Word of the Day

A well-known grad school phrase has now been codified as a draft entry into the Oxford English Dictionary: ABD.

To wit: "All but dissertation, an unofficial qualification recognizing that a student has completed all the work required for the award of a doctorate, except for the dissertation (also Ph.D. (ABD)); (also) a student who has achieved this status."

Return

Back from the Society for Neuroscience meeting, and am girding myself for the inevitable catch-up process. I took a loaner laptop with me to try to stay caught up, but it did no good at all. Too much stuff, not enough time! (And the hotel charged for internet access.)

More later.

It's raining ads

A little later this week, I'll be flying to San Diego to attend the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting. I know the meeting is coming up, because I have so many people trying to meet with me.

I got no less than twelve "Come visit out booth at Neuroscience" flyers in my mailbox yesterday afternoon. Twelve. And I wasn't counting the ones that came last week. I wonder just how many get sent to the 25,000+ members who will probably attend. Strikes me as an awful use of paper.

Canadian prairie girl makes good

My latest hero and role model: Atomic Betty. I was watching a recent episode on Cartoon Network, an American cable station. I was surprised when I heard one of the characters mention Edmonton – capital of my home province, Alberta. Then at the end of the story, they showed Betty's school, with a red and white flag with a maple leaf in the center. And once I visited the official website, I learn that Betty's neighborhood is none other than Moose Jaw Heights. And the street she lives on is Maple Lane.

Canadian prairie girl by day, Galactic Guardian -- also by day. Go Betty!

Aftermath 2, or, "Maybe we aren't screwed"

We met with President Bambi (Blandina) Cardenas today. Most of the people in our department who went there are convinced that we managed to accomplish something. I think the most significant portion of the meeting was when we were discussing teaching assistant (TA) salaries. In most universities, graduate students take up the bulk of teaching assistant positions.

President Bambi asked what we paid TAs, and named a number that was about twice what we pay TAs. She was clearly taken aback when we told her what the actual pay was. And that students were expected to pay tuition out of that, whereas many other universities have some sort of tuition waiver scheme in place for graduate students.

I've been looking at cleavage today, and I'm very excited by it

By "cleavage," I mean "cell division." I'm running an experiment on the development of ascidian embryos. What did you think I meant?

Lots of promising things have been going on. The ascidian species I was working on last year finally showed up again, about a month later than last year. I was getting so scared that they wouldn't, and my student Anna and I wouldn't be able to complete the experiments we started last year. But they've shown up, we have plenty of animals, and I'm feeling optimistic that we'll be able to pull together the experiments and get a manuscript together in fairly short order.

And I actually had supplies get ordered and arrive promptly for once. The supplies were things necessary to do the experiments I mentioned above. Some of the material arrived packed in dry ice. I never get tired of tossing it into the sink, turning the water on, and watching the fog roll over my lab bench. Also very fun to scoop up the mist in beakers and laugh maniacally. (I mean, you've got what looks like a smoking beaker in your hand, what else are you going to do?)

And I had some promising staining results last week with a new technique I have a student trying.

And two of my students got selected for Howard Hughes Medical Institute undergraduate research fellowships. Only one can officially work with me, but it's a good thing for both of them, and will be a good thing for me.

And I finished a short grant proposal for a new program called SOMAS. My grant paperwork is now making the rounds for institutional approval.

And I'm meeting with our new president, Bambi Cardenas, tomorrow, as part of a representative group from the Biology Department.

And my student Sandra is just about ready to provide me with some final data for my neuroscience poster (if all goes well).

The frustrations I have? One is that my colleague Virginia will be down next weekend, just when I have to leave for the Society for Neuroscience meeting. ANd all of my students who are working on our collaborative projects are also going out of town for things like medical school interviews.

And I have to finish a bunch of marking before going to the Neuroscience meeting.

And I've been waiting a week from someone from the computer helpdesk services to come and type in a password on a class computer so that I can install a simple driver for software.

