Anish's Insight

  Tania, a PhD student is conducting experiment on chickpea plants to check a specific gene expression level upon providing phosphorous deficiency stress. She is repeating this experiment for the third time and she could not reach to a conclusion yet, as her data shows specific pattern of gene expression difference among the control and stressed (she got higher expression in the stressed plants) but there is no statistical significance in this difference which is making her data scientifically invalid. Most of the researcher may have faced similar kind of problem during experiment. This happens mostly when the sample size or sample number is low due to low number of biological replicates, which is also called experimental replicates. The number of sample sets you are taking during an experiment is called replicates, which indicates for how many samples you are conducting the same experiment? In biological research, these replicates are called 'biological replicates'. For th...

  How to be frugal by choice? Being frugal is important for everybody who do not want to make their future life complex with financial problems. Here, some practical ways are pointed out to establish a frugal but enjoyable life which may be helpful to the research scholars depending on fellowships with break to achieve a financial stability. 1. Try not eat outside restaurants or cafés for more than once or twice in a month. Make a budget for that which is reasonable for you. If you have cocktail parties in pubs on every weekend on a regular basis then you will end up with negative balance in your bank account within a few months. 2. Do not be conscious about branded stuffs. Brands are for business and mostly for unnecessary luxury. Probably you do not need branded cloths or shoes or gadgets. Actually, no-body cares about what you are wearing. Find out generic stuffs of good quality which will be budget friendly and economic for you. 3. Try to go for economic but quality entertainme...

  Vikash is a final year PhD student in a prestigious institute in India. He used to be meritorious student in his school and in higher studies. He qualified all India entrance exam for research fellowship with outstanding performance and got admission for PhD under supervision of a renowned Scientist in his field. Beyond all of this Vikash is intelligent enough to grab his research design and did very well in his past years with two nice research publications. But Vikash is not happy at all due to the financial trouble. He did not receive fellowship since last three months and currently he is all most out of cash. He already took loan from others and that is also going to be finished within a few days. His bank balance is touching the minimum limit while he is entering his thirties. That is why he remains always tensed, depressed and irritated, sometimes he spends sleepless nights and it is now also negatively affecting his research and he cannot concentrate in his work. With ti...

  For carrying out a research project, the most important part is acquiring grant or funding. Specifically, in case of scientific research where the work is mostly laboratory oriented, the cost of running a quality research project is generally very high. For application of cutting edge technologies to perform real time experiments and to get accurate results for high quality publication usage of high end equipments are necessary now a day. To get these facilities the only way to get funds by writing grants. Therefore, the most important part of the daily work schedule of the research group leaders is to invest their time and energy in writing grants, since funds are the fuel of a lab to run. For senior research scholars, who are in the final years of their PhDs, or carrying out postdoctoral researches, it is important to learn to write research proposal for getting individual funds including prestigious fellowships. Therefore, from very early phase of a research carrier it is us...

  For a research scholar it is obvious to publish the research works in reputed journals, as these are the major output of his/her research. Moreover, this is obligatory for a scientific researcher to justify the research work and funding received from the funding agencies. After joining PhD, a research scholar mainly focuses on the experimental bench work which continues throughout the PhD program. This results in lack of other skills which are essential, such as planning of experimental design, reading, deep thinking, learning new analytical software and of course writing. As a researcher in the field of science since twelve years I have experienced different circumstances while writing research articles, research proposals, annual reports and technical pieces. I have also faced some general hitches during putting my written work for publication in journals. It was unfortunate for me that I was not guided by anyone to focus on improving my writing skills as a PhD student. Later...

  Reading is an integral part of a researcher’s job. To get new ideas about a specific research problem or to acquire background knowledge about that it is obvious to go through the related previous research publications or books. Now, reading a research paper is not comparable to reading a fiction or non-fiction piece. A research paper use to contain several scientific terminologies, equations and theories which need much more concentration of mind and patience compared to reading a general piece of article. Choosing a research article Most of the time, for a researcher, it is not enjoyable to read a critical research paper if that is not written in a lucid way. Therefore, choosing a research article on a specific topic is also important so that the reader needs to put less mental effort to understand the theory demonstrated in it. A science research paper which is enjoyable to read is always admirable though these kinds of paper are less in number. To find out papers worth to...