I have to ask... what made you want to pursue a PhD if you weren't acquainted with papers and research? General interest?

I'm not shocked he doesn't have an advisor. I'm shocked that he thought going to university websites would be the way to go.

excellent point. these days, a given professor's field is usually pretty small. they only want to talk shop with people who both understand their niche and show actual intellectual curiosity in it.

If you are trying to find a mentor in any scientific field, you don't go looking for "lists" of interests. I don't even know what that refers to. You find recently published primary literature in areas you have interest in, and speak to those authors. This helps you find people who are actively working in the field you seek to be a part of. Even if the authors themselves aren't right for you, they are more likely to know other people in the field than anyone else.

Frankly, I'm kind of shocked. You are applying to PhD programs, but don't currently know any scientists in the field? What about at your undergraduate institution? How did you get interested in social science without reading any papers?

I would recommend looking into supernova searching. As an undergraduate, I worked in a lab that used a robotic telescope high in the mountains to automatically search for these extremely bright and relatively common phenomena. Given their brightness and longevity, it is relatively simple (in astronomical terms) to design and build a system to look for these objects. check out KAIT, the telescope I worked on.

I took a high-level bio class at UC Berkeley this past semester that concerned exactly this type of genetic therapy. someone brought up the idea of doing this to normals with the pit viper IR heat-sensitive ionic channel gene, tie it to some downstream color of choice.

sign me up.

after a quick look at the paper linked in the article (Identifying photoreceptors in blind eyes caused by RPE65 mutations: Prerequisite for human gene therapy success), it is clearly not about gene therapy in humans. it is a study of the thickness of the retina in humans homozygous for a mutation in a specific retinal gene. as the title says, it is a prerequisite for gene therapy.

the actual paper, Human gene therapy for RPE65 isomerase deficiency activates the retinoid cycle of vision but with slow rod kinetics, can be found here. It concerns the same gene, incidentally.

i don't think they would film anything before the person died either way.

planet earth took years and years to film. i'm not suggesting this will be anywhere near as good as planet earth, just that production companies have plenty of time on their hands. it's not like someone is going to scoop them.

i wasn't suggesting it should be someone youngish. i just think it would remove some of the morbidity it they didn't use the word terminal.

Why does the person need to be terminally ill? why can't it just be someone who agrees to be mummified following their death?

are the producers that impatient?

yeah... you're right.

this is why I'm a bio major.

bingo. it's flux (change in magnetic field), not the magnetic field itself, that produces a current.