Don't back down

My new mantra: "Don't back down."

It is easy to say "gee, I don't know if I'll have time", "I'm not sure if that's something I really want to do" and so many variations of this when deep down you know that saying yes is what you should do (maybe it's an extra project with a colleague, one more student than you were planning to supervise, a talk to give, an invitation to review, or even an invitation to an event). I've been busy. So. busy. in my first semester as an assistant prof. Most of the time I resisted the temptation to back down, but a few times I let things slide until it was too late to do them anyway. The things I took on despite some lingering reservations I'm mostly glad I did even though it meant some extra hectic times. Don't get me wrong, I'll say no when I need to say no, but there are those times when you'd rather say no because you know it will be tough but you know the answer ought to be yes.

So next time I'm on the edge of a task precipice? "Don't back down, it's time to dive in."

Visual Information

I just got totally pulled in by this:



Really, in this visual world we live in, and with so much information overload, how can this not be the way of the future.

I've always tried to find visual ways to present my data, in large part because I understand it better that way, but I have to say this inspires me to do more.

I think you might want to rethink your ad there...

So, this may not be the great return to blogging I had in mind, but I simply couldn't help but post this when I saw it today on an academic newsletter I receive:

"Kill harmful bacteria including H1N1."

Really? Kills bacteria? Even H1N1 bacteria? That's special since H1N1 is a virus. If you can't get that right for the ad, do you really think I'm going to trust that it works? Ha!

Moral of the story? General science literacy is IMPORTANT. For consumers who might get sucked in and Ad Execs who majorly FUBAR.

(Oh, and the (*) there which I thought might redeem it? if you look really carefully it says "When used as directed" not something along the lines of "yes, yes, we know H1N1 is a virus, we were just trying to play off the general panic of the public about swine flu".)

science... always harder than you thought it would be...

Quote of the day:

Every problem is like an infinite goldmine of hard.
~hubby

And so I continue to muddle though, working on this thing that was just supposed to be quick and easy, but turned into a way bigger thing than I wanted right now. Thankfully hubby can help!

CO2 eating rocks? Cool... but wait a minute...

So, now that I have a PhD, I should probably try to say intelligent things more often. Or maybe I should do my corrections... nah.

Anyway, I saw this article: Scientists say a rock can soak up carbon dioxide, and I thought "Cool! I mean, we should still stop burning around in giant unnecessary vehicles, but in the meantime, this sounds interesting. I'm going to blog this!"

But then my critical faculties came online again (I guess I'm not hung-over enough), and it occurred to me that this is about equivalent to burying your garbage/nuclear waste/toxic shizz-nizzle. So, let's see if everyone is with me here... If a rock absorbs CO2... at some point it has to release it again, right?

So, maybe burning coal and just shoving those emissions away in a rock for someone to deal with later... not such a good idea?

Many companies are hoping to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by siphoning off large amounts of carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and storing it underground.

Because I'm pretty sure we should check into this...

That method could require thousands of miles of pipelines and nobody is sure whether the potentially dangerous gas would leak back out into the atmosphere in the future.

before we smother our future progeny with our procrastination regarding fossil fuels rather than just getting on with doing things better. :(

Defending your thesis... to study? or not to study?

So, I'm t-6 days to D-day (yes, it took them 3 months to get me a defence date... no, I do not want to talk about it yet.. there is a big post on the mess of all that brewing), and the question I keep getting is "what are you doing to prepare for your defence?". My answer so far has been mostly "Um, I have some slides?" with a subtext in my head of "I wrote the damn thesis, I think I know what's in there". But it's started to freak me out. I guess I'll re-read a little about a few peripheral topics, but beyond that and checking my talk for timing, I don't think I'm going to do anything besides set an alarm to make sure I get up. I hate studying (reading & learning things, that's different), it makes me nervous, and nervous is the last thing I want to be.

So here's my question to you internet scientists out there:

What (did you/will you/think you will/see others) do to prepare?

To be or not to be... a prof

I'm supposed to be writing things, but I keep stumbling across interesting articles...

This one is about what it takes to be a science professor... at least some of the many aspects... with emphasis on the many. Certainly being academically strong is not the only requirement for the job.

University Affairs: So you want to be a science professor?

