The Emperor Of Scent

Hi.

The post has been removed, because it is now published at Bitesize Bio! :D

Cheers!

June 8th

This is a delayed post. Why? Because it should have been written on the 8th. But I was succumbing to Sleep by the time I got the 'OMG! I have to write a post' itch. So I made a quick note of what I wanted to write. And here it is:

The 8th was an exciting day. Not exciting in the conventional sense (I get excited over trifling events.) Anyway, I learnt several sundry things. Here they are with the person who handed down the knowledge attributed in each

1) What's your Uterus - Hertz? (Anonick) Mine is 361 nano hertz.

2) Two excellent homeopathy and alternative medicine debunking posts by Phil Plait.

3) How to make bhendi bhaji. (Mom)

4) How to make a Bloody Mary (Jibin)

5) The Law Of Diminishing Marginal Utility (& how it applies to drinking a Bloody Mary) (Jibin)

6) How to make paper MIG 21s (Jibin)

7) How to cycle (First attempt, have to learn to move around in IISc) (Dad & bro)

8) Let me Google that for you (Aditya & Srikanth) LOL! Can't wait till someone asks me a silly q now.

9) Snow Leopard @ WWDC 2009 (Aditya) We really need the Finder update

10) Why entropy isn't a subset of energy. (Anonick)

11) How one can paint a nude dispassionately. (Achal)

12) How to retrieve and save You Tube videos from the cache (me) here. I always knew this was possible. Never got to finding out.

13) Anti-Islam documentary, Fitna (Srikanth)

Ah, that's all. I should scoot now. The pizza will be at the door any moment.

Toodles,

Firefox Add-ons: Part 2

Over a year ago, I began a post on my favourite FF add-ons. Here, I continue to list them, in no particular order.

1) Cooliris: Stunningly smooth. It is just SO bee-yew-ti-ful. I think it beats iPhoto aesthetics, which is saying something. It's great for scanning images on Google Images & now it even allows me to look at pics on my hard disk.

2) Locationbar: One of those really tiny but really awesome add-ons. It 'linkifies' your url, so that one click directs you to the home page of the site you stumbled upon.

3) Copy Plain Text: Copies the selected text as plain text saving you from the formatting nightmare. (Copy>Paste in Notepad>Copy>Paste in Word). You can even make it your default copy function.

4) UnMHT: If there was anything I missed about IE/Maxthon, it was this. When you save web pages to your hard disk as .html, each page creates it's own folder with all the embedded graphics blah blah. And the page won't open independently. This can be bypassed by saving it as an MHTML file, which saves the whole web page, all baggage included, as ONE file. This option wasn't available on FF for very long. Finally someone got around to make an add-on that works. :D

5) Xmarks: Previously known as Foxmarks. You are probably using it. Non-invasive, seamless backup + syncing of your FF bookmarks across computers. (It has some social bookmarking feature too now, but I just inactivated that). Saved me a panic attack many a times. I get palpitations at the very thought of what I'll do if my bookmarks get erased. The reason being, I save all my research work as bookmarks. I don't use Zotero/Google Notebook and the like. I simply save all relevant tabs (>Bookmark all tabs) in a separate folder lets say "Synthetic Biology". Next time I want to refer to it> Open all in tabs. As Xmarks syncs across OS, I don't have to bother about whether I surf on the PC/Mac.

6) Screengrab: Takes a screenshot. Period. Nothing very spectacular unless you are a Mac user (because Mac has a harebrained scheme of saving screenshots as .tiff).

7) Firesizer: I cannot believe I took so long to find this one. I resizes your screen. I use it especially to make sure my blog works fine on the 800 X 600 resolution.

8) Stylish: To quote, "Stylish is to CSS what Greasemonkey is to JavaScript". What I loved about this is that it allows you to preview the styles before you install. I am new to Stylish myself, but I found three neat uses:

• about: blank brushed: Simply gives you a nice grey brushed background for about: blank. There are dozen similar styles available, one even lets you choose you use your selected picture as the background.

• Google reader OS X Style: Finally, I found a great Greader theme. I know a lot of people use the Better Greader themes. I am a big Lifehacker fan, but the 'Better' add-ons are pretty lousy in my opinion.
  

• Add to Bookmarks Plus: Very useful. It displays 'keyword' and 'description' field in the 'Add to Bookmarks' box.

9) Wolfram Alpha Google: Nod to Aditya for finding this. It came just as I was wondering if the Wolfram toolbar was worth the screen real estate. It displays Wolfram search results in Google search. Honestly, I have yet much rummaging to do with respect to Wolfram.

That's all. I know I should make it 10, a nice, contented, round number. But I don't have a 10th one. Any suggestions?

A Word List

Hello. This is one of those things I had 'wasted' time on as I struggled to study for the exams.

