Perspectives Archives - Page 19 of 24

10/05/2013

Surviving experiments

Having just come through a particularly long and intense experiment (relatively unscathed) I thought I’d contribute some of the things I’ve learned and advice I’d give to other poor souls embarking on the exciting and terrifying world of empirical science.

1. Be organized!

I know this is a bit of a cliché but taking the time to work out exactly how much of everything you need, gather your chemicals, buying the labels etc.- it all pays off. Try, if you can, to run a number of pilots to iron out any blaring errors, work out difficult techniques and get familiar with how your system works. The absolute worst thing is to discover three days into an experiment that something isn’t working and you have to start all over again when you could have dealt with it weeks before.

2. Know your stats!

Another thing that I feel is really important and not always practiced or appreciated enough is to know what analysis you are intending to do with your results before you start. Understanding how you will analyse it makes a huge difference to the way and the efficiency with which you collect your data. Too many people don’t think about this in advance and the run into trouble once it comes to looking at their data. Knowing what you want from your data makes it a lot easier and straightforward to collect. It is also a lot more rewarding once you finish.

3. Accept you will have no life outside of work for the duration and share this fact

Realising this early is a big advantage. Warning friends and family in advance that you have time points that mean you can’t meet them in the pub, go for lunches or go away for the weekend saves frustration all round- they don’t think you are blowing them off and you don’t get that renewed sense of disappointment and questioning of “why am I doing this!?” every time you turn down an invitation for something more fun than looking down a microscope for 8 hours. It also saves boring them with your ‘hilarious’ “you’ll never guess what happened to me today? I held the pipette upside down!” stories that only you can appreciate right now, being the only thing to have happened to you all week.

4. Choose your listening and viewing carefully

Chances are you will be spending a lot of time alone and thus you will be turning to media for some company. I have a couple of pieces of advice about this. The first would be to not just rely on music. Singing along is fun for a while but the chances of a melancholic ballad coming on, or your dancing resulting in you knocking over bottles of liquid are quite high. Music all day every day for weeks also doesn’t do too much to pass the time. Chat shows or podcasts are great as you can let your brain engage they really make the time fly. I would also say to try and listen to a program that has the news on it so you remain somewhat in touch with the world. It is also a way of gaining perspective! A side note on TV as well, if you have late night time points, try to avoid too many murder mystery shows- leaves for an uncomfortable night alone in the dark lab in a creaking building!!

5. Make and effort to talk to people (and not just your equipment)

You can quickly cut yourself off from other people and goings on during your experiment and making an effort to go to coffee or pausing for a chat really can be the difference between going completely insane and being merely a little “frazzled”.

6. You’re probably a control freak- don’t panic if things don’t go exactly to plan

I imagine most people that have chosen to go down the empirical route have done so because underneath it all (or on surface!) you are somewhat of a control freak. You want to have power over your system, how it is designed and the kind of data you are going to generate. This is great but what it also means is that dealing with changes or mishaps can be hard. Most of the time these are things that can easily be adapted or fixed, so try not to cry when one thing goes slightly differently to how you had thought it would. Also, don’t count down the days. Take this from me, yes it is a comfort when you reach the last 2-3 days of the experiment but it isn’t much comfort waking up and saying “only 12 days left”. Definitely makes getting up harder!

7. Try to make it fun/pretty!

Experiments can be long, they can be tedious and they are exhausting. So why not do little things to make them just a little more fun and rewarding. Whether it is using one of your non-measuring moments to run and get your favourite coffee, buying sparkly labels and coloured beads to liven up your microcosms, or giving your equipment interesting names. These are all tiny changes that just might make coming into the lab that little bit brighter!

8. Embrace the insanity

If you are doing a long and time consuming experiment by yourself, you will go crazy. It is a simple truth. You reach a point where tedium meets stress meets exhaustion, and they seem to sum to delirium. However, embrace it, let yourself dance to that song when it comes on the radio while you’re pipetting, not chastise yourself too much for talking to the equipment (though see tip 4!) and remember that, in science, a little crazy is expected, even endearing. The mad scientist is already a thing, so you clearly aren’t going to ruin the rep.

9. Be prepared for the come down

This is kind of a strange one, but I think one of the more important ones. Your experiment will end (even if it doesn’t feel like it!). When it does, you need to remember that life is waiting for you again. I think it is a bit like finishing that first exam, it’s finally over and you’re delighted, but then there’s tomorrow to study for. Suddenly you need to make it up to friends, your emails, and your data. Try and prepare for this towards the end of your experiment: Glance at those unopened emails, file all those unread papers, sneak a brief peek at your diary beyond the page marked “end of experiment” circled a thousand times in red pen. This will make the day after the end of your experiment a little less of a shock!

10. Remember you are doing SCIENCE

The last thing and most important of all: Smile and remember, you’re doing that magical thing called science!! However tedious and time consuming, it’s amazing and exciting and you love it!!

