Science Box

When the budget is low: the "Flip a coin" experiment

2012-02-15T09:00:00.000Z

In these difficult times this may be the research that we are left to do :-( ... I hope not

Are journalists from Mars and scientists from Venus?

2012-02-13T08:00:00.000Z

Are journalists and scientists from different planets? Do they speak different languages? Are they forced to not understand each other?
These questions are framed in a long debate that looks like a never ending one. This time it re-started with a post in the “Notes and Theories” blog of The Guardian written by Ananyo Bhattacharya, chief online editor of Nature. What does this post say? In few words, that scientists don't have a clue about how journalism works.

There was a quick reaction from different bloggers and scientists who replied to that post giving their opinion and saying why, in this case, journalists don't understand how science or science journalism work. Even Ed Yong published in his blog a diagram of the relationship between journalists and scientists.

Actually, there is a bit of everything in science journalism and communication. It's true that scientists are used to write articles with a specific structure (the scientific paper one) that is different to the one used by journalists. And if scientists don't understand this journalistic structure and want their research to get published in conventional mass media and reach a broader audience, they should make an effort to adapt themselves to it in this context. An article in a journal is not the same as an article in a scientific publication. And for a journalistic article about a researcher work to be good it requires two things: a scientist who knows how to collaborate with a journalist, and a journalist who understands the researcher's work. This is team work.

In general, scientists are not trained to work with journalists to communicate the research they do. This is a problem because there are good scientists who would like to communicate their science but don't know how to do it or they are not good at it. There are masters and postgraduate courses in science journalism and communication but this is not enough. However there are some isolated initiatives that cover the necessity of training scientists in science journalism but they are not enough.

On the other hand, journalists have to understand that scientists don't like quite a few things related to mass media. Many scientists are afraid of telling something to a journalist and being misunderstood. Because if this happens the article about his or her research can appear in a wrong way in the mass media and the error will be associated to the scientist. This is understandable, mainly because what it is interesting for a scientist it is not for a journalist and vice versa. We can't change this , but we can make an effort and work together, understand each other and adapt ourselves.

And all this for what? Very simple. To be sure that scientists and journalists speak the same language: the language that takes science to the general public. I'm convinced that scientists and journalists who want science to get to everybody do find the way to do it. And it's an amazing way. The one that grips people with the wonders of science.

Comic: How science reporting works by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Published originally in Spanish in E-ciencia.com

Yeast in Cancer Research as a case study in the TEDxBrooklyn

2012-01-29T08:00:00.000Z

I've just discovered that my project "Cancer? Yeast has answers" was one of the examples that Brian Meece, the CEO of RocketHub, mentioned in his talk about crowdfunding science at the TEDxBrooklyn.

Actually he does a very good summary of what the SciFund challenge was and the key points to have a successful project to get funds for your research project by crowdfunding. And one of those key points is the rewards you give back to the people who decide to donate money to your project. In this part, my project got his attention and he used it as an example of interesting rewards. He mixed the ideas of sending a copy of the paper and getting the name of the contributors in the blog post about the challenge, and said that I was offering having the name of the contributors in the paper. That it´s not true.

But what it is really important and he mentioned specifically was the fact that I was offering as a reward, not only the paper of the work done, but also an additional explanation in lay language of what the paper was about. I'm very flattered by this. I admit it. But I think that is a great idea, indeed. An it´s the least I can do. To explain, in a way everybody can understand, the results of the work they contributed to. Anyway, here you have Brian's talk. Enjoy it!!!! (my project gets in stage in the minute 10:30)

The greatest show on earth (Symphony of Science)

2012-01-21T12:39:00.001Z

Symphony of Science is a very interesting project that brings scientific knowledge and philosophy to the public in a new way, combining science and music. John Boswell, the musician and producer behind Symphony of Science has made several videos about different topics in a very enjoyable musical way.

All of them are really good, but I want to share the last one: "The greatest show on earth". This video has been released last week and it's a video about the evolution. I'm sure you will enjoy it.

And before leaving you with the video, I want to add that John makes all his videos for free and all of us can enjoy them without any cost, so if you think they are good, you can help him with this project donating some money.

And now, here you have the last "Symphony of Science" video, "The greatest show on earth"

Here you have the lyrics... enjoy it!!!

[David Attenborough]
How could one species turn into another?

[Richard Dawkins]
How is it that we find ourselves surrounded by such complexity, such elegance?

[Bill Nye]
The genes of you and me
They're all made of DNA
We're all made of the same chemicals
DNA - we're all made of DNA

[Attenborough]
Only the fittest survive
And that is the key
Natural Selection
That is the key

[Dawkins]
We are surrounded by endless forms
Most beautiful, most wonderful
Evolution - the greatest show on Earth

There is grandeur in this view of life
Evolution - the greatest show on Earth

[Attenborough]
The history of life can be thought of
As a many branched tree
The five kingdoms of life
were established early on

Bacteria
Protists- amoeba like creatures
Fungi
Plants
And animals

[Dawkins]
We find ourselves perched on one tiny twig
In the midst of a blossoming tree of life

[refrain]

We are surrounded by millions of other species
Walking, flying, burrowing, stalking, chasing, fleeing,
Outpacing

[Attenborough]
Animals strive to reach this one ultimate goal
To ensure the survival of the next generation
This one ultimate goal
To pass on their genes
That is what life is all about

[refrain]

[Dawkins]
As we look back on the history of life
We see a picture of never ending,
ever rejuvinating novelty

[Attenborough]
Those animals may seem to us to be very remote,
strange, even fantastic

But all of us alive today
Owe our very existence to them

Science Box wishes you Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T14:37:00.003Z

Giving people the chance to take part in Science funding : the SciFund challenge

2011-12-07T08:00:00.000Z

Published originally in Agora, the blog of the L'Oreal Foundation for women in science. This is my post in that blog about the SciFund challenge.

It’s obvious that the economic crisis we are suffering is affecting science. We are seeing science budgets shrink quite quickly all around the world. We are seeing scientists struggling to find money to do their research. We are seeing a decrease in the trust of governments and institutions in research. And this is going to last for a while. But it is in moments like this that creative ideas arise.

A few months ago a couple of American researchers, Jarret Byrnes and Jai Ranganathan, got one of these creative ideas. They were tired of seeing this economic situation on one hand and, on the other hand, they realised that people were willing to give money to different projects, such as the one to build a RoboCop statue in Detroit. So why not ask people to fund research? The seed of the SciFund challenge was sown!

They spread the word through social networks trying to recruit researchers who were interested in taking part in this initiative. The challenge of making the research projects comprehensible to people had two main aims: telling people about the research and trying to get people to donate small (or not that small) amounts of money to fund parts of those projects. And quite a few scientists, from different levels in the ir research career s and different specialities, signed up.

After a full month of hard work writing the projects to make them understandable, making a video explaining the project (the first-ever video for many of them) and working together to get the best out of each project, the SciFund challenge went live. On the first of November, 49 researchers made it possible. 49 amazing research projects were on the RocketHub platform ready to be “fueled” with people’s donations.

I’m one of those researchers and I’m really impressed with people’s commitment. The SciFund challenge has raised so far more than US$60,000! Another thing that has impressed me about the SciFund challenge is the fact that 43% of the researchers who take part in it are women. Yes, 21 of the 49 projects are from women. This is not bad at all and it’s even more amazing if we take into account that four of the five projects that have already been fully funded are those proposed bywomen. I would like to tell you a bit more about some of these fantastic projects.

Athlete ‘s Foot in Worms ?

Rebecca Rashid Achterman is a biology instructor at Western Washington University who studies how microbial pathogens cause disease. Her project is about the fungi that cause athlete’s foot – the largest cause of skin infections worldwide. She uses worms for her study because the skin (cuticle) of the worm has a protein that these fungi love to eat and that is present in your skin, hair and nails. Using worms she can have a closer look at the interaction of these fungi with the skin.

Mapping a Bornean Soundscape

Alison Styring is a professor at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She is a field biologist with a focus in conservation and ecology with expertise is Southeast Asian birds. In her project she is asking money to study, record and mapp the sounds from the rainforests of Borneo, which are among the most species-rich habitats in the world. The information she will obtain is going to be very important for understanding the role of animal communication in that ecosystem. In addition, this information will be an important reference for many rarely seen species inhabiting rainforest thickets and canopies.

School of Ants

Andrea Lucky heads the School of Ants project, which is based in the lab of Dr. Rob Dunn at North Carolina State University. The School of Ants project is a citizen-scientist driven study of the ants that live in urban areas, particularly around homes and schools. The project involves thousands of people across North America and is mapping the native and introduced species of ants that live in backyards to understand how and when different species came to live where we find them today.

Smart Delivery

Jennifer Schmitt is a research fellow with the NorthStar Initiative for Sustainable Enterprise. She is working on projects that include corporate embedded sustainability, smart network applications in Tanzania, and energy efficiency financing. Her project wants to develop a new and better way to deliver childhood vaccines by using cell phones and a “Facebook like” social network. The aim is to send small batches of vaccines to continually reach the most rural areas of Tanzania with the help of cell phones and a virtual group of “friends” who will transport the vaccines in the extra space on their bikes, mules or backpacks to the places where they were planning to go.

Cancer ? Yeast has answers

This is my project. I’m a postdoctoral researcher at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research in Manchester (UK) and I work with yeast. Yes. Yeast in a Cancer Research Institute. I’ve already written in this blog about some research done on yeast, but now I’m going to tell you about the specific research I’m doing. Cancer cells divide without any control and the key proteins that control this cell division are so important that are (more or less) the same through evolution: from yeast to humans. In our lab in Manchester we study a protein that is increased in many cancers and is involved in promoting cell division. We try to find out how this protein interacts in the cell with other proteins. If some of these secondary proteins are important for the function of the key protein in promoting the uncontrolled division of the cell, inhibiting the specific interaction between them can be a new way to try to treat cancer.

Science needs your collaboration

These are only five of the projects, but the rest are very interesting as well. The initiative is going to be alive until the 15th of December and there are still many projects that need our support. With the SciFund challenge we have the opportunity to contribute to the creation of knowledge in many different fields. This challenge gives us the opportunity to take part in specific research projects. This doesn’t happen very often and we can’t miss it. Now it is our turn, as citizens, to be part of the future of our economies. To be part of science.

Diversity & Soaps Operas for Better Science Communication

2011-11-28T16:55:00.001Z

A couple of weeks ago Abby Tabor from MyScienceWork contacted me asking to interview me for an article about science communication that she wanted to write. I said yes and the result of that and other two more interviews gave as a result an amazing post that you can find in the Agora forum, For Women in Science community and in MyScienceWork blog, Multidisciplinary Research News. I hope you like as much as I do.
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As more and more researchers take part in bringing their science to the public, social media provide a wealth of tools for making contact. Still, it is important to remember that the target is real people on the other end, with a desire and a need to understand. The diversity of this community also means diversifying the approaches, with new ideas and old favorites, in order to connect most effectively with groups of different needs.

