There is that...

As promised, today is New England Events Day!  Or, for this first one - a chocolate tasting event - perhaps "snobby cities events day" would be more acccurate.  Perhaps this chocolate tasting afternoon more than ever outlined the difference between MIT and Harvard to me.  I suspect that such an event at Harvard would consist of several nattily-attired snobby persons standing around with magnifying glasses, examining the chocolate and making sophisticated small-talk regarding the unique bouquet of aromas resonating from the cocoas.  However, we are at MIT and, as such, rely simply on the evaluating the evidence in front of us, making a hypothesis, and testing it.  We were actually given a booklet describing what the different chocolates were (probably about 100 chocolates in all on display), so I will summarize for you the most important facts I read/observed and the experiments I subsequently undertook:

FACT: Chocolate contains over 600 volatile flavour molecules reminscent of mushrooms, fruit, wine, nuts, flowers and spices
FACT: As fine chocolate melts in your mouth, it actually cools your mouth as fat crystals melt and absorb heat from the body.
FACT: Pure chocolate bars should have a radiant sheen
FACT: Between sampling different chocolates, you should cleanse your palate with sparkling water and/or a neutral food such as crackers
HYPOTHESIS: Who on earth cares, there are several pounds of free chocolate to eat on the table!
EXPERIMENT: Eat copious quantities of chocolate (in a systematic way of course)
RESULTS: Pure cacoa is almost inedible... love the milk chocolates.
CONCLUSIONS: Chocolate is good.

Second interesting activity was a true New England special - candlepinning!  Candlepinning is essentially a cross between ten and five-pin bowling.  The pins are narrow cylinders and are arranged in the same geometry as 10-pin bowling pins... the ball is roughly the same size although a little lighter than a 5-pin bowling ball.  The differences between candlepinning and bowling which I noticed are two-fold (1) it is almost impossible to get a strike - the pins are so narrow, you don't get the same pin-on-pin action when you throw a good one (I only got one strike in 20 frames,
much less than my typical 5-pin performance)  (2) any fallen pins are not cleaned up from the lanes between throws in the same frame.  This leads to some truly fascinating shots such as the one which one of my friends used to defeat me in our first game.  I was up by two points and he was down to his last shot, which ended up being a gutter ball which hit the gutter about 2/3 the way down the lane.  However, one of the fallen candlepins was overhanging the gutter and was contacted by the gutter ball, launching the stray pin up into four of the still-standing pins to vanquish me in a pool of tears (really, it was very emotional for me... I don't like losing) :)  In another frame, he again hit a gutter candlepin, sending it into the adjacent lane and knocking down three pins for the person bowling beside us (who was, of course, thrilled).  Kind of a neat game though.  This is actually just one of many things (most of them less unique than this) which I have been doing to keep myself sane on weekends with a really fantastic group of friends here from my church who, like me, enjoy doing "lame" activities such as board games, classic movie nights, and pastry road trips (some awfully good stuff around here, let me assure you!) - it's been great to have them around!

Tomorrow: The FINAL INSTALLMENT OF MEGA-BLOG... the long-awaited Blogging Truancy Excuse #3 (it's a good one, you'll want to come back for it!)

Red Sox mania is in full swing, and for good reason - a 10.5 game lead on the Yankees in May is definitely cause for celebration.  To give you an idea of how nutty people are for the Red Sox here, MIT runs a discount ticket office for students, employees and even much-maligned affiliates such as myself.  Generally, if you want a ticket to something, you just go to their central desk and pick it up.  For the 1800 Red Sox tickets they had acquired (and, just to be clear, you still have to pay face value for them - this is just for the privilege of paying for them), they had to run an on-line lottery to "prevent incidents" of people in line.  I can see an MIT brawl now... watch the glasses and the pocket protectors fly!  Duck, here comes a calculator!  However, to my enduring bitterness, I lost the lottery while an Israeli post-doc colleague who knows nothing about baseball won... sigh.  However, through the questionably legal pathway of ticket agents, I did acquire reasonably priced tickets to see the Jays game a couple of Mondays back at Fenway, so I guess it turned out OK.  Fantastic game too - the Blue Jays won 7-3 and I was heckled by the standing room only creatures for cheering for the Blue Jays with the insanely creative chant "Go Leafs!" (give that guy a Pulitzer! - of course, I guess he thought the hockey comment would be the ultimate insult to a Canadian).   However, I think the funniest exchange was a text message conversation we were having with my Bible study leader.  After the game, we wrote something to the effect of "And, lo, on the first day, the Blue Jays shall defeateth thy Sox - Fenway 7:3 (with the chapter/verse representing the score) - I thought I was pretty clever.  Then I got his reply... "Evidence for the fall".  Nicely done.

