Archives

May 2012

• This is Not an Article About Running Viruses…
• Who's Really Pursuing the Alternative Career in Science?
• Cell Culture Derailing Your Vacation Plans?
• How is a Dormouse Like a Career Scientist?
• PhD Tales from the Couch: The Age of Anxiety

April 2012

• Sharing PhD Tales from the Couch with Yevgeniy Grigoryev
• Are Unlimited Online Backup Services Really Unlimited?
• Hairy Query
• Phosphoproteins: Where's the "ON" Switch?
• With Great Power Comes Great Violin Strings
• The Good Luck Bench Fairy: Failed Experiments are a Thing of the Past
• Becoming a Professor: How to Follow-Up a Postdoc FAIL
• Is a Publication Gap on Our CV a Job Killer?
• Tweet Tweet? TWEEEET!!

March 2012

• Looking for a Bright Idea? Go Bold With Color This Season
• Is There Really Science in the Twitterverse?
• How to Leave a Postdoc Quickly with Your Reputation Intact
• All the Better to See Sperm Whales With, My Dear.
• The Ideal Postdoc Duration: Get Out Before You Get Old
• You're a Scientist. You've Got Ideas. Now You've Got a Notepad.
• Optimizing Graduate School: How Long is Too Long?
• Saw VII: The Revenge of the Sawfish
• Stuck with a Bad Project (or Just a Bad Attitude)?

February 2012

• How to Establish and Enforce the Chain of Command in Lab
• Caution: Objects May Appear Larger Than They Really Are
• From Academic Bench Chemist to Freelance Science Writer
• The Forgotten Element of Graduate School: Coursework
• A Quick Makeover: From 'Lab Drab' to 'Ab Fab' in 10 Minutes
• Walking the Thin Line Between a Great Result and a Lie
• How to Contact Potential Postdoctoral Advisors: Email vs. Snail Mail
• Facebook Updates: The Good, The Bad, and the Vague
• How Long Should it Take to Get a Lab Off the Ground?
• Dear Boss: I Want to Graduate. Let's Talk.

January 2012

• Keep Your Sanity With a Smile
• BenchLife: Managing Your Life in the Lab
• Recipes: Chemistry You Can Eat
• Science Career Development Resources
• Archives
• BenchFly Crossword: History's Most Famous Scientists in Two Words
• Scared of Dropping the Soap? Worry No More.
• Put an End to Lab-Induced Crocodile Hands with Style
• Hiring the PI's Spouse and the Effect on Lab Morale
• My Boss' Spouse: A Spy or Civilian in Lab?
• While You Were Out Notes for Scientists
• Group Meeting Bingo: Keeping Developmental Biologists Awake
• New Year’s Lab-olutions

December 2011

• Happy Holidays! See You in 2012!
• Increase Your Lab Efficiency (and Make Henry Ford Proud)
• Should You Buy Your PI a Holiday Gift? (If You Want to Graduate...)
• Effortless Gourmet: The Fig and Stilton Holiday Appetizer
• Bullying in the Lab: Are PIs Guilty?
• A-Mean-Ol-Acid
• Bringing Style to Science, Literally. Introducing: FlyGirl
• A Social Network for Food: Why Won't Vanilla Friend Garlic?
• The Evolution of Lab: What Came First?
• What Came First: The Grad Student or the PI?

November 2011

• Sensational Science in the Press Part 2: Are Newspapers Any Better?
• I'd Rather Die Fat and Young than Skinny and Old
• Your Road to the PhD: Who Are You Thankful For?
• Problems Communicating Science to Family? It's Not Them, It's You.
• Should There Be an Official Language of Lab?
• Grr, baby. Very grr.
• Giving a Great Talk Begins With the Right Software
• Lab Techniques Wordsearch: You Can Do Them, But Can You Find Them?
• Co-First Author Doesn’t Have to be Last Resort

October 2011

• Exactly How Flexible is the Co-First Author Asterisk?
• How to Address the Funky-Smelling Lunch Problem
• Look Into My Wide, Vacant, Eyes
• Easiest Mac or Godey's Ladies Meet Lady Ga-Ga
• Sensational Science in the Popular Press: Can Anyone Get it Right?
• I’m Just Mad About Saffron….
• The Impending Death of Scientific Journals
• Know Your Role: Enzymes and Their Unexpected Physiological Functions
• Open Notebook Advertising: Making Science Pay, Literally.

