The secret handshake

Finally my boss approved that I am worthy material and granted me the privilege of reading his treasured copy of "Academic Gamesmanship: How to Make a Ph.D. Pay" by Pierre van den Berghe (ISBN: 0200717154). The author's cynical view on the inner working of academic world was hilarious, which makes the reading experience some sort of a guilty pleasure. The level of sarcasm is truly astonishing; Bill Bryson's work reads like children's literature in comparison. Too bad the book is out-of-print now (1st edition was in 1970) and the price of a used copy is simply outrageous (ranging from $35 to $468 on Amazon), otherwise I'd want one just for the fun of it.

Sleep seminar

While falling asleep during a seminar may not be all that rare (I do that some of the time and see people do it all the time), listening to a seminar about the science of sleep is definitely a first for me. Having good sleep during the night is difficult for me most of the time for as far back as I can remember, so when I saw the seminar announcement entitled "Sense & Nonsense to Improve Sleep", my interest is piqued and I can't wait to know what Dr. Richard R. Bootzin have to say about the subject. Here are the things that I learned today:

1. Sleep problems in toddlers and teenagers are good predictors for other problems (depression, substance abuse, etc) 10+ years down the road. Presumably, the same logic applies to adults.
2. Having <6 or >9 hours of sleep per day is not good; 7-8 hours would be the optimal for most people.
3. The use of bright light (in conjunction with darkness) is one of the most effective ways to influence circadian rhythm.
4. The stories about those crazy cyclists who participate in the Race Across America are absolutely fascinating. The hallucinations about aliens and such when one is under tremendous physical/mental stress and sleep deprivation can make very funny stories.

The ridiculous health insurance bill

Just been hit by the new health insurance bill: a 42.4% increase over the previous year. Honestly, I didn't get the memo about some hyperinflation going on in the US.

So, here is my plead to the guy who just won the Nobel Peace prize: Could you please do something about this ridiculous situation? *Sigh*

And that's the last of it

Tucson is a great city for biking. Most of the major roads have dedicated bike lanes and the weather is simply great. We have 350+ sunny days here, so for the most part I don't have to face the situation that I hate the most: riding in the rain. However, all that sunshine and dry weather comes with a great pain in the a$$: cacti and all sorts of thorny plants are everywhere!

Even with Continental Ultra Gatorskin for both my front and rear, I managed to run through 5 inner tubes in 3 months. Initially I was worried about the broken glasses/metal sharps on the road, but so far all my 10+ flats are caused by thorns. The last fresh tube in my stock went into the front today. Guess it is time to stock up again. *Sigh*

Incidentally, I noticed a Motobecane Fantom Cross Outlaw started to show up in the bike enclosure at work this semester. The disc brakes and the wider tires looks really cool. Could that be the answer to my problem? Hmm...

On being a good son-in-law

Because of my boss has joint appointment in different departments, and also because UA is doing some departmental reorganization to deal with the budget crisis, my appointment here gets transferred around quite a bit for accounting reasons. Within a year, I have been associated with three different departments. Fortunately, my boss told me to stick with the first one on my CV, so I don't appear to be job hopping like crazy.

My latest appointment, starting from this month, is in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. When I found out about this today, I thought it is quite funny. Everyone in Ann's family, with the exception of Ann, is a chemist. By being a postdoc in a chemistry department, I am truly becoming a part of her family, maybe even more so than she does. Ann got so excited and instantly called her parents when I told her about this, and they just couldn't stop laughing.

I wonder how many people out there has this kind of strange experience.

Postdoc milestone

Today is a very exciting day: my first research paper from postdoc is formally accepted by Genome Research. I am very glad to reach this milestone before the end of my first year here at UA, and the fact that it got into such a great journal is even better.

Conservation delimma

Dr. Donald Strong from UC Davis gave a very interesting talk on an invasive plant for our department seminar today. In addition to the ecology and evolution of this plant species, I found the implication on conservation very thought provoking.

So you have a new invasive species coming in and taking over everything, needless to say, many other species in the ecosystem are affected by these drastic changes. Now the problem is this: there are two endangered species of birds involved, one being harmed and the other being helped by these changes. You get rid of the invasive plant, one of the birds goes back to its old miserable way of life; you let the invasive plant goes unchecked, the other bird is going to suffer. It is like asking whether you are going to save your son or daughter. No really an easy question and probably have no good answer.