Last time I posted I asked two theoretical questions, whose answers I will now discuss:  (1) I decided that 17 hours round trip driving to attend a fantasy baseball draft in person was, shall we say, unwise (particularly when Skype worked so brilliantly until the final round of the bench draft... I blame the lack of communication capacity for my stinker pick of Pedro Feliz).  However, despite an incredibly slow offensive start (and a still wretched batting average), my team (the MIT Geek Squad... seemed appropriate) is now bobbing between third and fourth place and not completely embarrassing itself.  Assuming a couple of my team members who have decided to forget how to hit (I'm talking to you, Garrett Atkins and Carlos Delgado) rediscover their abilities, I might not break down in sheer sorrow prior to the All-Star break.  On the other hand, if worse comes to worse, I can always just slide over on the ESPN website to play... Fantasy Fishing!  Seriously.  (2) I determined that $150 was a reasonable price for the entire 137 episode collection of Get Smart episodes, only the finest sitcom ever produced.  I have only watched about a dozen episodes so far - it is interesting how many wildly politically incorrect lines are included which would cause the heads of today's censors to simulatanouesly implode, but the comedy is pure gold.  Favourite lines so far: "Max, if it will make it easier for you, I'll take an 8D" and "If I didn't know any better, I'd think that was an electric snake!"  Yes, I realize that out of context these excerpts are completely incomprehensible... but trust me, comedy gold!

Tomorrow: Unique New England Experiences!

OK, time for excuse #2 regarding blogging truancy - taxes! (no, no, this is actually interesting... don't lose me now...
wake up!)  Let me preface this by saying that I am one of those strange people who typically enjoys doing his taxes - I am actually interested in what the government values (i.e. what you get tax credits for doing) and feel a bit of a warm and fuzzy feeling doing my part to pay for stuff I like, for example roads, schools, sewers, R&D, and hospitals (you know, all that useless stuff we could easily afford by paying for it ourselves).  However, this year truly sucked all the enthusiasm out of me.  Believe me, the only thing more fun than doing your taxes in one country is doing your taxes in two countries with three different tax codes (yes, the rules for Massachusetts and the United States are ENTIRELY DIFFERENT - not even your calculated net income is the same - woo hoo!)  Turns out that, for tax purposes in 2006, I was a resident of Canada, Ontario, Massachusetts but not the United States... this year I will be a resident of Canada (despite not actually living there a single day), Massachusetts and the United States (not Ontario), while in 2008, I will be a resident of (wait for it) Canada, Ontario, Massachusetts and the United States.  Now, I realize that this means I have developed the extremely impressive ability to live in two places at once (to my Hamilton friends - little did you
know I was still living in your midst, bruhahahaha!), but it does make taxes an absolute nightmare.  Most of this is
actually MIT's fault - in order to reduce the amount of work they needed to do to appoint me (a "foreign scholar"), they
told me to acquire a NAFTA TN work visa instead of a normal J1 work visa, which means that the United States considers me a "resident alien" for tax purposes (I would be a non-resident alien - love that name, makes me want to run out and buy fake antennae or something - if I was on a J1 visa and therefore exempt from all the American tax silliness).  Suffice it to say, if any of you ever do this kind of move, talk to me first and I can give you some pointers on these things!   The best part of it all is that I did not make a single dime of income from a U.S. source (not even bank interest) and yet still have to pay taxes here on my worldwide income because "that's what the Americans decided" (makes sense to me!).  Anyway, it took me forever and required a fascinating 1.5 hour conversation with the IRS (talk about a bunch of fun-lovin' people!) but I think I got it reasonably correct (we will see when the assessments start filing in).  Very valid blogging truancy excuse though, believe you me.

And while we are on the topic of sad things about the United States, here's another - none of my American friends has any clue what a butter tart is... terribly sad, I must import some next chance I get.

Tomorrow: "Baseball and Classic Sitcoms!" (the theme is very clear I think)

Today, I will describe two silly discoveries I have made which, if widely distributed, would effectively ruin my credibility as a research scientist even before I had a chance to build it up.  Fortunately, I suspect nobody is reading this blog anymore, so I can spill it for you.
 
DISCOVERY #1: IF YOU GIVE SOMETHING UNPLEASANT A FUN NAME, IT AUTOMATICALLY BECOMES FUN - I have been doing a lot of biocompatibility experiments recently which essentially involve growing some cells in plastic wells, adding a material I have made, and then waiting four days and checking what percentage of the cells survived the presence of the material.  It's essentially a very crude way to filter out the really tragic materials before actually injecting or implanting the material into an animal.  These experiments are real ordeals - they each take several days since you have to count and plate out the cells, feed the cells (they are hungry little guys), sterilize the materials (typically 20-30 different materials per experiment), load them into syringes for injection, apply the materials (about a five hour process over which you have to remain sterile the whole time), and then assay for how happy the cells are after a pre-determined time period (a four-step, timed process which requires you to donate a full day of your life to science).  So, the bottom line is that this is a tedious and very work-intensive process which is not normally something you would look forward to.  In response, I decided that if I gave the experiment a fun name, I would be happier about doing it (half jokingly believing this at first).  I settled on "Cellapaloozah", which not only rolls nicely off the tongue but also evokes memories of a fun party atmosphere which requires narcotics to truly enjoy.  However, both myself, my undergrad slaves, and my other lab co-workers genuinely did enjoy the experiment much more by joking about it all day (somebody else's undergrad slave actually asked if she, too, could take part in Cellapaloozah seeing as how fun it was).  I have since kicked the fun up another notch with the sequels (note the Roman numerals, gives the whole thing some extra gravitas I think), "Cellapaloozah II: The Return of the Fibroblast" and "Cellapaloozah III: The Bupivacaine Boogie", which premiered just this Thursday (PS 1 - early box office returns suggest that Cellapaloozah III is a hit so far; PS 2 - if you understand either of the subtitles, you are just as much of a geek as me) :)  Try it, it's fun!

