A summer moment

From the future I remember

Days in my past, etched in memory

Close my eyes halfway, I can see the sunlight

Glittering through the tree’s green leaves

Magician’s haze

In the heat of summer, feeling the warm sun

On my bare arms, loving that feeling.

Wondering if heaven had descended

Sitting there next to you on the bench

You reading your magazine

T-shirt slung over your shoulder

Me watching you and the life around us

No particular cares

Us watching the new magpie parents strut about

Three little ones to care for, wondering if they could fly

In case a cat came slinking by.

I can see the future in the present moment

Remembering this day this exact moment in time

And the past from the present

When I remember back to what I thought life would be

When I was younger

It starts with happiness, that warm melting feeling

When boundaries dissolve

Feeling gratitude, because it could all die away or change

And I am grateful that it hasn’t.

Watching the new generation take the place of the old

Spectator in my life, watching others, watching myself

Everyone gets older

Wondering if you have the same thoughts

But I cannot articulate them to you

You would think that I was feeling melancholy

When the opposite was true. 

copyright Paula M. De Angelis

28 May 2012

The smells of summer

Out biking earlier this evening. Breathing in the smells of late spring/early summer. This is the season of lilacs, my favorite flowers, of freshly-mown green grass, a smell I love, of grilled meat on the barbecue, asphalt roads baking in the heat—the smell of tar. Reminds me of the ocean boardwalk at Rye Beach Playland, also baking in the sun. Love that smell—it always brings me back to childhood, summers, and our annual trip to Playland that was a treat from our parents to us and our friends. Loads of fun. Opened the door to my house, the hallway was filled with the pungent (but not unpleasant) odor that comes from my fig tree, which now has three figs on it. In the living room I smelled the lovely delicate fragrant scent that comes from my mini-orange tree, which has at least six oranges growing on it now and many new white blossoms. The fragrance attracts the bees, who love it when they get the chance to alight on the blossoms; and that is only when they get a chance to come into the house when the windows are wide open as they have been the past few days due to the heat. And then of course my basil plants, with their wonderful smell that always remind me of my aunt’s garden in Tarrytown. When we visited her during the summer, she would make dinner and send us children out into the garden to pick tomatoes and basil leaves for her salad, and also raspberries (for dessert) from the bushes that surrounded her house. I always remember the strong smell of basil from her garden. The smells of summer are peaceful, a kind of aromatherapy for the mind and soul.

Warm weather musings and updates

Summer has finally come to Norway, at least to Oslo and the surrounding area. And it’s not even officially summertime yet according to the calendar. So guess who’s happy? It’s my favorite season, summertime. It brings with it no work or very little work, vacation, sun, warmth, travel, long lazy days, boat trips, bicycle rides, a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables on a daily basis, salads, enjoying a few hours with friends or my husband at outdoor cafes—the list is endless. My plants are happy; it’s just to take one good look at them. Their leaves seem greener and they just seem to be healthier. Just like us, how we respond to the sun. Everyone seems happier, more patient, less aggressive and more open. I wish it could be like that all year long. Summer always seems to be the time when new beginnings blossom, for me at least. More than spring, although you might say that spring is where those new beginnings take root.

I haven’t written too much about work lately, I guess because I’ve moved into a new phase now at my workplace—the ‘wait and see’ phase. For the time being, my work life seems to have evened out a bit. All that means is that I have found a new research group to settle into and so far, so good. It feels good to be a part of something to which I can contribute. I just hope this new group is allowed to grow and flourish. One year ago, the other ‘new group’ that I was a part of was just getting onto its feet and learning to get to know one another. And then the end of 2011 came and that group went ‘poof’ and was no more. Management decided to move the pawns around on the chess board once again, and came up with new suggestions for new constellations. And of course they know best. The uplifting part of these political scenarios is that they happen now in public for all to see, so that it is no longer possible for my friends and colleagues to say that they don’t believe me when I tell them how it is. They’re now experiencing some of this personally and they don’t like the treatment either. I’m a couple of years ahead of them, having graduated from anger to depression to cynicism to healthy skepticism. ‘Trust no one’ as the main characters on the X-Files used to say. In a work-related context, I’d say that’s where I am now. Still like the research work I do, though. I just hate work politics, but they’re part and parcel of the whole arena, in fact of most business arenas.

Mostly, I’ve floated myself back into the world that I love the most after science—the world of the creative arts--literature, movies, art, and music. That world always fills me with hope and the feeling that I am being renewed—new beginnings within myself. I’m reading again, listening to new music, appreciating art where I find it, and going to the movies as often as I manage. Or renting DVDs to catch up on the movies I’ve missed. I just read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and enjoyed it; he describes evil behavior in mankind in a way that can chill you to the bone, and he does it in a way that seems so ordinary. I’m currently reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and enjoying it immensely; Olive is a prickly middle-aged woman but her life is so worth reading about—all the different people who cross her path and who interact with her. I recommend it. I got tickets to see Deadmau5 at Oslo Spektrum concert stadium next week as I wrote about in my previous post; in a few weeks I will see Sting at the Norwegian Wood music festival in Frogner Park. I recently went to see the movies Dark Shadows, Hunger Games and Martha Marcy May Marlene, and I got tickets today for the opening night of Prometheus (can’t wait!) next week. I’ve rented The Rum Diary with Johnny Depp, and watched Source Code and Another Earth (another film I wrote about recently). All of them were good films, and all of them inspire me in a way that no other art form can. I’m hooked on movies—always have been and always will be. Some of you may ask where I find the time to do these things—yes, I know and feel the time constraints all the time. The answer is that I am making the time now. Again I ask, if not now, when? Academia can eat up every spare minute of life including evenings and weekends, and I don’t want that. So yes, I am choosing the creative world of the arts any chance I get, as I’ve written about here in this blog many times before. It helps to balance out the administrative, political and other demands of academia. The actual research and experiments though are the creative part of science, when we are actually permitted to pursue them. There is a lot of creativity in the world of science research; the trick is to not get buried by all of the other demands that eat up that creative time.

