In Charles Dickens’ 1843 classic, A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by four ghosts who help him to see the error of his ways and embrace a life of service. Scrooge is then able to correct the actions that could have led to his demise. Researchers studying epigenetics take on a similar task.
No need to stand in the cold for a glimpse of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade when you can see it at the NIH Clinical Center! Want to go to space and have a look at the Apollo capsule? It’s here, too. Starting in 2004, the NIH Clinical Center has presented a wonderful annual display of gingerbread houses built by teams of NIH staff.
“Here is an image that is historical because it represents the era (1980s and 1990s) when drug receptors were first being localized in the brain," writes Miles Herkenham, Ph.D.
The turn of the 20th century brought exponential advancements in technology and science. While intrepid explorers like Cook and Peary journeyed over the tundra and ice in search of the North Pole—at that time considered the final frontier of land exploration—the budding National Institutes of Health (NIH) was also journeying into the unknown with a charge to protect the public from organisms existing at the very edges of life.
During my Ph.D., I decided to pursue my thesis project in a lab working in the RNA field and, more specifically, on the mechanisms of alternative splicing regulation. Moving onto my post-doctoral training, I decided to stay in this field mainly because I found it fascinating to work with RNA. It is such a flexible and diverse molecule, but also largely unexplored. I believed that this relatively new area of research would attract more interest among scientists, and the last few years show that I was thinking in the right direction.
This is National Influenza Vaccination Week. Since we are in the midst of flu season, it is an appropriate time to highlight the importance of continuing influenza vaccination. I won’t go into the details of the NIH Foil the Flu campaign, the annual flu vaccination clinic sponsored by the Office of Research Services that provides all NIH staff and contractors with the seasonal flu vaccine for free. Instead, I’d like to highlight the importance of influenza research and a couple of intramural investigators who are tackling interesting questions along the pipeline to creating safe and effective influenza vaccines.
I have been thinking a lot recently about how the tools we use in our work have improved so dramatically in the last few decades and how this is mostly down to the frequently disparaged study of microbes. While everyone can get behind studying bacteria that cause life-threatening diseases like typhoid fever and cholera, I think that it is often harder to convince people of the value of studying ordinary and sometimes obscure bacteria that do not directly affect human health. However, over the years, such studies have revolutionized many aspects of our lives.
Recently, more than a dozen of our Institutes and Centers (ICs) came together to tell a story of interconnected, cross-discipline science at one of the largest medical meetings in the world, the 31,000-attendee-strong Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.
How did I end up here? Nearly two decades of school. Countless coffee cups, pages of notes, and lost hours of sleep. College came and went like a whirlwind. Finally, I graduated with the piece of paper that people have been telling me is the ticket to the rest of my life: a Bachelor’s degree. Not only does this paper signify a level of previously non-existent expertise, it is also a stepping-stone to whatever’s next.
This page was last updated on Friday, January 14, 2022
