Cell need Xmas dinner too you know

 Is it a Christmas tree?  Is it a pile of sick from eating too many festive sweets?  No it's a myelinated culture showing green axons and red myelin sheaths!

So I’ve been working quite hard over Christmas. In November/ December I was concentrating on improving our cell culture methods and consistency. The draw back to this was that I now have tons of cells to come in and feed over the xmas/New Year break. Luckily they didn’t require the 5 course belly-busting food extravaganza, washed down with various beverages that I was treated to.

It’s actually been quite good coming in to work when its quiet and has allowed me to catch up on lots of little jobs that have been needing done for a while.

So where am I at with my studies? Well the myelinating cultures that I blogged about way back in June are now finally behaving themselves (touch wood), the immunocytochemistry has been optimised and the image quantification has been developed (almost). So hopefully in the new year I’ll be able to start collecting some solid data to characterise the model and its response to oxygen and glucose deprivation. It feels like its taken a long time to get to this point but hopefully everything will fall into place shortly and with other projects in the planning stage, along with several public engagement things going on, its going to be a busy 2012.

New Years Resolution: Work Harder, Play Harder.

P.S. I’m doing bright club again on Wednesday 4th January at the Stand Comedy store. Tickets here shortly http://www.thestand.co.uk/

Premiere

 Here is me on stage!  Enjoy!

The one time you actually want people to laugh at your reasearch...

Standing up to talk about your research in front of 100 people can be a nerve wracking experience. But doing stand-up comedy about your research in front of 100 people not only wracks your nerves, it shreds them and almost makes you throw up.

Bright Club Edinburgh encourages researchers to take on this formidable challenge safe in the knowledge that once you have conquered it, the normal conference presentation will be a walk in the park. I took on this challenge at their November show and what an amazing, fun time I had! The feelings coming off stage are not just relief that you survived, but delight that people laughed (a lot) and pride that you entertained a whole room for 8 minutes and maybe even taught them something about your work! I’ll post the video here shortly.

Bright Club are always looking for researchers to join up and I would encourage everyone to give it a go. It’s a very unique experience, let’s face it, how many people can say they have done stand-up at a proper comedy gig. Why not come along to the next gig in December to get an idea of what its all about, more details will be on there blog and facebook nearer the time. As the name suggests it is full of interesting and funny people from all research disciplines, and it’s a great chance to network with other folk doing public engagement but be warned; we will ply you with alcohol and persuade you to perform at the next event!

Maybe by my next post I’ll be doing some real work to tell you about…

Happy Birthday PhD!

So on 1st October I will have officially been doing my PhD for a year and to mark this momentous occasion last week I had my First Year Review. This is a meeting with both your supervisors and your thesis chairperson. You give a short presentation of your work so far and what you are planning to do next. The thesis chairperson then has a chance to ask you about the project and then, along with your supervisors, will decide whether you are competent of continuing or whether you should drop out of the course. Although this sounds very daunting hopefully you're supervisor will be honest enough to intervene before a whole year has passed if they think you are struggling. Luckily I get on well with my supervisors and see them almost daily, however, if this wasn't the case the First Year Review also gives you a chance to speak in confidence with your thesis chair about any problems you are having with your supervisors. For me the biggest thing gained from the meeting was to have another professor examine your work closely, critically evaluate it and give advice. My lab is quite small and isolated so I don't get the chance to discuss work with other academics often. So following on from my earlier post to new students and Vickys here I would strongly encourage you to talk openly about your research with other students, post docs and professors. Having input from other people can really help you form and finalise ideas about your work!

What do you call a cow with two legs? Lean Beef

This is the view from my lab window right now. Yes... that is a massive upside down purple cow and a medieval beer garden right outside the student union. The festival is well under way and the atmosphere in Edinburgh is awesome. In case you don't know the "festival" is actually a collection of music, theatre, art and comedy festivals throughout the month of August. Venues pop up all over the city with shows being put on in pubs, clubs, purple cows, the top of Arthurs Seat and even your own living room! So far I've seen about 7 shows, and most were brilliant. I'm yet to see Brain Surgery Live but it's on my list for this week. I'll let you know how that goes soon!

Tips for new postgrads

Shortly lots of new postgrads will be joining our ranks in the College of Med and Vet med. It’s pretty scary because it means I’ve been in my PhD for nearly a year, and although I feel like I’ve achieved a lot in a year, I know I have lots more to do in the next 2 and a half! That would be my first piece of advice for any new postgrad – appreciate how much you will learn, improve and grow in a short period of time. It’s easy to look forward and think about how much work you still have to do but if you keep thinking back to 3 months, 6 months or a year ago you can hopefully see what progress you have made. Other tips that were given to me by a postgrad just finishing in my lab were;
1. Save £30 of your stipend a month. If you run out of time at the end of your PhD you can take an extra month without worrying about being skint! If you do finish you’ve got a nice little lump sum to celebrate with!
2. Write as you go. You don’t want to be writing 3 years worth of work up in 3 months at the end of your PhD.
3. Have a hobby. You will likely be spending a lot of time in the lab but if you don’t force yourself to get out and do other things you could end up sleeping in your lab coat.
One other that I would add is to think about your future career. Try and get a wide range of lab techniques under your belt so that you have versatility. And do some Public Engagement! It’s fun, its good for your CV and its increasingly important for scientists to work with the public and the media.

Harry Potter and the Myelinating Cultures

So I’ve been pretty busy this week with a real mixture of things!

The Edinburgh International Film Festival is currently happening and the main centre of activity is the Uni’s own student union building Teviot. On Tuesday I was running a workshop for kids which teaches them about their brain, how it controls emotions and how it changes during adolescence. We used clips from the first Harry Potter film to demonstrate different emotions and what “magic spells” or neurotransmitters were causing that emotion. It was a great fun way to have a break from the labs and the kids loved it too. Although Lion King 3D is on tomorrow so I’m not sure they would pick my workshop over that!

This was followed by a lab visit to Glasgow on Wednesday. Our lab is always looking for ways to improve and learn new techniques and so we got in touch with a group at Glasgow Uni to show us how to prepare a new type of cell culture. It was good to see what other labs are like compared to your own and everyone . there was really nice. Usually neurones are grown as a homogeneous population in culture but this technique allows you to grow neurones and oligodendrocytes together so that some of the axons become myelinated. This gives a more accurate model of the brain in cell culture hopefully it will be very useful in the course of my PhD studies.

Lots of exciting stuff going on in July as well, graduations start next week and preparations for the festival so I will keep you updated with that in due course.

Callum