Christmas Lunch

Lab's annual event, sponsored by the boss.
We went to a local buffet at the Grand Hyatt at Orchard Road. 12 people, one table, lots of food.

Here are some pictures for you to oogle over.



There's this wall just stacked full of wine bottles. Quite a sight to behold. Very nice.


Amazing roasted chicken and duck. and the pastries are not bad at all.


Fresh fish, oyster omelette, etc etc etc...


Small talk while waiting for some others to arrive.


Someone found a worm in the cheng t'ng. We showed it to the waiter and all he said was thanks for pointing that out, I will go remove the whole pot of cheng t'ng. We were hoping for a 10% discount or a free cake or something.


After the worm thing, I found an ant on a piece of papadum. Makes you wonder actually how clean the place really is.


A toast; to remember a good 2005 and to usher in a hopefully equally amazing (if not more amazing) 2006.


Group shot. Taken with the cam's autotimer. Asked a waiter before this to take a shot but it came out blur.


The entry to Straits Kitchen. Very good ambience and deco.


A round fixture on a square wall. The whole place very nice deco. Quite overwhelmed by it.

Cool tap

Don't know what else to call it. The sink fixture like thingy at the hospital food court. You press the black thing on the floor and water like a waterfall comes out of the glass thing. The waste water drains out at the back of the 'sink' by the slit there. Thus, please dont throw anything bigger than 1.26cm x 2.04cm into the sink as it will get stuck.

bohliauness

Was 'free' the other day, no, more like bored the other day while sectioning some blocks, so had some fun:


After a few days, was 'free', no, 'bored' again. Behold, all you earthlings, kau-tau now to The Supreme Lord Boh-Liau Flaviguy, henceforth shall be refered to as Revereed Boh-Liau.


Hey, and you there, stop gigging in front of your monitor.

Fumigation

No idea why they call it such but this is the first time I've seen people doing a safety check for the biosafety cabinet. So, this is what you need to do.
1. Come with lots of sticky tape and big plastic bags.
2. Stick the plastic bags over the hood, wrap it up like you are Santa Claws.
3. Use lots of tapes, use as if your father owns the factory.

4. Please remember to forget to put in the smelly ammonium thingy into the hood so you can (after using lots of tape to secure the plastic bags in place) make a mess out of the whole thing by trying to put this tupperware of thing into the hood right after you sealed it moments ago.

5. Do also stick platic bags and sticky tape on the top of the cabinet. But remember that you forgot to put the ammonia thingy till just now? Enjoy the whiffs of scented air now.

6. Leave the lab to the rightful owners overnight. Dont hog the ammonia for yourself.

7. Come back the next morning with a smell-o-sensor and a big vacuum cleaner.

8. Take readings (or at least act like you are taking readings) from the sensor like thing (you forgot the batteries right?)
9. You can also take readings while the vacuum cleaner is on. If pentiums can multitask, so can you! I'm sure the air suction thing will NOT influence the readings of your dead sensor. How stupid of me to ill judge your skills.
10. Oh yeah, forgot to tell you to wear gloves when working in the lab.

Real?

The one on top, is it real? Got bleached by the washing machine? Don't know. Folded it up and bought chicken rice with it.

Pokemon causes cancer

Nature 438, 897 (15 December 2005) doi:10.1038/438897a
Pokémon blocks gene name
Tom Simonite

Moniker proves too much for games company.
A cancer research institute has been threatened with legal action by the US branch of Japanese video-game franchise Pokémon, after one of its researchers borrowed the company's trademark to name an oncogene.

