Thursday, December 27, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
How did zebras get their stripes?
anyways, it's genetic.
"Bard's hypothesis that all the stripes originally are the same width and are generated at different times in the three species also explains the numbers of stripes in each species. The common zebra has 26 stripes per side, and the 3-week Equus embryo is generally 11 mm long. This gives a spacing of about 0.42 mm per stripe. If the 43 stripes of the mountain zebra were generated in the 17 mm embryo of the 3.75 week zebra, the spacing is also 0.40 mm per stripe. At week 5, the embryo is 32 mm long, and the 80 stripes would yield the spacing of 0.40 mm per stripe. Therefore, the striping patterns of the common zebra, mountain zebra, and imperial zebra can be explained if the stripes are generated 0.4 mm apart in the 3-, 4-, and 5-week embryos, respectively."
read MORE.
and, when i was looking for patterning in zebras, i found this:
killing a victim by imprisoning him for homosexuality and causing him great psychological distress seems to be a thing that the british court was very good at doing: Looks like they killed turing pretty much the same way they did it to wilde.
the law: Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885
"Bard's hypothesis that all the stripes originally are the same width and are generated at different times in the three species also explains the numbers of stripes in each species. The common zebra has 26 stripes per side, and the 3-week Equus embryo is generally 11 mm long. This gives a spacing of about 0.42 mm per stripe. If the 43 stripes of the mountain zebra were generated in the 17 mm embryo of the 3.75 week zebra, the spacing is also 0.40 mm per stripe. At week 5, the embryo is 32 mm long, and the 80 stripes would yield the spacing of 0.40 mm per stripe. Therefore, the striping patterns of the common zebra, mountain zebra, and imperial zebra can be explained if the stripes are generated 0.4 mm apart in the 3-, 4-, and 5-week embryos, respectively."
read MORE.
and, when i was looking for patterning in zebras, i found this:
killing a victim by imprisoning him for homosexuality and causing him great psychological distress seems to be a thing that the british court was very good at doing: Looks like they killed turing pretty much the same way they did it to wilde.
the law: Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885
Monday, December 24, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Lust Caution [色·戒]
it's been a while since the movie Lust Caution has been in theatre everywhere, and everybody has been talking about it quite a bit. the focus of the discussion was always around the cut piece of sex scene, or the confusing love story between the girl wang jiazhi and her colleague, or that between her and Mr. Yee. I feel that this is not being just to the story or the movie. i haven't seen the movie, and i'm not sure if i ever will. but i think lee ang being the purist he is, tends to stick to the more beautiful and tragic side of the original creation, so probably won't deviate from the author's intention too much. i feel that the intention of the short story, written by my favorite popular writer zhang ailing, was not so much as to describe a love story, even less so to talk about lust. zhang ailing's works usually explore people's, especially women's emotions, introspections, ambiguous and subtle interactions and a lot of times love between men and women. but they were all bitter, lonely, tragic, and the "love stories" told were very often unpredictable, undescribable or unsure. very few occasions would we find her telling a story about a love that she or the heroine/hero was certain to exist. so zhang ailing's stories, while thought to be always about love, may as well be taken as always about the absence of love.
i feel that Lust Caution is such a story. the lack of compassion and personal relations between the revolutionary youths planning on the assassination was just as plain as that between the wives of the rich officers/businessmen. the lack of genuinity amongst the rich is not surprising, or maybe is even expected. but many in the audience were shocked by the same dynamics in the group on the "good side". the rightfully idealistic young men who sent Jiazhi on the dangerous mission couldn't care less about what she was about to go through. we have seen this and we have taken this for granted for as long as we remember. the poem goes:"生命诚可贵,爱情价更高.若为自由故,两者皆可抛," (indeed life is very precious, but love weighs so much more. however, if it was for the sake of freedom, both life and love could be abandoned. ) in the struggle against invaders it was no doubt that love had no place. and it was not like the students all had to suppress love, as we can see, love simply didn't occur in some - their little minds were too busy with lofty ideals and grand plots to realize them. and they would do what it wook and they were cold hearted. in contrast, wang jiazhi was a young woman who had hoped for love, but ended up getting confused and lonely and damaged in the bigger plot in which love was not set aside for her. the pain that was inflicted upon her would not be obvious unless looked at especially from her point of view, i.e. from the point of view of the female story writer zhang ailing. because, no, history books don't tell you all these personal struggles.
