Big day...

this is tims thesis! its about the work he did in boston. after a successfull defense, he will finally be a PhD. just like me, so then we are even again.... :P ah no, he is also an MD, and i am not and never will be one.... 

but anyways. so he did publish a paper recently that was also picked up by news sites all over the world. perhaps you saw it? here is a link to the BBC news, and it was also on the dutch news site nu.nl (here), or a more serious link, here. it was really interesting to see how news sites were just copying the story from other sites, changing it bits by bits (not always correct), at some point tims name got lost too, and in some articles they even prominently name the photographer that was hired to take some pictures..... (the above picture was taken by tim himself, btw). there are also interviews, with the second author and the boss (ah, and i already forgot again, with tim as well!!), here and here.

so, this famous person is getting his PhD tomorrow!!

now, if you are around the netherlands, or utrecht, more specifially, you can witness this defense, as it is a public happening. just be at "het academiegebouw" at the domplein in utrecht tomorrow, september 9, at half past 2 (well, then it starts, so i would be there 5-10 minutes in advance...). its fun to witness a dutch PhD defense if you have never seen one.... (here you can see where the defense will take place).
edit; here is the official announcement. and here (unfortunately there is no full access) is the original researchpaper i refer to above... im just as bad as those news sites... :)

#1 Hospital

i havent joined theme day for a while, and was sure i didnt have a fitting photo for the one of august. until i saw this cookie lying around. its been lying on our kitchen counter since july 17 (im sort of conducting the mc donalds experiment, as i dont feel the urge to eat this cookie at all. which says a lot, as i generally eat cookies/chips/chocolate/candy instantly...). so, massachusetts general hospital (MGH) was named the number 1 hospital on the 2012-13 us news & world report americas best hospital list. it was a big happening. there were signs everywhere, and free cookies and bracelets and commemorative pins with MGH #1. these annual rankings are done since 23 years, out of which johns hopkins hospital has been number 1 for 21. so... what does that mean? did johns hopkins get worse? or mgh better? whats the use of such rankings anyways..? shouldnt health care be excellent anywhere, regardless? why should you give it a number? 

should i be proud? i was a patient at this hospital, and i work here. my doctor, even before the rankings, told me the same each time i saw him; we are the best, our treatment is the best you can get, and you are my favorite patient (at some point tim and i knew when he would say what, and it got boring... although he was a nice doctor, i do have to say that). now, as a researcher, should i be proud? maybe i should be proud of the fact that i still didnt give up research, even after all that ive seen along the way, even at the #1 hospital of the usa.

a few examples, that didnt necessarily happen to me personally. when being ill, but still appearing at work, telling your boss you dont feel that well, getting as a reply; "work. you are only sick when you are in the hospital with high fever. i come too, when i am sick, so it is not an excuse.". or: "why did you get even more children? now you will definitely not make it in science." or, when working at the bench (which is somewhat similar to cooking, and sometimes you just have to continue what you are doing, or you ruin it) and the boss comes by to ask you something; "next time, when i come, you stop your work and talk to me. you dont continue working, understood? i am your boss and if you dont give me the respect i deserve, you can go. anyone can do your job, in no time i have you replaced." i dont know the number of abused postdocs, but i think there are quite some. its not something postdocs talk about a lot, as it is embarrassing. more importanly, most are afraid to loose their job. many are on temporary visas, tied to their job. loosing the job means loosing the visa, which means having to leave the country; depending on the type of visa, you have to be gone within a month. it doesnt matter that you lived here for several years, that you have an entire household and what not. you have to leave, or you become "illegal". surely, bosses know that their postdocs are dependent and powerless.

now some other numbers; this is the salary many of us postdocs get on their bank account each month; around 2300 dollars. that at least includes health insurance. but it doesnt include retirement savings. 2300 dollars, with the average rent of a boston 1 bedroom apartment being around 1900 dollars... even when disregarding the level of education (PhD), then consider the workload; 40+ hours, and often you have to come in on the weekend (some bosses demand (!!) workweeks of over 50-60 hours, and coming in entire days in the weekend). for 2300 dollars... i think those are sad numbers. aside from the miserable salary and the abuse many endure, there is scientific as well as financial misconduct (thats what you sometimes read about in the news; some scientist that faked data and now has to retract his/her publications, and thats just one example). all of that makes you wonder; why would anyone want to do science?!

purely because of the science! its exciting! you get to "play" in the lab, do experiments, see what comes out, or not. get to think about what that means, what other things you can try next. thats how "stuff" is solved. how eventually diseases are understood, and perhaps even cured. thats why people go into science; the excitement. the numbers, whether salary-wise and/or the number of times you were yelled at or got otherwise screwed, is what makes many postdocs leave science eventually. and thats just sad...

by the way, tim thought this cookie was perhaps distributed to crank up the number of patients at mgh.....

