Maybe the title is misleading. In this post I will not be talking about how to organize, structure and present ideas in your grant. This is not about what you put in your grant. That's up to you. What I will be talking about is what your grant should look like. Recently I've been dealing with graduate students putting together two-page graduate fellowships for the NSF which are due, like, this week. This is typically the first taste of grant writing students get, and it shows. Not only are thoughts disorganized, ideas vague and descriptions wordy, but the drafts often just look like crap. I've gotten everything from 2 pages crammed with impenetrable walls of text, or grants that are one page over the limit or something so sparse and thin that while it fills the 2 pages, there's about zero content. And of course I wouldn't expect any different, since these folks have had no prior experience or guidance. One thing that is often overlooked in grant workshops is how to make your grants more readable and pleasing to the eye. Most granting agencies have strict limitations on font types and sizes you could use, as well as specific margin sizes and line spacings. But even within these constraints there are good and bad practices regarding how you format your grant.

What follows is a miniguide of practices I follow to maximize the amount of space to put information in, without sacrificing readability and pissing off all of your caffeine-addled reviewers. I won't even go on about which font is better, people have strong feelings about what works and which doesn't and these arguments run deep. I will just tell you how I format my grants, I'm sure you can adapt these tips to your personal font preferences:

1. First and foremost, keep in mind that grants have a page limit for a reason. If the limit is two pages, then write two pages worth of grant, not six and try to fit it all in into two. But even if you are conscientious about page limits, there's always that extra paragraph that you want to add describing that extra method, or alternative interpretations of your results, or whatever. How do you squeeze this in?

2. Turn on hyphenation: This will not only shave off a few lines from your proposal (up to half a page for a 10 page proposal), but it will make your right margins neater. It is never a good idea to turn on right justification, because although the text looks prettier, it makes it hard to read. With hyphenation, it will tighten up the right unjustified margin without detracting from ease of reading.

3. Use several short paragraphs and don't skimp on headings: Often I've seen grants with page-long single-paragraph walls of text, with headings embedded in bold lettering within the text. While this impenetrable wall might be useful for keeping out the wildlings, it is very difficult to read. So use headings to organize your proposal, write several short paragraphs containing one or two ideas, this makes it so much more readable and increases blessed white-space on the page. "But," you say, "I can't afford to waste all those empty lines between paragraphs and after headings?" True, these two things use up precious space, but one way in which you can minimize the use of empty line-space, yet still open up your text, is to set spacing following each paragraph to be 6 points. That way, you have a half line of space between paragraphs to make it look good, but you save a few lines.

4. Use 11 point Arial and set line spacing to be exactly 12 points: This combo will pass muster of most spacing requirements (certainly NIH and NSF), yet minimize amount of space used and remain highly readable. When you set your word processor to "single space" it usually uses 13 or 14 pts, which is necessary for 12 pt font, but with 11 pt font, 12 pt spacing is fine. Keep in mind that 11 pt Times New Roman is too small, and 11 pt Georgia will look crappy with 12pt spacing.

5. Don't use gratuitous figures: While figures are good for presenting preliminary data and outlining experimental design, use them judiciously. Often they are not necessary and take up a bunch of space that could be used for clarifying your methodology, emphasizing your key points or what not. If you do use a figure, put it and its legend in a text-box and wrap the main text around it, leaving about 6 points of white space around it. For the legend you can get away with 9 pt Arial, maybe even 8pt if you are really tight for space.

6. Remove danglers: Often you will have in the last line of the paragraph one or two words taking up an entire line. Try to rearrange and rewrite some of the preceding text so that these dangling words are carried back into the preceding line.

That's it!  These tips and tricks will allow you to maximize use of space yet have high-readability. And while they will save you a few lines, perhaps half a page, they will not turn a 9 page proposal into a 6 pager. For this you will have to work on eliminating unnecessary or duplicated sentences and even whole paragraphs, which is much, much harder.

Do you have any other tips and tricks you'd like to share?

You know, I don't really feel bad for Mitt Romney. Because even thought he lost the election, he can just go back to being, well, Mitt Romney. Living the life he's always led. I often think, why can't we all live more like Mitt? Jet-setting and stuff. So I've started to think of ways in which I could acquire a lifestyle more like Mitt's.

