The second in a series of biophysical questions. Proteins are molecules. As is the case for every molecule, the constituent atoms and inter-atomic bonds determine the overall shape. In general, a small or stiff molecule has a well-defined form. In contrast, long, chain-like molecules as found in plastics or the gel-formers of the last post … Continue reading What’s the shape of a protein? (What is biophysics? #2)
An introduction to the series: It’s easy to write that biophysics is the intersection of biology and physics, but this is a minimal and cryptic description. We could elaborate, and describe biophysics as the study of how living things use physical forces to shape themselves, how we can harness physical processes for technological ends, and … Continue reading How can you push DNA through Jello? (What is biophysics? #1)
A terrible question to ask in science is unfortunately quite common: Does something affect something else? It seems innocuous enough — after all, one might want to know whether exposure to sunlight affects one’s risk of skin cancer, or whether the location of the moons of Jupiter affects the stock market. The answer, however, is … Continue reading Pushed around by stars
Our microbial ecology journal club, in addition to being fun and educational, is a limitless source of data presentation examples both wonderful and terrible. Here’s a recent example that drives me up the wall. It’s from a study [1] on correlations between pre-term births and various chemicals that may or may not be associated with … Continue reading When Should You Make a Plot of p-values? Never.
About a recent paper from my lab: B. H. Schlomann and R. Parthasarathy, “Gut bacterial aggregates as living gels,” eLife, 10: e71105 (2021). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.71105. What do gut bacterial colonies look like? My group has been exploring this question for years, and ever since our first forays peering inside larval zebrafish it has been evident … Continue reading Living Gels
Before my memories grow even dimmer I should write down some thoughts about the class I taught Spring term: The Physics of Solar and Renewable Energies. Like its companion course, The Physics of Energy and the Environment, which I taught the quarter before and wrote about here, it’s a course for non-science-major undergraduates at the … Continue reading Course Recap: Physics of Solar and Renewable Energies, Spring 2021
When I graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1997, non-California-residents made up about 10% of the undergraduate population [1]; the fraction now is 25% [2]. Here at the University of Oregon (UO), also a public university, out-of-state undergraduates are 44% of the student body. Why have these numbers increased so much at … Continue reading Graphs about out-of-state college students and money
There’s almost nothing new in this post, but descriptions of my upcoming (early 2022) general-audience book on biophysics are scattered across multiple blog posts, in some cases with outdated information like old versions of the title. Since it’s useful to have one definitive post to point to, here it is. (Update: It’s available! Publisher’s Link; … Continue reading “So Simple A Beginning,” A Popular Science Book about Biophysics
Update November 22, 2021: The final, published article is here. Update June 18, 2021: A preprint of my article is here. Over a year ago, I was invited to write a “resource letter” on Biological Physics for the American Journal of Physics, a very good education-focused journal. The goal of its resource letters is to … Continue reading Welcome to Biophysics! — A “Resource Letter”
In the quarter that recently ended I taught The Physics of Energy and the Environment, a course for non-science-major undergraduates at the University of Oregon (UO) that I’ve taught before, though never before as an online, Zoom-based course. (For those reading this in the far-off future: It’s April 2021, and we’re a bit over a … Continue reading Course Recap: Physics of Energy and the Environment, Winter 2021
The Eighteenth Elephant 