I finally signed up for Google Reader last week after reading Bala’s great post last week on Google Reader for Academics.

Setting this up brought my attention to iGoogle, another very useful Google service.

iGoogle allows the user to create a personalised start page. One of it’s main features is the ability to add all sorts of useful gadgets written by Google and independent developers. Here are the top 10 molecular and cell biology-related iGoogle gadgets: Read more »

It’s Friday again, and that means ‘around the blogs.’ Included are a few links to topics on personal development, science itself, and public understanding of science.

Giant neural stem cells in Times Square - The two winners of GE Healthcare’s 2007 IN Cell Image Competition went on display on the NBC screen in New York City’s Times Square last week. Follow the link and check out the rest of the images, including a lot of gorgeous fluorescent microscopy. (see the image on the right for the winner by popular vote)
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The Howard Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has announced a $300 million competition to support the USA’s best early career scientists in biological and medical disciplines.

The recipients of the seventy available awards will be selected from researchers who have led independent laboratories for two to six years at one of the 200 eligible U.S. medical schools, universities and research institutes. They will receive a six year, non-renewable funding award, which includes full salary and research support and will remain affiliated with their home institutes.

The initiative is designed to plug the funding gap for scientists who are nearing the end of the institutional start-up funds awarded with their first faculty position, and are therefore coming under pressure to apply for federal research grants.

“We know there is a tremendous need for flexible funding to support scientists who are two to six years into their independent research careers. This is a critical time for these scientists because many have not yet been able to obtain the kind of stable funding that would permit them to move their own research in creative new directions,” said Jack Dixon, HHMI vice president and chief scientific officer.

HHMI plans to choose the recipients on the basis of “people, not projects” and hopes that the funding awards will allow these early career scientists the freedom to explore and, if necessary, to change the direction of their research.

More information on the competition, it’s eligibility requirements and how to apply can be found by clicking here.

After yesterday’s bit of whimsical late-night creativity, I thought that today might be a good time to share the results of the 2008 Wellcome Image Awards. These images have been captured using both traditional and cutting-edge imaging techniques, from the simple light microscope to the latest in computer-aided imaging. Their artistry is astounding, and brings to mind what a biophysicist colleague of mine told me last year - that whereas physics had little more than pretty equations and graphs to offer, biology was replete with fascinating images that capture the mind.

Credit Lorna McInroy, Wellcome Images: Cultured colon cancer cells showing the nuclei stained with DAPI in blue, the actin cytoskeleton in red and plectin (isoform 1k) in green. Plectin interacts with cytoskeletal actin, affecting its behaviour. This subtype of plectin promotes the migration of cells and may affect metastasis. Read more »

And now for something completely different…

It’s always good to introduce a little levity to the lab, before we as researchers begin to take ourselves too seriously. With that in mind, below the fold, I have a handful of YouTube videos shared by molecular biology grad students who apparently needed to introduce a little creativity to their late nights in the lab.
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If you regularly use online DNA sequence manipulation programs, your life might be about to get just a little easier.

At Bitesize Bio, we were becoming tired of jumping from site to site to get the sequence manipulation tools we needed. One site for reverse complementation, another for translation and yet another for restriction analysis… it was all just a bit irritating. Read more »

This week’s around the blogs has stacks of yeast plates, tear-free onions and garage bio labs. Dare you miss it? Read more »

Relating to my recent comments on seminars, a beginning grad student or undergrad researcher might wonder why journal club is such a good thing. Or you might not be wondering, since the benefits are more or less the same: digesting, discussing and analyzing research findings. But whether or not you realize the benefits of journal club participation, I’ve noticed that a lot of young PhD and Master’s candidates horribly under-prepared to present a paper. As a result, I thought I would enumerate some of the commonly held expectations of the person presenting the day’s journal article.
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• Do you *really* know what you’re doing when you search for articles in PubMed?
• Are you familiar with Boolean operators?
• What does “MeSH” mean to you?
• Can you locate (and use) the Limits tab? History? Details?
• Have you set up automatic updates with MyNCBI?
• Do you know how PubMed relates to the other NCBI databases?

If you’re like me (before I wised up to the search power of PubMed) you probably just type in your topic of interest and press Go. And then you get back about 8 billion results, which—this is just a guess—is far more than you’re likely to read.

Here are a few basic tips to help you get the most out of your PubMed searches without wasting a lot of time slogging through pages of results, thus getting you back to the bench ASAP. Unless, of course, you’re avoiding the wet lab…not that I’ve ever used literature searches and background reading as an excuse to step away from the PCR machine… Read more »

Google reader is one the weapons available in an academic’s arsenal to combat information overload in the Internet era.

Part of research involves keeping oneself informed of the development happening in one’s own field as well as other closely related. It should not come as a surprise that these avenues of information are diverse, but nevertheless rich when it comes to the Internet.

Part of your research schedule may involve tracking literature, most probably using Pubmed. Still, most use journal eTOCs (electronic Table of Contents) that pop into your email inbox whenever an issue is published. Granted these methods get the job done, but there is more a efficient way of doing this routine. This opinion is not only echoed by techies but by several others in academia as well. I wrote a post on the same topic, albeit a very brief one, which attracted emails from several academics and is why I thought of making a detailed post at Bitesize Bio. Read more »