Deadmau5 next week at Oslo Spektrum

I was swapping through TV channels last night, and settled on MTV Live, which just happened to be showing some choice live sessions from Roskilde 2011. Exactly at the time I watched, Deadmau5 was performing. I have to say that I’ve never seen anything quite like it, but to be truthful, I haven’t been following a lot of the new music for some years now. It got to be too difficult, with all of the 'one popular song' groups that came and went. I haven't heard of Deadmau5 before, but he has been around since 2005. Anyway, this was just out and out wild! Really caught my attention, especially because the main performer--Joel Thomas Zimmerman—wears on his head what he calls a ‘mau5head’, which is some kind of computer-controlled mouse head with large ears. This mouse head appears in many different colors and designs, and the expressions on the face shift and change shape and swirl. A sinister (Mickey) mouse staring out at the audience from the darkness, into the darkness, from some chaotic fractal hell. The visuals were fantastic, and for me at least, it was a rare glimpse into the future, how electronic music will be (probably a hundred times more sophisticated by that time—let’s say forty years from now) in terms of the digital effects, computer-controlled light show, use of strobe lights and anything else that musicians use these days to heighten the effect of their music. These are just a few of the instruments he uses (and that I’ve NEVER heard of—info from Wikipedia): Nord Lead 2x, Moog Little Phatty, Voyager RME, Ableton, Fruity Loops, Allen & Heath Xone 3D, Allen & Heath Xone 4D, Lemur Input Device, Ableton Live, Monome 256, Reaktor, Cubase, Kaossilator, Nuendo, Native Instruments Maschine, Smithson Martin Emulator, and Dave Smith Instruments Prophet '08. And in a case of synchronicity, while I was online reading about him, I saw that he is playing at Oslo Spektrum next Wednesday, May 30^th. So I got tickets. I’m looking forward to seeing him live. I’ll let you know how it was next week.

The indie film 'Another Earth'

I have self-published three books that I am sure would never have seen the light of day had I sent them via an agent to a large publishing house, so that makes me an indie author. Not that I am against traditional forms of publishing, mind you. I just believe in giving underdogs a small chance. I may try the traditional publishing route with my next book, but it’s not finished yet and I may still change my mind. As I’ve written about before, Amazon/CreateSpace has given indie authors like me a chance to get our books out there. I’ll never be a millionaire from the royalties I get from the minor book sales I enjoy, but I’ve learned valuable things about the publishing and marketing worlds, and that by itself is worth gold, because I don’t have to pay a publicist to market my book. This is the true beauty of our modern society—dreams can become realities in the digital age.

But this time around this post is not about my experiences as an indie writer, but rather about an indie movie I rented recently. A nice little gem of a film released in 2011 called Another Earth; it had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on 24 January 2011 where it won an award. You can find it listed on IMDB at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1549572/. It was directed by Mike Cahill, and written by him and Brit Marling, who also has the lead female role of Rhoda in the film. Another Earth is labeled as both a drama and a sci-fi film, and I guess you could say that it is a sci-fi film of sorts. But the science fiction aspect is not paramount; it is the backdrop for the personal drama that plays out in the film. Despite the presence of the ‘other earth’ in the sky—a hauntingly beautiful orb that looks just like our planet—the film is really about what happens to individual lives in the aftermath of personal tragedy. It is about making amends, paying back, trying to forgive, and trying to move on with one’s life. The two main characters, Rhoda and John (played by William Mapother), have a hard time moving on with their lives. Their paths become entwined through a mistake really, or rather a failure on the part of Rhoda, a college-age young woman, to inform John, a middle-aged professor for whom she cleans house, about her role in the car accident that took his wife and child from him. Her inability to tell him about her role in his personal tragedy leads inevitably to another type of failure—the end of a love affair, but which inspires her to try to set things right for him. The film is well-worth seeing. The sci-fi elements of the film serve to keep us wondering about the possibility of second chances on the other earth, and this involves the aspect of whether or not there is synchrony between both planets. Will the other ‘me’ on the other earth have lived the same life as I did on this earth, and so forth. I won’t give away the details or ending of the film, but will say that despite a rather abrupt ending, you won’t be disappointed. The film will make you think, and if you read the message boards about this film on IMDB, you will find that there are others who are puzzling about the very same things. The mark of a good film—it gets people talking, discussing and trading ideas and possible scenarios.

I have no idea how much it costs to make films, nor do I have any idea of what it cost to make Another Earth. According to IMDB, it grossed $77,740 in the USA on its opening weekend (24 July 2011); it opened on four screens. As of 2 October 2011, it had grossed $1,316,074 in the USA. I rented the DVD here in Oslo just last weekend; I cannot remember that it opened in the theaters here, although according to IMDB it opened here in Norway in November 2011. No matter. I’ve seen it on DVD. It will be interesting to see what returns will come from the foreign market, especially from DVD rentals/sales. The American earnings are not a lot of money really, compared to what some of the commercial blockbusters rake in. But I’m betting that Mike Cahill and Brit Marling are not complaining. I doubt it cost them that much money to make the film. So now they may even have some funds to write and direct a new film. It will be interesting to follow them further; I hope they make more films like Another Earth. 

Dark Shadows and 'marginal weirdness'

