Insect love

Normally I would not say I love insects, but one look at his gallery- I am in love with these scary monsters!

Earth day was yesterday folks

If you Earth day is something that was instituted very recently, you are wrong. April 22nd was declared the Earth day in 1970 in the US. It is mostly celebrated as Earth week these days. The International Earth Day is different and is celebrated on March 21st, the equinox day. Whichever day or week it is, I am really proud that Harvard is really big on reduce, reuse, recycle policy and I am proud of myself because I don't throw anything that can be recycled or reused (no, I am serious, not even the tiniest scrap of paper gets thrown in the trash). In fact Harvard does much better than a lot of other universities. So do Boston and Cambridge- these cities are far more advanced in terms of their sustenance policies than most other.
Quick diversion here: I am proud of my parents too because they are big on the three Rs so much so that my dad made a usable mug out of a milk bottle!
For some of us, it might not mean anything at all. But think about it- how hard is it really to recycle folks? Plastic recycling can be harder because there are codes but paper, come on!!! We all can do that much at least for our part.
The other thing I believe everyone can do is to plant SOMETHING, ANYTHING really! I live in an apartment and would love to have a big (or small really, अरे कुछ भी चलेगा भैया) garden। But I have decided it is too hard for me to not have green living things as my pets so decided to grow my own apartment garden. Since space is a limitation I am not planting a lot, obviously. But the big question now- will the seeds I sowed, germinate?!
People do so many creative things though- be it Dervaes's homestead in Pasadena, CA or the brainchild of Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer, Terracycle Inc.
To me Earth day or Earth week is just a reminder about how beautiful this place we live in is and it also reminds me that I do not have to hike or trek along the thousands of trails spread across various parks to enjoy the bounty that is nature.

FOR ME EVERYDAY IS EARTH DAY FOLKS AND I AM PROUD OF THAT!!


PS I must say in this tech age, I have not encountered a slower site than Terracycle Inc. I hope they read this post and get a better page that loads faster!
Wow yesterday was all gloomy post, today all earthy...seriously this must be mid-life crisis...

Meltdown

While the world is facing a financial meltdown, I think I am facing an existential meltdown. Well maybe meltdown is a strong word- may be I could call it existential crisis. You know the usual- "நான் ஏன் பிறந்தேன்" (I think that is the correct spelling in Tamil- it means why was I born, used to be our favorite phrase in BITS) type issues. So I am a great believer of a few things, among those are these two "every person is here for a reason- you just have to find out for yourself what yours is" and "everything that happens, happens for a reason".
But I find myself in this whirlpool of incessant thoughts about "what I should be doing?"
I thought science is what I should be doing but something has changed (well me getting really excited about good science and great research minds has not been tarnished yet!) and I don't feel like I belong! But I feel like I don't belong anywhere. I am at a stage in my career now where I have to decide on something and ACT on it. I am failing at the first step, decision-making. Here I am wavering about it all, thought this ended like ten years ago! Its asking the question "what should I become when I grow up?" all over again and that feels strange.
I think I will play along, ponder over such questions and hope that once it is actually time to make the big decisions, everything will miraculously fall into place.

PS Aha..picture is worth a thousand words, so now will you believe me?!! May be this might be what others call "mid-life crisis"?!

Yeaah..go ahead replace us

Beware we will all be soon replaced by machines or may be perhaps we can sit back and relax while we let robots like Adam do our experiments for us (smell a long vacation here). Adam has been developed by Amanda Clare's group in the UK. He can come up with hypothesis and test them too. How cool is that people?! But he still needs somebody to add more lab consumables and of course clean the waste he generates. May be I should get an Adam- since he can perform all those things that I am doing right now.

The Automation of ScienceRoss D. King, Jem Rowland, Stephen G. Oliver, Michael Young, Wayne Aubrey, Emma Byrne, Maria Liakata, Magdalena Markham, Pinar Pir, Larisa N. Soldatova, Andrew Sparkes, Kenneth E. Whelan, and Amanda Clare (3 April 2009)
Science 324 (5923), 85. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1165620]

Close proximity

What do you do when you are in close proximity to people like her? She is only 4 years older than I am and she already features in the top 100 living geniuses (see the article here). She is one of the three women who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Medical School. You can read her profile in
Science 25 April 2008: Vol. 320. no. 5875, pp. 442 - 443, DOI: 10.1126/science.320.5875.442
Her foray into stardom came about when she found a novel way to identify targets for positive selection during the course of evolution. It is a pretty neat technique, although the math part goes over my head.

