the Dog Days are over

The sunny summer heat in Germany has given way to crisp fall air and cold rainshowers. My biking time has grown shorter corresponding to our day length. I am totally missing my cycling club in Riverside, there is a meeting tonight and they are riding at the LA Velodrome tomorrow. My bike here is not fixed, nor is it good for off-roading, but it is PERFECT as a grocery-getter.

Fortunately, I have found a nice group of crazy American running buddies. I've called our pack the ICE Runners. ICE=Institute for Chemical Ecology. We ran last Thursday in the rain and this Tuesday I totally crapped out and slept late instead of enjoying the morning run-shower. Tomorrow is another day and I WILL run rain or shine since it is my last time running with my new friend Evan. My Nike+ wristband is totally useless for web-interfacing but still records mileage and pace. It's at 69 miles right now. My shoes have fallen to less than $1 per mile, so I can say that they have been worth the investment.

mein hobby ist fahrad fahren

Greetings from across the pond! I have had many cycling adventures here in Europe. I've been here a month already. My English is starting to deteriorate but my Deutsche is improving. My hair is growing back, already it is as long as it was in November '09 before I shaved it all off in January '10.

I don't have much to bitch about today unless you count the heat and the separation from my family and friends. This experience has taught me a lot about attachment to objects and connection to people and the ability to generate ideas. The attachment to objects is superficial, for example, your objects can be stolen from you or you can be separated from them as I am now. It seems accumulation of possessions only sets one up for a big loss or a tough time moving. Connections to people are important and tie us to our humanness, but they can only enrich one's life so far. Only when one's self-concept is aligned can he or she be happy and free. Reliance on people for one's sanity is dangerous because those people can also be removed from one's life by distance or death.

But the ability to generate ideas is something that has not yet been taken away from me. At least I am still able to expand my mind and make new neural connections. Barring a head injury or neurodegenerative disease, I should be able to take these things with me for the rest of my life. I've been thinking a lot about why I am on this internship and I am still trying to make heads or tails of it. Spending time and energy on one's career is interesting because it's an uncertain investment, but if we aren't investing in ourselves than what can we believe in these days?

I (virtually) made it!

Well, my fantasy a couple years ago was to venture out on a cross-country bike trip when I finish school. According to Google Maps (bicycle beta version) the trip from San Diego, CA to the White House in Washington, D.C. is 2,908 miles. I've ridden in the past year and a half 3,146.04 mi. So if I had left a year ago, I would have made it by now.

My husband has already told me that this trip is NOT going to happen. He thinks I am completely nuts for even suggesting that it COULD happen. I told him the only way to PREVENT it from happening is to get me pregnant. If I have endless doctor appointments, then I can't be riding from city to city and sometimes in the middle of nowhere.

I had thought this would be a monumental trip. Something that could provide material for a book. I've just finished reading EAT, PRAY, LOVE by Elizabeth Gilbert. Totally inspirational!

Singing for Summer

Even though it's only Memorial Day Weekend, I feel this is the beginning of summer. We helped open the family pool yesterday. The days are already longer. Hello, sunrise at 5:40am and sunset not until 7:55pm. Over 14h of daylight. I've been thinking about my Arabidopsis plants and how they are on a 16h light 8h dark schedule, beginning around 7:30am and ending around 11:30pm. This explains my work schedule. I feel if Arabidopsis is working 16 hour days making molecules for me, I should be keeping busy too.

I'm getting ready to attend a conference on plant adaptations to low oxygen environments. My research has been using the model plant Arabidopsis, one of the first 3 organisms to have its genome sequenced. It will be interesting to show my work to the other attendees at this conference, who come from a wide cross-section of scientific disciplines with the goal of addressing a specific scientific problem and who work with a wider diversity of plants (some adapted to grow in low-oxygen environments and some of agricultural importance). My friend Takeshi Fukao (http://genomics.ucr.edu/news/news-details.php?id=41) told me that the conference attendees will be mainly ecologists (who study life and interactions between lifeforms within ecosystems) and agronomists (who develop plants for specific purposes including food, fuel, feed and fiber). As I'm writing this now, I am supposed to be working on a poster summarizing my research project... later, right?

I'll be flying into Tuscany for sightseeing June 14-20, then attending the conference in Volterra June 20-25, then traveling to the rolling plains of central Germany (Thuringia) to work at a research institute specializing in the study of plant-insect communication. I hope to rent or buy a bicycle over there and see the areas better that way. I'm looking forward to being situated in a world-leading research center while I continue my doctoral studies. The Saale river, which bends along the east side of Jena, has cut high limestone cliffs into the landscape and supports nearby wine growing regions.

How do I feel right now? Well I feel loved and supported. I've just had visits with my sister Karly for adventures, my mom for Mother's Day, and my friend Cheri for her birthday. My husband and doggies are here right now with me, so I can't complain. There's so much to do and so little time, yet I have all the time I need. I feel I could do so many more experiments, but that's where skill comes in. Knowing one's priorities is priceless.

"Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Next blog post, I swear, I will write about the integral membrane protein called human serotonin transporter (SERT) and the small molecules that bind to it.

