Past 4-5 months, Tango dancers in Tulsa have been holding a monthly milonga ("Matinee milonga") on the 4th Sunday at All about Cha cafe/restaurant in Downtown Tulsa. Using a corner of the cafe, it starts around 5:30pm and ends on 8:00pm when the cafe/restaurant closes.
Several years back, they used to have a Sunday evening milonga at More than noodle restaurant. The new milonga in All about Cha is a reincarnated version of the milonga in public in cafe/restaurant.
I checked out the milonga on 9/24/2017. It had been a while since I visited Tulsa for milonga last time. Thank you for welcoming, Tulsa dancers.
The place was nice. The green latte and cake were nice snacks to accompany the party.
The song happened to be alternative songs, but you can request your favorite Tango if you like. About 15-18 people were there, including 5 people from Stillwater and 1 from OKC (me).
If you are in the area and interested, check it out.
Matinee milonga
All About Cha 201 S Cheyenne Ave, Tulsa, OK
4th Sundays, 5:30-8:00pm
You should be able to find a notice in facebook through Casa Tango (Tango in Tulsa).
October is one of grant deadline dates for NIH grants. NIH RO1 grants are major research grants for which researchers in academia are aiming. In a year, there are three grant application cycles, whose deadlines are coming in Feb, Jun, and Oct.
The success rate has been decreasing over years. Currently, the rate is about 7-9%. Most proposals will be "not funded".
With that background, on occasion we have a "feedback party" for a written proposal.
During last week's program meeting with several Professors and junior faculties, we had one of the grant feedback session. There are still a few weeks before the deadline, so some of the feedback may be incorporated in the final, submitted version of grant proposal.
Although I am not sending an RO1 for this cycle (aiming for Feb, after sending off current manuscript), such meeting is a good opportunity to work on grantmanship.
One of interesting comments was, "Propose what you want to do".
The comment was for an experiment. It tests central idea of the proposal. But it looks somewhat ambitious, to cover all the parameters.
"Ambitious" is not necessarily a positive word in grant review. Actually, it is a word saying "you look like trying to bite more than you can chew".
The comment was essentially saying to cut back on some endpoints and focus on what you really want to do, instead of trying to do everything at one time.
When we want to cover all the basis, the experiment will bloat. You'll need more manpower, endpoints, samples, analyses, and budget. But alas you cannot do all.
Hence, "Propose what you want to do", focusing on testing central idea, is an important viewpoint.
Adding some for people interested in medical research:
There are grants coming in different sizes (in budget and in time frame). An RO1 is one of big ones, for 5 years, 250k/yr (with modular budget). That is big enough for supporting the PI, a Research assistant and a postdoc or a student, while paying for reagents and other costs.
But come to think of it. Size of an RO1 is not too big. It is like running a tiny family business. It is not sufficient to do big science like sending someone to Mars.
Biomedical science is supported by many, relatively small research proposals. Each grant makes a "unit" of research.
Since each unit is small, in a sense, research infrastructure is fragile. If a grant for a rare disease is discontinued, the disease research may be gone entirely.
If you have a simple notion of "big evil government", in science practice, the idea is wrong. If you apply wrong idea on the research ecosystem, you can kill the system, along with your cure for cancers or Alzheimer's in the near future. Be careful.
I went to a dance party last weekend, and got into a chat. She said she watch TED talks.
I asked her, "what is your TED talk title?"
A TED talk is a (usually inspiring) talk given in a conference held by a nonprofit organization devoted to Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED). Most talks are limited to (up to) 18 minutes, so the speaker has to deliver his/her central idea in a concise, yet communicating, and even inspiring, manner to the audience. Most speakers manage to do so, and the talks are fun to listen.
Link to TED talk site https://www.youtube.com/user/TEDtalksDirector
Since communicating scientific ideas and research stories is very similar to a TED talk, I've read a book titled "how to deliver a TED talk", along with similar books on presentation. Sometimes I ask myself and imagine what would be my TED talk.
Thanks to the exercise, I learned to use two perspectives when I listen to a TED talk.
One perspective is as a listener; being informed, entertained, educated, or even inspired or convinced to take action by the talk.
Another perspective is as a speaker. I imagine what experience brought the speaker to his/her current position, how the speaker worked hard to distill the central idea or concept, why he/she is doing it, and how he/she is trying to communicate the idea better.
Since I am not him/her, it takes lots of imagination that may not necessarily be accurate on my side. But it is okay.
This is similar to going to eat at a restaurant. We can just be a consumer, who eat and pay. We may or may not leave a review at an online review site later, playing a little critic.
But if you are a chef yourself, or involved in a similar restaurant business, you may pay attention to the food, to the atmosphere, to the guests, to the business,...... you'd have entirely different perspective and depth in observation and appreciation. Such attention may help you getting paid as a professional in your own business.
You can use the same thinking in many other things, like watching a movie as an audience or as a director/producer. It is switching outsider and insider in your thinking.
I'd tell myself; Don't just be a listener or a consumer. Have a perspective of a speaker. And, to be a speaker in a TED conference, you have to be a doer or a creator yourself, long before you become a speaker. No one listens to your opinion if it is not backed up by your own actions. (Or, I am cautious in evaluating who is speaking the opinion as well as what is spoken. If you want to be rich, do you seriously listen and follow the money advice by your dirt poor grandpa? You'd have to do things beyond his advice, don't you think?).
Having two perspectives helps your understanding, appreciation, and your own doing which counts most.
After you pile up your actions that speak, then, you may have your own TED talk.
There is a famous phrase by Thomas Edison; "......If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward...."
[You can find many other Edison's quotes here (http://www.thomasedison.com/quotes.html)]
We have been working on a scientific research project during this summer. The outcomes have been good and interesting. In fact, I've started drafting a manuscript already.
But a scientific research paper is a "story" made of several components. There are many basis to cover, and there are a few experiments to rule out some possibilities.
Today I was looking at samples my research assistant prepared. They were samples I was looking forward to analyzing for a while. The cost of the experiment was not cheap, either.
But it appeared to be a failed experiment with technical reason. The signal noise in the background was too high to conclude anything.
In such a case, we recite whatever works for us (including aforementioned Edison's quote), and just start troubleshooting.
Are the experiment and the results important? Yes.
Is it easy to troubleshoot? Likely. There are a few points we can change to fix the technical issue.
Then, we'll just modify the protocol and do it again.
There are bunch of quotes, pep talks, feel good phrases and success principles that you can lift from inspirational speakers, success magazines, or random facebook posts.
They aren't bad. Although I usually don't give a **** about random advice floating around, knowing some phrases that serve me well in the context of my life and work is certainly helpful.
This will not be the last time when our experiment does not immediately provide results. Edison's quote should serve well for me and other scientists today and in the future.
[Thomas Edison, 1922]
