Scientist gets hen pecked by wife for not taking a better paid job

With global recession apparently looming next year, I thought it would be a good idea to check out some TV programmes that could provide some good useful insight on how to deal, sensibly, with money.  On BBC2 (UK) there is a fairly new series dedicated to the subject, with the first episode based on taxes: who pays what, who doesn't want to pay what, and how much in terms of benefits do we get out of it all (incidentally, national insurance is the same thing as income tax! I never knew that!!!)  This weeks exciting episode was on couples, and tonight a group of them were invited to discuss their issues with their shared finances (oohhh, I said, elbowing my partner, this is interesting!)

All the couples came from very different backgrounds and had very different views on the subject, but my attention was caught by these two:

She works in a lawyers office and he works as a researcher at Manchester University; he is the breadwinner.  They have a very nice house, a nice family and seem pretty well off, but she is not happy.  She states that her partner is tight with money, is paranoid and that "all fun is banned from this house!" In front of the camera and with her red-faced partner beside her, she criticises his selfishness; that while he is doing a job that he loves, he is causing "suffering" to their children in that his pay check does not bring home enough to guarantee them a good future.  She wants the children to go to private school, she wants bright futures for them, and having seen the people in her work place earning triple the amount he does, she wishes for him to retrain for another profession, like accountancy : "Someone of your talent will have no problem doing that! Most of the general public do jobs they don't want to do for money!"

It is stated in the programme that the man earns £34,000, indicating that he is probably a senior post doc.  The salary is above the national average, but with children, a mortgage and other bills to pay, that really doesn't amount to much, so is his partner right?  The poor guy stresses that he loves his job and that he can't see himself doing anything else, but is that enough?

More and more scientists are realising that obtaining tenure and funding in academia is becoming increasingly difficult.  Even if we love our jobs there may come a day we have to find pastures new.  But is our passion all for nothing? Is our efforts all in vain? As mentioned in my previous blog Fat cats and dead rats it seems that academic science is the only profession where its professionals are treated so poorly in terms of job security, pay and benefits.  Should we become more selfish (or selfless, for our families as in this case)

....and all become accountants??       

Sources:  BBC2 Money: Couples


 







 

PhD in burger flipping!! No, seriously...

As reported last night in A Brave New World with Stephen Hawkings and in Sky news today, science is taking a turn towards the culinary, with scientists looking to create the world's first lab-created burger! In answer to growing world hunger and to reduce the ecological impact of farming meat-yielding animals worldwide, Mark Post at the University of Maastricht is aiming to grow cultures of meat cells dervived from meat leftovers from slaughterhouses.  These cells at a certain point will then be seeded onto collagen fibres where they will grow to form strips of meat.  The muscle strands, like in nature, will be exercised by being stretched with the aid of velco strips to create bulk.  All the while the cells are nurtured and grown in growth medium rich with carbohydrates, amino acids and fatty acids.  When mature, the strips can be harvested and then, I guess, grilled! To make a fabulous burger! Hmm-mmm!

If an edible product can be produced from this technique, the implications are huge and can change the way we view meat and food forever.  For example, we can stop feeling guilty  that animals are being slaughtered en masse for our consumption and we will all be obsessed with which university our meat was produced from (Those with a 5-star RAE rating will of course feature in Michelin star restaurants).  However, Post warns that the resulting produce will not be cheap.  He reckons that the resulting burger will cost a whopper £200,000! This cost is justified, what with the great technical skill, the time and labour undertaken to grow and maintain the meat cells.

 One beef burger and one lamb burger in the making...

'Hell yeah!' every cell culture scientist will shout!  For behind the glitzy, dizzying thoughts of solving world hunger and saving all those cute fluffy farm animals (not to mention having a permanent work contract) are the tears and the pure frustration that every cell culture scientist will have experienced in just growing and maintaining those damn cells, nevermind processing them for human consumption!  Mammalian cell culture is a notoriously delicate process: everything from the nutrients in the media to the temperature of the incubator and the level of carbon dioxide present has to be perfect; otherwise, when you look down the microscope all you will see are dead cells floating on by.  There is also the problem of infection, as the cells have no immunity and cannot be made immune: infections from mycoplasma and yeasts, all present in the air or carried on in by the researcher on their skin or clothes, can cause massive cell death of every sample present in that lab.  The infective agent can be difficult to trace and eradicate, and I have seen some researcher friends sigh and shake their heads as their work is being delayed for months as they try to solve this problem.  So sorry sir, but dinner is delayed.  Would you like some lab grown fries while you wait...?

