Finals Week

It's hard not to get caught up in the nostalgia of the season, not to mention planning hubs 40th b-day party and a monster road trip for Christmas.  Made a calendar of my dogs last night.  The momentum of the season and all the cookies and candy are supposed to give me enough energy to finish up all the gifts, bake all the cakes, sing all the songs, grade all the labs, tally all the points, drive all the miles, well it will all be worth it, and it should be no surprise that we will get there, we've done it before, right Mel?

Melle (in 2004)

This semester has been most epic.  It's just like any kind of training, you have got to keep taking yourself to another level.  When I searched for the word on my mind I got: HigherEdJobs, Higher education, and the following song: Taio Cruz - Higher ft. Kylie Minogue - YouTube (2010).  The songs that I had in my mind were:
Higher Ground - Stevie Wonder (1973)
I wanna take you Higher - Sly and the Family Stone (1969)
Both of which are much more amazing than the modern chart topper.

But why is it called higher education?  Higher than what?  Why do we elevate ourselves?  How?  We solve relevant problems and encourage others to join us in the endeavor.  Why not integrate problem-based learning earlier in the curriculum?  Wonder if there are any out there for Chem 15.  Wouldn't some kind of environmental analysis for Earth Day be a great activity?  I'm also needing time to plan for the invitation of Southern California's undergraduate researchers in Chemistry and Biochemistry to Keck for a symposium.  Will there be prizes awarded?  If so, what should they be?  Will we have a keynote speaker for the students to interact with throughout the day?  Whew!  We have to make an announcement soon.

Thankful

I am definitely thankful to have the classroom experience I am able to at my school.  My classrooms are lively and fun with a sense of security and organizational structure.  Students freely ask questions and listen actively during lectures and discussions.  I am a no-nonsense lab instructor who can work with students' musical tastes.  Safety is my #1 concern in the laboratory, other than that I appreciate students engaging freely with new equipment and techniques.  Often found wearing bright colors and personal protective equipment (PPE), I am easy to spot in a classroom.  A brief pre-lab discussion on the basic purpose of the experiment, the new procedures, waste disposal, and safety hazards specific to the lab is always provided at the beginning of the lab period, after pre-lab assignments have been turned in by students.  The teaching assistant, an undergraduate student, is asked if they have any general feedback for students before it's "goggles on" and everyone is encouraged to begin the procedure immediately.  Throughout the lab I am doing rounds like a lifeguard and enabling small-talk of a scientific nature by engaging with students about classes and extracurricular activities and how those may integrate with their experience of chemistry; how chemistry relates to other aspects of their lives.  It's been really fun working with teaching assistants, supplemental instruction leaders, and graders to bring the students a peer-peer interaction.



I am thankful for my family.  Although I have been spending most of my energy toward my education, I still appreciate the strength I have gained by my strong roots.  I have had many strong influences in my life that gave me the ideas I currently hold.  I appreciate the efforts they put into pushing me forward in my own understanding of the behavior of atoms.  I am still working towards completely crossing myself with my husband, but we're still looking to put down roots ourselves and just working towards the ultimate goal of a very green lifestyle.  I'm thankful for what we're able to do right now, farming in our yard and at school.  Small yield but enough for a small household.  I am crossing every muscle fiber in my body, hoping we can collapse our wavefunction to a much smaller box.  Right now we are delocalized over a large area and it is costing us too much energy.  Our carbon footprint is huge in comparison to where I would prefer to be.  Mathematically I know that if each and every person would work towards using less energy and consuming/producing more locally, we could all live more in harmony by connecting with each other in our communities.


Find more photos like this on My Green Riverside


I am thankful for friends.  These past few months have brought me closer to my friends and I appreciate their support and coaching during this transitional time for us.  The sun is coming up in my neighborhood right now and it's a beautiful sight.  The sight of the inside of our house is revolting since we have not put much energy into fighting the entropy lately, but so thankful for a long weekend to recover my momentum.  I have to set my own pace, that's the lesson I learned from long distance races.  It's never what's best for you if you run at someone else's pace.  But that's what's so fun, when you run a race with a friend, you get compromise and what really hits home as far as fitness is challenging the body to do something different.  If you do the same old workout, you will keep the same body.  If you want to change your body, you cross train!  So thankful for the advice of colleagues and friends at this time, for cross-training me.




I know I have too much going on when the number of tags exceeds the limit: career, ceiling tuesdays, century, community, distance, education, fall, family, goals, green, interdisciplinary, love, meditation, motivation, mountains, nutrition, ocean, plants, positive, running, Santa Barbara, science, shoes, teamwork!

Color Run ~ Race Report

If you have never done a Color Run, I can definitely recommend it.  The one I attended was EPIC.  There were 22,000 people traveling in cooperation, all wearing white.  There were hundreds of volunteers in goggles baptizing us in all the colors of the rainbow.  Then at the end everyone huddles together and sprays their color packet into the air and cheers!  There's no timing and no winning.  It's organized in waves.

The course I ran with my friend went around Qualcomm stadium in San Diego.  We went halfway around the stadium and then came back the same way we ran, since we started in the second wave, we saw the first man and first woman, running just as fast as they pleased!  There was a drumline from the YMCA that made me totally cry.  It reminded me of so many old high school memories, when life was simpler and all I needed was a beat and space to dance with my friends!

Life has been more than hectic lately.  The job search is moving forward.  I took my Nano Fashion Show on the road down to San Diego to carry out a mission of outreach and celebrating chemistry!  I stayed at the historic Sofia Hotel, a Neo Gothic architectural gem built in 1926 and operated during prohibition as the Pickwick Hotel.  En suite bathroom!  Very nice staff.  I was driving our 2003 Honda Civic which we fondly refer to as "the battlecat" and the valet guys were doing rock/paper/scissors for who would have to park it.

