What's In Your DNA - A Book Review

It seems that every day in the media we read something about DNA research, and the medical advances in science in this venue. People talk about gene therapy, getting rid of hereditary diseases, and even prolonging life. This has been one of the greatest discoveries in human history, and we keep learning more and more every day. Watson and Crick deserved to win the Nobel Prize, and Craig Venter has done an incredible amount to move this science and technology forward. Okay so let's talk shall we?

You see, just the other day on October 25, 2012 there was an interesting article the Wall Street Journal titled; "DNA Switch Boosts Disease Fight,"Guatam Naik which discussed how "scientists have replace bits of defective DNA in a human egg with the equivalent DNA from a healthy egg, a technique that could prevent women from passing on several rare and potentially deadly disorders to their children." Now can you see what I'm talking about? And as I peruse the science news each and every day, I see articles like this constantly.

Maybe it's time that you started thinking about this, and reading up on the topic. If so, there is a book that I own that I can recommend to you, and it is one which sits on my biotech shelf in my own personal library. The name of the book is;

"Drawing the Map of Life - Inside the Human Genome Project" by Victor K. McElheny, Basic Book Publishing, New York, NY, 2010, 361 pages, ISBN: 978-0-465-04333-0.

Interestingly enough this author also wrote the book; "Watson and DNA" many years the prior. The book explains how the building blocks of life were discovered, how the scientists got started, and what an overwhelming task it was once they figured out what they were looking at. The task was daunting, and trying to scale up their efforts to sequence the DNA was extremely tough. The more they learn, the more they realize they didn't know, but each day they discovered more and more surprises.

Isn't it interesting that this has spawned an entire new sector of the biotech industry? This book explains the future relevance, and potential applications of DNA research. It appears that we are just scratching the surface as we speak. Indeed it's amazing how far they've come, but also how far they have to go.

Perhaps it's time that you learn more, so that you are not caught off guard by future discoveries and surprises as they hit the science news. This is something that all citizens should know, and your children should know as well. Wouldn't it be great if you could explain it to them? Please consider all this and think on it.

How to Make Pizza Healthy For You

This article may come as a surprise to you...

Pizza. It's the weakness of many, many people including me. I love pizza- always have. I eat it in moderation, but it's still one of my favorite foods.

There's now good news for pizza lovers.

According to Men's Health magazine, research concludes that pizza can be good for you. We're talking about, however, real pizza- not the kind you get from Pizza Hut, Dominoes or the frozen food section of your supermarket. By real, I mean pizza made with real tomato sauce and olive oil.

According to Men's Health, scientists writing in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that eating pizza can reduce your risk of a heart attack. In a 4-year study of nearly 1,000 Italians, those who ate pizza at least once a week were 30 percent less likely to experience a heart attack than the folks who didn't partake of the pie.

This is contributed to pizza's cardio protective ingredients, including olive oil and tomato sauce. Here's the secret: top the pizza with vegetables, part-skim cheese and thin crust and you've got a meal that is actually good for you.

Can you get this kind of a pizza in a pizzeria? Most likely not. Instead you'll have to buy the ingredients at your local grocery store and make the pizza yourself. Speaking from experience, however, this can be a fun thing!

Enjoy the experience of making your own pizza and savoring a nutritious meal. After all, feeding your body with nutritious meals is the number one thing you can do for better health.

The Importance of Alternate Fuel Sources

With the depletion of the traditional fuel sources, the alternate fuel sources available nowadays become more and more important. Although there are lots of different fuel sources, gas for example is nearly out, so the more we use any alternate fuel source the better it is both for environment and for our fellow men. Extracting the gasoline pollutions is already too expensive and in addition its supplies are almost exhausted, however there are alternate fuel sources. And in case we plan their consumption effectively they will soon take the place of the traditional ones, maybe even before the time when the crisis will come.

A lot of the alternate fuel sources are actually being extracted from different kinds of plants. And this is much better because these resources are at least partly renewable. There is such an alternate fuel source called E85 or biodiesel. It actually consists of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline and even not totally renewable it is still a lot better than burning only gas. Unfortunately those alternate fuel sources are not the best solution. Yes, they do pollute less than traditional fuel sources and have some other advantages - chiefly that they are renewable, but actually they still do pollute and in addition they require growing of such vast amounts of corn, that it means a lot less land left to feed people from.