How I got hired remained a mystery

With the interview season upon us again, we have been seeing a number of people going through our lab and department. Just out of curiosity, I asked my boss why he decided to hire me on the spot when I interviewed for my postdoc here in his lab. Much to my disappointment, his answer was "Really? I did? I don't remember anything about that."

Well, at least I got the job and have been enjoying it a lot. I guess that's what really counts.

Evolution of human culture

As a part of the celebration for Darwin's Day, our department invited Daniel Dennett to give three talks at UA this week. I attended the first two, "The Evolution of Reasons" and "The Evolution of Words and Other Memes". Both are excellent talks and I really like the second one. The parallel between evolutionary biology and human culture/technology is really thought provoking. My favorite example is the analogy of languages as virtual machines that allow us to "digitize" and faithfully replicate memes.

All these reminded me of my first reading of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins back in high school, which may be a key reason of why I ended up as who I am today.

Where is everyone?

I only saw 1 other bike commuter this morning on my way to work, which definitely does not feel right in Tucson. With most of the the undergrads gone, riding around the UA campus is actually quite pleasant. Gotta enjoy this while I can.

Anyway, only 3 more days to go (yay) and some more eukaryote genomes to crack (yucks) before the winter break.

Away it go

Got my first research paper from the new lab out of the door today. Hooray!

M+O Lab retreat

When you spend lots of time staring at strings of ATCG in the lab, it makes you want to scream AAAAAAAAAAHHH!!! (wait, I see a homonucleotide run here)



To prevent us from going mad in the lab, the bosses took us out to the Santa Rita Experimental Range to have a lab retreat over the weekend. I took this opportunity to have my first long ride in AZ.

Getting ready to go:


The ride down on I-19 was uneventful, although seeing all the km signs in the US for the first time got me a bit confused. However, after getting off the main road, I was surprised to find that there are a couple miles of unpaved road ahead:



It was definitely not fun to play motocross on a Ninja. Nonetheless, my bike handled the road okay and I got to the station without any incident.





After having a light lunch, we went out for a hike along the trail up to Mt. Wrightson:



We only spent about 3 hrs on the trail and did not make it all the way up, but we did enjoyed some really nice views along the way:















After the hike, we sat down and chatted about our ongoing and future research projects. I talked about my gene fossil hunt in bacterial genomes and the frustration with some bad gene annotations on some sequences that was done using 454 (homonucleotide runs are indeed a headache).

The dinner was incredible and I can't remember when was the last time I ate so much. Zakee's steaks are the best that I had in recent years and Gaelen's chocolate cake is simply delicious.

I am pleasantly surprised to find that Gaelen and Kevin are fellow boardgames nuts (we are a rare breed). We enjoyed a couple rounds of games (including For Sale and Bohnanza) well late into the night and had a lot of fun.

On Sunday morning, we all put on the lab T-shirt to have a group picture before we go.



Instead of going for another hike, I decided to go home early. On my way back I stopped by the San Xavier Mission:



When I get home the bike was really dirty after all the riding on unpaved road.



I don't mind riding a dirty bike and usually wouldn't spend time on washing my bike. However, the chain and brake looks really bad this time and I decided to give them a good cleaning. Fortunately that didn't take too long.

The lonely rack

When I went downstairs after work this afternoon, I was quite shock to find that my bike was stolen. Rationally I know this shouldn't be so surprising, given it is a nice bike and I park it at the same spot everyday on a university campus. However, somehow I just can't get over the shock and kept staring at the rack as if my bike will appear again out of the thin air.

It's writing time again

Things are going well for me at work. In fact, it is going so well that I have enough meaningful data to write my first manuscript here. That said, the writing doesn't seem to be any easier after years of training. The feel of anxiety, the loss of sleep, everything is pretty much as bad as they were before. Fortunately, at least the process is going faster and the end product seems to be better.

Intriguingly, just as I was struggling these days, I saw this quote from Tomorrow's Professor:

"I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning" - Peter De Vries

Now that's very inspiring. :)

STOP means... bump?

Somehow I kept being rear-ended by college kids when I was stopping at stop signs. Fortunately they are riding a bike too and not driving a car so no one has been hurt in these incidences, but it is still quite annoying.

Super productive

It's not even a month yet since I started my post-doc at UofA, and we already submitted a review paper. I feel really good about me and my job. :)