A bit of information for non-scientists: many labs have “lab meetings,” where once a week or so everyone working in a lab gathers together and reports on their progress. That’s often where new experiments are suggested and designed, and how everybody keeps in touch with each other’s findings. I never had these, for I always kept a small lab in which I spent much of the day doing science alongside the others, so it was actually a continuous lab meeting as we chatted while working on our flies.
But Jonathan Eisen, a genomics biologist at Davis, and #25 on Science’s list of “Science Twi**er stars, surely has a big lab, and regular meetings. Nevertheless, he posted a picture of what he sees as, well, the title is in the post (via Matthew Cobb):
I expect that’s a new kitten for Dr. Eisen!
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Aw,… is that the new undergraduate student?
No, that’s the experimental control
Any kind of meeting would be improved by the presence of a cat!
Well, maybe not this one.
Especially one toing and froing on the lab benches and generally performing paws-on supervision.
I hold a long lab meeting every morning. It starts with a giant cup of coffee that Kink allows me to slurp out of between cheek scritches. Cheek scritches must be performed with both hands, in unison, starting at the point of the chin and working along the jaw line to the neck.
The lab meeting concludes with me getting up to refresh my giant coffee cup and to serve Kink “second breakfast.”
The thing about pound kitties is that the little kittens most always get forever homes first, so a lot of the time the only option is an older cat who got lost in the big wide world. Cordelia Bestkitty is probably about 11 years old now, and has not been interested in playing for more than three seconds at a time in the two years she has lived with me. But she does love having her chin, cheeks, and ears, scratched. And she is every bit as adorable as Hili.
I had a lab meeting yesterday — my best field’s yellow lab, Riley, the best retriever I’ve ever seen. If you miss, his disappointment is palpable. Riley loves me because I have ducks.
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I suppose it’s pointless to guess which one of those two really runs the lab?
As long as the kitten is not a lab rat! I know of certain experiments… best not to go there 🙁
Not sure if everything but kitties will be considered off-topic for this thread, but lab meetings are a fascinating topic.
I have met colleagues whose weekly meetings have become so formalised that PhD students seem to spend half the week preparing actual slides (!) and obsessing about whether they are good enough, leaving little time to do actual work. Some people sure lose themselves in formalities to the point where they lose sight of priorities…
Cute genome!
Wow! A beautiful kitten that will grow up to be a stunning cat! I’ve spent the last few weeks drawing black cat portraits, so when I saw the photo I began to mentally select paper and pencil colors…
Kitten cuddling sounds like the best possible use of time at any meeting.