Monday, August 13, 2012, 7:28:56 PM

I missed the colors down there, there's a reason it's called The Jewel (La Jolla).  We had a great LOOOOOOOONG walk along the coast.  It's so soothing, we sat down on a bench and watched the waves come in for a long time.  Very restorative.  I've always loved the multiculturalism reflected there.  We walked about 3.5 miles after having run 3.2 miles.  That's what I love about San Diego, it supports outdoor activities.  Don't worry I was wearing sunscreen!

Back here in Glendale, not much is going on.  My squash is still flowering in the backyard but my front garden is suffering, with the exception of the succulent clones from Riverside.  And the spider plants.  I had intended to plant radish, chard, and more squash.  The pots are ready but the weather has been so crazy lately.  Dear husband bought me a Farmer's Almanac so perhaps I will find answers to life's persistent questions there.  Kind of like a CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics for gardeners.

The corn at my Student Garden is almost as tall as me!  You can see it in parts of this video.  An article is also here.  I have really been letting my colors fly lately in creative and scholarly activity.  Preparing a lab "Wish List" is so exciting, I had no idea this big step in my life would come so soon.  It's funny when you are young it seems your future can't come fast enough.  Then when life hits you with a big step, it seems like I'm unprepared for the magnitude of it.

Recovery Food

Since this was (and still is) my original place to vent all the randomness inside my mind, I will return to it for some #madwriting now.  I'm enjoying an apple cider cause it's fallish-weather and we're out of coffee.  I'm planning a little service outreach project with my general chemistry students.  They seem enthusiastic about it.  It's a way to bring in other types of people to get excited about how science can impact our lives.  I've been putting off announcing it because I can't get a hold of the person at the mall where I want to hold the event.  I've left countless voicemails but I have not yet visited the office to argue my side.  A friend says I may instead be running up against apathy in which case I want to proceed with the event.  I feel like any small space would work and I would hope to create a learning environment for both the students and the audience.  So I guess I kind of decided that I would bike to work on Monday since I am not teaching and arrange this show with the Montclair Plaza.  Where will it be and can we pass out fliers?  Is there a noise limitation?  What is the maximum number of people we can accumulate before fire codes are violated?

I labeled this post Recovery because we are now recovering from some horrible germs that were exchanged starting at the beginning of when students arrived on campus and worsening until the first round of midterms.  Maybe since we're on fall break now everyone will come back relaxed and healthy.  Or maybe carrying more germs.  In any case, I wanted to post about a common household chemical HClO also known as bleach.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach
I was so proud of myself for finally getting around to bleaching some containers for fall planting, then I heard that you don't want to plant winter crops until November 1st in Southern California because it tends to have heat spikes that cause the plants to bolt prematurely.  This is what I was hoping for with my late fall planting in the Student Garden, which is blooming quite nicely.  For photos of that project, see here: http://mygreenriverside.ning.com/profile/KaylaAKaiser

Rather than acting like I know everything about chemistry, I will admit I went to read the Wikipedia article.  I think a wiki is an interesting thing because it's natural like a tree that has branches and it grows along with the group (community) that curate it.  I've been involving students in building Wikis for three semesters now.  It's only a tiny bit of coding that has to work for the generation of new pages, but I think the students should delve into that type of knowledge early on.

Since this is a cycling blog, our latest cycling adventure led us to need disinfectant in a large bottle and tape and gauze and wrap for several weeks.  Amazingly enough, the patient (who shall remain nameless but was not me) has recovered from a bicycle accident.  Luckily we were close to home at the time and there were three of us so we managed to get everyone a beer and then a way home.

This also got me thinking about the household uses of peroxide, another chemical important for our modern standards of living.  As an oxidizing agent, it destroys molecules that are colored.  When used as an antimicrobial, it destroys a wide-range of pathogens.  What potential we have in our household!  Well I guess I'm out of time and I do feel more relaxed now.  Sometimes I hold so many stories in my head and I have such big plans that it really crunches my brain.  Although I am not getting much perspective (not cycling or running or walking or swimming long distances) I am doing more yoga.  Maybe the time is ripe to focus inward.  I'm still obsessed with the Three Sisters.  It's so fall-y and comforting.  I've been trying to eat Squash, Corn and Beans together or separately throughout the day.  Pumpkins are plentiful and Corn is at the Farmer's Market.  Beans (green) or any type from a can have been in our diet these past few weeks.  Supposedly nutritionally balanced without meat.  We've been adding different onions, kale, dill, sage, all manner of spices, peppers, and cheese.  We've been so sick and tired that we've been eating cooked food just to stay alive.  Almost the consistency of baby food.  But it's comforting and sustaining.  And in some cases locally grown.  I'm looking forward to the Color Run, the Mission Inn Run, and possibly a trip to Santa Barbara.  Then we will give thanks!

What's your recovery food?

Authentic AND Local

I have my head in two places at once --> or maybe they are actually one.  I'm looking to the job market while at the same time focusing on doing a good job at the job I have.  But either way, I'm career-focused right now.  When I wake up in the morning, I feel energized at the possibilities of the day, but at the end of the day I am tending to feel like I didn't get enough done and I am trying to get up to speed to get to everything without any losses of time, but you gotta eat and you gotta sleep, ya dig?

I am writing about things that I'm happy about here.  My sister is visiting right now with her husband.  I have already attended the first seminar in the Fall 2012 Keck Seminar series.  My student presented her poster at the Summer Research Symposium.  I introduced myself to the ~80 new students I am teaching General Chemistry.  My car is amazing.  I love my doggies.

I am writing here about things that are upsetting me.  My back is hurting again.  I worry that I don't have the strength to do all the stuff I want to.  Between running and biking and home-gym-ing it with my husband, I had trimmed off a few extra pounds.  I wanted to be in shape when the school year started because for me, teaching is a very physically demanding profession.

My new classroom(s) are different sizes than the one(s) I had last year.  In one of them, there is so much furniture that I can hardly walk around.  In the other classroom, it's so spacious with staircases that I have to be very stable on my feet to walk throughout the space to pass out papers and interact with students 1-on-1.

