Let . . .

Breathe by ~theflickerees on deviantART

Come here, lay with me,
Inhaling our breathes
together
On this lazy summer day.

Let the sun
caress us
in its warm embrace,
Let the breeze
fill us
with the breath of life.

And we may gaze
at the clouds
And imagine
sweet dreams of tomorrow.

Let us enjoy this day
together;
Nothing to do,
Nowhere to go,
Just lounging around
in each other's company.

Let us close our eyes
and pretend,
Just for a moment,
That the world
stopped turning
And that time
gave pause.

That it is just
you and me -
Whoever you are,
Wherever you are,
Exhaling with me
the breath of yesterday.

By Starlight

Orion Constellation by ~Eric-P on deviantART

A few days ago, I managed to catch up with an old friend who I had known since kindergarten. We were next door neighbors for years until my family moved to a different part of town just before 8th grade. We had drifted apart - it being in the years before cellphones and high-speed internet (I almost can't believe that!).

I had told him how, upon returning to town, I looked up at the clear night sky and for the first time in perhaps years, I saw the stars. I saw the constellation Orion, clearer than I had ever seen it before from home. In response, he told me how a while ago, while backpacking with friends up north, he looked up to the clear moonless night and saw only the stars. There was so much starlight that everything around had a soft glow. And not just your typical stars, but stars of different colors - reds, oranges, yellows, blues - that you'd normally never see. It was later under this same starlight that he proposed to his fiance. Words could not describe how beautiful the world looks under nothing but starlight.

And I thought to myself, when was the last time I had that sense of amazement? Or any sense of amazement, really. I remember looking up at the stars as a kid and reading about every constellation, every star, every nebula, that I could look up. I wondered, when was this sense of awe and amazement quenched? When does growing up suffocate the curiosity and wonder of childhood? Becoming an adult is a perilous thing to the capacity of kids to dream.

Recently, I had a brief moment of amazement (granted, a somewhat twisted version). You see, viruses amount to nothing more than RNA or DNA, some proteins, and perhaps less than a dozen genes. And yet, without consciousness, without cognitive intent, viruses naturally just infiltrate our bodies and subvert our own cells to serve their own ends. How curious that we all share the same building blocks of life, the same atoms, and yet we must be so antagonistic. And on a loosely related note, how all thought and sensations are but the products atoms interacting. There's nothing of substance to our thinking, and yet like magic we make real what's only illusion - we materialize it in words, sounds, writing, actions, etc. To think that an orgasm or love are just chemicals interacting with each other at the right time and place, now there's some awe in that.

You may not think so, you may not agree, you may not even care or are thinking "wtf." But when was the last time you took a moment to take in something and think deeply about it - to reduce it to it's simplest elements and marvel how something so complex and, indeed, miraculous came about?

Anyway, enough of my rambling.

Negativity

I want to talk about negativity.

But first, look at this picture. My friend emailed it to me. It's a lake in Burma somewhere. See anything interesting about it? We'll revisit it at the end of this post.

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Negativity

So negativity - that swirling maelstrom of mind-draining horribleness. It's in ample supply everywhere these days, it seems. It's effusing the blogosphere, politics, my daily life, everything! I'm tired of it. Negativity is like a foul contaminant, only a tiny micron drop of it is enough to ruin things.

Last Friday while playing poker (I lost, of course) with the usual group of friends, the topic of the recently passed health care bill came up. Now in this group of med students I've rarely felt such negativity towards something. All they could see is the negative aspects that may (or may not) affect them/us.

And while they complained about possible reduction in pay and increased taxes, I mentioned, "It doesn't matter - in the end, I'm still going to be making more than my parents. Combined." I guess that wasn't good enough because they continued to go off. Aiden mentioned the notion of a federal mandate and how it may be unconstitutional. He was like, "Sure, it's federal mandate that you have to get auto insurance. But you don't have to drive. If you do drive, you're potentially putting yourself and others at risk, so it makes sense to have an insurance mandate there. With health care you can maybe make an argument, but not so much." To which I responded, "You know, every public health worker would disagree with you."

The following day, I said to Aiden (who'll be one of the M2 free clinic managers), "You know, with this health care bill, the free clinic would be obsolete because patients will have health insurance." To which he again replied, "If it's not struck down as unconstitutional in the Supreme Court." Almost as if he wants it to be struck down! It's just, I don't know - I'm rather speechless.

The health care bill wasn't exactly meant for health professionals, but for patients. It's for the people we're supposed to one day care for, not for us. Being doctors shouldn't be about the pay, we shouldn't be trying to maximize our own salaries. Sadly, the $160K+ loan screams otherwise. And all of that is just wrong. :-/

Do I think the health care bill is perfect or the next best thing since sliced bread? No. I'm sure it's greatly flawed. BUT I do sincerely feel that it's a step in the right direction.
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Positivity

Now I want to talk about positivity. I'll start with the health care bill since that's where I left off with. Again, I believe the health care bill is a step in the right direction. I was talking to a public health friend of mine, and she basically told me that the entire public health school was cheering. Odd - the public health sector cheers while the medicine sector groans. Shouldn't the two be more aligned?

Anyway, while I was in DC, I asked my friends about the health care bill. They were both overwhelmingly in support. My best friend told me that his girlfriend is basically counting on this health care bill to pass, because in a few months she'll have to be taken off her parents' health insurance (when she turns 26 or something). She has a heart condition for which she takes a pill every day (alas, I don't know what the heart condition is). As long as she takes her meds she's fine. But they're rather expensive and if she doesn't take them, she passes out. A lot. She's currently a nanny for a few families, and obviously that job has no health insurance. So she's basically hoping for this to pass by the time she's taken off her parents' health insurance and/or her meds run out.

So perhaps my experiences and the experiences of some of the people I know sway my thoughts. And it does seem that I have a more liberal bent to my views than many of my peers (which is odd, because in undergrad my views were pretty moderate). To learn more about the health care bill, the NY Times did an excellent job compiling several articles they wrong on the subject here. And this article in particular struck a chord.