DISCOVERY #2: CELLS NEED SOME LOVING TOO - We were having trouble growing fibroblasts, cells found in connective tissues which are normally child's play to culture.  We changed the media, cleaned the incubator, bought fresh cells... and still had no luck whatsoever.  So, out of actual scientific ideas, we repeated the experiment and wrote "good luck little guys" on their growing flask.  Guess what - they grew!  We decided to experiment a bit by switching to happy faces instead - life was still good!  Scientifically, we then shook it up and experimented whether button or point noses were better - either way, the cells were happy campers.  For two weeks, any cells we cultured with a happy face on their flask grew while cells without happy faces died... it was absolutely creepy, and to this day we have never figured out what was going on.  So, the bottom line: just like people, cells need a little encouragement from time to time :)  

Tomorrow: "Blogging Truancy Excuse #2!"

Would you believe that I was abducted by aliens for one day which was the equivalent of almost two months on earth and thus am now updating my blog at its regular interval?  No?  Well, fine - I am ashamed of my blogging truancy... it was kind of one of those cumulative things really, the longer I didn't update, the more daunting writing an update became and the less eager I was to do it.  Also, I have I think three compelling excuses which I will outline over the course of this mega-post (or rather series of mini-posts) which explain my lax approach to blogging the last little while.

For your benefit, this post will be posted in sections (I recall a couple of you complaining about how long my posts are, so this offers the double benefit of me getting more bang for less work and you not falling into a deep trance by the time you reach the end).  Today: Work/Research Update!

Things are still clipping along pretty well in the lab.  It is funny how cyclical research is sometimes - you go through a three or four week funk where nothing is happening, then things just come together for a few weeks.  I am still struggling a bit to get my main project working in a relevant environment (although our prototype for proof of concept worked very well), but my side projects have been plugging along nicely, in large part due to the assistance of three slaves, er, "undergraduate research opportunity students" working for you 10 hours per week each.  Unfortunately, this is their last week (MIT winter semester runs February - May) so the party is over... although one of the students is staying to work the summer as a "volunteer" (her father is a heart surgeon so I suspect the whole paying tuition next year thing is not a big factor in determining her summer plans).  On the other hand, it will be somewhat nice to have a break from planning the day-to-day lives of three undergrads and one and a half lab technicians, which is what I have been doing for the last couple of months - you can certainly get a lot done, but you can also get very tired (that would be blogging truancy excuse #1 :) )

Lots of other interesting research-related things are happening too.  My M.D. "sub-boss" (for lack of a better term - I am a bit of a free agent but have chosen to work with this guy more often than not) is moving from Massachusetts General Hospital to Children's Hospital of Boston, which means that I will have lines on my resume indicating that I have been a research fellow at both MGH and Children's Hospital in the department of pediatrics (????) in exchange for... doing absolutely nothing.  Makes a lot of sense I know, but this could actually be potentially helpful when I go to apply for health sciences-related research money (it's all about the unsubstantiated credentials). 

I am also involved in writing review papers both at MIT and at McMaster.  Review papers are the best kind of paper in science - you don't actually have to do any real work or accomplish anything yourself, only summarize what you and others have done in the past and give your opinion on the state of the field.  As a post-doc, my job is to actually write the paper and, since both papers are about things I specialize in, essentially tell my co-authors what their opinion is on the state of the art in the field... fun!  But, these papers get referenced all the time by lazy graduate students who don't want to read the original papers (I include "past-me" in this condemnation) so it is a good way to get a highly-cited, high profile paper out in the literature.  Science is a lot about marketing, particularly for me at this point as an entry-level kind of researcher, so these review papers will definitely help out in "publicizing" my existence if you will. 

Finally, I am also talking to a company about potentially commercializing some research I did at McMaster regarding the development of nanoparticles which can swell or shrink as the glucose concentration changes.  The idea would be that if insulin is loaded into the particles, it can be released at a higher rate as the glucose level in the fluid increases - essentially a self-regulating insulin release vehicle which can meter the amount of insulin it ejects as the glucose level in the blood changes.  I have no idea whether it will go anywhere (I am somewhat skeptical actually), but it has been an interesting experience in terms of thinking along with a company and looking at technologies from a more business-oriented perspective.

Tomorrow: MIT Fun!  (I promise, it will be less newsy and much more frivolously entertaining) :)