it was in the general lack of love that mr. yee's small little expression of emotion feels huge. and it was the fact that yee's small gesture feels huge that emphasizes the general atmosphere that lacked love. the diamond ring was an excellent use of symbolism. in modern day society, very few girls will be even assured of the opposite party's love by the gesture of giving a diamond ring, not to mention risking their lives to save the them. a diamond ring, albeit expensive, is a materialistic expression of emotions. but because it is seemingly such an un-special gift, we see how low Jiazhi's threshold for care and concern is. and it is therefore meaningless to discuss how much yee loves her. or how much she loves yee. because, there is no love story to talk about, at least not in the conventional sense. the ring was merely a thread of warmth that both of them desperately cling onto, in that indifferent time and place. it's difficult to call that love. and sex between them, well they were only human. in Lust Caution, instead of looking relentlessly for a love story, i'd rather see it as it is and savor the tragic beauty.
zhang ailing lived in a particular time, and she is of a particular personality. these are the reason for the particular charm in her stories, and therefore they should be treated quite differently.
read the original story in chinese here
i feel that Lust Caution is such a story. the lack of compassion and personal relations between the revolutionary youths planning on the assassination was just as plain as that between the wives of the rich officers/businessmen. the lack of genuinity amongst the rich is not surprising, or maybe is even expected. but many in the audience were shocked by the same dynamics in the group on the "good side". the rightfully idealistic young men who sent Jiazhi on the dangerous mission couldn't care less about what she was about to go through. we have seen this and we have taken this for granted for as long as we remember. the poem goes:"生命诚可贵,爱情价更高.若为自由故,两者皆可抛," (indeed life is very precious, but love weighs so much more. however, if it was for the sake of freedom, both life and love could be abandoned. ) in the struggle against invaders it was no doubt that love had no place. and it was not like the students all had to suppress love, as we can see, love simply didn't occur in some - their little minds were too busy with lofty ideals and grand plots to realize them. and they would do what it wook and they were cold hearted. in contrast, wang jiazhi was a young woman who had hoped for love, but ended up getting confused and lonely and damaged in the bigger plot in which love was not set aside for her. the pain that was inflicted upon her would not be obvious unless looked at especially from her point of view, i.e. from the point of view of the female story writer zhang ailing. because, no, history books don't tell you all these personal struggles.
it was in the general lack of love that mr. yee's small little expression of emotion feels huge. and it was the fact that yee's small gesture feels huge that emphasizes the general atmosphere that lacked love. the diamond ring was an excellent use of symbolism. in modern day society, very few girls will be even assured of the opposite party's love by the gesture of giving a diamond ring, not to mention risking their lives to save the them. a diamond ring, albeit expensive, is a materialistic expression of emotions. but because it is seemingly such an un-special gift, we see how low Jiazhi's threshold for care and concern is. and it is therefore meaningless to discuss how much yee loves her. or how much she loves yee. because, there is no love story to talk about, at least not in the conventional sense. the ring was merely a thread of warmth that both of them desperately cling onto, in that indifferent time and place. it's difficult to call that love. and sex between them, well they were only human. in Lust Caution, instead of looking relentlessly for a love story, i'd rather see it as it is and savor the tragic beauty.
zhang ailing lived in a particular time, and she is of a particular personality. these are the reason for the particular charm in her stories, and therefore they should be treated quite differently.
read the original story in chinese here
Thursday, December 20, 2007
publich research, who has a say?
ok, this is so funny i want to put it here. it's from the same page talked about in the last post:
Public control could be a nightmare for researchers
Dan Graur
Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204-5001, USA
Nature 450, 1156 (20 December 2007) | doi:10.1038/4501156b; Published online 19 December 2007
Sir
Last night I had a nightmare. In my dream, all the recommendations made by Pierre-Benoit Joly and Arie Rip in their Essay 'A timely harvest' (Nature 450, 174; doi:10.1038/450174a 2007) became a reality here in the United States. The public were consulted and actively engaged in practical scientific matters.
I dreamed that the dos and don'ts of science and research were dictated democratically by the American public, of whom 73% believe in miracles, 68% in angels, 61% in the devil and 70% in the survival of the soul after death (see http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=618). In my dream, this majority dictated through vigorous 'public engagement' that science should deal with virgin birth, the thermodynamics of hell, the aerodynamics of angel wings, and the physiology and haematology of resurrection.
Suddenly, I found myself in my old lab. There my students were not dealing with the prevalence of gene duplication in bacterial evolution, but were engaged in a heated argument on the virtues of old-Earth versus new-Earth creationism. I woke up in a cold sweat, thinking of what Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's wife reputedly said when confronted with Darwin's theory: "Let us hope it is not true. But if it is, let us hope it does not become widely known."
