On creativity in scientific research

“Creativity is contagious, pass it on”
– Albert Einstein
  • Being in the lab long hours, does not make you more creative.
  • Throwing brute force at a problem can work but it is creative thinking?
  • Creative thinking does happen anywhere and anytime.
  • I found that some of the best ideas I had did not happen while at work…
  • Be ready to capture that great idea when it happen.
  • Do not censured yourself with possible practical limitation yet (money, engineering, theoretical limitation, …).
  • Brainstorming is great: to refine a good idea or to launch a creative process that will be completed after the session i.e. the best idea might not be obtained at the end of such session (I contend that it is almost never the case).
  • Once in a while, take time to explore your ideas more deeply to see if it sticks. Throw them at colleagues (see brainstorming above).
  • Store all of your ideas, even the weird ones, in a system (physical or digital) where you can go back at them once in while.

About the e-Office series!

In one place all the posts related to hardware, software and other considerations for setting up a productive scientific digital workflow.

I will add to it frequently (last update December 2018).

 

Enjoy,

Luc

Zotero on the go!

In the previous post I was describing the free Zotero scientific manuscript management software. Through a comment via this blog and others, I was pointed out that there are some solutions for access to your PDFs on the go.

Continue reading

Invest in a good manuscript (PDF) management system

If, as starting graduate students, you are following my first key advice of reading on a regular basis scientific manuscripts related to your field of research in general and your project in particular, you’ve probably reach an obvious observation:  you are collecting a large number of PDF files very quickly.

There are, of course, a few more observations to be made:

Continue reading

The highest data density storage achieved as of yet is done with DNA!

The state of the art 20 years from now might look like a combination of quantum computing and DNA-based high capacity storage 😉

Here is a great link from Engadget: Harvard stores 704TB in a gram of DNA, may have us shopping for organically-grown storage (video) — Engadget.

R.I.P. Neil Armstrong

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

– Neil Armstrong

I was still a new born baby at the time but this event shaped much of my youth. R.I.P. Neil Armstrong.

Link to New York TIme article: Neil Armstrong, First Man on Moon, Dies at 82 – NYTimes.com.