Author

Deirdre McClean: mccleadm[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

08/05/201318/02/2019

Technically speaking…

Following the excellent Botany/Zoology postgraduate symposium in TCD a couple of weeks ago, we had a discussion in NERD club about giving scientific presentations – what makes a good one, what makes a bad one and which were the best in the symposium? Actually, we didn’t do the last bit, and scarily I could remember very few talks a week after the event (“do you remember so and so’s slide about x y and z?” NO!!). So, either I am becoming old and forgetful (likely), or I wonder whether it’s some form of desensitisation? Every conference is full of short talks I listen to and think “that was interesting” and then immediately forget. How can we give presentations that won’t be forgotten, or at least will be remembered for all the right reasons? Below are some of the points we discussed as a group – not an exhaustive list, but the random ramblings of a few academics, postdocs and postgrads.

What are the things to avoid – what makes a bad talk?

Speaker running over time (both their own fault for putting too much in, and the chair’s fault for not keeping time properly).
Too much text on slides – undergrads love it if there’s plenty for them to copy down as the lecturer is speaking (or to learn off by heart from the powerpoint slides just before the exam), but telling a story without the distraction of a load of text is much better for a scientific talk.
Too much content – need to stick to one (or two) key take-home messages, particularly if the talk is just one of many people will hear during the course of a conference.
Too many graphs – especially ones that are too small to see properly, or that are irrelevant – if a speaker needs to say “ignore all the graphs on the slide except the one in the top right” then they haven’t done their job of tailoring their talk to their audience and just presenting the one on the top right.
Jargon – even in a room full of eco-evo people, abbreviations and technical terms should be avoided (as should giving the name of a gene or biochemical pathway in the talk title – but we may be biased on this one!)
Not knowing what is coming up on the next slide – comes from a lack of practice
Colour-blind insensitive colour schemes – avoid red on green and other such indistinguishable schemes
Reading out the acknowledgements – this led to a discussion of whether the acknowledgements should come at the beginning or the end of a talk. The problem with having them at the end is the audience is left looking at a list of funders, collaborators and helpers, rather than the key take home message. The problem with having them at the beginning is the audience wants the speaker to get on and talk about something interesting. We ended up deciding that for short conference style presentations, having them at the end was best, but perhaps not covering a whole slide so that the key message/awesome graph can still be on the last slide to give the audience something to think about whilst clapping. But for seminars or longer talks, acknowledging that the work was a group effort at the beginning was a nice thing to do. And funding agencies could just be acknowledged with a logo on the title slide.
Bad chairing – ok, so that one’s not the speaker’s fault, but it is very annoying

And what makes a good talk?

A good story or narrative – a good talk tells the story in such a way that you are drawn in, the approach is logical (and seemingly obvious and you’re left thinking “why has no-one done this before?”) and the findings interesting and digestable
Targeting the scope and contents of the talk to the time slot – putting enough in, but not trying to include too much. Getting the balance right.
Leading the audience through the presentation so that they don’t get lost – clear ideas and questions as slide titles rather than introduction/methods/results/conclusions.
Being confident (but not cocky). Being enthusiastic. Being yourself, or doing a really good job at acting confident and enthusiastic.
Making eye contact or scanning the room – not picking on one person to talk to as this can be intimidating for that member of the audience. If actually making eye contact can be distracting, then looking at people’s foreheads or just over their heads, so it looks like you are making eye contact.
Spend time explaining graphs/figures – the audience gets lost if the graphs just flash up with no explanation – point out the trends or important parts, explain axes and colours if necessary (but don’t go on too long). Try not to just pull figures from papers/your thesis, redraw graphs to simplify them and make them clear so that they aid the audience in following your story, and don’t make things more complicated.
Know your audience and target your talk to them.
Humour – use with caution.
Have the ability to give your talk without any powerpoint slides/prezi – there may be a power-cut and you just have to carry on.
Practice your talk – practice the slide transitions so that you know what’s coming up next and how you’re going to link the slides.

There are heaps of resources out there which say more or less the same thing – I really like Jane Wilton et al.’s BES Bulletin article

And here’s Michael Alley’s “The craft of scientific presentations”

And here are some more (from a VERY brief google search)…

http://matt.might.net/articles/academic-presentation-tips/

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/agu/scientific_talk.html

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/Hany_Farid/Tutorials/Entries/2011/6/2_How_to_give_a_good_talk.html

http://oikosjournal.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/talk-and-stats-tips.pdf

Author

Jane Stout: stoutj@tcd.ie

Photo credit

http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/if-facebook-comments-are-gold-here%E2%80%99s-how-to-dig-for-more/attachment/audience-happy-2/

http://muratak.com/2011/11/24/5-ways-to-improve-your-pitches/

03/05/201303/05/2013

A hefty heating bill?

The Toco Toucan (Ramphastos toco) is the largest species in the toucan family but not only that, it has the largest bill relative to body size of all birds. As with most things in Zoology the function of the bill has been hotly debated, even Darwin himself weighed in with an explanation of his own. He thought that the exaggerated size of the bill may have been due to sexual selection. Seems a little extreme though, especially when you consider all the adaptations for flight birds already exhibit (see here for the basics). Why then would natural selection begin to select individuals with heavy large beaks, surely the extra matings acquired due to the size of your “birdhood” would be offset by your reduced capacity for flight. Right?

