the SEC as muppets, Parabens, ZMapp production, viking ladies, etc.

With the return of college football season, i would like to remind everyone of this truly hilarious description of the SEC schools as Muppets. i and several of my friends are alumi of various of these schools, and we all laughingly accept the Muppet indicated (the Swedish Chef for my alma mater, Gonzo for Bryan's,  and Rowlf for Kelly AT's, which i think is a wide enough sample to generalize for all schools involved).

Many, many congratulations and wishes for happiness to the delightful couple Kate and Jeremy, who married this past weekend.

i am familiar with the word 'parabens' as the common name of parahydroxybenzoic acid, commonly used as preservatives in various make-ups and skin products, of dubious-but-USDA-approved safety. However, a Brazilian friend (Hi, Luisa!) recently celebrated a birthday, and her facebook wall filled up with posts of "Parabéns!" It does not appear to have a direct translation, but instead mean either 'Congratulations', 'Happy Birthday', or 'Way to Go!' (update, as Ryan points out, the literal translation is "For good things!")

My masters work was about half focused on optimization for expression of exogenous proteins in plants, so the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp was of particular interest to me. Tracking back various papers, it looks like they just used a transient Agrobacteria infiltration into N. benthamiana for which acouple native plant glycoslyation genes had been knocked down; the pooled 3 (highly purified) plant antibodies were based on optimized ones originally made in mice against Ebola. (In case you can't tell, i love being a scientist and looking stuff up.) Also, i appreciated the Mapp Bio's FAQ page opener question; " Does ZMappTM work?
We don’t know.  ". Honest, if not necessarily encouraging.

This article regarding Viking skeletons, initially identified as males due to being buried with swords but now properly ID'd as women, is making the rounds on the internet. i'd like to think that if i were a Viking (when i was a Viking?), i'd have a sword and my own fast ship.

Few things annoy me as much as the use of infantile language by adults to adults, including phrases like "Yummy!", or tummy/belly. (Seriously, please just say 'Delicious!' or stomach, or abdomen like the adults that we are.) However, these are interesting origins, too. 'Belly' apparently derives from the Old English for 'bag'. 'Tummy' comes from the childish pronunciation of 'stomach', or, possibly-but-maybe-not, the Amazonian Indian word 'tum', for 'stomach'. There also might be a localization link; 'tummy' is possibly British, and 'belly' is possibly American, but maybe not.

My labmate Ryan linked this tshirt to me this afternoon; i would have immediately purchased it if somehow velociraptors were involved (we bandied about the modified state slogan "Velociraptors is for lovers"? or  former slogan, "Almost heaven, West Velociraptors." Maybe not, and i seem to be on a John Denver reference kick?). i responded with this tshirt link.

i really enjoyed this article on being polite.