“KNOW“ was the theme of the recently TEDxMRU (Vilnius, Lithuania), with the tag line: KNOW how to be present and ready for the future NOW!. This theme challenged attendees to reflect on today’s world and leave room to find their own answers to KNOWing how to stay present and be ready for the future NOW.

TEDxMRU’s aim was to spark  curiosity and provoke discussions by encouraging a search for new ideas and perspectives, which raise awareness about issues that make an impact on society (giving and receiving), education (constant learning and developing) and technologies (connecting the dots) NOW. The emphasis was on the future belonging to those who prepare for it NOW/today.

Since then, we’ve had a chance to speak to the winners of  the TEDxMRU Mendeley competition for best comments: Dovile Barzdaite (Mykolas Romeris University), Corneliu Munteanu (Academy of Economic Studies from Moldova), and Irena Alperyte (Mykolas Romeris University).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Q: What did you talk about at TEDxMRU?

Irena: My main topic was creativity in every day life

Dovile: Suprisingly, I still feel TEDxMRU event, atmosphere and good emotions. I talked with many friends about this event and I shared things which inspired me there. During the event I wrote down some quotes, I am still thinking about it meaning and why did I write it down.

Corneliu: About TEDx I have only maximum intensity emotions, since I’ve participated in other national TEDx conferences…So I wanted to see the level of an TEDx event organized by the forces of one university. It was amazing…The main goal of TEDx events is to inspire… The MRU TED achieved this goal. I was left with only very big and positive feelings.

 

Q: What was it like competing at TEDxMRU?

Irena: nice to be heard and hear the others

Dovile: It was my first that kind of event. Therefore, I didn’t know what to expect, how excatly it works and so on. But I was suprised! Everything was well done, I saw how much work putted there. I didn’t see any mistakes. Every minute was like something new. I can easily give 9 points in 10 points scale.

Corneliu:  I haven’t felt the competion on the TEDx forum… I just expresed my thoughts…my ideas…about the speeches. It was interactive to agree/disagree or just comment something that I heard on the scene.

Q: What did you take away / learn from the event?

Irena: optimism and motivation to go on; not to get stigmatized by mistakes

Dovile: I took a lot of inspiring thinking. During the event I wrote down some quotes, I am still thinking about it meaning and why did I write it down.

Corneliu: I learnt not to give up… To follow my dreams… To believe in my own forces and ideas… To be proactive and to take as much as possible from life.

 

Q: How did the Mendeley TEDxMRU Group effect your experience of the conference?

Irena: I felt the sense of the community for the first time at MRU.

Dovile: It was really nice to join that group and read all feedbacks after the event, see people who I saw during the event. This group can people contact with each other if them need something.

Corneliu: During the conference I had a lot of ideas/comments…that I wanted to share. Breaks were too small or may be u will not find the right person to discuss your ideas. Mendeley was a very nice platform were people are posting…and getting feedback! Thanks a lot Mendeley for getting involved in such events and giving opportunities!!! P.S. I am using a lot now Mendeley being quite grateful. This is what I was seeking!

We Mendeleyan, like hearing the great stories of our users. Today’s post comes from a very special user – Katja Kraemer: a researcher who was also a Mendeleyan for a while, meaning she knows Mendeley inside and out!

Here, Katja tells us about her Mendeley journey and the night she was finalising here thesis.

Thursday, 8th of January, sometime when between 10 p.m. and midnight: To me, this Thursday evening will always be special, because it was the first time I realized that my PhD journey has almost come to an end! I was sitting in front of my laptop and one click away to export my thesis from Mendeley, which meant I could no longer edit and actively insert any citation, but start with the fine-tuning of the thesis.

However, this was also a moment of me thinking about the value of Mendeley. To me as researcher, Mendeley means an easy and efficient way to identify, collect and share knowledge. For each single research conversation I am contributing from and to, I am able to create folders with the relevant papers. I can add comments, sort them, and within these folders (some are now more than five years old), I am able to identify newly emerging topics and research gaps. The folders grew over the years and each of them is precious to me! I can easily start a research project and invite colleagues to groups that contain my folder content and I can also be invited to the folders of my colleagues. We are so much faster in starting a research project than about five years ago, because we do not necessarily have to collect a bunch of relevant literature anymore – because we already have it in our Mendeley collections.

