The weird and the more-weird

Indonesia's veined octopus 'stilt walks' to collect coconut shells

Scientists grow pork meat in a laboratory

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas......

It's snowing! A lot.
Sledging tomorrow maybe.
I'm definitely not driving home tonight. Getting the bus.
Is this a sign of climate change? Colder winters are predicted. I don't remember this much snow in December for years. Though it was much more common when I was little.

My response

Answers to the previous post....

1. Unfortunately my toilet seat doesn't stay up. So mind you don't get a rather severe circumcision.

1. Watching sports on tv does not count as being sporty.

1. Try carrying all these bags in these heels and then tell me it's not a sport.

1. Don't do anything that might make me cry then.

1. If I ask for what I want, are you going to pay for it?

1. Don't phone me when you get man flu then.

1. Have you ever wondered why I only get a headache in bed?

1. Here's the deal - YOU wear the Victoria Secrets get-up for a day, and THEN I'll consider it.


If you like to camp, how about camping in the garden for a week?

what men wish to say

I was browsing through my old emails, as I often do when I'm avoiding work, and came across this. It made me laugh, so hopefully it'll make you smile too.

Apparently, these are all numbered "1" on purpose.

1. Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don't hear us complaining about you leaving it down.

1. Sunday = sports. It's like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.

1. Shopping is NOT a sport. And no, we are never going to think of it that way.

1. Crying is blackmail.

1. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one: Subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!

1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor.

1. If you won't dress like the Victoria's Secret girls, don't expect us to act like soap opera guys.

1. If you think you're fat, you probably are. Don't ask us.

1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one..

1. You can either ask us to do something or tell us how you want it done. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.

1. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during commercials.

1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing," we will act like nothing's wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.

1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine. Really.

1. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as baseball, the shotgun formation, or monster trucks.

1. You have enough clothes.

1. You have too many shoes.

1. I AM in shape. Round is a shape.

Thank you for reading this; Yes, I know, I have to sleep on the couch tonight, but did you know men really don't mind that, it's like camping.

Gundam

Is it really that strange that I like to have Gundam models instead of Hello Kitty or Sailor moon? I like the building part, and the end product looks cool as well. At least, I think so.

Anyway, my Gundam models are finally out of their box and starting to squabble over squatters' rights on my table. A good sign that I'm starting to settle into this flat.

Less sensitive, or less selfish?

It’s said that as people get older, we become less sensitive to the things around us. As children, we can be entranced by very simple things, and even in our teens, the smallest thing can send us over the moon, or feel like a tragedy. I remember the tears on my school bus (not mine) when Take That split up. I wonder whether it would have been less devastating, although they weren’t really my thing, if we knew that they would be back in a decade. Perhaps not. Ten years is literally almost a lifetime when you’re only 14 years of age.

I feel though, as if I’ve become more emotional over the years, rather than less. I certainly find myself crying much more than I used to, for no apparent personal reason. There were a few stormy outbreaks during my teens, and some secret tears shed in the privacy of my own bed, but these days I can start crying when an accident is reported on the news, or I see people visiting at a hospital, even though I don’t know them or the patient being visited. I never used to cry watching films, even those Japanese dramas where the main actress inevitably died of some wasting illness, where cancer is made to look like consumption. Now, I’m like a leaky tap. I cried whilst watching Atonement. And during Coco before Chanel (!).

I still glance up and feel my breath catching when the light shines through the clouds, or when I walk through a particular picturesque scene. I still get the urge to stand still and capture the moment, wishing that I could do so with a photograph, but knowing that a) it won’t be the same and in any case b) I don’t have the patience.

True, I’m much less intense than I used to be, more calm and content. I no longer jump from one subject to another with the attention span of a flea in a poultry battery-farm. Rather than becoming insensitive, it’s more as if I’ve become MORE sensitive to other things, but in a more rational way. I’ve learnt to appreciate things more, to take in the finer details and letting them sink in. There are times when my thought processes leap around and take a running jump into randomness, but I’m more aware when it happens and rein them back before they go wild.
I think as we get older, we become less intense, because we are more aware of the events and people around us. We are less inclined to classify our own personal disappointments and upsets as tragedies, even if they might be, because there is always something else worse. A bad hair day isn’t the disaster of the year when you know someone who has had chemotherapy and lost all their hair that way. The flip side that comes with this coin is no longer going into ecstasies because you got the present you wanted, or you get to have chocolate and raspberry ripple ice cream (in a cone, with a flake and jelly tots). We remember to count our blessings, and our joy might be tempered by other stresses and responsibilities lurking in the background, or the guilt that others aren’t as fortunate. But these responsibilities may be what keeps us going when things go wrong, the fact that we need to consider other people as well as ourselves.

