*****Update: If you haven't read this entry yet, skip this and come back to it.****
So the vendor reps boss, and I mean fucking boss called me today to apologize. Apparently the vendor told the other rep about what happened and asked why I was freaking out so much. And so I guess shit can roll uphill because it went to executive sales manager for the US and this dude called me to say sorry for the fuckup. Which was cool in itself that the company cares that much, but we ended up chatting on the phone for extra 45 minutes about random bullshit.



I am quite sure you are adequately versed in the knowledge of all the products that your company is a fine purveyor of. But let's be honest, I don't have time to listen to your song and dance. I'm working up some westerns, coa . . . More

Choices Choices Choices

Preface: My uni does the whole rotation system where you are required to do three different 10-week rotations. You can wave one of the rotations if you have an M.S., which I took full advantage of.

Lab #1
I loved this lab, it was really good people but also a lot of people. The lab consisted of one technician/lab manager, two instructors, three postdocs, a visiting lecturer, and three other graduate students. The PI was pretty busy and traveled a little bit and there was not much one on one mentorship. Plus the space was cramped, and I mean cramped. I had exactly two linear feet of benchspace to work with. Also the shelves above me were crowded with other shit. Also there was one tissue culture hood, imagine eleven folks trying to share that t . . . More

The LHCb is one of four experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva. It will study the decays of particles known as B mesons in the hope of discovering the answer to a problem known as matter-antimatter asymmetry.

The problem is this: at the big bang, matter and antimatter should have been, and in all likelihood were, created in equal amounts. However, according to what we currently know, if they had been created in equal amounts, then I wouldn't be here to write this and you would be here to read it either. We exist due to a tiny imbalance in the ratio of matter to antimatter at the beginning of time. This tiny imbalance meant that when most of the stuff created in the big bang was annihilated (when matter meets antimatter both are destroyed and lots of en . . . More

The Laboratory Manager is a unique position in the lab and a quite stressful one. Lets face it, you take shit from three sides: THE MAN (the PI), the front lines (folks working at the bench in the lab), and THE BUREAUCRACY (accountants, safety folks, HR, etc). So while they are balancing satisfying this week's whim that the PI has a scientific boner for, they are also calling to get the -80 repaired, making sure everyone has their radiation safety training certificates documented, getting PO's to order all the shit you need, and whats that there is an internal audit going on? Hopefully the PI treats the Lab Manager like gold because they are the constant in the lab. Grad students, postdocs, and techs, they come and go, but this person stays with the PI throughout most o . . . More

I'm Kelly and I'm an Undergraduate Physicist at Imperial College in London.

I've been a massive geek from a young age (see photo), and never really considered doing anything other than a science degree. When I was little I was interested in the usual things - space and dinosaurs - and, to be honest, not much has changed.
Fossil hunting on the beach

I started my blog, basic space, over at wordpress last November initially just to post science articles I'd written for felix, the student newspaper at Imperial. A few months ago I decided I'd quite like to start writing a bit more, about physics research papers I find interesting, so that's what I've been doing for a little while now. Because I've barely got my own blog up and running, . . . More

This song is one of the reasons why I have been tossed out of a bar like thirty times (underage drinking being the main culprit, but I'll post on that later). I evolved into druankasaurus rex and began dancing to the song on top of table. It was shameful and thank goodness the video evidence has largely been destroyed of this event. How does this relate to science. Run the fucking p value, I'm guessing once out of 30 times is probably p . . . More

If this post's title has you all "Wha?", have a listen here. Yeah, I'm referencing Lady Gaga, you want to make something of it?

Famous Collaborator Dude/probable future PI (if you've been following along on blogspot) is awesome. He's totally brilliant, and has been incredibly generous with his lab resources and time. He's also really good at emailing me back immediately when I have a question, which is nice, although sometimes he gets back to me so fast (and so without punctuation and capital letters) I wonder if he actually read the thing that I sent to him for comments?

There is one thing, though--I can't read him! Normally picking up on social cues is my forté, in person and even in writing, and it's gotten me far. And by "far" I . . . More

First I'll give you the contents of the note and then explain the situation.

"Dear Genomic Repairman,
Thank you for taking time out of your day to teach me about your profession. I really enjoyed the learning experience, and greatly appreciate your effort. I'm sorry if it came off as if I wasn't paying attention or was uninterested, when in truth I was quite fascinated. Once again, than you for allowing me to shadow under you..
Signed
Teenage Girl"

So we had some high school students come in for the afternoon and shadow some scientists at my institution. I received a pair of high school freshmen and took them to our lab. I let them get a little hands on and help me with a western blot and explained to them that we were looking for levels of specific proteins and taug . . . More

There is something that graduate school does to you that isn't right. You spend a lot of your time wishing that you were somewhere else. And lo! You find out that you get to go to a scientific conference, a meeting, and what could be better than an international meeting? An international meeting during Oktoberfest.

Alas, you have to attend with others, and this is where things go wrong, horribly wrong.

I have had the fortunate experience of being able to travel as part of my graduate school tenure. I don't knock it. I don't think I would have ever had the chance to go to these places had I not a rather unique boss. That is where the story gets interesting.

