better than others?

Something I am doing right now requires me to demonstrate that I am better than others with the ame levels of education. What thing I can do but others cannot?

While thinking about this question, I remember something like "if you cannot describe what you are doing in one sentense, stop doing it. you are wasting your time."

Sure I can do that. But my training has been a bit diverse, although always in life science -- from medical school gradually shifted toward basic pathology research to current biological research. I'll have to explain some basics before people really gets what I am doing. On the other hand, this really gives me something special than others. I will have to take advantage of my training background.

However, I understand that to succeed, it is necessary to be able to clearly explain to lay people my research in PLAIN language. So that people understand the importance of my research and therefore provide support. This is not just grant writing, which is for experts to review. This is for everyone else. I will post it here once I am done.


by Beyond Lab

Blogging your thesis?!

This guy, a PhD candidate in microbiology and currently at Tulane University, is blogging his ongoing thesis writing online.
http://pimm.wordpress.com

With his advisor's approval and several journal editors' positive feedback, he's posting part of his thesis, namely the introduction (which is a kind of review), and probably material and methods. As for the unpublished result part, I doubt that his advisor will allow him to do this before publication. Open science has not reached that level yet. You still have to publish your research somewhere to get noticed and get cited. I doubt Nature or any other journals will accept a paper with a blog article as one of the references.

-- Well, keep an eye on this. Certainly a brillant idea!

--Should I also blog my thesis when I write it? Maybe --

specialized services

Just received a postcard from postersession.com introducing their specialized poster services. "Don't be caught empty handed!"

This reminds me of another very interesting services I noticed a couple of years ago. A group of people in Boston provides scientific illustration services to biological and medical researchers. Basically, they make figures or diagrams for scientists to use in their publications. Nowadays, biomedical research is becoming more and more complicated. As a result, it is very difficult for the people actually doing research to explain it in a comprehensive way, especially to people out of the field. But these group could make it easier to understand by their specialized graphical or other visual-based techniques. They originated their service in Boston because there are huge amount of demand for their service, Harvard, MIT etc. It turns out to be a big success. Now you can find their work in many important publications.

Now, there's this poster service available. They understand science, and they understand computer techniques. Therefore, they are unique.

Try to be unique! (in a good way though)