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30.11.03
Thurs i have pdp. Evening shd be ok. anything. Do we want to eat? Watch movie?
logged by Alvin at 8:41:00 PM
28.11.03Do what? Go where? Eat what? Eat where? Meet where? Meet when?
This time Alvin will organise since ur free the whole week. :P
logged by AidanWu at 3:20:00 PM
i am on duty on tuesday. not free on friday. so that leaves thursday?
logged by AidanWu at 11:14:00 AM
27.11.03ya I'm free all evenings next week.
logged by Alvin at 9:49:00 PM
Hey Yeelin so how was ur exam? Hope it went well..
Good luck for ur CA Alvin!
logged by AidanWu at 9:16:00 AM
26.11.03This is cool~
__________________________________________________________________
Nano-transistor self-assembles using biology
NewScientist/20Nov2003
A functional electronic nano-device has been manufactured using biological self-assembly for the first time.
Israeli scientists harnessed the construction capabilities of DNA and the electronic properties of carbon nanotubes to create the self-assembling nano-transistor. The work has been greeted as "outstanding" and "spectacular" by nanotechnology experts.
The push to shrink electronic circuits to ever smaller dimensions is relentless. Carbon nanotubes, which have remarkable electronic properties and only about one nanometre in diameter, have been touted as a highly promising material to help drive miniaturisation. But manufacturing nano-scale transistors has proved both time-consuming and labour-intensive.
The team, at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, overcame these problems with a two step process. First they used proteins to allow carbon nanotubes to bind to specific sites on strands of DNA. They then turned the remainder of the DNA molecule into a conducting wire.
Proof of principle
"DNA is very good at building things in molecular biology, but unfortunately, it does not conduct electricity. We had to get a metal conductor on the DNA," explains physicist Erez Braun, who led the research.
"This is spectacular work," says Cees Dekker, a nanoscience expert at Delft University in the Netherlands. "It demonstrates that it's possible to use biology to build an inorganic device that works."
"But while it is a first step towards molecular computing based on this type of DNA configuration, we are still many years way from large scale self-assembly electronic devices, such as computers," Dekker cautions.
Bacterial protein
Braun's team began their manufacturing process by coating a central part of a long DNA molecule with proteins from an E. coli bacterium. Next, graphite nanotubes coated with antibodies were added, which bound onto the protein.
After this, a solution of silver ions was added. The ions chemically attach to the phosphate backbone of the DNA, but only where no protein has attached. Aldehyde then reduces the ions to silver metal, forming the foundation of a conducting wire.
To complete the device, gold was added. This nucleates on the silver and creates a fully conducting wire. The end result is a carbon nanotube device connected a both ends by a gold and silver wire.
The device operates as a transistor when a voltage applied across the substrate is varied. This causes the nanotubes to either bridge the gap between the wires - completing the circuit - or not.
Out of 45 nanoscale devices created in three batches, almost a third emerged as self-assembled transistors. They work at room temperature and the only restriction for future devices is that the components must be compatible with the biological reactions and the metal-plating process.
The team have already connected two of the devices together, using the biological technique. "The same process could allow us to create elaborate self-assembling DNA sculptures and circuitry," says Braun.
Journal reference: Science (vol 302, p 1380)
Gaia Vince
logged by AidanWu at 10:03:00 AM
22.11.03Okay just let us know
logged by AidanWu at 7:30:00 PM
oh okie...hmmmm then when?
i am free on the 3rd dec evening..duty off.
logged by AidanWu at 12:33:00 PM
21.11.03hmmm separate one from the 29th one or what?
logged by AidanWu at 9:46:00 PM
I haven watched! Gd Gd when u all wanna watch ask me along!
logged by Alvin at 9:15:00 PM
20.11.03hey hey so how's everything everyone?
hang on hang on...it'll be over soon =)
logged by AidanWu at 10:02:00 PM
19.11.03rite gd luck yeelin... my next ca is a killer. 2 tracks and so many topics.. think no time to finish liao.
haha will do it after ca =]
logged by Alvin at 7:08:00 PM
18.11.03
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I forgot my nick :P
logged by AidanWu at 12:43:00 PM
17.11.03
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logged by AidanWu at 12:15:00 PM
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logged by AidanWu at 12:12:00 PM
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logged by AidanWu at 12:11:00 PM
14.11.03For Fun!
_______________________________________________
Sociable baboons make better mums
New Scientist 13 November 03
NewScientist.com news service
Grooming between females is relaxing and may even boost their immune systems (Image: Dorothy Cheney)
Sociable mums make much better mothers than less gregarious ones, suggests a new study of baboons.
