1. Search for the ‘God Particle’ – the Higgs Boson
OK, so we’ve all seen Brian Cox captivating spellbound audiences with his silver tongue on the BBC, and alluding to the search for the God particle – a.k.a. the Higgs boson. So what exactly is this ‘God particle’ and if it finally is discovered what will change?

The Higgs boson is a hypothetical elementary particle that is predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics and its existence, in simple terms, will explain why fundamental particles such as quarks and electrons have mass. The particle was nicknamed the ‘The God Particle’ by Leon Lederman, an American experimental physicist and Nobel Prize laureate because of the particle’s crucial role in the fundamental workings of physics in the 21st century, combined with its amazing elusiveness.

Physicists have spent years yearning to catch a glimpse of the particle, so much so that they spent $10 billion on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, a particle accelerator just outside Geneva in Switzerland. After years of toil, it looks like they are finally close to finding the ‘god-damn-it” particle (nicknamed so by some physicists as they tend to pull their hair out in frustration in attempts to capture it), and in December 2011 there was a flurry of activity in CERN as data resembling the Higgs Boson was captured. If future data planned to be gathered later this year corroborates the finding of last December, capturing the Higgs will likely be regarded as one of the 21st century’s great discoveries.

2. The Ultimate Anti-Aging Cream
The holy grail of cosmetics; the mythical fountain of youth – well it now seems likely that we are close to discovering the ultimate anti-aging formula. Well, maybe not; but at least there is a theoretical basis for gene therapy in medicine now aimed at slowing and reversing the aging process as well as impacting on the processes of diseases such as Cancer.

Scientists in Harvard Medical School have discovered a genetic mechanism which allows them to artificially age, and then rejuvenate laboratory mice. Thus, it is theoretically possible to reverse some of the effects of the aging process in mammals. They achieved this by creating a genetic switch on the gene that controls the expression of telomerase, an enzyme that controls the repair of Telomeres (repetitive strands of DNA that protect the ends of chromosomes), which are critical in the aging process, as well as being implicated in Cancer. This research has the potential to yield significant advances in the treatment of diseases such as malignancies and age-related illnesses in the future.

3. So Time Travel is Possible?

Well maybe, but unlikely, according to the majority of the physics community. In September 2011, researchers from the OPERA collaboration caused a stir in the scientific community when they announced that they had measured neutrinos (small sub-atomic particles) that appeared to travel faster than the speed of light. Poor Einstein would be turning in his grave at the news; this would not only violate his theory of special relativity, but also it would rock the fundamental foundations of theoretical physics.

However, the majority of the scientific community view the results dubiously and indicate that there must be some anomaly in the findings. Physicists are now scrambling to independently replicate the experiment later this year; which involves firing neutrinos at a detector hundreds of miles away and measuring the time taken for the journey. Once replicated and depending on the results, physicists will either breathe a sigh of relief or will enter a phase of mass group hysteria; adding a new meaning to the term ‘uncertainty’ in science.

4. Search for Extrasolar Planets in the Goldilocks zone
Everyone is talking about it – in the press, in the media and all over the TV at any opportunity – ‘are we alone?’ Well the hunt for planets outside our solar system that may be able to support life took a leap forward last December when astronomers at NASA’s Ames Research Center announced that they had found the best candidate yet for a planet outside our solar system which could potentially support life.
The planet, affectionately named Kepler-22b after the telescope it was first spotted by, is right bang in the middle of the proposed habitable zone of its star – the ‘Goldilocks Zone’. Although not much is known about the composition of the planet (its 600 light-years away, that’s 3.5 x 1015 miles), it is 2.4 times the size of the earth and orbits its sun every 290 days. If it has a surface, scientists think the surface temperature would be somewhere around 210C – perfect for life.
The search continues and one day we may indeed find the perfect extrasolar planet – one which has life on it (detected by the presence of oxygen and other by-products of life in the atmosphere); the problem is getting there or even saying hello.

