Heather Doran

Last week I was in sunny (actually, it rained) California for the Experimental Biology 2012 conference.  I was blogging on behalf of the  American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB ). I saw lots of interesting science, met a Nobel Laureate, had a good chat with other science communicators and shared a few copies of Au Science Magazine too. Here’s a summary of what I got up to and some links, if you would like to read more! All the posts were on the Au Science Magazine website EB2012 Has arrived ! The Art of Science Communication Storify: The Anatomy of Communication – Interacting with different audiences hosted by the American Anatomy Association Storify: APS Science Blogging Session with Jason Goldman, Dr Isis, Pascale Lane and Danielle Lee Visualising Complex Biology: From the Creating Networks session Monkeys, Beach Balls and Twinkies: Teaching enzyme kinetics using analogies Fighting Drug Resistant Tuberculosis Effectively Communicating Your Scien

If you ever meet me in person I can, sometimes, sound like a broken record. I am somewhat.. persistent.. in my efforts to get every single PhD student I meet on, and using, Twitter. Surprisingly, although my generation is labelled as being, 'social networkers' the vast majority of people I know and meet are not on Twitter. Facebook yes. Twitter no. Twitter is for weirdos and celebrity stalkers. Oh my friends, how much you are missing out. Do you know that Professors are on Twitter? PIs are on Twitter? Post-docs are ADVERTISED and links made for post docs in the future are made through Twitter. (Sometimes I get a *gasp* at this stage, especially if the person I am talking to is a final year PhD student). Next question, so how do you DO it? How do you USE it? What happens in Twitter world? My response.. Twitter is what ever you want to make it, and it is up to you how you use it. You could use it to talk to the other three people in your lab and your mum. If you wanted to.

Answer this question for me - How many times a week do you consume chocolate? Can you (a) remember how much chocolate you have eaten in the last 7 days? Was it the same amount as last week? (b) Do you know you ate 5 Mars bars, a Twix and a bar of Cadbury's while watching Titanic 3D last night, feel that might be a little excessive and lie to me? If you are skinny would you happily say 'Oh I eat about 6 bars a week'? If you know you are not so skinny would you lie about your consumption? What do you think other people would say in answer to this question? Would you trust their answers? This is the exact question that was asked to participants in a study looking at the relationship of chocolate consumption and BMI. Did they take into account any of those scenarios or questions I just asked? No. A well timed (just before Easter) news story appeared EVERYWHERE this week, claiming that Chocolate 'may help keep people slim' (headline from the BBC ). T

Can you explain an aspect of our world in motion in 30 seconds? My friend and fellow PhDer Gina Maffey can.. If you enjoy the video, please 'like' it on youtube to help support her in the  British Science Assiciation's Prove It! competition. It was filmed on Aberdeen beach. You can find more about Gina here  and she is on twitter @ginazoo and is also part of the Au Science Magazine team :-) This competition was set for National Science and Engineering week and is open for anyone to submit an entry!

Beauty is big business. You may snigger at the promises in cosmetic adverts but in reality the majority of cosmetic manufacturers take science very seriously. Procter and Gamble, the biggest consumer goods company in the world, invest $2bn yearly into research and development of consumer goods. L’Oréal, the biggest cosmetics company in the world, employ over 3,000 researchers around the globe and have a grant programme specifically designed to support female scientists. Science is at the heart of these companies, and it shows in their financial reports. They encourage and invest in scientists and research in the hope of making the next great breakthrough. The biggest areas of growth for the cosmetics industry are developing markets, male cosmetics and the ever-ageing world population. The L’Oreal annual report from 2010 estimates that the global cosmetics market is worth 144 billion Euros and of that, 32% is skincare. If these manufacturers could crack the science and inven

I was lucky enough to attend the Scottish University Life Sciences Alliance Young Scientists' Event in Edinburgh on the 19th and 20th of March. There really were some excellent and useful talks, from presentation skills (including how to use pauses and silence correctly) to possible new therapies for inherited skin diseases. On the second day there was a debate about open access publishing. I tweeted the debate and have collated them using storify. [&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;<span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: yellow; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">lt</span>;a <span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color

Struggling to decide what to do after you finish your PhD? Try out my handy, 'nofuss-science-career-decider'. Start the process by clicking the link and saying, 'HELLO'  http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=83872e8cfe34cd1d