So I have reached the point in a PhD student’s life where, though there is still much work to be done in the thesis lab, it is time to start looking forward a little. And while thinking about where to go and what to work on as a postdoc, I realized something: I don’t know very much about science. Forget science— I don’t know very much about biology, even. And since this is likely to be my last summer without the pressures of paper submitting and thesis writing before the end of grad school, I have decided to spend it attempting to expand my biological horizons as much as I possibly can.
And so, I announce the formation of the Lonely Hearts Journal Club, where I will read two papers— one on something within the field of neuroscience, or I’ll feel guilty about abandoning my specialization completely, and one on any other topic in the biological sciences— every two days. I will discuss these papers here, because, as this is the Lonely Hearts Journal Club, I’m the only one reading them. And I will pick a venue outside the couch in my apartment to have my “discussions” in, otherwise I will probably just fold laundry or watch old episodes of MTV’s “Engaged and Underage” instead of getting any work done.
First up:
Mathy et al., Neuron, 2009 (“Encoding of Oscillations by Axonal Bursts in Inferior Olive Neurons”).
Li et al., Cell, 2009 (“Collapse of Germline piRNAs in the Absence of Argonaute3 Reveals Somatic piRNAs in Flies”).
What a good idea!
For your general paper, how about posting at the The Good Paper Journal Club? Get things stirring there.
yep great idea, I impress from your courage being in the final year of phd…hahhaha.
yea we will read the discussion about the
papers
c u
Another way to make things “less lonely” and get some traffic to boot, is to post code allowing Research Blogging to pick up the journal clubs for their site. This integrates fine with NN blogs and is a nice little site. Setup is simple once the overlordz have approved your blog.