All posts by kdshives

Surviving the Comprehensive Oral Exam

2013/05/09 kdshives 2 Comments

This article originally appeared at Gradhacker.org on April 26th, 2013.

While my last Gradhacker post focused on the written aspect of comprehensive exams, for many graduate students there is another, equally dreaded component: the oral examination.

For even the most prepared students, this can be an intense and difficult experience. However, with enough preparation and the right mindset the oral examination can actually be an enjoyable experience where you get to talk about your ideas with members of your committee.

Having just completed this hurdle myself I’d like to go over some of the things that worked and those that I wish I had known before undertaking this process. This advice is the most relevant for those of you defending a written document that you’ve had time to prepare, but some of this will be applicable to more generalized oral examination formats. Continue reading Surviving the Comprehensive Oral Exam →

Bacterial Disease, Leprosy

From Scourge to Purged: The Decline of Leprosy

2013/05/02 kdshives Leave a comment

Leper colony in Khor Province, Afghanistan, ru... — Leper colony in Khor Province, Afghanistan, run by the Scandanavian Charity Helping Hands (Photo credit: james_gordon_losangeles)

During the modern era of antibiotic treatment, we have gained unprecedented control over diseases that have plagued humans for centuries. Among the pathogens that the average American never encounters is Mycobacterium leprae, the causative agent of leprosy. This is also known as Hansen’s Disease, named after G.H. Armauer Hansen, who first isolated and described the bacterium in 1873. Thankfully though, while many of us have heard of this now-exotic disease, very few Americans will ever see someone with this condition.

So what is so interesting about leprosy and the bacterium that is responsible for this disease? Read on to find out. Continue reading From Scourge to Purged: The Decline of Leprosy →

General, Gradhacker Posts, Graduate School, Literature Review

Deconstructing the Written Comprehensive Exam

2013/04/04 kdshives Leave a comment

We've all felt like this at some point leading up to comprehensive exams. Photo from Flickr user Jixar, used under CC license. — We’ve all felt like this at some point leading up to comprehensive exams. Photo from Flickr user Jixar, used under CC license.

This article appeared in its original form at Gradhacker.org on March 22, 2013.

The dreaded written comprehensive exam. Many graduate students will have to pass some form of comprehensive exam at some point in their program. This can often include putting together a multi-page grant-style project proposal. Putting one of these together for the first time can be a daunting process if you are unprepared. But have no fear, there are ways to make crafting a solid document far less painful and even somewhat enjoyable.

Now at this point I have to mention that this advice will be most relevant for students preparing an exam on their own projects in the style of an NIH grant. However, this basic approach can apply to putting together any large proposal for your project. Continue reading Deconstructing the Written Comprehensive Exam →

Book Review

Microbe Matters Book Club: “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman”

2013/03/16 kdshives 1 Comment

Sometimes I’m lucky enough to stumble across small treasures and this collection of the short works of Richard Feynman is a gem.

For those of you not familiar with Richard Feynman, he was a physicist who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum electrodynamics. While he passed away in 1988, his scientific legacy as well as his impact on the world of ideas remains.

This book contains reflections on his wide ranging and impressive career that included working on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb (BEFORE he got his PhD). For anyone with a curiosity about the Manhattan project and what life was like there as a scientist, his unique insights into the inner workings of the project are fascinating. His account of being the only person to view the Trinity test without blackout glasses (he looked through a car windshield) and what came to his mind while witnessing this new power that he had helped to unleash is a moment that we should all reflect upon.

This entire work is worth reading, but specific chapters are of note. Any budding scientist should take the time to read his 1974 address to the graduating class of Caltech where he describes what he terms “cargo cult science” and the dangers of pseudoscience. His minority report to the space shuttle Challenger inquiry for NASA shows how willing he was to challenge institutions and hold them accountable to true scientific standards. Finally, his reflections on the role of science in society as how science and religion relate demonstrate a more philosophical viewpoint than one might expect from a physicist.

I highly recommend this book and think that any person who enjoys science can enjoy this collection of short works.

Gradhacker Posts, Graduate School

How to Cope When Work Follows You Home

2013/02/28 kdshives Leave a comment

[Image via Flickr user ishane and used under a creative commons license]

This article originally appeared on Gradhacker.org on February 22nd, 2013.

Anyone who had pursued a graduate level education knows that there is a great deal of work involved. At times, this workload can become overwhelming for any student once it follows you home and won’t leave.

However, it is times like this that we have to think back to the iconic line from The Shining: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Imagine him locked in that hotel with a thesis document or comprehensive exam to finish and suddenly Jack sounds like a burnt-out grad student.

Don’t let this happen to you! Continue reading How to Cope When Work Follows You Home →

Book Review, Important Concepts, Outbreak, Social Outreach

Microbe Matters Book Club: The Coming Plague by Laurie Garret

2013/02/14 kdshives 1 Comment

For this installment of book club I am happy to introduce The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance by Laurie Garret.

Written in 1994, this is an impressively well researched work on the current microbiological topics of the time. While this book is almost 20 years old, I was very impressed by how many of our current problems in health care were covered in these 620 pages and how well the content has held up to the passage of time.

What is even more impressive is how the author narrates the stories, giving a more human side to the factual recounting of disease outbreaks that most of us in the microbiology community are familiar with.

This book is arranged so that each chapter covers a specific disease or theme. Notable chapters on exotic pathogens include those on Bolivian Hemorrhagic fever, the Ebola virus, Lassa fever, the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in 1976, and the Hantavirus outbreak in the 4 corners region of the United States. These are all fascinating chapters as many of the people who were present for these events were interviewed and there is a real sense of the fear and confusion that accompanies the outbreak of unknown diseases.

These chapters also show “disease cowboys” in action during these outbreaks, scrambling to find out the causative agent or vector for these diseases. As someone who has just learned how to work in a Biosafety level 3 lab I can only imagine the difficulty involved in doing any kind or research in the field, let alone in with diseases that are known to be highly lethal.

The author does an excellent job of showing how environmental, social, and political factors drive the emergence of disease in human population. No other chapter covers this intersection quite as well as well as her work on the early years of the HIV epidemic. With 30 years separating me from this period in time it is easy to not think about how we got to where we are today with HIV; during my life it has always been here. It was eye-opening to see just how badly the epidemic was handled by politicians of the day or how distinguished scientists could fight so readily over discoveries relating to this new viral plague.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a more in-depth and extremely well written take on the challenges we face against the invisible armies of microbes that continually surround us.

K.D.Shives