What WAS that crazy mathematician's name in the movie "Pi"?

Mark something? Matt? I looked it up:

Max Cohen.

Duhsville. The whole "trying to find the name of God in the Torah using numbers" should have jogged my memory.

How do I "wash out" my nose?

I have chronic sinusitis and someone told me to "wash out" my nose with salt water. There was no elaboration regarding the actual technique, so I looked it up:

A warm salt-water solution poured through the nose may offer some relief from both allergic and infectious sinusitis. A ceramic pot, known as a “neti lota” pot, makes this procedure easy. Alternatively, a small watering pot with a tapered spout may be used. Fill the pot with warm water and add enough salt so the solution tastes like tears. Stand over a sink, tilt your head far to one side so your ear is parallel to the floor, and pour the solution into the upper nostril, allowing it to drain through the lower nostril. Repeat on the other side. This procedure may be performed two or three times a day.
(http://www.truestarhealth.com/Notes/1275000.html)

This person fashioned a nose-washing machine!

"Instead of a neti, I use a jerry-rigged waterpik as a pulsatile irrigation system. I got a Sinus Cleanse (http://www.unimedprod.com/) bottle from my doctor, cut off part of the tube with the head, cut the head of a waterpik, and used a section of aquarium airline as a gasket. It works really well, and the waterpik is supposed to stimulate better than a neti because the pulsing is supposed to be better for the cilia."

I can see a ton of shit going wrong with either one of these methods, and I'm really loathe to stick a teapot spout in my nostril, but if that crazy mathematician in the movie "Pi" can drill a hole through his skull to obliterate that "genius spot" of his, then I can surely run a little water through my nose.

What's wrong with Girl Scout Cookies?

There was a threatening-looking article on MSN about "The terrbile truth about Girl Scout Cookies" and I didn't look at it. I've seen a few boxes of Thin Mints around lately and I've been worried. So I looked it up:

According to the NYTimes,
"If that wasn't enough, the Girl Scouts are fending off concerns that the cookies have high levels of unhealthy trans fats. The national office has even had to deny that child labor was used to produce the chocolate that covers the popular Thin Mints."

What's a group of ravens called?

Everyone knows that many crows all together is called a "murder," but I couldn't remember (or didn't know in the first place) what a collection of ravens was called. I looked it up:

A conspiracy of ravens.

I don't remember what internet source I gleaned such a sentence from, but thanks and parenthesis and dates and all...

Pi day.

Well, happy Pi day, duhh...

What exactly is laudanum?

After half a Percoset tablet and some tea, I became curious about all the alkaloids present in opium poppies. I remembered laudanum from "Oregon Trail" and also from Edgar Alan Poe, and wanted to know how one concots such a thing. I looked it up:

Laudanum
Tincture of opium.

Usually a liquid, but the alcoholic extract can be subsequently dried as well.

Preparation instructions from Culpeper's Complete Herbal, 1653:
Take of Thebane Opium extracted in spirit of Wine, one ounce, Saffron alike extracted, a dram and an half, Castorium one dram: let them be taken in tincture of half an ounce of species Diambræ newly made in spirit of Wine, add to them Ambergris, Musk, of each six grains, oil of Nutmegs ten drops, evaporate the moisture away in a bath, and leave the mass.
(lycaeum.com)

I'll get right on that, drams and all...

How do nano-sized drug delivery micelles ACTUALLY target cancer cells?

I just attended a most excellent presentation on using micelles to deliver anti-cancer drugs, and because the scope of the presentation was mostly focused on the chemistry aspects I was left wondering how a tiny bubble of lipid-like molecules is able to specifically "find" tumor tissue. Why don't the micelles just fuse with everything and totally poison your entire body? I looked it up:

One way is by exploiting the "EPR effect" (which WAS mentioned in the presentation). EPR stands for Enhanced Permeability and Retention, and tumor tissue apparently has these enhanced characteristics. According to the National Cancer Center Research Institute of Japan in 2003, the EPR effect in solid tumor tissue got its name through the following pathophysiological characteristics: (a) hypervasculature; (b) incomplete vascular architecture; (c) several vascular permeability factors stimulating extravasation within the cancer; and (d) little drainage of macromolecules and particulates.

I suppose I trust that.

Another way to ensure that your drug-filled micelle gets to the tumor is to link some tissue-specific molecular marker or "vector" to the outside of the micelle. Some of these vectors include: antibodies, peptides, lectins, saccharides, and hormones. However, antibodies are most common vector used these days.

Nanotechnology!

Thanks to Kate for teaching us about some awesome research.

Internal Ribosome Entry Sites (IRES)

I wanted to know if an IRES was a linear sequence or an mRNA secondary structure. Technically, I should have assumed that a linear sequence might lead to a secondary structure (based on the laws of protein assembly) but I didn't. I looked it up:

IRES elements are highly structured cis-acting regions on the viral RNA. They serve as binding sites for proteins of the translational apparatus and facilitate the internal entry of ribosomes independently of the 5´-end of the viral RNA or a cap-nucleotide.

So this one mRNA was like, "you don't have to recognize my cap to sit down" and the ribosome was all like, "okay." Together, they made a completely different protein...

Internal Ribosomal Entry Sites (IRES)

More favorite Reoviridae species

Mono Lake virus
Sixgun city virus

All viruses are, among other things,

parasites of translation.
(Flint et al., Principles of Virology, 2nd edition)

Taxonomic structure of the family Reoviridae

I wanted to know what kinds of viruses were in the family Reoviridae. I looked it up:

Family 00.060. Reoviridae
Genus 00.060.0.01. Orthoreovirus
Genus 00.060.0.02. Obrivirus
Genus 00.060.0.03. Rotavirus
Genus 00.060.0.04. Coltivirus
Genus 00.060.0.10. Seadornavirus
Genus 00.060.0.05. Aquareovirus
Genus 00.060.0.06. Cypovirus
Genus 00.060.0.11. Entomoreovirus
Genus 00.060.0.07. Fijivirus
Genus 00.060.0.08. Phytoreovirus
Genus 00.060.0.09. Oryzavirus

You can click these links and look things up.

Some of my favorite subgroups:
Epizootic hemorrhagic disease virus
Telligerry virus
Above Maiden virus
Cape Wrath virus
Poovoot virus
Colorado tick fever virus
Operophtera brumata cypovirus 2

Southern blotting

I could have sworn the oligos for Southern blotting were made of RNA, but that doesn't really make sense in retrospect. I looked it up:

The basics of Southern blotting (from MBOC 4):

Southern blotting is used to analyze DNA as opposed to its analagous method of analyzing RNA, Northern blotting. Your sample (DNA or RNA) is resolved using gel electrophoresis, and transferred to a membrane (now called the blot) either by electrotransfer or by stacking piles of heavy books on top of the blot allowing for passive transfer. In both Northern and Southern blotting, single-stranded DNA oligonucleotide probes are hybridized to a target sequence in your sample. Depending on the variety of label is present in your oligonucleotide probe, the bands on the blot are visualized using autoragiography or by chemical means.

Uh-Oh. Blog?

I find myself looking things up a lot of the time