September 2011

• Does a Fellowship Yield Scientific Independence or Does the Boss Rule?
• Sweet Relief: How Sugar May Help Reverse Climate Change
• Potatoes Kill Cancer With Electrons from Fukushima? Suspicious Indeed.
• The Arrogant Labmate: Face 'em or Forget 'em?
• All Work and No Play Makes Katie RSI Prone
• Your Boss is Incompetent, But Could You Do Any Better?
• BenchFly Crossword: Back to Basics with Chemistry and Biology
• Pay It Forward with Good Lab Mojo Checks
• Is Grad School or Postdoc Success More Important for My Career?

August 2011

• Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine
• Are You Prepared for the 'Worst Case Scenario'?
• Can We Skip the GRE Subject Test If It's Too Expensive?
• Sexual Identity and Autocrine Stimulation: Oh, To Be Teenage Yeast
• Confronted By Your Hollywood Boss
• Tearing It Up: Glycogen and Its Chemical and Biochemical Breakdown
• How to Spot Sensational Headlines (Hint: They're Everywhere...)
• The Ethics of Mooching
• On Wine, Sunburn, and the Tendency of Headlines to Mislead...
• Group Meeting: What's the Point?

July 2011

• Should You Be at My Bench Right Now? (Probably Not)
• Give Group Meeting Again? I Just Went!
• Lab Safety Inspections: Passing the Torch to an Irresponsible Labmate
• Which Came First: The Opossum or The Snake?
• There's Nothing Romantic About Watching the Sun Rise...From Lab
• Enzymes and the Problem with Cosmo Kramer’s Levels
• Sensational Science: Memory Expansion and the Purpose of Happiness
• Pigeons Know a Crazy Woman When They See One
• Lab Independence Day: What are We Celebrating?
• Stuck Sharing a Project With a Lazy Labmate?

June 2011

• Elevator Etiquette: The Essentials
• To Boldly Go Where No Worm Has Gone Before
• Sensational Science: Why It’s a Great Time to be in Science
• Grant Writing: Is "Grant Creep" Choking Out PIs?
• Repetitive Strain Injury: The Hidden Lab Hazard
• Can Positive Thinking Affect Your Experiments?
• The Only Internet Password Protection You Need
• Another One Bites the Dust: Rinderpest Eradicated
• Lab Funding Outlook: Time to Move Forward or Pull the Ripcord?
• Wunderlist Task Management: Give Your Brain a Present
• Take My Figure Off of Your Poster...Or Else.

May 2011

• Robin's 'Rita: A Bubbly Twist on a Flat Classic
• Scientists Just Wanna Have Fun (Like Uncaged Monkeys)
• Lab Funding: What Does the Future Hold?
• How to Tell on Someone Like an Adult
• Careers After the PhD: A Primer on Consulting
• Sensational Science: The Death of Bin Laden and Space Medicine?
• Mosquitoes Eating You Alive? Cheesy Feet Could be the Problem.
• What's In a Name?
• Curating Science, Genomes and a New Career
• Working for Assistant Professors? Call Me After Tenure.

