first lab mtg: part II in the lab rotation saga

I sat in on my first lab mtg in rotation lab #1 this afternoon.  The first thing I observed was a very amiable dynamic... laid back, even.  There was a scalable project undertaken over the summer which was presented by two of its major players.  I was pretty quiet, mostly observing how people interacted and how information was presented.

Being only vaguely familiar with the study, I suppressed my myriad questions which would have mostly been helpful to my own clarity and not contributory to the conversation.  Mostly, though, I was not interested in coming off as that jackass who comes in and blindly tries to push their experience without understanding the particular design/choices of the lab.  I do understand that a lab mtg is not a seminar, and that plenty of detail, being familiar among the post docs and grad students, is not reproduced.

That said, one very curious observation was how disjointed some things seemed.  For instance, the summer study involved some cell counting.  After the presenter discussed her counting methods and findings and seemed somewhat unsure as to how to interpret them, Dr. PI chimed in and very amiably pointed out that the presenter had set parameters for said counts that made her results jumbled and irrelevant, and she should try measuring several new parameters in the upcoming weeks.

During this part of the discussion, my brain was asking, "why weren't reliable parameters discussed before they were carried out?  why weren't the specific cortical layers of interest identified separately and compared instead of being clumped into one group?  why was the cell size not defined as part of counting parameters? could double-staining be done to elucidate cells of interest more clearly?  what would you speculate this outcome might mean?"... etc.

This is why I shut up.  Questions better saved for a one-on-one with my grad student mentor in a learning environment as opposed to a lab mtg.  From what I gathered from the rest of the lab's input, this was somewhat standard.  There was a, "let's try this and see if it works, and if not we will exclude the approach in future" attitude, which I love.  But I also got the feeling that students were very much on their own in terms of project design, and methods were not cleared with a higher authority or guide before conduct, which is a foreign concept to me.  My instinct is to approach every study as if it were publishable, and to optimize the design as much as is feasible in order to produce a result that could contribute to a manuscript.  It did not seem that this was the general perspective in rotation lab #1.

Finally, there were about seven undergrads at the mtg getting a feel for whether they'd like to become part of the lab in the fall.  Also very new, since there were no undergrads at the teaching hospital from which I hail (only summer students).

It's going to be a very exciting term.  I cannot wait for Sept. 6th.

in which Remicade is a Mercedes Convertible, and I decipher Russo-English science

It has finally happened.  I -- organizational and scheduling fanatic -- have missed an infusion.  By two weeks.  How did this happen?, you may ask.  I'll tell you.

I rescheduled my infusion to be two days after I met with Dr. GI, so that if we decided to scrap the Remicade and move on to "sexier cars" (his words), I would have drug-free buffer room to start immediately.  In fact, what happened was that when the nurse rescheduled me, she in fact neglected to reschedule me.  So my appointment came and went, as did my alleged infusion date, and I called the clinic to see why they had no appointment for me.  "You were a no-show on the 14th," is what I was told.  "But I rescheduled for the 27th of May, I just did not receive a reminder from Epic as I typically do and so I have not yet been infused -- I must not have been rescheduled" I retorted.  "Oops," the nurse replied, not at all withdrawing the reprimand from her previous remark, mind you.

Not all that exciting a story, really, but I wanted to get your hopes up.  The recent increase in Throughput over the past two weeks may be in part because I am overdue for my drugging.  Dr. GI was firm in his conclusion that it is not because I've increased my veggie intake.  My miniature experiment wherein I ate only crackers/rice/broth for a day and produced a 50% decrease in Throughput the following 24 hr period was noted.  The 50% reduction did not convince him.  And since I've been buffering all my veggies with fluffy carby foods over the last week with no Throughput let-up, I am beginning to side with him.  It is possible that my notably increased nausea and dependence on Percocet to survive the evenings are weighing in.

So... I'm taking my Remi from the 8- to the 6-week interval -- perhaps the 4 -- and if in the coming two months I do not see improvement, I will concede to move on to "sexier cars".  For now, I will deliberate between Humira (the Benz), Imuran (the Lexus) or LDN (the Prius).  I refrained from challenging Dr. GI as to whether Imuran was a Lexus or, in fact, an Astin Martin.

Meanwhile, in my small corner of the world of science, I am reviewing my first manuscript as a Peer.  It has been translated from Russian, and while the findings are very exciting, the syntax, run-on sentences and hugely neglected Methodology section have been problematic for my novice brain.  I spent 6 hours on Sunday trying to get through this thing (during this same period, my boss pummeled through a 140 pg dissertation... pwned).

Something I am gleaning from my meager experience in reviewing and being reviewed is that reviewers tend to hope that you cite them in your work.  Often, when we (my lab) produce(s) manuscripts, we request reviewers whose work we cite in the present work.  The Russian paper from this weekend didn't cite any of our work anywhere, which was not really offensive so much as remarkable because their findings were so intertwined with ours, and supported by some of our previous publications.  They did not defend discrepancies between their data and that of other studies which they did cite (which was a weird door to leave open), nor did they speculate on the correlations within their own data set (also odd).  It is a very different experience to read a submitted manuscript than a published article.  I think I like it...

I am the Entertainer

I luvs nausea-free mornings.  I luvs them.

Today is Behavior Day, which marks the highly anticipated culmination of five weeks of therapy for my most venerable participants.  It also means that for the next ten hours, I will sit down perhaps once, juggle a protein assay whilst crunching data between behavioral tests, and probably not eat until supper.  I might even present said data to my boss before attempting to toss together an abstract to submit to SfN 2011 before the deadline in two weeks.  Maybe.

And I will most definitely be checking in on Wiley to see if my most recent manuscript re-submission has been accepted.

One must take advantage of days like this.

publishing misnomers

Some may recall that last year when I got married I put an excruciating amount of thought into changing my name, both legally and professionally.  I ended up deciding to publish as Name Initial Maiden-Initial Last.  It has since become apparent that I made the wrong decision.

With this new outpour of publications and grants, my family has realized that they are substantially upset that since my maiden name is represented only as an initial, I am not recognizable as their kin.  I have that distinctive maiden name where I'm related to everyone else in the world who has it, and my family is very upset that it is not represented.  They didn't care nine months ago before I had published or been awarded anything, but feelings change with press coverage...

The obvious solution to this is to scrap Name Initial Maiden-Initial Last and use Name Maiden Last from now on.

A brief refresher on why I did not do this in the first place:

1) Publishing with two last names (and no, Maiden does not pass for an obvious middle name) confuses potential "referencers" who would proceed to cite me incorrectly.  This leads to a dual body problem: one "Last, NameInitial.MaidenInitial." and one "Maiden-Last, NameInitial."... and being two people is not ideal;
2) Publishing with two last names confuses potential bosses who would proceed to not figure out how to administer my paychecks and W2s correctly;
3) I can't hyphenate because I don't legally have two last names, and hell if I'm going to go through that legal name-change bullshit again to do something that I didn't want to do in the first place.

Although all these points remain totally valid, I may have to throw all caution to the wind and change my publishing name.  Indeed, the very thing I thought I had avoided with my previous reasoning.  When I first changed my name, I had no publications yet and it didn't matter.  But now, I'm wrapping up revisions on my fifth manuscript, and I have two (publicized) fellowships.  Good thing that in five years no one will remember my first five manuscripts and two fellowship awards anyway?...