Most Gorgeous Cell Ever

Good afternoon, loyal and hungry readers!

Well, I am hungry anyway. And cold. It's really cold in this big Gilded Age, neoclassical reading room.

I am in the library today putting graphs into powerpoint format, leafing through the literature (on PubMed), and exchanging pretty pictures with my PI.

I have sent him one which he christened the "lamellipodia fan dance". It is very beautiful. You can see this crazy geodesic actin network behind the leading edge (in what Clare Waterman-Storer would call the lamella?) in green, as well as an array of stellar baby focal adhesions/large focal contacts in the thin region at the very edge of the cell and speckles of tiny little vinculin dots all along the ruffling edge, in purple. White shows the overlap between actin and vinculin. (My PI is color-blind so no green-red images in the lab!)

I can't believe I am only now figuring out how to insert pictures into blogger. Duh!

Thank you, God, for not giving me the gift of Religion.

I love coffee in the morning, I love coffee in the afternoon, I love coffee when it's cold or when it's hot, oh, coffee is a thing that makes me croon

You guys, I've been working pretty hard lately! No, seriously. My PI told me, uh, a week and a half ago or something that I should just get married and then I wouldn't have to think about it anymore and I could get back to lab work.

Damn it if he wasn't right.

This still doesn't make it easier to get out of bed in the morning, but it does kind of feel like a weight off. In a good way. Not in a not-appreciating-my-boyf..fianc..husb...partner way.

My advisor went to a conference the other week which was a veritable Valhalla of Ad/Mot Giants. (Wait, are there giants in Valhalla? Maybe an Olympus full of Titans. Or, wait, that's not right either. Anyway, a lot of Big Names In The Field.) And apparently, everyone who is anyone is working on something quite, quite similar to what I am struggling with - I mean, working on.

Talk about a cattle prod! Sheesh.

So that's why I ain't blogging so much at the mo'.

The jackhammering started at 8:00 this morning.

But the new diamond tetras are doing very well!

A Very Short Engagement

In the eyes of the Great Spaghetti Monster, Our Parents, the State of Massachusetts, and, with any luck, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Springy and I are now legally married!

It could not have been a lovelier day if we’d had more than a week to plan it. In fact, I think the fact that we didn’t plan and just let events tumble into place made it an even more perfect day.

I stayed over with the Madre and the Dondre* at their hotel on Thursday night, which was nice even though they kept me awake with snoring from 2 am to 3 am. Then in the morning, we had a little breakfast and went up to Central Square. The Dondre acted in loco parentis for Springy and went up to our flat, while the Madre and I went to the Hair Collage, where TJ the stylist did amazing things with round brushes that made my hair cascade in shiny curls around my shoulders. Not even the rain could muss it. Boomy and my uni flatmate Yathead (aka Cranfield) collaborated in getting me a wonderful bouquet of purple and white flowers with a big white ribbon.

The girls gathered at the hair salon – Boomy and Brookburg, Tapioca and the Balloon Lady – and accompanied us to the City Hall, which is literally one door down across the street from the salon. Brand was acting as bouncer/usher and many digital cameras were flashing as I met Springy at the foot of the marble steps. We all went upstairs to the City Council Chambers, a beautiful Victorian style room with large wooden furniture and rosy fabric wallpaper and various city eminences gazing down benevolently.

The officiate was a kindly middle-aged woman with a mild but awesome Boston accent. She directed Springy and I to stand in front of the large podium in the front of the room. She read out the civil service and although I don’t remember the exact words, it was very touching without being either cheesy or too formal. Something about celebrating our commitment before our community, making an equal partnership, growing in love and friendship, and supporting and understanding one another. My ‘dres had brought rings for us to exchange, because we are holding off on getting real wedding bands until next summer. Mine belonged to my great-great grandmother.

I giggled nervously a little before the vows and got a tear in the corner of my eye when Springy looked down and said his, looking very sweet and intense. Then my cell phone rang to remind me of my wedding appointment and no one could figure out how to turn it off. That was pretty funny. All in all, it was exactly what I would have wanted for a civil ceremony if I had known what exactly I wanted!

We convened back at the flat afterwards (a mere two blocks in the rain) where Springy had prepared delicious snacks and a champagne toast. There were many flowers from family and friends. I was a little stupefied at that point, and a little giddy. We spoke to the folks in the UK and gushed rather – it was all so sweet and joyful.