If Jolie and Rip's proposal for public engagement is workable, let's hope no one ever finds this out.
(and it's wrong of me to put the whole of this article in my blog. but most of people do not have nature subscription :( and i hope dr. graur and npg forgive me. )
it's a very relevant issue. yesterday, i was having a discussion with two of my friends about the singapore's biomedical policies, and the mission of Singapore's research funding agencies. we didn't reach any conclusions about how just it was for anybody other than scientists to dictate the directions of publicly funded research. whose opinions matter in research, as yf pointed out, depends on the mission of the particular institutions, and it not only concerns the direction of the research done per se, but also consequentially determines the executive leadership in the research institutions, and directly affects the way an institution is organized and run. if the mission of a funding agency is to do science, clearly the scientists, who know the science the best, should be the ones determining where the research should go, and should play central role in the leadership of the institutions. whereas in the dreadful situation described by the article, if you subscribe to the logic that because America is a democratic society, science should represent the knowledge the people want to acquire, then it is arguable that science is justly used to study the aerodynamics of angels' wings. and it wouldn't be inappropriate for the leadership of NIH to be fundamentalist christians. in the case of Singapore, because of the pragmatic nature of the society, the mission for the research institutions are stated as promoting economic growth. hence, the direction of the research will be determined by the economic planning section of the government, and the leadership will be a group of management-trained executives.
how beneficial is any one arrangement is debatable though. as long as the scientists insist that they know the science best and the people paying for the research or governing the state claim that they know how to best spend the money, the discussion will not conclude. most people will tend to take a middle ground i imagine, to say (like yc did say) that there should be space for both parties to have a say in the research. However, I still stand by the opinion that the open-endedness nature of scientific discoveries requires that scientists be allowed maximal autonomy. stale and still true is that no one knows what will come out of any studies. and it's not like none of the scientists cares about the survival of the species, or the country's economy, for that matter. some scientists are interested in basic research, some in applied research. therefore, it's a fair mixture of people and interests. I don't see an urgent need for smearing public opinion in their faces, let alone dictating the research. However, a quality control system that puts scientists' progress under public scrutiny is quite just, although it'll involve the high complexity of panel organization and selection.
Public control could be a nightmare for researchers
Dan Graur
Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204-5001, USA
Nature 450, 1156 (20 December 2007) | doi:10.1038/4501156b; Published online 19 December 2007
Sir
Last night I had a nightmare. In my dream, all the recommendations made by Pierre-Benoit Joly and Arie Rip in their Essay 'A timely harvest' (Nature 450, 174; doi:10.1038/450174a 2007) became a reality here in the United States. The public were consulted and actively engaged in practical scientific matters.
I dreamed that the dos and don'ts of science and research were dictated democratically by the American public, of whom 73% believe in miracles, 68% in angels, 61% in the devil and 70% in the survival of the soul after death (see http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=618). In my dream, this majority dictated through vigorous 'public engagement' that science should deal with virgin birth, the thermodynamics of hell, the aerodynamics of angel wings, and the physiology and haematology of resurrection.
Suddenly, I found myself in my old lab. There my students were not dealing with the prevalence of gene duplication in bacterial evolution, but were engaged in a heated argument on the virtues of old-Earth versus new-Earth creationism. I woke up in a cold sweat, thinking of what Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's wife reputedly said when confronted with Darwin's theory: "Let us hope it is not true. But if it is, let us hope it does not become widely known."
If Jolie and Rip's proposal for public engagement is workable, let's hope no one ever finds this out.
(and it's wrong of me to put the whole of this article in my blog. but most of people do not have nature subscription :( and i hope dr. graur and npg forgive me. )
it's a very relevant issue. yesterday, i was having a discussion with two of my friends about the singapore's biomedical policies, and the mission of Singapore's research funding agencies. we didn't reach any conclusions about how just it was for anybody other than scientists to dictate the directions of publicly funded research. whose opinions matter in research, as yf pointed out, depends on the mission of the particular institutions, and it not only concerns the direction of the research done per se, but also consequentially determines the executive leadership in the research institutions, and directly affects the way an institution is organized and run. if the mission of a funding agency is to do science, clearly the scientists, who know the science the best, should be the ones determining where the research should go, and should play central role in the leadership of the institutions. whereas in the dreadful situation described by the article, if you subscribe to the logic that because America is a democratic society, science should represent the knowledge the people want to acquire, then it is arguable that science is justly used to study the aerodynamics of angels' wings. and it wouldn't be inappropriate for the leadership of NIH to be fundamentalist christians. in the case of Singapore, because of the pragmatic nature of the society, the mission for the research institutions are stated as promoting economic growth. hence, the direction of the research will be determined by the economic planning section of the government, and the leadership will be a group of management-trained executives.
