ennui

Yes, I'm very sceptical of it too. I couldn't imagine a scientist (however good) being let loose on a bunch of patients! Unfortunately, the information on the Internet is very scattered and woolly. It's hard to even pinpoint a salary range. The website Prospects says a clinical immunologist can involve "working directly with patients and running specialised patient clinics," and gives a case-study of a clinical immunologist who "will attend clinics and become more directly involved with discussing patient treatment strategies." The British Society for Immunology page says that a clinical immunologist can become a "consultant", and participate in clinic attendance. The language is difficult to interpret. I might just start e-mailing some clinical immunologists and see what kind of work they do.

They do!? Oh dear. I have a C in Biology, haha. That won't look good. (I only found motivation once I started my degree.)

My favourite stand-up comedian is Alan Carr. I watched his DVD Tooth Fairy and I actually nearly wet myself.

Cheers, it's at UCL, should be starting October 09. Living in London will be strange (yeah, used to being in Brighton at Sussex uni.)

Strange request! Here's a link to a website with a lot of posts on the media getting science wrong. A 5 or 10 minute browse will probably come up with something. http://www.badscience.net/

Woah, didn't realise this would be so controversial! For some reason my university doesn't keep the old journals online. Even ones like Nature. I needed an article from the 1960s and I had to physically go through the library archives. It was like the Flintstones. On my journal articles I've never had to sign copyrights on anything and they've always been available to anyone. I think that's the best way.

Thanks. I'm very happy about it.

What do people think about GCSEs? Will they matter at any point in your scientific career after A-levels?

I'm wondering what kind of careers are available for an immunologist in the U.K. and U.S. I'm going to start a PhD in Immunology in October, which will last for 4 years. What kind of career paths could I go down? A lot of the jobs I've seen online only pay about £15,000-£20,000 even with a PhD in Immunology. And from what I can discern, there are three major routes: academia (doing postdocs etc. at universities, maybe becoming a lecturer); health sector (working in the NHS, in a hospital lab, etc.); pharmaceutical (working for a pharm. company, doing research as part of a lab team.) My personal preference would be to work as a clinical immunologist in the U.K., working for the NHS perhaps. From what I can gather, a clinical immunologist can have direct patient contact and act as a "doctor" (without the medical school) for people with viral problems. Is this correct? Some information says that as a clinical immunologist you can join the Royal College of Pathologists and run a hospital department, with your own 'clinic'. It seems strange that anyone (even with a biomedical degree, PhD and membership into other things) could be allowed to deal directly with patients. But stuff on the Internet says it is possible. Maybe it works differently in the U.K and the U.S. Are there any immunologists here who could shed some light on career options, or give some personal anecdotes of their experiences in this field? Thanks.

Hey, thanks for the advice everyone. As it turns out, although I thought the interview went horribly, they decided to give me the position. I guess you can never how an interview really went until they give you an offer or not.

Ah, okay. That makes sense. I guess it would destroy a lot of threads if an account was deleted. I'm not interested in deleting my account(!), I was just going through all the settings and wondering where it was.

How do you delete your forum account? I can't find the option anywhere. Thanks.

I wouldn't dream of it.

Thanks!!! Downloaded fine. Good journal article.

DNA is read 5' to 3'. But when the mRNA is being synthesized by the RNA polymerase- is the mRNA created 3' first or 5' first? e.g. Imagine that below is the double-stranded DNA. The gene needed to be transcribed is in bold. 5'-AGTGGGCCG-3' 3'-TCACCCGGC-5' So the DNA is now unwound by a helicase, and all the transcription factors are bound, etc. Below is the template DNA strand (with the gene required) in black, and the new mRNA in red. But which way does it go? 5'-AGTGGGCCG-3' 5'-UCACC>>>> I'd imagine something like this. But can the mRNA (red) align with the template DNA both in the same direction? Can anyone help me understand the directions of RNA synthesis? I'm a little confused about it.

