[#mylife] Sometimes around midnight…

Today’s fav song For some reason, the Dailymotion link doesn’t show as a video… Anyway: enjoy!

The Airborne Toxic Event – “Sometimes around midnight”

[#mylife] Fav videos of the week

Here we go: Puscifer… Discovered this more or less by chance. It sounded like Tool, but slightly less tortured. Or more surely desperate. Dunno, you make up your mind

[#mylife] Fav song of the day

Ah yeah, monomaniacs I listen to this song since this night at 3am or so… Enjoy!

On religious groups hiding behind NGOs that promote “gender equality”…

You remember my last posting about some random pseudo-research institute and its promotion of woman empowerment: “Women, men, gender equality… and natural law?” You liked it? You’ll love what follows…

Men, women, gender equality and… natural laws?

As you may have noticed it already, I am kinda interested in gender issues. This means quite a few things, “gender issues”. Sounds trendy, fashionable, LGBT-compliant, gently feminist, etc. Dunno, it is just end of any form of sexism for me. In “gender issues”, there is gender = not only women, not only men, but both.

Anyway. I am not intending to write a crash course on gender studies here. Although, honestly, after what will follow, I think some people should urgently take one. For the context: I was attending an one-day seminar where I presented an international workgroup I will chair and which will focus on encouraging women in science. As this is a long story, I’ll skip it here and come back to it later.

So, the context, was I saying: at this seminar, as at any seminar or conference, there are brochures, leaflets and stuff presenting various initiatives. I always take them all to read them calmly once I am home and have time. This time, no exceptions: I got back home with nearly a kilogram of brochures that I read from page 1 to the end. The part #mylife stops here. I wanted to tell you about one of them which definitely got my attention. It is a… surprising reading.

[#mylife] Fav song of the week

The video and the song itself. Particular ambience. Hard-to-classify and fitting me so well Enjoy!

 

2nd International Symposium “Microbes For Health”: live-tweeting from there in one week!

I was kindly invited by Yoni Winogradsky on behalf of Danone Research to live-tweet during the 2nd International Symposium “Microbes For Health”: thanks millions So, in one week, here we go!

The official hashtag to follow will be #MFH2011.

RIP Lynn Margulis

Sad news, everyone. Lynn Margulis passed away two days ago.

Important? Hell, yeah. Never met her in person. But she came up with one of the most fascinating scientific theories ever: the endosymbiotic theory. Remember, the stuff you are told from high school: mitochondria and plastids (such as chloroplasts) originated from free-living bacteria that were integrated in other cells. The whole system ended up being an eukaryotic cell, in other words what composes us.

[Brevia] Gendered Innovations portal

I got this through the eq-uni mailing-list, from Londa Schiebinger, Stanford University, Ineke Klinge, Maastricht University and Martina Schraudner, Fraunhofer & TU Berlin. It is about the Gendered Innovations In Science, Health & Medicine, and Engineering Project.

This project develops practical methods of sex and gender analysis for scientists and engineers, and provides case studies as concrete illustrations of how sex and gender analysis leads to innovation.

[Brevia] Open Letter to the European Commission on Socio-economic Sciences & Humanities research

In the proposal for next EC Framework Programme – Horizon 2020, — no funding for research in the social sciences and humanities is mentioned. If you support the idea of maintaining specific research funding for the social sciences and humanities (as it is the case under FP7), you are kindly invited to sign the open letter to the European Commission

Please forward this invitation to sign to others.

The EMBO Meeting blogging coverage

I think you will all be interested in finding more about the many and various topics that were approached during The EMBO Meeting 2011. That is why I hereafter link to the other certified bloggers’ pages In case you want to refresh your memory about some of the topics I shortly wrote about during The EMBO Meeting 2010, I link them below as well. Enjoy!

The EMBO Meeting Day 0: Career Advancement Day

As I told you earlier, I was selected as certified blogger for The EMBO Meeting This was really cool even though I had to travel a lot right afterwards and am now ill: definitely, when you come back from a place where it is 38°C every day to ~23°C, you feel the difference! But anyway: blogging about the conference makes me feel better Here is thus a short overview of the Day 0.

[Brevia] The weed genome gets sequenced!

Well, here comes Mary Jane with her brand new friends Medicinal Genomics and 454 Medicinal Genomics announced it has sequenced the entire genomes of Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica (two strains of the therapeutic plant). They were using Roche’s GS FLX+ System to do so.
At the same time, I was browsing the last issue of Nature Reviews Genetics and spotting the title Technology: Getting Moore from DNA sequencing. Oh yes, for sure!

I find this totally awesome, of course One of the good points is very pragmatic (and reassuring for sceptical fashionistas), as you may see it below:

This shoe is totally made out of cannabis

Sources: Oneras (CC-by-SA 2.0) & abaransk (CC-by-NC-ND 2.0)

Science Blogging at the EMBO Meeting 2011!

Ahoi, ahoi. I know, I’m not writing that much anymore, this is bad, sad, etc.

But this will be very soonish subject to change! Awesome news: I was selected to be ‘certified blogger’ at the EMBO Meeting I’ll also have a poster there, in the ‘Microbiology’ section. Lastly, since I’ll be finishing my PhD in precisely 1 year from now, I’ll attend several sessions at the Career Development Day to improve my job-searching abilities

The program looks really great and I am very much looking forward to attending some of the workshops dedicated on ‘Genome Evolution’, ‘Hosts & Microbes’ and — of course — Melissa Hines’s lecture on ‘Women In Science’! Naturally, you’ll hear from me on these topics.

If you want to apply, please do: the deadline was exceptionally extended to August 15.

See you in Vienna then!

My oh my!

I came across these videos on YouTube, featuring E. coli & PCR. Strongly recommended for a great laugh!

To PhD or not to PhD?

Ok, so here is some quick thought. The other day, I received a nice mail from Nature Staff member asking me whether I’d like to take part to a blogging initiative they had about PhD. I did accept with great pleasure since this was an excellent opportunity to talk about important things and to be read by a huge amount of people. Whether they would agree with what I say or not is not the question. Nobody asked for. To me, the crucial thing was to tell about what people can live through their years as as PhD. My answers are here.

Size matters?

Well, I don’t think so. But, since we all know that pessimists are out there, let’s try to convince them bringing some scientific evidence I found these maps below: you can see the sizes of penii all over the world, but also compare the distribution of the ratio IQ/penis size.

Ban Ki-moon urges universities to promote women’s empowerment

A week or so ago, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declared: “Women remain second-class citizens in too many countries, deprived of basic rights or legitimate opportunities”. It was during the Global Colloquium of University Presidents, held at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA.

Fellowships for divesity studies at CERN

I saw this announcement and thought it might be of interest for people.

CERN  Graduate Fellowship position / Diversity studies at CERN

In keeping with its international and increasingly global character, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has recently appointed a Diversity Officer to develop and implement a policy that will promote awareness and adherence to diversity, one of the established values of the Organisation.

In support of this new initiative, a position is now open to postgraduates in the framework of the CERN Fellowship Programme.

[#mylife] What is and what should never be

Yes, this is from Led Zep! Yes, I love this song! Yes, I am back