Webinars are such an amazing educational opportunity, and a great way to gather useful tips and insight on new (or new to you) lab techniques. Here are some links to a few I've watched, and some I hope to watch sometime soon. What a great resource, I am so enamoured with webinars!
If you have others to suggest, please let me know, this is a work in progress.
AAAS/Science: AAAS has put up a variety of webinars, definitely leaning toward biomedical interests from what I can see, but there are still a few useful ones for the geomicrobiologically inclined. I watched the webinar on the qPCR MIQE guidelines a few months ago. It was really well put together, the presentations were by experts in the field, with practical suggestions, and a chance for feedback from those watching the presentations. Plus you can view them anytime after the presentation on the AAAS/Science website: http://www.sciencemag.org/site/marketing/webinar/
Sigma-Aldrich: Sigma and co have put up a barrage of webinars. I've watched a few on qPCR and I thought they were great, they range from beginner to expert level. They also offer webinars on topics such as HPLC, proteomics, and synthetic chemistry. Hopefully more webinars are coming? Hint hint Sigma! I found their sign up and log in procedure for the qPCR seminars was a bit maddening but worth the time (I think if you bookmark each seminar you can skip the hassle of signing in too!)
NACE webinars: corrosion themed, one to explore http://events.nace.org/webinars/OnDemand/upcoming.asp
APECS webinars - weekly career development webinars from the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists. Easy sign up, user friendly interface with chat, the speaker will address viewers chat comments in real time. Small enough groups that during the Q&A session your questions will get answered! Past webinars are archived and can be watched on demand. More info here: http://apecs.is/webinars
to be continued....
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Writing for the peer reviewed literature - get that first draft moving!
A few weeks ago I discovered a new weapon to add to my writing arsenal. Whatever your scientific discipline, I think you (or your students) might find this exercise helpful for writing papers for peer reviewed publication. The tool is the Applied and Environmental Microbiology (AEM) short form article: http://aem.asm.org/misc/journal-ita_org.dtl#04
Whether or not you plan to actually submit a paper to AEM in this format, writing a short form paper draft can be a useful method to tackle a manuscript, especially if you have trouble getting started.
The basic format is:
Title (keep it short)
Running Title (54 characters and spaces max)
Abstract (50 words max)
Body (1000 words max, no section breaks, combine methods, results and discussion)
Figures and tables (kept to a minimum)
References
The beauty of the short form AEM paper is it is SHORT. so you have to distill your thoughts down to the essential. The strict word limit really force you to focus your presentation. For example: 50 word abstract (!!). Initially, I misread the title requirements and though the running title limit was the character limit on the title - this is actually a great exercise too, it is very hard to compose a 54 character title! Maybe a bit too hard - but it does force you to be as succinct and relevant as possible.
Within a few hours you can have a rough draft in your hands. If you are unsure about the direction you want the paper to take, you can write another one. Why not try out different ways to present your work and determine the most appropriate and relevant way to present your results? The AEM short draft format is probably not the format you'll stick with for your second draft or onwards. Chances are your final product will need to be much longer and divided into sections (intro, methods, results, discussion). Thus, it is much easier to explore the presentation approach for your work at the first draft stage where the manuscript is short and easy to follow, then in later drafts where you can get lost in the forest of information presented.
If nothing else, using this method can help you get that first draft on the table to work from - better to start from somewhere than nowhere!
Whether or not you plan to actually submit a paper to AEM in this format, writing a short form paper draft can be a useful method to tackle a manuscript, especially if you have trouble getting started.
The basic format is:
Title (keep it short)
Running Title (54 characters and spaces max)
Abstract (50 words max)
Body (1000 words max, no section breaks, combine methods, results and discussion)
Figures and tables (kept to a minimum)
References
The beauty of the short form AEM paper is it is SHORT. so you have to distill your thoughts down to the essential. The strict word limit really force you to focus your presentation. For example: 50 word abstract (!!). Initially, I misread the title requirements and though the running title limit was the character limit on the title - this is actually a great exercise too, it is very hard to compose a 54 character title! Maybe a bit too hard - but it does force you to be as succinct and relevant as possible.
Within a few hours you can have a rough draft in your hands. If you are unsure about the direction you want the paper to take, you can write another one. Why not try out different ways to present your work and determine the most appropriate and relevant way to present your results? The AEM short draft format is probably not the format you'll stick with for your second draft or onwards. Chances are your final product will need to be much longer and divided into sections (intro, methods, results, discussion). Thus, it is much easier to explore the presentation approach for your work at the first draft stage where the manuscript is short and easy to follow, then in later drafts where you can get lost in the forest of information presented.
If nothing else, using this method can help you get that first draft on the table to work from - better to start from somewhere than nowhere!
Friday, August 14, 2009
Sunfish!
I'd never heard of the Ocean Sunfish before; we spotted this one on a sampling expedition this week. I'm not sure which species this is, I suspect it's a Mola Mola but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. here are a few photos, and check out this
website for more info:
http://www.oceansunfish.org
website for more info:
http://www.oceansunfish.org
The fish is lying on its side in the photo above, and from the tail fin shape I think it was a Mola mola (Roundtailed or Common mola).
