Nerdy Science Blog

Just realize that Jobstreet has a feature call salary report, data are generated through their jobseekers’ database.

Interestingly, the report also included Research Assistant (RA) position. I am personally do not consider RAs involve in institutional research centers a real job; in Malaysia, it’s rather a transitional positions for graduate students under a supervisor and funded by a research grant before official registration as a MSc/PhD candidates. The bond duration can be months to year(s), depending on agreement between the graduate and his/her supervisor. Due to research’s budget constrains, payments are always expected low, average of RM1500/mth. Perhaps lower.

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Years ago;

“I wanna be a virologist, combating deadly viruses at the frontline, save life, save the world!”

Later;

“I wanna win a Nobel Prize, I wanna my family, my friends, even the country proud of me!”

“I wanna publish papers in famous journals, in Nature, in Science… etc, I wanna make great research discoveries and breakthroughs!”

and then…

“arghhh… I just wish I could get my bench work done, and figure out why my plasmid gone!”

“Abstracts, papers, conferences… nagging, dragging, dying…”

“Wish I could finish my MSc / PhD thesis… God, give me strength~~~”

Now;

“I want money, I want happiness, I want my life back!”

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No, it isn’t me, it’s just a thought since the word “evolution” has become top-five-tag in Nerdy Science.

Happy research!

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A brief yet beautiful 3D animation on introduction of stem cells, worth to have a look.

Another good presentation on “Everything You Wanted To Know About Stem Cells”, quite informative but I manage to watch only half of it as it is 51 minutes long!

I shall come back to this later.

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I can’t stop the funny feelings and feeling like laughing out when I read the one of the highlight in nature news: Swiss dignity law is threat to plant biology.

The Swiss federal government’s ethics committee on non-human biotechnology has mapped out guidelines to help granting agencies decide which research applications deeply offend the dignity of plants — and hence become unfundable.

The funny feelings are just like when I see the fact we are having not enough money but Deputy Prime Minister insisting our second space tourism is on, and the fact where our CSI graduates are jobless after following courses designed by related government departments.

Except when I read the sentence “dignity of plants”, I can laugh it out.

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I’ll like to take a break from jobless forensic science graduates and second space tourism issues.

Was real tired of searching of informations, so I start surfing around science blogs for fun.

I surfed one of my subscribed blog, Bitesize Bio, which was introduced by WTJ, admin of this blog. I couldn’t agree anymore seeing this three posts:

• 15 Reasons to Be A Scientist;
• 10 Reasons NOT to be a Scientist.

I’m not a scientist. But apparently, it apply perfectly to a researcher. Here’s the third post.

• Alternative Careers For Scientists. (this one should perfectly apply to our forensic science grads as well.)

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Came across this blog post and it grab my attention – a true story of a cancer survival, twice. For 2 more days, on 24^th April, it will be the cancer survival, Benjamin Rubenstein’s bone marrow’s 5 year old birthday, also his 5 years anniversary of cancer free life. Congratulate to Benjamin.

His wrote his cancer survival story but no publisher wants it. Thanks to blogger.com, he published it in blogspot, have a read when free.

I’ve Still Got Both My Nuts

• ch.1 The Golden Age
• ch.2 Teeter Totter of Life
• ch.3 Welcome to the Good Life
• ch.4 Welcome to the Cancer Life
• ch.5 Bombs Over September
• ch.6 Again
• ch.7 Fix Me

He life was saved by stem cells obtained from a little girl’s umbilical cord. One more true case of stem cell’s treatment saved life.

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Read this from kj’s blog, a fellow blogger I’d know for sometime through online. He was asking why are we (Malaysia) cannot be down-to-earth in sciences, in respond to one of our previous posts, Malaysian Cabinet Really Wanted To Send Another Space Traveller, wrote by WTJ.

I attended a seminar talking about the management and policy in science area. Too bad I don’t have management background to understand all the management and policy terms/thingy, I can barely understand what were they talking about. Otherwise I would have share it.

But the Q&A section was pretty fun, some of the audiences pointed out certain general issues that have long bothering us.

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Why do plate streaking? A friend of mine asked.

Why? Because this is one of the best, cheap, easiest ways to isolate a pure culture. And plate streaking can be fun when it come to coloring~

Although this is easy and cheap, it doesn’t mean it is not important. How pure is your culture often determine “dead or alive” of your microbiological experiment; and by mastering this simple technique, it can save your day…

Metallic green E. coli on EMB agar, picture derived from my undergrad thesis.

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Had my farewell in KTV yesterday, it was fun, thanks to all my fellow lab mates.

“Kiss”, is a famous Korean romance sad song, was chosen by our cute-the-only-male-lab mate, it’s a sad song, but he manage to sing it a funny way~

This song is about romance between a photographer and her girlfriend, they fall in love through camera lens. Toward the end, accident happened in dark room, the pretty girlfriend was blinded with photo chemical splash into her beautiful eye. Photographer donated both of his eyeballs to her without her knowledge, and never shown up again. She thought she lose him.

To make the MV more touching and dramatic, they were arrange to meet in the end of the MV, the girl realize what kind of sacrifice her lover had done for her.

Well, i guess all of this wont happen if we are able to grow an extra eyeballs for that girl, this should be happy ending for the MV, and also for peoples in real life surrounding us. I believe stem cell research can solve this kind of problems, not only dozen of eyeballs, also kidneys, hearts, liver, perhaps limbs i.e., legs and hands. Sound fantasy huh? This should be more practical than depending on pig bladder in regenerating tissue. It’s not halal anyway, some of us won’t like it.

But for those who are brainless, I think there still no cure at current moment.

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I am doing yeast (S. cerevisiae) transformation, one of the magic ingredients is salmon sperm DNA, which work as DNA carrier. We had good laugh over this name.

“Sperm? Haha! What is the sperm doing in the experiment?”

“Human one can arr? Ask him (our cute lab technician) to donate to you lah~!”

“Yewww~~~”

No doubt, my lab mates also get excited by the name of the ingredient.
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