Keeping up with quails

Keeping up with Change

Keeping up with calcium

Our understanding of how calcium functions as a second messenger continues to increase at an incredible pace. This symposium covered most, if not all, aspects of the many roles of calcium in the regulation of cellular processes and ranged from calcium imaging through to the structure and function of calcium-binding proteins. Emphasis was placed on elucidating the involvement of these proteins i...

Keeping Up With the Clock

Estimates of obesity prevalence based on the 2013 to 2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey average almost 40%, corresponding to a 7% increase from the 1999 to 2000 cycle. Similar alarming trajectories are reported worldwide, along with increasing concerns for related health risks. The traditional concept that obesity results from a mere imbalance between energy intake and energy...

Keeping up with career trends

The publication in September of a report from the US National Research Council, Trends in the Early Careers of Life Scientists, posed a question in my mind, as I’m sure it did in the minds of the many graduate students and postdocs already contemplating their futures as scientists with fearful anxiety. What is the value of a PhD in biological science if you can’t be a biologist? The report (ava...

Keeping Up with the Standards

There has been a not-so-silent revolution in research over the last decade. Though researchers had been publishing guidelines and decrying the disarray or lack of uniform design standards for some time, evidence-based guidelines to help direct research design and publication are relatively new. The first major undertaking was CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials), published in 19...