(if you didnt get it, theme day this month is numbers!). for other participants of august theme day, go over here to julies blog!

Harvard yard

this is harvard yard; the oldest part and center of the campus of harvard university. the oldest building still standing dates back from 1720. harvard yard was locked down for several weeks last year, when some students played "occupy boston" and had tents in the grassy area behind the people you see in the pic (as you can see in my old post here). it was then only accessible to those with a harvard id, and thus rather empty, while normally its a very touristy area! it is also the home of harvard freshmen (first year students); 13 of the 17 freshman dormitories are located in harvard yard (you see 2 of them in the pic). must be weird living in a tourist hotspot, although i think most harvard students actually enjoy this attention....

as you can see, also here the grass turned freshly green; it really makes everything around here very pretty (only now you are not allowed to walk on it anymore).

Harvard apparatus

i saw this machine in the lab and found it very funny. those pursuing a phd/having one will understand what i found so funny about it. does this machine really infuse and/or withdraw a phd? and in this case a harvard phd? tim is one of those "unlucky" ones who performs his phd work at harvard, yet will get the actual doctorate from the much less "prestigious" utrecht university in the netherlands.... (thats where i got mine too, haha).

anyways. unlike me, tim is a genius, as he won a price for his work. his work was selected, as well as 15 others, from a pool of some 300 harvard scientists. the price; 1000 dollars. not directly for him, but to spend on /towards the costs of a scientific conference (so that includes the travel/accomodation/conference fee, etc etc). on top of that, we had the honor this evening to dine with the scientific research committee, and other important harvard-people (i guess there were 100 or so). it was extremely fancy, and the entire affair probably costed more than a yearly postdoc salary.... which i somehow found extremely sad (as a postdoc salary is very meager (and does not include retirement savings. not even if you are american, i found out recently); but to spend it to feed some grey men from the scientific research committee and some "chosen" scientists at some fancy location it is quite a lot...!)

but well... for me the evening ended delightfully, as i joked to one of the ladies from the organization that i just saw a lady walking away with one of the bouquets from the dinnertable, and her reply was; please, take one too! otherwise they go to waste! and so we now have a beautiful new vase at home, with probably at least 50 dollars worth of very nicely smelling assorted flowers..... :D

Indelicate & unladylike

one of these stones is from sally morse, whose stone i showed you last week. this cemetery, the central burying ground, was actually established to alleviate overcrowding of the nearby cemeteries that i showed you earlier. as this burial ground was the furthest away from the market center of boston, this was the least popular cemetery. the graves here are from british common soldiers who died in combat or of disease during the revolution, foreigners who died while in boston, and some american patriots.

 a few commenters last week said something like "imagine everyone would would have their cause of death listed in such detail on their grave!" well yes, that probably would be weird. although i really didnt mind in this case. i guess they were just really surprised that "some stomach cramp" for just one hour resulted in her sudden and unexpected death. so much so, that they (her husband?) wanted it engraved on her stone...
a little more googling around about sally morse (thanks julie for pointing out she was named morse, and not morfe!), and i found the same article in 3 different newspapers, published around 1921, about a lady who apparently was not happy about sally's stone either. this lady went to the cemetery office and demanded that sally morse's stone be destroyed as the inscription is indelicate and unladylike! the secretary replied that he is in no position to destroy a stone. the lady then demanded that some sort of action will be taken while she waits in the office, to which the secretary replied, as it is the best/first that comes to his mind: "madam, that stone is of great value. harvard university has just been making an investigation and has pronounced that stone important evidence of the first authentic case of appendicitis. madam, that stone cannot be destroyed". "at the magic name of harvard the visitor retreated, vanquished, and went forth to tell her friends of the "appendicitis stone" as it came to be called". 

i have no clue whether this story is true, or when exactly it happened. i could not find anything about that, nor the original article in the detroit news to which this article refers, but surely it was an amusing find... . here you can read the entire article for yourself (and look at the advertisements too, they are funny!)

for more taphophilia, go here...!

