This is my daily nemesis, my friend, my lover, my worst enemy, my electrophysiology rig

”The Rig”, this morning

And you can see the little whojimawhotsit on the bottom right? The humjigger with the dials and coloured knobs? That’s the cunningly named micro manipulator.

It is operated by this, normally unadorned, object:

The Mummy Revisited, coming soon to a lab near you

To the endless despair of my loving parents, I am somewhat accident prone. I’ve broken most of the bones in my body at one point or another, through various nonsenses and foolishnesses. I have a new one.

As my avid fans readers know, I train in a delightfully brutal martial art called “Muay Thai”. Also known as Thai Boxing, it’s a variety of kickboxing that allows the use of elbow and knee strikes to maximise the infliction of horrid mayhem on one’s opponent. So far, in the last year, I have had a fractured-dislocation of one of my toes (that now looks like something your grandfather would have kept in his walking stick collection), two broken ribs, numerous black eyes and a mild concussion or two. And now this.

Remember kids, when going for the clinch, don’t relax your fist until you’re inside your opponent’s guard. In case s/he punches you on the hand.

Ho hum. I guess it’s time to catch up with some reading for a week or two…anybody need a manuscript or grant reviewed, drop me line. I’ve plenty of time on my hand.

I was reading That Other Magazine today, as I am won’t to do of a weekend. I found a funny letter to the editor, and was reminded of some silliness over in the Lablit Forums

>tideliar
Let me dovetail this argument so we’re thinking “inside” the box again. If we don’t non-verbally self-communicate before digitally opinon rendering, we could generate a negative halo effect.

Sunset on Mars Photo courtesy JPL

I have enjoyed watching The Discovery Channel’s recent show “When We Left Earth”. It’s a retrospective of the life of NASA from Kennedy’s first prnouncement to the current day. It’s full of great tidbits and stories, along with reams of previously unreleased NASA footage. There were interviews with all the major players too, Buzz Aldrin & Neil Armstrong, of course. There were the guys from the famous Apollo 13 “Uh…Houston, we have a problem…”, along with the actual sound bite itself (including the muffled explosion in the background!).

Absolutely bloody fantastic. And narrated by the wonderous and divine Gary Sinese (the interchoobs are an odd place sometimes…), to make things just that tingly bit better.

Anyway, I highly recommend it. I also recently had the distinct pleasure, and hono(u)r, of helping my best friend write her astronaut application to the European Space Agency!

Especially since I’ve been meaning to head to Technorati to claim this blog, but I found one of those buggers in my “music room” the other night…

A pregnant female brown recluse.

Grant: not a word out of you mate.

“There is no room for shy in combat sports. There is no room for not being comfortable in your own skin. It’s not a natural state for most people at first. Violence and aggression isn’t a natural state for many at first. You need to be able to move past that limitation. Shed that which is forced on you day by day in modern society and learn to feel comfortable in an environment and sport where aggression and violence is the order of the day.”

Words of wisdom from my friend Lucas, graphic artist and martial artist living in Hong Kong.

Sometimes we can get caught in our comfort zone. It’s easy to coast and put your dreams on the backburner. Fear of failure can prevent even the most confident of us from really trying to succeed. If you want to succeed and move on you have to throw yourself into your adventures.

I’m at the end of my contract, here in Memphis. My PI has asked me stay on for another year or so to finish up some projects; his current grant has funds until next May. But for me it’s time to move on. I knew when I moved here that I probably didn’t want a full time academic career. When I was a grad student I dreamed of having my own lab, but experience has shown me otherwise.

So, while I’ll hang around and tie up some loose ends and help the old man out, I’m really looking around at new opportunities. And just like buses, they certainly seem to all come at once.

Nature Neuroscience is advertising an editors postion and I’ve been recommended to apply by some senior faculty acquantances (and their ex-editor, but I won’t mention that…that would would be name dropping).

It would mean moving to New York though (on the assumption I get an interview and don’t totally duff it up). I’ve wanted to work for Nature for years, but now my girlfriend has moved down from Washington DC and has a great job here in Memphis… so do I make her move back north? Indeed, can I expect her to move again?

So what other opportunities are there?

Well, I think I’m a talented administrator and a good “people person”, so I’ve been looking for opportunities here at UT. I’d like to run our postdoc office (PDO) and do my best to improve the training experience, working conditions and daily life of postdocs. I’m quite surpised by the strength of feeling I have for this.