I guess what I feel is that I’m more aware of feeling happiness when it’s there, and less despairing when it’s not. Sometimes I wish I was a child again, living so much in the moment. But usually, I’m quite happy as I am now as well.

(Image from http://www.kesher.org.uk/)

Gardening tips - garden vs bathroom?

'Mary, mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?'

I'm pretty sure this rhyme doesn't end in 'by giving it my pee when I go' but that's what they recommend at Wimpole Farm in Cambridge. It makes sense, but perhaps if your garden is right by the main road you should consider using a different type of fertiliser?

Nightclub research

In case you don't read either the Daily Mail or The Great Beyond, the Nature journal blog, a 'scientific' paper on 'Evidence to suggest that nightclubs function as human sexual display grounds' has recently been published. I kid you not. Their findings suggest that males are supposed to approach females in nightclubs, rather than vice versa, while females dress provocatively to attract said males. And here I was thinking that girls dress (and I use the term loosely here) in skimpy miniskirts and boobtubes for the good of their health. For example, to increase blood circulation, in a 'kill or cure' manner.

Although I dress rather conservatively, i.e. normal-fitting t-shirt and jeans, on the few occasions that I go to a nightclub, I always seem to get dodgy-looking men trying to dance with me. Thus I normally go with (rather less dodgy-looking) male friends who can be relied on to rescue me from these unwanted attentions. I guess the dodgy ones are the ones who have been rejected by the better, or more 'sexually-suggestive',-looking women.

Anyway, if you want to follow the discussion on the Nature blog page, which promises to be extremely entertaining, here's the link.

Ladybird attack

I've always thought of ladybirds as being rather pretty and on the whole, quite friendly looking. Although I realised that they were a) poisonous and b) predatory (and are therefore good for your rose bushes), I haven't ever considered how they might look if you were a few centimetres high. However, I found this image of a ladybird munching on an aphid quite disturbing.

And the larvae are just as scary, in a sort of Zen Buddist/praying mantis/alien invader sort of way.There's currently quite a bit of interest in ladybirds, as they are important for natural biocontrol of pests, which affects not only roses, but also the whole ecosystem of insects, pollinators and disease vectors. The images above were taken from the website for Rothamsted Research, where there's a project looking into the threat to native ladybirds posed by invading species. Humans aren't the only ones to kill their own kind.

Weekend reading

When you receive a densely-typed, 17-page long, document from your supervisor to peruse at 4:52 on a Friday evening, and he says 'have a nice weekend' at the end of the accompanying e-mail, it probably indicates that he has a highly developed sense of humour. Good to know that.

To wed or not to wed?

Relationship-wise, it almost feels as if an ultimation’s been delivered to a subset of my nearest and dearest. There have been an avalanche of engagement notices and ‘save the date’ messages. The wedding invite count for next year currently stands at 6, although there seems to be a bit of uncertainty about the dates. It seems that weddings are now planned over a year in advance, probably to give you enough time to change your mind. If you want to get married the year after you become engaged, it appears that you need to be good at ringing people up and wrangling a hotel/cook/priest that can host/cater/officiate at your wedding.

There have also been a few new arrivals amongst my family and close friends, who have definitely stolen my heart and brought me over to the type of person who can sit patiently looking a little baby for ages on end (But I’m not having one myself yet – I still prefer babies that can be given back to mummy when they get cranky). I’ve also taken to browsing the baby clothes and toys sections in shops. As I know quite a few of my cousins have been doing the same, these must be the best dressed babies ever.

Some friends have swung the other way completely – relationships that appeared to be rock-solid from the outside have broken up, in a rather sudden way over the last few weeks. Some of the friends from whom I might have expected wedding notices have instead just broken up. You can never tell though, from outside a relationship, what is really going on inside. Hell, you can be in a relationship and still not have any idea what will happen next, or what the other person really thinks. It would be a lot easier if we could sit down and review relationships every few months, with a printed agenda so that important matters aren’t forgotten in any shouting matches that might ensue. Something like;

1. Apologies for absence of (him)/(her) from family dinner/wedding/funeral
2. How well and how far relationship has progressed since the last review.
3. Aims for the next 6 months – next step? (move toothbrush/clothes to his/her flat; co-habit; get engaged; marry; have baby(s); break up; leave for another man/women/other) – delete as appropriate.
4. Her complaints and views
5. His complaints and views (ordering of items 4 and 5 to be determined by drawing straws/volume of voice/ability to cry/power of fist)
6. Brainstorming of ideas to deal with issues brought up in items 4 and 5.
7. Summary and conclusions
8. Date of next meeting (if appropriate)

Note: Participants should come re-enforced with chocolate/alcohol/tissues/blunt weapons as needed. Also, if aim for next 6 months is to leave for another organism, it is probably best to end the meeting then and re-adjourn at a later date.

