I have in the past posted advice to new faculty and also top 10 advice list for the academic job hunt, but today I wanted to specifically talk about mentoring. Also, stay tuned for a special post later this week with an autobiographical section from Irv Weissman on his early career and who his key […]
How to find and be a good mentor? Read More »
Irv Weissman’s lab came out with a very intriguing paper in Nature this week on regeneration and something called a blastema. Having a blastema It is not exactly on regenerative medicine of the kind we think about using exogenous stem cells, but more about how we might tap into nature’s own program for regeneration by
If I only had a blastema: obstacles to human regeneration Read More »
I have posted before about publishing trends in the iPS cell field here and in here…. but where do things stand today? Here, I provide an important update. What’s going on now? Here I provide answers to the key questions. How many papers are there on iPS cells? An interesting and unexpected trend for
Everything you need to know about publishing in the iPS cell field Read More »
With the bewildering amount of news about stem cells, how do we tell the difference between hype and hope? Although the words “hype” and “hope” only differ by one letter, sometimes it is hard to tell them apart in real life, but of course they are very different things. So how do we know when
Stem cell hype: distinguishing it from hope Read More »
We have a running series here on The Niche on the Republican candidates including Rick Perry for the GOP nomination for President for the 2012 Election. I blogged about Romney here, Huntsman here, and talked about Tex Guv Perry’s own stem cell transplant here. I also discussed the Republican field more generally in my podcast
If Rick Perry is Prez what’s impact on stem cell research? Read More »
Periodically we do updates on the iPS cell field and now seems like a good time. Where do things stand? Here’s my top 5 list of action items for the iPS cell field in the coming year. 5.) Methods on the brain. A significant fraction, some would argue too high a fraction, of iPS cell
Key iPS cell action items Read More »
Recently I polled my readers on how they make iPS cells and what the best method is in their opinion. The surprising results to date are above. The first thing that is striking is how dominant the Yamanaka method remains after 5 years. Despite scads of papers reporting new methods that are supposedly better in
Striking results from iPS cell poll Read More »
The Susan G. Komen Foundation is an awesome organization. It has raised nearly $2 billion dollars in less than 2 decades for breast cancer research. It also has a variety of educational programs. This is an organization that has likely saved hundreds of women’s lives and I think will save thousands of lives through its
Trying to understand the Catholic ban on the Komen Charity Read More »
U.S. Federal Judge Royce Lamberth dismissed the lawsuit of two self-proclaimed “adult stem cell” researchers against the government to block federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. (update: you may find a 2020 take on this whole saga to be of interest). Lamberth was the one who originally seemed to buy into the arguments of
Interpreting Judge’s Embryonic Stem Cell Ruling Read More »
A year ago I did a post on scientific peer review and the dreaded Dr. No, but have things gotten any better? No. From everyone I have talked to, the answer would seem to be quite the contrary–things continue to move in the wrong direction. If you are not a scientist, but care about stem cell
I Still Hate Your Paper: Dr. No and the Editors that are ruining Peer Review Read More »