Powers of Ten and Shifting Perspectives on Science and Society

I bought this book for my kids awhile back, called "Powers of Ten" by Philip Morrison and Phylis Morrison. The premise (quoted from Amazon) is this:

"Starting with a view of a billion light-years, the book (like the film) moves inward, with each page being at one-tenth the scale of the previous one. In 25 steps, you're looking at a picnic by the shores of Lake Michigan, then plunging into a human hand, down through the cells inside it, the DNA inside the cells, the atoms inside the DNA, and the subatomic particles inside the atom. By the time you've gone a total of 40 steps, you're in a world of quantum uncertainty."

Each shift in perspective changes the view as familiar objects are seen in new ways.

My life has done the same thing, except in the opposite direction. For the first 25 years or so, my perspective was from the nuclear level as all the electrons revolved around me. And I would have completely agreed with these opinions in the comments at Epigenetics News:

"I did get a discussion about this topic going in the lab today (three postdocs, a tenured faculty member and a couple of other students). Surprisingly, there was very little sympathy for the high school students seeking biotech internships. The general consensus was that even if a student was taken on as an intern during the summer, it would take so much time to “get them up to speed” without any background knowledge coming in (and potentially no experience working a real job at all) that it just wouldn’t be worth the effort."

As a 25 yr old graduate student, I still would have agreed.

I had to TA during the entire first year of graduate school and I didn't particularly like it. Why should I work hard as a TA when I had my own research to do and courses to pass? Why lose my valuable research time? Why bother? It wasn't my fault that students who were seniors in college couldn't do the basic algebra we asked for in our microbiology course.

Let's fast-forward five more years to age thirty.

Now, I'm a post-doc with a baby who goes to day-care. My non-profit research institution holds Monday afternoon post-doc research seminars at 5:15 pm that last until 6:30. But my day care provider requires that children be picked up at 5:00 pm, and since I'm making $17,000 a year as a post-doc, and my husband is a grad student, we only have one car (which I drive). So I go to the scientist in charge of the weekly seminar and ask if we can move the time, only to be told "no one else considers this to be a problem." Oooh, that was a jarring shift in perspective. Maybe the nuclear model has to be replaced. I advance grimly to the cellular level.

Five years later, my perspective shifted farther outward to the organism view. And I still would have agreed with the lab in Epigenetics News. Why have high school students in the lab? What could they do?

I'm teaching in a community college. I'm about the same age as many of my students (the median age is 33), and I've gone from wondering why anyone would hire a community college student to wondering why they wouldn't. I've watched community college students, many with bachelor's degrees, some with kids, go to school full-time, and work at both jobs and internships, sometimes simultaneously. And I have developed a whole new level of respect and awe for what people can do.

I've also learned about multiple intelligences. Students can get A's on every assignment and write brilliant essays on exams and set boxes of Kimwipes on fire when they get a job in a lab. There are plenty of opposites, too, like the students who get C's on every test and become highly-valued technicians or even go on to graduate school. One of my former students, with only a two-year degree, gave a key note talk at cytokine conference and one student started his own biotech company.

Well, here we are, ten years later, and I'm starting see the world from the ecosystem perspective. I work at a bioinformatics company and have one child in high school and one in middle school. I know now, how efficiently the public school system - at least middle school - turns kids off of science early on. I no longer think that we can afford to wait until college - or in the case of community colleges - after college - to counteract the impressions that kids get of science and scientists.

Not only have I come to appreciate the broad spectrum of capabilities that high school students represent, but I can stand back, now, and see other goals beyond getting a nice-looking gel or cloning that fragment of DNA.

Why do I think it's important to find science opportunities for high school students and undergraduates?

There are many reasons. But looking from an ecosystem view, internships are one way to help society achieve the goals to which many scientists give lip service and some even work to support. These are goals like a scientifically literate society, a diverse society, and a society that doesn't view science as an elitist enterprise that's only open to rich white kids. Because, like it or not, that is how the outside world views the academy.

If we had a scientifically literate society we would be working on serious issues like global warming and over-fishing and disappearing species. We wouldn't have to waste our time with silly distractions like intelligent design. I don't think there would be such an anti-science sentiment on the part of the general public (1) if it were understood that strong science empowers all of us.

Of course, neither University research labs nor biotech companies are or should be charities, and my experience has been that they can't be relied on to act in a consistently charitable manner, anyway. If we are to increase diversity in science and develop a scientifically literate society, we need a workable way to open the laboratory doors and let in more students.


