Skip the postdoc? The National Institutes of Health has begun a new program that allows PhDs and MDs to become Principal Investigators — without doing a postdoc. The Early Independence Awards (DP5) offer up to $250,000 in annual direct costs for five years for the “pool of talented young scientists who have the intellect, scientific…
Adult lemurs appear to play as a way of breaking the ice with males not a part of the established social group, according to a recent study published in PLoS ONE. Observing wild populations of lemurs, sociobiologist Elisabetta Palagi of the University of Pisa in Italy and her colleagues found that males tended to play…
For this week’s Culture Friday, Jenny Rohn tells us what it was like to rap with Baba Brinkman. The intersection of science and art is an uncertain landscape, treading a fine line between asthetics, entertainment, education and outreach. Scoring high marks in all four is a rare success – and its failures can make you…
if you make a discovery, there’s no other way to gain the confidence that you can make a discovery Martin Raff (read his profile at The Scientist) gives advice to young scientists. He says that it’s important to do something great early in your career, to boost confidence; which means placing yourself in a position…
What do we know about molecular interactions, and what can they tell us about rational drug design? A medicinal chemist’s guide to molecular interactions1 summarizes the state of the art in a lengthy but fascinating account. Combining literature data and searches of structural databases, the authors conclude (among other things) that ‘holistic’ models are required…
MacArthur Fellows announced Last week, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named 23 new MacArthur Fellows for 2010. Among the winners of the nicknamed “genius” awards: Drew Berry, a biomedical animator at Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, who illustrates cellular and molecular processes (see his animation of…
What do Jonathan Ross, Brian Cox, Simon Singh and Ben Goldacre have in common? Along with comic book artists, television presenters, astrobiologists, science journalists, chess champions and even an ex-Member of Parliament, they’re all featured in the 2011 Geek Calendar, a celebration of British nerdiness (and no, I’m not going to get in the geeks…
Just before the fascinating article on Francis Crick’s correspondence in today’s Nature, there’s a feature by Brendan Maher on sabotage in the laboratory. Vipul Bhrigu, erstwhile postdoc at the University of Michigan, narrowly escaped a jail sentence after pleading guilty to sabotaging a PhD student’s experiments.
Do trees get old? This is not a trivial question: indeterminate growth distinguishes plants from many (if not most) animals, and so while they obviously get older, they do not necessarily age, or senesce. But it turns out that accumulation of mutations in very old Aspens affects pollen quality1, which means that clonal trees do…
Our final clip of Elizabeth Blackburn, recorded at the recent EMBO 2010 meeting in Barcelona. Here, Professor Blackburn talks about the possible mechanisms that link telomere length to cardiovascular disease. F1000: What potential (molecular) mechanism could link telomeres and cardiovascular disease? Liz Blackburn (paraphrased): One of the things we’ve been looking at is the effect…
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