I was browsing through the Mac dictionary and made a sticky of some cute words that begin with 'pas'. Here they are:

1) passe-partout: noun: From French, literally "pass everywhere"

• A master key.

2) pastiche: noun: from Italian pasticcio "medley, pastry cake"

• an incongruous combination of materials, forms, motifs, etc., taken from different sources; hodgepodge.

• a literary, musical, or artistic piece consisting wholly or chiefly of motifs or techniques borrowed from one or more sources.

3) passel: noun: Represents a pronounciation variant of 'parcel'

• a large group of people or things of indeterminate number; a pack : a passel of journalists.

4) paseo: noun: Spanish literally 'step'

• a leisurely walk or stroll, esp. one taken in the evening; a promenade (used with reference to the tradition of taking such a walk in Spain or Spanish-speaking communities).

• (also paseo de cuadrillas) a parade of bullfighters into the arena at the beginning of a bullfight.

• a plaza or walkway for strolling.
  

5) Pascal's wager: noun [in sing. ]: Philosophy

• the argument that it is in one's own best interest to behave as if God exists, since the possibility of eternal punishment in hell outweighs any advantage of believing otherwise.

What is Swine flu?

Swine flu is splashed all over the news and the Internet. I thought I should illuminate readers on how it actually works, because it is rather interesting.

Firstly, what's the big deal with influenza? Why don't we see similar pandemic outbreaks with let's say the Rabies virus, or the Measles virus? The answer lies in the structure.

Influenza virus is a spherical virus having two kinds of receptors on its surface coat which help it to infect a host: Haemagglutinin (H) & Neuraminidase (N). Think of it as a sphere with two kinds of embedded rods in it.

Accordingly, different strains of the virus are called H1N1, H3N2 etc. depending on the type of H and N rods they have. Inside this sphere, there is the nuclear material (RNA) of the virus. Here's the catch. Most bacteria and viruses have a single piece of DNA/RNA as their nuclear material. Influenza's nuclear material is split into 8 pieces or segments. These segments code for, amongst other things, those H and N rods. (Nucleic acids code for proteins remember?)

This 8-segmented genome property of influenza allows it to undergo a process called 'Antigenic shift' which is responsible for these sudden pandemics.

Here's how antigenic shift works:

Firstly, it occurs often in pigs, because pigs can be infected with two influenza strains at the same time (which is why we have 'swine' flu).

So lets say we have a pig 'The Empress' (nod to Wodehousians). The Empress has been infected with two strains of influenza, H1N4 and H4N1. Both the strains infect cells in the pig. They do this by

1) Using their H 'rods' to bind to the lung cells.

2) Entering the cells.

3) Releasing their RNA into the cells.

4) The RNA is multiplied to make many copies.

5) These many copies of RNA serve two purposes: One, they make new H and N rods and new coats. Two, they get packaged into these new coats (eight segments each) to make new complete viruses.

6) The cell bursts releasing new viruses that infect more cells

Now here's the awesome part:

Strain A (H1N4) and Strain B (H4N1) BOTH release their RNA. The viruses multiply in the cell and make four types of receptors: H1, N4 AND H4, N1. All these are floating in the cell. During the packaging, there's a mix up. The RNA segments of both strains mix up and get packed into the wrong coats i.e. of the OTHER strain.

This gives a new strain with H type 1 (from strain A) and N type 1 (from strain B). It is thus called H1N1.

All the vaccines for influenza were specific for H1N4 and H4N1. Similarly all the natural immunity we have is specific for those two only because we may have been exposed to it before. No vaccine is for H1N1 because it didn't exist before! So now, for the moment, the virus is invincible.

Well not exactly, some drugs still work for this new 2009 strain. Eg: Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and Zanamivir (Relenza) though it is resistant to Amantidine & Rimantidine.

Vaccines for the same are in development. The problem is viral vaccines take a month or so to make and then they have to pass a rigorous set of safety tests.


Addendum 1: Influenza isn't the only virus that has multiple segments. So do HIV and the Rotavirus (common cause of infantile diarrhoea, you must have seen the vaccine ad). However in Rotavirus the phenomenon is called 'reassortment' and in HIV 'recombination'. 'Antigenic shift' is a term solely for influenza. Now in rotavirus and HIV infection/reassortment/recombination doesn't occur between very genetically diverse strains, thus minimising the damage done by the recombined strains. This is because the new strain is still significantly similar to the two parent strains and is thus susceptible to a certain extant to previously used vaccines/drugs. I don't know why it doesn't occur. A probable guess is viral receptor interference.

Addendum 2: Whether the packaging is specific (taking one segment of each of the eight types) or random (randomly any 8 fragments are taken) is unknown. In the random process one would get only 1 functional virus for every 400 assembled. However, recent evidence indicates that the process might be partially specific.