At the Chair of Information Systems I in Nuremberg, where I carried out my PhD, we organized introductory sessions to Mendeley for our bachelor students at the beginning of the courses as they are just about to start with the analysis of scientific papers. Moreover, my colleagues and I always encourage students to dive deep into scientific conversations, when they have to write their bachelor or master thesis. In this way, Mendeley further enables us to ease the way for these students by sharing an initial set of papers with them.

On that Thursday evening I was also thinking about the steps before my time as research associate. When I was a business administration student, I got a job offer as a student research assistant at the Chair of Information Systems I in Nuremberg. I supported a group of researchers that dealt with a new phenomenon, which they called Social Research Network Sites (SRNS), Web 2.0 services for researchers. I supported the research activities about such sites and used one of those sites for organizing our research activities – Mendeley, the most innovative and useful tool in the eyes of my supervisors. During that time, I finished my studies, was interested in research, and somehow wanted to go abroad. Since I was doing research about Mendeley, using Mendeley, I thought “hey, why not applying for a job at Mendeley?” Five weeks later, in May 2010, I joined Mendeley! Now, while writing these lines, I am still fascinated by how fast researchers get used to services like Mendeley. I can hardly imagine working without Mendeley anymore.

Back in 2010, I met a young and dynamic Mendeley team. Every single team member was so enthusiastic and hands-on in their work attitude, helping each other in building and improving the tool. The team consisted of so many nationalities from Spain, Germany, New Zealand, Belgium, South Korea, and many more. Even though I was only a Mendeleyan for a very short time, I learned so many things and got to known so many great and special people – people that I am still in contact with. This network, and my Mendeley experiences, help me now as Post-Doc at the University of Lübeck, where I work at the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Business Development. As researcher I am more than grateful for the work of the Mendeley team and the service they offer!

So you see, quite a few thoughts for a Thursday evening in mid January 2015. However, there is one last thought, that came to my mind on that Thursday evening right before I clicked on the export-button: when I left, the Mendeleyans Kris and James, who are both PhDs, gave me the advice to go for a research gap that fascinates me, a topic which I can live with for a couple of years. In 2010, I thought “Ok, whatever that means.” In 2015, I thought “Oh man, how absolutely right they have been!”

Cheers, Katja

If you’d like to write a guest blog post about your experiences with Mendely, please contact the Mendeley Community Team.

After almost 10 years and a more that 3 billion mile journey to Pluto… The latest updates from the NASA New Horizon’s probe have revealed some interesting formations on the dwarf planet. The above image, that was taken at 476,000 miles from the surface using the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard the spacecraft, is the last image we will see prior to the closest approach tomorrow. The colour is revealed by combining lower-resolution colour information from the Ralph instrument also on board the spacecraft. Appropriately, the bright shape has been termed “heart”and measures approximately 1,000 miles wide. This region borders with darker terrains on either side, and the mottled terrain to its right (east) – at this resolution, much of the heart’s interior appears featureless, although we keenly await the post-flyby date for a closer look.

In addition to the heart, other features of Pluto geology is proving to be an intriguing new world with distinct surface features, including an immense dark band known as the “whale”, as well as linear polygonal features; a complex band of terrain stretching across the planet that may be cliffs, as well as a circular feature that could be an impact crater. The grey area just above the whale’s “tail” feature is causing particular excitement for New Horizons program scientist Curt Niebur who said “It’s a unique transition region with a lot of dynamic processes interacting, which makes it of particular scientific interest.”

New Horizons has also answered one of the long-asked questions about Pluto: How big is this dwarf planet? Analysis from LORRI revealed that Pluto is 1,473 miles in diameter, which is slightly larger than previous estimates, and confirms that Pluto is larger than all other known solar system objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. This result also tell us that Pluto’s density is slightly lower than previously thought, and the lowest layer of Pluto’s atmosphere (the troposphere) is shallower than previously believed.

In comparison, Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, lacks a substantial atmosphere, and its diameter was easier to determine using ground-based telescopes, however New Horizons has confirmed the previous estimation of Charon’s size of 751 miles across – roughly half that of Pluto. However, new data is revealing Charon’s geology including a system of chasms, larger than the Grand Canyon. This feature is trailed by a large equatorial impact crater, which is ringed by bright rays of ejected material.

