Brainstorm!

I've talked a little bit before in this journal about the aesthetic pleasure of realizing that something you thought were two things are actually only one. That "A-ha!" moment. It's often small, but it's always nice. I had one today, working on my latest grant proposal. I wanted to include two sort of separate projects that I've been working on -- one on the experimental animals' responses to stress, and the other on the animal's decision making. I was thinking and thinking about which to include, or how to link them together somehow. And I thought of one! I was very pleased. Sadly, the nature of the proposal process is such that I can't go into more detail than that right now. Can't give the game away yet!

In less thrilling news, a trip I had planned for next week to Louisiana State University is now in serious jeopardy, because I haven't got back paperwork from Canada yet. I'm having my passport renewed, and I want my passport back and some associated paperwork before I travel. I wasn't planning on flying, but because I'm nudged right up against the Mexican border, there are road checkpoints, mainly for drugs and illegal immigrants. And I have been pulled over and asked for my passport at one of these things before. So Finagle's Law says if I try to travel without this stuff, I will end up needing it.

More time to work on grant proposals. And manuscripts. And supervise students. And update courses. And fix the graduate program. And... and... and...

Odd measures we have known

I learned today, from our university's Stats at a Glance booklet, that UTPA has 66 students per acre. Why anyone would want to know that is completely beyond me. The sheer oddity of the figure makes me want to find a way to work it into my next grant proposal. Just because. I'd have to convert it into students per hectare, though, since scientific writing demands metric.

"Dang" minimization

I just had a look at the reviews for the last proposal I submitted, and am encouraged. Sure, it's a rejection, but it's one of the most positive rejections I've seen so far. Strong encouragement to revise and resubmit the proposal, which is exactly what I'll aim for.

Dang.

Can't escape rejection even on the weekends. I got notice today that another grant proposal, this one for equipment, got rejected. Oh well, I'll read the reviews to see how much they hated it and see if it can't be fixed. I kind of expected it, truth be told, since it was the first crack we'd had at this particular program.

The end of an era (sort of)

I just printed off and am ready to stuff in an envelope my third manuscript in as many weeks. Wow. I'm very, very pleased about getting all those out.

I do have a confession to make, though, about something of which I'm not so proud. All of those manuscripts were based on my last post-doc, which I finished slightly over four years ago. Ouch. Those really should have been put into the hands of editors a lot sooner, but when you become a new assistant professor, trying to find uninterrupted time to concentrate and finish these things is sometimes hard to come by. That said, my colleague Virginia told me research has shown that if a scientist didn't write a paper about their research before they left the institution, the chances of it ever getting done were vanishingly close to zero. So I am a teensy, tiny bit proud that I've bucked the trend.

In other news, my recent ascension to graduate program director has come with an unexpected side effect. I now seem to be one of the people in the short-list to substitute for the Department Chair when he can't make a meeting. I'll be going to a meeting about faculty credentials (yawn) this Tuesday. Turns out that UTPA is getting ready for re-accreditation, and one of the big things is to show that all the faculty are 24 carat, bona fide, certified academics with degrees. Somewhere along the way, some documentation was never asked for or got lost.

In fact, I was one of the ones they asked to provide with a new undergraduate transcript. I was prepared to be quite miffed at this, and was prepared to ask who was going to pay for all this documentation that apparently administration lost. It turned out, though, that the missing transcript from my undergraduate institution, the University of Lethbridge

, was free for the asking. And I can't get too upset when it doesn't cost me anything.

I doubt other faculty will be so lucky, though.

Write, write, write...

After working hard on the beach to collect animals yesterday (with no much payoff, sad to say), today I've spent almost the entire day earning chairsores (they're like bedsores, but from inactivity in a chair instead of a sickbed). I have been writing, and writing, and writing some more, working on a manuscript that is long overdue. As in, the data were all collected at least four years ago. Sigh. It's amazing what a teaching job keeps you from getting done in a timely manner. The good news is that I've very pleased with the progress I've made today. I think I'll have a draft I can ship off to an editor in the not too distance future. The end is in sight!

I'm not myself...

I am, apparently, Isaac Newton. This according to ABC's "Which scientist are you?" quiz. I was rather disappointed to find out I wasn't me...

Summertime, and the living is... hectic

A lots gone on in the last little while. I've got a new research assistant, a graduate student named Sandra who I've worked with as an undergraduate. She's decided to complete a Masters degree. I'm very pleased I was able to find her some cash as my research assistant to get her started.

That's if the university decides to pay her like they're supposed to, that is. My HHMI undergraduate student, Michael, informed me last week that none of the students in that program have been paid since December. Wha—? It's not like there's no money, it's over a million dollar grant. But a big chunk of the institution doesn't seem to care if we treat what are ostensibly our best and brightest students like rubbish. I wrote an email to our university president today informing her of this situation. Don't know if it'll do any good, but at least I can say I tried.

Still, a day at the beach might relieve some of the stress. I was able to do that last week, when Sandra and I went out to collect mud shrimp on the beach at South Padre Island. It went well; god day, low tide, animals coming up quite easily. We're planning on making another run out this Tuesday, only this time, the whole lab (Sandra and Michael and incoming HHMI student Veronica) will be heading out for an afternoon trip to our Coastal Studies Lab to collect and plot and plan.

Of course, I still have other irons in the fire. As new graduate program coordinator, I'm meeting with our dean to talk about the state of the program. I've spend the last couple of days chewing through some data so I'll be able to convince him of a few things (I hope). No shortage of things to fix in our graduate program.

How did that happen?

Rather unexpectedly, I submitted a manuscript today. Another one, not the one I mentioned I finished yesterday. Admittedly, it has been close to completion for a long time (way too long), but I really didn't expect to get it into the editorial pipeline today. The reason why I did so was that I discovered the journal I submitted it to had a new submission process for manuscripts: 100% online and electronic. No printing out a copy, writing in pencil the figure numbers on the back with an arrow pointing up, making two or three photocopies, plus an electronic copy on floppy disk, plus a cover letter. Because I was close to finishing, I just started tinkering with the submission process... and did some more... and some more... and by the end of the day thought, "Hey, I could get this sucker off now!"

As I said, this one had been almost done for a long time. I had keep thinking about putting some more work into it, but I finally realized I hit the point of diminishing returns quite some time ago. (A.k.a., "It's amazing what you can accomplish when you just give up.") The fastest way to improve this paper is going to be to get it in the hands of reviewers who can tell me what extra analyses, if any, they want to see.

Two manuscripts submitted in two days. My god, the pressure is on for tomorrow...

Nostalgic for spam?

Spam (the emails, not the food product) is bad enough. "Phishing" scams and identity theft are a little scarier, but luckily most of them are easily detectable when you recognize the signs. But this is a little more scary, particularly for those of us for whom computer work is essential: holding computer files hostage. I wonder if we'll reach the point where we look back at spam as innocuous and quaint.

Productivity

I finished off a short manuscript and stuck it in the outgoing mailbox a couple of hours ago, to be shipped off to a journal editor. I'm quite please for several reasons. First, finishing a manuscript is always pleasing. Second, I thought I would need a few more days to finish this one off. Third, although this manuscript is short, it's a case of "It could have been nothing, but it got made into something." I like how it came out more than I thought I would.

