An accidental discovery

I wanted to make an ultra-healthy cupcake for the kids.

So I used this recipe.

Except, since we don't have eggs on hand, I used yogurt. Didn't even have whole milk yogurt, so had to use low-fat. 

The batter was too watery. So the cupcakes oozed out of their little pots and spread like brown lava all the way along the rims of the pan and downwards. 

But guess what came out of it?

Chips! The best chocolate/ vanilla crunchy chips ever!

You just had to chip away at the ooze, after it baked, and crunch it up. 

So. Note to self: Must try to recreate this so that my accidental recipe becomes a real one. And next time, I need to make this on a sheet, and not a cupcake pan.

One more sunbird

Purple-rumped sunbird (Leptocoma zeylonica). What a minute beauty! Look at that delicate yellow breast and the glossy back! It's about 1/2 to 3/4ths the size of a sparrow and, like its relatives described in the previous post, quite loud.

Observed at St.John's Hospital, Bangalore, high up on a tree at around 3pm. We spotted two males. Ram also spotted a female, but I only caught a fleeting glimpse and cannot describe her.

Male purple-rumped sunbird

This is what the female is supposed to look like:

Check out that white eyebrow and that eye that looks like it's been kohl-lined. This is one stylish lady! One thing I realize, browsing through these pictures, is that the female purple-rumped sunbird is awfully like the female purple sunbird in appearance. One distinguishing feature might be the eyes. The purple-rumped females have a darker band, or the kohl-lined appearance, that the purple females don't.

So the two types of sunbirds are similar in size, appearance and overall general behavior. However, their habitats appear to be different: the purple-rumped sunbird is found at greater heights than the purple ones. Is that a one-off observation or a general principle? This requires further investigation.

New birds!

I saw a pair of purple sunbirds (Cinnyris asiaticus), a male and a female, on the branches of some flowering trees behind the Center for Human Genetics, Electronic City Ph 1, Bangalore on December 4th, at around 4pm in the evening.

Male

Female:

Until I identified the male as a purple sunbird, I had been thinking that the female was a little spider hunter, which looks like this:

See the similarities?

Male Little Spiderhunter

Female purple sunbird

But the fact that the male purple sunbird is undoubtedly that, and nothing else, and that the two birds were chirruping and foraging together on the same tree convinces me that the grey-yellow bird has to be the female sunbird and not the spider hunter. Plus, I am not sure if the female's beak was quite as long as the spider hunter's. 

Both the birds were smaller than a sparrow, tiny, fast and loud. Exquisite little creatures.

My munna Ani

We had taken the kids to the SVYM centers in Mysore and Sargur. Durgoose, while perfectly happy to keep running around, had forgotten her shoes in Bangalore (okay fine. I forgot her shoes in Bangalore), which meant that I had to keep carrying her over any patch that wasn't cool concrete. Also she kept snoozing off once in a while, another reason for the near-perpetual hoist.

We saw a whole ton of things at these places. And I was exhausted. Meeting people is fun only when one isn't taking care of kids at the same time. So after some time, I excused myself from the hospital tour and took the kids and went outside to sit in the shade of some trees. Durg went off to amuse herself with plucking leaves and flowers. Ani and I  sat on a bench and I said , "My back is hurting from carrying that little girl all over the world, bunny. I'm so tired".
Ani said, "You can lie down here on the bench, mummy", and then he scooted over to a  corner of the bench, folded his legs, patted his lap and said, "Here, put your head on my lap".

So I did. I stretched out on the bench with my head pillowed on Ani's lap and we both stared at some trees for some time. What bliss!

It didn't last for too long because Ani found out that he could tickle me much easier this way, and Durgoose decided she had to come and sit on my tummy and try to put her fingers into my nostrils and ears, but the whole episode was relaxing and fun and I felt so loved.

My munna Ani is growing up fast! But I hope and pray that he stays just as loving and kind as he was today.

Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement

We spent the entire day today exploring the SVYM institution in and around Mysore. SVYM is a center started by a group of young medical students to improve tribal health around Mysore.

They began, in the 80's, by offering lifts to the hospitals in Mysore to tribal folk who needed to get there but were unable to. From these modest beginnings, they have built a tremendously inspiring institution which caters to the health care, community health, educational and community development needs of not only the tribal society around them, but also the whole district, surrounding districts, and Karnataka state. Many of the ideas for HIV care and ART management adopted by the Indian government as standard policy for the country were first developed by them. They have developed innovative practices for community treatment of diarrhea, anemia, mental health and more recently, palliative care for cancer patients, for whole-family counseling about death and resumption of normalcy in a family after the death of a family member. But they also have the sophistication and skills to work with the government to scale-up these practices so that they may be disseminated to the general public. 

I was blown away by the people, the work, the vision, the achievements and the institution as a whole. When we think about health care systems in Bangalore, large corporate hospitals like Fortis or Apollo come to mind. But these practices are not ethical, neither are they particular patient-oriented (see this, this and this). But when an average person thinks of a doctor, or the ideal of a doctor, they think of someone who is caring, trustworthy, who uplifts not just the sick individual but also the whole family and the whole community. We shrug and say, well, that's not the way things work these days, but I felt, for the first time, that in SVYM, that ideal may be present and thriving. 

