What they eat in Iceland..

They say doing a PhD builds character. I will have a cast-iron character by the time I graduate.

Andrew Zimmerman just ate Hakarl on Bizarre Foods. Yep...he ate rotten shark meat. He's now onto Puffin meat. That guy's got character too. Eating all that crap and then having to lie about it on TV. Atleast he gets paid well for it.

Oh man...he's now eating blood pudding. Its Icelandic comfort food apparently. Have they not heard of pizza? OK..he just described it as irony, deep, and mineraly! I don't think he likes it. His face is screwed up in pain as he says..fabulous! I'm surprised Andy's nose is not 3 feet long!

Monday nights just got funner..

Because House is back. But last night's episode was a bit of a downer. Too little medicine, too much soap opera. And trust House to consider niceness a symptom! The whole House-syphilis thing was silly. And the team even considering that the syphilis is responsible for his genius as a doctor and meanness as a person is laughable. I have to say though that Cut-throat Bitch (CB for short or Amber-her actual name in the show) is beginning to grow on me.

Line of the episode: We need to prove that you're sick in order to prove that the world as we know it did not evolve because of intelligent design. (All this because someone was nice!)

NB: Why would a person live with everything tasting like lemon meringue pie for 11 years? That is just insane!

This made me smile..

I read this article today, and thought it was a very cool job to have. What could be more joyful than studying happiness? And, I am intrigued by the book..therefore I have ordered it. I am normally very skeptical of sociological studies, but this one has rave reviews and awards and everything. So, it must be good.

NB: To those people who care-I am very happy. I'm not buying this book because I need a self-help book on how to be happy or anything. Just thought I'd get that out of the way before I receive panicky phone calls from any worried folks out there.

1). The weather is gorgeousity itself.
2). The weekend looms with nothing definite planned....lazing around sounds heavenly.
3). I'm reading 2 very good books.
4). Oceans 12 is on TV. George Clooney still had it back then, therefore making it mildly watchable.
5). I succeeded in making contact with my long lost brother. (It was easier to talk with him when he was in India than on this continent!)

5 perfectly good reasons to be extremely happy.

Small rant

I'm a little annoyed by the plethora of papers out there with a complex mouse phenotype that they don't fully understand..so they call it premature aging. Its not aging if they die earlier than they should. Thats just a pathology you haven't figured out yet. And I have to read the paper for journal club...gives me a headache. On the bright side, its easy to critique those papers because they just have so many loopholes in them..beginning with the fundamentally incorrect hypothesis, to poorly designed experiments that lack the appropriate controls. But still, trashing a bad paper gives me no endorphin rush. Just a sad feeling.

Nothing that chocolate can't cure.

Of pee, the weather and general nothingness...

1). I rubbed John Harvard's foot for good luck on a visit to Harvard on Monday. I didn't know that Harvard undergrads pee on it for fun. Oh, well. I've had mice pee on my hands before. Same difference, no? And undergrads are stupid...whether they are at Harvard or some community college in the boondocks. They are young and stupid. Peeing on statues. Bah!

2). Humpback whales trap schools of fish with a bubble trap and a sonic boom. Saw it on Animal Planet. Also, some lizards shoot blood out of their eyes to drive away predators. I wish I could shoot blood out of my eyes whenever my advisor comes in to the lab with that purposeful look in his eyes. The one that says...I have an idea. Lets talk. I don't want to talk. I just want to be left alone.

3). Are they trying to depress me?

They are doing a good job of it, btw.

4). I thank the Lord for the lack of a window at work. Its so gorgeous these days, I'd never get anything done. Nope. I like being cooped up in my little windowless cubby hole of a lab.

5). I don't know why I ordered the Perry Mason series on Netflix. The music is loud, the acting hammy and Raymond Burr doesn't look like the Perry Mason I had in my head. So, I only watched about 10 minutes of the Case of the Restless Redhead before giving up on it.

