Books and Authors- My Latest Discovery

Deanna Raybourne has written a series of mystery novels in the Lady Julia Grey series.
The first three books of the series are pretty gripping: great language, imaginative plots- if slightly twisted, and great protagonists.
The suspense and plots fall a bit flat after the protagonists get married, but the books are still good for a lazy afternoon's read.

The series reminds me of Lindsey Davis' Marcus Falco series, with a few key changes:

The Falco series is written in the voice of Falco, a man and a detective who marries above his station and whose wife helps him with his work; the Grey series is written in the voice of Julia Grey, an aristocrat who falls in love with a detective and wants to help him with his work.

The Falco series is set in ancient Rome- a period that is not particularly well-known among most readers and as such, the author has a lot more freedom to play around with creating this world with regards to the place of women in that society, societal rules and constraints, descriptions of male-female interactions and so forth. So Davis endows the females of her books with relative freedom of speech and action, the right to inheritance and so forth.

The Grey series is set in England in the mid 1800s- a period that has been 'done to death' in hundreds of novels in multiple genres and is much better known to the average reader: females from this era are expected to conform to much more rigid rules and are not expected to question or challenge men; and ought to pay sufficient attention to clothing.

In that respect, the Grey series portrays an interesting evolution of Julia Grey, from a "Dresden shepherdess" (her description), meekly following, to one who struggles with and challenges the limits that society places on her and finally reaches for what she wants regardless of what is expected from a woman in her position. The man Julia loves and wants to marry, Nicholas Brisbane, is half-Gypsy, and poor and is "in trade" as a private investigator. Julia has to overcome the economic differences between herself and Brisbane, her family's horror of non-aristocrats and tradesmen, and the social consequences of being seen around a Gypsy.

As I mentioned before, once she does overcome all these struggles and gets married to Brisbane, the series goes downhill a bit. Frankly, one can't help feeling that they ought to get themselves to a marriage counselor pronto.

What's the big deal?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-petraeus-allen-sex-scandal-20121113,0,29930.story

David Petraeus had an affair with his biographer. The affair came to light when the biographer supposedly sent anonymous and threatening emails to some other woman whom she thought was also sleeping with Petraeus. Somehow, through some convoluted rigmarole that hasn't yet been unearthed, the investigation into these emails not only revealed the affair between Petraeus and the biographer but  has also pulled some other Army chiefs into suspicion.

Tell me again how someone's extramarital affairs has any role on their functions as a professional? Why did Petraeus have to resign just because his extramarital affair became public? Seriously, other than families closely connected to the protagonists of this drama, who cares?

Indiscretions by people in high positions have become the rule, not the exception. And even among the ranks of sexual indiscretions indulged by those in power, Petraeus' seems rather mild. Petraeus didn't tweet pictures of his wiener, like Antony Wiener did, didn't patronize a prostitution ring, like Eliot Spitzer did, didn't solicit male partners in a public restroom, like Larry Craig, and didn't even, like Arnold Schwartznegger, have a secret "other" family. He slept with someone who wasn't his wife. So what? Why should this become media fodder and why should we be subjected to sordid details about who did whom and when every single moment of our waking lives?


Can anyone in this day and world be puzzled and appalled at adultery? And why confine ourself to this day and world? In the history of the world and yes, even the Christian American world, you puritanical hypocrites, adultery is fairly common. The only difference between this age and all the previous ones is that we are so incredibly quick to leap up on our moral pedestal and sneer at someone. And I think we secretly sneer not at the act, but at the discovery.






 

Ranking of the Pittsburgh hospital cafeterias

Hospital cafeterias in Pittsburgh (to the best of my knowledge):

UPMC Presbyterian

UPMC Montefiore

Magee Women's Hospital

Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh

Allegheny General (how many?)

West Penn Hospital (how many?)

I'll rank them using the NIH scoring system (given below, lifted directly from a presentation by Freeman and Friedman on Developing Competitive Grant Applications)




















I'm a vegetarian. So I'm biasing my scores towards how vegetarian-friendly these cafeterias are. You may have different opinions about these places. Go write them on your blog, if you feel strongly enough about it.

