Biohazard training

Esco invited the staff to go for a biohazard hood training that lasted for 2 days. So I went.


They promised not to hard sell their hoods, what they in fact did was to pull down their compeditors. There's this room with lots of other brands of hoods all disected, and they point out to you the bad points of it. Like 'when you choose a BSCII hood, make sure it has got this and this feature which...oops, this model does not have...'


The disc test, to make sure the pumps are working well. The large metal thing in the center is supposed to replicate a person's hand while working in the hood.


Laminar flow: didnt know there were two types of these cabinets: the vertical and horizontal ones. The horizontal ones blow air directly into your face, but are cleaner.


The animal unit: used for changing animal bedding and housing. Luxury.


BSC2 hoods.


Higher class BSC2 hoods. A few thousand dollars more expensive than the previous ones, but works better because of the more powerful motor.


The one at the right is called a PCR hood! If you do lots of PCR, have one so it stays RNA free. Luxury.


The guy showing us the correct way to measure airflow from the HEPA filter.


Put the anemometer and measure if the blowing strength is up to standard.


Repeat this on 12 different point in the hood. But the guy that serviced the one in the lab mearly moved the machine here and there, and then he was done. Cheated...


Measuring total air suction power. Have to be above a certain number to be accredited by EU.


Masking tape factory owners are rich.


Another tool to measure air movement. It kinda gets boring after awhile.


The training spot is near the airport, so you hear lots of planes passing overhead as they prepare to land, even the landing gear is out.

Jagarsi

The old dude Jagarsi who has been faithfully serving our lab for the past x years (where x= a big number) is finally retiring due to a heart condition. So the department decided to have a farewell lunch for him. Unfortunately, the dude was sick that day and in hospital and couldn't make it for his own farewell lunch. But the lunch had to go on anyway. Its like the birthday boy missing from the birthday party. Sad huh.
Anyway, went to the Rice Table at Suntec. Decent place serving Indonesian food. The whole department went, the attendance sheet officially stating 71 participants. We came, sat down and waited a long time before being served. They had a choice of lime, orange or sour plum juice: all freeflow. Then came the keropok freeflow. What we dicussed and decided was that the people there were knaves who try to make us drink lots of liquids and then give us lots of keropok so that the keropok expands in the stomach with the fruit juice so we can't eat much later on.
The waiters later came with rice, which everybody took very little of, and then the food in nice identical dishes. About 12-13 varieties. Let me try and remember:

Soto ayam (not the best I've tasted)
pickled cucumber (prof likes it)
Rojak buah (prof says its ok)
curry chicken wing (didn't finish the first serving)
sweet black sauce chicken (so-so)
sayur lemak (ordered twice)
tahu telur (TOO OILY!!!)
satay ayam (yum, the thick sweet peanut sauce)
rendang (I personally ate two servings of it)
curry prawn (a favourite)
lady's finger (not bad)
sweet and sour fish (good)
kangkung belacan (good)
otak otak (so-so)


...hmmm....about 14, but have this feeling I missed out one or two.
Anyway, half way through the feast, the HOD gave a speech on how much money in grants the dept has got and how well we are all working and how much harder we must work now, etc. etc.
Then we got back to eating.
But I pitty the people sitting at the HOD's table. Can't enjoy a good lunch. Coz the people there will be too paiseh to eat alot and scared if they order more, the HOD think they glutton or something, and so pretend to be full after the first strand of kangkung.
But my table boh kiek kee. Order the prawns 4 times, satay 3 times, salad, fish, otak...everything take second round, and finish up all. We all is high performance one. Muahahaha....


Ok, ok, pictures:


Nice ambiance:






The ploy:


Why so few choices?


The spread:




Josie's first round:


Soto ayam:


My second round:


Bhu refuses to finish up the curry:


The HOD's table; sorry guys, no second rounds:


Ahhemm....




Escape!:


Trying to fit back a broken branch:






After lunch, we still had an hour to roam around suntec before the bus came to pick us back to campus:


Two of the staffs decided to get a haircut, and the whole department was outside watching... the poor hairdresser, must have been super stressed:


Yup, like I said, the WHOLE department watching one guy get his hair cut:

New air conds

After the central air cond failed some time back, the pressure on the window units found at the general heavy equiptment lab increased. The frequent breakdowns of the air conds caused many in the lab to break sweat. Thus, the department had no choice but to fix the air conds. So the day came when workers lined up outside the yellow doors:


Workers in the general equiptment area. They had to open up the false ceiling, take out the old air cond ducts, put in new air cond ducts, made a mess of the whole place.