What I wanted to write about today is the idea that I like to eat produce that is authentic (organic) and local just as much as I like to meet people of the same variety.  I like a diverse mix of people, just like I enjoy a salad with a variety of things in it.  I am brainstorming words that describe me (for the purposes of my job searching) and I would say Authentic is one big one.

I've spent time finding myself and my core values and I am genuinely myself.  I am nobody other than what I am.  I represent me.  I would also say that I am a locavore.  I love things that are locally grown or made.  I love growing and making things using materials that can be found in my local area.  If anyone is hiring, I am here in Glendale, locally.

complacent

I'm giving myself free reign today.  It's a holiday.  Technically.  So I will begin working after my #madwriting session.  I was thinking of a title for my post.  Something short that would summarize my general state.  I would say Complacent.  I typed it in to dictionary.com and got some ideas for why my brain would have come up with that particular word.

The first definition that popped up said "pleased, especially with oneself or one's merits, advantages, situation, etc., often without awareness of some potential danger or defect; self-satisfied: The voters are too complacent to change the government." With synonyms: "smug, unbothered, untroubled."

I was thinking BINGO that is how I feel about many things in my life right now.  I feel like there is a lot of noise in my headphones and it's my job to turn down the noise and turn up the signal.  This is why I've been doing #madwriting more often, but in a private journal like Julia Cameron suggests.

But sometimes, it seems, you have to focus on the noise for a minute.  Like acknowledge it during your morning pages and then it clears you out for more creativity and focus later in the day.  I've been preparing for the academic year to begin for the entire month of August it seems and classes start tomorrow!

This is a bike-centered blog so I want to share some bicycle noise with you.  I didn't make it out to some bike-related events in the area that I heard about and wanted to check out (or check-in to), but didn't want to (or couldn't afford to) spend the money, fuel, time, etc. devoting an entire weekend to a recreational pursuit.  One: Festival of Bikes, Two: Tour de Lake Arrowhead, Three: Swap Meet, Four: Public Outreach.  I guess I'm just not that into the lifestyle that I can devote a weekend to biking and forsake all other events.

Last weekend, we attended a Car Wash to raise money for John Morlock who we met through facebook.  He is a veteran who rides in events with other veterans.  He is part of an organization called Ride2Recovery that supports veterans who can be provided bicycles (with adaptations if necessary to accommodate any injury) to complete long (~600 mile) multi-day rides.  The idea inspired me to stand streetside waving a flag for an hour in Burbank, while dear husband was soaping, washing, and drying cars with a group of young marines at the American Legion.  We met another veteran Robert Kugler who also rides a Ride2Recovery-issue bike, who was there along with his wife Charlie.  Both of them are from Nebraska, like me!

I encourage anyone who understands how awesome cycling is to consider how you might support the Ride2Recovery organization or participate in their events.  I believe there is no better way to heal yourself than to train for and achieve an inspiring tour, especially if you are doing it with your friends (who become your heroes before you finally believe in yourself).  I learned in the power of group cycling by riding with the Riverside Bicycle Club.  There are scientific papers that show you can tolerate a higher level of pain when you are training in synchronization with others.

This is why I love group events, cycling or running.  I'm so stoked to do the Color Run in San Diego.  I think I'm more looking forward to it because it forces me to train (at least a little) and the actual event is all about having fun.  To me, that's what fitness has always been about.  I've spent many years punishing my body, trying to twist it into ridiculous positions and defy the laws of physics.  I've fallen down from exhaustion in a dance studio, and I've fallen off my bike a few times.  I think doing the color run will be less about competition, and more about being with my friend Sam, whether we feel like we want to walk or run to get through the course.  I'll definitely post a report when we get back.

I have to spend some time on Clitoral Mass.  I mean Critical Mass.  It's one thing that I shout in my head at cyclists that I see not wearing helmets.  It's totally silly that I shout in my head at cyclists I see with no lights on.  I never want to go on group rides in Los Angeles because I hear that everyone's taking drugs and doing dangerous things.  I heard someone always leaves in an ambulance.  What kind of ride is that?  Who wants to get together on a weekly basis and say, "hope I'm not the person who leaves in the ambulance on tonight's ride."  Or maybe they say something like, "I'll never have a manuvering error when we're hammering through a densely-populated area at night on drugs and I'm 18-years old."  I'm not that age anymore, so I just can't go on those rides.

In other bike-related news, I tuned up our old bikes to get to the Farmer's Market and the bicycle parking is off Central Ave now not on Caruso Ave.  It's great to be able to lock your bike to a solid rack in the shade right next to the security office with cameras pointed at it.  As my friend pointed out, if I were going to steal a bike, I would steal that new fixie over there.  Well I love the bikes we have, and I hope we have them for a long time more.

Also, the little shop we got Mike's shoes & pedals for the Performance, and seat for the Trek has gone to new ownership.  I love to support local bike shops, because how far do you want to have to walk if you get a flat near your house?  If you don't support your local shop, you'll have to go all the way to a big-box retailer on foot (assuming your bicycle is your main mode of transportation, but who in the US would be in that situation?) Anyway, the new owner calls the shop simply Glendale Cycles and he is very calm and unassuming.  He has a mountain bike, a road bike and a BMX bike for himself.  He's had the shop just a few months now, but don't be afraid to go there if you are ever in the area.  The phone number is 818 937 9440.

1053 words. #madwriting.

BBB update

In this blogosphere I had become sidetracked.  I had to actually split my personality, but still sometimes it overlaps. This post had me writing about science (nanotechnology) as it crosses with cycling.
https://sites.google.com/site/kaiserwellnesscenter/home/nanotechnology/carbon-fiber

In other news, I made a donation to support Bikes Belong on July 21 to honor my girl Heidi Swift, the awesome Rêve tour author and rider.

