For those of you who have been following science news, remember this debacle? Briefly recapping, back in February, Gary Struhl of Columbia University had to retract his 2002 paper that questioned the current theory on Wnt signaling from Cell. One of his former post-docs, Siu-Kwong Chan, had fabricated data. Once Chan admitted to the fabrication, he resigned from his post at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
So how on earth did someone manage to catch this? Well, I guess I didn't have to look further than my own school. The molecular cell biology program here has several "journal clubs" in which graduate students, post-docs, and faculty participate in. Each journal club is focused on a particular area in biology and basically each week, someone presents a paper or a couple of related papers which then everyone analyzes in a sort of roundtable or intimate seminar fashion (this usually depends on which professor is running the club).
The Cell paper was picked by another graduate student for his journal club which mostly dealt with developmental biology. After looking at the data, one of the post-docs attending the journal club felt uneasy. Something just wasn't right. What he realized was that one of the figures in the paper was simply a replica of another figure but rotated. So with that, he called up the editor of Cell to point out the mistake and that was that. Or so it would seem.
The Cell editor then called Struhl for his side of the story, saying only that someone from Dartmouth had called about the mistake. Struhl was furious. He jumped to the conclusion that the only person he knew at Dartmouth--who happens to be a professor here--had ratted him out. So this prof (who really didn't know about all this hoopla) got a call out of the blue from Struhl who wasted no time in ranting his ear off. It was then that the prof remembered that Struhl's paper had been presented at the journal club and proceeded to tell Struhl that it could have been anybody.
So with his theory that someone was out to get him falling flat on its face, Struhl tried to replicate the experiments in the 2002 paper. He couldn't do it. It was then that he confronted his ex-post-doc who subsequently confessed to the fraud. Although the truth is now out thanks to Dartmouth's underappreciated journal clubs, it's also unfortunate to the parties involved: one man's destroyed career, another man's tarnished reputation, and a competing group that had wasted almost two years trying to replicate irreproducible results.
Another grad student told me that she believed that anyone entering science should first have a psychological profile done to weed out anyone trying to go into the field for profit. What she is afraid of are not so much people trying to make money, but people who don't care anything about science and would only hire out their skills for bucks, even if it's for some unscrupulous end. Also, she thinks that this will prevent people from entering a field and finding out after several years that they want to do something else.
She's too idealistic in thinking that everyone can do what they love to do. Psychological profiling is not infallible, especially today. Besides, I don't think most people like someone rummaging around their brain and deciding what kind of person they are. And what about free will?
Onesome: Goodie-- What is your your favorite "goodie" you treat yourself to when you've finished a project or maybe even just survived a long day? Ice cream? ...a long bath? ...a good book?
Sleep.
Twosome: Two-- Quick! Two things that make you smile! No thinking, just write!
Witty jokes, strange links.
Threesome: Shoes-- ...and how about your favorite pair of shoes? You know, the ones you look for an occasion to wear! (Yes, guys that ratty pair of tennis shoes does count...)
What's Appropriate? The 2Blowhards are grumbling about how young women are letting it all hang out while on the other hand enjoying the ogling. I'm just thinking they're around exhibitionists too much--not all young women are like that. This is interesting:
[F]rom 15-25, we don't seem capable of doing much beyond acting out what our hormones tell us to do. Which makes sense: biology has us in a breeding frenzy. Girls during those years sometimes seem to think that they're just "being pretty" and "having fun" when everything about them is in fact screaming "impregnate me now."
Well, if that's normal, color me on the fringes. The craziest thing I've done to change my appearance was to bleach my hair which was more of a sign of trying to be different than anything else. It didn't work, of course.
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Book Questionnaire (Via Reflections in d minor again--maybe I should just make it implicit that all the crazy book memes I get are from her site? And I can't not do them, I mean, I'm a certified book freak. Actually, I'm not, but I should be.)
What did you last read?
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory by Stephen Jay Gould. I finished it last night (or this morning if you want to get technical). There's some very cool historical debates about Darwinism, but please don't quiz me about it. It definitely requires at least a second reading--I'll probably get my own copy whenever I find myself in a bookstore that stocks it. Warning: not light reading.
What are you reading now?
The Double Helix which is a personal memoir on discovering the structure of DNA by James D. Watson. In the first chapter, he manages to paint everyone in a not so nice light and piss of feminists. But one has to remember that this is written in the view point of a hormone-driven twenty-something-year-old geek who wasn't getting any.
What do you plan to read next?
The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. It's a history of Australia. I think I saw the PBS special about it some time ago.
What would you like to read, but don't have?
A bunch of books, all of which are listed on my bookrolling page under "Want List". Although that list is alphabetized, the top one on that list is Faces Under Water by Tanith Lee which is part of a loosely connected tetrology. Last summer vacation I borrowed it from the library and read one chapter before I had to return it. Besides, I'm a sucker for stories about declining and decadent societies.
What would you recommend for others to read?
Arg, I would have to cop out and say there are too many to list, but that's not true--there are only a finite number of books in the world. I guess it'll depend on what kind of book you want me to recommend.
What's your favorite book from childhood?
There's The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley, but I think that one is one of my favorites because I really liked fairy tales (I still do). My favorite sci-fi series was Isaac Asimov's books on Norby the time-traveling, wisecracking robot.
What book last made you laugh?
Probably William Zinsser's On Writing Well. He's very good at using puns and other literary devices to make a point. But I must add that he's very circumspect about those puns--only applying when needed--unlike a certain fantasy author I might name.
