Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with research

organizing ebooks on Kindle Fire

spunweb — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:48:35 -0800

How do you all organize your ebooks? My Kindle Fire is pretty amazing, but for one thing -- I can't seem to organize my books and PDFs by genre. Ideally, I'd like to have the texts associated with my job (including the PDFs) grouped together (and perhaps with titles readable via list?). I'd also like to make my fun stuff "disappear" from view while I'm working so I don't get distracted. It'd be nice if whatever app did this worked like Nanny for Chrome -- just POOF! It's 9AM, no more vampires for you!

FreeTime (the thing for kids) helps with this, but it doesn't retain bookmarks or notes very well, so I can't go from reading and taking notes on my Kindle to writing from those notes on my laptop very effectively. Also it doesn't actually keep your books organized by title or whatever -- just by the last time you opened them. :(

Any suggestions? Or am I somehow Kindling wrong?

The limits to bedbugs

mister_kaupungister — Fri, 31 May 2013 16:03:35 -0800

What are the limits to bedbugs? Why isn't every hotel room infested given how tough they are claimed to be? Is there any evidence on the chances of taking bed bugs home from a hotel with you? Will the bedbug infestation rates go ever upwards? Why or why not? Interested in aggregated, rather than anecdotal evidence here. Hello Mefites,
I have followed the bedbugs stories in the news with horror and some fascination. In fact, I had a first encounter with bedbugs in a hotel in Central/eastern Finland. The room I was staying in, and the room next door where my friends were staying were definitely infested. Upon complaining, we were transferred to another part of the (huge and mostly empty) hotel where we checked thoroughly for bugs and, (we thought) did not see any.

After this I followed many news stories and websites on bedbugs. Most seemed to suggest that bedbugs would gradually infest in a whole building if they were introduced and the building was sufficiently occupied. They also claimed that transmission in suitcases from one hotel to another was a (the) common modern cause of infestation.

This has all lead me to wonder about the limits to bedbug infestation. With all the news stories I began to wonder why every hotel room is not infested. Why?! What are the limits of bedbugs? Bed bugs seem so tough that it doesn’t seem possible that a colony would just die out (because of say a few weeks without human food.) I also looked at the bed bug registry maps of places like New York and wondered why the recorded rates of infestation were so high. Is it because of the urban density there?

The hotel room aspect interests me. I would love to know if some experiments have been done about the propensity of bed bugs to crawl into suitcases. I certainly don’t disbelieve that people transported them in this way. I am curious about the chances of getting bugs into suitcases. (I guess it depends on many factors like how open is the suitcase, the extent of the infestation).

Finally, I noticed the bedbug stories most of all in the mid-late 2000s, so I wondered if any decline in their prevalence has been reported since then. Or is it just a media (and bed bug registry) reporting thing (or my attention)? Does anyone know of any reasonably solid data sources (I don’t know how much to trust bed bug registry) and perhaps modelling or statistical analysis of bed bug transmission? All the media reports make me think that bed bug infestation should go ever upwards – it would be interesting if their population had recently gone down over some period as well as up for some reason.

I have read a lot of personal experiences about bedbugs, but I am mostly interested in aggregated, statistical or survey sort of evidence with respect to all these issue. Can any Mefites shed light here?

How honest is the author of "The Truth about Dishonesty," Dan Ariely?

markcmyers — Wed, 29 May 2013 15:04:05 -0800

My wife and I have been reading and enjoying Ariely's books, but we're a little skeptical. Many of his study results seem a bit too spectacular. Some studies produce dramatic surprises. All of which, of course, makes for great entertainment. Can you tell me whether, in general, others have duplicated his study results? What kind of reputation does he have among behavioral researchers?

How do I learn to read peer-reviewed studies comfortably?

sdis — Tue, 28 May 2013 18:31:08 -0800

I come from an engineering background rather than a research background, and I find myself lacking in vocabulary when it comes to understanding research papers, particularly when they start talking about ANOVA analyses, F(x) effect sizes and p values. I can skim through the results of a study and see that certain numbers are bigger than other numbers, but I don't really know how to tell whether what I'm seeing is significant. I'm guessing that I'm missing basic education in statistics. Can I fix this in a simple way?

