Sign me up for RSS!- Daily routines Data and analysis Ethics Experimental design Follow a scientist Graduate school Grant proposals Grants Group leadership Helping others Life in a biology department Life in the DNA lab Managing an academic career Microbes Natural areas New assistant professor New ideas Presentations and seminars Publishing your work Research Scientific meetings Scientific methods and pitfalls Seminars Social interactions Tenure The joy of teaching Uncategorized Undergraduates Writing Your lab group
Top Posts & Pages
Blogroll
Archives
Meta
Monthly Archives: September 2011
What do polymers and social amoebae have in common? Controls!
But all the time we spent agonizing over the right controls taught Alona in a visceral way that controls were important, that an experiment without the right controls would need to be repeated, and that the right controls were not always obvious. … In an experiment like this one, we can do the whole thing over with the exact same clones, just to be sure there wasn’t some bias on a given day. Continue reading
Why is only one of fifteen speakers a woman when the environmental biologists of St. Louis meet?
For example, it took a meeting in Scotland for us to meet our wonderful Dictyostelium collaborators, Adam Kuspa and Gadi Shaulsky , who are a ten minute walk away (or were before we left Houston ). … 
The lovely Tyson Research Center forest. 
The carbon neutral Living Learning Center. 
Our wonderful directors, Barbara Schaal, and Kevin Smith. 
Talking over lunch. 
Doug Berg, who has been wonderful at making microbial connections for us. 
Sitting or standing, the students meet each other. 
Our Keynote speaker, Jonathan Losos, home from Harvard, and Bruce Carlson who gave a great talk on weakly electric fish. Continue reading
The worst place to host your lab web page
I hope so, for this is where you can tell the story of your team’s research in your own way. Everyone should have their own lab page and there should be a prominent link to it from the more generic pages your university creates for you. Continue reading
What to call a manuscript file – begin with your own last name
After all, I read hundreds of drafts of papers a year from my own lab group and classes, and review for others another hundred or so. … When I return the file to you, I will put my initials at the very beginning, so you will know this is the draft of the paper that I read. Continue reading
Posted in Writing
2 Comments
Why writing is so hard – all those paths not taken
What you want to tell could be viewed a fragile net, with many interconnections, but at some point you have to pick it up at a single place and shake. … I could also talk about Whitefish Point in Lake Superior where in June two years ago we saw so many bluejays still flying north, loose groups disappearing into the fog over the lake. Continue reading
Posted in Writing
Leave a comment
Phil Kutzko – A radical take on building an inclusive, diverse academic community
Philip Kutzko might argue that we just don’t get it, but he does it in such a kind, enthralling way, gently explaining that we were listening to Tristan Murail when we might be listening to Keith Jarrett , Pierre Boulez instead of Miles Davis . … His second premise goes right along with the first, that we should care about and get to know our students, for only then will they be in a safe place for learning. Continue reading
Posted in Life in a biology department
Leave a comment
Why is Alan Templeton catching grasshoppers in the Ozarks?
Well, if it does, then the current populations of grasshoppers in glades where humans have suppressed fires for many grasshopper generations should be genetically more isolated and differentiated than those in glades where there were recent fires. … 
jeff smith came along and proved to be an excellent grasshopper hunter. 
It just looks like a patch in the forest, but the underlying soil is thinner, more rocky. 
We saw some other social insects, these lovely tent caterpillars. 
A very nice wasp, Polistes metricus, got caught in the web, unable to hunt these caterpillars. 
jeff found this praying mantis. Continue reading
Posted in Follow a scientist, Natural areas
1 Comment
What goes on in faculty meetings?
This morning I went to the first faculty meeting of the Biology Department at my new university. I was late. Apparently the convention that everything starts at 7 minutes after the hour does not apply to faculty meetings. And I … Continue reading
