Dear Fisher Scientific, is this really necessary marketing of lab gloves? First of all, I don’t care what color they are. Black gloves, sure, add a little panache to my work dissecting freshwater mussels for an upcoming genome project. But I don’t care if they are blue, purple, natural, or studded for lab work pleasure (sorry, this packaging is just too ridiculous). But thanks for the free samples anyway. I would prefer, actually, that you made gloves that were more easily re-used, e.g. have a little tiny tab on each finger for easy right-side-out removal. It isn’t the cost of gloves, just seems silly to toss gloves that have handled the innocuous things we handle in my lab, as long as there aren’t cross-project contamination issues. Anyway, this free pair of black gloves is waiting outside of my office for when the DNA isolation is done later today, I got them off for at least one re-use. I might use them the next time I need to dress up like a ninja or spy, too.

So far, a good year in the lab - three papers published, and several in review/in revision. Not that it matters for raises (there are none in the University of Georgia system), promotion (I’m a long way from ever moving up again), or fame (I’m happily infamous), it just means those projects are gone from my desk.

Ewers, C. and J. P. Wares. 2012. Examining an outlier: molecular diversity in the Cirripedia. Integrative & Comparative Biology. In Press.
Small, S. T., R. Eytan, K. Bockrath, J. P. Wares. 2012. Evaluation of genetic structure across freshwater mussel community (genus Elliptio) in the Altamaha River basin. Conservation Genetics, in press.
Zakas, C., N. Schult, D. McHugh, K. Jones, J. P. Wares. 2012. Transcriptome analysis and SNP development can resolve population differentiation of Streblospio benedicti, a developmentally dimorphic marine annelid. PLoS ONE, 7(2): e31613.