Benjamin Waterhouse

i took this pic long ago, at the mount auburn cemetery in cambridge (for an earlier post about this cemetery, click here). this is the grave of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, who died at age 92 in 1846. i took this picture because i liked this stone, and it is not usual to see that much text on a grave. upon reading it, i became even more curious! i put the pic in my "to post sometime, but first need to read more about this person" folder, and never did so. but thanks to taphophile tragics, im finally posting it! when waterhouse, born in the usa, was 21, he went to europe to study medicine, both in britain and the netherlands; he got his degree in leiden (as you can read on the stone; leyden). back in the us, he became professor at harvard medical school. in europe he had learned about the small pox vaccine, which he wanted to introduce in the us. he wrote to the then-president, john adams, as they had been roommates in the netherlands (how interesting!). when a reply did not come, he wrote to the vice-president, thomas jefferson, and when he became president in 1801, waterhouse introduced the vaccine. he did the first vaccinations on 4 of his 6 children, i guess the ultimate proof that a doctor deems something safe... he then also did a "controlled experiment" in which he deliberately exposed 19 vaccinated and 2 unvaccinated boys to the smallpox virus; the latter 2 died. (well into the 20th century this kind of experiments happened. i suggest this book if you want to know more about that). and so, he brought this vaccine to the usa. vaccines were discovered by edward jenner in 1796, when he noticed that milkmaids who caught the cowpox virus did not catch smallpox. by 1977, this deadly pathogenic disease has been eradicated, thanks to vaccination! it is said that jenner's discovery leading to vaccines has saved more lives than any other person...
of course, i got most of this knowledge from wikipedia... i could read it for hours, just following links... :) but.. tonight, the english wikipedia will be unavailable for 24 hours, to protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. if you want to know more about that; click here.
now i really digressed too much... to see other taphophile tragics, click here!

Harvard only

since november 9, harvard yard is "occupied" as well. some 30 tents have been placed right in front of the famous statue of harvard (see above). in reaction to this, the harvard administration closed the gates of the yard (they are so lucky to have it totally surrounded by gates!!), allowing entrance to only those with a harvard ID. well, arent we privileged, both me and tim have such an ID, and thus we went to the yard this beautiful saturday afternoon (while we had absolutely no business there other than to feed our curiosity). normally, this place is full with tourists, so in that respect it was really cool to be there... as one of the very few... :) while we were photographing around, we saw the real tourists behind the gates, most likely wondering how the hell we managed to get in.

and yes, there they were. the tents.... looked pretty cute. but i wonder how many "occupiers" were actually present. we saw 2. and 30 tents. the other occupiers were most likely enjoying the harvard-yale game, those 2 told us. well... is that really necessary? arent they there for a cause? is watching sport helping their cause?! i dont think so.... but... usually there are around 12 of them protesters they assured me! (12!!) i also asked them WHY they had put up tents there, as for me it seems like they want to separate themselves from the occupy boston at dewey square. i did not get a satisfying answer, but part of it was.. "some had never been there, and we want to make people aware everywhere, also here.. and its easier because we work around here, and its very dirty at dewey square... so many homeless, but mostly to make people SEE it also here..."

anyways. im wondering how long they will remain there in their little tents. and im wondering how long they will keep the yard locked. all those poor tourists... being denied their picture next to the harvard statue! perhaps the harvard administration did it to isolate those occupiers, being seen by harvard only, whats the use of their protest?
some people say those spoiled harvard students have no right to protest, as they are the 1%.  attenting harvard costs you approximately 56,000 dollars per year (!!!). who can afford that? but.... around 70% of the harvard students receive some form of financial aid (more here). well, the harvard occupiers want a university for the 99% (as you can read here). but.... i found this article in the harvard crimson that articulates very well whats wrong with exactly that: "occupy harvard seeks to trivialize the meaning of a Harvard education. In protesting Harvard as an instrument of elite financial oppression, Harvard students uncouthly slander the source of their financial aid, their educational experiences, and—most importantly—the abundant opportunities this institution provides them. For better or worse, Harvard students did not commit to attending a “university for the 99 percent.” EXACTLY!!! ah, and this article was very interesting too (and funny).

hmm... that was a long post. those occupiers get way too much attention. grrr....

Rainy day

its colder again, and it has been raining the entire day! perhaps autumn is really coming now.... they closed down the pool entirely today, now its ready for winter... i will try to take a picture someday, but actually it looks really ugly with that cover on it.

above was during the harvard football game few weeks ago, when it was raining so much as well. i think this was a steward that was there to make sure we all behaved properly.... he doesnt look too happy, maybe because hes facing the crowd rather than the game?

