Science Careers Blog

I've just stumbled on Better Posters -- a blog on scientific poster design from Zen Faulkes (aka DoctorZen), a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Pan-American. All the advice is top-notch, and he critiques real posters from real conferences -- and in some cases actually revises them.

While general advice on oral presentations is common (if not always sound), specific information on how to make a good poster is rare.

DoctorZen also runs the blog NeuroDojo, which also sometimes includes scientific career advice.

(Please follow me on Twitter: @SciCareerEditor )

Yale University announced last week it would reduce the number of applicants admitted to its graduate schools by up to 15%, which would directly hit doctoral programs and could affect the conduct of research on the Yale campus. The admissions cut is one of 10 measures unveiled last Wednesday that Yale says it needs to respond to a 26% drop in the university's endowment caused by the global financial crisis of 2008-09.

University President Richard Levin and Provost Peter Salovey said in a letter that the Graduate School would reduce its admission of new students in the 2010-2011 academic year by 10-15%. In Friday's Yale Daily News, reporters Vivian Yee and Lauren Rosenthal said that the reduction would fall almost entirely on doctoral students, since unlike doctoral candidates, masters degree students pay tuition. Levin told the Daily News that the university spends $65,000 to $70,000 a year on fellowships and stipends to support each doctoral student. Also in their Wednesday letter Levin and Salovey announced a 2% increase in those stipends.

Chairs of science faculties at Yale said the admission cut might cause more financial problems than it solves. "Reducing the number of graduate students in the sciences is unfortunate and short-sighted," Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department (EB&B) Chair Richard Prum tells the Daily News. Prum says his department received a surge of grants from the federal stimulus program, which include funds for paying graduate students. "Even though the income of our grants has gone up," says Prum, "the number of graduate students we're able to accept has gone down."

Computer Science chair Avi Silberschatz tells the Daily News he has a similar situation. Silberschatz noted that if these projects are not delivered, it may be difficult to win future grants.

Among current students, the Daily News found a mixed reaction to the announcement. Cynthia Chang an E&EB doctoral candidate tells the reporters that the proposed enrollment cuts would be "a huge detriment to our department and to any department." However, Mark Klee, an economics student they interviewed, likes the increased stipends in the proposal. "I think that cutting down on admissions as opposed to cutting down on stipends is probably the right way to go," Klee says.

Hat tip:  Washington Monthly

At Science Careers, we've written a lot about dual-career -- and especially dual-scientist -- couples. The most recent example is the excellent piece by Chelsea Wald, A Husband and Wife Play Science on the Same Team.

This article started me wondering what other current, prominent scientist-couples are out there,  with both partners making important contributions to science. I quickly realized that I don't know very many. The example that comes immediately to mind is Eva Silverstein and Shamit Kachru, who moved together last year from Stanford University to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCSB. Another example is Amy Palmer and Alexis Templeton, both at the University of Colorado, whom I wrote about in 2005. This article in The Scientist lists three more couples. And there are, of course, several important historical examples (including very recent history, like Kirschstein and Rabson), but that's not my focus here.

What other important, current scientist-couples can you think of where both are currently making important contributions to science?

(Please follow me on Twitter @SciCareerEditor )

The January issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society includes an interesting article by Tim Chartier about the convergence of mime and mathematics in his professional life. Chartier obtained a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2001, and is currently an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Davidson College in North Carolina. In his spare time, Chartier is also an arts performer. He trained in mime and physical theater; Marcel Marceau was one of his professors.

Chartier describes how he uses mime to convey mathematical concepts to a lay audience, including schoolchildren. "My mathematical mime leans heavily on that performing art's ability to embody the invisible," he writes. His mime-sketches "enabl[e] an audience to place an abstract concept into a story." In one of those sketches, Chartier provokes discussion about infinity after tripping over an invisible rope of infinite length in both directions. As he tries pulling the rope to find out what is at the end of it and is pulled back, he enters a tug-of-war and eventually cuts the rope into two pieces out of frustration. When asking the audience how long is the rope remaining in his hand, "My favourite answers generally come from children, which have included, 'very long', 'half as long', and, of course, 'infinitely long'," he says. "Mime speaks in its silence, often leaving echoing, unspoken words in the audience's consciousness... An invisible rope left on the performance floor pulls one into struggles regarding cardinality and the infinite."

