Tips & Tricks: What Writers Can Learn from the Ancient Maya Builders

Posted by Jennifer L. Greer

Every time I visit a Maya ruin in Mexico or Central America (a favorite vacation spot), I am awed by how much planning went into each and every building. I guess if you are designing a temple for the gods or lugging heavy stones across a steamy jungle to please a king who will toss you into the sea if dissatisfied, you perform well. In fact, most graduate writers can probably identify with these kinds of high stakes! As you can see by the photographs from the ancient city of Tulum, overlooking the Caribbean on the eastern Yucatan Peninsula, Maya architects and builders put a great deal of thought into the structure of their classical buildings (below left) from the location to the essential supports, such as columns and arches (below right, from another ruin at nearby Coba). Although no architectural blueprints, drawings, or models have survived the passage of time, the Maya clearly knew to "begin with the end in mind,” as modern life/work guru Stephen Covey advised in his popular book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits.php.)

So how do you begin with the end in mind on an academic writing project? One of the smartest things you can do is pre-write the abstract, or overall summary of the article, early in the writing process. This advice usually perplexes writers because they are taught to write abstracts at the end of the process. But that sequence doesn't help them see the whole story structure when they need to see it most, when they have to organize mounds of information, when they must be able to see the end in mind. To help writers pre-write, I developed a simple tool, called the OJISH Model, for fastdrafting abstracts in 10 minutes. Of course it takes longer to flesh out and polish what you can draft quickly. But I challenge you to give OJISH a try. See if it doesn't help you jumpstart a writing project --- and structure a research narrative as strong and sound as any ancient Mayan masterpiece.

    

What I'm Working On: The Science of Collecting Brains

Posted by Lesley McCollum

It’s Friday night and my mentor is calling, which can only mean one thing. "We're getting a brain in" she says when I answer the phone. I jump in the car for a late night funeral home run to pick up the brain just harvested from a donor. With brain in hand, I head to the lab. We're never sure when the next one will be coming, but when it does we have to act fast. 

Chances are that you have thought about whether or not you’d like to be an organ donor. But have you ever thought about donating your brain? As part of my graduate research I help maintain the Alabama Brain Collection. We receive brain donations from people with a desire to help advance science after they’re gone. Each donation is valuable and critical to advancing research, whether from a healthy individual or someone with a brain disorder wanting to help find a cure for others in the future.

With the brain back in the lab we inspect and weigh it. Each one is unique with its own characteristics and quirks. We quickly get it in fixatives or frozen in dry ice to preserve it just how it is. Then we store it for future experiments where it can be used to help understand how our brains work and what goes wrong in brain disorders. We are grateful to those who chose to donate. They are the ones who make our research possible.

What I'm Working On: Field Biology & Just Another Day at the Beach (with biting flies and mosquitoes)

Posted by Taylor Roberge

Summer for many people is a relaxing time of year when things start to slow down a bit. The bulk of my research, however, is condensed into a chaotic 3 month period when turtles are nesting and as it just so happens, the time of year when many of the biting insects are in greatest abundance. 

Currently, I’m spending much of my time in the lab either grading assignments from the Introductory Biology lab I teach, or working on in-lab experiments looking at how factors like fluctuating incubation temperature affect organisms, and in my case turtles, with temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). 

Each week, my adviser and I make the four and a half hour journey from Birmingham to Dauphin Island. Here, we perform surveys and field experiments to better understand the ecology and biology of the Diamondback terrapin, a severely depleted species in Alabama. 

This week we drove down to do some radio tracking of female terrapins that we had released earlier in June, release a female that we had been captured the previous week, and pick up a new female that was captured a few days before we arrived. Summer can be hectic and even feel overwhelming at times, but I couldn’t see myself being happy doing anything else.

Writing for the Public: What’s All the Excitement About? Communicating Science to Non-Scientists

Posted by Lesley McCollum

I think every graduate student can agree that we spend a lot of time writing and talking about our research. What we may not agree on though, is whether we feel it takes up precious time for experiments, or if we prefer to get in some quality writing time. For some, our goals for writing science go beyond disseminating research for peers to communicating it to the public. As the brilliant scientist/science advocate, Carl Sagan, said: "There are at least two reasons why scientists have an obligation to explain what science is all about. One is naked self-interest… If we scientists increase the public excitement about science, there is a good chance of having more public supporters. The other is that it's tremendously exciting to communicate your own excitement to others." What’s all the excitement about then? For me, a doctoral researcher at the Alabama Brain Collection (ABC), I am excited by doing work that may one day improve treatment options for those suffering from mental illness. At the ABC, we promote and encourage research using brain tissue donated from individuals who had a desire to contribute to scientific advancement after their death. What inspires you to communicate science with others? Do you think you would ever want to write about science for the general media or a blog? If so, check out the science journalism resources that I've collected for our wiki, WritingInTheZone. UAB does not currently have a science writing program, but as the interest grows here, so will the opportunities. Stay tuned for announcements about how to get plugged in here on campus.