Increasing numbers of researchers are living double lives. On top of a successful scientific career, many are stacking a full-time position as purveyor of science, via blogs, social media, and internet forums. Although, to many, it is more than evident that scientists should share their work with the public, Marisa Alonso Nuñez, a researcher at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Manchester (UK) and contributor to the Agora forum, explains that there remains some resistance on the part of the research world. Some scientists simply don’t see it as part of their job. It’s not taken into account in their job description, and those who actively communicate with the public do it in their spare time, without pay.

“Some researchers don’t like it, or they don’t have time, or they’re not good at [translating their work for a lay audience], but I’m happy to do it. A lot of our work is funded by public money, so I feel we owe that to society.”

Marisa makes good on this promise to her 516 followers on Twitter, as well as via her personal blog, in English and in Spanish, and on collaborative blogs and an online magazine.

Mayana Zatz, a geneticist at the University of São Paulo and laureate in 2000 of the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science award, not only keeps up the pace for the nearly 4,500 people following her on Twitter, but she also maintains a blog. She writes about her own work on neurodegenerative diseases, and other science news. The communication flows in both directions, as Professor Zatz welcomes questions from the public, via email. She receives about 20 messages per day from patients asking when a new treatment will be available, for example, or from citizens seeking to understand stem cell research.

The Internet clearly has a vital role to play but, for Federica Migliardo, a biophysicist at the University of Messina, an all-web approach without personal contact would be the wrong direction to take for enhancing relations between science and society. Writing on the Agora forum, Dr. Migliardo stresses the point that science must reflect the society for which it works, in that both women and men must be active in decision-making roles. Likewise, it could be said that our approach to transmitting scientific information to society should reflect the diversity of communication channels that exist, and the varying needs of the individuals involved.

Federica participates regularly in meetings at universities designed to expose students to a potential career in research. She says these young people actually request this kind of contact, sending her Facebook messages asking her to make a stop in their town.

“It’s important to speak personally because, if not, science is only abstract, it’s not something they imagine they could do.”

All things being relative, Dr. Migliardo admits that the laureates of the L’Oréal-UNESCO award are like gods to her. “It’s the same for young people. They imagine [scientists] live on Olympus, that we are geniuses, and that it would be impossible to reach our goals.”

When they meet her, though, she says they are struck by something else entirely: how very normal she is. This is something many women researchers feel is imperative to get across to girls interested in science. There is a misconception that to do research, you have to give up the ordinary pleasures of life: seeing friends, going to movies, having children. Mayana Zatz receives a lot of emails that touch on this subject, and feels it’s important to make it clear to young women that you don’t have to leave science to have a family, nor should you give up the experience of motherhood to do research.

Coming face-to-face, or email-to-email, with inspiring figures in research can clearly have great benefits for someone considering following the same path. But for a more general diffusion of science, what remains in our arsenal of communication? “I’m convinced TV is the best way now,” declares Federica Migliardo. Marisa Alonso Nuñez laments the undesirable time slots to which scientific documentaries are often doomed—“Who’s going to watch science on a Saturday night?”—but Dr. Migliardo has an idea that could bring science into more homes at a more influential hour. Her goal is to create short films to be broadcast just before the evening news. Each episode would let different scientists talk about their research and their life, and connect with the public on a more human level.

Mayana Zatz would like to exploit television to get science discussions out there into the world, using a genre that draws a serious following, all around the globe: the soap opera. Professors Zatz’s field of genetics abounds with ethical issues that doctors, patients and society have never had to face before. She believes these questions could be inserted into stories that would reach the public in a novel way.

The fusion of daytime drama with the grave dilemmas of medical ethics may seem an odd one, until Professor Zatz relates the story of a family that came to her for genetic counseling. The couple’s daughter had inherited a genetic disorder, and they had come for testing to determine the risk of a second child facing the same fate. Zatz and her team tested the three family members and discovered—incidentally to the test for the disorder itself—that the devoted dad was not, in fact, the biological father. If that’s not the stuff of soap operas, what is?

The question, explains Mayana Zatz, is whether to tell the couple, because questions of informed consent and personal responsibility spring to the foreground. This is the sort of debate that Professor Zatz would like to stimulate in the public by inserting scientific details into more plots on TV, “to improve the interest of science and ethics for the entire population.”

Perhaps, in time, a program full of drama, betrayal, beautiful people, and science will come to the airwaves. In the short term, though, Marisa Alonso Nuñez worries that the current climate of budget cuts will make science popularization efforts its first victims. Luckily, much of the web’s offerings, coming straight from the researcher-communicator’s mouth, are free. “Blogs don’t cost money, they cost time,” as Marisa puts it, “and more and more people are interested in doing it.”

“The public conception of science communication is changing—they demand more—and we need to take that into account,” Alonso Nuñez adds. “Now, we do it because we like to. I’d like to see it become that we have to do it, that this aspect would be considered for grants and job applications.”

This may be what’s in store for researchers down the road, yet Zatz, Migliardo and Alonso Nuñez agree that, to be most effective, science communication needs to be a joint effort: a team approach between scientists and journalists, writers, film directors, communications specialists…Because, just as a diverse portfolio of media improves the transmission of knowledge, a diversity of players will improve the quality of the message, from the start.

Have your say in the European Research Area

2011-11-23T08:00:00.000Z

We are always complaining about the fact that the public organisations don't listen to us. Governments, universities and international organisations usually write laws and regulations not taking into account the people that these are going to affect. However, I have to say that there is an organisation that, since a long time ago, does take into account citizens opinions when the time of writing its documents comes: the European Commission. I know what you are thinking: " but the European Commission produces not binding documents, but recommendations". Yes, you are right. But these are recommendations at European level that, little by little, governments, universities and other kind of organisations take.

Actually, the European Commission publishes two basic types of documents that cover different aspects of the European scenery: Green Papers and White Papers. The Green Papers are the documents about the current situation on some issues to promote a reflection on those subjects. The White Papers, however, have specific proposals of action and in many cases arise from some previous Green Papers about the same subject.

About research there is a document that the European Commission has produced that is key for the development of the human resources policies in this area: The European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. This document contains a paragraph that is very important in my opinion, and that I have used extensively in talks that I've given in different places:

"All researchers engaged in a research career should be recognised as professionals and be treated accordingly. This should commence at the beginning of their careers, namely at postgraduate level, and should include all levels, regardless of their classification at national level"

This document should be known by every researcher and organisation that has to hire researchers. Since 2005, when it was published, many national organisations have taken it, but they are not enough and its implementation is being very slowly. In addition, there are other two very interesting green papers related to research: "The European Research Area: New Perspectives" from 2007 and "From Challenges to opportunities: Towards a Common Strategic Framework for EU Research and Innovation funding" from 2011.

But the aim of this post is to present to you a public consultation that the European Commission is conducting at this moment about the Areas of untapped potential for the development of the European Research Area (ERA). This is a consultation where the European Commission wants the opinion of the citizens and organisations about the areas that can be improved in the European Research Area. This consultation cannot be successful without the citizens opinion and contribution. Here you can access the website with the information about the consultation. There are two main ways to contribute to it. One is answering the questionnaire that they propose, and the other one, sending your written proposals and opinions in a document. The deadline to contribute is the 30th of November of this year, so we don't have a lot of time left.

Alongside the questionnaire you can find a document with the key areas and information about the different parts of this consultation. If you have enough interest and time (well, it's only 10 pages), I strongly recommend you to read it.

And the only thing I can do now is to encourage you, from Science Box, to check the questionnaire and fill it. We don't have quite often the opportunity to influence the future strategies about research. Let's not miss this one. Thanks a lot for your collaboration and I need to ask you for a last favour. If you fill the questionnaire, could you leave a comment in this post saying that you have done it, and where country are you from? A "done"+"country" is enough. Thanks a lot again.

The "Blogfather". Interview with Bora Zivkovic

2011-11-14T12:30:00.000Z

There is a new science communication project in Spanish. A free online magazine of science communication called Journal of Feelsynapsis. This initiative comes from an online community of scientists called Feelsynapsis and the passion for communicating science of Enrique Royuela.

I take part on this amazing project and I have two articles in its first issue. One of them is an interview with Bora Zivkovic that you can find translated into English below. I hope you like it.

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This is the first issue of a new online magazine of science communication, so there is no better way of starting it than with the interview with one of the best known science writers and bloggers in the online world: Bora Zivkovic. Bora is the chief editor and community manager of the Scientific American blogs network. In addition, he is a chronobiologist, biology teacher, organiser of the Science Online Conference of North Carolina and editor of the Open Laboratory anthologies with the best science writing. But above all, he is a blogger who has been around for seven years in social networks and online communities, who writes his blog A blog around the clock and who tweets all the time from his account @BoraZ.

At the beginning of September I had the pleasure of taking part in the Science Online London 2011 Conference that was about how communicating science is changing mainly in the online environment. I met Bora there and we had a very interesting chat/interview about science communication that I want to share here with you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Q: What’s the role of science communication online nowadays or what should be if there is a difference?

A: Well, that’s not an easy question. What’s the role or the goal of any communication? Is it affecting change? Or is it educating? Or amusing, entertaining? Science communication can do all of that. But you have different audiences. Because other scientists are one audience and general public who finds science interesting or fun is another audience. But for some topics it needs to fire up a lot of people to affect or change policy or personal behaviour at country wide level. Your communication is going to be different depending on what your goal is. And how online and offline differ is that what you reach online can potentially be bigger if you are doing it right. But it’s also going to be more random who is going get it. So, if you are using email, letters, phones, flyers, is going to a very targeted audience, and it may be slower and less efficient. In essence that is going to be less people who are going to get it but you can target it very well.
But putting stuff online, everybody is going to read it. Your enemies are going to read it, your friends are going to read it, even the people who don’t care are going to read it. So you are hoping there is going to be some people who have not thought about before, but who are going to be fired up by what they just read. And that’s where blogs, twitter, facebook, google+ and all these things are coming in. Because what we science communicators basically do is taking scientific papers and news and spread them all around where we have a lot of non science audience. So my family, and my friends from high school and my friends from facebook, they are going to occasionally click on the link that I posted on facebook and say “Wow, this is cool, I din’t know this” and they share it with their friends and those concentric circles are going to reach people who are not going to actively seek scientific information. Somebody who reads and cares about science will buy Scientific American but most people won’t because most people don’t care. Or most people don’t know they care, or they don’t know that science is fun. And if you try to reach them, for that, the web is really really good because everybody is online.

Q: So the networks are really important for that I guess. And could you tell me up to five qualities or adjectives of good science communication?

