Bohemian Biology

For this 5th episode of Bohemian Biology I uploaded one of the podcasts I produced for BioTechniques. It was originally published on Biotechniques.com June 25 2009 Run Time: 32:48 Although the ban on funding embryonic stem cells was recently lifted by President Barack Obama, the controversy over this research still remains. New types of pluripotent stem cells have recently emerged as alternatives to embryonic stem cells. These include induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells) and parthenogenic stem cells. In this episode of BioTalk, Kent Vrana (1:25) , Ph.D., chair of the department of Pharmacology at Penn State University College of Medicine, and Ken Aldrich (21:55), CEO of International Stem Cell Corporation, discuss the current state of stem cell research.

On Saturday September 12, 2009, New Yorkers were invited to 'stop and listen' to the nocturnal chirping of crickets. The goal was to survey the presence of several species of crickets and katydids across the five boroughs and beyond. The collaboration between several hundreds of volunteers and scientists based at the American Museum of Natural History and U.S. Geological Survey Patuxent Wildlife Research Center allowed the construction of a preliminary map showing the distribution of 7 species of Crickets and Katytids spanning over 300 localities. This type of event is termed 'Bioblitz' and provides instant snapshots of the natural world, which can later serve as baseline in ecological studies. ‘Cricket Crawl’ is a 32:19 long audio documentary about this event, which aired for the first time on free103point9 internet radio as part of the Giant Ear))) ‘back to school sounds’ show on Sunday, September 27 at 7pm. Back to School sounds was curated by sound artist Mikhail Iliatov, a member of New York Society for Acoustic Ecology. Find Mikhail's website here: http://mikhaililiatov.com Giant Ear))) show: http://www.free103point9.org/events/2193/ Official NYC Cricket crawl event's webpage: http://www.discoverlife.org/cricket/

As the second annual Governor’s Island art fair is kicking in this month, a couple of friends and I hopped on the ferry at the DUMBO station on Sunday early afternoon to check it out. The sun was hitting really hard that day. This made waiting for the ferry quite hard to endure, but made the boat trip and short distance get away even more enjoyable. Once on the island I came across an interesting sound installation by Jeremy Slater. In this third episode of Bohemian Biology you’ll hear Jeremy Slater talk about his installation located in the attic of one of the art fair’s buildings. http://www.4heads.org/ jeremyslater.net Thanks Jeremy!

A couple of weeks ago I followed my friend Jenevieve to work. Jenevieve works for Big City Walls, an institution, that coordinates murals with youth organizations in schools across New York City. She recently completed a mural at the corner of Knickerbocker and Myrtle avenues with teenagers and young adults aged 13-21 from the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. The mural took four weeks to complete, from conceptualization to realization, and was funded by several organizations including Make the Road New York, CopWatch and Big City Walls itself. The role of such community outreach associations is to bring awareness and help to kids and their families on topics such as educational, immigration and housing justice, youth programs, and police brutality, which are relevant to the Bushwick population. In this podcast episode you will hear Jenevieve, her coworker Emilia and their students discussing the themes pictured on the mural and how they apply to the students personal lives.

For this first episode, I posted one of the episodes of BioTalk, a podcast I produced for BioTechniques, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. This is a pretty technical topic, and some parts require some knowledge of molecular biology. In this episode of BioTalk from BioTechniques, Gal Almogy, a post-doc at ETH Zürich explains how increasing the accuracy of the Tet system might lead to effective gene therapy. Gal Almogy, together with Gary Nolan associate professor at Stanford University, published a research report in the January 2009 issue of BioTechniques describing their improvements to the Tet system. Almogy also discusses his career goals in the synthetic biology field and his desire to help students and post-docs navigate the academic job market.