Squash science

One of the peculiarities of the campus where I work at the moment, is that it is in the middle of nowhere. Beautiful grounds, nice people, surrounded by tiny villages, or as a friend called them, groups of houses of very wealthy and most of the time elderly people. So, not much goes on here outside our comfy offices. This has one good thing, our productivity is super high, specially mine since I'm prone to daydreaming and staring at walls or anything else stareble. But there is a point when just enjoying nature, the rabbits hopping around, and wondering if we will die if we eat the mushrooms that sprouted next to the building door is not enough.
Doing science is a creative process that is quite temperamental, very much like doing any form of art. I am convinced that there must be a muse for the sciences as there is one for music, poetry or astronomy. As a matter of fact my other blog (Confesiones de Narcissus) came into being because I was fighting off writers block. So I needed to write something, anything. This is when distractions become necessary, and living in the middle of nowhere becomes a liability.
I don´t know what motivated it, I suppose certain boredom with a specific research topic from one of my office-mates, but a intra-lab squash tournament was organised. A few of us did play squash regularly, others, like me, have never even been in a squash court, but we entered nonetheless. The outcome was completely unexpected. Everyone got squash head from day one and we all are really committed to it. We are even thinking of carrying on with playing squash every week and even having a campus tournament. It was like we were injected with some new found enthusiasm, that not only got us very active physically, but socially and at least in my case, intellectually.
This squash revolution only proves what has been suggested previously by some people, that happy workers are better workers. And fights the notion of having to be warming up the chair for 8 hours straight to get your job done. Sadly, I know some cases in the scientific community where grad students and postdocs are still expected to do chair-hours and can only leave after the boss, as if they were bureaucrats. Maybe it's just me and my overly active, curious and borderline ADD mind, but art or good science cannot be forced, and playing squash is a good way to help things flow naturally.

The PCR* god, or when science meets magical thinking

I believe that a lot of us will feel identified with the title of this entry, even though some will not admit it in the open. The general stereotype of scientists, which is mostly true by the way, is that we are atheist, materialists, and highly critical. That's how we approach our work and man things in our everyday life. But despite what TV shows want to portray, we are also human, an thus, subject to despair, confusion and panic.
It is widely accepted, that religions arose as part of a psychological and social need to explain the unknown, and provide comfort for the collective. So, in the field of science, where we deal with unknowns on a day to day basis, how do we deal with an experiment that fails over and over when everything seems to be working just fine?
How do we explain the existence of a stubborn bacteria that refuses to die no matter how many times we put it in the autoclave? How about the typical case of pens, reagents or even paper towels disappearing and reappearing in a seemingly random pattern?
When we reach these levels of desperation, we scientists only have one refuge: the supernatural.

Several supernatural entities have been described so far populating labs around the world:

The lab midget: A trickster, like aluxes and pixies.

The PCR god: to whom we all pray to get clear bands and specific PCR products.

Saint Charles Darwin: the patron of all evolutionary analyses
Saint Gregor Mendel: patron of geneticists. Protects against PCR contamination.

I believe there must be many more. Maybe we should make a worldwide survey and write a grant proposal...





His holiness the PCR god inspired this representation on the person of E. Scheinvar.



* PCR (Polymerase chain reaction): It is a technique that serves to make many copies of an specific fragment of DNA. Like what they do in CSI to catch the killer.