A: PASSION!!! You have to be generally excited about the story you are telling which is one of the reasons why blogs are successful. Because bloggers don’t get assignments. You hear stuff, you read stuff and you suddenly get excited about something and that’s what you write about. So passion is the most important. The second is to write about things that you know. If you are a scientist write about your area of expertise. I’m not going to write about physics because that is not interesting to me or it would take far too much work for me to get it right. So I’m going to link it to a science blog who does it much better, who can do it in twenty minutes, as I can do a circadian story. So there is this division of labour between the blogs for each one of us to jump on the stories that we can actually say something intelligent from a perspective of expertise and with passion. So this is not five but it’s enough.

Q: Well, 5 was just a random number. You have talked about scienctist writing about their field of expertise, and you were a scientist and switched to just not doing much research… how this happened, why did you take the risk of making that change? Because is kind of a risky change.

A: It’s one of those things that happen. It’s not that I sat down, saw the pros and cons and made a decision. I was in grad school for ten years. I published five papers. I had four manuscripts and half of my dissertation ready, and I stopped doing experiments only because my advisor said so “Stop it! I know you can do fifty more experiments but stop now, write your dissertation and get out”. It was a combination of things. First, that I’m not actually doing research, just writing. Second, three very important people in my life, my father, my grandmother and my grandmother in law, they died one after another. And that actually put me in clinical depression. But I was a macho male and thought that couldn't happen to me and it took a couple of years to me to realise that it was a real problem. But I had a family who took care of the house and me. And that was the moment when I started spending most of my awake moments online. That was my self-medication. By that time I was out, you know?, like I didn’t renew anything in grad school, so I was out. It was over. But I was now part of these online communities. So I was blogging about politics. When the 2004 election was over I decided that I was bored of politics but I was a scientist so I could write about science, so I started a science blog and that was an instant success from the very first post. And that was a life boat moment for me. Wow, there is interest for this, there is hanger for this and I’m writing it from a position of expertise, that people trust. So if I write about sleep or circadian rhythms, or animal behaviour or physiology I’m not just anybody, I’m somebody who has knowledge. People would trust that and will come to me with questions. And that’s how I became a science blogger and that lead a job for PLOS first for three years and now with Scientific American.

Q: Actually my next question it is about the fact that you started blogging about politics but you switched to science blogging and I guess you already told me but what is the subject you love to blog about the most?

A: You know people change. I’ve been blogging for seven years. And people change in their interests and their styles so I still like, when I have time and energy, to blog about animal behaviour and circadian rhythms but I blog even more about the media. So I write a lot about blogging and social networking, journalism, science communication and science education because that is something I’m passionate about so I get up early, I’m walking the dog and taking a shower and I round up these words. And over the years I acquired some of that expertise so I feel comfortable writing about that. I feel comfortable wrting about that and it is what I care about. So I write a lot about it. And when I have time ever now and then I write about science. Just for fun, just becasuse I like it.

Q: And the last question. If you could give an advice to the newbies in science communication what would be, and also to the oldies, to the ones who have been blogging for a while.

A: It’s tough this one. With the new bloggers I guess the big obstacle is confidence. And it’s hard to tell people to be confident. If they are not, they are no going to listen to you. So something I do a lot, and people really like, is that my blog reading sphere is not just reading the oldies. It’s actively searching for new bloggers, young bloggers, new voices. And when I discover somebody whose writing really appeals to me, those who nobody has heard about before and they get three hits a day, I take it to myself to promote them and also to keep in touch with them, to give them the boost of confidence. It’s like go for it. Especially now that with the Scientific American I run the guess blog it’s perfect. Let’s write something for the guess blog. And they often do their best work for it. Somebody said that Scientific American guest blog is like TED of science blogging because people put their best writing there. So this is a way for me to promote young and new voices until they don’t need promoting any more because they became confident, they learnt, they built networks, some of them actually got hired by the media and I feel so proud of them. That’s the reason why they call me a blog father because they are my blog kids that I’m so proud of. And some of them are now big famous bloggers and they started because I told them. I really love doing that and whenever one of those people succeeds is like my success. And the second half, telling the old bloggers what to do. The thing is the first rule in blogging is that you don’t tell bloggers what to do, what to write about and how to write it, because it has to come out of passion .

Q: Well, It’s not what to do. It’s something that you miss or something that is not working. A feeling of the style of the old bloggers, or maybe it’s not just an advice, but something that you would like to point out to learn from.

A: It’s very different to tell again because every blogger has a different goal. So for their purposes or reasons, they are probably doing it right and we cannot tell that they are doing it wrong. Some of them use the blogs to communicate to their peers. So they use a lot of details and that is fine. Some reach broader audiences and they are working on it and they are improving their writing style and that’s fine. Others are blogging in order to provide support to different communities, especially for young researchers or women researchers as a minority of researchers to figure out how to navigate in the dangerous world of academia, how to succeed. So experienced scientists can be a lot of help for the younger people: how to write a grant proposal, how to choose your PI, how to present in a meeting to maximise your own chances for reaching your goals. So even if they never write about papers or they never write about news they are an extremely important part of the community and if they use strong language is fine with me, I’m not against strong language because some languages sometimes are needed to wake the structures up. One of the most linked blog posts of mine is titled “The shock value of Science Blogs” and is exactly about this. It has a traditional structure that people is just to it and how often crazy language and style of blogs gets people shocked out of that compliancy and makes them think differently. And that’s for the good.

As you can see, interviewing Bora was a great pleasure for me and I learnt a lot about the science communication world. I really hope this interview has been for you as useful as for me. Finally I just want to point out the two characteristics Bora said about science communication: passion and knowledge. So, let's communicate science with passion about what you know.

UPDATE: The interview has been featured in different blogs:
A blog around the clock
LSE Impact of Social Sciences

SciFund is really happening!!!

2011-11-04T22:46:00.002Z

Last month has been crazy. Apart from the regular work in the lab I've been doing something else. Something different... and quite fun I have to say. It´s been a month of thinking about how to explain my project with regular words and how to explain it in a catchy and good video as well!!

The SciFund Challenge has been a very important and special part of my life this month. And after all the work done and the collaboration with other scientists to get our projects done in the best way possible this part of it is ended. The experience is been great and I have made my first video ever!!!! I'm so proud of it...

But the good news are that the public part of SciFund is starting now!!!! Finally, all the effort and the work we have been doing for the last month will pay off. Well, we hope so. Now we will see if we've done a good job or not. If people like our project, or not. It's pretty exciting.

Now it's time for a different job. Getting our projects funded by people. It's a proper job of marketing and a good experience for us, scientist, to go out and spread the word about our research. This is something that we don't do very often and can be scary. Well, it is scary. These last days since the SciFund went live have been also frenetic. Thinking about who to contact to get some publicity for my project and trying to convince my friends to donate to it.

It's something completely new for me and I'm loving it. Now there is almost one and a half months to see if I'm good at marketing my project and I can get people as excited about my project as I am. Let's see what it happens and good luck to all #SciFunders!!!

Check out my #SciFund project Cancer? Yeast has the answers and fuel it!!!!
Published originally in the SciFund blog
And the same day in the SciFund blog my project as the Feature Project of the day!!!!

Crystal violet lactone

2011-11-01T10:12:00.000Z

This is not a post written by me. This post is been written by a proper chemist called Sarah Murray who lives in Manchester, like me. You can find her in twitter as @SarahScientist I hope you like it.

Cristal Violet. Courtesy of Chemblink

One ofthe great joys of being a scientist, is that there is always the opportunity tolearn something new ( and meet and work with amazingly talented and lovely people). It is now the end ofOctober and this means that in the UK, the half term holiday is over and sosadly is the Manchester Science Festival which takes place during theseholidays. At this festival I reprise my role as STEM Ambassador, i.e. in essenceI'm a science communicator and I love it! I could write about what a STEMAmbassador is, and what it means to be one. That could be an entirely separatepost altogether. Alas as I write, it isover for another year, always a time of feeling a little sad but so verypleased to have been part of it. As 2011 is officially the International Year ofChemistry, I fully expected this years festival to have many chemistry themedevents and I wasn't disappointed.

On my second day (the fourth actual day of thefestival) I had the good fortunate to assist a great chemist from theUniversity of Bristol with his demonstrations. Declan was his name and he wasvery enthusiastic. He managed to hold the children's interest even after demo'swere over whilst explaining the science. This I confess I always find to be thetricky part. Amongst his entertaining demo's was one which truly amazed me too.So finally, I am now going to talk about what I learned from Declan about abeautiful molecule called crystal violet lactone. I guess I have chosen thisbecause it combines my favourite science, chemistry, with my favourite colourpurple.

Cristal Violet.Courtesy of 3D Wolfram Alpha

There is an acid base indicator calledcrystal violet which I personally somehow have never in my career managed touse. Biologists also use it as a generic stain for looking at cell organelles.As you may correctly suspect, crystal violet lactone is a derivative of thisindicator and its real chemical name is:6-(dimethylamino)-3,3-bis(p-(dimethylamino)phenyl)-6-(dimethylamino)phthalide.

It iswhat is known as a leuco dye and it was the first dye to be used in carbonlesscopy papers, and is still widely used in this application. Declan had amolecular model structure of this lactone which was wonderful to see,especially when used to explain what was going on. He took some crystal violetlactone and blew some purple bubbles with it. I've never seen purple bubblesbefore! They look like this:

Courtesy of Geekologie

Hedeliberately got some on his hands and the table and followed this up with thequestion "what problem may a substance like this cause do you think?"Of course he was given the correct answer from some of the kids. It is messyand will stain things. Then amazingly he rubbed his skin and the splashes onthe table and we all watched fascinated as it disappeared! He explained, usinghis molymod that it hadn't really disappeared and was still there and is a verytoxic substance. There is just a slight change in the structure of the moleculewhich occurs when a bit of friction or pressure is applied. This happens quiteeasily as the molecule wants it to happen readily. The 3 rings within thestructure are no longer exactly aligned, the one with the lactone group istwisted slightly. Declan referred to this as a 'mousetrap' within thestructure. Now the molecule is absorbing light in the UV region rather than inthe visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum as it was before, meaning itis no longer visible to the human eye.

I find this truly stunning and is why I lovechemistry. So far, this is not a reversible process and researcher's haven'tfound any applications for it though it is thought it may be useful forsecurity purposes. Detecting fingerprints on stolen /counterfeit money perhaps.

I hopeyou have found this as interesting as I did. You have now learned as much as Ihave about crystal violet lactone. This just goes to show that attendingscience festivals in any capacity is good for you. Thank you very much Declan.

This post takes part of the VIII edition of the Carnival of Chemistry hosted in the blog Science Box. I know it's already November but it was written in October and because of different reasons it hasn't been able to be publish before.

Oh my cold!