Fortunately, I just got invited to a "brainstorming power-lunch" about how us shlumpy scientists could form partnerships with well-dressed industry folks to make mucho dinero! This one seems specifically focused to my broad area of research, and the university has invited a couple of local industry folks working in our area as well as some venture capitalists. I can understand why the uni is keen on holding such meetings, because universities can't function on indirect costs, tuition and fundraising alone, and their intellectual capital is supposedly highly marketable.

So should I start picking out my new jet and livin' la vida loca? I don't think so. I may be naive here, but I just don't see it. I don't see how any of my research make any money for anyone. Yea, I know some folks who have started companies and filed patents, and maybe some of those folks have made some extra cash from these enterprises, and yes, maybe an even smaller subset has made a not-so-insubstantial amount of money. But still, our research is so basic and far from anything immediately clinical, that I just don't see it. And it's not that I'm against this sort of stuff, the purity of science and what not. No, I would love to cash in on all our hard work, and the only way basic research can become truly translational is through such partnerships. Unless the government gets into the drug-development business. But with my research I just don't see it. Who knows, maybe these folks will illuminate me, and at the least I get a free lunch.

How about you, readers, do you often think about how you could monetize your research? Have you tried? If so have you been successful?

In México, November 2 is Día de Muertos or Day of the Dead. One venerable tradition is to write little obituaries for living people you know with a little skeleton of themselves, or a sugar skull with their name to accompany it. Newspapers will write funny obituaries, usually in verse of politicians and other public figures. These fake obits are known as "Calaveras". For the last couple of years, I've written some calaveras of a few fellow science bloggers. To continue the tradition I'm happy to present a new set of calavers of some fellow bloggers I've had the pleasure to interact with in the previous year. Enjoy!

Pobrecita SciCurious, killed by curiosity.

No matter how much she would try,

Death could not evade poor old Sci.

We tried to save her from the monster brain,

that chased her, again and again.

But one day as she was writing el blog,

monster brain caught her, as she tripped over a stupid log!

Prof-like Substance, R.I.P.

Prof-like substance was always confusing.

What sort of substance makes a professor?

He wrote this blog, about how academia was a slog,

until he died by falling into his substantial processor.

¿Qué?

PalMD, fightin' hacks and quacks!

Dr. Pal has finally gone underground.

Not in a white coat but under a mound.

He was fighting off quacks, chiropractors and hacks.

When a homeopath fired a round of projectiles.

Although the bullets were diluted a million times over,

poor  Pal was still felled by placebo effectiles.

OK folks, I've dropped the ball!! With all this SfN + grantwriting craziness going on in recent weeks I just realized that our annual Donor's Choose campaign is going on. That's when science bloggers put up little giving pages to raise money for schoolkids in need via the charity called Donor's Choose. You (the reader) basically browse through the various requests from teachers to fund projects and you give money to them. If enough dough is raised, the classroom get's a new microscope, or computer, or science experiment or carpet. Yes, some don't have carpets for the kids to gather. In any case rather than me set up another giving page in the few days that are left, I'm going to urge you to go visit the giving pages of fellow Scientopia bloggers and give there, so we have hopes of completing some projects. For example DrugMonkey is raising money for genotyping kits for an AP bio class. Or GertyZ is raising money so a class can do a chicken hatching exercise. Prof-like Substance is raising money for a microscope! And Christina Lis is raising money for circuit boards. So go to these pages and others and fund some projects! I know I am.

I remember in 1980, when I was nine or so, hearing on the car radio that John Lennon had been shot. My older brother started acting all upset, and I figured I should too. He then looked at me and said,

"I bet you don't even know who John Lennon is!"

"Sure I do."

"OK, who?"

"He's the lead singer from KISS!"

Must kids always fill up every possible second of free auditory space, bickering, asking, yelling, singing, repeating the same fucking phrase over and over again, calling the dog, demanding, to the point that it becomes impossible to formulate a coherent thought and you pour olive oil into a glass of milk, hot sauce in your coffee and you burn the toast?

Somehow we never get around to going blueberry picking until some point in September when late-season  varieties are ripe, and when we do, between the kids, supercoolwife and I we end up with pounds and pounds of blueberries. Which means blueberries for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as various pies, muffins and buckles. And even then we still end up with way more than we can consume. Thus it becomes time to pull out the cider vinegar and make one of my favorite drink-additives: blueberry shrub.

