cheers jojo.

it's totaly pants today, trying to find the motivation to drive me through today. just trying to remind myself that i said i'd have a complete chapter in by next week. so time to get back to it. congrats on paper.

We can let Sir Alan be the supervisor

write an essay on sheets lol, classic.

we would prob do an investigation to the various types of biological fluids deposited on the sheets etc etc

(only a scientist would think of that lol)

maybe we sould all join together, form a rival company and kick their ass at the tasks.

The one with the blonde hair "working" the computer was a total muppet. why as a team leader would you stick someone with no experience/confidance on a key stage of the task. Plus, the female team leader looked like she didn't give a damn. Not quite a leader you want to work for.

hey

just had a meeting with my boss today. she's had a draft of one of my chaters for a few weeks and handed half back with a few modifications to be made. Well a few being a "scientific few" i.e. a lot of re-organisation due to the nature of the 35 page chapter. lol

Aw well, back to the hell that is MS Word!

You are never too old to do a PhD and NO, if does not mean you are not good enough. Don't think that.

As for funding, it was a mistake to assume you will be funded after you first year. most uni's are happy for self funded students to come, as it is a lesser expense for the department, it's regarded as a source of income and you are just another number (PhD graduate) for the department RAE rating. Uni's leave the self funded students to get on with it when bench fees are paid, that’s all they care about.

It's great the other uni is willing to wave the fees (i hear they can run to roughly 12K a year depending on establishment) but at least it's an offer for you to continue YOUR PhD.

As for the establishment, ok the RAE may not be as high, what makes your PhD from Oxford Uni different from your PhD from Abertay Uni, it'll still be the same piece of work, still be the same thesis and still same viva experience. The uni is just a name, nothing special about it. A PhD is a PhD.

Jojo, i can go through about 8 drafts before i'm reasonably happy (yet corrections still come back). I'm tempted to weight the chapter before then after and work out how much carbon, or dredded red ink, had been put onto the draft.

seems like you are gettin on well now

chin up, PMA and keep going.

No super-duper protocol in general (sorry), but I had a lot of problems with SYBR Green to start with. In general, I followed the ABgene protocol. Also, watch your primer concentrations and starting cncetration of cDNA or DNA. They are both key in generating good amplicons in SYBR green analysis.

http://www.abgene.com/productDetails.asp?prodID=31 there are some good data sheets here to download and potentially provide better real time results

hope it's of some help

G