References:
1. Liza Gross. 2006.Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover of Biology.PLoS Biol 4(5): e167.


Subject: Education

technorati tags: biotechnology,
teaching-carnival
education
science education

Spring is in the heron

The herons have all built their nests now and are happily sitting on them. It seemed like a good time to post some pictures from the early days of nest repair.

It's a little hard to tell but this bird is carrying a stick and coming in for a landing as you can see below.

Even herons have to take a break from nest building sometimes.



What if we built a zoo and the animals just happened to show up? This heron did exactly that. It's sitting in the penguin exhibit at the Woodland Park Zoo enjoying the abundant little fish.

Everyone else enjoyed watching the heron. It's a good thing herons can't read.


Subject: Birds

technorati tags: biology, birds

Carnivals, Carnivals, and more Carnivals

A long, long, time ago, in a galaxy far, far away there came ....(pause for dramatic effect)


TANGLED BANK #52


And I've been promoted to Jedi trainer! Be sure to clear some time for some enjoyable reading.

In keeping with my new role as Jedi trainer, you might also want to check out the Education Carnival over at Education Wonk.

Re-thinking biotech student internships, part II

Three models for getting lab experience

In part I, I wrote about the need for both high school and college students to have learning experiences outside of school. High school students need learning experiences that open their eyes to potential careers and help them focus on education. College students need learning experiences that will open doors to jobs. Internships meet the needs of both groups but biotech companies only offer a small number of internships, if they offer any at all.

I've now seen three different models that present interesting, and viable alternatives to the traditional view of company internships. Each model allows students to gain hands-on working experience in a company or company-like setting. And the beauty is that, in contrast to the standard practice, none of these models depends on the benevolence or transient charity of local companies.

How do you create opportunities for students to do internships?

Model 1. Make your school program more like a research lab

This model is exemplified by the biotech program at Bates Technical College in Tacoma. At Bates, Students can start the biotech program on any given Monday and continue until they're finished. I've known about the school for a long time, but I never understood how this worked until I heard the director, Kelly Hamilton, talk at a Bio-Link conference last week. Apparently, this model works more like an apprenticeship or graduate school. Students join the program, get a customized training plan and get right to work in the lab. I don't think the Bates program entirely substitutes for a company internship, but Bates students do develop solid lab skills since they spend a considerable amount time working independently in the lab.


Model 2. Become an incubator

Shoreline Community College has become an incubator. Xactagen, a small biotech company, has moved in and shares some of Shoreline's lab facilities. This is truly a win-win situation. The company benefits from the infrastructure at the community college and the college benefits from the interaction between students and Xactagen employees. Having an authentic research program happening on site makes biotech lab a familiar site and Xactagen employees serve as informal instructors and role models. Xactagen has also hired graduates of the SCC biotech program and has students interns employed on their projects. The benefits are many. The greatest downside is that Xactagen is too small to hire very many student interns and those interns are all college students.


Model 3. Start a contract-research company

This model is the most intriguing and, I think, shows the most promise. Community colleges have always operated small businesses as way to educating students in both running a business and different types of careers. Some of the examples at my former school were culinary arts programs where the program operates restaurants, optician-training programs, beauty salons, and day-care facilities. So, I'm really glad these ideas are finally getting tested in the realm of biotechnology.

Why not have a small college-based business that does a bit of contract research?

Dr. Tamara Goetz at Salt Lake City Community College is giving this model a try. Frustrated with the challenges of finding student internships, Dr. Goetz started InnovaBio.

InnovaBio is a small non-profit company that does contract research for biotech and nutraceutical companies in the Salt Lake area. InnovaBio has a few paid employees, acting as supervisors, but most of the lab work is done by high school and college interns. InnovaBio provides a low-risk opportunity for companies to try out high-risk products and train future employees at the same time. Further, this is a model that can handle large numbers of students and can accommodate high school students. Students can even work in non-lab areas of biotechnology, such as marketing and business development.

This is a model that should be replicated.

With all the challenges that our local high school programs and colleges face in locating student internships, and all the challenges that our local biotech industry has in finding qualified employees, I hope the educators in our state will look a bit eastward and pay attention to what's happening in Utah.

Subject: Education

technorati tags: biotechnology,
teaching-carnival
education,science education

Upcoming carnivals

This is a reminder. Animalcules will be here on May 4th. If you write about tiny things (life forms that is), this is the place to show off your writings. Send Animalcule submissions to sandy at geospiza dot com with Animalcules in the subject line.

