Cosmos

I have acquired a new tv show (I know, I know, like I need one, right?). It's only been the pilot two episodes, and I've not seen the old one yet to compare, but already I am enamored with Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. It's obviously geared for younger or probably not-as-exposed-to-science audiences, but it gave me that same feeling that watching Bill Nye the Science Guy as a kid did, and that feeling I will eloquently sum up as: OMG SCIENCE IS SO *BLEEPING* COOL!!!!
 

Anyway, Cosmos is about the universe and everything in it. The narrative was well-written, incorporating history and science and personal touches from narrator Neil Degrasse Tyson, and paired with absolutely stunning visual imagery. It's the kind of show that I think would get more kids into science, because it really displays well how literally science is all around us. One of my favorite examples of the sheer wonder of the universe is depicted in the above picture. Neil Degrasse Tyson explained how if the annual calendar represented all of spacetime since the Big Bang, all of the history of modern humans on Earth occurred in the last hour of December 31st. Whaaa?! 

Finally, something really poignant that was said that I thought was particularly poetic was that it's easy to watch something like this and learn about the cosmos and feel really small and insignificant. Instead of thinking about how temporally little you seem in the cosmic world, he said to think about how there has been all of spacetime so far, all these reactions and evolutions and chance occurrences and failed experiments of nature, and yet here you are. You and I are such improbable miracles, formed from the same stuff as stars, we should feel large.

Back From Death

First off, I just want to say thank again to those of you who donated based on my last post. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.

Now, I want to tell you a little story. In my EMT class, we've been learning about how to manage cardiac arrest and recently just read an article on the innovations in prolonged CPR and induced hypothermia as ways to keep someone from dying.

In our last class, my instructor invited a couple in to talk to us, of which the man had survived being clinically dead for about 9-10 minutes after a major heart attack. I'm going to call them Lena and Jim. Jim said he really remembered nothing after passing out at the gym, till about 2 weeks after he'd been brought home from the hospital. Lena's story (and courage), were really something to be proud of. She said that the trainers at the gym had immediately begun CPR, which likely saved his life. When he was awake in the hospital though, after surgery, he had lost his short term memory almost completely. Lena's brother was there, and she recalled every time Jim would see him, he'd call out, "John! Where you been, man? I haven't seen you in forever!" even if John had been there all day, and just crossed the room into Jim's field of vision. She said there weren't a lot of times during this experience that were very amusing, but I'm going to tell you two that I thought were the most poignant.

In the hospital, Lena and her daughter would sit on either side of his bed, and make sure he ate everything off his food tray. Once, it went like this: 
Daughter: What'd they give you to drink today, dad?
Jim: [takes a sniff and a sip] Blech, sweetened iced tea. [puts it back down]
[3 minutes later]
Daughter: What'd they give you to drink today, dad?
Jim: [takes a sniff and a sip] Blech, sweetened iced tea. [puts it back down]
[3 minutes later]
Daughter: What'd they give you to drink today, dad?
Jim: [picks it up and looks in the cup] I don't know, but I ain't having any! Someone's been drinking it!

The second was when Jim had already come home from the hospital. This one's a little PG-13, but also kind of adorable. Jim didn't start to remember anything long-term until about 2 weeks after his hospital release, so almost 2 months after the attack. During this time, Lena was desperate, in her words, "to get her Jim back" and tried a number of games and tricks to get him to remember anything. One of these games was called Word of the Hour, in which she'd pick a really easy word (e.g. clock or book) and try to get Jim to remember it for 30 min-1 hr. This had been going on mostly unsuccessfully for about a week and a half. One day, she got frustrated, turned around to Jim, lifted up her shirt, and yelled, "Boobs! That's the word of the hour, Jim! Can you at least remember that?! Boobs!" And whaddya know, an hour later, Jim had remembered his first Word of the Hour. From that point he began to get better and better.

Jim and Lena both mentioned to us that the event significantly improved their outlook on life, and that they pay much more attention to their health now. I think it was really an important reminder to me to not take my time and my loved ones for granted. I've got this schedule right now in which I'm seriously over-committed, but it was a reminder to call my parents more often (or at least email them), to tell friends I haven't seen in a while how much I appreciate them, and to pay more attention to how I treat my body. I love hearing things like this, because not only are they moving and beautiful in their own regard, but I don't know about you guys, but I definitely need that kick in the pants sometimes to stop being lazy and un-awesome. I'm sure impressed if you read all that, and hope it inspired you to live a little better.

