bloyal

ee

Sat, 08 Jul 2006 04:56:22 GMT

Ok, so I think I'm going to launch this in late august, once i get back and settled in. It's going to be my new project, because i don't think there's any one place to get recent industry news.

I'm not sure about the design yet:

http://www.brianloyal.com/stlbiotech/

Big week in Creve Coeur

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 19:18:14 GMT

It has indeed been a big week at Monsanto, or at least a big Tuesday. Yesterday, the Ag-tech giant saw three positive news happenings:

A French court of appeal convicted 49 anti-GM foods activists of organized vandalism for destroying a Monsanto-owned field of GM maize. This overturned an earlier ruling in December claiming the group's pillaging was justified because (great quote) "the unbridled distribution of modified genes... constitutes a clear and present danger for the well-being of others". You think the corn is bad, wait until the cloned sheep get a taste for humans...

Due to their ever-growing portion of the global seed market, Monsanto announced on Tuesday that they will be splitting shares of their stock in a 2-for-1 deal. Basically, this puts their price more in line with their S&P 500 contemporaries, down around $40 per share. Of course, the price jumped 39 cents on the announcement, so we'll see how long it takes to double up again.

Finally, on the same day, Monsanto issued another press release announcing that it's American Seeds subsidiary will be acquiring 5 high-profile corn and soybean distributors in Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana. In addition to squeezing out the competition (The release identifies the companies as representing 1.4 and 2% of the U.S. Corn and Soybean market, respectively) this will allow Monsanto to further increase their library of crop trait information.

So, all in all, a good day to be growing corn off of Lindbergh.

Where's the beef?

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 16:12:33 GMT

The Post-Dispatch reported today that St. Louis soy-protein developer Solae will be introducing a new faux-meat product this week at the annual meeting of the Institute of Food Technologists in Orlando. Apparantly the product, SoleCina, has a more meat-like texture compared to previous attempts. But does it taste like chicken?

PhD comics

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 16:06:53 GMT

Oh man, Jorge was so close to St. Louis! Check out the Wash U shout out at the bottom of the strip.

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 16:04:48 GMT

It looks like J&J won the bidding for the consumer products division of Pfizer, at least according to the NY Times. Pfizer has been looking to sell the unit, which makes popular household drugs like Rolaids, Benadryl, and Rogaine, for about a year to focus more on its extremely profitable perscription drug division (Lipitor alone earned over $12.2 Billion in 2005!). The consumer unit makes up 4 percent of the company's profits, according to the article.

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 15:59:08 GMT

Dr. Bateman at WashU made some headlines over the weekend with his publication in Science about a new test for the brain amyloids involved in Alzheimer's disease. Here's the pop sci link from CNN.

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 21:19:27 GMT

Apparantly cellulosic ethanol is closer than anyone thought. Or at least CNN thinks it is.

Basement Biotech

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 02:48:13 GMT

Paul Kedrosky wrote this today in buisiness 2.0 about what he sees as the major market potential of individual biotech work. Fun stuff.

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 06:17:38 GMT

things i miss about my city:

-more red brick than grey concrete
-funny spellings like gravois, spoede, and florissent
-6 seasons
-crossing neighborhoods results in as many universes
-constant, inexplicable sports pride
-lack of any nationally identifiable id (the arch doesnt count)
-enourmous monuments
-rythmic highway names
-oak trees in forest park
-free museums
-only trace of french in the midwest
-still country, no matter how much we say otherwise
-small bookstores and even smaller deli's
-italian food, thai food, greek food, mexican food, and sushi - as far as possible from a national border
-the forests of the outer ring
-balmy nights at the muny
-balmy nights anywhere
-the world's best steakhouse (it says so, at least)
-enough counterculture to be interesting, not enough to become the culture
-the jazz kids
-the ska kids
-people slowly remembering urban life outside the central strip
-two weeks in april, the same in september, when life outside, inside, anywhere - is heaven

miss you

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 07:27:27 GMT

The new boondocks show on Adult Swim = my new guilty pleasure.

oh my

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 19:09:27 GMT

I think my computer is broken :-/ (I'm typing this from the library)

crazy dreams

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 16:31:16 GMT

So, what does it mean when I dream that I'm working in a hospital, but never actually treat any patients, and sarah chalbe is there, and i think Mekhi Phifer, and the building is reall orange, and its raining all the time, and someone gets offended when i joke about their genes? Oh, and every few hours all the residents line up, throw their stethoscopes over their shoulders, and do a dance they call "walking the snake" ?

Sometimes I worry about my brain.

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 00:41:16 GMT

my gorgeous girlfriend:

Pics

Sun, 30 Oct 2005 04:59:00 GMT

I finally put all of my old pics online:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/loyalbri/my_photos

good times

no more scrubs :-(

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 04:57:51 GMT

I have officially watched all 4 seasons of Scrubs.....and now there are no more left. :-( It's a little sad, because this is one of those things that made my transition from Stl (Where I watched the 1st 1.5 seasons) to San Diego (The rest) just a little easier.

Oh dear..

