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Author: Brian Krueger, PhD | Views: 34513 | Comments: 6
Last by Mike Gruidl on Feb 22, 2013, 1:22pm
It's bound to happen in every lab. Someone is going to get distracted and for whatever reason a box full of tubes or tubes themselves are going to accidentally get dropped in the lab's liquid nitrogen container. A lot of people might say, "Screw it," and leave those samples on the bottom of the tank. This might be a good solution for some samples, but what happens when you drop half a rack of boxes to the bottom of your tank? And what happens when those boxes are full of very important cell lines that keep your lab running?

I don't want to admit it, but this is exactly what happened to me today. I was preparing an order for a collaborator and getting 5 of my cell lines out of liquid nitrogen storage. I was explaining to my summer students how to safely handle liquid nitrogen, always wear cryoprotective gloves, lift the rack slowly and be sure to drain all of the liquid nitrogen before handling the boxes, etc. I got the box I needed, and put the rack back in the tank while I was hunting for my cells. Unfortunately, I forgot to put the wire back in the rack that holds the boxes in place. When I went to put the box back that I was handling, I pulled the rack up and half the boxes were gone. "Oh, shit."

So now the rack doesn't fit in . . . More
Author: Brian Krueger, PhD | Views: 2192 | Comments: 0
I know, know, paper is so 1990 but I just wanted to pull a paper over at Nature to read during seminar later. Unfortunately I used the big fat "Print" button on the manuscript page. This is what I got:


Notice anything funny about the figures?
I guess next time I'll just download the PDF and print it that way. However, even I know that if you stick blocks of text and figures in DIV or P code blocks, they won't get hacked off by the browser print renderer. I think some web developer was sleeping at the keyboard. A good example of this on LabSpaces can be seen if your try printing this page. You'll notice that in the browser rendered view, all 3 images butt up on one another, however in the print preview, the third image is moved to the bottom of the second page. This is because the image is in a DIV and the browser knows to not cut images in DIVs in half.

I can't be the only person that's ever tried using that button, right?

. . . More
Author: Brian Krueger, PhD | Views: 1175 | Comments: 3
Last by Brian Krueger, PhD on Apr 27, 2011, 2:01pm



The University of Iowa will be holding s science writing symposium tomorrow (April 27th). The symposium will be webcast LIVE at this address from 1PM to 5PM CST:

https://webapps1.healthcare.uiowa.edu/webcast/Default.aspx

There's a login screen now, but that will disappear once the talks start.

. . . More
Author: LabSpaces.net | Views: 2391 | Comments: 3
Last by h2so4hurts on Feb 02, 2011, 10:45am

Credit: Facebook.com
This update was a long time coming but I finally sat down and coded in the ability to authenticate blog and news article comments using Facebook Connect. It was actually really easy once I started coding. It only took two hours!

For all of you anony bloggers and people who fly under a different "name" I've also given you the option to OPT OUT of displaying your real name and facebook page. Just enter a new handle and webpage URL and those will be used instead. Entering a different name will also prevent the posting of your facebook page link so you can stay anonymous yet skip the hassle of dealing with the CAPTCHAs.

And for all of you CAPTCHA lovers out there, you can still login that way. I just figure Facebook is much easier for everyone. I probably won't be adding google, openID, or twitter support any time soon.

Please test it out and let me know if you have any issues.

. . . More
Author: Brian Krueger, PhD | Views: 2670 | Comments: 9
Last by Brian Krueger, PhD on Jan 20, 2011, 12:17pm
I'm finally coming out of my Scio11 coma. It was a super exciting weekend filled with talks about technology, blogging, and new media. On Saturday, Kristy Meyer, Dr. Isis and I led a panel discussion on the use of new communication tools in academic and industry science.

The discussion covered a wide range of topics. One of the first that was brought up was how new media tools might be used to increase collaboration between science and industry. One participant stated that she was surprised by the lack of collaboration between academic and industry scientists in the Research Triangle Park area. She said there really was no resource for expert discovery and thought that the creation of a local database would be helpful in finding connections.

Expanding on this researcher database idea, I asked the audience to talk about their use of currently available social networking tools like LabMeeting, MyNetResearch, BioKM, Mendeley, ResearchGate, etc. One biotech researcher said that his company was open to using these tools privately, and that's really what I have seen and heard of over the years. Companies and institutions want to find bette . . . More
Author: LabSpaces.net | Views: 816 | Comments: 19
Last by Lascap on Nov 03, 2010, 6:18pm
After 4 weeks of heated discussions and friend recruiting, our first iPad contest comes to a close with Jane De Lartigue coming out as the winner. In a close second was Nikkilina with Will rounding out third place. Nikki wins the LabSpaces runner up junk package while Will takes home the EtonBio junk package. Please message me your mailing information and I'll try to get those (and last month's, whoops) prizes out the door! For T-shirt selections, view the original prize package blog post here.