What book last made you weep?
Some of the books I have been recently reading have depressing parts but I don't cry from reading.
What book last made you angry?
Books don't really make me angry, although they do make me annoyed. Like The Double Helix when Watson remarked rather arrogantly that most scientists are stupid. But then again, you have to remember that he wrote this as a young man and was trying to get a rise out of everybody.
Remember the Reading List I posted a couple days back? Here's another one! (also via Reflections in D Minor, also bolded the ones read) Much more genre fiction, but I think I've read far less of these. I'll tack this list next to the other one and maybe make it my fall reading list. (And if you're curious for comparison, my current reading list is online here. I won't be offended if you think my current list is stupid.)
1) Lord Of The Rings - J R R Tolkien 2) To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee 3) Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
4) Animal Farm - George Orwell
5) War And Peace - Leo Tolstoy
6) Riders - Jilly Cooper
7) The Stand - Stephen King
8) The Sicilian - Mario Puzo
9) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
10) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 11) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
12) The Saga Of The Exiles - Julian May
13) Sandman:The Dolls House - Neil Gaiman
14) Vurt - Jeff Noon
15) A House For Mr Biswas - V S Naipul
16) Endymion - Dan Simmons
17) Space - Stephen Baxter
18) Hi-Fidelity - Nick Hornby
19) The Dark Is Rising - Susan Cooper 20) Valley Of The Dolls - Jaqueline Susann
21) The Allan Clark Diaries - Allan Clark
22) Charlotte's Web - Elwyn Brooks (i.e. E.B. White if you don't know) 23) The Scar - China Mieville
24) The Iliad - Homer
25) Peter Pan - J M Barrie
26) Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
27) Carry On Jeeves - P G Wodehouse
28) Porterhouse Blue - Tom Sharpe
29) Watership Down - Richard Adams
30) Tarka The Otter - Henry Williamson
31) Epitres - Voltaire
32) The Uplift War - David Brin
33) The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain 34) Adolf Hitler, My Part In His Downfall - Spike Milligan
35) Jennifer Government - Max Barry
36) Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
37) Watchmen - Alan Moore
38) Clan Of The Cave Bear - Jean M Auel
39) The Merchant Of Venice - Shakespeare
40) Tess Of The D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 41) Consider Phlebus - Iain Banks
42) Parliaments - Thomas Carlyle
43) Tales To Ticklish To Tell - Berke Breathed
44) The Day Of The Triffids - John Wyndham
45) Green Eggs And Ham - Dr Suess 46) A Traitor To Memory - Elizabeth George
47) I'll Be Seeing You - Mary Higgins Clark
48) The Stone Raft - Jose Saramago
49) Lord Of The Flies - William Golding
50) The God Of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
51) Alias Grace - Margeret Atwood
52) Fantastic Mr Fox - Roald Dahl
53) The Hunt For Red October - Tom Clancy
54) Count Zero - William Gibson
55) Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintanence - Robert M Pirsig
56) Wilt - Tom Sharpe
57) The Silmarillion - J R R Tolkien
58) Time Enough For Love - Robert Heinlein
59) The Love Knot - Charlotte Bingham
60) Female Parts - Dario Fo
61) Beowulf - Seamus Heaney
62) Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton 63) The Forge Of God - Greg Bear
64) Jack Holborn - Leon Garfield
65) Bruno's Dream - Iris Murdoch
66) Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets - J K Rowling
67) Praxis - Fay Weldon
68) The Monkey King - Timothy Mo
69) Stupid White Men - Michael Moore
70) 1984 - George Orwell
71) The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant - Stephen Donaldson
72) From Hell - Alan Moore
73) 101 Dalmations
74) The Time Machine - H G Wells
75) Runaway - Lucy Irvine
76) Huis Clos - Jean Paul Satre
77) Love & Rockets - Jamie Hernandez
78) The Death Of Grass - John Christopher
79) Naked Lunch - William Burroughs
80) Fevre Dream - George R R Martin
81) Books Of Blood - Clive Barker
82) Antigone - Sophocles 83) Wealth Of Nations - Adam Smith
84) The Colour Of Magic - Terry Pratchett
85) Cry Wolf - Wilbur Smith
86) Barman Year One - Frank Miller
87) The Tale Of Peter Rabbit - Beatrix Potter
88) Point Of Origin - Patricia Cornwell
89) Jackdaws - Ken Follet
90) Idoru - William Gibson 91) The Code Of The Woosters - P G Wodehouse
92) Shardik - Richard Adams
93) Helliconia - Brian Aldiss
94) Macbeth - Shakespeare 95) Shattered - Dick Francis
96) Disgrace - J M Coetzee
97) Ink Paintings - Gao Xingjian
98) The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
99) The Simple Art Of Murder - Raymond Chandler
100) Aenied - Virgil
I don't know if my nose is defective or what, but some people smell. I'm not talking about people who don't bathe or who have just come back from a workout, I'm talking about something more insidious: the people (mainly women) who douse themselves with too much perfume or cologne. It's definitely too much when I can smell you when you pass by me on the street. My first instinct is to move as far away from these people as possible--otherwise I would start, no so subtly, hacking and coughing like there's no tomorrow.
Radar clocks Mini at Mach 3 speed. "A Belgian motorist was left stunned after authorities sent him a speeding ticket for travelling in his Mini at three times the speed of sound."
