Who's Got the Giggly Munchies?

I have no comment on this figure as I was far too busy laughing. Click to open a larger version.


from:
Central and Peripheral Signaling Mechanisms Involved in Endocannabinoid Regulation of Feeding: A Perspective on the Munchies
Keith A. Sharkey^* and Quentin J. Pittman
Sci. STKE, 29 March 2005
Vol. 2005, Issue 277, p. pe15
[DOI: 10.1126/stke.2772005pe15]
LINK

Pretty Pictures That Toaster Takes (SFW?)

Immunofluoresence microscopy is one of my absolute favorite laboratory techniques. The method I use takes about 4 days and time for the slides to "cure", and during that entire time there is absolutely nothing I can do to tell whether or not the technique is even working at all. So I always seat myself in front of the microscope with bated breath, peering in hoping desperately that I haven't just wasted so much time and effort for no results. But, unlike an ELISA, which also takes lots of little invisible steps, the results of immunofluorescence microscopy are often absolutely stunning. I sit in that darkened room alone with these brilliant snapshots of life itself glowing below me as I feebly try to capture their gorgeousness with a camera. Compared to everything I've done so far in science, this is molecular biology at it's most palpable, it's most real. So much of my job consists of moving tiny amounts of one solution to another suspension and spinning it down and waiting and repeating and counting...all invisible stuff. I feel so often like I'm trying to find truth at the bottom of a dark chest with my eyes blindfolded, ears muffled, nose plugged, and hands encased in bubble wrap. When I do find something there it's like touching a loose vacuum tube* and that victory sings along my nerves electric, reawakening out of poor data's despair and repetitive boredom that fundamental hunger for discovery, a thrill of small but bottomless adventures. I study molecular biology not just because I'm an easily captivated nerd in search of shiny things, but because molecular biology is life itself vivisected out in all of its wonder and glory. It's not just difficult and complex, it's the biggest puzzle humankind has yet found and by doing science I am hewing the pieces of that puzzle out of raw ignorance and curiosity into elegance and grace.

Immunofluorescence microscopy, for me at least, bypasses all the trudgy serial dilutions and quantitative cell culture and patches me directly into that holy place of rare wonder and quintessential awe.

Below are a few of the hundreds of pictures I have taken over the past several months. These are all scientifically useless: control slides and slides where the concentrations weren't quite right or just not good enough for inclusion in practicable data. I've loaded each of these as large .jpegs, so if you'd like to download them I can assure you they make for excellent desktop backgrounds.


This is a frozen section of mouse stomach at 100X. The mouse was a germ-free C57/B6 infected with H. pylori and a unique microbiota that we're studying. The picture is at 100X. This is from a test-run I did on stomach tissue to make sure the same immunofluorescence staining protocol I use for mouse ceca works in this tissue type. We can't use this picture in any kind of data or results because it is, by and large, a mistake (pretty nonetheless, though). The red is an APC-labeled anti-mouse CD11c antibody and the blue is just the DAPI (therefore showing DNA) that came mixed in with the Promega Gold Anti-Fade Reagent.

So why is CD11c showing up so well on stomach parietal and smooth muscle cells when it's primarily a marker for dendritic cells?

There're a couple of reasons. First, according to other labs in our working group, CD11c antibodies have to be at a really high concentration to detect dendritic cells well (e.g., 1:10 instead of the 1:400 shown above). Secondly, Fc receptors bind antibodies. Fc receptors are most commonly associated with innate immune effector cells such as dendritic cells, macrophages, natural killer cells, and neutrophils; however, Fc-gamma receptors are widely expressed by several different cell types in diverse tissues. I didn't use any Fc blockers in this particular slide, so the Fc-gamma receptors likely present on the parietal and smooth muscle cells probably bound up my mouse IgG antibody (reason #1 there's high background). Thirdly, I used a mouse antibody in mouse tissue (reason #2 there's high background, also a stupid move on my part). Fourthly, I pulled out my old IF blocking buffer and used it without remembering that it contains normal goat serum instead of normal mouse serum (reason #3 there's high background). I might as well have not bothered blocking at all. Fifthly, these antibodies have only been tested, in the literature and our lab, for flow cytometry and not immunofluorescence microscopy. This last point is the win for the picture as it demonstrates we can use flow cytometry antibodies for this project, which is really really really convenient as it standardizes our data. That being said, however, I recently found out that rabbit anti-mouse monoclonals are coming onto the market for several CDs and if I hear that they do a better job than mouse anti-mouse CD antibodies I will not hesitate to use them instead (although if i do I'll probably wind up doing a direct comparison of the two by flow cytometry).