I have been eagerly awaiting the opening of Tim Burton’s new film, Dark Shadows; it opened here in Norway this past Friday, May 11th. So I was online a few days before and ordered a ticket so that I was assured a seat in the theater. I needn’t have worried; the theater was not full, and I doubt it will be for any of the showings. Not because the film isn’t worth seeing, it is, but mostly because it will have limited appeal given its subject matter in a cinema world where vampires have been done to death. I need think only of the Twilight films and of True Blood, both of which I don’t really watch, although I have seen one of the Twilight films and a few of the True Blood episodes. They don’t appeal to me as much as the original Dark Shadows TV series or the two Dark Shadows films from the 1970s (House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows) based on the TV series. The original Dark Shadows series and even the subsequent films managed something none of the other vampire films or series has managed as well, with the possible exception of Francis Ford Coppola’s incredible wonderful film version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And that is to take themselves seriously, despite that the subject matter was nothing more than pure fantasy. They wove the supernatural fantasies of vampires, ghosts, witches, werewolves and other creatures into a soap opera storyline filled with romance, love, sex, deceit, treachery, normal life, family life and honor, wealthy families, and tragic lives. They managed to be serious and campy simultaneously. The Dark Shadows TV series was talky, like a good soap opera should be. It kept its viewers hanging literally onto each word a character uttered. Those words were important to the storyline, driving it forward, and since the series ran from Monday to Friday, viewers were guaranteed a treasure trove of conversations, arguments, conflicts, ultimatums, discussions and more conversations. In between all of these, something supernatural could occur—there might be vampire or witch activity, or ghosts that wandered about the Collinwood mansion or estate, which was often shrouded in darkness or fog. It seemed to be always evening on Dark Shadows; and like the individual characters, I was always relieved when they got indoors, into the foyer and then into the main drawing room—a safe haven for the most part, because that was where normal family life happened, where ghosts and vampires and witches were kept at bay at least when the individual family members met there. Of course the other parts of the house were not as ‘safe’; I need only think of the different rooms inhabited by ghosts, or rooms that were portals into parallel times. I think those are the parts of Tim Burton’s film that I liked the most—when the Collins family sat down to dinner, with the matriarch of the family, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michele Pfeiffer) sitting at the head of the table, in complete control of her family. All she had to do was open her mouth and tell someone to be quiet, and he or she toed the line. At these times during the film, there was conversation, a sense of family, a sense of why these people stayed together and lived together in the house. Viewers learned about the history of the Collins family and how they made their living. There was character development and storyline progression. Much of this took place during the first half of the film. And then came the second half of the film, which took off into another realm completely—the absurd really, with Alice Cooper visiting the mansion as entertainment for one of the family’s famous ‘happenings’, or Angelique (played by Eva Green) ranting and raving about being scorned and how she would make Barnabas (Johnny Depp) and the family pay. She did a good job, but I would have preferred less emphasis on her and more on Barnabas and Victoria/Josette (played by Bella Heathcote), on Carolyn (played by Chloë Grace Moretz), or even on David (played by Gulliver McGrath). The film ends up being rather schizophrenic; I preferred the first half—the return of Barnabas, his entrance into and confrontation with the 20^th century, his meeting with his old family, his having to live and act as a vampire—all those things. The second half of the movie toyed with the first half. I would have preferred otherwise. But I am not sorry I saw the film. Why? Because after I got home, I went online and found some of the old Dark Shadows TV episodes on YouTube, and watched a few. And then I went onto Amazon and ordered the entire DVD collection of the original TV series (131 DVDs spanning 470 hours). I’ve decided that I will come home from work each day and watch one episode, just as I ran home from school in the 1970s to watch an episode on TV. I am looking forward to the experience of reliving the original series.

I’ve been following the reviews of Burton’s film to this point. The New York Times gave it a good review and even put it on its Critics’ Pick list: http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/movies/johnny-depp-stars-in-tim-burtons-dark-shadows.html. IMDB has a list of the different reviews so far: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1077368/externalreviews

But the review that resonated most with me was the one on Salon: http://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/johnny_depps_delirious_dark_shadows/. Why? The following excerpt from this review will explain it well: 

“Barnabas Collins predates not just “Twilight” and “True Blood,” but also Anne Rice’s “Interview With the Vampire” and the entire rise of the Goth sensibility. In the 1970s, vampires were something that only marginal weirdos who went to science-fiction bookstores and watched Hammer films like “Dracula: Prince of Darkness” knew about. People like the teenage Tim Burton, in other words”.

Well, marginal weirdo could describe me too. I may not have gone to sci-fi bookstores when I was a teenager (I’ve done so in my twenties and loved all the ones I’ve been in), but I did watch the many Christopher Lee vampire films and I even dragged my poor sister to them to keep me company. Heck, I dragged her to a lot of different horror films from that time. Needless to say, she does not have the same fond memories I have of time well-spent in dark movie theaters watching horror films. Of course, now that I think of it, she did accompany me, when she could have said no. Sometimes we were accompanied by a friend of hers, who was a marginal weirdo like myself. He liked those kinds of films, and was even the type to build models of Frankenstein and Dracula that glowed in the dark. I don’t know what happened to him after high school; I can only wonder if he too has seen Burton’s film. I would love to hear his take on the film.

'Until Tomorrow' by Gail Ann Dorsey

I have fallen in love with a song--this song. Pure poetry set to music. It's beautiful, both the music and the lyrics. It is a song from the soundtrack to the movie Phoenix, itself a very good and very underrated little movie, just like this song. I tried finding the lyrics online and couldn't, so I listened carefully to the song and wrote them down. I believe Gail Ann Dorsey wrote this song and sang it. If so, she is as good a songwriter as she is singer and musician. Here are the lyrics to 'Until Tomorrow'. Enjoy........


These are the pieces
Of all that I was
My troubles will never define me
Overcoming them does.

If I try to stand up
Would you hold me down?
The choices I made
Were all my own
All my own.

(chorus)

I have fallen in too deep
Miles to go, before I sleep
Before I sleep.
Give me peace
I am lost
Give me wings, to rise above
To rise above.

If I ask forgiveness
Would you give me that now?
If I wanted to hold you
Would you show me how?

No need for reasons
No time for sorrow
Each day is a new day
And lasts only until tomorrow.

(chorus)

'A story is told as much by silence as by speech'

I saw the recent film ’Martha Marcy May Marlene’ last night, and was reminded of this quote by Susan Griffin, 'A story is told as much by silence as by speech'. My first response—yikes, what a movie. Creepy. Right from the start—an atmosphere of tension, dread, and foreboding. An atmosphere of intensity and tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. Probably one of the most intense films I’ve seen, definitely not for the weak of heart. And I mean it. I found myself having to breathe, because I kept holding my breath for much of the movie. The film is not overtly violent from the physical standpoint except for one scene where you can see the violence coming a mile away—the person happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, unfortunately. The other violent scene involves cats, but you don’t see the result of the violence. That scene also contains the implication of violence toward a human being, and that by itself is nerve-wracking. Even though it doesn’t occur, you know it’s likely to in the future. From the psychological perspective however, the film is a continual assault on your nerves and psyche. It is the story of a young woman who manages to leave her ‘family’, a collective of men and women who live together on a farm and sleep together at random. The family has cult overtones, and not surprisingly, once you get a glimpse of its leader, Patrick, you cannot help but think of Charles Manson and his family. What the film gives you is an insight into how such families function, and even how they came to be. Besides Martha’s story, there is one scene where one of the male family members drives home with a new female ‘recruit’ in his black SUV. It made me think of the film Silence of the Lambs, how the serial killer Buffalo Bill managed to lure women into his van and kidnap them. The promise of love, family and acceptance is the lure in this film—the family members are young men and women who have come from presumably dysfunctional families. But you never really know for sure, in the same way as you never find out much about Patrick’s earlier life. I kept remembering back to my own youth, and how the Moonies used to come onto my college campus to try and recruit us to join them. I remember one young woman who nearly succumbed to their propaganda and how I fought to keep her from joining them. She didn’t, luckily. But it’s possible to get fooled in other ways, not necessarily by a cult--but by a man who says he loves you, or a woman who says she is your friend, that you can trust her. We want to hear those things. ’Martha Marcy May Marlene' is a scary film, and more of a horror film than any horror film you’re likely to see. Because it involves real people, who abuse one another in the name of ‘love’, and who have lost all semblance of what it means to be living breathing emoting human beings. They have turned into automatons who obey their leader, who mostly does not punish them with physical violence except in one respect (the ritual for the new women who become a part of the family is that they ‘sleep’ with Patrick, but the reality is that he rapes them. This is all presented to the new recruits as a cleansing and a special night that they will never forget). Patrick manages to be a truly menacing presence in their lives. You know that he is capable of physical violence if triggered, and you’d rather not trigger him (psychological abuse).