Hospital	Score	Reasons
Magee	1	Delicious, healthy food; plenty of options of vegetarians and others with diet restrictions; creative in use of ingredients.
CHP	2	Great food. However, sometimes, only options for vegetarians are pizza and burger. On good days, plenty of choice.
Presby	9	Absolute nightmare. Menu has not changed in 4 years.  Terrible choice of soups and desserts. Exactly 1 vegetarian entrée (“Mediterranean Veggie Wrap”) per week.
Montefiore	?	Have only eaten here once. Greasy, overly salty food. But I’ll give it the benefit of doubt and put it down to a bad day.
Allegheny General	?	Need to assess
West Penn	?	Need to assess

So what brought this on? My new job is at Magee Women's Research Institute, a short walk away from the Magee cafeteria. I can't help comparing the quality of my noon meal at Magee to what I subjected myself last year, when the closest place to eat was the Presby cafeteria.

I lost about 10 pounds last year while subsisting on Presby food, because all I could eat was the salad- the sole dish that was not floating in oil. Compare that to yesterday's vegetarian entree at Magee (quinoa with baked butternut squash. Yummy!) and today's (vegetarian chili with succotash and rutabaga on brown rice. Lovely!)

So, I hope that the Presby chefs take some ideas from the Magee guys. Then again, who cares? I don't have to ever eat there again!

Thank you, IBGP!

There are many things I need to thank my graduate program, the Interdisciplinary Biomedical Graduate Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, for. But definitely, topping that list will be Foundation Conference, a mandatory 4-credit course taken in the first semester of the 5-year program.

Foundation Conference gives a callow, nervous first-year the guts to take a paper like "IRE1a Induces Thioredoxin-Interacting Protein to Activate the NLRP3 Inflammasome and Promote Programmed Cell Death under Irremediable ER Stress",  and tackle every single sentence, data point, every aspect of a figure and figure legend. And the experience is so useful that even today, 7 years later, I remember what that course taught me about reading a paper: read the title, read the abstract and the introduction, then skip the results, read the discussion, come back to the introduction, read the results, go through the materials and methods and re-read the discussion. An incredibly long process that can make you want to tear your hair out, but a very, very useful and a solid way of tearing apart a paper. And if done right, you probably will not forget any aspect of the paper ever again.

Despite its obvious advantages, Foundation Conference is only offered by the Med School. The Graduate School of Public Health, for example, although offering PhD programs in related biomedical fields, does not have anything like it. GSPH offers a first-years-only journal club, but this is a joint session for all first years and by that nature, cannot offer what Conference can: separate groups of 4-5 students per faculty member, individual attention by senior faculty, a forum where every single student has to present his or her understanding of the paper every single week and is forced to read a  paper thoroughly because the faculty randomly pick people to answer questions beyond just the whats and hows of a paper. In our batch, we were 45 first-years. So the school would have had to come up with at least 10 interested and dedicated faculty members who would be willing to plow through each assigned paper, and not to mention, all the written reports by the students, for a whole semester. It's intense.

So thank you, Foundations Conference. I need to read the above-mentioned paper by noon today and although I might grit my teeth and groan out aloud, I think I'll get through it.

A Risky Venture?

Which job to choose? One which is safe and known and has a clear connection to what I want to do in the future, or one is which is unknown but promises to be very exciting, future goals be hanged?

To Tell or Not to Tell

I have been pondering a lot about pregnancy and women in the workplace. When I was first pregnant, nearly three years ago, I had conflicting emotions: happy and excited when I was with my husband or parents, but incredibly nervous at the thought of telling my thesis adviser.

My adviser is an awesome guy- supportive, friendly, excellent mentor. But he was not pleased when I told him I was pregnant. His first look was almost accusing- 'how could she be so irresponsible' were probably the first words in his head. And indeed his first reaction was, "Well, Varsha. I don't know how you'll be able to manage finishing your PhD. Hopefully you have an easy time of the pregnancy" and then he went to expound upon the many girls he knew who became pregnant while at school (not high school, grad school!) and who then had to shelve their dreams of doing research or going ahead in their careers because of their various pregnancy-related ailments. I can remember my emotions during my pregnancy swinging between guilt, shame, embarrassment, giddy happiness and excitement. 

Looking back, I can say that graduate school is probably the best time to become pregnant. There's a steady source of income, there's support from co-workers, school administrators, and yes, even thesis advisers ultimately, and the work is flexible. As long as your PI has enough grant money to fund you for six months more than he originally expected, life is good. 

A not-so-good time to become pregnant is when you are looking for a new job. And that's when the quandary arises: do you tell your prospective employer during the interview that you're pregnant or do you wait for the job offer and then gently break the news? 