This is a section of mouse cecal wall. In this one the red is an AlexaFluor 597 phalloidin that binds to actin. Blue is DAPI again. This is a control slide where I was trying to find the optimal concentration of the phalloidin to label actin in cecal epithelial cells. Here the concentration was too low and only clearly labeled the actin in the smooth muscle that lies under the cecal epithelium. The DAPI to the left of the smooth muscle shows where the epithelial cells should be.


Same thing, different field.


Here I got the phalloidin concentration just about right to stain the epithelium. Also, a different person cut these blocks into slides and got much nicer sections without destroying the tissue architecture (it helps when the person operating the cryostat doesn't melt down the OCT and rearrange the tissues to their liking). When we took this tissue from a mouse infected with E. coli O157:H7, we cut along the inferior curvature of the cecum, spread it flat open, washed with 1X PBS three times to wash away food gunk (because that shit autofluoresces) and unadhered bacteria, and cut a ~2mm wide strip of cecum down the length with a scalpel. Then we took a Q-tip swab and rolled the tissue around the end like a cinnamon bun (my boss calls them "Swiss rolls") before embedding it in OCT (like clear syrup that keeps cells from bursting when they freeze) and slow freezing in a -20C freezer (as opposed to snap freezing in liquid nitrogen). The green in the picture above is from a poly-clonal goat anti-E. coli O157:H7 lipolysaccharide. The little green dots along the thicker actin lines (tight epithelial junctions) are enterohemorrhagic E. coli O157:H7 that have stuck themselves to the cecal epithelium (the mechanics of which are discussed here).

*I've done that, once. I was testing out an old Fender bass amp. It was a beautiful amp, 4 10" speakers with a tweeter, sounded great on a 4-string bass, tight and punchy where you can feel the rumble right in your diaphragm. But I play a 5-string bass and it lacked good low-end definition; also, I prefer to run my rig at settings that place the bass rumble firmly in one's duodenum. The vacuum tubes of the amplifier were placed right next to the on-off switch on the back of the amp head where I could see it, so when I went to turn it off I groped too far to the right and wound up feeling up the vacuum tubes' loose connections. I was knocked flat on my ass.

Fragments of Toaster's Mind Blather

1) Debating ethical-ness of studying non-work stuff at work. I already carry around my Janeway's Immunobiology with me, so why not my Llama Book as well?

2) Finished -80C freezer inventory. No one had ever done so and my PI has had the freezer for ~15-20 years. I found tubes that contained the entire GI tract of mice in there, not to mention the many other unidentifiable things floating around (take note: if you're putting it in long term storage, clearly label what it is. "17" is not a valid label!) Now, unfortunately, I'm sorta bored.

3) I only have 2 projects right now, and they're both sidelined waiting on reagents/supplies. The lab is rather clean, too. See Fragment #1.

4) Does anyone have any wise tricks for dealing with student loan companies?

5) I'm going to go see Monsters vs. Aliens tonight!

6) I tried stopping eating cookies and burritos for 2 weeks not long ago and promptly lost 5 pounds. I promptly introduced doughnuts, pie, and pie into my diet and have managed to get 3 back. I'm becoming resigned to the idea that my ribs and hip bones will always be highly visible until I hit the mid-forties.

7) Sooner or later I'm going to wind up shanking a jogger. Not because I want to, mind you, but because that's what you get when you manage to sneak up on Toaster. Normally I can hear them coming many yards away (and smell them; for some reason many of the female joggers spray themselves with some kind of flowery scent before they leave, which I suppose is better than poop), but there's one part of my plod home that's really traffic noisy and I can't hear them when they're running on the grass. One surprised me recently and I had my umbrella out of my coat pockets ready to take out his knees before I realized what exactly was going on.

