Diwali: Then and Now

Posted on November 2, 2013 by madamescientist

IMG_2672 ⌘ Picture a little girl, shaken awake in the pre-dawn darkness by her mother, shivering before a “head bath” with a pail of steaming hot water from the big copper water heater in the kitchen. Squeaky clean, her hair dried and braided into long mogra flower-laden plaits, she puts on some pretty gold bangles (from an ever-expanding stash of jewelry destined for her future bridal finery) and dresses in a brand new, long skirt of Kanchipuram silk , the traditional and sacred fabric of southern India. After excitedly holding a little sparkler on the balcony, she joins her family for a Diwali feast, full of sweets and special treats that last all day long, while explosions of crackers and the acrid smell of smoke fill the city air. IMG_2670 ⌘ Fast-forward many decades later, and the little girl has given up the silks and bracelets for a disciplined life of an academic scientist, transplanted into a distant western land.  It may be Diwali, but she must fly from one coast to another, evangelical in her passion, poring over 200-page reports on the plane and happily rolling polysyllabic words into hour-long lectures. But wait : just before leaving, there is time to whip together a simple family breakfast of beaten rice (“poha”) with crunchy, tangy, comforting and colorful notes. Today, the sweetness comes from dimly-recalled memories of childhood and the sparklers are in the bright eyes of the family who will welcome “madamescientist” back home 🙂  To all those who celebrate, Happy Diwali !

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Clockwise from top: boiled, diced potatoes, chopped onion, chopped cilantro, whole spices for tempering (urad dal, dry red chilies, mustard seeds), poha with spices (turmeric, cayenne, salt and pinch of sugar), half a lemon.

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After the tiny mustard seeds pop in a tablespoon of oil and the urad dal and chilies release their flavor, add the onion and lightly saute.

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Add the cubed potatoes and let them develop a little bit of crunch.

Meanwhile, add a cup of water to 2 cups of beaten rice. The rice will rehydrate and plump up. Mix in spices and coriander leaves.

Meanwhile, add a cup of water to 2 cups of beaten rice. The rice will rehydrate and plump up. Mix in spices and coriander leaves.

Add the poha mixture, cover and steam for a few minutes to let the flavors meld. Season with lemon juice and top off with peanuts and grated, fresh coconut.

Add the poha mixture, cover and steam for a few minutes to let the flavors meld. Season with lemon juice and top off with peanuts and grated, fresh coconut.

A simple breakfast, enjoyed with a hot cup of coffee.

A simple breakfast, enjoyed with a hot mug of coffee.

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Late blooming November daisy from the garden. Enjoy the fall colors, my friends!

Posted in Diwali, FOOD, Indian food, Vegetarian | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Diwali: Then and Now

Posted on November 2, 2013 by madamescientist

Diwali: Then and Now

⌘ Picture a little girl, shaken awake in the pre-dawn darkness by her mother, shivering before a “head bath” with a pail of steaming hot water from the big copper water heater in the kitchen. Squeaky clean, her hair dried and braided into long mogra flower-laden plaits, she puts on some pretty gold bangles (from an ever-expanding stash of jewelry destined for her future bridal finery) and dresses in a brand new, long skirt of Kanchipuram silk, the traditional and sacred fabric of southern India. After excitedly holding a little sparkler on the balcony, she joins her family for a Diwali feast, full of sweets and special treats that last all day long, while explosions of crackers and the acrid smell of smoke fill the city air.  

⌘ Fast-forward many decades later, and the little girl has given up the silks and bracelets for a disciplined life of an academic scientist, transplanted into a distant western land.  It may be Diwali, but she must fly from one coast to another, evangelical in her passion, poring over 200-page reports on the plane and happily rolling polysyllabic words into hour-long lectures. But wait: just before leaving, there is time to whip together a simple family breakfast of beaten rice (“poha”) with crunchy, tangy, comforting and colorful notes. Today, the sweetness comes from dimly-recalled memories of childhood and the sparklers are in the bright eyes of the family who will welcome “madamescientist” back home 🙂  To all those who celebrate, Happy Diwali!