Women in science, or a follow-up to the zombie Marie Curie cartoon

The role of women in science has been a recurring topic in my circle of friends lately. My circle of female friends that is, not all of them scientists but somehow related to the academic life.
It is widely believed that academia is an ivory tower, a place of virtue that is less subject to the prejudices that afflict the rest of the world. So many "outsiders" tend to think that sexism and misogyny are absent in the scientific community. However, here and there I've seen articles written (mostly by women, but not only) about the many struggles of women that want to make it in the scientific arena. We were inclined to think that only women like Rosalind Franklin in the 50s or the many other before her were the ones that had to endure the lack of recognition, that even Marie Curie had to go through once her husband died. But to our horror, it still happens. Is not so obvious, but is still there.
A friend of mine and fellow blogger just wrote about how in an important Ecology conference, all the plenary sessions were conducted by men. (Her blog, here).
The same I noticed here at my campus of the Imperial College, all professors or senior researchers are also men. Something unusual, given that in the biological sciences there is nearly a 50/50 proportion of males and females at the undergraduate levels, being women slightly more represented. However, as a french researcher pointed out to me also recently, most women drop out of science once they reached certain age. They complete their PhDs but few of them continue to pursue a scientific career. Is it because we are less capable, or something else?
Having met a lot of bright and driven women in science, most of them young PhD students, I refuse to believe that is the lack of talent. However, the academic life is quite incompatible with family life, a goal in a lot of women's lives, that is also considered to be our main goal and mainly our sole responsibility. First, being a postdoc is hard, the salaries are not high and the contracts are short. Then there is the moving around chasing jobs that can be anywhere in the world. Try to do that with a husband and a baby. Then, to get a tenure, one has to work very long hours. Without childcare and an understanding partner, it is virtually impossible. So, for women, it is a choice between a family and a career. A choice usually men do not have to make, because they have a wife to take care of the kids.
But what about women who have made it? They are scarce, many of them are either single or childless (in Europe is common), and in some countries they still do not hold high positions in their institutions. How many female deans are there? Also a few. I can´t help to think that this represents a terrible waste of talent and of money. A waste of money spent training these female scientists that later decided to drop out because they simply could not find a way to combine to have a job they love with also having any sort of personal life. But whose fault is it? Everyone's and nobody's at the same time.
As a woman trying to make it in science and with no intention in the near future to drop out, I think we need to be more flexible. Not to expect to have the house, the golden retriever, the car and the country club membership that was supposed to be the ideal of the middle class. We chose a career that is demanding and requires sacrifice, like any other creative career, so we have to be prepared to compromise, like artists seem to be able to do without thinking too much about it. We also need to put the guilt aside and realize that the world will not end if we leave the baby with daddy for an evening, or two, or three, while we work on a paper, or need to go to yoga class. Being a model housewife and future Nobel prize winner in one is kind of unattainable. For all of this to be possible we also have to find the right partner, but that's a another topic.
Then, there is the system. Simple things like daycare centers at universities or research institutes could do a great deal. Also more flexibility with schedules and the possibility to work at home more often. This happens in many places, but in some others, people are still expected to do chair hours.
Also, some prejudices have to be eliminated. Women do not get automatically stupid once they have a child. And in general, women who behave like women are not less intelligent. Nail polish and shoe shopping are not incompatible with being able to understand Coalescent theory or multivariate statistics. Nor being polite and speaking softly. Many areas of academia are still ruled by people who think that speaking louder will make you right, and that being an asshole is a requirement to be a professor (with many many many fortunate exceptions). So, no wonder why many women convince themselves that this is not what they want not to have to put up with those things.
Obviously, the issue of sexism in science (as any form of sexism elsewhere) has no easy solution. Many attitudes need to be changed, and the change will be easier and more natural if it comes form individuals, and not from the top in the form of positive discrimination schemes that only cause more resentment.
For the moment, I will follow the advice of zombie Marie Curie and I will keep working hard.

Cute vs. plain odd

I already wrote about how some things in science are just a matter of fashion. There are the latest hits, things everybody wants to do to get a piece of funds, fame or media exposure. Such topics, in biology at least could be: genetically modified organisms (as a threat), genomics (of course), extraterrestrial life (we saw a piece of that a few weeks ago), biomedicine (nothing to say here, except when they report things like "finding the gene of homosexuality"), and of course, the study and conservation of charismatic animals. This is all very well, however, focusing all efforts, money and publicity in campaigns to save the pandas, baby seals or cheetahs are taking away the focus (and the money) from preserving whole ecosystems and maybe not so cute creatures, but interesting anyway. This is important because most of life on Earth does not qualify (is not even close) as being cute. So, what will happen to ugly animals or lets say, plants or fungi, or even worse, moulds or smelly algae! Here is an example:

The first needs no introduction. And yes, it is adorable and it should be saved from extinction! But equally rare and even more threatened is the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), a species of salamander that retained characteristics of a juvenile stage (keeps the gills like a tadpole) in a process called neoteny. This species is a narrow endemic of the wetlands of Mexico City and is therefore almost extinct. It has been used as a model organism for studies of animal development, but that has not helped the conservation of this species, because well, is not cute and fluffy. So I propose a PR campaign for the axolotl, maybe turn it into some kind of super hero, like the Xochimilco Avenger, or something like that. Just a thought...

Pop vs. Indie

Escherichia coli

Pelagibacter ubique: so popular that has not been formally named yet.
But we owe part of our oxygen to them (more info here)

* I hope you all know who these ones are

Science as a competitive sport

Lately, I've been having many conversations with friends about the science field and how difficult it is to get in and stay there. Our lunchtime conversations usually revolve around the fact that many of us live in a constant state of stress and anxiety to get the work done, to get the latest paper published, so we could ultimately get a job, a proper job. It is like a competitive sport, or like being an American Idol hopeful, or a little bit of both. Our professional lives are in constant evaluation, is like having to win match after match, tournament after tournament. But not only that, even after we manage to produce a good quality piece of science, the impact of it will not only depend on how well designed the experiments were or how well we manage to explain the data, but also on the trending opinions of the public. Is like getting a film or a record reviewed. You can produce an amazing piece of art film, but it will flunk at the box office while Transformers X takes the millions. So, we not only have to win the match, we also have to please the crowd!

Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez pleasing the crowd

So, like in the music world we have pop stars, that get their records sold no matter what's in them, in science, publishing research about on a model organism of a trendy topic is far easier than publishing work on a endangered endemic from the mountains of Chiapas (unless that endangered endemic seems like it came from Mars, like Lacandonia schismatica, but it wasn't easy even then). However, those model organisms rarely represent what is normal or common in the natural world. For example, Arabidopsis thaliana is the model organism for plants, flowering plants that is. It was chosen mainly because it is annual, easy to grow in controlled conditions and has a very small genome (for a plant). However, the majority of plants have larger genomes (some of the largest there are), many live for hundreds of years and much more picky of where they grow. The model organism for Bacteria is Escherichia coli, that usually lives in our gut. And again, it was chosen because it's easy to handle, but many other bacteria, far more interesting bacteria, have been completely forgotten because they live in acid ponds near volcanoes, or float around in the ocean, minding their own business and producing the oxygen we breathe. So, E. coli is like the Lady Gaga of bacteria, but we nobody would ever think that all the music produced by mankind is represented by the works Lady Gaga. In science it happens that way sometimes.
So, in summary it's about two things: competing all the time against oneself and others, and pleasing the public, and all that without the pay check of Lionel Messi, the private jet of Roger Federer, or the wardrobe of Sarah Jessica Parker. So, why are we still here? Why not look for an office job like everyone else? Well, the romantic answer, which in my case is also 90% true, is because we love what we do. Research is like playing Sherlock Holmes but without the murders (most of the time). Is just fun. Also, the other 10% of why I do this, is because this is what I am good at. I have no other skill. I can't sing, dance or play an instrument. I am lousy at sports, and I sometimes have issues with authority, so no office job for me.
Despite all that, science is not that bad. It gives me the chance of traveling a lot and go to exotic locations where literally nobody else has been, meet interesting people, and of course, gives me the rare satisfaction of seeing my name in print. So there is no other choice but to prepare for the next match, the next tournament, keep training, stay away from injuries and maybe, just maybe, I will win the trophy in the end.

P.S. Maybe we can help fund the private jet, the wardrobe, or at least our next research by making a reality show about PhD students. There will be enough drama, tears and cat fights, that's for sure!

Internet junkies

Now that I'll be crossing the pond to the British Isles, I thought it was appropiate to start a blog in english. The topics will be, well, whatever my restless brain cells come up with, hence the title. I had some trouble naming it, since I came up with this nice title in spanish but couldn´t find the right adjetive to convey entire meaning of the world inquieto. So I came up with some aproximation that also sounds funny.
My first contribution is actually very appropiate for the media, because is about out increasing dependence on the internet. Some may even call it an addiction. And maybe it is. This saturday morning was like any other. Lazy start, cup of coffee, maybe finish downloading an old chapter of a tv series I like to watch. And right around 26% of download it just died. I tried everything to reboot the router, nothing. A moment later my roomate, who just had woken up, came running down the stairs to check up on the router also, but he found out what the problem was. We had forgot to pay the internet bill. Major tragedy! It was 10 am in a Saturday morning and we didn´t have a working internet connection! What were we going to do?
But he moved fast, he was truly anxious about it. He managed to get our other roomate to go and pay the bill as soon as he could, and at some point there we were, sitting infront of a blue box waiting for the flashing orange light to turn green and steady. In the mean time, we talked about how it would be to spend a whole weekend without internet. We are not only using it as a source of information, but is our main entertainment. We have become so dependent of having everything right at hand, to be able to google anything at the slightest doubt we get or need of information, that we no longer can handle not knowing something for more than 5 minutes. The same with not knowing what our friends are up to every day. Well, I personally think it's kind of absurd to be posting on facebook where you are at any given time. I personally don´t care at all if any of my fb friends are getting a hair cut, buying toilet paper or waiting in line at the bank. That is simply oversharing, and only a potential kidnapper could possibly be interested in knowing when you check in your job, or a bar or boyfriend's place. The same goes with food. Some people like to post everythig they eat, as if they expected approval on their diet. I have been guilty of that myself, but in my defense, it was usually exotic food, or specially good one. So, if i ever end up eating stuffed marmot in the mongolian plains, I will definitely post it on facebook, be warned!
Ok, I drifted. The bottom line is that we are completely plugged. So much that we sometimes interact more with people online than in real life. We may be very well informed about what is happening in Lybia, but we may not know what is going on in our own neighborhood, just because is not on youtube. That is kind of scary, and reminds me of a science fiction novel called Hyperion by Dan Simmons that pictures a future where people had the connection to internet implanted in their brains. So, before we get to that point, maybe we should unplug ourselves more often.
Meanwhile, my download is done and I'm off to watch a video :P