The Tree of Life. "The Tree of Life is a collaborative web project, produced by biologists from around the world. On more than 2600 World Wide Web pages, the Tree of Life provides information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their history, and characteristics."
Survey Unveils What Happens in Bedroom. "In Sweden and Iceland, 72 percent of respondents said they use their bedrooms for romantic endeavors, while in China the figure was 20 percent. All it said about North Americans was that a fifth - about 20 percent - like to have sex outside the bedroom, but it didn't say where."
If Rosalind Franklin had lived, would she have gotten the Nobel Prize? Who knows. Although the decisions on who gets a Nobel are secret, there's no doubt about petty maneuverings for favored candidates. And the Nobel isn't exactly known for its generous treatment of women. But as Brenda Maddox explains in her biography, Franklin was far from looking for a Nobel. Yes, Franklin threw herself whole-heartedly into her work, but she didn't see herself in the rat race that Watson and Crick were so eager to win. Contrary to some views that Franklin was a plodding worker with no imagination, she worked steadily to accumulate enough evidence to be right. She wasn't one to rush out and publish what she thought was right.
Franklin was born into a well-to-do Jewish family that was already assimilated into British society. But even though she had the trappings of the upper echelons with her refined accent and socialite friends, Maddox argues that this was not enough to banish her feelings of alienation and depression stemming from the era's tolerance of anti-semitism and marginalization of women. Perhaps that is why Franklin felt more at ease abroad or with foreigners--England to her seemed drab, stiff, and unwelcoming. And perhaps that is why she appears to have two personalities--bright and vivacious to her close friends and colleagues and dour and combative to anyone else who regarded her patronizingly like a child.
But for someone who is so well known to biology students these days, Franklin managed to avoid the subject until J.T. Randall from King's College put her on the DNA project. In some aspects, it seemed as if she had remained willfully ignorant either following in her family tradition of not talking about it or her own puritanism. Perhaps this contributed to the Sylvia Plath-like quality of her personal life--all the men she ever loved were already married but she had too many scruples to break up a marriage.
It is tragic that her life was cut short, possibly from not knowing the hazards of X-ray crystallography (she died of ovarian cancer at the age of 37) and who knows what she would have accomplished if she was still alive. In the last years of her life, she collaborated with Aaron Klug to elucidate the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus. Even up to the end, she would go to her office regardless of her illness and shrugging off help to study polio. That kind of dedication is moving, if not heroic.
I'm not sure what kind of scripts you're feeding your tour guides, but a fellow student noticed an undergraduate tour guide telling a crowd of prospectives and their parents that there are no graduate students at this school.
I'm well aware that you are conflicted in what sort of image to put forth--is this a research institution or a liberal arts college for undergrads? Like a lot of people with seemingly contradictory aspects of personality, I'm sure you can integrate both. But if you have to present one side in attempt to recruit people, at least don't lie about it.
Sincerely, One of your supposedly non-existent graduate students.
I'm just starting on Stephen Jay Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. No, I'm not reading this for a class. I'm reading this on my own and hopefully I will be done with it by Wednesday (that's when I have to return it to the library). Yes, this is a crazy timetable considering Gould's book is over a thousand pages long, but I read fast. I've never taken an evolution class per se so I'm learning a whole bunch of stuff (or rather the nuts and bolts of something that I've only been generally acquainted with) that would make creationists' brains shrink in fear.
Also, I just finished a biography on Rosalind Franklin that I'm planning to write more about tomorrow. I found it depressing. One reason was that it made me feel like a really lazy and frivolous graduate student. Franklin disapproved of the fact that one of her colleagues was an aspiring playwright. She didn't like music much. But she liked climbing dangerous mountains. I think she would have liked some of the students I know who are also hard core hikers. Me, she probably would have dismissed for not having much intellect, like one of her technicians who wanted a week off to apply for some higher education.
And I've decided to check up on how many books I've read so far this year: 17. If I keep up this pace, maybe I'll be able to finish 50 before the year is out (I failed dismally in that goal last year).
I found myself in a conversation where people were talking about marriage, more specifically, their lack of marital status. For me, this is one of those uncomfortable subjects that I often try to avoid because there are always social pressures for saying certain things even if the people you're talking to are open-minded.
In this particular conversation, one girl is afraid that she will never find someone. The other, who does have a boyfriend, is afraid of commitment. I think they've let the environment get to them--there's a sizeable number of married graduate students and interacting with married couples is certainly different than interacting with single people. You feel like the unwanted third wheel.
Granted, these girls have other pressures that I don't (their parents got married in their late teens-early twenties and their younger siblings are getting married in a couple of months) but I also wonder if it isn't also the desire to fit in. People might not say so or even try to deny the fact, but if you have a significant other or are even trying to find a significant other, you're ever so slightly more accepted.
I don't know the reason for this. Maybe couples find it too hard to relate to people who would rather do their own thing and instead of trying a little bit harder to understand, give up altogether. Some might not agree with me, but it's exactly like people who have kids vs. people who don't. It's a lifestyle differential. It's one of those one-way street things in which you can't go back unless you turn off into one of those little used side streets that loop around and wastes ten to fifteen minutes of your time.
I guess the thing that bothers me the most are the questions which go along the line of "Can you picture yourself being married?" in which I always answer first with the word If... People inevitably respond, "Oh, you will find someone." It's the word "will" that grates--because it assumes that this is something that I expect out of life. It assumes that life has a "natural" progression in which getting married is one of those steps.
But you can't change how people think about these things. I'll just have to put up with the fact that I will always feel like the stupid kid at the adult's table.