We've posted our best hikes, bike rides, and runs here. Find courses with maps by region and distance.
https://sites.google.com/site/kaiserwellnesscenter/home/fitness-awareness/available-routes

Two Dog Parks Ride

Met the Bodaceous Bike Babes July 1st at Golden Road Brewery.  Will join a group ride soon, either that or Wolfpack Hustle, or ride my bike to work day again.  Truth: we have to get used to the speed of LA traffic and riding a bike in this town is CRAZY.  Not sure if all the education would be worthwhile if I splatted myself on the pavement.

I left this blog alone for 3 whole months and in its absence, I have been sad and quiet and catching up on my reading and putting on weight.  Is this a good thing?  When does relaxation cross the line into depression?  Well at least I feel better now!  I'm trying to find that balance.
https://sites.google.com/site/kaiserwellnesscenter/home/fitness-awareness/finding-balance

I gotta get back to some kind of dance class.  This is when I was cycling for my commute (May 2011) and then I gave myself ballet classes for a month as a birthday present last year (July 2011) at Riverside Ballet Arts.  This year, I haven't been cycling as much, but I took those ballet classes at Inland Pacific Ballet.
Hoping to get that started again.  My posture will thank me as long as I don't injure my calf again.

Not as weightless as life on a bike would make you seem...

Migrating Content

Compiled Blog from Grad School
https://sites.google.com/site/kaiserwellnesscenter/home/biographies/grad-school-blues
Enjoy!

#madwriting

The fact of the matter is, I can't sleep.  People used to tell me that I sleep so well because I have a clear conscience.  Maybe tonight I am feeling guilty.

ANTM ~ Cycle 16 ~ Episode 8 (2011)

I'm thinking negatively today.  Instead of thinking of the world as my oyster (and what does that mean anyway?) I'm thinking of it as a garbage dump.  Like a vast wasteland, it doesn't matter if I put forth energy into cleaning it up, it's so massive and polluted that it doesn't make a difference what I do.

Instead of believing that people are altruistic, I'm believing that everyone is selfish and greedy and that's no kind of world that I want to live in.  I'm thinking about long-range missiles and oil-consumption.  I'm thinking about John Edwards and his love-child.  I know it is useless to toss and turn over things I cannot control.

I'm also thinking about myself.  I preach about reducing waste and recycling, yet I drive a gas-powered vehicle 400+ miles per week and drink coffee out of styrofoam containers daily.  Some people think about the world as something we have no control over, like it doesn't matter what we do, entropy of the universe is always increasing.

On a good day, I imagine each person making small changes that add up to a big difference.  I imagine the ideas spreading by education, "teach a person to fish and he eats for a lifetime," something like that.  But then some days hormones take over and I can't do anything but cry and look around for the nearest exit.

My previous post described public/private.  A doublet of talks I attended last week by Uma Chowdhry furthered this line of thought.  I heard that corporations are now allowed facebook pages (with the new timeline feature) which give them the appearance of being equivalent to a person.  Corporations hold certain values and skills, for example DuPont has core skills (polymers, fluorine chemistry) and values (safety, teamwork), but they are not a human-like entity.  Although the buzzwords of sustainability can be found everywhere these days (did you know that 7% of Americans eat fast food daily?) its hard to believe that corporations care anything about solving the world's problems.  Unless you think that making money for shareholders is the most important problem to solve in the world.

Stephen Wolfram ~ Singularity Summit 2011 ~ Rule 30

Given that I watched a talk by Stephen Wolfram about finding a computer program that explains all the complexity of life out of all the programs in the world (and all combinations thereof), I asked if DuPont would move to share non-patented non-published data with the public, such that it could be mined at large, and the answer was NO because the intellectual property of corporations are their bread and butter.  I can understand that.  She said that it was simply too much data, and it would not be likely that anyone would be able to make sense of it.  I simply do not believe that.  I would much rather like to believe Wolfram and the power of possibility.  Hey, I might not be a gifted computer scientist, but I do like searching for patterns in nature.  With the wealth of chemical-biological information tied up in corporations like DuPont and Monsanto, I wonder if we (ALL OF US: industry, government, universities, tinkerers) could better make sense of nature if we had more data.

Therein lies my public/private theme.  Putting a happy face out for the public, while keeping valuable information private, puts a big frowny face on this bitch.

ANTM ~ Cycle 9 ~ Week 6 (2007)

And another thing that keeps me up at night is trash.  Speaking of fast food... I spent Earth Day 2012 at Disneyland in Anaheim.  The amount of waste generated there must be immense.  The amount of electricity to run the park is staggering.  For entertainment?  What's it all about?  I was reading about recycling of aluminum and although Americans are recycling more cans, they are recycling less food packaging.  When you eat at home, you cook the food in re-usable pots/pans and eat the food off of washable ceramic dishes with metal utensils, then store the leftovers in plastic/glass reusable containers.  What about when you eat on the go?  Or outside the home?  Bingo!  Waste!  When are people going to get the message?

If you want to use the words "sustainable" it doesn't follow that you are a corporation who only cares about making money (hello First law of thermodynamics) not everyone can be making money all the time unless money equals entropy (hello Second law of thermodynamics).  But by what law is it true that the universe is constantly expanding and there's no way we can control or understand it?  Is that faith?  And if we are guided entirely by faith, who is to set down the rules?  And if we follow one set of "rules" or dogma, does that mean everyone else is wrong and they should be put to death?

Another talk I went to was Tim Steimle.  I really liked some of what he was saying, but he always has a great way of making me feel really stupid.  As he starts to drift into the lexcion of hard-core spectroscopy, my thoughts wander, and then I remember, "Hey pay attention, this is why you don't get this stuff!"  It's great to be a "forever student."  Like a cycling mentor once told me, "You gotta ride with people who are faster than you.  If you never get dropped, you'll never get faster."

I forgot to mention that the fireworks at Disney brought tears to my eyes.  Twice.  That Tinkerbell was something else.  If wishes and dreams can come true, I hope to feel better tomorrow.  Thank you and goodnight.  

