Weekly Round-up 30th June 2014 (Return of the Round-up)

Today after a short break the weekly link round-up is back! As well as looking at the things I've found interesting online I thought I would add on a little nod to the things I'm currently enjoying in the form of books, games, music and TV.

1. Super Cool Livers for Super Transplants
   The New Scientist Reports that an experiment to see if cryopreservation of livers allows them to maintain function after days in storage. At the moment a liver may only remain functional for half a day, meaning distance can effect who receives the organ. However, by freezing livers treated with chemicals to keep cell fluids liquid and protect cell membranes, researchers found that a liver transplant within 3 days of freezing maintained function in all rat tests. The researchers are now working to see if they can repeat their results in a large animal model, with a comparable to human liver size. Fingers crossed this advance will make it easier to transport organs to the people who need them.
2. Gravitational Waves or Dust?
   After a huge media storm around the discovery of gravitational waves, two independent analyses have concluded that the observed results could have been caused by dust in space. Interestingly, the discovery was initially revealed before the research paper had been peer reviewed, a process the initial study is currently undergoing. It will be interesting to see if the paper makes it through to a journal, but whatever happens it looks like we may need further data to conclusively prove the existence of gravity waves.
3. NASA Tests Their New Flying Saucer
   NASA have been testing a new form of landing craft which may be a key stepping stone on our journey to the red planet. The NASA flying saucer test was designed to examine the performance of a pair of technologies designed to slow a craft down in order to land on a planet. The key driver in doing this is to make it possible for heavier vehicles to be able to land safely. Fingers crossed this test and the tests planned later in the year help pave the way for our first manned missions to our nearest neighbour. 

And finally... The clock strikes 12... 

It's coming! The BBC have finally announced that Doctor Who will return on 23rd August (bank holiday Saturday) with the feature length episode "Deep Breath" ushering in the Capaldi era. Check out the explosive teaser below.

Currently Reading: Stray Souls by Kate Griffin, a fantasy novel set in modern day London where underground tickets have magical properties and sorcerers draw power from the rhythms of the city (the same world initially introduced in Griffin's Matthew Swift books). It's a fantastic book on its own, but I'd read the previous Matthew Swift books (starting with a Madness of Angels) to get the most out of it.

Currently Watching: Avatar: The Legend of Korra, the sequel series to the Last Airbender, which for my money, far surpasses the original series. It follows the story of new avatar Korra and her struggle to bring balance to Republic City. I'm motoring through the first series so I can't wait for the second to come out on DVD!

TERMIS - Reflections and Diary Links

Good afternoon! Now I've had some time to get settled back into the swing of things at home I thought it'd be quite nice to round off my TERMIS coverage with a bit of an overview of what I got out of it. My diaries mainly focussed on the things that actually happened, rather than the bigger picture of what I've taken away so here's a look at what I distilled from my experiences.

What did I learn?

• Most obviously, I picked up lots of new scientific information from the conference, which is exactly what you would hope to do. However, it's hard to guarantee how much you'll pick up before hand, as you only really know what you'll get out of a talk once you've seen it. 
• I'm not half bad at networking, especially if I break myself into it bit by bit. In the event of nerves, wine and cheese help!
• Drama techniques are fantastic to apply to presentations. (I presented at my old college today and that found not warming up made a big difference)
• Practice really does make perfect. It really felt good to be able to present on auto-pilot as it took a lot of the stress out of the experience.
• Conferences are as much about the social events as the presentations because these are where you make contacts and start collaborations. However, that means during the social events you are actually working, so you don't have chance to fully relax! I wasn't very well prepared for the social program to be so intense, but next time I will be.

What will I do next time?