2011-11-01T01:33:00.001Z

I’ve had a cold for several days and I hate it. What I hatethe most is the running and stuffy nose. But the problem with cold is that youcannot cure it. The only thing you can do is to pass it and treat the symptoms.Many people think that you get stuffy nose because your nose gets filled upwith mucus but the reality is a bit different. The main cause of the stuffynose is the inflammation of the blood vessels in the nose. This makes the tissuein the nose to swell and get closer blocking the nose. We can find this type ofinflammation in colds caused by viral infections and in allergic processes aswell. Actually the production of mucus is a defensive mechanism that cells useto get rid out of the foreign agent (virus or particle that is producing theallergy).

As a pharmacist I can tell you that there are differentanticatarrhal drugs and descongestant nasal sprays that you can use for thesesymptoms. These drugs help to get through the cold but you have to be quite carefulwith them. The anticatarrhal drugs usually have a combination of differentdrugs to treat different symptoms. They often have a pain killer andantipyretic drug like ibuprofen, paracetamol or salicylic acid, and one or twomore drugs for the mucus, sneezes and stuffy nose. The most common combinationsof these are salts of chlorphenamine and phenylephrine.

Phenylephrine is a derivativeof ephedrine and it has been used insubstitution of pseudoephedrine. Thechemical difference between these molecules is not very big. Actually ephedrine and pseudoephedrinehave the same chemical groups in their molecule but organised(orientated) in different ways. They are diastereomers..

Ephedrine and Pseudoephedrine are obtained from plants of the genusEphedra and they act as alpha1adrenergic agonist drugs (they bind to the receptors alpha1 of the nervoussystem). What they mainly do is to promote the contraction of the nose blood vesselsto reduce the inflammation, reducing the stuffy nose at the same time. Butthese drugs have a big problem. Their chemical structure looks like the amphetamine and methamphetamine a lot.

These drugs are psycostimulants,produce euphoria and create addiction. As you can imagine that’s not really theeffect a decongestant wants to produce and because of that the derivative usednowadays to treat the stuffy nose is phenylephrine.This has an extra hydroxyl group that makes thisdrug less similar to amphetamines. Phenylephrine isused mainly in oral preparations but several studies carried out in 2006, 2007 and 2009 (two studies) have doubted its effectiveness, saying that its effect is not better than the placebo one.Interestingly, another study carried out by GlaxoSmithKline in 2007showed that it does have effectiveness. The controversy is still out there butthe Food and Drug Administration hasstood by its 1976 approval of phenylephrine for nasal congestion as the debatecontinues.

But there are also topical preparations, like nasal sprays,that act specifically in the nose because it’s where the drug is delivered. Inthis case the drug used is called oxymetazoline. This drug is an alpha1 and partial alpha2adrenergic agonist, and due to this effect in the alpha2 receptors its effectslast for longer but are slower than the phenylephrine ones.

However topical decongestants as oxymetazolinecan cause rebound congestion when the effects of the drug fade off. Thiswill cause the use of the decongestant again in a vicious circle of persistentand worsening congestion, creating a kind of addiction to the decongestant.

As you can see there is no magic drug to get rid out of thestuffy nose and that’s quite annoying but I can tell you that if I have a cold Iwould never get on a plane without a decongestant spray. If you don’t use this drug on time the paincan be really horrible. And that’s the least you want for starting your trip.

This post takes part of the VIII edition of the Carnival of Chemistry hosted in the blog Science Box.

References:

Hendeles, L., & Hatton, R. (2006). Oral phenylephrine: An ineffective replacement for pseudoephedrine? Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 118 (1), 279-280 DOI: 10.1016/j.jaci.2006.03.002

Hatton RC, Winterstein AG, McKelvey RP, Shuster J, & Hendeles L (2007). Efficacy and safety of oral phenylephrine: systematic review and meta-analysis. The Annals of pharmacotherapy, 41 (3), 381-90 PMID: 17264159

Horak F, Zieglmayer P, Zieglmayer R, Lemell P, Yao R, Staudinger H, & Danzig M (2009). A placebo-controlled study of the nasal decongestant effect of phenylephrine and pseudoephedrine in the Vienna Challenge Chamber. Annals of allergy, asthma & immunology : official publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology, 102 (2), 116-20 PMID: 19230461

Day JH, Briscoe MP, Ratz JD, Danzig M, & Yao R (2009). Efficacy of loratadine-montelukast on nasal congestion in patients with seasonal allergic rhinitis in an environmental exposure unit. Annals of allergy, asthma & immunology : official publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology, 102 (4), 328-38 PMID: 19441605

Kollar C, Schneider H, Waksman J, & Krusinska E (2007). Meta-analysis of the efficacy of a single dose of phenylephrine 10 mg compared with placebo in adults with acute nasal congestion due to the common cold. Clinical therapeutics, 29 (6), 1057-70 PMID: 17692721

Steve Jobs did what he loved the most

2011-10-06T07:19:00.000+01:00

"You've got to find what you love"
"Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition"
- Steve Jobs-

Opening post of the VIII Edition of the Carnival of Chemistry

2011-10-01T11:45:00.000+01:00

It looks like the VIII Edition of the Carnival of Chemistry starts today!!!! And this month I have the honor of hosting it here, in this blog. The quality of the last edition, that Eroyuela has hosted in his blog, has been really high and it´s going to be very difficult to beat. But because I am the way I am, I'm going to try it... this is like life... we learn from the good and bad things of our predecessors, to try to make it even better... and I'm not saying that there has been anything bad, ok?

I have to thank the organisers of the previous editions for the richness that they have given to this "carnivalistic" idea during these months, starting with Dani (Ese punto azul pálido) who is the daddy of this idea due to the fact that this year is the international year of chemistry, and following with Cendrero (El Busto de Palas), César (Experientia Docet), J.M. Mulet (Los productos naturales ¡vaya timo!), Jose Manuel (Scientia), Patricia (Divagaciones de una investigadora en apuros) and of course, Quique (Eroyuela's blog) who has given me the opportunity of hosting the carnival this month.

I would like to contribute to this carnival with something that is mine and I thought that it could be a good idea to enrich it even more by fostering the presence of articles in English. What do you think? Do you think that it will work? and that we will get at least a couple of posts in English?... I think so, so here we go!!!! This is the English version of the Spanish "Carnaval de Química". The idea is to collect all the posts in Spanish in the Spanish twin blog of this one (Caja de Ciencia) and use Science box to collect the English ones. At the end I will write a final post in both languages with all contributions (in English and Spanish).
So, the only thing I have left to say is that this VIII Edition of the Carnival of Chemistry is open starting today, 1st of October and finishing the 31st of this month. I'm really looking forward to receive all your contributions.

Here you have the list of the previous editions of the carnival (they are in Spanish) so you can check them... they are really worth to read!!

Participation Rules

1.- The publication of posts for this VIII Edition of the Carnival of Chemistry starts today, 1st of October and finishes the 31st of this month. The 1st of November I will write a final post with all the posts that have participated.
2.- The subject is free, but it has to be related to chemistry, of course, in all its variants. It can be just a communicative post or be related to the history of chemistry or even something with a bit of humour. The posts can be based on something of chemistry but related to other disciplines as well. I'm pretty sure you will manage to get very good ideas to write about.
3.- If you don't have a blog but you want to take part don't worry. You can publish your post in a friend's blog or something like that. If this is not possible write a comment in this post or contact me through the contact form of the blog with the subject "Carnival of Chemistry" and I will contact you to get your post and publish it in this blog with your name (or pseudonymous).
4.- The posts that will take part on this will have to be communicated in the same way than in the previous point or through the twitter account @CarnavalQuimica. In addition, they will have to have a reference to the VIII Edition of the Carnival of Chemistry and a link to this post.

If you have any doubt about the rules don't hesitate to contact me

You can find the Spanish version here.

Our little contribution to science funding: the SciFund challenge

2011-09-29T04:07:00.000+01:00

Nowadays we are suffering an economic crisis and one of the fields that is noticing this a lot is the scientific research. National and regional governments are cutting their budgets and some of the biggest cuts are in science. We, researchers, are having a very hard time to do our research and people in general doesn't like these cuts in science.

Well, there is a way for all of us to make a contribution in order to alleviate this money problem in research, or at least to help funding some interesting and useful projects. It's called SciFund challenge and it's an experiment of crowd funding. Several scientists will present their projects in a creative way to get funding from people for those projects. Everybody will be able to fund several research projects through small donations and help these scientists and their groups to do their research.

Crowd funding has been used traditionally in the fields of journalism, music or film making, but it has been used lately in science communication as well. Two different examples (in Spanish) are the Amazings magazine funded thanks to people collaboration and interest, and the Taracea platform from the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) to give people the possibility of funding science communication and public engagement activities through donations.

Until now crowd funding hasn't been used to get funds by the scientists themselves for their projects. However, a similar system has been used to raise money for charities. In UK many people do marathons, or long walks, or something that requires an effort to be sponsored by their friends and family and donate the money they get to the charity they choose. A clear example is Cancer Research UK (CRUK). This organisation is basically funded by personal donations and is one of the organisations that fund cancer research in UK (actually they pay my salary and most of the stuff we use in the lab). In Spain a new foundation (similar to a British charity) has been establish recently following the spirit of CRUK. It's called Fundación Vencer el Cáncer and one of its aims is to fund cancer research done in Spain with personal donations from people.

But the originality of the SciFund challenge is that the scientists themselves are the ones presenting their projects in an interesting and understandable way for the people to choose those that they want to fund with their donations. So far 146 scientists from all around the world have signed up to be part of this experiment and I am one of them. The deadline to participate is the 1st of October so, if you are a scientist and want to raise money for your projects, you are still on time to sign up. All of us, the scientists, will have to prepare a campaign to give the information about our projects and they will be hosted in one of the most important platforms of crowd funding in internet: RocketHub. This is another way of doing public engagement and science communication, although all scientists should communicate their science, even if it is not to get funding.

I think the SciFund challenge is a new initiative in which society will be able to get involved in science funding and even more, in funding the science that they like, understand or think it is more useful. It's a different and new way of involving people in research, of making them realise that they are very important in research. That, at the end, scientists depend on the society willingness to commit with the advance of the knowledge through research.

Science online, passion and thoughts

2011-09-07T20:33:00.000+01:00

Badges at SOLO11

I've just had two great days in London in the "Science Online London 2011" conference (#solo11). This was my first time and I have to say that the experience is been worth it. When I arrived in the British Library the first day I had the impression that there were many people attending the conference. All from many different ages. So I grabbed a coffee and walked around trying to read their badges that, in my opinion, had the key information: name, job place and twitter account. And there was a bit of everything: researchers, journalists, people from scientific journals, from online networks... I loved that because of the potential of this mixture to contribute to the meeting. However, it made me wonder what I was doing there. I got the answer straight away: "learning, meeting people, networking and doing my best to contribute". Because science online is everybody's responsibility and not something restricted to few people.