Are you a neuroscientist? Happy in academia? Want to do science...

epibatidine — Sun, 26 May 2013 17:36:37 -0800

So I have been working in an entirely different field for the last years and was never entirely sure about what I wanted to do with my life. I am certain at this point that I want to work in a field which involves, you know, nervous systems. Unsurprisingly, I am thinking of academia. I was wondering if any of you neuroscientists / cognitive neuroscientists / psychobiologists are actually happy in academia? Is anyone of you still in academia after the long road to getting a PhD and likes it? What is your daily work like? I am extremely interested in neuroscience and read textbooks / papers and so forth about it on a daily basis. You know, I suffer from one of those severely dangerous interests in doing science.

Oh, and did anyone here get into science later in life?

As I did something completely different thus far, I would have to start at the undergraduate level. I have no university degree at this point. I have applied for and got accepted into a broad-based natural sciences bachelor's programme which would allow me to focus on neuroscience/pharmacology, areas I am particularly interested in (there is no affordable neuroscience undergraduate programme I could find in my language or in English). They're actually doing research on psychedelics at this particular university, too, which is one of a broad range of areas which particularly tickle my fancy.

Note: I am from Europe and the university system here is a little different compared to the US (I assume most users here are US-based?). You have to do a bachelor's (3 years) plus a master's (2 years) plus a PhD here in that order. So that's what I would have ahead of me.
University education is, at least, a lot more affordable in the country/countries where I would like to study. The universities I am interested in have tuiton fees of max. 2000€ / year (abroad), some have ~500€ fees or no tuition fees at all (most in my home country, including medical schools). So doing what I am thinking of doing is at least less financially draining than it seems to be in the US or UK, for instance.

In the following paragraph I will ramble on about medical school as an alternative with less paranoia about actually getting a permanent job with a degree one puts a lot of effort into. Not a creative idea, I know, but whenever I read about something life sciences related, I am constantly hearing people say: 'Go to medical school, it will at least get you a job.' Basically, the same type of advice people ranging from Charles Darwin to Vilayanur S. Ramachandran have had to hear. You may probably skip this. So would anyone actually recommending 'brain science' as a career, despite the downsides?

The only alternative to the seemingly insane path of becoming a scientist in academia with my particular interests in mind would be medical school. Clinical work also seems interesting, not that the road to becoming a physician seems that much easier, but it is, at least right now where I live, extremely easy to get a job as a medical doctor. The work seems extremely demanding as well, but I am looking at a long, hard road of ~10 years either way (academia or medicine). I am primarily interested in psychiatry when it comes to medicine which is a specialty with perfect job prospects in my country at the moment. I could still do research going this route as well (for the aforementioned psychedelic research, one of my interests, it would be the best route, as someone who actually does psychedelics research told me). I guess I should mention that one does not need an undergraduate degree to get into medical school in my country. I have good chances of getting into medical school. Plus, I would almost be guaranteed entry into medical school by simply waiting a year or 1.5 years longer (there's a system in place in my country which makes it possible to be admitted after simply having enough 'waiting time' which means having accumulated enough semesters of not being enrolled in a university in my country.)

How do you do keyword research for EBAY?

flexiverse — Tue, 14 May 2013 06:41:36 -0800

There must be a keyword analysis tool by now that specifically works for ebay listings ? That is a keyword tool like google Adwords keyword research tool, but only works for ebay searches within ebay. Not suggestions, but rankings of ebay keywords.

Where to get tape of Nixon aides plotting murder?

Sleeper — Fri, 03 May 2013 09:46:25 -0800

According to the Washington Post, the famous White House tape recordings that Nixon kept include recordings of aides G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt seriously plotting to assassinate muckraking journalist Jack Anderson in 1972. They were only stopped because the Watergate fiasco got in the way. Where can I get that recording? That the plot was caught on tape is mentioned in passing in Jack Anderson's 2005 Washington Post obituary:

Mr. Anderson's work enraged those in power. President Richard M. Nixon tried to smear him as a homosexual, the CIA was ordered to spy on him, and, according to the Watergate tapes, a Nixon aide ordered two cohorts to try to kill the journalist by poisoning.

