In 2007, I started on my first independent position in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at Queen Mary University of London. Two years later Sir Nicholas Montagu was appointed Chairman of Council and Simon Gaskell was appointed Principal of the University. They formulated a strategic plan with the explicit aim to rank QMUL in the UK’s top-ten list according to the Government’s Research Excellence Framework assessment.
Author: fanismis
I was born in Canada, grew up in Greece, where I studied Biology. My Ph.D. was at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, in conjuction with the University of Guelph; I worked on reactive oxygen species within cells of the little Drosophila fly. I then moved to its handling of iron at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda Maryland; added copper, zinc, manganese and molybdenum during my first independent position at Queen Mary University of London; Presently my metal biology lab at the CINVESTAV del IPN in Mexico City is extending to the study of phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, magnesium, sodium & potasium thanks to the generosity of the Conacyt that enabled us with an inductive coupled plasma optic emmission spectrometer :)
Preparing for the big day
REF probably means little or nothing to scientists around the world, unless they work in Britain. This is the final week, prior to the preliminary announcements of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) “assessment outcomes”, which “will inform the selective allocation of research funding” and “provide benchmarking information and establish reputational yardsticks“. Are you REFable or a REFugee? asks THE editor John Gill. He would probably classify me to the latter category 🙂 Yet, Lord Stern of Brent, President of the British Academy and Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society have raised questions:
Has what was designed as an instrument of quality assessment become an institution that risks stifling the excellence it was intended to foster?
How Professors are treated at Imperial College
This is the title of an e-mail by Stefan Grimm sent on 21 October 2014 – less than 19 minutes before midnight.
The full email is published by David Colquhoun’s Improbable Science “as a public service”:
Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm
Stefan Grimm, RIP
Moonlighting proteins. “The idea of one gene—one protein—one function has become too simple because increasing numbers of proteins are found to have two or more different functions.” [Constance J. Jeffery, 1999, Trends in Biochemical Sciences]
Dos Mujeres
¡Vivos los llevaron!
¡Vivos los queremos!
Mexico. This cry is being heard loud.
They took them away alive!
We want them back alive!
May this contribution be part of the growing movement, here, calling for protection of the value of human life through justice:
In search of purpose in a purposeless world
While attending the European Neurofly meeting last month and visiting my good friend Gogo at the University of Herakleion, my eyes fell on the following title printed in a poster
The title of this book captivated me. It could also read “in search of meaning in a meaningless world”.
De elaborados libros y palabras – Περί περίτεχνων βιβλίων και λέξεων
El domingo pasado se publico en el Confabulario del Universal este poema de José Manuel Recillas dedicado para Huberto Batis; quise entenderlo y por eso trato a traducirlo en mi idioma materno con la esperanza de no dañarlo.
Για περίτεχνα βιβλία και λέξεις,
———————-ανώνυμες νύχτες λαβυρίνθων,
το γράψιμο της μοίρας σ’ ενα σύννεφο
που αποκρύβει τον καθρέφτη που αλλοιώς ονομάζουμε φεγγάρι· (more…)
A Physicist’s dream
A moment to share, as an outsider observer to a warm celebration of a Polish contributor to the exact sciences with a working base shared between Mexico City and Warsaw during the past 50 years:
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis
I first heard about the “zombie fungus” from Robin Maytum when we were working together at Queen Mary. The story captivated my imagination: The fungus infects an ant, eats up most of its interiors, leaving intact a few key neurons and muscles. Once its feast is done, the fungus can still control the ant’s locomotion, which then moves on to a leaf from where the fungus can best spread out its spores.
If you are the ant, you are unlikely to hold Ophiocordyceps unilateralis high in your esteem, even more to befriend it. Robin was the first cell within the infected ant I encountered. Other tissues were quite unprepared for the infection and so our university (the ant) was overtaken by those fungus-like managers. I have not stopped telling that story ever since.
A few reminders of what Restruction is all about.
Restruction is “dESTRUCTION by means of a Restructuring exercise”.
fanismissirlis 