Today, we visited their main office in Mysore city as well as their hospital in a small village called Sargur. They also have a healthcare center within the forests for the tribal population at a place called Hosahalli, as well as mobile hospitals that set forth from Sargur 5 days a week. At Mysore, the focus seems to be on training and research. Their training programs are vast and varied: they have an HIV fellowship for doctors; they conduct courses on counseling for people working with HIV+ or high risk populations; they have a center ("V-Lead") for training  NGOs on leadership and how to work with the government as well as with motivated individuals to embark on developmental activities in rural areas ; their institute ("Graam") focuses on grassroots public policy and advocacy. 

Sargur, which is about an hour away from Mysore, has this hospital:

Looks like any other hospital, right? Wrong. This deceptively simple building is a monument to brilliance. 

Firstly, they practice ethical medicine here: compassionate, low-cost, value-driven, appropriate. This is a place where true community medicine is practiced. For example, somebody presents to a doctor with a problem of diarrhea. What is the usual practice? The doctor treats the diarrhea, perhaps offers some counseling on safe drinking water and that's that, right? What if this patient has no access to safe drinking water? What if he has no access to proper cooked food? Then what's the point of all the counseling in the world? This place goes many steps further. They visit the patient's home, they find out about the patient's access to nutritious food and clean drinking water, they test the water, they offer water-purification services. One of the engineers in this hospital has designed multiple low-cost desalination and purification plants, which has improved the water quality in the whole region. They are strong advocates for organic farming and in addition to having their own farms, partner with neighboring farms. The guiding philosophy here is not that the hospital has to make money, but that it offers the best quality of care possible.

Nearby, they have started a CBSE residential school only for kids of tribal folk, and a day school for anybody who wants it. The school is another inspiring place. It teaches about 500 kids from nursery to 10th standard. It has the kind of atmosphere and space that only the most elite and exclusive schools in Bangalore can think of. They have two teachers per class, the classrooms are spacious and well-lit, they have playgrounds etc. But the best thing about the school is that it is actually also a science park. Have you ever visited a science center or a planetarium in India, or a children's museum in the US? You know how they have various entertaining things that all have a deeper scientific basis- compound pendulums, sympathetic swings, a water turn-wheel, one of those maze-like things that contain a ball going up and down in various ways that's supposed to be depicting potential-kinetic energy conversions? This school has all that! It is the first of its kind in the whole state, and possibly the whole country! They have a guy from IIT Madras, who lives there and who keeps thinking up of all these ideas to teach scientific concepts to kids! They use innovative techniques to teach Maths- I saw small-group discussions in a classroom, on maths. Who in the world ever discussed maths in school? We just ratta-marofied some tables, and went gada-gada-gada down a memorized protocol of steps. This school costs about Rs1000 a month and the kids who go here are not just the kids of the doctors and nursing staff at the hospital but are also from within a 25km radius from this village.

The hospital has a radio program every evening and morning, where they talk about health issues and concerns, announce which doctors are available at the hospital on that day and their specialities, which markets have fresh produce and so on. 

There are quarters for the staff from the hospital and schools to live in, just a two-minute walk away. Big quarters, with gardens in front of them.

This is why I said this hospital is like a monument to brilliance. Just see what these folk, with some vision, have built: an idyllic lifestyle, noble, worthwhile, where the hospital is like a living creature, constantly expanding and altering. Their driving philosophy, expounded by Swami Vivekananda, is an expansive and inclusive one. They live in a scenic, unpolluted area, with no commute to work; they have great schools for their kids; they try out their own desalination, water purification, organic farming and all that great stuff, and best of all, they are actively building and uplifting the community as a whole. 

This is an organization I HAVE to be part of.

We couldn't go to see their actual tribal care centers in Hosahalli, unfortunately. That's a trip for another time.

Philae boggles the mind

What mysteries will Philae unlock?

This is the sort of feat that makes one gasp in awe and wonder. And this is the sort of bold exploration that all humankind is proud to be part of.

Review of..

"Arranged Marriage" by Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni: Depressing as hell.

Teek Hai, Yaar!

The Slate, NYT and WaPo have one thing in common: a liking for eyebrow-raising, attention-grabbing, ominous-sounding headlines like this

(Slate homepage, November 6th 2014, noon)

This is a typical Slate article. Scary title, designed to garner clicks from all parents with pre-K, and younger, kids.  A person unfamiliar with Slate's tactics will feel some alarm. Even if, by some Herculean effort, this person manages not to click on the link and find this article, just the tenor of those words strikes a cord somewhere deep within and manages to lead to a good amount of pessimism about the country's future, depression about the sad state of things, bleakness about how in the world one is supposed to get quality care for one's kids and a longing for a simpler life. Or the person clicks the link and reads the article. To find what?

The standard sentence about how native wisdom from some country (this time, it's Russia) is trumping the supposedly scientific pre-K education that is currently prevalent in the US.... it's-something-they-have-always-known-and-done-in-(whatever country)-and-we-ignoramuses-in-the US-are-just-now-finding-out-about-it kind of line. Then what is this great wisdom that parents have been depriving their kids of? See, you're supposed to talk to your kids! Not just baby-talk, but really, really talk, connect with them even! And every play must be purposeful! No sense in purposeless play! What is play after all if it doesn't have some deep hidden message inside it, just waiting to be discovered and devoured by the voracious preK subconscious mind?

Then, obligatory lines by some expert in some Ivy League university about how whatever the article is claiming is needed is just quite so difficult, needs retraining of an entire generation of (whatever... pre-K teachers in this case) across the whole continent and yet, is just urgent that it needs to be done right away for the immediate improvement of our kids and future society.

And final shocking statements demonstrating extreme cases of shocking ignorance in knowledge/diligence/skills/ intelligence/ playacting/ tree-climbing/fill in whatever you want. Children know their numbers but don't know what it means! Children can dig, but they can't stack! Children can spit but they can't dribble! Yaaarrggh! End of the world and the current generation! Whatever will they do? 