Oh, us poor plebby scientists are donkeys enough - what with be underpaid, unappreciated and unrecognised.  To end up being burger growers and flipper PhD is the ultimate low - and even then the job doesn't get easier!  

An 8oz myco-burger with fries, coming up!  

Source: A Brave New World with Stephen Hawkings

      

Scientists selling their wares in a time of crisis

Escherichia coli under the microscope (Image by Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH)

The big news for the best part of a week has been the E. coli outbreak in Northern Germany, and this morning Professor John Oxford, a leading expert in virology and chairman of the Hygiene Council was interviewed by Eamonn Holmes on his views of the outbreak and what advice he could give to the general public to keep themselves safe.


The Professor answered with a brief low-down of where E.coli comes from ( the animal and human gut) how it got from there to the vegetables (animal and sometimes human waste is used to make manure that is used to fertilise crops) and why, in this case, that the E. coli bacteria from the manure has managed to make it into people's mouths (this new mutant strain of E. coli is more "sticky" causing it to stick to the outside of vegetables so that conventional washing is not enough to remove it.  It also has a way of being able to "wriggle" into the vegetable - where no amount of washing has an effect).  All of these points I agree with - the first two points are common knowledge and the E. coli strain (Enterohemorrhagic E.coli ) uses bacterial fimbriae to attach to surfaces, therefore making it sticky.  The "wriggle" bit I am not too sure about as that would suggest the bacteria has a "tail" that would allow for movement.  However, manure is sprayed on to crops and you would imagine that the fertiliser - and the bacteria - is capable of getting into the little crevices and gaps present in the natural shape of the vegetable.

 The shape of the vegetable, the fruit and their leaves makes it harder to remove potential pathogens (Image by User: Geographer)

However, when it came to giving advice on how to keep ourselves safe from getting infected, the Professor seemed to go off subject and talked about personal hygiene, handwashing and how "manners" is important to make sure that others are kept safe from infection by our own actions.  That is all very well and good and I agree one hundred percent - one should wash hands regularly and yes, one should be considerate towards others, like having your hand over your mouth when sneezing or coughing - but how does that relate when it is the foodstuff that is contaminated? How is handwashing and manners going to make the bacteria unstick from your raw vegetables and stop it from entering your stomach?

  If I scrub my hands hard enough, the bacteria from my salad will disappear! (Image by Serenity)

It was the next words that revealed what was behind his statement - I can't remember the exact words but the word "Dettol" was used.  Bear in mind that John Oxford had some involvement in the Dettol Habit survey and that the Hygiene Council is sponsored by Reckitt Benckiser, a multinational corporation that counts Dettol as one of its power brands.  The Professor continued and ended the interview with advice that people should disinfect more.

 The word infomercial comes to mind

It is already bad enough that in cases of disease outbreaks that we, the general public, have little information to go on except that conveyed by the media - information that is usually sensational and serves to promote fear and panick.  Now there are professionals, experts in the field, that are using this hysteria as an opportunity to endorse products and increase their project funding. 

In times of crisis we all look to those with more knowledge and expertise than us to inform and guide us and we hope that their information is in our best interests.  What we don't need is for these people to take advantage of the situation for their own.  What the good Professor should have said is that since the bacteria cannot be easily removed from the raw vegetables or fruits by washing, that they be cooked thoroughly instead before consumption.  This is just common sense and doesn't require a council and doesn't require a study.

It certainly doesn't require product promotion!

Source: Sky news

Also see: Sell it to me!        

  

Fat cats and dead rats

Image by brokinhrt2

Today I went to the first of a two day course titled 'Career Management for Researchers - Broadening Horizons'. The aim of the course is to recognise that with so few academic positions available nationwide, it is necessary for university staff on contract employment (such as yours truly) to think about the transferrable skills we have in order to find permanent employment elsewhere.

