The video that all prospective PhDs should watch Self-explanatory.Mixing humor and heartbreak, Naturally Obsessed: The Making of a Scientist delves into the lab of charismatic professor Dr. Lawrence Shapiro, and follows three irrepressible graduate students on their determined pursuit of a PhD and scientific success. As if the pressure of scientific discovery isn’t enough, the students are also competing in a worldwide race to be the first to Whistleblowers suffer from collateral damage too Science reported the case of Elizabeth Goodwin, a former UW-Madison associate professor of genetics who pleaded guilty to a charge of scientific misconduct for falsifying data in a grant application to the NIH.What is interesting (and sad!) though is not so much about sentence meted out to Goodwin (most likely just a fine and a ban from receipt of federal grants for 3 years), but the fate of her NIH Grant Proposal Writing and Review The key to bread and butter for academics running research labs...Begging for money isn't that simple as you think it is just by holding out your hand, certainly not when there are so many other beggars scattered all around lusting after the same pot.For those of you further down the pecking ladder (and thus less painful to get out while you are still able to do so), it is best in your interest ( The truth about doing research in Grad School and beyond Credit: Boingboing and Chemistry Blog.The term "lab rats" doesn't come out of nowhere. Again, it is very important to choose the right adviser.The cartoon below would be a good response to the last part of Carreira's letter:Afterall, Guido seems to be doing well at Novartis after leaving Caltech.Edit (30 June): A Boston Globe reporter spoke with Erick (Now at ETH-Zurich). He now claims that is a The problem with unisex bathrooms on campus... I am surprised no one has yet posted anything about the toilet seat up/down argument or how some guys would spray their liquid waste onto the seat in its down position.The whole thing is becoming very Ally McBeal-ish. Nuclear energy for Singapore? It seems like Singapore is going ahead with plans for a possible nuclear power plant. EMA is now planning to start a feasibility study on the use of nuclear energy as a possible long term energy solution.Energy Planning & Development DivisionSenior Analyst / Analyst and Senior Engineer / Engineer(Policy & Planning Department)Project Management - Nuclear Energy Feasibility StudyResponsibilitiesYou The Myth of Meritocracy School administrators, writes Senior, understand best of all that intelligence tests for young kids are "practically worthless as predictors of future intelligence....Rather than promoting a meritocracy, in other words, these tests instead retard one. They reflect the world as it's already stratified--and then perpetuate that same stratification."...Intelligence is a process, not a fixed, Most Touching Ad of the 2010 Winter Olympics To Their Moms, They'll Always Be Kids. How Nature selects manuscripts for publication Nature actually devoted an editorial (doi:10.1038/463850a) explaining its publication process.Exploding the myths surrounding how and why we select our research papers.Really? I thought the explanation's pretty weak on the statistics given that it is a scientific journal. Drug Monkey and writedit have more on commentary about this particular editorial....we make the final call on the basis of 12 girls band I spent my formative teen years in a relatively well-known cheena school in the eastern part of Singapore. It was a place where I spent 4 long years (even longer than the time I took to get my Bachelors degree) and have a love-hate relationship with.One thing that has stuck in my mind all these years since leaving the school is relating all Chinese orchestral pieces to DHS. Afterall, those years Academia (Tenure) as a Profzi Scheme The headline hogging news to affect academia (at least in the US) this past weekend is the Amy Bishop Anderson tenure-denial mass murder case. Much had been discussed about about her sanity and intentions, and I won't dwell into them.But it has brought to the forefront the issue of tenure for professors (the ultimate prize for all academia-focused postdocs and grad students). Even getting a Biopolis: The Science Factory A*STAR's management of scientific research in Biopolis....To fuel this research, a Singapore government entity known as the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) offers everything a scientist’s heart could desire: 2 million square feet of space outfitted with flow cytometers, nuclear magnetic resonance instruments and X-ray crystallography equipment; a vast supply center; and the Yale Undergraduate Recruitment Musical Video Hilarious. Scientific Peer Review Process This will be funny if it isn't true. I go through the same whole charade all the time whenever I submit my manuscripts to the journals. Some reviewers are just plain sadistic assholes