Friday, July 31, 2009
Beautiful bacteria!
This is an image of a gorgeous sulfurous spring at one of my field sites, note the purple sulfur (unconfirmed, possibly purple non-sulfur) bacteria in the center. The image is about 10 cm widthwise.I used an inoculum of these bacteria for a Winogradsky column I started a month ago, they are growing beautifully - stay tuned for more photos!
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Taming the fastidious organism
Biogeomicro term of the day: Fastidious organism
"An organism that has complex nutritional requirements"
ref: http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Fastidious_organism
Here is an open access paper using this term:
Degnan AJ, Sonzogni WC & Standridge JH (2003) Development of a Plating Medium for Selection of Helicobacter pylori from Water Samples. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 69(5): 2914-2918
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/69/5/2914
Though I don't study human pathogens, I do work with organisms that are difficult to isolate from their more persistent "weedy" companions. The following quote from this paper seemed to sum up the challenge particularly well:
This sentence really sums up the focus of my quest for this week!
"An organism that has complex nutritional requirements"
ref: http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Fastidious_organism
Here is an open access paper using this term:
Degnan AJ, Sonzogni WC & Standridge JH (2003) Development of a Plating Medium for Selection of Helicobacter pylori from Water Samples. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 69(5): 2914-2918
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/69/5/2914
Though I don't study human pathogens, I do work with organisms that are difficult to isolate from their more persistent "weedy" companions. The following quote from this paper seemed to sum up the challenge particularly well:
developing an acceptable selective medium for H. pylori in water presented the classical microbiological problem of finding a medium that is nutritionally rich enough to resuscitate and grow a fastidious organism while managing to inhibit the growth of all the other organisms found in water samples.
This sentence really sums up the focus of my quest for this week!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
virtual journal club - vocab in context
Ok, I have a plan!
I'm going to post various geomicrobiological vocabulary words to this blog and to my Twitter account. First to Twitter, then compiled once a week to this blog. With each definition I'd post a link to an open-access journal article where the word is used in context.
So for the scientists who follow this blog (hopefully a few eventually!) it could function as a sort of virtual bite-sized journal club. Don't worry, I won't ask you to make any presentations!
For the non-scientists you'll get some insight into what sort of work is being done out there in geomicrobiology and related fields - the kind of work that may not be sexy enough to get into science news but is still exciting (IMHO!). Science literature is pretty heavy stuff to the uninitiated of course, so here is some advice to get you started: just read the abstract, the intro, and the conclusion. They are generally written to be fairly comprehensible to the average scientist who isn't an expert in the specific topic of the paper. So you might have a fighting chance of understanding it if you read those bits, and you won't get bogged down in the minutiae of the methods and results sections. Unless you want to of course!
If anyone wants to post back references to peer-reviewed papers they'd like to highlight on the topics I cover, you are welcome to post them in the comments on my blog. I'm going to stick with journals that provide public access so anyone looking at the blog can see the articles I post. I would recommend you do the same but don't let it hold you back from highlighting a good one if you are itching to share it.
A few (oversimplified) definitions before we get started:
geomicrobiology (and biogeochemistry): science occurring at the interface of the fields of biology, microbiology, geology, and geochemistry.
Journal club: a group of students and/or scientists getting together to discuss papers from the peer-reviewed literature (scientific journals). The point is to learn more about new scientific discoveries, and also to critically evaluate other scientists' work.
I'm going to post various geomicrobiological vocabulary words to this blog and to my Twitter account. First to Twitter, then compiled once a week to this blog. With each definition I'd post a link to an open-access journal article where the word is used in context.
So for the scientists who follow this blog (hopefully a few eventually!) it could function as a sort of virtual bite-sized journal club. Don't worry, I won't ask you to make any presentations!
For the non-scientists you'll get some insight into what sort of work is being done out there in geomicrobiology and related fields - the kind of work that may not be sexy enough to get into science news but is still exciting (IMHO!). Science literature is pretty heavy stuff to the uninitiated of course, so here is some advice to get you started: just read the abstract, the intro, and the conclusion. They are generally written to be fairly comprehensible to the average scientist who isn't an expert in the specific topic of the paper. So you might have a fighting chance of understanding it if you read those bits, and you won't get bogged down in the minutiae of the methods and results sections. Unless you want to of course!
If anyone wants to post back references to peer-reviewed papers they'd like to highlight on the topics I cover, you are welcome to post them in the comments on my blog. I'm going to stick with journals that provide public access so anyone looking at the blog can see the articles I post. I would recommend you do the same but don't let it hold you back from highlighting a good one if you are itching to share it.
A few (oversimplified) definitions before we get started:
geomicrobiology (and biogeochemistry): science occurring at the interface of the fields of biology, microbiology, geology, and geochemistry.
Journal club: a group of students and/or scientists getting together to discuss papers from the peer-reviewed literature (scientific journals). The point is to learn more about new scientific discoveries, and also to critically evaluate other scientists' work.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Bio-Geo-Micro-Blog!
I am creating this blog as a companion page to my twitter account of the same name, as a place where I can expound a bit more if I don't have enough space on twitter, and for posting pictures. It's an experiment. :-)
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