Of Schemes and Memes Blog

Best of nature.com blogs, SciLogs.com and Scitable: 19 – 25 January

Childhood Alzheimer’s

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Yevgeniy Grigoryev explains in the Spoonful of Medicine blog that a clinical trial will begin for a rare and fatal illness nicknamed “childhood Alzheimer’s.”

Addison and Cassidy Hempel  are seven-year-old identical twins who are among only about 500 people in the world with an extremely rare but fatal neurological disease that gradually destroys the young mind and body. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved any therapies for this rare disease, known as Niemann-Pick disease type C1 (NPC). So under normal circumstances, Addi and Cassi would not live through adolescence. But that fate is not yet sealed because in 2010 they became the first children in the world to start receiving injections of an experimental drug called cyclodextrin.

For more details about Addi and Cassi’s story, continue to the post and watch the interview they did with Good Morning America.


Windback Wednesdays

Every Wednesday for the next four weeks, the Nature Jobs blog will be looking at ways to help increase your chances of getting funding, highlighting useful content from the NatureJobs archives. They will be posting the articles on their social sites, including the blog, using the hashtag #windbackweds. To start, they take a look at how to get a pay rise in academia:

How long has it been since your last pay rise? For almost half of current respondents to a recent Naturejobs poll, the answer is more than two years – and with ever-increasing inflation, that’s effectively a year-on-year pay cut. So is there anything you can do to improve your salary prospects, particularly in academia, where there is often a lack of flexibility in pay?

Continue to the post for more salary tips and keep an eye on the hashtag.

University investigates German research minister over plagiarism allegations

Quirin Schiermeier reports in the News Blog, 57 year-old education expert Annette Schavan is possibly facing an untimely end to her political career over a plagiarism charge:

Annette Schavan

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Following previous charges of plagiarism in her thesis, written more than 30 years ago on aspects of education, the University of Düsseldorf has now officially confirmed that the claims are substantial and that Schavan’s doctorate might be withdrawn. Although the final outcome of the university’s investigation into the case is still open, it is getting increasingly likely that Schavan will be stripped of her degree before long.

At its long-expected meeting yesterday evening, the university’s faculty council, a 15-strong body comprising faculty staff, administrators and student, ruled in favour of launching a formal ‘PhD withdrawal procedure’. In a previous report to the council, the university’s vice dean of humanities, Stefan Rohrbacher, said that Schavan had indeed intended to deceive in her thesis by paraphrasing other works without appropriate citation.

Continue to the post to find out more.

What is a Germ?

This week’s Soapbox Science guest post is by Geoff Hunt, Public Outreach Coordinator for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He outlines a great science outreach project and offers anyone interested an opportunity to get involved:

In conjunction with the Cambridge Science Festival, ASBMB is proud to present the “What is a Germ?” challenge. It is a take-off on Alan Alda’s incredibly successful “Flame Challenge” albeit with a biological bent: Can you explain what a germ is? Your entries will be judged by students at elementary schools in the Boston area, and finalists will be invited to present their entries during the Cambridge Science Festival’s Curiosity Challenge in front of a live audience.

This is a great opportunity for you, as a scientist, to take off the lab coat and try your hand at turning scientific jargon into plain English. It is also a chance to directly interact with and inspire future generations and to show them that scientists are real people who do really cool things.

This activity is the only the start. ASBMB will continue to develop and sponsor all varieties of outreach programming. But I’m only the catalyst. It’s up to you to provide the energy to drive the reaction to completion.

For more information about the “What is a Germ?” challenge, go to www.asbmb.org/germ. Entries close on the 1st March.

Away from home: From chemistry to biology

Vijay Singh at the Stanford University campus

Every Wednesday, the Indigenus blog hosts an ‘Away from home’ post featuring an Indian postdoc working in a foreign lab recounting his/her experience of working there. This week’s guest blogger is Vijay Singh, a postdoc at Stanford University:

My suggestions to the Indian students who are coming to USA are:

1) Bring enough money with you because you have to pay at least a couple of month’s rent as security deposit. Apartments are very expensive, especially in California.  US-bound researchers can get an idea about apartments from the craiglist website ( https://sfbay.craigslist.org/hhh/).

2) Learn driving before coming here and bring your Indian driving licence with you. Based on your Indian driving licence you can get a temporary driving licence from the US department of motor vehicles.

3) Try to buy a car as early as possible. That will help in commuting.

Have you ever worked in a lab abroad? Share your experiences in the post and join in online using the #postdochat hashtag.

Should PIOs Sit In On Interviews?

How many people should sit in on an interview?

Sparked by a Twitter conversation, Matt Shipman’s latest post looks at whether public information officers (PIOs) should be allowed to sit in on interviews between reporters and researchers:

In my opinion, there is no need for me to sit in on an interview between a reporter and a researcher. The researchers I work with are all grown men and women who are quite capable of handling themselves. Furthermore, the researchers know more about the subject of the interview than I do. I bring very little to the table. [Note: I am a PIO for a university with an active research program. I do not work for an industry organization, a federal agency or a private company. This influences my opinion, since PIOs at those types of institutions are, generally speaking, much more likely to want to sit in on interviews, for a variety of reasons.]

 Do you agree with Matt’s thoughts? Feel free to join in the growing conversation over at SciLogs.com.

Happy Birthday 

Finally, today is Robert Boyle‘s 386th birthday. He also happens to be the reason that Nature Chemistry’s blog is called ‘The Sceptical Chymist’.

Why not go and have a look at their first ever blog post  which explains more about Boyle and his ‘The Sceptical Chymist‘?

Comments

  1. Report this comment

    Mudit Gupta said:

    Really inspirational story about the child. I think that the field of medicine has progresses a lot in the last few years.

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