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.

Dept lunch

Last Friday two profs in the department got a farewell. Going on to another position in another university in another country. So all the staff said goodbye as well as had their year end lunch meet thingy. Here are some pics:



HOD going stright for the curry. The man knows what's good.


"For my going off party, I expect a buffet table as long as this room, ok?"


The spoils. Mee Siam looking bee hoon, curry chicken with lots of potatoes, fried fish, brocolli with mushrooms, fried won ton, and this oily fiber thingy that is actually chicken floss.


The table only has one line, so the queue snakes around the room.


Going off present. Need a hand tearing away the wrapper?


You gave me a slide box? what the...


I'm going to kill whoever gave me this stupid thing and stuff the black boxes down his throat!!

more pond

Went to the pond again but this time in the evening. the Lily was already shutting down for the day.


The lotus was shutting down forever. Will catch it in action the next time it blooms.


Water from the rock.


Behind the water feature, there is this garden thingy that was interesting so me and Littlefroggie investigated it. We found tomatoes, beans, lady's fingers, corn, papaya, pandan, and some other unidentified plants. All at our backyard! Somebody must be really free.




Can you spot the corn? This is not a corny joke, there really is one there.


Flowering corn. Corny flowers!


Closeup of the tomatoes. Totally organic, no insecticide. Makes good salad. *hint hint*

warren

Uni taking over Warren golf course!
http://www.nus.edu.sg/oed/residentialcolleges/
GL1101 (Introduction to Golf 1101):
Shoot hole-in-one means A+, eagle means A-, Bogey means B+
But of course must always be one shot behind the course lecturer, if beat him means sure to get D-. You have been warned.
On the way to the golf course got bridge. On bridge got shop selling golf ball, golf club and also this outlet sell insurance. This all students play golf, the ball pak here, pak there don't know fly until where liau, better buy insurance wait kena your lecturer car glass window break, you ownself go home cry. Now got promotion, buy insurance, free golf ball. But this golf ball is special one. the ball is make of sponge. Kena hit liau beh pain one. The only problem is the ball sink in the water hazard. After hit the water, it will soak up the water and sink to the bottom. If got many many ball sink, the pond will dry up because the sponge soak up all the water. So if the ball sink, better quickly go fish it out. But fish out liau leh must squeeze the water out of the ball. Then because you squeeze it, the ball kiew chui and become smaller. Because smaller, it is easier to enter the hole. So many students use this as a cheat in the final exams.

pond

New pond outside the NUH Surgery dept. Here's a pic of the blooming water lily and another of two odd looking fishes. Will take more and post tomorrow.

Number Crunch

Bat guano offers some surprising nutritional benefits compared with a Big Mac. Or at least, that's one possible reading of a study of the dietary habits of cave salamanders, which like to feast on the former.
54% of guano is protein.
23% of a Big Mac is protein.
1% of guano is fat.
33% of a Big Mac is fat.
Source: Fenolio, D. B. et al. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B doi:10.1098/rspb.2005.3341 (2005).

So now, when someone tells you to 'go eat s**t' you can reply with some dignity and pride "and you go eat a Big Mac."

Vintage

Olde ye equiptment...so retro
(photo credit: littlefroggie)

Lab Pet

Say hi to Whee the Whale.
Wonderful pet to have.
He's green, he's cute, he's quiet, and he zaps stuff!
What more can one ask of a pet?
He doesn't litter, doesn't make any noise, and doesn't seek for your attention. He's just happy to be where he is!


Whee came in a bubble, you could call him a bubble boy.


Here's the kind pet shop owner that came to make sure Whee has a good home from now on. Here the shopowner is plugging Whee in to his feeder. Whee eats tiny shrimplike things we humans call electrons. When Whee eats a super high load of 'shrimps' he gives out a little spark. That shows he is happy. However, if a big sparks comes out, Whee is over his head in happiness which could result in a toothache - a black spot in his mouth. Then you need to call the friendly petshop owner back to fix Whee up.

Ain't he cute?


Front view. His two little flippers help him walk on dry ground and swim in the deep blue sea. The tougue sticks out perpetually, waiting for his next 'shrimp'.


Whee with his mouth open, "feed me, feed me" he cries!


Front view of his mouth.

If you want to visit Whee, come to the lab! We charge only 50 cents per visit. Feed Whee some 'shrimp' for $5. Charges include the cuvette used for feeding.

pigs

Don't know whats with me this week but I keep on seeing pigs this week.

Pig on the fridge


Pig on the monitor



And even a purple pig attempting to fly (off the bench)!