I want to write this down so I will remember not to go down that rabbit hole (again): chillax, yaar! Seriously, your kid doesn't need purposeful play. He (and she) doesn't even need particularly any purpose. Walk him around and he'll find plenty of things to ask you about, to notice (and no, you don't have to take special pains to get him to notice accidentally-on-purpose-placed educational, purposeful articles) and to comment on. And just the conversation, with you being an involved and respectful participant, is plenty good to give him a head-start on anything he wants to do. 

And I'm getting to be a firm believer in the sentiment that the less you worry about your kids, the better off they will be.

So ditch your native-Russian wisdom (okay, since when did we start looking to Russia for wisdom on child-rearing?) and don your native-(whatever country you belong to) common-sense.

The fall of the mighty: how my mental discipline fails me in my home country.

My life in the US is fairly rigid. I have a routine which I follow fairly strictly: wake up at a certain time, do certain things in a certain order, get to work at a particular time, eat mostly salads for lunch, supervise very strictly what my kids eat (as much as I can anyway. They let them eat all sorts of junk at daycare and I don't do anything about that). You get the picture. I exert my discipline as much as possible on all steps in my life. I consciously step away from the dessert aisle (and it's very difficult for anyone with a sweet tooth); while cooking, I use organic stuff, I shun processed foods, and although the kids get their fried stuff in the form of puris twice or thrice a week, neither my husband or I touch the stuff. We don't make extravagant purchases; indeed, after shelling out for day care, healthcare, the house, utilities and the like, we don't have much money to splurge either. We spend money on clothes every 6 months or so but are fairly strict in economizing the rest of the year. But in turn, we are fairly healthy, in good shape, have the resources to go camping and sight-seeing on the weekends and we have money saved up for emergencies. It's a fairly frugal, conservative lifestyle... very disciplined.

My life in India is diametrically different. First of all, my parents' house is bang in the middle of a commercial section. One step out of the house and we are met with endless clothes shops and eating joints. It's become a routine for my kids to eat ice-cream or cakes or both nearly every day; I get a long, 4-course meal every 6 or so hours, with multiple fried papads or vadams; if I crave any ghee-stuffed monstrosity, it's just a hop away from wherever I am; and worst of all, there's a festival going on nearly every week for which my mom and grand mom and aunts make a hundred different sweets and fried things. Needless to say, my form has gone from being fairly slim to quite plump. None of my clothes from the US fit me anymore, so of course, I go shopping. And of course, I can't stop- the variety, the designs, the colors, the range of prices- there's nothing to beat India when it comes to clothes. I keep excusing my reckless abandon of all my precious mental discipline with the line that I'll be going back to the US soon. But it's been 3 months! And I still don't have my visa in hand! And I have no idea when I'll get it. So unless I start my exercising and portion-control right now, I'm going to resemble nothing less than the rosagollas and gulab jamuns that I keep popping into my mouth.

Life in India is also a lot friendlier. I talk endlessly here- and not just to the same people. The kids and I have made friends with the neighborhood shopkeepers, some other kids at the park we go to every day, some random ladies who come to visit the astrologer next door, and most of all, with the various cousins. Of course we have friends in the US and we do talk to people, but there, the chances of striking a conversation with some person you have just met are very slim.

Life in the US is going to be terribly flat when we get back.

A wise book

My dad had told me about Dorothy Sayers and the Peter Wimsey series ages ago. I had even checked out the first book "Whose Body?" from the library, but never got around to finishing it somehow. This time, I skipped straight to "Strong Poison", where Peter meets Harriet and falls in love (a bit quickly, but still) and then to "Gaudy Night".

I'm still reeling from the effects of "Gaudy Night". I read it online, never a good strategy if one finds a book good enough to lose oneself in, so I must, absolutely must get the actual solid text in my hands and read it so well the next times that I have the book memorized. Have I ever said this of any other book? Never. This book is that good. There is wisdom in it.

More on it when I can expound in better detail.

Neither here nor there

3 months ago, I would have thought that a 3 month-long holiday in India was the best thing to wish for. Well, after 3 enforced months in India, I can say with great firmness that it isn't all that's cracked up to be. Hear me well, you expat desis.
Short story as to why I'm still here in the desh: visa issues. Specifically, that beast called "administrative processing". Never mind what that is if you don't know it. It's a thing most boring and completely insane.
So yaay, here we are, the kids and I, in the lap of the motherland, experiencing life as it truly is in India, and not through a 2- or 3- week frenetic holiday window. It's been good and bad. It's the first time I have spent Diwali or Dussera at home in 10 years. It's the first time the kids have got to experience fireworks. It's nice to see the kids become close friends with their cousins. But, these moments are like raisins in a piece of raisin bread, some moments of sweetness in an otherwise boring and flat landscape.
The biggest hurdle: the man's back in the US. Let me tell you, those of you patient chaps still with me, one of the biggest and most unexpected results of sudden quasi-single parenthood: obnoxious kids. Kids who are normally fairly well-behaved start acting out like crazy. I put this down to the fact that they miss the other parent quite desperately, they are floundering even though there're plenty of relatives around, and they miss the stability the other parent brings. For my 4 year old son, if mom's in a bitchy mood, there's always dad to turn to. Now, even though he has Ajji, Thatha or Avva to turn to, it just isn't the same. So there are tantrums, general whininess, utter unreasonableness.... you get the picture. What in the world do divorced parents do, I wonder? It must be terribly difficult. At least I have the consolation that my husband will come and visit next week and I can hand over one of the kids to him.