And there just aren't enough days in the week to get things accomplished.

Aftermath, or, "We're so screwed" (even if they want to help)

It's hard to know what came out of the meeting yesterday. The Biology Department conveyed in no uncertain terms why sticking our stuff in the RAHC is not acceptable as far as we're concerned. But in terms of what we will do about our animal facilities, and how soon, and everything else... well, that's still up in the air. The big problem is that even if we get what we want – a new facility – it's several years away, and we have users in a substandard facility trying to run projects now. Even renovating the current building (short term solution) will probably result in a substantial interruption for the current users.

And just in general, the reluctance by administration to work on research space is angering me and a few of my colleagues.

We have a meeting with our new president, Bambi, in two weeks. I hope we can get some of these issues on the table then.

Confrontation?

The latest kafuffle between the biology department and upper administration is about to come to a head at noon. Here's the lowdown.

The Biology Department used to be in a different building (now the Health and Human Science Building). But when the Biology Department moved to the new digs, the Science Building, around 1996, one building containing the department's animal facilities got left behind. It's called the Biology Annex.

The Annex is in pretty bad shape, and because it's halfway across campus, it's underused. Initially, we were talking about renovating – fixing the air conditioning, etc. Then, at a meeting, our new president, Bambi Cardenas, suggested, "Why don't we tear it down and rebuild it?"

But somewhere along the way, something changed. Now administration wants to move our animal facilities into the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio's Regional Academic Health Center research division (this is the RAHC that I've shown pictures of in this journal before).

From my point of view – and everyone else in the department I've talked to – this is just an all-around bad idea from every angle. Nobody has seen a positive side.

We're having a meeting about it with some administrators today. Not sure which ones yet. The meetings at moon. About 90 minutes from now. I fully expect there to be – what's the politician's euphemism? – "a full and frank exchange of views." (Personally, I'll be trying to restrain myself from asking the administrators present what the hell they've been smoking.)

I could have a very interesting second post today...

Give it back!

Spent most of today trying to undo the damage that was foisted upon me by having my file munched by computer or software. Ran into a new problem with importing text – no matter how much I insist that I am importing English (a.k.a. "Latin") text, not Asian text, it still keeps marking the text as Asian with a limited font range. I got around it by importing plain text, but had to redo all the formatting. Annoying. But I think I'm almost back to where I was yesterday.

Munch

I spent a good chunk of the day working on my Society for Neuroscience poster today. The meeting is next week, and I like to have these things done in advance as much as possible.

And something went wrong. The drawing software crashed. I couldn't open the file with my poster on it any more. "Ah, that's okay," methought. "I'll open the automatic backup that's created every time I save the file.

And that wouldn't open either. Oh, no, no, no... ARGH!

I lost a lot of work. Nothing irreplaceable, but... damn. Just... damn.

Hot off the (virtual) press

Just got email in the last couple of minutes that my latest paper is now available online.

Now, let's see here... (opens file cabinet, pulls out folder, pulls out papers and scans them closely.) According to the publisher's "Copyright transfer statement," before I can link this page here, I have to mention that Springer-Verlag is the copyright owner, and this text must accompany the link:

"The original publication is at springerlink.com"

Although there are a couple of linking options for this article, I'm supposed to use one with a digital object identifier (DOI).

I think that covers all the legalese. If you have a subscription, you can now jump to my latest paper, "Mechanisms of behavioral switching," here.

(I wanted it to be "Mechanisms of behavioural switching." The editor for this set of articles was American, and I lost that argument.)

The proof of the paper is in the correcting

It's still mid-morning, but today is already a good day. I received the proofs for my latest (short) article that is forthcoming in Journal of Comparative Physiology A. For those who have a subscription to this journal, the article should be up about one week from today in the "Online first" section. It won't be much, as it's a short introduction to a special series of papers, but it's a publication. And according to tenure requirements here, a publication is a publication is a publication. It doesn't matter if its a one page comment in a journal that nobody's heard of or a massive magnum opus that makes the cover of Science or Nature -- it's still one publication for tenure purposes.