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 05:35:51 GMT

So, I just found out that Civilization 4 is coming out this month. Didn't even know they were making one. Considering that every time i start to play this game, i lose 3 months of my life (And remember, this is a 6-year old game), I think this is a bad thing.

Sigh.

This is me: http://media.pc.ign.com/media/620/620513/vid_1158656.html

!!!

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 16:08:12 GMT

2 weeks. :-)

Sat, 01 Oct 2005 02:12:48 GMT

Song I woke up to this morning? "Wake me Up When September Ends" Good timing.

A year ago, I had no idea I would be where I am now in life. Very interesting. Different city, different relationships and people in my life. Lots of things happened between then and now, and I didn't see hardly any of it before it happened.

No point really, just interesting.

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 18:23:33 GMT

In the morning there are little lights in my room.

Long strips on my floor from my blinds
that rock back and forth like waves,
stretching out at awkward angles
from my bed

Small dots of light on my wall, on my desk, on my floor
blinking blinking yellow and green and red
Talking, except i dont know how
and rather dont much care

Bright bulbs of light trying their best
but getting washed out
drowned out and flushed out
by the pleasent ones outside.

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 08:02:04 GMT

Yes Johnny Depp, for a corpse she DOES have very large....eyes.

Go see corpse bride. It's remarkable that Tim Burton can have such a consistently attractive view of the macabre.

One time a few years back and friend and I were talking about some movie or something, and the subject came up that it was a pale imitation of the dark aesthetic of Nightmare Before Christmas. His remark? "Tim Burton must be rolling around in his grave"

Still think is was one of the funniest things I've ever heard. Guess you had to be there.

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 07:26:46 GMT

mmm, stir fry

Fri, 23 Sep 2005 06:39:35 GMT

So class started today, and I remembered that school is hard :-P

Actually, it seems to be going ok. Since about May it's been my goal to finally go back and review all of the little things I always said I would but never quite got around too. If I get nothing else out of this whole grad school thing, at least it forced me to remember how to integrate again.

Today I went over some pretty heavy math, and I realized just how much it would've helped to have known all of this during my Junior year. As it is, I had a single class today, Heat Transfer, and it's a doozy. Harcore applied math again. Do I plan on doing this for a living? Not especially, though it might be good to know. Mostly I'm taking it because a) It's required, and b) I kind of want to prove to myself that I'm capable of doing real, analytical work. Lecture was kind of a rush, but at least I had an idea where he was headed and all of the symbols made sense. That's worth something, right?

Rented my first car today too. Jazzy gets in on October 20th (4 weeks!!!!) and the cab ride from the airport to here is about $30 each way. Totally worth getting a car, especially since we can tool around the city with impunity now.

Almost time for school

Thu, 22 Sep 2005 05:39:59 GMT

I can't believe I've already been here for a week and a half and I'm just starting class tomorrow. Wow. It's really flown by.

Today was about math. As in, "what the hell is a line integral and why didn't i learn this 4 years ago when i was supposed to?", and "How many pints can I drink before acting like an idiot at my department happy hour. ?"

(For the record: A general-case integral function with a range specified by some parameterization of a non-linear curve and probably about 4, respectively)

I like being an engineer. Doing math and what not. I'm not sure when I forgot that, but somewhere in the middle of WashU i started dreading doing calculations. It used to come so naturally to me before that but at some point I just started to fear it. I think that's why im so excited about going back to school. There are plenty of good reasons for me to be here, and they all apply, but deep in the back of my head I know that there was something that just wasn't satisfied with how I turned out. I know I can do better than I did, and i guess I'm a little excited about trying some parts of my education all over again.

Granted, grad school isn't exactly "all over again", but you get the idea.

After a day being the only dork in the library actually doing work, we had a big BioE mixer at the La Jolla Brewhouse downtown. Lacking a car, I bummed a ride with a 2nd year, who was driving another guy. All in all it was a lot of fun. Met some more people, drank some beer. Good times. Im glad that everyone seems pretty nice, or at least the ones I've met so far. There's still a little PhD vs MS/M.Eng thing going on, but it doesn't feel like I'm being looked down on too much.

...me kicking ass is biochem will help that :-P

I want my emai!

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 05:29:35 GMT

Arrgh!!!

So, apparantly having a cable modem means not having internet from 10am till 8:30pm. Very lame. It's funny how much you miss it when it's not there...

ow

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 06:57:18 GMT

For some reason i think i injured myself more than usual today. First, my cleats slipped this morning, clipping my shin on my bike pedal. Then, this evening, I burned off the hair on my right hand and forearm when my propane grill exploded. Note to self: it's of vital importance that you leave your grill lid open while lighting it. Especially when you've left the gas on for a bit. Especially when you lost your click lighter and have to light with a match. Honestly, I think im losing brain cells as i get older.

I also had a chance to poke around campus today. Bioengineering grad students get our own lounge, with a keypad lock and everything. I also managed to find a bike trail right by my apt. I'm going to try it out witha few guys tomorrow morning. Hopefully I survive which, with my luck lately, may be doubtful.

8 months today :-)