It isn't very romantic and there will still be lying, but anything that might ease the course of 'true love'?

telephone etiquette

Why is it that people ring other people for a chat when they themselves are doing something? It’s a bit disconcerting, and frankly, very rude, to be tapping away on the keyboard or to be absorbed in a problem when someone else is trying to have a conversation with you. The exception is when you’re calling for advice or information on a problem or work-related issue, and you’re looking for the relevant files or website. Alternatively, If the one working is the person on the receiving end of the call, then that can be excused. But when it’s the person making the call, then it begs the question as to why they rang the other person in the first place. Is it to save having to tune into a radio station that is sufficiently entertaining but not mentally demanding? When I pick up a call, I generally try and give the person on the other end as much attention as possible. When I call someone for a chat, not for anything specific, then I damn well make sure I can concentrate on what they say to me. This is perhaps why I rarely call people for a chat.

I’m quite used to busy friends ringing me for a quick chat when they’re waiting for a train or for an appointment, and to have them abruptly say that they have to go. Sometimes I get annoyed when it’s obvious that someone hasn’t been taking in anything I’ve said in the last few minutes of conversation. The degree of annoyedness generally correlates with my degree of tiredness, compounded with the amount of work I myself have to do and may have put aside to answer the call. My pet hate is to be asked why I’ve suddenly gone quiet after it’s obvious that what should be a dialogue has become a very one-sided attempt to keep the conversation going on my side with little help from the other. Surely a conversation must come from both sides? Then I feel either as if I’m a pet parrot that’s expected to just keep talking and entertaining people, or as if I’m being humoured and the other person isn’t really interested at all.

Of course, I too am guilty of many of these points. I might ring people if I’m watching TV, and sometimes what’s on the screen creeps into the conversation and possibly takes over. And I will take calls and chat sometimes when I’m with other people (kids, if you're reading, don't get into these habits. It's very rude).

I think one of my fears is to impose on other people and be a burden, and I dislike conveying my thoughts and ideas to people who are just plain not interested. Often, if I do talk about something that I think is important and the thoughts flow so quickly they come out of my mouth in a rush, I get told not to get worked up about it and that it’s not an argument. Why assume it's an argument? Can't I just be hoping for a debate?

I guess this might be why so many people have blogs.

Day 1: Job Hunt (Hunting for the place in which I have a job)

First day at work today - there was a bit of a hiccup actually getting to work as I appeared to have misunderstood the bus timetable and no bus arrived. Luckily I still have my parents' car, which I 'borrowed' to help me move my things to my new sticks. Surprisingly too, I wasn't late, although I didn't have a clue how to get there by car. Hurray for a semi-decent sense of direction!

Today was mostly paperwork, meetings, paperwork, reading literature - oh and more paperwork. I was introduced to so many people that after a while I gave up on remembering names. Most of them seemed to have been informed of who I was beforehand, so it was 'hi, you must be Sam' and from my side 'err.... yes, nice to meet you', before they disappeared without dropping the syllables of their name into the air between us.....

So, all seems new to me, other than the lab itself - a bit bigger and shared between groups, but the instruments and arrays of chemicals on the shelf are reassuringly familiar.

What would you do to get a 'Best Friend Forever'?

TV producers are amazing. Just when I thought that reality tv couldn't get any more humiliating, they come out with something else that proves me wrong. The latest show I had the misfortune to come across whilst I was channel-hopping was 'Paris Hilton's BFF (Best Friend Forever)'. Yes, it's an old show, probably in its fourth or fifth season for all I know, but it's news to me.

In case anyone reading this is as slow on the uptake as I am, 16 'lucky' contestants battle it out to become Paris Hilton's "new best friend". Note the inverted commas. Paris of course knows what's best, so she tells them how to do their hair, what to wear, who to like and who to ignore. If they're lucky she'll treat them as her pets. If they don't do what she says, they don't trust her enough. Of course, the advice can only go one way because how can they know better than Paris Hilton?

Of course, the behaviour in itself is nothing new, and it seems especially common in the US (at least from watching movies about American college girls and teen flicks - not that bitching and back-stabbing doesn't occur elsewhere). It's sad that they believe it makes them more likeable to Paris, as if she doesn't see right through them (which she does). There's something unbelievably icky about the show to me, and somehow it's more humiliating than even Big Brother. Mixing with a rich, celebrity socialite might be considered an enviable aim to some, and maybe the designer makeovers and clothes and hand-me-downs are rewarding enough. As long as they don't make the mistake of believing she really is their best friend.

I have to say though, this is probably more REAL reality tv than some of the other shows around. I'm sure the borrowed glamour is what many people would like, and what some would take if they got the chance. It's just that I can't stomach watching it.