• Take my own notebook. At TERMIS I just used the supplied paper in the conference pack, but it wasn't very good and I didn't really have enough, so next time I should just buy some and not be such a cheapskate!
• Write up useful notes as I go along. I had a full day of writing my TERMIS ones up when I got back and I don't want to do that again!
• Take a tablet, not a laptop. Tablets turn on quicker and are great if you want to flick through your slides without changing them or check e-mails.
• Practice, practice, practise any presentations. It's totally worth it.
• Be prepared to stay out late and party (for science of course).
• Try not to be afraid to speak to someone, people may not feel comfortable starting a conversation, but they will often join in if you kick things off.  
• Have a spare pair of suitable shoes! My feet got a bit shredded by the shoes I took and I didn't have an alternate pair of flats to wear.
• Get more involved with the young scientists program. I didn't get around to doing the mentor meet and co-chairing of seminars that the SYIS program offered, but next time I should make the effort to get involved.
• Poster harder. I didn't hit up the poster sessions as well as I could, so next time I need to focus less on the food and more on the posters!
• Take time off after the conference. I got home from Italy on Saturday night and I was back at work on Monday, but I think I really could have done with an extra day off to help me recover. I don't feel like I was very productive at work last week so it would have been better to write a day or two off as leave so I could've had a day to myself to just just sit and relax.

Just in case you missed my conference diaries the first time round my day 1 diary is here, my day 2 and 3 diaries are here and my day 4 and 5 diaries are here!

TERMIS Diary- Days 4 and 5

Here are my final 2 diaries from TERMIS and include highlights such as my presentation (eek!) and the conference dinner! I'm going to follow this up with a post linking to all my diaries, along with an overview of some of the key things I've learnt from my experience. Remember, feel free to ask me as many questions as you want!

Day 4

Ponente room, my presentation venue!

Today was D-day or rather P-day. I got myself ready at the apartment nice and early and dove straight into doing some of the vocal warm up’s I've learnt in my theatre group. They’re very effective, but sound quite strange to someone listening from the outside so either my colleagues are doing a great job of pretending they didn't hear me, or I actually got away without anyone listening in. I felt a bit nauseous before getting to the conference centre so I skipped breakfast and just went with drinking lots of water before going to the seminar my talk was part of. When I got to the room I needed to present in the panic really set it. To start with I’d forgotten the order of my slides, so I quickly used my netbook to run over them vaguely in my head before the seminar started. I then suddenly thought “What if someone asks me what the spectrum of bone is like?” realised I couldn't remember that either and desperately tried to get an image of the spectrum up using the conference internet. Unsurprisingly, this was one of the times when the internet just wouldn't work and I had to give up on that pretty quickly. I can't decide whether the timing of my talk was helpful or not from a nerves perspective. On the one hand, I was in the first session of the day. On the other hand, I was right at the very end of the first session and as the talks went on I started feeling more and more nervous, constantly noticing if more people were coming to the session or leaving (more were coming) and how tickley my throat was, but with an hour and a half to sit through I wanted to be careful not to drink too much water! Once the session started I was able to keep my mind on the talks quite well up until the one before mine. When I was called to the podium I managed to calm myself (up to a point) with lots of deep breaths, before launching straight into my talk. I made one slip up on the second slide where I said I would explain “What is tissue engineering?” rather than “What is Raman spectroscopy”, but I managed to recover. From that point on I was on auto pilot. I’d practised, practised and practised my talk so much that I was in performance mode, reciting my lines and playing the part of a knowledgeable scientist to the attendees. It’s strange. I can only really remember the bits of the talk where I laser pointed at the screen! Then it was over. I had one question. A very nice one about my thoughts on an interesting effect we’d noticed with some of my samples and I was done. The relief was immense! I was shaking a bit as I went to get my things and was roundly congratulated on a presentation well done by my supervisors and colleagues. I’d done it. My first conference presentation is over!

After the break, I went to see an excellent keynote on the nature of bone marrow stem cells in the body and how its seems that cells around blood vessels can actually become bone marrow stem cell like. I think it’s pretty common knowledge to some biologists, but it was all new for me and was pretty mind blowing. I decided to take a mini-break after the keynote to send texts home to tell people that my presentation went ok and to ring my better half (who had the conference program open on his laptop, trying to work out when I would be done). With that done it was back to the standard thing of watching more presentations! My favourite, was once again, the big plenary of the day by Professor Badylak, who's been doing some incredible work on repairing muscles in cases of significant muscle loss using tissue engineered scaffolds. The results he presented from the pre-clinical trial were simply incredible. 