8) I realize that I've come to the age where little children no longer regard me as being just a big kid and now think of me as an ominous adult. Maybe it's just that children are inherently wise enough to avoid asking a Mad Scientist what's in his backpack.

9) OK, honestly I don't know what's in there anymore either. Let's investigate:

2 mechanical pencils
lead
highlighters
1 tattered index card with the word "gonads" written on front
1/2 bottle Pepto Bismol
8 chewable doses of ivermectin
1 green hair Scrunchie
1 blue hair Scrunchie
1 pair black and grey striped fistwarmers
1 pair blue striped knee socks
lots of batteries
Everlast brand fisticuffs
1 dirty Tupperware container from several months ago
several plastic bags (dog poop bags?)
1 empty envelope
1 burned copy of the Big Lebowski (unwatched and unlikely to be)
5 official transcripts
1 Janeway's Immunobiology, 7th ed.
1 old sketchbook from cartooning job containing various obscenities and stick figures
1 ream of unread papers
2 bars of graphite
3 1m-long high-tension rubber bands

10) Mercifully self-censored complaint about the fit of my underwear.

11) I need to write myself a Perl app and install it on all the computers I use to remind me to eat. Due to a self-experiment that I've not yet blogged, I have developed a rather extreme tolerance for hunger. I have caught myself going 14+ hours without food before realizing that I actually am hungry. Often I don't remember that I haven't eaten in quite a while until I have real hunger pains. And before you tell me that maybe that is why I am scrawny, it should be noted that when I eat it is usually best measured in kilograms and what it is would make a nutritionist cry (e.g., just the other day I discovered how delicious chocolate chip peanut butter sandwiches can be).

Luciferase Shampoo

I just attended a departmental seminar where the guest lecturer presented data showing that transcutaneous vaccination works from DNA vaccines. Apparently, if you abrade the skin to remove the stratum corneum and rub on a transfection plasmid with your desired DNA (best to use a fusion protein, methinks) that has been stuck inside liposomes, the hair follicles will take up the DNA and use it. This apparently produces antigens inside the body and activates dendritic cells to take it up, process it, and go activate T cells to start a humoral immunity response. This has been demonstrated in mice.

Previously I had had no idea that mouse hair follicles are much smaller than human hair follicles. Nor did I know that ~80-90% of hair follicles on a human scalp are usually in growth phase at any given point. DNA vaccines have so far been shown to work best when they're applied to skin in which the hair follicles are in anagen (growth) phase. Therefore, it stands to reason that the human scalp would be a convenient portal for localized transfection.

As such, I need volunteers for 2 experiments.

1) Balding. There are demonstrated links between testosterone and alopecia. It is thought that testosterone is somehow acting upon hair follicles in middle age to cause them to somehow stop growing. But if we could make a fusion gene for the testosterone receptor coupled to nonfunctionality, we could theoretically block that signal and prevent testosterone-associated baldness at the scalp. However, in the interest of transparency, it should be acknowledged that there is a small chance that the testosterone knockout genetic construct will get into more places than just one's scalp, but also possibly other rapidly dividing cells. Other rapidly dividing cells include those in the skin and gut epithelium, where a loss of testosterone receptivity wouldn't do much, but also Sertoli cells, which could indeed cause infertility. However, as Leydig cells produce testosterone itself in response to luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone, systemic testosterone shouldn't be affected and no loss of virilization should occur.

2) Luciferase Shampoo. I don't know about you, but I think I'd look quite nice with glowing bright red hair. If adding the luciferase gene to a liposome and getting that to hair follicles could result in expression of luciferase, then great, we'd be able to get glowy hair! However, there is a very real possibility that doing this would only result in glowy hair follicles, which could still be kind of cool (light tends to shine through and off of my blonde hair, so in effect it might look like a translucent pink cloud, like fiber optics).

