11 posts tagged “work”
Look who stopped by outside my office window this afternoon. Maybe looking for a little late lunch?
It’s a day off today from the science salt mines today as I am heading up to the City of Angels (actually closer to the Airport of Angels) to participate in a career networking discussion at the California State University’s Biotechnology Program’s annual symposium. The symposium is for CSU students and faculty to present their research and the Career Networking Session is a chance for students to ask professionals about their careers (I’ll be manning the research in drug discovery table) which mostly boils down to how to get jobs. I did it last year, too.
I like doing these sorts of things because I remember being totally clueless as a student about what life was like in the “real world” – which had a different meaning before the MTV series – and I like the idea of having my experiences help them as they begin their transition out of school. Also, college kids are always so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, they’re sort of fun to be around. They remind me of me before the weight of the world crushed my spirit.
The other important thing is that my duties will conclude on Saturday evening, so I will be able to return on Sunday morning in time to watch the NFC Championship.
Have a great weekend!
Tea or coffee? Show us the mug you use for your morning caffeine.
Oh, the answer is coffee. Black, thank you.
It’s been a really long week and so I’m giving into the VoxHunt. I do like the fact that both Ross and I can post something that includes Charlie the Unicorn within an hour or so of one another, though.
Yes, that’s a small bottle of vodka. No, it hasn’t been opened. Though if any week was going to drive me to open it, it might have been this one…
Shun the non-believer! Shhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnn-nuh!
Ok – bag is backed. Briefcase is bulging. Presentation is ready. Will call for the cab to the Flughafen (gotta start integrating the dozen words of German that I know…) shortly.
Not taking a computer, so I probably won’t be back here for a couple of weeks – so don’t drop me from your neighborhoods, or force-quit our Scrabulous games, or anything crazy like that.
Tschüss!
Got tagged by a few people on this, and while its probably more generally applicable to do this with the books I have at home, I thought it might be funny to execute this at work.
1. Grab your nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag 5 different people.
Ok – the nearest books I have are my lab notebooks… but since they’re proprietary, I could get in fairly hot water posting that… so the next-closest book is:
Reproductive Endocrinolgy 4th ed. (1999) by Sam Yen, Bob Jaffe and Robert Barbieri
The classic steroidal hormones are estrogens, progesterone, androgens, glucocorticoids, mineralocorticoids and vitamin D. These are important hormones that regulate the developmental and physiologic functions of female phenotype (estrogen), pregnancy (progesterone), male phenotype (androgen), metabolism and stress responses (glucocorticoids), salt and water balance (mineralocorticoids), and calcium metabolism and skeletal growth (vitamin D). To accomplish this task, the steroid hormones must bind to and activate a group of specific gene-regulatory molecules called receptors.
I'm not going to tag anyone in particular with this since I think its been going around for a little while, but please feel free to play along. Just remember, kids, don't do drugs.
So, today was the birthday of one of the guys in my group and we had a little cake-and-pie party in my office in the afternoon. He was lamenting that he was 36 years old now, and to cheer him up I said,
"Hey, you're only thirty in Base-12..."
I know.
Well, I guess the FDA advisory panel does. Well, not exactly. They just don’t dislike it enough to pull it off the market.
In a remarkable 22-1 decision, the advisory panel voted to allow Avandia (the multi-billion dollar drug from Glaxo for Type-II diabetes). I find this remarkable because I wasn’t sure the Agency had the cajones to stem a rapidly swelling tide against the drug.
Much hay was made in May when a NEJM article described a meta-analysis of thousands of patients and found an increase in myocardial ischemia (a loss of bloodflow usually caused by a blockage) which can offer be a pre-cursor to a heart-attack.
A meta-analysis is performed by combining results from several studies to form a database with a large number of patients. And that's the problem -- because the combined trials were all run differently, its really hard to extract statistically meaningful data – and so such analyses are used to guide specifically designed clinical trials that WILL yield statistically significant data – if there’s anything to find.
And here’s the kicker – Glaxo’s been DOING THAT TRIAL. They know they need this answer. The damn thing is Avandia has always had a “heart disease” issue, and is contra-indicated in people likely to have congestive heart failure. They think their compound is safe (enough) and that the trial will show it. But suddenly, there were ascending cries to remove the compound from the marketplace right now.
And I’m glad it wasn’t. The FDA can not let media feeding frenzies dictate the nation’s health policy.
That said – if I was diagnosed as a Type II diabetic, would I want to take Avandia? No. Not because of the heart risk (if its there), but because Avandia is hell on your liver, causes edema AND there are new medicines that take advantage of a different mechanism that has a good chance of being way better than Avandia. I would choose to take Amylin’s Byetta or Merck’s Januvia.
But that’s just me – if you’ve got questions, go talk to your doctor – better yet get your PCP to recommend an endocrinologist and get the real deal from someone that knows.
(end of rant -- back to travel and music and books and movies...)
So I have one of those “fighting fire” sorts of jobs. A lot of program management – setting priorities, designing experiments, attend meetings, communicating to other departments, coordinating resources, etc.
This week is a little different and I’m having a bit of trouble because my boss and I have agreed to write a perspective in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (I know folks will be lining up to get that – but don’t worry I’ll be happy to sign your copy if you like…) – and I’ve had a hard time making progress on my sections – and I think it’s because of the fire fighting nature of what I do.
So today – an experiment in focus. There are two short meetings this morning which should be over by 10 a.m. At that point, Outlook gets turned off, Gmail notifier gets turned off -- maybe I'll even turn my phone to mute... Let’s see if I can get something written by decreasing the pings that beep “Look at me!”
Today’s episode has some bad news, some good news and a bit of the power of vox in it.
The Bad News: I was in my office discussing some interesting results with one of the chemists on one of our programs, when klutzy me knocked my empty coffee cup off my desk and broke it cleanly in two. I was bummed because I had gotten this mug in New Mexico and was pretty sentimental for it.
The Power of Vox: So, right about the time I added JavaJanie as a neighbor, she directed folks to a youtube of “Charlie the Unicorn” – which I thought was hysterical in a really disturbing way, and spent valuable time over the next couple of weeks sharing with a lot of friends. We (well, I...) quote it fairly often. I think I worry some of my colleagues.
The Good News: Later, I was bemoaning my broken coffee cup to one of my co-workers and she scooted out of my office and quickly re-appeared with something hidden behind her back – saying that she knew my birthday was next month, but since this was a coffee-cup crisis she was prepared to act now. And she produced:
Now, each morning I’ll get to go on an adventure…. a coffee adventure!
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