Check yo self

FSP's post today on getting blogged about reminded me of something I meant to write about awhile ago. And that is - ways to actively monitor how others talk about you publicly.

I highly suggest setting up several Google Alerts. This is a great service that emails you whenever someone mentions your name on a site Google indexes*. You can set this up for general search results, as well as for blogs, twitter, and news articles.

You also can set up citation alerts in Google scholar, which will tell you if someone has cited you generally, or you can set one up for individual papers if you're so inclined.

For these alerts, I have quite a few variations of my name, for example:
(Ada A. Lovelace) OR (A. Lovelace) OR (Lovelace, A.) OR (Lovelace AND Analytic Engines) 
etc.

I've found these alerts invaluable, because over the years I have given several talks where my privacy requests were violated. This happened along the lines of:
"Can we have a copy of your slides?"
"No."
"Pretty Please? It's for those poor undergraduate students who couldn't attend your talk today."
"No."
"Pleeeeease? We promise not to put it on the internet."

Because I'm a pushover when it comes to pleas about wee undergraduate students, I acquiesced, and sure enough two weeks later, surprise! There are my slides.

But these alerts have also relayed good news, for example, I've learned of news articles about my research I didn't know existed, learned of entirely unexpected paper citations, and, I also discovered a really juicy paper basically trashing one of the subfields I work in. (Not trashing me specifically, just saying something factual about my publication frequency).

So, these alerts are worth setting up. Unless you're the academic equivalent of Lindsay Lohan, in which case I do not recommend this service.

(*) If you're a Bing person, sorry - there are no Bing alerts at present. Their academic.research.microsoft.com site offers RSS subscriptions, though I imagine there is a fair bit of overlap with Google scholar. 

questions answered...

i had several questions and emails about painting my kitchen so i thought i would do one last post and then you don't have to hear about it anymore :)

painting: while i would love to say that i was cool enough to tackle this project myself, i'm not.  i left it to the professionals but i did buy all of the supplies so i can guide you a little on what they used.  our cabinets were a light stained wood so to get the paint to adhere they first started w/ sanding all of them.  next, they used zinsser cover stain.  this stuff is heavy duty and so we moved out of our house for 4 days while they painted.  it's an oil based primer that covers really well over wood, knots, etc. here is a pic of the can if you need a visual:

my paint colors were Benjamin Moore from the Classic Color collection.  the cabinets were oil base, which is not my favorite thing to use but the durability is a lot better.

cabinets: Vapor Trails 1556 (this is actually one shade lighter then Sally Wheat's kitchen)

and the walls: Northern Cliffs 1536

a lot of people also asked about my chair fabric....its one of my spare DR chairs and the stripe is lulu dk's catwalk light blue w/ brown.  

thanks a million for all of your sweet comments!  it was fun sharing the process and even more fun to get the "after" product!  

and i can't end w/out saying happy valentine's day!!  seriously, can this cake make its way into my kitchen so i can eat it?!! xoxox

Top Secret Rosies

A special "rose" for you for Valentine's Day - I've just posted at Scientopia about the incredible new documentary "Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of WWII."

Polyphenols, Hormesis and Disease: Part I

What are Polyphenols?
Polyphenols are a diverse class of molecules containing multiple phenol rings. They are synthesized in large amounts by plants, certain fungi and a few animals, and serve many purposes, including defense against predators/infections, defense against sunlight damage and chemical oxidation, and coloration. The color of many fruits and vegetables, such as blueberries, eggplants, red potatoes and apples comes from polyphenols. Some familiar classes of polyphenols in the diet-health literature are flavonoids, isoflavonoids, anthocyanidins, and lignins.