The old air cond ducts. Someone should culture some of that stuff on petri dishes. Could open a zoo I think...


The new Mr.Slim Mitsubishi units. I guess its a 2.5 horsepower. There were 4 units installed. Supposedly they are going to close the doors that lead from the main lab corridor to this general lab area. So the corridor will still be hot while the general lab will be freezing antarctica.

Old shaking incubators

The 4 old controled thermal shakers have been taken away. To replace it next month, there will be 3 new units of the Sartorious coming in. Those new units will be stackable and half the size of the old ones, so it will only occupy the same footspace as ONE old unit. Talk of real estate potential! The workers seemed to have a hard time getting the old units out. They were sweating and toiling, maybe partly because of the faulty central air cond. hahah.... free sauna.

First unit:


First unit gone, second one waiting in turn:


Second unit:


No. 3 and No.4:


After all 4 were gone, we decided to rearrange the chest freezers to widen the walking space:

Photo

Realized that the photo put up yesterday couldnt distinguish the numbers on the yellow asset number clearly, so here's a pic of the pic from the booklet:

blasphemy

The uni is trying to raise funds by asking everybody out there to give them money in exchange for renaming things after them. If you give them 2-30 million, they will name a building after you and if you give above 25 million, they will rename a school / faculty after you.
Thus, I have decided to save money to give to the uni, in a few years time, when I accumulate $100Million dollars, I will give it to the uni so they will rename NUS as National University of Sam. MUahahahahahah!!!! Then I will hike school fees by 30% each year and everybody that enters the uni will get stright A's no matter what you do or score in exams, just so long you dont complain about the fee hike. Muahhahah!!!!

As always, the uni has a unique way of messing things up.
Take a look at this picture, from the prestigious flavilab center:
An inverted microscope with the yellow asset number tag at the top.


Take a look at the propaganda brochure the uni came up with. They try to mimic the Mastercard 'priceless' advert some time ago.
Cover:


First page:


Some middle page:


Research excellence, yadda yadda yadda:


But wait, what's this!!!


Is that a pic from our lab? Lets read the caption:


What the....
O & G????
Ok, maybe OnG has a microscope EXACTLY like ours, same model, same monitor, and even same corner of the wall.
But on closer inspection, notice the yellow asset number? Its exactly the same.
Then, of course I'm wrong! I'm sure OnG has a microscope with the same asset number as microbiology.
How silly of me to accuse the makers of the brochure to NOT give credit to whom credit is due.

Pollutioin

Heard this saying today. Don't know how true it is.

The solution to pollution is dilution.

Think about it. So may ways to argue both for and against it.

Broken hearts

Feb 14, 2006
Be careful, a broken heart can kill you
Severe emotional or work stress can trigger heart attacks in healthy people
By Salma Khalik
HEALTH CORRESPONDENT

ON A day devoted to affairs of the heart, here's a bit of sobering news: A broken heart CAN kill.
So, too, can a surprise party... if there's a little too much of a surprise in it. There is truth to the phrase, 'scared to death'.

And that old chestnut, 'you're being worked to death'? That's possible too.

With Valentine's Day today, comes a timely warning from cardiologists at the National University Hospital (NUH): Severe emotional or work stress can trigger heart attacks in otherwise healthy people.
And their study of seven such patients, along with several others conducted by other cardiac centres, seems to confirm what men have long suspected: Women's hearts break more easily.

Women account for more than nine in 10 of these emotional heart attacks, the studies have revealed.

But it is not all bad news.

They also give the answer to that question posed in the popular song, How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?

Time, apparently, does the trick.

A 'heartbreak' attack is different from a 'regular' heart attack, which is usually caused by blocked arteries that restrict blood flow to the rest of the body.

A heart attack induced by emotion or stress, on the other hand, is triggered by a surge of hormones, which causes only the top part of the heart to contract, thus reducing blood flow.

This phenomenon was first discovered by Japanese researchers in 2001.

They called it 'tako tsubo' because, in such an attack, only the top part of the heart contracts, giving it the shape of an octopus trap with a round bottom and narrow neck - called tako tsubo in Japanese.