Chartier sees many similarities between mime and mathematics. A sketch can "reflect what mathematicians often do prior to writing a proof -- analyze simple examples and look for trends in cases of increasing complexity," he writes. Also, "Mathematicians can be silenced by elegant proofs of simpler concepts and somehow dissatisfied with seemingly clumsy proofs of complex material. The pleasure brought about by a good proof can similarly be evoked through the performing arts -- in this case, through a mimetic translation of mathematical thoughts."

 

To Chartier, the two worlds are inseparable. "As mathematicians, our intellectual world is commonly abstract and invisible. We create a narrative of our intellectual thought through our written words. For me, mime is another, quite different but surprisingly similar, way of journeying through this logical field. Best of all, this art creates a road map that invites mathematician and nonmathematician alike to travel alongside me -- often in silence, with occasional laughter."

The January issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society is dedicated to the interface between mathematics and the arts.

The excellent physics-and-math blog Not Even Wrong, published by Columbia mathematician Peter Woit (who has a book with the same name as the blog), has an interesting post about an analysis of the job market in high-energy theoretical physics. The post describes data compiled by Erich Poppitz, a theoretical physicist at the University of Toronto. Poppitz's analysis is available as a pdf download. The data were taken from the Theoretical Particle Physics Jobs Rumor Mill maintained at UC Davis; Poppitz insists that there's no guarantee of accuracy. 

Among Poppitz's interesting conclusions (most of them noted by Woit) are these:

• A typical recent year brought 20 new faculty appointments in high-energy theoretical physics in the United States; over the last 16 years the average number of new U.S. appointments in the field is about 17. The best recent year was 2007, when 28 new high-energy theory faculty were hired.
  
• Two years later, in 2009, U.S. universities made just 9 new faculty appointments. 
• In the same year, Princeton University alone hired 8 new postdocs in theoretical particle physics, so that one university cohort could nearly fill all of America's theoretical physics faculty slots in a bad year. The stats don't say how many postdoc appointments there were nationwide.
  
• If you want a job in high-energy theory, the numbers suggest, you'd better get your Ph.D. from one of a handful of universities, since that's where most new faculty members come from. And all six are in America: Princeton (24 new Princeton Ph.D.s were hired into faculty slots over the last 16 years), Harvard (19), Berkeley (18), Stanford (13), MIT (12), or the University of Texas (10). Those six schools produced 35% of all new high-energy theory faculty members since 1994; the other 180-or-so positions were distributed among another 76 or so universities throughout the world.
  
• Another key to getting hired is to choose your subfield carefully. "You pretty much have to work in cosmology or phenomenology to have some sort of job prospects," since no one is hiring at the more formal end of the field, Woit writes.
  

(Follow my science-career-related posts on Twitter @SciCareerEditor)

In September, we reported on the U.S. House of Representatives passing the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act and sending it on to the Senate, where many observers expected it to move quickly, as it did in the House. The New York Times reports this morning that the bill has bogged down in the Senate thanks to aggressive lobbying by private lenders and the Senate's changing politics.

The bill would end the role banks and and other private lenders play in making student loans. Students now can borrow money from private lenders through the Federal Family Education Loan Program, which provides subsidies and guarantees to banks and other lenders. Students or their families can also borrow directly from the U.S. government's Federal Direct Loan Program. The bill would fold all lending into the Direct Loan program, leaving the private sector with a much-reduced servicing role.

The bill would also redirect the anticipated $87 billion in savings over 10 years from ending the private-lender subsidies to more funding for Pell grant scholarship and Perkins loans that students can get through their institutions.

The student loan industry, led by Sallie Mae, the largest student-lending company, was not about to let that $87 billion go without a fight, says the Times.

Sallie Mae has plenty to lose if the bill goes through. The company spent $8 million on lobbying last year, the Times says. It originated $21.7 billion in federally-subsidized loans in 2009, compared to $3.2 billion in private loans last year. The company held town-hall meetings, circulated petitions, and button-holed legislators to stress the legislation's impact on jobs. Sallie Mae says it stands to lose some 2,300 jobs if the bill becomes law.

The Times quoted anonymous sources who say that some Senators are wavering, particularly fiscal conservatives and those in states where the lenders operate, including Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, New York, and Pennsylvania. The industry claims the bill amounts to a federal takeover of the student loan industry, an argument that gets the attention of conservatives. Adding one more Republican senator in Scott Brown of Massachusetts helps the lenders' cause as well, says the Times.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the Times that they anticipated the industry's push-back and the administration is stepping up its own lobbying in the Senate. In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama told cheering Democrats, "To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that go to banks for student loans." Republicans remained silent during that part of the speech.