Swimming or Swept away?

Thinking I could maintain weekly posts was ridiculous. The current is too strong.

Omaha skyline and Missouri River

Speaking of which, I heard a very powerful story about a baseball player who tried to swim across the Missouri River while in town for a game against the Royals (something every Omaha-an has thought of doing at some point). Now being married to a man who has a family history of male relatives ending up 6' under due to boating/water-related accidents, the possibility of something going terribly wrong on the water is very real to me at least.  Undertaking this post-doctoral teaching experience was like jumping into the river without knowing anything about how it flows.  I feel like I don't know where my career is taking me, except that I am trying to stay on the "fast track" and it's an exciting ride. I'm just hoping the undertow doesn't overpower my will to fight to stay on top of it.

Since my last post, I've administered a midterm, celebrated Easter with family, and obsessed about getting "caught up" which has very little chance of happening (see prev. paragraph). I actually took a week of quiet time at home. My husband and I took some major steps toward making our little house more liveable. I turned down some opportunities to attend seminars. I just felt like I needed rest. My family and friends started to buzz with worry. Then that worried me. Should I be worried about myself? Is there something going on that I can't see?

P4 activation by group 3 metal arene complexes

23 January, 2012

Wenliang Huang and Paula L. Diaconescu

Chem. Commun., 2012, 48, 2216-2218

This week, I had dinner with two women profs who have survived the tenure process. It was refreshing and inspirational. I also sat on a panel of profs representing different choices regarding graduate school, there were 6 women Ph.D.s on the panel in neuroscience, ecology, microbiology, organic chemistry, physical/biochemistry and analytical/biochemistry (me). It was interesting to be a member of the panel, hearing the other prof's advice, meeting the personnel from career services, and fielding students' questions. With their level of experience, it is even difficult for juniors and seniors to know what to ask, and this is why it is so hard to make a solid (informed) commitment to a graduate program right off the bat.

I also attended NSF Day @ USC, which presented junior faculty and staff with an overview of the federal funding process. The program officers were informative and approachable, encouraging us in every way to submit our ideas to the review process. I'm looking forward to getting some of my/our ideas down on paper and translating that into resources for my research group, which has grown in number to 3 students!

Merging chemistry and biology is a message I shared with my students this week as we talked about the chemistry of life (made up of just a few elements: C, H, N, O, P, S). This is part of the superpowers harnessed by the being known as Swamp Thing. It could either be a living mass occupied by the soul of a former biochemist, or perhaps one could think of it as the research love-child of the Alec Holland and his wife Linda, fictional comic book characters who invented a Bio-Restorative Formula that would solve any nations' food shortage by allowing plants to grow even in a desert. Seriously, this is right up my alley! Abiotic stress and plants' ability to survive it via metabolic reconfiguration is exactly what I study and it was great to share that with my students, along with the cutting edge research we are exposed to via seminars.

AND, we are doing some outreach this week in celebration of Earth Day! I'm looking forward to seeing my students (college age) interact with elementary school students, as they make green cosmetics.
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Chem_p022.shtml
http://pbskids.org/dragonflytv/show/makeup.html
I'm so proud of what this cohort of freshman has learned in Chem 14/15.
Cool pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/55505874@N08/sets/72157629332257440/

¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!

Also coming up is the 2012 VEX Robotics World Championship at the Anaheim Convention Center and we're going to Disneyland.  Just like my Smart Car, smaller can be better, as Mus musculus has known for 4 million years, or thereabouts.  I'm looking forward to seeing the innovations of our country's most talented youth.  Go Robotics!

between the sheets

This post is about the following

• Point #1.  public vs private
• Point #2.  healthcare, drugs, wellness, holistic medicine
• Point #3.  fashion, art, beauty, youth, hotness

Point #1. I've been "working from home" which has been amazing.  I'm getting back in touch with Glendale and how much I love it.  All this resting and being sick has made me reconnect with my pets and the things I love about our little house.  Seeing my neighbors and saying hello is a simple pleasure in life.  Spending daylight hours in the house and watching my garden grow have been a part of my days over the past few weeks and I am loving it.

My Biking Friends Tom and Kenilynn Bongiovanni

I just read an article in the USA Today about sharing personal health information via facebook.  The article was about women who share that they have miscarried on facebook to their closest 500 friends.  I wondered what health information I would put on facebook.  I wore my breast cancer awareness ribbon to class yesterday in honor of my friend Kenilynn McGuire Bongiovanni who shared on facebook this week that she has cancer.  She is so strong, I am sure she will be counted among the beautiful survivors.

I'm enjoying being inside my house.  Does that mean I am a private person?  I do really enjoy having alone time to listen to the sounds of nature all around me.  There are so many birds in this neighborhood, probably because we are near a water habitat (the LA river) and a sanctuary (Griffith Park).  I'm also a public person, I love being around people.  I was considering taking my grading down to the Glendale Galleria.  There's almost nothing I enjoy more than camping out at a mall with wireless internet and catching up on schoolwork.  The work that is tedious, repetitive, yet instructive and important can be made much more enjoyable with a scenic, continuously changing backdrop.

When my mom was visiting, she confessed how much she liked eavesdropping on people around us.  I guess I do too, actually I really like seeing other people interact.  I feel like I'm learning about humanity in general.  One time, I heard a manager (male) giving career advice and mentoring to a younger (female) manager.  His language was so strong and commanding, her language was so diminuative and I could see why she was an unsuccessful manager.  She counteracted every one of his strong arguments with a weak one, and hardly listened to the advice he was giving her about how to solve the problems between employees at her store location.  So that was an aside, but forgive me, it was a good story.

So what I mean is that we're all public when we're out in public.  We can be public when we're in private via the internet (sharing).  Where's the room for privacy?  Is it still there or is it a myth?  Is it important?

