ScienceBlogs

• December 30, 2009

• Mike the Mad Biologist

  Archives • About • RSS

  Do We Need More Scientists, or More Jobs for Scientists? I've been told by Very Senior People that 'in five years, there's going to be a massive wave a retirement of older faculty.' This, in my mind, ranks up there with the Friedman Unit and the Samuelson Unit (the length of time to the ULTIMATE DOOOMMM!!! of Social Security is always 30-38 years from the time of prediction). Until we create more science-related opportunities, in the private, public, and non-profit sectors, we are just creating an over-qualified, underpaid workforce.

• December 28, 2009

• DrugMonkey

  Archives • About • RSS

  Repost: The funding IS the science In a couple of comments to a recent post, people were exploring the concept of whether it matters if a particular individual is funded to do something since perhaps the other competing, well-funded labs will just do it anyway..

• December 24, 2009

• DrugMonkey

  Archives • About • RSS

  Repost: IFCN Clustering; A CRISP analysis Anyone spot the bunny hoppers?

• December 23, 2009

• Good Math, Bad Math

  Archives • About • RSS

  Academia vs Industry: an Updated Opinion One thing that continually amazes me is the amount of email I get from readers of this blog asking for career advice. I usually try to just politely decline; I don't think I'm particularly qualified to give personal advice...

• December 22, 2009

• DrugMonkey

  Archives • About • RSS

  CSR's "College of Reviewers" hits the streets From writedit we receive the tipoff to a new initiative of NIH's Center for Scientific Review. The Press Release says: CSR is sending invitations to about 2,500 members of the scientific community with a strong commitment to peer review and...

• December 21, 2009

• DrugMonkey

  Archives • About • RSS

  Anonymoustache brings the heat on NIH grant "gifts" Following our little discussion of whether or not NIH grants should be viewed as largesse or something a little more...professional, our good blog friend Anonymoustache teed off: Not to be framing anything here, but I believe the best analogy for...

• Uncertain Principles

  Archives • About • RSS

  Think of It as Kid Insurance Janet has a typically thoughtful post about tuition benefits, following on a proposal to eliminate tuition benefits for employees of the University of Illinois. Janet does a great job of rounding up the various pros and cons of the benefit...

• dezembro 20, 2009

• Ciência Ao Natural

  Archives • About • RSS

  What's Up, Doc? Uma prenda de Natal que recebi e ofereci, na 6ª feira dia 18 de Dezembro de 2009, na Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. O doutoramento. Foram anos de trabalho, milhares de quilómetros percorridos, bastantes tristezas, e muitas alegrias. Agora vou descansar... Para quem estiver interessado no abstract da minha tese (PDF). Referências: "Sauropodomorpha (Dinosauria, Saurischia) appendicular skeleton disparity: theoretical morphology and Compositional Data Analysis", Luis Azevedo Rodrigues Dissertation presented for the PhD degree in Sciences with the Doctor Europaeus Mention Unidad de Paleontología, Departamento de Biología. UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE MADRID Madrid, December 18, 2009 Supervised by Dr. Ángela D. Buscalioni Departamento...

• December 18, 2009

• DrugMonkey

  Archives • About • RSS

  Repost: The Big Bucks For some reason or other the recent discussions around here on the way we should view NIH grant money (largesse, fee-for-service) made me think this issue was worth raising again. While we're looking all....entitled you know. This post originally appeared...

• Mike the Mad Biologist

  Archives • About • RSS

  A Short Review of Nan Mooney's (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents The invisible electoral demographic.

• December 17, 2009

• DrugMonkey

  Archives • About • RSS

  On NIH funded research: Job or "gift"? I had a very fascinating comment pop up in a prior thread following a post which described the relationship between Congressional budget passing and the ability of the NIH to fund grants. This was motivated, I will remind you, by...

• DrugMonkey

  Archives • About • RSS

  Open Kvetch I am certain I am going to regret this.......

• December 15, 2009

• DrugMonkey

  Archives • About • RSS

  Never, ever, ever, nuh-uh, no way, ever trust a Dec 1 start date! This one you can chalk up to Congress

• December 11, 2009

• Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

  Archives • About • RSS

  What Were They Thinking? This American City has the Worst Street Naming System Evah!

• Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

  Archives • About • RSS

  Hamburger MakeUp Artistry This is food porn at its best: this video reveals that secrets of how to dress up a substandard hamburger and fries so they look like something you MUST have for lunch today -- and every day!

• December 10, 2009

• On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess

  Archives • About • RSS

  Ask Dr. Isis - Help Me with My HIgh School Aged (Maybe)Future Scientist Thank you all for indulging me a few days of sciencey-type meandering. I am now back in the saddle and back to my email box. I almost think I might be close to seeing the light of day. This letter...

• The World's Fair

  Archives • About • RSS

  Why I love my job (a.k.a. I get free stuff, sometimes awesome free stuff - anyone need an electron microscope?) Yesterday, I got this message: Subject: Free TEM? Hi David, We have an old (functional) Philips TEM 400 electron microscope that we're going to send away for scrap metal. I'd love to keep it for student training but we don't...

• December 9, 2009

• The World's Fair

  Archives • About • RSS

  O.K. So what is twitter good for? Some thoughts after a 3 week period. What is twitter good for? A slightly analytical look.

• December 8, 2009

• DrugMonkey

  Archives • About • RSS

  Your Grant in Review: The rebuttal to critique You should comfort yourself that you have a PO who is pulling for the project, get that R01 in and if you get a borderline score hope that the PO will be able to make the difference.

• Uncertain Principles

  Archives • About • RSS

  On Market Rates There's been a bit of a kerfuffle in the SF blogosphere about what writers should be paid for short fiction, which has led to a lot of people posting lists of their short fiction and what they were paid for...

• Mike the Mad Biologist

  Archives • About • RSS

  Post-Docs, Backup Plans, and Risk Versus Uncertainty Something to consider is that there is a scientific life outside of the tenure-track system, and it can be rewarding.

• December 7, 2009

• DrugMonkey

  Archives • About • RSS

  Dawkins rolls out some pretty tired and simplistic tropes about affirmative action Shall we score this simply as a missed opportunity or something more intentional?

• Uncertain Principles

  Archives • About • RSS

  Since the Last Progress Report, I Have Worked on This Progress Report It's that time of year again when I have to fill out my annual Faculty Activities Sheet, reporting on everything I did last academic year. Technically, I should've done this a while back, but it always slips into the December...

• December 3, 2009

• Uncertain Principles

  Archives • About • RSS

  Correlation, Causation, and Reputation I spent an inordinate amount of time yesterday reading an economics paper, specifically the one about academic salaries and reputations mentioned on the Freakonomics blog. There's a pdf available from that post, if you'd like to read it for yourself....

• Transcription and Translation

  Archives • About • RSS

  NIH Grants by Age The graph is from Are there too many PhDs? at Mendeley Blog In the U.S., we are constantly hearing about how the country is falling behind in science. We need more scientists to fill all of those jobs we...

Synthetic Biology

Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:

Pharyngula May 30, 2007

“Playing God”

The Loom January 31, 2008

"Frankenstein Was Here": Synthetic Biology as Graffiti

Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006

Build your own virus

See Also:

Cribsheet: Synthetic Biology
Seed’s downloadable science guide