The rules: highlight (or bold) everything in the list that you have read.
(You know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to print this list out, tack it on my wall, and make it my summer reading list.)
Beowulf Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet Shakespeare, William - Macbeth Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone Sophocles - Oedipus Rex Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse Wright, Richard - Native Son
End of the Wild. "The extinction crisis is over. We lost." Stephen M. Meyer remarks that we have become the major selective force and whether we like it or not, many species are going extinct because they cannot adapt to us.
A geek-- Hey, who handles tech support at your place? You? ...the six year old? ...or someone from outside? ...and how about in your web space? No, we're not looking for techs; we're just curious.
Me. If I don't know the answer, I call up the computing department and bother them. And I manage my own web space. (However at lab, there's this grad student who's even geekier than I am and all computer questions go to him. Which is fine with me--he knows way more about computers than is possibly healthy.)
in the-- computer? Just a curiosity for the designer types: what Operating System are you running? ...and which browser? Since sites can show up differently in different browsers it's more than a casual question.
I am currently using my laptop which is running Windows XP and MSIE 6. I also use my desktop which has Windows 2000 (too lazy to upgrade) and I have lots of browsers to choose from there (mostly just to see if my website isn't looking too kooky).
Family-- Do any family members read your place? Do they care? Do they have a clue? ...and how about your 'off line' friends? ...or do you supply a little bit of separation there?
My parents know, but I think they just tell me they think it's cool to humor me. They probably haven't ever visited the website considering they're not really computer savvy. Mom only logs on to check e-mail. Dad checks e-mail too, and probably the lotto numbers every once and a while. My sister is an occasional visitor, but she told me the only things that interest her are the comments. And since no one has commented in a while, she'll probably stop visiting. As for off line friends, they probably don't know since they don't ask and I don't bother blabbing about my website every time I have a chance.
It's a bird, it's a plane, no...it's a meme! Not just any old meme, but one highlighting posts on "biology, medicine, and natural history." You know, sort of like Carnival of the Vanities for science geeks. Except it's not really just for geeks. So go, read (and I'm not just saying that because I'm listed first) and find out something you didn't already know.
Writing on the Brain. What does it take to become a writer? Joseph Epstein says, "Incompetence, contempt, lunacy—once you have these in place, you are set to go." Actually, he argues that science is wrong in trying to distill what makes a person a writer by sticking people in MRIs and fiddling with brain chemistry. But what is being accomplished by putting such things as "free will" and "soul" and "consciousness" on a pedestal? Our current tools for studying the brain are probably still not sophisticated enough, but that's no reason to dismiss all research on the subject and conclude that creativity comes from some "mysterious place" we shouldn't meddle with.
Insect Shop. Make your own bugs here in this flash time-wasting doo-dad.
Squid Eats Skua. (via Monkeyfilter) Another reason to make sure my food is very, very dead before I take a bite.
Ping-o-Matic! If your blog doesn't already do so, you can ping all the relevant aggregators here.
I can't make any phone calls for the rest of this week because one of my housemates is having phone interviews with professors (at other institutions, I might add) who are completely wishy-washy at committing to when to call. If I were her, I'd definitely reconsider doing those interviews.
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Something on a Lighter Note
Patone Colorstrology. (via Metafilter) This is so silly, but...I'm Malaga (17-1723). Good thing I was not born a day later because then I'd be Baked Apple (what sort of color is that anyway?).
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And Another Thing
I just signed up to try out Gmail. So send any correspondence to this address. I'll still check my hotmail account, but if Gmail does all it says it does, well, it'll be obvious when you hover above the contact link.
The importance of handwashing wasn't so self-evident over two hundred years ago. Heck, we could argue that some people still don't consider handwashing very important if the percentages of people not washing their hands after going to the bathroom are to be believed. It wasn't until the 19th century when people started seriously considering the implications of those microbes (however cute they may be) wriggling around on a microscope slide. Now, due to the influences of Oliver Wendell-Holmes, Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, Louis Pasteur, and through vaccinations and antibiotics, improved food production, preparation and storage, and proper water management, we've seen major improvements, not only in quality of life, but the decline of morbidity and mortality.
But it isn't all sweet-smelling roses. The upward trend for chronic ailments is alarming and this is not just because people are living longer and significant proportions of the population is moving into the upper age brackets. There's evidence that urbanization may not solve all the problems--especially in children, developing asthma or allergies is increasingly likely. In 1828, John Bostock first noticed the curious correlation of allergies and the urban population (whereas the farming community, although exposed more frequently to pollen and other allergens were less affected). The frequency of these problems, however, seems to be restricted to first world countries in high socio-economic classes.
In 1989, David Strachan observed that sensitivity to allergens by a skin prick test was inversely proportional to the size of a family. He proposed that higher standards of personal cleanliness would reduce the chance of cross-infection in families and stunt the development of the immune system during childhood for kids who had not acquired infection from contact with siblings. Thus the "hygiene hypothesis" was born, that our current obsession with the elimination of germs has deprived our immune systems from seeing the microbes and other supposedly dangerous environmental stimuli helping our natural defenses mature.
In a recent issue of Cell, King et al. provided evidence for this hypothesis through a mouse model. The nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse is a standard model of studying autoimmune diabetes--in this strain of mouse, insulin-producing cells are attacked by the immune system leading to the disease. So what exactly is happening?