The proof also contained an order form for reprints, and I couldn't help but notice the cost of reprints. Now, I like reprints. It's nice to have something professionally printed on acid-free, archival paper. But for a short article like this (probably 2 pages, tops), it's so not worth it. The cost of 50 copies is...

(Wait for it!)

US$275! And the reprint order form notes, "If you order offprints after the issue has gone to press, costs are much higher." The mind boggles at who could actually afford reprints then. The guy who owns Wal-Mart, maybe. It's one of those things that makes me very glad that scientific publishing has gone digital. Most people will be able to get PDFs and print their own copies at a fraction of the cost of what the publisher can offer.

But... having to do something like this makes me feel good. It reminds me that I have actually accomplished some stuff this year. And that's an important thing when so often, I feel frustrated at my inability to get things done fast enough.

The animals do what they please

One of the logical corollaries to Murphy's Law is known as the Harvard Rule of Animal Behaviour. It goes something along the lines of, "You can have the most beautifully designed experiment with the most carefully controlled variables, and the animal will do what it damn well pleases."

That is currently one of my biggest problems. I changed my entire teaching schedule on the idea that the ascidian species I was working with last year would be back again this year.

Nope.

These little babies just have not shown up again. Whether it's En Nino, sunspots, bad luck, or whatever, I'm sort of stuck without the animals I wanted to work with. 'Tis a quandry. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have a student who worked with me last year ready to do a series of follow-up experiments. Eeep! So now I have to think of a back-up plan.

Still, I find this problem less aggravating than my other major problem, which is the seeming inability of getting anything I order here promptly.

A surprisingly good day

A few positive things happened today.

First, free food! We had a social with our graduate students today (a suggestion of mine, as it happens), and they brought in some food for the students. I was reasonably pleased. We got about a dozen of our students there, and I met two new ones for the first time. It was good to have a chance to chat to them a little. And there was pretty good cake.

Second. I whipped off a quick letter of intent for a grant that's due at the start of October. I wouldn't bet on my chances, as I've submitted to these guys several times before and have yet to go to the full proposal stage. The problem with this particular grant system is that they only provide you with a rejection, and no indication of why they're not asking you to submit a full proposal. But I keep kicking at the can nevertheless.

Third, I finally got some supplies that I ordered back in... June? April? May? It's been so long I honestly don't remember. But it has been months since I tried to order it – not days or weeks. But it is here, which means I actually have something for one of my students to start working on now.

Fourth, I got word from a copy editor asking for fixes to one of my upcoming manuscripts. Now, "fixes" usually aren't a good thing, because it reminds you of the mistakes you've made. In this case, though, the fixes were easily done. This is good, because it means the paper is in the production pipeline, and hopefully will be out either at the end of this year or early next. Right now, anything to do with a manuscript coming out makes me happy, because it makes me feel a teensy bit like a waste of space, scientifically.

There might have been one or two other things that went right today. But for the moment, I'll just savour those little pleasures.

People unclear on the concept?

This morning, I got an email asking if people would be willing to teach classes between Christmas and New Year.

Our university has a traditional fall and spring semester, and two summer sessions. This year, they experimented with a "mini term" in the few weeks between the spring and summer sessions, which apparently was reasonably successful. Administration is now asking about the possibility of a winter mini term between the fall and spring semesters. It would run December 20 to 11 January, with three days off for Christmas and two for New Year's.

My reply was, "You have got to be ****ing kidding."

I cannot help but wonder at the split personality of administrative decisions. On the one hand, we hear, "We want to become a research university." On the other hand, we get this email that says, "More classes. More, more, more!" When are faculty supposed to be doing research? Writing grant applications? Having a chance to even think about these issues?