I'll be in contact with Jane to distribute her Apple Gift Card!

Stayed tuned for details on our next contest!

Again, thanks to BioKm for their generous contribution to this contest. You will be hearing more about them and their awesome on-line LIMS system, BioData, over the next few weeks as I review their product! Check it out, and . . . More
Author: LabSpaces.net | Views: 1227 | Comments: 18
Last by Brian Krueger, PhD on Oct 26, 2010, 8:54am
There has been a lot of criticism again about why I post press releases on this website and what purpose they serve. PalMD of WhiteCoatUnderground and ComradePhysio Prof have been very vocal about their contempt for this practice on my website.

Let me first start off by saying that I entirely see where PalMD and CPP are coming from, although I think it’s disingenuous to comment about my intentions without first reading my post about why I post press releases. I’m trying to develop a site where the public and experts can come to discuss science. I would love to have experts rate the releases so that visitors can be better informed on their veracity. The fact is that thes . . . More
Author: LabSpaces.net | Views: 9926 | Comments: 42
Last by Evie on Sep 21, 2010, 11:12am
Last night, I retweeted Genomic Repairman’s request for the twitterverse to sign up for an account at LabSpaces. He wanted users to join in on the discussions he was having in the group he created. We were greeted moments later by a tweet from DrugMonkey saying that THE Facebook for science is dead. Considering I just wrote a blog post on that exact topic, I found his tweet Ironic. The emphasis in that previous post being that there probably will never be ONE single social hub for scientists, but that doesn’t preclude the formation of multiple niche venues. Please excuse me while I get this out of my system:

(rant)What exactly is a FaceBook for science anyway? Is any site with a science spin, groups, a forum, and/or user profiles a “FaceBook.” If that’s the case, then there are hundreds of FaceBooks for science out there. I’d argue that the term is deprecated. Many sites employ social tool . . . More
Author: LabSpaces.net | Views: 5862 | Comments: 21
Last by JanedeLartigue on Oct 15, 2010, 12:49pm
I recently got an e-mail from David Bradley asking my opinion of Web 2.0 as it relates to science, where it’s heading, and how we can get scientists more involved in web 2.0 / data sharing / and the semantic web. I thought this would be a great topic for me to write a real post on since I’ve been involved in this field and trying to promote the ideas of web 2.0 in the sciences for the last 5 years.

For starters, I really have no idea what it will take to get scientists to be fully engaged with the on-line world. It's hard enough to get them engaged in the real world (I wish that was a joke…). I think for most scientists to get involved with a network, we're going to have to develop something that significantly increases scientific productivity, and I'm not talking just a free reference management site or being able to post lab retreat pictures to a profile. The last 4-5 years have showed us that scientists really are not interested in FaceBooks for science. The marginal success of ResearchGate, NatureNetwork, and LabSpaces can't be cited as triumphs because very little of wh . . . More
Author: LabSpaces.net | Views: 278 | Comments: 0
I spent some time last night and today fixing up some high resolution images to upload to a Zazzle store. The bloggers have been nagging me for a junk shop pretty much since they started, so I figured it was important to them. I don't know about you all, but I'm definitely getting a mug or two and at least one shirt. Stop by the store and see the rest of the junk!

Zazzle Store

The 3 designs available are shown below. I'll add more later. I'm sure some LabSpaces Memes will show up in there too!

. . . More
Author: LabSpaces.net | Views: 823 | Comments: 2
Last by Nikkilina on Oct 31, 2010, 9:23pm
I was clued into a discussion earlier this morning by BiochemBelle about some misconceptions about what LabSpaces actually is. I will say that when I first read the comment by Ed Yong that LabSpaces is just another news aggregator (paraphrased) I was pretty upset. For one, the news (or "news") is only a small fraction of what LabSpaces is all about. If this was just a news site, I would have chosen to name the site "EurekAlert Science News Scraper". I thought that the vision of this site was covered pretty well in the "About" section, but Ed Yong is a busy guy and an all-star science writer/blogger, so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt here. What follows is a mock interview with Ed, I hope you enjoy.

Ed Yong: What's the deal with the Press Releases, . . . More
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