PS I am mediocre but at least I am not surrounded by it! Here I am, can't even get a PCR to work...

Schadenfreude, hope not

Schadenfreude is a German word that describes the pleasure that one derives from others misfortunes. It is very closely related to envy. In this nice paper, the authors show that despite the two emotions being correlated they activate different regions of the brain. While envy activates neural connections related to pain, sch.. activates the reward center of the brain. But can anything be ever so simple.....of course not. The authors show the interplay between social pains and pleasures.

Taken from

NEUROSCIENCE: Pains and Pleasures of Social Life

Matthew D. Lieberman and Naomi I. Eisenberger (13 February 2009)

Science 323 (5916), 890. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1170008]

Analyses of brain activity reveal a link between social and physical pains and pleasures.

"If maintaining one's social value is a need like other physical needs, then the greater the pain caused by negative social comparisons, the greater the pleasure in response to seeing the comparison target socially devalued (schadenfreude). The authors found that greater envy and dACC activity in response to a negative social comparison was associated with greater schadenfreude and ventral striatum activity when learning of that comparison target's subsequent downfall."

Basically what it means is if you envy someone, you get greater pleasure when misfortune strikes them. In fact Leiberman and Eisenberger think of this as something akin to physical needs such as food when you are hungry! What is even more interesting is the fact that the brain is treating things as important as lack of food and water similar to social pains such as envy. Now why would that be?

If you have access you should read the article (don't worry if you don't understand much of it) and for people who are not used to neuroscience jargon, you should read the perspectives that is referenced above.

When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude

Hidehiko Takahashi, Motoichiro Kato, Masato Matsuura, Dean Mobbs, Tetsuya Suhara, and Yoshiro Okubo (13 February 2009) Science 323 (5916), 937. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1165604]

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/323/5916/937

Time well spent with friends

This weekend, my time was well spent with friends. We were all very cheery, cheery to the point of being hysterical, I am guessing it is because of the baby boom. Yeah...I am so excited, and I ought to be, a friend of mine is pregnant. I surely exposed everyone to my dual neigh-cum-laughter, really I used to laugh hysterically and usually it used to sound more like a horse's neigh. Life changes so fast, one minute you think "well that is it for now, no BIG changes" and then boom there is the jolt again! If I feel that way, I can sure understand how the soon-to-be parents might feel. What was interesting was each of us had our own vices to teach to the newborn, including the "mum n dad"- Ashok wants to give it shots of tequilla, another friend wants to pick it up and spank it. So we will have to wait and watch how the kid grows up despite our presence!!
For now we are all super-charged when it comes to this couple...and of course the would-be mom gets the say in most matters.

Que pasa amigos?

Last weekend we were in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It reminded me of home junta. Warm weather, fruiting mango trees, coconut trees, hibiscus and other beautiful flowering plants of the tropics, people strewn about in roadside stalls doing absolutely nothing, traffic, the houses...everything reminded me of home. It was an interesting blend of India and US.

So the trip began with a bit of a drama- we landed 15 minutes or 60 miles away from San Juan at St. Thomas. We were not aware of the fact that our flight was just going to stand in the airport for 2 hrs and we were not going to be allowed to get out of the aircraft. Oh well, we did get to SJ eventually! Thankfully that was the only drama!
We spent a day traveling to El Yunque (took a really small hike to some random waterfalls) rain forest and then to Fajardo (Seven seas beach). It was a very quite place but weather played a spoiled-sport, as I was settling to take a nap under a tree, it began to rain....
Well that was that, after randomly driving around we got to Condado, where we stayed. The evening was spent walking around the area. Next day we did have a good plan. But like all good plans ours was busted too...we spent nearly an hour waiting for our burgers (Worst service at Chicago burgers in Old San Juan) that were not even worth the wait!!! I liked old San juan- had a very spanish feel to it. The image on the right is the fort at old SJ, again built by the spaniards, essentially a fort to protect the city.The streets were narrow and the buildings were beautiful. My only crib: I could not go around the city more and do some shopping.
We spent the rest of the day at the beach (Isla Verde), I found a spot under the shade and took a wonderful nap. There was just enough breeze and just enough sun!!
That evening there was some sort of a festival going on- which we did enjoy along with some decent chinese take-out. Called it a night around 11PM.....had an early flight to catch the next morning