I think that piece of advice regarding asking someone you respect who is already there whether they think you have what it takes (and listening to them) is a good one... a reality check both for those suffering from impostor syndrome (they might say you'll be great!) and those on the other end of the spectrum (maybe it's important to consider other options). I had a conversation like this with my supervisor a few months ago, and while I got the impression he's confident I could get and do (maybe even excel) at the job, he brought up the issue that it might take longer than I'd like to find a professorship in the right area, both academically and geographically, and encouraged me to think about alternate plans should I get to the point I'm not willing to wait longer for a "real job". He knows I have other life goals/plans, and well, I guess reality is that a professorship *might* not work out for me. Not what I wanted to hear, but something I think I needed to hear... not that I'm giving up or anything!

So...

Of course science has it's vocabulary, the euphemisms for "well, actually we don't know" and "we have found that these other folks were completely wrong", and there are the "um"s and "uh"s of talks when we need a pause to collect our thoughts again. But then there are the "so"s. I hadn't really thought about it, being such a little unassuming word, but it carries many meanings, and potentially great weight.

So, without further ado, click over to Seed magazine's article on "so":

Seed: "So"

disclaimer: i haz maybe lost mind

moar funny pictures

ohhhh... sorry for the groaner... couldn't help it... too funny to my tired brain today...

I learned a new word today...

STET.

Courtesy of the (very funny) Yarn Harlot's blog today.

stet |stet|
verb ( stetted , stetting ) [ intrans. ]
let it stand (used as an instruction on a printed proof to indicate that a correction or alteration should be ignored).

It is an editing term, derived from latin, that means "let it stand", as in put it back the way I wrote it, as in stop trying to ruin the greatness that I crafted in words.

Today, I am trying to finalize the edits for an article manuscript I just got back from a journal with some comments I swear indicate that the referees only looked at the figures and read every third paragraph. To be fair I get a little overly attached to my writing, and have a tendency to take it rather personally when a referee suggests changes. Ok fine, so sometimes I want to cry and just revoke my submission and say "fine, then the world will just NEVER KNOW!"... possibly including a "nah na-nah na-nah naaahhh". Of course I realize that is just silly, and then go about trying not to sound too defensive and like I am a reasonable being that is at least considering what has been suggested. Sigh.

I wish I could just reply with a giant "STET". No "please" attached.

Seriously.

ps- in all honesty, there are some good suggestions, and I suppose the paper will be better for it, except that now it will be too long. I just hate the revision process, and there are a few really odd comments I just don't know how to respond to besides to say "read it again!".

identity crisis

No, no, I'm not the one having trouble with my identity, it's the internet.

Something that's bugged me for awhile is that, due to my very common name compounded with the fact that I usually publish with my given initials only, when I search for my own papers in web of science or inspec, or any other of the publication databases, it is next to impossible to find my papers through the hundreds of others with the same moniker. It is especially problematic as it seems there is someone at my institution with the same first initial and same last name that publishes on many, many super multi-author publications, thus totally drowning out my (meager) contributions to science.

Let's just completely ignore the fact that when you google my name you get a freestyle skier that likes to pose skantily clad for magazines.

So back to the indexes... I've often thought that in today's age of electronic databases that we could have some kind of online association such that if a person found ONE of your papers, or maybe knew some topics you had already published on, could associate you with you repertoire. I also thought this could be useful if say, you got married and decided to change your name. One quick click to associate the two names, and that issue would be taken out of the dilemma. Easy-peasy right? Seems like it should be. A little while ago ISI web of science introduced an author search and I thought I'd finally be able to find myself, but it wasn't really flexible enough to deal with a somewhat varied set of research papers associated with different institutions. Just not there yet...

Well, a couple of days ago I got an email from ISI to try something they're introducing called ResearcherID.com. Basically it lets you input your information, including institution, full name(s!), research area, etc, etc. Then you can search, though web of science, for your papers and add them to your profile. It then keeps track of the citation information for your papers, and people can search ResearcherID for your name and whatever other info they might know about you to find your unique profile. I think it's great! I hope it catches on.

Now I can stop calculating my own h-index and just look it up. Oh, stop looking at me like that... as if you've never kept track of your citations. The whole thing gave me a little confidence boost on a somewhat low day as well since I discovered that my 8 papers have been cited a total of 73 times! Whoah... However, my h-index is sitting at 3, which according to Wikipedia's article isn't stupendous for a physicist:

In physics, a moderately productive scientist should have an h equal to the number of years of service...

