相声【找工作】

A: 几年不见，您干嘛去了？
B: 去做Intern了。
A: 哎，您不是要当发考题吗？
B: 要当发考题，就得先实习。
A: 没听说过！去哪儿实习了？
B: 大都会农贸市场。
A:  Store manager?
B: Sales representative.
A:  Represent 啥呀？
B: Chinese cabbage.
A: 你卖白菜去了呀？
B: 卖白菜怎么了？
A: 那你都学到了什么？
B: 所谓王婆卖瓜，自卖自夸。要想卖的好，就得会夸.
A: 夸白菜？
B: 夸客户。
A: 夸客户干嘛？
B: 这你不懂了吧？比如说我摊儿上来一拎包的女士，我要是说，买我这白菜吧，新鲜
着呢！她买的概率有五成。
A: 喔。
B: 我要是说，嘿！拎这包的我见的多了，没见过您拎得这么出彩的！
A: 那有几成？
B: 九成。
A: 说得也是。
B: 去Onsite也是这样，虽然是要卖你自己，但你不能老说自己多好，得对人家的学校
有兴趣，对面试你的人的研究感到钦佩。人家才会觉得你真想来！
A: 是这样！
B: 我们同胞经常犯的错误就是，给人感觉不够热情。
A: 这跟我们的文化有关。
B: 但就容易给人误解。当然了，这个research talk也很重要。
A: 讲你的研究成果？
B: 先别急着讲成果，得先提significance。
A: 讲一讲白菜在中国菜中的地位？
B: 那就完了！现在funding这么难， 什么都得往生死攸关的方面扯，比如
translational. 
A:  这白菜跟治病有什么关系？
B: 看你会不会忽悠了。这拨菜叶的动作，就是训练手眼结合，对曾经得过stroke的病
人有康复作用。
A: Physical therapy！
B: 对了。我这白菜还是高纤食品，具有colon cleanse 的作用。这时候插一video。
A: 还带Video的！
B: 现在就兴这个。Video里一人就爱吃白菜猪肉炖粉条，后来白菜不给种了，整天就吃
猪肉炖粉条，没多久就吃出肠胃病来了。
A: 就不能吃点儿别的？这要是爱吃韩国泡菜的，就只能喝辣椒汤了？
B: 保准生痔疮！
A: 扯淡！完了该讲研究成果了吧？
B: 别急呀！还得show一show我的先进methods呢！我这白菜可是基因knock out的
mutant.
A: 听着怪慎人的! 怎么种呢？
B: 种就不算high-tech了！我这是克隆加stem cell regenerate出来的！
A: 什么乱七八糟的！
B: 我研究项目的概述就叫A novel genetic approach combined with bioinformatics
and nanoimaging for Chinese-cabbage regeneration in the treatment of autism
and drug addiction.
A: 这都挨的上嘛！
B: 反正大家反响不错。吃晚饭的时候为了尊重我，特意搞了一桌白菜宴。有白菜吞拿
鱼沙律，白菜Lasagna，忌廉白菜戚风蛋糕。
A: 听着就够了。
B: 还叫了一瓶法国产的1980年的白葡…白菜酒。
A: 好喝吗？
B: 他们也这么问我。我说，嗯… 法国那年一定多雨，不够甜！
A: 真是行家！那您最后offer拿到了吗？
B: 别说offer了，现在连R01都有了！
A: 恭喜呀！只不过这么种…制出来的白菜成本太高了吧？
B: 高是高，但因此也养活了一批生化公司。知道我是从政府拿钱，一瓶农药都卖500刀。
A: 好嘛！什么时候去你那儿参观啦！
B：行啊！带你去看我最先进的Green house里满满的，一排排的茁壮成长的…
A: 大白菜！
B: 罂粟花。
A: 毒品呐！
B: 没听说吗？发考题就是拿着卖白菜的钱，干着卖白粉的活。
A: 去你的吧！
（鞠躬）

重庆野玫瑰，随缘，难得有情人

On Poster Presentation

“I think the first duty of all art, …, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not communicating. “ (Poul Anderson)

Poster presentation may sometimes bear an “inferior” look compared with oral presentation. Yes, you don’t get that collective attention from dozens or hundreds of people in a quiet room. You can’t play sound or videos to wow your audience, and whoever comes to your poster has the freedom of walking away in any minute. But posters do give you the advance of tailoring your presentation to individual listeners, soliciting candid feedbacks (many people hate asking questions in public), and securing the listeners’ attention since they can’t type on a laptop as they might do during a symposium.