A lab of almost 100

Wow, I have only heard about Bob Langer cursorily. He has about 80 people in a lab that spans about 1300 sq. m. at MIT.He is almost 60 years old and has a CV that is about 75 pages long. He has received several awards including the 2008 Millennium Prize. Nature has this to say about him. Boy, at almost 60 years of age, that man is quite something. I was truly awed, not as much as I was when I read "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" (this was when I fell in love with Richard P. Feynman). What was interesting and amusing to me in that profile by Nature- at the end of the day "on his way home, he stops for an ice cream — coffee chip frozen yoghurt with hot fudge sauce". Goes to show how important stopping to enjoy a cup of icecream is- no matter how successful you are!

On redaction

Onion had this to say about redaction of documents by the CIA. Pretty cool, I thought!

The BIG read

In April 2003, BBC launched a search for England's best loved book, you the most popular read if you will. English loved the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien's mega-book was the best-loved book.
I have not read Lord of the Rings or any other book pre- and post- LoR by Tolkien (I loved the movies though!). Anyway I was intrigued by this list and decided to see how much of those books have I read- (I must say I got this idea from here although the BBC actual book list seems to be modified a bit). I took a look at the original list and guess what I have read only 34 of those 100 books. Ow, when am I ever going to finish reading especially when my reading list already has a back log of about 30 books. That list is the one that seems to be expanding at an alarming rate!
See below for the list, and do let me know how many you have read and what you liked best.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen-X
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling-X
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee-X
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell-X
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger-X
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens-X
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott-X
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy-X
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell-X
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling-X
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling-X
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling-X
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck-X
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll-X
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez-X
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens-X
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson-X
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen-X
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald-X
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas-X
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell-X
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens-X
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck-X
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy-X
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth-X
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky-X
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden-X
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding-X
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding-X
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy-X
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo-X
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho-X
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer-X
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez-X
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

Bacteria are the best indeed

Two weeks ago, there was a talk by Bonnie Bassler (Priceton University). Her talk was absolutely great- she was extremely energetic, enthusiastic and seemed very passionate about her work. She also seemed to absolutely love bacteria. When I listen to a talk I want to hear the speaker's passion for his or her work show in their talks. I cannot stand talks that are drab no matter how good the person might be. Just does not give a good impression you see.
She spoke about quorum sensing in bacteria and I was blown away by how the concept of multicellularity may not be new at all.
But I do have questions about it- while the bacteria produce auto-inducer(s) specific to their own species (say a regional language) and a common auto-inducer (universal language) made across a wide variety of bacteria, the evolutionary aspect of why bacteria need such a mechanism is unclear to me, especially if they are invovled in only one downstream signaling process.

We were not this bad, what happened

Obesity cases have been steadily rising in the Indian subcontinent. The consumption of processed foods and fatty goodies are on the rise and, therefore, unarguably so is obesity. We were doing alright all these years, what happened? You walk into a mall in any Indian city, you would be drawn to the same sugary, fatty junk that we have now deemed "not healthy" here in the western world. Things like donuts, potatoes drenched in oil and many more unhealthy products are flooding the Indian households. It would not be fair if I just blamed it on the foods, we are becoming a LAZY bunch people! Not only do we not go out and actively exercise, even the little we did around the house has been replaced. What with so much domestic help and all...

The good thing here in the US is that a lot of the people are very conscious and awareness about obesity as a real health issue is ever-increasing.

