slow day

Since not much new is happening around the lab with the impending holidays, I thought I'd be indulgent a post a drawing of a cat by my son, Shayde... enjoy. Maybe he'll design the new lab T shirt (Ole?), since Cherry never took on that task (<-- see comments)...

click to enlarge

Hala's Travel Tips, vol. 1

It seems Hala has gotten quite ill following a flight back from San Diego back to Salt Lake City following the Thanksgiving holiday. She attributes this to the bacteria factory most modern planes are:



Because of this, we are proud to offer the first in a new Tasteman™ series that we affectionately call Hala's Travel Tips. Here's #1:

Hala's advice: change your seat (if you can) if you find yourself sitting next to someone on a plane that IS COUGHING AND DOES NOT COVER THEIR MOUTH.

Words to the wise...

Our Undies Shine...

Our infamous Undies (undergraduate researchers) shined at the recent Biology Department Undergraduate Research Symposium. We had three presentations including a talk by Spencer Hyde on his work on fatty acid sensitive potassium channels, and posters by Heather Curtis (on the obesity-prone and -resistant rats) and Stephanie Croasdell (salt taste in a diabetic mouse model). All did great jobs and made the lab look better than we probably are...

Stephanie won an award for the Best Poster presentation shedding more limelight onto the lab. Rumor has it Arian is angling to get a part of the award for all his help with her poster.

A link to a real article talking about the event can be found here.

Congrats to all our Undies on their great work!

Happy Thanksgiving...

Greenlander Hits Us...

OK, I gotta get on one of these social networking sites....

For about 5 weeks now, we have been on a sacred quest - a quest to get ONE visitor to our blog from Greenland. If you've been following along, you'll know it has been a miserable failure, giving me 5 weeks of frustration.

But today it all changed.

I got this email from one of the labbies, Heather - an undergrad researcher - at about 2:06 PM


Within about 13 minutes after getting Heather's email, I received the following email from our new favorite Greenlander, Ole Lange, who hails from Ilulissat, Greenland:




And, while there is yet to be a Greenland flag on our FEEDJIT traffic map (I am beginning to doubt if FEEDJIT has a Greenland flag available), I have taken the liberty of adding one to a recent traffic map for the blog. I have to admit shedding a tear while I did so...



As promised, Ole will soon be sporting the "old school" Gilbertson Lab T-shirt and writing with our official pencils. As they say, Ole, "it's in the mail".

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED thanks to Heather...

now, I just need to figure out what this Facebook is all about since it could accomplish in ten minutes what I couldn't in 5 weeks...

now what country is next?

Cough, cough.... achooooo!

Most Utah ski resorts are open or will be open soon, including our personal favorite Solitude. I think I may be feeling a prolonged cold coming on starting on or about Nov 14th that may cause me to miss a significant amount of work...

Thankfully, I know that my lab is staffed with the utmost professionals that can carry on in case of an extended absence on my part.

...now where did I put that wax?

OMG!!

I seriously doubt Dr. Master (bhavik shah) is a spy from India that is going to spy on CHINA！！

This little guy is pretending patching some fat things in LOGAN, but he actually knows everything about CHINA!!

HE KNOWS EVERYTHING!!!!

Sign of the times...

A plane flying over the Denver Broncos last home game (11.2.08) was pulling this sign:











Guess we know who Cathy Burks voted for.

Free T Shirt

In our continuing quest (desperation?) to lure a visitor from Greenland onto our blog, we have just upped the ante. To the first visitor from Greenland (did I mention this is our favorite country, by the way?) to visit the Tasteman™ and email me with your name, address* and statement as to why you love the Tasteman™, I will send you, free of charge, an official Gilbertson Lab t shirt (size L). This limited edition T shirt is the last remaining shirt from our original designer collection and is adorned with our previous logo and a large taste bud and the word "sucks" on the back. It is priceless (actual retail value: $8 USD) and waiting for the first Greenlander to snap it up. We'll even throw in a few Gilbertson Lab pencils and commemorate you in an upcoming issue of the Tasteman™.



This is a limited time offer, so hurry and start clicking!



*must be a Greenland address, of course!

We Are Famous!

Look at the map on the right side and check our recent visitors!

Country Page Views for Map Area:
Kuwait [17%]
Spain [12%]
United Kingdom [8%]
Switzerland [8%]
Portugal [8%]
Germany [8%]
Brazil [8%]
China [4%]
Sweden [4%]
Italy [4%]
Czech Republic [4%]
Saudi Arabia [4%]
Ukraine [4%]

Bangladesh [4%]

We are becoming famous and popular! Start charging money for visiting??

Why does Greenland hate us?

Cherry recently pointed out that our blog's popularity has been increasing lately as the recent traffic map (at left) from FEEDJIT shows. Sure, we are pleased by the exposure we are getting and we anticipate this will lead to our first grad student applications from students in Kuwait and the Ukraine in the near future.

But, what's going on with Greenland?