Joining the ranks of the employed

Well, I got the research job in Rothamsted. I am happy, but somehow not as excited as people seem to expect me to be. Partly that's due to the tizzy my supervisor has got into (and therefore infected me with) over my approaching thesis deadline, and the lack of thesis thus far. It's hard to be excited about a new post-doctoral job when you're still worrying about getting the prerequisite doctorate degree...

The other part is probably because I've been anticipating working in the US, and in fact I have a job less than 50 miles from where I am now (Rothamsted is near Luton). Not that I'm overly fond of the USA, but I feel that if I want to do a post-doc there before I settle down elsewhere, it would be sooner rather than later. I know there'll be other opportunities though.

Of course, to cap it all, I've spent weeks and weeks collecting together the samples for an experiment, only to just now find that it didn't work. It will now join the 'inconclusive data' section of my thesis.

I'm sure that the excited, happy, optimistic side of getting a job that seems really interesting with people who are really friendly will kick in progressively. So not to worry :P

Interview #1

The thesis writing is going slowly. My supervisor has succeeded in making me panic, but without actually motivating me to speed up my pace. I came back to Cambridge a couple of weeks ago, intending to finish the last remaining experiment (the lack of which is burning a big hole in my chapter draft) quickly and legging it back to Manchester. The day I got back though, my plans were scuppered by an email inviting me to interview for a job I'd applied for a couple of weeks before.

Having one week to prepare the presentation, practice it over and over, read up on the project and the three attached subprojects, read up the background of the three interviewers, AND most importantly, go shopping to get clothes fit for an interview and not just for the bonfire, was cutting it a bit fine. Kudos to my wonderful supervisor and the others in the lab for coming along to my practice talks and making detailed notes and giving advice. Especially to my supervisor, who came in especially on Saturday morning (and his wife, our resident post-doc, who OK-ed it) to sit through practice run no. 2, having practically slaughtered presentation take 1.

Anyway, to the interview, which was at Rothamsted research station (30 mins train journey north of London, near Luton - yet I still had to go south to London from Cambridge and back north again, that's the rail network for you). Arrive 1.35, wait a bit, give a presentation that was meant to be 20 mins long but for some reason finished at 2.10, so unless I started at a funny time, I must have been going at a ridiculously fast pace. Interview with three P.I.s (all well-known in their fields, thus have long and scaringly impressive biographies). Tour with another P.I., who was meant to ask me about my knowledge on viruses, but somehow didn't? (good sign or not, not sure, maybe my presentation was sufficient to convince him I'm a semi-decent virologist?). Chat with a post-doc, then another P.I., then pleaded a bathroom stop, then another post-doc. Then two students. Then it was 6.20...?!

Anyway, after being passed round and round like the provential parcel, I was knackered. I don't know if I got the job, but I definitely gave it my best shot. Unfortunately, regardless of whether I get the job or not, I still have to finish writing my thesis. For which I need to submit the abstract. Now. So, back to humdum panic.

PS I should find out by the end of the week if I got the job or not. Then I worry about whether I want to live near Luton or not. I'll keep you posted.

confused

'meow' said Allan
'woof' said Daniel
I wonder if being in the lion dance troupe has seriously affected their sense of identity
'sigh' says Sam

Reminds me of another confused animal I saw lately.... Daniel and Allan would like this.

the things we do when we're bored

buried under literature

Sorry for the lack of updates on this blog, I"m afraid I"ve been buried alive under the weight of all the papers I have to read. Metaphorically, given that I use ejournals. And why can"t I use the apostrophe button on my keypad? (rhetorical question, answer not required, ta very much).

Baby alerts

I've finally been to see my cousin's little baby, Oliver. Actually, I saw him a couple of weeks ago, when he was just 15 days old. He is awfully cute, and very small. I didn't really want to pick him up until he looked a bit bigger and a lot less fragile, but I was persuaded into it by a) his cuteness but more b) his parents and grand-aunt. He looks a lot more comfortable in his daddy's lap though, and ready to do some stretching exercises!

My friend's just given birth too, to baby Caitlin (pretty name!), a few days ago. Once I persuade my car that yes, it really does want to start up (the battery's dead, and I need to persuade a friend to bring a car and jumpstart it with me) then I'll drive over and visit her. I'm also permanently on the hunt for little learning books and picture books, as I seem to have acquired many little relatives between the ages of 3 weeks and 3 years old. How much cuteness can I take?!

stop the BNP from gaining any power!

Well I actually have done some work, albeit much less than I should be doing. I now have a page and a half of writing for my first results chapter, though I suspect that will look woefully diminutive once I've converted it to typing on a computer screen. But it's a start, and the advantage of having worried about the papers for my work first is that I now have a structure to work from and the go-ahead from my supervisor to lift sections from the paper.