Ok, that statement probably doesn't apply well to the beginning of one's career (if we count from my first publication date of 2002 even though I was still an undergrad at the time, that makes 6 years.), but still, I would like to see it get closer.

... but I digress...

For those of you who are interested in this ResearcherID thing, it seems to be by invitation only right now, but there is a sign-up sheet to be informed of developments (I think I got invited because I evaluated the author search feature at one point and got on ISI's spam list).

Lexan: MEC pulls water bottles

I posted about plastic water bottles a little while ago as it seemed like I was running across more and more information indicating that the Bisphenol-A in Lexan plastic (a common hard, clear, and easily coloured plastic) could be leeching into the water. Lately (in Canada at least) there has been a lot of press about this, in particular with respect to the use of this plastic in baby's bottles.

Today I see that Mountain Equipment Co-op has responded to concerns over Lexan by pulling food storage products made with the plastic until the government provides guidance regarding possible health risks.

While I'm glad to see a company that prides itself on social and environmental responsibility taking some action given the uncertainty about this product, I hope this isn't an example of an over-reaction in the absence of proper information.

why i hate computers...

... because they *should* help you automate things, but it never seems to work out that way.

I've been doing data analysis on large batches of data files (100's, not 10's, not 1000's) lately, and while I've written an IDL program to do the fitting, plotting, and output of parameters I need, there remained a few tasks that I couldn't figure out how to automate:

1. prepare the batch file (unfortunately, the files are not entirely sequential, so it's not that easy to automate... I could pull some trick with getting a file list and going from there... but...)
   
2. convert all of the .eps files that IDL outputs to .pdf so that I can actually use/view/print them
   

I decided not to bother about the batch file, it didn't really take that long, and once made I save it and never touch it again. BUT the only way I seemed to be able to convert the eps to pdf was to open all the eps files in Preview (it converts them on opening) and then save each of them. This is fine for a few eps (or ps) files... but when you have a 136 staring you in the face and know there are more to come... and that each one involves pressing command-w, enter, enter, you want to find a way that avoids causing tendonitis. Seriously.

First I turned to Automator (I'm a Mac user... unfortunately my solutions will be less than helpful for Linux users, and nearly useless for Windows users... sorry!). To be fair, I have actually managed to get Automator to do some useful things recently, but usually my encounters with the cute little robot leave me feeling rather let down. A quick perusal turned up what I thought was true anyhow, that Automator has no built in way to convert eps (or ps) to pdf. I also checked the Apple Automator downloads and Automator World to no avail.

So I thought, hey, I've got unix commands up the wazoo on here, there *must* be one that can convert eps to pdf...

pstopdf

excellent. So I pull up the man page, figure out how to use it, test it on a couple of files, and merrily enter:

pstopdf *.eps

uuh... geeee... that was fast. A quick "ls" showed me why... it only did the first file. Bugger. A bit of frigging around later, it was determined that pstopdf does not take multiple file arguments.

Ok. That stinks, but maybe now Automator can do something for me using the action "Run Shell Script". Yes, that's it, I'll grab the filenames with a "Find Finder Items" input it to "Run Shell Script" to run the pstopdf command, and voila, there will be 136 pdf's waiting for me. Right? Well not so simple, but yes, eventually. The two main quirks I had to overcome were:

• Apparently at some point the file output and file input of "Find Finder Items" and "Run Shell Script" became mismatched. Oddly this can be solved by inserting a "Label Finder Items" between (you can select none, so it appears to do nothing) which mysteriously does indeed change the file listing in the correct manner.
  
• When using the "Run Shell Script" action: do not enter anything into the script box until after you selected how you wish to pass the input from the previous action. That little drop down will insert the necessary script fragments you need to work with, but only if the box is empty. Since I tend to dive in, I of course immediately put my command in before selecting this, and got very frustrated very quickly.
  
• Also, since the pstopdf command only takes one input at a time (and I couldn't get it to work with stdin, though the man page claims it should function) I used the "Pass input: as arguments" option and placed the pstopdf command inside the loop with "$f" as the argument where the input file should go. If you have a command that takes multiple inputs, you *should* be able to use "$@" outside the loop.
  

