Mentoring choice: hands off or hands on?

In my PhD, I've had two mentors with very different mentoring practices. First one was very hands on, tracking even what time you were in the lab, and the second rarely visited lab. I realized things didn't work out with the first, hence my switch to the second. I am now very happy with what I did. I now know that my productivity goes down with increased pressure.

So, there must be two ends of the mentoring scale. One extreme is very hands-off, to the point that your advisor doesn't even know your project and the other would be you are not allowed to leave the lab or do any experiment without your advisor's approval. And you punch cards for your time in the lab. In my experience all mentors can be measured in this scale. One smart lad can even come up with a formula or index at some point. It's too late for me to quantify mentorship as I'm on the other side of the table.

The choice is there for both the student and the advisor.

What is the impact factor of Warren Buffett?

The frenzy of impact factor got renewed by today's announcement of 2013 impact factors. There will be many speculations and raging with one thing remain as strong as ever, the value and impact of impact factor in our research lives.

Apart from talking and publishing how impact factor is toxic, but still in high impact subscription based journals, there is not much we can do. We all know the ideal, objective behavior, one that is not effected by the name of the author or the journal.

Shout-out by Nature Chem

Thanks to the kind editor, this new and fresh chem blog is now officially tweeted by the prestigious Nature Chemistry journal. Here is the tweet.

Hey folks, a new chemistry blog from @caferyavuz - you can find it here: http://t.co/GBPBp1ATqh
— Nature Chemistry (@NatureChemistry) July 29, 2014

Apple of things

It has been more than a year since I did the 'big' move to Apple from an all PC-Android world. I knew it had to be all-in or none as these platforms are not necessarily friendly to each other. So I switched, even the routers for my wireless connections both at home and office are now Apple.

I am very happy as my needs are very well addressed by Apple, in particular, reading, writing and presenting. My biggest worry was the PC only software such as Origin and it still is a problem even though parallels desktop works fine on a powerful retina macpro I am using. My solution is to ask my students do all the plotting. Don't blame me on this; I got this tip from one of the senior professors who works in California. He said grad students do a better job than PIs so let them do it. What a wise advice!

As for the next step I am looking forward to Apple dishwashers, self driving cars, blenders and nano bots that speak like Samantha in the movie Her. Oh yes Siri already exists. 

I'd like to start an unfounded rumor that Apple is secretly working on this humanoid robot who can take data and write papers.

Summer heat, Carnot's engine and Archimedes

Today I felt grateful once again for Carnot (who indirectly invented all the heat engines - including the cooling air conditioners) and the Archimedes principle that explained us why/whether we float on a body of water.

Of course the floating would've been still there if Archimedes didn't discover buoyancy but for air conditioning I don't think we would know it - the history is the biggest evidence. That is why Carnot is my second most favorite scientist (first being Tesla). And the poor Sadi Carnot (yes, one of his names comes from the famous 13th century poet - Saadi Shirazi) died early of cholera in his thirties before getting noticed for his work. 

Happy Eid y'all

Tomorrow is the first day of three days of celebration for those of us who observed a month of fasting, which included daylight abstaining of food and water. I must tell you that it wasn't easy, nor it was meant to be. I, once again, realized how truly blessed we are to have food everytime we desire.

Now, where is that double decker burger I just ordered!

How to use Endnote

Endnote is the ChemDraw of reference managing. It is one of those things you got to know how to use, otherwise you are not cool. The software belongs to Thompson Reuters, the same company that handles ISI Web of Knowledge database, and the infamous Impact Factors through Journal Citation Reports. Yeah we know all that. We're cool.

But this video I found (below) is showing you the essentials for the newer Endnote (back then when I learned many of these tricks weren't there and you would be surprised if you haven't messed around recently). It is by the Endnote Training channel on Youtube. So, it is legit.

Enough testing here is the first post

And I am email publishing from my cell phone. Cool huh?

I remember times when blogs were hot and Youtube did not belong to Google. Well it hasn't been that much since, hence my motivation to write a blog. 

The most effective way of using this blog is by reading it. For the moment, there are no other pages than the posts and the inevitable and boring about page. Please enjoy the way you like it and read responsibly. Any damages (cannot think of one but better be safe) are your problem and leave your love/hate comments by hiding behind anonymity. I know how much you love me, especially you, the student I gave a 'D' past semester.