Well that depends, what if there were other benefits to having this huge bill. Like for example thermoregulation. Like other enlarged body parts used for thermoregulation, like for example the enlarged ears of many desert dwelling mammals, the bill of the toucan is highly vascularised (supplied with blood vessels) and it seems the toucan has the ability to control the amount of blood flowing to the blood vessels around the bill.

Thermoregulation is somewhat of a hot topic (if you’ll pardon the pun), recently there has been some suggestion that the plates and spikes of the Stegosaurus may have been candidates for thermoregulatory function, where they had been previously thought to have been for defence. Similarly and somewhat more bizarrelythe long neck of many animals both extant and extinct has been discussed as a possible means of thermoregulaltion in this wonderful article by Wilkinson and Ruxton (2011).

So the long and the short of it? As with many aspects of the animal kingdom, without wanting to blunt Occam’s razor the simplest answer may not always be correct.

Author

Keith McMahon: mcmahok[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5939/468.full.pdf

01/05/201301/05/2013

The popularity of bees

Because my research often uses bees as the study subject, friends and family are always forwarding links to news and culture that concerns these fascinating creatures. Let me list for you some of my favourites: I found this article about the debate surrounding the ban on neonicotinoids within the EU on twitter. On a lighter note, a performance group teamed up with a group of monks at Glenstal Abbey to compose a “Song of the bees” based on scientific recordings and data from honeybees. A friend on facebook sent me this comic, which describes the seeming absurdity of honeybee workers sacrificing themselves for their hives. Another facebook find was this spoof article which points out that we could probably solve the problem of bee decline if bees privatised. Finally, friends and family in Philadelphia informed me that Drexel University recently named its new department the BEES department! That last one is a little deceiving because BEES stands for Department of Biodiversity, Earth and Environmental Science, so they don’t actually focus on the study of bees. I think it’s still significant that the department’s acronym features our little buzzing friends though. In addition to these references, the birthday and Christmas gifts I’ve received over the past three years include bee embroidered hand towels, wine glasses with bees painted on them, a bracelet with a bee charm, and a stuffed bee .

What is apparent from all of these links and articles (and the availability of the plethora of bee paraphernalia my lovely friends and family continue to buy for me), is that bees are incredibly popular right now. And I can’t help but ask myself, what is the attraction?

My first question was am I just noticing these references more because I started studying bees in the last few years? Honestly if you asked me to point out the difference between a honeybee and a bumblebee before I went to college, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to do it. But it turns out it’s not personal bias, not according to the scientific literature anyway. The graph below is the result of a search in Web of Science for papers that contain the word “bee” or “bees” in the topic. Clearly there has been increased interest in bees since the 1940’s. In the last few years the publications on bees have been especially numerous, for example there were 1796 records in 2012.

Okay, so bees are being studied more. But why does the public seem to be so intrigued by these organisms? Why do people love bees?

I have a few thoughts- I’ll start with the obvious:

1.) Bees make honey.

Or so many think. In reality, not all bees make honey. The honey-like substance that bumblebees produce would not be fit for consumption- they don’t keep their colonies nice and neat like honeybees do, so you’d be likely to get a mouth full of bacteria or bee larvae in your honey if it came from a bumblebee. But everyone thinks all bees make honey, and after all, honey is delicious.

2.) The social nature of bees.

The average person may not know much about solitary bees or the differences in the life cycles of bee species, but usually they can tell you that honeybees have a queen. People also commonly know that the queen bee is responsible for producing all the rest of the bees, and that the rest of the bees in the colony will fight to the death to protect her. I’m not trying to dive too deeply into psychology here, but I think that the apparent altruism of bees attracts people to them and makes them a more sympathetic organism than we would normally consider something with a sting. People also like the concept of a “superorganism.”

3.) The “busy bee”

If you’ve ever watched a bee in the springtime foraging on a flower it’s clear that they are working hard. The work ethic of bees is impressive! I think people like that bees put in a hard day’s work, collecting food for themselves and their brood. It makes us think kindly of them, the working class insect.

4.) The ecosystem service

Maybe my first three reasons seem a bit silly and have left you unconvinced, so I will end with a more scientific explanation. We’ve known for some time that bees make excellent pollinators, and pollination is an important ecosystem service. In 2006 Science published two studies describing declines in pollinators in Europe and North America. These findings were compounded by the emergence of colony collapse disorder just a year or so later, leading to intense fear that our helpful honeybees were experiencing declines in population that they simply wouldn’t be able to recover from. The next question was what will be the impact of declining bee populations on food security? Turns out it’s rather significant. Studies have shown that the global economic value of pollination is over €153 billion. Furthermore, a study in March demonstrated that honeybees cannot replace the value of pollination services from wild pollinators; we can’t just worry about the honeybees, wild bees are important to increasing yields as well. Food security is not something we tend to take lightly, so our pollinators have intrinsic value. This helps explain the incredible media coverage bees have been receiving lately, especially regarding the European ban of neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides that have been shown to be harmful to bees.

