Thankfully, there was no blinding blizzard last night, so we had a nice turnout at our January pub night. One of the reasons I like these events is that I get to find out about the interesting things Boston scientists are doing outside of the lab.

For example, Ron Milo, a fellow in Harvard’s systems biology department told me about how he and his colleagues have created a new website called Bionumbers. Think of it as an almanac for biologists. You can look up answers to those burning questions, like:

What’s the average size of a protein in E.coli?

or

What’s the diameter of a human taste bud?

It’s a community website so you can add numbers, as long as you can back it up with a reference. Milo said this website was born out of frustration with literature searches that took a lot of time, but never produced the straight numbers he was looking for.

Then I spent some time with Andreas Mershin, an MIT postdoc, who told me about a website and program that he helps run, Molecular Frontiers, which aims to educate and excite children and teenagers about molecular science (it also organizes meetings for grownup scientists).

One of its projects is an online forum where kids can ask questions about molecules. Mershin, a postdoc, told me about how they’ll be awarding prizes to kids who ask the best questions.