Monthly Archives: October 2010

The NIH has just announced that in response to complaints that their new scoring system is too hard to interpret, they have decided, yet again, to revamp the way grant applications are scored. This new system will be rolled out … Continue reading →

In the class I’m teaching this semester on controversies in neuroscience, we had earlier talked about the conflict between Golgi and Ramón y Cajal regarding the nature of the neuron. Cajal argued that neurons are independent units while Golgi argued … Continue reading →

Recently a non-science friend asked me “How is your research going?” I hate answering this question because I never know what to say. Do I say, “my new grad student has been breaking all her micropipettes and killing all the … Continue reading →

This year we had a bumper crop of habanero peppers in our garden, and I decided to pickle them (see recipe here). So last weekend I had the Big Pickling Event and I spent about an hour slicing and dicing … Continue reading →

Our house is literally strewn with books. Everywhere you look there are little piles of them, some just lying around on the floor and stairs by themselves, some on the furniture, some balanced precariously on the bannister. One of the … Continue reading →

So today there was a Big Important Faculty Meeting at my university and we were all supposed to go vote on some important issues of relevance to the faculty. To expedite the voting process, they decided to provide us all … Continue reading →

So over at Lab Spaces we were asked the question: what would you be doing if you were not doing science? This is tricky, because you can answer this in a couple of different ways. One is, if I were … Continue reading →

One of my least favorite things about my job (or rather one of my least favorite things in general) is dealing with bureaucracy. One of the worst bureaucracies at my university is the grants management office. In theory, they are … Continue reading →