April 2011

• WANTED: Your PI
• Dirty Mouth? Clean It Up with Cancer Screening
• Who Opened the Thiols? Oh- That's Your Breath?!
• Sensational Science: Army Origami to Space Infections
• Leaving Graduate School Early: Get Outta Town or Hang Around?
• How Google Sees Us: 23 Search Terms We Had to Share
• Because in Space... It's Always 5 O'Clock Somewhere
• Changing Scientific Focus: Jack of All Trades, Master of None?
• Reviewing Papers from Your Past- Is It Legal?
• Could You Be the Worst Labmate in the World?
• Innovation: Concept to Commercialization

March 2011

• Curry: Now Good for Detecting Explosions, Not Just Causing Them
• Changing Labs: It's Not You, It's Me...Actually, It's You.
• Is It 2-Week or 2-Hour Notice? Telling the Boss You're Leaving
• The Tightrope: Finding Balance as a Scientist Mom
• Graduate School by the Numbers: Aftermath of the Decision
• 12 Reasons to Establish a Collaboration (or Not)
• Networking Etiquette: Opening Lines to Avoid
• Vote for Your Favorite Scientist Homepage
• So You Thought Eating Poop Was Bad For You?
• Graduate School by the Numbers: The Decision
• Graduate School by the Numbers: Interviews
• Sensational Science: Truth Behind the Headlines
• There's No I in 'Research' (But There is in 'Science')
• Are Fatty Acids the Cure for PMS?

February 2011

• 5 Reasons Every Scientist Needs a Homepage
• Innovation: The Value of Your Ideas
• BenchFly's Scientist Homepage Challenge
• My Boss Treats Me Like Rodney Dangerfield - No Respect.
• Botanical Sleuthing Recovers Endangered Maguire Daisy
• A Message from the Department of Lab Security
• Sensational Science Headlines: Read This or Die
• Selecting a Postdoc: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
• So You're Saying 50 is Too Many?
• Innovation: Acting on Your Ideas

January 2011

• Words Your Boss Will Never Say
• The Art of Organizing Your Literature
• The Path to Happiness in Research
• I Have No Graduate School Regrets... Except This One.
• 3 Steps to Mastering Literature Searches
• Group Meeting Bingo!
• The Job Hunt: Move With My Spouse or Chase a Paper?
• Ask Me One More Time... I Dare You.
• Poverty Nutrition III: Empty Refrigerator Contingency Plan
• Choose the Right Literature Research Tools (Or Else...)
• How Long 'til Your Resolution Implodes?

December 2010

• Is Joining Two Labs Twice the Fun?
• The Grad Student's Holiday Party Survival Script
• Best. Cashews. Ever. (Is That Rosemary?)
• Am I Stuck With This Boring Project?
• How Long Should Grad School Take?
• How to Get the Most out of a Conference
• The Road More Hesitantly Traveled

November 2010

• POD: Toaster-Oven Pie on Demand
• Giving Thanks in Lab
• So You Want to be an Entrepreneur…
• Professor? It's 'Academic Entrepreneur' to You
• 3 Scientific Products We Need in Lab
• LabLibs: The Qualifying Exam Courtesy Note
• The LinkedIn for Scientists: LinkedIn
• Scientists' Favorite Scientists
• Just Two Weeks to Study for My Qualifying Exam?!
• The 4 Steps to Finding Your Passion

October 2010

• BenchFly's Bloody Dry Ice Halloween Punch
• Lessons from a Recovering Postdoc
• When I Grow Up I Want to Be... A Scientist.
• Publishing Without the Boss' Blessing?
• H-Index: What It Is and How to Find Yours
• Has the Internet Ruined Vacation?
• The Isothermal Assembly Reaction: My Cloning Hero
• Is Burnout in the First Year Normal?
• Take Your Dissertation Research Mulligan
• Kirem's Carrot Ginger Soup Kreation
• Revitalizing Science in the Classroom
• How Much Do You Really Like Your Labmates?

September 2010

• Dear Dora: Happy One Year Anniversary!
• Write Grants Like Kenny Rogers?
• Beware of the Graduate Student
• How to Become a Great Graduate Student
• Mastering the Human Body: How Much Longer?
• How Many Postdoctoral Fellowships Should I Tackle?
• What Makes a Great Graduate Student?
• The Qualifying Exam: The Earlier the Better?
• Toaster-Oven Trail Mix Biscotti
• The Graduate School Survival Guide
• Don't Mislabel Me (Just My Bottles)
• Chuck Norris, Scientist?