Martha is mostly silent. She says very little, talks very little, offers few explanations for why she ‘disappeared’ off the face of the earth to live with her ‘boyfriend’ on a farm in the Catskills in New York State. She is mostly monosyllabic in her responses, and you know it is because she cannot begin to verbalize what she has been through. She is mostly in shock, and is trying to come to terms with what happened to her in the setting of her sister Lucy’s summer home on a lake in Connecticut. Lucy’s husband Ted has little patience with her, and the tension between Martha and Lucy and Martha and Ted is also nerve-wracking. You know something bad is bound to happen. I was glad to see that the director did not take the trite route of having Ted seduce Martha. There have been too many of those sorts of films and they most often don’t strike me as realistic. Lucy tries all sorts of ways to get Martha to open up about what happened to her and how she spent the last two years; she is overprotective and a bit controlling, but has a good heart and wants her sister to ‘get better’. Martha remains quiet and robotic. Her silence makes her powerful, even though she is not seeking that power. The natural silence of the rural settings in the film (the farm and the lake house in the woods) also lends to the tension and foreboding. Martha’s silence gives her a kind of (unwished for) control over her surroundings, but you know that she cannot control her former family. Patrick’s family is the wild card in her life—a menacing presence at all times, one that invades her dreams and her waking hours. Lucy and Ted merely dance around her, trying to integrate her into their lives as best they can. They fail. When they finally realize that she needs professional help, it really is too late. Without giving away the ending of the film, which I found rather abrupt, I can tell you that this is not a film with a happy ending, as ambiguous as it was. Elizabeth Olsen did a great job as Martha, ditto John Hawkes as Patrick, and Sarah Paulson and Hugh Dancy as Lucy and Ted, respectively. The movie's writer and director Sean Durkin has made an unsettling and uncomfortable film, one that you will not quickly forget.  

What George Orwell said

Just some amazing quotes from an astute man.......

·         During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

·         Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

·         Good writing is like a windowpane.

·         To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

·         The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

·         He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.

·         Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

·         The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

·         In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

·         To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.

Jumping hurdles

It’s been a while since I last wrote for my blog; I have been very busy with work-related things. My work life has changed yet again, perhaps for the better. Time will tell. I am now part of a large research group that has a new leader and he seems to be up for the job. He has the qualities needed to run a research group, and for now, that’s all I care about. My workplace remains a study in transition; I doubt the dust will settle any time soon. Several of my friends and colleagues are now dealing with the depression and uncertainty that haunted my life up until the end of 2011. It’s their turn now. I let go, gave in, and resigned myself to constant change, change for change’s sake, to frustration, to disappointment, to bad behavior. In the end, you get used to change and all its accoutrements. What seemed like such an impossible hurdle to overcome, dealing with constant change, has at least become a hurdle of lower height. It is possible to jump it at times without falling. It is even possible sometimes to soar over it; that’s happened at least a few times since the new year started. The associated hurdles of questionable leadership and boredom are harder to soar over, but I will. I no longer look at work in the same way anymore though; it’s a job, albeit well-paying and interesting, but a job nonetheless, and when it’s time to go home, I close the door on it—a big change for me. I doubt I will go in reverse and become the workaholic I once was. It’s hard to let go of an identity that was comfortable, one that defined me for many years. It’s finding a new identity that’s the tough challenge now; I alternate between scientist and writer/photographer. Both make equal claims on my time now. And I let them. Because in truth, I want to let them. I want both of them in my life. I no longer choose one at the expense of the other. I don’t want to give up my creative interests, and if I give up the time needed to pursue them, I will be unhappy, that I know.

Third-graders and their questions about science

A few posts ago, I talked about the third-graders at a Long Island grammar school who had written letters to me asking me about my work and life as a scientist. I received sixteen hand-printed letters in the mail right before Easter vacation, and read through them all. Their teacher (my good friend) helped them formulate some of the questions. Many of them were insightful, many were cute, a few were out there, but all of them were indicative of a group of youngsters who are thinking about their daily life and surroundings. That is a good thing and should be encouraged at all costs, especially if we want the younger generation to choose science and math when they get to high school and college.

Here are some of their questions that I am busy answering these days:

1.       What do I know about cancer and are we coming close to a cure?

2.       How is my research on cancer going?

3.       What would I do to stop cancer?

4.       Do I know the cure for cancer?

5.       Do a lot of unhealthy foods give you cancer?

6.       Did any members of my family get cancer?

7.       Do I like to study cancer?

8.       Do I study just cancer?

9.       Does a cell get destroyed from cancer?

10.   How many kinds of cancer are there?

11.   Will a sickness go away if you take care of it by yourself?

12.   What have I researched in the past and what am I researching now?

13.   Is it hard work to be a scientist?

14.   Do I have any helpers in the lab?

15.   How did I become a researcher?

16.   What does a research biologist do?

17.   Do I have my own cool lab?

18.   Is it fun to be a scientist?

19.   How come I am not writing a book about science, and have I written science

       books or regular books?

