Peter’s Quadrants: Four Types of Journalists

By some magical stroke of fortuitous nonsense, I was the clandestine uninvited guest to an invitation-only conference, “Journalism 101 for Scientists”, held in UWaterloo’s Davis Centre fishbowl  this past Tuesday.  On legitimate grounds, I did meet Peter Calamai before the conference, of course; but this post is about an awesome diagram that the man drew during the conference itself:

Stop laughing.  Aside from the illegibility, the illustration is perfect: it depicts — succinctly and humourously — the four types of journalists as a function of the amount of information they ask from their prospective researcher-interviewees, and the impact of their stories, once published or broadcast.

To do justice to its rightful and respective creator, I have affectionately named the following figure, “Peter’s Quadrants”:

What kind of journalist are you?

NOTE TO SELF: Find Interviewees with Awesome Brothers

You know things are going to turn out good when the person you’re supposed to interview/meet up with is with their brother and their brother is super-cool.

1. When I was walking towards Rob Gorbet for an interview at the Solar Collector in Cambridge, his brother Matt saw me from afar and eagerly motioned to Rob, pointing at me excitedly, all whilst prancing around in the snow in a black full-body suit.  It was at this point that I knew I was going to like them.  It turns out Matt was an excellent interviewee.  Despite our shoot outdoors in what must have been some ridiculous subzero temperature, I distinctly recall leaving that interview feeling pretty darn warm inside.
2. When I met Peter Calamai pre-Journalism-101-for-Scientists conference today and he was dropped off by his brother Paul, who introduced himself to me with a great big smile that radiated oodles of sunshine (despite, yet again, a day that boasted a ridiculous subzero temperature).  He also made sure to tell Peter to call his cell phone if he needed anything at all, and this told me that their brotherhood was strong.

I am sincerely starting to become convinced that one can make a relatively accurate preliminary judgment on the likeability of an unknown person based on their relationship with their brother.

There’s Triclosan in my Soap

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always had a penchant for great-smelling soaps.

Naturally, when Bath and Body Works finally made its way over to us Canadian folks, I was elated.  I can assure you that I took full advantage of any and all ‘sales’ on multiple buys.

Only recently, however, did I realize the significance of using “antibacterial soap” — not just BBW’s line antibac line, but every soap on the mass market today with the proud “antibacterial” label.   I mean, I knew Triclosan was an antibiotic from my basic microbiology courses, but only recently when Dr. Dupont talked about it in BIOL 444 – Microorganisms and Disease did I realize that these soaps are actually contributing to antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

Now, every time I pump some of that awesome-melling cucumber-melon foam, I can’t help but be very aware that I’m washing antibiotics down my sink.

Paper Pick #1: Vancomycin Resistance Mechanism in Bacteria

In Public Health Microbiology, BIOL 449, Dr. Butler was always telling us how the antibiotic vancomycin is considered today to be “the silver bullet” for any sort of infection.

The problem though, as we learned in class, is that there seems to be an emerging trend of bacteria which have developed resistance mechanisms against vancomycin.

Unlike most other antibiotics, which work to inhibit cell-wall building enzymes in bacteria, vancomycin works to inhibit directly cell wall synthesis by binding to the actual building blocks of the wall.  Thus, with antibiotic resistant bacteria, researchers were never sure what turned on the genes: the actual presence of the drug vancomycin, or the process of cell-wall disintegration itself.   By sticking a photoaffinity probe onto vancomycin, the researchers in this study were able to identify that the compound binding to VanS was indeed vancomycin, and that this is in effect what induces expression of resistance genes in the bacteria.

In terms of the significance of this work, lead researcher Dr. Gerry Wright, scientific director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University says:  “Out of this finding comes two different strategies to overcome drug resistance.

“Either we change the antibiotic so it doesn’t turn on the switch, or we make new compounds that block that switch and then the antibiotic works anyways.”

REFERENCE:

Kalinka Koteva, Hee-Jeon Hong, Xiao Dong Wang, Ishac Nazi, Donald Hughes, Mike J Naldrett, Mark J Buttner, & Gerard D Wright.  2010.  A vancomycin photoprobe identifies the histidine kinase VanSsc as a vancomycin receptor.  Nature Chemical Biology. Published online: 11 April 2010 | doi:10.1038/nchembio.350
<http://www.nature.com/nchembio/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nchembio.350.pdf>

How to make the most important discovery of your life

Like most people, I grew up associating the term “science” with a self-fulfilling notion of awe and discovery: in grade school, I was taught that Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation. In high school, chemistry videos showed me how Marie Curie discovered radium. And that falling apple – didn’t Sir Isaac Newton prove the law of gravity?

