SciFest in St. Louis

Yes, it's that time of year again.  SciFest is back at the St. Louis Science Center this October 7-11.  For those of you that have never been to or heard of the annual event (since they don't publicize it very well,), Scifest is a five-day celebration of science with over 60 different sessions and lectures.  Most of what is available for view is pretty watered down for the general public, but some of the lectures are quite informative.  I really recomend a lot of the events on Saturday and Sunday (since the weekday sessions are for school children on field trips). 

Some of the more interesting events (at least to me) include:

• Rock Guitar in 11 Dimensions
• Bionic You
• Honeybees in Crisis
• What is Reality?
• Can The Moon Save the Earth?
• Feeding The World
• The Science of Ted Drewes

Unfortuanately, the Schlafly science of brewing will not be there this year.  I don't know why, it just isn't.
Ticket prices are as followed:

Single ticket for day session - $6
Single Ticket for Evening Session - $10
All Day Pass - $10 for Science Center Members. $20 for non-Members.
Extravaganza Ticket - $100

UPDATE:  I will probably be getting a whole bunch of free session tickets since I am volunteering on Sunday and my employer is sponsering the event.  If you want some contact me or comment below.

Free Online Journals!

Unfortuanately, not everyone is currently enrolled at a university nor do their employers pay for acess to a robust set of scientific journals, but there is a large group of interested individuals who would like to stay on top of developing research without it being filtered through some news site or blogger (ugh...wait a sec?).  I encourage everyone to check out this website which provides a large conglomeration of free online journals.  Now it won't contain your Nature's and your Science's, your screwed there.  It does contain a large repository of open-access journals, some of which are great if you are a novice or an expert in that field.  Check it out, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), is a really easy to navigate website and who knows you might learn something.

Computer Programmers Needed!

Now that biology, specifically genetics, is becoming more automated for the purpose of high-throughput, I have seen more and more job opportunities arise to fill the rift between scientists, engineers/computer programmers.  These liason positions trouble me greatly.  They highlight a major inneficiency within organizations.  You have to hire an excessive amount people to compensate just the terminology gaps that two cross-trained individuals could easily tackle, not to mention that your end products are always full of problems and bugs mainly because programmers do not fully understand what the needs of the biologist are, and biologists rarely understand the limits of the programming languages.

If you're a biology major:  TAKE AS MANY PROGRAMMING CLASSES AS POSSIBLE!!!!  In fact, double major, if you can (or at least minor).  I cannot believe there is not more stress put on this, especially in grad school programs. If you have both degrees, then your marketablility is limitless. 

If you're a CS major and are intersted in working in science:  Take an advanced biology course (and all the prerquisites, of course).  If your programming for a genetics lab, then take a genetics class.  Understand the terminology, and the basic priciples that dictate the science.

UPDATE:  Not an hour after posting this, my boss just asked during a meeting if anyone could write PERL scripts, because our normal PERL programmer just got fired, lol!