3 month funded post-doc: University of Kent | The British Society for ...

The University of Kent has won money from the AHRC?s cultural engagement fund for its art/science project Chain Reaction!, based on an unsung hero of laboratory life, the Polymerase Chain Reaction machine (aka PCR, thermocycler, etc.)

We are looking for a short-term post-doc to work on the project from Feb-April 2013.? The work will involve some project management and the development of public-facing written materials for the final exhibition.? The latter might be a short piece of journalistic research on the PCR machine from any angle such as anthropology, sociology, history etc.? (There is an absolute gift of a story about its inventor, as it happens ?)

What we?re looking for

  • Someone recently post-PhD
  • With a background in hist sci/tech or STS or science communication, broadly conceived
  • No need to have heard of PCR but a willingness to learn!

What they will get

  • Developing transferable, impact-ish skills for their CV
  • Participation in a fun project ? working with artists, scientists and historians

Please respond directly and/or pass on to recent post-docs that you know. ?There?s no formal deadline ? it?s there for the taking by the first plausible enquirer.

To find out more, see the Chain Reaction! category on our blog Science Comma.? Informal inquiries very welcome.

Charlotte Sleigh

Categories: Jobs, Fellowships & Studentships | Permalink

Source: http://www.bshs.org.uk/3-month-funded-post-doc-university-of-kent

golden globe winners 2012 ricky gervais golden globes epidermolysis bullosa miss wisconsin law abiding citizen golden globes 2012 miss america

It's Official, Texas GOP Sets a New Record!

Republican Party of Texas - Here at the Republican Party of Texas, we would like to send a well deserved ?Congratulations? to Republicans across the state. For the third consecutive year, Texas has set a record by increasing the number of Republican elected officials to an all time high. Nationally, this was not a strong year for Republicans. But, here in Texas, we continue to endorse Republican principles of limited government that continues to produce a stronger job and housing market and balanced budgets.

Our sweeping victories in the 2010 election were fueled by a huge Republican wave after President Obama?s first two years of office produced nothing but more debt and failed policies. This wave helped the State of Texas increase its Republican officeholders from 2,395 in 2008 to 2,974 in the 2010 election cycle. That drastic amount of growth is nearly unheard of and many people expected our majority to decrease in a Presidential year.

We proved them wrong.

The odds were against us this year but thanks to tremendous efforts put forth by hard working Republicans across the state, we were not only able to maintain our record number of Republican officeholders but increased our total by 217 to a staggering 3,191. This is no small feat and, to top it off, we maintained one of the largest Republican majorities in Texas history in the State House of Representatives. On the District and County level, we made gains in every category. From District Attorneys to Court of Appeals, to County Commissioners to Constables, we were able to continue growing the number of Republican held seats from 2,241 in 2008 to 3,012 in 2012, an astounding increase of 771 seats. Overall we have 796 more Republican elected officials in the State of Texas today than we did in 2008. No other state in the country has the overwhelming number of Republican officeholders as Texas does, and we remain the only state to have elected nothing but Republican statewide officeholders since 1994.

This past month also marked the two year anniversary of the Republican Party of Texas being completely debt free which allowed the party to fund projects that were aimed at holding onto and expanding Republican held seats statewide. One of these projects we are very proud of is our mail program that allowed us to reach more people in Texas than ever before! Over the course of the election we were able to create 59 different mail pieces that resulted in over 3,000,000 pieces of mail being delivered to households across our great state.

On top of running an extremely successful mail program this year, we also ran a successful phone program that resulted in more phone calls being made for Republicans than ever before. Thanks to the hundreds of faithful volunteers that came out to help in the Victory offices in San Antonio, Harris County, San Patricio County, and Tarrant County, 875,000 volunteer calls were made to voters around Texas. It is this level of grassroots organization that allows Texans to remain the stalwart Republican stronghold it is today. In addition to the 875,000 volunteer calls made during the election, RPT was able to conduct paid phone calls that brought the total number of phone calls made this year to over 2.6 million.

This record setting election truly was a tremendous success for the State of Texas and we cannot wait to continue to work hard with Republicans everywhere and fight for a more responsible government and conservative principles. Make sure to hit the signup button below to find out how you can help us set all new records in the next elections and continue being the model for Republicans across the nation.

