Don't forget the transferable skills - the communication skills, the ability to pick the relevant pieces of information from a large mass of data and to present it succinctly, the networking skills, and the time management skills, as well as the ability to work on your own initiative. These, I think, could be just as important as the actual subject-relevant knowledge you pick up.

Ann, you took the words right out of my mouth. A good, non-lab science, example of this would be someone looking at population trends. If they're using datasets based on census results, is it wrong that they themselves didn't organise the national census? No, of course not.

As long as they're doing something novel, perhaps in terms of modelling or statistical analysis, then they're definitely making a contribution to the field in terms of producing something new, and surely that's what the point of the PhD is...

I've posted a few times about graph/stats programmes here before. After a period of me trying to persuade my sup to purchase Graphpad Prism for the lab, she's told me that she thinks it's a bit too expensive - to be fair, I agree with her. I hate SPSS, and Excel is no good, so I'm left with SigmaPlot, which we have for free.

My question is - does anyone know of any good books or websites about using SigmaPlot, or have anything to share from their experiences of using it? The SigmaPlot pdf manual is 900 pages long, and rather scary for someone who's never used it before, especially for someone who doesn't want to use the majority of its features...

Thanks :)

I'd go for singular, unless the tests were done on several simulatneously, in which case plural, and past.

The only one I have difficulty with is active or passive. I've always used the passive voice, and always been told to do so, but read many good papers using the active voice "We administered xxx to rats", or "We tested whether the response to xxxxx".

Yes, The Samaritans are very good, and offer phone call, face to face, email, and postal help. Also, Mind, SaneLine, and other similar organisations all offer help. There is help out there...

My comments are based purely on personal experience, both in trying to get help for my own problems, and also in having worked for the NHS for two years.

Daily Mail? Possibly, although I feel the Mail would give short shrift to "therapy"...

This may sound cynical, but I genuinely believe the NHS doesn't care about this. Go to the doctor, and all he'll do is ask if you're about to top yourself, and then throw some tablets at you. Perhaps he'll put you on a 12-24 month waiting list for a short course of therapy (no more even if you need it), but unless you have cancer (and are in the right postal area), need IVF, or have consciously damaged yourself through drinking too much (look at A&E on most evenings - full of feckless wasters who have no self-control), smoking, or taking drugs, you can go whistle in the wind. Still, I suppose it's better than being admitted to a filthy ward being cleaned by people who don't care. managed by cretins, and staffed by consultants who are paid far too much.

Nice work if you can get it.

Ok, I'm glad to hear all this. I don't feel quite so bad now! As you all say, it depends very much on your cells, availability of equipment, and so on. I always feel like I should be spending 8 hours a day at the bench even though, even on a really hectic day, I probably only do a total of 6 hours of actual bench work. It's just made a lot longer by waiting for things to happen and so on.

Matt = a little less stressed and guilty now :)

Loads. Despite all the cuts, science has been relatively protected, and cancer biology is very well funded. As for which unis - cancer biology is often so closely linked to fundamental cell biology that pretty much any university with a cell biology/molecular biology department will have some cancer-related research going on, as will any uni with a medical school. It's competitive though, because more people are choosing academia as the jobs dry up...

I've just got in to work, sat down, and realised that I don't have much to do today. This set me wondering - is this the same for most PhD students in my situation? Some days, I'm in the lab for 7-8 hours doing things, but on other days, I'll have nothing to do except feed some cells. Of course, it's not helped by the fact that there aren't any cells to do anything with at the moment because we're only just restarting after Christmas, but do you ever get days where you have very little to do?

In medical science, I think the US is generally thought of as being the best, closely followed by the UK and Germany, with the order of those two varying depending on who you talk to. Of course, plenty of other countries, such as Netherlands, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Austria, Finland, Norway, and so on, have top unis, but perhaps a lower number. However, for density of top unis, I think the UK is hard to beat, and I would never have considered leaving the UK for a PhD.

On the other hand, when you look at what's on offer post-PhD, I will definitely look at going abroad for a period if I decide to stay in academia, which, considering I want a job which pays well and has some degree of stability, I doubt I'll do. I think a PhD from a UK university is going to be well though of around the world.

I have a newspaper article that I want to cite, mainly as an example of something bad. I have a link to the page I retrieved it from, and a date, and also the date of publication in the newspaper itself. I also have the author's name.

How should I cite this in a lit review/references section, and how should I enter it in EndNote?

Many thanks!

:-)

There seems to be two main reasons for risk assessment - to protect the user/doer/researcher etc, and to protect, in law, the organisation/university in case of claim by the researcher or other organisations. A lot of risk assessments are sensible, where they involve working with substances, machinery, or processes which are clearly hazardous, such as ionising radiation, toxins, liquid nitrogen, etc. However, some risk assessments (I've actually seen one for "pouring water", although not at my current place, are plain stupid and exist just to justify some petty-minded individual. I think on the whole, however, they're pretty sensible.

In terms of writing them, we generally have just one per procedure, and sign any which are relevant to us. It seems to work pretty well.

I'm pretty sure they won't, although not certain. It will apply to only a small proportion of people though, as sponsored students won't really see any increase, if there is one.

I saw this too, and have read the paper - it's actually very very good. Obviously not as detailed as if they were fully fledged postdocs or whatever, but on basic principles it's superb, and an excellent read. The children, their teachers, and everyone else involved should be proud, and the neuroscientist at UCL who helped them should get some kind of award.