Friday, September 30, 2011
The 2011 Ig Nobel prize ceremony just took place last night! Here is a list of the winners, a news coverage article and a youtube video of the ceremony. Update: On 10/6/2011, our lab had a journal club mainly on the psychology prize, but we also talked about various interesting things related to different […]
Monday, September 26, 2011
This is mainly for female scientists in the lab and particularly for Chinese female scientists. This year’s Lasker Award is given to Tu Youyou, a Senior Chinese female researcher, for her discovery of artemisinin which is used to treat malaria. Artemisinin is extracted from our precious traditional chinese medicine. The Lasker Award for Basic Medical […]
I have recently read these interesting articles about people who can adapt a drastic change in career/life. There seems to be a good lesson to learn, even for our everyday routine work. Pulling off the ultimate career makeover Job security has gone the way of the three-martini lunch. You can’t become bulletproof, but you can […]
… after spending years of effort to get into the American research circle to have access to better resources, and find out your library requested two articles that you don’t have local subscription from your home institution through interlibrary loan.
These days many cherish “hypothesis-driven” research and trash everything that is observational, exploratory and non-translational. And yet the hypothesis in many research is “post-research” hypothesis. The “hypothesis” itself is also often generated for the sake of having an hypothesis; the essence of the research can still be exploratory. So when funding is getting scarce and […]
From If the dog ate your homework, read this: There are always excuses for not showing up, or not turning work in. I’ve heard them all. But lives built on excuses generally don’t turn out well. Few people care whether you succeed or fail. You are not showing up to class for your teachers or […]
An interesting article “Positive Black Swans” by Tim Harford From Slate Still, after a few years, Capecchi had decided that Harvard was not for him. Despite great resources, inspiring colleagues and a supportive mentor in Watson, he found the Harvard environment demanded results in too much of a hurry. That was fine, if you wanted […]
Evolution Moczek AP. Evolutionary biology: the origins of novelty. Nature. 2011 May 5;473(7345):34-5. PubMed PMID: 21544136. Tena JJ, Alonso ME, de la Calle-Mustienes E, Splinter E, de Laat W, Manzanares M, Gómez-Skarmeta JL. An evolutionarily conserved three-dimensional structure in the vertebrate Irx clusters facilitates enhancer sharing and coregulation. Nat Commun. 2011;2:310. PubMed PMID: 21556064. Tirosh […]
I just come across these two excellent articles that point out many wrong ideas that we can have in life. Interestingly, I find most are also our attitude towards scientific research. Try not to do that. Top 10 Common Faults in Human Thought 10 More Common Faults in Human Thought