Source: http://www.texasgopvote.com/knowledge-topics/2012-elections/its-official-texas-gop-sets-new-record-004903

bath salts heart shaped box lucid 2012 ncaa tournament bracket matterhorn chris harrison girl scouts

Gene network illuminates stress, mutation and adaptation responses

ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2012) ? For much of her professional life, Dr. Susan Rosenberg has studied the puzzling response of bacteria to stress and the mutations that result. In the current issue of the journal Science, she puts together the pieces of that puzzle, describing most of the members of an elaborate gene network that functions in causing mutations during repair of double-stranded breaks in the DNA of stressed cells.

"We now know the 93 genes more than half of which are funneling into three nodes that go down the mutagenesis pathway," said Rosenberg, professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine and 2009 winner of the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award.

Groundbreaking work

Rosenberg's groundbreaking work has shown that the rate of mutation can be increased in response to stress such as starvation or environmental challenges such as antibiotics. This changes old ideas about constant and gradual accumulation of mutations over time. Some mutations are detrimental; others can promote survival. In this work, she and her colleagues sought to define the cellular pathways that result in this stress response.

"We screened for every gene in Escherichia coli that is needed to make this happen," said Rosenberg. E. coli is a "model" organism often used in the laboratory to study cells, because its DNA and other components work similarly to those in humans.

They have found that the mutagenic part of the process is not required to repair the broken DNA strands. When they "knock out" or remove the special "error-prone" DNA copying enzyme or polymerase, "the DNA is repaired beautifully and there are no mutations." So, cells do not make mutations because they have to, to repair DNA. Rather, this mechanism appears to regulate production of mutations, making more during stress, when cells are poorly adapted to their environments, and most likely to benefit from mutations.

Painstaking process

"Fewer than 16 proteins that are needed to accomplish stress-inducible mutagenesis were known previously. This is about the number known for any molecular mechanism of DNA biology," said Rosenberg. "Our screen sought the whole list of all proteins the cell uses to make it happen."

The painstaking process, begun by then postdoctoral fellow Dr. Mary-Jane Lombardo, now of Seres Health, Inc., in Cambridge, Mass., was completed by Dr. Amar Al Mamun, an assistant professor in Rosenberg's laboratory at BCM.

Large fractions of the network work "upstream" of the activation of the stress response, showing that these proteins apparently "sense" the stress. In delineating how the network functions, Rosenberg and her colleagues identified specific pathways through which the proteins sense the environment and connected them to the molecular mechanism that promotes the mutations.

Key factors revealed

The findings reveal key factors about the cells, such as that stress-response regulators act as key network hubs, she said. Most of the proteins in the network deal with whether or not the cells feel stress, said Rosenberg.

"The cell devotes a large number of proteins to controlling the process that generates diversity," she said. "And most of them are sensing the environment and coupling mutagenesis to stress."

They have determined the function of about half the network and are working on the rest.

"It's a resounding confirmation of the regulation of mutagenesis by stress responses, which causes mutations specifically when cells are maladapted to their environment when mutations might allow the cell to adapt," said Rosenberg.

Protein networks

It is also a demonstration that one can hope to detangle large protein networks into specific biological functions. Large protein networks are being discovered in many areas of biology, but what roles the proteins play in particular biological processes is often difficult to determine. Rosenberg's study shows that by working backwards from a defined molecular mechanism, they could assign roles to more than half the network proteins. Rosenberg thinks this strategy will be useful for many other protein networks.

Funding for this work came from grants from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:


Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Baylor College of Medicine.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Abu Amar M. Al Mamun, Mary-Jane Lombardo, Chandan Shee, Andreas M. Lisewski, Caleb Gonzalez, Dongxu Lin, Ralf B. Nehring, Claude Saint-Ruf, Janet L. Gibson, Ryan L. Frisch, Olivier Lichtarge, P. J. Hastings, Susan M. Rosenberg. Identity and Function of a Large Gene Network Underlying Mutagenic Repair of DNA Breaks. Science, 7 December 2012: Vol. 338 no. 6112 pp. 1344-1348 DOI: 10.1126/science.1226683

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/fK3OEfGMG4g/121206142014.htm

bats hunger games review jeff saturday jason smith jon corzine austin rivers austin rivers

American Horror Story, Season 2

Joseph Fiennes as Monsignor Timothy Howard and Lily Rabe as Sister Eunice in 'American Horror Story: Asylum.'

Joseph Fiennes as Monsignor Timothy Howard and Lily Rabe as Sister Eunice in 'American Horror Story: Asylum.' Photo by Byron Cohen/FX.

Reading over various recaps around the web this morning, my Christmas cheer has been dampened somewhat by the discovery that, like my chat partner Bryan Reid, most viewers of last night?s episode found Santy Claus?s visit to Briarcliff to be little more than a gruesome distraction. To be fair, I get the general reasoning: AHS is already a seething mass of storylines and half-explained characters, so do we really need to add another, especially one who takes up an entire episode? I guess I just loved Ian McShane?s deranged performance so much that it didn?t bother me.

