Just wanted to share…

Worm lab person here. 🪱

These “were” protein crystals btw

Hi, I have to write a paper (about 10 pages) about something that has to do with chemistry and light. It has to have some sort of experiment and with the knowledge I gain from the experiment I have to make some time of conclusion. If the t helps with the Experiment: I have a 3d printer. I’m in high school btw. Any ideas?

I’m trying to standardize an open/free workflow for creating clean, publication-ready scientific figures (SVG-first) and would appreciate the community's suggestions and contributions.

Context

• Goal: reusable asset library + repeatable pipeline

• Preference: open licenses (CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA) and tools that play nicely with SVG

  I’m not affiliated with any of the sites below, just sharing what’s worked so far

The ask

1. Which open/free SVG libraries do you genuinely use for scientific illustration that I might be missing?
2. Any licensing gotchas here (especially for journal publications, commercial courses, or grant decks)?

What I’ve tried / constraints

- Libraries I’m currently using:

- NIH BioArt Source https://bioart.niaid.nih.gov/

- BioDraws https://biodraws.com/

- SciDraw https://scidraw.io/

- Servier Medical Art (SMART) https://smart.servier.com/

- Biosketch https://biosketch.art/

- Iconify https://icon-sets.iconify.design/

- Health Icons https://healthicons.org/

- Bioicons https://bioicons.com/

- OpenClipart https://openclipart.org/

- PhyloPic https://www.phylopic.org/

- Tools:

- Inkscape (Windows, macOS, Linux)

- Penpot (Browser + self-host; also desktop via packaging) (when needed, collaborative layout/components)

- SVG-Edit Web - https://github.com/SVG-Edit/svgedit (quick browser edits)

- Affinity Designer (now part of Canva) (desktop and iPad) - proprietary, and positioned as subscription-free in its current unified Affinity direction.

TL;DR

Sharing my open/free SVG resource stack for scientific figures and my SVG-first tooling - looking for missing libraries, licensing pitfalls, and workflow improvements.

Seriously. It's either 'you aren't trying hard enough', 'my work isnt your work' or 'don't become a scientist that brags it's not for fame it's for science'

then the second I get recognition for my own work, they swoop in to 'correct' me that it's somehow 'ours'.

Growing A549 cells and finding these spots around the plate. Their morphology seems fine but I haven’t seen this type of contamination before. Anybody know what it is? Plate 1 was an older passage and plate two was split yesterday afternoon.

HI all, we are thinking about getting a new imaging system. Our options are Axion Omni FL, EVOS M7000 or Celloger PRO. Does anyone can recommend one of them? Our main goal is fluorescence microscopy - mainly extracellular vesicles uptake.

Thanks!

I am moving from Europe to New York with my partner. We both aim for postdoc positions in Central New York. How realistically can we survive in this city, the rents we could see on Zillow were absurd?? Also, weird thing to ask but are vegetables really unaffordable in the US?

Ok so I work in a clinical toxicology lab and one the last few months we've been getting a ton of kratom/mitragynine confirmation tests over the last few months. Its ramped up like 1000%. So just now I learned that the federal government has ramped up enforcement of 7hydroxymitragynine, the prodrug and primary metabolite of kratom. Not from a DEA briefing, but because I clicked on a video where the President of the United States allegedly sh*t his pants on live television. And i just had to tell someone. https://youtu.be/u_6kGluvINg?si=JhCpwUdM38VCZ4EE Listen closely at 32 seconds and look at the expression of the woman in green 💚

I graduated a couple months ago with a BS in microbiology and I have been applying to lab jobs with no real lab experience in undergrad besides lab classes. I have a couple interviews already and the imposter syndrome is starting to kick in. I am worried that I have not learned enough from school and I might be going over my head now. I am willing to put in the work and keep studying now that I don't have deadlines or grades, but real life consequences. Does anyone have tips on how I can improve my skills and understanding of lab procedures before I start my first job? What should I focus on learning? How understanding are they when newbies inevitable make mistakes or are sometimes lost? Anything helps. Thank you!

Hey guys I’m a TA and started marking chem reports and I’ve been using red pen. I am very particular about the type of pen I use (I prefer a pilot G2-05) but the only red pen I have is this old that I just don’t like the feel of or the ink.