Michael Nielsen gave us one of the first examples of this in the first keynote about Open Science, related to the movement to promote free access to research results. He said that open science is a collective action and that some of the initiatives have failed because most of the research community didn't get involved in them. However, as any collective action, it has to start in small circles and increase little by little (as it happened to Facebook, that started being accessible to Harvard students and few more people afterwards, and ended up being used worldwide). Nowadays there are already some examples of open science and it depends on us to make these grow because knowledge is a public good.

Microattribution by Martin Fenner

After this first talk there were two sessions that I specially liked and I would like to share with you something from. The first one was about microattribution and had Martin Fenner, Mike Peel, Bora Zivkovic and Scott Edmunds as speakers. This is a not well known concept with very few information about. Martin Fenner says that micrattribution ascribes a small scholarly contribution to a particular author. There is not a proper way to cite these personal contributions yet. On the other hand, the recognition of them would be a good incentive for scientists to share their research results even if they have not been published in a scientific paper yet. During the session I realised that this is a very interesting subject we still have to work a lot on.

The second session I liked was "So many ways of telling a story" lead by Anton Zuiker and Bora Zivkovic (organisers of Science Online North Carolina). From this session I got a key idea (that I'm pretty sure many of you already know but it's worth to be repeated): when you write for a scientific publication the narrative style is different to the one used when you write for a newspaper and the one used when you write to educate/inform or you blog (in this last cases facts are just one component of the final result).

The second day was focused on several workshops introduced by a panel with the title "Dealing with data". One of the best sessions of the conference. Tim Hubbard, Alastair Dant and Kristi Holmes told us their different experiences (maybe too different) handling data. In summary, they showed us how nowadays the way of generating, storing, sharing and visualising data is changing a lot, and if you let me add: "and it has still a lot to change". This was the perfect starting point to go to work to the workshops after an introduction on spinal muscular atrophy (the subject we were going to use for the workshops).

The first workshop I chose was "Data visualisation". This is something I've always found interesting even if I have not clue about programming (I'm still in the HTML code). I think the way data are presented influences the way the readers get to those data and understand them. In addition, a friend of mine told me once that my blog lacks graphics and pictures and that it had too many words (and then he added: "well, you are a scientist"...?????). So this was an unresolved matter for me. The workshop was a bit chaotic because Jer Thorp couldn't come to London to lead it. However, he created a very good and easy to follow tutorial. I was lucky because Ian Mulvany sat down by my side and explained quite a few things to me (thanks a lot Ian). Now I'm not an expert using Processing.js but I'm very curious to play around with it and other similar programs. You can get great graphics such as the one I show below about the tweets related to the conference and made by Tony Hirst.

The last workshop I attended was "Beyond the scholarly publication" and was lead by Martin Fenner and Eva Amsen. The idea of the workshop was to work on developing scientific articles in a more interesting way than a pdf, using blogs as starting point to create them. But most of the things they told us were well known for me and surely for many bloggers as well (I don't if this was because I was present in the second part only). However, there is something I remember from this workshop. Bora Zivkovic talking about Researchblogging.com (a website that aggregates blog posts that discuss peer-reviewed research) and saying that this a stamp of approval, that if your blog has been accepted to be part of it you can be considered a science writer. I was really happy to hear that because my two blogs have been accepted and are part of the researchblogging network :-)

Well, it has been amazing to have had the opportunity of sharing these two days with so many people so passionate about science online and to have been part of the discussions, workshops and chats about the past, present and future of something that, in my opinion, will become very familiar very soon. but I can't finish this post without mentioning that one of the moments that I enjoyed the most was the interview to Bora Zivkovic. He worded many of the things I learnt and lived in this meeting, and I want to thank him once again for sharing his time, experience and passion with me. An the final summary that I can do about the meeting can be reduced to four words: science online, passion and thoughts.

"Biomarker Jones" and the search of cancer

2011-08-12T09:19:00.000+01:00

Golgi in 3D. Brad et al, 2001

Cancer causes a high number of deaths each year. However, most of the cancers are treatable and get cured if they are detected early. But how doctors detect cancer? One way is to take a sample of the suspicious tissue and check for the presence of cancer cells and/or proteins that are present in those cancer cells. This has a big problem. Imagine that for detecting a cancer every person has to have a surgery. Well, the process would be very long, expensive and uncomfortable for the patients. But don’t worry. There are other ways of detecting cancer. One of them is the detection of tumor biomarkers in blood. These biomarkers are proteins that cancer cells produce and are present in the blood. In this way the patients only need a blood test to know if they have cancer.

But these biomarkers are not just important to detect the presence of cancer, but also to see if the cancer has spread to other organs (metastasis) and to check that the treatment received by the patient is working and the cancer is being cured. In the last years there has been a big effort from many research groups to identify good biomarkers for several types of cancer and many research papers have been published about this using different approaches. A very interesting one is the study of the cancer secretome . The secretome is the group of proteins that cells secret outside. These proteins are very likely to go to the blood or other biological liquids and therefore they will be easier to detect in a blood sample and could be potential good biomarkers.

However, there is another factor that establishes if a protein can be a potential biomarker. This is the availability of commercial antibodies against it, because the most common ways of detecting biomarkers (Western blot and ELISA) use antibodies. Therefore commercially available antibodies can facilitate the identification of new and valuable biomarkers for the detection of cancer.

Western blot. Xue et al, 2010

A good example of the identification of new biomarkers studying the secretome of different kind of cancers is a study in colorectal cancer. In addition, it shows how having commercially available antibodies has been an important factor to choose the final candidates. Patients with colorectal cancer get cured but half of them develop further diseases within 5 years (mostly metastases). In this study they identified differences between the secretomes of regular cancer cells (SW480 cells) and metastatic cancer cells (SW620 cells) of colorectal cancer.

At the end of the process they chose 6 proteins because they were present in much higher or lower amount in the metastatic cells than in the regular cancer cells (Figure 2). Out of these 6 proteins, 3 were up regulated in metastatic cells. They kept working with only two of them, because, even if there was an antibody that detected the third protein in western blots, it could not be used for the assay that they used for further validation of these potential biomarkers.

The result of the study is impressive, because they found two proteins that are clearly present in metastatic colorectal cancer and not in the primary tumor and can be used as biomarkers to detect the presence of metastatic disease giving the opportunity of an early intervention and more chances for the patients to be cured.

Xue H, Lü B, Zhang J, Wu M, Huang Q, Wu Q, Sheng H, Wu D, Hu J, & Lai M (2010). Identification of serum biomarkers for colorectal cancer metastasis using a differential secretome approach. Journal of proteome research, 9 (1), 545-55 PMID: 19924834

Published originally in Spanish in E-ciencia.com

How people in science see each other

2011-08-10T13:58:00.001+01:00

A bit of humour is always good. Recently in Twitter I discovered this picture with the views of the different people working in science about each other. It's great. I hope you like it as much as I do.

You can see the original picture done by Matus Sotak here.

Fatal attraction: tall women and cancer

2011-08-10T00:02:00.000+01:00

Three women. Schaver.com

When it comes to chat up there are some women who are very good at it. They attract all kind of men and can choose their partners without any problem. Some of these women that come to your mind when we talk about this are the typical tall actresses or models. Those ones with endless legs and charming smile. It looks like everything is perfect for them, right? Well, it’s not. And not only for those actresses and models, but also for tall women in general. The Lancet Oncology journal has published an article of a research group from the University of Oxford in collaboration with some researchers at the Catalan Institute of Oncology where they show that there is a direct correlation between cancer and height (at least in women).

It was previously know that tall people had more chances to get cancer but not if that depended on the kind of cancer and other socioeconomic factors. Therefore these researchers started the study of this “fatal attraction” with the help of more than a million middle age women from the UK with different height and characteristics. For this, they followed these women for 9 years more or less to see if they got cancer or not.

The result was very clear: if you are taller you have a higher risk of having cancer. In addition, the correlation between height and cancer was stronger in these 10 types of cancer (out if the 17 they studied): colorectal, malign melanoma, breast, endometrium, kidney, ovary, central nervous system, no-Hodgkin lymphoma and leukaemia. On the other hand, this increment of the risk of cancer associated to height doesn’t depend on other factors such as the socioeconomic status (if you are rich or poor), the amount of alcohol intake, the body mass index (if you are slim of fat) or the physical activity of the person.

However, there was one factor that affected this relationship between height and cancer: smoking. And it does affect it in a particular way. I will explain myself. Smoking effect was clear in the smoking related cancers (such as mouth and pharynx, oesophagus, stomach, colorectal, pancreas, lung, liver and larynx). I know what you are thinking: “of course, smokers have a higher risk of having these smoking related cancers with height as well”. Well, actually, they don’t! There you have. Interesting, right? But they still have the same increased risk of cancer associated to height in the rest of cancers.

So, girls: if you are short, congrats; and if you are tall, keep an eye on this. But my advice is that taking care of oneself is always good. It doesn’t matter if you are short or tall.

Green J, Cairns BJ, Casabonne D, Wright FL, Reeves G, Beral V, & for the Million Women Study collaborators (2011). Height and cancer incidence in the Million Women Study: prospective cohort, and meta-analysis of prospective studies of height and total cancer risk. The lancet oncology, 12 (8), 785-794 PMID: 21782509

Baking Science and Cancer

2011-08-03T22:14:00.002+01:00

Fission yeast

Post originally published in the L'Oreal Foundation for women in science blog Agora

When they asked me to collaborate with this blog I asked what they expected from me to write about. The answer was very simple: “write about your field of expertise”. So here I am, ready to tell you quite a few things about… YEAST!!! Yes, you have read it right: Yeast. But don’t worry; this is still a blog about Science, not a baking one. And I won’t talk just about yeast, but also about other research done in the field I work in now (cancer) and can be interesting for you.

I’m a yeast scientist and it has been like that for the last 9 years. We all know that the most common usage of yeast is to bake bread or brew beer. Or if the yeasts are more complex (fungi) are meant to be eaten (like mushrooms) or to annoy you on your feet (fungi infection). But, actually, there is much more behind one simple yeast. This organism has been used in biomedical research for decades already. Why? It’s simple: it’s a simple organism that is easier and cheaper to work with than other cells or organisms.

At the beginning of my career as researcher I was working with yeast to identify new therapeutic targets in fungal infections. These infections are not severe in general but they can turn into lethal ones when the patients who got them have an immune system that doesn’t work properly (i.e: lymphomas, AIDS…). Therefore, the immune system can’t fight the infection and it ends up causing additional problems to the patients. At this moment, the drugs against fungi and yeasts are not very efficient because of the similarity between yeast/fungal and human cells. Actually the existing antifungal drugs have two main problems: 1) they are not specific enough against fungal cells so they will kill not only the fungal cells but also the human ones causing severe side effects, and 2) to not cause side effects, these drugs are not potent enough to kill the fungi.

