Around the web

The early embryology of the chick
Coffee and Sci(ence) features the 90-year-old book “The Early Embryology of the Chick” by Bradley Patten. The book is now out of copyright, and you can find the whole thing online at the Internet Archive.

“This book on the development of the chick has been written for those who are beginning the study of embryology and has accordingly been kept as brief and as uncomplicated as possible. Nevertheless it is assumed that the beginner in embryology will not be without a certain back-ground of zoological knowledge and training. He may reasonably be expected to he familiar with some of the aspects of evolution and heredity, with the recapitulation theory, the cell theory, the nature of the various types of tissues, and the more general phases of the morphology of vertebrates. “ – Bradley Patten, from the introduction to “The Early Embryology of the Chick” (1920)

Interview with Sir John Gurdon
After that trip back in time to the 1920s, let’s jump forward almost a century, to December 2010, when the Wellcome Trust interviewed Sir John Gurdon.

“Among the clutter of John Gurdon’s brightly lit Cambridge office sits a picture frame, displaying a small scrap of browning paper from an early school report. It reads: “I believe he has ideas about becoming a scientist…this is quite ridiculous…it would be a sheer waste of time, both on his part and of those who have to teach him.”
Professor Sir John Gurdon is now a knight of the realm, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a former Governor of the Wellcome Trust and the scientist who kickstarted the field of cloning. ” – From the Wellcome Trust interview

The Lab
The Lab is a “choose your own adventure”-style game from the Office of Research Integrity, in which you pretend to be one of four characters (grad student, postdoc, PI, or research integrity officer) and try to make the right decisions to prevent the lab from being shut down after a case of research misconduct.
It’s effectively a movie, of which you only see the scenes you choose. The Lab is extremely well done and fun to play, and the acting is far better than most educational videos, but wait until the end of the day, or your lunch break, to play, because it takes quite a while.
I played as the PI, and made a crucial mistake. Whoops! This is why I don’t have my own lab… But the game is forgiving, and let me go back to that point to see what would have happened if I made another choice. If only real life worked that way!

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