5. Human Stem Cell Research

Major controversy still surrounds the use of human embryos as a source of stem cells, however in recent years scientists have finally cracked the problem and are now able to manufacture an almost limitless supply of stem cells in the lab without destroying embryos. This limitless supply has opened the flood gates for stem cell research, allowing researchers to develop novel therapies for conditions such as blindness and Parkinson’s disease to effective treatments for spinal cord damage.

Stem cells are found in all multicellular organisms, and they can divide and differentiate into many different specialized cell types, effectively they are a ‘wildcard’ cell. If inserted into the human body, they tend to change into the cells that surround them. This has wide reaching implications for medicine and research is now underway across the globe to find effective treatments for conditions such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (which has special significance here in Ireland as Prof. Orla Hardiman in Beaumont Hospital is regarded as one of the world’s leading researchers in the field), damage to the heart after a heart attack, blindness, deafness, skin disorders, arthritis, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s to name but a few. Watch this space; it is the future of medicine.

6. Quantum Computing

The revolution of quantum physics may soon be about to pay off with the advent of quantum computers, a term that has been bandied about for some years now. The promise of super fast computers, performing certain calculations billions of times faster than any silicon-based computer and which that may even surpass the human brain in raw computing power, may not be too far away. Late last year another milestone in the race to develop the first practical quantum computer was made when a team at the University of Bristol’s Centre for Quantum Photonics developed a microchip which manipulates and measures entanglement and mixture, two quantum phenomena which are fundamental principles in quantum computing.

The major potential applications of quantum computing are in cryptography and communications; however the potential for developing the first artificial intelligence is now within the grasp of reality.

7. Can Arsenic really be a Building Block of Life?

The element Arsenic, historically labelled the Poison of Kings due to its popularity as a poison of the ruling classes in disposing of each other, is highly toxic to all known life on Earth, or at least that’s what we thought up to a couple of years ago.

NASA scientists have discovered a new microbe in the hostile Mono Lake in the USA that uses the deadly poison Arsenic as a component in its biochemical machinery instead of Phosphorus causing a shake up in the way scientists have traditionally thought about the biochemistry of life.

Traditionally, the six basic building blocks of all life on Earth were Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Sulphur and Phosphorus, with a dusting of trace elements thrown into the mix. The new discovery sees Arsenic replace Phosphorus as an element of the structural backbone of DNA in the microbe, paving the way for a change in how scientists view the possibility of life in once-thought hostile environments. If a microbe can build a deadly poison into its biochemical processes, who is to say that other organisms don’t exist in the most hostile parts of the solar system, using elements we regard as toxic in their fundamental biochemistry.

8. What’s up with the Weather these Days?

It’s hard for any of us to dismiss noticing the subtle changes in the weather patterns of the last twenty years or so (well, for anyone over thirty, that is). However on a more serious note, recent evidence from climatology researchers has shown a disturbing trend – the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting at an ever faster rate than once thought, making them the greatest single contributor to rising sea levels.

The study, performed over a period of nearly twenty years showed that in 2006 the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lost a combined mass of 475 gigatonnes (one billion tonnes) a year on average and that the pace of loss was found to be accelerating rapidly over the period of the study. They predict that at the current rate of melting, the global sea level could rise by 32 cm (over 1 foot) by 2050. With the ever increasing power of supercomputers, climatologists and meteorologists are busy modelling the changing weather patterns in an attempt to see how the reality of global warming will impact the environment of the future, the near future that is.

9. So now we become the Grand Architect

One of the spin offs of the multiple genome projects over the last ten years has been an intimate knowledge of how the base pairs on DNA combines in sequence to form life. This challenged geneticist J. Craig Venter, one of the main players in the human genome project, to put his architectural skills to task in an attempt to create synthetic life. In 2010, he succeeded in creating life in the lab by combining the 582,000 base pairs required for the complete genome of the new bacteria, proposed to be called Mycoplasma laboratorium. This paves the way for the genetic engineering of bacteria to perform tasks such as the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals and bio-fuels. Who knows we may even be able to create bacteria designed to kill other bacteria.