The plot is described in this excellent NPR piece: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130192940

Mark Feldstein wrote about it in his book Poisoning The Press, though I haven't gotten a copy yet. The NPR piece contains an excerpt. Feldstein also wrote a good piece on Anderson the year before Anderson's death: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19730-2004Jul27.html Feldstein says he believes, though he can't prove it, that Nixon was in on the assassination plot too.

I've been hearing about Watergate all my life, but had never heard about the Nixon assassination plot until last week. Why is it so overlooked?

The Nixon Library, oddly, has the Nixon tapes online: http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/tapeexcerpts/

The U. of Virginia has the Presidential Recordings Program, which also puts the tapes online and documents them meticulously: http://whitehousetapes.net/transcript/nixon

Yet I haven't found the specific recording involving G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, and/or Charles Colson discussing murdering Jack Anderson and making it look like an accident.

Does anyone know when the conversations occurred with more specificity than just the year?

Helping heal the psychological trauma... of trauma

itstheclamsname — Thu, 02 May 2013 12:58:36 -0800

I'm a career Firefighter/Paramedic. Recently, I've been thinking more about the long-term psychological trauma that results from a serious injury/illness, and how my actions during emergencies may help or hinder patients' healing. Help me help my patients. I have over 15 years experience in EMS, and I pride myself on being a compassionate practitioner. I've been reading about the importance of psychological factors in patient recovery - for example, the study that found post-operative patients whose rooms looked out on trees had shorter hospital stays and used less narcotic pain meds than ones whose rooms faced a wall. This has started me thinking about how EMS care might more effectively contribute to patients' psychological well-being.

First, can you refer me to any research that addresses this in a pre-hospital environment? The closest I've found is research on how family members often benefit from witnessing resuscitation efforts after cardiac arrest. We're aware of this in my department, and we try to assign someone to be with family members as we work a full arrest, to explain what we're doing and help them sort out what to do next. I'm focusing on direct patient care right now.

Second, if you've had contact with EMS, can you specify anything that the provider said or did that had a long-term impact on your recovery? Anecdotal evidence is still of interest to me because I so rarely get long-term follow-up with patients.

Do scholarly publications have to state who funded their research?

film — Thu, 02 May 2013 11:25:33 -0800

Is there somewhere in the article where they're required to state who backed the scientific study financially?

Low-budget DIY microfiche scanning?

naturalog — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:32:56 -0800

In the next day or two, I'll be getting some microfiche via ILL for an academic project. Ideally, I'd be able to digitize portions (50-100pp, probably) of them for future use in a way more efficient (and cheaper...) than printing out paper copies and scanning them. I have a Nikon D80 with a 50mm f/1.8 and a 105mm f/2.8 (I think) and a tripod, an iPad 3, a MacBook Pro, and a grad student budget. My campus has photocopiers that are also flatbed scanners; I'd be able to use one for an extended period of time if necessary. Any suggestions about the best ways to do this?

Test-retest reliability design: How can I measure participants?

whalebreath — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 07:12:52 -0800

I am conducting a study in which I want to administer the same questionnaire to participants at two times (one week apart). I am trying to figure out if there is a way to do this all online, either through SONA software (which is accessible to me) or through some other software that I could link to from SONA. Thanks for your help! Pertinent details:

- I will be administering the same questionnaire twice, with a one-week interval between administrations.

-I need some way to track participants in order to compare their first questionnaire to their second one. Maybe a confidential participant code that they could enter at each administration.

- I will be using SONA participant pool in order to recruit participants. I am hoping to be able to have them just click a link, take the survey, and then receive an email a week later prompting them to take the survey again.

If anyone has done this or has insight into SONA or other software that could help me achieve this, I'd love to hear from you!