I wonder though, how many people know the facts about how important bees are to the ecosystem service of pollination and therefore food security? How many people really like them because they are fuzzy, make sweet honey, and are hard workers? I suppose you could argue that it doesn’t matter why people are attracted to bees, it’s positive regardless because it encourages money to be spent on research into why they are declining and how we can conserve their populations. I think it’s helpful to try to understand why bees have become a sort of flagship species. That way we can better understand what traits cause humans to assign intrinsic value to organisms for future conservation work.

Author

Erin Jo Tiedeken: tiedekee[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

24/04/2013

Earth day

Monday 22^nd April was Earth Day. In schools and offices all around the world people organised events to highlight the importance of the Earth and the harm that climate change, deforestation, and other human impacts are causing.

As an ecologist and someone who cares about conservation I should welcome Earth Day and its relative, Earth Hour, with open arms. Shouldn’t’ I? Maybe, but I really can’t. In fact, I find these sorts of events incredibly frustrating. Implicit within them is the idea that if we spend one day really caring then we can spend the other 364½ how we like. I know that this is not the intention but I fear it is the reality.

Earth Day is popular with companies trying to improve their ‘green’ image, and it is here I have a big problem. I have no issue with companies trying to improve their green credentials, but improving their image and improving their credentials are not the same thing. How ‘green’ is a company who decides to spend Earth Day extoling the benefits of re-using cups at the coffee machine when the next day they send staff on a ‘training course’ that just happens to be in a hotel in Portugal? Who cares if you encourage everyone to print double-sided if you then require that 1,000-page file to be photocopied five times and then sent to offices all around the country (yes, I am drawing on past experience in these examples!).

I understand that Earth Day, and similar initiatives, try to encourage people to make small changes that are of little consequence in themselves but multiply over many people to make large differences. People are encouraged to turn off lights, the TV, their computer, and so on, when they’re not being used for long periods. The most commonly given reason for doing this is to ‘save you money’. After all, we live in a capitalistic society where money drives many of our decisions and if we can use money to drive lower energy consumption then everyone wins, surely?

Well, no. The problem comes from the rebound effect. If you save money on your heating bill most people don’t just say ‘yippee, I’ve saved money on my heating bill’, they say ‘yippee, I’ll put those savings into the holiday fund’ or similar. So the money saved on heating goes towards a flight to a tropical paradise where you stay in a five-star hotel for a week and lounge on the beach. This doesn’t exactly help the environment.

And this is where my biggest problem ultimately lies. No matter how hard we try to reduce our energy use, whether it’s through small behavioural changes or making things more energy efficient, the rebound effect will get us every time. I don’t know what the solution is but I think that this is something that really needs to be discussed publicly.

Sometimes the causes and effects of climate change can seem so overwhelming that people (myself included) want to give up, believing there’s nothing they can do. Unfortunately, there’s some truth in that. But one thing we can do is realise that it is overall effects that we need to consider, not individual ones. It’s not a very sexy message or one that is easy to sell, but unless it becomes the focus of the discussion then Earth Day is going to be nothing more than a wasted PR exercise. And that’s a real shame.

Author

Sarah Hearne: hearnes[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

http://thinkloud65.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/children_holding_hands_around_the_world1.gif

17/04/201318/04/2013

Hide and seek with a T-Rex in a drawer

Natalie Cooper and Sive Finlay already posted on this blog about the amazing old stuff you can find in a Natural History Museum (here and here). Palaeo collections are also special, I spent one week in the Smithsonian Institution Paleobiology collections to measure some Eocene American primate teeth and I was amazed by the quality of their collections. But the nice thing about Palaeo collections is that when you’re looking for a particular specimen, you always come across wonders you didn’t expect.

USNM-299811 — …Each one containing tiny fossils, like this *Tinimomys* molar.

…With some weird Helicoprion spiral teeth!

Oh and yes, not to mention the dinosaurs such as this hadrosaurid skull…

And I even found, hiding in a drawer… a T-Rex!

Author

Thomas Guillerme: guillert[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

Thomas Guillerme, with the kind permision of Michael K. Brett-Surman.

15/04/2013

Disney Ecology

In light of the current stresses of exam season, I have been contemplating my parallel educational history. Of equal, if not superior, importance to any stage of my conventional academic life, I have had a Disney education. If I visit medieval castles or forts rich in feudal history I can’t help but mentally locate Rapunzel’s tower and contemplate the prince’s access route. My Greek mythological references are entirely based upon Disney’s Hercules and any mention of Rudyard Kipling is incomplete without at least one verse of the Bare Necessities. Zoological education is no exception. Early Disney films were rather loosely based on real zoological principles – I don’t remember Snow White using any Pavlovian theory to behaviourally condition her furry friends to help with the housework. Similarly, Mary Poppins serenaded an American robin from her London home because studio executives thought the sight of a European robin would be too confusing for their target audience. However, some recent Disney tomes are more grounded in realistic ecology. Disney was my first introduction to fundamental ecological and behavioural concepts as varied as breeding coalitions, mutualistic relationships and inter-specific communication.