But time can help the victims of heartbreak - physically, as well as emotionally.

Rush the victim to hospital. If he - or more likely, she - gets there in time, the chances are very good that, within a month, the heart will have recovered its resilience, resulting in a full recovery and no side-effects from the attack.

Senior cardiologist Tan Huay Cheem, one of the researchers in the NUH study, said: 'We have come across cases like this before, but we thought it was caused by a very small clot which disintegrated.'

These victims tend to have typical heart attack symptoms, such as chest pains.

When doctors investigate, they find none of the classic problems, such as blocked or narrow arteries.

Now, when they do an angiogram on the patient and see the heart in the tako tsubo shape, they know they merely need to support the organ till it gets back to normal.

This is done with a balloon pump which helps the heart push blood to the rest of the body.

A study by the Sheba Medical Centre in Israel found that the tako tsubo syndrome caused 2 per cent of all heart attacks in that country, but 6 per cent of those in women.

A study by Johns Hopkins University in the United States found that, of 19 patients who had suffered attacks related to emotion and stress, about half were triggered by news of the death of someone close.

Other causes included surprise parties, armed robbery and even a fear of public speaking.

'The potentially lethal consequences of emotional stress,' the study concluded, 'are deeply rooted in folk wisdom, as reflected by phrases such as 'scared to death' and 'a broken heart'.'

salma@sph.com.sg

Do not think

Science 17 February 2006:
Vol. 311. no. 5763, p. 935
DOI: 10.1126/science.311.5763.935

News of the Week

PSYCHOLOGY:
Tough Decision? Don't Sweat It

Greg Miller

Buying oven mitts and buying a car demand completely different types of decision-making. Most people would scarcely think about the mitts and agonize over the car. That's exactly the wrong way to go about it, according to a provocative new study.

On page 1005, Ap Dijksterhuis and colleagues at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands report a series of experiments with student volunteers and real-life shoppers that suggests that too much contemplation gets in the way of good decision-making--especially when the choice is complicated. Conscious deliberation is best suited for simple decisions such as choosing oven mitts, the researchers argue, whereas complex decisions like picking a car are best handled by the unconscious mind.

"They're elegant experiments with a simple design and eye-popping result," says Timothy Wilson, a psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The research should "stimulate some useful new thinking" among decision researchers, says Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University.

The problem with conscious thought, Dijksterhuis contends, is that you can only think about so many things at the same time. He hypothesized that decisions that require evaluating many factors may be better handled by unconscious thought processes.

To test the idea, Dijksterhuis and colleagues asked volunteers to read brief descriptions of four hypothetical cars and pick the one they'd like to buy after mulling it over for 4 minutes. The researchers made the decision far simpler than it is in real life by limiting the descriptions to just four attributes such as good gas mileage or poor legroom. One of the cars had more plusses than the others, and most participants chose this car. But when the researchers made the decision more complex by listing 12 attributes for each car, people identified the best car only about 25% of the time--no better than chance. The real surprise came when the researchers distracted the participants with anagram puzzles for 4 minutes before asking for their choices. More than half picked the best car. The counterintuitive conclusion, Dijksterhuis says, is that complex decisions are best made without conscious attention to the problem at hand.

To test the idea in a more natural setting, the researchers visited two stores: the international furniture store IKEA and a department store called Bijenkorf. A pilot study with volunteer subjects had suggested that shoppers weigh more attributes when buying furniture than when buying kitchen accessories and other simple products commonly purchased at Bijenkorf. The researchers quizzed shoppers at the two stores about how much time they'd spent thinking about their purchases and then called them a few weeks later to gauge their satisfaction. Bijenkorf shoppers who spent more time consciously deliberating their choices were more pleased with their purchases--evidence that conscious thought is good for simple decisions, Dijksterhuis says. But at IKEA, the reverse was true: Those who reported spending less time deliberating turned out to be the happiest.

Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, says the study builds on evidence that too much reflection is detrimental in some situations. But "it adds an important insight" by identifying complexity as a key factor in determining which kind of thought process leads to the best decision. Schooler isn't ready, however, to dispense with conscious thought when it comes to complex decisions. "What I think may be really critical is to engage in [conscious] reflection but not make a decision right away," says Schooler.

Dijksterhuis agrees. When an important decision arises, he gathers the relevant facts and gives it his full attention at first. Then, he says, "I sit on things and rely on my gut."

