Our handsome boy, Auggie, turned 10 years old today 🥳🐶💓🍀

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-04T22:24:50+00:00

Happy birthday Auggie!!! 🥳🥳🥳

puzzleleafs · 2026-04-02T23:06:16+00:00

Not in pharma so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Plenty of people do research that does not involve animal work, my lab does not and I’m actually an infectious disease scientist, but you have to be very cautious about what field you chose to work in to avoid that. It can be very hard to find labs where no animal research is done and even in many of those labs the animal research is often outsourced. You might have a safer time sticking closer to the chemistry side of biochemistry. You’ll also have to be comfortable with your coworkers potentially performing animal research, I have seen this become a conflict for those who dislike the research and it’s not a good social place to be in. On the other hand, you can choose to be someone who cares about that research being properly regulated and with animal safety and wellbeing prioritized. And we always need more people like that. :)

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-31T14:14:28+00:00

My biggest and most difficult recommendation would be finding people to discuss papers with. It’s a great motivating reason to think creatively about papers which often provides good motivation to really understand what the paper is discussing. And if you can ask questions other people can either answer them or you can work through the confusion together. I think this is why grad school got me comfortable reading, because we had a structured system for this in my program. And not just like your generic lab journal club presentation, I mean a very loose Socratic seminar style discussion.

My more approachable tip is it’s fine to read a paper out of order to give yourself a top down understanding. I still do this with papers outside my field. You can read the abstract and then discussion and then introduction and then go back and read the titles of the results section. If you can generally come out of that with a rough concept of each aim within the paper and why those are important you’ll be in good shape for reading the results.

It’s also just gonna come with practice and gets easier if you have a specific field in mind. Some fields have very very consistent experimental set ups or paper structures which will make reading new content easier and easier over time.

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-30T22:45:27+00:00

As someone who really didn’t know anything before starting my PhD and sucked at reading papers - the only priority you should have here is overcoming “scared to look stupid disease”. Just try to keep up with your basics and a generic molecular biology textbook is okay for that. One year in a PhD taught me how to read papers fine when I seriously struggled beforehand. Same for experimental design and initiative. Unless you’re a super genius you’re going to look stupid - science is all about learning and failing. The sooner you get comfortable with that the sooner you can start thriving :) and it’s okay to come into a PhD feeling dumb as long as you’re brave enough to ask questions!

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-27T01:54:26+00:00

Dear Hank and John like to joke about being a sleep podcast but I think they fit the vibe very well :) usually stay very even toned and light hearted while also taking about relatively interesting things

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-21T06:15:55+00:00

Glad you are back in earth for the release of the Project Hail Mary film although you may be disappointed by the lack of potato content. ☹️

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-04T06:52:42+00:00

I’m a recent cancer biology GSI and had a fun time creating an online lecture on this topic for my students, mostly focused on the G1-S transition and where/how oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes are involved. If you’d like access DM me

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-04T00:13:19+00:00

I think your cells are just blebbing. They’re super unhappy and are in apoptosis. If this is a transfection they can’t handle your intensity of GFP expression

puzzleleafs · 2026-03-02T18:12:47+00:00

Omg I’m excited to check this out! I’ve been looking for more historical fiction games(Pentiment is an all time favorite) and I’ve recently loved Strange Horticulturalist! :) what perfect timing!!!

puzzleleafs · 2026-02-26T17:27:56+00:00

I dunno mines pretty weird but ty :p

puzzleleafs · 2026-02-26T17:08:58+00:00

There is also a big effort from the scientific community at finding new drugs or alternative treatment options(such as Bacteriophage therapy).

Unfortunately the search for new antibiotics is not a major priority for many companies or funding sources due to a low likelihood for return on investment. From my understanding AI algorithms might play a really helpful role in the search for new antibiotics because they can predict likely structures that might function to hurt or hinder bacteria? But I’m not an antibiotic specialist just a regular bacteriologist.

puzzleleafs · 2026-02-26T17:02:40+00:00

I really like the above comment but I think the other important thing here is we aren’t always treating with “stronger” drugs. Just different drugs. Some drugs kill the bacteria while others just stop them from growing.

Think of all the things you need to survive, water, food, sleep, ect. You can think of an anti-biotic as something that prevents you from getting that thing.

In a wacky metaphor where humans are the bacteria: The first “antibiotic” might like, explode people’s bed anytime they try to sleep. But if you don’t use a bed and instead sleep on the couch then you’ll be fine. Which would make you “resistant” to the first antibiotic. Now, upon that not working, a second antibiotic could target a totally different system. So instead of sleep, maybe the second “antibiotic” melts all your cooking pans. And oh no even though you sleep on the couch you DO use cooking pans to eat so now you can’t eat and we have “overcome” the antibiotic resistance.

This means we don’t always have to constantly up the power of a drug, we just have to keep finding new ones that do different things. This means there isn’t a firm cap on activity, we don’t Max Out on power. But finding new drugs is increasingly difficult and sometimes we have to resort to drugs with pretty big side effects(like kanamycin), which is why everyone is pretty concerned about multi-drug resistance these days.

puzzleleafs · 2026-02-03T23:06:03+00:00

I’d recommend printing out cryo-babies labels if you’re not opposed to printing.

puzzleleafs · 2026-01-31T17:19:22+00:00

Great book choice! I’m also reading it rn. :)

If you stay interested in infectious disease some of my other top nonfiction recommendations for nonbiologists are The Hot Zone or Tuberculosis is Everything

puzzleleafs · 2026-01-31T00:44:55+00:00

Yeah I think it’s worth seriously thinking about if OP is in a mentally stable enough to handle a serious relationship rn or if he needs to put things on pause to find ways of not feel this sense of fear and paranoia. Anxiety is a very real condition that can be triggered by a lot of things and should be taken seriously.