6). For a change I did an experiment that worked. And this is a pain. Because now the boss is excited about it. He wants me to collate data. I have to sit and stare at white light for hours on end whilst counting foci on a plate. Try staring at white light for prolonged periods of time. Your eyes will hurt. Not fun.

7). I have a committee meeting in 3 weeks time. I've done nothing about it. Zilch. Zip. Nada. Nothing. I'm getting a little worried that I'm so not worried. I should worry a little, right? I mean, I'm actually a worrier. I worry about everything. I don't know why I care so little about something that is actually pretty important.

8). Plus, I have to give journal club tomorrow morning and I haven't even picked a paper yet. Its too nice to read a paper. All I want to do is eat a tiny piece of Mysore Pak (microwaved for about 10 seconds, so it gets all gooey and all the ghee melts!) and sleep.

Gotta get back to work. Darn!

9). I just got back from the coolest talk ever on stem cell biology. (And even cooler...the speaker has dinosaur bones in his home on an ISLAND!) And the company is up the street from my lab! So far they've generated: red blood cells, human bladders that have undergone successful transplantation, retinal pigment epithelium, and some animal species such as gaurs, bantengs and a weird mountain goat whose name I forget. He's like God with a petri dish. Blew my mind. Totally and completely awestruck. I love science.

What not to do when one has nothing to do..

Its Friday afternoon. I had nothing to do in lab. Rather, I had stuff to do, but I didn't feel like doing them. I took a walk outside. It was quite beautiful. It was still only 2.15pm. I felt kind of embarassed to leave THAT early. I even tried to catch up with writing my notebook. And I have to be really really bored to do that. So, I did what I should never do. I went to the JCPenney website and found atleast 6 things I really liked. I pruned it down to 4 tops, and bought them. 80$ gone pfft, just because I was bored and had nothing to do. I don't need more clothes. I have enough clothes for 2 lifetimes.

Oh, well. They were cute. And it is summer. A girl always needs cute, summery tees.

Notes from the meeting

1). Needless to say, SD was warm, balmy and absolutely perfect, weather-wise.

2). There were 17,000 people at the meeting. Yep, 17,000!

3). The convention center was so huge that getting from 1 talk to another was a half-a-mile walk at least. By day 3 I was attending talks in rooms close to each other, even if they weren't the topics I was most interested in because my feet hurt.

4). Starbucks coffee is mediocre and overpriced. Dunkin' Donuts is much better...but they don't have Dunkin' Donuts in California. But on the bright side, Mrs.Fields' Macademia nut cookies totally melt in your mouth. Also, they had terrible food at the conference...the only vegetarian option was tofu with rice. I'm tofu-d out after eating it 2 days in a row.

5). I missed Sydney Brenner's talk, because I went to another symposium on metastasis. I can't believe I missed it. Man who should have gotten 2 Nobel Prizes, but only received one, gives a talk, and I miss it. I blame the stupid program that weighed about 5 kilos and had 500 pages. And showed Sydney Brenner's talk in tiny print buried on page 378. Whatever.

6). I narrowly escaped death by dirty looks at the poster session, when I pointed out some rather glaring discrepancies to a pompous gentleman who had performed a very mediocre (and conceptually flawed!) set of experiments. When he started getting abrasive, I judged it wise to move on. Just to let you know how much he scared me, I didn't go back to the poster session after that.

7). I heard all these huge names in the senescence field give talks. It was absolutely amazing. I've read all their papers and drooled over them. And I got to sit there and hear them present their data. Some of them were humble. Most were arrogant. All of them were opinionated. A few were downright obnoxious. And very few were charming. They spoke well, they were funny at the right times. They didn't go on and on about unimportant details. They handled difficult questions nicely. It was an eye-opener on how to give a good talk. (No hot data though..all published work.) And some of them are in Boston. I sense post-doc opportunities there. Yay!

8). I learned that you don't have to be a junior graduate student to ask stupid questions. PIs can do it too. (Yes...there is such a thing as a stupid question!)

9). I shared a room with my colleague. For most part she was harmless enough. Then, she managed to lose her set of room keys. Not only did she turn the room upside down looking for it, but she also accused me of taking her keys! Some people, I tell you. I almost got mad at her. Almost.