One of the best alternate fuel sources is electricity. Electric cars are very efficient because all the electrical power that they need is being produced in one location situated centrally, instead of a small and inefficient combustion motor situated internally. The electric cars use electricity, no matter how and where it was generated. It can be coming from any power plant be it a wind, a hydro-electric or a coal one. That makes such cars really good alternate means of transportation. There is another alternate fuel source and that one is actually the best. It consists of your own two legs on the pedals of a bike.

It has actually become unexpectedly popular option lately, as the other alternatives still haven't proved to be successful. Biodiesels availability is very limited and electromobiles are still not in serial production, while the bike is already a widely spread, perfectly working machine, suitable for both short and medium commutes. Unlike the more expensive alternatives, walking or riding your bike to your destination will simultaneously maintain your figure and keep you fit, save you some money and of course will help to protect the environment as well.

Are Your Undergarments Ruining Your Look?

You're ready for that special date, appointment or interview and you want to be sure that you look great. Here is a checklist that will help alleviate some stress and help you gain confidence.

1. Make sure there are no runs in your stockings. Take an extra pair with you before leaving home for added security.

2. Never wear dark undergarments under light clothing (bras or panties). Beige is a great colour to wear under whites because it can't be seen. Keep the vibrant colours for darker clothes.

3. Don't wear bras too tight or too low. Tight bras will create bulges that will not look attractive no matter how large or small you are. Go to a lingerie store to get a bra that fits properly. When you get older or you have a large bust you will need extra support. A drooping bust will make you look older instantly and is something that can be avoided by proper fit.

4. When wearing a top with smooth material choose a seamless bra. Don't wear decorative bras with such tops.

5. Bras straps should never be seen sticking out from under your tops. Keep them hidden by wearing a racer back (this type criss-crosses your back) or a strapless bra.

6. Panty lines that show will ruin your look. Keep panty lines from showing by wearing a G-string or pants that aren't too tight.

7. Don't wear your clothes too tight. It looks unprofessional and will make you appear larger.

If you don't have a full-length mirror, please get one. It will give you that last chance to see how you look from head-to-toe before you leave home.

Dealing With Violence, Creating Structure For Spontaneity And The Perils Of Being A "Jam Idiot"

Some fellow students have reported to me that their combatives training is actually making them feel less confident and more fearful!

Sounds crazy. But is it?

I had the same thing from studying RBSD/ Combatives... I really only got into it about two years after I had stopped being on the doors as a doorman or "bouncer" and getting into regular fights. I found the more I studied and the deeper I got into the subject the more nervous and less confident I felt.

Has your training made you feel more fearful?

You may well want to look at what is going on at your behavioural level and your internal dialogue... now look at your RBSD training... where are you doing it? who with? what do actually spend time focusing on in your sessions? Is there an IMPLIED feeling of incompetence? are you being hypnotised into feeling the world is a threatening place and that its a struggle to deal with? (just rhetorical questions for you to ponder )

This can be the kind of thing that happens in group therapy/ AA groups... the unspoken, implied assumption that are reflected in the language patterns are much more powerful than any specific explicit commands... beliefs like "you ARE an alcoholic" or "once an alcoholic always an alcoholic" etc

In some RBSD/combatives circles I start to get the impression by listening to their discourse that everyone who might want to have a disagreement with you WILL want to beat you up and they WILL be a "STREETFIGHTER" and that means they will be FEROCIOUS and use frighteninig prison biting tactics that you have never heard of... etc

That is just one reason studying this subject can make you more scared where it should be making you more confident.

Another is that intellectualising and frontal lobing the subject invites you to think in terms of consequence and that imagining of what MIGHT happen can drive you crazy. I personally found after 6 months of study of "how to do violence" I was less confident than I had been 3 years previous to the study when I KNEW far less but I was doing violence much more regularly!

Now thats not to say I don't think what Ive learned is useful and that I don't think I'm more skilled now than I was back then... but knowing more and being more skilled does NOT necessarily make you feel more confident.

I started to feel like my ultimate nightmare: "the RBSD nerd".

From Macolm Gladwell's book "Blink", chapter four which is about "creating structure for spontaneity":

"There are I think two important lessons here. The first is that truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking... The second lesson is that in good decision making, frugality matters... overloading the decision makers with information, makes (performing a skilled task) harder, not easier. To be a successful decision maker, we have to edit."

Gladwell also references in this section a former Marine called Paul Van Riper who was called out of retirement by the Pentagon in 2000 to play the role of a rogue anti american Commander in a quarter of a billion dollar war game called Millenium Challenge.

