I first became concerned about this via Fitbit‘s water tracker. For a few days, I used this to encourage myself to drink more water, but soon returned to my old habits. Two weeks ago, I gave a Quantified Self SD talk about the Fitbit, which caused me to readdress my water intake concerns.

Alas, I found the solution! I simply switched the cup on the left for the cup on the right:

Larger cup, more water
Well, of course… but this decreases the annoyance of going to the break room to fill up more water while I’m busy working. I usually stop drinking when I finish the drink. The bigger cup encourages me to drink more.

Straw minimizes distraction
While a straw seems childish or too much like fast-food drinks, it’s actually much better for productivity. Drinking a mug requires more attention than drinking out of a straw. Multi-tasking becomes easier and hence it becomes natural.

I’m half way though my second large cup today. Hope this new habit sticks around.

There are going to be official write-ups of the event by the organizers, so I don’t want to be redundant and rather talk about the project I participated in and what I got out of the Hack Day.

I worked with Dawei Lin on making a LED display for DNA sequences. The 4 nucleic acid bases would be represented by 4 different colors: red, green, blue, and purple (made from red and blue). The lights were programmed by Arduino to blink and move. We would be able to pass through any DNA sequence and embed it into a decorative piece to draw awareness to the concept of “wearing what you are”. Dawei had fiddled with the idea for 2 hours previously and brought some materials. While the project is simple to any electric engineer, us two biologist had much to learn. Luckily, many people at Science Hack Day were experienced with circuits and Arduino, so we had lots of help along the way. We started with this:

… and spent the rest of Saturday building it up to this:

The next step was originally to embed it into a DNA hat that Dawei’s wife made, but that would have been impossible with the materials and amount of wires our circuit required. So, the easier idea was to make a tie. Instead of using an actual tie, we ended up making a duct tape tie from watching a YouTube video made by an 8-year-old. It was great!

We attempted to make smaller circuits that we could place right behind the tie like this:

Unfortunately we did not have enough time to finish them and we were unable to make all the lights we wanted to (which was 48). We ended up with just 8 lights. (The print material around it was to hide the breadboard and all the wires.)

What was the sequence on the DNA tie, you may ask? It was a 24-base long sequence that when translated spelled out S-C-I-H-A-C-K-D. Here was our infograph:

What I got out of Science Hack Day

1) I met a lot of awesome people doing awesome things! :)

2) I’ve never done anything electrical before, but after this experience, I feel confident building my own circuit on a breadboard (not sure about the soldering part yet).

3) This was also my first experience with Arduino after hearing people rave about it for years. It is indeed very simple, cheap, yet powerful. The community around it seems great too.

4) I’ve decided, for an upcoming project, to use Arduino to power some kind of LED accessory for my wedding dress.

5) Finally, I love the concept of Hack Days. It draws together all kinds of talent to collectively put together projects that people have been thinking about but never had the time to do. Conference after conference, they are all about talking and spreading ideas, but here we finally implement those ideas and build something to share with the world. Even the seemingly small projects are contributions toward innovation, education, and the future. I want to be a part of this synergy… and might be bring it to San Diego! (*hint hint*)

More Coverage of Science Hack Day

BBC radio segment by @RadioKate! (20:55 minutes in)

Hack me with science: a look back at Science Hack Day SF

We have lift-off! Science Hack Day SF 2010 by @arielwaldman

Pictures: mine, Flickr group

I nicknamed her LabGal and then decided to do a photo shoot of LabGal doing various lab-related stuff. Here are some highlights from the shoot:

Rest of the pictures.

And what kind of data does LabGal hold? (you may ask) … FACS data, of course!

Evil Genius – Dr. Horrible vs. Megamind

Handsome Strong Hero – Captain Hammer vs. Metroman

Love Interest – Penny vs. Roxanne

Sidekick – Moist vs. Minion

Common Themes

- Good vs. Evil
- “With great power comes great responsibility”
- Effective use of brain and technology are equivalent to superpowers (yay, science!)
- Geeks
- Rayguns!

I was Roxy, Ramona ex. The rest of the cast included: @hober, @kirinqueen, @lisinsd, @mokolabs, @danifesto, @krysaia, @jessimuhka, and some others I don’t have twitter handles for.

Some action shots:

Rest of the pictures.

One day a few months ago, I suddenly decided I needed to get the “Stand back, I’m going to try science” shirt, but instead found that my favorite comic has been turned into a shirt! After getting it, I noticed that most of the shirts had models posing with the shirts, but not for this one because it was so new. Hence it was decided that I should be that model! I purchased a cheap Beanie Baby shark off eBay, a balloon, and borrowed some stuff from lab… and here they are:

Check out the rest here!

The contest challenges whether “tamper evident” devices are as secure as they claim. Such devices include stickers that leave a layer when ripped off, envelope seals, and zip ties. Furthermore, it is not only necessary to defeat the security measures, but also to conceal everything as if nothing was done (which is the harder part).

We received this box at 10 am Saturday morning and had until 1 pm the following day to return it fully intact. And so the hacking began…

Turns out most stickers can be taken off with isopropanol and will remain sticky for quite a while. Within the big container where 4 more:

In one paper bag was a chain of various locking devices. All the devices needed to be moved from the metal chain to the yellow plastic chain. This drained over 7 hours of our time and the help of many (and still was not completed fully).

