We have a new paper out! This post is to describe what our paper is about. The paper is free to read, so please take a look if you are interested. Gabrielle Larocque, Daniel J. Moore, Méghane Sittewelle, Cansu Kuey, Joseph H.R. Hetmanski, Penelope J. La-Borde, Beverley J. Wilson, Nicholas I. Clarke, Patrick T. Caswell […]
Category: science
Voice Your Opinion: naming your lab
There are perennial topics of discussion on Science Twitter. An example of this is: should figures be at the end of a manuscript are interspersed in the text. These topics tend not to be resolved because there are strong arguments (and personal preferences) on each side. I am not sure whether it is even possible […]
Rule of Three: advice on writing a PhD thesis
PhD students sometimes get the same bad advice on writing their thesis. I call this advice the Rule of Three. Typically, they get told that their thesis: Will take 3 months to write Should have 3 results chapters Should be 300 pages These bits of advice have one thing in common: they are all wrong. […]
The Rise and Fall: impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on bioRxiv preprints
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, different countries are experiencing various restrictions including lockdowns. Some of these restrictions alter our ability to do science: by hindering lab access or taking time away from researchers for homeschooling. So, what impact has the pandemic had on scientific output? One way to look at this – for biology – […]
Os Mutantes: an implausible naming system for SARS-CoV-2 mutants
The scientific response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been astounding. Aside from efforts to generate vaccines, the genomic surveillance of the virus has been truly remarkable. For example, the nextstrain project has sequence many SARS-CoV-2 genomes. In fact, the rapid identification of multiple new strains and mutations by diverse groups of scientists has resulted in […]
Keep A Knockin: new paper using knock-in technology
We have a new paper out! I am a bit late with this post, since the accepted version went online in December 2020, and the final version appeared a few weeks ago. It will shortly appear in a finished issue of the journal so I can tell myself that I am not too late yet. […]
Represent: geographical breakdown of a virtual seminar series
During the pandemic, many virtual seminar programmes have popped up. One series, “Motors in Quarantine“, has been very successful. It’s organised by my colleagues Anne Straube, Alex Zwetsloot and Huong Vu. Anne wanted to know if attendees of the seminar series were a fair representation of the field. We know the geographical location of the […]
Talkshow: why don’t scientists do gigs?
The coronavirus crisis has meant that scientific meetings and seminars have moved online. This change has led to me wondering: why don’t scientists give talks the way that musicians do gigs? The idea is: after posting a preprint or publishing a paper, a scientist advertises that they will livestream a seminar to explain the work. […]
Take Off: preprints on COVID-19
I’m posting this the morning after generating a graph, and it’s already out-of-date. During the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak, preprint servers such as bioRxiv and medRxiv have again shown that they are the most effective way of communicating science rapidly. A collection of all papers on COVID-19 deposited on these two servers is available here, and […]
On Steely Dan and lab management
As a scientist and a music lover, I see parallels in the process of doing science and in making music. They’re both creative endeavours after all. The lab’s latest paper is like an album release. The authors of the paper are like the players in the band. See, the analogy works quite well. So what […]