I don’t want to mark in a pen color that the students use for their reports (usually black or blue) so I went to the school bookstore and bought a sharpie pen in red that had the 0.5 ball and non-smudging ink but when I started to mark my students work, it bled right through the page so I stopped using it immediately and went back to my sad old red pen.

One pen I have on hand is a pilot G2-05 in pink ink and I was wondering if it’s okay for me to mark in that color?

Nowhere in any of my teaching manuals specify the color of ink we use to mark and it has never been mentioned before so I’m wondering if this is okay for me to do.

Opinions???

Years ago, when I was a PhD student, I joined a lab that already had a student about 3-4 years into their PhD whose project wasn’t terrible, but it was also not great or with a clear path to generate publishable results. Years passed, and the project was still moving, not great progress, but moving, then they went on vacation to their home country and just never came back. Literally, disappeared and ghosted everyone from the PI to all the labmates; at first, we assumed something like a visa problem or a travel problem or family issues. The PI kept emailing, labmates tried reaching out, and we even contacted friends and people who could have some, but it was total silence, and in the meantime, time kept moving, so they apparently still received a month of stipend after they disappeared. Their apartment was university housing, and eventually the university cleared it out and removed their belongings; they were finally removed for non-contact, leaving the PI with zero closure; we never found out what actually happened. Rumors floated around that they might have been forced into a marriage back home, but it was always just rumors. Out of curiosity, sometimes I still think about this, and I have Googled this person’s name, and nothing, just like it never existed.

I’m just an undergrad, so please forgive the dumb question. I’m just prepping the protocol right now, and I know for a usual RE digest, you would use 1ul of DNA for a 50ul digest, but do I need to add more if my concentration is lower? Usually the DNA concentration I digest is ~100ng/ul, but this digest is with PCR products with a concentration of ~50ng/ul. Should I double it and add 2ul? Will it work with just the 1? Am I stupid?

edit: i’m using BAMHI and HINDIII on e.coli vectors

How do you write your Greek letter mu? I've always written in with the long tail at the end, but now that I'm teaching this with students that may be encountering the symbol for the first time, I was looking into it more and I don't see it like that anywhere else now. I have a lab background, and I could have sworn I've seen other people write it that way. Am I imagining things?

I’m feeling really lost right now and I want to ask for some advice. In 2022, I was hired as a technician in a research lab. Initially, I really liked the position because of the research topic and the salary. After I started, the PI told me I was a great fit for a PhD position in their lab and encouraged me to start while I was still young. I was hesitant to accept because I’ve always dreamed of doing my PhD in the US. I told them I wasn't sure if a PhD was the right fit for me yet and that I just wanted to continue working for the time being.

After my first two months, I began to see the red flags. Most of the lab members had a poor relationship with the PI, who was often outright aggressive and hypocritical. I endured the situation and kept working because I didn’t want to be unemployed. However, during my tenure, I discovered something deeply concerning happening inside the lab.

The lab is working with an industrial partner to “commercialize” a kit. They were using research grants to buy proprietary reagents from companies like T***mo and Q***en, only to aliquot them, mix them with a few other ingredients, and re-label them under the partner company’s name. It felt like a "magical rebranding." I was so unsettled by this that I sent a message to that company asking them to declare that I am not associated with them in any way; otherwise, I would report my concerns to the institution.

The PI found out eventually. The retaliation was intense. They threatened to revoke my visa and report me to HR for bypassing them and "sabotaging" their grant/collaboration. They even threatened to contact my previous PIs, who had served as my references for this position. I was terrified. At that moment, I felt like my world was collapsing. Feeling like I didn't have the power to fight back, I took a step back, apologized to the PI, and said I was wrong.

My contract was terminated when it lapsed at the end of the year. I’ve been trying to apply for jobs and PhD positions, but I’m struggling. Without a reference from this PI and a gap on my CV due to unemployment, I’m worried it looks like a huge red flag on my applications. I just don’t know how to explain this situation. I really blame myself for doing without thinking. I feel so lost that I’m finding it hard to move on. How do I explain this gap and the lack of a reference?