10). Traveling with the boss has an advantage. Especially if your advisor loves to talk. And mine does. I learned all the gossip about the faculty and grad students in our department. Some students who I thought were rather smart apparently did very poorly in their qualifying exam. And some PIs who I thought were obnoxious, really are obnoxious because they are frustrated with their careers. But there is a limit to which one can gossip with the advisor. After about 3 hours, the novelty wears off. But I pretended to sleep..and actually fell asleep. Since even he cannot talk to himself, he also slept.

11). Then I got back, and not only did I have to catch up with my own experiments, but the other members of my lab have also given me lists of what to do for them. They are all on vacation except me. Sucks! I'm doing the work of 3 people, and there is no one to talk with...except my advisor of course!

1 perfect hour...

So, I'm in San Diego for a meeting. The meeting is phenomenally good. All my heroes are here giving talks. Its turning out to be a wonderful learning experience. But more about that later.

This post is to share THE most becalming experience I have ever had in my short life thus far.    It was after lunch. I was too sleepy to focus on a talk and too lazy to walk to the poster session. So, I spent 1 hour sunning myself on the extraordinarily large patio provided for the express purpose of allowing conference weary folk to put their feet up. There was a gentle breeze blowing. It was about 70F. I was sprawled on a large chair, with my feet stretched out on another. I plugged in my iPod and spent 1 hour in serene bliss.
 
There is no greater pleasure than doing nothing. None.

Another mouse post.

Every once in a few months I come back to them mice on this blog. Goes with having a job that entails spending several hours a week in their company. And when I read a headline in Science News that says, " Sex and Drugs and Singing Mice", I am compelled to read the article. Turns out mice can sing. Here is the actual paper, if you care enough to read it. This paper, by another group has some audio files of mouse songs that you can listen to. They sound exactly like birds. Sweet at first. Annoying after about 20 seconds. Astounding, no? Mice sing. They twitter. They chirp. They whistle. (Small rant: To my eternal shame, I can't whistle. I've listened to her instructions a thousand times and I still can't do it. But my mice can. Damn. Sometimes, life is unfair.)

They sing when they're happy (i.e having sex), or when they're high (pumped chock full of amphetamines). Hmm. Kinky research, you say? Well then, read this paragraph from the article:

"A team of researchers led by brain scientist Haoran Wang at the University of Toronto in Canada used special microphones to eavesdrop on mice during sex. When they let a male mouse into a female's cage, he approached her with a series of whistle calls and then, during intercourse, sang more complex chirp songs until ejaculation. (Females sing during social reunion with other females but only squeak uncomfortably during sex)."

Sometimes, you read stuff, and you go Wow! This is clearly not one of those articles. This just makes you think....huh...even the poor mice. Clearly, there is no such thing as intelligent design!

Dare I..(Updated)

Go watch Sweeney Todd?

Its a scary movie. I scare pretty easily. I was scared by this movie when I saw it some 2 years ago. And even now, when I can't sleep at night, I attribute it to my spooky basement, which resembles the basement in the last scene of the Blair Witch Project.

People are cooked in Sweeney Todd. I like cooking. Maybe it will put me off cooking for life. On the other hand, even though they sell people-meat pies to their customers, there is nothing they can do to put me off eating.

I think I am going to take my life in my hands and brave Sweeney Todd tonight. Besides, its Johnny Depp. Anything for Johnny Depp.

Update: Saw it. Not that gruesome. Blood spurting from the carotids of people every 30 seconds...but thats about it. Why is Helena Bonham-Carter still in Bellatrix LeStrange mode? She looks like she walked off the Harry Potter set into the set of ST. Johnny Depp looks too angsty. Perpetually haggard, pained, tortured, what-have-you. The kid who plays Anthony bears an uncanny resemblance to Keira Knightley. That was the scary part..figuring out if she was playing a male role in this movie...or whether it was her separated-at-birth twin brother.
So, for the record..The Blair Witch Project is still the scariest movie I have ever seen.

