Nature News recent article developers call for lab aids is helping to draw more attention to software for science. As they aptly put it, "It's an unfortunate truism that scientists often have better software tools for managing their music or family photos than they do for tracking their experiments and data." The biggest frustration has been managing papers that I  read. Then I discovered Zotero, a free easy-to-use research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources and then share the results of your research. Zotero was so much more intuitive than EndNote. Mendeley is similar to Zotero in many aspects, but Mendeley offers more space, more uniform user profiles, minimizes the steps to get others to join, and provides some interesting analytic information. The mentioned Nature News story highlighted Mendeley, which I have only recently started using. Thus far, I really like Mendeley and have been telling others about it.

This graph shows an increase in the number of PhD graduates in science and engineering, but acknowledges reduced availability of a postdoc or job compared to just a few years ago. A story from Beryl Lieff Benderly in June covered the "The Real Science Gap." "It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career."

A doctorate supply graph from Nature's "SEVEN DAYS The news in brief." Full PDF available here.