I'd say that the use of the God, as opposed to god, is personal preference. I know some polytheists who refer to all their deities as the big-gee version. Example: "Apollo is the God of music." Whether or not this is 'proper' use of English is debatable, but various communities use it as a mark of respect.

From what I've read, they did. There are caves in Western Europe (Spain/France areas) with depictions of stag-gods, drawn in red ochre. There are also the Venus of Willendorf figurines depicting what some call a fertility goddess. Some anthropologists contend that they're not gods. But at the very least they agree that they suggest shamanic practices, which would most likely have contained spirits and/or gods. Also from the Stone Age is the Indus Valley civilisation, which definitely had its own gods.

Hi, I'm trying to get the article 'Electron microscopy of prefibrillar structures and amyloid fibrils' (1999) by Nielsen et al. in the journal 'AMYLOID, PRIONS, AND OTHER PROTEIN AGGREGATES'. My university has recently changed its journal access system, I can't get it. Would anyone be able to attach this article (or similar ones, i.e. reviews of the use/technique of electron microscopy in amyloid fibril analysis) to a reply? Thanks.

I'm scared of maths. I had a bad teacher in school, who used to tell people they were 'egocentric' when asking him to explain a difficult concept. Whenever I see equations I get a little nervous and panicky! The furthest I got in maths was logarithms, simultaneous equations and basic statistics. Just enough to get by in a life sciences degree. I wonder if bad teaching from childhood leaves anyone else feeling intimidated by a subject?

I'm curious about what people involved in science believe regarding God. Do you believe in God? Use any common definition you like.

I don't know what the appeal is of discussing homosexuality as a "hot topic"; my straight friends are very uninterested in whether someone is gay or not. It doesn't seem to be any more interesting than whether a person has blonde or brunette hair. The guy who started the thread has a very, very flawed argument. He's saying "Gay is unnatural and wrong, because if the whole world was gay, the species would die out." Couldn't we use that exact same argument elsewhere? Ignoring scientific fertility treatments, we could say, "Being a woman is unnatural and wrong, because if the whole world was a woman, the species would die out." It's annoying when people try to attack homosexuality through evolutionary theory. I don't know why every aspect of human existence has to be related to passing on genes. I'm a scientist, but I don't try to analyse every single aspect of my life to try to see if it measures up to evolutionary principles!

I find biology the easiest, followed by chemistry, and then physics. I don't like all the maths in physics. It's really off-putting. I like biology because it's more descriptive; although I can't stand the kind of biology where you count birds or insect-legs.

Think about the secondary structures. First consider the polypeptide backbone, and then consider the side-chains. In a beta-sheet you get hydrogen bonding whatever the R-group (except proline); and in alpha-helices you get hydrogen bonding all the way up the helix. You need to ask yourself which amino acids can be H-bond acceptors/donors. E.g. Do any have nitrogen or oxygen in their R-groups? Find a table of the amino acids online and have a careful think about their groups. You might also want to consider Pi-orbital stacking in Phenylalanine/Tyrosine residues. Hope this helps! Good luck.

Thanks for the replies. I do try to be enthusiastic in the interviews. One problem is that I'm terribly paranoid I won't get onto a PhD for the upcoming academic year. So I've applied to very different research projects. In all honesty I could see myself becoming a geneticist as much as an immunologist, or structural biologist. I'm sure that I'll be happy with any project which involves medically-relevant biochemistry. Is it common to find someone who has done a PhD in one subject transfer to a different one later in their career?

Hello, I'm a student at a university in England doing a degree in molecular medicine. Trying to get onto a PhD programme to start in Autumn 2009. Fingers crossed. My favourite areas of science are probably immunology & gene expression. But it changes often. For some strange reason I've wound up doing protein research. Other interests include telly, clubbing, yoga (I'm a bit of a New Age flake, innit), music, and various other things.