If you're not sure what an Animalcule carnival might look like like - you can take a look at the last one at the Biotech Weblog.

And the next Tangled Bank will be April 26th at The Inoculated Mind. Send those submissions to karl AT inoculatedmind DOT com and put "Tangled Bank Submission" in the subject line.

TTFN!

Re-thinking biotech student internships, part I

Jobs can be learning experiences, too

I read an amusing story yesterday about a summer job packaging ice in plastic bags. I had jobs like that, too, when I was in high school. I waited tables, sold popcorn at a theatre, sold plants at a garden store, and did lots of babysitting. I learned something from every mindless part-time job, but mostly I learned that I didn't want to do them.

So when I started college, I started looking for jobs that would do more than pay the rent. I wanted first-hand impressions of potential careers. As a receptionist in a veterinarian's office, I learned that small animal vets needed to be good with handling animals and even better with handling people. As an autopsy assistant, I learned about anatomy and pathology. Working as a phlebotomist in a plasma center, I learned to spot needle tracks and find good veins. My medley of part-time and volunteer jobs were eye-opening forays into the working world.

The job that I wanted the most though, was the hardest to get. I really wanted to work in a science lab. Every now and then I would go to the student employment center and look at the job postings, but I was never eligible. The lab positions at my University required either work-study funding or work experience and I had neither. This was before the age of biotech, but I spent five years looking, and didn't find a lab job until the middle of my senior year in college.


Learning about careers

Making career choices as a young person is a challenge. It's hard to commit to a future and focus on education when you don't have a clue what a future job might involve. Some students never even consider that studying science could lead to an interesting job. They think that you need a Ph.D. or they get the interesting notion (that I heard from one of my kids) that science would be a really boring job because all you did in middle-school science class was read textbooks.

The part-time jobs that I collected were pivotal in helping me decide what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it. For me, working as a lab technician convinced me to go on to graduate school and study science more seriously.

Over the years there has been a greater and greater push, at least in our area, to find internships in science labs for both high school and college students. Teachers want their students to know that people of all sexes, shapes, colors, and sizes work in biotech companies and that studying science can lead to an interesting career.

At the same time, internships in the biotech industry have become harder to get (especially for high school students!). As the local industry has shifted from research to production, the environment has become more controlled and closely regulated. Even though some business leaders might recognize the long-term benefits of contributing to a scientifically literate society, and inspiring future employees, few companies want to accept the risk of having an $80,000/year employee spend the summer babysitting a student intern. (The $80,000 yr/number comes from salary + benefits).

I'm on advisory committees for some high school biotech programs, and I've had student interns, so I know these students have an excellent track record and can be a great help. But, I also know how people in companies think. Hiring interns presents a risk for employers in terms of lost time and productivity.


Learning skills

Not only are internships important for investigating future careers, sometimes internship experience is essential for getting a job.

We still have the same catch 22 that I experienced in college. Biotech companies and University research labs want to hire experienced people, but they're unwilling or unable to provide that experience. Students need experience to get jobs, but they can't get jobs without experience.

Community college biotech programs have helped and Bio-Link centers have been instrumental in helping schools connect with companies. By focusing on marketable lab skills, those programs have become fairly successful at getting students into the workforce.

Many community college programs also require their students to do an internship.

But guess what, unless you have experience, those internships are still hard to get.


What can we do?

Stay tuned. We discuss different models in part II.






Subject: Education

technorati tags: biotechnology,
teaching-carnival
education
science education

Tangled Bank #51: the Seattle Tour!

I've been racking my brain about what to do when Tangled Bank #51 came to Seattle.

And it hit me.

What do I normally do with visiting nobility (like my in-laws or my parents)?

We go sightseeing.

So come along, get your reading glasses and your walking shoes, we've got places to go and lots of scientific treats to sample along the way.

We're going to do a circle around the center of the city, starting in a bus ride to the zoo and ending up at our local cultural hotspot, Archie McPhee's.

Since I'm a biologist, we'll start our tour at Woodland Park Zoo. Before we're allowed in, we have to answer this riddle.

"Who's bald head makes it easier to dive head first into dead meat?" I think we'll let 10,000 birds answer that question and explain to us why Black is Back.