20.   Is Norway a hot place to live?

21.   How is it to live in Norway?

22.   How are the fjords in Norway?

23.   Have I ever studied the human heart?

24.   Do all rabbits eat grass only?

25.   Is it ok to eat the bananas that have brown dots on them and that the fruit flies fly around?

26.   Do I make potions?

The beauty of Bergen

In my last post, I talked about my recent trip to the city of Bergen (on the west coast of Norway) together with two of my friends from New York. We thought it was a beautiful city and enjoyed our short visit. I have been to Bergen at least four times before this trip, but for some reason, this time it just radiated beauty. Perhaps it was the sunny day, the perfect blue-sky weather, the clear crisp air. A clean city, cheerful inhabitants, lovely homes, and a feeling of peace in the city. I took more pictures than I can count, and I thought I would share some of them with you today. Enjoy!

The ugliness of litter

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Nothing makes a city uglier than inordinate amounts of litter and garbage strewn about on streets, in parks and on different properties. I bring the topic up yet again because I spent some of my Easter vacation walking around Oslo together with two friends from New York who were visiting me for the week. It was actually quite appalling, the amount of litter that we saw in different places—paper, plastic wrappings, plastic cups, empty beer and wine bottles, not to mention dog feces and human spit clumps here and there. I’d like to say that it was mostly localized to the center of the city; but that was not true—there was just as much litter in the residential areas that ring the city. I guess it’s time for the annual spring cleaning of the streets and different properties after the long winter, and that may account for why the litter, garbage and feces have not been cleared from the streets, but overall I find it rather sad to consider that a number of people in this city apparently don’t care too much about how their city looks, either to themselves or to visitors. And I really cannot understand this, because the litter and garbage strewn about are ugly, and make the city rather unappealing to look at. We also spent a day walking around the city of Bergen, and the contrast was striking. No litter anywhere—not one piece of paper, empty cup, or empty bottle strewn about. And no spit clumps or dog feces. What’s up, Oslo? Why are there no litter and garbage in Bergen, and so much of it in Oslo? Is it just that Bergen has had its annual spring cleaning of the streets and grounds? I doubt it. It is a beautiful city, and it seems as though its inhabitants want to take care of it and to preserve its beauty. I wish that could be said of Oslo’s inhabitants. I think it’s time to wake up and take a look around, Oslo-ites. This city is also lovely in its own way, and could be even more so if there was no litter. One of the most beautiful areas of Oslo is the Akerselva river that divides the city into east and west; there was even a fair amount of litter along this beautiful waterway. My visitors were left with the impression that Bergen is the prettier city. Perhaps that doesn’t matter to anyone; it matters to me, because Oslo is a pretty city when it is clean.

I also want to make one last comment. Tagging is also ruining the beauty of this city. Graffiti artwork is fine and often very striking and pretty. Tagging is just ugly, and is a type of litter too if you ask me. I don’t know what it will take to make people care again. I don’t have the answers, but perhaps it’s time for some kind of ad campaign to shed light on this problem. 

Third-graders and science

I recently agreed to answer questions from third-graders about what it means to be a scientist, what a scientist does, and so forth, as part of a project to get students interested in science. My friend teaches third-graders in a Long Island, NY, elementary school, and it is her class that I agreed to 'talk to'. I cannot do so in person, so we agreed that her students would write letters to me with their questions. Today when I got home from work, there was an envelope waiting for me. Inside were personal letters written to me by hand from about twenty students. I had a long day in the lab, so when I got home I was pretty exhausted. But after reading these letters, I perked up again. They are just so sweet and unusual and interesting. It will be fun to answer their questions and to see what I can come up with in the way of photos and other items that will allow them to 'see' what it is I do everyday. I thought I would post some of their questions here over the next month or so, anonymously of course. But it will give you an idea of what third-graders think about when they think about science. Stay tuned.

A fascination with the night sky

I find myself looking skyward at night a lot this month; the reason is that this is a remarkable month for planet sightings according to the different astronomy websites I’ve come across. Check out the following website for good information about what’s happening in the sky above us during March http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/visible-planets-tonight-mars-jupiter-venus-saturn-mercury. It helps that March has been a month of some wonderfully sunny clear days and equally clear crisp nights, so that when I look up I can in fact see the planets, stars and the moon, not hidden by clouds or fog.

I’ve never been very good at identifying the different stellar constellations, except for the Big and Little Dippers, the common names for Ursa Major and Ursa Minor if I understand the information I’ve read correctly. As a child, I remember looking up at the ceiling of Grand Central Station in New York City and being pleasantly surprised by what I saw there—a zodiac mural painted on the green ceiling, which has recently been restored. For more information about it, check out the following site: http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/nov/08/stars-shine-grand-central-terminal-again/. My parents tried to explain some of this to us, but my siblings and I were not of an age where we could really understand it. But it was fun to look at.

I’ve been trying to photograph the night sky a lot this month, without much success until tonight. I am posting the photo I was happiest with. You can see the crescent moon, and closest to it on the left is Jupiter; Venus shines brightly above the both of them. Enjoy!

Forays into the world of social media promotion

I am slowly becoming more social media-savvy. It’s taken a while—I joined Facebook in June 2008, rather late compared to many of my American friends, and it’s hard to believe that I will be coming up on four years of social interactions that have changed my life in a very positive way for the most part. Joining Facebook pushed me over a wall that had been of my own making; it was easier to stand on the side of not knowing, of not reaching out, of not sharing, of being skeptical to all of it. But I’ve realized that as long as I can maintain some semblance of control over what, when and how I post, I can be a part of the digital age and actually be happy. I’ve also joined Twitter, mostly in a professional context—I enjoy tweeting about science and the little tidbits that I come across during my day, since I follow a lot of scientific journals and newspapers that write about science. It is an amazing daily ride through a huge world of other twitterers who seem to love what they’re doing. I don’t post each day; I simply don’t have the time for it. And as you have probably surmised, I have less time these days for blogging as A New Yorker in Oslo because my work life has changed (yet again) and now I am busy with new responsibilities that are actually quite welcome. I plan to keep on blogging, but I may not post as often as I used to. I hope you will keep reading in spite of the change.