Today, Science Careers launches a new beta of our Facebook application, which allows science (and Science) fans to give the gift of science -- for free! If you're not familiar with Facebook gifts, they're little virtual objects -- like 'Viva la Evolucion!', an animated picture of a monkey evolving to a modern man; and 'Positive reaction' featuring a bubbling beaker. Kind of like those little Valentine candy hearts, but with science and, well, without the sweetness. Or the hearts.

The best thing about these gifts is that they come from Science Careers. The next best thing is that they're kind of cute. After that, the next best thing is that they're free.  The only bad thing is that you have to be a member of Facebook to send or receive them, which is inevitable since Facebook is the only place they really exist.

Science Careers has been active in social media at least since 2007, when I dedicated my personal profile on Facebook to Science Careers. Since then we've grown our presence in social media, building a Facebook fan page with some 6,100 fans and a Twitter feed with more than 600 followers. Science Careers editor Jim Austin has just set up a new Twitter feed, @SciCareerEditor, offering his followers a sort of mini editorial page focused on careers in science, with commentary and information on scientific careers in 140 characters or less. It's just a day old, and he desperately needs followers!

Oh, and please try out our new Facebook gift application. Send Science Careers gifts to your friends and colleagues. And let us know what you think.

According to a story published today by Zoë Corbyn in the Times Higher Education supplement, the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of Newcastle in the United Kingdom has urged its principal investigators (PIs) to keep a better check on the originality of draft papers written by younger scientists.

The faculty's research strategy committee recently recommended "appropriate supervision of postdoctoral staff, 'including the previewing of draft papers' and the use of 'native English-speaking staff to support junior colleagues," Corbyn writes. The recommendation follows a case of plagiarism that led to the withdrawal of a paper that had been published last July. As explained by the faculty's dean of research, "the postdoc had inappropriately copied a large piece of text, and the principal investigator... had not checked his work," Corbyn reports.

Close mentoring and good training are needed to help young scientists learn proper procedures -- some plagiarism is unintentional -- and adopt appropriate ethical standards. But there is something in the recommendation that makes me a little uneasy. While it puts the onus on the PI to guarantee original research and writing, it seems to imply that only early-career scientists are prone to plagiarism. 

To me, a more appropriate recommendation would be to encourage and train both PIs and young scientists on how to avoid, detect, and report plagiarism -- by their younger AND their older colleagues.

Read the full THE story here.

A press release from Robert Madore, the Director of Region 9A of the United Auto Workers says that postdocs at 3 University of Massachusetts campuses have voted to unionize.

According to the press release, a majority of the 300 postdocs at the Dartmouth, Amherst, and Boston campuses of the University of Massachusetts "have signed cards authorizing UMass Postdoctoral Researchers Organize/United Auto Workers (UMass PRO/UAW) to represent them in collective bargaining, triggering a process that will require the university to negotiate over wages, health insurance, job security, and other workplace issues." The release says that a certification petition has been filed with the Massachusetts Division of Labor Relations.

This is the same union that is in currently in negotiations with the University of California on behalf of some 5000 postdocs at that institution. We'll have more about those negotiations in this week's "Taken for Granted" column, which will be posted tomorrow afternoon on Science Careers. 

At the Career Hub blog today, career consultant Billie Sucher unveiled her top-ten list of illegal or inappropriate interview questions that her clients said they were asked in 2009.  Sucher noted that the items she listed were those she could post; there were still other doozies not fit for a family-oriented blog.

Here's a sample ...

- You're too pretty to hire...productivity would drop with you around.
- Has it ever occurred to you to dumb yourself down a little?
- We noticed you're driving a Mercedes...convince us you need this job.

And my personal favorite ...

- You remind me of my grandpa...he's in his 60's.

Enjoy the full list for yourself.  

Sucher refers readers to human-resources guru Alison Doyle, who blogs about job-searching on About.Com, for background on interview questions prohibited by law. Doyle says "employers should not be asking about your race, gender, religion, marital status, age, disabilities, ethnic background, country of origin, sexual preferences or age," and offers advice on what to do if confronted with one of these gems, such as ...

- Are those your real fingernails or are they fake?