Monthly Archives: May 2009

50!

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I received notification today that the most recent article from my lab has been accepted by BioScience. I am feeling a bit sentimental about it because this marks my 50th peer-reviewed paper. It’s also something new for me, a study on grad student conceptions of evolution. I have now officially been all over the map — experimental, comparative, synthetic, reviews, methods, and educational. Thanks to all my colleagues and students who have been co-authors to date!

In which Dr. Eisen gets scooped.

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Jonathan Eisen, of Tree of Life, has an excellent feature called the “Overselling Genomics Award”. Here, I am gonna scoop him and hand out something similar, at least based on the heading.

A genome may reduce your carbon footprint

This somewhat rhetorical title must excite many scientists, particularly those with ongoing research on biomass, feedstock development, and lignocellulosic breakdown/fermention. With the costs of sequencing rapidly decreasing, and with the infrastructure now developed for almost anyone with access to a computer to cheaply store, access, and analyze sequence information, emphasis will increasingly be placed on ways to apply genome data to real world problems such as reducing dependency on fossil fuel. For the efficient production of bioenergy, this may be accomplished through development of improved feedstocks. This article will consider more closely the impact of very cheap sequence data (approximately 1USD per genome) on improvement of switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.), a perennial grass well suited to biomass production.

Wow, $1 per genome? That would be sweet!

Evolver Zone.

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Readers of this blog will soon notice some changes. This is because the Evolver Zone site has now been launched, and Genomicron will be fit within it. For now, it will remain a separate blog at this same location, but the look will be updated shortly. Meanwhile, have a look at the resource of multimedia and information about software, databases, journals, and web links at Evolver Zone (www.evolverzone.com).

Agaporomorphus colberti.

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Quentin Wheeler and Kelly Miller have named a beetle after faux-blowhard Stephen Colbert.

Agaporomorphus colberti

This might be pretty cool, if not for the following issues:

1) This was done explicitly to get publicity.
2) It has already been done. (A spider was named after Colbert last year).
3) Apparently without intending to be ironic, Wheeler has also named species after Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.

I absolutely support the need to gain attention for the importance of taxonomy. I also think the tradition of naming species in honour of individuals is amusing. Heck, I’m still waiting to have something with my name attached to it. But I’m not sure that naming species after people willy nilly just because they might bring attention is very dignified. On the other hand, maybe Wheeler thinks Colbert is right wing (apparently his illusion is effective among conservatives) such that there’s no inconsistency there.

Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships.

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So, the results of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships have been released. A big congratulations to this year’s 166 recipients, who represent promising new researchers. However, it cannot be pointed out enough how poorly this program meshes with funding for other Canadian students and scientists. $50,000 for 3 years is what they get, which is 2.5x more than regular NSERC scholarship winners, $10,000 more than postdocs get, and nearly twice the average grant for people actually starting a lab. Remember, too, that this is twice what they gave one of our leading statisticians this time.

What could have been funded with the $25 million instead?

  • Regular PhD scholarships for 3 years: 395, or
  • Discovery Grants at the average of $34K for 5 years: 146

[Update]
Furthermore, note the following:

  • The scholarships can be awarded to non-Canadians. The plan, I presume, is to draw top students to Canada. How likely is it that they’ll stay when the find out that there is now a 65% chance that they will get an NSERC grant, and that it will average about $34,000 to run an entire lab?
  • The intent is to award 500 of these per year. That’s $25 million per year on scholarship students, folks. Meanwhile, 35% of existing researchers — who already have PhDs, completed postdoctoral research, landed a job at a Canadian university, and have built a lab whose primary functions include training students — get nothing, while the rest receive $15,000 less on average than single scholarship students.
  • These scholarships represent a direct trade-off between funding the MSc program for 2 years instead of 1 year. In other words, an already very competitive scholarship program just became decidedly elitist — better to give a few people an outrageous sum than to fund more of our other top students in the country.
  • These scholarships further exacerbate the inequalities in research support among universities in Canada. Not surprisingly, the largest schools got lots, mid-sized schools got some, and most of the smaller schools got none.

I have yet to meet a colleague who thinks this is a good idea.