Yesterday a bi-partisan group of legislatures – Rep. Doyle (D-PA), Rep. Lofgren (D-CA), Rep. Yoder (R-KS), Sen. Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Cornyn (R-TX) – introduced legislation that would require federal agencies that fund scientific and medical research to make works they fund available to the public. This bill – known as the Fair Access to [...]
Twenty-six years ago, on February 7th, 1987, my father killed himself, and this day is always a complicated one for me. It is something I have never talked or written about in public. But I am moved to say something this year because of the suicide of Aaron Swartz. My brother had the same reaction, and wrote [...]
Greg Lang and David Botstein have a paper in PLoS One this week probing the consequences of disrupting the cluster of GAL genes in the yeast genome. The paper is cool. But the supplemental material is awesome. This description in the text says it all: Notebook S1. The complete laboratory notebook detailing the strain constructions [...]
Nearly everyone is familiar with Madeline, Ludwig Bemelmans’ classic 1939 children’s tale of the girls in a Parisian boarding school. You will recall that there are 12 of them, and they go about their days in two nice little lines. Always 12 of them, whether they are out and about. Or eating, washing up or [...]
Bruce Alberts has an editorial in this weeks science in which he proposes the idea of “Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Merit Badges” – a set of “100 different challenges to choose from at each level of schooling” – to engage students, patents and teachers in science. Whether you think this is a good [...]
I’ve written before about Nature’s tendency to publish biologically inaccurate covers. But this one really caught my attention. This is a cover about DNA sequencing, but the structure of the DNA molecule they show is wrong – in a crucial way. DNA is a chiral molecule – meaning it can occur in forms that differ [...]
In an article in The New Republic about how Republicans are being disingenous by opposing the health care bill on account of its length, Harold Pollack writes: Most of the junk DNA of the Senate bill is the usual block-and-tackle of complicated legislation, and is of no particular ideological or partisan concern. Many of the [...]
I’ve made no secret of my opposition to this week’s protests at Berkeley and other UC campuses. The tactics were stale, the targets were wrong, and the rhetoric was ineffective. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think what’s going on at UC doesn’t completely suck. The immediate cause of the protests was the 32% [...]
I sent this letter to some colleagues who are supporting the proposed UC faculty walkout on September 24th. I want to thank you and the others who are spending their time and energy trying to figure out how to deal with challenges of the UC budget. I understand the appeal and value of a collective [...]
I'm a biologist at UC Berkeley and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. I work primarily on flies, and my research encompases evolution, development, genetics, genomics, chemical ecology and behavior. I am a strong proponent of open science, and a co-founder of the Public Library of Science. And most importantly, I am a Red Sox fan. (More about me here).
I can be reached at:
mbeisen at berkeley.edu
and @mbeisen on Twitter
