Friday, April 24, 2009

Poll crashing vanguard for the science!

Ok, we all know internet polls are far from scientific, but if nothing else, they give an inkling of the organization behind the alternative positions.

In this case, there's a poll at the LA Times blogs (here), stemming from a recent pro-research rally helpd at UC in support of animal research. The results have tilted towards the anti research poll option, so for any of those folks out there who support the responsible use of animals in research, and realize that there can be little biomedical science without it, go and vote. And tell your labmates, friends, parents and grandparents to do the same.

And if you're interested in the things that impede meaningful debate about animal research, go check out Dr. Free-Ride's recent series on the topic!

3 comments:

Daimo said...

Paper printed and on desk for afternoon coffee ;)

Nat Blair said...

You sure you can take that much caffeine? Cause that had better be one BIG coffee. ;)

Wait, what am I saying? You have a little one. No amount of caffeine will ruin whatever sleep you're able to snatch from the jaws of children.

Nat Blair said...

Say, DSKS, I was just reading your short JBC communique from last year (which really I should have cited in my paper - sry bout that), and the idea of pore properties changing made me think of an old paper from Chung Chin Kuo and Bruce Bean in Nature (oh, 1992 or 1993).

In it they proposed that PKC phosphorylation altered the single channel conductance of NMDA receptors.

I think the paper never went anywhere because it might have been too heretical now. But seeing as the times they are a changing, and you have the NMDAR clones, maybe it's something that would affect fractional Ca2+ current?

Any comments on the paper? Full of crap, boring, blew your socks off?