Finished PhD; informally meeting with a prof in a different field?

zeek321 — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:29:29 -0800

Just got a PhD, don't have a new position lined up, meeting a prof, no obvious goal for conversation, have questions. I have just finished an engineering PhD, and I'm going to be with my lab for a few more months to submit some papers from my diss. (I have no publications, yet.)

Since forever, I've been interested in "X" and "Y" though I didn't know that's what they were called. While following my interests wherever they led, I came across a prof at a nearby institution who studies these things, and she has agreed to meet with me to chat.

I'm trying to figure out how to get the most out of this interaction. At minimum, I'm hoping I can tell her a little bit about my interests and get recommendations for interesting stuff to read that I didn't already see from reading her publications. At maximum, I would like a mentor who would hire me as a postdoc and help me become competitive for a tenure track position.

As for the minimum, this is a highly productive full professor, and I am an amateur, armchair enthusiast, and I'm concerned about wasting her time.

As for the maximum, it doesn't seem like this is likely to be in the cards. She doesn't seem to have a major grant based on my searching the NSF and NIH databases, though I think she's funded through various private institutions. And, she's not advertising for a postdoc or anything.

But, between those two extremes, I'm wondering if there might be an opportunity for me. She and her collaborators do a lot of combined research and outreach in the community, and it seems like there might be ways they could use extra manpower for analysis, statistics, and writing. But, I have to be thinking about a career track that's somewhat commensurate with my educational investment, at least in end-game. So I don't know if I should even pursue this if there's something available.

My advisor is nudging me towards research scientist positions and industry, but I want to make sure I explore some non-obvious and serendipitous stuff, too.

So, I guess my question is:

Were you a newly-minted PhD, and you didn't know what you wanted to do next? And you were clearly not ready for a tenure track position, if ever, and were sort of blah about a wide range of obvious jobs and careers? But, you were self starter with lots of eclectic interests--and you managed to create a career out of nothing, based on conversations with kind but ultimately indifferent people in positions of power?

How did you do this? What happened?

I'm reading through her recent publications and trying to figure out where she's heading next. And I'm thinking about how to frame my diss work in a way that would be attractive to her goals. And I'm preparing to ask lots of questions about what she and her collaborators are doing. I'll have my diss defense talk ready to go in the slight chance she wants to hear about it.

Anyway, I'm going to treat this like an informational interview while simultaneously portraying myself positively.

Am I missing anything in how I should think about this and how I should prepare? This is definitely going to be a shot in the dark. I'd like to have fun but be respectful and make the most of it.

Where did my brain go?

avocet — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:02:09 -0800

Help me rescue my analytical faculties so I can survive the last months of grad school with my dignity intact. I'm in my final semester of a research-based MA program in the social sciences, currently trying to get my thesis written so I can defend by a September deadline. My project has been incredibly intellectually and emotionally challenging – I'm researching the public commemoration of violent death among two populations in Canada – and a portion of my fieldwork was downright traumatic. That said, I know I have a compelling, stimulating and fairly original project on my hands, and numerous people both inside and outside of academia have been very supportive of my work. I'm just really not sure I'm able to carry it out.

While completing my coursework last year, I suddenly lost all confidence in my ability to comprehend and synthesize everything I was reading – I'd come to class having done the readings multiple times and always seemed to be on a totally different page from everyone else, many of whom didn't have the advantage of having a background in the discipline like I did, which led to great doubts about my abilities to critically engage texts. The crippling anxiety associated with getting it/not getting it led to me feeling totally unable to participate in what was actually an incredibly supportive small seminar environment. Everything that came out of my mouth was rambling and incoherent and frequently irrelevant. Through some miracle I managed to submit some decent written work and received As in all my classes, but the psychological barriers persisted and seemed to get worse.