Typical of a lot of laboratory mice, the NOD mice were raised in a sterile animal facility--an equivalent to our modern first-world, clean living spaces. These mice did not see many microbes and their immune system--particularly the memory T cells which help remember what foreign microbes and particles that have been encountered before--failed to mature properly. Without a population of memory cells, the CD4+ CD8+ T cells which can be skewed towards autoimmune activity expanded into this empty niche. What makes NOD mice particularly susceptible to the increased production is this strain's increased expression of IL-21 receptor. IL-21 is part of a vicious mechanism which helps drive the expansion of autoimmune reactive T cells.
Another group of NOD mice were inoculated with bacteria or bacterial products and showed a reduced instance of diabetes. The immune system of these mice were stimulated, boosting the population of memory cells and eliminating the extra niche for T cell expansion. So what does that mean for us? Children living on farms or had pets are far less susceptible to allergies to those that don't. Military cadets who have never been exposed to hepatitis A or other bacteria were more likely to have asthma. Should we all get inoculated with environmental bacterial endotoxins at an early age? Should every family be required to own a cat or dog to prevent the onset of allergies and other autoimmune diseases?
But don't throw out your bath towel just yet. Although the Cell paper may present some convincing data, remember that these experiments were done in a controlled mouse model. This may help those people with the human equivalent of autoimmune diabetes, but it doesn't explain the variety of other chronic diseases we experience. There could be a completely different explanation--the presence or absence of microorganisms is not the only difference between urban and country, first-world and third-world. Could it be the result of pollution or change in diet? A different lifestyle that has nothing to do with how many times you wipe down the countertop?
But whatever the case, I can very well picture this as a reason Junior might petition his mom to get his very own Fifi.
Last night, I saw a performance of Capitol Steps, live. Oh man, they're hilarious. If you haven't heard of them before, high-tail it out to the nearest public radio station (or go to their website and download the mp3s on their website).
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom by Conrad Black. What the heck was I thinking, grabbing this over 1000 page tome from the library shelf? Well, I had finished the biography on his successor (Truman) and I was a little curious about the man who Truman thought as enigmatic and privileged. All I knew about FDR was mostly from memorizing the "Alphabet Soup" of all his New Deal programs in high school history class. So far, I'm struck by the man's personal foibles--it makes him so much more human than the urbane glorification of a textbook mainly concerned with facts and figures. FDR was ambitious, maybe a little vindictive, and stoic to the point of machismo. Perhaps he loved Eleanor Roosevelt when he married her, but there was constant contention between two very different and independent personalities--and when you throw in FDR's domineering mother, meddling relatives, and questionable female companions, you're bound to get an explosion or two. I keep on wondering if Eleanor might have been better off if she had refused Roosevelt's marriage proposal (the first woman Roosevelt proposed to turned him down because she didn't want to be a "cow"--FDR wanted a really large family). Interesting, but very long. Hopefully I will be done with this book before the end of next week.
On Writing Well by William K. Zinsser. Unlike the above book, I have finished this one. There are a lot of good ideas, some of them (especially the more technical aspects) I've heard of before, but one point that I took away from it was the process before one starts writing. A topic has to be specific, but no one can tell you what to write about. That, you have to figure by yourself and sometimes it can be trial and error. Another point is simplicity and clarity, which is self-evident, but many times a writer forgets that the reader doesn't know the stuff the writer assumes they know. Zinsser also puts the emphasis on rewriting and rewriting again--I wonder what he would think about blog writing where the author just slaps on whatever is on his mind on the moment.
DNA: The Secret of Life by James D. Watson and Andrew Berry. A science textbook? Hardly. Watson guides the reader through the history of genetics and the birth of molecular biology in first person. But because this is first person, you have to be wary not to take everything on face value. It's exciting to read someone's inside view --from discovery of DNA structure to human genome sequencing--but then there are the ethical dilemmas that Watson also describes. He covers everything from genetically modified crops to genetic profiling. Certainly, these are important problems that we must consider, but are the opinions Watson offers really representative of the scientific community or just his own?
"You work very hard. But you know, in Europe people get off work at noon on Fridays. Only half a day. They generally don't work as hard and they have more time to think about other things. Here, people work a lot and they don't have time to think about anything."
I resent the implication that I'm not well-rounded because at work, all I talk about is research. I don't talk about the other things I do in my free time at work because I don't feel like other people really care about it. Nobody really cares about what I do or what I think about. Most people just say something to humor me.
Onesome: Insomnia-- Ever have it? Some do and some don't, but have you ever been hounded awake for that endless hour after hour with no hope of sleep? ...or does the very act of touching head to pillow put you out for the count?
I usually don't have any problem sleeping unless it's very hot and humid. This means that it is more than likely that when I lose sleep, it would be during the summer where there is no air conditioner in sight.
Twosome: the cure-- Hey, if you do have the occasional bout or chronic insomnia, what do you do about it? Work? Read? Try cures? Hmmm... Did you ever find one that worked?
I just lie in bed being tired and miserable.
Threesome: for sleep-- Female/male, young/not so young, we all need varying amounts of sleep. What's your personal sleep cycle? Five hours? Ten hours? ...and if you had a choice, what would be your personal sleep cycle? ...and yes, "All day long" is a valid answer.
My schedule works in multiples of four. If I get up after four, eight, or twelve hours, I'm fine. Anything else, I'm totally out of it for the rest of the day.
When it comes to stores, I'm rather neutral opinion-wise. I mean, some can be trashy or low-class or cheap and others snotty-nosed and expensive, but at the end of the day I just shrug my shoulders and move on. I don't really notice the atmosphere unless it's a bookstore.