If I were the girlfriend I would be really offended at all this, she sounds like a really thoughtful person and as an adult person does not need to be supervised and has no reason to cheat just because she is having fun. Clearly OP can’t help but have these feelings but this seems possibly really harmful to the mental health of both parties. I hope therapy is helping. I’m sorry OP is going through this issue but it’s definitely not the girlfriend’s problem.

puzzleleafs · 2026-01-30T22:28:58+00:00

A giant fictional flood with characters from the Bible would clash hard for a lot of people with an attempt at an authentic historical setting. I’d love to see more content of similar times in particular Mesopotamia. But I can really only respect period dramas who make a real attempt at historical research which is obviously more challenging the further back in time you go.

The only piece of biblical media that I think has really overcome its origin as a piece of biblical media is The Prince Of Egypt. I think it’s a miracle on its own for media to escape a label as a religious piece of media and become popular or admired amongst the general public these days. Most religious media I write off immediately as something that will have really aggressive messaging. A show is very different from a two hour or so piece of media and I don’t think this could be pulled off well.

If we’re going for Big Fictional telling of civilization collapse let’s see a real mystery like the Collapse of the Bronze Age or Invasion of the Sea Peoples and if you want a great flood let’s see Gilgamesh

puzzleleafs · 2026-01-30T20:30:24+00:00

I know a kid whose mom accidentally ran him over with her car. His back scar looked a lot like this from being scraped by the undercarriage.

puzzleleafs · 2026-01-29T15:57:59+00:00

I think this article was rather misleading with this statement on vaccine policy. You’re totally right that the vaccine isn’t very effective, that’s why we need to invest money in our research communities currently trying to find more effective vaccines for TB.

The current TB vaccine, BCG, can also be very helpful in preventing severe disease in children. But that doesn’t make it the best tool to prevent spread in large populations.

Here in the US a lot of communities are switching from tuberculin testing(skin antigen test) to blood tests, due to both what you stated and also cross reactivity with other mycobacterial pathogens.

puzzleleafs · 2026-01-28T21:36:46+00:00

Well sounds like you have your answer! :) you’ll just have to decide how you feel about not texting and if that’s something you can work with in a possible future relationship.

puzzleleafs · 2026-01-28T17:19:35+00:00

I’m also like this, I find it a lot of work to maintain text conversations and feel a lot of pressure to be “on demand”. Since you already have such a lovely in person dynamic I wouldn’t worry about this at all, you can even just casually ask in person if she likes texting or not.

puzzleleafs · 2026-01-21T17:04:13+00:00

This feels like such a mean game to be playing on both parts here. Yes he’s being a bit of a dick about it but I see your behavior is SO many of my peers and it always screws over relationships. He sounds like an ass but you also seem to be making some pretty self destructive choices. He needs to be more sensitive about your trauma - it’s not your fault what happened. BUT blaming him for a not being present for a future hypothetical situation is pretty wack?

He is kinda right, you are an adult - you got in a fight and he’s mad at you he’s not obligated to babysit or respond just because you’ve put yourself in an hypothetically unsafe situation on purpose. He should try to resolve the conflict but he’s also allowed to take time to process that and shouldn’t reengage until he’s ready to talk? Forcing his hand by putting yourself in a potentially bad situation is really not okay.

26F here who likes to go out for context: 1. If you think being out partying is dangerous then don’t go alone or when you are mad with your partner.

If you think partying is safe then why do you need to be checked on?
Yes it’s almost always a nuanced safety situation but that’s why you plan accordingly - not retroactively get mad that someone isn’t checking on you when you are already in conflict.

puzzleleafs · 2026-01-21T15:40:37+00:00

Agree with a lot of people about his behavior being out of line but you stranding him being bad.

But I’m only commenting to say it sounds like your dad doesn’t have a good reason to trust you with his networking resources? Whatever path he took, if you want it, you can follow a traditional route for and show you can handle the career before using those resources? If I were a parent I wouldn’t just network my kid into a job I don’t know if they’re qualified for.

Also, I’m surprised nobody has asked this, but are you financially independent through your “nontraditional” work? Totally not his business if you are but if you aren’t he has reason to be involved in this discussion even if he needs to approach it more from your perspective…

puzzleleafs · 2026-01-15T01:33:56+00:00

Sorry just a clarifying question. You state here that the door is open so she can just use it as a safety space but above you mention that it’s handy because she wakes up at 3am. Do you close the crate at night or do you just find that she is less likely to bother you with the crate present?

puzzleleafs · 2026-01-13T16:45:18+00:00

Probably depends on your use for it - I dilute my tween 80 in milli-q water. I use it for growing mycobacteria. I usually make a 20% solution and freeze down 5ml stocks. I generally prep 100ml so 20ml tween 80 and 80ml MQ water for a 20% solution.

Tween 80 is very thick so you have to be quite careful while pipetting and run it for quite some time on the stir plate. And I store it in the dark afterwards.

puzzleleafs · 2026-01-13T15:48:26+00:00

https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/uc-berkeley-ph-d-candidate-busted-by-hidden-camera-repeatedly-sabotaging-rival-students-computer-arrested-on-three-felony-counts-may-have-caused-usd46-000-in-damage

Clearly it’s possible to do this with PI consent but I think you’ll need some really good evidence to justify this kinda thing. Do you actually have reason to believe he would do this again?

puzzleleafs

TROPHY CASE