Heather Doran

Working in a laboratory can be stressful, and cause tension (see my post about lab post-it notes and the radio ). Can new technologies help make life easier, by saving time and enabling easy sharing of work? Or is sticking with old-fashioned paper methods better? ( I have already posted about how I like the idea of e-lab books) I get really annoyed that labs are at the forefront of new discoveries, new science and THE FUTURE, but often work in an old-fashioned way with paper notes and old equipment (my computer is currently on its last legs, I am pretty sure it isn't going to survive 'the thesis'). In the lab I work in, we are pretty old-school. Order numbers and prices are found on a computer, written down on paper and then put back in a computer. Excel files and written lists are used to keep track of what comes in and where it is kept in the lab, but these are not available to update on a computer. But saying all this, in general, it seems to work well.. so why c

Last week I was in sunny (actually, it rained) California for the Experimental Biology 2012 conference.  I was blogging on behalf of the  American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB ). I saw lots of interesting science, met a Nobel Laureate, had a good chat with other science communicators and shared a few copies of Au Science Magazine too. Here’s a summary of what I got up to and some links, if you would like to read more! All the posts were on the Au Science Magazine website EB2012 Has arrived ! The Art of Science Communication Storify: The Anatomy of Communication – Interacting with different audiences hosted by the American Anatomy Association Storify: APS Science Blogging Session with Jason Goldman, Dr Isis, Pascale Lane and Danielle Lee Visualising Complex Biology: From the Creating Networks session Monkeys, Beach Balls and Twinkies: Teaching enzyme kinetics using analogies Fighting Drug Resistant Tuberculosis Effectively Communicating Your Scien