I don't really know what happened this year, but it feels like I no longer understand the theory at the core of my project (and I think I've kept it pretty simple, theory has never been my strong suit) and my abilities to analyze and argue seem to have completely disappeared. I don't know how to explain my way from A to B anymore. I just got a big unsettling load of major edits back from my supervisors on everything I've written so far, pointing to an overreliance on empirics and lack of theory and absence of analysis throughout the chapter – yeah, I should have known this was coming. I've apparently totally misunderstood key texts, elided major theoretical arguments, and the whole thing reads as just so facile and simplistic. I've been following my supervisors' cues when they explain to me what my argument is all about, furiously scribbling down things I need to write about when we're in meetings together, then getting home and looking at my notes and realizing I don't understand what they said at all. This all just seems to big for my brain to process, and my mind is becoming increasingly sieve-like with respect to everything I read. I seem to forget and misunderstand so easily.

My supervisors have been wonderfully supportive but I fear they're getting really sick of me and my lack of intellectual progress (or even regression – I feel like I wasn't always this bad). I'm hugely embarrassed by the fact that I can't answer ostensibly simple questions about my project on the spot – how will I manage to get through a thesis defense if I can't string together cogent answers in meetings? I've done very good work for both of them before – it's not like I was admitted to the program by mistake – but I'm ashamed by the fact that I feel like I'm starting to waste their time. It just feels like everyone around me knows my project much better than I do. (I feel like the academic version of Guido, the protagonist of 8 1/2.)

How do I relearn how to think critically, analyze and argue in a really short period of time? I've got a big pile of substantial edits (more like a massive rewrite) due at the end of the month, and the whole thesis (most of which remains to be written) needs to be done by the beginning of August, at the latest. The government and the banks will not give me any more money if I'm not done by then, and I'll have to drop out if I'm not ready for a defense/get to a defense and end up failing.

I know this is all just a bad case of performance anxiety/impostor syndrome/self-defeating thoughts at its core. Through CBT I learned how to shut certain depression-related self-defeating thoughts down, but I don't know how to suddenly reconfigure my thought patterns to understand texts and theory and logic again. I sit down to write/lie awake at night and attempt to logically think through the questions that have been presented to me in the simplest terms possible and my mind gets stuck in this endless 20 GOTO 10 loop in which I can't think past step one of my argument, let alone follow it through to its conclusion – it's not like I've got a negative thought that I can step in and interrupt. My mind is a mess. (And yes, I'm on medication for depression, but it doesn't seem to be doing a damn thing these days. Given my previous experiences changing drugs, having to taper off and start on a new one does not seem like a good idea right now.)

Is there any way to salvage my confidence and mental faculties from this mess in time? MeMail me if you need to. Thanks for listening.

Looking for internships related to sociology

flying_trapeze — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:00:29 -0800

Is there a resource for finding research positions in the social sciences? I'm about to finish my second year in school, transferring likely in the fall (the precise school and location, still unknown). I've just declared a sociology major, and am very, very interested in doing research. Or at least helping someone do theirs.
Now is the time that everyone seems to be getting internships, and while I've been looking, I haven't been able to find one related to sociology. I'd preferable like to find one as a research assistant on a project. I'd ask my school for help guiding me, but they largely focus on opportunities present in the city I currently am in, where I don't plan on being this summer. Are there resources or websites specifically related to the social sciences and research intern/assistant positions?

Tell me about teacher stereotypes

b33j — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:08:49 -0800

I want to know what typical ideas of typical teachers the public has. My posting history will show that I'm doing a Grad Dip in Research Studies (within the field of Education). My first (tiny) project is about learning about qualitative and quantitative research methods. Because I will have to survey friends & acquaintances (on advice of lecturer) and (as a result) not be able to publish any results of my data, I will be looking at teacher stereotypes rather than the area I'm doing my dissertation on, which is "evolving preservice teacher identity". I still need to justify my research referencing previous studies, and I have found some decent material about stereotypes in the media and stereotypes in literature, and perceptions of teachers themselves and attitudes of students. I have also found great stuff on how parent-teacher relationships affect student learning outcomes.

However, I'm struggling to find research on public opinion on teachers, and the more I get sucked into the vortex that is Google Scholar, the more I am wondering why this is so. So, I've marked this for a future research project with my mentor (an academic with resources who gives me amazing freedom).

