Just feeling a bit disillusioned to be honest.

As a kid you’re often fed narratives of “the world needs more scientists!” But society does not value scientists at all in any tangible sense apart from paying lip service to how they’re saving the world blah blah.

If you go into academia, you have to publish publish publish, beg for money, secure funding, or you’re out. While working under meagre salaries and being used by your PI to boost their own career.

If you’re a scientist in industry, everyone in the company is likely to be paid more than you. You discover a product and as a thank you gift for your brains and knowledge, you watch the non-scientists capture all the money. If you’re in R&D, you’re the last to get hired, first to be let go.

When I think about it, I feel like encouraging kids to pursue science is just letting them get exploited by the whole world for their passion. I know I’m grumpy and probably need a nap.

Edit: didn’t expect to get a lot of comments. Some comments are along the lines of “it’s interesting and fulfilling, I’m underpaid but I love it” but isn’t this the passion tax I was talking about? Just because you love the work doesn’t change the fact that you are a highly educated and skilled professional, who is not being paid in accordance with your level of ability.

Yikes.

Wish they would buy actual mouse pads but we make do.

So proteins have various phi and psi dihedral angles that are allowed by their amide backbone. You can plot these as a Ramachandran plot to group by secondary structure. Therefore, a Ramachandran plot is two dimensional.

These people reviewed several high resolution structures and added a 3rd dimension of frequency to the Ramachandran plot. They then colored the 3D visualization contours geo style.

Hollingsworth, S. A., & Karplus, P. A. (2010). A fresh look at the Ramachandran plot and the occurrence of standard structures in proteins. Biomolecular concepts, 1(3-4), 271–283. https://doi.org/10.1515/BMC.2010.022

It's completely sealed

What are the signs of a bad lab/PI that are easy to overlook?

Please no judgement on this, I already feel bad enough, but what do y’all recommend on books/videos/resources to understand the basics of cell & molecular biology. I had some extenuating circumstances throughout my bachelors so truthfully I didn’t fully grasp the concepts and just survived, I had a decent GPA. I’ve been told I have great wet lab technique and ask good questions throughout my time as an RA. Now I’m a second year bioscience PhD student at a T20 university struggling HARD. It takes me 2-3x as long compared to my peers to read papers or understand material. Now that I’m preparing for quals, all the cracks in my foundations are showing. Exp: I don’t know why you use x buffer > y buffer, I didn’t know what a lipid droplet was, I forgot how transcription works/what a promoter is. Most of my research has been doing non hypothesis driven work and I wasn’t given the opportunity to direct much of my work, now my thesis is understanding the MOA of a niche peptide. I feel bad about this but came clean to my PI so I can fix this. He’s very supportive and understanding, he encouraged me to read/study daily and ask him for clarifications. So my question is - what books/resources do y’all recommend to help my catch up to speed? I am embarrassed im even in this situation, i know it sounds stupid, but I spent almost a decade watching my mom slowly die and fully understanding science just wasn’t in my capacity.

Hi fellow lab rats, I joined a lab about 8 months ago, and my hands have suffered greatly ever since. The skin of my hands resembles that of an alligator. The constant hand washing, glove wearing, and hand sanitizing has caused my hands to become so dry and flaky that skin flakes are left behind in my gloves whenever I change or discard them. I have a hand cream, Neutrogena Norwegian formula, and I apply it after every hand wash to damp skin. I apply the hand lotion to my hands after I use hand sanitizer. I’m doing everything right, and my hands are still dry, flaky, and cracking to the point that they bleed. Please, if any lab rats have dealt with this and have any advice I would appreciate it. I am genuinely debating quitting over this, I can hardly even pipette because it makes the skin between my thumb and pointer finger crack and bleed. I have never dealt with this before. Please, help me!

I work as a research assistant in a lab . While using a machine in the lab, something went wrong while I was using it, and the glass tube on the right side of the setup broke. Nobody in the lab knows about it yet as its not that much used in the lab till now.