Well, I just came back from tagging along with some people who went to a T. J. Maxx. It's the first time I've been in one although I wasn't surprised--I've seen many similar stores that sold similar items before. But there was something not right about it. Something that made my skin crawl.
People have different musical tastes than I do and I totally respect that. If in lab, one of the other graduate students is playing Dixie Chicks, the technician is playing some angsty death metal, and one of the post-docs is playing elevator music, I'm fine with that. If the bus driver likes bubblegum pop, I can stand that too until I get to my destination.
But this store was playing David Hasselhoff on the PA system.
Volcanoes of the Deep Sea - I left this IMAX documentary feeling as if I had sat through somebody's computer gaming session. I'm sure the liberal use of computer graphics was very good at illustrating certain points, but I'm not so sure if the rest of the audience could really tell if it was an illustration of something real or hypothetical. And yes, the CGI hyperthermophiles with cute little tentacles (realplayer required) made me roll my eyes. What actually carried this film was the real footage and the story of an aging scientist on his fifty-year quest to find the maker of curious stone markings on the coast of Spain, the paleodictyon. The ending might not be so satisfying for those who think that a simple trip down to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge will get you all the answers--in fact it may be downright disappointing to some people who like all loose ends to be tied up neatly. But if you can't get to an IMAX theater any time soon, you won't be missing much (except the pretty pictures) if you've already seen documentaries about deep sea life on public television.
Last Friday, someone remarked that lately I had been "chained to the lab bench." It's not that I don't think that what I do shouldn't be hard work, but one must pause and consider if something isn't just a tad bit wrong if someone else says something. Or maybe I just like to be contrary. It's one thing to tell myself that I don't have a life. It's another if someone else says so.
So I decided to go on a rather unplanned trip out of Hanover, just for Saturday. This probably doesn't prove that I have a life except maybe that I like to run away, abet temporarily, from perceived criticism.
(As an aside, this does bring up the question of what it means to have a life. Must I lead an Indiana Jones-like existence for my life to have validation in other people's eyes? If I am not clever or heroic or interesting for the rest of my days, am I somehow less entitled to an existence than you or the billions of other people in this world?)
While traveling, I've observed a curious thing. Whenever a group of people notices me in their vicinity, they talk louder. Whenever a couple sees me approaching, they suddenly get all amorous when a second before, they were merely two people holding hands. Is everyone an exhibitionist or is something else going on subconsciously? Perhaps I represent something they are afraid of--being a stranger, a loner without friends or lovers or family, an outcast. Perhaps by being an exhibitionist, they try to confirm to themselves that they are part of a social network and that I am not.
In some ways, by being a lone traveler, people watching becomes a depressing and vicarious sport.
Most of yesterday was spent at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. For a first time visitor, it's not so much confusing but overwhelming. I could have easily spent half a day in just one gallery so going back for a repeat visit would be an understatement. The museum's collection encompasses art from ancient to modern, from western to the far east. My favorite exhibition was the Japanese postcards. I'm a somewhat casual collector (just the cheap and the cute) and would never be so extensive or niche oriented.
I spotted an odd message in one of the comment books scattered throughout the museum:
"I am blind and I am disgusted by the fact that you have denied me the right of touching the objects."
Below that, someone else wrote:
"You sure write really well for a blind man."
Someone was obviously trolling and being snarky, but I do wonder, what would be the point of a museum for a blind person? Sure, there are audio guides, but wouldn't it be easier to just stay at home and listen to an audio book about 19th century artists? But I am not so much irritated as amused by someone being a smartass on paper. At a high traffic museum, I don't mind too much the screaming children, the crowds, the crazy tourists with cameras, the slightly ominous museum attendants, or the people who just don't get it, but I do mind the pseudo-intellectualism that inevitably runs rampant inside museum walls.
Maybe I'm just one of the stupid unwashed masses who looks like I need a harsh lecture on post-modernism, but I do have a brain, no matter how much of an uncouth cabbage head I might look to certain Prada wearing ladies. The thing is, I don't want to be lectured at or told what to believe. I know art, politics, and literature mainly consists of high-minded people attempting to convince other people of their ideas. But I don't care how you would like for me to interpret Jackson Pollock's black squiggles on canvas. I'd determine that for myself, even if I have to stare at the damn painting for the entire day.
An unexpected thing happened, though. A middle-aged woman approached me in the museum bookstore (I wasn't quite sure why I was there except to buy a postcard of Renoir's Dance at Bougival which I had seen at one of the permanent galleries. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the romantic French impressionists.) and gave me a ticket to the Gauguin Tahiti exhibition. Originally, I had not planned to see it. The museum's permanent collections already was more than enough, but the Gauguin required the visitor to pay extra on top of general admission. So I profusely thanked this stranger who had decided to bestow a ticket to me. Why she picked me out of the hundreds of other people in the museum I don't know. Maybe I didn't look so much like a cabbage head or maybe it was because I was alone and didn't have someone tagging along and whining about how a museum is just a collection of old and boring stuff.
The Gauguin Tahiti exhibition was crowded, stuffy, and hot. Maybe the museum deliberately didn't have any circulating air and packed in patrons like sardines into the gallery to create a hot, humid atmosphere to view Gauguin's tropical paintings. Or maybe the exhibition was just popular. It has only been previously shown in Paris and the present showing at the MFA is the only time it will be shown in the U.S. Many visitors were exclaiming, "Oh how beautiful!" or "I like his use of colors," but one woman, probably cranky from the crushing atmosphere remarked, "I'm sure I saw this at Paris, I just don't remember it."