For Azlin Bloor, nomad dimitri and #foodiesdiwali  , with apologies that this is not quite the spread you requested.  

Recipe:  https://madamescientist.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/diwali-then-and-now/ #diwali  

Posted in Rajini Rao | Tagged , | 91 Comments

A Balancing Act

Posted on October 27, 2013 by madamescientist

A Balancing Act

✦ Nature’s Gyroscope: Your ear does much more than hear. While the snail shaped cochlea of the inner ear (pictured below) is superbly adapted for picking up sound vibrations (by deflections of hair cells described in last week’s post), the rest of the inner ear is a complex labyrinth of tubes and chambers that keeps our lives in balance. 

✦ Up, Side and Down: Since we live in a three dimensional world, we have three fluid-filled semicircular canals arranged at right angles to each other, along the x, y and z planes. Each semicircular canal senses a different movement of our head: up and down, side to side, and tilt. When we move our head, the fluid inside the canal moves and presses on a tear shaped bulb at one end. The bulb (ampulla) has a collection of mechanically sensitive hair cells embedded in a jelly like matrix. Deflection of the “hairs” triggers a message to the balance center of our brain that is interpreted as a deflection of the head. Because we have a pair of ears, the deflections are mirror images so that when one side is stimulated the other is simultaneously inhibited by the movement.  

✦ Rolling Stones: Two other chambers sense horizontal and vertical accelerations of your body. The saccule detects changes in vertical movement (when you are in an elevator), and the utricle monitors horizontal movement (as when a car suddenly moves forward or stops). While these organs also have mechanically sensitive hair cells, what is different is a special overlaying membrane weighted down with tiny stones of calcium carbonate, around a protein core, called otoconia. A shearing effect of the membrane against the hair cells detects vertical and linear accelerations of your body.  Sometimes, the otoconia fall into one of the semicircular canals (see image) sending conflicting signals to the brain, resulting in vertigo. Fortunately, a series of head maneuvers can restore the rolling stones back into place. Ménière’s Disease is a common cause of vertigo, accompanied by hearing loss and tinnitus. It is thought to be caused by disturbances in the fluid volume filling the inner ear. Future relief from vertigo may come from prosthetic devices, similar to a cochlear implant in the inner ear. See Physician Inventors Discuss First Device to Combat Vertigo

✦ Space Jellies: Did you know that NASA has been sending jelly fish out to space since the 90’s for microgravity research? Jellies born in space have trouble orienting and swimming back on Earth because their gravity sensors, crystals of calcium sulfate much like our otoconia, fail to develop properly. Read more: http://goo.gl/Jtj00N

A follow up on How Hearing Happens: http://goo.gl/lEHKjF

#ScienceSunday  

Posted in Rajini Rao | Tagged | 76 Comments

How Hearing Happens

Posted on October 20, 2013 by madamescientist

How Hearing Happens

☛ The Hair Cell: When a young student heard that the lab next to mine studied frog hair cells, she exclaimed, “Oh? I didn’t know frogs had hair!” Actually, hair cells, so named because of the curious stacked arrangement of hair-like stereocilia emerging from their crowns (image a), are the cells that detect sound.  About 16,000 of them line the snail shaped cochlea of our inner ear, picking up sound induced vibrations of the fluid inside our ears of less than 1 nanometer. The remarkable hair cell is what gives us humans the ability to detect sound of frequency ranging from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. 

☛ Mechanosensation: How does a hair cell detect sound? The secret lies in the way the stereocilia are stacked. Each one is connected to an adjacent taller ‘hair” by a tenuous thread, known as tip link (image b). At the bottom end, the tip link controls the opening of an ion channel while at the upper end it is held taut by a motor protein (myosin) that moves along tracks (actin) inside the “hair”. When a mechanical disturbance in the surrounding fluid pushes against the hair bundle (image c), the tip link is stretched, yanking open the gate of the ion channel. Calcium ions flood the interior, changing the electrical potential of the cell and triggering a message to the nerves leading away from the cell. Immediately, however, the motor protein slips down, releasing the tension on the tip link and closing the ion channel to end the signal (image d).  Later, the motor protein climbs up the cables again to re-establish tension in the tip link. 

