The Synapse Connections of a lifetime

So some researchers have nothing better to do.. so they decided to pick up a few harry potter books and came out with a study called: "Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects".

It's weird.. haha! Everything is done so professionally that you woould think it's a real study.. Hang on.. it is a real study.. check this out:

Abstract

Objective To assess the evidence for a genetic basis to magic.

Design Literature review.

Setting Harry Potter novels of J K Rowling.

Participants Muggles, witches, wizards, and squibs.

Interventions Limited.

Main outcome measures Family and twin studies, magical ability, and
specific magical skills.

Results Magic shows strong evidence of heritability, with familial
aggregation and concordance in twins. Evidence suggests magical ability to be a
quantitative trait. Specific magical skills, notably being able to speak to
snakes, predict the future, and change hair colour, all seem heritable.

Conclusions A multilocus model with a dominant gene for magic might exist,
controlled epistatically by one or more loci, possibly recessive in nature.
Magical enhancers regulating gene expressionmay be involved, combined with
mutations at specific genes implicated in speech and hair colour such as FOXP2
and MCR1.

The even quoted a twin study from the book..

Twin studies: Although assumptions are made, complete genetic determination
of a disease would result in monozygotic twins being concordant.12 The two
pairs of twins in the Harry Potter books, the Patil and Weasley twins, are
monozygotic and both have magical abilities. Although two sets of twins is a
small sample size, the finding does add credence to the idea of magic being a
genetically determined trait.

This is weird. Certainly not something I expect to see from BMJ :P

References:

Ramagopalan et. al. (December 2007). Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects. BMJ 2007;335:1299-1301. Retrieved December 22 2007 from http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7633/1299

Bought a cheap Gundam model from a shop in the place opposite QVB, making one is quite a fun. Made another one last time so this one is no new adventure. Thought I'd write about it a little. :)

This is the model I worked on, 'High grade' 1/144 scale Mobile Ginn from Gundam Seed. The 'high grade' is actually one of the cheapest grade available, don't let Bandai fool you.



This is my working space, it's just my normal table with ample lighting.

These modelling kits come with the parts placed in plastic frames where you take it out from called the 'runner'. More advanced people would spray colour these runners before starting their work, but I'm a beginner so no colouring.

Taking them out piece by piece and sticking them together is basically what it is, Bandai has made some cheats into their models coz you don't need any cement or anything, just snap lock them and they work.

That's a torso and a completed arm and parts of the left arm left. In no time they will be this:
Finally, with the legs together you'll get something like this:
This one is quite good, the joints are very articulate and you can use it to make many kinds of poses, including weird ones.. haha!

It takes around 3 hours to finish this, so it's fairly simple. If you have more cash, you could get more advanced models with articulating fingers. It's a great thing to kill time and to add some nerd decors to your room. :P

A good tutorial can be found here.

This is my dog, STORM a.k.a "tin kosong", hehe!

That day half of IH was awakened by this fella chirping like nobody's business, took of pic of it coz it looked like it's wearing some kind of mask :P

I'm finally home :) Will talk about the trip home and stuff later but here's a quick link to a donation site.

Freerice

Through the site, you can enhance your vocabulary and donate rice to reduce world hunger at the same time. Try it!

Template's getting messed up again, haha! Bored of the last one.. :P

Took this picture in Foundations Day's Dinner just for fun;


Yesterday we took another one during the End of Session dinner;


Mafia family reunion!

And then there's the mafia extented :P

Thanks guys, IH was fun coz of all of you ;)

Instead of exporting palm oil, we might one day start exporting our cili padi.

Apparently the capsaicin (the chemical that give chilli the hot taste) contained in cili can be used to reduce post operative pains by exploiting the numbing effect it has on nerves, the TRPV 1 receptors to be exact. This effectively leads to reduced use of pain killers and opiates.

Full story here

This is a very clever move that may well revolutionize medicine in a few years to come.

For the past week I've seen many happy moms with their new and cute babies. For them, every vomit, nausea, frequency, heartburn, frequent visits to the doctors and the many troubles of carrying 11kgs around are rewarded by the first cries of their baby and the first cuddles.

Today though, I was tagging along with Dr. Newton and we had to follow up on a mother who just gave birth to a baby. Unlike most of the other babies, this baby is one of the two babies on average that gave birth with a limb malformation:

The baby didn't have a left hand.

The session was quiet saddening. We can see the mother slowly coming into tears while her mother wipes them away from the side of the bed. Dr. Newton were quite empathic, slowly giving her the time she needs to digest the situation and understand what's going to happen for the baby next. She clearly explained things that needs to be done and what's the prospects are for the baby.