My grad advisor is a strange man. We will call him Jackass (cause he once got in a yelling match with my predec . . . More

Life has a way of interfering with your plans. Or at least it does mine. Looking at where, a year ago, I expected to be now and where I actually am is like looking at two completely different stories. I had planned to continue with my running and weight training schedule, but I allowed other things to squeeze out my time. I thought I had a very clear idea of what I wanted my career to look like, but I have begun to wonder just how much I'm willing to commit to that path. I certainly had no idea that I would be moving to a different lab.With the exception of the first item, it's really not as bad as it might sound, though, because these deviations either signify or have initiated consequential changes for the better. To start with, I'm far less timid than I was a year ago. I . . . More

My parents are the ultimate science/art yin and yang--Mom's a crazy smart biomed researcher, while Dad could probably recite the entire Pantone catalogue. You'd think, then, that their offspring would have been these well-rounded überkind, Renaissance Children destined for world domination. Instead, they got one of each of them--my sister: arty, musically inclined, naturally perfect pitch, handy with a paintbrush--and me: nerdy, science-leaning, was on the math team. I can't carry a tune, nor could I re-create the simplest of drawings. But why am I telling you all of this?

It's because I need your help.

While I'm totally loving my new digs here at LabSpaces, I'm looking around my blog page and, well, the walls are a little bare, no? When I was setting things up I notice . . . More

In between topics to rant about, I thought I would tell you a little bit more about what it's like to be a biotech scientist. I've been in many different sized biotechs and even between them, the culture can vary quite a bit. Therefore, I'll try and describe it in general terms to give you an overview of the life of an industry scientist in research and development (R&D). Of course, some people will disagree. Just like academics, there are good labs and bad labs with good managers and bad, and in some companies you get to do mostly R (which is the most fun) and in others it's mostly D (which can be tedious and not as inspired) and this will make a big difference in your perception of industry science.

These are my own perspectives but feel free to leave comments about your experienc . . . More

Since I've started blogging for LabSpaces, people have asked me to introduce myself more and give a little background education on who I am. So, here are a few short little stories that show you just how exactly I am a scientist that loves to work with animals.

I was always interested in animals, but as a child, my passion was solely focused on dinosaurs. My parents would buy us (NOTE: I will keep referring to us, we, etc... because I am an identical twin, and we did a lot of stuff together as children) dinosaur books by the pound. We just could not get enough!

We were the types of kids that would correct the tour guide at the museum, the ones who would be content just to stare at a dinosaur skeleton for hours on end, and the kids who would annoy the librarian for ne . . . More

I started up a blog on Blogspot a little over a year ago. The genesis of it was to get ideas off of my chest and vent my frustrations and get to know some people in the scientific blogging community. I have to say it has been nothing but a spectacular experience. If you haven't started a blog yet, get in the game man. So my scientific journey started out about 9 years ago when I got my first job as a bottle washer in a lab and worked my way up. Now I'm currently about to begin my 3rd year of a Ph.D. program (note I already have my M.S.). I've done everything from then until now including teach undergrads, work clinical trials, and other assorted crap. I feel that my drunken ambling through the field of science has given me a diverse background that helps me to this da . . . More

So in case you missed it. My motherfucking man, Harold Varmus, aka NCI Director, aka Nobel Prize Winner, aka Big Sexy, recently said in Cancer Letters that :

"we have to remember that the great achievements of science have almost always begun with an individual scientist—a lone explorer—working in his or her lab, having an unexpected idea. This in an essential precept to remain faithful to if we are going to retain the stature of the NCI, the NIH, and American science."

I swear I nearly jumped off my stool at the lab bench and cheered for this statement when I read it. Big Sexy gets it, he really does. Ground breaking work comes from individuals hunkering down in the lab who run some crazy experiment that they pulled out of their ass to get something to work and they . . . More

Over the last year, there has been a question on the minds of thousands of people that continues to be for the most part unanswered: Why do disinfectants and hand sanitizers kill only 99.9% of germs and not the full 100%? Or, more succinctly, why is there always 0.1% survival? Many people have surmised that the 0.1% is due to the presence of those superbugs we keep hearing about. Others have suggested that the 0.1% is just not killable. Then there’s the suggestion that the 0.1% is just a way to keep the fear of germs in the mind of the public. While these may seem like good explanations, none of them are true.

As a microbiologist who has been involved in the testing of antimicrobial products, I’ve been testing disinfectants, hand soaps and hand sanitizers for years and I . . . More

Being a woman in the sciences is sometimes hard. Sometimes you have to put up with total and utter bullshit. I'm one of those women that if I feel I'm getting some sort of "special" treatment from a guy (God forbid the word "honey' is used), I'm going to knee him, and he's going to feel it for several days.

Currently, I am the only woman in a research group of 10. There's another research group with which we work, and they are 20% male. I don't really know how this worked out. But since I'm in the 'boy' lab, there are some things that I would like to change.

1. I have wrist problems. This necessitates that my wrist is at the correct height. If I raise my chair, my feet don't touch the ground. I'd like keyboard arms . . . More

One day not quite a year ago, I decided quite suddenly that I wanted to keep a blog. I knew nothing of the magical world that is the science blogosphere; I just wanted somewhere to write, though I wasn't immediately sure about what. It occurred to me that my upcoming search for a tenure track job would fit the bill, according to the following course of logic: looking for a job is a process of sorts, and the "process blog" is a thing, insofar as people blog about the process of traveling around the world or the process of renovating their kitchen. And so On the Market: Fumbling Towards Tenure Track was born (we've trimmed the "On the Market" bit here for your convenience), and then my world exploded. In a good way! In case you haven't been following, the links below should . . . More

Hedgehog, Forkhead, and Cheap Date are all gene names. Hedgehog is a key developmental regulator, Forkhead describes a family of proteins that all contain a Forkhead box and is important in regulating transcription, and Cheap Date is a fly gene that results in the production of flies that are acutely sensitive to alcohol. . . . More