Baby baboons born to outgoing mums who enjoy hanging out with other females are considerably more likely to survive their crucial first year than infants born to less friendly mothers, reveals the behavioural study.
Primates and monkeys are unique among animals in the intense social bonds they form. These bonds are thought to have been crucial in the evolution of primates, including humans. Behavioural ecologists have assumed that extrovert behaviour in primates boosts survival by generally making group life easier.
But now US biologists have shown for the first time a direct link between having friends and reproductive survival. "What they have been able to show here is that there are real impacts on the lifetime reproductive output of females," says Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Liverpool, UK.
Susan Alberts, at Duke University in North Carolina, and one of the research team was surprised by the significance of sociability. "Eight per cent of infant survival is explained by sociality," she told New Scientist. That is "striking", she explains, because "we wouldn't expect to have a large amount of variation that is deterministic - things that a mother can actually control - it's amazing."
Long view
The team analysed data on wild baboons (Papio cynocephalus) living at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya. These baboons are highly sociable and live in large mixed sex groups. Females live in the area they were born forming matrilineal hierarchies, while males leave when the mature.
The researchers amassed 34,000 observations of 108 females over 16 years. They then compared the behavioural data from the observations to records of births and deaths.
Babies born to friendly mums, who enjoyed grooming and lazing around close to their buddies, were much more likely to make it to their first birthday than those born to loner mums. If a baboon survives to one year, the equivalent of a human five-year-old, it has a strong chance of making it to adulthood and breeding.
Alberts says that, in a good year, the average infant mortality rate at one year old would be about 10 per cent. In a bad year, as many as 35 per cent of baboon babies might die.
"But the actual numbers for each female varies a lot," she explains. "More sociable females bring it down. The less sociable ones may not be able to cope in a bad year, and for them it may even be higher than 35 per cent."
Stress buster
Friendliness may boost infant survival by helping to combat stress in the baboon mums. Grooming is extremely relaxing for primates, slowing their heart rates and sending them to sleep. It can even induce the release of pleasurable endorphins.
It may also give "direct material benefits" says the team. For example, females clubbing together may provide offspring with protection from harassment and better access to food and shelter.
Dunbar and Alberts both agree the findings have relevance for humans. Previous studies have shown that the size of social networks among human parents influences the health and mortality of their children, says Dunbar.
"We are primates, and we are really sociable primates," says Alberts. "Humans who are more socially isolated have worse health. So nourish your social connections - nurture your friendships."
Journal reference: Science (vol 302, p 1231)
logged by AidanWu at 8:23:00 PM
haha thanks...well I dunno if they'll buy the plot..if they don't it'll just be UCSD for me..or worse still Imperial lor...
yah I'll send it to you alvin the next time I am in camp.
logged by AidanWu at 8:09:00 PM
Send me also! Or post it here!
logged by Alvin at 10:33:00 AM
13.11.03Oh yah hor..I forgot to send 'cos the only copy I had of it was in camp and I always only remember abt it at home...=)
Just sent to you, but then the thing is I already sent out the application yesterday...dateline's approaching..
logged by AidanWu at 1:40:00 PM
11.11.03Interesting article on testing the accuracy of memories
___________________________________________________________
False memories have characteristic brain activity
NewScientist/09Nov2003
A study has revealed characteristic activity in the brain that predicts whether a memory is accurate or false. The difference occurs at the time of recall, suggesting that a test for false memory might one day be possible.
Daniel Schacter and Scott Slotnick, at Harvard University, Massachusetts, found that sensory areas of the brain, rather than the regions thought to deal specifically with memory, are more active when people recall information correctly.
The researchers asked volunteers to try to recall whether a particular shape had been in a previously viewed group, while scanning their brains. When people correctly recognised a shape, a visual area called the ventral temporal cortex was more active than when people mistakenly identified a shape that was in fact only similar.
Schacter also found a similar effect with word lists, where auditory regions of the brain became more active during accurate rather than false recognition. "There seems to be an additional feature of a memory that is present for something you have already experienced," says Schacter.
Unconscious memory
Intriguingly, the brain scans also suggest that our unconscious or "implicit" memory might be more accurate than what we consciously recall.
Preliminary studies suggest that the extra sensory activity happened when people saw the same shape, regardless of whether they correctly said they saw it, says Schacter.
Yoko Okado, who is researching false memory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, says some kind of lie detector might one day pick out such differences in brain activity. "While true and false memories are processed similarly in the brain, there are some key distinctive features that need to be explored further," she says.
