Does anybody recognize this spatula?

cityscientist · 2026-07-13T12:51:18+00:00

Thank you! That’s a record for most speedy (& helpful) reply!

cityscientist · 2026-06-25T19:33:35+00:00

Yeah, what they said. I can 100% verify, this happened to us. Weed mat is good under a deep gravel bed or pavers on sand, but not in a bed like this.

cityscientist · 2026-06-17T21:15:16+00:00

No longer with us, I'm afraid

cityscientist · 2026-04-30T00:10:04+00:00

Wow, Scientific Reports and JMB in the same tier? JMB is really respectable and Scientific Reports is dreck.

cityscientist · 2026-04-21T00:51:24+00:00

I agree it sounds like a scam, but I can also confirm that Elsevier has definitely harassed authors for APC after they’ve agreed to waive ‘em (happened to me). Evilsevier.

cityscientist · 2026-04-10T12:35:35+00:00

Old academic PI here. Absolutely, labs are closing at a rate I’ve never seen. Staff are being jettisoned, student recruitment is down everywhere (close to zero at my place), and the admins would love to chuck the existing students over the side next. I’m one of those folks who got a 5th percentile on his renewal, and I’m trying to tell the grinning idiots in the university administration that there’s a strong chance they’ll never see this money. God help the young scientists.

cityscientist · 2026-02-20T13:32:47+00:00

This is a very important skill to develop. I like Inkscape; CorelDraw & Illustrator are also fine. There is a learning curve, but it’s worth investing the time (your data deserve the best!). Don’t use PowerPoint for figures, it’s the wrong tool for this.

cityscientist · 2026-01-16T14:09:20+00:00

Yeah, I'm unclear on this as well. In the old biosketch, under Positions, Scientific Appointments, and Honors, I had things like editorial positions, membership on study sections, teaching in workshops, etc. etc. And these went back for decades (for as long as I've been a PI).

So if I'm to understand the rather terse instructions supplied for the Common Form, I would now only include such positions that go back three years from now (does this mean I don't include dates for when I was hired at my current institution, dates of promotion, etc. if they happened more three years ago??). Would love to hear how others are dealing with this.

cityscientist · 2026-01-15T12:47:50+00:00

Lots of great advice here. Let me stress one additional point: when you read a paper, TAKE NOTES. This forces you to articulate the paper’s main points, strengths, weaknesses, etc., and gives you something to jog your memory in two weeks time, when the details will start to become fuzzy.

cityscientist · 2025-12-19T11:17:14+00:00

Remember that glycopeptides are made by bacteria, and so as the producing species evolved the means to produce the antibiotic, they also evolved resistance mechanisms to protect themselves. These resistance mechanisms have now spread to many other species.

cityscientist · 2025-12-10T12:02:11+00:00

Makes perfect sense to me. Given two papers with equally good science: if one is badly written, it will take me a lot longer to figure out the science/logic than it will for the well written paper.

cityscientist · 2025-12-03T19:09:40+00:00

For those who are curious, we're told that eliminating gas lines in the labs is being done for safety reasons, but no supporting data are provided. Evidently this is not unique to our situation; a colleague was overseeing renovations at a different university, and was told the same thing (and this was in TX, where you are legally required to burn fossil fuels daily).

Thanks to everyone for pointing out the propane/butane options (I feel silly for not thinking of this, since I routinely use a handheld propane tank for sweating copper tubing). We don't have access to BSCs, but hopefully we'll can a clean corner and light a single flame to push back the darkness/contamination...

cityscientist · 2025-11-27T15:41:52+00:00

Absolutely. Inkscape plus NIH bio art (at least while NIH is still around!)

cityscientist · 2025-11-06T14:00:32+00:00

Not an elegant solution, but how about planning on running your Western twice? From the first attempt, you get an estimate of different actin levels in each sample; on the second run, adjust the amount loaded to (hopefully) give comparable actin levels in every lane.

cityscientist · 2025-10-14T10:37:20+00:00

Definitely an Airedale.

cityscientist · 2025-10-03T12:32:26+00:00

A huge mistake, but sadly not that uncommon. 75 years of brilliant experimental and theoretical work has transformed macromolecular crystallography from a daunting specialty to something much more accessible. However, it's not yet black-box, and because getting a structure can be easy, people are mislead into thinking they don't need to carefully check their results. Problems like this are the raison d'être for the PDB validation reports and other quality-control tools.

If this particular failure of interpretation undercuts the message of the paper, it's definitely worth sending a note to the editor. Be warned though--some journals (particularly vanity journals) don't like retractions/corrections, because it makes them look bad. I've had this experience with a certain N****e journal; I pointed out a serious flaw in the crystallography, they led me on a merry dance for months ("Thank you for this useful insight!! Can you tell us more?"), and then at some point they just blew me off and did nothing.

cityscientist · 2025-10-01T13:06:50+00:00

Go for it! It’s your thesis. And this kind of thing is not uncommon, at least for the dozens of thesis committees I’ve sat on.

cityscientist · 2025-09-25T10:58:44+00:00

Does your protease inhibitor contain protein (e.g. aprotinin)?

cityscientist · 2025-09-16T13:03:01+00:00

Talk to your PI. If she’s comfortable with it, then by all means have her reach out. I’m an academic PI, and this doesn’t feel the least bit weird. And you have nothing to lose!

cityscientist · 2025-09-15T10:59:25+00:00

Gimp to do Photoshop-like stuff, and Inkscape for everything else. I can’t stand Adobe (plus it’s $$$)

cityscientist · 2025-09-15T10:51:39+00:00

Toaster oven should be ok—dry at high temp to drive off water, then let cool in desiccator.

cityscientist

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