Foundational Skills in Life Sciences

My students selected a paper to read in a journal club. The abstract (and the rest of the paper) was not written well. The abstract gave us two precious lessons.

• Lesson 1: Good structural organization will help the readers understand the content.
• Lesson 2: Abstracts of peer-reviewed papers can be disorganized.

I hope you learn them in this episode, too!

This episode = mini-series: reading-31.

(My email is active. But my we...

We have reached 50 episodes! Thank you for listening.   

Today, we will briefly talk about how I have kept sustainable podcasting so far. The most important thing may be that I have set my goal simple and single: It is to create high-quality content for you. That’s it.   

Here are links to two sources of podcast statistics that I mentioned in the episode.

• https://www.amplifimedia.com/blogstein-1/lyspqop3ylro9a2t7y2de820uwkgwx
• ...

We will talk about the second of the two, well-crafted loops of logic, in the Abstract of a paper written by the Nobel Prize Laureates. 

Not all abstracts have this second loop. But when it is present, it gives a better overview of the impact of the presented work. We can find one of the best examples in our Abstract. 

We are reading the paper written by the Laureates, Dr. Katalin Karikó & Dr. Drew Weissman, that led to the ...

I can visualize two well-crafted loops of logic, in the Abstract of a paper written by the Nobel Prize Laureates. Can you?   

We will talk about one of them in today’s episode. Such a loop, together with a linear progression, highlights the authors’ clear and logical thought process.   

We are reading the paper written by the Laureates, Dr. Katalin Karikó & Dr. Drew Weissman, that led to the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...

Let's analyze a single sentence in the Abstract of an impressive paper. It is the paper that led to the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This is the paper that we call the milestone article 1 (Please see below for details).   

We will analyze the second sentence. Why is this sentence important? We will discuss four of my approaches to see that this sentence is important, beautiful and helpful for readers outside the ...

Today, we will analyze the Abstract of an impressive paper. It is the paper that led to the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This is the paper that we call the milestone article 1.   

We will have two essential pre-analysis sub-steps, and then we will analyze each sentence. During this analysis, we will read each sentence of the Abstract, examine the role of each sentence, and assign each sentence to a structural componen...

Today, we will take a significant step towards understanding the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. We will read the Abstract of the Laureates’ most important paper that led to the Nobel Prize. This is the paper that we call the milestone article 1.   

We will have two essential pre-reading sub-steps, and then we will conduct the initial readings. These sub-steps will set the stage for a more in-depth exploration in the nex...

How are you reading life-science textbooks?   

My approach to reading textbooks has evolved significantly throughout my academic career, from student to researcher to instructor to course director. Today’s episode is part 2. We will discuss the last two phases of my experience.   

I am now in the fourth phase. I fully appreciate how well the authors summarized a vast amount of knowledge in one field of life scienc...

How are you reading life-science textbooks?   

My approach to reading textbooks has evolved significantly throughout my academic career, from student to researcher to instructor to course director. Today’s episode is part 1. We will discuss the first two phases of my experience.   

My overall goal of the two-part episodes is to highlight the unique roles that textbooks play, different from those of primary research papers. Knowing th...

“Should I exclude irrelevant experiences from my academic CV?”   

This is a question that students often ask. In this episode, I would like to give you my thoughts about this question.   

In general, there is a way of creating a comprehensive CV: it will show that you have unique experiences, and you are a careful and a thoughtful writer. The key would be for you to be proud of what you did in the past. I hope tha...

“Should my CV be short or long, when I apply for a research assistant position in a college/university lab?”   

This is a question that students often ask. In this episode, I would like to give you my thoughts about this question.   

The content in a CV depends on the person’s career stage. But I have one common viewpoint for CVs at all stages. I would like to view the descriptions in the CV, during and after the ...

How do top-tier scientific journals, like Nature, make sure their abstracts are clear and impactful?   

In today’s episode, we will identify the eight key components that make those abstracts effective, by naming the components in our own words, and clarifying their roles and order.   

Our system was inspired by the Nature document for the Abstract guidelines that we discussed in the Episode #38.   

Here ...

What is the best way to learn how to read the Abstract of a scientific paper?   

In my view, the best way is to learn how the Abstract is structured in any paper.   

Today, we will learn it, by reading a very short document. It is a one-page document that describes the Abstract guidelines, provided by the journal, Nature.   
Here is the URL that brings you directly to the Nature document:   

• https://www.nat...

The 2024 Nobel Prize was announced! Two days ago, it was in Physiology or Medicine. Yesterday, it was in Physics. Today, it was in Chemistry.   

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Dr. David Baker “for computational protein design”, and to Dr. Demis Hassabis and Dr. John Jumper, “for protein structure prediction.”   

Their work is directly related to life sciences.   

Let’s learn about the work by...

The 2024 Nobel Prize was announced! Yesterday, it was in Physiology or Medicine. Today it was in Physics.   

It was awarded to Dr. John Hopfield, and Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”   

It is somewhat (indirectly) related to my field, neuroscience!   

Let’s learn about the work by watching a YouTube video. It i...

The 2024 Nobel Prize was announced! This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Dr. Victor Ambros, and Dr. Gary Ruvkun, “for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.”   

Let’s learn about the work by watching a YouTube video. It is the archived video of the announcement of The Nobel Prize.   

Here is the URL of the YouTube video:   

• https://www.youtube...

We will complete the analysis of positive and negative controls in the milestone article of the Nobel Laureates of 2023. The article shows us one of the best examples of how to use positive and negative controls in life-science experiments. This episode will be Part 2 of a 2-part summary of control experiments. This will also conclude Step 11 of reading the article, which is to examine the key graph of the article. We can learn a l...

Question of today: What is a practical tip for effective oral presentations? There are many important things to do, for delivering oral presentations successfully. But I will be happy to give you my number one tip and the reasons why. And this tip is not discussed often in scientific communities. I hope you will find it useful!   

Disclaimer: What I'm going to tell you is my personal opinion. It is possible that it do...