AAAAA

This is a great web site for molecular movies!

The oldest rock on earth was found in Canada, 4.36 billion years!

This is a moral dilemma. Is it morally acceptable to redirect a runaway trolley car hurtling toward five workers onto a track with just one worker? How about pushing a man off a footbridge into the path of the trolley to stop it before it hits the hapless workers? Most people say they would sacrifice one life to save five in the first scenario but not the second. In this case, emotion may trump utilitarian logic.

cited from Science 2008, 320:734-37

Neurobiologists, philosophers, psycologists and legal scholars are all looking for the origin of human morality, there are lots of new discoveries recently with the  aid of fMRI imaging technique, but the connections of neurons are so complicated, it’s still too early to say which part of the brain is responsible for morality. A more detailed disection of the brain may show us more what we don’t  know yet.

VV likes to eat dark chocolate because she likes the bitter taste. And research recently found that  "6.7 grams of chocolate per day, corresponding to a small square of chocolate twice or three times a week" can reduce vessel inflamation, which is the key for later cardiovasular diseases.

I’ve been following the research of stem cell since 1997, though I still work with some neural stem cells , I didn’t have chance to work in the top labs in the world. The idea is first heated in 1990’s when embryonic stem cells were cultured from mouse, and famous Dolly was born….then from the application purpose of treating diseases with stem cell transplantation, and ethical conficts of using human embryo, scientists are thinking of using cells from patient itself and easily disected and enriched in large numbers, to reverse the cell fate from aging to young…for the last decades, there has been a great leap in this area, especially the success of Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, who turned the human skin cells from patient into embryoic stem cells by introducing 4 genes into the cell. This solve the key problem of stem cell therapy….though it’s still far from the final application in clinic, this will make the stem cell research hotter and hotter. There are several papers come out from Nature and Science recently, and authors are all from Harvard, they are doing the same thing, but it seems more practical, such as making stem cell line with skin cells from DS patients; inducing pancreatic beta cells from glands cells….And the mile stones are mapped and the leading scientists are remembered…

Shinya Yamanaka  Kyoto University

James Thomson  University of Wisconsin

Kevin Eggan Harvard University

George Q. Daley Harvard Stem Cell Institute

Douglas A. Melton  Harvard University

Irving Weissman Stanford University

Fred H. Gage  Salk Institute

Even Y. Snyder Harvard University 

Martin Evans University of Cambridge

Gail R Martin UCSF 

Joseph Altman MIT 

Alxander Maksimov Russian Histologist 

水调歌头–和VV

残飓扫东岸，沐雨梦秋天。
不知时空虚幻，依稀月又圆。
我欲逆流而上，穿梭毫发一刻，魂系五千年。
论道对鬼影，爱恨何绵绵？

涉南漠，游北海，醉阑珊。
礼乐寄天，乡音渺渺恨无边。
朝吟佳人新曲，暮和小鬼残篇，情意长相牵。
希捷多便捷，天寒共加衫。

附VV词：

漠上观明月，蓦然感秋寒。
十年一闪而过，唯有月长圆 。
正好平楼夜景，杯酒佯狂微醺，拟草作词篇。
多少平常恨，不复在跟前。

夜已深，君入梦，正酣甜。
屡有捷迅，疑是梦里意阑珊。
佳节遥情千里，枉有从容词句，未晓向谁言。
欲寄何从寄，一觉又经年。

因为读一篇文章(Poetry and Madness, Connected or Not?-and the Case of Hoelderlin by Elizabeth Sewell), 荷尔德林引起我的兴趣。。。

Hyperions Schicksalslied
Ihr wandelt droben im Licht
Auf weichem Boden, selige Genien !
Glänzende Götterlüfte
Rühren euch leicht,
Wie die Finger der Künstlerin
Heilige Saiten.

Schicksallos, wie der schlafende
Säugling, atmen die Himmlischen;
Keusch bewahrt
In bescheidener Knospe,
Blühet ewig
Ihnen der Geist,
Und die seligen Augen
Blicken in stiller
Ewiger Klarheit.

Doch uns ist gegeben,
Auf keiner Stätte zu ruhn,
Es schwinden, es fallen
Die leidenden Menschen
Blindlings von einer
Stunde zur andern,
Wie Wasser von Klippe
Zu Klippe geworfen,
Jahr lang ins Ungewisse hinab.

