1. thinking very carefully about what I write
2. not knowing exactly who is reading this
3. making it appropriate for anyone who might stumble onto this page – whether that be my mother (not techie enough), my employer (a possibility), or a nosey journalist who might infer something about where I work

I started this blog as a way to understand where my career was going and to make sure I was actively making positive choices (as opposed to accidentally becoming a scientist because I didn’t have other options). For 2010 I want to bring the main themes back round to taking control of one’s career and exploring how to carve out the career you want, rather than letting yourself be  stuck in a job. It’s as much a learning tool as anything else and any thoughts I have are borne only out of experience and innumerable life-changing choices.

From the start, there is a difference in how you look at your work. The word career implies something you have worked hard to achieve, something which has direction and where you can be successful; something to be proud of. A job, on the other hand, seems very static and – at least in my experience – is something you do every day, take home a paycheck and not think too much about, except to wonder whether you will have to do it for the rest of your life.

Perhaps there is a reason you rarely hear about a ‘dead-end career’. First resolution of 2010: stop using the word job.

When I interviewed for my current role, I asked about career progression and the interviewer said ‘there are a lot of opportunities at this firm and you can move up fast, but really, your career is what you make of it.’

Valuable advice. In all honesty, that was something I hadn’t appreciated before. My education was achieved largely by doing ‘just enough’ to get by. In my case, ‘just enough’ was not a great deal but nonetheless it got me the top first class degree in my faculty at uni. Sure, I worked hard in the last couple of weeks before exams but truthfully I hadn’t done a great deal else, so the idea of taking a degree of control over my future was very new to me. And very daunting. The main reason I never worked that hard was because what if I fail? At least if I hadn’t done much work, I generally had nothing to lose. If I poured my heart and soul into something and it doesn’t work out, well, that means responsibility. I’m not a fan of responsibility.

It’s taken me the best part of 27 years to take responsibility for my career. A career doesn’t just happen to you, a career is proactive. You have to take it by the reigns and point it in the direction you want to go, even if you don’t know quite where that path will take you.

FT Lexicon

I figured, in a spark of inspiration today, that I will be able to get through the FT quicker if I understand more of the jargon the pages are littered with. To that end I’ve subscribed to the RSS feed of the FT Lexicon so I will learn one term a day that will help me get through the paper that much more speedily on the train, allowing me to get straight to the Daily Express at work without having to continue ploughing through the serious stuff. It will also help me become better at spelling Lexicon, which I initially spelt wrong twice in this post. Genius.

Today’s word of the day: Contingent Capital

Having read the first line, I am probably going to skip over this one and start again tomorrow…

I could write a book about planning a wedding (mostly what not to do and it’s all been valuably learned by experience) but to be honest, I’m pretty bored of the wedding now. It’s on to new things.

Taking inspiration from Dooce, I recently launched my photography blog which is a new interest of mine, and now that I’m doing less freelance writing, it may be an good way to generate some additional revenue – as per tips from http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/. I suppose, in an effort to make it as lively as Dooce, I’m going to need to make it personal. Hell, I’ll give it a go. I’ve already mentioned the word ‘Husband’ on it. And that freaked me out a bit so I walked away and rocked gently in the corner for a while. Baby steps.

Many of my friends were obsessed by the saga (despite the fact that they are nearer 30 than 13) and likened it to ‘Harry Potter with sex.’ So I was compelled to at least try reading it.

I was suspicious of all the hype and when I started reading the book, I wasn’t actually sure I did like it. The writing was quite stilted and the conversation wooden. Bella’s clumsiness annoyed me and I was looking for that ever elusive description of just what made Edward so freaking hot. Bella is a feminists nightmare, playing the good housekeeper for her father and Edward is possessive, controlling and dictatorial. So I didn’t much like the characters and there didn’t even appear to be a great deal of plot except a rather thin love story.

What 18 year old girl falls in love with someone they barely know, so quickly, so deeply but most importantly so genuinely?

But oh my god that book was addictive. What it did very very well, was take me back to my 15 year old self. Back to the innumerable crushes and the anguish and the drama. Bella’s experience with Edward was exactly as immature as probably every girl’s first crush. The frustration, the excitement, the nerves.

I was surprised how much it took me back to all those things I felt then. And despite how patronising I found Edward a lot of the time, a girl can’t help but fall for him too. From reading the books, we all know he will never ever let Bella down, but you know there’s just enough risk to make him dangerous. He’s a good bad boy.