A good week (so far)

I like how this week is turning out so far. I got my broken lab fridge fixed. I had an appointment with an immigration lawyer and made good progress towards the first major hurdle in getting a green card. I've got to spend some time in the lab with one of my students doing research. I've had a chance to analyze some old data and am getting very close to finishing a manuscript using it. I'm particularly pleased about that last one, and hope I might have something ready to go into the post to an editor... well, I don't want to say when. Am I being superstitious? Worried I'll jinx myself? I'm not sure.

Kickin' it old school

I just received something I haven't seen in a long time. A reprint request card. It's a little postcard from someone, with a form asking me to send them a copy of a recent paper (in this case, one that came out in Journal of Comparative Phsyiology A). Without getting too nostalgic, they were something I saw a reasonable number of in graduate school -- not so much my own, of course, but there was a reasonably steady stream of them coming into the department's mailboxes.

You don't see reprint cards much now, because people will typically either send out an email, and the revolution in electronic publishing typically means that most people who are interested can just download and read the article electronically. While I'm very pleased for the increased accessibility of electronic publishing, one of the things I do miss is knowing that other people are actually reading the thing. And -- even better -- to learn that it's someone that I don't actually know personally. Sometimes, the field is so small, you wonder if you are making an impact on those outside of your own circle of friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. Reprint cards gave you a little peek at who's reading your work in a way that electronic publishing typically doesn't.

We also finished moving the last of the herbarium cabinets today. No bruises this time, thanks to having a proper dolly to move those suckers.

Oh, and I should also mention that I am now officially the Department of Biology's graduate program coordinator. Ah, the power...

Hm. Not feeling the power yet. Hang on, is this plugged in?

Best use of time

The first day of no class-relayed responsibilities, so I get to...

Move freakin' heavy cabinets.

All of this relates to a big, $1.3 million dollar grant we got from the HHMI. Included was a budget for a core facility. The rooms we're going to build this facility in are currently in use for a herbarium and invertebrate museum. According to someone, work on renovation begins Monday, so we're supposed to clear out these two rooms by then.

So we had three people with Ph.D. degrees doing grunt labour. I don't mind the task (much), but the fact is: This is not my job. I could be using this time to write grants, manuscripts, work on all manner of things. We have Physical Plant guys. But they're not clearing out these rooms, because they're occupied setting up chairs for moms and dads for a graduation ceremony tomorrow.

Copious free time

I just handed in my final marks for the semester, which means that I have a bunch of free time. In theory, anyway. Of course, there are always a couple of students who have little dramas about there marks, always asking if I can pull a couple of percentage points out of thin air ("Damnit, Jim, I'm a scientist, not a magician!").

On my agenda now are the takeover of the biology graduate program, writing grants, writing manuscripts, preparing for summer meetings, supervising undergraduate researchers... which reminds me, I have a final draft undergraduate thesis to review. Must dash!

Never a dull moment

Lectures are done, but there's been no shortage of things that need doing the last couple of days. I've spent both afternoons the last two days interviewing undergraduate students for our HHMI undergraduate research program. I was really pleased that we had a bunch of good applicants, and it was kind of fun to talk to them all. And the interviews didn't stop there. I met with a candidate for Dean of our college this morning. Plus I was running around, getting passport pictures taken care of, and picking up birthday cake for fellow faculty member.

One of the most unusual tasks I was working on over the last couple of days, though, was writing letters. Some weeks back, as a spin-off of my Brain Awareness Week public lecture, there was a feature story in The Monitor. Some teacher apparently took that and ran with it in her grade five class, so I had this stack of letters from kids asking about the article, my research, and so on. Yesterday, I sat down and wrote individual replies to each one in the stack.

Interestingly, I also had another student who had come to my Brain Awareness Lecture, and was intrigued enough to come in and talk to me about neuroscience. It's great, because often you do these sorts of things and wonder if anyone notices at all. It's been a bit of ego boost this week to find out that my quickie jury-rigged talk made a ripple.

How to lie with statistics

We had a departmental seminar on Friday. It was good, but the speaker got under my skin with one silly claim. She was discussing how life expectancy is 36 or so in a region in Africa where she works. So she asked for a show of hands of everyone in the room who was over that age. After a fair chunk of the room did so, she said, "All dead."

Rhetorically effective, but wrong. If average height is 5'8", does everyone stop growing at 5'8"? An average represents the middle of a sample. Some people will be above average and some are below average. Heck, depending on the distribution, the majority could be above average!

And she knew better, which was the most annoying thing.

Irresistable

Not much of note happened today, but who can resist making a post on 05/05/05?

Although yesterday was the last day of classes, the pace of my days has not slowed down. I tested a new oxygen meter for a research project, met with one of my undergraduates, had a meeting about our new textbook, took care of a shipment of new crayfish, filled out some forms and a few other odds and ends.

Better than expected

There was a meeting on the workload policy I mentioned recently. And huzzah! From the criticisms on the draft, they put back the various ways to get teaching release, and even recommended increasing the maximum release (thus lowering the teaching load, potentially). Whew.

No good deed goes unpunished

Our university is trying to move more towards research. As part of that movement, there's a move afoot to reduce the standard teaching load across the board. This is good. A draft version of the policy, however, all but removes any possibility of teaching release. This is bad. The short version is that under the new plan, the hardest working faculty will have to do more work (because the release they had been granted won't exist any more), whereas people who haven't done anything get the benefits of a reduced teaching load. Fortunately, this is a draft document, so there might be a chance of changing it. I hope!

Speaking of teaching, my last lectures for the semester were yesterday. Time now to do some grade bookkeeping and start figuring out what projects I'm going to try to do over the summer.

Finally, in these days where getting research published is quite competitive, I found this story to be highly interesting.

(W)hen the Brown University researcher's paper was recently rejected from an occupational medicine journal, he simply bought two pages of ad space and printed the entire article in the same journal.

Next time, try not to cut it so close...

Proposal done with less than 11 minutes to spare. Required some fairly elaborate racking down of some other people, since two people involved in some way were both out of town today. Just awaiting electronic submission now. But it looks like this proposal is going to make it in, albeit under the wire. Whew...

Additional: Submitted with 4 minutes, 29 seconds to spare.

Good thoughts

A post to let former fellow grad student Mary Anne know that I'm sending her positive thought vibes as she interviews for a new job.

Deadlines

The current grant proposal I'm working on may not be the biggest I've submitted, but it is easily the most complex. I have four co-principle investigators (two was my previous record), have been working with architects, physical plant, and others... yeesh. The practical upshot of all this is that rather than being done a couple of days in advance, this thing is due at 5:00 pm today, and there is still some information missing from the proposal. That doesn't make me very happy, but I'm hopeful that I can pull this off somehow.

Defenses

Another busy day today. I was sitting down for the defenses of two Honors undergraduates. One was a student who I supervised, Yajaira, who gave a very confident presentation. You would never have known we were making changes to her presentation only 20 or 30 minutes before her talk! After her defense, I learned she was a former Miss Rio Grande Valley or some such thing. Explains the poise; she's used to standing in front of people.

Second student was Tina, who actually did most of her research off at Louisiana State University as a summer research project. She also did a good job, although we were lamenting a bit about the level of assistance she got from her supervisor at LSU. It sounds like her supervisor may not have given her quite as much help as she could have. But as someone always pressed for time myself, I can see how that would happen.