Point #2. Everything involving these topics to me is scary!  When a medical problem (symptoms) arise, generally people are advised to go to a doctor.  The doctors can pass you around (referrals) until eventually one of them gives you a program (prescription).  You are to go home and administer this medication (drug) to yourself and watch yourself for side effects.  In follow up appointments, you are asked to self-report any symptoms (and people are usually untruthful).  I feel like our medical system overall is broken and I'm hoping never to get ensnared in it.  The costs are enormous now because medical technology is amazing (expensive). We can save lives now.

Dr. Kayla A. Kaiser says... commute by bicycle!

What I'm interested in is something more preventative.  A long-term comprehensive solution to our healthcare issues would be something to address the inputs (food calories) and outputs (physical and mental activity) of our daily routines.  We should take into account karma (transportation sometimes 10,000 miles for food to travel from where its grown to your plate).  We will soon have the power to browse our own genomes, and possibly epigenomes.  Here we can also turn to molecular therapies (biological drugs) to compensate for errors at the genetic level.  Another area to explore is data collection.  When the realtime acquistion of biological data (proteomics, metabolomics) can be combined with data mining (bioinformatics), biological (physiological) outcomes may be predicted and an emergency physician can be automatically notified.  This is where I hope we are headed.

I think we can also do better in the area of education.  I think if we can get people cooking, buying more responsibly, carrying their own groceries the distance to their homes (no burning of fossil fuel), perhaps even growing their own food (container gardening is possible).  In the 1950s, Americans grew 50% of their vegetables in their own backyard.  In my dreams, I see myself with much more land.  But seriously, by teaching people to take that labor upon themselves, perhaps we can see the diet change on its own.  People will be proud of what they have grown, they will eat with pride, share with their neighbors and grow together in love.  Well, that's why I plant seeds.  Seeds of chard and seeds of knowledge.

Pitzer College: Provida futuri, Mindful of the future
Claremont McKenna College: Crescit cum commercio civitas, Civilization prospers with commerce
Scripps College: Incipit vita nova, Here begins the new life




Point #3. They say youth is wasted on the young.  I think I lived my youth pretty well, thank you very much.  I may still be in it right now.  I have always had the impression that I wouldn't live very long.  Maybe because I had a brilliant, talented, bright, beautiful cousin who died while jogging while still a very young woman.  I always think of amazing, inspiring women who died (or disappeared) before their time.  Therefore I always try to maximize my life, live each day as if it really was my last.  It turns out that this is pretty hard on my body.  I tried to go for an epic hike and gave myself a water-borne illness by leaving a packet of EmergenC in there and not bleaching it (or tossing it) out before using it again.  I rinsed it with dishsoap, but apparently this is not good enough.  Then after vomiting for 12 h and eating the BRAT diet for 4 days, I tried to jump right back into a normal Monday.  Ok well not a normal Monday.  And not after a normal weekend.  Anyway I sprained my calf by doing rapide grand jeté at the end of my adult ballet class and getting a massive pain in the lower leg.  I'm still limping a little and it's been a week + 2.5 days.

Fertility, Agriculture, Seasons

Anyway, part of the reason I push myself to go on crazy hikes and ballet classes is to maintain a size 8.  See that little hourglass shape of the number 8.  If you turn it sideways it looks like infinity ∞.  Anyway, I am trying to preserve these "child-bearing" hips and keep a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 for the purposes of fertility.  Although I don't wear makeup and sometimes I don't put any product in my hair (the benefits of being a chemist) I do worry about keeping my body in shape.  I've been playing a little game with my students.  For every piece of glassware that is left out on the benches, we must do one push-up or one pull-up.  My husband has noticed my arms are growing in size, be that from eating at the drive-through window (since my leg sprain) and skipping workouts, or be it from actually doing these push-ups and pull-ups.  I certainly noticed it was easier to move desks around in my classroom yesterday so that all of my students could sit and take an exam together.

Having spent some time at the Getty museum, and watching re-runs of QE on Netflix, I feel I want to say something about art and beauty.  Definitely ballet qualifies as using the body to make pretty pictures, in 3D, that's one of the reasons I like it.  I think career-wise looking young may work against me.  Sometimes I feel like people are helping me too much, like they don't think I can do it on my own.  But that's part of being young, accepting help from those who are more experienced than you.  How did the great masters become great?  By apprenticing in the studio of a master!  So that's why it's fun to think that I'll be starting my research up again with an apprentice of my own.  YEA science & art.  Let me be fertile in all areas.  But also let me remember that I occupy a physical body which has certain requirements and limitations.  Help me to be patient and remember that it takes time for the body to heal itself after injury and that the process of building muscles and bones is continuous.  Bodysculpting is a lifelong art.

So I called this post between the sheets because I am trying to value resting.  And procreation!  Happy wedding anniversary my love!

upping the ante

I have literally experienced so much in the time span since my prev post, it's hard to know where to start.  The highlights go a little something like this: (Spring Break) catching up on organizing papers and cleaning house, 4 mi hike (Food Poisoning) sick for 2 days.  Mom comes into town (Horse Races) and we go sight-seeing (Getty Museum).  My cousin raced in the rain (Team Swift) and we saw some stars (Griffith Observatory).  We were planning to go to the Chinese Theater and Beverly Hills but the LA Marathon was going on so we hit a cafe (The Trails) instead.  Got to hang with my aunt also who educated me about Einstein, Tina Fey, and great organizations such as http://www.farmvetco.org/ that she is putting her brand architecture skills to work on.  The visual story about seed swaps warmed my heart.

This past week at school I heard the research talk of Eileen Spain.  We also met in my office to discuss being a woman scientist married to another chemist (which we have in common) and I shared my passion for outreach and teaching general chemistry with her.  She got me thinking about fluoride and fluorine chemistry.  I heard the research talk of Matthew Benoit.  He called our neighbor's cat Fluffy a fathead.  He studies evolution of cats by measuring various skull points and graphing the data in such a way that divergence between genus and species can be seen.  It's called multiphasic allometric analysis.  Various types of comparisons can be drawn from large datasets to support classification and evolutionary conclusions.

