BP Invests $90 Million in Verenium’s Cellulosic Ethanol Technology

Pretty cool story for the Green movement. I know a lot of people believe in it, but it's great to see that those smart shrewd guys who make a living making these big decisions believe there's a financial future here.

I bought 35 shares... am keeping my fingers crossed.

Running Again and New Website Creation

I started running again on Friday morning. I put in three miles next to the road by my house. I've been pretty sore this weekend. Running just ain't the same as the elliptical machine.

I threw together a website for my residency program, Diagnostic Radiology at Fletcher Allen Health Care / University of Vermont at http://uvmrads.org. I think it's getting a lot of good interval reviews so far. Hopefully, it will become a useful Departmental tool in the near future.

The site was created using Joomla on a GoDaddy.com hosted website utilizing MySQL 5.0.

Components added:

• AllVideos Reloaded
• GCalendar
• Attachments for Articles Extension.

Vioxx Shows US How the Pharmaceutical Companies Tell Lies

The Vioxx lawsuit demonstrates that scientific articles on Vioxx were written by pharmaceutical employees but the lead authorship was given to academic physicians who didn't write and sometimes didn't read the material. This was done w/o mentioning who actually wrote the articles and that money from Merck was given.Ghost writing and guest authorship are destroying the basis of academic pharmaceutical research!

read more | digg story

Just keep running

Virgil the Triathelete

Dante is a great dog. He has many strengths. Jogging on his leash is not one of them. Some days I blame myself for training his poorly when he was young, but I really think he's just stubborn.
He also has bad hips. Not the full blown dysplastic types seen in too many Goldens, but not normal. He never did like to run on the leash and seems to need a break earlier than the other dogs when playing.

Now Virgil also has his weakness. If you had to rely on him for warmth, then you'd freeze to death because he doesn't cuddle. At least he makes up for it with his tireless fetching and his love for a good jog.

I took him out with me today for my jog and had a blast. I think he had a grin on his face the entire time. This dog just doesn't quite seem happy unless he has wind blowing in his face. My pace wasn't too good today, but it was nice to run with company besides the iPod. And as usual, he was an angel on the leash even with all the traffic at the pre-rush hour time we ran.

I better go get ready for my meeting

Damn I'm Slow

After my wardrobe malfunction, I've had a series of alarm clock user malfunctions. I kept forgetting to turn my alarm clock on. My morning is pretty busy and about a half hour delay in getting going in the morning can ruin my schedule.

I was due for another mile time trial today and I guess considering it's my first jog in about four days, I guess it's not too bad. I wish considering how hard I thought I was running that my time wasn't in the high 7's.

Six Runs and Wardrobe Malfunctions

It's interesting to see what kind of wear running takes on your body. After my second run I realized that one of my toenails was rubbing on the adjascent toe which left me with a small but moderately annoying scratch. The annoyance lasted for five days. Now, not only am I trimming my toenails really short, but I'm finding that I need to tape some of my toes to protect them.

Today I found something more annoying than a scratched toe -- a misplaced seam. All of the compression shorts (BOXER JOCK from Under Armour) that I usually wear to run were dirty, so I wore another shorter pain of compression shorts. Whoa, did I learn my lesson. The chafing on my upper thighs got to the point after about 3 1/4 miles that I just stopped and walked home. First thing I did when I got home was put the Boxer Jocks I usually wear into the wash. Tomorrow after call I'm headed straight to the UA store to buy more.

I was aware of pulling muscles in the gym and the bruises from football. Now I've learned the hard way about the dangers of being a runner.

Run was pretty good today otherwise. Happy about my overall pace over the week. Six runs in seven days. Total of 16.84 miles.

Mambo Run #5

My attending said something funny to me yesterday after rounds. She told me that contrary to what she had heard about me, I was actually a really good intern! Compliment? Well, I took it that way. I'm uncertain who told her bad things about me. The only two attendings to formally evaluate me at the VA gave me all superior and excellent markings on my eval. Instead of losing sleep over who raked me over the coals, I'll just try to be pleased that I've impressed her. (But at the same time not forgetting that I've pissed someone off...)

Had my longest run today with the Nike+ system. My pace could have been better. I didn't realize until I finished with another half a mile at the best pace of the run, that I could have run the first part so much harder.

I'm still hesitant to drop shift early in my runs.


My newest research project is moving along very nicely. I had a talk on the phone with the Assistant Director of Coriell Cell Repositories yesterday morning. This is a branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute and is responsible for establishing, maintaining, and distributing cell cultures and DNA derived from the cell cultures. The AD didn't think my project was a strong fit for the CCR, but did think it was an interesting project. Pretty cool to get a compliment from a scientist at that level.

Five Total Runs

I didn't feel much like jogging this morning. It's probably because I broke my self-imposed rule against napping. Yes, I was weak yesterday and fell asleep in the afternoon for about 3 hours. Then I had trouble getting to sleep at night. Then I had trouble waking up in the morning.

I had a light warm-up jog with the dogs today and then dropped them off before I set out for my two mile solo jog. The pace was crappy -- 9'06".

I guess it's a victory of sorts even if my pace today was weak. I've had five total runs and only bought the kit six days ago. I'm going to increase my run length this week and plan on running two mile trials to work on getting my speed up.

Here's the run:

First time trial

Went out this morning for my first "time trial." I set a goal for myself when I bought my Nike+ system to run five time at a pace of under 7'44". Today was my first one at a distance of a mile... I think.



I realized that calibration of the Nike+ system wasn't really optional, but encouraged. I'm not really sure how far or fast (or slow) that I've been running, because I haven't calibrated yet. Tomorrow is a good day to go down to Tempe Town Lake after rounding in the morning for a nice calibration run.

Better get cleaned up for work now.