That afternoon, Boomy and Brookburg and the Madre and I went to a place in Belmont (only getting somewhat lost) to look at wedding gowns. I was prepared not to find anything and to hate how I looked but in fact we found a dozen pretty dresses and it was good fun. The saleslady zipped and clipped me into the various dresses and I got up on a dais, under three stage lights, in front of a huge mirror. I also got the gauge the look of the dresses from the expressions on the faces of my fashion posse as I came out of the dressing room. We winnowed it down to four, then three, then two, and ended up with the very first dress I had tried on. The Madre had picked it out as soon as we walked into the store, and it’s not a dress I would ever have picked for myself but it is very, very beautiful: deep ivory silk, strapless (which I said I’d never do, but it’s very high so I don’t get that armpit squish), with ruching and a ruffle down the side. Very 30’s red carpet glam. And it was a sample sale dress! Still, it was a very expensive treat from my mother.

That night twelve of us went to The Elephant Walk, a French-Cambodian restaurant in Porter Square, for a fabulous dinner hosted by the Dondre. BL made adorable bride and groom balloon sculptures – the bride with long brown hair and cleavage, the groom tall and holding a “green card”. Aha-ha-ha. Excellent food, some sweet/funny toasts (Joolya ever the iconoclast), and a good time had by all.

I am just as happy to have done things this way as having had a year to worry and plan the Perfect Wedding. I mean, we’re still going to have proper wedding parties, but this way 1) we are married in MA which has same-sex marriage, which is cool, and 2) I didn’t have time to stress out about the concept of Getting Married in general.

I think the lesson of this whole experience is that sometimes the best things that happen are the least expected. If you chill and allow the Universe to unfold as it will, it gives you gifts you didn't even think to ask for.

*Dondre (don-dray) n. : consort of Madre, father figure to Joolya, man in the Kangol cap with the curled moustache.

Oh Holy Fucking Shit, I Am Getting Married Tomorrow Morning.

I hope I didn't sound too snarky the other day - aside from a runny nose I am really happy. I have been jamming through experiments in order to get the whole weekend free. Funny how stuff starts working nicely right before the only weekend I absolutely refuse to come to lab! But then, there's nothing like having something else you need to do to propel you towards greater efficiency.

So, I'm not wanting to get too cheesetastic on this, my impersonal blog. Still I reckon there is some more fermented dairy ahead. Stay tuned for more ranting about science and the end times after this brief interruption in service.

In Case Anyone Was Wondering-

The only change I intend to make to my name is to eventually subsitute "Ms." for "Dr." as my prefix.

I seriously forget that women even change their names anymore. It seems so strange and antiquated. What seems stranger is that anyone who knows me even a little bit would ever think to address me as Mrs. Springy - or even ask if I planned to switch to Mrs. Springy.

Ms. (future "Dr.", fingers crossed) Joolya wrinkles her brow at the idea of altering her fundamental identity just because she is committing to make a new family unit with her best friend with whom she also likes to get her swerve on.

Little Springlets or wee Joolyinos? We shall cross that bridge when we get there, I imagine. People having different names isn't really that confusing.

I'm not "making a statement" about this (although I feel like making a statement when people assume I am going to conform thoughtlessly to heteronorms). It really, really never occurred to me that I might change my last name, even when I was a kid.

I'm not even all that attached to my last name. It's hardly the moniker of a great dynasty; it's tricky to spell; it's mutated since it left the Old Country; Springy's name is nicer; and the man who gave it to me is kind of a douchebag. Still, warts and all, it's MY name, you know? Like how my nose is kind of crooked but I wouldn't get a nose job because a) it's not that bad, really, and b) more to the point, it's MY nose.

I've always been ever so slightly oblivious to the perception and expectations of other humans. This has made for problems in the past (e.g. why is she mad at me???) but when it comes time for planning weddings I think it's probably a good thing. A friend of mine had some heteronormativity angst when she got married, thanks to suddenly having people imposing their cultural expectations on her from all sides - expectations of a kind of culture she ordinarily manages to avoid dealing with (rarified air in our ivory towers and all that).

