u/Possible_Oil_2594

I have been in two East Asian countries doing my studies, and while this part of the world has become more familiar to me, I am planning to do further studies in Europe, and I’m eyeing Spain because the institute I want to be in is in Spain, and also, since I have studied Spanish briefly before, I have a foundation on the basics.

It seems like most of the Filipinos I know in Europe either study in Germany, or Switzerland, so I’m curious what are the experiences in Spain.

I also want to know about the working culture, and social interactions you have in your university/institute.

I have been in East Asia for 4 years now, doing my undergraduate and masters in Korea and Japan. In terms of education, I am frankly not impressed with the lectures because it’s more of rote memorization. But I did learn a lot from doing research in a lab and learning lab techniques throughout the years. I think that’s a big strength of East Asian countries, because they have facilities and even if the training is not that great, if you are motivated to learn something, you have resources you can always use, and you can teach yourself the techniques or equipment. For PhD, I want to build more on communicating my research to people because I want to either teach or work in a museum. Also, I find that a lot of scholars trained in Europe are more confident when they talk about their work, and they don’t back down easily when they are questioned and they also ask questions well. In East Asia, I eventually learned to assert myself, but otherwise, I feel likecould easily get carried away by just doing what I was told without questions.

So, anything you could tell me about Spain, in terms of university, institute, or just interactions with people in academia in general will be greatly appreciated, Thank you!!

Edit: I work in Marine Biology

He’s from a different culture, and their people are known to be friendly so whenever I’m questioning his intentions, I tell myself that he is being friendly.

Some situations that made me question his intentions:

1. We are not that close, but when our group of friends started putting me on a hot seat about my dating life, he was curious and even found ways to get me to talk about it

2. He would be curious about what I eat or drink (?) At first it was giving brother vibes the way that brothers often think you’re always eating better food but. He is not my brother and I find him drinking from my drink a bit too close

3. He would post me a lot on social media. Just me in the photo, when he wouldn’t even do it for our other friends. Sometimes it’s nothing special to post too, I am just doing normal things.

4. He’s someone who likes arguing but somehow when I tell him off when he does something or says something, he doesn’t argue. I also find him speaking the same way as I do sometimes

I might be overthinking, and people may say I observe him very closely to be friendly but I do this for all of my friends because I grew up trying to sense everyone’s moods (💀). I’m asking the question if you think he likes me romantically because I don’t like him that way and I’m not open to that even in the future because I just want to be friends and I want to know how I should act like to maintain this friendship.

Thank you 🥲

Hello,

For context, I am planning to do a short weekend trip starting from Taipei and ending at Taitung. I was thinking of Travelling to Hualien first, staying there overnight, leaving early the next day to go to Taitung, and then stay there for 2D1N.

I don’t drive or ride a scooter, so I plan to rely on public transportation and biking. I also don’t speak mandarin, so I don’t expect to see a lot of places– I just want to see nature for a bit during the long holiday. Is this possible for a solo traveler?

How different is it from designing PCR primers? From my understanding, qRT-PCR starts from RNA, transcribe to cDNA, and DNA amplification as in normal PCR, but qRT-PCR uses fluorescent labeling.

So I’m wondering if like PCR, the design of primers for qRT-PCR will be the same? It will also start with the RNA of the cell I want to study to measure protein abundance (?) and quantify them?

Any resources related to this will be very helpful!

Thank you :))

I’m doing cloning and PCR for the first time from hearing about other people’s experience, I think it would be good to learn to know how to understand my results and learn to optimize.

Just wondering if anyone have any tips or resources they studied before that helped them do PCR/cloning?

We are not a big lab so no one can really help me but myself and some questions here and there to the RA other than me.

Thanks!

Edit: my PI wants me to design a primer for PCR, so any resources related to that will be greatly appreciated! (I was told I need to pay attention to GC content, melting temperature, etc.)

I’m an early grad school student, and what I noticed about people I look up to (not only in their achievements but more so how they think as researchers) is that they ask great questions.

Great questions to me does not necessarily mean it is very technical, but something that makes people think more creatively about their topic.

On the other hand, I’m at that stage where I’m scared to ask questions because it takes time for me to process things, and I usually don’t know what I don’t understand. I’m wondering how people build this kind of ability? To ask better questions, and learn methods to find ways to know more about what I want to learn?

Thanks!

I am in Ecology/Evolution field, so if anyone has any recommendations or any journal clubs I can join online, that would be great!

It’s exactly as the title suggests. I don’t think my personality meshes well with my PI. Some labmates like them, and admire his values (that I honestly don’t see…but that’s me) but personally, I don’t see anything in them that makes me think they will be a good mentor in my gradschool life. My definition of a mentor is basically someone who will guide me to become a better scientist, a scientist who still finds research interesting after all the chaos that is gradschool. I am early into grad school, and frankly, I don’t think that my current PI will make me want to continue science. And that’s fine- I can find ways to still find science more interesting, and although rare there are people who make science still interesting so I’m holding on to that.

Anyway, to be fair, I do acknowledge my current PI’s work ethic, appreciate how they are steering my direction, and giving me enough challenges that help me improve career-wise.

But personally, I don’t like their personality. I don’t like the way they talk to me (they act annoyed when I say I don’t understand what they’re saying) so I avoid small talk and just talk about work with them. It’s fine, and it’s definitely something I can handle (for now…and later too I hope…)

I’m just wondering if you think it is a red flag? people would say to escape right away, but I also came from another lab that is the exact opposite. I had a good relationship with my previous PI, and we are actually friends, but soon enough that caused friction, because I chose another path and they took it personally.

What would be a realistic “balanced” relationship (professional but not soul sucking, friendly but with boundaries) with not only PI but other people you work with look like?

In my understanding, to make a construct for RNAi, I need to:

1. find a a unique sequence fragment in the gene I am interested to knockdown
2. design primer to amplify fragment
3. build the construct by cloning the sequence to plasmid
4. transform plasmid into e.coli

Am I understanding it correctly?

Also, I’m just wondering in Step 1, what are the tools I can use to do it? I saw some people use Pfam or InterProScan. Is it basically manually select regions (>300bp) that is unique to the sequence of interest, and then copy that part of the sequence to design a primer with? Also, does it need to be a continuous sequence range or is it possible to pick and choose regions that are not conserved? (Please correct me if I understood something wrong or if this is not possible)

Any suggestion or corrections will be greatly appreciated, thank you!

I’ve heard that some museums have their own PhD programs and that museum can be another place where I can do research. I’m just wondering how is the work environment/culture in museums?

In other words, what’s a day in a life of a scientist who works in a museum?

I’m thinking Natural History Museums who might have this role..?