But my contributions are nothing compared to my colleague Scott Gunn, who is either supervising or being on the committee for sixteen, count 'em, sixteen undergraduate Honors thesis. He broke the old record of twelve in one semester, a record that was previously held by... himself! And yes, he was on the committee for both of the students today.

You may be an assistant professor if...

You receive an receipt for a program application that you had completely forgotten writing and submitting. That happened to me yesterday; I got an email from HACU about my application for their "Professions Capacity Building" program. I dug around on my hard drive and sure enough, there was the short two page application I had written up and submitted back in February when the request for applications was made. I had totally forgotten about it.

Meanwhile, I am soon to be up against the wall for my latest NSF application, which is due in a week and a half. Unfortunately, I'm depending on other people to provide me with information, which they haven't done yet. I'm getting nervous about it.

Denied!

Another day, another rejection letter, this one from the NSF. They didn't like my proposal for Neurobiology Methods enough, so back in for resubmission it will go.

In other news... I've been busy. Hence, no posts. The fun never stops in Zen's world.

In all the papers

One of the spin-offs from my recent Brain Awareness Week talk was that I spent a good chunk of an afternoon talking to a reporter from the local newspaper, The McAllen Monitor. The story from that chat is available here. The final story doesn't quite do justice to a wide-ranging conversation over a couple of hours. I love the composition of the picture they used, but I just wish I didn't look quite so... sombre.

Bits and pieces

What have I been up to lately?

I've been talking to job candidates a lot. Even though I'm not on the search committee this year, I'm trying to get as much face time with each of the candidates as I possibly can. I think we're three down, and have four to go. Whee!

I'm grinding away on another grant proposal, this one for the Coastal Studies Lab. I've got a few weeks to work on it, luckily, but it requires coordinating information from several people, so that'll make it a bit tricky.

I'm geeking out over the start of the new footy season, even though my first tip for the season was wrong.

But even that pales in comparison to the top-flight geek-out I'm having over the latest teaser trailer for the new Doctor Who series. It's going to be a bit of a struggle not to watch that over and over while I should be working! It makes my heart go pitter patter thumptthumpthumpthumpthump...

Takin' it to the streets

I gave a public lecture last night as part of Brain Awareness Week. I got a very pleasant surprise; I reckon I had over 100, maybe 150 people there. Most were students looking to earn some extra credit, but hey, I'll take anything I can get. I may try to expand on this and do something a bit more elaborate next year.

Time to update the resume

One of my papers has now made the transition from "published online" to "published." It's "Mechanisms of behavioral switching" (I didn't pick the American spelling of "behavioural," by the way, the editor did), in Journal of Comparative Physiology A volume 191, number 3, pages 197-199. You can see it here. Accept no substitutes!

In other news, I am now spearheading another grant proposal. This one will be for the National Science Foundation, asking for about $350,000 to help fund improvements to our Coastal Studies Lab out on South Padre Island. Yipes!

We've also started this year's round of job interviews. We're currently trying to fill four tenure track positions, and we had our first visitor -- of seven -- on campus yesterday. One down, six to go.

End of no lecture week

I can't bring myself to call it a "break" like others. I did get one day of that rare treat: I didn't come into my office at all yesterday. Actually, it wasn't that much of a treat, because I didn't plan ahead for myself and didn't really have much to do and was rather bored and more than a bit depressed. Otherwise, though, I got caught up on some class related stuff and did various odds and ends over the last week. I hope will be able to jump into the fray full throttle tomorrow.

Taken to TAS

My presentation at the Texas Academy of Science meeting today was well attended and well received. I probably had between 40 and 50 people in for my talk, which is great considering that many other speaker in my afternoon session were probably talking to less than ten people. I rock.

Almost like being there

A slideshow of my recent "Teaching Technology" presentation is available here. I particularly like slides #6 (I seem to be hitching a lift), #11 ("You can make a lovely shadow of a swan...") and #13 ("Disco inferno!"). Oh, and in classic UTPA style, the forward and backward buttons in the upper right corner are reversed: the "Forward" button sends you back and vice versa.

Three good things

Apart from the aforementioned loud music emanating from our building's lawn, today was a fairly good day. First, a new graduate course my colleague Anita Davelos Baines and I put together (Evolutionary Theory BIOL 6324) was approved by the university. Once given the rubber stamp by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, we'll probably be able to offer it next year. Second, I gave my Teaching Technology luncheon today, and it all went very well. People were interested and I got good feedback. Third, got the formal acceptance for my latest manuscript. I always love be able to update my curriculum vita and delete "submitted" and replace it with "in press." This is one of the better days I've had in a while. It starts to make up for a rather lackluster weekend.

Next up: My talk for the Texas Academy of Science meeting this Friday. I was tinkering with it this afternoon, and I think it's going fairly well. This is turning into a good week for adding up points for my merit and tenure folders.

Military incursion

The Navy is holding some sort of concert as a recruitment event. They're practicing not too far from our building, and they are loud. Extremely irksome.

Completion

I finished a revision on a manuscript today and sent it back to the editor. It looks like it will be published without any more fuss, which is a very good thing.

Many other tasks will get completed this week. I have two presentations to give; one on teaching, and one scientific. I'm looking forward to giving both talks. The teaching talk is tomorrow; I'll let you know how it goes.

Let the reign of terror commence

I just became the Graduate Program Director in waiting for our department. The change was confirmed in a faculty meeting that ended a few minutes ago. The current director, Tim Brush, continues until the end of this semester, and I'll be taking over this summer. I will apparently get some teaching release time to deal with this responsibility. And it's a pretty substantial one. There's a lot to do. I might talk more about this later, since graduate studies are intimately tied to research (which is, of course, the main point of this journal).

Snapping my suspenders

Storyteller and game author John Wick once wrote a column about how the audience members watching fiction engage in willing suspension of disbelief, but sometimes, the storyteller messes up and something happens that yanks you out of that willing participation; he said that such moments "snapped his suspenders."

After having written positively about the verisimilitude of the television crime show Numb3rs, which features an academic, mathematician Charlie Eppes, as a lead character. And then, the last episode, "Prime Suspect," goes and snaps my suspenders.

In this episode, we learn that mathematician Charlie is a tenured faculty member, who buys a big house from his father—at full cost, mind you—that is being sold because property values are skyrocketing, and that he is almost 30.

"Snap!" "Ow!"

Okay, I know that mathematicians typically have an earlier career start than biologists; many mathematicians do their best work when they're younger. But just for comparison, I was incredibly proud that I defended my doctorate just before my 30^th birthday. In the spirit of the show, let's run the numbers. Average age for entering university is 18. Four year degree puts you at 22. Average length for a doctorate in mathematics—let's say four, putting our protagonist at 26. Not sure chow common postdocs are in mathematics, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt to the writers and omit that step of most academic careers. The average tenure-track period at most universities is probably five or six years; let's give the benefit of the doubt and say five years, which puts Charlie at around 31 to make tenure.

Even if I could get around the age thing, which I almost can, what the heck do the producers think assistant professors make? The episodes made mention of some academic awards, but even given that, I know of no assistant professor on one income who could manage to afford a two story house in prime real estate in a major city.