☛ Deafness, Eugenics and Alexander Bell: It may come as a surprise that the inventor of the telephone also had a profound impact on deaf culture. With both his mother and wife deaf, Alexander Bell became an avid proponent of “oralism” – teaching deaf people to articulate sounds in place of sign language. Given the uniqueness of deaf culture with frequent intermarriage among deaf people, Bell cautioned that the incidence of deafness could rise until there was a separate race of deaf people. Although his ideas on eugenics are not credited now, he was responsible for many changes made to education of the deaf. Deafness is the most common inherited sensory defect at 1-3 births per 1000. Interestingly, the most common inherited form of deafness has actually increased due to assortive mating (this is also seen in other disorders linked to ethnicity or race). Bell’s goals may yet be achieved, not by eugenics but by cochlear implants, which may restore hearing and abolish deaf culture in the future. Will that be a good thing?

Another installment in the    #excyting series on cell types.

▶ Cardiomyocyte: http://goo.gl/uBL37G

▶ Adipocyte: http://goo.gl/S4fQFS

▶ Erythrocyte: http://goo.gl/R5R6Y0

▶ Astrocyte: http://goo.gl/SMpXMV

Image and Free Read: Corey, D. (2009) Cell biology of mechanotransduction in inner-ear hair cells. 

http://f1000.com/prime/reports/b/1/58

Through Deaf Eyes (Alexander Bell): http://goo.gl/DY2ouS

#ScienceSunday  

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Pumping up Pumpkin Pie

Posted on October 14, 2013 by madamescientist

Pumping up Pumpkin Pie

✿ My postdoctoral advisor, Carolyn Slayman, could strike fear into us by the deceptively mild statement..”Wouldn’t it be nice..?” We all knew what that meant. At least another couple of months of experiments, if we were lucky. Twenty years later, I will confess to pumping up science. Just when my lab folk think they have a story neatly wrapped up, topped with a colorful title and shiny journal to target, I have no qualms in raising the bar on expectations up another notch. It’s the same with recipes. Who can resist the urge to dress up a nice but bland sauce, sneak in more spices or fiddle with the fixings? So when a collection of 50 canned pumpkin recipes came my way, I considered it only the start of a culinary excursion.

✿ Take for example, the Pumpkin Alfredo sauce: whisk together a cup each of pumpkin puree and light cream, season with salt, pepper and grated nutmeg, and heat through. Nice, but surely there’s more? It needed some tang: in went a quick puree of sundried tomatoes in olive oil, with a sparse bunch of rosemary and sage scavenged from my fast fading fall garden. The little specks of deep red and bright green were a lovely addition. What, no vegetables? I folded in roasted florets of cauliflower to the penne with the pumpkin sauce. Topped it with crushed red pepper and parmesan cheese. Next time, I might try layering the pumpkin cream with no boil lasagne, fresh mozzarella and something yet to be determined. Consumed before digital capture, this one is worth repeating.

✿ Now that I was on a pumpkin quest, pie loomed on the next horizon. I am not a pie person, however. So I settled for prudence and a recipe on the can of Libby’s pumpkin puree. It sounded easy enough, besides it’s been on the label since 1950! I used my trusty crusty Graham Cracker base and decorated the top with walnut bits and pecan halves (to dress up the wound I made when I tested for doneness!). Although my prudence was rewarded with a perfectly pleasing pumpkin pie, I have a hankering to veer from the straight and narrow next time. Do you have suggestions to pump up my pumpkin pie? How about adding a dash of smoked paprika? Chocolate in the base? 