The wedding crazies have started to nip at my heels, what with looking at various bridal websites, and of course I am obsessing about looking fat in pictures, but aside from that I am not having serious heteronormativity angst. I mean, my life parter of choice happens to have a penis (whereas I have a vagina), which is certainly more convenient than if he'd been a she, but he's pretty gender neutral in terms of the things that are important. I really don't care if anyone has a problem with our place settings, or the absence of religious figures, or my iPod playlist, or whatever other nontraditional aspects of my unusual and protracted nuptial celebrations. In the grand scheme, these are pretty minimal elements compared to the real dramas that I hope to avoid.

(So, loyal readers, if I start in with the wedding crazies, please point my to the previous paragraph.)

In Other News-

The rumors are true - I am in fact getting married on Friday!

What Can It Be?

There is a strange and terrible, yet oddly enlivening, Fire in the Sky! It seems to have turned the colour of the clouds from gray to blue!

Is this the sign of the end times?

Or is it ... wait ... a long buried memory tugs at my sleeve ... of a time ... before the rain ... perhaps it is not a nuclear explosion which has caused this bizarre spectacle in the firmament ...

Perhaps it is ... the Sun?!

The Lab Sex Ratio Question

Of course, it depends on the personalities of the people, but I agree with Propter Doc that there is an ideal mix of co-worker genders. Something around 50-50. 60-40 works, too, but 70-30 is about the cutoff in either direction.

I actually think that the ratio itself influences behavior and perceptions of behavior. When the ratio is close to even, that there is less gendered behavior of all kinds. When the ratio is skewed, some kind of group sex dynamics come into play which make the women and men both act more stereotypically gendered, hence more annoying. It becomes, when someone does something, "how just like a man" or "she's such a girl" because there is an obvious majority ("normal") versus a minority ("other") which define the members of the group.

When the ratio is skewed in either direction, also, it becomes more likely that a dominating, sterotypically gendered person (e.g. the macho male or the bitchy female) will influence the personalities of the other labmates; either they conform or react. If there were a healthy balance of males and females, it is less likely that hypermasculinity or hyperfemininity would be seen as normalized behaviors by the group, rather than a quirk of the individual.

The Dept. Of Homeland Security Can Derelique My Balls*

The madre is about two steps away from high-tailing it to a log cabin and living off the grid; I'd say I am about three steps.

Riase your hand if you squirm at the prospect of being In The System. In The System is a place I don't like to be. When you're In The System the cold, inept eye of the beaurocratic machine is on you. Nothing that is innocent cannot be construed as dodgy.

There are many excellent reasons why I am not a libertarian, but my gut reaction to the government noticing that I exist is not one of them.

*If I had balls, I could Derelique them myself.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod - you must go here!!!

I am practically pissing myself with laughter.

Melancholia

Oh, sigh. Such an emotional roller coaster, this research life!

Newbie grad student presents her research proposal with a gleam in her eye and a sparkle in her slides, a whole vista of potential stretching thrillingly before her; glimmering quicksilver roads of possibility wending their ways toward the bright horizon, their potholes hidden, the burrows of rabid little mongooses still covered with vegetation as the vermin lie in wait; the air of research fresh and unspoilt by fumes of rotten gels and the debris of broken dreams ...

Senior grad student in the lab puts her head in her hands and remembers how she was going to solve all the problems of adhesion and motility and shift paradigms, etc. Now she oozes from bench to bathroom, trying to avoid her PI, hoping he'll forget that thing she was supposed to be writing up, taking long dejected coffee breaks and staring into the void ...

You lucky few who don't know what I'm talking about ... can bite me.

"Who could ponder equations when he had the chance to imagine dragons?"

A quote from The Flight of Dragons, which is still a great film.

Ah, me. That is the dilemma, isn't it? The dull mystery of the real world, which requires dogged patience and precision, or the escape into fantasy, which requires its own kind of discipline to master?

TFoD pits man's embrace of science and reason against the need for magic and wonder. A young scientist - who has left academia in order to write a scifi novel - is called back in time, or possibly to another world, in order to defeat the evil wizard who wants to get back at the humans for rejecting magic by helping them use their Reason to effect their own destruction. The good wizards want to retire to a bubble where they will not try to defeat logic, but from which they can inject a little magic into the prosaic life of humans. In the end, the scientist/writer defeats the evil wizard by using logic to break the spell he's under. (Dude is somehow in the body of a dragon, and he's like, "Hang on, this can't really be happening." Not actually so logical seeing as it was happening - the data did not support the model - but it works if you don't think about it too much.)