10. Medicines made just for You

Personalised medicine, or pharmacogenomics to the geeks among us, is fast becoming one of the hottest areas of research in therapeutic medicine, with the promise of more effective therapies for a range of debilitating and terminal conditions. Personalised medicine is based upon the premise that drugs acts differently in different people due to genetic variation. With the advent of the human genome project, and the revolution in diagnostic testing, researchers can now tailor drug regimens for individuals with a high degree of accuracy, leading to a significant increase in therapeutic effectiveness.

The most notable application of personalised medicine will be in the treatment of Cancer – instead of treating Cancer with an ‘one size, fits all’ approach as with chemotherapy, clinicians will be able to identify the genetic basis of the tumour and design a treatment regimen based upon this. The costs of diagnostic testing and the lack of current available drugs prohibit the widespread use of personalised medicine at the moment, however in the coming years a raft of new biopharmaceutical therapies will be coming onto the market, the culmination of over thirty years of research, heralding the field of pharmacogenomics into mainstream medicine.

On a side note, ca. 12% of the jobs we advertise contain detailed information on the salary range on offer.

“The need for good staff has never being more important and companies are going to greater lengths to minimise the risks in any potential new hires, longer interview processes, psychometric testing, presentations, roles plays etc are becoming more and more common in the interview processes. Likewise employees are increasingly more concerned with company stability, culture and future growth plans.
It’s an old adage that price is what you pay and value is what you get. Employers in the current market place are very aware of the need to get the right individual on board not just in terms of skills and experience but also in terms of attitude and fit. To this end a lot of companies don’t want to be boxed in by setting salary bands that will either be dismissed by people that are at a higher salary level and like wise not to prevent applications for people with the right skillet but with less experience.”
-James Cassidy, Medical Device Principal Consultant, Life Science Recruitment

My own way of looking at it is both form the client and candidate perspective:

Client (ie company) – sometimes they have very strict salary bands in place, sometimes they don’t. It can save a lot of time, if the former is the case, to advertise the salary. This is generally done at the junior level to ensure no time is wasted in the recruitment process. Where higher potential salaries exist, employers generally keep their cards closer to their chest and thus tend not to advertise salaries. It can be frustrating from a candidate point-of0view, but is something which is unlikely to change.

Candidates (ie job seeker) – this boils down to the experience the person has. If they are sought after, they are in a stronger position to negotiate. In this instance, again it can save time if they inform the company of any salary expectations that they have, so that this isn’t a big issue later on in the recruitment process. It also means both parties are on the same wavelength from the start. If a candidate has a skillset which is widely available, then they are on the backfoot in terms of ability to demand salaries, and they must act accordingly. It is an employer driven market in many (or even most) areas, but in particular niches, there a skill shortages. IT being the most obvious example, but in many areas of Life Science and Pharmaceutical too (Clinical Reseasrch, Regulatory Affairs, QA to name but a few). In these cases, salaries are generally not advertised in order to encourage as many people as possible to apply.

- Brian Christensen (brian dot c @ lifescience.ie)

Some points that occurred to me recently that are very important:

-NEVER address an email to Sir / Madam or “To Whom it Concerns”. This is lazy. Go onto LinkedIn, find the name of the person you need. If you can’t find it here, contact the company directly and simply ask for the contacts name / email. This will make your application stand out.
-When composing your CV, put yourself in the mind of a HR Manager. They often from Arts / Business backgrounds and sometimes don’t have a lot of technical knowledge (no offence!). You therefore need to explain everything in your CV. If you have worked with local regulatory authorities, write “the IMB” or “FDA”, as a HR person could have been told (“I only want CVs with IMB / FDA experience”). If you have worked with ERP systems, highlight which ones in the experience section, NOT ONLY in the skills section. Your CV could easily get overlooked otherwise.
-Expanding this point, make sure all acronyms are explained. Sometimes even technical people will not know what something means, so put yourself in their shoes and write it from their perspective.