In my more recent consultant work, I have discovered the power of Facebook ads to promote business pages, events, products, and whatever else one might dream of. For my own creative projects, I’ve created two Facebook ads, one to promote my book Blindsided—Recognizing and Dealing with Passive Aggressive Leadership in the Workplace; the other to promote my new page Books by Paula M De Angelis (https://www.facebook.com/BooksbyPMDeAngelis; you would have to be a Facebook member to connect to and ‘like’ the page). The ads appear on the sidebar of Facebook sites. You can choose your budget—25 dollars a day for ten days, or 500 dollars lifetime budget for one particular ad campaign. It’s a pretty amazing way to promote what you want to promote. You can choose your target audience. In my case, I target English-speaking countries, and in both cases, my target audience on Facebook was approximately 175,000,000 people over the age of 18. Daunting? Oh my God, yes. I have no idea if these ads will increase sales of my books. But whatever happens, it was worth learning about this promotion possibility. I also use press releases to announce the publication of new books, and they are also quite effective at getting the message out there. The point is that being an indie author means that you do all of the promotion work yourself. If a publishing house had released your book, they would be doing this work for you. I don’t mind doing the legwork myself. Again, I guess because I am a bit of a control freak, I like knowing what is going on and having some control over how fast it all proceeds. I’ll keep you posted on the eventual outcomes—how many people actually look at the ads, and if sales of my books increase.

Brave new work world

It strikes me more and more that the work world has become a ’brave new world’. The future is now, is upon us. A myriad of changes sneaked up on us and suddenly were there. But they weren’t just small changes; they were life-changing and workplace-changing changes. Those of us who have been in the work world for a while are a bit more observant of these changes; or perhaps we feel the effects of this brave new world a bit more intensely than those just starting out. In any case, I’ve had the past two years to muse upon all of the changes, and I must say that they herald a new world of work that we can no longer deny has in reality arrived. 

Open landscapes, shared jobs, home offices, flexible time, team projects, and group thinking are just a few of those changes. But perhaps the biggest change in the past five years alone has been the move toward selling yourself as a worker. It is no longer possible to ignore this fact—that marketing yourself and your capabilities, selling yourself to a potential employer, has become de rigueur for average employees. It is no longer a matter of choice. Even headhunting agencies will tell you that now. It started with posting personal photos on resumes. That was never done when I was starting out in the work world; it is very common now. It moved on to the use of social media to establish your online presence; that has become very important. LinkedIn, Facebook, Google +, Twitter, and a myriad of other online social spaces help present you to a potential employer. The more hits you have on Google, the better. Of course they have to be the right kind of hits; it won’t do for an employer, potential or not, to find your drunken party photos on Facebook. But it strikes me that a potential employer might even overlook this if they see that you have a huge number of friends or followers. Because this is the age of networking. The more networks you have, the better. It shows presumably that you are a social person, friendly, capable of teamwork, of sharing, of listening, of communicating. It may be to your detriment not to have an online social presence these days. I cannot say for sure, but I have a very strong feeling that this is the case. And if it is, is this the right way to be doing things? It’s too soon to say, but for those people who are professionally competent yet introverted or even shy about ‘getting themselves out there’; it must be a nightmare to maneuver through this brave new world. How do you explain to a potential employer that you are fully competent to do the job but a bit shy about promoting yourself? And if your job doesn’t involve sales or marketing, why is it necessary to have to market yourself to an employer? Why isn’t an interview about your skills and competence enough to get you hired? But it’s not anymore. I think that some of this new emphasis on selling yourself is going to backfire. An employer may be impressed by a potential employee who has hundreds or thousands of friends on Facebook; the employer may even think that this means that if this person is hired that he or she will be good at teamwork and group thinking. But not all jobs need this or require it. It won’t do to hire a scientist with hundreds or thousands of friends on Facebook if he or she can’t survive the loneliness of lab life. The life of a scientist is often lonely. If you are hired as a scientist, it is expected that you can tolerate alone time—in your office writing articles or grants, or alone in the lab doing experiments until all hours of the evening. And being social online doesn’t necessarily translate to being a better communicator or better networker in the workplace. I’ve seen that more times than I can count.

I couldn’t even imagine how awful it must be to work in an open landscape, to not have my own office or even to share an office but to be able to close the door on the rest of the workplace at times. I cannot imagine what it must be like to talk on the phone with no hope of privacy whatsoever, whether it be a work-related or personal call. I couldn’t stand the idea that I was to be monitored at all times. I also don’t like the idea of shared jobs; I don’t think it is right to hire a person to do a job and then to hire one or two more people to do the same job, so that all of them are sharing that job at the same time. I can understand sharing a job if one person does it 50% of the time and the other person has the other 50%--I call that splitting a job. The trend that I have seen recently is that one or two people are working simultaneously on the same project or job and are mostly just competing with each other instead of working effectively. I don’t get it in any case. I know a few people who have complained to me about this—that they don’t have their individual projects in the lab but instead are working on the same project as a co-worker, or that they really don’t know what is expected of them, or they don’t know what they’re really doing. That sense of vagueness that hangs over everything—the veil of vagueness, I call it. Who is my boss, what is my job, what is expected of me, am I doing a good job, what is a good job? The same vagueness is involved in group thinking—is this really the way we want to go in the workplace? Forcing people to brainstorm together in the same room for hours at a time won’t necessarily lead to new creative ideas; it may rather lead to boredom and inertia. Home office days work for me, so that is a change I like personally, but I know many people who dread this because of the lack of structure and discipline that the workplace provides for them.

This has been a long post, but one that I have been thinking about for quite a while. I will be writing more about the brave new work world in future posts. I am figuring it out as I go along, but I must say I am ever so glad to be closer to the end of my work life than to the start of it. 

Tunnel of Light at the Nydalen Metro Station in Oslo

Lovely day in Oslo today, so I went for a long walk up along the Akerselva River, as far as Nydalen. I had my camera with me and decided to take a short video of the Nydalen Metro Station's Tunnel of Light. You can see it in action and read more about it here. But I'll include the info about it anyway. Enjoy!!

The Tunnel of Light is located at the Nydalen Metro Station in Oslo, Norway, You step on to the escalator that connects to the station platform, and for 30 seconds you can experience a tunnel of rainbow colors that shift color constantly; the sound patterns ("music") also change along with the lights. The station was designed by architect Kristin Jarmund, and the interactive installations were created by Intravision System.