So when I first started studying Science in University, I was surprised to learn that much of what I had romanticized about Science was, in fact, quite wrong. Scientists don’t like the word “prove”. They also almost never use the word “discover”.

What? Where were all the Marie Curies and the Isaac Newtons, then? If no one was proving, disproving, or discovering anything, what was Science all about?

A few days ago, I told one of my friends about how discovering Amy Krouse Rosenthal just about changed my life. To explain what I meant (not in words because Amy cannot be explained in words), I sent him to one of the videos she made on YouTube. He came back, after having watched the video, and said something like, “Wow, Amy Krouse Rosenthal does look amazing…”, immediately followed by: “How did she change your life?”

For me, the video itself was self-explanatory in describing the essence of how Amy K.R. changed my life. The embodiment of serendipity. Loveliness. And magic.

I stared at the screen for a while, not knowing how I should reply to his email. This whole time, I had refrained from trying to describe Amy and I couldn’t – wouldn’t – resort to words now. At the same time, I realized: my life-changing moment isn’t a discovery to him.

In Science, we rarely call things “discoveries” because it’s such a high claim. In order for something to deserve that kind of title, it has live up to something “big”. It has to be just as important to you as it is to me. Objective. Testable and provable.

But it’s not like that with Life. I happen to think that Life is really just one big experiment. And if you think so too, then why not make discoveries – all the time? What are you searching for? What is your hypothesis? What discoveries have you made today?

I truly believe that the most important discovery of our lives is the one that we make today. It is the one that you make, for yourself, every single day: a new twist to an old recipe, a sighting of a bird you’d never seen before, learning something new about someone you thought you had down-pat… It’s discovering that avocados can be substituted for butter in granola (you knew that one was coming!). It’s realizing that you were wrong, that you shouldn’t have said that, and that after all is said and done, your bed is still the best place to put your head down for the night. And it’s true – at the end of the day, there are no golden bells, no accolades, no parades or Nobel prizes. But then there’s you. And there’s Growth.

For example, ladies and gentlemen, today, I made a Most Important Discovery.

I discovered that pistachios…

…look an awful lot like mini-avocados:

It’s arguable, but I feel just as important as Newton.

Who Am I? (Version 2)

Version 2: Who I really am.

Hi, I’m Science Girl.

I really, really, really like Art.  In all forms – tangible or abstract.  Specifically, I like Ideas.  I desperately love Inspiration.  I also really like Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

To consolidate the seemingly disparate natures of what I’m studying at school (science) and what I’m really passionate about (art), I sometimes call myself a creative scientist.  I want to define that as someone who melds the barriers between art and science.

I want to believe that it is possible to be artistic in a scientific context and that I can make art my science.

Making the Most out of Nitrile Gloves: Micro-Pirate and PCR-Man

In molecular biology student labs, waiting for a gel to run can make Science kids antsy.

But not Christine and David.  Instead of sitting around and waiting like the rest of us boring folks, these two immediately put their creativity to work constructing nitrile balloon-people.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Micro-Pirate (pictured with Micro-Pipette):

And PCR-Man:

A pair of nitrile gloves, a Sharpie, and an air inlet have never before been so entertaining.

Science Girl talks about being poor on the radio: OSAP to the Rescue

A news release came out today on the Government of Ontario website stating Premier Dalton McGuinty‘s government’s official commitment to providing greater financial assistance to post-secondary students.  Some of the modifications to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) include:

• Allowing students to keep more of the money they earn from part-time jobs
• Providing a no-interest period on student loans for six months after graduation
• Introducing 1,000 new graduate scholarships

Neil Adams from 570 News was on-campus this afternoon, speaking with students at the University of Waterloo about these recent changes to OSAP.

Listen to me and FEDS president Justin Williams talk to Neil: version 1 and version 2.

Now, what would I do with more money?

Eat more salad, of course.

UW Faculty of Engineering Event: Inaugural Nanotechnology Fourth Year Design Symposium

WHO: 65 fourth year UW Nanotech students (the inaugural class! – from 2005! woot!)

