Quick Links: Biology and a Day in the Life

On my flight back from New Hampshire I found that Virgin provided a few TED lectures as part of their in flight entertainment. TED, a non profit who's tagline is "Ideas Worth Spreading", hosts and records lectures by leading thinkers in art, science, technology and pretty much anything else. Not only are these thinkers experts in their metier, but they are also good speakers, which means that these lectures, far from being boring, can connect with any audience. On the flight I watched a lecture by Bonnie Bassler, a Princeton professor who has done some important work in bacteria function. In this lecture she describes how bacteria talk to each other and how understanding this communication allows us to develop a new types of antibiotic and gives us insight into the development of multi cellular organisms. It was absolutely fascinating!





I also wanted to share an article in this month's Symmetry magazine, an excellent publication on particle physics geared towards physicists and the public alike. This article chronicles an (atypical) day in the life of Hitoshi Murayama, a distinguished Berkeley physics professor, director of the Japanese Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, member of my qual committee and all around good guy. The article, written by him, describes the day he met the Imperial family of Japan.