Should I hire a postdoc or a technician? - Thoughts about managing an academic research lab.

Animal Rights Extremists kill at least a dozen mink - “….by releasing them from a mink farm. This is what happens when you set animals free without regard to the consequences.”

Used Postdocs - “Please dispose thoughtfully of your used postdocs.”

The Ends Justify the DNA - Informative post on Next Generation Sequencing and its applications.

10 Things about GE crops to scratch from your worry list (Sorry - link corrected) - As John Tierney points out, many consumers worry about things that are not actually a threat to human health or to the environment.

Useful RNAs? - “If more than 90% of the genome is ‘junk’ then why do cells make so much RNA from it?”

Evolution as the Recycler of the Cell’s Tools - Part 2 of a 3-part series on issues raised by the book The Plausibility of Life.

How to get scientists to adopt web 2.0 technologies.

It’s Friday, so let’s take a glance Around the Blogs and see what’s happening.

Science and Society
Banned Performance Enhancing Drug Classes
Basic Concepts: Crop Genetic Engineering

Publishing Science
Reed Elsevier Caught Copying My Content Without My Permission
Bring Me Your Huddled Manuscripts

Lab Life
Postdoc Personalities

The Science Itself
Solving the Cell: Will the Future of Biology be Boring?
Gene Transfer in Bacterial Arms Races

In this week’s round-up of bio-related blogs: The smell of the sea breeze, corporal punishment in the lab and a surprising side-dish that comes with your sushi.

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We’ve reached the end of another week here on Bitesize Bio, so let’s close with the usual survey of what’s happening Around the Blogs. I’m not linking to too many posts (just five), and am instead trying to pick quality over quantity.

I hope you find them interesting.
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We’ve reached the end of another week here on Bitesize Bio, so let’s close with the usual survey of what’s happening Around the Blogs. Luckily, the post titles speak for themselves…

Society

Which baby do you want? A dilemma for the 21st century parent-to-be
The goal of a science education
Scientists are excellent communicators, or for the more complete post title: “Depending on the medium and the context, many scientists can be and often are excellent communicators.”

Careers

How to blog, get tenure and prosper: Starting the blog (Anthropologist John Hawks recently got tenure, and blogged on it - go congratulate him!)
Graduate students and blogging

Using Resources

In(s) and Out(s) of Academia
Trendspotting: Molecular profiling data resources
Science schmience: How to make sense of a published study

Science

Epigenetics
Helicobacter pylori

Humor

Dent, I’ve found you! - Alex references a hilarious cartoon depicting the 9 types of Principal Investigators.

It’s time to look around those blogs again. On offer this week: The Tree of Science, a perfect Western at the first attempt and how to kill someone using an IPod Nano. Read more »

Here’s a list of blog posts worth passing along from the past couple of weeks, in the order I bookmarked them.
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In this week’s around the blogs - biorap, one-ton tomatoes and a PCR machine that fits into your pocket. Read more »

Some interesting and thought-provoking posts from “Around the Blogs.” Some are weeks-old… sorry ’bout that, but that’s what happens when you take a couple weeks off. Check ‘em out, starting with:

Graduate School and Teaching, AKA ‘Why Grad Students Should Teach,’ by guest Joel Corbo at Cosmic Variance. The post was written with physics students in mind, but applies equally well to biologists.
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This week you get two “around the blogs” articles for the price of one!
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