Employment

I worked for 34 years in biomedical research in universities, but took early retirement in 2020.

Tree stump grinding for me was a rather boring, repetitive, and mind numbing activity but it was offset by the beautiful gardens I've worked in and at some very interesting locations. Further, each job presented me with an access challange of how to manoeuvre a one tonne four wheeled machine in back gardens to its intended target. I am able to utilize my transferable skills in my retirement. In my direct way ---which hopefully will not be misinterpreted, How do you apply your skills level. What aspects were involved ---CRISPR, AI protein folding,---- etc ?

Away from a lab. skills in things like heterologous protein expression and mass spectrometry are difficult to apply to everyday life. However, I have skills in researching and analysing written material and in writing concise and logical reports, so I edit subjects that interest me on Wikipedia. I have created around 38 new articles on Wikipedia and never had one rejected.

Away from a lab. skills in things like heterologous protein expression and mass spectrometry are difficult to apply to everyday life. However, I have skills in researching and analysing written material and in writing concise and logical reports, so I edit subjects that interest me on Wikipedia. I have created around 38 new articles on Wikipedia and never had one rejected.

We were making the rockets out of aluminium foil, they weren't dangerous to any great extent. They were just strong enough to direct the thrust out of the nozzle at the base, rather than through the sides. More dangerous was putting pellets of dry ice into sealed microfuge tubes, they did explode quite energetically.

The majority of the DNA of most living organisms (not viruses) is 'non-coding' which means that it is not directly used for producing proteins. Some of the rest is used for important things like control of DNA expression (when and where genes are expressed) and other useful functions like telomeric DNA. The rest is apparently non-functional, like the remains of viral DNA and suchlike. The DNA I was looking for was that coding for known drug targets - looking at the molecular basis of drug resistance - or for potential drug targets. The latter being DNA coding for proteins vital to the growth of the pathogen, but not found in humans, or being sufficiently different in humans that knocking out the pathogen protein (enzyme) would not lead to adverse effects on any human who was infected.

  Cellulose nitrate or trinitrocellulose (gun cotton) is classified as a low explosive yet has 10 times the explosive power of its predecessor black powder. You guys received good advise from the CID. Even well trained operatives handling all sorts of high and low explosives every day a degree of careless apathy sets in. I was on a tempory assignment at a base in North Africa (now gone) where we were ordered to cull loose 20mm projectiles used in the gattling guns of the A-10  aka 'the Warthog', 'the flying gun' and 'the Tankbuster', and extensively used in the Desert Storm conflict. While culling these rounds, out of boredom we decided to remove those loose projectiles from their shell casings. We then crimped the open end of the casing and set light to it. The shell casings took off like a balloon releasing its pressure. The bomb dump was located 5 miles inland well away from authority in the desert, but in hindsight still a dumb thing to do.

My understanding is %90 of DNA is considered junk but more probing is starting to identify usefulness in the "junk". What sort of usefullness did you find.

As a student living in a student house, we discovered that the nitrocellulose we used  in the lab. (transfer DNA/RNA bands from gels onto nitrocellulose filters, then probe with radioactive labelled DNA to find bands that were of interest) was the explosive, 'gun cotton'. We then started making home-made rockets propelled by nitrocellulose. That was until the CID called and advised us to stop.

Very well done. For what little value it has coming from a humble stump grinder, I am impressed. You have found your niche. That in itself is a great achievement. I have an admiration for anyone who has had the determination to qualify themselves at an acadenic level which had escaped me during my adolescense. 

Part of my own multi skill set is with explosives learned in the military.  This too is difficult to apply in everyday life although I did consider joining a mining company.  Demolition companies are usually run by tightly knit families. I backed way from those ideas as operations of that kind by their nature require working closely as a team looking after each others back. So that skill wasn't very usefull or transferrable. As a footnote, I found military life very difficult worthy of a lot of masking and extremely tiring.