It was then time for the 'Students and Young Investigators' evening. Which, after the success of the other social elements of the conference so far, was a bit of a let down. The bar we were in was beautiful, no doubt about that, but that meant expensive drinks and very small plates of food! The group I was with (Team Sheffield plus some lovely fellow students from Germany and the Czech Republic) nipped out for some ice cream (definitely worth doing) and came back to find most of the people gone, which was probably due to 330ml bottles of beer costing 5 euros. I did have a good evening over all (and was once again out later than planned), it was nice to be able to relax and chat. But for next time, in order to keep people together and networking, they really need a cheaper venue!

Day 5

I made it to the final day of the conference! There weren't many sessions that screamed out at me today as 'PhD useful' so I looked at what sounded interesting or fun and I ended up going to talks on simulating cells growing in a bioreactor on a computer, rapid prototyping and inkjet printing scaffolds. It was a nice and short day of talks, finishing at about 6pm to give us time to get ready for the conference dinner and pre-tours of the palaces of Genoa!

After changing at the apartment (going via a supermarket to pick up some Genoan  pesto to take home, you just have to) we headed down to the posh part of the old town for the palace tours. The two palaces we visited were filled with artwork, it wasn't really my thing, but it was a really nice opportunity to wander around some beautiful buildings. In the first palace we visited, we made it up to a viewing platform on the roof, which gave us some wonderful panoramic views of Genoa, right from the old town, to the docks and new town. It was a brilliant way to start the evening. Wandering around the houses and looking at the views, I couldn't help being strongly reminded my of the houses and city views in Assassin's Creed II, I could just picture Ezio running around the old town roof tops and shimmying into the courtyards of the cities richest families... yeah. I can never let the geekiness go.

Views of Genoa

Then came one of the highlights of the conference. The social dinner in the beautiful Palazzo della Meridiana, I'm going to go a bit George RR Martin and gush about the food now, so if you don't want a run down akin to the description of the feast of 77 courses, look away now!

Palazo della Meridana fresco

The conference dinner.

So, when we got into the Palazzo, we were supplied with a glass of prosecco and nibbles of yet more parmasan, which I'm starting to think should be the only way to start a formal dinner! The entry hall we were in was lovely, but it did make me wonder whether we would be standing to eat. Thankfully, my fears were most definitely alleviated when we were shown to the dinning rooms. It was breathtaking. The fresco on the ceiling, the carved stone fireplace, the platers on the table and not one but 3 wine glasses per person! It's safe to say I was more than a little awed. Then there came the food, all 4 glorious courses in true Italian style starting with seafood salad. Now, I'm not a salad person, but this was definitely my kind of salad as it was really just a seafood selection with a gherkin! We then had our pasta, a lovely thin pasta (small pieces to avoid having to slurp) in (not so surprisingly) Genoan pesto. I made a slight error as I didn't realise my server was waiting for me to say when to stop serving me (the others hadn't) so I ended up with quite a plateful (Maybe that was more of a happy accident than a mistake...). Next was amberjack fillet with pine nuts (there's a theme here) and potatoes. I'd never had amberjack before, so it was good to try something new. Finally, we got desert served with accompanying desert wine, a frozen mousse with grand marnier sauce, perfection! Even better was the fact Atra couldn't finish her's so I got one and a half deserts. You might think that would be the end of the culinary delights, but you'd be wrong. There was a selection of Italian pastries to enjoy (I managed one, it would be rude not to), a free spirits bar and espresso for those insensitive enough to caffeine to have strong Italian coffee at 11pm at night. Needless to say, it was a brilliant way to end the conference, full from a lovely meal, enjoying a disaronno on the rocks, chatting with my new friends from Sheffield about all things geeky. You can't get better than that! Well you could if you didn't end up going to bed at 1am and having  to get up at 7am. That could have been significantly improved... But, apart from the general lack of sleep, it was a fantastic end to a fantastic week. A week of firsts and fun, I might actually be looking forward to Photon14 (my next conference in London) now! 