The potentials are there. Though, you may have to work hard to foster them.

1. Familiarity is our enemy.

When people give me a tour of their posters, I almost always ask them to back up. They tend to start like this, “Our goal is to develop a model to explain behavioral data. The first type of model we have tried is …” That’s when I have to step in. “Wait! What kind of behavioral data, in an animal or humans? What part of the brain are you trying to model? What are your input stimuli?” To you, the basic facts are mundane and time-wasting. You try to get to the fun part (your genius experimental design and breakthrough result) before your audience walk away. But without a good understanding of the basics, your audience (God knows what kind of background they may have) will be utterly lost.

This does not mean we should begin a poster with experimental details, though. At the beginning, always give a layman’s description in one or two sentences about the problem you aim to solve. For example, “We are testing a new speech-processing strategy for cochlear-implants to improve spatial hearing.” It’s necessary to draw a big picture first, because the last poster they went to could’ve been a genetic study on Parkinson’s disease. Note that this example differs from “Our goal is to develop a model to explain behavioral data.” The latter opens up too many possibilities that will just bemuse your listeners.

In fact, a guidance sentence should precede the description of each figure. You think the shape of the plot matters, but your audience might be studying the maximum amplitudes. Tell them what to look for at the beginning. Every figure should serve a clear purpose and contribute to the final conclusions. If you can’t come up with a definite purpose, or you find yourself constantly omitting the figure during presentation, it probably shouldn’t be there.

Similar to the layman’s description, try to avoid terminologies and abbreviations that are only meaningful to people in your field, even though you’ve defined them on the poster. Even when you are talking to an expert, one who might have invented that term, being explicit will not be taken as an insult. I frequently find myself missing the presenter’s points when my eyes are searching on the poster for the definition of an abbreviation, such as “CS” (mind you, it doesn’t mean computer science.)

2. More words, fewer words.

There are debates on the appropriate amount of text that should appear on a poster. Some argue there is no need to put more than minimal descriptions on a poster when you can explain everything to your audience. Nobody will read it. But others point out that, if you have to walk away from your poster, sufficient information can guide your visitors to navigate through the study on their own. My experience is, you don’t have to write a lot of words to tell a story once you’ve learned how to write efficiently. When people write in paragraphs, rather than in bulletins, they tend to narrate in the same way they do with papers. Say, first you describe previous studies and bring out a hypothesis. Then you begin the second paragraph with “To test whether or not our hypothesis can explain previous findings …” Think about it, isn’t this obvious? It’s perfectly fine in formal writing, but for a poster, anything that exists solely for a literary purpose and doesn’t add information should be left out. Another trick is to use narrow fonts, such as Arial Narrow. When you write in columns, sometimes there are only a few words spreading each line. Using a narrow font not only squeezes more words in the same space without decreasing the readability, but also eases the reading since your eyes don’t have to keep switching lines like an old-fashioned typewriter.

Even if you decide to err on conciseness, having a somewhat detailed conclusion is always a good idea (and you’d be surprised at the number of posters that don’t actually have a summary or conclusion section). In the absence of a presenter, I usually read the conclusions first. For example, if the conclusion says A is better than B, even though it may not make any sense yet, when I study the figures subsequently, I’ll keep that piece of information in mind, and try to make my own judgment. In short, I know what to look for. Otherwise, it’s hard to figure out what a figure tries to convey without a long written description alongside, unless the audience is very familiar with the topic.

Speaking of conclusions, many presenters forget to verbally summarize the study at the end of the tour. They may have explained the results clearly and do not feel the need of repetition. Well, this goes back to the familiarity issue. Keep in mind that your listener has a lot of information to absorb in a few minutes, including the results, but also your methods, your way of thinking, how your results may link to their own research, and even the meaning of your colors (for God’s sake please mark clearly on the figures what each line or color or panel stands for; in a noisy ballroom not every listener will hear you description). Their brains have been kept so busy that, by the time you’ve finished the last figure, they might have forgotten what the previous results were, or even why you needed to do the study in the first place. Give a summary. Articulate your conclusions. Nobody will complain about hearing the main points one more time however you feel they are obvious or redundant.

3. Don’t sell easily.

Some meetings have traditional oral presentations, poster sessions, as well as multiple brief oral presentations called Poster Teasers. It’s not a widely adopted form yet, but I’m observing a trend. Some presenters will come to the front of the room and say, we are studying a tough topic, and guess what? Bang! Here is our finding. Impressed? Yes, but then we don’t need to come to your poster anymore. The best one I’ve heard did this, “Here are two types of stimuli. They look similar, right? But our data shows they can cause very different responses. Want to know what the difference is? Come to Poster Number X.”