Another great realization, or rather, a confirmation of what I've known for a while: home may be where the heart is, but home is also definitely where the work is. Mooching around here, I realize there's nothing particularly important that I need to do, there's nowhere that I particularly need to be and it's a depressing thought. But yet, it isn't just work for work's sake that I miss. It's my work, my research and my questions. I miss pottering around at my work bench, I miss pipetting things and I miss discussing stuff with my lab chaps.  At my parents' place, I do no work. At my in-law's place, I don't get time to breathe, let alone sit. Neither state is particularly joy-inducing.

Birding in Lalbagh

One fine morning during our trip to India in August, Ram, Durgoose and I went to Lalbagh Botanical Gardens in Bangalore.  Long ago, my cousins and I used to be taken to Lalbagh, but it's been decades since I've visited the place. It is just so huge that it's really difficult for anyone, let alone some cranky five year olds, to spend too much time there without getting utterly exhausted. Places in the US might be larger, but you can drive through such parks. In Lalbagh, you enter through one of four gates at the periphery of a 240-acre garden and then walk through its various sections.

As you enter through the gates, you will be greeted by some pretty spectacular gladioli and the sight of a lot of people walking through the gardens. Early in the morning, Lalbagh is free to walk through. After about 10:30am, when the flower show opens, is when the ticket stalls open.

One of the first marvels of Lalbagh is the Lalbagh hill, a 3000 million year old formation which is, if I recall the sign correctly, supposed to be some kind of pseudo-gneiss (whatever that is). On top of this small hill, Kempegowda, the founder of modern Bangalore, installed a post some time in the 1500's to mark one of the four corners of his new city. Bangalore has grown so much since then that the post is now in the middle of the city.

One of the first birds we encountered was the common myna. A member of the starling family, it is as common a sight in urban India as starlings are in the USA.

From the summit, on the opposite side from which you climb the hill, you can see a water body choking with water hydrangea. This is a perfect hiding place for birds like the purple moorhen. Nearby gulmohar trees and bamboos sway gently in the breeze.

Is there another tree as graceful as the gulmohar?

A family of parakeets madly cackle away. Can you tell where they are?










The lake at Lalbagh is where inexperienced birdwatchers like me feel like we have really hit pay dirt.  So many birds, each one more graceful than the next!

Here are cormorants (which, by the way, I could recognize because we had seen them all the way back in Galveston, TX!), pelicans, brahminy kites and painted storks!

Pelicans and cormorants fishing together

Cormorants sunbathing and swimming

Painted stork, cormorants and purple moorhen

Purple moorhen

Here are some pictures of the beautiful painted stork.  See that little dash of pink right by the tail? I think that's why it's called "painted".

Guess what this stork is doing by lifting its wing like that? It's blocking the sunlight and its reflection so that it can see its fish better!

Let me end this post by quickly summarizing the birds we saw that morning:

Common myna

Golden eagle

Purple moorhens

Jungle myna

Common crow

Jungle crow

Parakeets

Brahminy kite

Pelicans

Cormorants

Wild ducks

Painted storks

Owlets

Lalbagh is massive. We were only able to see a fraction of it. The terrains we covered (in about 2 hours) were:

Hills and rocks

Vegetation-covered ponds

Thickets

Big shady groves with large canopies

Lake and surrounding areas

The OMG-We're_Doomed! List

It just keeps getting worse.

I've decided to compile a list of things that frightens me a bit more about our future as a species on this planet and about the future of the planet itself. I think it's a good coping mechanism. I shall call this list OMG-We're-Doomed!

a) Fertilizer run-off into streams overgrowing algae, messing up the water and causing gender-upsets in fish

To be updated...

The maddening, all-consuming and ultimately pointless act of buying gifts

This must be what it is like for Westerners during Christmas. But for us desis, the gift-buying happens during the once-in-a-blue-moon trip to India.

Over the years, I have developed a system of gift buying. It's not a very efficient one, to be honest. The ideas for gifts start coming a few months before the actual trip. Then, a few weeks later, when I can no longer keep these straight in my head, I write down a list.
As we edge closer to the date of the travel, I realize my hand-written lists are woefully inadequate and I move to Excel spreadsheets. I type down the following: people on my side and on Ram's side that we will meet, categorized by city; gifts that I would like to give; gifts that I have already bought; gifts that need to be bought and the quantities of all these.

When I populate the lists by matching up the gift to the person, that's when the problems start. There will always be about a dozen or so for whom I have not thought of anything at all. And then there will be those teens who used to be mad about a particular thing the last time you saw them, a few years ago, and you buy them something that you think they will treasure. Then, from an offhand comment that someone makes, you realize they are no longer into that thing, that they in fact feel that that particular activity was the stupidest thing they could have indulged in, and that they have moved on to greener pastures, leaving you with a giant-sized cricket bat or multiple pairs of hot-hands hand-painted with scenery by Rembrandt or some such thing (I'm kidding.... really. Even I know not to buy cricket bats in the US!).

Then there are generic gifts that you just buy because you have no clue what to give some people: chocolates, of course; ties, wallets etc.

The hardest gifts to buy are for those uncles whom you haven't met in many years, but for whom you have a soft spot. What might they like, you wonder. Well, what do they do? Watch cricket, drink tea, and umm... well.. that's about it. So all of them get... guess what? Almonds! I figure they can snack on something healthy while watching TV.