As Chris Harnick theorized over at HuffPo, the producers may have done this ?solely to show just how creepy McShane could be and to establish that watching people get murdered while wrapped in Christmas lights is upsetting.? Surely that?s justification enough, no? Both he and Brian Juergens of After Elton? kind of say ?no,? so perhaps we?ll just have to agree to disagree.

The American Horror Story holiday card.

The American Horror Story holiday card.

Image courtesy FX.

In other news, one glaring revelation that Bryan R. and I both missed last night was the fact that Lana is almost certainly pregnant by Dr. Thredson because, you know, she ?forced? him to give her ?his intimacy.? (Is that not the sickest euphemism for rape you?ve ever heard?!) Both Harnick and Halle Kiefer of Rolling Stone offered this notion after noticing Lana?s vomiting (even though she hadn?t eaten anything), and Harnick goes a tantalizing step further, prophesying that ?modern-day Bloody Face is growing inside her as we speak.? The previews for next week?s episode seem to indicate that Dylan McDermott (who Murphy has revealed is playing our modern day killer) will be discussing his ?impulses? with a therapist in a nice reversal from last season, so Harnick?s theory may be tested sooner rather than later.

Speaking of theories, I have one that I?d love our readers? help with vetting. Did anyone else notice how tweaked-out Sister Mary Demon got about those rubies? Girl looked like a cat to catnip. I googled around a little, but couldn?t find for sure if demons are supposed to have a weakness for the red gemstones. If any of you out there are of the theological persuasion, satisfy my curiosity. I think that reaction to the ?shit-stained earrings? may have been a clue to the demon?s future downfall. Submit your research papers in the comments!

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=9633fc90733639ee161e90234d563ec2

ground hog day florida primary results black history groundhogs day paula abdul cinnamon challenge lou dobbs

Democrats: Obama to ask for $50 billion Sandy aid

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress for about $50 billion in additional emergency aid for states hit by Superstorm Sandy, Democrats on Capitol Hill said Wednesday.

House Secretary Shaun Donovan told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that the administration is still working on a request for a supplemental spending bill to provide the aid and expects to send it to Congress this week.

"We do not have a specific number," Donovan said.

The price tag is expected to be anywhere between $45 billion and $55 billion. Two Senate Democratic aides, speaking on condition of anonymity because the request is still being assembled, put the number in the neighborhood of $50 billion.

"The president isn't going to leave New York, New Jersey or the entire region to fight for itself," Donovan, who is coordinating the government's Sandy recovery efforts for Obama, told reporters after the hearing.

Donovan urged Congress to take action in "the next few weeks" on the administration's upcoming request.

On Tuesday, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Craig Fugate, said the government's disaster relief fund still has $4.8 billion, enough to pay for recovery efforts into early spring. So far the government has spent about $2 billion in the 11 states struck the late October storm, one of the worst ever in the Northeast.

New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are together seeking about $83 billion in aid. Donovan described that figure as more of damage estimate, saying some of might be covered by private insurance and other already-funded government programs.

Given the recent budget talks and the strong pressures against new spending, Congress is not expected to approve large amounts of additional money all at once.

The storm devastated coastal communities from North Carolina to Maine, killing more than 120 people. New York and New Jersey were hit the hardest.

Obama can request up to $5.4 billion more without hitting a spending ceiling. Several Republicans have said that more than that should be matched by spending cuts in other federal programs.

Donovan said people who lost homes or businesses are waiting desperately for help. He said it would be a mistake for Congress to quickly approve the $5.4 billion as a "down payment" and defer until next year providing additional funding.

"A down payment simply means that these families, these communities are going to be waiting for months or longer to get on with their lives," he said.

Donovan said requiring spending cuts in other federal programs to cover the cost of additional disaster aid makes no sense. "We believe strongly that the country has to come together even in difficult times and stand behind places that have been devastated," he said.

Officials in the affected state expect the fight for more recovery money will last for months and probably require a series of spending bills. They also fear it will fade as a priority next year.

Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., voiced disappointment in a joint statement.

