Last week I visited UBC-O in Kelowna for CSEE 2013. It was a fantastic conference; the symposia I attended were informative, the talks were great, I met lots of interesting people, and had some amazing discussions about science, life, the universe & everything.

C. buckelli female exploring some linoleum.

The evening after the banquet a friend and I followed Hump-winged Grig collector extraordinaire (and all ’round great fellow & scientist) Kevin Judge up a hill behind the UBC-O campus to capture some of these tremendously charismatic creatures. The evening air was abuzz with the songs of lovesick males.

Grigs are closely related crickets, but their songs are quite different. While crickets make a sort of ‘criiiiiiiiiiick criiiiiiiiiiick criiiiiiiiiiick criiiiiiiiiiick’ sound, grigs’ stridulations  sound more like ‘TRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII~IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL’. The song is astonishingly long and shrill. Luckily for us, this makes the males relatively easy to find.

Triumphant and thrilled, I tromped back to the residences with a male Cyphoderris buckelli enclosed in one hand and a female in the other, determined to keep my new insect-friends as pets.

When I returned to Vancouver I cleaned out Hypatia‘s old terrarium and filled the bottom with soil from the pet store.

Materials

I buried a modified egg carton, hoping the female might use it as the base of a burrow and perhaps even raise more little grigs. Kevin told me that parental care had been predicted in this species, so I was keen to see if I could observe anything. I cut the carton to have a hole in the side and buried it against the side of the terrarium so I could try to peer in.

I awoke that night to my partner desperately trying to figure out which of his electronics sounded like it was about to explode and/or take flight. “TRIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLL”. Oops. I forgot to mention to him that grigs sing.

I moved the terrarium onto my balcony, but even through the sliding glass door, my noisy little friend made his presence felt across 3 consecutive restless nights.

My pair of grig friends are now enjoying their new home in the laboratory where they will only be communicating with each other.

On Thursday March 28th the Biology Departmental seminar featured the yearly Grad Hosted Speaker. This year the graduate students (with some help from the Department) got Nancy Baron, a naturalist, science writer and communications coach from COMPASS and Leopold Leadership to teach a thing or two about communicating our science more effectively outside academia.

Graduate students in “The Insect People” group sit down to chat with Nancy Baron about their research.

Nancy spent the morning meeting with graduate students that had been roughly broken up into three groups: “The Fish People”, “The Bird People”, and “The Insect People”. After hearing about the exciting, innovating, and surprising research being done here at SFU, Nancy stood before an audience that packed C9000 to give her official address. She started with some take-away messages from her discussions earlier in the day. (1) People are hungry for science stories like ours: we need to start sharing them (maybe we should start some kind of departmental blog!). (2) We all need to get on twitter to hear and participate in the ongoing global conversation.

Some graduate students sit down to enjoy lunch and more Sci-Comm discussion with Nancy Baron (who is sitting on the left).

Before cutting into the meat of her afternoon talk, Nancy reminded her captive audience of keen academics of the importance of not just doing good science – but communicating it too. I’m sure every scientist has heard the old adage “publish or perish”. I believe the truth behind this is two-fold; first, if you don’t have pubs under your belt, you wont win grants or jobs. Second, if no one knows about your results but you or your lab-group, then that research might as well not have happened at all. Nancy’s talk took this a step further. Many of us hope our research will make a difference, have some impact on the way people think or how policy is made. The sad truth is that it can’t have an impact if no one knows about it, and people wont know about it unless we can tell it to them in a way they’ll understand.

Preparing for her seminar: Does Nancy look nervous at all? I don’t think so.

The talk was titled “One Minute to Impress: And Deliver a Clear Message”; it focused on how we can get our point across by shaping our science stories to be quick and understandable. Attendees completed a rough draft of a “message box” prior to the presentation and workshopping them became the highlight of the seminar. Our thesis-length stories became elevator pitches that we practiced on our peers. Along the way we collected some important take-aways. For example, know your audience – frame the material so they will care, or you’ll lose them before you start. The secret to being a bore is trying to tell everything (~Voltaire). And “the three Ps”: Preparation, Practice, and Passion – the audience cares if you care.

Workshopping our Message Boxes and practicing our elevator pitches.