Cell Wall of Fission Yeast

Because of this, studying the different structures between yeasts/fungi and human cells (i.e: the cell wall) is required to develop new and more efficient drugs against fungi. However, only around 10-20 percent of patients who get a general fungal infection have their immune system somehow defective. The majority of patients get these infections in the hospital. Hospitalized patients are more susceptible to these infections because of different reasons. For instance, the use of high amount of antibiotics that wipes out the bacterial competitors or surgery and use of intravenous catheters that will allow fungi to have access to the patients tissues. In this case the immune system of these patients is intact and will generate an immune response to vaccination. Therefore, another kind of projects that use yeasts and fungi to do research are aimed to create vaccines to avoid these infections.

On the other hand, nowadays I’m involved in research projects that use yeast for other aims. Yeasts are the simplest eukaryotic organisms. They are unicellular (they are just one cell and don’t form more complex organs) and have many of the proteins that can be found in human cells. These proteins are in charge of the functions that one cell needs to be alive. Therefore, yeasts can be used to study processes happening in human cells. This is due to the fact that the important proteins are the same in both kind of cells but they are “more accessible” to study in yeasts. For instance, yeasts are used in the study of some of the processes involved in the development of cancer. This is the kind of research that I’m currently doing and it’s fascinating.

Cancer is a group of diseases that have an uncontrolled cellular division. In the cancer cells the processes controlling that everything happens when and where it should happen for the cell to divide into two new cells don’t work as they should. Usually, the important proteins in these processes are in a higher amount than they should and this causes many problems to the cell. These key proteins are present in yeast and other lower organisms as well.

Sir Paul Nurse

For instance, the discovery of the protein that tells the cell to divide in the fission yeast gave Sir Paul Nurse the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2001. He identified a protein called Cdc2 in the fission yeast that acted in collaboration with another protein called Cyclin (because the amount of protein during the cell cycle was different in different stages) to push the cell to make the decision of dividing into two. This Cdc2 protein in higher eukaryotes (like humans) is called Cdk1 (Cyclin-dependent kinase 1). The stunning experiment that made Paul Nurse get the Nobel Prize was a very simple but powerful one. He took one fission yeast that had a defective Cdc2. In this yeast at low temperature the protein was working well and the yeast was alive. But when the temperature was increased the defective Cdc2 stopped working and the cell was dead. Once he had this yeast where he could switch off the activity of Cdc2 by rising the temperature, he introduced the human DNA chopped in small pieces into the yeast, increased the temperature and looked for any cell with a piece of human DNA that at high temperature was able to be alive. And there was one. What happened in this one cell that was alive is that, even if its Cdc2 wasn’t working, it got the human equivalent. And this “human Cdc2” was able to work properly in the yeast cell because both, the yeast and the human Cdc2, were very similar and had the same functions. He identified the Cdk1 protein in humans!!!

I hope I’ve convinced you that doing research with yeasts is useful and important. I will keep telling you about some discoveries made in yeasts, among other organisms, that have been important steps to advance in the scientific knowledge in my next posts.

Lee MG, & Nurse P (1987). Complementation used to clone a human homologue of the fission yeast cell cycle control gene cdc2. Nature, 327 (6117), 31-5 PMID: 3553962

Lee, M., & Nurse, P. (1988). Cell cycle control genes in fission yeast and mammalian cells Trends in Genetics, 4 (10), 287-290 DOI: 10.1016/0168-9525(88)90171-0

PhD Comics movie!!!

2011-06-10T07:20:00.001+01:00

If you are a researcher and have done your PhD in the last years or you are doing it now I'm pretty sure you have heard about Jorge Cham's website "PhD Comics". In there you can find the daily life of some PhD candidates in comic strips. Highly recommended by the way.

Now, Jorge goes a step further creating the movie. The comic characters come alive!!!! Here you can taste a bit of it in the trailer.... Enjoy

PHD Movie Trailer from PHD Comics on Vimeo.

Conspiracy for not curing cancer

2011-06-09T09:13:00.000+01:00

Cancer cells
Source: Wikipedia

Everything related to cancer and finding new drugs to cure it is a very interesting subject for many people. If you add a touch of big pharmaceutical companies conspiracy, the result is headlines like "Researchers find the cure for cancer but is not profitable for the pharmaceutical companies and it may never come to light".

These last days several friends, readers of my blog and some twitter users have contacted me to ask about some news about a "wonder drug" that can cure cancer. These articles were talking about the fact that this drug has been in the market for a long time and it's not covered by a patent. Therefore, the big pharmaceutical companies are not interested in funding the research with this drug (that is going to cure cancer) because is not profitable for them.

The so called "wonder drug" that "cures cancer" is called dichloroacetate (DCA). The DCA is a small molecule very similar to the acetic acid, but with two hydrogens substituted by two chloros. Interestingly, if we add one more chloro it turns into TCA, a compound that we use in the lab to make DNA and proteins insoluble.

Dichloroacetate
Source: Wikipedia

The DCA is not a new drug. It has been in the market for several years and it has been used in diseases related to the mitochondrial metabolism. Mitochondrias are the cell parts that produce the energy to keep the cell alive and have been called "power plants" or "batteries" of the cell as well. The energy in the mitochondria is produced through a process called "Krebs cycle" that requires oxygen to work properly. However, cancer cells use another process that is simpler, doesn't require oxygen and occurs outside the mitochondria. Mitochondria is a key part of the cell: it does produce energy and if something goes wrong in it, it can trigger cellular death, helping the no formation of cancer cells. Due to the fact that the cancer cells "switch off" their mitochondrias (they don't use them to produce energy), scientists think that this can be an escaping mechanism of cellular death and therefore these cells become immortal. So, the DCA mechanism of action is to block the alternative process of getting energy, forcing cancer cells to produce energy again through the Krebs cycle in the mitochondrias.

All the news that have appeared in the mass media about this issue are related to a paper published by Dr. Michelakis and colleagues at University of Alberta (Canada) in 2010. These researchers already published another paper in 2007 where they showed the results of a study using this drug in different cellular cultures and rodents. Actually, DCA was able to slow the growth and reduce the size of tumours in rats. However, it wasn't able to eradicate the tumours completely or prevent tumour growth.

After getting these results, Dr. Michelakis received the permission to start a clinical trial with fifty patients who had a specific brain tumour called glioblastoma. In the 2010 paper the scientists show the result of the phase I clinical trial in five patients. For all of you who are not familiar with the different kind of clinical trials (there are phase I, II, III and IV trials), phase I trials study the right dose that doesn't cause toxicity, not the efficacy itself.

Because DCA has been used before to treat other diseases it's known that it can be used in humans in a safe way (despite producing some side effects in the nervous system), but this is the first time that is used in cancer patients. Therefore, five patients with advanced glioblastoma received DCA in combination with radiotherapy, another drug called temozolomyde and surgery. Four patients were still alive after eighteen months and three of them showed a reduction in tumour size. However, it's difficult to know if this result is statistically significant due to the small size of the study (only five patients when phase I trials usually have ten to twenty patients). In addition, the combination of drugs and treatments that the patients received doesn't allow us to know if the effect is due to the DCA. An interesting fact is that the scientists took samples of the tumour before and after the treatment and saw that DCA was helping to "switch back on" the mitochondrias.

View of one patient brain before and after treatment with DCA

Source: Michelakis et al., 2010

The main problem of this study is that the mechanism of action of DCA is not clear. Cancers are composed usually by two kind of cells: cancer stem cells, that divide a lot and are resistant to conventional chemotherapy, and the "regular" cancer cells that are eliminated with chemotherapy. Actually, another paper has been recently published (May 2011) with the results of a study where DCA was used in cellular cultures of a different kind of cancer, the neuroblastoma. This cancer shouldn't be affected by DCA because of the characteristics of its mitochondrias, however, it is affected. DCA affects neuroblastoma cells in a similar way to the one described by Dr. Michelakis, but only the cancer stem cells of the tumour, not the regular ones. This study shows again that DCA cannot eradicate the tumours completely.

As you can see, things are not as simple as they are presented in some mass media. Actually, cancers in general are quite complicated and to find the right treatment for each one many factors have to be taken into account. For instance, cancer cells are not isolated. They are surrounded by other cells and interact with them. Related to this issue, last year another paper was published with a study in breast cancer cells of some processes related to mitochondrias. This paper is interesting because they show that the fact that the cancer cells "switch off" their mitochondrias and use the alternative process to produce energy is not completely true. These researchers put breast cancer cells (with "switched off" mitochondrias) and cells that are usually around the cancer cells (with normal "switched on" mitochondrias) together in a culture. The result was very interesting: at the end of the experiment the cancer cells had their mitochondrias switched back on.

There are still many things to study related to the use of DCA as a drug in cancer treatment and we can't say that it's going to improve the treatment of some cancers yet. So, I have an advise for you. If you read in a newspaper or internet, or hear in the radio or TV that "the cure for cancer" has been found, be cautious and don't believe it straight away. There is still a long way to go and it's not easy.

Published originally in Spanish in E-ciencia.com

Michelakis ED, Sutendra G, Dromparis P, Webster L, Haromy A, Niven E, Maguire, & C, Gammer TL, Mackey JR, Fulton D, Abdulkarim B, McMurtry MS, Petruk KC. (2010). Metabolic modulation of glioblastoma with dichloroacetate Sci Transl Med DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3000677

Bonnet S, Archer SL, Allalunis-Turner J, Haromy A, Beaulieu C, Thompson R, Lee, CT, Lopaschuk GD, Puttagunta L, Bonnet S, Harry G, Hashimoto K, Porter CJ,, & Andrade MA, Thebaud B, Michelakis ED (2007). A mitochondria-K+ channel axis is suppressed in cancer and its normalization promotes apoptosis and inhibits cancer growth Cancer Cell DOI: 10.1016/j.ccr.2006.10.020

Vella S, Conti M, Tasso R, Cancedda R, & Pagano A (2011). Dichloroacetate (DCA) inhibits neuroblastoma growth by specifically acting against malignant undifferentiated cells. International journal of cancer. Journal international du cancer PMID: 21557214

Martinez-Outschoorn UE, Balliet RM, Rivadeneira DB, Chiavarina B, Pavlides S, Wang C, Whitaker-Menezes D, Daumer KM, Lin Z, Witkiewicz AK, Flomenberg N, Howell A, Pestell RG, Knudsen ES, Sotgia F, & Lisanti MP. (2010). Oxidative stress in cancer associated fibroblasts drives tumor-stroma co-evolution: A new paradigm for understanding tumor metabolism, the field effect and genomic instability in cancer cells Cell Cycle DOI: 10.4161/cc.9.16.12553

Scholars with scholarships

2011-05-24T13:24:00.006+01:00

Published originally in European Alternatives

Scholarships are grants made to support student's education. Internships, on the other hand, are the periods of time in which a student or trainee works, sometimes without pay, in order to gain work experience or satisfy requirements for a qualification.