The Case Against Polyphenols

Many diet-health authorities seem pretty well convinced that dietary polyphenols are an important part of good health, due to their supposed antioxidant properties. In the past, I've been critical of the hypothesis. There are several reasons for it:

1. Polyphenols are often, but not always, defensive compounds that interfere with digestive processes, which is why they often taste bitter and/or astringent. Plant-eating animals including humans have evolved defensive strategies against polyphenol-rich foods, such as polyphenol-binding proteins in saliva (1).
2. Ingested polyphenols are poorly absorbed (2). The concentration in blood is low, and the concentration inside cells is probably considerably lower*. In contrast, essential antioxidant nutrients such as vitamins E and C are efficiently absorbed and retained rather than excluded from the circulation.
3. Polyphenols that manage to cross the gut barrier are rapidly degraded by the liver, just like a variety of other foreign molecules, again suggesting that the body doesn't want them hanging around (2).
4. The most visible hypothesis of how polyphenols influence health is the idea that they are antioxidants, protecting against the ravages of reactive oxygen species. While many polyphenols are effective antioxidants at high concentrations in a test tube, I don't find it very plausible that the low and transient blood concentration of polyphenols achieved by eating polyphenol-rich foods makes a meaningful contribution to that person's overall antioxidant status, when compared to the relatively high concentrations of other antioxidants in blood* (uric acid; vitamins C, E; ubiquinone) and particularly inside cells (SOD1/2, catalase, glutathione reductase, thioredoxin reductase, paraoxonase 1, etc.).
5. There are a number of studies showing that the antioxidant capacity of the blood increases after eating polyphenol-rich foods. These are often confounded by the fact that fructose (in fruit and some vegetables) and caffeine (in tea and coffee) can increase the blood level of uric acid, the blood's main water-soluble antioxidant. Drinking sugar water has the same effect (2).
6. Rodent studies showing that polyphenols improve health typically use massive doses that exceed what a person could consume eating food, and do not account for the possibility that the rodents may have been calorie restricted because their food tastes awful.

The main point is that the body does not seem to "want" polyphenols in the circulation at any appreciable level, and therefore it gets rid of them pronto. Why? I think it's because the diversity and chemical structure of polyphenols makes them potentially bioactive-- they have a high probability of altering signaling pathways and enzyme activity, in the same manner as pharmaceutical drugs. It would not be a very smart evolutionary strategy to let plants (that often don't want you eating them) take the reins on your biochemistry. Also, at high enough concentrations polyphenols can be pro-oxidants, promoting excess production of free radicals, although the biological relevance of that may be questionable due to the concentrations required.

A Reappraisal

After reading more about polyphenols, and coming to understand that the prevailing hypothesis of why they work makes no sense, I decided that the whole thing is probably bunk: at best, specific polyphenols are protective in rodents at unnaturally high doses due to some drug-like effect. But-- I kept my finger on the pulse of the field just in case, and I began to notice that more sophisticated studies were emerging almost weekly that seemed to confirm that realistic amounts of certain polyphenol-rich foods (not just massive quantities of polyphenol extract) have protective effects against a variety of health problems. There are many such studies, and I won't attempt to review them comprehensively, but here are a few I've come across:

• Dr. David Grassi and colleagues showed that polyphenol-rich chocolate lowers blood pressure, improves insulin sensitivity and lowers LDL cholesterol in hypertensive and insulin resistant volunteers when compared with white chocolate (3). Although dark chocolate is also probably richer in magnesium, copper and other nutrients than white chocolate, the study is still intriguing.
• Dr. Christine Morand and colleagues showed that drinking orange juice every day lowers blood pressure and increases vascular reactivity in overweight volunteers, an effect that they were able to specifically attribute to the polyphenol hesperidin (4).
• Dr. F. Natella and colleagues showed that red wine prevents the increase in oxidized blood lipids (fats) that occurs after consuming a meal high in oxidized and potentially oxidizable fats (5).
• Several studies have shown that hibiscus tea lowers blood pressure in people with hypertension when consumed regularly (6, 7, 8). It also happens to be delicious.
• Dr. Arpita Basu and colleagues showed that blueberries lower blood pressure and oxidized LDL in men and women with metabolic syndrome (9).
• Animal studies have generally shown similar results. Dr. Xianli Wu and colleagues showed that whole blueberries potently inhibit atherosclerosis (hardening and thickening of the arteries that can lead to a heart attack) in a susceptible strain of mice (10). This effect was associated with a higher expression level of antioxidant enzymes in the vessel walls and other tissues.

