With the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco next week, large-format printers around the world are working overtime to get all of the posters ready to go. While you’re printing things out, we’ve prepared one more sheet that we think will help deal with one of the biggest problems facing meeting attendees…
BenchLife
Being a scientist isn’t just about doing experiments, so neither are we. This is where we make breakthroughs beyond the bench for scientists.
How to Survive a Boring Seminar (and win some bets at the same time)
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What Diseases Will We Tackle Over the Next Decade?
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The 2004 World Health Organization list of the Top 10 Causes of Death worldwide includes many familiar faces. Although the results are grouped as low-, middle- and high-income countries, it’s largely just the order of diseases that change. But what will these lists look like in 10 years?
How Important is Recognition in a Career of Research?
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Science is not a career that most people go into for money. The pursuit of discovery, the intellectual challenge, the opportunity to contribute to society – these are often-cited reasons for following the research path. In fact, sometimes more valuable than money is the praise and recognition we receive from our colleagues. But how strong, exactly, are our principles?…
Should Your Beaker be Half-Empty or Half-Full?
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At some point in our careers we have likely worked with a King Midas- a person for whom experiments just always seem to work. They tend to have an outlook that experiments should work and they seem genuinely shocked when they fail. We’ve probably also worked with a colleague who assumes the natural state of the universe is failure, and thus sees an unsuccessful experiment as par for the course. But is one a better scientist than the other?
Does Anyone Still Read Entire Journals?
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Believe it or not, it wasn’t long ago that reading the literature required hours spent in the library- navigating chem abstracts, printing citations, locating journals and (finally) reading articles. An easier way to keep up in those days was just to regularly thumb through a handful of relevant journals as the new issues were released. We’ve come a long ways since those days and the internet has certainly changed the way we monitor and read the literature.
LabLibs: The Passive-Aggressive Instrument Note
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It’s the bedrock of the modern workplace. It’s the piece of paper that instantly annoys the reader. It’s the communication style that really isn’t communication. Ah, the passive-aggressive note. If we can’t beat ’em- well, you know the rest…
What Do You Want from Your PI?
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Last week, we asked everyone what they truly thought of the people they work for. It was our turn to grade our PIs and supervisors. The most popular response revealed that although things could certainly be worse, they could also be better (see Figure 1).
BenchFly’s Football Primer: Science-ized
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Given the number of rules, American football can be a confusing and intimidating game if you’re new to the sport. As a result, many times the easiest solution is simply not to watch the game – with one exception: The Superbowl.
How Would You Rate Your Boss?
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If they ever sent a performance review around in academia for lab members to rate their bosses, I never got it. And of course, we’d all probably lie anyway for fear of the boss finding out who actually said what. A few quick PCR reactions on the skin cells swabbed from our review form could seal our fate…
The Endive Appetizer: It’s So Easy a (Classy) Chimp Could Make It
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Whether you’re a football fan or not, the Superbowl is just over a week away and chances are, you’ll be watching it with friends. And by “watching” we generally mean stuffing ourselves with food and drink and caring just enough about the game to see if we won the lab pool. Regardless, if we’re invited somewhere, we’d better not show up empty-handed. Don’t worry- we’ve got you covered.