In other news of positivity, I got both positions I ran for (as I mentioned in this post)! So I got the positions for APAMSA co-president and FMSA patient education co-chair. W00t! :-P This is exciting, now I have the power to enact changes to the frustration of the current systems. Hopefully my vision will be more efficient/effective than the outgoing people's.
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This doesn't really fall into either of the above categories (though I suppose it could fall under "Negativity"), but there are couple friends who I'll never come out to. I was chatting on AIM with Harry and the topic of homosexuality and bisexuality came up. He's basically uncomfortable with both because: 1.) it's against the natural order of things - like, evolutionary dead end; and 2.) he thinks most homosexuals are actually confused and not "really" gay. I spent a good while discussing with him how his views are inaccurate and fall apart easily. But I can only do so much without challenging him to a mental duel - which I would win but would lose him to my "cause" in the aftermath. Oh well.

And now, to reveal the specialness of the picture at the very beginning of this post . . .

That picture (supposedly) is taken on a particular day at a particular time. And if you flip the picture 90-degrees, you get this:
Isn't that cool?! I don't know if it's PhotoShop'd, but I sure hope not. It's pretty amazing.

---TANGENT---
And lastly before I go (I know I've ranted quite without much structure a bit in this post), I'd just like to say that I wonder where Dave from Daze Gone Bi is. Has anyone seen/heard from him? Last he blogged, his laptop had serious issues and needed to get fixed. But that was over a month ago. :-/

I sent him an email but he hasn't replied. I hope everything's alright and that he returns to the blogosphere very soon. I quite miss him and his posts. In the mean time, I hope everything's going well for him!!
---END TANGENT---

Mask of Genetics

Genetics is a mysterious and complex realm, a field that frustrates and scares many. I've never explicitly explained why genetics is a field that fascinates me and motivates me. If you told me 4-5 years ago that I'd be so interested in genetics now I might've laughed at you. If you told me that I'd be wearing my Mask of Genetics now I might scoff at the thought. Why then is it such a focus of mine? Truth be told, I kind of "fell" into this field of interest and here's how it began.

I did a lot of research in undergrad. I first worked in a pharmacology lab that focused on the Ras oncogene (genes that are over-expressed in cancer) pathway - in particular its role in neurofibromatosis and breast cancer. Then I worked in a human genetics lab on genetic deafness. With some genetics research under my belt, I had a decent grounding before I even took the intro to genetics course. I continued in my one-year foray into grad school by working in a colorectal genetic epidemiology lab.

Also in undergrad, genetics was emphasized in many of my biology courses. It was taught as being the "thread" that united and wove through all of biology, and all of life. Through genetics we can better understand evolution, development, and disease. It helps to connect things such that things that wouldn't otherwise make sense starts to make sense. It's not perfect (is anything?) but it gets the point across pretty well.

Research!
Evolution Class
Mask of Biology I
Mask of Biology II

I then began to pursue my interest in genetics further, in grad school. I took several courses with genetics as the focus - how genetics was utilized in public health, how the public views genetics, how physicians view genetics, how med school education shies away from genetics and how this can be improved, etc. My friend, AG-F, is a genetic counseling student. So having her perspective had a huge impact on me.

At this time, with the more I learned about genetic diseases and cancer genetics, it began to become a bit more "real." I had a friend whose cousin had/has colorectal cancer in his early 20s. And towards the end of the semester my friend, RZ-F, calls me to tell me someone who used to live in her hall sophomore year died of colorectal cancer. At age 22. I had vaguely known him. Something like this was obviously genetic in nature. In fact, with my (public heath) knowledge I could diagnose that without even having to think. How could it have been missed? How could his doctor(s) not notice? Did they not take an accurate and detail family history? Was he adopted? So many questions, so many frustrations that I could know "so much" and be able to do absolutely nothing.

Apparently genetics is something most physicians avoid or forget easily (or never learned it well in the first place). As such, genetic conditions are often missed or misdiagnosed. I had endeavored then, as I had all semester long, to continue to teach my undergrad students about genetics with a health "twist" so that even if they never take a genetics course again, it lingers in the back of their mind. The least I could do (at that point) was educate the generation or two of potential physicians and researchers after me about the emerging importance of genetics in health and medicine.

Just Gotta Press On
Too Epic
Mask of Teaching

Perhaps above all, genetics holds this kind of awe and mysticism for me. It's difficult to explain, but there's something to be said for genetics to be a literal and metaphorical link between all people and all organisms. That we share over 99% of our DNA with the person next to us, that we share the same building blocks as the food we eat, as the diseases that make us sick, as the grass and the trees and the animals. And DNA operates without consciousness, it just continues to work almost flawlessly every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

0.01%
Life is for the Living
Masks of Sexuality I
The "Gay Gene" Part I
The "Gay Gene" Part II
The "Gay Gene" Part III

Hopefully after this one would have a clearer view of my Mask of Genetics. If not, read the links in this post to all my past posts with a heavy genetics emphasis to them (and likely there are a couple I missed). It's clear that genetics permeates many posts in my blog and blends into several of my other Masks. I suppose in a sense it's also the "thread" that binds parts of my blog and some of my Masks together with me.

Under the Shadow of Leaves

It is a good day.

I sit on a stone bench under the shadow of leaves, the sun poking through as if light were leaking through the green canopy. Looking out, the sky is clear blue except for the presence of a few wispy clouds. The day is bright and full of colors forgotten in the seasons prior.

I close my eyes and hear the sounds of toddlers and children laughing, of students talking, of many feet walking by. I wonder, how many hundreds of thousands of people have passed this point? What were they thinking as they passed by? The birds above sing their chorus in a language I cannot decipher. Far off a group of people are playing some instruments - a guitar and some drums. Though unrefined and unpolished, the sounds mix organically into carefree music.

