I'm off to Estonia to participate in the thesis defense of Mardo Koivomagi. I'm really looking forward to this as Mardo has written two of my favorite cell cycle papers over the past two years http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21658602 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21993622. This is part of a great string of biochemical results on CDK enzymology from the Loog lab in Tartu - which is definitely a group to follow.
There is something nice about having an idea that wouldn't have been had for a while had you not have had it. Of course, most of these, including the ones I have had, are obscure, forever off the main path of the scientific research. Some are not, and in the end these are the ones that accelerate our understanding of the world. I don't think our paper on the unifying theory of plant and fungal movements is too elevated in that sense, but it is a nice idea, and I doubt it would have entered the literature for at least 10 years had we not written it down: Skotheim & Mahadevan, Science 2005
The q-bio meeting on waikiki was fantastic. what a location! paying attention in the sessions was greatly enhanced by a noon swimming or surfing session. Also, the meeting exceeded my expectations as I was happy to see the q-bio field maturing. I'm optimistic we will get to the bottom of how cells process information and be able to co-opt this information for useful engineering purposes. It is an exciting time in the field and I'm very curious about what the next decade will bring. If you are thinking about attending this meeting next year then do it!
it turns out that some people can even do awesome science!
What a nice publishing experience... you submit a paper and it is soon accepted, with revisions only serving to clarify text. I don't miss the usual cell & mol bio trench warfare at all. It reminds me of publishing in physics. The paper is nice and represents a significant advance on the segmentation and tracking of densely growing budding yeast colonies. The software, largely written by Andreas, is of course available upon request; just email doncic@stanford.edu