As always, get in touch if you have any particular topics you’d like us to cover, or if you have any thoughts on the above

-Brian (bhc at lifescience dot ie)

It’s been a good month in Life Science Towers on various fronts, here’s a run down of the roles were working hard on currently:

Health Quality professionals. We’re working exclusively with this Client to provide them with a number of people who have previous experience in the Healthcare and Clinical Quality / Compliance field. If you have any type of Quality experience within a Clinical setting we want to hear fom you. 3 roels available at various levels. The Project Manager role is seeking a Medical Doctor (2 actually).

Medical Science Liaisons – these are very interesting roles, a mixture of commercial and scientific, suitable to anyone with the correct therapeutic background. Call Eamonn for more information on these (01 6854545)

Production Support / Process engineers. We are seeking Production Support Engineers for one of our precision engineering Clinets, and a process Engineer with Medical Device slant.

Supply chain (Pharma) – this is an area we have noted a marked increase in activity in recently. Specifically we are looking to hear from candidates who have 3+ years experience in Pharmaceutical or related industries.

LOTS of other roles, do give us a call if you think you’re suitable for any and would like to discuss (Brian for Science / Pharma, Richard for Sales / Marketing, Eamonn for Clinical / Healthcare).

Outside of these walls, we’ve been enjoying the scorching weather recently. The World Cup is also beckoning, I (Brian) will be supporting my fatherland (Denmark), here’s a great clip with some of the goals from the Qualifying campaign. If Bendtner does the business, Holland won’t know what hit them on June 14th!

- Brian (bhc at lifescience dot ie)

Science Spin is both a podcast, mag and site dedicated to Science in Ireland. It’s aimed more towards environmental and discovery issues, but that’s science too isn’t it?! (apologies, I’m a medicinal chemist with tunnel vision!).

Twitter: I hate sounding like a broken record, but Science seems to be one of the major topics on here, along with tech, given that’s it’s bulging at the seams with geeks and nerds of all descriptions (along with some super cool people too!). Some humorous and / or interesting  scientists are here, here and here. By following these people and checking out who they follow, you’ll be in the loop in no time.

There are numerous video channels dedicated to science. TED (Tech, Entertainment, Design) brings together people from different walks of life who each give keynote speeches. Some very interesting scientific speeches can be found here. They are all remarkable in their own little way.

For more industry focussed information, B&F’s Life Science Review is excellent. It will give you a rundown of a number of companies operating in the Scientific space in Ireland, as well as some interesting articles. What a coincidence, we just had one published ourselves last month! But seriously, I would suggest its essential reading for anyone looking to pursue a career in science / medical devices in Ireland.

Podcasts are also a great way to keep in touch on the go. Stanford has a great series of “Entrepreneur Thought Leaders” talks which feature a number a high profile scientists.

Any more resources appreciated! Brian (bhc at lifescience dot ie)

It’s a well known fact that people highlight their CVs to the best of their abilities, but there exists a fine line  between this and adding skills there which don’t exist (and which, if discovered would make your employer upset).

Personally, I would have to give this person their P45 – how could you expect a constructive business relationship to be built if the candidate effectively undermind you to get the job? The relationship is effectively undermined from the outset, and it’s tough to build confidence when this happens.

I think it boils down to passion for what you do. Do you see your job as just a job? Do you dread Monday mornings? Yes, there are expenses involved with firing and re-hiring. But if you have true passion for what you do and strive to build a team around you who echoes your values, then you have to be able to trust them implicitly. I can’t see how this can be achieved if your recent hire has lied on their CV to get the job.

For more on this, Seth Godin is a great resource (recent posts here and here).

What you you do if you were the lab supervisor? Fire or let it go?

-Brian (bhc at lifescience dot ie)

All Life Science jobseekers should check out this video: HERE.

It’s 4 Irish industry leaders: Owen Treacy (GM, Novo Nordisk Ireland), David Lloyd (Dean of Research, TCD), Joe Keenan (Director Sales & Marketing, Argutus Medical) and Michael Gillen (Bioindustry Ireland). There are various tips contained within about how to distinguish yourself from your peers, how to sell yourself to people like them in industry, and how to get that first step on the ladder.