A breeze blows by, carrying with it the scent of approaching summer. It is the smell of leaves, of living wood, of flowers, of the stone buildings - sentinels that resist the wear of time. It is the smell of life itself, and nourishes my lungs in a way I had taken for granted. I hold out my hands and arms into the breeze, as if to slow it down or capture it. Instead, the invisible force flows up over and down under my arms. It flows between my fingers, eddying slightly and briefly into an almost tangible ball in the palm of my hands. It feels as though I was almost able to grasp the breath of the world.

Something speaks to me, faint just beyond the detection of my senses. I see nothing, hear no words, smell no source, touch no object - but it is there. It surrounds me like an emotion but is not an emotion. Suddenly it feels as if things will be okay. And all those times I have tried to believe, to rationally seek answers to the mysteries, to understand that which cannot be tested, all this does not matter. It is there, it is here, and somehow I know things will be okay.

I open my eyes and walk away from my stone bench, away out from under the shadow of leaves. I am cloaked in the day and the moment and the world and this mystery. I will be okay.

It is a good day.
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A small prose passage. A memory - a snapshot capturing what I feel on the best of days. It is curious how I never expect it but always welcomed, replenishing my inner strength.

You may have noticed my new blog title banner thing. I'd like to give a HUGE shout out to J of Southern Inebriation for designing it for me at my request (he's an art major, can you tell?). I will explain the 5 panels of this banner from the left to the right:

The first panel is of Chinese opera masks and the Great Wall. It represents my background: being Chinese, culture and language has been a huge influence in my life (sometimes good, sometimes bad). The second panel is of a stethoscope on a book. It represents my future, my goals and aspirations: for a long time I have worked my ass off towards getting into medical school and (hopefully) I will come out poised to be an excellent doctor. The third panel you should all recognize as the smiley face banner I had previously. It represents outlet and others: it is this blog and all of you who read, and all of you I talk to. The fourth panel is of a flower I took while visiting a clinic in China. It represents life: I was a biology major in undergrad not primarily because it's the "easiest" path to medical school, but because it can give one an appreciation for life - for all its complexities, and mysteries, and frailty, and endurance. The last panel is of a ghostly mask of sorts. It represents conflict and struggle: all the uncertainty and frustration that being bi/gay brings and a kind of loneliness that comes with an inability to find "the one."

Finally, to conclude this post, I would like to give a shout out to the following 3 blogs that I've had the pleasure to read fully on. They may need no introduction as many of you already read them, but if not, do go over and say hi! And they are:

Enjoying the Journey
Hellogenation
Overrated Integrity

Splattered Mind

This post may be quite long. You've been forewarned.
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Discussion Sections

So last week I had to teach my 3 discussion sections. Each one was rather unique. My first section (on Tuesday) consisted of almost all seniors. I could see the senioritis setting in, as they just did not seem to care. My second section (on Friday) was pretty quiet and timid, mostly juniors and sophomores. I got the vibe that they didn't really want to be there. My third section (also on Friday) consisted of mostly sophomores and juniors. I actually really liked this section. They responded pretty well (aka, didn't just sit in utter silence staring) to some of the tidbits I said to get their minds working.

I feel just a wee bit bad for my Tuesday section simply because they're the first, and I'm basically still working out the kinks in my lesson plans. I changed it up a bit between Tuesday and Friday sections. I assumed that, because the Tuesday section was almost all seniors, that they knew things that in reality they didn't. I didn't make this mistake with my last 2 sections.

Anyway, I survived! And I just finished prepping for tomorrow's section. I think I have this week pretty well planned, hopefully execution will be just as good. Somehow I'm expected to teach them Bayesian probability when I haven't been formally taught it myself. This may be interesting . . .
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Dinner Cook-off

Saturday was our (AG-F, SR-F, RZ-F, and my) massive cook-off day. I arrived at about 4pm to AG-F's apartment and helped her and her boyfriend (DC-M) clean her apartment before SR-F and RZ-F arrived about 2 hours later. Our dinner "menu" consisted of: surf-n-turf (tilapia and steak), golabki, pumpkin bread, apple pie, and bread pudding.

Disasters struck the moment we started cooking. While AG-F instructed me how to make surf-n-turf, I accidentally breaded the steak. Okay, minor issue. As she tried to help me speed the cooking along, she put too much olive oil in the pan, so when I cooked the breaded tilapia it was almost submerged in oil. Then AG-F was cooking the rice in a pot (she didn't have a rice cooker) and burnt the bottom layer of rice, causing the apartment to fill with smoke. We cracked 2 windows open, and it was interesting that the smoke alarm didn't go off. Then just as SR-F was about to put her apple pie in the oven, she dropped it, causing a sizable chunk to fall out.

Despite all this, it was a miracle that no one got hurt (4 people in a tiny tiny kitchen, mind you). There was a large carving knife on the floor next to where we ate . . . Also, all the food actually tasted pretty good. Okay, the tilapia was a bit greasy and the steak tasted a bit odd (not bad, just kind of weird - will not bread steak again). But everything else was actually really good! We watched WALL-E after dinner, recovering from being so ridiculously stuffed.

By the way, you know you're a science major (and have worked in a lab too long) when you say something like, "Where's my aliquot of bread pudding?" Seriously . . . I said aliquot. o.O
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Western blot

So I'm helping AG-F design a Western blot experiment (I won't go into the details of it here) to detect this particular protein she's interested in. I have the most experience in this technique out of everyone she knows, including her labmates and mine. So I'm offering her help every step of the way, as we hope it can be done.

Interestingly, due to "lab politics," she has to keep this experiment on the down-low. Her lab has decreed that further investigation into the expression of this protein would be a waste of time, but she wants to prove that there is something there that's meaningful. A Western blot, if she can get it to work, would do just the trick.

Anyway, how cool is it that I'm good enough at something that people would come to me for advice and such?! ^_^
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Winter Not-Wonderland

This is a snowy bus stop I was standing across from.

This is a massive snow pile.

This is me, in my eskimo ninja form.

I'm SO glad that the temperature is now in the positive double-digits. I'm tired of walking out of my apartment and having the inside of my nose freeze (literally) instantly because the weather's -7 F or something. We actually cheered when the temperature reached 10 F (-12ish C). I mean, we walk outside and we didn't instantly feel frozen to the bone! That's progress. Cannot wait until spring is here.
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What else . . .

