Totse Science Journal Club

DrakeDrake Acolyte
edited January 2012 in Tech & Games
As some of may you know, scientific journal clubs are organized meetings of groups of scientists (mostly graduate students) that analyze recent articles in a particular field. Usually they are structured in a way that either the entire group discusses the article's results figure-by-figure or a member presents the article to the entire group and the other members challenge that person's understanding/conclusions from the paper. Potential topics for the journal club that I have in mind are: virology, cancer biology, heart disease, microbiology, and auto-immune diseases. I'm open to other topics (limited to molecular or cellular biology), but those are topics that I'm better able to bring some expertise to.

The goal of this is to be able to introduce people, who may never have had formal study in the field, to primary scientific literature and bring them to a point where they are very knowledgeable about a specific topic. Questions and spin-off threads on specific methods (western blot, DNA sequencing, gene delivery, etc.) or concepts (transcription, translation, apoptosis, etc.) will be encouraged (and hopefully make this forum more active).

We probably need at least five active members willing to participate for this to be somewhat successful (I would be happy with at least one good in-depth paper discussion).

Comments

  • chippychippy <b style="color:pink;">Global Moderator</b>
    edited January 2012
    I'm more physics orientated, but I'd be willing to participate from a lay-man's position,
  • GoingNowhereGoingNowhere Global Moderator
    edited January 2012
    You know, thats a really awesome idea :) However, the only science that I have a brief knowledge of is physics. Like chippy, I'd be willing to participate though.
  • DaktologistDaktologist Global Moderator
    edited January 2012
    I have a small amount of chemistry knowledge.
  • DrakeDrake Acolyte
    edited January 2012
    Well, I think that a virology journal club would probably make the most sense. Viruses are simple (many have less genes than you can count on your fingers) and there will be a lot of opportunities to learn fundamentals of molecular biology (also chemistry of inhibitors and physics of viral capsid structure). Hopefully, we will get some more members and maybe I'll try to start a thread introducing virology to spur some interest.
  • (nameless one)(nameless one) Regular
    edited January 2012
    As interested as I am in the field of science, I am unfortunately illiterate when it comes to science talk. I love the idea behind this.
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