During the 80’s these funding schemes started to be used as a replacement for proper contracts mainly in the University environment in Spain. Nowadays it has been extended to all kind of sectors. Since this started, scholarships and internships are frequently used as a way of labour insertion for recent graduates. But the reality is that there are thousands of cases of graduates who work without proper funding in business, public administration and research centres. This happens under the mask of a training term funded by a scholarship, a really low salary contract or without any funding.

In Spain there is still no clear and decent research career and researchers in the early stages are the ones suffering this the most. For a long time researchers doing their PhD have been considered students, and not only in Spain. Nowadays PhD candidates or early stage researchers are not considered workers in many European countries such as Belgium, Denmark, France, Portugal or the UK. This is despite the declaration of the European Commission in The European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers saying that “All researchers engaged in a research career should be recognised as professionals and be treated accordingly. This should commence at the beginning of their careers, namely at postgraduate level, and should include all levels, regardless of their classification at national level (e.g. employee, postgraduate student, doctoral candidate, postdoctoral fellow, civil servants)”. On the contrary, other countries like Finland, Germany, Norway and Switzerland do consider early stage researchers as workers.

The excuse for considering them students is that they are being trained and will get an academic qualification, the PhD. But the fact that they are graduates with the skills and knowledge to be workers has been forgotten. In addition, in the case of Spain, the early stage researchers (doctoral candidates) are the main work force of research. With the new Spanish Law of Science the early stage researchers will have a training contract similar to the contract that an intern can have. This is an important step because it will consider these researchers as workers however, there remain many limitations. Hopefully this situation will evolve towards better conditions for the early stage researchers and not towards the exploitation of the graduates in research.

Actually the FJI-Precarios has a campaign called “No more scholarships for work” (No más becas por trabajo) born from an awareness of the precarious labour situation of many early stage researchers. With this campaign they intend to give information to the affected people, so they can think about their situation and act through the Labour Inspection. The Campaign expects to provoke a change in the mentality: zero tolerance against scholarships covering work positions (more information can be found in Spanish in the website of the campaign).

Internships and scholarships have a limited field of use and they should be used only in the right cases. In essence they should not be seen as cheap labour, used to cover work positions as it has been done in the last years in Spain and other European countries.

Spanish May of 2011

2011-05-18T14:44:00.004+01:00

*I don't usually blog about these things but I think this is important.

Something is going on in Spain nowadays. What is it? May it be that it has an unemployment rate of 20% that goes up to 40% in young people? May it be that it is going through an economic crisis? May it be that there will be elections in few days with no real political options that are worth to vote for? Or it may be all of them.

Picture from @acampadasol

And the result of all this is what you can see on the streets of the different cities of Spain in the last days. Citizens are fed up with the situation of the country and they want to shout it out loud: "Real democracy now!!!". And they do more. they are taking the cities. They are meeting in different cities to let the government know that they don't agree with the way this country is lead. They are camping in public squares to be seen and remind their fellows that Spain has a big problem. And it's time for the citizens to rise their voice and make things happen. Make things change.

Everything started with a call through the social media sites to meet and camp at Puerta del Sol ( a central square in Madrid) last Sunday. This would go on until next Sunday when local and regional elections will take place. At the same time in other cities, mass meetings were organised as well to support this big meeting in Madrid. The tags ♯spanishrevolution, ♯yeswecamp, ♯nonosvamos (we are not leaving), ♯acampadasol (camping in Sol), ♯15M... spread through twitter very quickly... and more and more cities were joining this call. Pictures and movies from every part of Spain were shared and more people showed their support to this initiative.

But there is also a sad part in this story. On one hand, the police action last Sunday in the demonstration hitting the protestants and taking some of them under arrest, as well as prohibiting them to go back to Puerta del Sol again. On the other hand, the low coverage by the Spanish big mass media. This situation in Spain needs to be told and everybody needs to know what is happening.

And it needs to be told not only in Spain but in the rest of Europe and the world. So, I ask you, who are reading this, to spread the word about what is going on in Spain.

Because the ♯spanishrevolution is happening!!!!

Scientists and journalists together to stand up for science

2011-04-18T15:44:00.005+01:00

Vitae Public Engagement Blog

It's always great to share a day with passionate scientists. It's even better if these scientists are not only passionate about doing science but also about communicating science. And the best thing that can happen is to share a day with those passionate scientists plus journalists and people willing to have a word about science in the mass media, and discuss about these topics with them.

Published in Vitae Public Engagement Blog

I’m a scientist and I do what I love to do. I do experiments with yeast that hopefully will have an impact on cancer research. But I want to make an impact on people as well. As a CRUK funded researcher my experiments are paid with people’s money and I want them to know what I’m doing with their money. I owe them that. Scientists owe society that.

This is something that scientists cannot do by themselves. We need journalists and mass media in order to do that. This is one of the main reasons why I attended the “Standing up for Science Media Workshop” organised by Sense about Science, a small charity that equips people to make sense of science and evidence, on the 11^th of March at University of Manchester.

Most of the knowledge that society has about science comes from breaking news about new discoveries made in different scientific fields in different mass media. And not all of them are true. What is exciting for a scientist is not for a journalist and the other way around. Here is where the miscommunication problems arise and where “bad science” has a place. As scientists we have to make clear to the public what is true and what is not in the science that is spread in the mass media. Because that’s the science that society gets. We have to get involved in public debates about science to make this “bad science” turn into “good science”. It doesn’t matter in which moment of your research career you are. Actually it’s important that we start doing this from the early stages of our career as well (even if at the very beginning we are focused on making our way in science and we think we don’t know enough about something to make a statement).

Finally, I would like to share with you some take home messages that I got from the workshop. First, be proactive. You have the knowledge. Share it. Talk about your published science or other people’s published and interesting science (start writing a blog about science and use the help of your institution press officer to contact the media). And second, be critical and analytical with the science that is communicated and respond when something is wrong. This is our duty and only scientists can do it. Stand up for Science.

In cancer, 1+1 are not 2

2011-04-08T00:09:00.000+01:00

The Oxford dictionary defines cancer as "a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body". This idea is somehow far away from reality.

Cancer is not A disease. Cancer is the name given to a range of specific illnesses resulting from one of our body's own cells growing out of control. There are many types of cancer and each one has different causes and symptoms, and requires different treatments.

When I meet somebody new and I say that I work in a Cancer Research Institute, people ask me if we are about to find the cure for cancer. I have to say no, we are not. And the reason is that THE cure for cancer doesn't exist. On the other hand we have to be very happy because the number of people working on cancer research is really high. They are a big team working together all around the world. And thank to this we know, for instance, that the reason why some treatments work in some patients and not in others with the "same" kind of cancer is that the causes of the cancer in these patients are different.

An when I say causes I mean mutations in the genes, in the DNA. Cell division is a highly regulated process in the cells. The cell uses different mechanisms to avoid any errors and be able to divide properly. Therefore, mutations in different genes with a role in different mechanisms of control will lead to uncontrolled dividing cells. These cells will cause cancer, but because of different reasons. If these different mutations take place, for instance, in breast cells they may produce breast cancer. However, because the origin is different, they will probably need different treatments.

Actually, nowadays an important part of the applied research is focused on identifying patients' mutations to be able to chose the most effective treatment for each one. There is still a lot to do and research about cancer but, it's a fact that nowadays there are many more people with cancer who get healed than 30 years ago.

Without plaits there is an explosion

2011-03-01T02:01:00.004Z

As I've mentioned in my previous post Why using yeast for research? one of the applications of yeast for research is in the field of discovering new antifungal drugs. In order to do this the studies are focused on the yeast cell wall. This cell wall is present in yeast and fungi but not in human cells.

So, to continue with my posts about basic research with yeast, today I'm going to write about a study done by some scientists I used to work with during my PhD in Salamanca.

This study is about a protein that transfers sugar chains, made by the cell, to other chains fostering the intertwining between them to form the cell wall. The formation of these "plaits" after the action of this protein helps the cell to be alive and not explode!!!!

Cell wall of S.pombe. Modified from C.Vazquez de Aldana

The protein I'm talking about is gas1 and is a glucanosyl-transferase (there you have, hehehe). This means that it transfers groups of sugars ("glucanosyls"). Yes, sugars. Because the yeast cell wall is composed of different kind of sugars. These sugars bind to each other forming long chains that can be linear or branched (as it is drawn in the first image) and composed of different sugar molecules: a-glucan, b-glucan or galactomanan in S.pombe (the yeast this study is done with). These chains get formed, branched and intertwined to build a compact cell wall to protect the yeast from the environment. A kind of blanket that surrounds the cell and keeps it safe from the external inclemency.

de Medina-Redondo et al., 2010

But what happens when this blanket is not enough close-woven because the spins haven't branched properly and they are not intertwined in the right way? It's very easy. The blanket has holes and cannot protect the cell as it should and the cell is now defenceless. The cell wall is this blanket. When the gene of the gas1 protein is deleted from the yeast, these sugar chains cannot branch properly nor intertwine as they should. What happens to the cell then? It explodes!!!! yes, yes, it explodes because it cannot keep the balance between its content and the environment. You can see the effect that deleting gas1 has in the yeast cells in the picture on your right (bottom-right square, black arrowheads).
The conclusion of this work is that the gas1 protein is essential for the yeast to survive in a regular medium. Without it the cell dies unless is placed in a special medium in which it doesn't die but is very sick.
As many of you have thought reading this post, gas1 is a very interesting protein to develop a new antifungal drug. So, producing a drug that prevents gas1 to work properly, could make the fungi cells in the infections to die exploding? I don't know, but I do know that this study is a very good first step to find the answer to this question.

P.S: I would like to thank my PhD supervisors Drs. Francisco del Rey and Carlos R. Vázquez de Aldana the opportunity they gave me to work in their lab in the Institute of Biochemical Microbiology (now Institute of Fundamental Biology and Genomic) in Salamanca and all my colleagues I worked with during that time.

de Medina-Redondo M, Arnáiz-Pita Y, Clavaud C, Fontaine T, del Rey F, Latgé JP, & Vázquez de Aldana CR (2010). β(1,3)-glucanosyl-transferase activity is essential for cell wall integrity and viability of Schizosaccharomyces pombe. PloS one, 5 (11) PMID: 21124977

Colaboration in "Partiendo de Cero"

2011-02-27T16:21:00.001Z

Well, well... today I have good news... this week a journalist from a national radio station in Spain (Onda Cero) got in touch with me. She saw the interview in "El Mundo" and she loved it, so she wanted me to colaborate in the program "Partiendo de Cero" this last Saturday night.

This is a science communication program where researchers present their work in different fields. It's a place where listeners can get some knowledge about what is going on in labs and libraries and about the result of the financial investment in science that get to the researchers. I hope you like it despite it's in Spanish. You can listen to it here.