Cheer leader

during friday's football game we also saw cheerleaders! i had never seen them in reality, but so often on tv. it still is funny to see how everything you see in the movies is just real and normal here, while we (or me?) think its made up for the movie, and very funny (perhaps that explains why we have to laugh more often in the cinema than the real americans?). i was surprised to see that some were not superpretty! (i also learned from the movies that only the most pretty and popular girls can become cheerleader, so perhaps that is one of the few things thats only true in the movies). here they were holding one girl up in the air, i think there were 4 or 5 like these, and then they would let themselves fall down, all at the same time. they were also twirling their pom-pons around, but to me it all looked pretty useless and actually was diverting my attention from the game.... 

i did have to look up the word pom-pons, and ofcourse discovered a wealth of information about cheerleaders! how interesting... for instance, cheerleading originated (ofcourse) in the usa, but intially was an all-male activity! johnny campbell (he sure does look cheerful!) in 1898 was the first to "cheerlead" (i made that word up). only in 1923 women began to join, and with currently 97% being female, dominate the sport (there is so much more to read here).

but.... ever since the big bang theory, i cannot think of cheerleading without thinking about the conversation penny and sheldon have when penny is trying to make him feel better. she tells him not only he has lost his opportunity to greatness, but also she, when she was not chosen as the head cheerleader. it makes sheldon only more sad, as you certainly cannot compare missing out on the nobel prize with cheerleading. and more importantly, he absolutely does not see how she can be a cheer leader, not being able to cheer him up at all!! (i searched on youtube but cannot find a fragment of this.. buuuhhhhh)

American football

this evening we went to watch a game! american football; harvard against brown (i think they are from providence). we were once before in the harvard stadium, when it was entirely empty and the weather very nice... as you can see here. but... today the weather was not that great. it was quite warm, but it had been raining all day already on and off. somehow i was convinced that the rain would stop during the game, and i just brought my crappy umbrella, not really thinking about the fact that i would have to sit in that outside stadium.... i sacrificed my time magazine that i had not quite finished yet to sit on (although that turned out to be useless), and shared my umbrella with tim.... rain rain rain.... of course i had no clue what they were doing on the field, just a lot of guys in tight pants running around every now and then... ah, and the cheerleaders, that was funny, never had seen them but on television! after 45 minutes, the rain finally stopped, only to return at full force a little later.... it got so bad that we did not stay till the end of the game (i think harvard won). while walking to some place to eat it got worse and worse, i was entirely soaked by the time we found some place....

ah well, it was fun. sort of.. :) although i guess it would have been a lot nicer without the rain...

Out playing

this was a few weeks back just behind harvard yard. there is a fountain, and as it was rather hot, it was a nice way to cool down...

Manly contest... ?

as mentioned previously, the harvard stadium was built from money that came from the 25th reunion gift by harvard's class of 1879. the above sign is in the harvard stadium.... so... this stadium is dedicated to the joy of manly contest...... ehmmmm?! whats manly contest? is that a contest between males? or not necessarily, but it should be "man-like"? or....?

well... im not very good at the manly contest. tim and me decided to do some more sports... but after work its always late and we are tired and hungry.. during the day is no option. so... the morning was left.. thus far, i have gone to the gym once, friday morning (and saturday/sunday, but weekend does not count), while tim went every morning! i do promise every evening that i will go, but then... eehmmm. no.. rather not..

perhaps tomorrow a little manly contest again?

Be unstoppable

saw this advertisement underneath the harvard stadium. but.. ehmmm.. doesnt it kind of defeat the purpose? unstoppable wouldnt be good in this case!

anyhow... the crappy weather and rain seems unstoppable too. its cold, grey, windy and this week's forecast; rain, every day. beeeuughhh! i want summer!

No gates

as biebkriebels asked yesterday; there are indeed no gates around the harvard stadium, and there were only a few warning signs. this is underneath the stadium, thats what i saw first. i then did not yet know how huge the stadium is, athough this is already pretty big, entering the stadium was really a surprise! and it looked so ancient! it almost reminded me of the colosseum in rome (the outside, i never went inside), but almost...

Harvard stadium

sunday evening we went to the harvard stadium.  i had never seen it before, although it is soooo big! its along the charles river, close to harvard business school. we climbed all the stairs up to the top, from where i took this picture! at the entrance of the stadium was a sign saying "stadium only open to harvard faculty, staff and students. al others are strictly prohibited. trespassers will be prosecuted", will be prosecuted?! ouch... , but as harvard employees, we were allowed to go there. except for an old man running up and down the stadium, there was nobody, but i still was afraid that any moment someone would come to ask what we were doing there... and make us prove that we work at harvard (of course i did not bring my harvard id)

it was really cool to see! but going down all those stairs on too high heels made me a little dizzy and took quite some time.. haha! on the grass it says "harvard crimson", which are the athletic teams of harvard. the stadium opened in 1903, and was built in just four and a half months. the structure cost $310,000. most of that money came from the 25th reunion gift by harvard's class of 1879. its so huge, currently 30,323 people fit into the stadium, although according to wikipedia the maximum number of seats is 57,166 (perhaps before obesitas became a problem..?)

