Fourth-graders will get to meet six or so of us real-life researchers and ask us questions. After that, we will purify DNA from bananas, recover it, and take it home in a test-tube to show family and friends.
Interested grade-school teachers in the Stockholm area are welcome to apply for their class. The program is held during a week in spring and fall.
This course called Applied Biomedical Communication and Professional Development has been running since 2022. This is a popular course — 47 masters students this year. It covers scientific writing, oral presentation skills, and career planning.
In my workshop this week, the students learn to apply linguistic strategies for improved readability and flow in scientific manuscripts. Specifically, I cover:
This course is part of their program for Service Technicians in the Life Sciences.
Academic scientific writing and technical writing share many similarities, but there are some requirements specific to writing a technical report. These apply regardless of whether the report is in Swedish or English. My lecture will present “The Top Ten Tips for Writing a Technical Report” and then we will practice by writing SOPs (standard operating procedures) and other forms of instructions.
3 April 2025
Today I was at Karolinska Institutet again, this time as one of six volunteers for Berättarministeriet. We assisted a class of sixth graders in isolating DNA from a banana. This is an outreach program, held all over Sweden, that gives elementary school students an opportunity to meet real-life scientists, ask us questions, and do some real lab work. I hope it can inspire some of them to pursue a future career in science. Read more about the program here.
This week I am teaching at Karolinska in the Applied Biomedical Communication and Professional Development course. This is a popular course — 60 masters students again this year. It covers scientific writing, oral presentation skills, and career planning.
In my workshop this week, the students learn to apply linguistic strategies for improved readability and flow in scientific manuscripts. Specifically, I cover:
I will be officially retiring at the end of this year. To take proper farewell of my colleagues after 44 years at the lab bench, we will gather for a vegetarian Lebanese meze at Byblos.
Why two formats of the Third Edition? PDF books have many advantages. They can be downloaded right away and easily stored on the computer. They are searchable to some extent, although nothing replaces a well-curated index. (Yes, the third edition has such an index.)
However, research shows that deep reading is done best with printed text. The publisher International University Line offers both formats of the book so that readers can choose the one that suits them best. I hope this makes the book as accessible as possible.
The pdf is available directly from the publisher. The print version can be bought on amazon. While I am no fan of amazon, their platform is the most expedient way for the book to reach an international readership.
If writing a journal article is a like running a 10K race, editing a book is the equivalent of an ultra-marathon.
Or so it felt.
The idea to update the second edition occurred to me in November, 2019. I contacted the publisher of the first two editions and he agreed to produce a third one. So, with his enthusiasm backing me up, I started after Christmas that year.
Then came the pandemic. I almost wanted to call this book the “Journal of a Plague Year”. However that title was already taken, by Daniel Defoe in 1772.
But now, almost two years and one (still ongoing) pandemic later, the third edition is available as an e-book. A softcover version is underway.
I thank my wonderful colleagues who contributed chapters, the publisher, and the many coworkers who assisted in fact-checking, indexing, and photography.
And finally, I thank my grandson Alex, now 7, for being quiet hours on end. Due to the quarantine, he had to put up with me working from home on this book for months.
In vivo crystals—crystals that grow inside cell organelles or cytoplasm—are a fascinating natural phenomenon and perhaps more common than we realize. But how do we know they are there unless we have a way to look for them? Read my commentary in this month’s Journal of Applied Crystallography on the method that Lahey-Rudolph et al. have developed to screen for crystals in cellulo.
Inhibition of translation termination by small molecules targeting ribosomal release factors can be downloaded here.