The declining number of positions is in line with the cuts the UK government has announced for university funding: according to The Guardian £940m will be cut from the 2012 budget for teaching, research and buildings. This announcement is a massive blow for science departments everywhere who are already struggling to obtain funding. The regulations to date, set by various research councils, state that successful research proposals should have a social or/and economical impact. This has put a huge pressure on laboratories, such as the ones I have worked for, that carry out what I call 'pure' research; where a subject is being studied solely for the expansion of knowledge and discovery. The findings of these projects are by no means "useless" or a "waste of money". It is the probing nature of this type of research that leads to the better understanding of the complexity of life, in the standpoint of physics, chemistry and biology. I believe that forced cessation of such projects will lead to the decline of useful knowledge that could lead to the discovery and development of new medicines and technology; the vital component of work that, ironically, would have a social and economical impact.

The announced cuts for 2012 means that many research groups will be scaling down and tightening belts than ever before. Many highly qualified and talented individuals who have trained long and hard and have made many personal sacrifices for the sake of their careers will be unceremoniously made redundant. This is insult to injury since professionals in other fields of work have excellent job security, decent pay and benefits and, most importantly, are recognised and appreciated.

Tonight, as I wring my hands at the prospect of being a job seeker that is too old and too over-qualified for most types of work, I see that our Vice-Chancellors are not feeling as worried. Dispatches on Channel 4 has reported that while universities are facing cuts, students (their parents) will be hit with massive tuition debts and academics and researchers will be out of a job, university Vice-Chancellors are livin da vida loca with salaries up and over a quarter of a million pounds. In addition, they reside in luxurious accomodation and have ski chalets, chauffeured driven cars, membership of exclusive clubs - all taken care of by the "cash-strapped" universities. My hands are wringing even harder.

Memories of a quip from an ex-colleague enters my mind: "it is time to find a real job". This epitomises the life of a present-day academic science researcher. Far from the romantic ideal that universities are a haven for those who wish to make a living through knowledge and discovery, the reality of the situation now is that through commercialisation the fat cats are getting fatter and the lab rats are facing certain death.

See: Dispatches

It's all Chinese to me...

And in a few years time it might be. Recently the UK's national academy of science, The Royal Society, carried out a major study on the global scientific effort (Knowledge, Networks and Nations). The study notes the "striking" rise of Chinese science in terms of the number of scientific findings being published in recognised international scientific journals. At the time of the study, the number of publications orginating from the PRC stood at 184,080. This is a significant increase from the 25,474 papers being published in 1996. Compare this to the number of publications originating from the United States, the country that at present is number one in all areas of science. Here, 316,317 papers were published at the time of the study; a slight increase from the 292,513 papers being published in 1996. The study by the Royal Society suggests that after 2013 the PRC may overtake the US as the leading country in scientific research. The rise of scientific progress in India and Brazil, and the emergence of science in the Middle East, South Asia, North Africa and some smaller European nations also indicates a shift in the global scientific landscape where the likes of the US, Japan and Western Europe have been dominant.

So how did this change come about? As indicated in the study by the Royal Society the increase in collaboration between scientific communities has extended beyond international borders. The common interest of a particular field and the pursuit of a common goal has allowed the forming of specialised organisations and societies that convene on a regular basis to discuss and challenge ideas and to share knowledge and expertise. I myself have been to one such meeting (organised by the RNA Society in Berlin, 2008) and found the experience awesome, insightful and thought provoking. It is at these meetings that scientific collaborations are born, where ideas and solutions originate from a figure on a poster or the from the presentation and words a very nervous speaker (they don't call us labrats for nothing!). Furthermore, with international travel becoming the norm more and more scientists are taking the opportunity and travelling greater distances to present their work to a wider audience, to study and gain experience from a different lab or even moving and settling in a different location altogether; taking advantage of the expertise and technology available. A great number of scientific publications now contain the names of researchers from more than one institution.

So why in the PRC? The economy of the People's Republic of China is the second biggest in the world after the United States. It is also the world's fastest growing economy and one that emerged unscathed from the global recession that has had major effects on the US, the UK and Japan. The wealth and affluence in this emerging super power is attracting the interest of many scientific laboratories around the world. To be able to obtain financial backing is crucial to the life span of a research project. The PRC has the funds and wants in return the knowledge and know-how to further develope its own scientific base, in the form of institutes, technology centres and researchers.

The Royal Society recommends from the study that the support of international science should be maintained and strengthened and that international collbaoration be encouraged, supported and facilitated. This is true since it is scientific research and discovery, not nationalism, that is paramount for preserving the true quest for knowledge.

Having said that though, it wouldn't hurt to start learning some Chinese...

Story: Knowledge, Networks and Nations