Neuronetwork

Unfortunately, we'll have to cancel this week's meeting. Sorry about that. We will re arrange it for January!

Lg Guidi and I would like to announce a Christmas Special NeuroNetwork!! 17th December - 4pm, Le Gros Clark Seminar Room. We will have exciting talks from Thorsten Hauler and Lauren Watson. Hope you can join us for science chatter and complimentary mince pies!!

An approach we could all be learning from?
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/910.full?utm_campaign=email-sci-toc&utm_src=email

Many psychology papers fail replication test The largest effort yet to replicate psychology studies has yielded both good and bad news. On the down side, of the 100 prominent papers analyzed, only 39% could be replicated unambiguously, as a group of 270 researchers describes on page 943. On the up side, despite the sobering results, the effort…

NEXT TALK!

Thursday at 4.30pm @ **Le Gros Clark Conference Room**

Dr Rita Hendricusdottir (ELIXIR Training Coordinator Group)
ELIXIR - A distributed infrastructure for life-science information

James Cooke (Auditory Neuroscience Group, DPAG)
Neural Circuitry Underlying Contrast Gain Control in Primary Auditory Cortex (abstract below)

Discussion will likely spill over to the University Club from 5.30pm. If you can't make the 'formal' discussion group feel free to join us for a drink!

Next week, a hearing will take place at the European Commission to discuss an initiative to *ban all research using animals* across the EU.

The Physiological Society has put together instructions and templates for contacting your local MEP asking them to oppose this initiative. Please do so by following the instructions in the link below.

http://www.physoc.org/contact-your-mep-about-european-directive-201063eu

Contact your MEP about European Directive 2010/63/EU | Physiological Society You may be aware that there is presently a ‘Stop Vivisection’ European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) calling on the European Commission to ban all research using animals by repealing European Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes.

I find this quite worrying, academia is already subject to more pressures from money than is ideal...what do you think?

Editor quits journal over pay-for-expedited peer-review offer Authors can pay open-access journal extra to get reviewed in less than 3 weeks

This one could potentially be of interest - and have consequences - for eveyone: http://www.nature.com/news/male-researchers-stress-out-rodents-1.15106

Male researchers stress out rodents Rats and mice show increased stress levels when handled by men rather than women, potentially skewing study results.

Essential reading for all scientists who work with animals...
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6161/922.full

When Mice Mislead Tackling a long-standing disconnect between animal and human studies, some charge that animal researchers need stricter safeguards and better statistics to ensure their science is solid.

Our two talks for December will be given by André Marques Smith and Damian Tyler.
André's talk will cover Thalamocortical integration via a transient, early developmental L4-5b circuit and Damian will talk about Trying to Achieve a Work-Life Balance as a Post-Doc and Fellow. See http://www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/t-z/damian-tyler for information on Damian's career track.

Damian Tyler — Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics I am currently a British Heart Foundation Intermediate Research Fellow and the Isobel Laing Biomedical Sciences Fellow at Oriel College.