With only a few hours to go until New Horizon’s whizzes past Pluto at 30,800 miles per hour, we’re excited to see the detailed features of Pluto final revealed as well as analysis of it’s atmosphere and composition.

You can follow the path of the spacecraft over coming days with a visualization of the actual trajectory data, using NASA’s online Eyes on Pluto

The international Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition is the world’s premier synthetic biology competition with the vision to create synthetic biology tools and processes that will offer breakthrough answers to the many needs of industry and the economy. Mendeley has partnered with this organization to help promote innovative and creative scientific research, especially for a project that is fundamentally by young researchers!

This guest blog post comes from Sharlene Dong, an undergraduate Pre-Med Chemical Engineer who is also a member of iGEM team, and she offers an update on the iGEM competition

Last November, the Cornell International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) team travelled to Boston to compete against over 240 teams from all around the world in the 2014 iGEM Jamboree. At the Hynes Convention Center, poster sessions were set up to display a year’s worth of synthetic biology research. One project from Team Heidelberg (Germany) proposed a novel system of ‘circular proteins’ to improve heat stability. Team Imperial (UK) developed a customizable ultrafiltration membrane from bacterial cellulose. Amidst all the scientific jargon, the letters and numbers and equations, it’s hard to believe that the driving force behind all this scientific creative energy is merely a group of undergraduates.

But what exactly is a ‘genetically engineered machine’? What is the point of iGEM? As a whole the iGEM competition seeks to advance synthetic biology as a tool for addressing pressing concerns in industry, medicine, and the environment. Instead of focusing on the individual biological parts, synthetic biology emphasizes engineering principles of biological design. How do they fit together? How can we design a novel genetic construct? How can we alter this metabolic pathway to increase efficiency? Of course, it’s easier said than done. Cells are wonderfully fickle in their own right and many intricacies have yet to be unraveled. This vision of harnessing the power inherent in a cell is what pushes the research frontier of synthetic biology.

This past season, the Cornell iGEM team developed a water filtration system using genetically engineered bacteria to sequester heavy metals. The project took home a gold medal. What’s next? As the gears of the new competition season start turning, newly elect student lead Jonlin Chen wants to approach things a bit differently. Why not shake things up a little? Stir up some commotion. As the saying in Cornell Engineering goes, “break the rules to push the limits of imagination”. To do so, Cornell iGEM has recruited eight new members. According to Chen, “The iGEM competition is rapidly evolving as new discoveries are made that extend the capabilities of synthetic biology. In order for the Cornell iGEM team to remain at the forefront, we need fresh new minds and the next generation of thinkers. Each of our new members not only demonstrate a passion for science, but also a sense of curiosity for synthetic biology and motivation to take our 2015 project to the next level. I am very excited to see how they will shape the team this coming season.”

In addition, now that iGEM HQ has further condensed the timeline, pushing the competition up two months from November to September, time management and efficient communication are even more vital. Brainstorming must not stop once we leave the sterile white lab space or when we exit a meeting. Ideas must be constantly shared, whether at home, work or on-­the-­go and whether at 6 AM or 11 PM. This momentum, this constant flux of creative energy, is what drives our team and what powers global scientific endeavors like iGEM. The Cornell iGEM team is built upon this constant communication of ideas. According to wet lab team lead Michelle Zhang, team communication is the key to success. “Our team is pretty large compared to many other teams, which makes it more difficult to relay information. When teams are smaller, they can just have a group chat where everyone is in on the conversation. That’s why tools like Mendeley are so essential to helping us develop the communication we need between not only team members, but the larger scientific community as well.”

In the coming months, Cornell iGEM is looking forward to making great strides in our new 2015 project. Although no official details can be released yet, the 2015 project has been selected and will target a completely different problem than that of the previous year. Overall, it is a topic that very few, if any, iGEM teams have ever approached before. Cornell iGEM is grateful for Mendeley’s continued support, and is excited to delve into new territory and continue to inspire the next generation of synthetic biologists.

Cornell iGEM has recently started a crowdfunding campaign through their university to collect tax-deductible donations that would cover the remaining costs of the team’s projected budget this summer to continue their participation in outreach activities particularly those that help expose disadvantaged youth to the sciences (and biology in particular). Cornell iGEM especially feel that community outreach and public education is vital for the public perception and future successes of biological research as a whole. So if you are enthusiastic about supporting science outreach programs, take a look at the iGEM campaign.