However, Schacter points out that their work currently averages brain activity over many trials, so detecting the accuracy of a single memory is not yet possible.
The research was presented at the Society for Neuroscience's meeting in New Orleans on Saturday.
Helen Phillips, New Orleans
logged by AidanWu at 4:41:00 PM
9.11.03Hiya~
Yah...I've heard of it but I don't like bakuteh..so never eaten there before. But Balestier got quite a lot of good food..but hidden here and there I think..
Glad you enjoyed the concert! =)
logged by AidanWu at 10:39:00 AM
Haha glad u all enjoyed the concert.. for me, mebbe next time! Din play mahjong, but went to balestier bakuteh and sat ard until past midnight.. wah I think I'm very suaku, never heard of such a place, I'm sure shengyong at least wd have heard of it or possibly went there b4 rite? Anyway at the shop they had photos of celebrities like Jacky Wu, SHE, Energy, 5566, Li An, Chow Yun Fat and other local personalities eating at the shop... so it is quite famous.
logged by Alvin at 2:15:00 AM
7.11.03Yup just for the record, it's at Raffles Place MRT...forgot that it's much nearer to Lau Pa Sat than Tanjong Pagar...cos usually when I go to SCH I drop off at TP..
logged by AidanWu at 8:41:00 PM
Yupz tmr at 5. My pdp for tmr is cancelled AGAIN.. but I'm not complaining anymore, juz as well dat I can sleep in a while longer becos I'm so used to NOT having pdp on saturday mornings =]
logged by Alvin at 6:32:00 PM
haha it's okay one lah...the blog is for you to blog whenever you feel like it. hope you don't see it as an obligation...really.
anyway it's quite interesting to see pple bothering to login and blog abt themselves (esp zhewei and qiyue) to keep us in touch with them. you don't really have to reply if you've nothing to say....
anyway...you can feel free to put up some crappy stuff that you wanna share too~
hey tomorrow set right? 5pm at tanjong pagar mrt...cos 5:30pm may be too late to eat at a leisurely pace and conquer all the stalls.
logged by AidanWu at 8:56:00 AM
5.11.03haha ehh i didn't mean that!! i just take it that ur too busy...^__^
logged by AidanWu at 8:24:00 PM
4.11.03Cheers for both of u for finishing ur work.. sound so ecstatic!
Thx shengyong for making the blog nicer.
logged by Alvin at 11:31:00 PM
Hahahaha congrats!!
Btw Yeelin can u give me the authority to make changes to the 79 blog? wanna revamp it and make it nicer~
just go to settings, members and select.
yep yep~
logged by AidanWu at 9:08:00 PM
3.11.03Haha I am like SO glad that the essay is finally done!! Wee~~~~~~~
Looking forward to seeing you guys sat~
logged by AidanWu at 8:30:00 PM
2.11.03Sure! =]
logged by Alvin at 8:06:00 PM
hey so set ah we will have dinner at Lau Pa Sat on 8th November 2003. We shall meet at Tanjong Pagar MRT at 5:30pm sharp, and then proceed to march towards the food streets around the intended destination. Upon surrounding the target in general, we shall survey the food stalls and select specific key targets which we will then zoom in upon and raid the daylights out of it. And upon finishing the food, we shall declare the target to be devoid of any WMD - weapons of mass diarrhoea.
Peace.
logged by AidanWu at 4:52:00 PM
1.11.03Haiz it was nothing much really. Issue solved liao. Really thx for ur concern yl..=] Not dat I'm used to such things happening to me, but prolly becos of my experiences in ns, I've learnt not to let myself get so affected by such things, to take a step backwards and not plunge headlong into it.. can only say dat human relationships r so complex and hard to handle. See i'm getting long-winded.
We shd meet up leh! b4 Paul comes back or when he comes back at least.
logged by Alvin at 10:04:00 PM
harlow~
haha.
suddenly felt like laughing. anyway yeah it's ok then i think i won't go for the volunteer thingy also...but u wanna meet up for dinner before the concert?
emotional baggages...we all have them in some form or another, it depends on how much u let urself be affected by them, whether it is worth being affected or not is not for outsiders to say, so u have to ask urself too, what your priorities are: worrying abt things, or getting on with life and keep the grievances till ur free to sort them out thoroughly, not half here half there and getting nowhere in the end...hope u get what i meanT! =)
logged by AidanWu at 9:45:00 PM
Hey yeelin u sound so stressed. Must take things easy girl... juz throw all the baggages aside and sleep over it. Wat I do!
Midterms r ard the corner rite? Take care.
logged by Alvin at 1:53:00 AM