Today I got my travel vaccinations. I was surprised by how few vaccinations I needed to go to Beijing and Tianjin, China. All I got was the flu vaccine shot, the hepatitis A vaccine shot, and the typhoid fever oral vaccine. I didn't know that hepatitis A could be trasmitted via food, water, and feces. Good to know. I have no intention of getting hepatitis A, and subsequently cirrohsis of my liver and possibly liver cancer later on. The doctor was amiable and easy to talk to, and I was actively observing her attitude and manners so that I may learn a bit. She was right about the muscle soreness - both my upper arms are now sore from the shots. Grrr.

The one thing that surprised me the most about the whole travel vaccination was how expensive it was. Apparently, my parent's health insurance doesn't cover travel vaccinations, so the whole $79 had to be paid. Stupid insurance, not even good where it's needed. At least it paid for half of the cost of the meds to combat traveler's diarrhea (in case I get it) and the oral typhoid vaccine. Still though, that added up to another $45. -_-

It's interesting being on the "other side" of teaching. As a student, we interact with professors a particular way. Sometimes we feel like they're making the questions particularly difficult to be mean or something. In reality, I think this is rarely true - at least with the class I'm GSI-ing for. Several of my students had expressed their concerns about the course, which I relayed to the professors lecturing for the course. We spend most of our 1-hour prep session not discussing what we're doing in discussion sections, but rather how to best tactfully address student issues - how to tell them something like, "No, the quizzes aren't meant to be easy, only easier than the hardest questions you'd see on the exam."

Lastly, there appears to be a leak from the apartment above me. There was water falling down the side of one of my walls near the corner. That has stopped and it looks like it's drying. But that's going to stain. I hope I'm not charged for damages when I move out . . .

---TANGENT---
It was short-lived, but I have to say goodbye to the blog Equal Eight. :( I really enjoyed that blog. I hope all who've had the pleasure of reading that blog remember the amusement and joy it brought its readers.
---END TANGENT---

In Defiance . . .

. . . against studying for my exams next week. This is a really random post and it may end up being longer than I intend. You've been forewarned. :P

I was on my way to the library today to study during the football game because the library would be deserted. On my way, I took this pic:
No joke, I was literally within a meter or so of that deer. And it didn't even flinch. Just stood there eating. The deer on north campus here must be really used to people.

Speaking of creatures, there are a lot of fruitflies in my apartment. Which makes little sense because there isn't any fruit laying out, much less overripe fruit. I think these fruitflies have evolved to live off another food source, like my chocolate. I saw a fruitfly in my bag of chocolates (don't worry, the chocolates were still in their wrappers) and I thought that was odd.

Yesterday (Friday) I had the LONGEST lab meeting ever. I was good for all by the last 10 minutes or so, in which I began nodding off. I made the unfortunate choice of sitting right in front of the presenter's seat. So every time the PI looked back to talk to the presenter, he had to look past me (at least the presenter couldn't see if I was nodding off or not). I had also planned to attempt my apparently very ambitious 1-day Western blot. Apparently I am the "expert" on Western blots in my lab (my lab is not a protein lab). So much so that my researcher, while absent due to studying for the USMLE, has charged me with troubleshooting the Western blot technique in the lab and developing a modified protocol for our experiments. That did not happen on Friday as I had to measure and aliquot the amount of protein to use, and by then I didn't want to stay in lab any longer. To get an idea of how long a Western blot takes, skim the following (it's boring, so I won't blame anyone for skipping):

1.5 hours running the protein gel
30 minutes transferring the proteins from gel to membrane
1-2 hours blocking the membrane in milk
1 hour incubating the membrane in primary antibody
10-minute washes in TBS-T solution, 3 times
1 hour incubating the membrane in secondary antibody
10-minute washes in TBS-T solution, 3 times
Expose glow-in-the-dark proteins (if successful) to film and develop

In other news, I brought back my cello over break! I've missed playing my cello. :D I also played my piano a bit while I was home. Oh, right before break, a strange thing occured when I went to the gym. After I had finished working out I wanted to wash my hands, so I walked to the bathroom in the locker room. When I got near there was this guy, in his 40s or 50s I imagine, shaving his head naked at the sinks. I turned around, got dressed, and just left. Who does that (shave their head naked in the locker room, I mean)?!

Speaking of working out, I've come to realize that my legs are disproportionately more muscular than the rest of me, but not by a huge margin. My arms and shoulders are developing nicely (albeit slowly), and to think that 3 years ago I wouldn't even dream of seeing even the faint traces of muscle there. Now, if only there was a good way to work out my abs to get rid of the flab there (and to lose 10-15 lbs in general) . . . anyone have any suggestions?

The last two weeks or so have been really strange for me. Each day I swing back and forth between being really horny and really not horny. And by really horny I mean suddenly getting hard and all sensitive down there and then jacking off 2-3 times in 2 hours. My skin's starting to get sore from going back and forth so much, maybe I should use some lube if this trend continues . . .

Anyway, the real point of this post. I have a take-home exam in epidemiology that I'm avoiding. And I have to study for my toxicology (anti-pharmacy) exam next Thursday which I'm avoiding. I really shouldn't as that exam can kick my ass. I also have to write something up on biobanking. So what was I doing to avoid studying? Reading blogs. So while listening to several of Brahms' symphonies, I read the following blogs and left a batch of comments (potentially to the annoyance of their owners?):

Small Step on the Other Side
eggSPLICE!
AJ's Ramblings
The Random Thoughts of Crash

All are cool new bloggers, so go over and say hi! :D Also, give AJ a hug, he needs one right now.

Lastly, a quote I told Tim from a story of a boy and the universe I'd post:

Attitude

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more than facts. Its is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company . . . a church . . . a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past . . . we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude . . . I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you . . . we are in charge of our attitudes."