Formula:
1. Luciferase transfection vector inside liposomes.
2. CaCl2
3. HEPES buffer
4. Glycerin (might as well make functioning shampoo whilst we're at it, no?)
5. Fragrance (anyone know how to synthesize the scent of melting lemon drops?)

But first, I need volunteers! Mad Science Law #9 may be waived if I get volunteers. Or maybe I should just get the DIY-Bio people to do this for me.

Not-So-Mad Science: IL-13 vs. IL-4 In The Battle For Asthma!

(Previous asthma research-blogging here)

Marsha Wills-Karp, Jackie Luyimbazi, Xueying Xu, Brian Schofield, Tamlyn Y. Neben, Christopher L. Karp, Debra D. Donaldson (1998). Interleukin-13: Central Mediator of Allergic Asthma Science, 282, 2258-2261

Abstract:
The worldwide incidence, morbidity, and mortality of allergic asthma are increasing. The pathophysiological features of allergic asthma are thought to result from the aberrant expansion of CD4(+) T cells producing the type 2 cytokines interleukin-4 (IL-4) and IL-5, although a necessary role for these cytokines in allergic asthma has not been demonstrable. The type 2 cytokine IL-13, which shares a receptor component and signaling pathways with IL-4, was found to be necessary and sufficient for the expression of allergic asthma. IL-13 induces the pathophysiological features of asthma in a manner that is independent of immunoglobulin E and eosinophils. Thus, IL-13 is critical to allergen-induced asthma but operates through mechanisms other than those that are classically implicated in allergic responses.

There are many morbidly fascinating pathological changes associated with onset and clinical asthma. To wit, these include eosinophilia, mucus overproduction, mast cell/other inflammatory cell airway infiltration, and increased smooth muscle. There may also be scarring of the airways.

From what I currently understand about it, airway hypersensitivity generally happens after immune effector cells have infiltrated the underlying airway tissues. When these effector cells, which can include allergen-specific T-cells, mast cells, eosinophils, basophils, and even macrophages, are activated by an irritant (the allergen) they more or less cut loose and let wild with the localized inflammation. The localized inflammation, in turn, leads to more immune cell infiltration over time and concurrently the tissue itself undergoes histopathologically apparent changes, including thickening of the base layer of smooth muscle.

For example of immune effector cells getting activated, let's consider the most dramatic case: the mast cell. Mast cells are a type of white blood cell that expresses Fc receptors for IgE (IgE is the immunoglobulin most associated with allergic and anti-parasite responses) on it's surface. The Fc-bound IgE act as allergen-specific receptors that, when bound to their ligand, send a signal into the cell to degranulate. Mast cells store relatively massive amounts of inflammatory cytokines and peptides in large granules (e.g., histamines, prostaglandins, and leukotrienes) and they can, effectively, disgorge them all at once. This can lead to a very rapid spike in the systemic concentration of inflammatory effector molecules and subsequently extremely rapid onset of asthmatic symptoms. The same process is at work in acute food allergies.

Figure A: The mast cell is the one with the big lumpy nucleus in the center. The black dots surrounding it are granules packed with inflammatory molecules, just waiting to be released and wreak havoc. Those other 2 cells to the right are lymphocytes (according to the original caption on this TEM).

But what inflammatory molecules are required to invoke and/or sustain a hypersensitive airway response?

This paper examined the role of IL-13 in allergic asthma. According to Janeway's Immunobiology, IL-13 is involved in the differentiation of naive CD4+ T-cells into TH2 cells, which have been shown to be more involved in allergy than TH1 cells. IL-13 is also secreted by TH2 cells, apparently, and has been shown to have a direct effect on airway epithelial cells by which their proliferation in increased and differentiation into goblet cells (goblet cell metaplasia) is increased, which in turn leads to the increased mucus production seen in allergy and asthma. And when your organs are infected with multicellular parasites, IL-13 is there to help the organs make the changes they need to get rid of those parasites. And as if that weren't enough, IL-13 also increases smooth muscle contractility.

But IL-13 doesn't really do anything without the context of a TH2 immune response. Th2 cells are characterized by secretion of IL-4, and it should be noted that IL-4 and IL-13 share a subunit in their receptors.