I’m chairman of our postdoc association (PhDA) and recently got to represent UT at the National Postdoc Association annual meeting in Boston. It was an inspirational conference and really finalised the lurking motivation I have to work on something like this full time. It’s a cause I believe in, you might say. So, to this end I have been talking to the current head of our PDO (our very overworked Associate Vice-Chancellor) about internship opportunities in the UT administration.

Last week I submitted a grant to the NPA for funds to help set up a research ethics training program for the postdocs (hence this post coming in on Sunday, not Friday). Hopefully this will be funded and will be a metaphorpical feather in my allegorical cap. It was a hell of a lot of work, but I refused assistance from my colleagues on the PhDA because I needed to see if I could do it and more importantly if I enjoyed doing it.

I loved it. I’ve got a great team of lawyers, faculty and even a management consultant lined up to teach. I prepared a course outline, planned the workshop, sourced other funding…

This could be a very interesting career move. It’s certainly dangerous, as most of us know. Walking away from the bench is usually a one way journey. I think I’ll miss experimental science a bit, but if I’m honest I won’t miss it that much. I’ve been doing this for ten years now, but I’m not a technical whizz kid. I don’t think the field of neuroscience will stagger to recover from my moving on from the lab!

But, if I really want to know then I have to throw myself into this. So, cross your fingers and wish me luck. One day soon I might be changing the information on my Profile Page…

How cynical am I these days?

Actually, she seems to have the necessary attributes to have a crack at grad school… keen of eye, swift of mouth, ready with questions (oh… the questions…and questions…and questions ad infinitum).

There are the necessarily really dumb mistakes, but we all make them. Finding your way in a new lab is like trying to line dance without knowing the steps. You are going to get in everyones’ way and eventually piss someone off. There are a thousand unwritten rules, some rather silly, that exist in all labs, especially when they’re either very big, or very small (mine is the latter).

My PI is franticaly running himself into the ground trying to get preliminary data for his next grant submission, so most of the day-to-day mentoring of The Graddling has fallen to me. It’s good fun, and helps me put my own knowledge in perspective: only an idiot thinks he knows everything. It’s also a big confidence boost because I don’t usually get to test the bounds of my knowledge because I am in such a small lab.

The Graddling actually managed to get data only a week into her first project. PI and I were frantically jabbering in science-speak about what these data might mean and what needed to be done next. Alternate hypotheses sprung up and were instantly quashed… “but this could just be a voltage dependent effect…”

Orders were barked, “Run a set of ramps from different holding potentials through it. We need to see the IV at this dose.”

Of course The Graddling froze, she had been for some time. Despite being told what she was doing and seeming to understand, in the heat of the moment it was all suddennly a lot more complicated than just a “simple” electrophysiological test. Now she understood why we had been so vigorous in our demands for perfection on her technique. Demands on re-making buffer solutions because they might not be at exactly the right concentration or pH.

“It has to be perfect every damned time!”

“But nothing I do works, so why does it matter?”

“Because, Graddling, if by some miracle it does work we need to be able to use your data.”

..and work it did!

A testament to her staying power, and that alone is a good indicator of future success. All afternoon, cell after cell had died before she got a stable voltage-clamp.

“Take a break,” I suggested. She refused and stuck to it.

That’s the thing with research, as with life. Perseverence. Things don’t always work properly, and if the cells are having a bad day because of ambient humidity or temperature, or heaven forbid you screwed up your cell culture earlier in the week, sometimes you might not get data no matter how hard you try. But try you must, and try she did, so

Well Done Graddling. A toast to your first data point. Now go and do it again.

The light of intellect in our society is dying – a point I didn’t make strongly enough in my original post (though I meant to), hence the title. And the unfairness? We have a government that pretends to be in favor of the knowledge economy, but does everything in its policies to prevent this. Money talks, and bullshit walks.

While Mr. Darwin waxes forth about the future of mankind, he ends with this bold statement:

And in a late PS, how I regret the decline in the standard of scientific comment in The Times newspaper…Oh dear, the rot has not yet reached its carrying capacity in the popular prints: the Daily Mail, reporting on my statue being moved in the Natural History Museum, opens its ‘report’ claiming my theories are ‘elitist’…I assume that like many critics the ‘Daily Mail Reporter’ has not troubled his, her or its ‘mind’ with my writings before pronouncing them elitist with such brazen confidence. As a doughty defender of my person mentioned, The Origin was a sellout on its first day.

