Welcome to the Out 'n' About section of the website.
Hi, this section of the website is going through a bit of a renovation! I've decided that I would love to use this page to write about my escapades seeing interesting wildlife, photography, or environmental activities. So stay tuned for more informal, casual articles chatting about stunning nature reserves, cool creatures, paddle boarding, river cleans, and anything else I get up to that I consider interesting. I hope you enjoy the change and the articles that come with it.
Virtual Conferences: A Review
Virtual quizzes, meetings, social events, and conferences, home-based video calls have been a symbol of how the covid pandemic has changed all aspects of our lives. In some cases, this can be a good change, it reduces the need for office spaces which helps people with accessibility difficulties, as well as being environmentally favourable by minimising transportation and the utilities required to run a building. However, some things are certainly lost when conducted over video call, social events are not the same and people celebrating graduations or PhD vivas do not get the same feeling of accomplishment that comes with being able to share that with others. As we begin to ease the measurements in place to combat the pandemic, it will be interesting to see what stays online and what goes back to being in person.
In this context, I recently attended my first proper academic conference, and it was conducted virtually. Here, I hope to discuss the pros and cons of the experience of a virtual conference and whether I think they will become more prevalent or if there will be a push to get them back in person.
In this context, I recently attended my first proper academic conference, and it was conducted virtually. Here, I hope to discuss the pros and cons of the experience of a virtual conference and whether I think they will become more prevalent or if there will be a push to get them back in person.
Science isn’t an exact science
Anyone who follows me on Instagram may have noticed that last week I uploaded a picture of a western blot. Now, trying to get a western blot to work has been a bit of a saga for me, my lab mates and family are very aware of how frustrating it has been. It's a technique that I had never done before and is not routinely done by anyone in my lab, so it has been a bit of a trial and error process. I’ve spoken to people, attended an online course, read protocols, and so on but I was never getting a good result. I purchased a new batch of my primary antibody, played around with incubation times, different extraction methods, and different membranes, but still nothing. Recently, I decided to give the process a go using a different antibody, not the one most relevant to my research, but just to check to see if I could get something. And then…low and behold... I got a nice looking blot with clean, sharp bands in all the right places! It really was a cracking feeling and provided a real confidence boost as it implied that some of the issues were with the antibody and not my technique. I then tried another blot using the original antibody and, whilst not particularly clean and sharp, (although this is likely due to reusing a stored primary antibody solution), I got bands in the correct places for the first time. Now, this didn’t make too much sense, I am sure that I did not do anything noticeably differently and to be honest, was expecting no bands and would then contact the supplier to discuss a potential issue with that antibody batch.
