Giant Misshappen Phallus Blooms

The sexual organs of the Giant Corpse Flower.

Below is a live-stream from the United States Botanical Garden in Washington, DC. The man-sized flower you see is known as the "corpse flower." Named for the putrefied stank it emits this carrion flower attracts pollinators by mimicking the smell of rotting flesh. The plant has the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world. Its Latin name is Amorphophallus titanum ~ "misshapen phallus." It is worth noting that this titan of the plant kingdom does not have a regular cycle to its bloom. Blooms may be separated by years or decades. 

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Remembering Dad

Ronald G. Hite 

February 29th, 1932 - May 17th, 2013

Dad was born February 29^th 1932 in Rochester, New York.  This date tells us a lot about the person he was.  As a leap year baby his birth made the local papers, a showman from the start! But being born in the middle of the great depression would not be easy on him.  His father “Ross” left Dad and his brother’s Bob and Jim and his mother Agnes when Dad was very young.  Dad spent much of his youth in chaos. His mother Agnes struggled to hold down a job. He spent time in foster homes and even ran away with his older brothers for an entire summer when he was around eight years old. 

Dad proudly retold the story of living off the land that summer, camping on the banks of the Genesee River, smoking cigarettes and foraging for food. The boys would get so hungry that they resorted to stealing vegetables right out of the back of farm trucks. They’d stand on a bridge near Avon, NY with a grappling hook dangling on a rope and when the veggie truck drove under the bridge they’d fish for sustenance.  One time while pulling up string beans Dad got the grappling hook caught on the back of the truck and pulled the tailgate right off and all the sting beans came pouring out.  You could say he had an early start spilling the beans.

I tell you this story to give you an idea of where Dad came from. Ultimately he found a home living with his grandmother – Lizzy Duffy and his grandfather Frank Moran in Avon where he worked as an adolescent at the Avon Inn. He spoke so fondly of his grandmother Lizzy attributing his love of home cooking and fresh vegetables to her.

When I think of the archetypical Dad I think of hunting, fishing, and power tools you know, the macho stuff. But Dad did not enjoy any of these things. Dad valued good conversation and learning new things. I spent many years of my life being upset with him for not filling the traditional father roles I thought he should have been playing with me. But now, when I think of Dad’s life, what he went through to put himself through college and law school all without a father I can’t help feel more and more proud of him.  Despite all the obstacles he faced Dad was able to develop a unique personality and sustain an unbridled optimism.

Dad had such a passion for being alive. A child-like sense of curiosity and positive attitude filled him with fervor for sharing new information. If Dad read a stimulating article he would have copies made at his office here on Cherry Street in Jamestown and pass them out to people. People he loved and people he just randomly encountered. A Democrat to his core Dad believed whole-heartedly in the earnestness of the common person. I always admired and will for the rest of my life strive to accomplish his skill at communicating with total strangers. He struck up conversations at bus stops in the airport or at the bakery with anyone who would smile back at him.  Though we have photos there is nothing that will replace Dad’s smile.  A genuine smile with rosy cheeks you always knew he was about to say something clever.  

Dad was larger than life. He stirred the pot and rocked the boat all while making you think.  More than just a pun-master he was a great weaver of stories.   On Tuesday nights when I was a boy Dad would come home from choir practice here at Saint Pete’s (as he so affectionately called this place back then) and walk up the stairs to my room where I would pretend to be asleep. He’d walk in and sit on my bed and begin to tell me about the day’s excitement. Eventually I would beg him for a story. Maybe an old standard like his rendition of Robin Hood or the old Irish folk-tale - Billy Beg and the Bull. But often I’d request a completely new story improvised on the spot. I would even give him a breakdown of what I wanted “one part scary, two parts science, one part camouflage and two parts adventure… please.” Dad would sway for a few minutes sitting on the bed with his eyes closed; his bottom lip pulled up high then he’d begin to unfold the most marvelous tales you could imagine.  There were kingly feasts served on red silk table clothes pulled right out of a bull’s ear, a mad scientist who saved the world with his magic camouflage camel, and a little boy who ran away into the woods only to return home heroic but sleepy.  I romanticized these stories the most; running away into the wild, living on what nature supplied, making a bed out of heaps of dry pine needles. It was not until much later that I realized the personal origins of these stories for Dad.

As I get older I become more and more grateful for the gifts he gave me while he lived.  First and foremost he gave me an education.  But more important than the means to attain an education he also instilled in me a deep-seeded appreciation for education in general and a drive to continue learning as long as I live.  Many nights when I would visit home in my twenties I would walk up those same stairs to his room sit down on his bed with him. I’d scratch his back and we would start talking about politics, or world history, or Cornplanter, Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull.  If we got to a point in the conversation where neither of us knew much about the topic at hand I’d go get the appropriate Encyclopedia volume and we’d read together about the Etruscans or the Danube River, or the Andromeda Galaxy. 

I was lucky to have thirty years with Dad and to have such a close relationship with him. When I look at my voicemail history I see that the vast majority of the messages were from Dad. He loved to chat and stay in touch. This will be the biggest change for me, loosing not just a supportive and loving father but also a great friend.

Richard Dawkins and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid MEME

Watch the following video all the way through. A metamorphosis of sorts unfolds before our very eyes.

How to Ride a Bike in the City.

Netroots Nation 2013 LIVE VIDEO

Adventures in Genomes and Ethics.

Flooding in Northern India

More than 100 people have been killed in Northern India due to flooding. The Monsoon season has pushed the Ganges over its banks.  (Photo Credit - Associated Press)

Frans de Waal and Jeff Schloss: a Conversation about Science and God

Free Genes - SCOTUS strikes down Myriad

The SCOUTUS blog is reporting the Supreme Court has struck down Myriad Genetic's patent claim on two human genes - BRCA1 and BRCA2.

The decision is being called  a compromise by some news sources but the crux of the ruling is this...

We merely hold that genes and the information they encode are not patent eligible under §101 simply because they have been isolated from the surrounding genetic material.

I am sure the lawyers for Myriad are scrambling to write new patents with slightly different wording to emphasize "cDNA" (which the court struggles with defining; in some instances they call it complimentary DNA in others composite DNA). However, it will be difficult overcome the following language in the present decision.

If the patents depended upon the creation of a unique molecule, then a would-be infringer could arguably avoid at least Myriad’s patent claims on entire genes by isolating a DNA sequence that included both the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene and one additional nucleotide pair. Such a molecule would not be chemically identical to the molecule “invented” by Myriad. But Myriad obviously would resist that outcome because its claim is concerned primarily with the information contained in the genetic sequence, not with the specific chemical composition of a particular molecule.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the ruling and there is a one paragraph opinion by Justice Scalia partially affirming the ruling.

Read the entire ruling here. (It is only 18 pages long)

This decision sets the "product-of-nature" precedent for the patent eligibility of all naturally occurring human genes. As I currently work as a biochemist in a plant biology lab I am curious to see if this applies to plant genes.

It is not clear whether cDNA copied from naturally occurring templates (human DNA) is patentable or just synthetic cDNA.

I will update this post as I learn more about the Supreme Court's ruling.

CLARITY - looking inside the brain

I stumbled across this video yesterday while bouncing around Twitter. Mitch Waldrop had posted the video a few months ago. The technology displayed here is dubbed CLARITY - a new method for looking inside animal tissues. In this case brains. It takes the grey mass you normally think of when you think "brain" and turns it into a jellyfish-like consistency, see-through and all. CLARITY was developed by a team of interdisciplinary researchers at Stanford University lead by Karl Deisseroth. I am constantly amazed at the pace of progress we are witnessing in biomedical science. Just brilliant!