Maybe there's more money in applied mathematics than biology. Hm. Expression of sincere doubt.

Lifting a curse and beating the hydra

My week started to turn around a little today. First, my student Anna and I finally got some fluorescent antibodies to label some neurons in some long preserved ascidian embryos. This is a pretty big deal, because I have been struggling for literally two years trying to get something to glow from any fluorescent technique. I really felt I had some sort of curse with me and these techniques, because they are widely used by so many labs, and I'd had such trouble. I hope to post a picture of this later, if I can figure out why the camera is colouring things purple on the screen that are green through the eyepiece.

In between meetings with students of various sorts, I composed a remarkably restrained email to the director of the Helpdesk; copied to his boss (Director of Academic Computing), my department chair, and the Vice President for Research, about my recent computer problems. I said that I thought the response time was poor but I could live with that, but that messing with my computer operating system settings so that I couldn't use it as I saw fit was unacceptable. To my surprise, I had a staffer from the Helpdesk in my office before the day was out, fixing the problem that needed to be fixed. While he was finishing up, I had a phone call from the Director of Academic Computing, who apologized and explained why they had made the changes they did.

Vindication.

Tomorrow, I will write a follow-up email to those same people saying thanks for taking me seriously. I wasn't sure if I could get someone to pay attention to the problem without me flying into a blind rage in someone's office. Other than me venting in my own office... I got plenty mad, visibly upset, but! Not at the support staff. I didn't lose my temper with any of them.

The Helpdesk hydra is not dead -- I know I will be tangling with them again, probably over installing software on classroom computers -- but the head has been buried under a rock, where it will lie dormant and not spawn new heads. For now.

Round the twist

I got my computer back today. The screen is now working. I should be happy, but I am instead incredibly angry.

Because, you see, the computer helpdesk didn't simply fix the problem that I had (broken screen). No, they took it upon themselves to made some changes to my operating system. All my settings for my programs? Gone. I can't access some of my files. And I certainly can't install new software. They managed to give my office computer a lobotomy. I hate to think how much time I am going to waste trying to get things put back to the level of functionality I had before the helpdesk "helped."

So what can I do? I have to call the helpdesk and my request goes to the bottom of the queue.

Dealing with our helpdesk is like fighting a freaking hydra. For every problem you kill, two more rise to take its place.

I can't get any Sex happening

I want to create a new course on animal courtship and mating and sexual selection. First, I submitted it as a fourth year undergraduate course, simply titled, "Sex." The department's curriculum committee asked me to revise it, on the grounds that other departments (Psychology, Health, Sociology, maybe) were too likely to argue that it was a topic they should be teaching, not biology. So I took it back and changed the title to "Evolution and sexual reproduction" and resubmitted the proposal.

The departmental curriculum committee met again yesterday and I ran into a whole bunch of new objections that weren't raised in the first meeting. One of the reasons for creating the course was that we have our courses grouped into five areas; students need at least one class from each of the five areas. I wanted to create a class that would fill out the smallest section, which has only three classes. The first objection was that this course would draw away students from Genetics. I said, "There's a prerequisite; students can't take this instead of an existing course in the group, because you need a lower-level course to get into this one."

From this, it comes out that there is actually no way of enforcing prerequisites on this campus.

What?

Yes, it turns out that pretty much all of those course requirements are apparently not enforced, or even enforceable.

Being curious, I ask if the goal was to pump students into genetics why the course is not a requirement. After the meeting, I learn that the reason it's not a requirement is that many, many years ago, the person who taught genetics was so bad and so unpopular, he drove people away, so there was resistance to making the course a requirement because of this one instructor's unpopularity. Although the reason for not making the course required no longer remains, it would be hard to make the course required because it is argued that there would be complaints from pre-med students about adding more courses they have to take to finish their degrees.

Anyway, whether this course would pull people away from genetics or not, the second suggestion from a committee member was that I make the class a graduate course instead of an undergraduate course. I say, "Not what I had in mind, but I'll consider it." In the afternoon, I go away and write up two versions of a course description, for the third time.

After the curriculum committee meeting, I was left wondering if it was "appropriate" or "ironic" that my course on sex keeps getting screwed.

Ignorance may not be bliss, but perhaps it is painless

Making the rounds on the Associated Press wire service is this news article on what is arguably the question we crustacean neurobiologists get asked: does it hurt a lobster when you boil it? It's a topic I've dealt with in this journal before (see comments here and here). I am bitterly disappointed to see people saying that lobsters don't have brains. Again. "No brain, no pain," one Mike Loughlin is quoted as saying. I won't comment on the pain portion, but as to the claim that a lobster has no brain? It is wrong. It is false. It is incorrect. It is untrue. I don't know how much more flatly I can say it. Lobsters have brains. So do crabs and crayfish and other crustaceans. So do insects (insects also get slapped in the article with this quote: "...the lobster's primitive nervous system and underdeveloped brain are similar to that of an insect."). So do other arthropods. They all have brains. But because this is a wire story, probably being sent around the world, there's not much I can do to try to set the record straight. I just don't have time to fire off emails to every newspaper and media outlet that runs the story. Alas, as Darwin once noted, great is the power of steady misrepresentation.

Furthermore, there is good evidence that at least some arthropods have nociceptors (sensory neurons that respond preferentially to tissue damage): see this abstract in the prestigious journal Cell here or here. That said, nociception is not pain, though the two are obviously closely related concepts. In this specific case of crustaceans, there is no published evidence I am aware of for or against nociception in crustaceans—and I've looked more than once. But then, it was only recently that the findings on nociception in the intensely-studied fruit fly (the Cell article above) were published.

What is all the more frustrating about this matter is that it is easily solved. Lobsters can be anesthetized by placing them on ice for a while. I have never heard anyone say that this affects the taste. Thus, it would be easy enough to ease any guilt one might feel over boiling an alert animal.

More rejection

Almost forgot to mention that I received another grant rejection letter over the weekend. This one from the SOMAS program. Since I am not succeeding, I am left to try, try again. Back to the old drawing board. Once more into the breach. Etcetera.

On-screen scientists

How scientists are portrayed in film and TV has been an interest of mine for a while. Today, I came across this quote (in the New York Times (1 February 2005, "A conversation with: James Cameron; Filmmaker Employs the Arts to Promote the Sciences"), requoted in Science) from film maker and fellow Canuck James Cameron talking about his IMAX film, Aliens of the Deep:

"One of the things we tried to do with this film was to show what scientists are really like. ... They're not driven by a materialistic value system. They're seeking something else, something more important."

Tenure?

My man Jim doesn't come out and say what that "something else" is, at least not in that quote. I don't know. I find most scientists are just as interested in taking home a regular paycheque as anyone else. In fact, given that a large chunk of this journal seems to have become devoted to detailing the amount of time and effort I spend trying to find money to do my research, perhaps Cameron has a slightly romanticized view of a scientist's lot. This wouldn't surprise me; probably everyone romanticizes careers other than their own.

I've also been interested in watching Numb3rs, which may be the regular first U.S. television show to feature a mathematician as its main protagonist. Of course, the other main protagonist is a law enforcement official (FBI), because what else is there to do in an hour of TV except solve a crime? My annoyance about math being joined with a standard police procedural drama notwithstanding, there is something in the portrayal of an academic (applied mathematician Charlie Eppes, played by David Krumholtz) in an academic setting that I quite like. On last week's episode, two instructors were talking about teaching evaluations; a nice little touch that will be familiar to anyone teaching in a university.