"Van Riper didn't believe you could lift the fog of war.... from his own experiences in Vietnam... Van Riper became convinced that war was inherently unpredictable, messy and non linear... It wasn't that Van Riper hated rational analysis. Its that he thought it was inappropriate in the midst of battle, where the uncertainties of war and the pressures of time made it impossible to compare options carefully and calmly... nurses and firefighters would size up a situation immediately and act, drawing on experience and intuition and a rough kind of mental simulation. To Van Riper that seemed to describe much more accurately how people make decisions on the battle field."

Van Riper's Rogue Red Team played the "War by the book" Blue Team who obeyed every established principle of military strategy... and gave them a kicking!

"Had Millenium Challenge been a real war instead of just an exercise, twenty thousand American servicemen and women would have been killed before there own army had even fired a shot."

I say: You cant do violence by numbers, you have to develop an intuitive ability to improvise given the circumstances and then trust it, thats where real confidence comes from.

There is so much good material in Gladwell's book relevant to self protection Im struggling to edit myself ... here is my last point:

Jam Idiocy

In chapter 5 Gladwell describes an experiment performed by Psychologist Jonathan Schooler, who came up with the term Verbal Overshadowing

(... if I ask you to remember someones face, you can do it effectively, but if I ask you to describe that face in words your visual memory actually becomes impaired by that process! thats "verbal overshadowing")

In the experiment a group of food experts were asked to rank the quality of 24 different jams. Schooler took a group of college students and asked them to rank the jams too. How close was the students ranking to the experts?

"Pretty close" says Gladwell "What this says, in other words, is that our jam reactions are quite good: even those of us who aren't jam experts know good jam when we taste it."

BUT

What happened in the experiment when students were given a questionnaire and asked to explain their choices of jam? Total disaster... there was little correlation at all with the experts choice of jam.

"This is reminiscent of Schoolers experiments I described in the Van Riper story (about verbal overshadowing) in which introspection destroyed peoples ability to solve insight problems. By making people think about jam...Schooler turned them into jam idiots."

In your Combatives training, beware the "Jam Idiocy" Effect.

You cant think your way out of a problem that you acted your way into... so if you want more confidence: stop thinking so hard about everything and take action!

Microscope Incubator - Environmental Control for Live Cell Imaging

Background:

During live cell imaging, environmental parameters, such as temperature, CO2 and humidity, should be controlled to optimize experimental results. A well- controlled environment not only provides cells the best condition they need to grow, but also minimize the focus drift caused by thermal fluctuation.

Types of microscope incubator (also known as environmental control chamber):

There are two main types of microscope incubators-

A. Cage incubator: An acrylic chamber which encloses the whole microscope. It provides stable temperature across the chamber. As it needs to warm up the air inside whole chamber, it usually takes 30 minutes for the temperature to stabilize at preset temperature.

B. Stage incubator: A compact metal chamber which can be mounted on the microscope stage. As the stage chamber can be easily removed from the stage, it's convenient for shared microscope facility. On the other hand, inhomogeneous temperature distribution is usually a trade-off for this kind of incubator.

Temperature Control:

Typically, the temperature in the microscope incubator can be set from ambient to 50°C. The control accuracy depends on the design and type of incubators. For example, without advanced control, a typical stage incubator might have a 2 °C difference in temperature across the sample. On the other hand, a well-designed cage incubator yields a control precision of ± 0.2 °C.

Humidity Control:

During the time-lapse imaging, cell culture medium might evaporate and thus change cell conditions dramatically. To minimize medium evaporation, a small chamber connecting a water reservoirs is usually used to cover the sample. Passing through the water reservoir, the air gets humidified and then enter the small chamber. This technique should keep the relative humidity inside the small chamber between 90-100%

CO2 Control:

For live-cell imaging, 5% CO2 is usually supplied to a small chamber to keep the PH of culture medium constant. Most labs use 5% CO2 gas cylinder directly, while some others use 100% CO2 cylinder with a CO2 controller.

Temperature Sensor Setup:

The closer the distance between sensor and the sample, the better the temperature control. However, putting the sensor directly into the medium might alter the characteristics of the sensor and it will need calibration later on.

Microscope Incubator Customization:

As the microscope configuration varies widely, the microscope incubators usually need to be customized for individual setup.

Other considerations:

Heat sources like mercury lamps should be isolated from the environmental control chamber to ensure optimal temperature control