Tuesday Tunes: NASA Edition

I am preparing for the long drive home as we speak. Well, no, I'm probably sleeping, since I tend to post-date these, but I am going home tomorrow. I'm really excited to visit home and see the Harry Potter premiere at midnight with my best friends! But today's Tuesday Tunes, in honor of the end of NASA's 30-year Space Shuttle program and the first birthday of the discovery of Neptune (in Neptune time), is all about space!



1."Space Cowboys" - N*Sync
2."Lost In Space" - Avantasia
3."Stars" - Switchfoot
4."Tubthumping" - Chumbawumba
5."Watch The Sky" - Something Corporate
6."Fly Me To The Moon" - Frank Sinatra

And, here's a link to the Official Playlist to the Atlantis Shuttle Launch which has a much better selection of songs than anything I could ever pick. Check it out. 30 years is a long time.

What do you guys think about the end of the Space Shuttle program?

Some Guys Just Can't Hold Their Arsenic

Several months ago, as I was rolling through my usual science blog updates, I stumbled upon something truly amazing. Scientists had discovered life forms in California's Mono Lake that used arsenic instead of phosphate in their DNA.


A little background to hopefully make this all seem a little cooler (and less nerdy): Our DNA (and all known DNA to this point) uses a sugar-phosphate backbone to hold the nucleobases (A,T,C,G) in their double-helix structure (see picture). These phosphates have important chemical properties and interactions, without which our genetic code wouldn't be able to be expressed. So, really, this small structural change from phosphorous to arsenic (which has been thought to be totally toxic to cells) would open up a WHOLE Pandora's Box of problems that could have shaken the very foundation of what we know about evolution and modern biology.


A few days ago, though, I discovered that further studies have brought this discovery into serious question. The original findings have been deemed "not thorough enough" and lacking rigorousness of the scientific method. This article sums the arguments against the idea pretty nicely, but it's a little technical.

What's somewhat depressing to me here, is that I was so excited and all "Holy crap, this is science at its awesomest! Look at the awesome shit we are going to discover about life after this!!" but sadly, it seems that it isn't so. I get like this a lot about science, where I can suddenly see all these possibilities, but unfortunately it just isn't that simple. One study is rarely enough to be a complete and total breakthrough, and even then faces years and years of revision and opposition to hold on to its promise. That is kind of discouraging to me, and one of the reasons that I knew research wasn't always going to be for me. I love my work, honestly, but I'm totally one of those people that needs to see the fruits of my labor...like immediately.

"Break Their Neck!"

I am back and (mostly) better and my physio midterm is done! Yay!

There was an interesting question on our midterm about what substances we might administer to someone facing the death penalty, specifically to: a) put them to sleep, b) paralyze them, and c) stop their heart and the mechanism of how the substance works. Gruesome question, I know, but I thought the answers were fairly straight forward from what I'd studied and what we'd learned in lecture. However, when I turned my test in, I noticed the paper underneath mine said: a) Ambien (which, technically, is right, but he totally didn't explain how), b) break their neck! (which does kill them, I guess, but the exclamation point's a little creepy), and c) Poison (Vague much?). Seeing that not only vastly improved my mood, but also made me feel significantly better about my own test. I mean, really? "Break their neck" isn't even a substance. I would have accepted severed spinal cord between the cervical and thoracic vertebrae, but wow.

I know that was particularly nerdy of me, but I wanted to share. Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Quirks

Recently, Lisa of Respect the Shoes did a cute little post where she appreciated quirkiness, listed some of her quirks, and invited people to tell her about theirs. I loved this idea so much that I decided to do my own post on them! Plus, who are we kidding? If I'd listed off all my quirks in her comments section, the poor girl would have been reading them for hours. Though, I promise I won't bore you with hours about me, haha.