If she doesn't remember it, she either has a serious memory problem or is a very jaded museum traveler. Gauguin's style and subject matter is hard to dismiss as the usual. It's not so much mysterious but puzzling and maybe a tad obsessive. One has to wonder about a man who built "a house of pleasure" in the tropics and proceeded to paint, draw, and etch bare-breasted women surrounded by ominous symbols. There was a self-portrait of Paul Gauguin in a rather unnoticed corner of the crowded gallery. (Unnoticed because people were busy pondering Gauguin's numerous sketches of a frightened woman lying naked in bed while a dark figure stares at her.) Gauguin had a rather pale and insipid face and I was suddenly struck by how it reminded me of Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness. I came out of the exhibit thinking that Gauguin was more than a little depraved--genius or no.
As for the rest of the afternoon, I spent it sitting at the edge of the Boston harbor, my feet dangling above water. I watched the waves rippling in the cool, not-quite-spring breeze and half a dozen dinghies bobbling like so many rubber toys. And I tried to think about nothing.
One of my housemates, a med student, asked me to do an experiment with her. The experiment was this: to see how long we could hold our arms above our head before they go numb. So we did that. Nothing happened after ten minutes (and besides, we got bored) so we stopped the experiment. I asked her why she wanted to try the experiment. She read somewhere that how long you can hold your arms up indicates how good your heart is. Apparently there are people who can't comb their hair without getting tired arms.
Well, I finally gave into my paranoia and have started to scan in my lab notebook. It's not so much delusions of grandeur but a nagging worry that the chronicles of all my experiments for the past year would go up in a glorious and raging inferno. So yes, my lab notebook is on paper, like a lot of other people's lab notebooks.
There are some people, however, who write their lab notebook on computer. It's not the same as handwriting it, not as personal. At the same time, it's also somewhat unreliable--the typing part, not the scanning part--since it can easily be altered by a simple press of the delete key.
Then again, keeping a lab notebook is not so much different as keeping a diary or journal and it's not such a short leap to think: hey, why not blog the whole damn thing? But even though a lab notebook usually makes for boring reading on a Friday night and is rather impersonal (I don't know about your lab notebook, but mine doesn't have any emotional gut spilling in its pages), it's just one of those things that you just don't put online.
Yes, this contradicts the whole notion of everyone having access to information, but there are problems with how everything else is set up. Like publishing and credits and "scooping". It's one of those real world and human concerns that override the pursuit of science and information. Which is, unfortunately, too bad.
Onesome: Home- What's the one thing your dream home must have?
Plenty of space.
Twosome: improvement- What's the one thing you would change about your current home? New bed, couch? New carpet or wallpaper? Or something major like an addition?
Nothing, considering I'm probably going to move soon.
Threesome: shows- Do you ever watch home improvement shows? Which one(s)? Do you actually learn anything, or is it simply entertaining?
I don't watch TV, but if I did, home improvement shows would not be the first thing on my list. To be honest, I find them very boring--probably because I don't own a home. And even if I did, I'd probably hire someone who knew what the heck they were doing.
[Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says] "Over the river, in the Old City, the streets were narrower and..." From Perdido Street Station by China Miéville. (Disclaimer: I have yet to read this book. I have way too many unread books lying around.)
[Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?] The edge of a bookcase.
[What is the last thing you watched on TV?] I don't remember. It's been a long time since I've watched television.
[With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?] The first movement of Felix Mendelssohn's String Quintet No. 2 in B flat major. It's a recording, not public radio.
[When did you last step outside?] About two hours before this post.
[What are you wearing?] Jeans and a brown sweater.
[Did you dream last night?] Yes, but don't ask me to recall it.
[When did you last laugh?] Not too long ago when I was reading about how the inventor of the Reach toothbrush helped fund TIGR (The Institute of Genomic Research) and HGS (Human Genome Sciences). Yes, I know I have a really weird sense of humor.
[What is on the walls of the room you are in?] A calendar with a bunch of smiley faces on it. No, I'm not kidding.
[Seen anything weird lately?] No.
[What do you think of this quiz?] Amusing.
[What is the last movie you saw?]The Ladykillers.
[If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?] Books. Maybe a car.
[Tell me something about you that I don't know:] I have mashed up infant mouse brains before. I'm sure the protocol for mashing adult mouse brains is no different.
[If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?] Besides world peace, ending hunger, blah, blah, blah, I would like forty-something-year-old women to stop laughing at me.
[Do you like to dance?] Not really.
[George Bush:] Uh, no.
[Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?] Despite my obsession with names, I really don't know. One thing's for sure, I wouldn't give a kid of mine a name I would give to a character in a story.
[Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?] See above.
[Would you ever consider living abroad?] Depends. Example: Belgium, sure. Botswana, no.
If classical artists had any groupies, they would be old ladies who have gotten proficient at wielding those new fangled digital cameras or young ladies clamoring to get a cheek-to-cheek photograph with the virtuoso. While I was standing in line for the signing I noticed that most of the fans were women. I suppose it's not that surprising if you look at the pictures of the virtuoso in question. But I wonder if the composition of the crowd would be different if it had been Itzhak Perlman instead.
Signings, however, are funny things. Instead of being as psyched about the event as other people, my mind wanders. Maybe it's the effect of standing around waiting with nothing to do. It seems too commercial and manipulated and I really begin to think that I've succumbed to some herd mentality. Waiting has this insidious effect of planting paranoid ideas in your head--like how the middlemen probably deliberately engineered the selling of marked up CDs.