A shrub is a sweet, flavored vinegar which you add to water or seltzer to make a refreshing drink. This was a typical drink in the 1900's. Or so they say. You can make it with any fruit (raspberry shrub is delicious) and blueberries are specially amenable to "shrubbing". So here's a delicious recipe to try with your extra blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, pears  and what not:

Take about a quart of blueberries and rinse them well, removing any overly mushy ones. Put them into a glass pitcher or ceramic bowl and pour over enough apple cider vinegar to cover the fruit. The better the vinegar, the better the drink, but any ol' cider vinegar will work great. Mush up the fruit with a wooden spoon and cover tightly. Let it sit for 3-7 days on the counter, stirring it around once a day or so.

Macerating the fruit.

Pour the fruit mix onto a small saucepan, and add 1/2-1 cup of sugar and bring to a boil. Simmer gently for about 15 minutes and open all your windows because it'll make a big vinegary stink.Take the boiled mix and filter it through a fine colander onto a bowl or small pitcher. Pour into sealable jars, bottle or whatever's around. This will keep in the fridge for 2-3 months (though you'll likely drink it before then).

Stinkin' up the place.

To make a drink, take a tall glass and fill it with ice and bubbly seltzer. Then add 1-3 tablespoons of shrub (to taste) and stir. Now drink it!

I'll leave it to my friend Doc Becca to come up with a blueberry shrub based cocktail.

As some of you may remember, almost 2 years ago I got pretty sick. Thankfully I'm doing somewhat better now and am in the middle of a two-year long maintenance treatment. I'm currently writing this as I receive medicine through a port implanted in my chest by my shoulder and I've been here all day, I still have another 150 ml to go. I decided that rather than watch another episode of Breaking Bad on Netflix, I should write a little blog post. The clinic is essentially run by nurses who have received specialized training in oncology and totally kick-ass at their jobs. One thing I was thinking about just now  is that several of the nurses in this room have literally saved my life multiple times, they have given me drugs to treat my disease, and when the going was rough given me life-saving blood transfusions and other medication. And I see them running around the room saving other people's lives too, all day long. How many people can say that they directly saved several lives today? I certainly can't. Probably most of you can't either. You might say, "wait a minute you and we are performing basic biomedical research that will unlock key insights that can one day save peoples lives". And I know basic research is necessary, without it none of the treatments I've received would have been possible, and having a basic science background certainly has helped in understanding various options. But still, my job seems completely trite and meaningless compared with the direct impact that these nurses have on their patients. And I really admire them for this.

So, if you ever meet a nurse, thank them on my behalf, if you are one reading this, thank you. Oh, and please go donate blood, this will certainly help someone directly, and thank you for doing so! Maybe we should start a little campaign to get science bloggers and their readers to donate blood, if you do donate send me a note, and I'll publish the tally a month from now. See if we can get a modest 15 people to donate blood and thank a nurse, here we go!

I just realized that I missed my second bloggiversary by about 2 months. Bah, who cares anyway. But in realizing this, I was looking back at some of my old posts and came across this, written almost 2 years ago, and which I'd forgotten about. I read it, and I was like "I wrote this?? Holy shit, it's actually quite good!" So, since I hope I've acquired new readers since I started this here blog, I've decided to re-post for you the story of "The lowly grad and the magic beans". Enjoy!

Originally posted: September 26, 2010

_____________________________

"Lowly Grad and the Magic Beans"

You had seen him several times skulking around your poster, furiously scribbling notes. Every time he came by you recognized his pointy beard and short stature. Once he pulled out a ruler and started measuring your error bars, another time he took out his camera and took a snapshot of your poster. And every time you couldn't read his name tag, it was flipped over, or covered by his jacket. Who was this guy?

It was your first big meeting and you were excited to be presenting your hot new results. It would have been better if your advisor had come, but he had to stay behind to finish his grant proposal. After the poster session as you were leaving with the awkward and enormous poster tube you saw him again, and this time he looked like he wanted to talk.

"I saw you stop by my poster several times, do you have any questions?"

He tugged on his beard and asked "Is it for sale?"

"For sale? My poster?"

"Yes, I'd like to buy it."

"Who are you?"

"I'm the poster buyer."

"Why do you want to buy my poster?"

"Because that's what I do. I pay very well."

You think, what the hell, I can get some extra cash and not have to lug this thing back home. "OK, let's do it." The poster buyer takes your poster and pulls something out of his pocket, handing it to you.

"What's this?"

"Payment."

"But these are only three beans, what's the deal here, dude?"

"Ah", says the poster buyer, "not just beans – magic beans. I thought you were hoping to get your project published in one of those fancy Glamour Journals?"

"Yes…"

"Well, these beans will help you do that."