Responsible for introducing Swahili phrases to a generation of Timon and Pumbaa fans, the Lion King is a Disney classic, both as a film and more recently as a highly popular stage musical (which is coming to Dublin soon – even if you don’t normally like musicals you must go to this show for the most incredible stagecraft you will ever see). The film marked one of the first times that animators made a specific effort to study their animal subjects to make their movements and behaviours as realistic as possible. Prior to the release of this film, my four-year old self didn’t know that male lions, often brothers, form coalitions to take over prides or that female lions take a cooperative, crèche approach to raising their offspring. Cooperative behaviour in lions continues to spark interest and research to understand why lions are unique among big cats in exhibiting these social tendencies. Of course, some creative licence remained in Disney’s depiction of their feline heroes – the voice of Darth Vader is sadly absent from the Serengeti and male lions don’t lead a troupe of goose-stepping hyenas in a song of revolution. Similarly, rather than a “king and queen”, there’s an equal dominance status within male members of a coalition and within adult females in a pride (unfortunately socially equal characters don’t lend themselves easily to a re-telling of Hamlet). Despite the sprinkle of Disney magic however, the basic ecological premise of Simba’s pride remains grounded in fact.

My ecological horizons were further expanded by Finding Nemo’s depiction of the mutualistic relationship between clownfish and the anemones they call home. It’s a deceptively simple relationship – the anemone’s sting provides the fish with a predator-free habitat while Nemo and his friends help keep the anemone free from parasites. However, many of the finer details underlying this interaction continue to spark research interest (and I’m obviously not the only one to have experienced a parallel Disney education). Nemo has provided evidence that mutualistic interactions tend towards a nested structure. More recently, the way clownfish move their fins has been identified as helping to increase anemones’ oxygen consumption at night – although, hampered by a malformed fin, I wonder whether Nemo’s personal anemone is gasping for breath a bit more than the other anemones? Furthermore, Finding Nemo did not neglect my geographical education – I now know that to get from the Great Barrier Reef to Sydney it’s just a short ride on the East Australia Current – and if I meet a turtle on the way, just call him “Dude”, Mr Dude is his father.

Thanks to Disney, Nemo’s pal Dory is another star of every aquarium. Forgetful but lovable, Dory was my first introduction to the realms of interspecific communication. While Dory speaks whale, it appears that some whales can learn to talk back. A captive beluga whale in San Diego seems to modify its call to mimic human speech. Neither of these examples are true interspecific communication; Dory’s valiant efforts to converse were unsuccessful and the Californian beluga’s “human” vocalisations appear to be relicts of an ability to mimic other whale species. In both cases, information is not passing between fish and whale or whale and human. Though who knows, perhaps Finding Nemo 3 will be a story of the quest to discover the Rosetta Stone for interpreting whale speech…

So through the talking animals, improbable alliances (why a meerkat and warthog??) and heart-warming moral tales, look out for the ecology in your next Disney film. Combining their subliminal ecological messages with the excellent work of the Disney conservation fund hopefully many more generations will experience a Disney ecological education.

Author

Sive Finlay: sfinlay[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

12/04/2013

Finding a PhD

Undergraduate and Masters students often come to me for advice about how to find a PhD position. I know quite a few students read this blog so I thought I’d share the advice here. Hopefully some of it is helpful! Note this is aimed at people in the UK and Irish system who often go straight from undergraduate to a PhD (or do a brief one year Masters course in between the two). But many points are relevant to the US system too.

1) First make sure you definitely want to do a PhD!

This is really important and I think it’s something that very few of us ever bother to do. The thesis whisperer has some amazing advice on this, and many other subjects related to PhDs, so I won’t repeat too much here. (See http://thesiswhisperer.com/2011/11/07/should-i-do-a-phd/)

Doing a PhD can be an amazing experience, but it can also be extremely frustrating. Often it’s amazing and frustrating at the same time! You will work long hours for several years with very few rewards and low pay. Then once you finish your PhD things get even trickier – there’s no job security until you reach the Lecturer/Assistant Professor level which generally won’t happen until you’re at least 30, and getting that lecturer’s job is extremely difficult as there are far more qualified PhD students than there are postdoc jobs and lecturer jobs. So to succeed you need to work really hard and also have good luck. It’s good to aim high, but it’s also worth having an alternative career plan in mind for if the whole academia thing falls through. So before you start the long road of potential academic misery, make sure you have a really clear reason WHY you want to do a PhD. If it’s because you love research and can’t imagine doing anything else then great! If it’s because you need one for your chosen career (within or outside academia), again great! But if it’s because you don’t really know what else to do after graduating, or because you want to be a student for a few more years, then I’d recommend researching other options.

