Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Friends will be friends ....

Human beings are a hostile lot. Just ask anyone who survived playground politics. Or boardroom politics. Any sort of backstabbing behaviour perpetrated by another upon oneself. Abuse. Murder. What-have-you.

It made me wonder, what a terrible spot this orca must be in that it sought human contact for companionship.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Doping your way to higher grades/pay scale

When looking at a student's grade, do we ever think about the effort it takes to achieve it? Swotting, sure. Some all-nighter perhaps. So what if the kid knocks back a couple of Red Bull to keep his/her red rimmed eyes open to cram as much as possible for tomorrow's paper. No biggie. But taking and (most likely) abusing a controlled drug? Would that be considered extreme?

This commentary in Nature deserves some examination. According to some, as human beings, we owe it to ourselves to go further than ever with the aid of such enhancement. For others, it is "unnatural" and therefore abhorrent.

Whatever your take on this, you can betcha if I could line me some Ritalin, I would not hesitate to take it for my all-nighters, warranted or not.

Does that make me a bad person?

*ponders*

Wanted: Another lonely gene

Everyone has known loneliness to a certain extend. Sometimes you can shake it off easily, sometimes it takes you a while to bounce back. Is our loneliness due to our personal choices, contact avoidance and simple inadequacy? According to this CNN report, maybe not. I have not read the reports from which this story was sourced, so cannot determine whether the numbers speak the truth.

But what struck me most was the last quote by John Cacioppo, director of the University of Chicago's Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience. "It's really having one good relationship is all that it takes," Cacioppo said. "Spending all your time online getting 4,000 friends on Facebook is not useful. The number is not where connection occurs."

In a world where everyone is frantic to be famous, do they actually want to hear this?

Friday, December 12, 2008

Don't go gently into the good night ...

Or something like that. Yeah, quote abuse abounds in this blog.

Anyway, to my point. Euthanasia is something that is hotly debated the world over. Some countries legislate it and allow people; commonly the terminally ill or massively disabled, to end their lives. Belgium allows assisted suicide, so does Switzerland and some states in the USA, notably Oregon.

Why do these group in the population request for assisted suicide? Well, primarily because they can't do it themselves. They are seriously ill with limited physical ability or was injured severely that they can no longer perform daily tasks such as feeding themselves, walking etc. Why do they want to die? Is their physical condition or deterioration reason enough to snuff out their life? Well, judge not lest ye be judged, is all I can say.

I do not want to judge people who opt for this decision. No one wants to live out the rest of their life infirm and dependent on others for their physical needs. The loss of dignity and being a burden is something that is feared by many, with good cause. To lose control over one's body, to not be able to care for oneself the way one has always done so, whether due to physical or mental deterioration, is something that no one wants to contemplate. But millions of people the world over have to live (and slowly die) with this reality.

It is easy to say, when you are whole and hearty, that you'd rather die than become paralysed. But if that is your reality, can you actually make a firm decision to choose to die? Or for someone whose physical condition slowly diminishes, taking away their dignity and quality of life, does it take more strength to die or to live? I think that no one who have to live with such reality, or have someone they love live with that reality, should make any kind of judgment.

Most religion forbids the taking of life, with suicide one of the greatest insult of all. If you are a person of faith, it is perhaps, not so difficult a decision to make. But for many without the comfort of faith and devotion to The Divine Being, the lines can be as blurred as the tidelines come monsoon.

But to broadcast this choice in the name of education, documentary, what-have-you, is that acceptable? I wonder if the station actually warns viewers of possible disturbing content that they may see from the film. But even if they do so, it is human nature to gawk at horrid circumstances.

Just ask any faithful rubberneckers at the highway accident.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Fragile things

The unit of inheritance is more fragile than ever, according to this report. It also appears that genetic diversity may be built into the cellular machinery, unwittingly or not. I just like to think that God is pretty darn creative in getting things done. Just when you thought there are no more surprises to be had ...

Blame it on ... plastic?

Hah! Finally! If you are a biologist of any flavour and your experiment fails, you can blame it on ....

Your disposables! From multiwell plates to pipette tips, plastic leaching and/or adsorption may be affecting your experiment. If your assay fails, you now have a new candidate for blame. Nope, nothing to do with you not prepping your reagents proper, or your cells are too old or that you may have forgotten to add in the test compound du jour.

Don't believe me? Check this out.

However, with the pervasiveness of plastic in biolabs the world over, does this cast a pall over the results obtained and published in peer review journals? Can we trust the outcome of our experiments, may they be positive, negative or inconclusive?

Heh.

Like labwork isn't hard enough already. But what are the alternatives? Are bioplastics better if they are prepared without the interfering biocides? Will the cost be prohibitive? Judging from the comments, glass isn't without its own set of problems. Apart from the adsorption issue, the manpower required to prepare glassware for laboratory use can be quite a headache.

Just to share ... I used scintillation vials to store my plant compounds as well as for bacterial incubation. Reusing glassware means washing extensively with detergent and using enormous amount of water. My supervisor related that her supervisor made all his students rinse their glassware 10 - 15 times with hot water with a final triple rinse with distilled water. Dude started as a physicist and being the uber-conscious analytical scientist, decided to check glassware for contamination and voila! Apparently normal washing isn't good enough and he devised that demented rinsing regiment as the best way to prep glassware. If you're into sterile work, this is followed by autoclaving and drying. And if you are really obsessive, you throw in dry sterilisation (180 deg Celcius, overnight).

So, how does one have an environmentally friendly lab that produces consistent and reliable result? You tell me.

Monday, August 25, 2008

On Calcium Blockers

This blog, as evident, serve as my del.i.cious account to keep track of things I find interesting online. The links may or not be alive by the time I re-visit them (or whomever who reads this journal and felt like clicking 'em), but I can console my inner OCD-info-hoarder that I did something constructive.*snerk*

Recent events made it necessary for me to look into calcium blockers; a class of drugs used in the treatment of hypertension and atrial fibrillation. Since my physiology and pharmacology was left behind some time ago, I needed faster and easier access to information. It didn't help that I gave away my pharmacology book.

God bless the Internet and people who put up Podcasts (is that the right term?) and videos giving you the info you want. So, thanks Jim Christensen!


Tuesday, June 10, 2008

In and out of favour: Darwinism

I've always considered the arguments for and against Darwinism to be strange. It is expected that if you accept the theory of evolution, then it is not possible for you to believe in God. And if you reject Darwinism, then you must be against science.

I love how this article illustrates that this issue is not black and white.

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/54714/

God is the most creative driving force; life in His hands is an elegantly complex construct with endless variation. The theory of natural selection, to my mind, shed some light as to how God does what He does; but it does not answer everything. Therefore, there is room for discussion and expansion when one tries to understand how life is shaped and what allows it to continue to exist.

And yes, even in science (more like, especially), mileage may vary.

Drugging your way to slenderness

Huh. At the end of the article, I was musing if the drug is available in my country and how much will it cost me. Ah, to lose weight without the pain of exercise or dieting. But on the other hand, without exercising, the drug can only help you lose only 5 - 10 lbs.

http://www.the-scientist.com/2008/6/1/40/1/

Oh well, better than no loss at all, isn't it?

Cave crawling inspiration

Germs are fascinating creatures; nearly invisible and yet the impact on the biosphere is immense.

http://www.the-scientist.com/2008/6/1/21/2/

It is not surprising that germs-driven chemical reactions are responsible for cave formations. After all, without germs, there won't be life as we know it.