In novel writing, this is called suspense. Whenever you feel you can’t put a book down (or walk away from a poster), I can tell you that suspense is working. Whether you are giving a public speech, a poster, or writing a paper, it never hurts to introduce a little bit of suspense at the beginning. It doesn’t need to be a long-lived myth. For example, in one of the examples above, I said if we know A > B in advance, we can keep it in mind while studying the figures. There is no suspense there. If you, the presenter, have the opportunity of talking people through your poster, you should take the advantage. Tell them that some evidence points at A>B, and other seems to support the opposite. The reality is? (Don’t give it easily.) Let’s find out together. As you describe the figures along, you might see your listeners nodding involuntarily as they approach the correct answer.

4. Speak with confidence.

One advice we sometimes receive is to know your audience briefly before you start, so that you can decide how much background to be provided. Overall, it’s a sound strategy, but don’t do it excessively. Some presenters would constantly pause and ask, “How much do you know about this concept? Do I need to explain it? Are you familiar with this? Am I too fast/slow/general/concrete?” Being overly interactive breaks the flow of your story and is, frankly, quite annoying. It also gives a false impression that you are, in general, not a resolute person. This is your poster. You decide what or what not to be included. If people are confused, they can ask.

Due to the nature of posters, many studies are presented before they are ready to be peer-reviewed, if not prematurely. This should be considered as an advantage, because suggestions are most helpful during an early phase of a study. Yet we frequently hear apologies among the presentation, “We believe our finding is real, but as you can see (or we wouldn’t have mentioned it), so far we only have a small sample size.” Then they would go on and on venting on the difficulty in training their animals or recording from a particular cell type. Well, what do you expect the audience to say? If you are uncomfortable with your sample size, simply pointing it out is enough. We don't weigh a poster similarly as we do with a published paper.  If a year later you still don’t have enough data to reach statistical significance, it’s your own problem.

5. The dreaded networking.

Scientists tend to think they are horrible at networking. This is a misconception because networking isn’t something that only occurs at cocktail parties. When you present science, you are also presenting yourself. And for scientists, relationships originating from common research interests are more pleasant and sustainable than other forms of acquaintance. Just like in any type of social network, people cherish their interactions with those who are superior to or simply more experienced than themselves. Nothing wrong with that. However, when giving a poster to a group of people, treating your customers equally should be considered as a golden doctrine.

I’ve noticed that some researchers, especially juniors, ironically, only enjoy presenting to experts in their fields, and consider it a waste of time to explain basic facts to “outsiders”, probably with the notion that the latter may never cite their papers or review their grants. My experience is, sometimes you get the most useful feedback from people who you think have no idea about your topic. If you narrow your vision, you are going to narrow your path. Besides, think about what happens ten or fifteen years later. Those big names are going to retire, and that humble graduate student standing in front of you may well become your peer. Friend or enemy, you are planting the seed. People usually have good memories on those kinds of things.

When I took my new job, my chair handed me a box of name cards. I thought I’d never use any of them. I’m not a business woman. But it can be convenient when you ask the presenter to send you an electronic copy. With the formality of a card, it also assures people that you aren’t popping up from nowhere. Same thing with clothing. We are scientists. Scientists are allowed to dress casually. That’s how Hollywood pictures us as “science nerds”, right? But it never hurts to look nice. It’s a sign that you value what you are doing and conveys a sense of self-respect. At least be tidy. At least don’t “stand out” from an already casually-dressed group. If you don’t think you deserve a $20 haircut, nor will anyone else.

Always thank the presenter for spending the time, and praise the work unless you truly dislike it. Don’t be afraid that doing so may briefly interrupt his conversation with another audience. I’ve never seen a compliment being resented. If the presenter likes your feedback and shows an interest in your research, introduce yourself. Shake hands. If the presenter happens to be a student in a lab you are familiar with, and if there aren’t other people waiting to talk to the student, don’t just listen and go. Ask about the lab, the PI, previous lab members. Ask the student how long he has been there. What the near-future plan is. Show that you care. It takes only a minute, and don’t do this only when the student is also a Chinese. Behave like a family, and before long you’ll have a family.