Long story short, I'll make available to you, the fruits of my frustration, all for the low, low price of *FREE* (err, uhh, and listening to my rant)... better yet, I'll include my other workflows that I've been using:

• Automator workflow to convert eps (or ps) to pdf (can also be saved as a Finder action)
  
• Automator workflow to take all pdf files in a folder and merge them into a single pdf
  
• Automator workflow to take text files, cut out the header and combine them into a single text file (this one will take some tweaking of the inputs the actions have... easy stuff, just change the drop downs and fields you need)
  

Since some people were having trouble downloading the workflows above, I've put the workflow to convert eps to pdf and to combine pdfs into a zip file for download: PDFworkflows.zip

Is that all? Oh no... no, no, my friends. I started many hours ago, this morning, with IDL opening into an xterm completely UNCONFIGURED for my needs. Let's look at my "needs":

1. Something more readable for my not yet caffinated eyes than black on white (I like a nice soothing green on charcoal... reminds me of that old Apple//c we had when I was a kid)
   
2. More pressing: a bigger window (ok, I can drag and resize, but sometimes funky things happen when I do that)
   
3. And pure luxury would be a SCROLLBAR... yes I like to scroll, especially when I'm running batches of 136 files and I'd like to look at some of that output.
   

Is that too much to ask? I have my X11 configured to open an xterm that is more pleasing on the eyes, but since IDL launches it's own xterm from a mini-app, and I couldn't find where it actually did that anywhere I was stuck with what it gave me. Until today people, until today. All one needs to do is create a default xterm style you are happy with and then any program launching it's own xterm will use this default style. The trick is simple: create a .Xdefaults file in your home directory. The bits of code I used were:

XTerm*background:grey15
XTerm*foreground:PaleGreen
XTerm*vt100*geometry:160x48
XTerm*scrollBar:on
XTerm*scrollKey:on
XTerm*jumpScroll:on
XTerm*saveLines:500
XTerm*cursorColorBackground:DimGray
XTerm*cursorColor:DarkSeaGreen3
XTerm*highlight:LemonChiffon
XTerm*borderColor:SlateGrey

I got most of the commands from here and there is an xterm color table here. Now it looks like this:



Now go make a beautiful, scrollable xterm and make me proud... I have to believe I didn't waste my day in vain.

And convert some eps files to pdf while you're at it. Hell, convert a whole bunch of them and put them together into one gigantic pdf!

Because today, I got my computer to do what I wanted it to do... It just took a really long time.

water is good, but "bisphenol-a" is bad?

A few months ago, my parents sent me a somewhat alarmist email about plastic. The concern? They ran across an article on the internet stating that hard plastic water bottles marked with recycle symbol #7 contained Bisphenol A and that this could cause all sorts of health problems.

So I did a little research of my own. A little browsing around the internet and journal searches turned up a few things...

First of all "#7" plastic doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot. This label means "other". 1-6 are all specific types of plastic, everything else is 7. Ok. So just because my two water bottles are labelled #7 doesn't mean I'm doing any harm.

However, Lexan (a GE brand), also polycarbonate, plastic, which I do know at least one of my water bottles is made from, does contain Bisphenol A. *Most* clear hard colourful plastics marked #7 are Lexan.

Searching around some journals, I found a few articles expressing some degree of concern about the effects of Bisphenol A in rats. Nothing terribly conclusive as far as I can tell (I am not a biologist, I know very little about physiology, or the kinds of methods used in those studies), but the authors consistantly called for further study, and advised caution.

While this is a whole other issue, it should be noted that whether you absorb enough Bisphenol A to do yourself damage, in the kinds of large doses which can be released into the environment during manufacturing, humans and other organisms in the area can be affected significantly. That in mind, it is up to you whether you choose to buy a new Lexan bottle or avoid doing so for environmental and social reasons. I bought mine years ago now and was unaware of any of this at the time. I might have considered choosing something else had I known, though I suspect most plastics manufacturing has similar consequences.

Back to the health issues... Being uncertain, I have more or less left my water bottles in the kitchen cupboard for the past few months. Usually, a lack of conclusive data leads me to ignore the cries of the internet and carry on whatever I was doing before. However, given the small amount of data indicating reason for concern, and consequences like birth defects, infertility, and breast cancer, I decided that drinking city water in a mug at work is a reasonable alternative to taking a water bottle of Brita filtered water from home. If I'm heading into the wilderness (a rare occasion) or a long day around the city, I'll take one of my bottles.

But today I read this: ScienceNOW: Common Plastic Ingredient May Be Cause for Concern

A federal advisory panel meeting here today concluded that a hormonelike chemical found widely in food containers, bisphenol A, could potentially be causing neurological effects in fetuses and children. Although the group's conclusion, based on a wealth of animal and human studies, falls short of supporting any kind of ban, the panel expressed "some concern" about the chemical and noted that people may want to reduce their exposure.

