I am writing a couple of grants at the moment.  For those of you who are not familiar with how scientific research works, scientists need to apply for funding for their experiments and they do this by applying for grants from various funding agencies.  The biggest in Australia is the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) if, like me, you are doing biomedical research, or alternatively the Australian Research Council (ARC) if you do any other sort of research.  In addition to these two governmental bodies there are a series of smaller funding agencies, charities or research foundations that also offer grants for research.  The ones I am writing at the moment are an Early Career Researcher Grant from the Medical Faculty here at Sydney Uni as well as a Rebecca L Cooper Foundation grant.

I have written the outline of what I am trying to say, and now need to fill in some references to support those statements.  The experiments them selves are very sexy and are aimed at trying to find the cause of Parkinson’s disease.  In particular I want to look at the levels of glutathione, iron, nitric oxide and superoxide dismutase in the brain in a new model of Parkinson’s disease we have developed in my lab.  I should get back to it as I am procrastinating badly.  I am so not going to get into the lab today.  I had a bunch of brain sections that I needed to put into antifreeze too.  I have a student coming from Italy in October to work on a project so I need to preserve a set of sections for her at -20 degrees C until she gets here.

Back to it. Bye for now.