As for other things, I've been finding it a bit disconcerting to hear advertising vans driving around my area blaring out promotional material for the BNP. For those who don't know of them, the BNP (or British National Party) is an utterly racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Islamic and thoroughly fascist political group which shamefully has enough of a support to stand in government elections. Only white ethnic groups are allowed into their membership (assuming anyone else would ever want to join!), and they are actively against immigration, particularly of non-white ethnic minorities, but also against many Europeans. They also wish to overthrow all legistration that is anti-discriminatory. Basically, and this is strong language from me, they are hypocritical scum.

The sad thing is that the support for the BNP, especially in the poorer Northern regions of England, has been growing. As the economy collapse has continued and the unemployment rate soared, people have started to look for other people to blame and the BNP have taken advantage of the growing discontentment of the Caucasian working-class. Most of the other political parties focus on getting votes from the middle-class but have neglected the massive numbers of working-class umemployed in the North. And whereas I'm sure some of my friends from Cambridge would frown upon my suggesting there is still a class hierarchy, believe me, it is much more apparent when you live in the North, as I have done and now do, that there are still distinct differences between middle- and working- class, and indeed, between North and South.

In one way I cannot completely blame some people for turning to the BNP - the papers have been splashing their front pages with stories on how Eastern European immigrants have come in and 'stolen' jobs, and how the government is not doing their job and looking after the 'British people'. How much easier it is to lay the blame at someone else's feet than to look for a good solution! That there is a racist problem has always been much harder to ignore up here in Manchester than in well-behaved, well-educated Cambridge (where it is not the done thing to admit to racism even if you have such sympathies). There have been gang fights between Caucasian and Pakistani gangs in Oldham, instead of the Bangladeshi vs Pakistani in Moss Side conflicts I heard of when I was growing up.

The UK Independence Party also seems to be getting a lot of coverage, at least after the BBC news I seem to see a lot of their promotional broadcasts. Whereas the UKIP professes to be non-racist (their main aim is to withdraw from EU politics so that the UK is politically and legally independent of the European government) I can envisage that if support for them grows a whole can of worms might be opened. Politically and morally easier to swallow than the BNP, it's a slippery slope towards racist leanings once you establish your country as being too good to mix with the rest of Europe.

But what worries me is that there has always been traces of racism remaining in the UK, even when some people choose to deny it, but now with the current economic crisis people's views are polarising. I really hope that multicultural Britain, as it undeniably is, will pull through.

With regards to whether the BNP may actually have any real power in government dealings, the other political parties have finally woken up. As they say, most people don't support the BNP in any way, but because they don't believe that the BNP can ever get any power, they don't bother to vote in elections because they think their area is safe Labour/Tory/Lib Dem. Unfortunately that means that if the BNP have a large enough proportion of the votes, they can have a seat in council. The Green Party have offered an alternative - if people don't want to vote for Labour/Tory/Lib Dem, they can vote for the Green Party, who will never win, but might be able to grab the seats that might otherwise be BNP's. That seems like a good strategy, so come the European Parliamentary elections, I may be voting Green.

update

Having moved back home to Manchester for a few weeks to write up my thesis, I've been on the phone much more than I have been in the last six months. However, I have not seen anyone except through my house windows for several days now, and not stepped foot out of the front door since Saturday.

The house is in a row of terraced houses, although in fact there is a private alleyway running down one side of my house, so we only have one adjoining building. The sounds from around my house do carry though, as is the norm for old terraced buildings, so that sometimes I have to refrain from running downstairs to check that there isn't an intruder when I hear doors banging, seemingly from the ground floor of my otherwise empty house.

Despite this relative isolation, work is going very slowly. I seem to spend all my time planning the thesis and not actually writing it. Today though, I'm adamant that I'm going to start work in earnest on my first results chapter.

So this is just an update, to let everyone I'm still alive, and to put down in typing that I really am going to get this chapter done.

Toes crossed and fingers ready to fly across the page.

the next step

So it looks as if I'm finally going to stop being a student sometime in the near future. I'm ready to write my thesis, get my PhD and leave university. Next step is to look for a 'proper job' (albeit one in research, so not in the real world at all) and look forward to filling some of the holes in my bank accounts.

So why is it now that I'm catching up with most of my friends who are already out there working and earning money, I find that they've already moved on?!

Whilst I'm looking for jobs, they're looking at properties to buy, venues for weddings, names for their children. My oldest friend is having her first child this month, another friend is buying a house and getting married next year, and even my best friend from university has just been house-hunting at the weekend.

I've been getting more and more wedding invitations over the last few years, so it's not exactly out of the blue. But generally they've been from friends a few years my senior, not from friends who are a couple of months older than me.

It looks like I need to pull up my socks and get on with things.

