food stall

All the food that prof made, and all the deco i did.

another video of the welcome tea

the stall

tee shrit spraying pics

flavilab official tee shrit

Weapons of war scoop spoof Nobels

Published online 10 October 2007 | Nature 449, 648 (2007) |
Steve Nadis

It was a case of 'make love not war' winning out over 'don't ask, don't tell'. Borrowing a bad story line from a B movie, researchers at the US Air Force Research Laboratory at the Wright-Patterson Air Force base in Ohio proposed to develop chemical aphrodisiacs that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. The idea — dubbed the 'gay bomb' — earned the unnamed Ohio scientists the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded at Harvard University on 4 October along with nine other prizes.

The competition for the Peace Prize was intense even within Wright-Patterson laboratory itself. Researchers there also proposed chemicals designed to attract stinging and biting creatures, as well as low-toxicity compounds that would “create severe and lasting halitosis” for those exposed to tiny concentrations. Despite the merits of the competing concepts, none had quite the 'legs', so to speak, of the gay bomb.

The Ig Nobels — a spoof of the real Nobel prizes — have been awarded annually since 1991. But the gay bomb would never have basked in their glow had it not been for the Sunshine Project in Austin, Texas. The group's director Edward Hammond caught wind of the report when he saw a promotional CD-ROM of 'non-lethal weapons', prompting him to seek all supporting documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

The fate of the gay bomb project is unclear, says Ig Nobel impresario Marc Abrahams, who was told by former lab staff that “if research on the gay bomb had proceeded further, it would have immediately been stamped secret, and neither you nor I would have any way of knowing about it.” Fortunately, however, the Ig Nobel selection committee was lucky enough to hear about the idea, as well as others that warranted similar distinction.

The Linguistics Prize, for example, went to researchers from the University of Barcelona in Spain for showing that rats cannot always distinguish between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.

Brian Witcombe of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK, shared the Medicine Prize with Dan Meyer of Sword Swallowers' Association International in Antioch, Tennessee, for their report, “Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects”. In recommending the paper for the British Medical Journal , one reviewer called it “a cut above the others”, according to Witcombe.

Investigators at the National University of Quilmes in Argentina won the Aviation Prize for determining that Viagra aids hamsters' recovery from jet lag. A member of that team, Diego Golombek, praised his graduate students for top-flight research and “for going to the drugstore to get the Viagra”.

Junk

Korean boy came back and brought us junk food.

clamped

Was drinking milo for tea and looking out of the lab when i spotted this car kena clamped by the campus security. All the best dude.

children's day

Children's day treat. KFC for the whole lab from prof. Overgrown kids....

Invitrogen's new giveaway

new door gift from Invitrogen, very nice. Infrared mouse. but not very sensitive, so have to click very hard to get it going.

welcome tea

Department welcome tea coming up. Check out the sexy superheroes.....almost choked...

stone age

This is what stone age technology looks like

painting the whole building

painting the whole place, and it has been raining for the past days. kind of the wrong time to do painting. yesterday it rained and lots of wet paint got washed down, milky drains.

my bday

lab celebrated Sam's bday and prof made an extra dish: mooncake with 'transparent skin' filled with walnut filing. Super stuff. The cake is cheese cake with a base layer of peaches, topped with a chocolate mesh.
sorry, no pics of me coz i was not holding the camera.





Lazy An


New kid (honours)

taiwan

What our dear MK was up to while at the conference... all I can say is
Still water runs deep

tid bits

Mel went to Malacca and brought back pineapple cookies and green bean cookies.

happy teacher's day

Today is teachers day

drying salted fish

KL's salted fish dehydrating.

taiwain goodies

Some lab people went to Taiwan for a conference and they brought back FOOD.



Keychain of different animals that glow in the dark. No one wanted the pufferfish.


The goods. First is a bag of pork chips. thin slices of meat crispy and fattening. Then there are some keropok thingy, and at the bottom is the pineapple cookies and the muah chee like gooey thing.


The supposedly famous pineapple cookie. so-so IMHO


Baked sweet potato in some crust. Very good. Must warm up before consuming.