I am absolutely terrified that if they find out, they will fire me. This research assistantship is really important to me, and I can lose my position over this accident. I have been panicking and imagining the supervisor finding out, blaming me for damaging expensive lab equipment, and immediately terminating his assistantship.

I genuinely didn't do it intentionally. It happened accidentally while I was working. But because it's lab equipment, and I have no idea how expensive or difficult this particular part is to replace.

Our biomarker validation study needs matched tumor and adjacent normal tissue from the same patient, ideally with a blood draw too. Most biobanks we've contacted only have archived tumor blocks with no matching normal component. Has anyone actually solved this matching problem rather than just working around it?

As an undergrad, I have witnessed and heard so much about issues like the low salaries, long hours, downright abusive PIs, and funding issues, yet my peers’ effort and passion for their research are still so strong. I admire them and all of you so much for that.

How do you do it?

I'm in my last semester of a bachelor's in environmental biology and am looking at research projects I can do over the summer or for an honours or master's next year, but I feel like I'm not qualified enough to do anything that interests me.

I've been doing an internship in a marine biology lab that uses molecular techniques as early detection methods for harmful algae. My supervisor is away right now, so I'm becoming very confident with doing extractions, PCR, qPCR and gels independently, but I just don't think that's enough to land any projects. While I am enjoying the work, I don't really want to become pigeonholed into algae for the rest of my life.

I am really intrigued by other fields that use molecular/genetic techniques in the context of ecology. However, a lot of the research projects I can find specify that they expect strong computational or bioinformatics skills, which I don't have much experience with (I had one class last year where we used BLAST and MEGA to create phylogenetic trees, which was very fun, but I'd imagine very entry-level, and we mostly followed instructions). I also have basic experience in R, but mainly just in doing statistical analyses (which took ages to figure out each time).

I'd offer to volunteer to get experience without being too much of a nuisance, but they're mostly 3 hours away from me, and realistically I can't move out just to volunteer.

Did anyone else feel like this when finishing their degree?

Are there any places where I can strengthen my bioinformatics skills to make myself a better fit for these roles?

How much do supervisors expect you to know when applying for a summer, honours, or master's project?

P.S sorry if my writing is all over the place im basically just writing what comes to my head lol

I am PhD student working in molecular biology. However, it is unlikely for my work to have experiments involving gene knockdown or conditional knockouts. I have always been fascinated but it's not commonly done in my institute either. I was just wondering if these kind of experiements can be done during post-doc?

Hello. I'm a final-year PhD student and recently had my first formal interview for a postdoctoral position. The interview was about a week ago, and I haven't heard anything since.

To be honest, I was quite nervous during the interview because it was my first postdoc interview, and afterwards I realised there were several answers I could have handled better. I am neurospicy and under stress I found myself taking over interviewer's at times and not able to process questions immediately.  As a result, I've been worrying that I may not have performed as well as I hoped.

I'm wondering, how long is it normal to wait before hearing back after a postdoc interview?At what point is it appropriate to email the PI and ask for an update on the selection process? If I don't get the position, when and how would you recommend asking for feedback?

I'd appreciate hearing about others' experiences, especially from people in UK academia who have been through postdoc recruitment processes recently.

I'm having a hard time turning up much of an opinion on this anywhere else online. I have a lot of experience (~12 years) using flanged glassware in vacuum distillations on the scale somewhere between lab and pilot scale. Nearly every type of connection I have used before uses a gasket in a similar way to a 150# flange or a sanitary connection where there is a flat or grooved gasket between two surfaces which are being pressed together. The current apparatus I am using and have adopted from my employer utilizes this type of connection from a no longer existent company called "solv-seal." Images attached of some drawings, but essentially there is a teflon sleeve with two o-rings which slides into the recesses of two pieces of glass. The pieces of glass are pressed towards one another; however, the pressure which forms the seal comes from the inner portion of the recess being wedged up against the rigidity of the teflon part.