I also heard a talk at the Athaneum by Oran B. Hesterman.  He shared his personal struggle with ulcerative colitis and how it caused him to have a paradigm shift in his thinking about food.  He teaches agronomy.  He founded http://www.fairfoodnetwork.org/ which is to aid food suppliers in connecting with social workers so that federal food assistance dollars can go farther and directly into farmer's hands rather than to Wal-Mart where people more likely purchase pre-packaged foods.  It was a call to action, he was recruiting us to become part of the solution to the obesity epidemic as well as spending more federal dollars on ag research and public education rather than spending it on subsidies for a limited number of crops.  He acknowledged that food solutions are going to become increasingly more necessary as the global population continues to rise.

I sprained my left calf muscle at adult ballet class.  It was impossible to walk on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I had to take baby steps and kind of crab-walk (sideways) to avoid stretching the calf.  It was awkward, but nice at the same time to be forced to slow down.  I spent more time enjoying the birds and squirrels on my walk from Center Court (CMC) to Humanities (Scripps) to teach my lecture on Wed and Fri.  Luckily by lab on Thu and Fri it was feeling better.  This means no hike, run, or bike this weekend.  Massage tomorrow! Want to eat junk food these days.  Want to bake scones and coffee cakes.  Why am I so stressed?

Fitness Fridays!

Considering weekly posts.  Thinking about plants, reproduction, scalability.  Keep them safe, and let them learn. This is how I got addicted to twitter and neglected my blog, along with complete sentences.  I am on "Spring Break" and awaiting a visit from my parents (separately, of course).  I've attended so many amazing seminars, I can't keep track of them all.  My summer student has been funded!

2012

Mar

8

09:39

Thu

I looked up at the moon and thought, what a great night for an evening walk, the moon was amazingly full.
I attended a seminar by an accomplished geneticist who is a professor at University of Southern California on Feb. 29th at the Women in Science dinner at Scripps College.  What an amazing experience!  She encouraged all of us to be ourselves, to embrace our inner "bitch."  Ahem-on-a-bike!  I heard a talk at the Athaneum at Claremont McKenna College by a professor at Singularity University, and a 'restless inventor,' who pointed out that with regards to technology, we can expect exponential progress leading ultimately to a crossover point where humans and technology become one.  It's already happening.

I heard a talk from a scientist at Pioneer/Hi-Bred which is part of DuPont who uses DNA shuffling (every day he's shufflin) to identify key amino acid residues in proteins responsible for efficient detoxification.  In this way, farmers can use selective herbicides to target weeds without harming their crops.  I went to a workshop for Writing Intensive courses in the Sciences.  The professors of English were constructive and gave me the courage to try a Cypher with my students on the last day of class before spring break.  Thermodynamics, it's a rap!

Looking forward, I see the San Dimas Road Race (18-Mar), the RBC Time Trial (8-Apr), NSF day at USC (12-Apr), and the Verdugo Mountains 10K (6-May).  Looking forward to the Commencement Ceremonies (3 in one day) on 12-May.  I see the the IGERT Symposium (15-Jun) the Pagent of the Master's (8-Jul).  I'm celebrating my 32nd birthday in Chicago!  Speaking of which, I hope to run tomorrow morning in the Downtown Dash... gotta run!

I may not be reproducing myself right now, but my chard is adorable.  I got some 2 L bottles from the Water Quality Lab and blinged them out using superglue.  Then I transferred my seedlings into them and voila!  These are seedlings from seeds produced by plants that grew to maturity at my roommate's house on Leafhill Pl in Riverside (33.960421,-117.343296).

The title of this post: Fitness Fridays! refers to a concept my husband and I developed while working in different cities all week. Now, we live under the same roof but work quite hard all week.  So it's the idea that to break the tension and let go of the stress, we do some kind of fitness.  We crank up the music, and get some wacky YouTube videos going and crunch it out.  I had a sweet rotation going last night between crunches, pull ups, and push ups.  I told my student, who is on the ballroom team, that I am in training for next year's 'Dancing with the Claremont stars.'  I love motivation.

As of late...

I feel like I am totally messing up and totally succeeding at the same time.  I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, the wrong thing, too little, or too much.  I guess that's where one's own sense of intuition into what's right and wrong comes in to play.  I feel like I'm happy with my figure, but I don't feel healthy.  At the end of the day I feel absolutely exhausted.  I feel like my heart is beating too fast and I am trying to move too many agendas too far each day.  But I'm afraid if I slow down, I'll fall off this train, and it's been such a fun ride so far.

I entitled this picture (excuses) because I've used the weather as an excuse to skip exercising for two mornings in a row.  I mean in Nebraska, this would be considered a nice day.  We'd try to sneak something in.  But in California, these hazy mornings mean sleeping in.  I see a few people strolling the sidewalks of Glendale, but not many are out.  Last weekend, the visibility was 10 miles, so I hiked up into the Verdugo Mtns and took a picture of downtown LA.  Yesterday, the visibility was 3 miles and today it's 1.5 so I just told myself to skip it.

My weight on the scale went up, but also has my activity level over the past three weeks.  I will get a performance evaluation on Tuesday which I am looking forward to.  I justified skipping workouts since I've been so hard on myself lately, I might actually need a rest day.  Today we are getting massages.  We've had a contract for monthly (or more) massages at a chain called Massage Envy.  It gives me an excuse to shave my legs at least.

So when I start skipping workouts and making excuses, I tell myself to think of exercise as a daily pill.  Instead of taking an antidepressant pill, weight control pill, birth control pill, immune system boosting pill, vitamin D pill, I just go for a walk.  There's nothing wrong with spending an hour a day in nature.  Moving.