So thought process is this for my current and future research:
1. public perception of teachers-->influences parent opinion-->influences relationship with teachers-->influences student outcomes.
2. public perception of teachers-->influences parent opinion-->influences student opinion-->influences relationship with teachers-->influences student outcomes
3. public perception of teachers-->influences preservice teacher opinion-->influences teacher identity development-->influences teacher self-efficacy-->influences student outcomes

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to

a. tell me your ideas or other people's ideas about typical teachers (I'm not looking for opinions of bad teachers).
b. find any published material: newspaper, journal article, book, blog, whatever: on people's opinions of typical teachers
c. suggest a useful place or way to research this topic.

[Disclaimer 1: you are not doing my homework/assignment. My homework is to survey friends/relatives on a topic that I am interested, code the data for the lecturer to run through SPSS, and write a report on that data, following conventional standards etc. Disclaimer 2: You are not doing my work either, I will have to put together a research proposal to my academic before she'll pay for further work to be done. Disclaimer 3: If you find heaps of interesting stuff and I get distracted - as I am wont to with my ADHD, and polymath preferences, from my studies and work, that's okay, I won't blame you.]

TL;DR: tell me your ideas, opinion, perception about what a typical teacher (not "bad", "typical" or "average") is, looks like or does.

Undergrad's over... what now?

Strass — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 13:45:49 -0800

I wanted to go into academia but I don't have the balls. Now I'm at the cusp of graduation and unsure of what my options are. I'll be finishing up my undergrad at the end of the month barring any unfortunate surprises. I will graduate with a fairly high GPA (although nothing too special) from McGill with a bachelors in Biology. I've always loved the idea of academia, but for the last year I've been reading articles that practically plead for me to stay away. My past considerations have focused around research, but med school and bio/biotech industry have also crossed my mind. There's also a whole world outside of science that I've never really considered. I've dabbled in graphic design in high school. It was really fun, but I always figured that I would make a better academic. I'd imagine most jobs I'd be interested in would involve reading/learning, information analysis, and stuff like that. I think I'm fairly well versed at communication, both written and spoken, but probably rusty in both in non-academic contexts. Honestly I do care about money. I expect to work hard, and I expect to be paid well for what I do. I'd also like to be paid for my expertise, not just for 'doing things.' Med school is appealing because I'll get to help people in a more direct manner than academic research, plus the money is probably the best I could expect make in any field (on the other hand, the money is a lot of work). Industry involves science and research, but I'd also be working for the man, man and I don't know what private research entails. Besides those options I'm completely blindsighted. MD/PhD sounds great, theoretically, but I'm not sure it's any better than either the MD or the PhD.

So far my only job experience has been in academic labs (plus a restaurant or two and a graphic design firm before university), I am going to hit 20 months (12 of which are full-time) of lab experience before I leave McGill. I've enjoyed my time in lab, but the chances of me reaching my goal of tenured professor seem terrifyingly slim. I'm willing to put the work into a PhD, but only if I feel more confident about where it will leave me career-wise. My (current) research interests include general molecular biology (I love learning about all the pieces in the molecular puzzle of a biological function), epidemiology, virology, oncology, and pharmacology.

So now I am feeling pretty lost. I know that I enjoy science, that I love learning, and that I'm fairly good at school. But I'm not sure what to do with this knowledge. I'd love to hear your thoughts, comments, and possibly condolences. I'm freaking out a little and would love some guidance from those more experienced!

Overwhelmed Tutors and Teaching Assistants

divabat — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:55:23 -0800

What resources are there that address overwhelm faced by tutors and teaching assistants - grad students who are also taking on a teaching role? As part of my fellowship (training and work as a grad-school academic writing tutor) I am working on a research project about overwhelm in grad school, and I am thinking about writing about when tutors like myself are overwhelmed by our stuff and have to deal with our tutees being overwhelmed (pretty much the #1 comment we've been hearing).

I've found some material about overwhelm about grad students in general, and there's some leads to teachers being overwhelmed, but how do I go about finding material that relates to tutors and teaching assistants in particular? My professor suggested education journals and The Writing Lab though apparently the latter can be hard to search through.

