By Allison Lee My eyes behold a feast of pleasant views. Today I learned the difference between “snow blink” and “water sky.” When it is overcast, some parts of the sky look black and stormy. In Seattle, we would say, “Looks like a storm is a brewing.” Here in Antarctica, they call that “water sky.” That is sky that is reflecting the blackness of the sea. Sailors know that open…
By Allison Lee What do you eat on board an ice breaker for two months? Some of you may have the impression we are eating freeze-dried food. I thought we might be eating unpleasant cafeteria food. I was pleasantly surprised to find our chef is a professional back at home and I have been impressed with every dish we’ve been served — especially desserts. My cruise mate Andrew Margolin wrote…
By Allison Lee PENGUINS! At 5 a.m., the lone Emperor was spotted. The penguin team quickly assembled and set off in the Zodiak. They were able to tag their first Emperor penguin of the cruise. The transmitter is attached to the feathers on the wing and sends a signal every 40 seconds. If a satellite picks up the signal, the penguin’s location and diving behavior (depth, speed, duration, etc.) is…
By Allison Lee I just want to illustrate the work life out here. I have worked 20 straight days in a row. No weekends. No evenings off. Few breaks. Each day varies in time schedule but it usually consists of waking up at 7 a.m., taking at least two shots of espresso before working until lunch at 11:30 a.m. -12:30 p.m., working until dinner 5:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m. and working until…
From Allison Lee, ISB research associate: Some randoms from me….. 1. Last night a couple of us did the INSANITY workout in the gym. Try doing plyometrics on a rocking ship. Extra calories staying balanced! 2. Today I begin a 24 hour shift. Every 3 hours for 24 hours, I will be collecting sea water and measuring the algae SNOT (aka algae microgels). Mmmm. 3. We brought a couple espresso…
Allison Lee, an ISB research associate who’s on board the RVIB Nathaniel Palmer for a research cruise in the Ross Sea in Antarctica, has sent these images from her first few days on the research cruise. Each scientist on board the ice breaker is allotted just 15MB of data per day, which limits how many photos she can share. But these…
“Startup Weekends are 54-hour events where developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch.” Steven Lewis, a software engineer in the Shmulevich Group, offers a snapshot of his experience at Startup Weekend UW, which took place on Jan. 25-27. He chose to join a group that would focus on creating a virtual dressing room. The project was called PerFit….
ISB research associate, Allison Lee, has boarded an icebreaker in the Ross Sea in Antarctica, where she will spend the next 53 days conducting algae research. Between her more formal blog posts, we’re sharing some Facebook snippets from her first few days in McMurdo, where she participated in a half and full marathons prior to boarding the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer. Read related posts. Feb. 8, 7:11 a.m. I…
ISB Senior Researcher Shares Ode to DNA By Jared Roach, MD, PhD Here is my personal ode to DNA. Valentine’s day is coming and this ode is overdue. For those of you attending my talk on personal genome sequencing tonight (Monday, February 11) at 7 p.m. at Wilde Rover in Kirkland, I have put in some links to books that I think you might really enjoying reading. What does the…
By Jared Roach, MD, PhD Here is my personal ode to DNA. Valentine’s day is coming and this ode is overdue. For those of you attending my talk on personal genome sequencing tonight (Monday, February 11) at 7 p.m. at Wilde Rover in Kirkland, I have put in some links to books that I think you might really enjoying reading. What does the genome mean to me personally? How is…
LAB NOTEBOOK By Allison Lee, ISB Research Associate
LAB NOTEBOOK By Allison Lee, ISB Research Associate In a collaborative research effort, chief scientist Dennis Hansell invited four co-chief scientists (Alexander Bochdansky, Jack DiTullio, Rob Dunbar, and ISB’s Mónica Orellana) to be part of a grant looking at the origination, utilization, and movement of carbon in the oceans, specifically the Ross Sea. The National Science Foundation funded the grant and it has been dubbed TRACERS which encompasses the objective…
We were very excited to watch the live stream of the keynote from the Google I/O conference today, because it featured work from ISB's Shmulevich Lab, which is one of a group of research organizations that has been working on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). To help visualize the TCGA data, the lab created the Cancer Regulome Explorer using Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine. Google Compute Engine is…
Karlyn Beer, one of our grad students who works in Nitin Baliga's Lab, was featured in the Seattle Times' "Cool Jobs" section. An excerpt is below. See the full story here. What do you do? I'm a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington, and I work at Institute for Systems Biology, studying how microbes navigate their way through complicated and ever-changing environments I work with a single-celled organism native to hypersaline habitats like the…
Above: Kristian Swearingen and the re-engineered FAIMS device. (Editor's Note: This post shows a wonderful example of the collaborative, innovative and entrepreneurial ethic that ISB nurtures. Even if the science or technology is difficult to explain concisely, the cross-disciplinary and integrative nature of how our work is done and the pioneering spirit come through. How cool is that?) By Terry Farrah What do you do when your mass spectrometer accessory…
by Tom Massey How do you keep a 12 year old who learned Arabic in fourth grade “because it sounds exotic” engaged? That question has kept me and my wife on a circuitous journey to educate our daughter, Alexis. Our basic philosophy is to anchor her to a stable core of a few activities while having a continuous stream of “new things” in her orbit. Once every few years, a…
By Chris Witwer The Health and Human Service human research regulations are being revised. Scientists' input on whole genome sequencing data may shape the future of research. It's great that the article below says that change is "imminent." Here's an article that describes the issue: DNA Mapped in a Day Prompts U.S. Review of Genome Ethics And here's a document from the Department of Health and Human Services: https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2012-07329.pdf The…
