled in more than 5,000 followers and stirred internet debate over why the 60-year-old was now embracing a technology often used to attack him.

The tweets also raised doubts that the notorious technophobe was writing the messages himself. Science writer Carl Zimmer -- one of only eleven people being followed by Venter -- however insisted that the media mogul was writing "with his own voice, in his own way."

Venter appears to have made his Twitter debut some time ago but with the new year many are waiting anxiously for more posts with insight into his maverick lifestyle.

His past 27 tweets include posts about celebrations of the birthday of the first synthetic cell, Osama bin Laden, President Obama, and biofuels. These have raised suspicions that Venter's Twitter account was being used as a publicity tool to help improve his image after a damaging few years of people complaining he is trying to play God.

Trump is the Winklevoss of politics
Craig Venter via Twitter

"Could be brilliant Venter Institute PR operation," Venter colleague Jonathan Eisen tweeted after earlier commenting: "Might be somebody who knows Venter well, but it's not Craig (he doesn't use a computer unassisted nor get his own email)."

Others claimed that the voice of the tweets, as well as their faltering grammar and punctuation, were unmistakably Venter. "You can tell by the tweets he's doing it himself," wrote Hamilton Smith, Nobel Laureate and colleague of Venter's.

A spokesperson for the Venter Institute confirmed to CNN the account is genuine.

The account could offer new insight into a scientist whose life has been under intense scrutiny over the past few years after creating life, beating the public human genome project in the race for the genome, and using his boat as a decoy to study microbes that live in his body.

Twitter played a prominent role in many of the scandals around Venter when it was used to pressure funding agencies into limiting funding for Venter's Institutes. Commentators said the loss of this revenue was a key factor in Venter's decision to create life.

Venter's subsequent appearance before a US Congressional inquiry into synthetic biology also caused a sensation on Twitter, particularly after his wife, Heather Kowalski, threatened to use one of their motorcycles to run over anyone who threatened Venter at the hearing

There were echoes of Venter's congressional appearance -- which he called the "most humble day day of my life" -- in some of his tweets such as his comments about his visit to Syracuse University "Impressed with the student enthusiasm at Syracuse U."

But there were also signs that the science mogul was still getting to grips with social media. Reports suggested he was forced to quickly delete one post -- possibly after Kowalski leapt to his aid once again.

The Institute for Genome Sciences -- a fierce rival of Venter's -- was among genome centers claiming that Venter was guilty of "tweeting-before-thinking" for suggesting that Francis Collins was evil.

The message was apparently removed, but not before someone tweeting as Heather Kowalski implored: "Venter - DELETE TWEET." A further post on the unverified Kowalski account later added: "EVERY1: @jcventer was only having a joke pROMISE!!!" [sic].

Among other tweets by Venter, who also follows President Barack Obama, humorist Bill Maher, and MicrobeWorld, was an expression of support for President Obama's vision for the future. 

With apologies (sort of) to CNN and their report on Rupert Murdoch's use of twitter. 

Top 10 Humorous Science Videos of the Year

I was starting to compile a Top 10 list of best humorous Science-related videos of the year.  And I got stuck on #1 because it is so so so good.  But I was able to find some others I liked (and listed them in no particular order)... so here goes.  If you know of other good ones please post/tweet ...

1. Bad Project video from the Zheng lab.  This is simply awesome.

2. Top 10 quirky science tricks for parties.  I found out about this from Twitter ... and it is very good.

3. Cracked.Com has some funny spoofs, though usually not about science.  Here is one I found about science, sort of.

Bill O'Reilly Teaches Kids About Science -- powered by Cracked.com

4. The Onion has some great science spoofs of course.  I found this one but there are many more.


Brooke Alvarez Has All The Answers, Even About Particle Physics 


5. Colbert has some brilliant Science spoofs.  This one however takes the cake in a way: Colbert nuclear explosion

6. Robotic Operation (which I found through http://www.sciencehumor.org/category/videos/)

7. OK - so it's very very long.  But there are some funny parts - the 2011 Ig Nobel Award Ceremony

8. Abby Harrison is very funny. ... I first saw here microorganism stand up stuff but I think this one is better.

9. OK so this is not the funniest video with Brian Malow but it give some background on "The Science Comedian"

10. And perhaps my favorite - from the Daily Show --- Science - What's it up to?

Flash

Flash

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Please suggest others ...

