Circle the word that doesn’t fit: Notebook, Bacteria, Spreader, Transform, Vacation.
If you selected “Vacation”, you’d be…
Say it with us: Vay…cay…shin
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Polypropylene vs Polystyrene
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I sometimes feel like there is only one way to learn anything in lab: the hard way. A lot of little details in lab go unmentioned, yet can make or break an experiment, and you won’t know it until things either don’t work, or go horribly awry. Losing a day and a half because you didn’t realize that all plastic is not created equal falls into the latter category. Losing someone else’s day and a half is, well, infinitely worse.
Why Did I Become a Scientist?
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This is a question that I asked myself a lot through grad school and well into my post-doc. The phrasing was a little different though. The question I asked myself was something more like “why in the hell am I putting myself through this crap?” Everyone figures that the process of becoming an independent scientist will be an academically challenging one, but what one may not count on is that it is also psychologically challenging.
The Emergency Meal: Indian Food
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You’re tired. Possibly cranky. Definitely starving.
It’s been a long day in lab and as you gather your bag to head home, your mind shifts to dinner. The local grocery store closed about an hour ago and the pizza delivery guy knows you so well he’s starting to ask you to hang out on weekends, which is getting uncomfortable…
The Evolution of Scientific Impact
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In science, much significance is placed on peer-reviewed publication, and for good reason. Peer review, in principle, guarantees a minimum level of confidence in the validity of the research, allowing future work to build upon it. Typically, a paper (the current accepted unit of scientific knowledge) is vetted by independent colleagues who have the expertise to evaluate both the correctness of the methods and perhaps the importance of the work. If the paper passes the peer-review bar of a journal, it is published.
What to Expect When You’re Expecting…In Lab
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It’s hard to get more literal in the BenchLife channel than actually creating a Life while at the Bench! For many women, the decision to have a child while still a postdoc brings up more questions than an undergraduate summer student… We turned to new mom and former MIT postdoc Joanne Gibson to find out about her experience balancing pregnancy and the lab.
Email. The E is for Eeeeevil.
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If email had knuckles, inked across one hand would be the letters “L-O-V-E” and across the other: “H-A-T-E.” This probably describes some level of almost everyone’s relationship with the electronic beast. And with the likes of texting, IM and Twitter, the beast is only getting stronger…
There’s Nothing Fishy about this Protocol
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We’re always looking for a good protocol. In the lab, a proper technique can be the difference between a successful or a failed experiment. In the kitchen, it may be the difference between a moist, delicious piece of salmon or a dry, tasteless hunk of pink stuff.
That’s why when a good friend of mine, Bill Macaitis, first showed me how to use a digital infrared kitchen thermometer to cook salmon, I knew my life would never be the same…
How Do You Say Hoechst?
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There’s a street in Nashville, Tennessee called “Demonbreun”. It’s a sure-fire way to tell tourist from local. Anyone can bust out a “y’all”, but utter “Demon-brewin’” and your cover is blown. Oh, and there will be laughter.
In science, there are a number of words that, if horribly mispronounced, can make us look like a hack and of course, will elicit laughter. In many situations, a word’s pronunciation may be more stylistic – like you say “toe-may-toe”, I say “toe-mah-toe.” This is not one of those situations. This word has an answer. After sitting through hundreds of seminars and group meetings and still not understanding how the word was actually supposed to be pronounced, I figured it’s time to get the answer.
Why is the Postdoc So Stressful?
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Today we’re following-up on Friday’s post (A degree of stress), in which we observed a trend towards elevated levels of stress during our postdocs. Although the trend emerged from only a small sample size, it seemed to be striking enough to warrant further consideration. Namely, why is the postdoc so stressful and what, if anything, can we do to alleviate it?
