Why I Do Science

"There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality." - Richard Dawkins

To me, science is indeed poetry.

Grace, beauty, and harmony, the characteristics that define poetry outside of literature, abound in nature.

For a scientist, as for a child, the world is a puzzle to be fit together, and the beauty of that lies in the ways these complex four-dimensional pieces join.

It shows in physics -
Atoms are made up of protons and neutrons, and if you can characterize those, you can attempt to decipher the behaviors of these tiny particles, despite having no way to sense them directly.

It shows in chemistry -
In high school, you learn that certain chemicals react. As you delve deeper and deeper, you begin to see how the orbital distribution of electrons not only affects but effects those interactions.

It shows in biology -
Enzymatic interactions require not a simple lock-and-key fit, but rather, a spatial positioning that can become a lock-and-key fit, which helps to drive the reaction. Cells and organisms have complex feedback pathways for regulation that work based on the activities of these enzymes.

It shows in the way those fields fit together, in how you find chemical reactions happening because of physical properties, and biological reactions happening because of chemical properties, and psychological reactions happening because of biological properties.

Could there be anything more beautiful?

A Speech to Remember

As I was walking up Bancroft St. this afternoon, I found my way blocked by some policemen. They were allowing nobody to cross the street behind Zellerbach Hall. After I waited for a few minutes, a motorcade turned into the street. Police cars at either end flanked a couple of SUVs. I looked into the silver one and saw...

Are You Noteworthy?

Don’t worry, I’m not calling your worth into question.

Noteworthy is a UC Berkeley a cappella group (i.e., their vocals act as the background instruments) that somewhat recently went viral on the nets for their antics in their rendition of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face.

At any rate, one of the members is my roommate’s friend from Taekwondo (and boyfriend of our possible future roommate). And I only knew him from the context of Taekwondo. So imagine my shock when I saw him on Sproul, performing this:



I'm going to leave you hanging on which one he is, but to make up for that, I'll give you another video. They've got a few other gems, like this slightly-difficult-to-hear version of my favorite song from Mulan:



According to my inside sources, until the sudden spike in popularity of Poker Face, the boys were working on an arrangement for Bad Romance. So keep an eye out for that, and I'll let you know when they start performing it.

Into Another Dimension

Thinking in three dimensions can be tricky. For whatever evolutionary/social/biological reason, spatial visualization tends to be easier for males than females.

As a bio major, the main thing I visualize in 3d is molecular structure, for proteins and organic chemistry reactions.

But artists do much more. Kumi Yamashita brings people out of the shadows in ways you’d never suspect. Matthew Albanese creates entire worlds – and then shows us how he does it.

Amazing.

Irregularity

Posting every day is currently a fail.

I’m busy, but I could do better.

For instance, after the Bollywood dance class, I didn’t have to spend an hour talking to my friend.

And then after helping out with the Hustle lesson, I didn’t have to stay for the Salsa workshop.

And after coming home, I didn’t have to watch the Olympics (roommate consensus: figure skating men have nice glutes) while trying to do Japanese homework.

 

Jeremy Abbott, though the US champion (he even beat Evan Lysacek on the US stage), didn't do so well in the short program.

What's Up With All The Hearts?

Up until today (technically yesterday) I completely forgot it was Valentine’s Day. I didn’t really care, although I would rather have Clementine’s Day.

This year, it didn’t bother me to see everyone coupled up, my roommates returning to Berkeley early (despite the 3-day weekend!) to spend time with their boyfriends.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been keeping myself busy this semester with the things I love: neuroscience, labwork, martial arts, dance… who has time for boys?

The War on Cancer

I just watch a TED talk by David Agus on the next steps in the war on cancer, and it reminded me of a class I took last semester.

What I learned in my Bio of Cancer class last semester is that we’ve pretty much got clinical cancer diagnosis and classification all wrong.

Because we didn’t initially (and to some extent still don’t) have the tools to do much else, we look at the symptoms – a tumor in your lung, a lump in your brain, an overproliferation of white blood cells.

But that doesn’t help in treating the cancer. One breast cancer may have the protein HER2 amplified, while another may not. You can’t use Herceptin for both.

It’s true that certain mutations show up more often in certain cell types or body parts, because the pathways involved are the ones expressed in those cells. Still, there are usually plenty of other mutations that show up in the same cell types and even the same cells.

Just classifying cancers by their mutations isn’t enough though, because just as in real estate, location matters. The environment around the cells (extracellular matrix, blood vessels, neighboring cells) can help determine whether the abnormal cells can grow. There are carcinoma (epithelial cell cancers) cells that are provided with growth factors by the cancer-associated (but not cancerous themselves) fibroblasts surrounding them.

Look at all the cell types and growth factors involved in the tumor microenvironment! 
(I stole this picture from the Pittet Lab at the Center for Systems Biology)

So what we need then is some integration of our current form of diagnosis and our knowledge of the cancer genome. I'll link to Agus's TedMed talk again, since it's pretty informative. Take a look.

Also, HTML does not show up on titles in a Google Reader. Oops.