Now, I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression here. It's not like faculty would be forced into teaching these mini terms. They'd be an opportunity for extra money for those faculty who wanted to teach them.

Still, I think it amply demonstrates how far administration's mindset is in thinking about research. This university has grown on the back of ever increasing student enrollment, and has chugged along quite nicely on student fees. I think university administration smells an opportunity for more tuition, and are chasing that with far more seriousness than they are talking about investing in faculty's ability to write and secure major external research grants.

Mysterious deaths, 7 day work weeks, and other reasons for cheer

I drove out to the Coastal Studies Lab last week, and brought back many animals. Some hermit crabs, ghost shrimp, sand crabs, and tunicates. All had survived well in tanks recently. But for some mysterious unknown reason, just about all of the hermit crabs and ghost shrimp keeled over in less than a week this time! About half died on Sunday, the other half on Labour Day.

This is one reason I was glad to have come into the uni every day this week. It would have stunk to high heaven – both literally and figuratively – to have come in to all those corpses after a long weekend.

The tunicates didn't die prematurely, but the work I was trying to do with them was not encouraging, either. They're about as easy to dissect as old boot leather.

On the plus side, I'm more glad than ever that I live within walking distance of the university.

In which the author is reminded of his numerous limitations

Late last night I get an email from the National Science Foundation advising me that my latest grant proposal was missing a section and I had one day to fix it. It was easy to fix; I had written the section, but for some strange reason, I hadn't uploaded it.

At today's faculty meeting, I'm afraid the entire faculty got lectured because I forgot to turn in paperwork. Consequently, the Dean's secretary spent a couple of minutes, in a huff, telling everyone that it's not her job to remind us when we need to submit paperwork for travel. Which was pretty much aimed squarely at me.

And I'm up to six independent study students this semester. I must surely be mad.

On a more positive note, interesting thing that happened today was meeting with some folks from the graduate school of the University of Texas Medical Branch, who have some support money for Masters students from our university who want to continue on into a doctoral program at their university.

Ripe for the picking

Our building has had an amazing rash of thefts the last few weeks. We've lost about five or six computers and other equipment, including two last night. So far, I have been fortunate, but I've backed up the most recent stuff on my desktop computer just in case. I'm really worried. It's not the computer that concerns me, but losing data is a huge issue.

In other news, classes have started yesterday. I've tried to lighten my teaching load this semester (two classes) so I could get some more research done, but it's going to be an uphill battle. I will be supervising five students in research projects, and have many manuscripts and grant applications that need to be completed. My major concern is a repeat of the summertime issues with ordering supplies (as in, having only half of them actually show up).

Passtimes

When I walk to work every morning and when I walk home every night, I pass right by the baseball stadium that is home to the Edinburg Roadrunners. Have done so for the past three years. Heck, we live so close that we get the fireworks displays on Saturday for free. I rather like baseball compared to most other sports, and I've sort of meant to go for three years. Of all things, Sarah got given a pair of tickets, so we went to the ball game last night. The Roadrunners were playing the Jackson Senators.

And a good game it was, too. The lead went back and forth, and at the top of the ninth inning, it was a 9-9 tie game! The Roadrunners managed to strike out the batting Senators in the top of the ninth, and I was sitting thinking, "This could go extra innings, but there's only one hit in it."

Edinburg player Ryan Webb gets up to the plate. First pitch...

BAM!

Over the fence! Home run!

I just had to laugh. Great, great way to end the game. They have a thing here where they pass out a tip bucket for the pitcher for striking out a player, or a player for hitting a home run. I put in a contribution for the batter for the one pitch, one hit end to a tie game.

The proposal has left the building

Despite a form getting stuck in the Dean's office, my latest National Science Foundation proposal has been submitted this afternoon on time. Huzzah! Now comes the waiting – I should find out the results around January or February. This is my third kick at the can with a major proposal for the NSF, so here's hoping this one actually hits.