All-round, this year’s Grad Hosted Speaker turned out to be a great success. Typically this event is followed by a second day (the Olympiad) where graduate students present their work. This year the Olympiad will be replaced with a poster session style symposium to showcase the message boxes we learned to make with Nancy. This event will be held in the downstairs section of the Highland Pub on Friday April 12th, 2:30-5:30. Between 2:30 and 3:30 there will be materials available to make a poster with your lab mates (please sign up with Lindsey Button to participate: lindsey_button@sfu.ca). Posters will be displayed starting at 3:30, so even if you aren’t participating, come by for free food, beer, mingling, and science! At 5:00 best poster and door prizes will be awarded, followed by an evening of socializing in the Highland pub.
See you there!

Nancy ended her talk by encouraging us to be fearless!

Eight months ago Mike Boers made a very cute GitHub project called “Haikuize“. You pour in text, it blends away punctuation, simmers up 5-7-5 syllables, and BLAM, delicious, senseless haikus.

Some of them are less senseless than others though.

This evening we popped the 6th edition of The Origin of Species into the oven. We pulled out many half-baked, poorly formed thoughts. All of them are out of context. Some of them are worth sharing.

The Hypothesis
Of The Development And
Modification

************************

A Woodpecker Has
Become Adapted To Its
Peculiar Habits

************************

The Fact Is Given
As Something Remarkable
And Exceptional

************************

No One Ought To Feel
Surprise At Much Remaining
As Yet Unexplained

************************

In Many Cases
We Are Far Too Ignorant
To Be Enabled

I didn’t read through all of it. The book itself is 1.2MB in plain text; after it has been Haikuized it bloats out to 2.2MB. It’s a lot of fun to read through them one after another, even (or perhaps especially) when they make no sense.

Of Habit To This
Latter Agency He Seems
To Attribute All

…

All The Beautiful
Adaptations In Nature
Such As The Long Neck

…

As The Long Neck Of
The Giraffe For Browsing On
The Branches Of Trees

Can you tell he’s talking about Lamark? I even own a commemorative Tee (though I’m not sure if the reference to Lamark was intentional).

If you want to read through the monstrously large version for more gems, download it here or bake it up yourself by cloning Haikuize from the GitHub repository and pouring in your own batter. Alternatively, here is a reduced version of Origin Haikus that only includes those that started or ended in a period before the punctuation was stripped out. Complete thoughts will probably be easier to find in that version.

Enjoy!

I still have at least 6 more months of my master’s left to go, but I’m starting to think (obsess really) about what my next steps will be. I know lots of people who write up and defend while employed in full or in part off campus. Since I’ve never done a co-op or internship outside academia, this seems like an intriguing possibility to me. I love (love love love) TA-ing and teaching, so if that is how the wind blows for September 2013, that is okay too.

Even if I completely finish with school (i.e. defend) before venturing into the job market, I figure it will take some serious time and investment to find employment. If possible, I’d like to avoid unemployment while finding employment.

As a bright-eyed undergrad I spent lots of time finding opportunities and gaining experience toward a career in academia. I was grooming myself for this detailed plan I had composed based on all the organized talks and personal advice I got from everyone and anyone I met. Now that I’ve decide to explore more options, I feel like I have catching up to do.

Catching up is tricky though. In a university it’s easy to find people with lots of experience being in universities, but learning how to be employable outside of the ivory tower while still in the ivory tower is.. well, tricky. I suffer from opportunistic and thus serious sampling bias. Lots of other people have discussed this many-faceted problem too.

Today was a holiday (Family Day in B.C.), so I took the opportunity to (try to) update my CV. The last time I had touched it was back in July, so there was lots to add. Adding led to reorganizing, which in turn led to lots of re-writing. Several hours into my CV Spring Cleaning, I started to get restless. How “expert” do I need to be to say I have “expertise” in something? I think anyone who thinks they know everything about anything is probably deluding themselves. Maybe I should include my working definitions*. Should there be a “Skills” section or does that belong in a resume? What goes in a resume vs a CV? Do people outside academia care about CVs anyway?

… Should my twitter handle go under my email address at the top?

My CV Spring Cleaning was starting to feel like this moment.

(*Don’t worry, I don’t really intend to do this.)

Even though there are relatively few people who can speak of personal experience in career building outside academia from inside, luckily there are other resources. I haven’t found my golden solution or written my winning CV (or resume), so I can’t tell you all my tricks yet. I decided to write this post because job-hunting, career-building, and CV-Cleaning have been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe after I check out SFU’s Career Services I’ll have more answers.

It’s now three weeks into the spring semester, and a lot of my time is devoted to training my new students in how to handle, breed, rear, and care for spotted winged drosophila (SWD). When reviewing the techniques I’ve been perfecting over the last 7 months, I always follow the HOW with the WHY. I started these colonies with very little prior knowledge or guidance on how it should be done, so the WHY is usually based on personal experience, and the experience is often “…because they die.”