 
Hyperion’s Song of Destiny

Holy spirits, you walk up there
    in the light, on soft earth.
            Shining god-like breezes
                  touch upon you gently,
                         as a woman’s fingers
                               play music on holy strings.
 

Like sleeping infants the gods
      breathe without any plan;
        the spirit flourishes continually
            in them, chastely kept,
                         as in a small bud,
                                and their holy eyes
                                       look out in still
                                              eternal clearness.

A place to rest
    isn’t given to us.
          Suffering humans
                decline and blindly fall
                       from one hour to the next,
                              like water thrown
                                    from cliff to cliff,
                                         year after year,
                                               down into the Unknown.

Translated by James Mitchell 

许贝利翁的命运之歌

你们徘徊在神秘的光中
   在丰收的大地上
     充盈着欢欣的天才啊
        微风神圣地闪烁
          轻轻地触动你们
             就象艺术家的手指
                拨动了圣洁的琴弦

在命运之先
  在熟睡中滋生 呼吸着不朽
     圣洁地保存一切
        在新芽之中
           而精神永远盛开 灿烂
              啊 这些满是欢欣的眼睛
                静寂地观照着
                   永恒的澄明

但是我们却失去了
   栖息的家园
      人性的崇高
         盲目地一点点沉沦 消失
            就象撞落在悬崖上的浪花
               又无知地扑向另一个悬崖
                  年复一年 没有目的

宋非 译

Piss…Sheet…i hop…
Bluberry Pancake…
Zinc…Alzheimer…

Neurogenesis…Psychiatry…
Stem cell…potassium channel…
FilaminB…PCR…

Oligo…potassium…membrane potential…
proliferation…oligo…harmonica…

Big Mac…chicken selects…
plans…plans…plans…
stars…stars…stars…

We often hear that the artist is psychic, or vice versa. They must share some similarities. I was reading a paper, "Poetry and Schizophrenia" by Ronald W. Pies. He gave the examples of E.E.Cummings and Christopher Smart, who are both poet and had psychotic problem. And he cited an anecdote of James Joyce. "It is said that James Joyce had brought his psychotic daughter to the eminent Dr.Jung for treatment. Joyce, aware of the pecaularities in his own language, asked Jung what difference there was between his art and his daughter’s psychotic expressions. Jung replied, ‘She falls. You leap.’"

I went to Walden Pond today with landlords, and had a very good swimming for about 45 mins, about 1 mile in total. I tried freestyle and back style both to finish it. It’s quite a good feeling to float on the water under the blue sky and mild sunshine…and the temperature of the water is just perfect. I’ve been there swimming once with Giuseppe on 2005 about the same time. I like here very much for its quiet and calm atmosphere….

Then I went on to finish reading Jung’s autobiography, where I happened to learn some interesting stuff, such as "peat bog corpse" and "Amenophis IV" from the Freud-Jung conflicts. The corpes were mentioned by Jung during their visit of Bremen in Germany, which made Freud fainted, and Freud blamed Jung for his "death wish" of him. Amenophis IV is a pharaoh who changed his father’s God and made a new one "Aton", which was hinted by Freud as a relationship between Jung and himself, a son-against father relationship.

I am working like a machine this week, time on, time off, all day long to finish my full plans…and then thinking stops, though not the swimming. I feel being numb, yet still respond to stimulates now and then, with smile and posture and some sloppy words…there’s still a paper to be finished,  two books to be read, and 3 travel blogs to be written…and I need to sit down to make plans for the exams…

however, it’s not difficult to find something intersting everyday, like this new view of life and disease reported.  That’s something worth to celebrate, like periodic table of elements discovered by Dmitri Mendeleev. The author claimed 68 molecules as building blocks for life, and encourage researchers to intergrate the knowldge we have gained at a expotional scale.

"The physical sciences developed the periodic table of the elements to convey the composition and relatedness of matter. A related construct for biology may provide a more balanced view of the cell and its biochemistry. The four fundamental components of cellular life are derived from 68 molecular building blocks. Unlike the genome and proteome, the glycome and lipidome are not directly encoded by DNA. Nevertheless, the glycome and the lipidome contribute to the pathogenesis and severity of an increasing number of diseases, and are usurped by pathogens as receptors for infection. Scientific discussions that encompass these components remain relatively infrequent in the protein centric world of cell biology. Some scientists lament the ‘complexity of the molecules’. Yet our alphabet of 26 characters, let alone Chinese characters, is rather easily assimilated. Imagine a world in which each of us knew only a fraction of the alphabet."  __Jamey D. Marth