There is an ever decreasing level of understanding of science among the general public. Universities are shutting science departments, high schools teach an abominable amalgam of subjects labeled general science, or something equally as asinine. Thankfully there are small glimmers of light in the darkness. Individuals and Institutions are trying to engage the public more. Jenny Rohn frequently lets us know about her involvement in various events in and around London, and I remember listening to the Naked Scientists at the Cambridge Science Festival too. These sorts of events are to be funded, lauded and attended. And now those of us residing Stateside, or at least our Yankee cousins in New York, can do their bit.

In yesterday’s edition of That Other Journal Brian Greene and Paul Nurse, of Columbia and Rockefeller Universities respectively, published a Commentary on The World Science Festival. This event has attracted the support of such luminaries as actor Alan Alda and Bourne Identity director James Schamus. In fact, a screening of The Bourne Identity will be used to lead a discussion on the neuroscience of memory and amnesia.

This is a wonderful event and I hope we see reports back from any of our Nature Networkers who might be in and around NYC this week.

Drs. Greene and Nurse, and many others have worked very hard putting this great event together. They end their commentary with an exhortation to us all. I reproduce it below; they have phrased it more eloquently than I could.

Through the centuries, basic science has been a key driver of human growth, advancement, and prosperity. Recently, we have seen not only science being relegated to the back seat on matters of public policy where it should be at the core, but also the marginalization of science in all parts of public life. This was emphasized eloquently by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof who, in December 2005, wrote a column called “The Hubris of the Humanities,” in which he addressed the dangers surrounding the public’s “profound illiteracy about science and math as a whole.” He noted that an educated person could never laugh off ignorance of Plato or Monet or Dickens, yet so many shrug off a lack of interest in quantum mechanics or genetics as a reasonable intellectual stance. The World Science Festival is committed to sparking a movement that will reverse this trend by building a bridge over which the public might pass toward a rich appreciation for the challenges and triumphs of the scientific journey.

The King Say “Thank You” with a grin!

I remember loathing writing “Thank You” cards after every birthday and Christmas. The rote

“Dear [insert aging relative],
Thank you so much for my lovely [insert unwanted object].
It’s what I always wanted… blah blah blah.”

I never got to write the notes wanted…

“Dear Granddad,
I guess the Alzheimer’s has finally kicked in huh? What the hell made you think I wanted a neck tie printed with the royal crest of Norway? And even worse, what the hell made you buy it? Next year, you old coot, just give me the damned money like I asked for. If you’re still alive that is.”

It’s probably for the best that my mum supervised the note writing, I really was an angry young man.

But this all makes me think about the nature of Thank Yous. I remember the first time I was acknowledged on a manuscript. It was an excellent feeling. Obviously not as great as being an author, but I knew my minor contribution hadn’t warranted a place on the list, so an acknowledgement was fine. I loved it when our grad students defended their theses and my name was on the list at the end, or if my PI gave a talk and mentioned me and my project. This isn’t an ego trip, it’s just nice to know that your hard work has paid off and is…well…acknowledged.

But that’s an easy way to thank someone. You’re adding a name to a list. How do we thank people for the help they give when there’s nothing concrete like that?

I wrote on Lablit once about learning to network effectively. I put those “mad skillz” to use and recently managed to land myself two telephone “interviews”. One was with a senior administrator at a large research hospital in the north east, the other with an ex-senior editor of a major scientific journal (no prizes for guessing which one) who now works for a not-for profit company as their Director of Communications. Both are PhDs who are now applying their skills in positions far from the ones they (officially at least) trained for. They work in very different areas, but had many similarities in their journeys.

Both took time out of their extremely busy schedules to talk to me, tell me their stories and give me advice as I look to make my own move away from the lab bench. Both of them asked me to stay in touch and let them know how my personal journey progresses. There were offers of help along the way too, offers I’m sure I’ll take advantage of.

How do you thank someone for that?

The only way I can think of to show my respect is by working as hard as I can towards my new goals. I’ll show them I appreciate their support by succeeding in my new endevours. This is much better than a “Thank You” note, and much more fulfilling too.