We get a lot of call from graduates and people with <1 years experience who are seeking to advance in industry. Although there aren’t as many opportunities as 2 years ago, following the advice provided here will set you well on your way. The concept of working for free is mentioned. Although I would agree with Doug Richard that working for free is not a great idea (it can create the wrong dynamic), certainly being flexible in your approach is the way to go to get that first notch on your CV.

I’d love to hear any thoughts you have on the above.

-Brian (bhc at lifescience dot ie)

In a market like this for the informed job-seeker, the process is very much 2-way. A consultant who receives a lot of CVs and traffic may not have time to call you immediately in relation to any new jobs. A great way to stay on top of things is to be proactive, and technology can help here. I would advise all people actively searching for jobs to join us on Facebook, Twitter and especially subscribe to our RSS jobs feed. In this way you are notified as soon as a new job is posted, and the candidate can therefore call in to the consultant, something which is far more time-efficient.

1 final tip while we’re on the subject – do NOT apply to more than 2 positions with any particular company / recruitment agency. It looks unprofessional and will only damage any application you make more than enhance it. It’s better to compose a personal email to the consultant listing the positions you believe you are suited to. Better still is calling the consultant after you have made an application to get more detail on the various other roles available, in this way you can quickly figure out how many companies you would like your CV to go to. In a company setting, most companies have talented in-house recruiters who will know if your background is suited to a different role they have on offer, and will present these to you if they wish to speak to you. Making more than once application simply presents more admin work for all parties involved and this reflects badly.

-Brian (brian dot c at lifescience dot ie)

He gave a superb insight into his apprenticeship as an upholsterer in Detroit, lessons learned and how he always believed his calling was in art / music (stitching poetry and putting vinyl discs inside couches, writing receipts in crayon!). Current muses and thoughts on his marriage / family were also interesting. Jack fielding some questions from the audience about finding the “lost” America and comparing Britney Spears to Dylan, Bowie and himself – apparantly in some ways he feels she is being truer to herself than they are!

When asked what advice he would give to up and coming musicians, he tied the interview together nicely with the theme of night – authenticity. New musicians need to love what they’re doing, if they don’t love their work then how can anyone else? I think this is a concept that can be applied different areas in life. He advised to stay away from sites like myspace to promote themselves, instead to focus on creativity and getting out to the fans.

As a company focussed on Web 2.0, of course we will not take his advice literally! However, I think the substance is relevant – love what you do, be authentic, differentiate and people will naturally be attracted to you. Stretching this out somewhat and applying it to canddiates on the job hunt, I would suggest it means getting “out there” more, don’t just send out 10s of CVs out to various recruiters and potential employers, focus on quality. Pick up the phone, get to the right people and project your value and personality upon them.

Note: this postwould like to doff its cap to a couple of other business / ideas blogs: Robin @ Bytesurgery, the guys @ Contrast and to a lesser extent, the 37signals signal v. noise blog, all of which are superb.

-Brian (brian dot c at lifescience dot ie)

SO what has brought on this rise in the drop-out rates in science…?

One camp says the increase in due to the “dumbing-down” of the leaving cert exam combined with significant drop in points for science subjects especially. The points for science in UCD in 2008 were 300, compared to 440 the year I started my science degree there… Quite a drop.

Reading in the Irish Times, Tom Boland, chief executive of the Higher Education Authority, recently voiced fears of declining standards, with what he called “spoon-fed” second-level students struggling to cope at third level.

The other side of the argument is that maybe student life is too easy, too much of a party and that those who perform badly in first year, due to the excitement of genuine party-time, do not have the funds to go back and repeat the year.

The reality is that there is a massive over supply of science graduates on the market – I think the govt have forgot that “quality” is better than quantity… Raise the points for university to what they were 10 years ago and make the leaving cert harder, then we will get a real marker of how smart of economy is.

-       Eamonn