I'm also curious to see how Reed Richards, a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic, will be depicted in the upcoming Fantastic Four movie this summer. An old friend of mine described his character in the comics well: his real superpower was his intelligence, and the stretching was just a bonus. It'll be really interesting to see if Reed is portrayed as truly intelligent, rather than the typical approach films often fall back on, which is to make the smart guy boring! The original comics, in fairness, often fell into this trap themselves, especially in the hands of weaker writers. But even when handled by Stan Lee or other top writers, Reed Richards certainly never got the fan devotion of Ben Grimm (a.k.a. The Thing).

I'm still looking for a depiction of a scientist in contemporary film that really seems to ring true. It's a mistake to underestimate the impact these depictions have; if I'm not mistaken, recent record-winning Jeopardy! winner Ken Jennings said in a TV Guide interview that much of his interest and knowledge about science was sparked by reading none other than Fantastic Four comics.

Workload reassignment

I had a quick peek through the campus newspaper today, and it looks like President Bambi's more or less confirmed that there is going to be a reduction in teaching load, which was being discussed in the fall. Only instead of fall 2005, which was bandied about as a possibility, it looks like it'll be in place by fall 2006. Can't be soon enough for me.

Chugging along

I've managed to get my butt into the lab the last couple of days and do a few things. First, I received some ascidians from Wood Hole Marine Biological Lab for some genetic experiments I'm doing with my student Joe. Luckily, these animals are reproductive, which means I might be able to get double duty out of them. Have also been working with my student Anna to try to get some labeling done with preserved ascidian embryos -- we'll see tomorrow if it has worked. Fingers crossed.

In other news, I have somehow manged to get myself slated to give three talks in as many weeks. First, I'll be giving a teaching and technology lunchtime seminar about my experience with wireless polling on 1 March. At the end of that week, I'll be giving a presentation (co-authored by my student Anna and my colleague Virginia) at the annual Texas Academy of Science meeting. Two weeks after that, I've set the wheel in motion to give a public lecture on neurobiology as part of Brain Awareness Week. I'll make it work, but I didn't quite realize how these were all going to pile up. This is what happens when my computer program, with my scheduling software, gets taken away... (No, my computer still isn't fixed. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.)

Rejected

The first of four NSF grants under review got turned down today. This is one I submitted back last August.

Good news and no news

On the good news front, I submitted yet another major grant application today. This is the second this month, and I think the third in three months (one in November, two this month). It's a little disconcerting when I think just how much money I've stuck my hand out for recently; the total of all these proposals would be well over half a million dollars. I sometimes worry I'm not equipped to cope with that much cash, as most of my finanical experience is with tens and twentys, not thousands.

Another piece of very welcome news is that our Department got approved to hire another secretary! Hooray! We're still understaffed compared to most other Biology Departments I've worked in, but I'll take progress.

I also finished off my last guest lecture for my colleague Anita Davelos Baines, which is my third piece of good news. It was fun and I was glad to help, although I will be glad not to have to write new lectures! Or, for that matter, to talk nonstop for 2 and a half hours (stupid evening classes... ugh).

On the no news front, my main computer, reported non-functional over a week ago, is still non-functional. Grrr. The service here sometimes seems to be the equivalent to phoning the fire department, screaming your house is on fire, and being told they'll pencil you in to serve all your extinguishing needs for tomorrow afternoon. (But I'm not bitter.)

Technology, why hast thou forsaken me?

Pretty much every computer problem I described in yesterday's entry still hasn't been fixed. In fact, I seem to have at least new one. Usually I'm the technically proficient guy, but the last few days it feels like I'm giving off a "computer malfunction" body aura. That'd be so cool... if it wasn't actually working!

Otherwise, not much to report today, since I just spent it struggling to maintain some resemblance of functionality. It's really amazing just how much of what I do now is dependent on a working computer with a live internet connection.

Hell day

I knew today was going to be bad.

I had to give 6 demos of my class website to my general biology students, starting at 8:45 a.m. The computer labs only hold about half the class, so I had to give demos to half the students, kick them out, and rotate the other half in. I also knew I was in trouble, because I learned yesterday that about two-thirds of my students can't log into the class website, which would sort of be helpful when you're trying to do a demo of said website. While I was giving the demo, students who could log in told me some of the features I put into the class website weren't working.

I also learned that another instructional website I was using can't be reached from our main campus. I knew I was going to be faced with technical stuff trying to trace that problem. That's still not fixed, although that one isn't urgent.

I also agreed to give a guest lecture for my colleague Anita, who has a late afternoon early evening class that runs for two and a half hours and ends at 7:00 pm. This made for a very late start and a very early finish. And did I mention that this was not a class I had formally lectured in before? It was evolution, which I do study and is one of my favourite subjects, but just because I know this stuff doesn't mean it's easy to put everything into some sort of coherent lecture -- especially a two and a half hour non-stop lecture.

What really did me in for the day was that about 90 minutes before I was to give my guest lecture, I was sitting at my computer, working away on slides and notes and thinking about what I needed to do... and my computer screen blanked out.

Actually, it wasn't completely blank. It was just about 0.01% as bright as it should be. Dang near black. I found I was just barely able to see enough to save what I was working on. But not enough that I could read any screen text that might help me fix the problem. I have an "integrated" computer, i.e., the screen and computer are all one unit, so I can't unplug the existing screen and get a new one. There is a port for a second screen, but something is preventing it from working right, and it flips into power saving more after the boot screen. The practical end of all of this is that I have a big doorstop where my computer used to be. Or maybe it's a paperweight.

Still, I do count my blessings. I will take a screen blanking out over a hard disk disaster any day. At least no data should be lost. But it's going to make trying to do anything very indirect and time consuming until its fixed.

I knew today was going to be a hell day, and was saying so to people yesterday. If only I'd known how right I was going to be... But I am convinced that tomorrow will be better!

Quick update

We're now at the end of the last full week of what some people have called to me the "break." I have been writing two major grants; they are mostly waiting for other people to deliver some written material to me. I banged out a quick letter of intent for another grant and mailed it yesterday. And finally, I have worked on a short little paper with some colleagues that I think will be in the hands of an editor very soon. So I have been surprisingly productive, by some measures, in the last couple of weeks.

Once in a lifetime

I've learned from this article this this was the first white Christmas in the Rio Grande Valley ever recorded, and the first measurable snowfall since 1895! I thought there was about an inch, but it was more like 3 inches in some places. Wow... I'm awestruck. While nothing compared to Canadian winter, withing the context of the region, this must ranks up there with the ice storm of 1998 (also here) as the most memorable weather I've encountered as an adult. This one was considerably more pleasant than the ice storm, though!

After the (snow)fall

I was probably up for a good half hour before I looked out the window yesterday. I wonder what my face looked like when I realized what I was looking at.

Snow!?

Not just a dusting, not just frost, but an honest-to-goodness few centimeters of snow covering almost everything. In the tropical Rio Grande Valley? On not just any day, but Christmas morning? I knew the night before, it was cold, the roads were treacherous icy (nobody's prepared for it here), and someone had said something about ice coming down, but I never in my wildest dreams expected there to be snow.

