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I don’t know if it’s my curious nature, my scientific training, or just that I’m easily sidetracked while looking for journal articles, but I always seem to find myself drawn to bizarre, interesting, or bizarrely interesting research that’s taking place around this wonderful world of ours. This latest article I’ve come across is no different, but this time, for a much more serious reason. And the solution to this problem was so simple it blew my mind.
This is more of an informative post than anything. As graduate students, I would assume that most of us are life long learners and pride ourselves in our capacity to understand new things. Unfortunately for us, our education has been expensive. Even as graduate students, we somehow find $3500 a term disappearing from our bank accounts for tuition. Luckily enough for future generations, I think there may be a trend towards cheaper (or free), less formal education with the evolution of Web 2.0. For example, I recently came across a resource on the web, offering an entire Webinar on Technology Transfer for free. For those of you also interested in this career (or if you’re just interested in intellectual property and/or business for that matter) I would recommend checking it out. You can find it here: http://bit.ly/axxIMa
I hope that I have been able to help some people discover a few more potential careers out there that don’t involve lab work. I’m going to discuss a few more that I have come across today and probably leave it up to you to find out the rest. I’m just here to wet your appetite, ultimately you’ll need to discover your own path – I can only help push you in the right direction. Technical Writer These individuals design, write and edit product manuals, handbooks or application notes. There isn’t as much creativity involved here as some people may like, but this career will challenge you to communicate effectively in writing. If the protocol for doing something isn’t clear, it is the problem of the technical writer. For more information about this type of job check out this link. http://bit.ly/aBlb3D
How do you examine others’ faces? Do you find it easy, difficult, or downright impossible to gauge the emotions of others in your daily interactions? You might be surprised to learn that your ability to perform these tasks is largely influenced by the culture that you grew up in, according to new research conducted by Caroline Blais at the Université de Montréal. In two recent articles (PLoS One 3(8): e3022 (2008), Current Biology 19: 1543 (2009)), Blais argues that Caucasians and Asians do not examine faces in the same way, and thus will often gather differing emotional information from those they are interacting with. Specifically, Eastern cultures have a lower tendency to recognize negative facial expressions than Western cultures do. Why is that? And how is it even possible to quantify such a thing? Welcome back! My last blog just scratched the surface of the many career options available to graduate students in the department of Medical Biophysics (or most graduate departments for that matter). So I’m going to discuss with you three more options today. Someone mentioned they’d be interested in hearing what a radiation physicist does, so I’ll try my best to answer that question. Medical Radiation Physicist (Radiation Oncology Physics) These advanced degree holders (typically a Ph.D. in medical physics) work in the hospital setting. Medical Radiation Physicists are involved in all aspects of radiation therapy. Their day to day responsibilities include ensuring that radiation emitting devices within the hospital are functioning properly, monitoring emissions and recommending safe dosages and treatment parameters. Radiation Physicists verify that the hospital is following established guidelines for the use of radiation. This career will expose individuals to radiation equipment design and enable them to research particular medical devices in order to make policy recommendations based on the findings. Becoming a Radiation Physicist unfortunately requires more training. The program lasts 2 years and includes both a classroom portion (typically in the first year) and a clinical rotation portion (typically in the second year). Does this sound interesting? Here are some links to get you started. The Toronto Residency Program in Radiation Oncology Physics http://bit.ly/aXOtTD
A lot of my early blogs will probably be related to this topic – that’s because it has been on my mind a lot lately (shocking I know). I hope to be able to share with you some of what I have learned during my current career search. My main focus will be on jobs outside of the academic realm because that’s where my own interests lie. Although, I am not opposed to the idea of doing a little research regarding the academic job search if it is what some of you want (leave me a message or a comment). Graduate students are extremely busy doing experiments, attending conferences or helping their supervisor by getting those last few experiments completed for a grant proposal due tomorrow. Typically thinking about our eventual career is not really a priority and we put reflecting about it off. I would be the first person to admit to doing this but I think it is a mistake. Looking back, the sooner you address this question the better (unless you are 100% that academia is for that is). So I guess the first pertinent question to ask would be, “What kind of careers are there for life scientist/physicist outside academia?” Let me give you a few examples:
Soybeans. We’ve all seen it growing in the fields of Ontario, but soy-rich foods have traditionally been fairly absent from the Western diet. Asian diets, on the other hand, have typically been rich in soy products in the past, and it was always anecdotally noted that women from Asian countries suffered from much milder cases of menopause. The perceived reason behind this? Soy-based foods are rich in isoflavones, a major group of phytoestrogens. But can the addition of soy-rich foods to a woman’s diet help their health in any other important ways? According to Dr. Wei Lu’s research group from the Institute of Preventive Medicine in Shanghai, China, they most certainly can. Breast cancer recurrence and mortality, it would seem, are inversely associated with soy intake. In research that was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (302: 2437 – 2443), Dr. Lu and his colleagues undertook a massive population-based cohort study that followed 5042 female breast cancer survivors in China for a period of 4 years after their diagnosis. The numbers were quite staggering: the 4-year mortality rates were 10.3% versus 7.4% for women in the lowest versus the highest quartiles of soy protein intake, respectively. Similarly, the 4-year recurrence rates were 11.2% versus 8.0% for the same groups. These are not trivial differences. |
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