(Review) Green Fluorescent Proteins

Reviews the book:Green Fluorescent Protein: Properties, Applications, and Protocols. Second Edition. Methods of Biochemical Analysis, Volume 47. Edited by Martin Chalfie and Steven R Kain.Green Fluorescent Protein: Properties, Applications, and Protocols. Second Edition. Methods of Biochemical Analysis, Volume 47. Edited by Martin Chalfie and Steven R Kain. Hoboken (New Jersey): Wiley-Interscience. $89.95. xv + 443 p + 24 pl; ill.; index. ISBN: 0–471–73682–1. 2006

100th Convocation 2014 Address - Amazing Mice Light Up the Liberal Arts

Connecticut College Professor of Chemistry Marc Zimmer states, I like to think of our educational system as an intellectual maze. New students, you are standing at the entrance of this fantastic maze, a lush and verdant garden maze... He concludes: We are all, faculty, students and staff tremendously privileged to be sitting here at the entrance of the amazing maze of learning

The Green Paradox and the Choice of Capacity

A number of recent papers extend traditional Hotelling frameworks by the topical issue of climate change. They study the effects of different environmental taxes on the resource extraction paths and derive important and far-reaching policy implications. In particular the most recent strain of literature devoted to the so called Green Paradox shows how over various economic channels a steady increase in environmental taxation rather accelerates resource extraction instead of resulting in the desired slow down. The cause of this paradox lies in the inability to tax the supply side of the resource and thus limits the policy instruments to the demand. Thus, e.g. an oil-sheikh has an interest to sell his oil while it is still relatively low taxed and he can still generate higher profits. This effect could be seen as a kind of intertemporal carbon leakage transferring future extraction to the present. The Green Paradox literature generally concludes that a binding global certifcate system covering all CO2 sources is the only solution and that attempts of implementing greener policies in the transition process are counterproductive. However, the underlying implicit assumption is that extraction capacities are suffcient and that capacity adjustments are costless. Our paper accounts for an endogenous capacity building decision under convex adjustment costs by extending the original Hotelling type formulation of the Green Paradox. The analysis shows that for typical assumptions about the cost structure greener policies stay a useable instrument in the transition process. We are able to define the necessary conditions for the policy measures to be effective and show that the evaluation of the Green Paradox differs for pre and post oil-peak regimes

Guerrilla Puzzling: a Model for Research

There are two main settings for puzzle solving in higher education: graduate programs, with professors and both graduate and postdoctoral students; and predominantly undergraduate institutions, with professors and students. Research programs at large universities are well-oiled puzzle-solving machines. Graduate students there work long, hard hours in the laboratory, under the supervision of postdocs and professors. Students at predominantly undergraduate institutions, on the other hand, can rarely devote more than 10 hours a week to research during the academic year, what with course work; extracurricular activities, like sports; jobs; and other commitments. In this article, the author describes guerrilla puzzling, a model for research that should be considered by faculty members at predominantly undergraduate institutions to help them achieve both their research and pedagogical goals. It is cost-efficient, its time span is appropriate for undergraduate participants, and it can produce significant results. It is a great way to get students involved in research at an early stage in their academic careers

How to find students’ inner geek

As a chemistry professor at a liberal-arts college, the author believes it is his job to find the youthful awe in his students and draw it out so that they will be intrigued once again by science and nature, so that they want to learn about equilibria, pH, and redox reactions. He has to go fishing inside their brains, to find, hook, and reel in their scientific spirit. Most of the students he teaches have not yet deeply suppressed their inner science geek. He can hook almost all of them if he uses the lures available to professors everywhere: enthusiasm, a smorgasbord of teaching techniques, demonstrations, and real-life examples. Every year, he sees students from underrepresented groups or students with great potential who do not seem to hunger for science. To reach the scientist within those students, he resorts to extra-super-duper bait: undergraduate research. This article presents undergraduate research programs as a way of fomenting students\u27 interest for science in liberal-arts colleges. Steps for managing research programs and recruiting and retaining students are outlined

Detecting the Upturn of the Solar 8^8B Neutrino Spectrum with LENA

LENA (Low Energy Neutrino Astronomy) has been proposed as a next generation 50 kt liquid scintillator detector. The large target mass allows a high precision measurement of the solar $^8$B neutrino spectrum, with an unprecedented energy threshold of 2 MeV. Hence, it can probe the MSW-LMA prediction for the electron neutrino survival probability in the transition region between vacuum and matter-dominated neutrino oscillations. Based on Monte Carlo simulations of the solar neutrino and the corresponding background spectra, it was found that the predicted upturn of the solar $^8$B neutrino spectrum can be detected with 5 sigma significance after 5 y

Water diffusion in and out of the β-barrel of GFP and the fast maturing fluorescent protein, TurboGFP

The chromophore of fluorescent proteins is formed by an internal cyclization of the tripeptide 65SYG67 fragment and a subsequent oxidation. The oxidation is slow – the kinetics of this step is presumably improved in fast maturing GFPs. Water molecules can aid in the chromophore formation. We have used 50ns molecular dynamics simulations of the mature and immature forms of avGFP and TurboGFP to examine the diffusion of water molecules in-and-out of the protein β-barrel. Most crystal structures of GFPs have well-structured waters within hydrogen-bonding distance of Glu222 and Arg96. It has been proposed that they have an important role in chromophore formation. Stable waters are found in similar positions in all simulations conducted. The simulations confirm the existence of a pore that leads to the chromophore in the rapidly maturing TurboGFP; decreased water diffusion upon chromophore formation; and increased water diffusion due to the pore formation

Embedded Firmware Solutions

Computer scienc

Embedded Firmware Solutions: Development Best Practices for the Internet of Things

Embedded Firmware Solutions is the perfect introduction and daily-use field guide--for the thousands of firmware designers, hardware engineers, architects, managers, and developers--to Intel’s new firmware direction (including Quark coverage), showing how to integrate Intel® Architecture designs into their plans. Featuring hands-on examples and exercises using Open Source codebases, like Coreboot and EFI Development Kit (tianocore) and Chromebook, this is the first book that combines a timely and thorough overview of firmware solutions for the rapidly evolving embedded ecosystem with in-depth coverage of requirements and optimization

Monitoring energy consumption with SIOX

In the face of the growing complexity of HPC systems, their growing energy costs, and the increasing difficulty to run applications efficiently, a number of monitoring tools have been developed during the last years. SIOX is one such endeavor, with a uniquely holistic approach: Not only does it aim to record a certain kind of data, but to make all relevant data available for analysis and optimization. Among other sources, this encompasses data from hardware energy counters and trace data from different hardware/software layers. However, not all data that can be recorded should be recorded. As such, SIOX needs good heuristics to determine when and what data needs to be collected, and the energy consumption can provide an important signal about when the system is in a state that deserves closer attention. In this paper, we show that SIOX can use Likwid to collect and report the energy consumption of applications, and present how this data can be visualized using SIOX’s web-interface. Furthermore, we outline how SIOX can use this information to intelligently adjust the amount of data it collects, allowing it to reduce the monitoring overhead while still providing complete information about critical situations