~ Charles Swindoll

A Much Needed Break

I'm home right now for the next 4 days. Hurray for short fall study break! Too bad it's rather cold at home, as my parents are resisting turning on the heat for as long as possible.

I got my grade on my pathophysiology exam on Monday. I got an A!! :D Apparently our class murdered the average, as it's usually around 60-70% whereas our average was around 81%. There were some poorly worded questions, though none particularly difficult.

This week was my first full week of work. It's tiring - so many tumor samples. Here's a pic of the lobby of my research building. I work on the first floor off to the far right corner.

And 3 days ago I got a package in the mail. When I opened it up, I saw that it was a package from my friend JW-F from New York. It was a venus flytrap!! I've no idea how I'm going to manage to keep it alive in the long-run, but it's really really cool. Maybe it'll eat some of the bugs crawling about my apartment.

I think I'll call it "Zetsu" (villain from the anime Naruto). Yes, I'm dorky like that.

And finally, a few pics to indicate that autumn has truly begun here in the midwest.

Lastly, I added in the sidebar of this blog a section called "Cast of Characters" as I realize that it may be difficult to follow who routinely pops up in my blog, as I code names (because I don't feel like inventing names for people). You may have to scroll down a bit to get to that section.

Halcyon Days

This post is actually kind of two posts merged into one - I meant to write one yesterday but never got to it . . .
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From the moment I left my apartment, I knew it was going to be a good day. As I stepped out from the stairwell into the open sun, I could feel its warmth basking my skin. It was still a bit cool out - in the mid-60s Fahrenheit - but I was excited that the days were finally getting warmer. I walked towards the diag, the central heart of campus.

I feel the spring days slowly rolling into summer. Everywhere people were out, but the density had dwindled significantly compared to the academic year. As I walked closer to the diag, I could feel the pulse of a campus still very much alive, content on living out the next few months in a lazy dream.

People sat at nearly every bench or on blankets on the grass. I walk under the shade of the trees for but a moment, and yet I could still perceive the cool shadows on my skin - still a bit too cool for me to actively seek its company. I close my eyes for a moment and I could smell the green grass, the maples and pines, the sunbaked concrete, the distance fragrance of flowers. I could feel the gentle breeze flow by me, brushing across the small hairs on my arms, encompassing parts of my fingers while leaving other parts of my hand untouched. It's as if the wind were trying to hold my hands as it moved by, as if trying to put a secret message in my hands.

I reach an unoccupied concrete bench. I could feel the warmth left by the sun on the concrete as I sat down. I could once again feel the sun's embrace once again as it beamed down from a sky with few clouds. I put down my backpack, took out a book, and began to read. Occasionally I would see a family with young children pass by. Sometimes they stopped at the fountain a little ways in front of me, playing by the sides. At one point two dads jogged by and talking, their toddler sons half-asleep in their strollers. Every now and then I would see a couple kissing, holding hands, and though normally I would feel lonely at this sight, I did not mind it much today. Nothing was going to get between me and my book. I welcomed the solitude.

Hours passed, I could feel the sun wanting to set. It was time for dinner anyway.
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The above was an attempt at prose-like writing, just something different to describe how I felt. Whether or not I achieved that depends on the reader.

Anyway, my Sunday was quite amusing. First I went to do laundry. Now, this in itself isn't remarkable. But first some quick background: my apartment uses laundry card keys rather than being coin operated or whatnot. I had $3 on my card, and I needed $4.50 to do 2 washes and 1 drying. So I debated whether or not to just wash and dry half my laundry, or wash half my laundry while hand-washing the other half and then drying both, or just washing both and air-drying all. I decided to take the last option. I took every cloth hanger I had and hung my wet shirts and jeans on them. I found a length of twine in my drawer, with which I made a drying line by tying one end on the frame of our bunk bed and the other to inside my closet. I was successful! I had my socks arranged in a neat ring on the sides of my laundry basket, and my towel occupied its own rack in the bathroom. Only time would tell . . . and now more than half a day later, I can say most of my clothes are dry (but it's way too late at night for me to fold them). So that was my silly laundry idea. Hey, if my parents could air-dry all their laundry back in their day, surely I can survive one day without a dryer.

By now it was about 1:30pm. I still hadn't eaten anything all day. I didn't feel as hungry as I probably should've been. I debated making eggs and toast, then French toast, then pancakes, then biscuits with nutella (except I don't have any nutella), and then to brownies (didn't have any brownie mix either - and I wasn't actually considering that an option). I kept going back and forth on these ideas. Finally I just decided to go out to a sandwich place to get a sandwich and a malt. That was a strong call.

I read some more outside somewhere on campus. I relocated myself a couple times as there are some very large bees residing in the area. It makes me nervous when they constantly fly near me for more than a few minutes. About an hour later, I get a call from SC-F asking to play baseball. I readily agreed, and 10-15 minutes later I was ready to go. I met her, JW-M and their friends for a game of baseball. Bear in mind I haven't touched a baseball glove nor a bat in just over 6 years. I didn't even have a glove of my own and had to borrow one of theirs. That didn't work out optimally as I'm left-handed and the only left-handed person there. That felt awkward . . . But all things considered, I did pretty well.

I ran/walked along the railroad tracks partway back to my apartment. There were "No trespassing" signs everywhere with severe warnings - I kept kind of thinking someone would shoot me. But I got back in one piece and rehearsed trio music with SR-F (violinist) and EA-F (violist). My apartment's rather dim, so I turned on several lights including some Christmas lights I had been too lazy to take down. I have a special place in my heart for Christmas lights.

Later, we went to go see the new Indiana Jones movie. It was alright, it was certainly different from the previous movies in many ways. But in some ways, it was exactly the same. Also something else I noticed: when did Shia LaBeouf become cute or - dare I say it - even kind of hot? My fellow blogger at Minding the Heart maintains it was Tranformers when he became attractive. Whatever the reason, I'm just a bit envious how he turned from that once-dorky/nerdy kid into someone quite attractive. Sometimes I wish I could undergo such a transformation with as much grace.