I’ve spoken to more than one friend who has said ‘I don’t want a boyfriend, I want Edward!’ and my colleague who sits next to me at work has replaced the background on her computer monitor with R Pat. She is 26. And she already has a boyfriend.

The love Bella and Edward have for each other is like a drug, it’s addictive, it’s illogical and it’s messy. It’s the same feeling that every girl has felt at least once in their life. So we can identify with the sheer desire. When there’s that much feel good factor involved and when you don’t actually care that much about Bella, what’s to stop a girl dreaming that she’ll step into Bella’s shoes and frankly do a better job?

I’m sure never have so many women in their mid twenties had so many meaningful and deeply serious conversations about the relative merits of having a vampire for a boyfriend.

Productivity is really hard. It’s hard to motivate yourself to do things that are ultimately good for you if you don’t like the process of doing them. Even if the thing might sound like a treat. For example, I hate getting my hair cut even though I know it will make me feel fabulous, because sitting in a chair for 45 minutes making small talk with the hairdresser drives me a little bit crazy. I hate it. Especially because I then have to pay £40 for the privilege. It’s why I only get my hair cut every three months and certainly don’t have the patience to have it coloured.

The way to be more productive, I discovered, is to invest in making those tasks a little more bearable. For example (and this may only be common sense but it took me a while), by buying lots of different coloured files, I have the space to file all my papers. This makes it much quicker and easier than trying to cram everything into one file that was already pretty full, even though it takes up a bit more space in my tiny flat. It makes the process less daunting and more achievable.

By purchasing – or investing in – a couple of pretty and EXPENSIVE (i.e. treat) scented candles, it makes me want to keep my coffee table tidy and get rid of those ten thousand magazines littering the surface.

So, by making those horrible tasks a little better, even if there is a cost involved, it actually improves productivity. Spending hard-earned cash on ‘unecessary’ stuff like this would have seemed crazy to me a couple of years ago so perhaps this only applies once you’re earning enough to be comfortable (whatever that is) but it’s really helped me achieve a goal of being more productive, so in that sense, perhaps it is necessary after all?

Panorama contacted Ryanair in August about a show due to air tonight; investigating the airline’s ‘hidden charges’ and reneging on purchasing contracts. Head of Comms Stephen McNamara initially declined the opportunity to participate in “yet another BBC programme which clearly looks to portray Ryanair negatively.” But the Panorama team’s determination to continue with production eventually led to Ryanair, somewhat grudgingly, offering an uncensored, uncut interview with CEO Michael O’Leary.

Panorama, refusing to hand over editorial control declined the interview although continued to affirm that they intended for the program to be “fair and balanced”. To that end, they sent McNamara a comprehensive arsenal of questions for fact checking to which he responded fully, thoughtfully and (intentionally?) not quite politically correctly:

What market do you have in mind for the “Free” seats which you regularly offer? Is this a trick question? The “market” we have in mind for free seats is any consumer in Europe who wants a free seat. Is this not blindingly obvious?

Is there an “ideal” Ryanair customer? Yes. Any human being with a brain, a pulse and a credit card, who doesn’t want to be ripped off with BA or Easyjet’s high fares and frequently delayed flights.

Overall the questions were actually fairly aggressive, not to mention “bizarre and desperate” according to O’Leary. Most were rebutted by the airline’s standard and rather bland branding as “Britain’s favourite airline” as evidenced by 66 million passengers. Some of the more uncomfortable questions, such as proportion of agency staff to employees were answered perhaps surprisingly truthfully, although largely with the caveat that the truth won’t be heard anyway, because of “the Panorama Agenda”.

The BBC certainly has a lot to work with for the show but it has now upped the ante, posting on its Panorama website, a nine-minute ‘unedited’ exchange between O’Leary and Vivian White post Ryanair’s AGM. It is unlikely that this will appease anyone, it is a rushed conversation outside a hotel where O’Leary is cornered by White and frankly it doesn’t make either of them look very good. Of course, Michael O’Leary is hardly known for his great PR.

If I were the Panorama Reporter I would be incensed at McNamara and O’Leary for making my life more difficult than it really has to be, but conversely, if I were McNamara, I would feel extremely victimised by the production team. Ryanair is all about extra charges. Most customers know that the cost quoted on the fare page doesn’t even resemble the final price tag if you want to do more than continue to breathe on the aircraft. If you don’t like the way it works, you don’t fly Ryanair, it’s pretty simple. As a consumer, the charges Ryanair puts on everything is infuriating but no one could argue that they are unexpected.

