Snub of the universe from postdocs

Excerpts from the Globe's blog on the Boston-area medical community.

Not a single institution on either side of the Charles cracked the Top 15 places to work in a survey of postdoctoral life scientists, the March issue of The Scientist magazine says.

Training and experience matter the most to these researchers, who have finished their PhDs but don't have faculty positions, according to the survey of 2,555 nontenured readers. They ranked access to books and journals next, followed by affordable medical insurance and then equipment and supplies for research.

M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston topped the list, zooming up from 29th last year. San Francisco's J. Gladstone Institutes dropped to second place from first. The US Environmental Protection Agency in Research Triangle Park, N.C., stayed in third.

Here's how postdocs ranked area institutions, with the 2006 ranking in parentheses:

Beth Israel Deaconess: 28 (97)

Harvard Medical School: 31 (17)

Brigham and Women's: 35 (41)

Woods Hole: 38 (11)

Dana-Farber: 39 (67)

MIT: 53 (26)

Harvard University: 71 (45)

Massachusetts General Hospital: 81 (64)

Postdocs, what you think about where you work? Send us your thoughts at whitecoat@globe.com.

In the past, medical students performed pelvic exams on anesthetized patients waiting for surgery, sometimes without their knowledge or consent -- a practice now condemned. But the backlash from that controversy means today's medical students do many fewer exams during training than their predecessors, Dr. Adam J. Wolfberg, a fellow in maternal-fetal medicine at Tufts-New England Medical Center, wrote in last week's New England Journal of Medicine.

"We have an absolute obligation to provide our patients with outstanding compassionate care, and it requires that we respect their privacy and their wishes regarding whether they want to participate in the process," he said in an interview. "But we also have a responsibility to make sure that medical school graduates are competent at doing a pelvic exam."

Medical schools now hire volunteers who are typically paid about $200 a session to allow students to examine the cervix, ovaries, and uterus. The women also teach, guiding the students.

Women having trouble getting pregnant because they aren't ovulating regularly may want to drink a daily glass of whole milk and skip the skim, according to a Harvard study in last week's issue of the journal Human Reproduction.

Dr. Jorge E. Chavarro and his colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health followed 18,555 women in the Nurses Health Study II for eight years. They found that eating low-fat dairy foods may increase the risk of infertility from a lack of ovulation by 85 percent while eating high-fat dairy foods may decrease the risk by 27 percent.

Cambridge will turn into "Science City" in April, courtesy of the MIT Museum.

The first Cambridge Science Festival, April 21-29, will feature music-playing robots, alternative-powered concept cars, a Genome Trail, a chance to make and launch soda-bottle rockets, and to star-gaze with astronomers.

Science and technology businesses will open their doors and welcome middle- and high-school students interested in exploring careers in science.

"We hope the festival enables people to explore Cambridge -- the ultimate 'Science City' -- and discover some of its hidden science treasures. We also hope that by demystifying science we can pique the interest of young people and inspire them to pursue an education in the science, technology, and engineeering fields," John Durant, director of the MIT Museum and the festival's executive director, said in announcing the festival. "But most important, we want the festival to be exciting and fun."

Harvard professor and international health advocate Dr. Paul Farmer has won the 2007 Austin College Leadership Award, whose $100,000 prize he plans to give to Partners In Health, which he founded to provide healthcare in impoverished countries.

ELIZABETH COONEY