I am not sure how best to warn people of the dangers of such a rapidly changing lifestyle. But people please if you read this post, educate your friends and family so they can educate their friends and family and hopefully we can make people realize that by slightly modifying our eating and exercising habits we can actually lead healthier lives.

PS You can read this article and this one to learn at least a little more about obesity in India. Not that a lot of research is going on right now.

You are not alone...

I find this amusing and annoying at the same time, I understand when you work you want to left alone but science is all about mingling- sharing ideas, sharing crazy hypotheses, sharing work space and more. I think science would have remained rudimentary if the iPOD was discovered 200 years ago. I am not sure I can embrace the idea of come to the lab, turn your iPOD on and do whatever it is that you might be doing- surfing the net, working on an experiment or reading papers. My old lab was different that way and I liked it- we did not flaunt the "oh-look-wires-coming-out-of-me and so glued to my ears I cannot take it off" thingies. We talked incessantly, our thoughts constantly collided with one another giving rise to better experiments, we would badger the newbies in the lab calling it the "we would love to get to know you" phase.
This iPOD fetish might have something to do with being in a big lab, your bench spaces themselves are so far apart that there is very limited extent of interaction.
Anyway, I think as scientists we should limit the use of such devices- use it albiet sparingly, at least when at work. I am just a fly on the wall but I hope I am making sense here. I think this is not just true about science, you walk on the road all you can see are people either talking to themselves (back in the old days we used to think such people had the crazies!), or talking to a cell phone or concentrating on the music that is playing right into their heads.
So long people...man is a social being afterall, is he not?

Start your day GRUMPY...

This morning something odd happened- well it might not be that unusual but it seemed a bit unnerving to me anyway. We came to the car parked on a busy road (especially crazy at 9:00 in the morning). He got in to drive while I waited for him to pull out of the icy mess and give me some space to get in. Incidentally he did not see the bicyclist. She thought he was going to stop for her but he did not see her. She was yelling out "stop for the bicyclist" but of course he did not hear her. He pulled out really slowly, while she also kept at it- and all that happened was she stumbled a bit. Okay mistake probably was his- I don't know, she saw him driving and not stopping and so she decided not to stop either... anyway she got really worked up and started screaming like crazy. Things like "Jacka**, can't you stop for a bicyclist" and much more. So nothing odd about it, right?
Well, while she yelling I was watching her in awe. I could not understand how someone could actually be so grumpy early in the morning. I mean come on, how do you yell like that with such loathing in the morning. After a presumably good night's rest, Yyou wake up, have coffee and breakfast, wash, get dressed and leave for whatever it is that you are going to do for the rest of the day. Amidst all these things what happens that makes you crabby like that? Then what happens to the rest of your day? May be she is going through something genuine...
I sure felt sorry for the next person that came in her way.
I cannot fathom such emotions, can you?

Its snow holiday again...

...not for me anyway
Now I understand how poor Maryland's snow cleaning system is- it was supposed to snow only 1 to 2 inches. Guess what, UMD closed at around noon. And here in Boston, it snows about 8 to 12 inches every time and people act as though its JUST another thing. Usually the pavements and roads get cleared up rather quickly and that is all that matters, innit? Everything is seemingly normal, well me being the exception. Nothing is ever normal for me during winter. So far its been not so bad, while it was snowing outside, I stayed on inside! But there is going to be a snowstorm tomorrow. We will see how that goes, eh!!

I could go on and on...

Hmm...I have never felt so strongly about anything political. But today as I incessantly pour over the news about Mr. Obama's inauguration ceremony, I feel like I should have been there, where all the action is. I feel terrible having left DC before this great event. I must tell you though, I am not sure if Mr. Obama will be a successful president but there is something about him that tells me that he will do good. I love his speeches, I love his simplicity and I hope his actions are as sincere as his words. I also for some strange reason believe that he is a good man (let me tell you I have a blanket hatred against world's politicians- to me they are necessary evil!).
The only thing that has been on my mind these past few days is the fact that I am not in DC to witness this good, honest man take oath to the highest office in the United States. Also, I would not get to see "the beast" too! I want to be a part of this grandeur, seems like 2 million people are expected, too bad I am not one of them. What more, I want to kick myself for having left DC, I could have stayed on until the inauguration ceremony. Work calls right!
Well, if you let me, I would go on and on about how badly I want to be there. Does not matter now, I will be there in spirit, I guess!