Anyway, you buy all this nonsense and go back and give them, hoping that they will find happy homes where they will be treasured. But inwardly you know that most will disappoint, and be thrown aside as junk.

What to do? There's only so many creative gifts one person can think of. And invariably one ends up buying way too many gifts for a particular set of people and not enough for anybody else.

If I have to keep my head and not go mad, I must let go of this attachment, as Buddha would say. I must just get a bunch of gifts that seem nice to me and then, without worrying about consequences, results, fruits of labor or their ultimate fate, release them gently and calmly into the turbulent seas.

Which then brings me to the next problem: how to carry all this within the baggage limit?


*******************************************************************************
Update:

You know what's worse? You lug your luggage (magically made to fit all the hordes of gifts that you bought) and after the inescapably frustrating and long trip, land up in the great desh, and finally get to go... either to your parents' home or to your in-laws' home and with a flourish you open up the gifts and pass them along. Then, because you can't help yourself and because everybody is asking why in the world you had to bring so many pieces of luggage which all weigh a ton, you make the fatal mistake of briefly mentioning the other people for whom you bought gifts.
Uh oh.
Rule #1: let nobody know whom you have bought gifts for.
Because if you, invariably, the response will be: you bought something for them? Why? Don't you know we have not spoken to them for more than a year, ever since they took the inexcusable decision to.... (something.... from not inviting somebody else to some wedding (a big faux pas in Indian weddings when EVERYbody and their neighbors are invited), to not phoning someone when they were in the same town to something minor like not returning some borrowed item).

So suddenly, you've landed yourself in a feud and by taking these gifts, you have claimed friendship with the wrong team.

Mitomaniac!

Imagine a negotiation bid that took place billions of years ago. One bacterial system tells another, "Hey, know what would be really cool? If I got into you and helped light up your place, get you some energy and in turn, you protect me from annihilation" 

The second bacterial guy scratches its imaginary head and says, "Well, okay. But you gotta figure out a way to shut off that energy-making when I don’t need it. I can’t stand the racket you make”

“Deal”

That’s the story of how we got mitochondria within nearly every cell we possess. And in accordance with the treaty of yore, they reside within the cells, do all the dirty work and in return, get access to nutrients, protection from other microbes and harmful chemicals, companionship and love.

And because they weren't total pushovers in that above-mentioned treaty, they got to keep their own DNA. The DNA they have right now is exactly what they need for their primary purpose of energy production. Now, being savvy packers, it might be that they shed some genetic baggage that we don't know much about. But the end result is that we actually carry two pockets of DNA within each of our cells: the check-in baggage that contains the bulk of our DNA stored neatly within the nucleus and our little mitochondrial carry-ons.

Where there is DNA, there is genetics. Of course. Mitochondrial genetics is very different from the nuclear genetics that we know and love so well (ha!). For one, ALL the mitochondrial DNA you have within you comes directly from your mom, and nobody else. So you can sequence every person's mitochondrial DNA and trace back your maternal ancestors. And indeed, when people did that, they figured out the entire migratory routes of womankind (yes, you tagged along too, silly males!)

Here's a nice pic showing human migration from the Professor Taboo blog:

Mitochondrial DNA can get mutated, just like the DNA in the nucleus. But unlike the nuclear DNA, mtDNA has no protein complexes, called nucleosomes,  enveloping it making it more susceptible to mutations. But on the plus side, there are many mitochondria within each cell. So even if one mitochondrion has mutated DNA, the cell might still function just fine if the rest of the mitos within it are normal. It is all a matter of dosage.

Problems arise when many or most mitochondria end up carrying mutated DNA.

A really cool theory goes like this: Mitochondria accumulate mutations over time. Initially it may be a few mitos that carry mutated DNA, then a few more, and a few more.  Even if new mitos are being formed, they arise from mitos that are carrying mutations. So, the new cells in your body are less efficient and more prone to mistakes. Ultimately, new cells may not be produced at all, because there are just too many mutations in the mtDNA. This is what leads to aging and the development of degenerative diseases.

What an interesting concept, no? It forces you to think about your body like a car or a machine. Since mitochondria produce energy, mutations in their DNA can affect the amount of energy each cell produces. As mtDNA mutations accumulate, the efficiency of conversion of food to energy drops off, cell by cell and then organ by organ. It's like an old car that cannot run anymore. It's basic thermodynamics at work: a body needs an energy infusion to keep it running. No more energy, no more running.

As more and more researchers leap on the mito-bandwagon, it is becoming clear that mitochondrial energetics can, at least partially, explain a number of complex diseases or symptoms, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity-associated diseases.

Let me conclude this post with another very interesting theory, which goes back to the dosage effect mentioned earlier: different dosages of the same mtDNA mutation can lead to different effects. A small dosage (only a few mutated mitochondria) might lead to a disease like retinitis pigmentosa, leading to blindness in middle-age, a larger dose might lead to blindness at an earlier age, a still larger dose might lead to early death, while at very high dosage, the mutation might cause stillbirths or miscarriages.


What fascinating stuff! Suddenly, a whole new way by which we think about diseases, their pathology and development has opened up. Very different diseases may actually all arise from the same cause!

How does mtDNA get mutated upon different environmental insults like smoking or drinking polluted water? How do mitochondria compensate for their mutated and less efficient brethren? How do nuclear DNA and mtDNA interact, if at all? And finally, what can we do about mtDNA mutations pharmacologically?
Hopefully we find the answers to these and more questions.