Scientific news article of the week!

Apparently ruthlessness is genetic. Nature News says so. Emphasis mine:

Researchers at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem found a link between a gene called AVPR1a and ruthless behaviour in an economic exercise called the 'Dictator Game'. The exercise allows players to behave selflessly, or like money-grabbing dictators such as former Zaire President Mobutu, who plundered the mineral wealth of his country to become one of the world's richest men while its citizens suffered in poverty.

Ebstein's team wondered whether differences in how this receptor is expressed in the human brain may make different people more or less likely to behave generously.

To find out, they tested DNA samples from more than 200 student volunteers, before asking the students to play the dictator game (volunteers were not told the name of the game, lest it influence their behaviour). Students were divided into two groups: 'dictators' and 'receivers' (called 'A' and 'B' to the participants). Each dictator was told that they would receive 50 shekels (worth about US$14), but were free to share as much or as little of this with a receiver, whom they would never have to meet. The receiver's fortunes thus depended entirely on the dictator's generosity.

About 18% of all dictators kept all of the money, Ebstein and his colleagues report in the journal Genes, Brain and Behavior 1. About one-third split the money down the middle, and a generous 6% gave the whole lot away.

There was no connection between the participants' gender and their behaviour, the team reports. But there was a link to the length of the AVPR1a gene: people were more likely to behave selfishly the shorter their version of this gene.

It isn't clear how the length of AVPR1a affects vasopressin receptors: it is thought that rather than controlling the number of receptors, it may control where in the brain the receptors are distributed. Ebstein suggests the vasopressin receptors in the brains of people with short AVPR1a may be distributed in such a way to make them less likely to feel rewarded by the act of giving.

Though the mechanism is unclear, Ebstein says, he is fairly sure that selfish, greedy dictatorship has a genetic component. It would be easier to confirm this if history's infamous dictators conveniently had living identical twins, he says, so we could see if they were just as ruthless as each other.

And then there is this gem in the comments section:

To test this theory, would it be possible for someone to submit hair samples from the Clintons?

Nice...oru simple experiment..oru logic defying conclusion. Requires a gigantic leap of logic to go from people giving money away in a game, to being masochistic villains in real life. But I believe Nature News. They are always right. So, I want an antidote to this gene stat. To shorten my overlong AVPR1a genes. Maybe they will have a swanky gene delivery system soon. Something that does not involve needles. I'm feeling particularly anti-needles this week. Someone in the lab dumped needles in the broken glassware container, and I (unable to say no to the Boss), had to spend one hour gingerly fishing out used needles from the midst of broken glass. If I had a shorter AVPR1a gene, I would have told him to go fly a kite. But what to do...genetically spineless.

BTW, I think that the Hebrew University spending money on studying the genetics behind ruthless behaviour is weird.

Also, why is the antonym for ruthlessness not ruthfulness?

Mucho perfecto dayo at worko!

Everyday I go to lab, set up my laptop and type in the usual keywords in Pubmed. Most days, something really boring shows up. But yesterday, my first hit was a paper so awesome, so cool and so related to what we do, that I almost fell of my chair in excitement. For the first time in a long time, I was actually, really buzzed about a paper. I read it through at top speed. And then I showed it to my boss. He saw the title and said "Whoa!" And then we gushed all over it. And how it would impact our studies. Yesterday was a very cool work day.

And then I read this letter in the latest issue of Nature. I'm reproducing it in full, because it is restricted access, and because everyone must read it. And empathize with the plight of us South Indian women! Not only do we have long, unpronounceable names, but also, due to some weird S.Indian quirk...no surname. And then you get unhappy women like these 3. I have to say that while this has occasionally been an issue over the years, I've never had such a beef with it, as these gals seem to have. Usually, whilst in Pune, some poor soul in a government office would gawp at me when I said no surname, just father's name. Then mutter nasty things under his breath about South Indians who chatofied curd rice and didn't have surnames. So, I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to this. Also, I don't particularly care about such blatantly unimportant things because I don't have enough data for a paper yet. So what does it matter how it will be written on a manuscript that is as yet not in existence.