Experimenting with the workplace

I have written a lot of posts about the modern-day workplace over the past year and a half in an attempt to understand my own workplace and all the changes that have occurred there during this period of time. I follow the news in both the USA and Norway and whenever there is news about what is going on in modern workplaces, I sit up and take notice. It interests me almost as much as science news. I’m not necessarily talking about business news in general; more about organizational behavior in businesses. Why do companies behave as they do toward their employees? What are the different management philosophies that dominate workplaces and how do they affect employees? Why did they arise in the first place? Who is responsible for their implementation in the workplace? When did modern workplaces become research laboratories? By that I mean, when did it become kosher to ‘experiment’ on employees by foisting different trendy management philosophies on them? Because it is an experiment to do this to a workplace—to force a workplace to adopt new strategies and ways of managing people in the name of cost-effectiveness, productivity and innovation. And before one experiment is finished, before data can be analyzed and conclusions drawn, another experiment is undertaken in the name of some other wonderful ideal that is usually impossible to live up to. It is impossible to draw any conclusion whatsoever without careful study and analysis of data that has been carefully collected from carefully-designed experiments. Do any of the workplace experiments meet the stringent criteria required for performing such experiments? I sincerely doubt it, based on what I have been witness to in my own workplace.

I get the impression that this type of ‘experimental’ approach occurs in the classroom as well. Education seems to have been invaded by the same types of people who are responsible for the major changes in the workplace. There seems to be an inordinate amount of experimentation in the classroom, whether in grammar schools or high schools. I don’t get it. What are the experiments trying to prove? I have listened to frustrated parents talk about their children, who are now young adults and who are struggling to find meaning in their lives. These are children who grew up in the 1990s and during the early part of this century, who were told that they could plan their own curriculum in schools, choose their own course of study, and so forth. What they weren’t told was how they were to follow that self-chosen road to its end. They weren’t taught discipline and focus and the value of hard work and homework; they weren’t told about failing and rising again after failing. They were only told to believe in themselves. Some of them do, but many of them don’t. It’s a vague concept for a child to ‘believe’ in himself or herself. When you’re young, you don’t think that way. You think rather—‘I’m scared to give this talk in front of the class. I don’t want to be the center of attention or the butt of the jokes or the nerd’. But there’s often no one to talk to about these things. And you would much rather get concrete help on how to talk in front of the class than hear an adult tell you to ‘just believe in yourself and it will all work out’. That may be true, that it usually does work out. But as adults, we are responsible for training the young, not leaving them to their own devices. I find it ironic that adult workplaces are micromanaged to the n^th degree, whereas children’s (public) schools are not, or haven’t been up to this point. The teachers may be micromanaged, yes, and forced to fill out a myriad of reports; the children are given a lot of ‘freedom’. Discipline is discouraged, homework likewise; teachers who come down hard on students are reprimanded. It’s a very different world than the one I grew up in, and I don’t really understand it. The same is true about the modern workplace—it is not the workplace I cut my teeth on, and I am spending a fair amount of time trying to figure out when the paradigm shift occurred, when the rug got pulled out from under our feet, and how it all changed when no one was looking. The values and ethics I grew up with that I expected would be valued in the workplace, are not necessarily valued as much as I thought they would be. Loyalty, discipline, structure, focus, hard work—I know they are appreciated, but not in the same way as in my parents’ generation. But when I started out in the work world over thirty years ago, they were still highly appreciated. It is amazing how much can change in the space of ten or twenty years. I suppose when I look at it all objectively, I cannot really be surprised. Change is part and parcel of life, including work life. Perhaps it has been rather naive to expect it to remain the same, especially when everything else around us changes continually. 

My heart and San Francisco

Nineteen years ago, my husband and I were walking the streets of San Francisco; we lived there for one glorious year when he got the wonderful opportunity to work as a postdoc in a molecular genetics lab at the University of California at San Francisco. I also ended up working in the same lab (pretty large) but in a different capacity. I remember loving the challenge of moving, setting up stakes in a new city, finding an apartment for us to rent, going to look at them in the evenings when he got home after work. All those things that make for a life together and the stuff of great memories. I got to thinking of that time in our lives because I saw our old address on a slip of paper as I was going through my files recently and tossing old papers. We lived on Carl Street (very near the intersection with Stanyan Street), a stone’s throw in terms of distance from both Golden Gate Park and the Haight-Ashbury district. I googled the address recently and clicked onto the street view—wouldn’t you know, there was our old Victorian-style house, still looking the same as it did nineteen years ago? I wonder if it still exists as apartments for rent? As I remember, there were several apartments in the three-story house. We lived on the top floor.

We loved being there and each weekend was a new adventure. There were so many things to do and see that year. Where should we go, what should we visit this time? Of course we did all the standard touristy things—visiting Fisherman’s Wharf, Alcatraz prison, Muir Woods, Chinatown, Golden Gate Park, different museums and the zoo. And so many other things. We drove to Marin County, to Berkeley, and to the Napa Valley wine country (don’t get me started on how much I loved being there—it is one of the most beautiful places on earth if you ask me). But what I remember most from our year in SF is that we got outdoors and walked. It is a great city to walk in, hilly yes, but easy to walk around in. And that is how we discovered most of the interesting off-the-beaten path restaurants and cafes and stores that we ended up liking to go to. And our trips to the beach on the weekends, even in the months of February and March. Deserted beaches for the most part, but what an expansive feeling to be there. I love being at the shore during the winter months; I remember doing that when I lived in New Jersey—driving to the shore in the middle of winter and looking out over the ocean. In San Francisco, we took the cable car all the way out to the end of Irving Street and then walked a few meters from there to the beach. We stopped and bought homemade vanilla sodas at the little Italian deli that stood on the corner of the last street before the beach. That was my first introduction to those wonderful Italian syrups that come in all flavors—vanilla, coffee, chocolate, and so many others. I took so many pictures that year, we had so many visitors that year—my sister and her husband, my friends Gisele and Judy, my husband’s friend Lars, colleagues from our Norwegian workplaces.  I remember my husband’s aunt and uncle (Gunvor and Åke) visiting us in the autumn, and her falling in love with the pumpkins that were in abundance at that time of year; she helped me carve out a large one for Halloween. And when my ten-year old stepdaughter Caroline came for three weeks during that summer, we took her to Disneyland in Los Angeles and then visited my friends Lucy and Steve in San Diego where we ended up visiting Sea World as well. My brother got married that year as well—the wedding was in NY which made it a pleasure to fly the short trip back to NY to be a part of it. There was never a dull moment in all of 1993, and that is why that year stands out in my mind as a very memorable year. It was full of adventures and new experiences that we tackled and mastered and enjoyed doing so in the process. Perhaps those are the things we should do more often in our lives—choose new experiences that bring us out of our comfort zones, that stretch us and make us broader. Who knows? It is easier to choose safety at the expense of all else, and becomes much easier to do so as we grow older.