Admittedly, it was melting fast even then, and I soon realized that this was probably a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. According to one of the local papers i quoted a couple of days ago, the last measurable amount of snow anywhere in the Rio Grande Valley was 1924. I got dressed, threw on my much-loved-but-seldom-needed leather bomber jacket and my hat from Alice Springs, grabbed my digital camera, and started to walk over to uni.

On the way over, I started to get a little emotional. I'm Canadian, and so snow and Christmas are inextricably linked. I hadn't really been feeling much in holiday spirit for lots of reasons, but no matter how much your rational mind is telling you, "This is just an improbable coincidence of freak weather," the little kid inside is going, "Santa came and brought snow just for me."

(Later in the afternoon, I realized that I don't think I'd seen snow for over five years. I haven't seen any here before yesterday, and I sure didn't see any in Australia.)

I walked around campus and took a lot of high-resolution pictures. I saw a family drive up and get out of their SUV and run around throwing snowballs at each other. I saw some grackles and feral cats that I suspected were mighty confused. I saw the melting snow falling like rain from the tree branches, and even some actual, factual, no kidding, icicles. It was really beautiful, and I felt fortunate to be there to see it. Because I was. And I kept telling the part of my brain that was reminding me of the economic damage caused to crops and the likely number of accidents on the road to shut the hell up.

Partway through my walk around campus, I realized that there was something I just had to do. One last requirement before I walked back home and watched the snow melt from the comfort of the inside of my apartment. I didn't have gloves, so it was chilly work, but definitely worth it to create something that few people will ever have a chance to make or even see.


A Rio Grande Valley snowman.

By mid-afternoon, there was almost no trace that there had been snow at all.

But I'll remember.

Something wonderful

At least it's trying to feel like Christmas...

It is, according to The Weather Channel and The Monitor, 0°C outside. Freezing. I'm not sure I believe it. I see rain, not snow, and no ice on the ground. But it is closer to what I think of as Christmas weather than two days ago, when I wore shorts to uni and back.

As for me, I am enjoying the luxury of working on my grant proposal at home. I don't pretend I'm making great progress, but it is progress.

A Christmas miracle!

Perhaps a slightly over the top headline, but I am pleased to report that I've continued with my track record of securing small internal grants. I've been awarded $998 for one of my undergraduate students, brunnette Anna, as part of UTPA's Undergraduate Research Initiative.

Now I have to get back to working on a grant proposal to pull down some "real" money from an external source. I'm already feeling, with the deadline some weeks away, that this one is going to go right to the wire.

In case I don't think to add to my journal in the next few days, I wish you in both of my official languages: Joyeux Noël. Merry Christmas.

Just think of a monkey, it'll cheer you right up!

I always had such high hopes for those people who chased after the Loch Ness monster, sasquatch, and Ogopogo. Unlike lots of other fringe ideas that violate the laws of physics flat out, these critters seemed at least plausible: that there were just big, undiscovered animal species out there. Indeed, the finding this year of the species Homo floriensis in Indonesia -- and that we may have missed seeing them by only thousands of years, which is nothing in biological time -- adds a certain plausibility to the idea. I always thought finding something like Cadborosaurus (from my old stomping grounds of Vancouver Island) would be so good for conservation and people's awareness of the natural world.

Sadly, the field of cryptozoology (which more or less means "hidden animals") has yet to yield one single noteworthy finding. Nonetheless, I still find the idea of new species unknown to science a thrilling one. Of course, new species are still being described every day, but the vast majority of them are small invertebrates. And while I have a great and deep appreciation of small invertebrates myself, I still have to admit there's a certain appeal in finding a new species that's a big vertebrate.

Today, I read this story about the discovery of a new species of monkey being discovered in India, one of the most heavily populated countries on the planet. Very, very cool. Maybe there's hope that we'll find a lake monster yet...

Celebrate the times, come on!

Congratulations to my colleague and friend Anita Davelos Baines on the birth of her third child, a baby girl. This makes her (the child, not Anita!) a monkey in the Chinese calendar and a Sagittarius in western astrology. [This information is provided purely for entertainment purposes and should not be construed as an endorsement of any scientific validity of astrology. Astrology is goofy.] And this new girl will share a birthday with Thomas Graham (1805), the founder of colloid chemistry (a very stately portrait can be found here). (I know that's a little obscure. But hey, this is a science journal. Surely more appropriate that pointing out that she shares a birthday with KISS's Peter Criss.)

Pride

This has nothing to do with science, but I helped a friend this weekend and I'm damn proud of it. I think I accomplished a great deed.

Hiding

I hate the day I post final grades and the day after. Because it doesn't matter how often I tell people that there's no extra credit and marks are rounded, I still get every person with a sob story wanting me to change their grade just because. "I need this to graduate." "I'll lose my scholarship." "I'm on academic probation." "I won't get into medical school." And so it goes.

So I hide until people get over the initial shock. Typically, after 24-48 hours, people realize that they have no grounds for me to change anything. But darn it, I still hate having to tell people, "No, I'm not changing your score, and I'm not paid to care about your personal dramas." Only I don't put it quite like that. I save the brutal honesty for my journal.

Not scary fast, but still pretty fast

I got the announcement for the spring semester competition for an internal Faculty Development Grant about 3:11 pm on Friday. I just finished phtocopying the required five copies and stuffing the final proposal in an envelope, at about 3:40 pm today.

From learning proposal to completion: four days and half an hour. And I didn't really work on it over the weekend. Admittedly, this was a fairly short proposal: a form cover page to fill in and four typed pages outlining the project. Still, I'm pretty pleased that I was able to turn that around so fast. I think I may reward myself by quitting a little early and getting ice cream. I need to go to the post office anyway, and if there's ice cream on the way... heh.

If this one hits, it'll provide me with about $1,900 to travel to Houston to visit a lab that works on a sea slug called Aplysia, and have a couple of people come down to visit my lab to show me some tricks in working with the slugs. Aplysia is a widely used organism in many neurobiology labs, thanks mainly to the extremely aggressive promotion by Nobel laureate Eric Kandel. We have one species, Aplysia brasiliana in fairly large numbers locally. It's not much to look at when its still, but it is amazing to see when it swims. It unfurls some flaps that normally cover its gills, and swims along by undulating these flaps, a little like a skate or ray does. It's graceful in a way that only animals without bones can be. (A short video of this is here.)

I've worked a little bit with slugs, but not very much -- so I want to go get some help in learning how to care for, handle, and record from the brains of these beasties.

Urge for money... rising

Just noticed that Google wants to run ads on blogs. Like this one. (Okay, maybe not like this one—maybe one that's actually popular...). Funny how my mild annoyance with ads a surfer doesn't stop me from being awfully tempted to try to sign up. But considering that this is supposed to be an academic / scientific site, with the goal of letting people know about the various stresses of running a scientific research lab, having "Buy this beaker" on the site seems contrary to my stated goals. Even if the ads are somehow related to whatever it is I'm writing here.

Bad to worse

December 7^th, 2004... a day that will live in suckage...

