A MR Imaging primer through analogy with Guitar playing
Thanks to my colleague Jerry Battista from the University of Western Ontario, understanding the basic MR pulse sequence (a not so obvious topic especially if you have to design such a sequence) is now easier than ever. For those who do not know Prof. Battista also developed a mini-CT scanner (using non-ionizing radiation!) to teaching the basic of medical imaging from high-school all the way to university. We are using this scanner in our undergraduate laboratory.
So, check out this wonderful and accessible teaching YouTube Video: Understanding an MRI Pulse Sequence using a Guitar.
Luc Beaulieu on brachytherapy research!
Here is a BrachyTalk interview I gave during the 2016 ESTRO meeting in Torino, Italy. Get to know what I am working on and my (physics and biomedical technology) vision of the field.
Thanks to the peoples at BrachyAcademy for making me look good during that interview😉
The CIHR gong show – a ridiculous state of affairs | Affaires Universitaires
The last month has been a pretty topsy-turvy one for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. After it rolled out the first round of applications for its new operating grant application termed “project grants,” it was all set to deliver evidence that its new systems of financial allocation and peer review were superior to the […]
Source: The CIHR gong show – a ridiculous state of affairs | Affaires Universitaires
How much time does it really take?
To present a scientific subject in an attractive and stimulating manner is an artistic task, similar to that of a novelist or even a dramatic writer. The same holds for writing textbooks.– Max Born
When a graduate student come to me with the big news that its abstract has been selected for an oral presentation, my first reaction is a big congratulations and the second is to already set a deadline for a first version of the talk. Because of the abstract, you already know the content, what needs to be presented. But crafting an effective 7, 8 or 10 minutes presentation is a complete new game.
Read the rest of this entry
Advice to new graduate students
- Invest time in learning tasks/project management – start here.
- Review all of your tasks/next action weekly
- Set time aside to review your projects/goals on a regular basis (at least monthly for projects and quarterly for goals).
- Set time aside to do something else: sport, tricot, …
Scintillation Dosimetry Book is now available!
It has been a few years in the making (from the first conceptual idea to publication) but the baby has been delivered and is now available at CRC Press.
Cool😉
A 75 min presentation on Organizing Creativity
From the author of Organizing Creativity, Daniel Wessel, here come an overview of the book in 75 minutes!
As I have said before, this is a must for all graduate students. I cannot recommend enough that you take the time, listen to the presentation and afterward download (free!) and read the book for more in-depth information.
Quite frankly, this book is so good that I bought the printed (color) version. Yes, a paper version, call me a romantic…
Public Bench Project and other Inner Sunset Beauties
Conquer your neighbourhood, conquer your city, conquer your country, and then go after the rest of the world. That’s my mantra.
— Grandmaster Flash
Not so long ago I was reporting about my discovery of the Little Free Libraries around my adoption neighborhood. There are other beauty scatter around that neighborhood.
To “Google Scholar” or not…
The reality is simple, even if you do not want it, as a researcher you are something of a public figure. You are probably using public funds to do your research, you most probably train peoples (from undergrads to research assistants) and, sometimes, more than you think actually, you will be googled.
For all kinds of reasons you might not want to tell the world openly what kind of research you are doing (which is actually a shame) or even keep people for knowing your “at bat” scores (e.g. is your work actually being cited at all). Let me tell you a secret, unless you have never published anything, Google Scholar will find you… even if you do not want to.
So do not be shy and make your Google Scholar page public!
The new lazy: non-field specific meeting and journal invitations
We came across your contribution entitled <name of your paper here> published in <journal name here> and thought your expertise would be an excellent fit for <name of this unrelated – to your specialty – congress>.
We invite you as speaker at <full name of congress with dates>.
It is becoming a new form of either spamming or phishing (I still haven’t decided yet) or actually maybe a combination of both, especially that most seem to come from meeting organizers on topics that are completely unrelated to my field of expertise for the said meeting. I now received 7-10 of such invitations per week.
An interesting resource for PhDs, postdocs and early career researchers
I recently came across the following document by Professor Alan M Johnson, which appears to be distributed freely by Elsevier and entitled “Charting a Course for a Successful Research Career: A Guide for Early Career Researchers – 2nd edition“.
Is the definition of smart going down the drain?
There’s these things called books, it’s like television for smart people
Bill Bryson, Movie A Walk in The Woods
A few days ago, we watched the movie A Walk in the Woods, bearing some similarities to Wild (a much better movie in my opinion). It, however, had a wonderful exchange which I jotted down immediately and reproduced as the quote above.
I wish you better work meetings for 2016…
– 37Signals (and a book called Rework)
If you have got the chance to read the book Rework, if might well be of one the best resolution to start the new year.
An Efficient and Fun iOS E-mail App: Spark by Readdle
Except for a few months of BitNet e-mail on a VAX mainframe server, I have been using the default UNIX mail app for almost 25 years now. Started with a SUN workstation, moved from SunOS to Solaris, Linux RedHat distribution (and a few others) and ended up on OSX. The nice thing about this is that all my e-mail archives transferred easily from one UNIX flavour to the other!