(Part of my query involves working out what terms to search for that will bring up "tutors" as in "grad students who are also taking on teaching roles" rather than any other form of tutoring.)

Help me make my grad student status good to the last drop.

deludingmyself — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:36:48 -0800

Graduating with an MS in May, an independent historical research project on my brain, and time. What should I do NOW while I'm still a student? I'm about to graduate with an MS in biotechnology and regulatory affairs, and there's this fascinating pre-FDA history/bioethics/food safety topic that I can't seem to shake my interest in. Historical research is outside of both my normal field of expertise and the focus of my program, but right now I have seem to have the resources, the expertise, and the time to tackle it... whether the end result turns into a journal article, a publication for a magazine, a book manuscript, or some combination of the above.

My MS program has been part-time and not research-oriented, so while it's a great institution to name-drop, I don't have advisor relationships to leverage (and I'm not on site). Buuuut, even though I'm just getting started on this project, I'm wondering if there are some smaller grant, fellowship, or essay prize type opportunities that I should look into during the next two months, while I'm still officially affiliated with a university as a grad student. I know we've got tons of academics and librarians in the hivemind, so... what should I be doing NOW to put me in the best position to really dig into this project in more detail after I graduate?

Other, possibly relevant information:
* Project will involve building some personal profiles of bit historical players from a human interest side - but everyone's dead, so no oral histories required
* Will likely require some digging in the national archives/congressional record/FDA or USDA historical files (not yet sure how much from this era is digitized)
* While I'm not a historian, I do a lot of ferretting out of information for a living - that said, all my previous research/manuscript writing/grant chasing involves scientists and experiments
* I'm located near the University of Michigan (where my husband's a grad student), and can keep on using their library resources for the next 12-16 months
* I will be talking to some archivists and research librarians, as well
* I've read this AskMe already (useful, but all about post-graduation resources)

Grinding along the Research Assistant career path

nicolas léonard sadi carnot — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:18:00 -0800

I'm a baby Australian scientist trying to earn experience and cash prior to embarking on a PhD, but landing a relevant job is turning out to be a bit of an ordeal. In undergrad I majored in biochem and microbiology; I graduated from my Honours year last November with a great GPA and some useful skills. Rather than segue straight into a PhD, I want to work for a few years in labs as a research assistant and broaden my skill base and hopefully get a couple of publications. Unfortunately, my Honours supervisor was not able to offer me anything, so I'm left with responding to publicly posted ads.

From three months of applications, probably around 40 at this point, I've only scored a single interview, which went well, but unfortunately not well enough. Following up, the interviewer said that I did "wonderfully", that she found the hiring decision very difficult, and that she would happily consider me should another position open up. On the other hand, she also said that the job posting attracted over 130 applicants. I'm getting a bit dispirited, not to mention low on resources. I know I can be a useful asset to a lab, but the competition is so ferocious that I feel like it's statistically unlikely I'm going to land something at all this year.

Are there other avenues I should pursue? Any positions that may not be so competitive to land but that would still be at least tangentially useful to my future work? Something at which I could build contacts to network my way into a research position? I've applied for a few clinical jobs, biochemistry and microbiology both, but no luck there so far.

Help me discover some work that matches my interests!

averageamateur — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:48:02 -0800

I'm 31 years old and looking for a career change. I've come to love research and I've always loved reading nonfiction and true crime as well as the exposé articles often published by alternative weeklies. What are some careers that would fit these interests, and how do I work my way towards those careers? My current job is in film production, in a fairly technical union position. It pays decently well, but I’m looking for an eventual career change into something a little more fulfilling. One of the things that I find myself interested in is investigation and research. I love looking at historical and court documents, maps, reading interview transcripts, and trying to uncover new or relevant information to a story, and I also enjoy writing. I often find myself researching the books I've read to look at the primary sources they used, and to find relevant information. My usual choice of reading is nonfiction, specifically true crime and missing persons cases, but I’m less interested in the sordid details of a murder case, and more interested robberies, fraud, white collar crimes, and other complex cases.