Best part is when the older dragon is showing the hero dragon how to fly and make fire. The scientist/writer keeps asking how, how, how until he comes up with a reasonble hypothesis for the mechanism of flight. (Again, it makes sense as long as you don't overanalyze it.)

Does that take the magic out of dragon flight? I guess it does - but I feel like it makes understanding it makes it better, that it's not some crazy inexplicable magic thing.

As alluring as dreams are their logic does not hold, despite the sleeping brain's best efforts to formulate a consistent narrative. If a dragon is flying, it's got to be due to chemistry and aerodynamics. Or something quantum. But math has got to enter into it somewhere.

Occasionally, in my more solipstist moments, I wonder if that urge to find patterns and reasons is ... "real". What if the universe is actually magical and nonsensical, but we superimpose logic upon it? I don't think that's true - but as a good scientist/wannabe scifi writer, I have to keep that possibility open. Even if it's not good science. [Wink.]

This tangent brings me to something Springy found the other day. It's a quote by Cotton Mather, one of the founding bigwigs of Massachusetts. Springy was interested to note that the ID-ers of today are using arguments that have been tootling around for over 300 years, in basically the same words.

I think this is interesting, not because it restates the creation myth, bu tbecause it uses the exact arguments of the ID-ers, and shows that anti-creation arguments have been around a long time. From Cotton Mather's 'Wonderful Works of God', 1689:

'Our own bodies are, to use the phrase of the Psalmist, so fearfully and wonderfully made, that one of the ancient heathen at the sight thereof, could not forbear breaking forth into an hymn unto the praise of the great Creator; 'tis impossible that anything should be better shaped! Indeed, all the things that we have every day before our eyes, have a most charming prospect in them; and the very deformities which the Flood has brought upon this terraqueous globe, are made beauties, by the disposals of the Lord that sat upon the Flood. There is not a fly, but what may confuse an atheist.'

Mather was keen on science, even Copernicus, as well as history and theology. The Puritans, for all their pecadillos, were academic types. However, they were also very big into the felt experience, finding truth through personal revelation. Hence the ID classic argument from wonder.

I asked Springy how they reconciled those things, but it was 7:10 in the morning so he wasn't inclined to discuss it.

Scientists can feel wonder - do feel wonder - what can be more awe-inspiring than figuring out how something works? Is a stained glass window less lovely because it was fashioned by a dirty, homely artisan?

Do people to feel the need to justify, rationally, their sense of wonder? To define - to rationalize - the felt experience of beauty by proposing a model in which a Supreme Being or Beings has ... imparted goodness or right aesthetics to that which seems wonderful to us?

I look upon a fly and I am stunned by its magnificent complexity. Do I feel like my appreciation for it is diminished if ... if it is not empirically magnificent? Because then, what is magnificence? How do I confirm the essential validity of my felt experience?

Still raining

It's still raining.

Classic Films

It seems that everyone who liked one of my favorite films as a kid also liked all of my other favorite films as a kid. They are the following, and betray my basic inherent nerdhood:

The Dark Crystal
Labyrinth
Flight of Dragons
The Last Unicorn
The Neverending Story

I wish I could go back in time and show my nine-year-old self Spirited Away so that it could be on that list. I rented it a while back and watched it twice.

I would also like to add that Muppets can kick CGI ass any day of the week, with the possible exception of Gollum.

Also on my fave films as a kid list, but not necessarily in the muppet/animated genre are:

Dirty Dancing
The Big Chill
Clue
Jesus Christ Superstar
Fiddler On The Roof
Yentl
Grease
The Princess Bride
When Harry Met Sally

I bring this up because I just ordered Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal on DVD. And guess what? Amazon sells them together! This is how I know that one's taste in childhood films cleaves to a certain stereotype.

The other day my mom referenced the Skeksis and unleased a flood of nostalgia and a yen to see that little dog thing, Fizzgig, as well as David Bowie in a pirate shirt and leather pants. Even at age 8 I thought that was super hot. If I'd been Sarah (and oh, her long brown hair! her flowy white blouse! the ideal of young womanhood!) I would have 1) asked that litle worm guy why not to "go that way", 2) tried to walk along the top of the walls so I could see where I was going, 3) not ended up in the oubliette, and 4) totally made out with the Goblin King. David Bowie in a pirate shirt and leather pants, y'all.