So I guess you could say the view from my handlebars is getting better.  Got to sneak in a ride with RBC on a Tuesday night.  It was great.  I worked at UCR during the morning, then took my bike to Don's for a tune-up.  Then, I headed down to Adams via Victoria and La Cadena Dr.  I love the scenic glamour of Riverside et environs.  I have no idea where we went on the ride, but it was my first night ride in a long time.  I remember passing across Overlook at one point and thinking, I'm glad we're crossing this beast and not heading up it.  I missed my biking friends and it was a sweet rendez-vous.

I've been doing some crazy gardening.  I germinated a bunch of seeds under lamps and transferred them to the front lawn.  If they survive, we'll eat them all summer!!!  Our new goal is to OCCUPY GLENDALE until July.  Glendale is awesome, it's nearby a bunch of fun places.  In July, we will visit the windy city of Chicago.  So by then, the garden will either be established or wilted from not surviving.  It's crazy windy here.  There was a wind advisory (above 35 mph gusts) for this morning.  Take that Chicago.

advanced maternal age

Tuesday, February 7th I attended a lecture at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum at
Claremont McKenna College.  The speaker was R. Scott Hawley, who is an American Cancer Society Research Professor at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, MO.  His talk was entitled "When Good Eggs Go Bad--Because Sometimes Even Chromosomes Aren’t Perfect."

retinoic acid

He talked about the process of meiosis, which takes place in humans when the female egg cell meets a male sperm cell. 23 chromosomes from each cell have to meet and pair up in order to start the process of cell division, yielding a single hybrid offspring containing 46 chromosomes. Mistakes can be made in the process of preparing genetic material (DNA) to participate in this complex dance of macromolecules, which can result in too many or too few copies of a chromosome to be present in the offspring. When 3 copies (instead of 2) of chromosome 21 are present, characteristics of Down syndrome are observed.

Because females make all their eggs while they are themselves yet unborn, the eggs can become exposed to a range of environmental factors over the course of a woman's life, putting them at risk for DNA damage and defects to their eggs.  Males by contrast can make billions of sperm at a time, on a daily basis (and they don't start doing it until puberty) by a process regulated by retinoic acid.  Prof. Hawley showed this frightening graph (which I recapitulated using data from this source) relating risk of chromosomal abnormality and maternal age, and I started watching the clock tick-tock.  My biological clock.

There are countless studies showing that modern women are delaying child-rearing in favor of their careers.  And there are women like Sarah Palin whose son Trig has Down syndrome.  Rick Santorum has a daughter with too many copies of chromosome 18.  The conversation over lunch this past week turned to the church's pressure for couples to reproduce (and political opposition to funding contraceptives for women of child-bearing age).  It's all too real and scary for my brain right now.

(c) Pavel Popov 

Environmental and lifestyle factors affecting a woman's probability of experiencing fertility problems include: age, smoking, excess alcohol abuse, stress, poor diet, athletic training, being overweight, and sexually transmitted infections.  As I consider the possibility of getting pregnant, I am also wary because of the amount of risk factors present in my own life (being a chemist and living in a pretty high-stress, pollution-rich area).  I try to strike a balance between over and under weight, under and over exercise, good and poor diet, I guess moderation is the key.  Given the nature of information these days, one could probably justify anything.

What I don't like is that it somehow sounds like Eve is being blamed for everything again.

Fountain of Youth?

This post is dedicated to a good friend who has been my comrade in wellness-oriented life-choices.  Many months ago, he asked me to investigate a substance called TA-65 which is reported to actually lengthen telomeres.  Telomeres are at the ends of chromosomes, which are long strings of genes (DNA) that encode each cell's machinery.  A human is composed ~ 10 trillion cells!  Each time a cell divides, the telomeres become shorter.  There is a correlation between telomere length and healthy heart & immune system.  Some researchers even believe telomere manipulation will help cure cancer.

Astragalus membranaceus

The compound TA-65 and a related molecule TAT2 (Cycloastragenol) are isolated from the root of the Chinese herbal remedy Astragalus membranaceus which has been in use for over 2,000 years to increase metabolism, promote healing and enhance the immune system.

Looking at the molecular structures, I see a structural similarity to the endogenous hormone estrogen (Estradiol).  The difference between TA-65 (proprietary structure I found through SciFinder) and TAT2 (discovered on Wikipedia) seems to be glycoconjugation.  I have not had enough time to read up on the mechanism of action of these molecules, more reading for another day no doubt!

From SciFinder (TA-65) and Wikipedia (Cycloastragenol, Estradiol)

As far as the fountain of youth goes, I think the telomere shortening over time is part of life.  To partake of herbal remedies is fine, but to believe we can stop the clock on aging is a myth that has flourished since the 5th century BC.  Although it is great fodder for art (Eduard Vieth, a Viennese painter who worked around the turn of the 20th century AD) it is probably not a good thing to tamper with.

4SSSS

sac·ri·fice/ˈsakrəˌfīs/

Noun:	An act of slaughtering an animal or person or surrendering a possession as an offering to God or to a divine or supernatural figure.
Verb:	Offer or kill as a religious sacrifice.
Synonyms:	noun.  offering - oblation - victim - immolation - prey verb.  immolate - victimize - offer

suf·fer/ˈsəfər/

Verb:	Experience or be subjected to (something bad or unpleasant). Be affected by or subject to (an illness or ailment).
Synonyms:	endure - bear - undergo - tolerate - sustain - stand

As I was finishing up my dissertation, the two words that sprang to my mind were sacrifice and suffer.  I felt I had sacrificed so much of myself (physically and emotionally) as an offering to the Academic gods.  I felt I had bled, and that I had made many offerings.  But the definitions of this word pointed out to me that it was not an empowering term, that it painted me as some kind of prey or victim.  

Then I found suffer, which resonated a bit better.  Endurance is one of my specialties.  Now that I've made it "through the ringer" I feel as though my two new words for 2012 are sanity and satisfaction.

Also got a kick out of this vid also about pain and suffering.  Explains how cycling helped me finish my Ph.D.