...

Still, critics accused the panel of ignoring many other relevant studies. They point out that 38 bisphenol A experts and other scientists who met at a workshop last November concluded that people are exposed to doses that cause many other effects in animals, such as enlarged prostate and larger body size. The consensus statement of the November group, which is in press at Reproductive Toxicology, describes "a great cause for concern with regard to the potential for similar adverse effects in humans."

I think I'll be leaving those bottles on the shelf awhile longer. Maybe it's time to replace them with an HDPE or aluminum bottle.



Here are some other references:

• Nalgene product specifications - find out which plastic is which


• American Chemistry Council: Plastic packaging Resin codes [PDF], or get them from Wikipedia: Resin identification code


• Wikipedia: Lexan


• Wikipedia: Bisphenol A


• Some of the kinds of articles that are bringing out concern and muddying the waters, so to speak: Bottle Racket: On plastic water bottles, CityTV news: Water Bottles, The Bisphenol-A Debate: A Suspect Chemical in Plastic Bottles and Cans
  

Academia!Entertainment is Haiku:participate you.

Check out this fun contest over at Jim Gibbon.com, challenging the academic blog-o-sphere to write their research in Haiku.

Here's my contribution:

Buckminsterful|erene on KBr studied by High Res'n NC-AFM: Molecu|ar nucleation and growth on an insulator*

C₆₀ islands.
molecules do not like salt;
strange shapes resulting.

Yup. Acutally that's pretty much it in a nutshell. Sad that it boils down to 17 syllables...

*(Excuse the "typos"; I deliberately messed with the title a bit to make it not appear when googled...)

Le point de craquer*

I think I need to read this in detail: Six steps to a stress-free career (seen at: YoungFemaleScientist).

Of course, not everything (or much) is really under one's own control on that list...

1. Create a good space: Mm-hmm... mm-hmm... I hear you there. I hate working in the sunless, cold, noisy (pumps), uncomfortable chair lab environment unless I'm doing an experiment and actually have to be in this environment. But I'm also not to keen on working in my overly warm, moth-infested, noisy-neighbour, bad creaky chair environment of my office either. Except... I don't think anyone would take kindly to my demanding a sunny corner office with no noisy co-workers, and a light pipe for the lab so we don't feel so much like Doozers (Fraggle Rock? Anyone?).
   
2. Raise your status: Mm-HMM... yes, being the boss would alevieate stressful incidents like last night, what a great solution, dang-nabit, why didn't I think of that?!? Except... I don't think anyone is going to hire me until I've jumped the hoops... and even then it will be a while before I can start pawning off responsibilities and get that nice corner office complete with real sunshine.
   
3. Be social: Uhhh... lost me here. I mean sure, a little chit-chat might feel good at the time, but it's like a sugar hit. Get back to your desk and realize your to do list is just as long as when you left? Crash... sugar-low. A little socializing... ok, but I think it's rare for grad students anyway, in shared offices and lab spaces to be lacking in social contact.
   
4. Don't be too social (aka: too many interruption): Yup. They say the average worker has 3 minutes to focus between interruptions. Yipes. You see this is what happened yesterday... everytime I turned around another task popped up making it virtually impossible to complete tasks. I just ended up with a to-do list in constant flux.
   
5. Learn to switch off: This is exactly what I didn't do last night. It started out well, Hubby and I had dinner, watched some TV (yay, Grey's Anatomy! except... they won't kill off Merideth will they??? they can't... right??), I did some knitting. Then I picked up my computer to do some aimless web-browsing or possibly play a few turns of Civ before bed, and somehow I automatically clicked on email immediately after turning on Airport. Ok... sure... whatever, might as well confirm there's nothing there, or maybe a message from a friend? No harm? Right? Email from boss... bad idea. If I'd just left it alone, I wouldn't have worried about it until the morning when it likely would have been too late to do anything about it. And so be it. It wasn't like I stopped work early (~6:30-7pm... right around when the email was sent). It would have been perfectly reasonable for a normal person to have simply just not gotten the message. Dang. No more email at home. Not unless there's a reason.
   
6. Modern stress-busting (yoga and other trendy things): Sure whatever. I'm going to hockey class in an hour and a half and have a game on Sunday. Maybe slapping some pucks around will help with my stress. It's also social, being a team sport and all.
   

