It's fun to know what people look like and most universities have pictures of faculty. Here is a link to Rokimoto's U of A webpage
Rokimoto, I didn't know you were doing all that cow stuff...
In research you do what is called a postdoc. It is additional research training after you get your PhD. It is a way to get a lot of research done and pay very little for the expertise. When I did my first postdoc NIH had a limit of 18,500 for a first year postdoc. This was at a time when the average starting salary for a BSc in biology was around 30,000. I was lucky and went into agriculture where they paid more.
Speaking of bad genes, I have a AQHA mare whos great,great grandfather wae a stallion named Impressive. he was a prominent stallion and sired many champions. His natural muscling was outstanding. There are now over 100.000 horses carrying his breeding. Along with the good , came some not so good. The xtra muscling trait carried ,darn, I cant remember, a disease that caused muscle spasms and freeze ups. It can naw be controlled with meds. I have to make sure when I breed my mare there is no Impressive in sires pedigree. I kept two genetically interesting breeds of cattle until recently, Scotch Highland and Murray Gray. Both breeds were dominate for their breed character. Very interesting cattle. Rokimoto, I think the day of the purebred Holstein is getting short, in part due to gene pool, also inefficiency. Your thoughts?
In mathematics we have postdoctoral stints too ... the research is often on topics that most people, including scientists, wouldn't recognize as research or even science. It certainly isn't natural science. When I got my Ph.D., 'automatic theorem proving' was a hot area and I did my postdoc in Louisiana with a leader in that field. Neural networks and AI (artificial intelligence) were all the rage in the late 1980s and early 1990s. One would have thought, from the hype, that neural networks were going to take over the world, but we see that that didn't happen. A computer company funded my work.
Inbreeding depression is showing up in the dairy herd. It takes more inseminations to get a live calf as the genetics improves. Half the embryos may be aborted early. Compare this to chickens where we have a +85% hatch rate. The problem is they can't bring in new blood without loosing a lot of what they have gained. The Holstein book has been closed for quite a while, but some mistakes have slipped in. The red mutation is the same one you find in Jerseys so you know that some bull got in the wrong pasture at some time and his progeny infiltrated the Holstein purebred population. The reds lag behind the blacks in milk production, but people like the color so they accept the decrease.
Hmmmmm .... I didn't see any feathers hanging off is jacket!
By Infomaniac on Tuesday, January 22, 2002 - 10:15 am:
By Rokimoto on Tuesday, January 22, 2002 - 04:58 pm:
My first postdoc was in cattle genomics. We did cutting edge research and were among the first to produce a molecular based cattle linkage map and use it to identify trait loci affecting milk production traits. I still have sires and sons running through my head. Valiant, Mark, Rock, Bell, Rotate, Sweet. Dairy people would probably recognize some of those names. Mark sired about a 1/4 of the top 400 sires in 1992 and Bell had over a million registered daughters.
We talked about detrimental alleles, Bell carried BLAD and half his progeny inherited the defect. He left his mark on the dairy population.
My second postdoc was in chicken genomics and then I got a real job.
By Robbpa on Tuesday, January 22, 2002 - 08:09 pm:
By Infomaniac on Tuesday, January 22, 2002 - 08:49 pm:
Most mathematicians don't make a living in mathematics (are employed outside of mathematics) unless they teach and typically math departments at universities pay much less than other departments do. Most mathematicians wind up doing something in computer-related fields, like me now after having been a poorly paid math teacher at a small, private, liberal arts college. Faculty in the Business School were paid almost three times what we were and they had half the teaching load.
My best friend (graduated from Yale) from my postdoc days did three postdocs before giving up and going to medical school. I searched her name today and I see that she finished her residency in oncology at a hospital connected with the University of Pennsylvania in 1998. She's the smartest person I've ever known with the possible exception of my father. If I get cancer, I know where I'm going for treatment!
I am truly amazed at the number of exceptional postdoctoral researchers that are out there living on the fringe ... perpetually being postdocs ... never getting that coveted and usually low-paying faculty position.
In addition to the genetics pages, I am planning to write a computer program that will draw a chicken from an inputted set of genes. It should also be able to predict the phenotypes of progeny given a reasonable estimate of the genes of the parent generation. The opposite process is also possible... namely, to deduce the a reasonable estimate of the genotypes of the parents given enough progeny phenotypes. Also, the user should be able to get a reasonable estimate of the plumage genes by selecting a phenotype from a menu that closely resembles the user's bird. Right now, I believe the graphics would be the hardest part.
By Rokimoto on Wednesday, January 23, 2002 - 01:19 pm:
You aren't going to see any crossbreeding except in very long term projects. Once they have a better idea of the genetics of the various breeds they can plan these crosses for maximum gain and intergration into the Holstein herd.
Info:
I know a lot of people that are very bright and don't get a shot at an academic position. In some fields you have to wait for a faculty member to die before a position opens up. I got lucky because I did a postdoc in a field that expanded rapidly in recent years, and I made the short list and was interviewed at both institutions that I applied too, and got the job at the second. This is unusual, most biologists send out many applications (sometimes hundreds) before they get a job. I don't think you will find very many people that claim that we do it for the money.