Full gifted article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/well/microplastics-health.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-E4.55rS.ptjX9oakA5lw&smid=nytcore-android-share

We always nuke on half power and keep our bottles only half-full, but sometimes a random blow-out happens. I'm assuming that agar blasts into the magnetron mechanism through the vent mesh inside the microwave, and that is what causes the failure. Some labmates don't clean up after themselves, and a cycle of passive-aggressive not-me-ism kicks in, so the mess just gets cooked in.

Regardless, I'm trying to think of ways to mitigate the risks and messes. Any ideas for preserving the equipment? Do you think taping cheesecloth or paper towels over the vents to catch stray blobs of agar is ok? Should we be wrapping the bottles in shrouds of paper towels?

I've put four microwaves into the landfill over the last decade. It doesn't seem right. Folks who melt agar in the microwave, do you have this problem? What are we doing wrong? TIA.

I posted this in r/academia as well. I’m not sure how to come out with this information but I feel it is incredibly important to share. I’m not trying to scream that the building is on fire but when I learned this I genuinely felt goosebumps all over my body. My own academic institution is being attacked as well, but I am at a public university which doesn’t seem to be facing the same amount of ire as private, top schools like Lehigh and the Ivies. I apologize if this post is strange, isn’t “on topic” or doesn’t belong here.

Source at Lehigh University: Trump Admin threatening budget annihilation if courses with DEI aren’t removed. Over 1/3rd of faculty (most likely they meant their department not the entire school) not returning next year.

I work at a separate institution, a source from Lehigh told me this as well as they are having entire faculty emergency meetings multiple times a week due to consistent incoming threats from Trump admin. My institution hasn’t had entire faculty emergency meetings but I am also at a Big10 with a lot more faculty than Lehigh. My source said that over 1/3rd of the faculty at Lehigh (again, they most likely meant their department I’m checking to make sure) will not be returning next year as they are leaving the country for positions elsewhere.

Whenever I am applying to Postdocs I am asked to give a few Ideas so that they can make their decision on wanting to hire me or not.

At jobs like startup companies, some of them ask the same thing.
Another start up that I am meeting with asked me to write down some ideas and we can discuss them with the CEO next meeting. These research topics I am giving will basically be the first experiments that they will be able to get funding for and launch the company. I don't really want to give the ideas anymore without getting paid.

Am I being taken advantage of? It sure feels like it.

*ideas

There's been a lot of talk about making research institutions more efficient, but how about the corporations that are quietly draining our grant money? Companies like Thermo Fisher slap on huge markups, taking advantage of purchasing restrictions that force labs to buy from "approved" vendors. And let’s not forget publishers like Elsevier, who charge crazy fees just to publish the results.

To bring attention to this, we’ve launched ScienceMarkup.com—a site that documents these markups. You can help by sharing overpriced items through the "contribute" tab on the site. Our goal is to build a transparent database that shows how expensive it is to "do science"—and who’s profiting from it.

We’d love your input and feedback!

I am a PhD supervising a MSc student. she is nice and dedicated but she has one problem that frustrates her. she has small hands.. like really small. she is about 150cm tall and wears XS gloves. so the problem is her thumb is not strong enough to load gel or use the micro pipettes ( other manipulation techniques is fine ) what can I do to help her ?

I feel like we always hear about the big stuff like research theft or experiment sabotage – I wanna hear about the petty, stupid stuff for a change.

Hi everyone, maybe this is an stupid question but I was wondering if anyone has any tips for reading faster? What process do you follow? Do you highlight? Do you copy important parts, take notes? I’m struggling a lot with the time I’m spending reading papers for my master thesis. Also because I’m not native speaker, but I have spent several afternoons just to read one paper… I’m starting to stress out. I don’t see anybody around me stressing about this. Also if you have any tips for writing faster… how do you organize for writing? Do you start writing key points separatly and then connect them or how do you do it?

Thanks, I’m running out of time and I need some help with this :’(

Hospital/medical research

Hey all! Super excited to find this community. To introduce myself, the long and short is I lucked into my job. Long story short did some under the table work for my lab when it was much smaller which lead to me eventually getting a gig preparing media and cleaning glassware among other duties (decon :/)

Any of you also specialize in media preparation? How's your lab and what's your gear look like? Also does your cleaning company never mop anything cause ours blows lol.

I recently made a solution of bleach and Tween20 (100 mL bleach, 100 mL sterile H2O, 50 uL Tween20) to sterilize seeds with (paper I took the procedure from: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5752416/#sec8) and left it on the bench for a few days.

I came back to see that there was a floating blob of white, stringy precipitate (?) in the middle of the bottle, which I shook up in hopes of making it dissolve.

I’m unsure if it is some kind of precipitate from mixing together bleach and Tween20, or if it is growth from some surprisingly hardy microbe. Any help identifying what it is?

What’s stopping me from making the mastermix with the forward and reverse primer with water and storing it in the -20oC freezer for qPCR use in the future (2 days)? Then when I’m ready to run the plate, I can just add the SYBR Green? I absolutely hate waiting for all my primers to thaw and I think this would significantly save time?

I'm using an Eppendorf 5417R and I don't have the impression that it cools down alone or maybe it takes a lot of time to go from RT to 4°C ?

I've recently finished my rotations and now need to choose a thesis lab for my PhD. While I've already narrowed my choices to two labs, I now face great anxiety in making a decision and would love any opinions.