how beneficial is any one arrangement is debatable though. as long as the scientists insist that they know the science best and the people paying for the research or governing the state claim that they know how to best spend the money, the discussion will not conclude. most people will tend to take a middle ground i imagine, to say (like yc did say) that there should be space for both parties to have a say in the research. However, I still stand by the opinion that the open-endedness nature of scientific discoveries requires that scientists be allowed maximal autonomy. stale and still true is that no one knows what will come out of any studies. and it's not like none of the scientists cares about the survival of the species, or the country's economy, for that matter. some scientists are interested in basic research, some in applied research. therefore, it's a fair mixture of people and interests. I don't see an urgent need for smearing public opinion in their faces, let alone dictating the research. However, a quality control system that puts scientists' progress under public scrutiny is quite just, although it'll involve the high complexity of panel organization and selection.
Come all ye scientists, busy and exhausted. O come ye, O come ye, out of the lab
nature just published a short study on how hard pple work around christmas... lol..
Read more here if you have access to nature.com. such a pain in the ass... shouldn't they make these short articles free?
** on a hind sight, because the rest of the plate looks interesting too, i decided to do this:
Read more here if you have access to nature.com. such a pain in the ass... shouldn't they make these short articles free?
** on a hind sight, because the rest of the plate looks interesting too, i decided to do this:
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
well i have 12 min while waiting to go home, so i thought i'd blog.
so many things happened recently that i think i've stopped being bored by my life. suddenly it's a mixture of delight, sadness, surprises, puzzles, discomfort at once, like a melodrama.
the day we went to hear our juniors carol at esplanade, the old farts got so nostalgic that we couldn't help but burst into songs in the city link mall, attracting much attention from strangers. and when we sang les fleurs, mohan mentioned that he liked calme des nuits better and joce said that we screwed it up. it's like a title from my deepest dreams :p... i honestly couldn't remember any line from that song, even after he sang a couple verses from both bass and sop parts. and when i came back, i searched in itunes store for that song, and found the cd that i listened to again and again in the whole of j2 and j3, that faure's requiem by monteverdi choir, with a load of other french choral work. calme des nuits, les fleurs, des pas dans l'allee, dieu! qu'il a fait bon regarder!, trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis... and it felt as if they had disappeared. complete erasure (thanks man, i learnt this word.) i wonder what happened between now and then. of all the times i missed jc times, this time was the most surprising. how is it possible that i totally forgot about half a dozen songs that used to be my favourites! i even translated the lyrics of trois beaux oiseaux into chinese... it's such a mystery....sigh
anyway,
Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder
la gracieuse bonne et belle;
pour les grans biens que sont en elle
chascun est prest de la loüer.
Qui se pourrait d'elle lasser?
Toujours sa beauté renouvelle.
Par de ça, ne de là, la mer
nescay dame ne damoiselle
qui soit en tous bien parfais telle.
C'est une songe que d'y penser:
Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder.
so many things happened recently that i think i've stopped being bored by my life. suddenly it's a mixture of delight, sadness, surprises, puzzles, discomfort at once, like a melodrama.
the day we went to hear our juniors carol at esplanade, the old farts got so nostalgic that we couldn't help but burst into songs in the city link mall, attracting much attention from strangers. and when we sang les fleurs, mohan mentioned that he liked calme des nuits better and joce said that we screwed it up. it's like a title from my deepest dreams :p... i honestly couldn't remember any line from that song, even after he sang a couple verses from both bass and sop parts. and when i came back, i searched in itunes store for that song, and found the cd that i listened to again and again in the whole of j2 and j3, that faure's requiem by monteverdi choir, with a load of other french choral work. calme des nuits, les fleurs, des pas dans l'allee, dieu! qu'il a fait bon regarder!, trois beaux oiseaux du Paradis... and it felt as if they had disappeared. complete erasure (thanks man, i learnt this word.) i wonder what happened between now and then. of all the times i missed jc times, this time was the most surprising. how is it possible that i totally forgot about half a dozen songs that used to be my favourites! i even translated the lyrics of trois beaux oiseaux into chinese... it's such a mystery....sigh
anyway,
Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder
la gracieuse bonne et belle;
pour les grans biens que sont en elle
chascun est prest de la loüer.