Fungi, do you eat me or I eat you?

2011-02-24T12:04:00.003Z

I've always loved science communication and few years ago I started doing some small things about it.

Here you have the poster I presented to the first contest of science communication posters of the Spanish Young Researchers Association (Valencia, 2005).

I did it with my friends and colleagues Cristina Jimenez Ortigosa and Eva Pablo Hernando.

I hope you like it even if it's in Spanish.. we won the third prize!!!!

Campaign "No more scholarships for work"

2011-02-22T20:08:00.002Z

Masking work positions with scholarships or internships is been done in Spain since the 80's starting in the University environment.

Nowadays it has been extended to all kind of sectors (businesses, public administration and research). Since then, scholarships or internships are frequently used as a way of labour insertion for recent graduates. There are thousands of cases of graduates who work without proper funding in businesses, public administrations and research centers. This happens under the mask of a training term funded by a scholarship.

The FJI/Precarios is aware of this situation that many young researchers have. With this campaign we pretend to give information to the affected people, so they can think about their situation and act through the Labour Inspection.

The Campaign expects to provoke a change in the mentality: zero tolerance against scholarships covering work positions.

More information in the website of the Campaign

Women scientists must speak out

2011-02-22T17:42:00.003Z

This is an article wrote by Jennifer Rohn that I specially liked in Nature:

Female researchers still battle sexism. The media gives them an opportunity to be heard alongside male colleagues, says Jennifer Rohn

Despite decades of awareness, science is still inherently sexist. Women are vastly under-represented in professorships and in national academies worldwide. This is a familiar problem, but less highlighted is how the discrepancy plays out in the public arena of science — the media.
Male science pundits dominate television, radio and print — including the pages of opinion and comment in this journal. This imbalance cannot simply be explained by the shortage of female professors, as many male pundits are still at an early stage of their academic careers, when genders are better balanced. So what is behind this effective invisibility of women scientists in our media? And why does it matter?
Many people think that women themselves are to blame for the male-dominated media, in science and other subjects. Women, who often bear the brunt of domestic obligations, are said to have less time than men to participate in activities outside their work. And female colleagues tend to say that they do not feel eminent or qualified enough to comment. Perhaps this points to a question of confidence — one that does not seem to bother most men. Women may also be uncomfortable with the cut and thrust of conflict and debate. Indeed, at scientific seminars I have attended, most of the questions come from men, despite the audience usually containing an equal number of women. Voicing one's opinion in a public arena is a charged activity that seems to discourage many women, yet this is precisely the skill that a good pundit needs.
This still cannot explain the near-total absence of women pundits. Sexism must be responsible too. Having both the inclination and the time to do media work myself, I have certainly found myself dropped for programmes and replaced by less-qualified men. A prominent television producer once refused to put a colleague on screen because, he said, people wouldn't swallow science offered from "a young, blonde girl" like her. I have voiced opinions during panel discussions to little effect, then watched a man next to me say the same thing to widespread applause. In group discussions, I find that women are often talked over by men as if they weren't even in the room, whereas men are more likely to let other men finish their sentences. More insidiously, it is well documented that what passes for spirited assertion in men is interpreted, by both sexes, as unpleasant aggression in women. Given this bias, I understand why many women might prefer not to get involved.
Although these external factors and biases are out of our control, there are positive steps that women scientists can take to increase their visibility in the public arena. First and most importantly, women need to speak up. They could start in the relative safety of their own academic departments, preferably during their PhD studies. It is not easy — a famous female professor recently admitted to me that she still gets palpitations when asking questions at high-profile academic seminars — but nerves never killed anyone. Work through them, and you will gain respect as someone who has intelligent things to say and is not afraid to share them. Verbal sparring at seminars can also help your career because it builds confidence, develops an ability to communicate ideas and can even lead to collaborations. (And, palpitations aside, it gets easier with practise.) From speaking out at seminars, I found it natural to progress to media work, which, as well as being challenging and enjoyable, hones your powers of analysis and persuasion — skills that are useful for all scientists, regardless of sex.

Second, keep in mind that, to the media and its audience, you don't have to be an eminent professor to have a valuable opinion — any PhD student or postdoc is miles ahead of the public in terms of scientific knowledge. Start a blog about your own research to refine your opinions and develop a style. As you gain more research experience, give your name and telephone number to your institution's press office, and don't shy away if asked. Similarly, don't be afraid to stray from your specialized niche of research expertise: if you are reasonably well read on a general topic, your opinion will still be useful. It is important to participate, because if we scientists aren't ready to step into the gap at short notice, the press may choose someone who isn't qualified at all — a real problem when the story is about homeopathy or other quackery.
Some might question if it matters whether we have more female science pundits, as long as the men are doing the job well. I think it does. A female messenger could attract a more diverse crowd, including other women. The point of punditry is often to persuade people that science is worthwhile and, more to the point, deserves funding. Also, pundits help to put forward scientific recommendations and counter misinformation. When it comes to controversial issues such as climate change, childhood vaccinations or genetically modified food, we need as many people as possible to hear and engage with our arguments. Women should stand shoulder to shoulder with their male colleagues to make this happen.

Jennifer Rohn is a cell biologist at University College London and editor of http://LabLit.com. Her most recent book is The Honest Look (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press).

Open letter for the future of research in Spain

2011-02-22T17:27:00.002Z

In face of the worrying future of Spanish research, and given the imminent discussion in Parliament of the partial amendments to the new Law of Science, an Open Letter has been written to denounce the dire current situation and urge the Government and the opposition to accept the researchers' proposals. Today is been left at Moncloa (Spanish Government building) with the signatures of almost 2500 researchers.

The behaviour of our leaders in scientific matters is unbelievable. This is cutting Spain's possibilities to grow and to be competitive.

The letter here:

During the last two years, in the context of the current economic crisis, Spanish research has been a victim of drastic budget cuts, with the Public Research Centers (OPIs) suffering cuts twice the average (30% compared to 16%). This implies a loss of credibility and competitiveness of the Spanish science policy, and prevents the needed change in the country’s economic base from the current one, to one rooted in Research and Development (I+D). Particularly worrisome has been the steep decrease and almost disappearance of research positions beyond the postdoctoral level (a 90% cut in the case of the Spanish Research Council – CSIC). This reduction affects not only the researchers under the current 5-year, tenure-track Ramón y Cajal program (whose researchers have already passed numerous selection and evaluations processes), but also the postdoctoral community (that has suffered from the small number of opportunities to access the system). Spain faces the real danger of losing several generations of researchers that have enable the growth of its science productivity in the last few years. In this context, there is the need to discuss the current draft of the “Law of Science and Technology”, which is being debated in the Spanish Congress. We consider this draft deficient in its design of the research career for the following reasons:

Previous drafts anticipated the existence of 5-year, tenure-track contracts with evaluations during the third and fifth years that, if passed, would imply the stabilization of the position. Even though the current draft establishes that the results of these evaluations would be considered in a selection process, it does not make any compromise regarding the existence of these tenured opportunities. (i.e. a “track” to nowhere).
The current draft allows for research scholarships in the private sector (instead of contracts), and establishes that the salaries of the researchers could be between 25% and 44% lower than those required by Law for workers conducting similar activities. This undignifies the research labor.
The current draft unregulates the postdoctoral stage of the research career.

In this open letter, we request for Spain a clear and dignified science career by making the following demands:

To honor the compromises already made under the current 5-year, tenure-track Ramón y Cajal program, with the creation of positions that enables the stabilization of the researchers in the program that have passed the evaluations.
That the budget-cuts do not disproportionally affect Research and Development (I+D), maintaining or increasing its percentage with respect to the Gross Domestic Product.
A social contract that allows for the long-term planning of human resources in Research and Development (I+D).

With respect to the current draft of the “Law of Science and Technology”, we ask for the following changes:

That the new 5-year, tenure-track program anticipates the stabilization of the researchers that pass the evaluations, taking into account the needs of the research centers.
The transfer of the current RyC researchers to above program, taking into consideration the evaluations already passed.
The regulation of the postdoctoral stage of the research career.
The substitution of research scholarships, including those in the private sector, by contracts.
That the salaries of researchers should be, at least, the minimum established by Law for workers conducting similar activities.

http://www.investigaciondigna.es/indexenglish.html

Why using yeast for research?

2011-02-21T11:55:00.004Z

To start this blog properly I have to start talking about the organism I started working with in the lab. The organism I worked with when I started my research career in 2002 and I'm still working with: the yeast

The most common usage of yeast is to bake bread or brew beer. Or if the yeast are more complex (fungi) are meant to be eaten or to annoy you on your feet...

Well, actually there is much more behind a simple yeast. This has been an organism that is been used in biomedical research for decades already. Why? It's simple: it's a simple organism that is easier to work with than other organisms.

Yeast are the simplest eucariotic organisms. They are unicellular (they are just one cell and don't form more complex organs) and have many of the proteins that can be found in human cells. These proteins are in charge of the functions that a cell need to be alive (like workers in a factory). Related to this, yeast can be used to study processes happening in human cells. This is due to the fact that the important proteins are the same in both kind of cells but they are "more accessible" to study in yeast. For instance, yeast are used in the study of some of the processes involved in the development of cancer (cancer cells divide without any control and this cell division is studied in yeast).
On the other hand, the drugs against fungi and yeast are not very efficient because of this similarity between yeast and human cells. Fungi infections are not severe in general but they can turn into lethal ones when the patients who got them have a deficient immune system (i.e: lymphomas, AIDS,...). And they turn into lethal ones because the immune system can't fight the infection and the anti fungi drugs have two main problems: 1) they are not specific enough against fungi cells so the drug will kill not only the fungal cell but also the human one causing severe side effects 2) to not cause side effects the drug is not potent enough to kill the fungi. So studying the different structures between yeast/fungi and human cells (i.e: the cell wall) is required to develop new drugs against fungi.

I hope I've convinced you that doing research with yeast is useful and important. I will keep talking about some discoveries made in yeast that have been important steps to advance in the scientific knowledge in my next posts.

This a picture of fission yeast, S. pombe, the yeast I work with

Interview for "el mundo"

2011-02-21T04:47:00.000Z

Interview for elmundo.es
If you click in the link above you will have access to an interview (in Spanish) I gave to elmundo.es about what I research about and the situation of the research in Spain.. I hope you like it... if you speak Spanish...

Let's get started

2011-02-21T02:06:00.003Z

Hi all,
a while ago I started to think about the idea of creating a blog to talk about different matters related to science that I think are important.

I would like to share with you the science done in the labs. In this way everybody will know how the money invested in research is spent. This is something that researchers owe to the society and is not getting enough attention.
On the other hand I would like to share in this blog the situation of research and science in general in Spain and Europe. The steps forward and the steps backward. The ones leading us to a knowledge based society and the ones moving us away from it.
I hope you can share your opinions on these matters and that this blog will be useful