Recipe: https://madamescientist.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/pumping-up-pumpkin-pie/

50 canned pumpkin recipes: http://goo.gl/Trmr4J

Posted in Rajini Rao | 72 Comments

Pumping up Pumpkin Pie

Posted on October 13, 2013 by madamescientist

IMG_2643

My postdoctoral advisor, Carolyn Slayman, could strike fear into us by the deceptively mild statement..”Wouldn’t it be nice..?” We all knew what that meant. At least another couple of months of experiments, if we were lucky. Twenty years later, I will confess to pumping up science. Just when my lab folk think they have a story neatly wrapped up, topped with a colorful title and shiny journal to target, I have no qualms in raising the bar on expectations up another notch. It’s the same with recipes. Who can resist the urge to dress up a nice but bland sauce, sneak in more spices or fiddle with the fixings? So when a collection of 50 canned pumpkin recipes came my way, I considered it only the start of a culinary excursion.

Take for example, the Pumpkin Alfredo sauce: whisk together a cup each of pumpkin puree and light cream, season with salt, pepper and grated nutmeg, and heat through. Nice, but surely there’s more? It needed some tang: in went a quick puree of sundried tomatoes in olive oil, with a sparse bunch of rosemary and sage scavenged from my fast fading fall garden. The little specks of deep red and bright green were a lovely addition. What, no vegetables? I folded in roasted florets of cauliflower to the penne with the pumpkin sauce. Topped it with crushed red pepper and parmesan cheese. Next time, I might try layering the pumpkin cream with no boil lasagne, fresh mozzarella and something yet to be determined. Consumed before digital capture, this one is worth repeating.

Now that I was on a pumpkin quest, pie loomed on the next horizon. I am not a pie person, however. So I settled for prudence and a recipe on the can of Libby’s pumpkin puree. It sounded easy enough, besides it’s been on the label since 1950!

IMG_2649

  • For the filling, mix a can of pumpkin puree, a can of evaporated milk, half cup sugar and two eggs. Season with powdered cinnamon and cardamom, and a pinch of salt.
  • For the crust, I turned to my trusty crusty Graham cracker base: crush about a dozen of them in a food processor, add half a stick of melted butter and half cup sugar. Pat into a 9″ pie pan and bake for 12 min in a 325F oven. Easy!

Now pour the filling into baked crust, and return to the oven, turning up the temperature to a sizzling 425F for 15 min. Then turn it back down to 350F for another 40 min. Poke to see if done. Confronted with a gash on the smooth and glistening pie surface, I devised some dressing: sprinkle walnut bits around the edge and arrange some pecan pieces strategically as covering. Return to oven for another 10 minutes so the nuts get lightly toasted.

Serve with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar and a scoop of your favorite ice cream. The creamy smoothness contrasted nicely with the crunchy cracker base and the nutty goodness on top. Although my prudency was rewarded with a perfectly pleasing pumpkin pie, I have a hankering to veer from the straight and narrow next time. How about adding a dash of smoked paprika?

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fall colors 191

Posted in Dessert, science, Vegetarian | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Fiddle-de-dee: The male fiddler crab is a fine example of how evolutionary pressure can select an exaggerated…

Posted on October 13, 2013 by madamescientist

Fiddle-de-dee: The male fiddler crab is a fine example of how evolutionary pressure can select an exaggerated physical trait: while one claw is small and used for feeding, the other is grossly enlarged, reaching up to 2/3 of his body weight! The female has symmetrical, small claws. So, does size matter? 

✤ Ornament vs. Armament: The large claw of the male fiddler crab is a sexual ornament, like the feathers of a peacock. With it, he waves flirtatiously at the susceptible female, enticing her to his sand burrow. The larger and more conspicuous his claw, the greater his chance at mating success. It is also an effective weapon, used to threaten and wage battles with competing males. But these are competing demands: large and light claws may be waved at lower energy costs, whereas heavy claws with powerful muscles are better in fights. Studies show that claws evolved to optimize fitness in both mating and fighting (REF: http://goo.gl/n00sZa)

✤ Keeping Up Appearances: In a study performed upon a beach in Zanzibar, Tanzania, scientists tethered a female crab by super-glueing a thread to her carapace and anchoring it to a spike in the sand. If she was viewed by a solo male, a friendly waving at a leisurely pace of 11.5 waves/min ensued. But in the presence of male competition, his waving became more urgent, at 16.5 waves/min! (REF: http://goo.gl/ME1wW5). Watch this little guy seemingly inspired by the Village People 🙂 YMCA crab dance with music