Science In The News...

Researchers at Indiana University have recently discovered a bacterial glue that is stronger than any known adhesive (1) – more than three times as strong as super glue. This super-sticky, water-resistant glue is produced by bacteria called Caulobacter crescentus. C. crescentus are notoriously tenacious microorganisms that colonize wet surfaces such as water pipes, the hulls of ships, and even medical catheters in a process called “biofouling”. While biofouling can be a costly problem for industry and medicine, materials scientists and microbiologists hope that the sticky adhesive produced by C. crescentus might be more of a boon than a bane to technologies of the future.


A Very Sticky Little Specimen

C. crescentus is a non-pathogenic, single-celled organism that lives in rivers, streams, and tap water pipelines. Its life cycle has two distinct stages. First, it lives as a free-swimming, non-replicating “swarmer cell” with a flagellum, or tail, that it uses to propel itself through the water. Then, when it comes in contact with a surface, it grows a long slender stalk. This stalk is tipped with a sticky patch called the holdfast, which anchors the bacterium, now in its attached “sessile” stage, firmly to the surface. The C. crescentus holdfast is a generalized attachment device that shows little specificity in terms of the surfaces to which it can adhere (2). The sessile bacteria can form a biofilm – a dense colony of microorganisms affixed to a surface within a protein and sugar-chain matrix – and are then able to divide and give rise to new swarming cells (3). These biofilms can be responsible for the biofouling of pipes and catheters.

A Novel Strategy For Measuring Large Forces On Small Objects

Various methods have been employed to measure the strength of C. crescentus adhesion, but none have been able to establish the force needed to remove a single cell. C. crescentus cells can withstand being washed with strong jets of water, suggesting that their attachment to surfaces is extremely strong. Pulling on cells with laser tweezers or micropipettes can be used to measure the strength of chemical bonds, but the amount of force that these techniques can exert are far too low to break the holdfast adhesion. Another method, called atomic force microscopy (AFM), where a tiny metal tip is used to tap or scrape a surface, has been used to explore the physical properties of cells and elastic materials. AFM can generate stronger forces than laser tweezers, but the metal tip of the apparatus cannot be tightly enough coupled to cell surfaces to overcome the cell-surface adhesion (the tip detaches from the cell before the cell comes off of the surface) (4).

In a novel approach to measuring the strength of C. crescentus adhesion, Jay Tang, Yves Brun, and colleagues at Indiana University attached a tiny suction pump to a single cell on a flexible glass rod, pulled on the cell until it detached, and calculated the force that is needed to remove the cell by measuring the deflection of the rod (1). Having pulled on a total of fourteen individual cells, they found that the force needed to detach one C. crescentus cell was in the micronewton (mN) range, from 0.1 to 2.26 mN. One Newton (N) is the amount of force needed to cause a 1 kg object to accelerate at the rate of one meter per second squared. (Remember Issac Newton’s famous equation, F = ma: force equals mass times acceleration.) A micronewton is one millionth of a Newton. Other kinds of adhesive bacteria and fungi have been shown to produce adhesion forces of only nanonewtons (one billionth of a N) or piconewtons (one trillionth of a N), many orders of magnitude less than C. crescentus. A few micronewtons may not sound like a great deal of force, but this means that a layer of C. crescentus holdfast covering 1 cm2 could hold 680 kg (1500 lbs).1 This is equivalent to 5 tons per square inch, or the pressure of three or four cars balanced on top of a quarter.

The researchers also showed that the breaking point of the cell-surface contact was above the holdfast-substrate contact, somewhere along the stalk. In other words, the forces they applied to the cells were enough to rip the thin stalk apart, but not enough to remove the adhesive from the surface of the rod.

Super-sticky Sugar Chains

The ability of C. crescentus to stick so firmly to surfaces is the result of special polysaccharides, or sugar chains, that dot the tip of its stalk. These polysaccharides are composed of long chains of sugars called N-actetylglucosamine (GlcNac), which are essential for the bacterial holdfast’s remarkable stickiness (5). Polysaccharide gels are formed when the long chains of sugars become entangled and cross-link (form chemical bonds between polymers) with one another to form a semi-solid mesh which becomes filled with water. C. crescentus glue, for example, is at least two-thirds water (5). These polysaccharides are likely attached to proteins on the surface of the cell membrane. A mixture containing the GlcNac polysaccharides and proteins, as well as other chemicals forms the adhesive gel (6). The concentration of proteins and polysaccharides affects the adhesive properties (the stickiness and stiffness) of the bacterial glue (7).