The thing I realised about the mother is how some guilt seems to seep into their mind. We read in books that often parents will wonder if what they do during the pregnancy caused the problem. Everyone needs to blame someone, or something for any mishaps. How did it happen? What could we have done? Questions that are difficult to answer for us.

I guess all we can do is to do our best to be understanding.

Thanks for reading :)

Beginning, Growths and Development is by FAR 100 times better than Society and Health! Just gone over Obstetrics and Gynecology and now we're moving on to Paediatrics. Handling babies are really cool, but it's really scary though. The mom says she can easily tell if we ever had kids just by looking at how we're handling the babies.. The baby feel really fragile, I'm so scared i'll break something or injure the baby somehow.. haha!

Babies are cute! I know everyone knows that but they are so so cute.. :P The nicest thing to do is to do the grasp reflex, coz the baby will grab your finger if you stroke the palms, hehe!

BUT, when babies cry, it really sucks.. You can't palpate the abdomen, you can't hear the lungs and the heart you can't do much! Not to mention the poo.. haha! Scary black stuff.. :P

Had to travel a lot for this though.. It's really far away from Uni, even further than Sutherland Hospital.. It sucks..

Anyway, more to come, thanks for reading!

It's pretty easy to make fake UFO videos now but this one looks pretty convincing.

Two weeks ago i dropped my camera during the trip to Newcastle. Now it's sitting on the shelf waiting to be buried.

The day after that, my laptop died. While playing a game called cnc3, the enemy launched a nuclear bomb in my base. The explosion looked something like this:



Then suddenly, a few seconds after the bomb went off, the screen suddenly flashed and weird random gibberish stuff comes up. I was like, "wtf?".

The gibberish stuff was also in windows. Even after restarting, it's still there! In fact, it's in the BIOS loading screen!

The nod nuke blew up my graphics card..

That cost me AU$266.60...

It's funny how I realised how dependent i am to my computer.. I'm so dependent it's pathetic.. I actually hang out downstairs at the computer room of IH more because of this.. :P Found a random side shooter game and it had became my staple for 2 weeks.. lol!

Oh well, the Muslims fast for their Ramadan, I fast by giving up my computer..

Found something else to occupy my time during this period of 'starvation' though. Never in my life I would imagine having to read a novel to pass my time.. it was interesting though, instead of going an anime episode by episode, I was reading chapter by chapter.. There is entertainment other than the computer! (i am such a nerd :P)

Nevertheless, a few days ago Dell decided to do me good by sending the graphics card over. Guess what, the package originated from Bayan Lepas, Penang.. That's the building I can see from my house! That Dell building that were there since I dunno when that I never cared about.. haha!

Anyway, I was excited of course. So i called Dell tech support to get instructions on how to install the graphics card..

It goes roughly something like this:

Me: Hi! I just received a graphics card that i've ordered a few days ago. I need instructions on how to install it.

Dell technician: the part that you need to install is very complicated. We need to send someone to fix it for you.

Me: How much will that cost?

Dell technician: AU$185 (or something like that)

Me: WTF!(silently :P) Can you just send me the instructions for it so that I can do it myself?

Dell technician: No, the installation is VERY complicated. You need an ENGINEER to do it for you.

Me: err.. Ok.. I'll think about it.. bye

I felt really cheated.. I mean why the hell do you need to charge more than 100 bucks just to install something? That's like half the cost of my graphics card.. So I went to Dell support website to take a look. Guess what? I found a manual.. I has step by step guide on how to install the stuff..

Got a friend to help me out and we managed to install it in 1 hour. Does that make me a computer engineer? :P

Oh well.. life goes on back to usual.. :P

Thanks for reading :)

Just something funny I found in MMR forum just now by a poster called UK doc:

"The secret with children is to tell them lots of rubbish so that by the time they recover from their confusion of what you were saying you have done your examination."

Was surprised by a news in yahoo today:

Mon Sep 17, 11:23 PM ET

LIMA (AFP) - Villagers in southern Peru were struck by a mysterious illness after a meteorite made a fiery crash to Earth in their area, regional authorities said Monday.

many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.

Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a "strange odor," local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP.

Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized, Lopez said.

Rescue teams and experts were dispatched to the scene, where the meteorite left a 100-foot-wide (30-meter-wide) and 20-foot-deep (six-meter-deep) crater, said local official Marco Limache.