Pier Paolo Pandolfi of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, first called the new member of the POK family of genes Pokemon at a conference in 2001, claiming it was an acronym for POK erythroid myeloid ontogenic. But when Pandolfi and his colleagues described the gene's role in the development of human cancer in Nature last January, the discovery attracted headlines such as 'Pokemon's cancer role revealed' (T. Maeda et al. Nature 433, 278–285; 2005). Message boards and blogs picked up the story, unable to resist using the phrase 'Pokemon causes cancer'.
That led Pokémon USA to exert its legal right to the trademark, Nature has learned. "They threatened to sue us if we did not stop calling the gene Pokemon," says Pandolfi, "but the name and the gene have nothing to do with the cartoon." A spokeswoman for Pokémon USA told Nature that its image was at risk. "We don't want our image undermined by associating Pokémon with cancer," she said.
This is not the first case of trademark law interfering with a researcher's attempt to name a gene. In 1993, Alfonso Martinez Arias of the University of Cambridge, UK, was told to find an alternative name for his new fly gene Velcro, after the Velcro Corporation wrote to the journal that was publishing his paper to say that "such usage invariably dilutes the value of our name and mark".
Perhaps the best-known quirkily titled gene, the fly-development gene Sonic hedgehog, has so far escaped legal threats, despite sharing a name with the spiky electric-blue star owned by that other Japanese video-game giant Sega. Bob Riddle came up with the name in 1993 while working at Harvard University Medical School, but says he doesn't think Sega's image is threatened. "I don't think a development gene harms them," he explains.
Martinez Arias says he has been more careful since his experience with Velcro, but that trademark infringements will continue if geneticists keep looking for catchy names. "They name genes as if they are claiming a new continent," he says. Safe, if boring, systematic names such as those of the Human Genome Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) should be used instead, says Martinez Arias. The Sloan-Kettering centre seems to agree, and is now calling Pandolfi's gene by the HGNC-recognized moniker Zbtb7.

The Pond part III

One week ago, the lotus plant at the new NUH pond was in full bloom, in great splendor and glory.

The beautiful close up of the flower.

One week later, it's dead. A new plant viurs? Who knows.

Teren the terror

Teren the terror broke a pipettor!
Welding his superhuman strength, he trust forth his power onto the tiny pipettor shaft, breaking its neck and leaving it stuck in the pipette tip; mortified, fractured, dead.
*shudder*

This is what a 'normal' pipettor should look like.



This is what Teren did to the one of the P2 we have, rather, had. ouch.


Closeup of the broken shaft. Much like decapitation.


The end of the shaft still stuck in the white tip.



You can see the little hole in the middle of the shaft.

But fear not, fret not, cry not!
Gilson sells replacement parts! Hurrah, a new lease of life will come soon for this unfortunate soul.
http://www.gilson.com/Products/prodInfo.asp?pID=67&ttID=3

If you would like pipettors like P2 to enjoy a new lease of lab life, contribute now to the Help-Get-New-Stuff-For-My-Lab program. Just call 1800-NEW-STUFF or 1800-639-78833 NOW to donate $100.00!

Seminar

Some EM seminar on the TEM cryo technique. The lady is from some small country between Sweeden and Switzerland I think. Population about 32,000. Guess that if you got fired or married, the whole country will know. The old-technique new-technique photo difference is really something. And the processing steps were made to sound so easy... "just put the sample in here in some solution and you can view it already."
Oh yeah, there was refreshments after the talk. yummy.

ice cold

A white Christmas? Not quite.

Cleared the -20C chest freezer with Dr.Li. Got out a whole bucket of ice from it, and we only did half the fridge! The problem was the accumulated ice at the bottom of the fridge caused the racks to be unable to get stacked into the fridge without poking out and thus the fridge door could not be closed. Nobody bothered to clean it up so we did it. Spent 5 minutes hacking, another few minutes scouping and then half an hour of frostbite. Intended to do the other half before we started but at the end of it, after the cold finger thingy, erm... another day maybe.

no more bottles on the shelf

many Schott bottles standing on the shelf
many Wheaton bottles standing on the shelf
if 4 honours students would suddenly come
there'll be no more bottles standing on the shelf

new phone

Old phone used the normal telephone line, made normal calls, and normal sounds:


The new phone!
Using the latest in IP technology, WooHoo!
Super cool with lots of features, got call memory, voice mailbox, recieved calls, dialed numbers, missed calls, etc.
But the best part is, its connected to the uni directory. Just key in the staff's tel number and you can check the location of the phone and the directory of the staff that is using the phone. It supposedly is also linked to the government intranet and phone system.
I forsee many dull afternoons filled with phone phreaking in the future.

Muahahahah!

The clean water bath

The screw. Screw it! Got in the wrong one. Somebody's loose screw was lying along the bench and I picked it up and screwed it into the water bath only to be told it's the wrong screw. But it fitted! This proves that screws can multitask, which my laptop can't.


After lots of toil and washing, here it is, gleaming. What a work of art.


The washing process is a long and arduous one. First, bring the water bath to the sink (its super heavy) then release the dirty water into the sink. Unscrew the shaker and then scrub the insides of the tub and shaker. Fill the bath with water to flush out the scrubbed and now floating around dirt. Let water drain again. If dirt persists, repeat scrubbing step, else close one eye and procede with next step. To end wash step, place face directly in front of a metal surface. Should face be seen reflected on the metal surface, cleaning step is considered accomplished. If face cannot be seen, repeat scrub step or check if lab lights are on. Failure to on lights may result in false negative results. Reattach the shaker and screw it back with the correct screw (not the loose screw lying around there).


