Weekend Vid Picks: Dance, Dance Scientific Revolution

Not sure how this one slipped past us, but last month Science magazine challenged its readers to translate their PhD research into an interpretive dance and post their moves on YouTube. Thirty-six videos were submitted and last week the winners were chosen.

It’s not exactly “news” at this point (hat tip to Slashdot for pointing it out), but if you’ve ever wondered what “Resolving Pathways of Functional Coupling in Human Hemoglobin Using Quantitative Low Temperature Isoelectric Focusing of Asymmetric Mutant Hybrids.” would look like as a dance — you’re in luck. Vince LiCata, a biochemist at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge won in the professors category for this performance.

The winner in the graduate student category was Sue Lynn Lau from Australia, who won for this interpretation of “The role of vitamin D in beta-cell function.”

The postdoc winner was Miriam Sach, whose solo dance took top prize for illustrating “Cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs with positron emission tomography: A comparison between single subject and group analysis.”

And the popular choice winner (which was determined by who got the most views) was PhD candidate Markita Landry who did this physics tango to “Single Molecule Measurements of Protelomerase TelK-DNA Complexes.”

Winners will be paired with professional choreographers to turn their paper into a dance that will be part of a single, four-part performance built around the research.