No crime

although you are not allowed to watch inside the great hall when the freshmen have their food, its no crime to look through the window when its empty, right? above what me and my camera saw... doesnt it look like harry potter? :)

as for the harvard library urine incident: it happened actually already a few weeks back, and then was reported as an accident by the person who tripped over the bottle of urine. only later it somehow got listed as a possible "hate crime" and was investigated by the university police. they however came to the conclusion that, although it were gay and lesbian books, was "just" an accident, and there was "just" a bottle of urine located at the wrong place. nowhere it was mentioned WHY there was such a bottle with pee in a library in the first place??!! now i found a post on this website where someone poses the following: it is finals week at the university, so everyone is studying real hard. possibly... someone was studying soooo hard in the library, that he/she could not even get up to go to the restroom and instead did it in a bottle. seems plausible... although... crazy?! i especially like the last sentence: "Harvard's damaged books on gay issues turning out to be a accident instead of a hate crime is quite a relief to the compus' GLBT community. Finals are tense enough without thinking someone they study with could be that nasty."

so, thats it, no hate, no crime, just harvard pee..... not very prestigious though...

Wet accident

above the memorial hall in cambridge, from harvard univeristy. according to my friend wikipedia it is now a national historic landmark. in 1877 it was completed. the hall's great room is used as the dining hall for freshmen, and you are not allowed to have a look inside (those poor hardworking students are at harvard, and need to study! they arent monkeys you can watch...). i did however once have a peek inside, and that was soooo cool!! it totally looked like the great dining hall in the harry potter movie (at least so i think..).

clearly this picture was taken when there was more sun out.. but i just read something sooo weird in the newspaper related to harvard that a harvard pic was necessary... :) according to the newspaper, 36 books, all dealing with gay and lesbian studies, were damaged by urine. urine??!! harvard issued a statement that the books were damaged "when a library staffer accidentally knocked over a bottle of urine that had somehow been placed on the shelf where the staffer was stocking books". eh? how did that get there? why? the headline of the newspaper thus is "hate in the halls of harvard?" 

surely i keep you updated if more news on this follows....

Bizarre animals

this is in the Harvard museum of natural history, which you can enter for free if you are a mass resident, or when you have a harvard ID, or on the first weekend of each month when having a bank of america card. all 3 apply to me, yet i went there only once.. :) i liked the museum. it is in an old building, and there is maybe a little too much to see... it is so crammed that the gigantic skeletons of different whales are hanging 3 species thick above each other in a small space with very high ceiling.

this text in particular made me laugh and since then i sometimes think about it, while replacing south for north... ;)  (am i bad?)

i cannot get the american obsession with food, for example. just read that in NYC fast food chains are required (!!) to put calorie counts on their menus. in fact, i see that a lot... and up till recently calories never meant much to me. but then i started going to the gym; the stupid bike counts how many calories you burn. so.. now i often check how many calories are in whatever i am eating, and when comparing that to how much effort it costs me to burn 500 calories at the gym... i actually have the feeling going to the gym is not worth it at all!! in no time the 500 are back again! hahahahaha!

an interesting detail this morning in the newspaper: the cheesecake factory shrimp pasta contains 2727 calories, which is the equivalent of 6 mc donalds quarter pounders (6!!). needless to say, i like to go to both places every now and then.... :)

Everything different

i changed labs. everything new, everything different, everything scary and everything exciting. the first few days/weeks in a new lab are always extremely tiring (at least to me). new faces, new customs, new techniques, new subject, new rules, finding out where everything is located. trying to do the first small experiments, trying to remember everything in the first go, feeling stupid when having to ask again where something is stored.... then there is also the paperwork part... my employee number stayed the same as i remain at the same university, but since its at another hospital, everything else has to be done again, checked again, filled out again. but mostly im excited and cant wait to be well into a project of myself, and where i am set up to work there as if i never did anything else before...!

above a picture of Don; he delivers all the labstuff at my old building. always friendly, always in a good mood, and when there were packages for "my" lab, he always let me sign for them.. :) his cart always piled up with boxes far too high; me often asking whether they wont fall off. but hey, sure not, as he said himself; "im good at what i do :D !!"

Proud graduate

during lunch i saw this. he is in front of the nice building... :)
and his girlfriend takes a picture. after many more pictures followed.... real fun to see.
glad i did not have to wear something like that during my PhD defense!