hiding behind a cloak of anonymity in asking me to "run more control experiments", while others are clueless idiots who don't know shit about anything in the field yet still want me to "strongly suggest that" I Difference between going to Business School vs going to Graduate School A JC classmate and I graduated from college the same year. He went on to Business School two years after I started Grad School, and received the MBA 2 years before I got my PhD. He is now at a major investment bank that survived the bank failures of 2008 and is set to receive record bonuses for this year. I am an academic postdoc, and have just received email from Payroll that my income for the Selecting undergraduates to mentor A few weeks ago, I made the decision to take in a couple of undergrads and have them work directly under me in the lab. Regular readers of this blog might be able to guess my reason for doing so. It is not altrusic intent on my part, although I must state that this arrangement will be a win-win situation for all of us involved (if the research results and their lab performance turn out well). Harvard University Spoof Commercial Contrast with NBC's University of Westfield: Of Syntax and Grammar from English to Math and Science II Oftentimes we become too comfortable in our own little cocoon of scientific terminology that we forget that there are laypersons in the lab.*'Utramicrotome' was misinterpreted as a very small book, and the lab member (an undergrad) proceeded to point out that the term is contradictory - doesn't 'tome' mean a large book? How can it be very small?Undergrads...Sometimes they try too hard to impress. Are you a thinker or do-er? Many of the grad students I have encountered over the years can be broadly classified into 2 types - the thinkers and the do-ers. Thinkers refer to those who are typically strong in the academic theoretical concepts, and are very much at home playing with complex mathematical equations and the like. Do-ers on the hand, are more comfortable building machines/equipments from the ground up and are Killer Bean is back! The earlier version totally blew me away (back in college). This is even better. If the Nobel Prizes in the Sciences are like the Peace Award... You can be a laureate in your first year of Graduate School (and with no publications yet to your name)!Parody taken from Greg Mankiw's blog:First-Year Grad Student Wins Nobel Prize in Economics!From the Associated Press (with some light editing):Pfuffnick's Nobel Economics Prize triumph hailed by manyLONDON — The surprise choice of first-year graduate student Quintus Pfuffnick for the Nobel 中秋节快乐 床前明月光，疑是地上霜。 举头望明月，低头思故乡。- 唐朝詩人李白 (701AD to 762AD) No prizes for coming second I got my first rejection for an academic faculty position. It is a brutal world in academia, and there is no difference between the 2nd place or last (especially when there is only ONE opening). At least I got a rather detailed rejection letter, instead of the generic thank you for your application type. I wonder if it is so because of my PhD advisor (they are friends).To: takchekSubject: Re: My A Dunman High Love Story This is such a sweet wedding video.The youtube version. Do you list declined honors/fellowships/scholarships on your CV/resume? I wonder the rationale of people listing the fellowships/scholarships that they declined. Is it show that they are smart? Or arrogant? I came across 2 examples (anonymously of course):Hertz Foundation Graduate Fellowship, 199X-200XNSF Graduate Research Fellowship (declined for Hertz award), 199XandXX University Presidential Graduate Research Fellowship, 200X - 200YSingapore National Science (PhD) US Public Sector Employees' Salary Data Feels kinda weird when one's salary is available for the whole wide world to see. Information on University of California employee salaries as well as that of the other states can be found here. The World is One's Oyster Drawing By Edward Monkton Of Decision Making and Scientific Integrity Taken from the book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", and mainly for my own future reference....That was tremendously exciting and very important – that was a fundamental discovery. And I realized, as I finally got to my office, that this is where I’ve got to be. Where people from all fields of science would tell me stuff, and it was all exciting. It was exactly what I wanted, really.So when Tales from the Lab IV Two emails make me feel like...a brain on a stick...or a monkey.Publication of our findings is vital to the group – this is how we are evaluated by our peers, our funding sources, and by our potential employers. Although we have had several of our papers appear in 2009, all were submitted in 2008. So far, in the first half of 2009, we have submitted only a single paper. I suspect we have been Moving on I almost forgot that Singapore's birthday is round the corner. Do I feel anything about that? No. Interpret it however you like.