✤ Honesty is Not the Best Policy: When a male fiddler loses his major claw, he regenerates a new one of similar size but much weaker fighting ability. Studies have shown that the male can bluff his way through fights with the weaker claw, in a form of dishonest signaling. This unfair advantage presumably makes up for the costs of claw regeneration. (REF: http://goo.gl/OQNfB7)

✤ A Cool Tool: If you think you now know all there is about the fiddler crab claw, consider this. Scientists measured body temperature of fiddler crabs subjected to a heat lamp and showed that the large claw actually acts as a heat sink, allowing the male to cool off more quickly with it. On a hot beach, this advantage may help offset the high energy costs of his exaggerated “male ornament”. (REF: http://goo.gl/EpxrUq )

✤ GIF:  http://headlikeanorange.tumblr.com/post/49121046623

#ScienceSunday      #HappyBirthdayHalfPintBuddy 

Birthday shout-out to Buddhini Samarasinghe !

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A Part of the Puzzle: NHE9 and Autism

Posted on October 7, 2013 by madamescientist

A Part of the Puzzle: NHE9 and Autism

❑ People with autism have difficulty with social interaction, language delay and stereotyped interests or repetitive behaviors that vary widely in severity between individuals. Currently diagnosed at rates of 1 in 88 children, autism spectrum disorders are an urgent public health issue. 

❑ Autism is one of the most inheritable of neurodevelopmental disorders. We know this from twin studies, family trees and rare chromosomal abnormalities. But it is also the most complex – because no single gene contributes to more than 1% of autism cases. We describe this as extremely heterogenic.  Most likely, these myriad genes impact a few common pathways, such as signaling between nerve cells. Although geneticists trawl through massive banks of DNA sequence and clinical data to uncover candidate genes, each one still has to be analyzed individually to separate the chaff from the grain- harmless variations in DNA (polymorphisms) from disease-causing mutations. 

❑ In a study just published we focused on a gene that had been flagged as a suspect in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, addiction and epilepsy as well as autism spectrum disorders. We knew that the gene made a transporter named NHE9, that shuttled positively charged particles of hydrogen, sodium and potassium into and out of cellular compartments called endosomes. By regulating the acidity inside these compartments, we showed that NHE9 controlled traffic to the cell surface and delivery of cargo (such as the neurotransmitter glutamate) critical for communication between nerve cells. 

❑ We drew upon decades of basic research in simpler models like bacteria and yeast to develop a structure of the transporter protein (inset in the image). To do this, we used evolutionary conservation analysis to predict if variants would be harmless or disruptive of the protein structure and function (simply, highly conserved portions of the protein are critical for function, whereas the more variable regions are often not). Using yeast as a model, we quickly (and cheaply!) screened through mutations to find those that resulted in loss of transport function. Then we extended our findings to the more complex neurobiological model: glial cells from mouse brains. We chose to study these cells because they are critical for mopping up neurotransmitter glutamate from nerve junctions, and we knew that patient brains showed elevations of glutamate, which tend to spark seizures. We hope this systematic screening process will be useful in the near future when gene sequences are routinely available for everyone, so we can determine risk levels in patients. Also, our study sheds a spotlight on the importance of trafficking in neurological disorders, that could be a target for future therapy.

News Flash: Today’s Nobel prize announcement in Physiology and Medicine celebrates three scientists who contributed to our understanding of cellular trafficking: Randy Schekman (Berkeley), Jim Rothman (Yale) and Tom Sudhof (Stanford). More: http://www.nobelprize.org/

Our News Story: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130930114101.htm

REF: Kalyan C. Kondapalli, Anniesha Hack, Maya Schushan, Meytal Landau, Nir Ben-Tal, Rajini Rao. Functional evaluation of autism-associated mutations in NHE9. Nature Communications, 2013; 4 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3510

