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.