Category Archives: Research and Academia
Do boring speakers talk longer?
According to this Nature blog post (Do boring speakers really talk for longer?), yes! It seems that having rhythm, a clear structure and sticking to it as well as practice your talk should be obvious practice but not always applied by the research community.
Please add to your names to the scientific community Statement denouncing Strumia’s discriminatory talk at CERN
“In this talk he argued that the primary explanation for the discrepancies between men and women in theoretical physics is that women are inherently less capable.“
— Statement introduction
Follow the link to the Community Statement, read it (and the associated materials in the REFERENCES and LINKS at the top if you do not know of that talk yet) and if. like myself and many others, feel the discriminatory and unethical aspects that was convey during the talk, please sign by selecting ADD YOUR NAME at the top right corner of the page.
Minor updated to Kanban View for Cultured Code Things 3
First, Kansan-View scripts and css are now available on GitHub.
Second, many thanks to Alexander Willner from Berlin, Germany for making the script fully compatible with both the stock 2.7 (coming with any recent macOS version) and 3.6 version of python. Furthermore, he introduce dynamic home folder as well as default output in the same directory as the script path. This removes the need of previous version to edit the script to change the unix user name in the file path. As such, the new version is extremely easy to run . Better, follow the instruction (method 2) given here and make it a system service, assign a keyboard shortcut and never, ever run python directly yourself!
Kanban-View for Things 3 – Release V1.0 available (free)!
Synopsis:
The following will allow a visual project-level overview of what is on your plate. It is comprised of 3 files: a python script, a CSS file and a PDF README file (a copy of this post). It can be executed from the terminal or as a system service using the macOS Automator app (thus never needing to open a terminal and can be associated to a keyboard short cut).
*** read below for the download link ***
A Kanban view for Things 3 : Part III – displaying the project-level information
Almost there!
Quite surprisingly, I hadn’t written html code since I completed my PhD in 1996. From 1993 to 1996, I created and maintained our research group webpage. At the time, we were one of the few to actually have sites. Well, it does come back and boy it much easier than anticipated (at least at the current level) 😉
Adding an efficient, higher-level project view layer to Things 3: a proposal
Task manager applications are great. They help you get things out of your head and easily accessible. One of the major issues with task manager applications is higher level planning, particularly on the fly decision about committing or not a new project. This is because you need in one look an overview of everything going one right now, including deadlines. This is something not easy to do only with a Task Manager and your electronic calendar apps. Also for what I am thinking about, a planning software is not that useful either. I tried OmniPlan for that purpose alone, maintenance is higher than I would like and I am still not convinced this is the best way of doing it.
Free, multi-platform pro-like applications for students
– Free Software Foundation
Going through graduate studies (or even undergraduate studies), is about creativity, hard work and learning not to loose information, not to drop the ball on ideas and projects. In order word, part of it is also about being able to put your ideas to work for you in an efficient manner. In the following are a few applications to help you along the way. Of course, nothing precludes the good old pen and paper. I personally really enjoy my Lamy 2000 fountain pen and a Leuchtturm 1917 whitelines notebook (but this is for another post!).
Université Laval medical physics professors and students in action at AAPM2017
This week, our students and faculty are involved in 17 presentations at the AAPM meeting in Denver, Colorado. This include Best In Physics (Therapy) Marie-Ève Delage. Overall 2 general poster presentations, 5 poster discussions (ePoster), 3 SNAP Oral, 5 oral presentations and two symposium presentations.
New manuscript published by our group!
Use of 3D- transabdominal Ultrasound Imaging for Treatment Planning in Cervical Cancer Brachytherapy: Comparison to Magnetic Resonance and Computed Tomography available for 50 days (free) – https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1VS4n5Tpjq36rD.
A new list of predatory (blacklist) journals is available…for a fee
Beall’s list of predatory journals has found a “commercial” replacement. Let’s see how much it will cost to access.
Source: U.S. company launches a new blacklist of deceptive academic journals | University Affairs
Naylor Report on Fundamental Science in Canada released!
Report home can be found here: Canada’s Fundamental Science Review. The download link for the report itself is prominently displayed.
We have received 439 000$ from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation JR Evans Leader Funds Program
“Luc Beaulieu, du même département, disposera de près de 440 000$ pour réaliser son projet Development of Novel Optic-based Dose Sensors and Dose-based Treatment Guidance. ”
Source: 17 projets financés par le Fonds des leaders – Journal Le Fil
Money to acquire new state-of-the-art equipment. Will expand our research program and enable new graduate student projects.
Exciting!
New publication by our group on Quantum Dots as radiation nano-dosimeters.
Systematic characterization of semiconductor colloidal quantum dots (cQDs) response to ionizing radiation must be performed to use them in radiation detection. In this study, the robustness of multi-shell (MS) and core/shell (CS) cQDs was investigated under irradiation. Radioluminescence (RL) measurements with kV and MV photon beams revealed a better resistance of MS cQDs to ionizing radiation, with their spectra fluctuating by barely ∼ 1 nm. A systematic signal recovery between subsequent irradiations was noticed for MS cQDs only. A beam energy dependence of the RL stability was detected between kV and MV energies. At the same point of dose cumulated, the RL signal loss for the kV beams was observed to be ∼6-7% smaller than that of the MV beam, for both types of cQDs. These results demonstrate that MS cQDs are better candidates as ionizing radiation sensors than CS cQDs, especially in the kV energy range.
Source: Robust shell passivation of CdSe colloidal quantum dots to stabilize radioluminescence emission
PLOS ONE: How Many Is Too Many? On the Relationship between Research Productivity and Impact
Clearly if you do not published, you can never be cited…However, interesting to see that the Natural sciences field seems to taper-off more quickly than the life science field.
Source: PLOS ONE: How Many Is Too Many? On the Relationship between Research Productivity and Impact