At a conference, there are also occasions away from formal presentations. What do you say when people ask about your research? Our college recently organized a Collaboration Forum, sort of like a “group dating”. They invited people from outside the college and randomly assigned groups of five or six researchers, hoping to create “chemistry”. I doubt it has resulted in any real relationship, but I enjoyed observing people’s presentation skills. After one guy mentioned that he studies Information, which could’ve been a boring topic, he immediately dived into lively examples, such as how CEOs know they’ve collected enough trial feedback before releasing a new product. I bet I’ll remember his research ten years from now.

Another guy studies computer science. He deals with big data, has countless collaborators and student projects, but other than that I know nothing. When it’s too general, it’s meaningless. Consider how novelists create characters that long live in the reader’s head. “Begin with an individual, and before you know it you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find you have created - nothing.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald) Yes, all of your projects are important. To you. For others, they aren’t. Never as interesting as what they themselves do. So pick one highlight when people ask about your research, and if you can imprint it in their heads, call it a success.

All right, enough rambling. At least enough for the moment. If you have just returned from a wonderful presentation, keep the passion alive and finish the experiment or write up the paper. They say, “Don’t let the grass grow under your feet!”

“Or on your head,” I added.

Quotes on Writing

• So this is always the key: you have to write the book you love, the book that's alive in your heart. That's the one you have to write. ~ Lurleen McDaniel
• Write what you want to read. The person you know best in this world is you. Listen to yourself. If you are excited by what you are writing, you have a much better chance of putting that excitement over to a reader. ~ Robin McKinley
• Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly. ~ Hugh Macleod
• It's about what YOU are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth. ~ Hugh Macleod
• Nobody can tell you if what you're doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is. ~ Hugh Macleod

ROSETTA is Ready!

"Rosetta is a robotic space probe built and launched by the European Space Agency to perform a detailed study of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko with both an orbiter and lander module." -Wikipedia

Well, that's their Rosetta, which will land on the comet on Nov 12, 2014. Here is mine.

Amazon link (free from Nov 6 to Nov 10):

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P9RTS5M

First Chapter:

Chapter 1   The Comet

“Rose, I need to talk to you.” Leo appeared at the door with an open folder.

“I’m leaving for the day.” Rose logged out the computer and briefly organized her desk. It was related to the donation, she knew.

“About the Rosetta project …” Leo looked down at his folder and frowned. He had a sophisticated look when he frowned—she admitted—with neatly parted and moussed hair, well-kept figure, and the slick sport jacket that must have cost him a fortune. Yet whenever she saw him, the name of a four-limb reptile would pop up in her head, lizard.

“We’ve given them seventy-five million over the past few years. Seventy-five million! My lady. And I just saw you added more last week. Why, why do we have to do this?”

“You asked the wrong person.” Rose checked her handbag one more time to make sure the envelope was still there before she left her desk. She was a tall woman with springy curls and dark blue eyes—eyes in which men had claimed to see moons and stars, while she enjoyed staring back at them from the same level. “It’s from our Nebular Budget. Part of Nick’s will.”

“Nick, my dear Nick. Yeah, I know it’s for science, but we are a profit company, and …” He paused as an ambiguous smile crept up his face. “I’ve heard rumors …”

“Whatever rumor you’ve heard, I can tell you it’s true.” Having been a widow for five years, Rose had learned that the most effective way to stop gossip was to acknowledge it immediately.

Though, this time the rumor was true, indeed.

She made no stop when she walked past him. It was five thirty, but through the frosted glass door ahead she could still make out people’s moving silhouettes in the hallway. Most of her employees would not leave before she did.

“Come on, Rose!” Leo followed her. “They’ll be there tonight. It’ll be over soon—thank God! We don’t have to do this anymore, do we?”

“Speaking of rumors …” Rose turned back abruptly, her eyes narrowing. “Are you the one who’s been proposing to spend some of the money on a movie instead? A movie that’s been rated NC-17?”

He looked away. “I thought it might be worth …”

“I don’t want my company to be known that way. What’s that woman’s name? The so-called plastic queen?”

“All right, all right.” Leo retreated with his hands up. “Fine, Rose. It’s your company, your money, your call!”

She resumed walking, not wanting to be with that guy—lizard!—for another second. Were he not Nick’s cousin she would have gotten rid of him long ago.

Before she opened the door to the hallway, her secretary caught her up.

“Ms. Melandroinno, Mr. Perez is wondering if you would like to have dinner with him tonight.”

“I’m going to the Dipper. You knew that.”

November twelfth. That was the day she had to be there.

“Yes, but Mr. Perez said he would be truly disappointed if you turn down his invitation.”