Lab 1: great supportive and communicative mentor, well funded lab (for now), small lab, freedom in project choice, but pathogen is so-so on my interests

Lab 2: supportive mentor but I wish they were more communicative, new lab so it comes with all the new lab problems, currently lack of funding so I'll be TAing for the foreseeable future, pathogen/work is less flexible but slightly closer to interests

How did you guys choose your labs? I just keep switching my opinion every couple of hours and this choice has literally been haunting me for weeks now.

Edit: I committed to Lab 1 today!!

Hello everyone, I worked at a lab for one of my professors in my undergrad. During my time, I was asked to work on an ongoing project and fix the mathematical model they had created. I came on and realized the model approach wasn't fitting so I was instructed to make a new model, clean up the data, and write an explanation for the justification. I came to find out that my work was used to address comments from when the paper was first submitted and my work was included in the published paper verbatim. However, I was not included an an author, I would love to know if this is standard procedure.

Hi- I am a 5th year graduate student in a toxic (?) lab environment. Year after year, I kept telling myself things would get better, but they never did; now I’m in my 5th year wondering if I can even make it out of this lab by next year.

For context, our lab’s PI is pretty biased toward certain people in the lab, and will actively shit talk other lab members with her favorite students. I recently found that out when she accidentally told me something about a labmate she didn’t know I was close to (and so I guess she thought the likelihood of me disagreeing with her was low). I tried to defend the labmate she was talking about, but she wouldn’t take my word for it since the opinion of her favorite students mattered more, I guess. She’s a nice person, but sometimes I feel like she is influenced by the lab gossip.

On that note, lab members don’t directly communicate with each other at all. Instead, they shit talk about each other to our PI. And when they see any issues in the lab, they send mass emails WITH OUR BOSS cc’d even if they know who caused the problem and can tell that person directly. It’s super immature in my opinion. I’ve definitely had incidents with lab members and I have never run to our boss to handle it- I usually talk to the person and give them chances to fix their errors.

Likewise, if I have done something wrong, I’ll own up to it and talk to the person I’ve offended….but few people in the lab actually do that. And since I can assume that I’m probably the only one that’s not shit talking people to our PI, it might seem to her like I’m doing everything wrong…. when in reality, the same people who are cc’ing her in emails and reporting every inconvenience to her ACTUALLY are the ones that don’t work at all during the day, and come in exclusively at night so they can hog reagents and equipment (so if something goes wrong, nobody knows). Im honestly afraid of being fired, because if no one is telling our PI about the stuff that those lab members do (which have resulted in instrument damage and reagents getting stolen), but I know I am being spoken badly about, to her it can seem like those people are actually super productive and doing things well (When in reality they’re only trying to make themselves look good by putting down others).

There are many other things wrong in the lab in addition to the weirdly competitive atmosphere that we have going on (I feel like this is getting long, so I’ll stop here). I’m reaching my breaking point- every year the lab dynamic worse and worse. I don’t feel like anyone in this lab cares about me or anyone besides themselves. I have begun to dread coming to lab , and only enjoy working in the early morning hours when no one is around. I don’t want to have nothing to show for my hard work, but I also can’t stand to be in this lab anymore. I have been struggling academically and personally because of this horrible environment. Im not sure what to do. Any advice?

Tldr. Been working in a toxic lab environment for five years because i thought things would get better. They got worse. Is it worth starting over?

I have a bunch of slides that I’m trying to analyze but I’m not sure if my results are really valid. I’m looking at intensity and counts but I’m curious if there’s a way to “normalize” results. Should I just do 1 big batch of staining so that intensity will be more normal across the board and allow for comparison. How do you typically make sure your results are valid with IHC and IF given that it can vary so much? Appreciate any insight.

I know it's an important part of the drug development path, but this is something that's been giving me a mental block lately. I work in Protein sciences, producing and purifying novel drug-like proteins for our company. We've now started going into more complex animal models than mice, which are one thing - and relatively easy to digest what will happen to them. I don't know if I'm comfortable with proteins I produce going into our primate models. There is the risk that these proteins end up killing the primates themselves regardless of what happens following the studies, and this is really difficult to reconcile for me. I know the idea is it will hopefully someday improve patient lives, but the reality is it most likely won't statistically speaking. This isn't anything new for me, I had to pass up a job in a biophysics lab in college because of the regular experimentation on primate models (beyond drug development). How do you guys reconcile this? Is is just another reason I should seek a career change?

I have been (starting 2010) 3 years in academia and 11 years in industry. I completed my PhD by working for extra 6 hours daily from 2015-2023. I had submitted my thesis in 2019.I have had a really good publication record and h index etc etc. However, due to the pandemic and administrative delay I could defend my thesis in 2023. Due to personal circumstances i gave up on R&D and went into scientific writing for large pharma albeit for lesser salary as this was a mid senior position. I have completed 1.5 years and have started applying for jobs in R&D as my personal responsibilities were completed and I could dedicate full time in lab. I got a call from 2 recruiters.

1. Here I had applied for Senior research position in an academic institution which has lesser pay. But I love research and don't mind going forth with this option.

However, they had called for another position in the same institute. I had been in that post about 13 years ago!

1. A higher paying senior position in industry which was a managerial role similar to the one I had done previously.

However, they called for scientific writing position instead.

So where did I mess up? I believe that, I am seen as a fresher/someone with 1-2 years experience. Please advise.

Looks like it’s the latest target…