Firing a member of your lab is difficult. Fortunately, it’s also rare. The first and only time cell biologist Samara Reck-Peterson had to do it, in her laboratory at Harvard University, she felt prepared. She had practiced the difficult conversation during a lab management course she’d taken in 2009, and she had a script ready. “Practicing is really the most important thing,” she says. Continue reading Learning to Lead a Lab
All posts by LL
Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications Tech Will Be Mandatory, say Feds
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA) will soon propose rules for vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications on U.S. roads, it announced yesterday. The agency is now finalizing a report on a 2012 trial with almost 3000 cars in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and will follow that report with draft rules that would “require V2V devices in new vehicles in a future year.”
Read the rest of this post in IEEE Spectrum’s Tech Talk blog: [html] [pdf]
Spanish HIV Researcher Faces €210,000 Fine Over Unauthorized Clinical Trial
MADRID—A Spanish HIV/AIDS researcher is facing a hefty fine for violating clinical trial regulations. A court of appeals has upheld most of a lower court’s verdict against Vicente Soriano, a physician at the Hospital Carlos III here and a well-known clinical researcher with hundreds of publications to his name. Continue reading Spanish HIV Researcher Faces €210,000 Fine Over Unauthorized Clinical Trial
Supernova erupts in nearby galaxy
![1.14579b](http://lucaslaursen.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/1.14579b-238x300.jpg)
Last night, light from a new supernova reached astronomers on Earth. Its origin: the nearby galaxy M82, some 3.5 megaparsecs away (11.4 million light years). It is one of the closest and brightest supernovae seen from Earth since a monster exploded in 1987 just 168,000 light years away. Astronomers say that the latest supernova is of the type 1a class, and may help reveal how such supernovae form. Moreover, because these supernovae are used as cosmic measuring sticks, understanding them better may help clarify the shape of the Universe.