Figure B: The left column has a normal lung biopsy (top) and a normal airway (bottom) from a Tbet+/+ mouse. The right column has the same measurements, but showing airway inflammation with lymphocyte and eosinophil infiltration (top) and remodeled airway with increased collagen (bottom) from a Tbet-/- mouse. The picture is blurry because I took it with my phone. It is from Janeway's Immunobiology, 7th ed., page 575. Tbet is a transcription factor that is necessary for the development of TH1 cells, so its abscence will invariably result in a TH2 inflammatory response (right column). Tbet is analogous to GATA3 in TH2 cells.

Allow me to explain T-cell differentiation really briefly:

1) Naive T-cells arrive in thymus.
2) Naive T-cells have to decide whether or not to be CD4+ or CD8+, which will result in being able to recognize MHCII or MHCI, respectively.
3) CD4+ T-cells get stimulated by DCs or stuff, and the resulting cytokine mileau determines whether they become TH1, TH2, Treg (also refered to as TH3), or TH17. They can also become memory T-cells of any of those variety later on in. Respectively, these cell types are characterized by secretion of IFNg, IL-4/IL-5, IL-10, and IL-17.
4) TH1, TH2, Treg, and TH17 all more or less have distinct biological roles, although the cytokine soup that gives rise to different types is messy (e.g., IL-2 just drives T-cell proliferation irrespective of subset) and often overlaps, and they'll even compete against each other (IL-12 drives TH1 proliferation but inhibits TH2 proliferation while IL-4 does the same for TH2 cells).

So, anyway, the group behind this paper found that while IL-4 is sufficient to initiate asthmatic events, IL-13 is required for the development of the airway hypersensitivity response (AHR). They used the standard ovalbumin (OVA) induced model of AHR and found that blocking IL-13 with an neutralizing fusion protein prevents the development of AHR. Apparently blocking IL-13 in mice who already have AHR results in their measures of AHR decreasing (specifically goblet cell metaplasia and mucus production). However, with all of this, blocking IL-13 had no effect whatsoever on net circulating IgE or eosinophilia.

These findings prove that IL-13 has a significant role in asthma. But they also imply that IL-13 does not play this role through classical allergy pathways, as IL-13 is found to be elevated in patients with both allergic and non-allergic asthma. This is further supported by the group's finding that daily intratracheally administration of IL-13 is sufficient to induce asthmatic pathology even in the abscence of antigen sensitization.

What I wonder about here is: how does it make biological sense for a molecule involved heavily in the production of allergen-specific TH2 cells to also operate completely independently of that cellular phenotype?

But what is important to human health is that this paper demonstrates that adminstration of IL-13 agonists or blockers may be of great therapeutic value to human asthmatics. This paper is 11 years old, and I don't currently know if anything has come of their findings, but still, it'd be cool if this really did have therapeutic value because, as my last post on asthma discussed (link up top), inhaled acute anti-inflammatories may only be getting to the pieces of lung that need it least (because they're the pieces that can still pump air, and if reacting tissue isn't pumping tidal volume, how can inhaled medicine get to it?). If this could be used daily as a preventative, I think it could greatly improve the quality of life for asthmatics everywhere.

Actual Action Ranty Rant #1

As a Mad Scientist, the temptation to unleash my wrath upon those who annoy or piss me off is sometimes very great indeed. As such, I usually try to sleep on it when my spleen feels to need exploding, and if I'm still a handsome kettle of seething rage in the morning I figure it's worth letting fly (zeppelin!). I've even had 3 donuts and a burger and a half (unfortunately I didn't have the donuts when I had the burgers, so I couldn't use them as a bun. That would've been delicious!) to make absolutely sure I wasn't just cranky from low blood sugar or some such crap like that.

However, the thing that currently has me so pissed off is rather too public for actual action, so I'm going to have to let the following Ranty Rant suffice.

This rant regards the overpriced and overpretentious grocery store Whole Foods. I will begin by disclosing that I do go to Whole Foods to buy turkey sausages (Toaster doesn't eat cows because they never did anything to him, nor pork because it didn't deserve the ill fate of being so tasty; venison, however, is fair game) because they are the same price as Trader Joe's, and they have chorizo, which is delicious. I also buy bulk grains there. With that in hand, I am going to tint this window with a slight hue of hypocrisy.