All in all, it was a pretty good and relaxing weekend. Though I still have laundry to fold . . . I'll do that in the morning. And I didn't finish my book, though I've only about 25 pages left to go. Yet another thing to finish tomorrow morning.

Mask of Biology II: Evolution

Evolution. Survival of the fittest. Darwin and natural selection of the most adaptive traits. If only it were so simple. This was what I once thought as well, despite being a biology major. It's an elegant and beautiful theory, but it's a theory in the same way that gravity's a theory. It has so many subtleties that are just now being explored. In the span of a single semester, I've had exposure to but only a fraction of evolution's complexity.

While I realize that few reading this might find this particular post interesting, I hope those that do can see my appreciation and awe of nature, and the humbleness it brings through my Mask of Biology. I don't know if my words will do any kind of justice to how I feel, but if it conveys even a little bit, I will count it a success.
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1. Not always selection of the most adaptive
There is the tendency to think that the traits that are most adaptive and beneficial will always get passed on whereas detrimental traits will be eliminated. This is a rather gross over-simplification. Firstly, mutations are the ultimate source of variation. Most mutations are neutral, meaning that they don't impact the organism or its offspring at all. Some are harmful and some are beneficial.

Neutral mutations are passed on from generation to generation; over time, enough accumulate to make a difference in the genome (complete set of genes) of that organism. There are also varying degrees of detrimental and beneficial. The most detrimental (resulting in death before reproductive maturity) gets purged from the population rather quickly. Then there are some traits that are bad . . . but not so bad as to be worth eliminating. The opposite goes for beneficial traits. Some are so marginally beneficial that they might "accidentally" get lost. Sometimes really beneficial traits get "fixed" in the population, meaning that most individuals in that population will carry that trait.

This has been fairly straightforward so far. Now there's something called "linkage disequilibrium," another is called "positive selection sweep." In linkage disequilibrium (LD) it basically means that 2 traits are almost always seen together because they're physically very close to each other on chromosome. So if a mildly bad trait is next to a really good trait, chances are that you'll see both of them at the same time. Positive selection sweep is a means to detect whether or not positive selection (selection for a positive, aka beneficial, trait) has happened. Like LD, sometimes the trait being selected for is "so good" that it carries along bad traits with it as it "sweeps" across the genome.

Interestingly, it should also be worth noting that just because a trait's good, doesn't mean it'll reach fixation (again, where most individuals in the population carry the trait) on the first try. In fact, many/most such traits must arise independently several times before it can reach fixation. In a way, it's more or less the roll of a die.

2. Order matters
What evolves first and what evolves second matters. A good example is bat wings. 2 things must happen in the evolution of bat wings: elongation of finger bones and maintenance of skin webbing between the fingers. Both require evolution of different regulatory mechanisms, the question is, which came first?

In another paper, scientists "forced" bacteria to evolve from one state to another by making them adapt to a new food source and environment. So let's say the bacteria evolve from Species 1 to Species 2, and it required mutations A, B, C, and D. They went back and painstakingly made each mutation in different combinations (i.e. ABCD, ACDB, BCDA, etc) to see what happened. Surprisingly, they found that only a handful of combinations are able to evolve the bacteria from Species 1 to Species 2.

So back to the bat wings, just a sample of its complexity. The expression of the gene bmp4 increases bone growth, so it increases finger length. However, it also prevents interdigital webbing (skin between fingers). So another set of 2-3 genes are required to turn off bmp4 expression between the fingers. So again, which came first? Repression of bmp4 between fingers, or increase in bmp4 expression all around? No one knows.

3. Large vs. small mutations
There has been a debate between "large" mutations and "small" mutations. Large mutations are mutations that causes a sudden or significant change. For example, the alteration of 3 genes can change cells from growing cells to growing scales or feathers. Small mutations are mutations that on their own don't do much, but the sum product of them create large changes.

This is related to sudden change theories, like punctuated equilibrium or "hopeful monsters," to gradualism promoted by Darwin. There are clearly evidence of both throughout natural history. Sometimes you get a freaky mutation that just so happens to work, so it does. And other times small changes accumulate over many generations, and things gradually change from one thing to the other.

So even in the way things evolve there is no consensus.

4. Canalization
There are several concepts in evolution where diversity is somehow hidden or limited. This seems counterintuitive as generally evolution is thought of a driving force for change, for creating diversity, and not for maintaining the status quo. Why might this be? Well, for some things you really really don't want mutations to occur. For example, if a bad mutation occurred in the formation of the brain, that organism's brains will be scrambled. So you want brain formation to stay more or less the same throughout evolution. There are several biological mechanisms that prevent mutations or at least mask their effects from showing.

One is canalization, which is any genetic mechanism that reduces phenotypic diversity. Phenotype is what's actually expressed and seen. Again, genotype = what the genes actually say, and phenotype = what's actually seen. So a phenotype might be brown eyes when that person really has the genotype for brown and blue eyes.

Canalization acts kind of like a rug that hides things underneath it. What this means is that there's some genotype or genetic trait that acts like a rug. And it hides other genetic mutations under it, so the phenotypes for those mutations aren't seen. But, if conditions are just right, the rug can be pulled aside or shifted. And some of the phenotypes that were hidden under it can be seen.

5. Developmental System Drift
This is one of my favorite concepts. Basically you have a phenotype, but for that phenotype there are more than one genetic mechanisms that create it. At one point there may have only been one genotype for that phenotype, but over time, small mutations occur until eventually, you have 2+ different genotypes that still express the same phenotype.

I think I've used this analogy before. Let there be two genotypes "Shawn" and "Sean." Both are spelled differently but have the same pronunciation (aka, the same phenotype). Now, "Shawn" and "Sean" are considered two different species. So if they interbreed, the offspring would be an infertile or inviable hybrid. This is one way different species similar for a particular trait(s) speciate, or become different species from one another.

Developmental system drift (DSD) also allows the appearance of different phenotypes arising from a single one. For example, from "Shawn" you can get to "Shown" and from "Sean" you get to "Dean." Each only requires one "mutation" to get from something that's pronounced the same to two things that're different.

