X-Wing Lifts Off...

Pure awesomeness.

Click the picture for the incredible video.

















Pipette tip to Pharyngula.

Evolution Of Fresh Brainz

Tagged by John, our friendly evolutionary middleman!

I have to write about how my blog has evolved since it started on 11 July 2006, and provide 5 blog entries that demonstrate the evolution.

Personally I think that Fresh Brainz (and its writer) is still floundering around trying to find a direction, so it's too early to see any clear pattern emerging.

But Brian of Laelaps would say that we are all future "transitional" fossils - the meandering process is important - so it's a good idea to track those random changes that have occurred in the past 15 months.

1. Fresh Brainz started short and sweet:

Bon appetit! I meant the strawberry, of course.

This non-sequitor of a beginning and unintended zombie reference hints at the wanton aimlessness that was to follow.

The main purpose of Fresh Brainz has always been entertainment first and education a vanishingly distant second. Inspired by the disjointed British science fluff show Brainiac and the unimitable bawdy writing style of blogger queen Xiaxue, I attempted to bring about the unholy union of science and pop culture in a blog.

The result was (and still is) utterly illegitimate.

2. Two months later, some semblance of organization emerged as the first running series was launched - stories of the second best:

In Singapore there is a well known social attitude called Kiasu (from Hokkien - Kiah Soo, Chinese - 怕输). It literally means "scared to lose", and it refers an excessively competitive attitude at the expense of basic social graces like courtesy and respect for others...

I suppose it isn't surprising that Fresh Brainz roots for the underdog - something that starts with a "F" is certainly not going to be an exemplar of excellence like things that start with an "A".

The failures, the second best, not to forget downtrodden, misguided, perverse and stark raving mad will always have a special place here.

Now you can see why the future seems so uncertain.

3. Not every serial feature that appeared persists till today. For example, the misadventures of Freddie only lasted 7 episodes:

Birth Of Freddie






Again the inspiration for this came from elsewhere - the delightfully obscure Bunny webcomic.

Freddie was intended as a regular fixture to Fresh Brainz. However despite great efforts to publicize Freddie comics, blog stats showed that he never became popular, probably because nobody really understood my insider jokes.

As a result Freddie became one of a few regular items that was completely eliminated by negative selection.

4. Due to the fact that most (over 70%) Fresh Brainz readers come from North America and Western Europe, the subject matter and language in this blog primarily cater to this international audience.

Despite my best efforts, less than six months into science blogging, readership had waned to such a sorry level that I was ready to give up. For a change I decided to focus more on Singaporean science and wrote this post:

I still remember the smell of the medicated oil and the whirring sound of the generator. The year is 1984. I was a little boy accompanying my grandmother to a mobile clinic providing traditional Chinese medical services such as Tui Na and acupuncture to the elderly...

Unexpectedly, this post would help turn the blog around, though not immediately.

Two months later, a war of words between two prominent leaders over the direction of biomedical research in Singapore would help to raise interest in this subject.

5. One of the newest regular feature here is Fresh Science daily reads:

Fresh Brainz is proud to bring you a brand new feature: Daily reads from the science 'o sphere! Science blog readers may know (and science bloggers definitely know) that good science blogs aren't easy to find.We do the hard work of scouring the globe for the meatiest science articles, so you don't have to...

Aggregating the best posts together in a convenient place clearly wasn't my idea. I learnt this format from the now defunct sociopolitical blog Intelligent Singaporean, which was a blog aggregator that also contained original articles.

Using the Fresh Science format, I can update regular readers on the juiciest news in the science'o sphere - often written by less prominent bloggers with remarkable style and content.

Heh.

Ok the real reason it exists is so that I can post regularly even when afflicted by the writer's block, or bitten by the lazy-ass bug. Man, it's impossible to fool a Fresh Brainz reader!

So now it's time to tag a hapless victim... I'm really curious about how Bayblab degenerated into the "smutty" state it's in today, so off goes the arrow!

*TWANG!*

Fresh Jobs 5 October 2007

Laboratory Technologist Position in Bioengineering

The Division of Bioengineering’s mission is to contribute to the nation’s development in Biomedical Sciences through the establishment of world-class Bioengineering Research and Educational programmes. A cluster comprising nine bioengineering laboratories has been set up on campus to facilitate the cross-fertilisation of ideas and foster interdisciplinary Bioengineering teaching, learning and research.

