Fashion for women in STEM

Etsy store Shenova specializes in fashion inspired by the STEM disciplines, including chemistry, medicine, astrophysics, neuroscience, math and computer science.

I think my favorite is the Space Time Warp dress.

via Neatorama

NIH salary cap raised for 2016

The maximum salary on an NIH award has increased to $185,100 effective 1/10/16. This figure represents a base salary over a 12-month calendar, so to figure out whether your 9-month academic year base salary is at or above the cap, use a 9-month figure of $138,825. If your academic year salary is at or above this amount, you must use this figure when calculating salary costs on an NIH grant proposal.

More information on this calculation may be found in the Fordham Research Manual.
More information on the NIH salary cap may be found at this notice: NOT-OD-16-145.

Chemist-trees!

Don't let being stuck in the lab over the holidays get you down, you can still be festive!

See more trees at the Chemistry World Blog.

Rejection of rejection

Cath Chapman and Tim Slade from the University of South Wales, Sydney, Australia, provide the template of a "rejection of rejection letter" in a recent BMJ feature, which begins:

Rejection of rejection letter

[insert university emblem here]

Dear Professor [insert name of editor]

[Re: MS 2015_XXXX Insert title of ground-breaking study here]

Thank you for your rejection of the above manuscript.

Unfortunately we are not able to accept it at this time. As you are probably aware we receive many rejections each year and are simply not able to accept them all. In fact, with increasing pressure on citation rates and fiercely competitive funding structures we typically accept fewer than 30% of the rejections we receive. Please don’t take this as a reflection of your work. The standard of some of the rejections we receive is very high...

Read the rest at BMJ:
Rejection of rejection: a novel approach to overcoming barriers to publication

thanks to Dean McKay for finding this!

Speaking of avoiding jargon...

via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zack Weinersmith.

"Dance Your Ph.D." 2015 contest finalists

Many writing advisors urge new scientists to "avoid the jargon" when they write about their work; what if you couldn't use words at all? For the past eight years the AAAS, Science and HighWire Press have sponsored a "Dance Your PhD" contest. The winner last year was Uma Nagendra who eared her PhD in plant biology:

The winner for 2015 hasn't been announced yet, and voting has concluded, but you can still view the 12 finalists that are vying for the title:
It's a dance-off! Vote for you 'Dance Your Ph.D. video winner!'

NIH Loan Repayment Program accepting applications - due 11/16

The NIH Loan Repayment Program is accepting applications, due by 8pm on 11/16/15. It's a quick turnaround, but the pay off makes it worth it -- up to $70,000 in student loan debt could be repaid for you if you're a qualifying researcher.

Visit their website at http://www.lrp.nih.gov (hurry!) to learn more.