Saturday, March 31, 2012

Conference Love

I know, I know, I let too much time go again. I honestly didn't feel that I had much to write about until now.

Anyways, I literally just got home from my first conference. It was a local chapter conference, so I feel like it was an excellent first step. I gave a platform presentation which got rave reviews (multiple people told me it was their favorite!) I didn't win anything, but my reviews were all very good. That can only mean that the competition was amazing. Overall, I learned some things:

- I LOVE toxicology!
- I LOVE my committee!
- I'm much better than I though at talking with new people

The next two weeks will be pretty busy. I'm running a test this week and then moving on to another conference next week. 

Monday, January 30, 2012

Everyone Makes Mistakes

My first is allowing a month to go between posts o_0

Anyways, I'm currently reading a book that my friend suggested called "The Seven Daughters of Eve." It's a non-fiction (which I don't normally do, so watch out y'all!) about the genetic history of humans and how we can all be traced back hundreds of thousands of years to seven women. I've been a slow reader lately, so I'm only in the first couple of chapters which is spent familiarizing the reader with the basics of genetics, PCR, and the like. Obviously, the story made it's way to Watson and Crick. Now, being an educated kid of the 21st Century, I've always heard of Rosalind Franklin's contribution to the discovery of DNA's double helix shape. I therefore, fully expected to see her name somewhere in the chapter.





Imagine my surprise when Franklin's name didn't show up at all. I even waited until the end of the chapter to get really disappointed. I went as far as to look at the publication date, thinking perhaps the book was written before Franklin was commonly spoken about in Biology classes. Nope, the book was published in 2001, around the time I started to hear about her.

Was it a missed piece of info? Did the author genuinely feel it wasn't important to the story? Perhaps, but given the extreme detail in these chapters, I was shocked that she wasn't even haphazardly mentioned. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks it's a mistake, but that's my two cents. Other than that, I'm really enjoying the book. It's a rare occasion to go over genetics in such a chill manner. Bravo!