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Your monthly news & updates
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ECTS Announcements and Events
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ECTS/TMS Webinar:
Gateway, Artemis and NASA's Return to the Moon. 14 November 2019 1:30pm CET by Jeffrey D. Smith
, Register here
- ECTS Webinar: Mechanotransduction of ECM-cell interactions. 14 November 2019 4pm CET by Dennis Discher, Register here
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ECTS Annual congress, 16-19 May 2020, 15 May Pre-congress day, Marseille, France - More information
Other Announcements and Events
- 14th International Conference on Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI2020), Sheffield, UK, 5-8 September 2020 - More information
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ECTS webinar series - 2 years young and going strong!
By Bram van der Eerden
(on behalf of the E-learning action group)
Celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the Webinar series on Bone, Muscle & Beyond, and following a 1 year evaluation in August last year (
https://ectsoc.org/ects-webinar-series-on-bone-muscle-beyond-where-do-we-stand-by-bram-van-der-eerden/), it is a good time to reflect once more on this still young initiative. Hosting 10 webinars annually, we aim to provide a wide range of research topics provided by clinical and basic scientists, who are experts in their field. During the second year, we managed to attract more preregistrations and attendees compared to the first year. On average, over 120 colleagues preregistered and close to 60 connections were received. Reportedly, this number is an underestimation since behind each connection is more than one listener, making an average of 80-100 attendees more likely. Regarding the quality of the webinars and the research presented the evaluations remain very good, indicating the appreciation for the webinars and the speakers.
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The Korean Society for Bone and Mineral Research (KSBMR)
The Korean Society for Bone and Mineral Research (KSBMR) is a scientific society in Korea, which was founded in 1989 by professor Hun-Ki Min, an endocrinologist from Seoul national university with his colleagues.
The KSBMR membership consists of basic scientists as well as clinical investigators of endocrinology, orthopedics, gynecology, dentistry and other areas. The KSBMR membership has been growing. As of now, KSBMR has 1,572 registered members, of which 400 are actively involved within the society.The KSBMR organizes many academic activities, such as scientific conferences, clinical osteoporosis update (COU), clinical densitometry course (CDC), advanced program for metabolic bone diseases and young leader's camp (YLC). KSBMR organizes 2 scientific conferences a year, a national one for Koreans in autumn and an international one in spring. The domestic conference is divided into two tracks. One track deals with clinical topics and the other deals with basic research. Recently, the participation of basic researchers is more than that of medical doctors.
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A new ECTS Academy initiative to reach out to the general population
Scientists have a great responsibility to share knowledge. Accordingly, in 2018 a new ECTS Academy dissemination initiative was introduced. This action group aims to provide a simplified summary of research findings of ECTS Academy members in order to make these findings comprehensible to a lay audience of non-experts. Moreover, in terms of "public engagement", the in depth knowledge of bone disease pathophysiology as well as the translation of our findings in the clinical setting represent an outcome of our daily work which has a significant impact on society.
Our dissemination process involves writing a short lay abstract (~ 300 words) of a selected paper from an ECTS Academy member. The abstract should fulfill the following 3 criteria: 1) simple in presenting results, identifying the goals and target group of research presented; 2) brief; since we are in the "velocity era", the message should be short, direct and effective; 3) easy to read, avoiding scientific jargon.
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Early and mid-career scientist's difficult progression.
By Carmen Huesa
Postdoc appreciation week ran this year from the 16th to the 20th of September. Although most institutions ran an event or mentioned it somewhere in their web page, it is likely it went by unnoticed by most, especially postdocs. It is for this reason that I went searching for information and found only a handful of articles on the difficulties and career prospects post-docs face in Europe. Chris Woolston highlights these difficulties in his Nature Career News report from 2017 (
link), determining that "low pay, long hours and contractual barriers to obtaining outside work could jeopardize or hamper scientists' future employability".
It is likely that the bulk of scientific discovery is carried out by PhD students and postdocs through the guidance and expertise of principal investigators, yet career prospects and progression of early and mid-career scientists is more difficult every year. The system makes it challenging to progress but also doesn't allow those who just want to do the science to simply stay where they are, leading to the constant loss of expertise. The situation has lead three of the largest medical funding institutions in the UK to write a letter to Universities (
link) stating that funding "could be withheld unless universities provide better support for early- and mid-career staff - particularly women and trainees".
We are all aware this is happening, the question I continually come back to, without a true answer, is: What can we do to improve the situation? Can each one of us, individually do something in our own institutions to instigate the change necessary so those who come after us do not have an even more difficult prospect? Can we as a collective improve the system?
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ECTS Announcements and Events
-
ECTS/TMS Webinar:
Gateway, Artemis and NASA's Return to the Moon. 14 November 2019 1:30pm CET by Jeffrey D. Smith
, Register here
- ECTS Webinar: Mechanotransduction of ECM-cell interactions. 14 November 2019 4pm CET by Dennis Discher, Register here
-
ECTS Annual congress, 16-19 May 2020, 15 May Pre-congress day, Marseille, France - More information
Other Announcements and Events
- 14th International Conference on Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI2020), Sheffield, UK, 5-8 September 2020 - More information
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ECTS is thankful to its Corporate Members and other companies that have supported ECTS activities through unrestricted educational grants. These sponsors have in no way contributed to or influenced the content.
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Editor in chief: Teun De Vries (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Co-editors: Carmen Huesa (Edinburgh, UK), Cristiana Cipriani (Rome, Italy)
Marco Ponzetti (L'Aquila, Italy)
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