No visit to the zoo would be complete without a trip to the Tropical Rain Forest display. If we can be quiet, we might even learn from our docent, GrrlScientist, about the new species of parrot and mouse that were recently described from the small Philippine Island of Camiguin. Her enchanting display, New Parrot and Mouse Species Discovered in Phillipines, includes lovely photos and maps. It's right around the corner at Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted). Woodland Park has lovely landscaping as well. Could they have saved some $$ if they bought their plants on eBay? Check out It came from eBay from the Invasive Species Weblog to learn some surprising facts about those bargain basement plants.

The petting zoo is always a popular stop. But be sure to wash your hands when you're finished. Tara Smith, of Aetiology, has an entire series on Emerging Disease and Zoonoses that explains why this is a good idea.

After we leave the zoo, we'll take a short stroll through Woodland Park and do some rabbit watching. The city plans to round-up most of the rabbits, sterilize them, and send them off to retire at a bunny farm (after Easter?) but I think the city should consider another solution. After reading Another Bobcat Story from the Dharma Bums, I wonder if we shouldn't look into getting a Mayan Jaguar carving and let Nature take its course.

Our next stop will be the Burke Museum of Natural History, but on the way we'll hike through Wallingford and check out one of my favorite landmarks, the Word of the Week. This week we'll fortunate to have two new words. From Bora Zivkovic at Cicadiana, we have a word to describe that feeling when in you've been in one place too long, Ah, Zugunruhe!, and from Wandering Visitor we have a photograph that might have been the model for "The Scream" and we have Pandiculation, a word guaranteed to make you very, very, sleepy.

Before we get to the Burke, we'll also make a quick trip inside the University Book Store to check out a new book that we read about at Living the Scientific Life on Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life.

The Burke has lots of bones and interesting displays. We might even see some displays getting set up or moved around like the you can see in the Ice Age Migration web cam that Zygote Games shared.

Naturally, there are wonderful diplays on evolution. Science and sensibility wants to know why there's so much hoopla over a funny-looking fish. He invites you to read about the real winners of the first land race in When animals first conquered the land.

What's that PZ? You found some interesting fossils, too? Wow! Those are incredible. Take a look at the Taphonomy of fossilized embryos for some wonderful photos and interesting experiments.

As we leave the Burke, we'll walk through the University of Washington campus and pass by the old nuclear reactor. I wonder if there any Deinnococcus living close by. These radiation-resistant bacteria have been found living on the Hanford Nuclear Site in eastern Washington and seem to be ready for any type of environmental insult. But Hanford's too far away for us to visit today. We'll have to be content with reading Karmen Lee Franklin's wonderful story and looking at electron micrographs at Chaotic Utopia's Conan the Bacterium: The Ancient Microscopic Hero.

It's time now, to stop at the UW Health Sciences complex. Construction never stops in this part of campus. We can ask the Seattle SNP group about the study on aging that Jeremy Cherfas described in Why Die? at Another Blasted Weblog. A single nucleotide change in the APOC3 gene is correlated with a longer lifespan.

Glyn Moody writes about other interesting studies in genomics in Coughing Genomic Ink. I was fortunate to hear the subject of this piece, David Haussler, give a wonderful seminar at the UW and Moody does a fine job describing Haussler's work to reconstruct ancestral genomes.

Before we go on, and as long as we're talking about seminars, I have to add a story from Uncertain Principles on writing letters to famous figures in science (Origin Story). He would have been very impressed the night that Jack Horner talked at the UW. Kids were lined up in the aisles waiting for autographs!!!

We might also drop by the teaching labs in the biology department and ask if they have anything informative to say about The Three Types of Experiments that are described at The Daily Transcript.

No discussion about genomics is complete without considering the ethical implications of this line of work. I wrote about how these discussions differ a bit between classrooms and companies. Kate Were tackles a harder problem in a three part series (I, II, and III) on sperm donors and sexuality. Since Google has opened an office in the region, Hsien Hsien Lei at Genetics and Health wants us to ponder this idea: Google: A Threat to Genetic Privacy? What if Google were to become a gigantic version of BLAST?

Our next stop will be biotech companies and institutes near Lake Union. First, let's go to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. I'm sure the researchers there would enjoy Charles Daney's article, from Science and Reason, Cancer Genes Tender Their Secrets. And they would certainly agree with Orac, from Respectful Insolence on Linus Pauling and clinical studies of vitamin C. (By Seed prodded, or there's less to these studies than meets the eye). I have to share a funny Linus Pauling story that was told to me by a former boss. He said that he once asked Linus Pauling how he detemined the appropriate dose of vitamin C to take. He (my boss) claimed that Linus said that he upped the dose until he got diarrhea and then backed off.