As I was leaving Whole Foods with a paper bag loudly telling me how it's 100% recycled and that I should definitely recycle it as soon as I possibly could (green-washing, anyone?), I noticed that they were selling canvas grocery bags with the (paraphrased) words: "FEED THE CHILDREN OF THE WORLD!"

For real. Now, first note that I don't have a problem with the message emblazoned on the bag, because yes, the children of the world should be fed, and so should the adults and geezers. However, note secondly that I have a huge problem with this kind of fake socioenvironmentalist bullshit. Thirdly, I also have a problem with the kind of bougie asshat who buys that kind of shit and then prances around like the sun shining out their ass has given them an orgasmic wedgie*. They are a bunch of plinking facile douchebag noodley rotten overtan lardass colostomy bags.

Some bougie motherfucker who has never really been truly hungry** is going to go to Whole Foods, which specializes in petroleum-drenched, overpriced, overproduced food flown in from developing countries all over the world, pay a premium on their groceries so that they can feel better about the rest of their wastefulness, and then on their way out to their newer model SUV note that they shop there often enough to need a canvas bag. So they buy the one with the socially aware message that gives $2 to some humanitarian aid organization so that they can feel additionally special and like they're saving the world when in reality, if they'd walked their fat asses to Trader Joe's or Kroger they could have helped a hell of a lot more hungry children by donating the money they'd saved directly to the same organization.

This is fake concern at it's worst. These bougie asshats are the very same who patronize bullshit coffeehouses and walk around with their thumbs firmly lodged up their asses, listening to their iPods and looking down their nose at everyone around them (seriously, the next person who tries to talk to me with one or both of their earbuds still in their ears is going to have to extract said earbuds from his sinuses). I've listened to their shallow bullshit conversations in the past and I avoid overhearing them anymore because I inevitably feel a strong urge to kick them in the throats because all it is is a bunch of sophmoric swaddle about how each of them is hipper than the last ("OMG [wait, remember you're too hip for that, but play it cool like you're being ironic], check out these new shoes [puff on cloves cigarette], they cost, like, $100 [it's OK, daddy gave me a credit card] but they were fair trade [adjust boutique vintage hat] and made with organic cotton!" like it's pixie unicorn dust magic). People who bitch and moan that they're starving when all they've had is a motherfucking latte in the past 4 hours and now they need some motherfucking hummus and organic whole wheat crackers. The people who buy a bag saying "FEED THE CHILDREN OF THE WORLD" and fill it with food taken from those children's countries***. Not to mention that they're buying this shit while children starve right here in this country.

This isn't coming across nearly as angry as I feel it. I tried not to resort to unbroken streams of cursing and eleventies. Hmm...maybe /RANTFAIL.


*Wonder what kind of search terms that's going to get me. Here's a chaser for your mental image.
**What I mean here is the kind of hungry that you get when you don't have food and can't afford it and can smell someone else's tasty lunch and your stomach has absolutely nothing in it at all and is knotted up and chewing on itself. I mean the kind of hungry you get after weeks of watered-down food. I'd like to see one of these bougie bastards try to make it just 24h with no food at all, and no motherfucking replacement power shakes or other such bullshit. Maybe then they wouldn't have such stupid ideals for skinniness.
***Look at many tropical countries that grow commodity foods such as plantains, pomegranite, etc. to export to post-industrial countries that then have to import essential foods from industrial agriculture in those post-industrial countries. A good example of this may be El Salvador and the U.S..

Wanderlust

Figure A: Toaster would rather be here than where he is.

The picture above is of the Current River in the Ozarks. This river is generally noted for its clear water and gravel bed, and it's fed by lots of springs that have carved floatable caves out of the bluffs. I would currently rather be there on a kayak than here in the lab starting another week's toil. Alternatively, it'd be nice to be breaking my ribs on the St. Francis River spring shut-ins*.