2) Advertised PhDs.
These PhDs generally already have funding and a planned research project. You just need to apply. Applications are usually fairly simple, just a CV and cover letter plus a couple of references (usually two). For the cover letter, make sure you describe exactly how you meet the criteria in the job description. Check out our earlier blog posts for help with CV writing. For referees try to include academic referees. Your project supervisor would be a good person to ask, followed by the head of department or your tutor. If the position is in aquatic ecology and you did particularly well in your aquatic ecology module you could ask the lecturer who taught you. Make sure you ask people before you put them down as references.

PhDs are advertised in many places including:

Twitter (with #phd or #jobs)
www.findaphd.com
ECOLOG Archives
Evoldir
University websites

Twitter can be particularly useful for this, as lecturers often tweet about positions in their lab and retweet adverts from other lecturers.

3) Non-advertised PhDs.

Not all PhD positions are advertised. Sometimes this is just because the person taking on students already has someone in mind or a good pool of undergraduate students to choose from. More often though this is because although the lecturer is perfectly happy to have a new PhD student they don’t have any funding. In these circumstances you need to apply for your own funding.

There are a couple of options when it comes to funding. The simplest are “personal” awards or studentships. These are PhD scholarships given to individual students based on various criteria – usually the quality of the student and of the proposed project. The other option is that a supervisor may include PhD student funding on a larger grant they are applying for. In this case the responsibility for the application rests with the supervisor. For personal awards the responsibility rests with you.

To apply for your own funding you first need to find a possible supervisor. You should already have an idea of the kind of project you’d like to work on, so you can use the internet to search for supervisors who might fit your interests. Ask around your current lecturers to see if they know of anyone suitable. You can narrow the search by also thinking about the place you’d like to study at. Once you’ve identified a possible supervisor, send them a brief email with your qualifications (attach your CV), what you’d like to work on, why you’d like to work with them and ask if there would be any opportunities in their group. Also mention that you’d be happy to apply for funding (if you have a funding body in mind mention this too). Don’t do this as a bulk email; make sure it’s tailored to the person in question. Also make sure it’s brief; most people today read emails on mobile phones so long emails are annoying.

If they say yes then you can work with them to prepare a proposal. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get replies or if you get lots of negative replies. It’s not personal, it’s just that people are busy and some already have as many PhD students as they can handle!

One quick tip on choosing a supervisor (again thesiswhisperer has lots of advice for this): don’t just focus on the senior people. It’s exciting to work with a famous scientist, but more often than not they are extremely busy and their groups are hard to get into. More junior people are often given money for a PhD student or two when they start a new job. They also tend to have more time.

4) Where to apply for funding.

The best thing to do is to talk to your potential supervisor about funding options. There are fewer and fewer options these days but each university usually has some kind of scheme, and scholarly societies often give out scholarships. What you are eligible for will depend on the project, your nationality and the country you wish to do your PhD in. For example, EU citizens can get funding from Marie Curie/European Commission if you do a PhD outside of your home country (and in the EU). Students of any nationality can apply for funding from the Irish Research Council to do a PhD in Ireland. Students of any nationality can also apply for a Trinity Postgraduate Scholarship or Ussher Scholarship from Trinity College Dublin if they wish to study at TCD.

5) DO NOT accept a PhD with little or no funding.

Some people are so keen to do a PhD they’ll accept one with little or no funding. This is a terrible idea (unless you’re independently wealthy!). You will need to pay fees (at TCD these are currently nearly €6000 a year) and need money to live on. Many people try to manage this with a part time job, but if you’re working you’re not doing your PhD, which should be a full time job in itself. And remember for every extra year doing your PhD you need to pay fees. This doesn’t even consider where the money for lab materials, conference travel or equipment is going to come from. So make sure you check the status of the funding before you say yes!

6) Qualifications needed for PhD positions.

If you only have an undergraduate degree then you need a 2.1 or 1^st class degree. Remember you’ll be competing with lots of people when you apply so this is just a guide. You can get a PhD with a 2.1 BUT if all the other applicants have 1^st class degrees you will struggle. I personally would prefer a student with a 1^st for their project and a 2.1 overall, to a student with a 2.1 for their project but a 1^st overall.

If you have a Masters then you may get a PhD with a grade lower than a 2.1 but only if you got a good grade on your Masters (preferably a Distinction). Again, your mark for the project component is the most important.

If your qualifications are unusual make sure you explain them. Also make sure you explain them if you are applying to a foreign university which may use a different system. Percentage marks often help here. If you know where you ranked in your class include this information too. If applying for positions in the UK, Irish students should highlight the fact that Irish degrees are 4 years long thus almost the equivalent of a degree and a Masters in in UK.

7) Should I do a Masters or work experience?

Masters courses can be great but they are also expensive and may be of limited benefit in some cases. If you don’t feel ready for a PhD, or are unsure you want to commit to a PhD, a Masters may be more sensible than jumping straight in to a PhD. Also if your grades in undergrad were not very impressive, doing a Masters and getting a Distinction or Merit can override these issues. However, if you’re certain you want a PhD and your project and overall grades were good at undergrad there’s no reason you shouldn’t apply for PhDs straight away. One solution might be to apply for Masters courses and then pull out if you get a PhD (check your contract so you don’t end up losing any money). Masters in Research (MRes) courses may be a particularly good idea as they involve several research projects so allow you to decide if you really like research or not. MSc courses also include taught elements, so these are good if you want to learn more about a specialised topic. These also end with a long research project.