Although the exact chemical makeup of the adhesive gel is not yet known, GlcNac polymers have been shown to be critical components of C. crescentus holdfast. Treatment with lysozyme, an enzyme that dissolves GlcNac polymers, reduces the adhesive strength of C. crescentus by more than 90% (5). The other essential components and biophysical nature of the adhesive gel are subjects of ongoing research.

Technology Draws Inspiration From Nature

Scientists often look to nature to solve technological problems. For example, the feet of the gecko have been an inspiration for a new kind of synthetic adhesive tape that may someday be used in robotics or in surgical applications (8). The feet of geckoes are covered in “setae”, tiny hairs that stick to surfaces through van der Waals forces (weak intermolecular bonds that result from negatively-charged electrons sloshing around inside atoms) and capillary action (the force which draws liquid up a very thin tube) (9). The additive effect of all of these tiny hairs and tiny forces allows geckos to dangle from smooth vertical surfaces by their toes.

Although its mechanism of action is very different from the gecko’s feet, C. crescentus holdfast could also have important technological applications. While a single gecko seta can generate a force equivalent to 10 N/mm2, a single C. crescentus cell can generate a force up to 68 N/mm2. By comparison, the adhesive force of commercial superglues and dental adhesives is on the order of 20-30 N/mm2 (1).

Since C. crescentus live in water, their adhesive works on wet surfaces, even in salty water, which would make it suitable for applications ranging from industrial-strength underwater glue to dental and surgical adhesives. Superglue-like compounds have been used for many years as an alternative to surgical stitches, because they reduce scarring risk of and infection. Bacterial polysaccharides, such as the ones found in C. crescentus, are naturally occurring and biodegradable, so the body would break down the glue over time. The combination of great strength and biocompatibility could have applications in joint-replacement, bone and cartilage repair, and eye surgery (10).

Further study of the nature of the holdfast compound is necessary to understand just how it can withstand such tremendous forces, and technical challenges must be overcome before bacterial superglue can be mass-produced. According to Yves Brun, one of the greatest will be to “produce large quantities of the glue without it sticking to everything used to produce it.” (11)



1. Tsang HP, Li G, Brun YV, Freund LB, and Tang JX. Adhesion of single bacterial cells in the micronewton range. 2006. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 103(15):5764-5768.

2. Merker RI, Smit J. Characterization of the adhesive holdfast of marine and freshwater Caulobacters. Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 1998. 54(8):2078-2085.

3. Bodenmiller D, Toh E, and Brun Y. Development of surface adhesion in Caulobacter crescentus. Journal of Bacteriology. 2004. 186(5):1438-1447.

4. Feng HH, Chan KY, Xu LC. Quantification of bacterial adhesion forces using atomic force microscopy (AFM). Journal of Microbial Methods. 2000. 40(1):89-97.

5. Li G, Smith CS, Brun YV, Tang, JX. The elastic properties of the Caulobacter crescentus adhesive holdfast are dependent on oligomers of N-acetylglucosamine. Journal of Bacteriology. 2005. 187(1):257-265.

6. Pawlicki JM, Pease LB, Pierce CM, Startz TP, Zhang Y, Smith AM. The effect of molluscan glue proteins on gel mechanics. Journal of Experimental Biology. 2004. 207(Pt 7):1127-1135.

7. Smith AM. The structure and function of adhesive gels from invertebrates. 2002. Integrative and Comparative Biology. 42(6):1164-1171.

8. Autumn K, Liang YA, Hsieh ST, Zesch W, Chan WP, Kenny TW, Fearing R, Full RJ. Adhesive force of a single gecko foot-hair. 2000. Nature. 405(6787):681-685.

9. Gein AK, Dubonos SV, Grigoieva IV, Novoselov KS, Zhukov AA, Shapoval SY. Microfabricated adhesive mimicking gecko foot-hair. 2003. Nature Materials. 2(7):461-463.