*Shut-ins = Ozark colloquialism referring to sections of streams or rivers that run rapids through narrow gorges (~<1m wide), usually occur in parallel sets and often have chutes and drops. Also used as early water slides.

Audio Monstrosity #2

Toaster has been up to nefariousness for the past couple of hours (2.5h, to be exacter). This is what inevitably happens when he's left up to his own devices. You see, I have created yet another Audio Monstrosity! But this one is better. Much better! Although it's not finished yet, either...

Anyway!

In this track, I programmed the drum machine myself (I generally don't like using loops), played the guitar myself (which is why it's so bad) and the bass guitar myself (which is why it's so good). I know, there is a buzzing, but I wasn't able to process that out as it seemed to be part of the feedback from the distortion I was using on the guitar. My equipment is rather limited, so I do the best I can.

Here is the track: Mad Scientist Personal Ad!

Here are the lyrics:

Toaster Sunshine, Personal Ad, Take 9

The life of a mad scientist is so sad and lonely
All of my best friends live in formalin jars, you see

So I took out this personal ad
As an appeal to all the hot science ladies
You know, I might be mad
But that doesn't mean I'm all bad
At least not for you, baby
I'm about six feet tall
With a slightly hunched back
Uh, my hair's pretty wild
But, you know, I know that
I enjoy long walks
Through the city ruins
After I've destroyed it
Um, I love the smell of Tesla coil in the morning
Um, my hobbies include orchestrating my enemies' doom
And, building weird devices
The more devices I can fit into one chassis, the better
So I really hope you like electronics
And if you know how to solder, it's a plus

Did I mention I have a zeppelin?
Because it's a really cool zeppelin!

I'm a mad scientist
Lookin' for love
Your legs need to be as sexy as your brain
I'm a mad scientist
Just looking lookin' for love
Want brains so full and curvy
I want your brains wrinkly
I want your brains smart
I want your brains so juicy
I want you in my heart

I'm a mad scientist
Lookin' for love
Your brains gotta be as hot as your legs

Call me.

This one is downloadable!

I have also uploaded a couple of older tracks, "Zombie Cookie" (lyrics: "I am a zombie, give me a cookie!") and "Dishware Flossery".

Story of Toaster: Self Experimentation #1

Looking back, even though I sometimes wanted to be an astronaut or an architect, it becomes apparent that I was fated to become a scientist. And it manifested rather early. For evidence of that, here is the story of Toaster's First Experiment.

Or, well, at least the first experiment that I clearly remember doing. There may have been others before that, but as I was a child prodigy at dropping heavy things onto my own head I don't remember them.

Exposition:
Young Toaster, aged ~5. Hot Southern summer*, I was left to play alone in the backyard. I was very good at this, busily digging holes, hoarding things in the shed, and collecting pillbugs. I had recently tried to dig a tunnel under our neighbors' yards (this failed).

Observation:
So I was casting around for something to do when I noticed that it was difficult to breathe in the very hot humid summer air (typically >40C + 70%+ humidity). I noted that air was coming out of my mouth and my nose, but not the other holes in my head.

Hypothesis:
Because the holes for my eyes are already filled up with my eyes, I logically cannot breathe through them. However, there is nothing filling up my ears, so I should be able to breathe through them.

Test 1:
I held my breath very tightly and even closed my eyes to make sure no air leaked out (just in case). I pinched my nose shut and tried to force air out my ears.

Result 1:
No air went through my ears.

Revision:
OK, it's not easy, but that doesn't mean it's not possible.

Revision Tool:
Piston-style air pump found in shed**!

Test 2:
I held my breath again like before. And I held the air pump to my right ear and tried to pump air in mechanically.

Result 2:
Young Toaster runs into the house trying to scream over the sudden painful ringing in his ears. A visit to the doctor revealed that I had managed to puncture my eardrum membrane when I didn't account for the pointy tip of the air pump moving toward my ear when I pushed down on the plunger. The tinnitus lasted for 2 weeks and thankfully my eardrum healed. Interestingly, my balance was off during the entire acute phase of the tinnitus. Incredibly (because walking was [and is still sometimes at any level of sobriety] a dangerous undertaking for me), I managed to not further injure myself, I think. Sometimes I still get transient tinnitus.