If you want to get a field or conservation based PhD, then work experience may be a better option than doing a Masters. This may still be expensive as most of these positions are unpaid, but then you have the option of volunteering for some of the time and then working to support yourself. Work experience can be Research Assistant positions at universities, internships at conservation charities etc. The Institute of Zoology take interns every year, as do the IUCN. There are field projects on meerkats and baboons run out of Cambridge University that take volunteers each year. Also search ECOLOG and EvolDir (see links in 2 above) for other field assistant positions. Alternatively, if you have a potential supervisor in mind you could email them and offer your services. Or offer to help at a local university so you can live at home and save money. Research Assistant jobs are a great way to learn about PhDs and research from PhD students and researchers you interact with, however, you have to be prepared to work independently as people often don’t have much time to supervise interns.

That’s my advice! Feel free to add alternative advice if you have any. And good luck finding a PhD!

Author

Natalie Cooper

nhcooper123

ncooper[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

PhD comics

10/04/2013

Icefish: The coolest fish on the planet

I love fish. Not (just) to eat, but to study and learn about and at times just marvel at their beauty. They are arguably the most diverse vertebrate group (and easily arguable if you take the cladistic view that all vertebrates are, at heart, just highly modified fish). But even focusing solely on actinopterygians (ray-finned fish) every aquatic niche is filled by one species or another, from the poles to the equator, from the high Tibetan plateau to the depths of the ocean where sunlight is a distant memory. If there’s water chances are there’s fish.

My particular passion is for deep-sea and polar fish. They have, in my opinion, some of the weirdest adaptations to their environment and I’ve reached a point (right around the time a fish with a transparent head was filmed in the wild!!) where nothing they can do can surprise me.

Despite my jaded outlook I like to keep an eye out for interesting news stories and the other day I stumbled across a story in the Independent about a ‘mysterious fish with clear blood’. I read the story with increasing disappointment as I realised the fish was mysterious only to the reporter, but it provides a perfect opportunity to share the wonders of icefish with a wider audience.

Icefish (Channichthyidae) live in the Southern Ocean. They are a family in the suborder Notothenioidei, a group found in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic, and have been a love of mine for almost a decade. Notothenioids live in water which reaches sub-zero temperatures, but where their softer, lower-latitude relatives would freeze instantly, they swim merrily on. They can do this due to adaptations, one shared by most Notothenioids and one unique to icefish.

The first adaptation is, in every sense of the word, the coolest I know – they have evolved antifreeze! Antifreeze glycoproteins to be exact. These AFGPs inhibit the growth of ice crystals and prevent the blood and tissues from freezing.

The second adaptation, found only in icefish, has resulted from the interplay of two properties: at low temperatures fluids become viscous and large molecules, such as haemoglobin, increase this viscosity further still; and oxygen solubility increases as water temperature decreases. Icefish have exploited this second property to counter the first. Haemoglobin is an oxygen carrier, but at low temperatures it becomes more of a hindrance than a help. Icefish have a leathery skin instead of scales, allowing oxygen to be transported across their skin as well as their gills, and the high oxygen concentration in the water means that the haemoglobin can be lost with little reduction in oxygen capacity which is exactly what they have done. It helps that these fish aren’t exactly active, preferring to wait for prey to come their way than actively seek it out, but even so I think there are few other animals that could lose haemoglobin and still be alive, let alone live with few negative consequences.

The most striking consequence of this loss is that icefish have white flesh and gills. Normally gills are one of the reddest parts of a fish due to the need for blood to collect oxygen as water passes over them. But in icefish their gills are white; freakily so.

The news story, originally from AFP and posted almost verbatim on several websites, was extraordinarily hyperbolic. It gave the impression that haemoglobin- and scale-loss were unique to this species. Yet, as I’ve said, haemoglobin loss is found in all members of the icefish family and scale loss is found in many species.

The real story is that they have managed to get the species to spawn in captivity, which is a fantastic achievement as anyone who knows anything about closed life-cycle aquaculture will know. Unfortunately it seems that this legitimate success is not sufficiently newsworthy and so a false story has been created. The upside I get to talk about one of my favourite fish so I guess it’s not all bad news!

Author

Sarah Hearne: hearnes[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

Sarah Hearne

08/04/201308/04/2013

Top tips for science networking!

Science is a business like any other, and it’s hard to get things done if you don’t know anyone outside of your own department. Other scientists will review your papers and grants, invite you to give talks and hopefully employ you in the future. So the more people you know, the easier it gets. Conference season is just around the corner so I thought I’d continue my hints and tips series by talking about networking at conferences.

Step 1: Finding someone to network with…

Find someone you know and get them to introduce you to everyone they know. This person may be your supervisor, but postdocs and other PhD students can be just as helpful. Make sure you return the favour then everyone will know plenty of people! If you know several people, spend time with each of them meeting all their friends and maximizing the number of new people you meet.

