A take-home message for today - bullseye

"The curse of this age of microspecialization and proliferation of 'omics' is to separate the ridiculome from the relevantome."

                                                                                                 George Johnson: The Cancer Chronicles

Off-peak time

Working between Christmas and New Year is not typical here. Certainly, if your cell lines have to be maintained you don't have many options... One can enter the building but there is no heating (ie you can leave the enzyme on the bench...hehe). The canteen is not really busy in these days...

Xmas

For the first time, we spent the Christmas time without our parents and relatives. I managed to buy a 2.5-metre tree in wind storm and carry home on a double decker. (Fortunately, the driver allowed me to get on the bus...I was quite a bit worried.) It proved to be too high but the skylight helped (see below)...The English decorate the trees on December 1st so there is plenty of time to enjoy it. Giving Christmas cards personally, not sending via post, is another interesting tradition around here. (huge business for card factories I'm sure...) 

Our tree

Drinking coffee wearing mummy's jumper

Taking a bath (this unusual way is not an everyday practice of course :-) ) 

Cards from my colleagues

Due to extreme weather, water started dripping from the ceiling at 1am on Christmas Eve. perfect timing.

 Our neighbour's Christmas cards.

Christmas present.

Data analysis

If next-generation sequencing is included in your project, the bioinformatic data processing and analysis are absolutely the bottleneck of the study. Especially, if you are a wet-lab scientist and need to collaborate with a bioinformatician. After waiting 3 months for my data, I can start the analysis today. It's like looking for needles in a haystack and discriminate them from tones of junk.

Pubs

Pubs are very popular places in England and have major role in creating and maintaining social networks. Dissimilar to many Eastern European countries where these units are full of alcoholics and teenagers, in this country, the Pubs are visited by families and people from the middle and upper classes as well. Important scientific questions and future plans are also often discussed in these lovely places. Last week, I wanted to talk to one of my new colleagues and we couldn't find an empty room within the building so went to this pub below (called Anglesea Arms) and spent more than an hour standing at the bar (which is also very typical here; people like standing instead of sitting).

  

Halloween

More work

As it frequently happens, I need to complete my study with some more experiments. This is always a pain since researchers want to publish their results as soon as possible but I'm sure it is worth doing to get a better paper. At the end of the day, this is only what matters. I hope the new stuff won't take too long time and the technique is quite interesting. You can learn more about it here.

MS drafted

Oxford

Oxford is the home of the oldest university in the English-speaking World. There are a lot of historical buildings in the downtown. It was a great time popping over there. The Marie Curie Fellowship provides among others a lot of opportunities to visit such very nice places.

High Street 

Bodleian Library 

Street view 

Museum of history of science 

 

Balliol College 

Christ Church College

MS preparation

Now, I have finished the lab work of my first project more or less and am working on the manuscript. This is the final stage of research which is not as easy as it might sound. The text must be very precise and we need to discuss all the results in the light of previously published data. Anyway, I hope we can do it as quickly as possible...

Return from holiday

We spent two weeks in Hungary which was a very nice and relaxing time. We haven't been there since Christmas so the landscape and smells recalled some memorable events from the past. Very special feeling...

Kew Gardens 2

Summer

The summer finally arrived last week. Thirty degrees, sunshine and BBQ :-) We have visited Portsmouth today. This was the first time I've seen the seashore in the UK.

HMS Victory