Conclusion:
Once cannot breathe through their ears, either unassisted or with mechanical help, no matter how much they may wish to.

**One of the few days where we weren't inside hiding from these.
*At this point you probably already knew how this was going to end: Badly.

Not-So-Mad Science: STEM Education

In lieu of your normal Wednesday Cyber Journal Club Science Blogging, I offer you the following:

Most everyone agrees that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education in the U.S.A generally sucks. We often rail against Teh Stupidz of the masses and their ignorance of basic scientific concepts and principles and in doing so we frequently make the masses out to be lazy. I don't think they're lazy necessarily, I think the public school system and society as a whole have failed them. And to a degree, by extension, we as scientists have failed them.

Certainly, we can spend our time debating the global warming deniers and proponents of creationism or the vaccine-autism link. A vigorous debate is necessary to discredit the dishonest irrationality of the opponents of scientific knowledge and progress. However, I posit that directing the bulk of our attentions and energy to this task is stupid. Stupid because it is ineffective, like waiting in the wings with a tourniquet and bone saw as we watch clumsy children try to juggle chainsaws. When we spend so much time interfacing with and disproving the few loud idiot voices in the crowd, we are doing a disservice to that crowd by ignoring it. In effect, we are fighting the flawed output instead of striving to better the input. Doing so would stem the tide of ignorance and intellectual laziness.

I'm not saying that this is all on us scientists' shoulders per se, at least not exclusively. We're a busy profession, trying to conquer save the world by engaging in deeply imaginative and technically practicable play. The worlds inside our labs, our offices, our Ivory Towers are our cherished sandboxes, and as such we are reluctant to leave them and face the bitter reality that we cannot well communicate with...well, anyone who isn't also a scientist. We are a deeply insular and idiosyncratic culture and to a degree this is why we thrive in the right settings. But we need to come out of this shell and start real dialogues with interested citizens, nosy neighbors, and especially students.

Our society has forgotten the value of independent, creative, critical thought and replaced it with iPods and whatever clothing brand is popular today (Baby Phat?). We make public school students jump through the flaming hoops of standardized tests of regurgitated facts and teach through prime-time TV advertisements that instant gratification and consumerism are far more valuable than meaningful education or thoughtful pondering. We teach the dates of the important battles of the War of Roses or the American Civil War, but we neglect the causes of why those factions marched on each other in the first place and we fail to examine the consequences of those battles and wars. We teach the DNA is a double helix with 4 different nucleotides that pair specifically, but we don't talk very well about why a double helix is optimal or what difficulties it might pose. We teach physics as ballistics fun fun time and don't talk about how the application of electromagnetism has revolutionized the entire world.

Ultimately, we are substituting meaningful discourse on the Whys, the Hows, the What Ifs, and most importantly the Why Nots, for boiled-meat-and-potatoes Whats and Whens.

This represents a deep and disturbing failure to teach Critical Thinking and to foster Curiosity.

Society: FAIL.

We as scientists, ostensibly working for society, have an obligation to make that society smarter, or at least more curious. Why aren't more of us out there on lecture circuits in local libraries and community centers giving layman's presentations on basic scientific concepts, such as the nature of electromagnetism or what a gene actually is and how it works? Yes, we are nerds, but we are damn sexy smart nerds, and if we can figure out which molecules bind what cells or how to make a 100ton metal airplane fly through air, then we can damn well figure out how to talk to normal people!

We should be! So get to it!

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I believe that TV is a useful barometer of cultural conditions, especially children's TV. I still watch cartoons, and I have noticed that the science content in cartoons has sharply declined over the past 10 years. 10 years ago we had Dexter's Lab, Pinky and the Brain, and Bill Nye reruns. Then for a couple years there was Jimmy Neutron. And now all that remains is Johnny Test, who is the favorite guinea pig of his twin scientist big sisters, and the "science" in these episodes is just plain stupid. I mean, even stupider than Dexter's Lab, which was at least entertaining. So do you think that maybe the absolute decline of children's science programming is reflective of a devaluation of the place of science in society?