TERMIS Diary - Days 2 and 3

I'm back! I made it home from the conference on Saturday so things are beginning to get back to normal. Here are my diaries from the first two days of my conference experience at TERMIS/EU the meeting of the EU chapter of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society. If you want to have a look at some of the official conference information you can find it here. and the abstracts from the conference can be found here (I'm on page 113 (75 of the pdf) and I'm very excited that something I wrote is in a journal). Hopefully, my dairies will give you a window into what academic conferences are like, but if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

Day 2

On the second day of TERMIS the science Gods gave to me one ryanair flight and a drinks reception by the sea!

Things are now officially under way now at the conference. I am now in Genova, after flying in with one of my supervisors and despite a slight hiccup with my suitcase falling off the baggage carousel the wrong way, things are going pretty well. We have a lovely apartment which I managed to find on my own, I'm registered, and I have some idea of the things I'm going to see tomorrow. The main thing so far that I wasn't prepared for is the heat. I'm definitely a cold whether person so temperatures of nearly 30 degrees make me want to melt! In terms of what actually happened at the conference, we had plenary talks (which are 30 minute plus lectures of particular importance) by some of the giants of tissue engineering. It was a really good opportunity to see some of the big academics in the field give their thoughts on where next for tissue engineering and what strategies we should use which, incidentally, they didn't agree on!

The view from the aquarium

After my first gelato of the trip on the harbour side (which was a great opportunity for my supervisor to point out particularly important people to me), I went to the conference opening social, the ambiguously named "Welcome Cocktail". Would there be food? How many drinks would we get? Thankfully the event surpassed my expectations immensely. The reception was held in an aquarium, so we were able to tour the attractions before the reception, meaning I saw manatees, dolphins, seals and penguins! A very unexpected but very welcome treat. The reception itself was lovely, many drinks (not just one) were on offer and we had a full buffet laid on that was continually refilled. The highlight was definitely the huge wheels of parmesan that you could just shave bits from, I was in cheese heaven! But the food is only half of the story, drinks receptions = networking, or at least attempts at networking. Dun dun dun! I am not a networking fan. Oh no. Not me. Trying to speak to people you don't know, but who all seem to know each other is something I'd rather  not do... But I did it! Thanks very much to my supervisor introducing me to people. But. But! I managed to come up with appropriate things to say in the conversation and not melt into the floor and I even managed to strike up bits of conversation independently with a few PhD students. Win! So I dedicate this victory to the wine. I can definitely say that today I learnt networking goes better with alcohol. Maybe in the future I should carry a hip flask with me. Or just get over it...

Day 3

Magazzini del Cotone Conference Center

It's now day 3 of the trip and the second day of the conference proper so everything has kicked off and is in full swing. We're now into the nitty gritty of the conference, attending presentation after presentation after presentation and learning about all kinds of new and exciting research. Yesterday’s 3 half hour lectures were most definitely just a warm up. Boy is this tiring! We're doing 830am to 730pm (with around 2 hours of breaks). I find it really hard to sit and listen for that amount of time! Especially when people dive into more hard core biology when my brain would really rather drift off and I have to fight to stop it. Having said that, there were lots of really interesting talks and I've attended presentations on the diverse topics of imaging, bone tissue engineering, bioreactors and more. My favourite lecture was on the use of simulations to predict the process of tissue repair and the application micro-CT techniques to image implants and showed some really exciting results. The main blot on the horizon is the lack of drinks around the venue even though there are plenty of bottles around. The problem is that the cups are way too small to allow you to get a good drink, which is not so fun in the heat. Also, every time I flick through the program I get the dreaded reminder that I actually have to get up and speak tomorrow. I think, or rather hope I'm ready. I can’t change anything else now as I've handed my slides over to the conference so I suppose I should stop worrying about it. Unfortunately that’s easier said than done; the last time I practised my presentation was on Monday night at the B&B which feels like a very long time ago now. 