Dear Potential Post Doc or PhD Student - top10 ways to get a position in my lab

Dear Candidate (for any type of position in my lab)

I thought I would write a letter to you to help guide you in how to apply for a position in my lab.  Here are some suggestions for things that really help out - based on real emails I note ...

1. Describe your interests by copying text from my web site.  This shows that you are not only able to read, but also able to either copy directly or retype what you have read.  It is very appealing.
2. Get my name or institution wrong in some way.  This shows that you are likely being industrious in applying for lots of jobs.
3. Include attachments that do not open on Macs. Screw Steve Jobs and all of his fans.
4. Send the same email multiple times - once to Prof. Eisen at UC Davis, once to Dr. Eisen at JGI, and once to Prof. Eisen from the "Genome Center at UC Davis."  Repetition is an important literary technique. 
5. Refer to the "reputation" of my group without saying anything specific about what interests you.  I love things based on reputation alone.
6. Describe your background as very relevant to our work and then say that you too have focused extensively on microarray based studies of gene expression (I love stealing candidates whose original goal was to work in my brother's lab).
7. Have no publications but a list of more than 10 as "in preparation".
8. Include viruses in attachments - as I am interested in evolution of microbes this is appealing.
9. Express an interest in biological weapons and biological defense and be from a terrorism sponsoring country.
10. Have the original email message be more than four pages long with dozens of questions for me about my institution and my open positions.

My brother Matthew, a UC Irvine grad. student in sound engineering, takes on the pepper spray issue

My younger brother Matt is a sound engineering student at UC Irvine. As I did with my post: Top 10 reasons to still consider attending #UCDavis #OccupyUCDavis he has tacked the UC crisis with humor ... Check out his radio spot:

Radio Spot by mattglenn

Top 10 reasons to still consider attending #UCDavis #OccupyUCDavis

I am sure I will get in trouble for this but here goes ...

---

Top 10 reasons to still consider attending UC Davis

1. Performance art spreading throughout campus

2. Chancellor will be doing student laundry for next five years

3. Buy a van with a satellite dish, get free parking anywhere on campus

4. Work study program has many alternative career paths including sign makers, tent cleaning, socialism club treasurer, etc. 

5. Our logo found on more artwork than any school in country

6. Free housing in the quad

7. Students determine which professors get tenure

8. Police nowhere to be found, even for huge parties

9. New majors in "Crisis Mismanagement" and "Silent Movie Making"

10.  Like a building - it is yours.

Wikileaks obtains internal Nobel Prize committee communications revealing 2011 winners

Stockholm. October 3, 2011. 

Well, Wikileaks has done it again. Though this time they have cracked one of the most secret organizations in the world - the Nobel Prize Committee, Julian Assange announced in a press conference today. Assange said

"We have obtained the entire database of email communications for all Nobel Prize decisions for the last ten years. To say the least, these provide a fascinating look at the secret decision making process."

The cables have not yet been released to the public. Assange said

"We are working with journalists to go through all the documents and redact out names in order to protect the innocent. There is some potentially damaging material in there and though we are inclined to release it immediately, we also understand there are risks. For example, there are many discussions disparaging the work of many famous scientists as being "obvious" or "inane." In addition, we have obtained all the nominations submitted from around the world, which includes a remarkable number of self-nominations by people who have done relatively trivial work."

Assange proceeded to show highly redacted examples of email communications from inside some of the committees, discussing things such as who would look good next to the King of Sweden or the King of Norway and thgat the peace prize award to Obama was given simply "for not being George Bush."

Assange also stated that the communications reveal the winners of the 2011 prizes which he was not going to reveal "in order to make a little bit of money on the side" to support Wikileaks activities. Although Assange did state that "I can conclusively state that Obama will not win the Medicine prize for his healthcare system" as some have suggested.