10. Chan MW, Schwaitzberg SD, Demcheva M, Vournakis J, Finkielsztein S, Connolly RJ. Comparison of poly-N-acetyl glucosamine (P-GlcNAc) with absorbable collagen (Actifoam), and fibrin sealant (Bolheal) for achieving hemostasis in a swine model of splenic hemorrhage. 2000. J. Trauma. 48(3):454-457.

We Fail The Grown-Up Test (again)

From: Joolya
To: Springy

hi sweetie-
remind me to write you a check for the rent-utilities. did we settle the hotel in new york? i can't remember ... is there anything else money-wise?

From: Springy
To: Joolya

Hi,
No, we didn't sort out the hotel, I don't think. Did I pay you for last month's rent, too? Let's sort all this out tonight.

From: Joolya
To: Springy

i think i paid the rent last month and i seem to remember you writing me a check for some large amount of money - possibly rent+hotel?
btw, this email exchange illustrates a lot about our characters. my cousin the banker would be clutching her sides.

It's been a beautiful weekend, aside from yesterday having more fronts move through than my head could handle. Made me feel weird all day. I had to have a sit-down and eat pastry.

Did you know you need appointments at posh wedding dress shops? You can't just go browse around. This is vexing.

Today in lab I cleaned the incubators. There was crud all over them. Mostly it was whitish crud, with a soupcon of orange crud and some rust colored crud that might have been rust. As the racks are made of stainless steel, this gives me pause. It made me reconsider all my notions about sterility.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo

A gorgeous spring/summer day today, and the affianced and I spent a good part of the morning skiving off and talking about life, the universe, and everything (i.e. the plight of the left-wing in America) on the plinth* of the Widener Library. I had an iced coffee. It was most delicious.

Springy and Boomy have now made the same point to me in different words: that the Left is so fragmented it can't get anything done, while the Right has banded together in an unholy alliance and is buggering us up the arse while we bicker about veganism or whatever. I said we needed something really potent to rally around, something that combines feminism/poverty/human rights, etc. Springy proposed child poverty as an issue that encompasses all of those various issues, and which no one could fail to get behind (without looking like assholes). The problem with attacking poverty in general is that there is a dearth of sympathy (by which of course I also mean empathy) for adults who are poor, and by extension dirty and lazy and stupid and undeserving. The dark underbelly of the American dream is that if you're poor it's your own damn fault, and why shoudl I pay for your mistakes? But who can blame a poor child for being poor? Then we can tackle healthcare and childcare and education as well. Rally round, troops! Because something needs to be done here. The bad guys are winning and we are putting our heads in our hands.

The American middle class has no visceral sense of how close to the edge it is walking until it drops off. I reckon that every middle class person in this country is a maximum of two horrible things away from destitution. Think about it. Financial crisis + deadly disease. Debt + natural disaster. Death of family member + crippling mental illness. Pregnancy + job loss. However comfortable you think you are, if there are not social support systems, and two bad things happen to you, you are fucked. You, who favor the free market and hold yourself to be superior to the poor dirty stupid people who didn't stockpile clean water - if you are not Donald Trump and two bolts of lightening strike you (from the vengeful God of Job or from the great uncaring void), you'll be living in your car or the basement of your brother's house before the year is out.

Remember Trading Places?

Anyway, that's all of that for now. I'm in a happy mood. Sun is shining, weather is sweet, and I spent four hours in the dark of the confocal room yesterday so I have buckets of data ripe for analysis. Huzzah!


*"Plinth" is probably not the word I am looking for, but I just really wanted to say "plinth", as it is a great word. Say it, you'll see. Go ahead, right now: "plinth". Doesn't your tongue feel like it's had a good workout? "Plinth, plinth, plinth." Don't worry if people give you funny looks. There was a woman sitting behind me on the bus yesterday who was muttering to herself the whole way home. All I could hear were the sibilant sounds bouncing off the window. So you saying "plinth" a few times is actually not even so weird, considering.

Crazy Good Weekend!

Friday afternoon: meeting with PI was encouraging (and is now over).

Friday night: terrific birhday party for Springy with many lovely guests and cocktails, etc.

Saturday: a big, splendid surprise! Joolya's player days are officially over and she has a new sparkly piece of jewelry! Spends rest of the day on a cloud.

Sunday: hot and sunny, lots of telephoning, Springy's birthday, very fun.

Best weekend EVER.