And before you have a chance to object, the poster buyer and your poster are gone.

When you return home you tell your advisor about the whole incident. "FOOL!!" He yells. "You don't know who this guy was, he could be a competitor, or one of our 'science enemies'. He's totally going to scoop your project, you are totally screwed, you'll NEVER get it published, you will now take 14 years to complete your PhD! I hope that he at least paid you well…". Sheepishly, you say "Well he gave me these magic beans… he said they would help get my paper published in a fancy journal." Your advisor gives you a despondent look and walks away laughing maniacally, shaking his head. Totally in the dumps, you walk home and you bitterly toss the stupid beans in your front yard before you get to your apartment. You spend the night eating Doritos and drinking heavily and fall asleep in the couch.

"Dude, you gotta check this out. Dude wake the fuck up!" You open your eyes, your head pounding, to see your housemate shaking you awake.

"What?! Leave me alone!"

"The seeds, the ones I thought were pot seeds you threw in the front yard…they're not pot seeds."

"I know, they're magic beans. Now let me go back to sleep."

"Take a look, look out the window!"

You figure that looking out the window is the only way to get rid of your housemate and as you look, you are totally astonished at what you see. The beans had grown into a giant bean stalk, twisting and curling all the way up to the clouds. "Holy crap! I'm going to climb that thing." And after quickly dressing you run out and climb the giant beanstalk.

The beanstalk is much taller than you thought, and after 3 hours of climbing, you reach a large sign: "NO TRESPASSING. This is the laboratory of the Head Honcho,  funded by NSH, NIS, DDT, CIA, PDQ, ABC, DoF, QED and the Willy Wonka Foundation. Unauthorized lowly grads are not permitted beyond this point, because your science ain't shit compared to the stuff we do in here!" Ignoring the sign you press on, until you reach a large, warehouse-like room. In it are hundreds of ashen-looking grad students and postdocs working away in endlessly long lab benches, pipetting, running gels, imaging cells. And wandering around are large goons with whips, with tee shirts that say "Lab Manager", ensuring everyone works harder, faster. At the end of each bench there are large bins, connected to chutes and you recognize the names of the various Glamour Journals in the labels to each chute: Journal of Sexy Science, Trendy Topics in Nature, etc. And a continuous stream of grad and postdocs are wandering over to the bins, one after another, and dropping in their manuscripts, watching them be whisked away through the corresponding chutes. After a while you realize that there's this strange, wonderful music in the background. It's like nothing you have ever heard before, a warm sensation fills your body, what is that?! You decide to pull over a postdoc wandering to the bins and you ask her "What is this strange music?"

"It's the Mojo Banjo, of course."

"The Mojo Banjo?"

"Yes, where the science mojo comes from."

"Science mojo?!"

"You silly, lowly grad, the science mojo is what makes your science tick. It's what makes it glamourous, and hot and sexy and trendy. It's what makes people want to listen to it and publish and fund it. It's the key to it all. Whithout science mojo, your science is bupkes! Nada! Zilch!"

"But my science is very interesting and groundbreaking, I'd like to think…"

"It doesn't matter, without the science mojo it's worth a handful of beans! "

"So how do I get some of this mojo?"

"Only the Head Honcho can make science mojo by playing the mojo banjo. And he never lets go of the mojo banjo, he even sleeps with it. Now if you will excuse me, I need to deposit this manuscript in the 'Hot Journal of Cell Science'  bin".

You know you need to get a hold of the Mojo Banjo and mesmerized you follow the music until you get to a large banquet hall. In it is a large table, full of people eating and laughing, almost drunk on the sounds of the mojo banjo. And you recognize among the guests prominent editors and grant reviewers and representatives from funding agencies. At the head of the table is the Head Honcho himself, playing the mojo banjo, his fingers flying across the strings. And everyone seems to be eating cotton candy, which is made by these gigantic machines. And the cotton candy looks delicious and you never had breakfast, so you decide to sneak in and taste some. It tastes wonderful! Nothing like regular cotton candy! After you taste it, you taste fame, and fortune and you feel important and powerful. And mixed with the sounds of the mojo banjo, you soon fall asleep under the table. When you wake, everyone has fallen asleep. The head honcho is slumped over, cotton candy stuck to his chin and the mojo banjo dangling from his hand. Carefully, you sneak close and snatch the mojo banjo and make a run for the exit. But the Head Honcho has been woken and angrily looks around, loudly exclaiming:

"Fee, fie, fo fudent! I smell the blood of a graduate student! Be he alive, or be he dandy, I'll grind his bones to make my cotton candy!"

