WE'RE BACK!!!

To celebrate the one year-ish birthday of NRS and the not-so-triumphant return of not_pwang (ha, UConn), NRS is back! The editorial staff here at NRS has missed this forum, as I'm sure you have, but we have learned a valuable lesson in the past 9 months: It's all fun and games until your blog becomes an international sensation with people and pets alike... That being said, NRS v2.0 will have enhanced privacy settings as we continue to ponder the ramifications of our past infamy. 


So what has NRS been up to? In this great year of slump, do we continue to wallow in our ineptitude, inconsistency, and inability at the bench? Yes, kind of, but we also decided to take matters into our own hands: since our day "job" lacked instant gratification and stepwise progress, we needed to find something else to fill that void. Therefore, you will find us weekly, if not more often, making real stepwise progress on the Penguin Passport, the perfect antidote to a rough day/week/month/year in lab. With 330+ beers to check off, we initially set a goal of two beers/week to be able to finish our ambitious project before graduation. Even though this side project has over 330 specific aims and minimal external funding, we are happy to report that we are progressing ahead of schedule. Beat that, real science. Come join us!

Speaking of beers and reasons for drinking beers, is it not coincidental that our great competitor, Science, recently published this article online? In this study, "[flies] experienced 1-hour sessions of sexual rejection by mated females, three times a day, for 4 days." Yikes. One of the main conclusions from this study is that rejected males drank 4X as much alcohol as males that mated. Furthermore, male flies exposed to decapitated virgin female flies also had increased ethanol preference. Do you blame them? The experiments suggested that it was deprivation in general, and not necessarily rejection specifically that led to ethanol-seeking behaviors. I'm sure many of you are chuckling, thinking, "wow there are so many people I can send this article to right now," but we wonder about the realistic future directions and applications of this study. Says the author: "Our results certainly don't translate directly from flies to humans, but it does bring up questions and suggest future studies." Does anyone dare try to gain IRB approval for 1-hour sexual rejection sessions three times a day, for 4 days, in humans? We're not even mentioning the decapitation assay. We decline to comment on own deprived lives (read more about sexually deprived PhD students here), but welcome sharing of personal experiences in the comments below. 


 Until next time!