Let's go on. Close by the Hutch is the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute. Perhaps we can see some trypanosomes if their outreach scientists are on duty. I have a soft spot for Tryps since I studied them as a post-doc at the aforementioned Fred Hutch. Orac tells us Tryps are also a wonderful model that illustrates how evolutionary understanding furthers our understanding of biology, overall. (Medicine and evolution, Part 3: A trypanosome shows the way). It's a great article with wonderful pictures.

Time for a lunch break. Lab Cat has an enjoyable read, What is Food Science?, that's a perfect lunch time treat. Who would have guessed that there is a Research Chefs Association? or a trademarked field, with a somewhat erotic sounding name called Culinology®?

What better place to head after lunch than down south to the Museum of Flight? If the Museum of Flight had animal exhibits, I would suggest that they include these. From the Hairy Museum of Natural History, we have Sharov's Wondrous Wing. In the art section we could include the interesting paintings from Rigor Vitae and the story: Gliders and the evolution of flight. And we can't forget the incredible Gliding Ants from Science and Politics.

Time to head back north again. On to the Seattle Aquarium where we can see people embrace their inner fish. And the Pike Place Market where we can see the fish get embraced and then tossed around. I would like to see the guys at the Market toss Tiktaalik, the fish that Hitched to Everything writes about in We hit the jackpot. But I shudder to think what would happen if they only tossed the fish halfway there, as Whirled View explains in Tiktaalik and Zeno. If the fish paid more attention, maybe they could crawl on over to the tourists, we could spend our time musing about more general issues in tetrapod evolution like IndianCowboy (New Transitional Fish/Tetrapod Fossil And Other Thoughts).

Only two more stops left. No trip to Seattle would be complete without a visit the Specific appliance center, no wait, the magnificent defiance penter, oh right, the Pacific Science Center! And my home base, Geospiza is only two blocks away.

Pacific Science Center has one of the most wonderful collections of physics toys in the entire city. I think Scientia est Potentia would enjoy this place and it would be perfect for looking at Physics, Sex, and People in a Box-shaped Room. Well, maybe not the sex, actually. There are quite a few kids running around. But if any creatures behave just like random particles, it's a group of kids at the science center.

I think Stein from Dynamics of Cats would enjoy it too. Although it's pretty unlikely that the PSC could help fund the Terrrestrial Planet Finder, they're badly in need of funding themselves. If there is anywhere in Seattle where people might really enjoy Mark Chu-Carroll's discussions on Dimensions from Good Math, Bad Math, it would be at the PSC.

Now, we have to wait for the bus to Ballard and our last stop. Time goes so fast when we're having fun. Bora wonders if time moves faster at night because you're cold or because you're hungry? He'd like to have a group of undergraduates test this out (Chossat's Effect in humans and other animals), so if you teach a class, and want to do some relatively harmless human experimentation, let him know.

If you're worried that we won't see the bus coming, check out Cognitive Daily, where we learn about Seeing and awareness, or how fear can bypass the visual system.

At last, the bus comes to take us to Ballard. Ballard is the Scandanavian enclave of Seattle. This part of the city boasts the largest Syttende Mai parade outside of Norway. We better not let Ballard know about the discovery of the ancient Swedes between the ice (thanks Salto Sobrius for this story on the First People!) or we'll be finding settlements of Neanderthal Swedes down on Market Street for sure. You betcha!

Since we're in Ballard, and it's the end of the trip, we have to visit Archie McPhee's. After all, it's a cultural highlight of the city. Not only does Archie's have useful items like bacon strip bandages and the every popular Einstein and Librarian action figures, Archie's would be the type of place that would carry Professor Quippy's invention - the Cliffy Siren (from Mark Rayner). And if Archie's had pets, you could probably get an interview with a nude mouse, just as described in the Science Creative Quarterly.

Luckily, they don't sell chemicals like Bis(Chloroethyl) NitrosoUrea, otherwise known as:

BCNU.

Because our tour is over, and it is time for me to be BCNU.

If you speak English, be sure to say it out loud

and I'll BCNU, too!




Subject: Announcements

technorati tags: Tangled Bank, science

Ethical issues in biotechnology: contrasting companies and classrooms

About a decade ago, I took a fascinating summer course at the UW on bioethics. We read about the Nuremburg trials and the Geneva conventions. We learned about horizon problems and eugenics. And we discussed lots of challenging scenarios with genetic testing, autonomy, family relationships, and the problems faced by people seeking to have children, trying to get insurance, or looking for a job.