But I wish I liked wedding cake. I'll be eating a lot more of it.

a worthy competitor

Due to the lack of other fourth-year PhD students to compete with, my lab mate and I have decided to compete with phd comics' Cecilia, who is also thinking about writing up her thesis. Given that Cecilia is an American (and we all know how long PhDs in the USA take) we're going to be really gutted if we lose to her (especially since she's imaginary).

In addition, my lab-mate and I are competing against each other. Whoever loses buys the other a pint. It would be buying each other a pub dinner, but as we have no job lined up as yet, and our funding has run out, we decided to make it a more economical prize.

Hopefully we won't die of thirst first.

the next generation

I just found out that my oldest friend is pregnant! And not just pregnant, but 8 months pregnant! How come it's been so long since I last talked to her? We have communicated by sms, but that bit of news was omitted....

Wow. I still remember having sleepovers at her house with the clown nightlight in her room so it wouldn't be completely dark - and being more scared of the clown when I needed to get up in the middle of the night. I babysat her tamagochi and her guinea-pig when she went on holiday to spain. I remember being mildly grossed out when we found out she was going to have a little brother (we were ten years old by then and thought our parents were ancient). I remember when that little brother was in a cot. And now she has a cot in her room for her own baby.

She says it's payback time for her brother - after all those years of babysitting him, he has to babysit for her now. He's only 14 though, so it might be another 2 years before he's legally allowed to babysit for her on his own.

I have other friends who have had babies, and the number of children belonging to my generation of my family seems to grow at an alarming rate. But somehow this is harder to take in. Perhaps it's because I only have a month to get used to the idea before the bump turns into an actual baby, or perhaps it's because I remember being seven years old with my friend. And the screams she made when we cycled into a (parked) car and scraped her knee. She didn't scream when she actually scraped it - she screamed because the antiseptic her mum put on stung so much.

But I think I'm looking forward to being back in manchester and saying hi to the new arrival. Perhaps I can teach him/her all the naughty tricks we did then?

the last of the fourth year students

Aaargh
I'm officially the last one of my batch of phd students not to have submitted their thesis!! And I haven't even left the lab yet.
I'm hovering between panicking and complacency now that I'm the last one - I can't be any more last than last. Except I know that people who started after me are also starting to write up.

Oh and yes. I finally set up my cantab address. Not that I'll be leaving anytime soon.

Wallace and Gromit rise again

I watched Nick Parks newest Wallace and Gromit short last night - A Matter of Loaf and Death (cue appropriately dramatic and scary music).I love Wallace and Gromit, the writers have a brilliantly wry and British sense of humour - and as my friend points out, they actually create a storyline which works without taking itself too seriously. The amount of attention to detail and the painstaking effort required to film it frame by frame is worthy of our appreciation in itself. How is it that they can convey more expression via modelling clay than most computer-generated animations seem able to do?(excepting some Disney and/or Pixar films - I won't concede all.)
The best bit for me is the waking up of Wallace scene, with a *new and improved* bakery-incorporated method of getting Wallace out of bed and into his trousers (literally). My glee amplified when the contraption played an extra starring role later in the clip.
A bit floury, very nutty and very well done.

What should have happened...

This is what I wanted to achieve with my laser capture microdissection work. This is the cross-section of a tobacco leaf. I've used the laser to remove only the upper epidermal cell layer (The section is upside down). I had to camp out for a week in a room cooled to 12 degrees Celsius, with the cooling motors making a racket in the background, to get these tissue sections.

shooting practice

I spent a very frustrating couple of hours on the laser capture microdissection machine on Saturday. The aim was to capture a sample of about 250 cells from a fixed leaf section of 5 microns thick and extract the RNA from them, to use for RNA analysis. The basic idea is very simple - you have a 'cap' of thin plastic film which you direct the machine to position above your tissue section. You can then look at a microscope image which is projected onto your computer screen and mark which individual cells you want to capture. The computer then relays this information to the laser arm which fires a laser beam for a period in the microsecond region at the cap above each point. The film then melts, adhering the cell as it reforms, so that when you lift the cap off the desired cells should be adhered to the film.

Very cool, and I've had brilliant results from it. The hardest part is only really optimising the laser parameters, as it has to be strong enough to melt the film, but not so strong that it burns a hole in your tissue. However, it seemed that the laser just didn't want to play on Saturday. That or it was too eager. It jostled between not melting the film, only making dents in the surface (see top image) or burning a black hole in the middle of the target point. As the RNA in the tissue section only remains intact for an hour or so after wax deparaffinization, by the time I had the laser optimised there was no time to capture the cells I wanted.

Not yet defeated by this failure, I prepared a second section, and set about re-optimising the laser for this sample (you have to re-set everything each time you change samples). Again it wasn't playing. My cap looked like it'd been used for target practice.