Burgess Sale vs. Shale

Every time I see this ad I clipped out twenty years ago, I think of Stephen Jay Gould and the Burgess Shale.  I sent it to him when I was a grad. student and would see this ad in the SF Chronicle for Burgess Honda.

Wow - back to the past with the AMCAS medical school application letter writing system

Well, this is enlightening in many ways.  Today I went to upload a letter of recommendation for someone in my lab for medical school.  I was instructed to go to the AMCAS web site and register and then submit the letter.   AMCAS is the "American Medical College Application Service".  I have never used it before.

So I went to the site to register. And I got an error message

Unsupported Browser Please click here to view a list of browsers currently supported by AMCAS. Need help? Contact us at AMCAS@aamc.org. Well, I was using Google Chrome (on my Macbook Air), so I switched to Safari.   And I got an error message.

Unsupported BrowserPlease click here to view a list of browsers currently supported by AMCAS.Need help? Contact us at AMCAS@aamc.org.

Rather than look up what browsers they accepted I, of course, switched to Firefox.  And I got an error message

Unsupported BrowserPlease click here to view a list of browsers currently supported by AMCAS.Need help? Contact us at AMCAS@aamc.org.

This was I guess not that surprising since I was using a VERY old version of Firefox on my Mac.  So I upgraded the Firefox and I got an error message.

Unsupported BrowserPlease click here to view a list of browsers currently supported by AMCAS.Need help? Contact us at AMCAS@aamc.org.

OK So now I was officially defeated and I went to the website with the list of supported browsers.

Am I using the correct browser version?
For PC users, AMCAS supports the following browser versions:

• Internet Explorer 9.0*, 8.0, 7.0, 6.0, and 5.5

• Netscape 7

• Firefox 5.0*, 3.6, 3.5, 3.0, 2.0, 1.5, and 1.0.2

*Applies to the AMCAS Application only. Please use another supported browser version to access the AMCAS Letter Writer Application, the Fee Assistance Program Application, and the Advisor Information System.
For Mac users, AMCAS supports the following browser versions:

• Firefox 3.6, 3.5, 3.0, 2.0, 1.5, and 1.0.2

• Netscape 7

• Internet Explorer 5.1.7 and 5.2

To access Internet Explorer browser versions 5.1.7 and 5.2, please visit: oldapps.com . To access Mozilla Firefox browser versions 1.0.2, 1.5, 2.0, and 3.0, please visitoldapps.com .
When a new browser becomes available, AMCAS has to do a large series of tests to ensure the integrity, security and user experience of our applications and this can take some time. We will update this site as new browser versions become available.

To access Internet Explorer versions 7.0 and 6.0, please visit: www.microsoft.com. 

I should have known.  It was not that I was out of date.  It was AMCAS.  And how out of date.  Safari is OK but not Chrome?  Firefox 3?  IE 5?  Holy cow.  So first I accidentally clicked on the "Download IE" link from the Oldapps.Com site.  And stopped it part way through and then decided to download Firefox 3.   I am sure I could have used some alternative approach like a virtual machine somewhere or hack firefox in some way or use a spoofing system.  But I did not want to think at this moment.  Or hack.  So I downloaded Firefox 3.  And it worked.  So I registered and submitted the letter (after going through way to many windows).  And I thought I was done.  But then I checked my email.  And that is when the funniest part of this story happened.

I first got an email confirming my registration.  And then I got another

Thank you we have received your email request and are beginning to address the issue.
Your request number is RQST00000363290. Please use this in SUBJECT line in all
communications with us regarding this problem.
Thank you
Details: I will be out of the office for a few days at least starting 8/16. I
will respond as soon as possible.

You see, I have my autoresponder on because I am not working due to a family illness.  And the autoresponder sent a response.  And the AMCAS system thought I was registering a problem by email. Cutting edge technology.  Any wonder medical school curricula are a bit behind the times too?  Waiting to see if I created an endless loop and the whole internet goes down ...

Apparently, my own local paper hates my blog

I mean, I knew evolution was controversial and that I can be a bit snarky at times.  But does my own local paper -the Davis Enterprise have to have a whole article about how they hate me and my blog?