Yeah, it's been a pretty naff week. Tuesday was, as you've gathered, particularly bad. I drove out to the Coastal Studies Lab to collect some mud shrimp. The waves were considerably higher than I expected, and the tide was high. I spent a couple of hours getting wet and messy and ended up with one small mud shrimp to show for it. Well, one and a half, really, but the half wasn't of much use to me. And that one shrimp didn't manage to make it through the night.

Then, I worked on an ascidian experiment. My student Anna and I went though about ten animals trying to get some eggs and sperm, but they were all pretty much spawned out. That was very depressing, because the species we're working on isn't available year round, and those were the last animals of the season. And we didn't get all the experiments done that we wanted to do. They're not even hard experiments -- but there are just so many other things to do that we didn't get them done in time. Yes, this means that I'm probably going to have to wait nine months or so for the next opportunity to do finish the experiments. Crap.

Even the one thing that was nominally good news was a double edged sword at best. I got a letter in the post from our Office of Sponsored Research informing me that I have been given the opportunity to submit a grant proposal for the NSF's major equipment grant program. This program only accepts a small number of proposals (three, I think) from each institution, so there's an advance selection process to pick which get sent forward. I am trying to get our department a confocal microscope. The downside to all of this is that it means I now have two grant proposals due in January with the deadlines a fairly short period apart from each other. In short, I've been told, "Yes, Zen, please go ahead and do even more work from now until when classes start again in January."

And I was still trying to track down money that people are owed from August.

And there were a few other things. I just generally felt like I sucked on Tuesday.

I'm not sure that getting into the car at 4:00 a.m. this morning to put my S.O. on a plane back to Canada for Christmas is entirely an upbeat development, either. Stupid early flight.

Fast and dirty

Yesterday, I banged out a short proposal for an internal program they're calling the "Undergraduate Research Initiative." If successful, it'll bring in about $1,500 for one of my undergraduate research students. It's done (a full week ahead of the deadline, I note with some pride), and waiting for my student to drop by my office to sign it.

Then, last night and this morning, I zapped out an abstract for the Texas Academy of Science annual meeting, which UTPA is hosting next March. It's some of the work done by one of my Honours students, Anna, from last year, so it'll be good to give her a small presentation of her work. Hopefully, we'll be able to work it into a paper, but in the meantime, this isn't a bad start.

Also finished and printed off copies of the proposal by my most recent Honours student, Yajaira. Got that out of the way, and now we're good to go to pick up the tempo on her research project. Did a few little initial tests which look promising.

Oh yeah, President Bambi officially went through her investiture today. Community access cable will be thrilled. They'll be able to show those hours of people standing around in robes on cable for months. Me? I wasn't there, because I have real work to do. Like writing proposals, abstracts, and supervising students.

Another noteworthy event today, at least for a geek like myself, is that the new email program Thunderbird is now more or less ready (version 1.0 candidate release). After becoming a convert to Firefox a while back, I've been waiting for this for some time now. Lots of people have been using it steadily for a while, but call it a quirk: I still want to use software that is labeled "1.0" at least.

Slower even than grant applications!

Remember the Hulk movie from last year? Lots of hype, impressive in lots of ways, stuck with a confusing ending? There was no shortage of advertising tie-ins, one of which was run by Hershey's. I received an email today informing me that I'd won a Hulk T-shirt in their sweepstakes.

Blink.

I admit, I need some new scruff around the flat on the weekend shirts, but wow. The movie was out, like, a year and a half ago, and just now they're giving out promotional T-shirts?

Maybe Hershey's should make molasses in January in addition to chocolate.

It was a dark and stormy day...

I drove out to the Coastal Studies Lab today to pick up some ascidians and mud shrimp. I only came back with ascidians. A bit of a storm blew in overnight, so it was wonderfully chilly (only 10 degrees C!), and not so wonderfully windy. A tarp that had been proecting our ascidian tank from rainwater, extreme sunlight and the like had blown off the rails and was flapping around in the tank. I pulled out what animals we had, and turned around and headed back to the main campus. I decided that going out on the beach and trying to pump out mud shrimp on my own was, frankly, not worth it in this weather.

In other news, I've just submitted my most recent NSF proposal. That's two to the NSF this year, which is double what I've submitted the previous two years. These, however, are both teaching grants rather than research grants. Let's see, though: that's five external grants I've submitted for the year so far, of which I'm waiting some word for four.

My next research grant I'll be working on over December to get ready by January. I'll probably start work on it in earnest next week, when classes end.

Is there anybody out there?

I've been getting odd looks from the Americans surrounding me this week. They've all been wishing me a happy Thanksgiving, and I keep telling them, "That was last month. Thursday's just another day to me. I'll go into my office and work." That was pretty accurate description of my day. The one thing I didn't expect was just how quite it was going to be here! You can come in at night, on Sunday afternoon, Saturday morning, and there's usually someone else around. Not today. The only other soul I saw was my student Sandra, who had to come in to do a couple of steps in some tissue processing.

;;;;;

Miscommunication of the week: I set an appointment with my student Yajaira yesterday for 8 in the morning. I got to my office on time, and waited. And waited. Did quite a bit of work while I waited. Finally ran into her late in the afternoon: she was waiting for me in the lab. D'oh!

;;;;;

So long to Triple J's Adam & Wil, who've amused me for many an afternoon with their morning show. (Isn't live streaming radio on the Internet a grand thing?) In particular, I'll miss listening to Adam Spencer, who shows how funny a bloke with a Ph.D. in mathematics can be. And who is also a shining example of someone get a job not in their chosen field, because the field in Australia is too small. I'm not sure if his success in being one of Australia's most recognized doctorate holders is the sort of thing that gives academics hope or despair.

Research Google

It's fair to say that search engines have revolutionized how people use the internet, and in fact, much of their lives. And the 900 pound gorilla on the search engine block is, of course, Google: the only search engine whose name has entered the language as a verb. One of my colleagues said to me at a meeting, "I solve all my problems with Google now. 'Daughter annoying'? 'Common problem' comes the reply." (The name of said colleague will not be revealed on the off chance that his daughter Googles his name and hits this blog.)

I've just learned from this article in Nature that Google has put up a scientific version of its search engine called Google Scholar. It's still "beta testing," but usually these test versions work fine.

I bookmarked this page as fast as I could. This is going to be an amazingly powerful work tool. There are other science related search engines, chief among them Pub Med, but they tend to be focused on single areas of specialization (biomedical research in the case of PubMed) or run by publishers. Google Scholar will probably avoid those issues.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm just going to wipe the drool off the corners of my mouth now. OoooOOoooooh, it even links to articles that cite the ones you're interested in....

Wanna sauna?

I'm working today (as usual), walked into my lab, and was just about bowled over. It was hot! Way hotter than Mike's lab next door. (While I was typing this entry, he walked into my office and said, "Your air conditioning's FUBAR.") I took a temperature reading, and it was 27 degrees C in there. I called Physical Plant and was surprised that there was actually someone there to answer my call. He claims he can adjust the temperature from where he is (some central building somewhere on campus). I suspect a thermostat or other control device has gone and someone's going to be crawling around in the ducting to fix things.

Luckily, most of my animals should feel quite comfortable with 27 degree C temperatures. But I sure don't! Heck, it's just reaching the time of year now where I can enjoy lower temperatures outside. Now I'm being forced to deal with them inside? Unfair!

Frustration defined

Frustration (n): Losing your glasses and not being able to look for them—because you've lost your glasses.