So naturally, when I started a biotechnology course for non-science majors (Biotechnology and Society) at our community college, I used many of those examples. The class had a grand time discussing all those interesting things. And they all had opinions! We debated the merits of labeling GMO food, animal testing, genetic tests and all sorts of fun topics. We had a great time during the OJ trial, studying good and bad DNA fingerprinting data and the chain of custody. And considering all the vegetarians in our class, our talks on making cheese were especially enjoyable. Since many of our vegan students were also anti-GMO, it was truly enlightening for them learn about the GMO E. coli used to make rennin for vegetarian cheese.

Later, when I became a member of Bio-Link in 1997, one of our goals was to address teaching ethical issues related to the biotech industry.

I decided it was time to find out what they were so, I asked members of our industrial advisory board.

What are the most important ethical issues in your company?

These were the sorts of answers I received:

• Make sure your students know that they need to write down every thing in their notebooks! Even – no, especially if it didn't work. I fire people for not recording negative results!
  


• They need to take good notes and understand what they're doing. I had to testify in court, in a patent dispute, about experiments that I did many years ago as a technician.


• They need to know that telling the truth is critical!


• They need to know that we work with animals, people have taken shots at our building, and sometimes I've had to walk around protestors to get to work. If they have problems with animal research they should do something else.


• Make sure they know that experiments cost money!

I listened and modified my seminar course for biotech majors to better align with industry concerns. We had speakers talk about patent disputes, interpreting data, and animal research. We had speakers from the FDA talk about their role in making sure that biotech products are safe (although, I guess you want to stay away from diet pop).

Perhaps our biotech program was a bit unusual, though, because from what I read, biotech instructors spend more time on interesting controversial topics and miss the topics that concern biotech companies.

This gap can be seen very clearly when comparing what teachers say they teach (genetic testing, euthanasia, cloning, stem cell research, GMO foods) with the top ethical topics concerning companies. According to Finegold and Moser (1), in the March issue of Nature Biotechnology, the top ethical concerns of companies were these:

1. Employee behavior
2. Conduct of clinical trials
3. Sales practices
4. How to market products
5. Corporate governance
6. Regulatory strategy
7. Who to partner with
8. What research to conduct
9. What products to develop
10. Accounting practices
11. Company mission
12. Where to do business
13. Product pricing

We don't do clinical trials, but I'd say this list is pretty much correct, given my limited company experience.

Which raises an interesting point.

Could it be that biotech instructors are biased towards picking more interesting topics? Few things could be worse than lecturing on accounting issues to biotech students.

Or perhaps this list is different from the standard garden-variety set of classroom biotech issues because some of the ethical stands that people might take should discourage them from working in companies that engage in those activities in the first place.

Against animal testing? Forget working in a biotech company. Almost all of them rely on animal tests somewhere down the road.

Against GMOs? That rules out any agbiotech companies, plus several other biotech companies that might be doing research to express therapeutic proteins in tobacco or corn.

Have a problem with stem cells? Many biotech companies that make or do research on developing therapeutic drugs are interested in this technology. If they're not doing this work in the U.S. they might be outsourcing this work to countries with a more enlightened view.

Against cloning? The whole industry, just about, is based on cloning something - either DNA, cells, or bigger things.

Euthanasia? Dead issue. (oh sorry! I just couldn't help it!) Rest in peace, we're not planning a product line around this one.

Hmmm, on second thought, maybe the classroom topics are on target after all. Could the answer be that biotech instructors want to help individuals avoid a rude shock by thinking about where they want to work and why, before they apply for a job?

1. David Finegold & Allison Mose. 2006. Ethical decision-making in bioscience firms. Nature Biotechnology 24:285 - 290.

Subject: Education

technorati tags: biotechnology,
teaching-carnival
education

Tangled Bank is coming April 12th!

Hey there aspiring science writers!

Warm up your typing fingers and get to work 'cause the very famous Tangled Bank will be hosted here on April 12th.

Your assignment is to send essays, reviews, and interesting things for me to post and the rest of the world to chew on and puzzle about.

Weird science entries are especially welcome. : P

Send your submissions to: sandy at geospiza.com

or to: host at tangledbank.net

If you'd like to see past issues of Tangled Bank, simply click the image below to go check out the archives:

Subject: Announcements

technorati tags: Tangled Bank, science