HEK cells. Thanks to The University of Hull

The cell culture system we use employs a type of cell known as HEK, short for Human Embryonic Kidney. It is, as its name more than suggests, a cell line harvested from the kidney of a human embryo. This harvesting took place decades ago, long before thoughts of patient consent were considered (Just ask Henrietta Lacks about that one). The cells are essentially just epithelial cells, the simple cells that form the linings of your mucous membranes. We can take these cells and “transfect’ them with the DNA coding for the proteins we’re interested in studying. To translate that, basically we infect the cell with DNA. A few days later the cell has made use of this DNA because it can’t tell the difference between the new we gave it, and its own. Because of this the cell is making the proteins we study.

I mentioned last week that I have the honour and responsibility of being the Chair of my institute’s Postdoctoral Association. This afforded me the opportunity a couple of weeks ago to travel to Boston and attend the National Postdoc Association annual conference. At the conference, there was much discussion and humming and hawing over acronym laden documents such as COSEPUP and COMPACT, but I feel if nothing else was achieved the meeting served to refocus the community on the strategic goals of the organization. Namely to represent postdocs at local, national and federal levels with the remit of improving our lot. And that’s not to say I think we achieved nothing. I think we did, but that’s for a different blog post.

One of the major foci of all the humming and hawing was mentorship and management. We still work within a system built decades ago when the academic world was a vastly different, and smaller, place. If postdocs are to be properly equipped to deal with the modern workplace we will need guidance from those already there. There is a great need for transferable, or so called “soft” skills that is often lacking in current postdoc training. I was forced to face the reality of the situation a couple of years ago, when I realized that my life long dream of becoming a professor at a major research university, running my own lab like a benevolent and lab-coat clad Gandalf, was never going to happen. Since then I’ve been considering my options and what to do about them. It’s all very well having the amorphous goal of being “a science advisor”, but about what and to whom? And with all due respect, just because you can perform the neatest and clearest western blots known to man, doesn’t qualify you to advise me on diddlysquat. Except perhaps how to prepare my western blot buffer solutions.

As I, and many others like me, weigh up the various options open to us I am reminded of something that was covered at the conference. “Personal Time Management”. I’ve heard of it before, and it always seemed silly that someone would have to coach you on managing your own time. But now I’m juggling committee work at the local and national levels, writing for this blog as well as for Lablit and a couple of other magazines (irons in fire…don’t jinx me), trying to balance an increasingly over-burdened chequebook…and oh yeah, trying to keep up with the literature and my share of lab chores as well as actually do my experiments. So, if anyone has any advice on “Personal Time Management” they’d like to share, or else a time machine I can use to add a couple of hours to each day, please let me know…

As the undergraduate lecture continued I learned about RNA editing (RNA is the message from your DNA, the step before a protein is made), and how a certain part in one certain AMPA-type receptor subunit must be “edited” at least 99% of the time, or else you die from epileptic style seizures not long after birth.

“But, how does it know when and how to be edited?” I asked.
“No one knows…Yet.” was the answer and that was that.

That was the day I fell in love with science.

I ended up becoming a technician in that professor’s lab, and then moving to the US to attend graduate school. I had a couple of offers in the UK, and everyone told me I was mad to move, but I was young, I was in love (there’s always a woman involved!), and I was looking for adventure. Well, I found it. After initially interviewing at the wrong campus, 150miles from my fiancée I settled into the daily rhythm and grind of scientific research in the quest for my Ph.D..

I have followed my love of scientific research across the synaptic cleft, between species and all over this fine continent. Now I’m a decade older and wiser I can look at the system that has trained me, and looked after me and I can see what’s good about it. I can also see what’s bad about it. Postdoctoral research has many benefits, but also many drawbacks. For example, there are still scientists out there working without healthcare, working for what equates to less than minimum wage. We’re the ones that drive the lumbering machine that is scientific endeavor, but we sometimes have the rough end of the stick. It doesn’t get much better if you make it to faculty, but now even fewer of us will find out. With the National Institutes of Health budget frozen, there is less money to round, and fewer faculty positions open. Postdocs nowadays need to train for careers away from the bench.

I’m Chair of the Postdoctoral Association at my institute. I was fortunate enough to recently attend the National Postdoctoral Association conference in Boston, Mass. There is a vibrant community of talented young postdoctoral researchers striving for change and I’m proud to be a part of that movement. This blog will record our evolution, as individuals looking away from traditional careers, and as a community fighting for survival.