August 2010

• The Lab Family: Benefit or Cause-a-fit?
• The Seven Habits of a Highly Successful Scientist
• Hurdles to the Non-Research Career
• Dear Boss: Time to Trust Me (or Bust Me)
• Escape Velocity: Non-Research Oriented Careers
• Did You Want a Career in Academics? Oh, Sorry.
• Send Email Without the Worry: Training Your Autopilot
• When Do Top-Tier Publications Lose that Lovin' Feeling?
• The Ombudsman: The Best Conversation that Never Happened
• Having a Business Card Doesn’t Make You a Douchebag
• Postdoc Risk-Reward: How Valuable is a Top-Tier Publication?

July 2010

• An Essential Video Setting: Deinterlace
• Thanks for Making it to Our Meeting. Oh Wait, You Didn’t.
• 3 Scientific Products that Would Change Your Life
• Become an Instant BBQ Master With Two Accessories
• My PI Tells More Stories than Mother Goose
• Eating 3 Meals a Day Is Harder than Physical Chemistry
• Poverty Nutrition II: Beans & Rice (And Their Infinite Variety)
• BenchFly Laboratory Techniques: Now on the Go!
• Working for a Micromanager is a Macro Pain
• Poverty Nutrition: A Fugue in Egg Minor
• Longevity Genes: Do You Want to Know?
• The Weekend Conversion Factor: Price per Drink

June 2010

• How to Give a Good Talk
• How Smart is Your Phone? iPhone, Droid or Other
• The Lab Desktop: Looking Busy at Work (When You’re Not)
• Changing Thesis Projects: Death Sentence or New Life?
• Mac vs. PC: What Side are You On?
• 5 Laboratory Techniques That’ll Get You Punched in the Face
• Is World Cup Killing Your Experiments (and Your Hearing)?
• LabLibs: Let Chuck Norris Protect Your Bench
• Dear Dora: The Lab Budget's in More Red than a Friday the 13th Movie
• Tim Lee Tickets: Enter Our Fan Appreciation Giveaway!
• The Lab Group Outing: Are We Having Fun Yet?!
• If You Don't Disaster-Proof Your Bench Now, You'll Hate Yourself Later

May 2010

• Dear Dora: Is a Lab Holiday Party Too Much to Ask For?!
• You Should Try Some PCP: A Model Scientific Conference
• Social Media for Scientists - What's Most Popular?
• Only MacGyver Could Make a Gourmet Quiche With Fewer Ingredients
• Seven Steps to Successful Summer Student Supervising
• Superstition Doesn't Affect Experiments (Knock On Wood)
• Dear Dora: Is it Career Suicide to Work for a Competitor?
• Meet Your Search for Research Microgrant Winners!
• Licensing Deals: Lab Treasure or Personal Pleasure?
• Choose Your Microgrant Winners While You Still Can!
• You’re a Grad Student: You Shall Perform, Even When Sick.

April 2010

• Dear Dora: Full-time Student (and Part-time Employee?)
• 11 Days Left to Make Your Votes Count!
• How Important are Scientific Conferences?
• Search for Research: The Race for a Microgrant is On!
• Dear Dora: Isn't Reviewing Papers My Boss' Job?
• How Scientists Really Get Trained
• Back-of-the-Envelope-Calculations (Should be on the Front of Our Minds)
• How Big is the Tenure Carrot?
• Larry's Luxurious Artichoke Dip

March 2010

• Dear Dora: My Labmates Want Me to Be Their Dealer
• Politics in Science? Surely We're Not as Bad as Congress...
• Comparing Capillary Cutters for LCMS
• Ten Minutes Separates You From $500!
• The Short Straw Works the Graveyard Shift
• How to Survive a Boring Seminar (and win some bets at the same time)
• Dear Dora: Asking for a Raise, Picking a Lab and the Importance of Good Grades
• Their Research is Sexier than Yours
• The Collision of Science, Music and Theater: John Olson and Gioia De Cari
• Leaving the Academic Path (and Country) to Find A Job
• What Diseases Will We Tackle Over the Next Decade?
• The 2010 'Fly Video Awards
• Academic Scientists: Please Remember to Translate!
• New Source for Science Funding: BenchFly Pioneers Search for Research Program
• BenchFly Secures Sigma-Aldrich as Premier Search for Research Partner
• Download Your Search for Research Toolbar Here!
• How Important is Recognition in a Career of Research?