And seeing you with his mojo banjo he begins to run towards you, his face beet red with ire, the room shaking as he does. You make a beeline for the beanstalk, running away from the Head Honcho you start the long climb down. But the Honcho is relentless, no matter how fast you climb down he seems to be catching up. And when you reach the bottom you can see him just a few feet away. So you have no choice, you begin to hit the base of the beanstalk with the mojo banjo until finally it topples over with a gigantic crash, crushing the Head Honcho. But the mojo banjo is destroyed! You will never get your glamour publication, your PhD WILL take 14 years!

"You did it!" exclaims a familiar voice. You turn to see the poster buyer, tugging his beard and cleaning his ear with a Q-tip.

"Did what?! I destroyed the mojo banjo. I'll never publish in a fancy journal, ever!"

"On the contrary, lowly grad, you have set science free! No longer will those in possession of the science mojo will be granted exclusive access to Glamour Journals. Papers will be judged purely on scientific merit and not trendiness. Grant reviewers will provide useful constructive feedback, ensuring all good grant proposals get funded. PhD's will be completed in no more that four years, graduate students and postdocs will be appreciated, and anyone showing a genuine interest in science will be reward with a faculty position. Because of you, lowly grad, a new era in science has been ushered! You are a hero!"

"Really?!"

"Yes, now get back to work, after all you are only a lowly grad and I understand you have a thesis committee meeting you need to prepare for…"

 

A recent blog post and conversation on the tweeter was addressing the question of "what were some of your formative books your read when you were 10-15 years old?" I remember I was not really into reading until I was about 10, when my brother returned from college and gave me a copy of "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe". Up until then I basically read comics (Asterix, Tin Tin), or magazines ("World", "The Electric Company" and the Mexican magazine "Chispa") and I thought there's no way I'll get through that. Especially since I was (and still am) a slow reader and the book was in English, which is my second language. Nevertheless I was totally blown away, so much so I had my brother send me the rest of the series which were hard to find in Mexico. After that I discovered an English-language bookstore in Mexico City and I would always want to go there to buy books. Whenever I visited the US I'd come back with a suitcase half-filled with books. I discovered the Great Brain series, which I loved and almost made me become a Mormon (until I realized that you didn't need to be a Mormon to engage in the Great Brain's shenanigans). I also liked those Chronicles of Prydain books, but they always fell a little flat compared to Narnia. The Phantom Tollbooth for sure. And all the books by this dude named Edward Eager (Knights Castle, Half Magic, etc.) I read all the Judy Blume books and I had all of the Choose Your Own Adventure series. Also I read all of the Roald Dahl books I could find. As I got a bit older I got into Ray Bradbury and The Hobbit (I didn't read the rest of the Lord of the Rings until high school).

One of the reasons I read so much in English, is that I think children's literature in English was so much better than anything I could find in Spanish. Everything I had in Spanish seemed either antiquated/irrelevant or just plain bad. So much so that I don't remember a single chapter book in Spanish I read as a kid, other than the whole Asterix series, which I love (although that was translated from French, but whatever). It wasn't until high school that I discovered all the cool Latin American writers which occupied most of my reading during high-school: Borges, García Márquez, Cortázar, Bioy Casares, etc. I also discovered German writer Michael Ende (Neverending Story, Momo) and Vonnegut.

Now my kids are starting to read a lot. My son not so much yet. He can read well, but still doesn't have the bug. My daughter, who is 8, is completely obsessed. She's reading at a level far more advanced than I was at her age. She's on her second iteration of the Harry Potter saga (which I've never read other than reading the first two books to her out loud). I tried to get her into some of the books I used to like and she did enjoy Narnia and Momo and Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH, but hasn't shown much interest in others. But I think that the best thing is to just let her develop her own tastes, and she's found all sorts of cool books in her school library by authors I don't know but that seem pretty good. Books I would have liked to read as a kid (she really loved this Warriors series about some epic cat saga) and she loves graphic novels. I'm hesitant to introduce her to Asterix, because I would feel painfully rejected if she didn't like those. She also appropriated all my Choose Your Own adventure books and has been going through them (I recently slipped on House of Danger, left on the bathroom floor). But most of all I'm glad she's reading and enjoys it. And Im sure my son will follow soon once he becomes a bit more confident. Then we can all sit around and read. And maybe I'll finally read Harry Potter. Or not.