The Division of Bioengineering invites applications for laboratory technologist position for Teaching Laboratories.

You will provide laboratory and technical support for teaching-related activities such as running laboratory sessions and assist in training students and researchers in essential laboratory techniques. In addition, you will oversee the maintenance for equipment and procurement of consumables for research/equipment as well as support in other assign duties.

Requirements:

- Bachelor or Master Degree in one of the following fields: Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering or Life-Sciences.

- Good communication and organization skills.

- Strong knowledge and practical skills in Molecular Biology, Surface Chemistry, Cell culture, Bioanalytical Methods and Microscopy (Optical and AFM).

- Able to work independently to plan, test and supervise Teaching Lab experiments.

Remuneration will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. Interested candidates are invited to send in their detailed resume together with copies of all supporting documents and a passport-sized photograph to:

c/o Ms Teresa Nah
Division of Bioengineering
Faculty of Engineering
National University of Singapore
9, Engineering Drive 1
Block E3A #04-15
Singapore 117576

Fax : (65) 872-3069 Email : bienahwc@nus.edu.sg
Website: www.bioeng.nus.edu.sg

We regret that only shortlisted applicants will be notified.

Fresh Science 5 October 2007

We do the hard work of superpoking the globe for the sheepiest science articles - so you don't have to.

Belief doesn't protect you from being maimed by swords (Aetiology - USA)
Er... it's just a flesh wound!

October 4, 1957 (Bad Astronomy - USA)
Beep beep beep beep beep...

Mammoth hair yielding DNA (Cosmic Afterthoughts - Canada)
It's always about Manny... nobody cares about sloths!

Space bacteria (The Biology Refugia - Singapore)
Hitching a ride, hitching a ride...

New Hadrosaur! (The Ethical Palaeontologist - UK)
Monumental discovery by dino-detectives!*














*Sorry Julia.

Interesting Animals

Tagged by Julia, our friendly neighbourhood palaeontologist!

An interesting animal I had

I'm not into keeping pets (for fear that one day alien overlords will tie me up to a wooden post naked and force me to bite rubber toys... wait a sec) but my family has kept a few small animals such as birds and fish.















One interesting fish that we had was this little dude. She was a feisty fish that went around attacking other fish and chasing them away from food.

We called her Mrs. C in honour of a particularly tyrannical teacher who afflicted one of my siblings for a few years. To stop her from attacking the other fish, we installed a plastic barrier to separate them.

But it was too late - her injured and starved aquarium-mate soon died.

It sounds funny now, but at that time we really hated her, as if she had really become the embodiment of the human Mrs. C. But yet, she continued to live on for months and months, managed to lay many eggs and eventually died of old age.

An interesting animal I ate

That would be one of these.















I bit through the transparent part of the candy and then nibbled cautiously at the mealworm. It had a flaky, powdery texture and no distinctive taste.

I wasn't brave, just bored.

An interesting animal in a museum

Opabinia at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, why of course.














Could anyone at Lucasfilm have imagined an alien species with two rows of swimming appendages, five eyes and a vacuum-cleaner mouth that can grab prey between its sharp, merciless spines?

Reality is always more bizarre.

I bet it used to make "sluurp-sluurp" sounds just like Noo Noo!

An interesting thing I did with or to an animal

This crab spider tried to hitch a ride into the lab on my T-shirt one day.















I trapped it in a Milo cup, observed it for a few hours and let it go in the garden outside.

Sounds boring? It is.

But can you imagine what would have happened if it succeeded in infiltrating the lab?

Instead of being an ordinary disillusioned grad student - I could have become Spiderman!

Stand aside Tobey McGuire. I want Kirsten Dunst.

An interesting animal in its natural habitat

















No... erm... I mean... fireflies! Fireflies are cool because they make dots and dashes of light while flying through the night, like some kind of Morse code.

I first saw them while on a stargazing trip at Pulau Ubin, one of the offshore islands northeast of mainland Singapore.

In addition, the protein that makes them light up is called luciferase - a commonly used tool in molecular biology.

Lucifer-ase. How much more evil can an animal get?

Simply awesome.