Spring has Sprung!

Many changes take place in spring. Weather patterns change. Daylight savings time shifts our working hours to accommodate the sun. Our family is changing, but I suppose that the only thing that never changes is that things are always changing.

Biking time is my favorite time of day. The way I can productively reward myself is related to biking. Time spent on the bike. Only problem is that I worried about overtraining. So I added running into the mix. Still love biking best though.

Trying to get into daily affirmations. Trying to maintain this weight. Trying to be more positive. Trying to leave more free room in my schedule, with daily priority tasks that "must get done" and other than that priority, worrying less.

Like a bulldog chasing a cat

So it seems I've been called out as having a Type A habit. What does that mean exactly? Well it generally means I have a desire to do everything, quickly, better than anyone else ever has, and perfectly. Why? Because I can, and it's important, and I need to do it before someone else does, and because it will prove to everyone that I am a worthwhile human being. At least that's how Carol Lankton (a marriage and family therapist for 28 years) describes what's been going on inside my head. My cycling buddy says I ride like a bulldog chasing a cat. I hoped I was the cat in that simile, but unfortunately not. Can't I be a poodle instead of a bulldog?

The problem is that while Type A personality is correlated with assertiveness and sturdy work ethic, it is also commonly combined with anxiety/depression and tends to alienate friends and family. Researchers speculate that this may happen because society tends to shun and isolate competitive, hard-driving women, even as it encourages men with the same traits. That's why I say "I'm a grrrrrrl." Luckily my she-wolf companions (my doggies and running partners) don't mind being dominated. Call me a bitch if you like, but I'm still standing. And running. And biking.

Stormy Weather

It's the rainy season, and I'm gonna bitch about it. I rode to school today, on my road bike, ending up soaked and dirty. On the bright side, I wore black and I look good wet.

Life has been stormy, too. I've just attended the Southern California Users of Magnets (SCUM) meeting, which was co-hosted by my research advisor, mentor, and personal hero, Professor Cynthia Larive and my husband's former research advisor, Professor Len Mueller. It was sponsored (in part) by the company my husband interviewed with in Boston last month, Bruker. I feel like I have a million projects going on right now and it's only a matter of time before I screw something up. But it's all about perception, right? And for now it seems I am managing.

I've been developing some educational materials for a course called "Instrumental Methods," which involves advanced topics in analytical chemistry, such as; chromatographic separations, electrochemistry, and spectroscopic techniques. Analytical chemists are known for attention to detail, accuracy & precision, and the desire to know (1) What substance(s) are present in a "sample" and (2) How much (of each substance) is present in the "sample." One could make a career as an analytical chemist improving experimental designs for targeted analysis or validating new methods to enhance the richness of information from a nontargeted analysis. Often, the analytical chemist is challenged to balance performance and cost, lending somewhat of an engineering or applied type of problem-solving to our field. We can also see a direct application of our work in many diverse types of fields: environmental monitoring, medical devices, pharmaceutical R&D pipeline, quality control, drug enforcement, etc.

Speaking of which, the reason I'm developing these new educational materials [namely a problem-based laboratory exercise] is because UCR Department of Chemistry was the recipient of a Gas Chromatograph-Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS) donated kindly by the local Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) lab. It's cool because it's already set up to detect small amounts of volatile organic molecules in a complex mixture, because it was likely used to detect banned substances and their downstream metabolites in urine, feces or blood.

The class of substances we're focusing on in this activity are monoterpenes. These are found in citrus peel (among other plant-based sources) and are useful for cleaning and degreasing (as in the case of turpentine) and/or for fragrances in perfumes and soaps. I have isolated monoterpenes from a variety of citrus fruits, including orange, lime and lemon, tangerine and mandarin so far. Each peel has offered a complex mixture of these molecules (between 5 to 20 detectable monoterpenes per variety of citrus) and the subtle but statistically significant differences between fruits is what we're interested in recording.

Since my other research advisor, Julia Bailey-Serres, has been training me to think like a plant biologist, I asked the question "But why does the plant produce these compounds?" Surely not for us to use as a degreaser or additive to our soaps and perfumes. It turns out that these molecules have exhibited antifungal activity in addition to deterring insects from the area. This protects the fruit from pathogen attack and allows the citrus to live long and prosper.

I found limonene in high abundance in each peel extract, while the relative amounts of the minor components in each extract were variable. Orange and Tangerine peels contained little or no beta-pinene, both Lemon and Lime peel contained more beta- than alpha-pinene, and the relative amount of beta-myrcene correlated with strong and pleasant aromas (using the human nose detector that I have built-in for cross-validation). This makes good sense since myrcene is one of the most important chemicals used in the perfumery industry.

So as you can probably tell I'm still trying to find some footing for this lab, but I think it's coming along well so far. It's got to be ready to go in January when classes start (week of Jan 5, 2010) which is less than 4 weeks. This project, along with my regularly scheduled research and another educationally-related project (that I haven't even brought up here yet) is keeping me very busy. Oh yeah and I forgot to mention, we're moving to San Diego. But as I said, I'm managing. I have so many wonderful people in my life right now. Thank you all for your support.