What jobs/careers involve this kind of research and investigation? I’m not particularly interested in law enforcement. I know a lot of what I wrote is basically a description of what a journalist does, but I’ve read a lot about the ‘death’ of traditional journalism, and how difficult it is for people with actual degrees in journalism to get jobs. In terms of education, I dropped out of college my senior year so I did not complete my bachelor’s in English, so it limits my ability to get jobs that are strict about having a degree. Any other ideas for jobs I might have overlooked? I’m not looking just for suggested job titles like “researcher” or “reporter,” but details about how someone with my background would be able to actually develop the skills and experience to do the suggested kind of work.

I work full time but otherwise have a good deal of free time, so I’m pretty flexible in being able to do another type of work in my off time. Let me know if you need any more background information to give better answers. Also, just wanted to say this community is awesome and I’ve been really enjoying the discussions so far.

Thanks!

Please help me find a book published in Argentina, now out of print.

ipsative — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:42:25 -0800

Hello dear Mefites. I am looking to buy or borrow this very-hard-to-find book: Ramacciotti, Sandra and Rodil, María Victoria (2006): Economics: Glossary of Metaphorical Usage - Glosario Económico - Financiero Uso Metafórico de Voces. Buenos Aires: Editorial Quorum. I have already contacted the publishing house (Editorial Quorum). Answer: it is out of print and they can't help me out because they don't know if/when a new edition will come out. I am guessing: never.

I have already made an international interlending request at my university, but the book has been on my list of open orders for almost three months.

I think it's time to start looking elsewhere....

Ideally I would like to buy it, as I could really use it to write my thesis. If somebody were to find it in a public or private library somewhere, I would let my the interlending people in my library know about it, so they could attempt to get it for me.

Thank you so much for your help!!!!

Graffiti in the pre-internet era

pxe2000 — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:41:47 -0800

I am currently working on a young adult novel set in a small Massachusetts town at the tail end of the '80s in which one of the protagonists is a graffiti tagger. Unfortunately, I am less familiar with some of the most basic aspects of graffiti writing and the preparations for it, particularly in that era. Below the fold are some questions. - How would taggers buy spray paint and avoid detection? Would they go a few towns over to buy their paint? Would they buy a few cans of paint and some other sundries, the way teenagers would buy condoms or feminine hygiene products?

- Would fresh graffiti tags appear in a police report, or would graffiti only get published in a police report if the tagger was caught?

- Would the local press cover graffiti writers, or would they just not pay attention?

- What other information should I know about graffiti at this point in time?

A study which shows that people unite against a common enemy?

dontjumplarry — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:54:19 -0800

Over on reddit, a commenter said that they once read a "social science study" which showed that people are more likely to rally in support of a cause when there's a common enemy to hate. It supposedly showed how when people were given the opportunity to unite and campaign for a positive cause, they showed little interest; but that the presence of a hostil opponent motivated the group to unite and rally against it. Can anyone think of a study along those lines?

How can I locate pharmaceutical sales or use data for individual drugs?

dredge — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 07:51:27 -0800

I am hoping to locate present and historical sales or usage figures for various prescription drugs, and I am not sure where to start. I'm trying to use the data to get a sense of how many people were using a particular drug at different times; I just figured sales volume would be a good indication. For me, rough numbers would be fine. Paying for the data may be an option (especially if it is not too expensive), but I was hoping to find some good free resources. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Market share data for different drugs in a particular class would be similarly useful, especially to the extent that I can also find overall sales or use volume for the overall drug class.

[citation needed]

zinon — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:12:03 -0800

According to a study women talk more than men. Which study? During a Today Show segment about FOXP2 they said: New research indicates there’s a biological reason why women talk so much more than men: 20,000 words a day spoken by the average woman, according to one study, versus about 7,000 words a day for the average man.

But I remember this story from NPR. Stating that: The researchers found that women speak a little more than 16,000 words a day. Men speak a little less than 16,000 words. The difference is not statistically significant.

The NPR story cites this article in Science. But I can't find any citation for the Today Show numbers.