Thursday, October 14, 2010

Quotes from the science blogosphere



The editing process requires interaction and patience, which may explain why some PIs choose to take over the draft of a developing student rather than teach them how to write it themselves. But, if we want to raise the level of writing in journals, books, and grants, this process can't be rushed. We should all to learn to edit just as well as, or even better than, we write.

-Dr O, on her post Editor's choice


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Generation X-change



A few months ago, I was interviewed for an article to be published in Nature, on the topic of the "internationalization of science". Basically, the idea was to interview scientists from different countries to address "whether or not the exchange of people and ideas is changing how science is done in countries all over the world".

The article, entitled "Generation X-change", was published today as part of the Nature supplement "Science masterclass", which commemorates the 60th Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates.

Go check it out... there's free full access to all articles in the supplement!


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Quotes: Publish like a pro



"Authors should try to resist the urge to let their findings trickle out over many years and many papers. Although the trend in the past may have been to turn each PhD thesis chapter into a manuscript, these days, even scientists at the postgraduate level should try to get one or two higher-profile papers rather than several lower-profile pieces (...)"


-Mark Hauber, in an interview in Nature entitled "Publications: Publish like a pro".

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Friday, October 8, 2010

Meeting of the Society of Biochem and MolBio + future meetings + small rant



I recently attended one of the largest scientific meetings in the country, the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. It was held at “Gran Hotel Termas de Chillán”, a 5-star hotel right in the middle of the mountain. We had access to hot springs and pools and we were surrounded by the most beautiful scenery.
With two friends, outside the hotel
The meeting was fascinating, although a little too “biochem-oriented” for my taste (rather than molbio-oriented). I got to meet Rob Martienssen, a Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory working on plant epigenetics, with whom I shared a good number of wine bottles over dinner on various nights and many of what he referred to as “Chile Libre” (you know Cuba Libre right? Rum + Coke. Rob defined Chile Libre as Pisco + Coke). Meeting Rob (who invited me to visit his lab when I fly to the US, see below) was definitely one of the meeting highlights for me.


Rob Martienssen
The meeting was divided in a number of different Symposiums, with topics ranging from Virology, Plant Biochemistry and Biomedicine, to Cell Signalling and Bioinformatics, just to name a few.

A particularly interesting Symposium was the one on Plant Small RNAs, in which Rob, along with Scott Poethig and our very own Rodrigo Gutierrez, discussed a variety of small RNA-regulated processes in plants.

Also, we got to listen to David Holmes talk about the “challenges and opportunities for life at pH:1”, which focused on comparative genomics, and to Richard Garrat discuss the classification of protein domain folds (there's actually a protein chart with a number of different folds, resembling a periodic table).

Giancarlo de Ferrari, presently at Univ. Andrés Bello, also gave a very interesting talk on the role of Wnt signalling pathway in neurological diseases and how his group is using data derived from GWAS to address this.

With my PI, outside the hotel
All in all, I had a great time, I got to show my work to others (and almost got the prize for Best Poster - I was among the 3 finalists-) and bonded with my labmates, which is always important. My idea is to now attend two other meetings in the near future: one in Europe, from which I’m still waiting to hear back, and the very popular Fungal Genetics meeting, which will take place in Asilomar, California on March 2011. I have to somehow raise money to attend these meetings, so maybe I should get a paper route (or 10,000 of them!).

On another note and to wrap this up, here’s a small rant: it doesn’t matter where you are, you’ll always run into people that will try to cram 40 slides into 10-min talks. Obviously, they are not able to finish in time and so, when the session chair tells them they are out of time, they’ll keep on talking and fly through ten slides filled with data. What’s wrong with those guys? Session chairs should have the power to smack them in the head and send them outside to “think of what they’ve done”.





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Thursday, October 7, 2010

Quotes from the science blogosphere



In this day and age, anyone who equates junk DNA with non-coding DNA isn't worth reading.

Larry Moran, discussing an article by Steve Talbott published in The New Atlantis.


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Quotes from the science blogosphere




Reviewer #3 is blaming our paper for not comparing our data to a very similar report that was published after we submitted it.
(..)
Trying to convince my collaborator to say that "our DeLorean was in the shop" in our reply to the editor.
@nantel on a recent rant on Twitter (not exactly from the blogosphere, but I want to keep the name of this Series).

--
(Image credit)

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Wednesday, October 6, 2010

MolBio Carnival #3



A new issue of the Carnival was published on Monday. Go take a look at the great posts Alex Knoll has selected for the third issue of The MolBio Carnival!

If you didn't have time to get your post in this month's issue, don't worry! You can always submit to the next edition, which will be hosted by Psi Wavefunction over at Skeptic Wonder.  

And remember... The MolBio Carnival is posted on the first Monday of every month

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