Doom Gloom

I don't think I'm especially prone to thoughts about mortality and death, but these past few weeks have agitated my composure badly. What with the airplane tragedy in Ukraine, the escalating and baseless war in Gaza, our ever-increasing population, the disappearing ice cap in the Arctic, the high levels of animal and plant extinction in South Asia (including India) and (this is kind of a non-sequiter, perhaps) the ridiculous schooling system in the US, I sometimes feel like it was a big mistake to bring my kids into this world.

What a drama-queen statement to make, one might say. But think about it. When has there been a time in our history when things have been quite so bad politically, environmentally, economically, and morally, all at the same time? When has there ever been such a vast disparity between people, when have we failed to understand each other less, when have we been so eager to start or prolong wars, when have we been less tolerant of one another?

This is the sort of hyperventilating dialogue that sends people into nursing homes for nervous breakdowns, but I can't imagine anybody denying that things are looking kind of bad for us Earthlings.

Wildflowers near my lab

On the properties of the two abandoned houses near the Pitt genomics core lab on Forbes between Halket and Craft, I found:

a) Chicorium intybus. Chicory! The same chicory that's used as a coffee additive/alternative!

b) Oxalis stricta. Yellow woodsorrel. It's much too beautiful and fragile a plant to be named ox-anything!

c) Achillea mellifolium. Yarrow. I've been reading about this for a while and its medicinal properties are stupendous. It can be used as a pain reliever, to stop bleeding, and as an insect repellent. I need to grow some in the garden!

d) Taraxacum officinale. Dandelions! Yet another flower whose scientific name woefully falls short of describing the flower. Who doesn't know dandelions? 

e) Many more whose names I haven't yet figured out.

Oh my F-ing God

I want to be able to make a circular heat map. Like this:

To do this, I need to install a software called Circos, which runs on Perl.
But thankfully, for Perl-morons like me, there are detailed instructions on how to use the thing.

First thing to do, obviously, is to download and install the thing. So I try doing that, and I get an error like this:


*** REQUIRED MODULE IS MISSING ***

You are missing the Perl module Clone. Use CPAN to install it as described in this tutorial

http://www.circos.ca/documentation/tutorials/configuration/perl_and_modules

Okay, I think. Let me get this Clone then.

So I get the module and try to install that, only to get an error message like this:

bash: make: command not found

I try to find this "make". I try > man make and >which make and >locate make, all to no avail.

Fine. I think I can circumvent make and go directly to CPAN and install the thing. I do so, and I get the message


Going to write /Users/shridharv2/.cpan/Metadata
Clone is up to date (0.37).

Hurray! NOW maybe I can get cracking. But no:


*** REQUIRED MODULE IS MISSING ***

You are missing the Perl module Clone. Use CPAN to install it as described in this tutorial

Okay...I go back to the Circos troubleshooting page and hunt this out:

So get this: To install any software that runs on Perl (and I assume there must be tons of those softwares, since Perl has been around for a gazillion years), you need some component. But the software which has the component itself messes up Perl.

Crazy shit. Why can't these software developers get their acts together? Is it SO freaking difficult to put a "make" command where I can find the damn thing without having to pull my hair out?

And why in the world would ANYbody think it's a good idea to remove "make"? Doesn't the name itself sound like it might be something important?

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Update: to get "make", you have to create yourself an ID claiming you're an Apple developer, then hunt out and download the right version of X-code command line, to install which you require admin permission. Then, you can get hold of "Make" and install Clone.

But does that mean you can finally use Circos? No! Because now your Mac OS Lion 10.x has a bug that doesn't allow your permission to use the main program, for which you now have to go to each individual file and change the permission settings.

**************************************************************
Update 2: Still haven't been able to use Circos because of the above-mentioned permission problems. Am waiting for some bright spark of inspiration to strike me soon...

Blech!

So, some time ago, I had bumped into JY at the salad bar in the cafeteria and she was looking for the balsamic vinaigrette. JY is one of my role models: she's a mom with two kids, a kick-ass scientist and very straight-forward and very friendly. I gave her the one I normally use, which is in one of those big plastic bottles next to Ranch, Italian etc. She literally shuddered and said, "Oh God, I am morally opposed to any dressing that has sugar and high fructose corn syrup. I'm looking for the smaller glass bottle". 

I'd been pondering this for a while and so yesterday I thought I too should be ultra-healthy (forget the fact that I'm eating a salad for lunch! Instead of French fries!), and shunned the plastic bottle and hunted for the small glass bottle which just has vinegar with some grape juice in it. I liberally doused my salad in the stuff and with a feeling of extreme virtue, tried to eat it. 

It was AWFUL! Oh. My. God! My whole lunch was spoiled because of that excessively healthy nonsense. 

I'm going to stick with the unhealthy dressing from now on.

Our first family camping trip

Ram has long been hankering to go camping. I would demur. While he waxed eloquent about starlit nights, the early dawn birdsong and the call of the wild, my thoughts would be depressingly pragmatic: what about food, I would ask. What about kids squalling at night because they haven’t gotten enough to eat? Or what about running water? While he might bask under the evening sun, I might be the only one running around trying to get us set up.

But in these worst-case scenarios, there is no concept of a team. It gives the impression of a vague but ruthless dictator (Ram), and his hapless, chicken-without-a-head wife. But reality is different. Six years of marriage has honed us into a pretty good team and each of us has learned how to work the other into our way of thinking. While Ram may disdain to talk about the mundanities of real life while envisioning a perfect holiday, he also knows that I will not enter into an agreement without straightening out the details of those mundanities. And reciprocally, I have learned not to bring in mundanities while talking about something broad like an overall vision for a holiday, and keep them for their place in the nitty-gritty planning. Or at least, in theory, that’s how we work. If I am hungry, all bets are off and our discussion usually ends in a brawl. 