Wait a minute... let's rewind. Eating blueberries causes mice to increase the expression level of their own antioxidant enzymes?? Why would that happen if blueberry polyphenols were protecting against oxidative stress? One would expect the opposite reaction if they were. What's going on here?

In the face of this accumulating evidence, I've had to reconsider my position on polyphenols. In the process, and through conversations with knowledgeable researchers in the polyphenol field, I encountered a different hypothesis that puts the puzzle pieces together nicely.  I'll discuss that in the next post.


* Serum levels of polyphenols briefly enter the mid nM to low uM range, depending on the food (2). Compare that with the main serum antioxidants: ~200 uM for uric acid, ~100 uM for vitamin C, ~30 uM for vitamin E.

Sejarah Linux/unix

Nama Linux merupakan kombinasi unik antara nama penciptanya dan nama
sistem operasi yang menjadi targetnya (UNIX). Semuanya
berawal dari sebuah
sistem operasi bernama Minix. Minix dibuat oleh Profesor Andrew Tanenbaum.
Minix adalah sistem operasi mirip UNIX yang bekerja pada PC.
Torvald adalah salah seorang mahasiswa di Universitas Helsinki yang
menggunakan Minix. Walaupun cukup bagus, ia belum menganggap Minix memadai.
Kemudian pada tahun 1991 ia membuat sistem operasi yang merupakan clone UNIX,
yang diberi nama Linux.
Seperti halnya Minix, Linux tidak menggunakan kode apa pun dari vendor
UNIX komersial, sehingga Torvalds mendistribusikan linux di internet secara bebas
dan gratis.
Pada Oktober 5 1991, Torvalds mengeposkan sistem operasinya di newsgroup
comp.os.minix. Ia mengumumkan bahwa source code Linux tersedia dan meminta
bantuan programmer-programmer lain untuk ikut mengembangkannya. Ketika itu
Linux masih setengah matang, sistem operasi ini hanya bisa menjalankan sedikit
perintah UNIX, seperti bash, gcc dan gnu-make. Saat Linux 1.0 diluncurkan pada
1994, sistem operasi ini telah cukup stabil dan memiliki banyak feature, seperti
preemptive multitasking (kemampuan untuk membagi sumber daya CPU untuk
banyak aplikasi) dan symmetric multiprocessing (kemampuan untuk membagi tugas
di antara banyak CPU). Linux bahkan memiliki maskotnya sendiri yang oleh torvalds
Dijelaskan sebagai "seekor penguin yang menggemaskan dan ramah, yang kekenyangan setelah
banyak makan ikan hering".

Pada 1996, tim pengembangan Linux yang ada diseluruh dunia mulai
memberikan hasilnya. Tahun itu mereka telah membuat versi Linux untuk sejumlah
versi hardware, dari Atari ST sampai Macintosh.
Linux terus berkembang pesat, utamanya karena ada sejumlah distributor
(seperti RedHat, Caldera, dsb) yang berkompetisi untuk berebut pangsa pasar. Oleh
karena itu dibentuk kelompok bernama Linux Standard Base. Kelompok ini bekerja
untuk memastikan bahwa beragam distribusi Linux yang ada tetap bisa menjalankan


aplikasi yang sama dan saling berinteroperasi. Saat ini ada tujuh distribusi Linux
paling terkenal, yaitu :
1. RedHat Linux, distributor paling populer di AS dan salah satu yang paling
mudah digunakan.
2. Mandrake Linux, distributor yang menambahkan update dan patch untuk
RedHat Linux.
3. Caldera Open Linux, distibrusi Linux dengan instalasi dan lingkungan
pengguna berbasis grafis yang bagus.
4. Suse Linux, distribusi Linux paling populer di Eropa yang juga
menyediakan perangkat instalasi dan panduan berbahasa Indonesia.
5. Slackware Linux.
6. Debian GNU/Linux.
7. TurboLinux, distribusi Linux paling populer di Asia yang menyediakan
dukungan untuk set karakter khusus Asia.