Fai has just participated in the 8th ISO-HK from December 14-16, 2012 and interacted with many colleagues around the world.
From Left to right: Prof. Zibing Jin (Wenzhou Medical College Eye Hospital), Prof. Calvin Pang (Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Chinese University of Hong Kong), Prof. Yuk Fai Leung (Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University). See the whole album by the conference organizer here.
On 12th November 2012, Prof. Calvin Chi-Pui Pang from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Prof. Haoyu Chen from the Joint Shantou International Eye Center (JSIEC), Shantou University & the Chinese University of Hong Kong visited the Leung Lab and the research facilities at Purdue University.
Prof Pang and Chen first met with Prof. Marietta Harrison, Associate Vice-President for Research and Dr. Geanie Umberger, Assistant Vice President for Corporate and Foundation Relations to discuss collaborative plans between the Leung Lab, Purdue and JSIEC. Our long-term goal is to explore the opportunities in clinical eye research and drug screening in China.
From left to right: Dr. Umberger, Prof. Harrison, Prof. Pang, Prof. Leung, and Prof. Chen.
Then, Profs. Pang and Chen visited the Bindley Bioscience Center. Dr. Tommy Sors, the Center Project Manager, showcased the Purdue’s infrastructure for preclinical investigations.
From left to right: Prof. Chen, Prof. Leung, Prof. Pang and Dr. Sors.
Finally, there was a dinner gathering with Prof. Marietta and other distinguished professors from the Department of Biological Sciences to celebrate friendship and new collaborative relationships.
Back row: Prof. Don Ready, Prof. Chen, Prof. Leung and Dr. Liyun Zhang, postdoctoral fellow in the Leung Lab.
Front row: Prof. Bill Pak, Prof. Marietta, Prof. Pang, and Prof. Richard Kuhn.
I have been paying attention to the ongoing discussion on open access to scientific research in the news media and have collected a number of interesting articles. Here I will keep a record of a few interesting ones
2012-11-08 From the Guardian: “Open Access: ‘we no longer need expensive publishing networks‘”
2012-06-19 From the New Scientist: “Set science free from publishers’ paywalls”
2012-04-17 From the Harvard Faculty Advisory Council Memorandum on Journal Pricing: “Major Periodical Subscriptions Cannot Be Sustained”
I once wrote about the difficulty in getting access to the research papers here and I had to ask my friends from my home country to download that for me. The expensive journal subscription is obviously one reason that caused the problem. Obviously publishing in high-quality, open access journals with publisher like PLOS and BMC can be a good solution. However for many practical reasons, i.e. to survive and be recognized, scientists often do not act what they advocate is good. Let’s hope the field can wise up and treasure what is actually important to us.
A colleague at Purdue puts it in perspective in a Bloomberg News article: College Costs Rise With $250,000-a-Year Bureaucrats
“Why is it that we can’t find any money for more faculty, but there seems to be an almost unlimited budget for administrators?” asks J. Paul Robinson, a Purdue University professor of biomedical engineering and chairman of the school’s faculty senate. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
This is an interesting story that I came across last week. It started with a guy playing with his ex-girlfriend’s pregnancy test… and the result was positive! He told his friend about it and he made a rage comic and posted it on reddit.
Several users pointed out that he should check with his oncologist, and he did. As it turns out, he had a rare form of testicular cancer that would produce human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone that is being detected in the pregnancy test. This (un)fortunate incident helped his early detection of the cancer and saved his life.
They announced the update through another rage comic again.
Boing boing has an elaborate discussion of the science behind this.
Just come across this interesting video the other day..
which is an except from this TED talk : Frans de Waal: Moral behavior in animals
Science special section – Forces in Development
Visual sciences
Neural behaviour
Retinal development
Eye diseases
Medicine
was awarded jointly to Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka
was awarded jointly to Sir John Gurdon and Shinya Yamnaka
“for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent”
They also won the Lasker Award in 2009.
This is not related to biology but is a question that is in my mind for a while….