Addendum 3: A little bit on how the drugs work. Oseltamivir and Zanamivir are neuraminidase inhibitors. You see, once the complete spherical viruses are ready to leave the cell, the H receptor still anchors them to the host cell. Here's where Neuraminidase (N) kicks in. It breaks the bond between H and the host cell, so that the virus can be free and infect neighbouring cells. Now these two drugs bind to N and inactivate it. So viruses remain attached to one cell and cant infect others.
Thus Oseltamivir & Zanamivir don't kill the virus, they just limit its spread. Something like 'damage control'

On the other hand Amantidine & Rimantidine bind to a protein called M2 on the virus. This protein is required for the virus to release its RNA into the cell. However, mutations in M2 that prevent the drug from binding to it can make a virus resistant to the same.

Well, that's about all that I know. I might have made some mistakes, if you spot them, do tell me.

Cheers,

The Dot Song revamped

Raj revamped the song for me :D

Here it is, even better:

A line is a dot that went for a walk,
a curve is a dot that flew like a hawk,

An icosahedron is a dot that didn't know where to stop,
A Bucky ball is a dot that was out there to shop,

A circle is a dot that just goes round and round,
a coil is a dot that keeps getting wound,

A scribble is a dot not knowing what it sought,
a bot is a dot, out of silicon wrought,

A star is a dot that's really really hot,
a doodle is a dot that dances a lot,

A division sign is a dot looking at the mirror in vain,
a curl is a dot that had too much champagne,

A shooting star is a dot that can't be caught,
So dot is not just what you and I thought,

An asterisk is a dot with lot and lots of hair,
A comma is a dot with just one to spare,
(But a tilde is a dot that swerves here and there...)

A squiggle is a dot that lost the plot,
really, who comes up with so much rot,

A knot is a dot that lost its path,
An @ is a dot that needs a bath,

A semicolon is a dot taking a dump,
Ellipses are dots that decided to clump,

An O is a dot that was sneaking a yawn,
an exclamation is a dot that was watching porn,

A colon is a dot who found true love,
Umlauts are two dots flying high above,

A bull’s eye is dot that is tough to spot,
a dot is a dot is a dot,

A fuzz ball is a dot with goose bumps,
Z is a dot acting like a rude drunk,

A comet is a dot with a wild streak,
a tittle is a dot, so to speak,

So a dot is but a symbol that ends every line,
And hence with a dot I stop this silly rhyme.


A double helix is a dot that is entangled and can't get out,
(Couldn’t fit this anywhere! I tried DAMN hard!!)

The Dot Song

The whole thing started when Bimal introduced me to that quote and I put it up as my status message on Gtalk. Then Anonick and Madhura came up with their lines and Anonick thought of making a whole poem out of it. So here it is:


A line is a dot that went for a walk.
- Paul Klee (contributed by Bimal Bharath)

A curve is a dot that flew like a hawk.
- Rahul "Anonick" Dandekar

An icosahedron is a dot that didn't know where to stop.
- Madhura Rane

A scribble is a dot not knowing what it sought.
- Anisha "Anne" Zaveri

A circle is a dot that just goes round and round,
A coil is a dot that keeps getting wound.
-Aditya Sengupta

An exclamation is a dot with an erection.
-Bimal Bharath

An asterisk is a dot with hair.
-Srikanth Viswanathan

A Buckyball is a dot that was out there to shop.
-Shatabdi "Express" Chowdhury

A doodle is a dot that dances a lot.
-Rahul "Anonick" Dandekar

A colon is a dot who found true love.
-Siddharth "Sid" Joshi

A knot is a dot that lost it's path.
(disclaimer: in a closed space)
-Ravitej U.

A star is a dot that's really really hot.
-Aditya Sengupta

A tittle is a dot.
-Anandi Rajan

Z is a dot after too many drinks.
-Shivam Gupta

A bot is a dot, out of silicon wrought.
-Preyas P.

A semicolon is a dot taking a dump.
-Ranaji Deb

A division sign is a dot looking at the mirror in vain,
A curl is a dot that had too much champagne.
-Anisha "Anne" Zaveri

A comet is a dot with a wild streak.
-Nikita Mehra

A shooting star is a dot that can't be caught.
-Shatabdi "Express" Chowdhury

A squiggle is a dot that lost the plot
-Nikita Mehra

An O is a dot yawning.
-Bimal Bharath

A bulls eye is dot that is tough to spot.
-Preyas P.

A fuzzball is a dot with goosebumps.
-Rajani Rajan

A double helix is a dot that is entangled and can't get out.
-Anandi Rajan

A dot is not what you and I thought.
-Achal Agarwal

A dot is a dot is a dot.
-Nikhil Karthik (A Gertrude Stein reference)