Yes, I am experiencing this right now. My nose is very close to the computer screen. I took my contacts out, put them in the disinfectant, and started looking for my specs and couldn't find them. And I can't take my contacts out of the disinfectant, because that stuff stings if it hasn't been neutralized.

Still no word on the teaching award.

Edit: Got my glasses! My S.O. walked out of the apartment with them in her purse, thinking they were hers.

One and a half proposals done, and recruiting for science

I've tidied two things off my plate (more or less) today, both related to the NSF. I sent off a preproposal for a major equipment grant and an almost complete proposal for a course improvement grant. The latter is just missing a couple of letters of support, but those can go in while the administration is busy signing forms and worrying about whether I've committed institutional support that they didn't know about (or whatever it is they read those things for, because I sincerely doubt they're reading them for the science).

Another thing I did today that was kind of fun was to chat at a meeting of the new Biology Club on campus. This is a new student group on campus. It's so new they just announced at the meeting that they just got their constitution approved, and it's not on the October 2004 list of organizations. The Bio Club is trying to do a few things for the general biology students (i.e., those who don't have their eye on a career in the health professions). With the help of my colleagues Fred and Kristi, and a few grad students, we talked to the undergraduates about what graduate school is about, how you get in, and why you might want to stay in a university even longer. I think it went over pretty well (people laughed at the right bits), and I think it was pretty useful and informative for the students.

The one small thing that I didn't expect was how much it sounded like we were dumping on medical school -- which was not what we were trying to do! But around here (like many biology departments), med school is the 900 pound gorilla: you may like it or hate it, but you cannot ignore it.

In retrospect, given how many people have dramas with completing grad school, I sort of feel a little like a science pusher. "Hey little girl, want some... data? It'll make you feel really good..."

Waiting

Still no news on the teaching award. I notice that it's listed on the agenda for the upcoming faculty council meeting for Wednesday, so maybe I'll find out then. I don't think I got it, though. I suspect having a chemist and a biologist nominated means the vote among scientists will be split, leaving the door wide open for the French instructor.

Grants, grants, grants

It seems like I'm spending the vast majority of my time trying to get people to give me money. I am currently working on three grant proposals, all for the National Science Foundation (NSF). I'm just putting the finishing touches on a Course Curriculum and Laboratory Instrumentation grant proposal, worth just under US$100,000 if it hits. Second, there's a "basic" research grant, which isn't due until January, but I have to get working on it now if I hope to finish in time. Don't know how much cash that'll end up being requested in that one. Third, I'm working on a preproposal for a major equipment grant. This program only allows an institution to submit three applications to the program, so we have to put in a short paper to our research office saying why we should be allowed to submit our proposal instead of those pesky engineers (or whoever).

At some point, I'm going to have to lift my head up and look in my lab again. But if I don't get some cash soon, it's going to be very hard to get anything done.

In other news, voting for the teaching award was supposed to end yesterday at 5:00 pm, but no word yet on who won.

It's bigger than I thought

When I last checked the tally board at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, attendance was around 25,000. Of course, I left early, but I suspected that it wouldn't hit 30,000, guessing that most of the people would have arrived for the start of the meeting. Wrong! Email from the Society says final attendance for scientists was a staggering 31,549!

One of the concerns that I have when I see a number like that, though, is where will the growth end? And, as my former Ph.D. committee member Craig Hawryshyn once mused in my presence, "Who's going to fund all this research?"

Chills

Another thing I forgot to mention about Tuesday: autumn arrived! It was the first day that I stepped outside the door and thought I might actually be more comfortable in long pasts instead of shorts. I'm going to enjoy the next few months of less than screaming hot temperatures...

Nominations

I had a ballot delivered to me yesterday—with my name on it. I'm one of three finalists for the UTPA Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence. The winner is chosen by a vote of all faculty. If I win, I get an honorarium (not sure how much -- the paperwork didn't say), a nice siny line in my CV, and I then become the university's nominee for the state-wide Minnie Stevens Piper Award.

I also got a ballot in the mail to elect the new councillors and executive committee for the International Society for Neuroethology. It's as though someone up there has decided, “I don't care that you're a Canadian living in America, you're going to vote for something!”

;;;;;

But that was yesterday. Today was good because I submitted a grant proposal, this time to a new program called SOMAS. It's not for a lot of money, but every little bit helps. This was just the first of several that are coming up. In the next two and a half months, I have three big grant deadlines for the National Science Foundation that I'm trying to meet. One deadlines early December, the other two in mid-January. The ones in January will be tough, since the university slows down so much between semesters.

But I'll worry about that tomorrow. Lots of writing to do!

Letter from the President

I was interested that we got a memo from our new President, Bambi Cardenas, today. President Bambi has been meeting with representatives from various groups in the university (I described Biology's encounter with her previously). Today, a memo comes out saying that she's of the opinion that there's an urgent need to review teaching loads, and associated issues with merit and tenure. There's a task force being formed to put a new policy in place by Fall 2005.

Given my discussions with colleagues here and at other universities, I suspect / hope that this will translate into lighter teaching loads, and that merit and tenure requirements in other departments will be brought up to Biology's levels. Apparently, our department has the highest standard of any at our university, and they're not all that high compared to a lot of other places, particularly with regards to research.

;;;;;

So I'm almost all caught up from the madness that was preparing for the Neuroscience meeting, attending the Neuroscience meeting, and catching up on all the work that I couldn't do while I was at the Neuroscience meeting. Which only leaves me with my regular insanity to deal with.

Like, for instance, teaching, finishing a grant due on 2 December or so, reviewing someone else's grant application, tracking down where my last grant proposal is in the UTPA great chain of signatory paperwork, teaching, and making a trip to the Coastal Studies Lab to deliver a much-needed new computer and take back a much-needed fresh batch of ascidians and other critters.

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Nobel laureates spotted at Neuroscience this year: One. Eric Kandel, who won the prize around 2000 for his work on learning and memory in a sea slug, Aplysia californica. I learned that his bow tie really always does seem to be that crooked. He's also doing some fascinating new work on how prion-like proteins might be involved in memory.

I think this brings my total number of Nobel sightings to two: I once heard David Hubel give a talk at McGill University.

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Best thing about Neuroscience meeting: Getting to present my poster, explain my work, and have generally positive response to it. Now, if I could just turn that positive response at meetings into a positive response when I'm trying to get a grant funded.

Other good things: The ability to eat good food at restaurants, knowing it will be reimbursed. Seeing old friends. Making new friends. Networking. Being able to visit the Chuck Jones Studio Gallery in old San Diego. Finding a little cafe across from the convention center still stocks Violet Crumble from Australia.

Most disappointing thing about trip to Neuroscience: That there was so much interesting stuff to do, and not enough time to do it.

Second most disappointing thing about trip: Having White Chicks be the in-flight movie on the way out, and Dodgeball be in the in-flight movie on the way back. One stupid movie in a trip is just unlucky, but two is Just Not Fair_(TM).

Other disappointments: Motel charging for internet. Long shuttle bus trips back to the hotel (sometimes well over an hour between waiting for the bus and the drive). Having to come back to Texas heat.

Spent a large portion of Sunday and today day feeling awful for a completely uncalled for comment I made to a friend over the weekend. I can't wait to apologize.

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.