“Then wish him better luck next time.”

* * *

“That’s it!” Matt exclaimed. “Right there! Look at its coma. It’s so pretty!”

Devin smiled, resting in his chair and watching the first-timer pacing in front of a window in the bridge of Rosetta. Whenever he saw Matt, he was reminded of his honeymoon in Italy twenty-seven years ago. All those young men full of passion, with their neck-length dark hair, polished manners, and an aura of readiness to break into a dragon-guarded castle at any minute for the rescue of his captive princess.

It’s good to be young—Devin continued his thought—when you have all the potentials to discover new worlds and have your name printed in textbooks. Devin was no longer young, despite the agility of his mind and the sturdiness of his body. It had more to do with the heart.

“I’ll go get dressed!” Matt vanished from Devin’s view while his words were still wafting in the air.

Devin walked over to where Matt had been standing and peered outside. Right now they were halfway in between Earth’s and Mars’s orbits. Since the ship and Comet 195F were flying toward each other, the distance was quickly diminishing. The plan was to skirt to the back of the comet and approach it from behind.

And then what? Devin sighed, rubbing his short straight hair and subconsciously wondering when it would all turn gray. Or fall out. Since his last fruitless mission to Planet Mullos 17b five years ago, there was no question that he had begun fading out from NASA’s hot missions, like those projects related to the exploitation of extraterritorial resources. And from the public’s eyes. This wasn’t the first time for mankind to step onto a comet, and they’d just had the famous Colossus last year and the Fireball four years ago. Devin and his colleagues were sent here mainly because Comet 195F had a period of twenty-five hundred years, and people didn’t want to “miss anything”.  With a longitudinal dimension of only 2.2 km, Comet 195F had nothing exciting and did not even deserve a name.

But that was okay. Devin left the bridge and headed to his cabin. Now that the girls were gone for college, he didn’t mind spending more time at home with Tracy.

* * *

An hour later he and Matt were waiting at the front hatch of the ship, fully dressed in their spacesuits. In between them stood the lander, which more or less resembled a large metal suitcase with extra handles here and there. Devin bent over and checked the tethers connecting their spacesuits to the lander.

“Do we have to be chained all the time?” Matt said through the intercom, pointing at the maneuvering units attached to their backs. Once they landed they had been advised not to detach the tethers over the entire duration of the mission, because of the comet’s low escape velocity.

“Even if we escape,” Matt continued, “we shall be able to fly back.”

“I think it’s better to stick to the rules,” Devin replied. During his thirty years’ career as an astronomer, he had learned enough lessons from colleagues who had failed to take proper caution.

After the inner hatch had been lifted, they rolled the lander over to the exit. Connor checked with them briefly through the intercom to make sure that everything was all right. Then the inner hatch was resealed at their back before the outer hatch slid to the side.

“Now I’m going to turn off the gravity,” said Connor. “Are you guys ready?”

“Yes,” Devin and Matt said, each holding one side of the lander.

As soon as the artificial gravity disappeared, Devin pushed a button on the handle, and the lander began running forward at a preset speed. The comet was right ahead of them, rotating slowly as it headed in the direction of the sun. It wasn’t Devin’s first time to travel in outer space this way, but after a while, he began feeling disoriented. He almost suggested to Matt that they went back to the ship and took a break. Maybe drinking some water would help. But sensing how anxious the young man was to proceed and trying not to appear weak in front of a junior colleague, he decided to press on. Fortunately the condition quickly went away.

As they drew near, Devin knew they had also started orbiting the comet, based on the way the star-field background was shifting, even though he could hardly recognize his body movement. In the absence of gravity, humans’ perception of motion was strange and unreliable, to say the least.

It’ll be over soon, he said to himself, wishing that the earlier disorientation was not a sign of age.

* * *

“Hmm, it’s more regular than I had expected.” Matt said as they were carried along by the lander. “Almost symmetrical.”

Staring at the comet nucleus ahead, Devin agreed. He hadn’t been to one before, but he’d seen pictures. They may resemble gigantic rocks on Earth, but their surfaces were usually rougher because of the lack of weathering and erosion in outer space, except for the solar wind they had to put up with every time they came close to the sun. The surface of the comet in front of them, however, was quite smooth. Overall, it looked like a filled basin attached with a long handle. And as an astronomer, Devin couldn’t help thinking of …

“I’d like to name it Dipper,” said Matt.

Exactly! It reminded Devin of the Big Dipper.

