There is an increasing trend for the focus of biology to be determined more by administrators who have short-term pecuniary interests in science rather than by individuals who are "doing science" to further the fundamental human desire to understand ourselves, the natural environment, and our place in the world, though questioning. We feel that this ceding of the scope of science from the quest...

where she works with Dr Richard M. Peek. Dr Noto provides practical advice for succeeding in a career as a non–tenure-track scientist in academia. We hope this column will be relevant not only to research scientists but also to junior investigators considering this career path and principal investigators considering working in their own laboratories with research scientists. We welcome feedback...

In this age of big data and high social and professional mobility, ranking has become one of the central issues in social life and information technologies. Ranking algorithms, including the famed Google PageRank [1–3], enable automated selection of relevant information and the functioning of search engines. Ranking is an obligatory task of various selection and evaluation boards. At the same t...