The spotted winged drosophila is of growing/continuing concern in agriculture across North America and Europe. As the public eye turns toward them, so too does the academic. I know many people who are beginning to consider adding this species to their research programmes because knowledge garnered on this species right now would be both timely and potentially high impact.

I say “timely” because they were first introduced to North America just 4.5 years ago in the summer of 2008. In 2009/2010 there were farms that lost up to 80% of their crop due to this one generalist pest!* Research done now will be “high impact” because results will be immediately important to both (1) the public (stakeholders) who are in desperate need of a knowledge base from which to make management decisions, and (2) the academics interested in testing theories in ecology, evolution, and invasion biology.

This is why I chose dedicate my graduate degree to this species… I’m assuming the other interested scientists have been following similar lines of thought.

The lessons I’ve learned and am imparting to my new students have been very hard won, and I hope I’ve persuaded you that there is (or should be!) interest in rearing these little insects beyond just my little crew and thesis**. Thus, I’m going to start trying to amalgamate my insights on SWD rearing and care into blog posts.

My goal here is to save some other poor M.Sc. or Ph.D. the same months of trial and error by explaining my HOWs with illustrative and colourful WHYs (sweat, tears, burns, and close calls). I wont claim to be an expert in all potential problems; all I can do is impart my experiences and subsequent conclusions. It’s up to you to draw your own conclusions.

It’s still my goal to post here once per week (or more IFF time permits) so the going may be slow as I write about various other topics that interest me from week to week. If you’re interested in learning more about something I write, or want me to speak more to a topic, please feel free to comment or contact me.

As usual, hold on to your hats, toupees, and cocktails.

*If you’re interested in references for these facts, contact me. I’m omitting them here for readability and brevity (in post-length and in time to write).

**Hopefully this also means you’ll be interested in reading MY thesis and publications when they come out – stay tuned!

Right now the Science Online Conference 2013 is happening at N.C. State University and my Twitter feed has flooded with excellent advice for people like me. In particular, Melissa Blouin writes:

When you haven’t blogged for a while, you want to come back with a great post. Slow down and ease back in. @boraz #scio13 #scio13haul

— Melissa Blouin (@FlaScigal) January 31, 2013

And Laura Wheeler writes:

‪

#scio13haul @doctorzensays set up a blogging schedule it helps to manage your posting regularity!

— Laura Wheeler (@laurawheelers) January 31, 2013

And Dirk Hanson writes: ‪

@borazsays: Do a video, and image, a couple of paragraphs, and it’ll come backj. Don’t wait for “perfect post”. #scio13#scio13haul

— Dirk Hanson (@Dirk57) January 31, 2013

Okay Twitter, okay #scio13 … message received. Today has been one of those days where I thrash at my thesis-related tasks. In the spirit of being productive while procrastinating and with the added dash of Scio13-reflected glow, I am now guiltily sitting before the 4 month long vacuum in my blog logs, metaphorical pen in hand.

Melissa Blouin; this lacklustre post about blogging is me easing back in. Laura Wheeler and DoctorZen; I’m going to blog every Monday evening. They may be short … or I may find my Tuesday routine suddenly aline with the coffee machine. If they are short, lacking originality, or full of unanswered questions, I will take it as a learning experience instead of shyly hiding them in the dusty corners of my Documents folder. If I can’t find inspiration for text, Dirk Hanson, Bora; I’ll draw one of my neglected “Science Dailies” (perhaps that’s in need of rebranding), post a video or a photo.

Now that I’ve told the internet, there’s no turning back.

Last week I posted an X-ray of my right foot that I received after spraining my ankle. I knew when I went in that I would want copies (who wouldn’t?!), so before getting into place to have the X-rays taken I made sure to ask the radiologist/practitioner who was working with me. He immediately said “yes”, that I would just have to speak with the receptionist.

After having the X-rays taken, I hobbled out to the front desk where the receptionist seemed startled that I was standing in front of him. He stared at me until I spoke. I told him that I’d like to get a copy of the X-rays that were just taken. He hastened to tell me that oh no, they don’t normally do that, and he’ll have to speak to the doctor, etc etc.. He went away for a few minutes and then returned to tell me again that they don’t normally give copies unless there is a fracture and this would be a special exception. He made a pretty big deal about what I had thought would be very little extra trouble. After all, they were already making copies for my family doctor.

I left the office frustrated. I felt like they had been on the verge of denying me something that should really just be available to me. They had information pertaining to me and my health; I should have more right to those materials than anyone else on the planet.