They share an ice-like environment with Logan in January, yet not one individual out of your population of 56,344 even has set foot near our 'popular' blog! This is disheartening. Did we offend you Greenland? We in the lab have always thought highly of you, but for you to ignore us this way, just doesn't feel right. I always longed to do my sabbatical there but your recent behavior is making me reconsider.

So, this is our mission - we want just one of you Greenlanders to pay us a visit, you don't have to stay long, just pop in. It doesn't even have to be one of your more popular people, we aren't picky. No advance notice needed, our door is always open for you. We want to see your proud flag on our traffic statistics! C'mon, you know you want to, quit being so stubborn.

Poor economy --> lots more future research

The sinking economy means we'll be hanging around here doing research for a lot longer than we ever expected since there is no chance of me retiring in the foreseeable future. A big hearty "THANK YOU" to our country's current administration for promoting scientific research. They gutted funding for NIH and NSF but have found a great way to make sure no scientist ever retires - do away with all our investments. Shrewd strategy, indeed. And here I thought they weren't too bright!


It's a good thing I love my job or I might actually be depressed over the 27% drop in the stock market over the past year. Following the trend line above, I'll be able to retire in about 2414 when I'll still be only about 450 years old. Sweet!

Take our poll --------------------->

Why is Bhavik so upset?























UPDATED:
Our resident photog, Tian, has provided two additional pictures here & here for your viewing pleasure since apparently our subject above didn't like this picture.

The New "us"

Well, it took some doing, but we finally got around to getting an updated lab photo (see!) that was precipitated by the fact that I got tired of showing pictures of the lab at seminars that had people in them that had long since retired.

Thanks to our resident photographer, Shaker, for arranging and executing the photo...


Pictured (L-R): Spencer Hyde, Arian Baquero, Hala Hadawar, Stephanie Croasdell, Tim Gilbertson, Han Xu, Cherry Liu, Tian Yu (Shaker), Dane Hansen, Bhavik Shah, Heather Curtis, Eric Hickenlooper. Not pictured (at least until we 'photoshop her in'): Kris Watson.

New Website - coming soon

Part of my Labor Day Weekend was spent doing a much-needed redesign of the lab's website. Not that the content has changed much, just the look, navigation and a partial updating of the old content.

Amazingly, despite my incessant complaining about things not being orange enough (see here), the new site has a noticeable lack of much orange. I suppose after 8 years of various orangish websites, a change, however temporary, is in order. Perhaps my migration away from orange has something to do with the recent downturn in the Denver Broncos' fortunes (read this)... I dunno.

Anyway, it should be up in a few days or whenever I find the time to upload the files and check them out. Next update of the site will be probably about 2010... so you don't need to be in a hurry to see it.

USU Fooball Ranked!

click to enlarge (if you have a strong stomach)

...#119 out of 119 by Sports Illustrated.

As a season ticket holder since my arrival on this beautiful campus, I was dismayed to see our Aggies ranked dead last in Division I football by Sports Illustrated despite the fact that we are riding a two-game winning streak into this season (last year's record: 2-10). They were also the only team predicted to lose EVERY game this season.

Other publications have us ranked as high as #114! Woo hoo.

...well, at least we have some notoriety and there is no where to go but UP. I have faith that we will be infinitely better than predicted (meaning: we win at least one). Of course, this optimistic slant is tempered by the fact that I am trying to justify the increase in ticket prices and "seat licensing fees" this year. It's getting harder and harder for me to find someone to go to the games with... (Ummm, anyone want to buy some tickets? Cheap.)

Color Crisis

As most of the lab is preparing to run off to ISOT/AChems* in San Francisco next week, the GL grad students have been hurriedly preparing their presentations - Arian is giving a talk and Bhavik, Cherry and Tian are doing posters of their great research. As most around the Gilbertson lab know, we (OK, I) love the Denver Broncos and accordingly the colors orange and blue.



So, one would assume that our posters should be some artistic variation of orange & blue, correct? Well, to my shock and dismay none of the posters prepared by the three were based upon this most glorious combination of colors.


Instead, they chose some horrific combinations of colors as you can see:


Sure, they look "OK" and the data are good, but none have the well recognized pizazz of a poster based upon O&B (orange & blue). If I had to rate their choices out of a possible 10, I'd give Tian a big 0 (zero) for nothing closely resembling O&B. Begrudgingly, I'd rate Bhavik a +1.3 for a little blue (it's mostly green & yellow poster with a touch of blue tossed in). I'd give Cherry a +4 for copius amounts of orange. It might have been higher but it was combined largely with brown (orange & brown = Cleveland Browns... ugh).

Here's hoping the next batch of posters out of the lab score higher.

*ISOT/AChemS: International Symposium on Olfaction & Taste/Association for Chemoreception Sciences

yet another reason I am embarrased by my time in Louisiana...

...and on a serious note:

have a read... unbelievable and really, really disappointing but probably not that surprising given the source and the state. I guess the fight to only teach SCIENCE in science classes will go on. Last time I checked we were in the 21st century, no? Heck, let's revisit Lamarckism while we are at it and, come to think of it, I have always been skeptical of those that believe the earth is round... come on, ROUND???

