More often than not, people come to a point in their academic careers where they hit a wall; some of us just do it more literally than others. What started out as a strange niche sport for people living on the fringe of society has quickly become a fast-growing sport in America. The first indoor climbing gym opened in 1987, and by the end of 2016 there were 414 commercial climbing gyms in America. The growth of the sport is not surprising.
Americans are increasingly interested in outdoor recreation. What does surprise me is the sheer number of researchers embracing the sport. This became immediately apparent when I began my graduate program and started to recognize climbers from the gym around campus. So why is it that rock climbing appeals to so many researchers? I have a few ideas on the matter.
Scientists love jargon.
We can deny it, and say that we want to become more effective scientific communicators. However, at the end of the day, we enjoy throwing around our acronyms, and showing that we belong in academia by using the esoteric language that science is built on. Now imagine the joy of discovering the whole new body of jargon that rock climbing provides: crimp, dyno, smear. Saying “CRISPR” will elicit the same furrowed brow from your layman.
Scientists love problem solving.
More importantly, rock climbing appeals to the problem-solving nature of a researcher. An indoor climbing wall is covered with specific routes that are marked with tape or color-coded. If you wander over to the bouldering area — where climbing is done without ropes — people will refer to these routes as problems, and they will call a route they can’t climb without falling a project. I’m sure you can already see the parallels. When climbing a project, you will troubleshoot moves on the route until you finally get to the top without falling. It is immensely satisfying to have an experiment finally work after endless rounds of troubleshooting, and that emotion physically manifests in climbing by finally reaching the top of the wall.
Exercise is a natural coping mechanism.
Exercise can ease the emotional struggles that research presents. A recent study of students attending universities in Flanders, Belgium, found that one third of students are at risk of developing a common psychiatric disorder. This underlines the importance of taking steps to promote mental health. Countless studies have shown that exercise can have antidepressant effects. That, combined with the hint of adrenaline that rock climbing provides, is the best recipe for getting over a bad day in the lab.
My hope is that the next time you hit a wall it will be at the gym. Come join the growing army of academic climbers. We have problems you can solve.
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Kyla Britson is a Ph.D. candidate in cellular and molecular medicine. She has been playing violin since she was 10. She was in her college’s campus orchestra, and since moving to Baltimore she has been part of the Hunt Valley Symphony. She says playing the violin has always been her artistic break from science.
With a high likelihood of disappointment perpetually looming over our work, how is it that we, as students, are able to stay motivated for at least five years to complete a Ph.D.? I’ve watched postdoctoral fellows in my lab leave their families overseas to complete papers and projects, and friends leave their homes and friends to follow their labs to different institutions. What is the driving force and where does this motivation come from, when we already know the probability of success is so low?
Why is science so fragile? Why haven’t we been able to prevent so many of the failures that we experience each day? Scientists are risk takers. Each experiment comes with the bravery that one feels when climbing a mountain or bungee jumping out of an airplane, and the practice of scientific research often requires us to take a leap of faith and pursue our hunches. We believe in the work of our predecessors and colleagues and use their findings to guide our own.
If you’re planning to apply to Ph.D. programs this fall, hopefully you’ve — at the very least — thought about starting to write a personal statement. For many students this is one of the most daunting aspects of the application process; however, having a strong personal statement can really set you apart amid a thick stack of applicants and, later on, can give you confidence going into your interviews. Here are some tips from my experience applying to graduate school, with the hope that they can make your own writing process a little easier.
Every developing embryo, irrespective of its sex, at one point contains both male and female reproductive tracts, referred to as the wolffian duct and the müllerian duct, respectively. If the fetus produces testosterone and the anti-müllerian hormone (AMH) gene products from the Y chromosome — these molecules elicit cellular signaling events that lead to the destruction of the female müllerian ducts. The wolffian ducts subsequently develop into male reproductive organs, such as the seminal vesicles, vas deferens and accessory structures. In the absence of testosterone or AMH, the wolffian ducts degenerate and the müllerian ducts develop into female reproductive organs including the fallopian tubes, uterus, cervix and upper vagina. These pathways were first identified and elucidated in the 1940s by the French endocrinologist Alfred Jost, who conducted intricate experiments using rabbits and showed that female development is a "default" pathway that needs to be actively overridden for the development of male sex organs.
The researchers had originally set out to study how tissues on the outside of the early ducts communicate with the lining of the tubes in the early embryo to direct proper organ development. Since the COUP-TFII protein is produced in that outer layer, Yao suspected it could play an important role in this signaling process. His team mutated the gene for COUP-TFII in mice so that this protein was no longer produced by the developing embryos. They observed that in these mutant mice the communication in the reproductive tissue of early female mouse embryos was disrupted. However, what was surprising was that these female embryos retained not only the female müllerian duct but also the male wolffian duct.
Solutions Focus on Recruitment, Retention and Return
