MyScienceWeek: Plankter? What’s a Plankter?

The Friday confessional of MyScienceWork’s news team: July 21-25, 2014

Lounging about on vacation are you? Hmm? Well, some of us are still at it: MyScienceWork Paris is still churning away! So, while you bask on the beach, we thought we’d give you a look behind the scenes, at the life of our Paris team. Discover how we fill our days, the subjects we enjoyed working on this week, which news particularly struck us--plus, as a special bonus, absolutely free of charge, the singular of “plankton”!!

Lounging about on vacation are you? Hmm? Well, some of us are still at it: MyScienceWork Paris is still churning away! So, while you bask on the beach, we thought we’d give you a look behind the scenes, at the life of our Paris team. Discover how we fill our days, the subjects we enjoyed working on this week, which news particularly struck us--plus, as a special bonus, absolutely free of charge, the singular of “plankton”!

Krill going through an existential crisis

 

Some of the news beyond our walls was not funny at all and, for that reason, deserves mentioning. Let’s get that over with, first:

Colombian Student Faces Prison Charges for Sharing an Academic Article Online

 

In France, we learned that 2013 witnessed a historic drop in the number of positions for researchers teaching at universities. While this data is specific to France, researchers’ job security is no better in many other countries.

Effondrement historique des recrutements d’enseignants-chercheurs : près de 500 postes en moins en 2013

 

Let’s turn now to happier tidings from the world of young PhDs: Did you know Knock Knock Doc is back for the summer? If not, you’ve already missed six episodes, but, at 5 minutes a pop, it’s not too late! In a half hour, you can still get to know these six scientists and follow Arthur’s saga.

 

→ On a side note, my magnificent photo montage of the first six stars of Knock Knock Doc Season 1 appeared in our newsletter this week. Go check it out! If you don’t yet receive our newsletter, the odds are good that if you enter your email address in the box towards the bottom of our front page, cleverly labeled “Newsletter”, a MyScienceWork newsletter will one day be yours!

Box, cleverly labeled “Newsletter”

 

But cutting and pasting six heads together, was not my only achievement this week. Audrey and I started off in translation mode.

We wanted to share with you WAX Science’s look back at the meeting in support of gender equality in science:
WAX was there! The European Gender Summit

And we put Pierre-Sofiane’s question again, this time to the English-speaking world:
Open Data: To Improve Innovation, Do We Need to Share?

--> We were happy to hear that the Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group will include this article in its next newsletter.

 

The very same Pierre-Sofiane Kadri spent an afternoon visiting sunny places around the globe via the MyScienceWork publications search bar. He discovered a world of research on young people and sunburns. Around the world in 80 sunburns, with PSK. (This article is coming soon in English!)
Pourquoi faut-il protéger les jeunes du soleil ?

 

Never one to rest on his laurels, our dear PSK took off to meet with Morgan Meyer of Agro ParisTech for an upcoming article. Not only does Dr. Meyer do cool research - on biohackers, DIY biology and the future of research - but he’s a real, live, native of Luxembourg!

 

Another teaser to whet your open science appetite, this week I put down on paper some lessons learned from Puneet Kishor of Creative Commons about open licenses for science. Stay tuned!

 

And after all that, MyScienceWork Paris’ week was marked by still more highlights:

Our friends at WAX Science sent us some lolcats. There seems to be something brewing over there…

 

 

...After 3 months, PSK managed to connect to the printer. Good things take time.

And just so you know, we print our pages on lavender paper, because we’re that sophisticated.

Lavender papers screams “sophistication”.

 

And I discovered that, all this time, I’ve been treating plankton as a single, basically homogeneous group, with no respect for the individual. I did not even know that a single unit of a whale’s planktonic meal is, indeed, a plankter. I have seen the light.

 

Stay tuned next week for more science, more MSW antics, and a new voice to recap the week!