In the end I gave up. It was only when I was removing my caps from the machine and complaining to a friend that he noticed a dust-hair on the surface of the cap. Those very fine ones that float about. But it was enough to prevent the cap from sitting flush against the tissue surface - hence my problems with the laser. Sigh. At least now I know, so I'll be cleaning the cap holder very well before using it in the future.

spoke too soon

It turns out that the end of the light of the tunnel was really just the headlights of an on-coming express train.

I've been trying to put together the figures for my *first* paper (yay). It's a mix of my work and some results from a PhD student who finished last year. My supervisor's writing the main bulk of the paper, which is good because it saves me time, but he's assumed we have images and figures that we don't have, which is BAD. We have the data and some of the photos, but they were meant for our own records and not of publishable quality. The other problem is that the previous student's thesis is a nightmare to trawl through, there are so many different plant lines and he's laid out the results for each experiment in a slightly different format each time (why oh why?!!!) .

Some of these issues I need to bring up with my supervisor, but in true traditional supervisor fashion, he sent me the rough draft on monday and then disappeared for the week on tuesday. I need to give him a mock-up of the figures at the start of next week, and there's been no word from the previous student in response to my cry for help (and data in a more sensible form).

At least I'm lined up to be joint first author on this paper, rather than the second author I thought I might be. But it's a hefty amount of work I need to do to get it.

a single keystroke

I need to start writing up in earnest.

The end is in sight

Over the last few days, I've thrown out 7 shelves of plants - that's 45 trays or 315 tobacco plants. I did take samples from them, so they didn't die in vain. More to the point, I'm in the last stages of processing my data from over 300 samples.
I've also heard that each growth chamber at the plant growth facilities cost us £4000 a month to maintain. As I've been using half a chamber, that's £2000 a month I've been clocking up for the lab bill, if the rumours are true that is. Our group alone use the better part of 5 rooms, adding up to a ridiculous amount of money spent on lighting and humidity control alone...

Anyway, hopefully not too long left doing experiments!

Plants versus zombies

It's amazing what we can do with G.M. technology these days.

Pregnancy tests for viruses

There are several ways to check if your plant is infected with Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). If your plant of interest is Nicotiana benthamiana (i.e. such a sickly thing that it wilts at the mere sight of a virus) then you wait for them to die. Though that could mean it was infected with any one of scores of plant viruses.

To narrow down the list of culprits, and to do so before plant death, then look out for the dark green veins surrounding light green patches of leaf tissue, where chlorosis has occured due to insertion of the virus coat protein into the chloroplastic envelope. The leaves will become mottled and curl up. These symptoms could be attributed to a much smaller number (i.e. less than 10) of different virus species that cause the same symptoms.

If you're more pedantic about your viruses and want to know if your plant has TMV, you could use antibodies against TMV-specific proteins, or primer sequences that complement TMV-specific RNA sequences in molecular-based assays.

However, you can also get tests to check if your virus is TMV/CMV/boy/girl/indeterminate gender. They look like a pregnancy test, work in the same way as a pregnancy test, you interpret your results in (I'm told) the same way as you would a pregnancy test. The only difference is that instead of peeing on a stick you put plant extract on it. (And no, you cannot train plants to pee).
And yes, my brain is addled from too much data analysis.

M.I.A. - Have you seen this PhD homo sapiens?

I haven't updated my blog for a LONG time. I've found that being an unfunded fourth year PhD is a time-consuming job, despite being technically unemployed. Not only have I become jaded and bitter, but my life is increasingly asocial and self-centred. My thoughts are unable to drag themselves away from the *exciting* lab experiments that pre-occupy them (and inevitably don't work) long enough to compose any meaningful or entertaining prose. Of course, that has always been the case, so what's new?

Anyway, I realised that this lack of communication with the world outside my lab room 123 was getting out of hand when my mum had to resort to sending me a facebook message to check I'm still alive. I shall endeavour to be something more resembling a human being.

Please humour me if my next few blog updates are all work-related. It's an uphill endeavour.

CNY

It used to be that I looked forward to Chinese New Year in Cambridge, and this year especially I was looking forward to the celebrations without the stress and intense practising for lion-dancing. I've had some great times with the lion dance troupe, and made good friends with the members, both past and present. When I decided to leave last year, I was afraid at first that I wouldn't see any of them much anymore and I would have missed them. So I was really very happy to find myself socialising and getting to know my friends better outside of practices.

Lately though, I've been hearing a bit too much about lion-dancing. As far as I can tell, it boils down to insufficient communication between the committee members, and the feeling that some are taking the bulk of the work and stress that comes with CNY more than others. After trying to listen patiently for several weeks (yes, weeks), and resisting the urge to butt in, all I can say is 'why can't you guys sit down and talk about it and sort it out amongst yourselves?!!!'. As a friend, I'm happy to listen about problems they might have, and sympathesize. As an ex-coach/ex-president/ex-almost everything I'm also willing to give my advice when asked. But I keep finding myself being placed in the most difficult of situations, being asked for advice in a friend capacity. Frankly, I know them too well to be impartial, nor can I step in and help because, even if I had the time, it would be rude and stepping on people's toes. It is not my responsibility nor my inclination.