February 2010

• Renewing Our Vows: Our Mission, Our Pledge and Our Future
• BenchFly Welcomes the Proteomics Community!
• Dear Dora: Starting a Family, Finding a Job and Managing Your Boss
• Should Your Beaker be Half-Empty or Half-Full?
• Tetrahymena: Little Creature, Big Discoveries
• We're Gonna Need a Bigger Lab: Large Animal Models in Research
• The Almighty Fungi: The Revolutionary Neurospora crassa
• Saccharomyces cerevisiae a.k.a Budding/Baker’s/Brewer’s Yeast
• Does Anyone Still Read Entire Journals?
• An Ingenious Solution for Monitoring Reaction Progress
• Switching Careers? Try the Sampler Platter: Internships
• LabLibs: The Passive-Aggressive Instrument Note
• What Do You Want from Your PI?
• BenchFly's Football Primer: Science-ized
• Five (Plus) Web Resources You Should be Using Right Now
• DNA Electrophoresis Sample Loading
• How Would You Rate Your Boss?

January 2010

• It's So Easy a (Classy) Chimp Could Make It: The Endive Appetizer
• Scientist Turned Comedian: Tim Lee
• Do You Work Weekends?
• Dear Dora: Authorship, Feuding and Career Doubts
• Kick Off the New Year with a New Camera!
• 5 Library Resources You Should be Using
• Model Organism Week: EEK! The Mouse.
• Model Organism Week: Getting to Know Your Worms (C. elegans)
• Model Organism Week: Research's Next Top Model
• Model Organism Week: Drosophila melanogaster- The fruit fly.
• BenchFly's Model Organism Week
• UCSC Visigene: A Gene Expression Database You Need
• Why Do Your New Year's Resolutions Fail?

December 2009

• Scientists: Naughty or Nice?
• Dear Dora: Ethical Dilemmas, Micromanagers and that Evil Email
• "Seeing" the Big Picture: Vision Revolution Author Mark Changizi
• How to Work-Up a Reaction
• Holiday Wishes Do (Sometimes) Come True!
• The Scientist’s Holiday Shopping Guide (Soon to be) Endorsed by the NIH
• Don't Be Such A Scientist! An Interview with Randy Olson
• How to Make an Old-fashioned
• Communicating with Non-scientists: It's a Ball or Tylenol?
• If You’ve Got a Tongue, You’re Gonna Love These Cheese Balls
• The Hallmark for Scientists (Free Card Inside!)

November 2009

• What Makes a Successful Scientist?
• Giving Thanks on Thanksgiving!
• Trick for Calculating Molarity
• Scary Seminar Seat Selections
• Making DNA Look Simple
• BioKM Interview: Online Lab Management
• How to Perform a Semi-dry Transfer
• How Do You Fill Free Time?
• Dear Dora: How to Leave, Balance and Publish
• Managing Our Social Media Obsession
• Are You a Social Media Junkie?
• How to Clean a Rotovap
• Facebook Connect Is Here!
• Do You Recognize the 7 Early Warning Signs of Lab Apathy?
• How to Behave Around the Boss
• What Do You Want in a Boss?
• Cotton Trick for Column Chromatography

October 2009

• Take a 90-second Break, You've Earned It
• The Kitchen Weapon You Need
• Training Your Autopilot: When in Doubt, Throw it Out
• Holiday Videocamera Giveaway!
• 100 Blogs and Counting!
• Project Juggling: How Many Can You Handle?
• Calculating How to Split Cells
• Choosing the Right Cooking Solvent
• Know When to Fold 'em (for the day)
• Make Your P.I. Love You
• Does Chemistry Impact Your Life?
• PCR Tube Strip Labeling Tip
• Bar Chemistry that Could Save Your Life
• Training Your Autopilot: Assay Pipetting
• What Threatens Us Most?
• How to Weigh Small Amounts
• Five Ways Scientists Waste Time
• Dear Dora: Stealing, Guts and Deceit
• BenchFly Buzzes into Labs Worldwide to Help Scientists Soar
• Dear Dora: Introducing Dora Farkas, Ph.D.
• What Influences Your Research?
• The Importance of Sterile Technique

