Find the right box. Crush the dry ice. Assemble the package. Get a FedEx number. Fill out the forms. Schedule a pick-up. Pay for the package. Wonder why there’s not a better way…
Flyceum: Your Science. Your Career.
We’re following in the tradition of open discussions among scientists that has resulted in important advances in both science and society.
Training Your Autopilot: Mastering Mindless Tasks
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Woody Allen famously said “80% of success is showing up.” At the bench, there are days when this number feels closer to 99. Although we all live for the mind-blowing, cutting-edge, high-impact experiments, the reality is that much of what we do on a daily basis is routine. But it’s these mindless tasks that can be the real killers…
Become a Scientific Expert in Five Years
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Graduate school is undoubtedly a key training period in which we learn to carry out independent research in preparation for our future career. The postdoc is considered an essential step on this pathway. But what determines when we’re ready to step out on our own? When do we officially become a scientific expert?
Why Do We Still Publish Scientific Papers?
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This question is directed towards people who think that ranking ~24,000 scientific journals according to a negotiable, irreproducible and mathematically unsound measure is a practical way of sorting the wheat from the chaff. The specific uselessness of Thomson’s IF aside, if this ranking were done in the best possible way, what would be a consequential way of using it?
Reducing Bumping on the Rotovap
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The bump guard lesson is usually learned one of two ways: A) someone teaches you, or B) someone doesn’t. The former is ideal and you may have no idea how lucky you are. The latter looks like this…
I’ve Found a Job – the Final Steps of Grad School
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(From the archives of an almost-real email correspondence…)
Dear Tim:
The Widget Company would like to inform you of the following job offer, as head of scientific development, working on the discovery of our next generation widgets….
The email then goes on to state your compensation and your start date. And that’s when the joy of your sweet new salary turns sour…
Government Science Budgets 2009
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The government is a key funding source for most academic labs, so it’s not a bad idea to know how much money is actually out there. We’ve looked at the 2009 budgets at four of the major funding institutions, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Energy (DOE), in order to reveal the current budget numbers.
Working at the Interface: Matt Bogyo
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Research at the interface of disciplines has spawned entirely new fields, like Chemical Biology and Chemical Neuroscience. These burgeoning fields are ripe with opportunity for scientific discovery. We spoke with Matt Bogyo, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Stanford about his journey to chemical biology and academics, both of which followed a winding path.
Sleep Your Way to Better Science
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Although the summer heat is behind us, sleep remains a pretty hot commodity, particularly at this time of year when the academic cycle is just getting started. In many circles, people wear sleep deprivation like a badge of honor as evidence of how hard they’ve been working. But standing at the bench with bloodshot eyes, trying to remember why we’re standing there in the first place is hardly heroic…
Miniprep Tips That Will Save You Time
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The first biochemistry lab I worked in had a policy that you could not use a miniprep kit until you had mastered the “old school” way. This meant making buffers, phenol-chloroform extractions and no columns – it was an all day affair. [Continue Reading…]