"While $50 billion is a significant amount of money, it unfortunately does not meet all of New York and New Jersey's substantial needs," they said. "While we know there will be additional supplementals, the administration needs to come as close as possible to meeting our states' needs in the first request."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/democrats-obama-ask-50-billion-sandy-aid-194150907.html

kim kardashian flour bomb hunger games box office xavier joan crawford joan crawford john goodman kendall marshall

Facebook Talks App Traction: 350 Apps Have 1M Monthly Actives On Site; Facebook Now Integrated In 200K Mobile Applications

facebook-gamesFacebook today announced new numbers related to Facebook app usage on its site, as well as its integration into mobile platforms like iPhone and Android. The company said that there are now over 350 apps on Facebook.com that see more than 1 million monthly active users each. The company also said that there are nearly 200,000 iPhone and Android applications which are integrated with Facebook, including 9 of the top 10 grossing iPhone applications.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Gg_sT4vG3x4/

jessie j kobe bryant David Boudia David Rakoff Bourne Legacy Chad Johnson London 2012 Soccer

That Will Do The Trick (talking-points-memo)

Ex-Goldman director to stay free on bail: court

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc board member Rajat Gupta can remain free on bail while he appeals his insider-trading conviction, an appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

Gupta had been scheduled to surrender January 8 to start a two-year prison sentence. But after hearing arguments from Gupta's lawyer and prosecutors, a two-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York granted Gupta's request to stay out of prison.

Gupta, 64, was convicted in June of leaking Goldman boardroom secrets to Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon Group hedge-fund manager at the center of a U.S. government crackdown on insider trading over the past four years. Gupta, also a former head of management consultancy McKinsey & Co, has been free on $10 million bail.

The former Goldman director attended the hearing with his family. After the hearing, he hugged his lawyer, Seth Waxman, and patted him on the back.

Waxman declined to comment on the appeals court's ruling. A spokeswoman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara declined to comment.

The U.S. Justice Department had argued that Gupta should not be able to delay going to prison while he awaits the outcome of his appeal, which is expected to be heard by the 2nd Circuit as early as April.

At Tuesday's hearing, Waxman argued that Gupta's appeal would raise substantial questions that likely would result in his conviction being reversed.

The government hadn't proved its case, which relied on "classically inadmissible" or "entirely circumstantial" evidence, Waxman said. "It totally failed in that regard."

Waxman said the trial judge, Jed Rakoff, erred in admitting an October 24, 2008 wiretapped conversation between Rajaratnam and David Lau, a Singapore-based portfolio manager at Galleon.

On the call, Rajaratnam told Lau that he "heard yesterday from somebody who's on the board of Goldman Sachs, that they are gonna lose $2 per share." But Waxman said there was no evidence Lau traded on the tip, and the call had been focused on the general discussions of the global financial crisis.

Reed Brodsky, the prosecutor who argued before the 2nd Circuit, countered that the wiretaps show that Rajaratnam had provided information to Lau so he could also benefit from it.

"The government's evidence showed this was in furtherance of the conspiracy," he said.

The 2nd Circuit had earlier denied Rajaratnam's similar bid to remain free on bail pending his appeal, which was argued October 25. The fund manager is serving an 11-year prison sentence.

Gupta is facing a related civil proceeding brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In a court filing late Tuesday, his lawyers argued that he should not pay any civil penalty in connection with the SEC's claims. The SEC has asked the court to impose the maximum allowable penalty of $15.3 million.

The case is USA v. Rajat Gupta, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No 12-4448.

(Editing by Martha Graybow, Andrew Hay, Tim Dobbyn and Michael Urquhart)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-goldman-director-gupta-stay-free-bail-court-002906552--sector.html

nate robinson sharia law sharia law new hampshire primary results molly sims hostess brands nh primary

Dykstra sentenced in bankruptcy fraud case

By GREG RISLING

Associated Press

Associated Press Sports

updated 5:32 p.m. ET Dec. 3, 2012

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Former All-Star outfielder Lenny Dykstra has been sentenced in Los Angeles to six and a half months in prison for hiding and selling sports memorabilia and other items that were supposed to be part of his bankruptcy filing.

U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson also ordered Dykstra to pay $200,000 in restitution and perform 500 hours of community service. He pleaded guilty to bankruptcy fraud and money laundering charges and prosecutors were asking for a 2 1/2-year prison sentence.

Monday's sentencing is part of a downward spiral for Dykstra, who has had a host of legal problems over the past year.

Dykstra is currently serving a three-year prison sentence after pleading no contest to grand theft auto and providing a false financial statement. He also was sentenced this year to nine months in jail after pleading no contest to charges he exposed himself to women he met through Craigslist.

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


advertisement

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/50063092/ns/sports-baseball/

Frys tryptophan BestBuy.com Kohls Black Friday www.walmart.com Macho Camacho Rise of the Guardians