Qui se pourrait d'elle lasser?
Toujours sa beauté renouvelle.
Par de ça, ne de là, la mer
nescay dame ne damoiselle
qui soit en tous bien parfais telle.
C'est une songe que d'y penser:
Dieu! qu'il la fait bon regarder.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Just one of those things
because of the puppies' request for me to play choral songs in a certain hotel room in vienna, i dug out our syf finals recordings from eons ago. i haven't listened to these in years literally, and this following song in particular brought me to a smile (yeah, like this :) )
It was just
one of those things
It was just
one of those crazy flings
one of those bells
that now and then rings
just one of those things
it was just one of those nights
just one of those fabulous flights
a trip to the moon
on gossamer wings
just one of those things
if we thought a bit
of the end of it
when we started painting the town
we'd have been aware
that our love affair
was too hot to cool down
so goodbye and amen
here's hoping we meet now and then
it was great fun
but it was just one of those things
our performance wasn't great haha, rhythm was all over the place and some notes were obviously out. but it was so delightful and there was so much life in it. so much so that i can't help singing along whenever i played it again. (and each time i have a mental movie clip of toh trying to demo to us the sound and look of particular words. "jaaaahst" "rinnnnnggg" "baell" "ok!" "tres bien!") and the tone was totally different from the previous songs, probably just cos we were finishing up the competition performance with that song. hahaha.. but yeah, it was great fun, but it was just one of those things... ironically now that i'm reading the lyrics again, i realise that when we were singing it i didn't even think about the meaning of the words at all. and now it strikes me how interesting and true the words are. lol... and i probably don't have the energy and time to sing it anymore.
anyways, so the choral part of me hasn't actually died. and it's nice to know that :)
It was just
one of those things
It was just
one of those crazy flings
one of those bells
that now and then rings
just one of those things
it was just one of those nights
just one of those fabulous flights
a trip to the moon
on gossamer wings
just one of those things
if we thought a bit
of the end of it
when we started painting the town
we'd have been aware
that our love affair
was too hot to cool down
so goodbye and amen
here's hoping we meet now and then
it was great fun
but it was just one of those things
our performance wasn't great haha, rhythm was all over the place and some notes were obviously out. but it was so delightful and there was so much life in it. so much so that i can't help singing along whenever i played it again. (and each time i have a mental movie clip of toh trying to demo to us the sound and look of particular words. "jaaaahst" "rinnnnnggg" "baell" "ok!" "tres bien!") and the tone was totally different from the previous songs, probably just cos we were finishing up the competition performance with that song. hahaha.. but yeah, it was great fun, but it was just one of those things... ironically now that i'm reading the lyrics again, i realise that when we were singing it i didn't even think about the meaning of the words at all. and now it strikes me how interesting and true the words are. lol... and i probably don't have the energy and time to sing it anymore.
anyways, so the choral part of me hasn't actually died. and it's nice to know that :)
Saturday, December 08, 2007
I haven't blogged about my trip.. :P
I am sitting in a room at Hotel Savoy, Vienna now. Through the window, I can see windows of perhaps other hotel rooms, or some random apartment rooms. They are very ugly. I wish I had the view of Mozart's apartment. I walked by this particular window when I was on the tour there, through which I could see a curved alley, with white apartment buildings that had pretty window sils on both sides. that itself looked like a sketch of some sort.
(i wonder what mozart would've written if he had lived to old age.)
(hmm, i need to go for breakfast. i think i should blog about the trip later)
the company i have on this trip is fabulous. even though things changed quite a bit, getting together to sing is still a joy. and it's a wonder how the people clicked despite the age gaps. (there's a reason why these people chose to stick with toh...) this is perhaps the happiest part of the trip.
anyways. breakfast time!
I am sitting in a room at Hotel Savoy, Vienna now. Through the window, I can see windows of perhaps other hotel rooms, or some random apartment rooms. They are very ugly. I wish I had the view of Mozart's apartment. I walked by this particular window when I was on the tour there, through which I could see a curved alley, with white apartment buildings that had pretty window sils on both sides. that itself looked like a sketch of some sort.
(i wonder what mozart would've written if he had lived to old age.)
(hmm, i need to go for breakfast. i think i should blog about the trip later)
the company i have on this trip is fabulous. even though things changed quite a bit, getting together to sing is still a joy. and it's a wonder how the people clicked despite the age gaps. (there's a reason why these people chose to stick with toh...) this is perhaps the happiest part of the trip.
anyways. breakfast time!
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