Moral of the story? Probably the worst stressor of all for grad students is having the majority of these things out of our control. So take a deep breath, pound down some coffee, find a way to get your aggression out, and wait for that glorious moment when you get to the top and can demand that perfect office.

* title taken from a grade school french text I had: "le point de craquer" was at the top of the "stress-o-metre"... "je suis a le point de craquer!!!!" became a silly expression amongst my friends and I.

Science News: Oh Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun...

... won't ya please shine down on me! To make my skin healthy? Wait, aren't we supposed to stay out of the sun these days?

This recent study, featured in ScienceNOW: The Good Sun talks about how getting a bit of sun may trigger immune cells to be more active near the skin's surface eating up damaged and infected cells.

Oddly, I've always gotten the impression that a moderate amount of sun makes my skin (especially my face) feel and look healthier and less prone to break-outs. Of course, I'm careful to keep the amount of sun I get low and try to keep out of mid-day sun for fear of damage, and just plain old sunburns (which I get stupidly easily), but it does seem to me, especially in the winter when it's difficult to get much sun at all, that completely hiding from the sun not only makes me almost blindingly white, but my skin just doesn't look or feel very good and I'm constantly battling with it. I wonder if it's really this effect going on? Curious. Guess I'll try to poke my head outside while there's still daylight!

What I think a lot of us know to some extent...

news@nature: Science blogger Bora Zivkovic/The editor of a new book, an anthology of science blogs, talks about how his blog saved his career in science.

How blogging brought him back to science, back to writing his thesis, why blog... interesting. Also touches on where Science Blogging may go in the future.

You can also check out his blog here: A Blog Around The Clock, though he claims there will be less posting now that he is working on his diss again... hmm... can anyone say procrastination mechanism?? Best of luck Bora!

Science news roundup: Where the mind wanders, More than the sniffles, Setting a good example

Ever wonder where your mind goes when it wanders? This news item features a study examining what parts of the brain are active when the mind wanders... it suggests we have a sort of "default" setting which helps to generate spontaneous thought. Does this mean daydreaming might lead to that next great Eureka moment? Maybe someday it will be a good thing when the boss comes in and catches you off on a cloud?!?

ScienceNOW: Peering Inside the Wandering Mind

---

Mounting evidence that the 1918 flu pandemic turned us against ourselves; meaning our own immune systems did the dirty work putting the young and healthy in greater danger.

ScienceNOW: Portrait of a Killer

---

Editorial addressing issues of scientific misconduct on both the grand and seemingly minor scale:

news@nature: Leading by example

The article makes a few points I think are of note:

"No aircraft are going to fall out of the sky because somebody fudged a graph in a materials-science journal. Rather, the problem is the time wasted by other scientists chasing up minor and not-so-minor infractions in pursuit of their own research."

This is quite true... most pure research never directly makes it to the public, so it isn't going to be the public at risk, but rather the "front line scientists" (mostly graduate students, post-docs, and junior researchers) who will have to wade through the crap, puzzling over this equation, or that graph, and trying to make sense of what may have been fudged, or even just not checked thoroughly.

"But most important of all, as the first scientific studies of the factors behind good conduct confirm, is the example set by senior researchers themselves. It is here in the laboratory — not in the law courts or the offices of a university administrator — that the trajectory of research conduct for the twenty-first century is being set."

Here's where I like to make the analogy of research groups to families... a professor in my department once told me about meeting up with his "scientific sister"; they had done their PhD's together, and the analogy made so much sense to me. Your supervisor(s) and other senior researchers that you interact with are like scientific parents: they are your role models in everything from measures of success to ethics to how you conduct yourself on a day-to-day basis. You "grow up" scientifically during these impressonable years and learn how to conduct yourself in research and in communication, and it is natural to look up to those people near you with more experience. I think that last statement of the article is critically important. Perhaps today when problems with cheating in schools, and "padding" resumes has become almost acceptable, it will become increasingly important to be aware of the example being set for the next generation of "science kids".

To buy or not to buy?

I like to shop as much as the next girl... but I am cautious with my money, so every time I go to actually buy something, I here a little recording of my mother's voice from when I was younger saying "If you spend it, you won't have it anymore..."

As it turns out there is now some scientific evidence that this is pretty much what the brain says too when debating a purchase. Check it out:

ScienceNOW: When Your Brain Goes Shopping