Networking is still a big thing, tonight we had a “Sheffield Bioengineering and Health Technologies Group Meal”. However this quickly grew to be much, much bigger than I had originally anticipated. At first it was just people from the Dental School, then people from Sheffield University, then friends, collaborators and anyone else who fancied joining us. In the end it was a fantastic evening. We went to an amazing little restaurant in the middle of the rabbit warren that is the old town of Genova. The food was great, but also surprising as my lack of Italian meant I guessed what looked good and I ended up with a squid and octopus starter and a squid ink pasta main! I was also able to speak to the researcher who gave the big closing lecture of the day which was extremely exciting. I suppose it looks like I'm getting into this networking thing. Maybe. The only down side of the evening was the time we got back home, nearly midnight. Not exactly what I was hoping for with my presentation tomorrow, but it did mean I was tired enough to go to sleep without lying awake worrying for ages, so maybe that was a good thing...

Diaries to Come on Sunday or Monday

Hello!  The good news is I have wifi! The bad news is it won't work on my NetBook! So I just wanted to let you know I unfortunately won't be able to upload my conference diaries until Sunday or Monday. I hope everyone is having a great week.

TERMIS Diary - Day 1

As I write I'm sitting in a station waiting for my train to take me on the first leg of my journey to a tissue engineering conference in Italy. It's the first conference I'll have done a spoken presentation at, my first international conference and the biggest conference I've been to. To say I'm feeling nervous is a bit of an understatement! But I'm going to do everything I can to get my nerves under control and get the most I can out of the  experience.  As it's quite a big week, I've decided that I will keep a diary  of what I get up to while I'm away and try to put up a new mini blog up everyday (free wifi permitting), to give you an idea of what conferences are like.

So far today I've packed and repacked twice more my suitcase, checked my tickets, passport and wallet more times I can count, synced up my iPod. It's a bit of a relief to sit down and relax to be honest. The rest of my day is promised to be filled with a tube journey, another train and an early dinner before bed.

I'm now in my guest-house room, a few miles from Stansted. I'll tell you one thing, the smaller London stations aren't that fun! I've now got the lovely thing to do of wait for the morning and skedaddling to the station, with a bit of presentation prep in the middle. Fingers crossed I'll make it to the airport with no problems!

Weekly Round-up 2nd June 2014

Its time for a weekly round-up!So, here's what's caught my eye on the internet over the past few week.

1. MIT's "A Slower Speed of Light"
   
   Researchers at MIT have developed a game to help show what movement at approaching the speed of light might feel like to a human observer. The general idea is that 'seeing' what happens will help people to understand the theory of special relativity, which I think it does, but it is a bit trippy and not suitable for the photosensitive!
2. The New Scientist Discusses Why the EU is Good for British Science
   
   It's a bit too late to change the result of last week's elections (unfortunately my council seat went to UKIP), but for future reference here's another reason why being anit-EU might not be such a good thing for UK science and therefore, UK PLC.
3. The Longitude Prize 2014
   The Longitude Prize has been relaunched for 2014, with £10 million up for grabs for a team or individual who solve a 'global challenge', but what will be the chosen challenge? A public vote is currently running to decide. So is this prize actually going to do something useful or will it just be Britain's Got Science? I'm not sure myself, personally I don't see why there shouldn't be some funding for research in all 6 categories. It's definitely a nice idea, but whether it's the best thing to do or not is another question. I also wonder, what will happen to the money if a research council funded project wins the prize.
4. Glamorous Scientist's Aren't the Answer
   
   George Osbourne is trying to encourage young girls into science through the use of 'glamorous' role models. But, as the 'Science, its a Girl Thing' debacle along with actual research shows, this probably isn't going to work and it may well be a waste of time and money. As the above article suggests the real thing we need to do is refresh public perception of STEM so the general view is that anyone can do science and engineering, not just the cleverest few.

And finally I leave you with the first ever thing I've seen on The Big Bang Theory that we actually do in lab... Enjoy!