6. Genetic Constraint
There's a concept that there are simply limits on life. That there are only so many ways to develop along a path once it's been established. There are constraints on how things develop and constraints on what develops.

For example (and this will be a bad example) the evolution of legs favors even numbers. Once the evolutionary path to create legs has been established, legs will always be created in even numbers. This is a limit on what can develop. Then there are limits on how something develops. For example, the brain must develop in a certain way and a certain order. If it goes out of order, bad things happen. So nature constricts how a brain forms.

This leads to an interesting thought-experiment. If we were to back in time and restart the Cambrian explosion, would life on Earth today look the same? Or, if on another planet, conditions were exactly the same as they are here, would life look similar? This concept may not answer these questions. But what it does say is that, once a path has been laid out, there are only so many places it can go. So if life had favored a different set of beginning traits, things might've looked different.
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So yeah, don't know how much of all the above people actually understand. But, if you got through it and even if you don't understand a word of it, I hope you might still be in awe of what the hell it could mean. Of course, this is nothing. "You ain't seen nothing yet" when it comes to evolution. We live in a world of constant change, and I think it's always good to see where things came from and how far they've come (or not).

Anyway, this is all the free-flowing biology for now. If you have any questions about evolution, or something biology, don't hesitate to ask. I may not know the answer (and many times I simply won't), but I think my B.S. in Biology affords enough knowledge to at least make a damn good guess. It's weird to be a graduate now. More on that later!

Mask of Biology I: All I Know

The great philosophers had it right when they said "The one thing I know is that I do not know." Truer words never before said of biology. How long ago was it when we discovered DNA? How long ago did we think that, once we had the human genome sequenced, we'd know everything about ourselves? How long ago did we classify things by the 5 kingdoms rather than the 3 domains?

It's an exciting time for the field of biology. It may be difficult to think, but each year something truly revolutionary in the field of biology emerges. I'd like to now extend the philosopher's statement: "The one thing I know is that I do not know, but I will sure attempt to find the answer." I am a biology major and in a couple days I will graduate with my B.S. in biology; I proudly wear my Mask of Biology.

I've often wondered what I learned these last 4 years of undergrad, what would be useful. I take for granted all the knowledge I did acquire (useful or otherwise) and all the skills I've developed (again, useful or otherwise). It's now almost hard for me to view nature the same way as a non-biology, or even non-science, person.

For example, let's take the model organism Drosophila melanogaster (aka, the fruit fly). I can tell you how it develops from an embryo into a larva. I can tell you some of the major genes controlling its development. I can tell you how their reproductive genetics is different from ours, how sex development is different. I can even tell you how to get legs to grow in place of antennae, or eyes to form on legs. While this sounds impressive, I'm always humbled by how much I don't know. One might incline to think, given the last section, that we biologists can "play God" with these organisms. However, what we do is like comparing kids with Legos to professions architects. We know so much, yet oh so little.

I have two groups of friends: a group consisting of largely biology majors like myself, and another group where I'm pretty much the sole "resident biologist." This latter group consists of poli-sci, Asian studies, history, computer sciences, and various engineering majors. I only truly appreciate how much I actually do know when I attempt to answer their questions about biology. For example, tonight I went through a gamut from plant speciation to the human genome project to gene regulation to stem cell research to viruses to mutations and cancer to how our immune systems work. Let's take, for instance, the immune system. I've long known that it consists of more than the "stereotypical" white blood cell. It contains B cells, T cells, macrophages (the stereotypical WBCs), and esinophils, amongst others. But my friend didn't know this, and I was somewhat stunned.

I know I will leave this university with, if nothing else, a deep appreciation and respect for nature and its vast complexity (that, and the ability to read biology papers and de-cypher its esoteric writing). My roommate, DvF-M, believes that in 10 years a computer programmer can completely decode genetics and know exactly what does what and how. His argument is that "it's only a code, we just have to crack it." Well roomie, this code is something the likes you've never worked with because it doesn't follow the rules as strictly as you would like to think.

Biology is "divine" territory. It's beautiful and logical, yet at the same time completely random and irrational. One day we may able to know everything there is to know, this I believe. Yet I also believe that day is a long long long ways away. Even though each year revolutionary papers are published, we're still barely scratching the surface. We're still limited a handful of "model" organisms that we understand well, and all other are mysteries.

My next post will be the long-awaited "evolution" post. And I hope to show how evolution is not a simple concept of "survival of the fittest," but rather something so much more, all-encompassing, and far-reaching in every branch of biology.

Evolution Class

I am a biology major. I believe in evolution. I think it's an amazingly beautiful and elegant concept. It's also very mysterious because we know very little about it. I will write a separate post on the amazing-ness that is evolution, but this one is dedicated to one of my professors.

I'm taking a class this semester on genetics, development, and evolution, and how these three things tie together. My professor for that class is so cute! She's so accomplished and established in her field - she knows all the big shots in the evolution-development (henceforth called evo-devo) field. She's also a great human being - in fact, many of the girls in my class aspire to be like her. That says something.

After class she sometimes randomly emails us things. Like this:

I can't help but wonder, how did we got here from speciation again? Nonetheless . . .

7 legged, hermaphrodite lamb
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/08/02/7legged.lamb.reut/index.html
http://xo.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/lamb-born-with-.html

"Bhagat, they discovered, had one of the world's most bizarre medical conditions - fetus in fetu"
http://abcnews.go.com/primetime/story?id=2346476&page=1

Or this other time:

Walking back from class, I finally thought of a good example:

Given the name "phenotype" we discussed, possible "genotypes" are Sean and Shawn. If a mutation is a change of one letter, it is much easier to get to a new phenotype of "Dean" if you start at Sean rather than Shawn.

Have a nice weekend!

Okay, this email requires a bit of background. Genotype is what our genes actually are, and phenotypes is what's actually expressed or seen. The two don't always go hand-in-hand per se. For example, you may have the genes for blue eyes but actually have brown eyes. Your genotype includes the genes for blue eyes, but your phenotype is brown eyes.