PS: After all this rant about Mr. Obama, I guess it is only fitting that I read his book!

American exceptionalism

Yesterday on Diane Rehm Show (npr.org), the guest was Godfrey Hudson- the author of the book called The Myth of American Exceptionalism. I have not read the book and after that interview with Diane, I want to. This book seems to be provocative and is bound to offend a lot of people. In fact there was a caller who said that the author was the most condescending guest ever on the show. Well it did not seem that way to me, but then I am NOT an American. What struck me most was when a caller asked the author if saying "God Bless America" was a sign of such exceptionalism. Interestingly, the first time I heard that phrase in this country I thought of it as the weirdest thing- why would you want God to bless only a select few, why not God Bless the World or something like that. Anyway, Prof Hudson did not seem to have an answer to that question but he too had thought it was a bit strange. He is an English guy and it is impressionable that he would write such a book (well he has been studying this country for more than 3 or 4 decades I cannot remember). He argues that America is not exceptional after all and the idea of being exceptional, sort of you know, a keeper or a custodian or even the protector of the world in a sense, could prove dangerous.
I think Prof. Hudson kind of speaks out what has been going on in my mind but I guess I would definitely read it to get his perspective.

PS: I love Diane Rehm show and the thing I hate most about Boston is I can only to listen to recorded versions of her show on the radio. So I take advantage of npr.org and listen to 88.5 online.

My first few days at my NEW JOB

Finally I am working again- started this Monday.
Pa walked with me (he would rather say he was walking me to my bldg on Oxford St, just like when I was a little girl except then my mum used to do it!)- the icy pavements made it very treacherous and my dad cautioned me by falling down himself. It was only a 3hr work-day, getting done with all the paperwork (was not much at all).
The next day I met with the boss for about 15-20 minutes, and since then I have been reading and reading and read.....
Cannot believe that the FIRST week of the new year is coming to an end. Hopefully I can come up with a good project and that too within a reasonable amount of time coz I need to get back to the bench, y'all.

take care
hope you all had a good week

My trip to San Diego

Last year that is Nov 2008 after I submitted my thesis and successfully endured the 9 hour ride to Boston from College Park (It felt like I was the one who drove). Anyway the next day I left for a trip to SD (I stayed in SD for a week) and Boulder (this was only for two days, thanks to the single runway-high traffic-useless SD airport combined with a foggy morning).
The first 2 days I was by myself, took the trolley tour around San Diego. And thanks to my host there, I ended up on a shopping spree (he left me alone for the two days and what better thing to do than SHOP!!)
One thing I realized in San Diego- I love Mexico- the people, the culture, the crafts. The one place I loved in there is SD is the Old Town San Diego, a place that is considered to be the birthplace of California. While, they still have a few original structures made of Adobe bricks, a lot of the buildings are reconstructed. Despite this you do get an 1800's feel when you visit the Old town State historic Park. Other than SD was just alright.
For Thanksgiving we drove down to Mammoth lakes park. I don't ski and Renga could not snowboard or ski (you see the day I landed he broke his finger playing cricket, coincidental eh?) and Ashwin decided to give us company- therefore we put on a pair of snow-shoes to hike but it was totally unnecessary because it had not snowed that much. The next day we took a long detour via Death Valley and this is another place I instantly fell in love with. How very DEAD, you might think but then just as any desert landscape there are a few survivors. The photograph one the right was taken from the lowest point in the Northern Hemisphere, this place is about 86 meters below sea level and therefore has salty flakes all over.
I am not sure if people might agree if I call Death Valley beautiful but believe me it was to me and interestingly it reminded me of Denali Natl Park, except one was lush and green while the other was brown and dry. So it was fun thanksgiving and I must thank the guys for such a lovely trip.

I then flew to Denver, CO to meet a newly married couple. Spent a couple of day with them in Boulder and then headed back for a short stay in Boston, a stay that lasted for two days. I was off to India in two days.