Ugh.

And the answer is......... NO.

From my wonderful, but slightly out-of-focus, graduate students as seen on our lab's webcam:

Wha' happened to Spring?

I think it snowed a couple of weeks ago... and I complained. Today it is 97°F... and I complain. Well, no disputing, summer is here with a vengeance. I think I slept through Spring. At least, some of us can enjoy it!

Stroll down memory lane...

From our friend and colleague, John Boughter (the Boatman) at UT-Memphis... for some of us, no explanation is needed; for the rest of you, no satisfactory explanation could EVER be provided.

new Labbie

and so, we grow.

Several grad students in the Gilbertson Lab have their sights set on finishing their Ph.D. degrees within the next 1 to 1½ years and, for some reason, are anxious to leave Logan, Utah State U and the friendly confines of the lab. Could it be they actually want to make some $$$? Nah... Ah, just the natural progression of life, we suppose, but we'll need to somehow begin the process of replacing the anticipated departures of Arian, Bhavik and Tian.

We are fortunate to have a new graduate student, Hala Hadawar (<-- that's her), starting this fall - a true blue (n' gold) Triton from my (and my wife Donna's) alma mater of UCSD. I will look forward to having someone around who can speak to the UCSD undergraduate experience - easy? uh, no. Hala will be joining us for the Fall 2008 semester and we'll have to convince her of the huge importance of studying the taste system and the unrivaled joy of doing patch clamping and cell-based imaging (among other things). Welcome, Hala.

One is Better than Zero

We were happy (OK, big understatement) to find out our last grant submission, while not funded, was "specialed" - meaning it got one year of funding under the R56 mechanism to allow us to continue to work to generate data and make progress for our next resubmission. Whew... It also allows us to stay in business and keep the wolves at bay a while longer... we are always hoping the funding situation at the national agencies will take a turn for the better and that all of us in this business have an easier go of things... well, we can hope, can't we?!?!?!?

Bhavik Back on May 16th

The prodigal son, Bhavik, will be back in the lab on 16 May 2008 after having spent the better part of 4 months doing an internship at IFF. The lab is eagerly awaiting his return despite the fact he stiffed us on IFF-related gifts. We are a forgiving bunch... Bhavik comes back to us well trained in the design of constructs and techniques related to the creation of inducible and constitutive stably-expressing cell lines.

Logan Weather - May 1, 2008

SNOW!

...crap.

A real lab SHOCKER

As many of our faithful readers know, labbies in the GL* submit monthly reports on their research activities, supposedly due on the first of each month. As you might imagine, sometimes getting these is like pulling teeth - even though all the labbies are wonderful and productive researchers. One of the usual late-comers is our own Tian (call me "Shaker") Yu, a third year PhD student in the lab. Typically, her monthly reports trickle in on the 4th, 5th or 6th of each month with an explanation that "she forgot".

Imagine my utter shock when this month, not only did her monthly report arrive FIRST and ON TIME, but also a DAY EARLY... just goes to show you that you that there are always a few surprises left in life...

*GL: Gilbertson Lab

Tian advances...Cherry loves STCs

...blog-wise, things have been slow. Cold, snowy (and very skiable!) winter, Bhavik in New Jersey, Tim teaching a new class have all contributed to a real lull in things worth writing about. Journalistic tragedy... not. We'll try to comment more...maybe.

Tian ("Shaker") recently passed her qualifying exams with flying colors, earning her brain* quite easily.
*You'll have to go to the old Tasteman™ archives to find out the significance of this.

She is now heading off to South America for Spring Break. South America??? Her stipend must be too high...

Cherry has been working on Bhavik's STC cells in his absence - making great strides in the work on characterizing responses in these cells after knocking down receptor expression using siRNA. Rumor has it she wants to continue to work on these cells after Bhavik returns and letting him do mouse taste cells. Guess that'll teach him to leave the lab - even temporarily.

Stephanie - one of our illustrious undergrads - got an URCO grant to continue her work with Arian on the behavioral responses of diabetic and insulin treated mice... We're (OK, I am) plotting a way to steal her $1000 grant to buy a big screen TV for the lab so Tim can watch the NFL Network all day.












-tag

New Year minus Bhavik

Well, we in the Gilbertson Lab embark on our 8th year at Utah State U well rested from the holidays and full of hope and enthusiasm for another year. (Do I sense the beginnings of itchy feet? Hmmmm.) However, as we begin 2008 we are currently without our resident jack-of-all-trades, Bhavik, who has run off to New Jersey for a well paid, semester-long internship at International Flavors & Fragrances. While we in the lab will miss him and wish him well, we are a bit annoyed that we haven't received any IFF-related gifts (T-shirts, coffee cups, calendars...) yet from Bhavik. We will continue to check the mail daily...

In fact, if there are any other generous individuals out there, we will gladly accept things from you to support us and our research efforts - while we prefer cash, we will accept just about anything as well. Just send your gifts to:

The Gilbertson Lab
Department of Biology
Utah State University
5305 Old Main Hill
Logan, UT 84322

Happy 2008.