The role of blogging in Biology – Biogging

Blogging is the “in-thing” for the present generation and will probably continue to be one of the most popular form of sharing knowledge, experience, information with a personalized approach. Blogposts can be just de facto or de jure, what one felt that day or what interesting one learnt, what one wants to do or how one should do. We can broadly categorize blogs into “Strategic” and “random” blogs. Here, I wish to discuss how strategic sharing of biological information, approaches, theories, beliefs and even speculations, are providing a niche for accelerated spread of knowledge. QUESTION: have biologists actually taken up the electronic sharing system seriously. ANSWER - “yes” and India is an active participant in biology related searches on Google. 

The tabular representation of google search trend for keyword “biology” shows India being at the second position (Trend 1). If this is HOT, let me now tell you what is HAPPENING. India holds the first place when it comes to google searches for “Bioinformatics” (Trend 2), with cities like Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi etc occupying top seats on the global scale. Now if there is a demand for knowledge on Biology and bioinformatics, following the quote “Necessity is the mother of inventions”, resources will be created. There have been many instances where I have been benefited by blogs for example, I was facing issues during installation of double precision MPI-enabled version of Gromacs on Linux. I found a very comprehensive and “easy –to-understand” blog (which has now been converted to a website- www.somewhereville.com). There I amny blogs which I personally admire following. One of them being http://rosettadesigngroup.com/blog/ and http://practicalfragments.blogspot.com/. It is fun, educative and mind intriguing. There is one very important aspect of blogging, you SHARE knowledge – not only Impart. I personally feel this bidirectional traffic of knowledge and opinion is really exciting. The best part is you can communicate with people you hardly know and are geographically miles and miles away for you and there is a community following your discussions which minimizes the chances of channelization ofwrong knowledge. To wrap up - We are really fortunate of being able to write and share our views as free lancers. But this freedom of writing comes with responsibility to convey what is right. I really feel strategic blogging is crucial for Biology and its time to roll up your sleeves to participate in “Biogging”.

Choosing between academia and industry

A very common dilemma that we face is choosing between Academia and Industry. I myself have gone through the such confusions many a times and I understand that when you are an undergraduate how lucrative industry might appear ! So how to decide between the two. I read this very interesting and thought provoking article that appeared in PloS Computational Biology. The author ,David B. Searls has very neatly put forth the following 10 rules that we should consider while choosing the academia or the industry:
1.Assess your qualification
2.Assess your needs
3.Assess your desires
4.Assess your personality
5.Consider the alternatives
6.Consider the timing
7.Plan for the long term
8.Keep your options open
9.Be analytical
10.Be honest with yourself

I could very easily connect with these rules and specially the fact that there might be a stage where you may have completed you masters with a view of going to the industry all along, and never considering academia as an option even in dreams. This kind of approach can be lethal because of lack of “Practical” Bioinformatics. PhD and post-doctoral stages make you more practical , more educated (If you don't hate reading like I do) and definitely more robust. I personally feel these stages help you accepting challenges and even failures pretty well. The other important aspect is that the time of switching to industry is very crucial. The author discusses the recent trend of shrinking the R&D and mega-mergers of firms in industry and similar trends of cutting down of budgets in academia. These situations carry risks and opportunities both as the business cycle is bound to reverse and healthcare will be a major global priority. So one should wisely craft the short term and long term goals and ultimate objective one wishes to achieve professionally. Being ambitious is good and being open to broader ambitions is better. One should keep ones eyes open to new and evolving technologies as well as opportunities. When you land in a decision making situation make sure you analyze all the pros and cons with similar weights applied (honesty element is vital and tricky). Apply the scientific analytical methods you learned to analyze your decision and fate . I would quote what the author says : When you interview, don’t just impress,
but get impressions; record everything
down to your gut feelings.
To wrap it up, be calm, logical, analytical and optimistic because the career choice that you make is important but not irreversible. As the author says : “Don't let the decision process ruin what should be an exciting time for you”

Cheers

Reference : http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000388