Today at 11:00, I’ll be doing my first real presentation with the LaTeX Beamer class. It will be about Random Field Theory in functional imaging (fMRI), a topic I’ve never done, ever, in my life (I am working on other techniques in the same lab). But, anyway, preparing this presentation was a good challenge (to understand a new technique from scratch and to do it with Beamer). I am quite impressed with Beamer ease of use. ...
Combining a trend from the free software world and a reaction to increasing subscription costs, the last decade saw the emergence of the “Open Access” movement in the scientific litterature. Instead of transfering all your rights (and copyrights) to an editor that will sell your work to other scientists, you can choose to publish your work in Open Access journals. In this case, you retain your rights (and copyrights) on the article you wrote. Moreover, your work is freely available to other scientists (at least in electronic format) while still being of some quality since the reviewing process is still there. As an article writer, you only risk to be cited more often (since your article is freely available). As an article reader, you only risk to gain more knowledge (since more and more interesting articles are published with various Open Access publishers like BioMed Central, the Public Library of Science, etc.). ...
This afternoon, the secretary of the university ethics committee came to visit (inspect) our animal housing unit. We (and I) can be proud of our work since he said quite a few times that we have a “model” unit, a unit that is clean, etc. :-D As I said before, the animal wellbeing is one of the top priorities in the lab. And it is always good to be congratulated for our work (since I am working alone in my unit, it doesn’t happen often and it is even more important for me).
When they are not doing any experiments (or even while doing experiments), scientists can be good singers. Here is the proof with two bands: Les Horribles Cernettes and Science Groove. Of course, you need some science background to understand everything …
Oxford University is building a new facility to replace and regroup all its laboratories working with animals. In July 2004, after a campaign of protest from animal rights group, works stopped. They are now resumed ( BBC story). I am working with animals in my laboratory and, if I can understand some arguments from the animal rights activists, I can’t understand why they are going that far. A big part of the “modern comfort” that Europeans and North American are used to comes from and needs animal experimentation. For example, if we take any drug, it has to be tested on animal first before coming to the market. Of course, you can use in vitro cells but the complex behaviour of an animal (including the human) won’t be there. Animals are a collection of cells; but these cells are not the same in the arm or in the brain: they are specialised. How can you be sure that a general in vitro cell will react in the same way as an animal (including the human)? If we completely abolish animal testing, will you still go in court if a drug have side effects (that would have been spotted if tested first on animals) on you? ...
Open source software are more and more observed (if not used) in the biological sciences field. They provide all the advantages of Open Source software, plus they bring needs for consensus on file formats, data representation and manipulation methods. I’ve just read a short article from Greg Wilson ( in Nature) who is working with the Python Software Foundation “to develop a course that will teach scientists and engineers the 10% of software engineering they need to solve 90% of their problems”. Their goal is to “introduce them to some open-source tools and working practices that can reduce the amount of time they spend programming by up to 25%”. The course is already available here ( Software Carpentry) … for free, of course!
I am currently reading " The behavior of the laboratory rat" and I found a very interesting point : don’t feed your lab rats too much or they will suffer and your experiments can suffer from that too! Of course, letting them have food ad libitum is the easiest way of doing. And we may think that they will only eat what they need. But rats are greedy! Unrestricted access to food is “unnatural” and compromises the health of the rats : it may cause obesity, diabetes, tumors, it shortens the life span and reduces the cognitive performance (formation of free radicals and/or glycation reactions of sugar with proteins). On the other hand scientists showed that dietary restriction is associated with increased production of proteins enhancing neuroplasticity and increased protection against metabolic insults like BDNF. ...