First, a handy little reminder on group meetings from Biocurious. The suggestions are so simple, and yet so many people in group meetings do not think about what they want to say ahead of time, or they drag on and on. And those that respond to questions with “I don’t know”, as a full answer, [...]

Three selected articles for your blog-reading pleasure: The Stimulus – How much is marked for science funding? Let’s not mess things up this time! The last major increase to the NIH caused major problems years later. Money was simply pumped into new and existing grants, PIs hired many new grad students and postdocs, and the [...]

I’m a frequent lurker on a wide variety of life science blogs, and one of those blogs that I’ve recently started to really appreciate is What’s New in Life Science Research at Scienceblogs. As a blog it has promise, although I’m hoping that some of the posts go into greater depth with their analyses of [...]

Welcome back from the Winter Holidays, it’s time to start the regular ‘Around the Blogs’ segment again. I’ve taken notice of a handful of interesting articles around the blogs on human genetics, so I’ll focus on that this week. Genetic differences between human populations: more drift than selection? Dan MacArthur points to a paper claiming [...]

Books About DNA: DNA: Promise and Peril In one of a series of posts on books on DNA, Hsien-Hsien discusses a book about the genetic revolution and its implications for our lives. The Problem with Publication-Driven Science Mike laments the consequences of publication-driven research, and how it can inspire problems associated with secrecy and withholding [...]

Three story highlights from related blogs: All Graduate Student Supervisors Take Note “This lovely piece has been circulating of late, but Sonke has been kind enough to allow the SCQ to present his “Advice for Potential Graduate Students” as a handy dandy pin-up, suitable for pinning up in some visible area of your lab.” FDA [...]

This week’s highlights from Around the Blogs include shakes in the lab, confused science journalists and brain tissue from stem cells…

Our highlights from the blogosphere this week include cloning woolly mammoths, the logistics of tissue culture entertainment and Google’s efforts to save the world. Back from the dead. Sandra Porter at Discovering Biology in a Digital World covers the recent cloning of some long frozen mice by a Japanese group, which could take us one [...]

Six highlights from “Around the Blogs”: Help High School Kids do Genetic Engineering and Make Glowing Bacteria “Why should professional scientists have all the fun?” Sandra shares stories of cool stuff in the classroom. Talking Points for NIH Funded Science Drug Monkey has some suggestions for scientists venturing into politics, amid the height of the [...]

Why Do We Care Where We Publish “How can we assess the competence of a scientist? Past performance is, realistically, the only way to judge future performance. Past performance can only be assessed by looking at their publications.” RO1s in Decline The hard data on the decline of federal science funding in the National Institutes [...]