We often walked around in Haight-Ashbury on the weekends, with its great old record stores, clothing stores, cafes—you name it. Of course it had its quota of shady stores and seediness, but what big city doesn’t? I wouldn’t have lived smack in the center of that district, mostly because it attracted a lot of tourists and there wouldn’t have been much privacy or quiet. But we were there often. It’s where we discovered a little hole-in-wall Southern food restaurant that probably isn’t there anymore. It served crab cakes and seafood gumbo and you name it. We went there often, as well as to a barbecued ribs place that probably should have been closed down by the health authorities, but boy were the ribs good! We had an organic deli and bakery on the corner a few houses down from us, where we bought fresh bread, and a small supermarket a few blocks from us where we could get fresh fish. We didn’t lack for much that year.

It was the one year in my life where my work really didn’t matter all that much to me. I was employed in the same lab as my husband, working on a flow cytometry project that I learned and mastered and that eventually led to a publication for my boss at that time. I’m proud that I was able to come in and get the project organized and on-track so that a publication became possible. I worked hard, but I left work at the door at the end of the day. We met some great work colleagues and hung out with them as well--concerts, picnics, parties. But weekends belonged to my husband and me, our free time, relaxing because work did not hang over our heads as it does usually. I miss that. I try to keep weekends free now, but there is always something to do for work. I don’t mind it, but I miss that feeling of being truly relaxed.

When we returned to Norway, a new year awaited us. It seems almost impossible to believe that nearly twenty years have passed since that time. But they have. We sat and watched The Streets of San Francisco with Karl Malden and a young Michael Douglas, that ran for a year or so on Norwegian TV during 1994. We missed SF. It made us feel good to watch the show, to try to identify the streets we knew and had walked on. Is it possible to fall in love with a city? I think so. It happened to me during 1993. I don’t know how I’d feel going back now. I’ve changed, our lives have changed. Perhaps it’s good not to go back? I don’t know. I’ve done it once, returned to Cambridge in England, the city where I met my husband. It wasn’t the same feeling. Of course it couldn’t be. Part of the original feeling had to do with its being my first trip to Europe (1987), first time in England, meeting my husband, falling in love—all those things. Can you recapture those feelings, the feelings you first have about a place or a person? Probably not. And that’s ok actually. Because other feelings and thoughts have taken their place. New memories have laid themselves up on the old ones. I dig deeper now to unearth the very old ones. But they’re still fresh when I do so. The mind is interesting that way. A mystery that holds our lives in its recesses. The heart likewise. 

Defining academic productivity

At the end of Saturday’s post, I said that I would discuss productivity in a future post. I decided to write a short post about academic productivity today.

I found a useful definition of productivity at the following website, at least in terms of how it can be measured: http://www.investorwords.com/3876/productivity.html

‘The amount of output per unit of input (labor, equipment, and capital). There are many different ways of measuring productivity. For example, in a factory productivity might be measured based on the number of hours it takes to produce a good, while in the service sector productivity might be measured based on the revenue generated by an employee divided by his/her salary.’

Another definition comes from the Merriam Webster online dictionary http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/productive:

‘yielding results, benefits, or profits’.

There are difficulties in applying the first definition in its entirety to an academic researcher, because it is very difficult to directly measure a researcher’s economic productivity. The number of publications and grant funding (money given to the research organization where the academic works) are the standard ways of measuring an researcher’s productivity. A good number of publications often leads to more grant funding. And more grant funding in turn draws in more students. But all of this depends on the hierarchical level of the academic. It stands to reason that a staff scientist without a research group (students) cannot be as ‘productive’ as a professor with a large group of students around him or her. Can they even be compared? Yet they often are, especially when it comes to the numbers of publications produced. This is unfair, because in principle a large research group can produce many more publications than one scientist alone. Whether that is in fact true is another discussion. In any case, not all researchers get grants, which doesn’t mean that they are necessarily bad researchers. It simply means that they didn’t get funded this time around. But is that acceptable to the business administrators who control the research institutes and who insist on measuring productivity on an annual basis?

Most other research activities--e.g. advising, teaching, designing experiments, having meetings with students, and writing--don’t generate revenue. If a researcher/advisor spends several hours per week helping one graduate student who is clueless about how to proceed with his or her research article and data interpretation, how do we measure productivity in this situation? The advisor has invested time, energy and intellectual focus in these activities--meeting, advising, and discussing. What is the tangible product? Over time, the product may be (emphasis on the may) an article or two from a student. Or perhaps not, as this can depend on the whim of the involved student as to whether he or she will write those articles. There is no guarantee of a publishable article for all the hard work invested in the student. If graduate students aren’t productive and won't write articles, it can reflect poorly on the advisor because there will be no papers to publish unless the adviser ends up writing them himself. A lack of articles can lead to not getting grants. Published papers are proof that an academic is productive; proof that an academic has done his or her job, which is to do science and to train graduate students how to do science, as well as to write/help to write the articles resulting from research activity. But how many published articles are enough, and how many are too few? Is it quantity or quality that counts?

And what should be done about the academic researchers whose graduate students leave research for the greener pastures of the business world without finishing their PhD degrees? Who don’t stick around despite the huge investment of the researchers’ time and money for lab consumables, conferences and travel? Is this the fault of these researchers? Was it a waste of time and money to train them? The point is that these graduate students got valuable research training before leaving academia. It has to be accepted that whatever they do with that training afterwards is their business. If they leave the research world, well, then they leave it. No one can stop them from doing so. So here’s the rub. Should academic researchers’ productivity be measured by how many of the trained students go on to become academics themselves? If that is the case, it will take years before productivity can be assessed correctly.

The second definition talks about yielding results, benefits or profits. Research activities such as doing lab work, generating data, reading, advising, teaching and writing articles do yield results, but not necessarily profits, unless ideas are patentable, leading to collaborations with big business, e.g. pharmaceutical firms that can produce a profitable drug to treat a specific illness. But getting a patent approved can take many years. So it’s difficult for me to understand the emphasis on increasing academic productivity. I'm not sure what this really means. Again I ask, who will define this adequately, and will it be fair? It strikes me as rather naïve on the part of business administrators to not even make an attempt to understand the complexities of the academic research world, and yet this is the current situation—administrators who have no real idea of what academics do, yet who insist that academics increase their productivity so that the organizations for which they work can get their 'money’s worth' out of them.