It’s pretty rare to go to conference where you don’t know anyone beforehand. This is much harder than option 1 because you constantly have to make the effort to talk to new people which is pretty exhausting. In these situations try asking your supervisor beforehand if they can remotely introduce you to at least one person there. Then follow them around until you make new friends!

Go to conferences with easily achievable networking goals, for example choose one big name in your field and make sure you have a conversation with them, even if it’s short. However, don’t be that person who goes to conferences with a list of “important” people they want to meet and spends the whole time pestering the big names and ignoring everyone else. The people with the time and energy to start exciting new collaborations are usually students or postdocs, and these are also the people you’ll be meeting at conferences for the rest of your career. So make sure you network with them too!

At huge conferences like ESA it’s often hard to casually network because everyone has already scheduled meetings for every lunch break and evening before they arrive. If you really want to meet with someone drop them an email beforehand and see if you can arrange a quick meeting. Make sure you’re really specific about the meeting place, and don’t be too upset if they don’t show up, they were probably intercepted on the way!

Use social media! Twitter is a great way to arrange tweetups at conferences, and some societies also have Facebook pages where events are advertised. I haven’t tried this yet but I’m very excited about trying it at Evolution and ESEB this year.

Go to all the drinks receptions you can, but skip the conference dinner. This is just my opinion, but I’ve never done any good networking at a conference dinner. They can be fun, but usually they are at the end of the conference so everyone is hanging out with their friends and not really in the mood to talk about work. They are also expensive and the food is often awful. I usually go for dinner with some friends instead and we usually meet other people who aren’t at the conference dinner so we get to make new friends that way!

Step 2: OK so I’m chatting to a new person, what do I say?

I think you should always aim to have a person walk away from a conversation knowing the following pieces of information: your name, your institution and roughly what you work on. Aim to do the same with everyone you meet. If you meet someone particularly relevant to your research interests make a note of this before you forget.

Before going to a conference make sure you have a series of “elevator pitches” prepared. These should be the 1, 5 and 10 minute versions of what you’re currently interested in or working on. If you’re looking for jobs you should also prepare a quick outline of what you’d like to do in the future and the ideal place you’d like to work.

Be interested and interesting. Being interested just involves asking the other person about their work. Everyone likes to talk about their current pet project, and in general these are interesting so you don’t have to fake it! Ask questions where appropriate and be enthusiastic even if you couldn’t care less. If appropriate refer back to their talk/poster or recent papers. Being interesting is harder but again being enthusiastic helps. Talk about your work or the talks you’ve enjoyed at the conference or current areas in science that fascinate you. Hopefully after a somewhat artificial start to a conversation you’ll find yourself in a real and enjoyable chat.

Provided you get in a tiny bit of information about what you’re working on, you don’t have to talk about your work the whole time. Feel free to bemoan peer review, or the funding crisis or the bizarre nature of your structured PhD program. These are great conversational topics as everyone has an opinion and they affect all scientists. Also don’t worry about talking about normal topics – family, hobbies etc. Even the big names have lives outside of academia.

Step 3: Damage control (or OMG I can’t believe I just said that…)

One or two beers are your friends! Alcohol is a great way to reduce inhibitions and help you to chat to people you’d be too terrified to approach when sober. Three or more beers (depending on your alcohol tolerance) are not your friends. If your inhibitions are reduced to the point of dancing on the table people may not remember what you work on. Though they will remember your name…

To be fair, conferences often do involve a lot of drinking and it’s naïve to think you can avoid this entirely. People come to conferences to see old friends and enjoy themselves as well as for work so this should be respected. I think the rule of thumb for alcohol at conferences is to try and hang around with people at the same level of inebriation. Don’t be the drunk group in the quiet bar surrounded by sober people. Also remember that you need to get up the next day and go to lots of talks, so being hungover is not a good idea. Know your limits and never feel pressured into drinking if you don’t want to.

Don’t worry about making a fool of yourself. I’m the champion of this and somehow I still got a job. My classics (all while completely sober) include (1) being put in charge of cake at a meeting in London Zoo and promptly falling over and throwing all the cakes on the floor in front of the director; (2) missing my mouth while talking to a big name at Evolution and pouring coffee all down myself; (3) accidentally wearing a dress you could see my underwear through when meeting the Duke of Edinburgh; (4) complaining that an eminent scientist who published a lot of similar papers would probably publish their shopping list if they could – then realizing the person I was talking to was the scientist’s co-author; (5) insisting that ducks weren’t birds in front of an ornithologist (there’s a logical reasoning behind this but they didn’t stay to hear it); (6) trying to tap someone on the shoulder and accidentally stroking them instead etc. Most of these incidents are not remembered by anyone but my colleagues, and I don’t think they have influenced my career. So if you do say or do something ridiculous, don’t let it scare you away from talking to people in the future!

Those are my top tips; I hope some of them are helpful! I should point out that I don’t actually follow most of them, but I do try my best! Feel free to add more tips in the comments!

Author

Natalie Cooper

nhcooper123

ncooper[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons