Map that Campus L
This week we have a special edition of Map that Campus. A few weeks ago I I wrote about my new voyage on the HMS Palazzo Lab. Well the resident of this campus had some advice on this topic: In a moral point of view, the effect ought to be, to teach him good-humoured patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for himself, and of making the best of every occurrenc

Fourty two* and still in need of mentoring?
After a frantic couple of weeks, the lab seems to be finally coming together. This afternoon I sat down and started to peruse the past few issues of Cell Science, Nature, JCB, PLoS etc. and a few of the blogs that I like to check out. And then I read this strange article in the latest issue of Science: A SMART Plan for New Investigators The premise is ... that the NIH should not give young investigators a break ... because they are full of crap?!?!!! As a solution the author writes: Instead of providing special funding directly to new faculty, we should make sure that they receive s

Scientific Careers and Job Security
From Study Finds Science Pipeline Strong, But Losing Top Students, Science 30 October 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5953, p. 654 A new study finds little evidence for leaks in the U.S. pipeline for producing native-born scientists except for a steep drop in the percentage of the highest performing students taking science and engineering jobs. The findings suggest that the United States risks losing its economic competitiveness not because of a work force inadequately trained in science, as conventional wisdom holds, but because of a lack of social and economic incentives to pursue career

Olympus BioScapes 2009 Winners
Like Nikon, microscopes manufacturer Olympus has a yearly microscopy photo competition, this years winners are up. First place: Dr. Jan Michels Christian-Albrechts-University, Institute of Zoology Kiel, Germany Specimen: Daphnia atkinsoni (Water Flea) Technique: Confocal laser scanning microscopy For more go to the Olympus BioScapes 2009 Winners

Speaking of Talks - Next NERD Club is 11/19/09
When I was a postdoc at Harvard Medical School, I was a founding member of the New England RNA Data Club. We organized a monthly meeting, where RNA researchers from around the New England Area would get together and present data. Over three years, we were lucky enough to hear exciting talks and catalyze many new collaborations between labs at Harvard, MIT, University Massachusetts Medical School Worcester, Boston University, Brandeis and Tufts. We were fortunate enough to get speakers as far away as Yale and Darthmouth. When I left Harvard to start my own lab in Toronto, I thought that the Club (affectionately dubbed NERD Club) would die and that was the end of that. But fo