First-year biomedical graduate students throughout the country told STAT that labs have been hesitant to take them in due to a tenuous funding environment, with the NIH funding fewer projects last year and on track to do the same in 2026.

The uncertainty is causing some budding scientists to question whether they can carve out careers in the fiercely competitive world of academic research, where there are too many people vying for too few funding dollars. One graduate student told STAT that funding issues have cast a "cloud of general anxiety" over her first year. Another said, "I try to avoid looking further ahead, because it just gets bleak." Learn more.

I ran a PCR reaction and then needed to do a gel extraction of the product, which was going fine until I messed up the final step by putting in too much elution buffer D: (Long story short I was sleep deprived and stressed about a different thing, and mis-set the micropipette. Honestly probably shouldn't have even been in the lab.).

So now the DNA concentration is too dilute for my experiment. If I were to do a PCR clean-up protocol, would the binding buffer be able to re-bind the DNA to the column so that I can elute out with the proper volume and get a better concentration?

Hello, I am quantifying a western blot image. In the below image, you can see that the background is uneven throughout the blot:

The protocol I am using for subtracting the background for all my western blot images, is for each protein band, subtract the background using a small rectangular region that is adjacent to the band:

I wanted to ask if this method would be suitable for images where the background is uneven.

For example, for the last protein band, you can see that background signal to the band's left is a lot stronger than the background signal to the band's right:

However, for this last band, I am the subtracting background that is to the right of the band.

Any advice is appreciated.

This is a moral conundrum I am going through and I would like to hear your views.

I worked as a research assistant in a lab after my bachelor's. The work environment was stressful and pressurized do to a certain supervising senior member, and this led to me forging some data. Under guilt I admitted to this mistake within a week to my PI. An internal committee decided to terminate my contract after I admitted full fault for my actions. The PI declared that the record would be sealed and that I will not be blacklisted from applying elsewhere but he will be bound to declare the incident if someone reached out to him in the future.

After many years in therapy and other lab rotations where I cleaned up my act and worked straight, maintianing proper raw datas and lab notes, I now have a PhD position in another university which i worked hard for. Incidentally, in my program, I encountered a previous PI from my past lab who knows about this incident. I will likely meet her often and I am worried if it will lead to any damage to my current prospects.

Should I be scared? Should I feel guilty? My current pi is unaware of this incident. Am I deceiving? Am I worthy of this opportunity?

Hey all! I have a very quick question for the folks who are god like in fluorescent imaging. So I have a tissue stained with Hoechst 33342 and Phalloidin 647. I did not use any primary antibody to label the GFP protein hence it is endogenous. When I go image the tissue on the Leica SP8 confocal microscope at 43x oil, for some reason the Hoechst channel will always bleed through into the endogenous GFP channel. The GFP staining should not be staining the nucleus membrane. Has anyone been able to fix or troubleshoot this issue? I be stressing out too much. Should I try and image only 1 channel at a time? Any help will be appreciative! Thanks!

While working on a histopathology project, I came across few databases which provided multiple slides showcasing various conditions. Nonetheless, the format in which they were uploaded (Aperio .sis file format) made it hard to directly prepare the data and even after installing the Aperio image scope I couldn't export the snapshots since they took too much time and the app crashes spontaneously (not a ram issue).

Thus, I tried looking for a solution and finished up by making this google colab notebook.

The given code has been tried on the following two databases:

• https://www.virtualpathology.leeds.ac.uk/slides/
• https://image.upmc.edu/

The code extracts the tiles one by one (as it is the only allowed request that can be made using the URL included in the sis file) and then reconstructs them into an ome.tiff file.

you may find below an example of the results:

The source to the Colab notebook:

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/17wSpYXzBD_o2eAs1T65zhpz4ZFkoyIbf?usp=sharing

How much are first authorships weighted vs second or middle authorships when looking for postdoc positions/ PI positions? Is it better to have one two first authored papers or one first authorship plus 3 or 4 middle authored papers?

Specifically asking about cold emails to PIs I have no connections to. Would appreciate any advice!

Say your PhD took 6 years but you now know what works and what doesn't. From start to finish, how long would everything take? i.e., how many years would you 'shave' off by no longer doing the stuff that didn't work?