Anyways, read and enjoy. If you have any creative ideas on how to develop a universal nomenclature system for papers, write to Nature.

Give south Indian authors their true names

Nalini Puniamoorthy1, Jeevananthinee Jeevanandam1 & Sujatha Narayanan Kutty1
Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543, Singapore

Sir

Your recent News Feature 'Identity crisis' (Nature 451, 766–767; 2008) reveals that many Chinese, Japanese and Korean researchers do not receive due credit for their work, owing to inconsistent abbreviation practices and journal requirements regarding names. Many other Asian scientists face similar problems.

We are three female postgraduate students of south Indian ancestry. Indians from the south traditionally do not have surnames. It is only when forced to comply with Western naming standards that they use their father's given name as a substitute. As a consequence, journal rules require them to publish research under the fathers' given names (with which we — Nalini, Jeevananthinee and Sujatha — also sign this Correspondence letter). Obviously, as young south Indian scientists making a contribution to science, we would prefer to be identified with our first names and not by our fathers' given names.

India produces more than 100,000 postdoctoral scientists every year (see Nature India at http://www.nature.com/nindia/about/index.html). We believe that now is the time to introduce a consistent publication system that accommodates Indian names. The universal author-identification that uses contributor IDs, as discussed in your News Feature, is a good start. Such a system could be designed along the lines of the digital object identifier (doi) system used for journal articles. That could be followed by changes to reference rulings in journals to allow for citation of papers with single-name authors who are linked to a contributor ID.

We hope that all of science will take note of the extent of the Asian identity crisis in publishing and will work towards creating a universal system of authorship.

In which I try to broaden my horizons...

Most of the time I prefer to spend my free time lazing on the couch, watching re-runs of ELR or just lazing on the couch. Period. But every once in a while, I can rouse myself sufficiently enough to be able to read articles like this, instead of my usual fare, which is this.

So, their conclusions thus far appear to be:

1). Practising religion makes people happy.

And they need PET scans to come up with that conclusion? Just go to a satsang or something dudes!

2). Living in a religious commune increases cooperation.

Huh! I believe that like I believe this! Actually, I stand corrected. Lots of cooperation happened there!

3). Reminding people of God makes them altruistic.

Umm. Maybe. But I bet if you showed them a picture of a starving child, you would have gotten similar results. Not that I'm suggesting comparing apples and oranges. Just saying.

4). Scaring people with ghost stories makes them less liable to cheat.

Dumbfounded!

My favorite sentence in the entire article:

Exactly what Dr Norenzayan has discovered here is not clear.

Nice.

In the meanwhile my lab struggles to get funding. And all we want to do is cure cancer and understand ageing. Whatever!

I'm going back to my staple diet pronto. I was made for mirth and not matter, anyway.

SMS lurrrve!

Oh dear! This brings back funny memories.

I had a cellphone for 5 years in India. The most amorous SMS I ever received was from a student who had a crush on me. It was mildly annoying, but mostly just funny. He followed me around like a puppy. Told me I looked nice in blue. Did everything he could to impress me, his Physiology instructor, (and 24 to his pimply 18!) except actually pick up a book and study. The boy was hopeless. Totally and completely hopeless. He failed his exams with amazing regularity.

So, here's the deal. I could laugh at it. I thought it was hilarious. My colleagues were horrified. (what guts he has, a teacher no less, useless fellow...you get my drift.) And it was all they could talk about over lunch for about 4 days. After that, 2 students were caught making out in one of the classrooms in the evening, and my poor little devotee was forgotten. He did persist for about 2 months though. Then, I left for the US. And he gave me flowers and some sweets at my farewell party. I gave him some advice to study. He tried emailing me a couple of times. When I didn't reply, I think he figured that a long distance relationship wasn't going to work and gave up.

So, thats my sad little SMS story. I haven't included context of his text message, because for the life of me, I cannot remember it. Clearly, an ode to the beauty of my eyes it was not.