#ScienceEveryday

Posted in Rajini Rao | Tagged | 40 Comments

The Dance of Virulence

Posted on September 28, 2013 by madamescientist

The Dance of Virulence

Double Agent: The fungus Candida albicans lives a double life. It co-exists as a harmless “commensal” inside our mouth, gut and urino-genital tract. Occasionally, it flares up as thrush, treatable with over the counter medication. But given the opportunity to breach our defenses, Candida can cross into the bloodstream and switch from peaceful coexistence to attack mode, producing long filaments that dig into tissues and destroy them. You can see the yeast-like buds germinating into hyphae on the left image. On the right, hyphae labeled with green fluorescent protein insert between intestinal cells (marked in red, with blue nuclei) in a macabre dance of virulence. This is particularly dangerous to people with weak immune systems (HIV/AIDS, cancer) who have less than 50% survival rates with systemic candidiasis. 

More than a Junk Yard: In a study just published, we showed that the pH of the fungal vacuole (seen as dark holes inside the fungi on left) was crucial for the switch from yeast to hyphae. This was a surprising finding, because the vacuole is best known as the cell’s recycling center – a junk yard. But our previous study showed that an popular antifungal drug, fluconazole, blocked the vacuole from becoming acid, leading us to suspect that this may be important for fungal virulence. We focused on the V-ATPase, a cellular pump that has wide-reaching functions and acidifies many parts of the fungal cell. One component or subunit of this pump exists in duplicate forms, coded by two separate genes. Inactivating either one has no effect because the other one serves as a back-up, compensating every function – except one. We found that the vacuole exclusively depends on one version of the duplicated genes to become acidic. Without this one crucial function, Candida could no longer morph from yeast to hyphae. It also lost all ability to kill infected mice. In contrast, mice injected with the healthy Candida strain succumbed to infection.

A Chink in the Armor: The study revealed a vulnerability that could be exploited by targeting the vacuole’s pH, rendering Candida harmless while potentially posing little risk to infected patients. For example, FDA-approved drugs known to alter cellular pH could be repurposed to treat fungal infections. This is important because there are relatively few classes of antifungals known, and it is particularly dangerous when fungi become drug resistant. That is why we are always looking for new chinks in the fungal armor. This may be one. 

News Report: Science Daily “Possible way to turn fungus from foe to friend” http://goo.gl/mtXLGM

REF: C. Patenaude, Y. Zhang, B. Cormack, J. Kohler, R. Rao. Essential Role for Vacuolar Acidification in Candida albicans Virulence. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2013; 288 (36): 26256 DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M113.494815

#ScienceEveryday    #ScienceSunday  

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RIP Kevin Staff

Posted on September 22, 2013 by madamescientist

RIP Kevin Staff

I am incredibly sad that Kevin Staff , my long time collaborator in generating science posts on G+ has passed away. Kevin was much too young to leave us. He was an extraordinarily creative artist who specialized in unique styles of gif conversion. Although we never met, I often emailed him with a link to a movie or YouTube video that caught my eye, asking if he could convert it to a gif for a science post. He unfailingly responded with generosity and patience, often redoing them until I was happy. I used to joke that his turnaround time was so rapid that it put pressure on me to write the darn text!

Please join me in celebrating his art and his generous spirit.  And in conveying our condolences to his friends and family.

Here is just a small sampling of Kevin’s work, there are too many for me to pick favorites:

Fastest spring in nature: Vorticella http://goo.gl/Jw4hQk

Walking heads: kinesin http://goo.gl/amYA3P

London calling: http://goo.gl/MbY71j

Chris Pirillo, the science experiment http://goo.gl/YMM3bI  

Originally shared by Regina Guimard

It is with sadness that I am informing you the death of Kevin Staff 

on Thursday, September 12 in Loma Linda, California. 

He was known by his unique animated gifs. On his posts,  he expressed a passion for Coffee, Photography, Arts, Architecture, Design, Science, motivational quotes and travelling. 

He will be deeply missed by his family, friends and members of his circles. 

Please join me for a moment’s thought in remembrance of a true gentleman, caring person and wonderful human being. 

#kevinstaff   #coffee   #animatedgifs   #gifs   #geek  

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