September 2009

• The Keys to a Great Hypothesis
• Stay Motivated in Lab
• Are We Failing Our Graduate Students?
• What is Your Lab Nightmare?
• How to Mail DNA
• Training Your Autopilot: Mastering Mindless Tasks
• Slow Cooker Magic: Italian Beef
• Become a Scientific Expert in Five Years
• Why Do We Still Publish Scientific Papers?
• Choose Your Lab Superpower
• Reducing Bumping on the Rotovap
• Own a Pet in Grad School? Consider this first...
• I've Found a Job - the Final Steps of Grad School
• Government Science Budgets 2009
• Time for a New Lab Resolution
• Working at the Interface: Matt Bogyo
• Organize Your Life: Getting Things Done
• Sleep Your Way to Better Science
• What Fuels You?
• Timesaving Miniprep Tips
• Lab Etiquette: Don't Make us Call Supernanny
• What's for Dinner? Bag It.
• Fashion Etiquette for Scientists
• Challenges in the Scientific Curriculum
• Upload and Win. It's that Easy.
• No Welcome Mat
• Extraction of Limonene Using Liquid Carbon Dioxide
• How Much do You Labor?
• Graduate School Year 5: Approaching the Finish Line
• The Weers Ranch 'Rita
• Graduate School Year 4: Hang in There
• Graduate School Year 3: The Sun is Shining!
• The Lab Panic Button
• Graduate School Year 2: A Few More Hoops
• Eatin' on the Cheap: Dahl

August 2009

• Welcome to Graduate School!
• What's the Most Valuable Part of Grad School?
• How to Perform Colony PCR
• Lessons from EM Purcell
• Bananas: Chemists in Little Yellow Labcoats
• Technology Transfer: Applying the PhD Away from the Bench
• The Non-U.S. Postdoc, Part 2
• The Non-U.S. Postdoc, Part 1
• Say it with us: Vay...cay...shin
• Polypropylene vs Polystyrene
• Why Did I Become a Scientist?
• The Emergency Meal: Indian Food
• The Evolution of Scientific Impact
• What to Expect When You're Expecting...In Lab
• Email. The E is for Eeeeevil.
• There's Nothing Fishy about this Protocol
• How Do You Say Hoechst?
• Why is the Postdoc So Stressful?
• Group Meeting Food: What do we Really Want?
• A Degree of Stress
• Our New Feedback System
• Choosing Video Equipment: What Really Matters?
• The Importance of Side Projects
• Managing your online reputation
• The Shadow of the Ph.D.
• 10 Ways to be a Successful Scientist
• Identity Theft. Did Someone Just Clone Me?
• How to Make a Bacterial Spreader
• Creating the Soundtrack of Your Science
• It Worked Three Times...
• Thank You!
• Your Career in a Sentence - How to Craft an Elevator Pitch
• The Chemistry of Skunky Beer
• Working at a Small Company, Part 2
• Molecular Gastronomy: Experiments You Can Eat
• Win a Flip Camera!
• Working at a Small Company, Part 1
• How to Remove Static from a Scale
• Our Pledge to You
• Our Mission

July 2009

• How to Choose a Good Scientific Problem
• Three is the Magic Number
• The Image of the Scientist
• Dont be Afraid...Be Anonymous!
• Make Your Own Rapid Ligation Kit
• How to Keep a Lab Notebook
• Make Labmates, Not Enemies.
• Life, Laberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
• Setting up an IntenseDebate Username
• How to Upload a Video
• Getting the Most out of the Blog Channels
• Welcome to BenchFly!
• How to Film a Scientific Protocol
• Why Did You Become a Scientist?