If the clip of the on-the-fly interview is anything to go by, the Panorama show should be interesting viewing. More interesting, particularly from a PR perspective, will be what Ryanair has to say about it tomorrow morning.

Many sorts of cells are able to form superficial bone-like nodules in culture, but how these nodules compare to native bone has been unclear. New work reveals that embryonic stem cells form a bone-like material quite different from that formed by adult-derived cells. This finding has implications for osteogenic engineering, which could be used in the over two million bone-replacement procedures that take place every year.

Continue reading my article on Nature Reports Stem Cells…

Some background notes from my interview with Molly Stevens:

“In the developing embryo, bone forms by one of two mechanisms.  Most of the skeleton, including the long bones, is formed via a process called endochondral ossification.  In endochondral ossification, a cartilage skeleton is first formed which later mineralises.  The other process, called intramembranous ossification, occurs in the skull and some bones of the face and doesn’t involve a cartilage intermediary.  Instead, during intramembranous ossification the mesenchyme mineralises directly.  In both cases, bone mineral forms when mineral crystals form on collagen fibers laid down by osteoblasts.”

  So are the cells still alive at the mineralised stage?

  ”The [in vitro] cultures overall are definitely alive at the mineralisation stage.  The mineralised nodules form in discrete areas while the rest of the culture remains a confluent cell layer with no mineralisation.  The question is then, are cells in the mineralised nodules alive?  When we look at the nodules by TEM, we see cells in two areas.  There are cells on the upper surface of the nodules in contact with the cell culture medium.  These are almost certainly alive.  However, we also see cells embedded within the mineralised matrix.  There’s some controversy regarding whether these are alive.  During formation of native bone, osteoblasts become embedded in the mineralised matrix where they do survive.  These embedded cells and are no longer called ‘osteoblasts’ but rather ‘osteocytes’.  The function of osteocytes in native bone is a topic of much current research but it’s believed that they serve a bone maintenance and/or sensing role.  It’s unclear if the cells we see embedded in the mineralised nodules are serving a similar function.  We can’t say that the osteocyte-like cells in the nodules are definitely alive as we didn’t do any analysis to prove this.”

I keep reading how the same type of tissue derived from different types of stem cells have different properties, even if on the surface they appear the same.

“I think this is one of the main points of the paper.  For many tissues, very few analysis techniques exist to definitely determine if engineered tissues are identical in composition and/or function to the native tissue.  Here, because bone can be treated a material and can be subjected to materials characterisation techniques, we were able to carry out a very thorough analysis.  For other tissues such as lung, for example, the techniques that are available can identify protein markers of lung cells and gene expression specific to lung tissue, but it’s still extremely difficult to determine if these cells can mediate gas exchange, which would presumably be the purpose of creating therapies with the cells.”

I thought that was pretty interesting.

A couple of weeks ago we drove down to the Cotswolds for the weekend. It was phenomenal, just an hour and half out of London but it was so relaxing and different that it felt like I’d been on a proper holiday. I was a little over ambitious with the walking – I was in no fit state for the nine miles I eagerly signed up for – but just the fresh air and the having nothing else to do aspects were amazing. 

The Fields

It was just so beautiful. So I’ve decided to scrap all plans to buy a flat in London, and instead concentrate on owning a lovely house in the countryside, that is big enough for entertaining friends and close enough for disappearing to every weekend. For the first time in ages I’ve become happy about buying a place, rather than filled with gloom. 

Flowers

Grass and flowers

Turns out if you google Accidental Scientist, you won’t find this blog. I’m going to have to fix that…

Today, I went into a boutique chocolate shop and had a conversation that went like this:

Me: Hello. I know you sell your chocolates by the 100g, but roughly how much does one chocolate cost?

Assistant: It depends how much it weighs.

Me: Right. But they are all bite sized chocolates so roughly, on average, how much does one weigh?

Assistant: They are all different.

Me: Right, but they aren’t THAT different, they are basically all ABOUT the same size. So on average, what would any average chocolate cost – I don’t need you to be that exact.

Assistant: They are all different.

Me: Yes, I understand they have different fillings and wrappings but they are FUNDAMENTALLY ALL THE SAME SIZE so even if they are different, they won’t be THAT different.

Assistant: Would you like me to weigh one for you?

Me: Yes please.

Assistant: Which one?

Me: Seriously, any one, you choose.

Assistant: It’s 16g, it will be 55p.

Oh my God I thought my head was going to explode. How hard would it have been for the girl to go, “well, it will probably be between 50 and 60p”  and save us both twenty minutes of lunatic conversation?