As they got closer to the comet, Devin sensed a readjustment of their speed and direction. With a sensor embedded in its front, the lander constantly modified its motion according to the current surface image and its location relative to the comet. Eventually it would “lock” to the exact spot they had chosen for landing and gradually pull up the distance.

For a while, the two had nothing to do but hold on to the handles of the lander. Then without warning, the dizziness struck Devin back, and the blood in his legs seemed to have been drained off. To distract himself from fretting about his physical condition, Devin tried to start a conversation.

“So why did you choose this project, Matt? I heard they initially asked you to join the Phoebe No. 6.”

In fact, if Devin had met him earlier, he would have talked him into taking the mining project. As a beginner, one was always advised to get in the most promising line of missions.

 “I came here because of you,” Matt said, turning slightly to look at Devin. “You’re my role model, Devin. I’ve always wanted to learn from you.”

Really? Devin made no reply. He wondered if he deserved the young man’s worship. Nevertheless, Matt’s words seemed to have abated his sickness.

“Ur, Devin, do you mind if I ask …” Matt suddenly sounded hesitant. “About that rumor, is … is it true?”

It took Devin a while to figure out what he was talking about. “Of course not.”

People were hopeless, Devin reflected, or maybe they were just jealous. Soon after the project had taken off, they began receiving donations from a biotech company. And he remembered going out to dinner with the donor once—normally Kenton was the one who dealt with those kinds of things, but he had a family emergency that night. Anyway, Devin couldn’t even recall what she looked like. Rose McLand … Melandroinno. She was a tall woman; that was all he remembered. Over the years that company had been quite generous to their project. Almost loyal. That was indeed a little offbeat, considering the obscurity of this mission. But that was it. Nothing like what his colleagues had speculated.

“Devin,” Connor’s voice sounded in the intercom. “You’ll be landing in about five minutes.”

Devin pushed another button on the handle. An “umbrella” stuck out of the front of the lander and expanded into four legs. Two minutes later, they were only a dozen yards away from the surface. A harpoon shot out from the lander and plunged into the surface. As the cable connecting the harpoon and the lander shortened, Devil felt as if he were a kite being gradually pulled back to the ground. Soon he and Matt were resting on the surface of the comet, while the lander beside them wasted no time drilling and sampling.

“Can you imagine we are sitting on something that hasn’t been touched for billions of years?” Matt’s voice quivered.

Devin smiled. He remembered being as excited as Matt was when he first stepped onto an extraterritorial land. After all, how many humans had the opportunity to do that? Space tourism was getting popular, but still not affordable to most people. As he aged, however, he had started appreciating his daily life more than his job. Yes, we may not see that comet again for the rest of our life, but so may not with the friend to whom we said farewell on an ordinary day.

“We have the surface temperature,” he heard Matt saying. The lander had a touch panel to display the results as soon as they became available.  “Seventy-nine Fahrenheit.”

They were on the dark side of the comet. Devin reckoned the temperature must have exceeded a hundred Fahrenheit on the sunlit side.

He rose up and wandered on the surface, unable to go too far due to the restraint of the tether. He walked past a few rocky areas and arrived at a soil-like spot. Stooping, he fumbled inside a pocket on his pants and fetched out a portable drill. The lander must be doing a better job than he was, but he’d like to get a feel of it. That was why they sent humans here, wasn’t it?

At first, the drill bored into the soil easily. Then he sensed some abnormal vibrations and switched it off. Slowly, he pulled out the drill and examined it. Something was coiling around the drill bit. He turned on his headlight and carefully unraveled it. The cord-like thing had a textured skin. Pliable, but sturdy. Kind of like a tree root …

“We got the soil composition!” Matt’s announcement almost startled him.

Devin tucked the thing in another pocket and turned to the direction of Matt, who was bending over the lander and reading the panel.

“Silicates, carbonates, water, metal sulfides …” Matt stopped abruptly, his posture freezing.

Devin swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure about the exact items on the rest of the list, but he had a feeling that Matt’s assertion about them visiting a place that hadn’t been touched for billions of years was incorrect.

“Amino acids and proteins.”

From Ambrose Bierce’s Dictionary

Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.

Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.

又见炊烟，旧梦不须记， 情雪 （翻唱：Fiona Rawsontile)

Coming Out in November

When the European Rosetta sends its lander to Comet 67P, my Rosetta will send HUMANs to Comet 195F!

All in November!