To my delight, in one envelope was the following. This was totally perfect for me!

The small black box was a circuit. Luckily almost everyone else had electric engineering backgrounds.

And of course there were all kinds of codes, including a CD with a passworded RAR file.

By 1 pm Sunday, we had everything sealed back up as if nothing had been touched.

We didn’t crack everything and missed a bunch of bonus points, but ended up getting first place! Our team consisted of Gabe, Brandon, Declan, the artistic Nonie, and pretty much everyone who hung out, gave suggestions, and fiddled with us. It was a great experience!

This event is filled with scientific inquiry and technological manipulation. One must carefully observe the nature of the devices, decide on the right tools, and execute with extreme care and precision. Practice often makes perfect. Our cohesive teamwork and openness to others were highly beneficial. All of these characteristics really appeal to the scientist in me.

Documentation blog: http://covertpenetration.posterous.com/
All photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gebl/sets/

The up-and-coming website About.me is a personal splash and analytics dashboard. I was amongst the first group to check out the site. Check out my profile at http://about.me/jun/.

I jumped immediately and snagged the username “jun” since it’s usually taken early or too short. Although, now it feels somewhat of an oddball since it’s not consistent with my normal username.

The site is pretty basic, as it is suppose to be, I suppose. I do like the excuse to put a gigantic picture of myself on the page. I feel all bold and important, but I need to take a better and more recent picture. There’s limited customization, such as font and placement of the text box, but one can do a lot with manipulating the background. There’s a lot of potential for creativity. The current site connections are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, tumblr, WordPress, Blogger, posterous, flickr, TypePad, and foursquare. I imagine this list will expand. Clicking on the icons open up pop-up feeds.

The second part of their pitch is an analytics dashboard:

Since I don’t use Facebook anymore, it’s only analyzing my Twitter. The number of tweets per week would be fun to watch. Although pure numbers hardly mean much. It would be more interesting to compare yourself against others. Hence I like EngageRank better. Plus, EngageRank uses a fancy statistical algorithm so it must be awesome :)

It would be interesting to see how About.me takes off. Will it replace business cards as the first access point for finding someone? Will it stay in tech crowds and be the directory of who to know in the tech world? Or will it just be pages with pretty backgrounds? There’s lots of work and potential ahead.

Redefining Human – Part I: Biology

Redefining Human – Part II: Technology

The following sections cover three notable examples of external factors that help make up the human body.

Human Flora

Human flora is the encompassing term for all microorganisms living symbiotically in our body. These are various species of bacteria, fungi, and archaea that live in our gastrointestinal tract, saliva, oral mucosa, and even on skin. Some of these organisms help digesting, breaking down complex chemical compounds that our intestines can’t digest. Others are not so beneficial, such as the bacteria that cause plaque and teeth decay. Many of these species have no known effects, but some can cause disease in individuals with compromised immune systems.

Bacteria are small and can live in a huge variety of environments, so it is not surprising they get into and onto our bodies. It is estimated that our bodies are made up of ten times as many microorganism cells as human cells. Another interesting fact is that babies are not born with any of these microorganisms but very rapidly acquire them from eating and… well, simply existing in this world. These bacteria that have co-evolved with mankind are very much a part of our bodies.

Viral DNA

Many viruses reproduce by invading a host and using a viral protein, reverse transcriptase, to make viral RNA into DNA. The viral DNA then can get incorporated into the host DNA, causing the host to make viral proteins. However, sometimes errors occur and the viral DNA gets inserted into the wrong place and does not replicate the virus. These regions of DNA are a part of “junk DNA”. They are completely useless foreign DNA, but because there is no selective pressure, there is no reason for it to leave.

Transposons (also known as jumping genes) are also thought to have originated from viral DNA. These are “junk DNA” elements that seemingly move from one location to another. The way this works is that the DNA gets transcribed into RNA, but then a reverse transcriptase (usually found on the transposon itself) makes the RNA back to DNA. The new DNA randomly incorporates itself into a new location.

While these examples are completely random additions of non-functional DNA that seem meaningless, they actually serve some function for our genetics. First, they are spacers that separate regions of important DNA to allow space for certain proteins to bind. Second, it provides diversity between different people and allows more diversity when passed on to a child. Diversification of DNA, after all, is an essential part of evolution.

Sickle Cell Anemia and Malaria

Sickle cell anemia is genetic disorder highly prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is caused by a single point mutation that cause red blood cells to have a sickle or half moon shape. Normal blood cells are circular disks that can easily slide across each other. Sickle cells, however, clump up and can easily clog blood vessicles, which can be fatal, oftentimes before the individual can reproduce.
Then, why is this mutation so prevalent? Turns out that carriers of this disease (who do not have the disease themselves) are resistant to malaria, another prevalent disease in the area caused by a parasite and carried by mosquitos. If two carriers mate, there is a 25% chance of the child getting sickle cell anemia, but 50% chance of being resistant to malaria. Hence, the selective pressure of malaria has caused sickle cell anemia to be more prevalent than it would have been otherwise.

Conclusion

I have covered three examples of how human DNA has been affected by our environment and evolution. Despite the perception that our body is a single entity, there are layers and layers of underlying complexity. Some of this complexity had been co-evolved with other organisms, viruses, and genes (especially those selfish ones).

Sources: random things I remember from biology classes, Wikipedia.