"Boiling water started coming out of the crater and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby. Residents are very concerned," he said.

Could this be an alien contact? 1000 different ideas coming past my mind! The thing that caught my attention the most is the last line in the article about boiling water and stuff, there's also a strange 'odor'.

So why do the people there fall sick? It can be a totally unrelated incident, but it can also be due to some toxic materials from the meteorite. More interesting though, can it be due to some bacteria that were sitting in the meteorite?

If it's the third possibility, then it'll hit the scientific community like mad. It'll mean that there's an alien lifeform in it, like science fiction.

What's happening there? I want to know!

Would you rather take a day flight home from California or would you spend months cycling home? Recently there was a thread in Recom about this guy who decided to put some interesting twist into his life by cycling home all the way from california and meeting new friends along the way. It would be obvious to say that this attempt is insanely challenging, dwarfing out le tour de langkawi dudes, haha! Anyway, he's keeping a log of his journey online and they can be accessed here.

Initially I thought this guy has lost his mind, but after looking through the first few days of his journey, I knew he was serious. He don't look like the average athlete but he certainly has the determination to do it. Back to his journey, he did things like sleeping by the road side or in some random bush holding a pepper spray on one hand and a knife on another. It must be quite scary to be alone in somewhere you're not familiar with.

His parents are gonna hold a briefing about his charity mission tomorrow. The guys that would benefit are:

St. George's Instituition's Developement Fund,
MAA-Medicare Kidney Charity Fund and
The Naational Cancer Society.
(Targeted donation - RM1 million

He gonna cycle for a total distance of 30000 km. That's like cycling from Penang to KL 300 times! It'll end with an event called the 'Bike for Malaysia Tour' where for 3 days youths will join his last push toward taiping, the finishing line. I would join him if i'm home AND i'm fit enough to cycle for 3 days but i'm not :P Haha! So anyone who can, do support him, I think this is a great effort that deserves more publicity than all the other gov-funded 'adventures' that we had so far.

As many have heard, a lunar eclipse was visible throughout Australia on the 28th of August. I didn't know about it at first, but I overheard of it from the radio when I was waiting for the bus early in the morning that day around 6.00 am. At around 7.30 pm, a few of us were already at a small field near International House. The moon was already 20% covered by the Earth at that time. Eagerly, I began to deploy my trusted tripod in hopes of landing a few shots of the special view that last came 7 years ago.. After 1 shot, the battery bar flashed red! For the first time in my life, I came unprepared and my camera's batt went dead.. Only managed to land 3 shots with the remaining batteries..

The lighting condition was suboptimal at best, as there was a severe light pollution coming from light sources around the vicinity and of course, the city itself..

Nevertheless, the product is still magnificent..


Luckily Zhong was also there and we ended up having some fun with his camera instead.. He took some great pictures, and he managed to compile everything into this,


The streak of orange at the bottom right of the picture is the result of a prolonged exposure over 5 minutes if i'm not mistaken. What we see, is the motion of the skies, and the moon for that matter within that time frame. At 8 pm, the awesome image of an orange moon was visible, in a phase called 'totality'.

The reason for the odd title here is because the event reminded me of the days when I was very interested in astronomy. Because my neighbor is an avid astronomer that even has his own observatory, he allowed me to cultivate my interest in astronomy. Years ago, back at 1999, I was at school looking at the solar eclipse, using a special set of glasses that filtered out the glare. I had also watched a meteor shower in my own lawn. However, perhaps the best experience I've had is the 1997 comet Hale-Bopp experience. That was a truly amazing sight, the comet was even visible to the naked eye then. Together with a large number of avid astronomers, we set out a huge event in our residential area to allow everyone to have a glimpse of the comet using telescopes and binoculars. That was one of my most memorable experience.. Probably the first and the last time I'd see a comet.

However, there's also disappointing moments, such as in 2003, where Mars was reported to have been in its closest proximity. I was in Taylors back then, and I organised a trip (sold out!) to the National Observatory in Kuala Lumpur. However, the skies were cloudy and we can't see anything that night.

Anyway, back to the lunar eclipse, we decided to play around with the long exposure functions of Zhong's camera, and we ended up with quite amusing products, hehe!

My name! A part of the X is missing though,


Edit: Apparently this technique is called 'light writing' and it's a new technique! I'm surprised noone else used this effect till now. This short clip is how this effect can be used to it's max!



Multi-hands!

Well, that's all for today's post I guess.. Tomorrow would be a full day of study and group project, hope we'll pull this through..