Gosh...I must be hungry...

not so hot

Follow-up after the air-cond commited suicide: the undertakers took the carcases out and placed them on the floor. Apparently they tried to bury them but the shovels could not penetrate the tiled floor (they should have asked me first, right?). So there they sit rotting to this day. One can only imagine the stench! (because there is none-hahahh):


And how could they bury them all together? Mass grave. Shudder... Human rights! Human rights! erm, hmmm.... Air-cond rights! Air-cond rights!

In its place, they brought in two portable units:




Notice the haphazard work done to seal up the old vents. The people that brought the units placed them there and finding there were no 13Amp sockets (the squarish type) around, as the old air-conds used 15Amp plugs (the round types), they left the units there and WALKED OFF. Can't plug them in, so, leave it there loh...
Then the level supervisor came around and found the air-cond plugs not in, got furious and called them back. What good will two air-conds do just sitting there not pluged in? air-cond sit-power? (versus the human 'eye-power')
The guys came back with two 15Amp plugs and converted the 13Amp plugs to 15Amp ones. Got it running and placed an empty bucket next to the air cond. You see, the air-cond condenses water from the environment around it and so the bucket collects this condensed water. You need to empty it every 6 hours or so.
So they placed the bucket next to the now working air cond and LEFT (now I am beginning to wonder why they were in such a hurry).
The level supervisor came round to inspect and got angry again. How do you expect us to accept this kind of shoddy work? The workers should connect the condensation pipe to a drain so that everyone can go home and enjoy the weekend (its a Friday), not worry if the lab would become flooded come Monday morning.
So they came back (I meant the workers, not the old air-cond's spirit) and fixed a pipe from the unit to the nearest drain.
Peace was restored: the temperature went back to normal as the level supervisor cooled down alowing the new air conds to take effect.

WNV at NUS?

Monitoring and surveillance of WNV prevalence increasingly depends on the early detection of WNV in birds on the basis of reports of dead birds. The virus in these birds usually precedes appearance of WNV in humans and can be an early warning of potential human infection.
Ohajuruka, O.A., et al. EID 11(9):1437-1439.

Dead bird outside Biochem.
ARGHHHH!!!!!
Panic! PAnic!



I'm telling you, better go grab some N95 masks quick! Then hide in a hole till next year. Oh, and cover the hole, lest some birds drop in.

cutting edge

Whenever I tell others that I work in a lab, they always oOoOOOh and ask me:
Say, do you work at the cutting edge of science?
And my reply?

Of course!






You want cutting edge? I'll give you the cutting edge!

tea

This is what tea time a la Flavilab would look like:


A cup of 20 cents milo, a heong peng, a seaweed flavoured biscuit and a half eaten bun. Yum!

Before and after

37C incubator
Before:


After:



Aliens came down and abducted our sterile pipette tips, eppendorf tubes and conical flasks, not to forget our half-dried Nature/Science/Cell-publication quality western blots and plaque assay wells! ARGH! Lazy aliens, who don't even try to pack, seal, autoclave, dry and store thier own lab consumables.

GASP!
panic!

NaAaH....

Got them transfered to the next door lab:



See how neat they all are now? (ahemm, ahemm... who did it?)



Done under directive of the great Half-day.
And where did all the stuff in the shelves got displaced to?


Reminds me of Jengga.

fun with co2

forgot to add this pic of me playing with the dry ice:

new paper

link --> here

J Biol Chem. 2005 Nov 7; [Epub ahead of print]

Quantifying the specific binding between west nile virus envelope domain III protein and the cellular receptor alpha Vbeta 3 integrin.
Lee JW, Chu JJ, Ng ML.

Previous study has illustrated that the aVss3 integrin served as the functional receptor for West Nile virus (WNV) entry into cells. Domain III (DIII) of WNV envelope protein (E) was postulated to mediate virus binding to the cellular receptor. In this study, the specificity and affinity binding of WNV E DIII protein to aVss3 integrin was confirmed with co-immunoprecipitation and receptor competition assay. Binding of WNV E DIII protein to aVss3 integrin induced the phosphorylation of focal adhesion kinase that is required to mediate ligand-receptor internalization into cells. A novel platform was then developed using the atomic force microscopy (AFM) to measure this specific binding force between WNV E DIII protein and the cellular receptor, aVss3 integrin. The single protein pair interacting force measured was in the range of 45+/-5 picoNewton (pN). This interacting force was highly specific as minimal force was measured in the WNV E DIII protein interaction with aVss5 integrin molecules and heparan sulphate. These experiments provided an insight to quantitate virus-receptor interaction. Force measurement using AFM can serve to quantitatively analyze the effect of candidate drugs that modulate virus-host receptor affinity.

box

Two totally unrelated pictures.
A box of infectious stuff. Euuuu...
Don't ask me what's inside, all i know is that I have dry ice to play with later :)

And secondly, Christmas deco are appearing all over town! Yay!

Inverted ice-cream cones good for the hot weather here.