So this time when Memorial Day rolled around, we decided to take the plunge and camp out… somewhere. As to where, we still hadn’t decided by Saturday afternoon. I leaned towards the safe bet of Morraine State Park, while Ram thought we ought to aim for a more ambitious first project. He thought Cook County Forest, about 3 hours from Pittsburgh, might be it. 

We hit on Presque Isle almost by accident. As we were driving back home from breakfast, a guy on the radio was swooning over the delights at Lake Erie and Ram mused, "Presque Isle is pretty close to Lake Erie". "Isle?" asked I. "You mean a real island in the lake? We have to go there! Imagine camping by the water! We can sleep to the sound of waves! It will be like being in Goa!"

Presque Isle State Park

And that was how we started out on our first camping trip. In the midst of Ram's thrilled explorations of tents and camp stoves, we made a detailed plan of what we would eat and when and how. By the time I wrote out lists of things we had to take, things we already had, and things we needed to buy and by the time we bought all these things, it was already late evening. We pondered on whether to puff full steam ahead and drive down to Erie anyway, and then set up camp at night when a rare streak of common sense struck us. "I know!" we exclaimed at the same time. "We should practice setting up the camp and using the stove in our backyard tonight!" 

Back home we went. While I jogged Durga on my knee and read out the instructions on how to put up a tent, Ram and Ani attached the poles and the ropes and sure enough! We had a beautiful red tent, spacious and airy, with a jaunty flag atop it. "Why don't you figure out the camp stove and I'll start cooking on our real stove" I said to Ram. "Kids are getting hungry". If there's one thing I really dislike, it's hungry kids. Kids that are otherwise awesome, sweet, sensitive and smart turn into howling, unreasonable, uncontrollable banshees. Durga's still at the age where I can stick a milk bottle into her mouth and she'll be quiet. But Ani requires more cajoling. 

Kids fed, tent up, cooking stove up and roaring beautifully. We looked to be in good shape for our trip.

The next day, we had breakfast and started out, the radio playing great music, the kids humming along, the man a bit puffy-eyed due to caffeine withdrawal. We stopped for coffee and gas. Ani said, "Me! Me! I want to feed the car!" so I let him. Durga watched, transfixed at the sight of her big brother wielding a gas pump. "Waah!" she let out, pumping her hands, wanting to come out and join the fun. I caught her eye, fixed her with a gimlet stare and said, "Durga. The important thing today is the camp. All this is minor. Stay where you are". She subsided, much to my astonishment. 

And then we were finally, really off! The day was beautiful, sunny, the skies a clear deep blue. Summer at last! About an hour into the drive, Ram tried to put on the AC. "God, it's so bloody hot!" he complained. I gazed at him in false sympathy and mocked "Is a bit of heat too much for your baby skin? Is our man a widdy-biddy Amreekan baby?! Be a man of the great hot plains of Kolar, Ram!" This is a standing routine between us. I hate the cold and he hates the heat. I consider myself a true daughter of Chennai, of heat and humidity. Ram, on the other hand, loves the snow, sleet and frost.

Kids fell asleep halfway through the drive. Ram and I talked about research, our careers and co-workers, and plans for trips for the remainder of the year.

At the first sight of the lake, we cheered, waking up the kids. We registered at the office at Sara's Campgrounds, parked the car and went to the beach to pick a site for our tent. It was pretty crowded. I think, when we started out, Ram and I had this image of camping as being essentially a solitary pursuit. My own idea was a scene from Parent Trap (when Lindsey Lohan was young, clean and cute) where there's a single tent, a blue lake and an endless stretch of human-less forest. Reality was more carnival-like. A radio somewhere nearby was loudly playing Adele. A pot-bellied, sunburnt old gent strolled by and said, "If you're thinking of pitching a tent here, don't forget to grab a fire pit". "Huh?" we blinked. "You know, a fire pit", he said, gesturing towards a short iron cylinder about a foot in diameter. "You start a fire in there and it stays there". "Oh.. wow.. sure. A fire would be nice. Umm… what would we need the fire for, exactly?" this was me at my brilliant best. "Well you just light it. You get some logs right by there. It's five bucks at the store for 5 pieces of wood. Daylight robbery, if you ask me. Anyway, you get those logs and you start the fire. See? I've got mine going", he said, pointing to a large fiery ring next to his tent. His wife, in a little bikini, waved, pointed to Durga and said, "Awwww so cute!" I smiled at her. I like everybody who say nice things about my kids. Mind made up, I said, "Wow! That's great! Ram, get that fire pit. This nice gentleman here says we need one". "Errr..", said Ram, not exactly sure what we were getting into, but too polite to say so in front of the man, who introduced himself as Mark. "And I'm Varsha", I said cheerily. "That's like Marsha, but with a V". "Hahaha!" laughed Mark, as though I said something very witty. "Put up your tent and I'll help you get a bench", he said. 

"I wonder why we need a fire", Ram said as we made our way back to car. "It's pretty hot… and it's the middle of the day. And we have a cooking stove". 

"Oh well. We couldn't have said no to him. Poor man. He was being so nice! Hey, plus, he's going to help us get a bench. That'll be useful while cooking"

So we unloaded our tent, plonked the kids on the sand and told them to dig around, spread out the tarp, weighed it down with stones from the beach, and put up the tent. Ram finished it by flinging out the canopy on top of the tent with a flourish. "You gotta tie up that canopy!" yelled Mark from his campsite a few feet away. 