最近翻唱的几首歌曲

1） 都是夜归人 （国语）

2） 难道（国语）

3）夜机（粤语）

4)  爱与痛的边缘（粤语）

5）夜半小夜曲（粤语）

6）你的眼神（国语）

On Being a PI (Book Review---At the Helm)

(This is a book review I recently published on a forum.)

“Scientists are notorious for being unable to say ‘No!’ and are very poor managers of their (limited) time. This leads progressively to an over-burdened, over-worked, harassed and distracted individual who has no time for lab or family.” (Caveman 2000)

1. The missing training with a well-trained scientist

So far I have recruited four undergrads who volunteered to work for 8-10 hours per week in my presently-empty lab. During interviews I told them, “You set your own schedule, but once you’ve decided on it, please try to stick to it. You’re welcome to bring homework to the lab if there isn’t much to do.” Having flexible hours is one of the biggest advantages of working in academia. The reason for me to be strict came from past experience working in my advisors’ labs. That is, for unpaid undergrads, except a few highly motivated, once they are used to not showing up, you’ll see them less and less often over time.

This is one example of what new PIs do---they make decisions and establish styles based on previous observations of what have or have not worked for their advisors. With extensive training in almost every aspect of academia, they have never been trained on how to be a PI. Although replicating the labs they have worked in can be an effective strategy in some situations, sooner or later they will run into challenges, because they are in a new institution, with different student qualities, and most importantly, what have been proven to be golden doctrines in an established lab with an experienced PI may fail a starter.

This book focuses on all kinds of issues that are likely to be encountered in the early stage of a PI’s career. I especially appreciate the fact that the opinions are not from a single source. For most of the topics that are covered, the author, Kathy Barker, has interviewed dozens of successful PIs throughout the country. Some of the arguments are contradictory to one another, because there isn’t supposed to be a universal answer. Given your skills, personality, and the environment, you choose your style and come up with your own solutions. As mentioned above, beginners tend to imagine there is an ideal way of surviving every situation, and they often resort to memories of their mentors. With the many options listed in the book, you may gain more freedom when designing your career, and the author tries not to make judgments on your preferences. There are questions with no answers, just to bring up your attention on the issues. Even if you have no idea what you would do facing those situations, learning the questions in advance can be a great help. “There are occasions when you have to rush, but more than often, composure is what people want the most from their leader.” (The Starlight Fortress)

Note that this isn’t a book that is meant to please you, i.e., to make you feel good about yourself (nor is the career as a PI in general, to be fair). It will point out mistakes you have made, and may even forecast the regrets you are going to have later according to others’ experience. You will read about issues you wish you’d never run into in your entire career, but bear in mind that the intention of the book is to be preventive; living through an imagined crisis is, after all, easier than handling it in real life. In the worst case when things do happen, it can be comforting to know that you aren’t the sole individual in the world who is suffering from an imprudent hire, or crying over the permanent loss of experimental data.

2. The guts to say “No”

Recently someone on this forum complained about being frequently occupied with various administrative duties and left with only scattered time slots for research. We really can’t afford that to happen! A PI should never grant others the right to take charge of his schedule. I work at an institution where everyone uses Google Calendar that allows colleagues or students to see one another’s schedules (they know you’ll be busy at a certain time without knowing the exact details). It’s easy for people to assume that, for any blank period on your calendar, you’ll be available at that time and they can just pop up or send you a Calendar Invitation to schedule something.  A colleague once shared his schedule with me, and I saw that he even put down “12 pm, lunch” on every single day! Poor guy, I thought.

A request can be difficult to decline if we indeed have an open slot, not one with which we forgot to note an event. However, having nothing scheduled does not mean you are obligated to fulfill someone’s request. Especially if that chunk of time has been intended for you to read papers or write grants or visit your lab, it’s actually not an open time slot and you should say no. Find another time, and if the meeting doesn’t demand much thinking, find a time with which you can’t do intellectual things anyway. If we can’t control our own time, how are we going to be the masters of our labs?

Speaking of time management, we all have some ideas about priorities, about sticking to our plans, but why do we still struggle for more time to do what we really want to do? The book categorizes a PI’s common activities into four categories.

1) Urgent and important, such as grant deadlines, personal (e.g., health) or professional (e.g., tenure) crises, equipment problems (e.g., broken machines).

2) Not urgent but important, such as reading papers, lab meetings, thinking and planning.

3) Urgent but not important, such as certain phone calls or mails, administrative meetings or duties.

4) Not urgent and not important, which can include a lot of things.