Found a nice song called 'Stories' sung by Hitomi for a great anime called Code Geass, somehow it really sooths the mind. Gonna get sick of it soon though, lol!

Thanks for reading! And Happy Merdeka for all Malaysians!

Just realised that I haven't updated this blog for a whole month! been bz with some studies recently, especially reading the Clinical Examination book by Tally and O'Connor. It's a good book for clinical examination skills, presented in a rather systematic way.

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Anyway, yesterday we had a nice dinner at a Japanese restaurant called Masuya located somewhere along O'Connell Street in Sydney City. The restaurant is located in the basement and has a small sign leading into it.



It was Jesselyn's birthday and our good friend Jerome planned a nice dinner there, ready to drain our pockets dry dry.. Everything except the entree and the vegetarian meals easily cost more than $15, which, granted is rather 'reasonable' for an expensive looking place.


Anyway, we ordered a combination of stuff, namely:

The Sashimi Main ($25)
The Sashimi main has an assortment of raw fish complemented with some salad stuff and a clump of wasabi (the green paste to the right) to spice things (and to kill bacteria i suppose) up. It was kinda weird at first but a good tasting meal nonetheless.

The Unaju BBQ Eel ($16.80)
This here is my favourite of all the dishes we ordered. The taste of the thin slices of fried eel is great and the rice has a very nice consistency.

We didn't had enough just yet, next up is the Agedashi Tofu ($9.80).
Although i'm not exactly a tofu type of person (except for some types), the tofu is great, deep friend and seasoned with lots of random seasoning things on top and dipped in random soy sauce.

Finally, the finale of the night, with the Sukiyaki hot pot ($22.80 per person) with extra beef added ($13.80). The Sukiyaki hot pot is Japanese hotpot concept with a combination of Grain-fed beef, shirataki (Potato jelly noodles) and seasonal vegetables cooked in a special pot with Masuya's mirin and soy based sukiyaki sauce. The cool thing about this dish is that the waitress actually sets up the hot pot on our table and starts cooking for us.

Here you can see Jon Lee looking eager to go for the food, haha! After that it's a short 5 min wait for the stuff to cook up.

Also with the dish is some udon noodles, but it's too little to be shared around though..

There's also some beaten raw eggs to use as sauce. It sounds like a weird concept but having gone pass raw fish, raw eggs are nothing special, hehe!



And that's all we ordered that night. Oh yeah, not to mention a cute drink called 'China Doll'. Was wondering why it wasn't called Japan Doll, but oh well..

And here's the birthday girl in the middle (5th from left) together with all the girls who attended. The picture of the guys are still with another camera, will be up when it's acquired.
Afterwards the rest of them went for some KTV, but i didn't join them as I had to wake up at 4am the next day. Overall, Masuya is a nice restaurant with good services but is rather costly.


Thanks for reading! :)

I've been told by several people of the usefullness of taking Vitamin C to prevent colds and also to treat colds.

Apparently, while looking through MMR, there was a Cochrane review on the matter which reviewed the studies done to evaluate this issue. It had been updated and their latest conclusions were that:

“Regular ingestion of vitamin C has no effect on common cold incidence in the ordinary population. It reduced the duration and severity of common cold symptoms slightly, although the magnitude of the effect was so small its clinical usefulness is doubtful.”

However, I guess it's no harm to take Vitamin Cs to reduce the severity of the problem as there really isn't anything wrong with that practice. However, from this review, it is implicated that regular pill popping of vitamin C has not been shown to have any real beneficial effects for prevention of cold.

Reference:
Douglas RM and others. Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2007,Issue 3.

As part of the Session 2 O-week, the Resident Society of International House organised a picnic at Centennial Park this morning.. The turnout for today's event was surprisingly high, making this event a successful one.

During the event, we had the usual small snacks and we played some mini team-based games, which is quite fun although not exactly the most creative games i've played so far.. :P

I'll post up more pictures and elaborate more in the near future, stay tuned.

For now, this is a picture we took in the end of the picnic, during the clean-up process. The water in the buckets were to be disposed of, what better way then to snap an action picture of static flying water? :P It turned out to be quite a cool picture. The guy closest to the left is me by the way :)

Started my second session on Phase 2 med course this week. We're doing the course called 'Society and Health'. I really dread this course, at least the non-hospital part of the course. Why? Because it's filled with endless statistical and ethical stuff that bores everyone out. I can seriously see at least 10 people sleeping on the first day of Uni. I hope the hospital attachments are interesting this time round, we're gonna get attached to various aspects of community health care, so we'll be doing home visits and stuff, which are quite interesting.