"Err… tie it up where?" 

"To the stakes!"

"Oh right! Hey look Varsh, now it looks just like the picture!"

I was calming down the baby. Ani had flung some sand into the wind, which went into Durga's eye, who promptly began howling. "No flinging, Ani! No blowing it either! Dig it and keep it to the ground! How would you like it if I did that to you?"

The sight of the erected tent did wonders to soothe tempers and the kids scrambled into the tent in perfect accord with each other. 

"Now for food! We can't cook now, but let's go to some place nearby and get something to eat", I said with an anxious eye at the time. I grabbed a couple of bananas, a bag of dates and some water to tide the kids (and me) over till we actually got the food.

From the Mexican joint where we had lunch, we drove down to Presque Isle State Park. Ani had a hankering to bike and I had a hankering for a boat ride. We debated and decided that we should boat first and then bike, since it was so hot. But alas! No boats at that time- apparently they only had them at 11am or at sunset. Tired of driving, I declared we should all walk back to the bike store, rent a bike to come back to the car and that I would drive the car and kids back while Ram rode the bike back to the store. Seems a bit convoluted, no? It didn't seem so at the time and needless to say, it didn't work out terribly well, as you will see further along.  And so it was we sent out on what we expected would be a mile-long hike, but in reality was more like two and a half miles. Ani, being the trooper that he is, walked nearly the whole distance. Durga, since she too has adventurous blood in her, decided that she wanted to walk as well. Since she doesn't walk by herself, this involved a laborious dance where I would hold either one or both her hands and she would toddle along, sometimes slipping, sometimes sliding. We took a LONG time to complete that hike.

Much to Ram's delight, we also happened to observe a whole number of birds we had never seen before. We saw the Baltimore Oriole (and its nest!) and a Cedar Waxwing. 

Baltimore Oriole

Cedar Waxwing

But the best part were the warblers. Have you taken a walk in a forest path where there are tall trees and you can see little birds, smaller than sparrows, flit by? You might be able to make out a dash of color, but the birds never stay long enough for you to observe them. You can definitely hear them. These are warblers and they are beautiful, tiny and really hard to find. Ram has been trying for months to observe these little guys and hadn't been too successful until Presque Isle. In Presque, there were so many warblers that they were practically flying in front of us. We saw many American yellow warblers and in one case, a nest housing a warbler too! Three little female redstarts landed at my feet quarreling and chirruping loudly. 

Yellow warbler

                      

Female redstart

What makes Presque easily so unique is that in those 2.5 miles that we walked, there were at least 3 or 4 different types of terrain: there were flat grassy lands, there were marshes, there were tall wooded trees and there was the lake and its shore. Each terrain had a completely different set of birds. 

Ani was excited by the large spider webs we passed. We peered down into many of them, counting the insects captured. We saw a pupa of some unidentified worm. At these stops, Durga would sit down on the ground and pluck leaves and twigs and throw them in the air. 

After our long walk, with Ram in the heights of ornithological ecstasy and me growing increasingly stressed about everything, we finally reached the bike store. And learned that they were not going rent any more bikes for the day. Yaarrgh! Now what? "Please, could one of you just give my husband a lift to the boat center? It's only 2 miles away!" I pleaded, to no avail. The bike guys gave me the phone number of the park ranger, to ask for help. I did so (marveling that my phone was still working and hadn't yet achieved its usual state of death), again to no avail. Ram started making noises about quickly walking back the 2.5 miles to get the car. But I spotted an Indian couple walking nearby. If there was ever a time to exploit the Indian connection, this was it. I grabbed Durga (a baby always makes a case for pity that much stronger) and accosted them. I blurted out the whole story and asked, "Do you think, if you could possibly, drive my husband a couple of miles down to get the car?" They initially demurred: oh but we have a tour that's going to be starting soon. But I wasn't about to let something like that stand in my way. "But the tour's in 20 minutes, no? If you leave now, you'll be back within 15". I can be pretty ruthless when it comes to getting my way to food.

So long story short. They drove Ram to the car and drove back in time for their trip. Hurray! Then we got to the camp; the sun was just about to set. I made Ram some tea, and hot chocolate for the rest of us. We watched the sun set on Lake Erie, a beautiful sight. We spotted Mark and his wife at the water's edge. He waved and walked back towards us. He said, "Well, I almost forgot the bottle of champagne!" Apparently, he and his wife come here multiple times every year, and have been doing so for the past fifteen years and at every sunset by the lake, they open a bottle of champagne and drink to the sunset. What a nice tradition! 

Then while I took the kids for their various peeing and pooping jobs, Ram cut vegetables for our dinner and I made pasta with broccoli, ginger, garlic and oregano with alfredo sauce. Pretty fancy for a pair of newbie campers, eh?

As we were eating, the night advanced and it became darker and darker. Then, the fireworks began! This was such a pleasant surprise! I guess they had them for Memorial Day. They were beautiful. We ate under the light of the fireworks. Then, we got ready for the night. The thing with making your kids walk 2.5miles is that they eat without complaint and they drop off to sleep without a fuss!

So if you're an avid (or merely interested) birdwatcher, here's the low-down on Presque:
Terrains present:
Marshy land
Forests with tall trees
Shoreline with lake
Grassy flat stretches

Birds we observed:
Baltimore Orioles
Cedar Waxwings
Many red-shouldered blackbirds
Many cowbirds, catbirds and Eastern phoebes
American yellow warblers
Redstarts
Some cormorants on the way to Presque