Being a scientist isn’t just about doing experiments, so neither are we. This is where we make breakthroughs beyond the bench for scientists.
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?
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?…
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?
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.
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).
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.
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…
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.
For some of us, Monday represents the start of a new week. For others, Monday might as well be Wednesday or Friday or Saturday, since the days just blend together.
By now it’s safe to assume the New Year’s hangover is safely behind us. Likely, so are half of the resolutions we swore we’d keep… (Why Do Your New Year’s Resolutions Fail?) However, one resolution remains alive – “to upload more videos to BenchFly!” So we’re here to help.
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