Another X-ray of my right foot.

I just read this article by Dr. Makary (a surgeon at Johns Hopkins in the US) calling for transparency and accountability in the American health system.

This got me thinking about our system here in Canada. How transparent are we? Dr. Makary makes a point about there being no (or few) stats or useful information available to the public about hospitals, so potential patients cannot make informed decisions. These same patients will check online descriptions, recommendations, and ratings for restaurants before sitting down to eat. Shouldn’t they have a similar opportunity for something as important as their health?

After moving to Vancouver I went in search of a new family doctor for my partner and I. The first thing I did is go to the official website for the College of Physicians & Surgeons of British Columbia to look for doctors who were accepting new patients. Armed with a list, I then looked at online reviews by google-ing each potential doctor and using Healthcare Reviews. I and those close to me have had many experiences involving medical doctors who provide obviously incorrect diagnoses, and poor suggestions of prescription drugs that lead to uncomfortable consequences (for the patients). However, I also think the first two family doctors I had growing up were chosen because of their convenient locations. This time, I was keen to find someone good.

For family doctors at least, there is a reasonable amount of reviews online. But what about the rest of the system? I had to fight (sort of) to get copies of my X-rays, but the last time I saw my family doctor, she told me that I can see the results of blood tests online! I found a GP using online reviews, but I still haven’t found a dentist. Because an evidence-based approach is very important to me, finding a physiotherapist for my ankle that I didn’t think would prescribe power-bands or reiki has been very difficult (I think I succeeded, but I haven’t had an appointment yet, so we’ll see).

In a quick google search for ‘transparency in the Canadian health system’ I came across the ‘Health Council of Canada‘ that advocates for transparency in healthcare. Unfortunately, they only do so in Saskatchewan, and claim to be the first such organization in Canada. Despite this claim, I also learned of the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), a federally funded group that collects and distributes information about the quality of healthcare across Canada. They even have this nifty (but slow) tool that theoretically should allow me to compare hospital performance across the country. That is what it claims to do, but I will never know for sure because it loads so slowly.

At this point, I’m not sure what to conclude about what I’ve seen and learned about our system in Canada. For a number of areas there are tools and outlets for getting information at both a small scale (e.g. individual doctors and specific test results) as well as a large scale (e.g. hospitals, provinces, general performance across the country). However, in some places there holes and lags. At the smaller scale, there aren’t enough dentist reviews for me to make an informed choice, and getting copies of my X-rays was trickier than it should have been. At the larger scale, the tool for assessing hospitals is too slow to be effective for general use, and the reports provided by CIHI don’t report their data very effectively: In ‘A Snapshot of Health Care in Canada as Demonstrated by Top 10 Lists‘ are they presenting totals across the country, or averages per hospital? If the latter, there really ought to be error bars so we can see how variable these values are. If the former (i.e. totals), well, I think averages would be more informative for a general consumer like me… especially if they further disseminated the information by province or county.

I was going to do a blog post about the psychology behind fascination with scars and minor injuries (bruises, scrapes, etc), but all I can find on the internet are articles encouraging people not to be ashamed of scars, social commentary on blemish-free models, advertisements for scar removal, and stuff to do with the Lion King. A Web of Science search of “injury” and “pride” wasn’t helpful either, though interestingly there was a remarkable number of articles about injuries on fruit.

Example of an article hit from Web of Science when you search “injury” and “pride”

This has made me wonder. Is it unusual that I find (my own) injuries fascinating (even if they’re annoying, debilitating and often embarrassing)? I’m definitely not alone in being proud of scars; I’ve had countless discussions comparing scars or bruises and their stories. People do it in films and stories all the time.

Comparing scars seems like a pretty human thing to do. I think I remember a phrase “Every scar has a story.” So why is there so little literature or internet content on it? Maybe my google-fu just needs more work.

All this was spurred by a recent (and foolish) injury I had rock climbing. The injury itself is annoying and embarrassing (in some ways), but it DID lead to me getting some X-rays. It’s the X-rays that I find fascinating. This is what the inside of my foot looks like!!

X-ray of my right foot.

During this past June I was browsing my Facebook feed and found a highly amusing status update from my friend Peter Christian about an imaginary interaction he had with a spider over his lunch one sunny afternoon.

In reply, I drew this comic while eating my own lunch sitting in a pub near UC Davis (where I was visiting for field work at the time). You’ll have to excuse the dismal quality; I drew it in my field notebook and digitized it using my cellphone camera.