LOLcats make life better.
1. I, like that cat, am obnoxiously particular about things and routines and schedules and lists and whether that frame I put up is perfectly straight. I brush my teeth for at least a minute. I only eat Honey Nut Cheerios or oatmeal for breakfast. I like my things to all have a proper place, even if they sometimes aren't in that place. The volume on my car can only be set to even numbers and I can't just have one window down (for symmetry, you know?). I split up my college reading by number of pages per day so as to finish by a certain time. There are so many little things, but I think until I start organizing my closet by color (which I've thought of doing many times, but haven't executed yet), I don't need to see a specialist.

2. I am a huge sucker for science. I love reading science news and fun articles about all the amazing work being done in so many fields just blow me away. It's really cool to read about what we're discovering about our world and our bodies and space! Needless to say, I think research was probably the right short-term career choice for me.

3. I'm slowly becoming obsessed with TV. I do this thing where I start watching new TV shows over breaks, so you can imagine how I've accumulated quite a number of shows I watch. My recent favorites have been The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Parenthood, and Gossip Girl. I love being able to relate to families, people, and concepts in TV shows, because they're so much better developed than in movies, most times. I'm especially into comedy, so it's no surprise that my all-time favorites include sitcoms like I Love Lucy, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Three's Company. I have to watch my shows!

4. I like good grammar. There are phrases I purposefully will not use because I'm unsure about their grammatical correctness. Often times, I pause during sentences to determine if something I'm saying is correct. I tend to edit and re-edit my blog posts a hundred times over. I also occasionally outwardly flinch when other people use poor grammar or switch in "then" instead of "than" on their blogs. I'm trying really hard to work on this, but especially with blogging, misuse of their/there/they're is kind of a deal-breaker on which ones I decide to follow...

What are some of your quirks?

Coronado Sunset

First and foremost, let me apologize for having gone suddenly and unexpectedly AWOL. The conference went from Saturday to today, and I've been attempting to balance being in downtown San Diego all day with keeping up with school...and failing. The conference was pretty amazing, though, with over 30,000 people there, it was also a little overwhelming. Seeing as business casual is one of my favorite dress codes ever, I was all set to do some outfit posts on what I wore, but then I ended up so rushed for time and busy busy busy that I forgot. Sad life. But, I ran into a couple friends from high school while I was there and on Monday, I decided to show one of them around Coronado! We had a bit of a sunset photo shoot, because she has awesome camera skills.

The Hotel Del Coronado!



Wearing my ModCloth dress that I'm in love with!

Me and R, my lovely partner in crime for the day.
And, in other news...ONE DAY. ONE DAY. ONE DAY. My shirt is almost made. The back is cut out and the front has "Neville Longbottom will reject your bribes and kill your pets" in puff paint, from the PotterPuffs comics. I just finished listening to the Deathly Hallows audiobook today, and it's made me really really excited (not that I wasn't already)! And, since I forgot (!) to do a WizWiz for the last post, I will be doing TWO today!

Wizarding Wisdom: 1 DAY, 5 HOURS, 41 MINUTES
"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure." -Engraving on the Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw

"I don't know who Maxime thinks she's kidding. If Hagrid's half-giant, she definitely is. Big bones... the only thing that's got bigger bones than her is a dinosaur." -Harry Potter

Breakthrough!

Good news, chronic sufferers! It seems that progress has been made on developing a cure for the common cold. This is huge! I mean, this thing is so high-occurrence that we've even stuck 'common' in it's name! You'd think science would have progressed far enough to combat this seeing as we have already found cures for leprosy and vaccines against polio, right? But, now is that time! A mechanism has been discovered by which antibodies can enter a cell attached to a virus, and with the help of the TRIM21 protein, can destroy the virus within the cell before it has time to reproduce. You might say, well that doesn't seem virus-specific, and you'd be right, but the virus that causes the common cold (rhinovirus) is high on the list of viruses to target, along with tons of others. This could be Nobel Prize material if all goes well. For me, I'm excited to see what will be done with these findings! Yay, science!

News on NaNoWriMo Progress: About 2500 words in. Yeah, I'm behind, but that's what weekends are for!

Wizarding Wisdom: 13 days!
"But for god's sake, you're wizards! You can do magic!"
“The trouble is, the other side can do magic too, Prime Minister.” -Cornelius Fudge