Lisa's Lab Book

Soapbox Science in Grantham  Last weekend I was standing on a box in a shopping centre in Grantham, talking to shoppers, passers by about 'The Ageing Brain'. You can see the very small people were more interested in the battery operated fluffy rabbit toys I'd taken along, others were interested in the rubbery bats and luckily there were many others who were curious about our research approaches to finding out how the brain ages. It was a really fun time - but exhausting due to the huge variety of questions! I definitely had to use all my powers of thinking on my feet! The sun shone in through the glass roof and I think by the point this picture was taken I was in full 'mad scientist' mode. I totally loved it though - there is nothing like seeing the interest of the general public to reinforce that we we do is worthwhile.

The path to Jurmala Beach Sunset over the Baltic Sea  From the 18th to the 21st September I attended the Mitochondrial Physiology meeting in Latvia. Having never travelled to a Baltic country before I was excited to see what Riga was like. Like the best meetings the days were filled with interesting talks - all about mitochondria. There were lots of good discussions between the talks and excellent food and arrangements throughout. The beach was five minutes from the hotel along a path through the pine trees. The weather was unusually hot making a swim in the sea compulsory. A midday visit to The Great Kemeri Bog highlighted the incredible natural landscapes in this part of the World. A couple of good potential collaborations were formed during the meeting and hopefully if they come to fruition you will hear about them in the future! From the viewing tower at the Great Kemeri Bog.

This month we visited the Research Complex at Harwell We have been joined this summer by a couple of new faces. Brad Poulter who is an undergraduate in the School of Life Sciences won a summer studentship funded by the BBSRC to work with us on our mitochondrial haemoglobin project. Sam Mackenzie is joining us for a few days of work experience, he is currently studying at Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College. We set off from Sutton Bonington with Tom at the wheel to get to Harwell for about 11am. A lot of motorway was accompanied by 80's tunes from somebody's collection (not mine, though I found I knew the words to most of the songs!). In front of the synchotron at Diamond Light Source, Left to roght -Tom, Brad and Sam The 'guts' of an electron microscope We got a tour around the facility by Dave Scott and then of the electron microscopy facility by Peijun Zhang. It was very exciting to see the facilities that we may be able to use for our resea...

So yet another grant proposal bit the dust this week, just an eye roll rather than total devastation, the show must go on. However, I wanted to give this little beauty of a paper some extra air time. It tells us what we may suspect already, that giving the same groups more and more money does not necessarily increase the likelihood of their getting more and more good data. The authors conclude that funding strategies that target diversity, rather than 'excellence' are likely to be more productive . For me it seems like there are excellent groups doing cutting edge research in their special areas of interest with millions in grant funding, yet we are still seeing very little in the way of therapy for the diseases they work on. It must be time to make a decision to fund small groups with new ideas, and for more than just a year at a time. To say that an organisation 'funds the best science' suggests we can see into the future...sometimes it's the quirky off-beat i...

The importance of stupidity in scientific research - M. A Schwartz This is a short, eloquent 'must read' essay for anybody starting a research career. The ability to drown yourself and feel okay floundering in the maelstrom of unknown is essential to start asking and then answering the right questions. Of course it helps if someone is happy to fund your proposed approach once you have risen to take a breath!

I do like updating my blog but it is a real battle to decide how much of me to put out there (or here in this case). There are some great scientific and academic blogs out there, the serious ones and more and more those that allow us to laugh about the challenges we face as Research and Teaching staff. The endless conflict of time share between one and the other - and for me, and others the teaching of subjects that aren't within my research expertise. We can each write a blog that makes everything look shiny but there is another side. Imposter syndrome. The complex triangle of publishing, networking and funding. So many things that are systematically wrong yet appear impossible to fix. Teaching is hard and though we are trained to evaluate and give feedback our students are not. Yet student evaluation is embedded into our appraisal mechanism. This despite it being shown that students are more likely to give higher ratings to males or  to the 'likeable/popular' teachers. ...

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