Now, this email refers to a phenomenon called "developmental systems drift" (or DSD for short). Way back in the 1990s, people thought that similar developmental pathways used the same genes. For example, the development of the complex eye from a handful of cells only used a certain set of genetic mechanisms. But under DSD, a developmental pathway could result from 2 or more different genetic mechanisms.

So in her example, the names Sean and Shawn are pronounced the same. The pronunciation of these words is the phenotype, while the actual spelling of the names is the genotype. We were talking about how DSD could lead to phenotypic variation. So, a new phenotype would result when a mutation caused both the spelling and pronunciation to change, such as when Sean changed into Dean and the pronunciation along with it.

So that's that. It's a really cool concept, because it's totally contrary to logic and makes you go "wtf" when talking about evolution. Oh! She went to a "fly meeting" in San Diego last week (She studies the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, btw). Anyway, she met the person who created PLoS (or the Public Library of Science), and she got a T-shirt from him that says "Drosophila loves PLoS." She was like, "I wasn't thinking of ever wearing this outside my house . . ." We making her wear that to class on Tuesday. Apparently, this guy rented a beach house for his lab during the meeting. And someone there was from Austria and knew how to make sausages from scratch.

That's all for now. One of the next posts will be on evolution. And how sweet it is.

Birthday Travels

Okay, here's the post I was going to blog like, half a week ago or something like that. So, I've been spending quite a bit of money on my friends' birthdays thus far this semester. Yes, it's all been fun, but it still hurts to see the numbers in my account go down that quickly (or more readily, the speed at which my wallet empties itself). So, here are the two places we went to.

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RZ-F's birthday
For her birthday we (about 8 of us) decided to go to Canada for a day on a Saturday. We first went to some place in Windsor, Ontario, for dim sum. It's like this "famous" dim sum place, at least amongst Asians in every US state bordering Ontario and probably in Ontario too. I recognized it immediately as my family used to go there sometimes. And yeah, the food was still good, and hopefully it'll always be good.

A little background on "dim sum." Dim sum is (I think) a Southern Chinese thing. It's basically a certain kind of brunch/lunch where you don't order dishes. The waiters wheel around carts with a wide assortment of appetizers on them. You basically just eat appetizer after appetizer. The appetizers are things like sesame balls, egg custard tart, dumplings, and a variety of steamed or baked buns. You can order an actual dish, like pan-fried noodles or something, if you want, but that's not critical to dim sum - the carts and carts of appetizers are.

After dim sum, we went to this place called Pelee Point. It's a really cool nature area near one of the Great Lakes (don't remember which one, Lake Erie I think). There was a marshland that we went to first, there were frogs there! Pelee Point itself is where this part of the beach juts out into the lake. 3 of my friends and I took the "scenic" route through the woods. Then we found the road again, haha. Somehow, the 4 of us made it to the end of Pelee Point before the other group of 4, who wanted to walk along the beach. It was a great view from Pelee Point, as you'll in the next several pics.












After we finished up at Pelee Point, we went to the casino in Windsor. RZ-F wanted to gamble a bit, but most everyone else just wanted to see what there was to drink. I didn't really want to partake in either, but I must admit, some of the drinks did taste really good. I liked this particular drink with blue Curacao, Sprite, and lemon/lime juice. Also, "sex on the beach" is a really good drink too, haha. Towards the end of our time in the casino, I had 2 drunk friends (girls) in arms - one hooked on each - trying to steer them in the right directions. Alas, I'm always the one stuck like this in such situations. I ended up going home in a car with the 2 drunk ones; that would've been interesting when crossing the border if they hadn't both fallen asleep.

SR-F's birthday
So SR-F's wanted to take us (RZ-F, JW-F, and me) up north for the weekend of her birthday. Her family owns a condo just north of Petoskey, MI. Driving all the way up there too several hours, and the weather was nasty - rainy, cold, and dark. That first night was unpleasant.

But the next day (Saturday) was amazing. By mid-morning, the clouds had cleared and the sun had come out. We first went to a corn maze at some farm. That was entertaining for a little while - 4 college students getting stupidly lost in a muddy and puddle-filled corn maze. Then we went even further north to Harbor Springs, which was a nice tourist-y town on Lake Michigan. It was a really nice area and I love walking through Midwest downtown areas. And the fall colors were amazing - another prominent feature of the Midwest.












Later that day, right before sunset, we went to a lighthouse in Petoskey. It was really cool watching the sun set beneath the lake from the lighthouse (it was a small lighthouse). Then came the highlight of the day.












Oh yeah, we went out to eat every meal . . . so that accrued quite a sum. We ate dinner at this local place which was okay, and then went for ice cream afterwards. Oh, how I do love ice cream. Anyway, back to the highlight of the day. Around 1:30am or so, there was supposed to be the Orionid Meteor Shower. Around dinnertime new clouds had rolled in, but by 1am or so, the sky was clear again! So we went out onto the balcony of SR-F's family condo and watched the sky for meteors. Honestly, even if there weren't meteors, there were SO many visible stars because we were in a rural area with very little light pollution. I hadn't seen that many stars and constellations so clearly in years! (I used to be a huge astronomy nut in like elementary/middle school.) They were truly beautiful and I found it touching, for lack of better words. But of course we also saw several meteors go by (at a rate of maybe 1-3 every 5 minutes or so), and that was really really cool. I only regret that my digital camera wasn't good enough to capture anything in such low light. We watched the meteors until almost 3am, but then we really needed to sleep as we were going to head out by 9am in the morning.

I woke up around 8am or so, early enough to see the sun rise. So I took several pictures. I love taking scenic pictures. That pretty sums up that entire trip. SR-F, JW-F, and I had to be back for orchestra rehearsal that afternoon, so we sped along on the highway.
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So I hope everyone enjoys these pics as much as I do. Pictures capture great memories. And now that I've finished drinking my green tea, it's time to take a shower then watch anime or something before going to sleep.