Ah see, can see face, means pass liau! Thats why smiling. Also note that the lights are on.

You might be wondering who the heck Littlefroggie is, well, after this post, you will wonder no more. Yes avid readers, today the identity of Littlefroggie will be revealed! Feast thy eyes:

(photos obviously by Littlefroggie)

Write poems, get lucky

News at Nature
Published online: 30 November 2005; doi:10.1038/051128-5

They may be badly paid, but artists have more sexual success.
Tom Simonite

Creative people have more sexual partners than the rest of us, say a pair of psychologists. They surveyed a hundred or so artists and poets, and claim that traits similar to those of schizophrenics explain these people's success with members of the opposite sex.Artists and schizophrenics are known to share characteristics, and they pose a certain kind of puzzle to evolutionary psychologists. Neither artistic talent nor schizophrenia offers an obvious reproductive benefit, nor are they expected to, but does their existence suggest they might have one?British researchers Daniel Nettle, of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and Helen Keenoo, at the Open University in Milton Keynes, decided to investigate by surveying 425 professional visual artists and poets, amateurs and regular people. They found that active artists had had an average of five or six sexual partners; those without artistic ambitions had had nearer four."I think it's to do with attention," says Nettle of artists' sexual success. "Art forms are things that hold people's attention, and that can be a powerful aphrodisiac."
Weak linksThe survey also measured psychological characteristics associated with schizophrenia. The results showed that possession of one trait, the tendency to unusual interpretations, was associated with artistic activity, which in turn was linked with more partners. Critics point out that this schizophrenic trait is not directly linked to increased partners. And although an unconventional attitude to social rules, another schizophrenic trait, was directly associated with increased sexual partners, it was not linked to artistic tendencies.Charles Crawford, an evolutionary psychologist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, applauds the study for trying to put numbers on the suspicion that creativity has an evolutionary role. But he is surprised that male artists do not enjoy more success than their female fellow creatives. "Because of the demands of pregnancy, having more partners doesn't really help women have more children," Crawford says, "but for men it really does." So one would be pushed to use the findings to defend a link between creativity and reproductive success, rather than just creativity and number of partners.Balanced viewNettle's suggestion is that creative works are like the displays that animals have evolved to attract mates. "They function as indicators of quality because they are hard to maintain," he claims. "Just like it's hard to have a huge, fantastic peacock's tail, it's not easy to be a successful artist. But it can help you reproduce and pass on your genes."Even if some schizophrenic traits are linked to sexual success, others include being socially withdrawn and lacking interest in one's surroundings, and these reduce mate numbers. So Nettle suggests that mental characters associated with schizophrenia and creativity are retained in the population as a result of an evolutionary balancing act. "We've shown that some of them can increase numbers of sexual partners, so you would expect them to get more frequent," he claims. "But in others they manifest as mental illness."Of course, the assumption that correlations between schizophrenic traits, creativity and mate number indicate a causal relationship between them might well be questioned.
Crawford says it's an interesting and provocative pilot study. But, he adds, "before I believe it, I want to see bigger samples and a focus on sex differences."Nettle agrees and says that he plans to investigate the social side of artists' sexual success as well. "This kind of work can't offer tips on how to get more sexual partners," he says, "but I would like to look at how artists manage it. My gut feeling is that they are given a licence that other people don't receive."

The sky

Amazing sky the other day in the evening as I was going back:

old

And I thought I had been here like forever in this lab.


1988!!!
The grandmother of all paraffin liquids for spectroscopy.
Quick call Ahh-Ma!

Rare sight

If you know my lab, you will know that this is a rare sight, so enjoy it here while it lasts:


There are actually bottles on the shelves! When I saw that i was so shocked, the only time I last saw this was about half a year ago. Then it dawned upon me this great revelation: it's exam week!


Quite a nice geometric, honey-comb like picture of the bottles seemingly stacked vertically in a crate and the shot taken from the top down. But no, its stacked horizontally as the following picture proves :



(photos by Littlefroggie)

ssssshhhaaakkkiiinnngggg

New shaking incubator!

The shaking incubator when stationary:


The shaking incubator when shaking:


This ones is very the powderful man, dontch pray pray ah. Can the shake until you is heen.