But then, we received an email from the course coordinator from Sutherland Hospital.

The best sentence i've see so far from him is this:

"Everything that can go wrong with this has gone wrong"

So now we're kinda lost souls with no idea where to go or what to do, hence my free day today, which i'm glad for :P

The trip i just had during the winter break was great. Went to Perth to visit my baby and the trip was a very enjoyable one. :) Took some nice pictures while we're at it, and gave my new tripod a test run. I'll post up some pictures when I have the time, but this is one of my favorite.. It's taken during a Curtin Uni organised tour called 'Twilight Tours'.


This is taken at King's Park at night. It's pitch black at that time, but a good 60 second exposure lighten up everything, including the stars. It's quite difficult to aim the shot here as my camera has no viewfinder and it's pitch dark. I was lucky to hit a shot that obeys the rule of thirds here though. Hehe! Don't kill me bb :P



In King's Park, we were also greeted with a magnificent view of Perth's Cityscape. It's truly a great sight and the location we were at greatly puts everything is a good perspective for photography (minus the stupid trees blocking the view).


On the way to King's Park, we visited a beach (forgot the name) to supposedly see the sunset. Unfortunately, the sun has setted before we reached it.. so it's pitch black.. haha! Oh well.. luckilly, I was armed with my tripod here, and I was able to take some quite colourful pictures of the twilight hour.



That's all for now, more pictures shall come later :)

I might be updating my aquaria KLCC post as its receiving some hits from google/yahoo search. Stay tuned.

Quote of the day: "Most cardiologists think that the heart is the most important organ in the body"

In the ward rounds today, we saw a patient that had severe Alzheimer's disease. The woman was bedridden and have lost most of her cognitive functions.. She is no longer able to speak, move or understand what's going on around here.

The consultant were talking to her husband and then suddenly he said something like "can I have a talk with you outside?"

What follows are a little bit shocking, as the discussion that ensued revolves around the suggestion of discontinuing treatment.

"It is time. Discontinuing all her treatments is the best course of action.."

I was surprised, but everyone was calm, the husband confessed that he had prepared for this. He knew it was coming. The thing about this situation is how the consultant handles it. Again, it takes good skills to express your empathy and explain what's going on, and what's the best course of action.

It was a sad situation for the husband, and we could feel his grief. It was a very difficult decision that only he could make. Hopefully, he would be able to cope with his loss.

Korean barbecues are pretty popular here, with some restaurants situated just right next to each other. For Anne-lise's birthday, we celebrated in one of them, called BBQ-city at Liverpool street. Simon managed to book a huge room that looked pretty cool, it's one of those Japanese (Korean?) styled short tables that requires you to either sit cross legged or kneel jap style.

The seating arrangement is pretty cool for the first 20 mins, until I begin to lose sensations to my toes.. The few minutes after that is pretty much a struggle to stand up from that crammed position to drop some blood back.. Luckily some of the other guys are suffering too.. haha!

The food is 'geng', actually, not the food, but the price.. so I rephrase.. the price is 'geng'.. so 'geng' my wallet felt lighter.. A lot lighter after the dinner, but that's not the point :P

[Vegetarians beware, pictures of meat ahead]

Here's how a usual Korean BBQ set up is like, you get a pan (I don't know what it's called) and they give you raw meat to cook yourself. It's a neat setup, and in another place where it's a buffet, you get unlimited meat so you can literally cook till you drop. Also in the menu are MISC stuff like kimchi, pancakes, radishes and other random stuff I can't name.

We also ordered a hotpot (or steamboat) dish called beef and mushroom (I said beech and muchroom that time for some reason, it was hilarious!). It has a number of different kinds of much.. mushrooms and also noodles, which is quite tasty actually..

Then after the meal, we sang the birthday song and ate the cake.


This is Anne-lise and Simon. The fuzzy image of a person at the back is the manager, and he's trying to 'xiang jing tou' or trying to get into the picture and do the Asian victory sign while I was taking the picture. This guy, is quite a businessman, he offered a wine to the 'most beautiful lady in the room tonight' and we all know he's going to give it to Anne, haha! Then he sang the birthday song himself! It was actually quite good, he had the soprano type voice, lol! I was quite stunned at that (not at his voice, at his appearance mind you :P).


After that we all went to Club 42 (M.K's place in Barkers) for an after party, I left early so I have no idea what they did after that, haha! They were still sober when I left though..