I'm starting to find myself avoiding social events where I might see more than a certain number of lion-dancers together in the same place. An impossible situation as I spend a lot of my time with Malaysians. I'm also starting to feel resentful, because I can't seem to look forward to Chinese New Year, nor can I relax when the subject of lion-dancing is brought up. Most of the lion-dancers don't discuss lion dancing with me, other than inviting me to watch their performances or making light talk, but I feel myself tensing up whenever I hear 'lion' and 'dance' in the same sentence, even if it's 'lion cubs' and 'dancing with wolves'. Perhaps when I hear about 'leona lewis dancing in a new mtv' I will find my shoulder muscles bunching up.

Anyway, perhaps it's my fault for getting too involved. There's no particular reason why I should feel responsible. I might just hide under my bedclothes and avoid them all this weekend. Wake me up in the New Year please.

Cousin network

Over recent years the family Cousin network has been getting quieter and quieter, but when needed, it can spring into action with surprising speed.

My mum rang me on Saturday morning, asking if I knew my cousin's (let's call him cousin J) phone number. His parents' house in Stockport had been broken into on Friday night, and the car and my auntie's phone had been stolen, along with their only record of J's mobile number. I only had an old number for him, so I rang cousin S, who said she would sms it to me if she had it. S had a DIFFERENT old number for J, so she rang her sisters, M and Y. Y had mobile number 3 for J, again out of use, so their brother L gets a phone call. L was at his parents' house so they had to tell his mum what had happened. His mum promptly rang my auntie. Meanwhile my parents were at my auntie's house waiting for the police. In the end we failed to get hold of J on the phone, but he still turned up at my auntie's after all. Facebook can be amazingly useful.

My auntie and uncle are fine by the way, though a bit shaken, they were sleeping upstairs whilst burglars were rummaging around downstairs. They also had their little toddler grandson in the room next to them upstairs, and somehow that makes it even scarier.

When it comes to gossip, the cousin network can be remarkably efficient as well, especially when our mums help out with the spreading of news.

blended creme eggs

The January Sales are still on-going, but the Easter merchandise is already on the shop shelves. Seems like a good time to mention chocolate and creme eggs in a blog entry. For fellow procrastinators and professional time-wasters, please go to www.cremeegg.co.uk for silly clips.

(my favourite)

People of a highly impressionable and depressive nature should not be allowed to watch these unless supervised by a sane (and therefore abnormal) person supplied with emergency boxes on non-creme-egg chocolate.

We must eat chocolate

From an article in the Times Higher Education supplement (19-26 December 2008) on examples of illogical logic -

'It is imperative that we do not do bad things. Eating chocolate, broadly speaking, is a good thing. Therefore not eating chocolate is a bad thing. We should not not eat chocolate. Conclusion; we must eat chocolate.'

I can think of several people who use that 'logic' already.

Another one I like is 'last year, approximately 6000 deaths were direct consequences of drinking. Nearly 5000 deaths were direct consequences of driving. There were 500 reported cases of death by drink-drinking. Therefore drink-driving is safer than drinking or driving alone.'

Hmm.

P.S. Although I use quotation marks, I'm only quoting from memory, so these may not be the exact words used, but as near enough as I can remember.

P.P.S. Yes I'm aware this is a flagrant misuse of quotation marks.

Bright-field leaf sections

I've been trying to get good clean cross-sections of tobacco and Nicotiana benthamiana leaves, and having a few problems with the tobacco cell walls, which have a tendency to rip and tear apart. Following up the suggestions made by a few colleagues I've found that using a different brand of the embedding media, and also sectioning at a lower temperature, makes a significant difference. The section below is 5 microns thick (that's 5 thousandths of a millimetre).

Ironically, I can't get the microtome lab cold enough - these sections were cut at a room temperature of 19 degrees Celsius. I'm planning on moving the microtome to a room with ambient temperature of 12 degrees and trying there.

The cell architecture of N. benthamiana appears to be much more robust and has stayed intact during sectioning, even at a thickness of only 4 microns.

My next stage is to stain the sections.

scissors that leave no visible rend

When people say that they feel their heart break
what their hearts are really doing is experiencing intense feeling
For how can a broken heart feel?

When there is but an emptiness
where your heart used to be
And a sense of something missing in the tiniest events of your everyday life
as if there someone has exited with help from scissors that leave no visible edge
Then there is your broken heart.

The question is, how does it learn to pick up the pieces of itself and carry on?
Or maybe it never does
but the body learns how to carry on, a shell to protect the precious fragments left behind.