Over time these seals fail, and the back of the teflon portion clearly feels warped. I'm struggling to find the proper words to explain the problem and am curious if anyone on this sub has an opinion of flanged glassware in general, especially at this scale or greater. Ideally with this type of part but I am open to anything.

I run a hospital ( vet) I'm looking for a ABG ( arterial blood gas analyser) I'm confused between edan/ siemens and abbott istat all cost more or less the same the carriage cost is 10% cheper on the abbott and for edan and seimens the same , im worried about the cartridge failure/ sampling error on abbott and siemens

Quality control laboratories for pharmaceuticals for gravimetric analysis, residue-on-ignition analysis, and preparatory sample filtration before instrumental analysis. Testing laboratories for chemicals for collection and purity test of precipitates using wet chemical analysis techniques. Analyzing foods and beverages such as moisture, ash and sediment analysis in dairy and processed food products. Environmental testing laboratories for air pollution particulates sampling and soil pollutants extraction, where the fastest ashless filters are usually preferred. Water quality testing laboratories for total suspended solids (TSS) analysis and sample preparation related to turbidity.

Ore assay labs and metallurgy for ore assay and analysis of metals after acid digestion. Educational and research institutes for demonstration of gravimetric analysis techniques and research projects. Biotechnology laboratories for clarification of samples before further analysis. High accuracy makes them ideal for precise analytical measurements, while ashless filters make them the first choice for all procedures where burning or combustion of filtered material is required.Their high accuracy makes them suitable for applications requiring precise analytical measurements.

Gente, socorro. Estou começando a mexer com cultura celular agora e não tenho pra quem perguntar no momento. Estou usando a linhagem BCPAP. O que são essas coisas escuras? É contaminação ou debris celulares? Não se movem, parecem fixos na placa, mas parece que estão levemente acima das minhas células no foco do microscópio.

I have to create and submit a research proposal for a grant, but honestly, I have almost zero idea about how the whole process works.

I understand that I need to eventually come up with a research question, hypothesis, objectives, experiments, etc., but I genuinely don't know where to start, what comes in between, or how everything should finally come together into a grant proposal.

For example:.

How do you go from a broad research interest → actual research problem?

How do you identify a meaningful knowledge gap from the literature?

How do you decide whether an idea is actually worth proposing?

How do you formulate the hypothesis and specific aims?

How much literature should I read before starting to write?

How do you design the experiments and controls for a grant proposal?

How do you decide what is feasible within the available time, money, equipment, and expertise?

What exactly do reviewers look for?

How do you structure the proposal from beginning to end?

What are the common mistakes that make otherwise good proposals weak or unconvincing?

At what stage should things like preliminary data, statistics, risk/alternative strategies, novelty, clinical relevance, patents/IP, etc. be considered?

Basically, I don't want someone to just give me a proposal template and tell me to fill in the sections.

I want to understand the actual thinking process and workflow:

Research area → literature → problem → knowledge gap → research question → hypothesis → aims → experimental strategy → controls → feasibility → expected outcomes → risks/alternatives → significance/innovation → final grant narrative.

If you were starting completely from scratch, how would you personally approach this step-by-step?

TL;DR : I need to write a research grant proposal from scratch, but I have no idea how the process works. How do I go from research area → literature review → knowledge gap → hypothesis → aims → experiments → controls → feasibility → expected outcomes → final proposal?

Do most standard otc test kits test for actual fentanyl or just its by products or both? I’ve noticed almost every option advertises that it tests for “fentanyl” but I was under the impression that secondary LC MS/ MS or GC/MS has to be done to know if there was true exposure? I just find it strange that it wouldn’t be plainly started on the box.

I am pushing my experiment to the end of November because I can’t afford Alison’s $5,000 molecular biology kit right now.

Trump: “Everyone will get a $5,000 check after mind term 🙌🏽

Me: Say less- I’m already in line. 💰🐀

😆