Every time I hear people ranting about life being unfair, huffing and puffing if things don’t go their way, I recall this stunning visual: “What are the odds”. It estimates our odds of being alive, showing they are just a fraction above zero, or 1 in 102,685,000 if you like math.
Imagine: 1 in 102,685,000. As someone put it, “that probability is the same as if you handed out 2 million dice, each dice with one trillion sides… then rolled those 2 million dice and had them all land on 439,505,270,846.” It seems we are damn good at gambling! At least for once. So, when next time your dumb classmate gets into Harvard and you fail as a valedectorian, please recall this absurdly slim chance of your existance, and take a moment to appreciate this unique gift of luck — to be alive as a concious human being, to share this transient journey we call life with people we love, to get a chance to understand and explore ourselves and the universe around us, to breath air and enjoy warm rays of the morning Sun — all those things we take for granted while being obsessed with the cherry on top. Because, if scientists got it right, our life is highly improbable, and it won’t last for long. Thus, luckily for us, life is tremendously unfair, if you see what I mean.
The Pac-Man rule
Apparently there is an amazingly simple and elegant trick to help people interact with new people at conferences (and other social events). And I am not talking about chutzpah (although this is a great quality to have, at least within reason). What I am talking about is the Pac-Man rule: https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2017/aug/2/pacman-rule-conferences/
Cost-effective lab suppliers
For those who are starting a lab on a lean budget, exploring new directions, or simply looking to invest wiser, there is a handy database of cost-effective lab suppliers: http://www.sciencemadness.org/smwiki/index.php/Lab_suppliers
Integrated bug management
In late 1970s, agriculture encountered a major crisis in pesticide resistance leading to the near-collapse of the cotton industry in several countries. This crisis forced the industry to devise the Integrated Pest Management (IPM), an approach that aims to minimize the risk of pesticide resistance by limiting pesticide use and by trying to manage pests rather than trying to eradicate them. Our recent paper provides a small “stone” for the emerging “building” of a similar approach – adaptive therapy – that aims to improve the way use antimicrobial and anticancer drugs: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/07/10/2003132117
Please check out this wonderful blog post by Maria O’Hanlon discussing our work and this emerging new trend in more sustainable drug application: https://bit.ly/3fs45sr