We admit that urgent and important things (Cat-A, grants, etc) have to be dealt with seriously in a timely manner. We don’t ignore urgent but unimportant duties (Cat-C, meetings, etc.), however reluctant or resentful we might be in carrying out the tasks. What matters is that, with only that many hours every day, plans that are important but time insensitive (Cat-B, reading papers, etc.) often get pushed aside. Sometimes Cat-B can even yield to Cat-D, such as sitting on meaningless committees or listening to gossips, mainly because we are unable to say no (another reason may be that Cat-B doesn’t pay off immediately). You could argue that we aren’t machines; what the fun of life is if we aren’t allowed to relax. That’s absolutely true when you have the leisure to dissipate, but not when little time is left for research.

We have probably all met a few businessmen-typed PIs. If you ask them about their current schedule, they have meetings every day, and two incoming grant deadlines.  Check back two months later, the same thing. This may work for a senior PI whose lab has several postdocs or scientists, each being responsible for his own project, attending conferences and keeping up with literature. In other words, the PI has well-trained people who are doing the Cat-B for him, and all he needs to do is pay for the publications. For a new PI with at most a technician and a few students who count on him to write programs and papers for them, this can be suicidal. Under the current funding situation, we are often advised to “keep sending proposals out”. Well, yes and no. Why should any organization fund you if you no longer advance in science?

The book especially urges beginner PIs to spend adequate time thinking and planning. It can be tormenting not to have publishable data for the first year or two, and the quickest way to circumvent the problem is continue on your previous projects---“to tie up loose ends, to bolster earlier conclusions with still more evidence, and to explore side issues” (Vermeij 1997). Different opinions are offered here. Some think that having a productive project as soon as possible is all that matters; you can always explore new ideas later. Others caution on this strategy because once you have something going, you are less willing to take a risk in a new area that may involve investments in new equipment and endless trial and error.

Whichever path you adopt, be sure to think carefully and don’t rush into actions. I once came across a quote related to novel writing. “One of the problems we have as writers is we don't take ourselves seriously while writing; being serious is setting aside a time and saying if it comes, good; if it doesn’t come, good, I’ll just sit here.” (Maya Angelou) So instead of putting down “12 pm, lunch” on my calendar, I have reserved a whole afternoon every week marked with “Cat-B”. I’ll go all the way to protect that sacred time, and if on a particular day, for some reason, I couldn’t read papers or write computer programs or create research plans, I’ll just sit there.

Note that sometimes we have to say no to offers that appear to be attractive but do not essentially agree with our best interest. After I had recruited the undergrads, I was called for a meeting with the Director of the Graduate Program in our college. He encouraged me to take a couple of Master’s students by promising full tuition coverage. Had I not read the book, I might have considered it. At the moment I have enough to worry about my own future. The last thing I want is the responsibility of another person’s future. I don’t feel too bad to engage the undergrads in cleaning and shelving, but I would be sleep-deprived knowing that, in a year or two, the Master’s students will need something for their theses. On this forum we have also read stories about the regrets a PI can have by taking Ph.D. students that have been offered “for free”. After spending a tremendous amount of time and energy in training a student, a PI may end up in a fruitless mentorship. The frustration to both the PI and the student can be painful, although it may bring excitement to other lab members as they speculate “Is he going to fire her?”

All right, there is a fine line between selling a book and pirating its content, and I should probably stop here. If I have to give a negative comment, I’d say that the arrangement of the topics can be improved. For example, the section on Working with a Secretary / Administrative Assistant appears quite early in the book. Maybe it’s just my field, but I’ve never met a PI who has the luxury of hiring a full-time secretary to work solely for him. When fifty pages later I saw the prudence one needs to have in evaluating candidates, I had already finished my hiring process.

A final message. It’s not rare to come across negative or passive attitudes from PIs on this forum, evidenced by complaints of losing interests in research, or statements that being a PI is just another job to pay the bills. There can be various reasons for it to happen (some are listed in the book), but I hope people realize that it is to their own benefit to stay motivated with their projects, because research is more productive if we genuinely care about it, and life is more gratifying when we feel proud of what we do (this applies to any type of job). Off topic here, over the years I’ve noticed a trend of “devalulization” (I know this isn’t a real word) among certain Chinese, here and in China, towards arts, science, and faith. Does it look smart or cool if a person appears to care nothing about spiritual things, I wonder. But it’s a personal choice. To me, being a PI is about enjoying the fun of science despite funding pressures, setting realistic goals without forgoing your wildest dreams, hanging on a little longer after others have all quit.

About being yourself and yourself alone.