Author Archives: Rich Glor

EEB Readings, Nov. 8-12

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Lesser Antillean bullfinch. Image from http://www.birdinginstlucia.org/birdfieldguide/photos.htm

Monday: Speciation reading group. 2PM in Hutch 341. Ch. 10 on Reinforcement from Coyne and Orr.

Tuesday: EEB Journal Club. 12:30 in the Bryant Room. The 1000 Genomes Project Consortium (2010) A map of human genome variation from population-scale sequencing. Nature. [doi link]

Wednesday: Island biogeography discussion group. Noon in Hutch 341. Ricklefs’s chapter in The Theory of Island Biogeography Revisited. Contact the Glor Lab if you want to get in on lunch.

Wednesday: Bartuszevige A.M., Gorchov D.L. and Raab L. 2006. The relative importance of landscape and community features in the invasion of an exotic shrub in a fragmented landscape. Ecography 29:213-222. [[doi link]]

Friday: Elements of Evolutionary Genetics reading group. 10AM in the graduate student lounge. First half of chapter 3 from Charlesworth & Charlesworth.

“If our ignorance is infinite…”

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Every first year feels it constantly.  Second years feel it in droves, especially around qualifying exam time.  A PhD student’s career is capped by a defense that makes sure you still feel it a little.  What is it?  Stupidity!  Here’s a good article from the Journal of Cell Science with a new perspective on “The importance of stupidity in scientific research.” – Dan McNabney

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Another Spec to Demo

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We’re shipping off the demo NanoDrop today, but have a spec here to demo – the BioTek Epoch.  The BioTek Epoch is a new competitor to the NanoDrop built by a company that’s been in the plate reader business for decades.  This machine is capable of doing 16 NanoDrop style 1-2ul samples simultaneously, or even reading an entire 96 or 384 well plate of larger samples (>25 µl).  With some help from Danna Eickbush, we did a quick test this morning and found BioTek Epoch capable of accurately detecting and characterizing smaller concentrations of DNA than the NanoDrop (the NanoDrop crapped out around 10 ngµl, whereas the Epoch was still giving us reasonable results down to 3 ng/µl).  We’ll have it for another week, so please stop by if you’d like to give it a spin.

EEB Coffee Time

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Disclaimer: this image may not resemble product offered by Glor & Garrigan Labs.

The Glor & Garrigan Lab’s are hosting coffee time today in the graduate student lounge at 3:30PM.

Rochester Breaks Into Top 10 on Daily Beast’s List of Smartest Cities

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The Daily Beast has made an annual tradition of using data on education (e.g., % population with degrees) and intellectual environment (e.g., libraries per capita, year-to-date nonfiction book sales) to rank the smartest major metropolitan areas in the United States.  This year Rochester cracked the top 10,  just behind Washington, D.C. and just ahead of Portland, Oregon (take heart Portland, in my book you’re still leading the nation in hipsters per capita).

EEB Readings, Nov. 1-5

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Monday: Speciation reading group. 2PM in Hutch 341. Polyploidy and Hybrid Speciation from Coyne and Orr.

Tuesday: EEB Journal Club. 12:30 in the Bryant Room. Xia et al. (2009) Complete resequencing of 40 genomes reveals domestication events and genes in silkworm (Bombyx). Science 326:433-436. [doi link]

Wednesday: Island biogeography discussion group. Noon in Hutch 341. Gillespie & Baldwin’s chapter in The Theory of Island Biogeography Revisited. Contact the Glor Lab if you want to get in on lunch.

Wednesday: Martin P.H. and Marks P.L. 2006. Intact forests provide only weak resistance to a shade-tolerant invasive Norway maple (Acer platanoides L.). Journal of Ecology 94:1070-1079. [[doi link]]

Friday: Elements of Evolutionary Genetics reading group. 10AM in the graduate student lounge. First half of chapter 3 from Charlesworth & Charlesworth.

Reminder: Ray’s Thesis Defense Tomorrow

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Tomorrow is a big day for EEBers.  Werren Lab PhD student Rhitoban Ray Choudhury kicks things off by defending his thesis on “The evolutionary genetics of the parasitic wasp Nasonia” at 11:15 in Computer Sciences Building 209.  Later in the afternoon we have a seminar from Tristan Stayton at 3PM, with a reception to follow at Glor’s house at 6 PM.

Upcoming Lecture on Ecological Applications of Remote Sensing

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The Western New York chapter of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society is hosting a lecture on Nov. 8th that might be of interest to EEBers interested in ecological data emerging from modern remote sensing technology.  The lecture by Jan van Aardt of RIT addresses the use of waveform lidar for understanding complex signals for ecolgoical applications such as “structural unmixing, species classification, and biomass estimation.”  An abstract of the talk is available in PDF format.