Originally, there was supposed to be a discussion with Joshua Bell an hour before the concert, but instead there was a lecture by a music professor on the background of the pieces that were going to be played. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the music lecture, but one wonders what really happened when the organizers have to apologize for the alternative scheduling due to a snafu with the violinist's agent.
The concert itself was a rather informal affair. While some musicians always wear the tux and bow tie on stage, Bell and his accompanist, the pianist Simon Mulligan were in black casual with Bell's shirt noticeably untucked. But perhaps this was also for practical purposes--casual clothing affords freedom of movement for more expressive passages. I found it amusing that a woman in the row behind me complained about bad seats but was sushed by her husband by replying that they had good seats. I should say so. Unless that woman was completely blind, she should have been close enough to the stage to see the horse hair snap from the bow, the graining on the 1713 "Gibson ex Huberman" Stradivarius violin, and the sweat gleaming from Bell's face.
The first piece was the Sonatina for Violin and Piano in G minor, D. 408 by Franz Schubert. It was written when Schubert was only 19 and highly influenced by Mozart. But it was hardly typical in one way. Although the title says G minor, most of the melody is in a major key. Resolutions of major motifs aren't typical either--Schubert likes to rush off into a totally different key when you're expecting something else. But to the modern ear accustomed to a lot of dissonant melodies, it's a very subtle thing.
The Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano in C minor, Op. 45 by Edvard Grieg was actually my favorite piece in the program. Where the young Schubert is all teenaged rebelliousness with a short attention span, Grieg is contemplative and sentimental, moody even. The entire piece is intensely focused and the movement names bear it out: allegro molto ed appassionato, allegretto espressivo alla romanza, allegro animato.
Maurice Ravel, one of a clutch of famous French impressionistic composers, attempted to Frenchify the blues in his Sonata for Violin and Piano. There's a fantastic perpetuum mobile at the end where the violinist gets to showcase his stamina and technical skill, but the Blues section is most curious. There are blues motifs, but then it isn't blues. The best description I've heard of this section is that it's like Mexican food in the Upper Valley. All the ingredients are there, but it's not quite like the real thing. No wonder then, that when the sonata debuted in 1927 that many American critics took note of it.
The last two shorter pieces on the program and the encore are also rather romantic, dangerously bordering on the sappy. The Sérénade mélancolique by Tchaikovsky was originally written for violin and orchestra but later successfully transcribed for violin and piano. The Introduction and Tarantella (scroll down for the mp3) by Pablo de Sarasate, violinist and composer in the 1800s, is a bit more lively but still in the romantic tradition (a tarantella originated as an Italian erotic courtship dance). The encore was an airy melody by the German composer Gluck.
One could say, as I've heard many people in the audience say about the concert, "It was fantastic!" or "It was awesome!" but really, those accolades aren't really descriptive. Perhaps the best analogy was one that popped into my head while Joshua Bell was digging vigorously into Ravel's perpetuum mobile, his locks shaking in the light as he jerked his bow and his feet moving intricately as he shifted on stage. He's the classical equivalent of Luke Skywalker in black doing a showdown with Darth Vader. Except he's using the violin instead of the light saber.
Ahh! I touched him. Okay, okay, I just got to shake his hand. I'll talk more about the concert tomorrow, but for now, you can gaze at a scan of two signatures (click the image for a larger view), one from him and the other from his accompanist.
Blogs are the new email address. (via IDENT I-O (Voice)) Uh, no. Somehow, this article totally rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's because whenever I read compassionate, I see "condescending" instead.
David Collins and Shane Dundas are the Umbilical Brothers, an Australian comedy duo "joined-at-the-navel" specializing in wacky and cartoonish live performance. Their routine consists of a hodge-podge of sketches (some planned, some improv) all held together by the semi-narrative thread of sibling rivalry. It's a mix of technique and style (or more crudely put: silly misbehavior) that brings out the laugh--as they say, "It's mime with sound."
Thwack was specifically tailored for the American audience, but I'm afraid that if I say too much, I'd spoil the fun. So with no further ado, a link:
Onesome: Rebel-- Hey, are you considered a rebel in any areas? Yeah? Like how, man? (...or not? Maybe you are one of the conforming types?)
If everyone was a rebel, wouldn't that be conforming?
Anyways, I would like to think I'm not like everyone else. I would like to believe that I'm not your typical whatever-stereotype-you-can-think-of. But there are many kinds of groups out there. So if I may seem to be a rebel in Anygroup where everyone worships the grapefruit as a god, I'd be a conformist in Anothergroup where everyone eats the grapefruit for breakfast.
Twosome: Without-- Hmmm... What have you done without lately that you could use a little of? Sunshine? A break from schoolwork? Housework? Kids?
Uh, hot water.
Threesome: a Cause-- ...and just 'cause' it's the type of thing we ask: are you getting away for Easter/Spring break or is the usual routine in effect?
Spring break at my school was over last week. While other students were at home or some exotic locale, I was in lab.
* * *
A link:
Even More Long-Winded (But Practical) Writing Advice. Heh. This is just great. I love #5. The only "busy" place I take my laptop is the library. (This also reminds me--I actually got to read someone's novel draft where the main character went to a coffee shop and scored. I remember thinking that it sounded too much like a fantasy which should have never been put to paper in the first place.)