Both my thesis adviser (to whom I asked this question) and my husband thought they would not reveal the news until later. My adviser said, "Well, you have to protect yourself. Ask yourself this: if you were a PI with some finite source of funding, would you hire a highly productive person, or would you hire someone who has uncertainty in her future. And make no mistake: pregnancy and childbirth are uncertain events. Who knows what might happen when and for how long?"
RK said, "Every woman has a right to reproduce. And every person has a right to protect themselves against discrimination. If there is a chance that pregnancy can lead to a person not being hired, then it is only natural that that person not reveal anything that leads to discrimination" 

On the other hand, Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg says pregnancy is not a time to be apologetic and freaked out and unsure of yourself; it’s a time to be your most ambitious http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18uDutylDa4.

Well, it so turned out that all these questions arose in my head because this is exactly my situation: I am pregnant and I am job-hunting.

Postdoctoral positions in the biomedical sciences are notoriously underpaid and highly stressful. Principal investigators (PIs) look for productive scientists (and the most productive postdocs are single men or women; married postdocs are also relatively productive, though they do expect holidays once in while; male postdocs with kids are less so, but the least productive postdocs are females with kids. Family systems being what they are, females are the ones most likely to take days off to take care of sick kids, to take a morning off to drive the kids to a doctor's appointment, the ones least likely to stay back late at lab finishing up an experiment). But of course, here I am equating "productive" to "ability to spend large amounts of time in lab". They are not the same at all. And in fact, female postdocs with kids usually end up making the most efficient use of their time in the lab with minimal interruptions and breaks. But it is nonetheless a pretty stressful life: expectations are unclear or unrealistic, job security is low, and egos can be fragile. 

What is the value of this training? This will warrant a whole new blog-post. 

So let me tell you what has happened so far: in my postdoc interviews, I have been clear about expectations regarding time: I will not spend hours beyond 9-5 in the lab, and I am not likely to come to lab on weekends, unless I deem it absolutely necessary. And (more relevant to this post) I tell all my prospective postdoc advisers about my pregnancy. My outlook on pregnancy has undergone a pretty drastic shift from the last time I was pregnant. I do not see it as something to hide or shy away from. I am thirty. If I don't have kids now, when the heck will I? I hope that the persona I project is as strong and honest as I want to be and the message I want to convey is this: I am a great scientist. And I am a mother. If you have a problem with this, then I do not want to work with you. If you hire me, you will get a hardworking and imaginative problem-solver, but you are not going to get a slave. 

So far, it seems to have been successful. Only time will tell to what extent.

Curiosity might join Opportunity tonight!

The NASA spacecraft to Mars, appropriately named Curiosity, will land tonight, if all goes well. This is exciting on many levels.
For one thing, our nearest neighbor has a lot more stories to tell than we originally expected, as the data collected by NASA's previous spacecraft, Opportunity, indicates. Mars used to have water, and therefore might have once contained life (as we know it). Curiosity, in fact, has been targeted to one of the sites that scientists consider likely to have harbored water and life aeons ago.
For another thing, Curiosity is an engineering marvel. When the rover Opportunity landed on Mars 5 years ago, it was dropped by its spacecraft cucooned in a nest of airbags. It hit the ground and bounced to a stop, still packaged in its protective airbag covering, intact, shaken but not stirred, for which NASA no doubt was fervently thankful for. Curiosity packs a lot more punch: it is nuclear powered and carries an impressive number of instruments including an atomic spectrometer, an X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence machine, a large suite of instruments to analyze gases and solid matter, metereological package and ultraviolet sensor and a total of seventeen cameras, not to mention its array of devices for communication with Earth. It is understandable that NASA feels leary of using its trusty old airbags to protect this giant.
Hence, NASA engineers have come up with a pretty darn ingenious system of lowering the rover onto Mars (Mission Impossible-style):
The spacecraft itself will use heat shields and parachutes to slow down its descent. About a mile from the ground, it will lower the rover down by unspooling a set of cables until the rover's wheels touch the surface.

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This was on Sunday. I couldn't complete this post or publish it because I was interrupted by my son who woke up crying when a bolt of lightning hit close, Sunday being a day of thunderstorms in Pittsburgh.

Anyway, as all the world knows now, Curiosity did land beautifully and has already sent a bunch of images! Hurray for science! Hurray for NASA!

No matter how bad the budget deficits and bureaucracy, it is reassuring to know that NASA is still at the top of its game.