Last word

Kinda got bored with the journals Nature and Science so looked for something more mainstream. Found NewScientist. Check out this really cool segment that they put up on the web. Link --> here. This week's question: In films, a hero often evades bullets by jumping into a river or lake. How far below the surface do they need to dive?

JGV 2006

The glycosylation site in the envelope protein of West Nile virus (Sarafend) plays an important role in replication and maturation processes

J. Li R. Bhuvanakantham J. Howe and M.-L. Ng

Flavivirology Laboratory, Department of Microbiology, 5 Science Drive 2, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597

The complete genome of West Nile (Sarafend) virus [WN(S)V] was sequenced. Phylogenetic trees utilizing the complete genomic sequence, capsid gene, envelope gene and NS5 gene/3' untranslated region of WN(S)V classified WN(S)V as a lineage II virus. A full-length infectious clone of WN(S)V with a point mutation in the glycosylation site of the envelope protein (pWNS-S154A) was constructed. Both growth kinetics and the mode of maturation were affected by this mutation. The titre of the pWNS-S154A virus was lower than the wild-type virus. This defect was corrected by the expression of wild-type envelope protein in trans. The pWNS-S154A virus matured intracellularly instead of at the plasma membrane as shown for the parental WN(S)V.

J. Gen. Virol., Mar 2006; 87: 613 - 622.

The Singapore 2005 Yearbook

One paragraph in the new Singapore Yearbook!!! But too bad no pictures, or names. But something better than nothing. Part of one of the 5 most important achievements from the NUS community.

lots of chocolate for me to eat

Prof got back from her annual OZ trip and with her......CHOCOLATES!!!
Feast your eyes:

Random Pop

No Recipe for Superstardom

By Mary Beckman
ScienceNOW Daily News
9 February 2006

For all those parents wondering why their teens are so devoted to scantily clad pop stars, take hope: It's not really the music that they like. They just want to fit in, according to new research. The news isn't so encouraging for aspiring artists, though. While talent might distinguish good from bad, social pressure and pure dumb luck are also big influences on which bands gain the most fame, sociologists report in the 10 February issue of Science.

Music industry professionals would dearly love to figure out what makes some bands skyrocket off the charts while equally--or more--talented musicians wallow in relative obscurity. Obviously, they haven't been able to pin it down. (Neither have book publishers or movie producers, for that matter.) Duncan Watts, a sociologist at Columbia University, and colleagues wanted to know whether peer pressure contributes to which bands go platinum. Can science do a better job of picking pop idols than the cold calculations of capitalists?

Watts started by collecting 48 songs from unknown but real bands listed on a garage band Web site (including tunes such as Beerbong's "Father to Son") and creating an experimental music site. Visitors to the site were randomly assigned to a particular Web page. On one of these, they could listen to any of the rock songs and rate them on a scale of 1 to 5, then download them for free if they liked. Some songs were downloaded much more than others, and because all the visitor's judgments were independent, the researchers defined these as good songs.

Other visitors ended up on one of eight Web pages that looked the same except for numbers next to each song listing the number of times previous visitors to that page had downloaded the song. After tabulating the whims of 14,000 visitors, the researchers learned that there was some accounting for taste: Good songs always ranked high, and bad songs ranked low. But when visitors had access to information about what other people were downloading, they were much more likely to download songs with high download rates, even if they weren't the highest quality, and pushed the highest-ranked ever closer toward superstardom. This indicates that knowing what other people thought of the music influenced what people downloaded.

Moreover, success was random. Even though the eight Web pages started with the same 48 songs, different tunes hit the top 10 list in each. The researchers could not predict which songs would reach success in one Web page by examining the results of another. Stardom is indeed a crap shoot, Watts concludes. So if the independent rankings show that there actually is some accounting for taste, why does it lose out to popularity? "There's a social function to all of us liking the same thing," he speculates. "It's not the thing that's important, but having something to share."

Calling the experiments "pathbreaking," sociologist Michael Macy of Cornell University says the findings illustrate how a small advantage can snowball, making popularity hard to predict. Economist Robert Frank, also at Cornell, says the work shows "we're all susceptible to the herd mentality."

Related site

Columbia Music Lab

Ed: Quick click many many times on Flavilab make this site the most popular one and overtake Xiaxue and mrbrown. Muahahahahahah!!!!!