WHAT: Design symposium with 16 interactive projects, posters, and student presentations.  According to the nanotech site, this engineering program teaches students “how to exploit the special properties that arise when materials are fabricated on the nano-size scale.”

WHEN: Friday March 26 2010 from 9:30 AM to 8 PM.

WHERE: William G. Davis Centre

WHAT I SAW:

Figure 1: Jamie Durham explaining her shoe-warming project.

Figure 2: Rajesh Kumar talking it up with Michelle Chan (I think) over her bench-scale electrospinner.

Figure 3: Not sure who this fellow is, but I talked to him, and he was extremely nice. I think his name tag reads "Goran Vlacic". His project - Electrochromic Eyewear.

Figure 4: This picture was totally taken by Graeme Williams. He has not idea who I am and I have no idea who he is, but facebook albums are accessible and this is a good photo. Aerial view of Nanotech Symposium.

PROJECTS I LEARNED ABOUT:

The projects were divided into 3 categories: (i) Nanophotonics and Electronics, (ii) Nanofluidics and Nano Bio Applications, and (iii) Nanomaterials. I had one hour between classes to check out the Nanotech Symposium. I got around to seeing at least one from each category, 5 tables in total, without being late for my next class.  (I was pretty smug about it myself.)  Here are the projects I learned about, annotated with a few words on what stuck out to me the most after speaking with the presenters:

(i) Nanophotonics and Electronics

• Electrochromic Eyewear

  Transition lenses with batteries that enable glasses-wearers to manually control level of tint almost instantaneously.  Compare with slow lag time of 5-10 minutes of traditional Transitions lenses.  Can be operated using a simple watch battery.  The nanoparticles in question that makes the glasses tinted purple? A network of monomers that looks like dog bones, with Iron atoms in between.  Cobalt and rubidium atoms also work, but Iron being the least expensive, was the preferred element of choice for this project.  In addition, Goran assured me that Cobalt and Rubidium conferred no significant advantage over Iron in terms of UV-protection.

(ii) Nanofluidics and Nano Bio Applications

• Anti-microbial Coatings with Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles

  Painting synthetic leather car seats with Titanium Dioxide solution to act as an antibacterial and antifungal agent for use in taxis and other public transportation vehicles.  Requires UV rays from natural sunlight (probably at least 15 minutes) to activate nanoparticles and destroy surface microorganisms.  Tested on Escherichia coli and Bacillus cereus as well as with fungi controls.

(iii) Nanomaterials

• Bench-scale Electrospinner for Quick Prototyping
  
  Can make quality nanofibres (about 1/100th the width of a strand of hair) using the economic and versatile electrospinning method.  Fibres can be used for medical or electronic applications: bandages, filters, growing artificial tissues, or electronic devices.
• Night Vision Stealth Coating

  Based on black body radiation principles and crazy wavelength stuff, carbon nanotubes (CNT) are applied to fabric to facilitate “invisibility” when the temperature of the fabric is akin to that of the external environment.  “Infrared camouflage”.  Military applications – “stealth operations”.

• High Resistance Carbon Nanotube Film for Rapid Shoe Insole Heating

  A battery-powered heat-supply that fits in the insole of your shoe to keep your feet warm and cozy during cold winter days.  The heat supply comes in the form of a black filter-looking like membrane, coated with carbon nanotubes and gold sputtering for good conductivity of heat generated from the battery supply.

(I really wanted to check out Xyloclear, a project that develops a method to make alternative windows out of plant cellulose! Holy crap!)

Overall, though, I had an awesome time.  For me, the inaugural nanotechnology symposium represented the apex of Waterloo geeks at their finest.  I walked away realizing three things:

1. My other alias could very well be, “the Biology Girl who really, really, really likes Engineering.”
2. I’m a total techie groupie.
3. So this is where all the cool kids went.

(OK so maybe those 3 things mean exactly the same thing: the geeky world of fancy technology-that-I-can-barely-comprehend-the-underlying-principles-of-but-can-still-appreciate-the-significance-of still rules my biology-wired brain.)

Regardless, afterwards, I almost regretted not skipping my next class just to have the time to get around to seeing all the projects!  Instead, I contented myself with reading about all 16 projects in class and dreaming about other ways to become the coolest tech groupie yet.

What’s Next – Microbesoft?

Drew Endy (top) is the Bill Gates (bottom) of synthetic biology.

See?

Just sayin’.