In addition to publicizing the post-graduation employment data of a department's or research group's graduate students, should the attrition data -- the % who start but do not finish a degree -- also be made available to those interested in seeing such...
Telomerase can reverse the aging process... sort of
Biologists are, at long last, beginning to understand the molecular processes responsible for aging in complex (multicellular) organisms – and to investigate ways to counteract these processes. We discussed one line of research in this recent article...
Old & Scary
Every so often, when my husband's hair is at a certain length that makes him look like a mad scientist, he gets it cut. He refuses to let me cut it, despite repeated offers -- perhaps because I have no skills or experience with cutting hair -- so he...
Review Well or Die
In the course of some recent discussions about Journal Editing, the question arose as to whether someone's reviewing skills should be a factor in tenure and promotion decisions. In particular, should a tenure-track professor's failure to be a good (reviewing)...
Job Info
Another aspect of a recent Careers Discussion with my research group involved talking about the elements of a Professorial Trading Card from PhD comics. The "trading card" was very useful for illustrating important topics that most of us somehow learn...
Why We Are Awesome
Today in Scientopia, I attempt to answer a question posed in the comments yesterday: Why are graduates of my research group so successful at getting PhD-relevant jobs, including tenure-track faculty positio...
Job Data
The actual, real-life purpose of The Grad School Experience image that I posted on Friday was an attempt-at-humor introduction to a discussion with my research group.As part of this discussion about academia, careers, life etc., I presented some histograms...
Supermassive black hole in a dwarf galaxy
Supermassive black hole in a type of galaxy where nobody expected to find one? Henize 2-10 is a small, mostly unremarkable compact dwarf galaxy. Its estimated dynamical mass is about 1010 M⊙, only a few percent of our galaxy's mass, and its distance...
When was the last time you visited a science center or museum?
I'm in Washington, DC now. I'm in town for the AAAS (Science Magazine) conference. I love science conferences and I love this gathering in particular. It's the world's largest science conference and an inter-disciplinary mix of scientists,...
The Graduate School Experience
As an introductory image to show my research group as part of a general discussion about grad school, careers etc., I decided to see if I could graphically depict the essence of The Graduate School Experience using only the standard menu of clip art...
Misadventure
There has been much blogospheric discussion, here and elsewhere, of (good) ways in which "career interruptions" can be mentioned in grant proposals, so that no one is penalized for a temporary decrease/halt in productivity owing to certain important...
Militantly Ignorant
Today in Scientopia, I discuss the phenomenon of Militantly Ignorant Reviewers, and worry about becoming one of th...
Blogged
Not so long ago, I co-organized a Science Workshop on a particular topic. At some point after the workshop, I saw - by chance - a link to a webpage that seemed like it was closely related to the workshop topic. In fact, the link was to a blog post by...
Happy Valentine's Day, from my backyard to yours.
See how much urban nature loves you. It blooms with heart-shaped leaves for you.From my heart to yours. big hearts little heartsmany heartsjagged heartssmooth heartsI took all of these pictures last summer 2010, at various parks in St. Louis, Missouri. ...
Editorial Soul Searching
A post last week dealt with a topic related to my work as an editor of a journal. Some commenters raised issues about editors and reviewers, and I decided to discuss at least one more editor-related topic this week.But first, here are some links to previous...
First Bird Friday! A Survey & New Nature Blogging Meme
I wish I could say this was my idea. It isn't. (But to my knowledge the title is my idea). Audubon California has a weekly survey. Each Friday they ask online readers to tell them the identity of of the first bird they see each Friday Morning and...
Dropping the h-Bomb
Perhaps it was inevitable. Throughout our daughter's childhood, the teenage years loomed ever larger. We heard the stories, we knew what might happen. And then we got there and.. it was fine. In fact, everything has been great. Until a few days ago.A...
Wearing Two Hats: Editor & Reviewer
A few times since I have been a journal editor or guest editor, authors of rejected manuscripts have written angry e-mails railing against the injustice of the negative decision by me or by one of my fellow editors. I have written about various aspects...
Orders of Magnitude
Thanks to all who sent me links to the recent PNAS article by Ceci & Williams on "Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science". I had read reports of the results, and now have read the article itself.The authors of the...
Advisor/Student
Today in Scientopia:Perhaps the most common theme of questions/laments that I get from readers concerns advisor-student interactions: grad students send me (long) sad tales of dysfunctional working relationships with remote and neglectful advisors, and...
Posts about sirtuins
♦ Sirtuin proteins (11/16/07)♦ The discovery of sirtuins, part 1 (11/17/07)♦ The discovery of sirtuins, part 2 (11/20/07)♦ Sirtuin news (1/21/08)♦ SIRT1 and cancer (10/26/08)♦ Testing the Fountain of Youth in the lab (2/7/...
Testing the Fountain of Youth in the lab
It's been more than 10 years since it was noticed that certain enzymes – the sirtuins – had life-extending properties in organisms like yeast, and later nematodes, fruit flies, and mice. The excitement spread to other compounds, such as resveratrol,...
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