Mt. Auburn Cemetery June 2015

Acer platanoides (Norway Maple)

 Rhododendren maximum

 Magnolia

 Quercus velutina (Black oak)

 Cornus kousa (Kousa dogwood)

 Rhododendren maximum

Acer palmatum (Japanese maple)

 Rhododendren maximum

Acer saccharum (Sugar maple)

Three body

Three body by Liu Cixin tells an epic of human's Odyssey to the universe, spanning 20000 Earth years. It's a great science fiction in many ways,  full of dazzling imaginations and thrilling plots. It integrates the traditional Sci-fi, Chinese Wuxia, game theory, fairy tales, moral dilemma, history, and humanistic concern.

Scientifically, he invents the concepts like universe sociology, universal axioms, dark forest, interstellar deterrence, photon attack, dimension attack, light-speed spaceship, wall-face plan, and staging plan. It presents a grand picture of the human future with significant progress in science, yet still a dust in the universe. it describes the endless cycling of war and peace, as well as human ambition and desperation. He cleverly avoids the detail images of three-body,  leaving a "white" for the readers to fill. 

Philosophically, he projects the conflicts of human ideas to the aliens, and creates a dread scene of natural selection.  In the last-day war, we can see the familiar ethical dilemma of killing for survival in the lifeboat case of 1884. Interestingly, we can see the book is affected by Philip Dick from the plots in "The shadow of the man in the high castle" (the invasion of three-body) and "Mr. Spaceship" (sending brain to the space). However with all the dreadful fates, he leaves us the hope of better survival with exploration and love.

I don't like the first book of the trilogy because of its superficial dialogues and plain characters, but I do like the second the third book of the trilogy with much better plots, thoughts, and structure.

Stanford Sep 2015

Passiflora caerulea (blue passion flower) 

Eucalyptus

Callistemon viminalis (weeping bottlebrush)

Moss Landing, Sep 2015

 Ice plant (Carpobrotus edulis)

Monterey cypress 

Yingkou, May 2015

Peach flower 

Chinese scholar tree flower

Mountain View library

Cambridge library, MA

Ramen

Pancake with bunching onion

Introduction:

Similar to omelet, It is an easy dish for breakfast, but may vary a lot from different preparations. The recipe is a mixture of that for omelet and pancake. 

Ingredients:2 eggs

10g flour

10g bunching onion
5g cooked and peeled shrimp

2g salt

1g hot chili pepper

10ml whole milk
1ml sesame oil

10ml canola oil

Preparation:

1. Chop the bunching onion into fine pieces

2. Crack 2 eggs into a mixing bowel, and beat well with chopsticks

3. Add the chopped bunching onion, hot chili pepper, sesame oil, and milk into the eggs to stir well 

4. Heat the canola oil in a fry pan on the stove over high heat for 1 minute, then turn to mild heat

5. Spread the prepared mixture into the hot oil evenly as one thin layer, wait for 30 seconds for the mixture to firm a little and use spatula to direct the left wet mixture to the sides

6. Wait for 1 minute or until the mixture is 80% firm, and turn to the other side, wait for 1 minute

7. Continually turn the pancake every 20 seconds, until the color of both side turns golden yellow

Braied pork belly with rock candy

Introduction:

This dish is based on braised pork shoulder with rock candy, which is said to originate from Jinan, Shandong, China. This recipe is an integration of several popular recipes, with a special ratio of rice wine and soy sauce as 2:1. The pork belly is cooked in one piece, and cut into slices once it is cooled down, served with extra sauce or added on top of noodles in Ramen. It is delicious!

Ingredients:

500g pork belly in one piece

10ml canola oil

45ml light soy sauce

15ml concentrated soy sauce

120ml rice wine (Shaoxing 17%)

20g bunching onion

20g ginger

20g garlic

5g rock candy

Preparation:

1. Cut the bunching onion into 5cm long fragments, and ginger and garlic into 0.3 cm thick slices 

2. Heat the canola oil in a fry pan on the stove over high heat for 1 minute
3. Adjust the stove to low heat, and add the rock candy into the pan, continually stir the rock candy in oil with spatula until all the candy is dissolved in the oil, in about 5 minutes

4. Add the piece of pork belly (dried by paper towel) into the sugar-oil, cover the lid, wait for 1 minute, then turn to the other side of the pork belly, and wait for another minute, or till the pork surface is colored
5. Add the dry hot pepper and ginger into the hot oil and stir for 1 minute or until they dark and dry, then add garlic and bunching onion, continue stirring for 1 minute

6. Add the mixture of light and concentrated soy sauce, and rice wine, and hot water to cover the pork belly

6. Heat over high heat until boiling and continue to heat over mild heat for 2 hours with the lid covered, turn the pork belly every 30 minutes

7. Open the lid, and switch to high heat, continue cooking until the liquid dries
8. Cool the cooked pork belly in the refrigerator, and then cut it into 0.3 cm thick slices, which are ready to be served with extra sauces or in ramen

Do I have a role model?

I was reading "Mindset" by Carol Dweck when I found I don't have any role model for my career. The book is about the importance of having a growth mindset rather than fixed mindset in order to achieve something. Although the writing is not so interesting compared to what I have read before of books by other psychologists and it is heavy with commercial tone, the book does have some bones inside. 

I had a pretentious role model Siguan Li when I wanted to become a geologist before the college exam, but I knew little about him. What I imagined was romantic scenes to live a hard life in mountains, like a sacrificed martyr. When I finished medical school, I found no interest to be a real doctor, and neither when I finished the USMLE in US 17 years later. Still I had no role model of physician even I thought I might be a good doctor. As a neurobiologist for 20 years, I have been very dedicated to this career and were quite productive by publication, yet I don't have a strong role model in my mind. Santiago Cajal may counts for one, but I learned little about this neuroanatomist who got the first Nobel prize on medicine, except that he started his career quite late in his 40s. 

If you have no role model, it's very unlikely to have clear career goals. That might be my problem for my career development. So I need to find a role model now and set up my career goals. I need to read more biographies first. Fetching from my memory, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Gould could be the role model for science writing; Erich Kendal could be the role model for neurobiologist; Seymour Benzer could be the role model for geneticist; and Thomas Edison could be the role model for inventor...

Happiness is in your gene?

We know by nature that some people are always happier than others, no matter in what situation, so we say it's his/her nature. But looking around the world, you also see people in some countries feel happier than those in others, such as, Northern latinos and West Africans are happier than others, even they are poor with more diseases and murders. Will you still say it's their nature? 

Some will say, it is probably due to the equatorial weather; whereas others will argue, it is probably due to national wealth; and there are serious scientists working on these hypotheses. A resent study published in the Journal of the happiness studies (they even have a journal!) suggests that there is indeed a genetic basis for happiness, as we all have taken granted for it.

A basic question is what's happiness, and there is no consistent standard; they used a relative stable standard "good mood" or "positive affect" for people from every nation. The data is from "world values survey". With a scale from  "very happy", "rather happy", "not very happy", to "not at all happy", the percentage of  "very happy" is used for the correlation studies.

Another basic question is what are the possible genes for happiness? One of the candidate is serotonin receptor from depression studies; if you are more likely to be depressive than others, you will less likely to be in good mood.  The other candidate is FAAH, a degradation enzyme of an endogenous cannabinoid from pain studies; if you have less pain than others, you will more likely to be in good mood. The beauty of the gene correlation studies is that with only one genetic code difference, you separate people in different groups, just like what the ABO blood system does — here is a difference on serotonin receptor gene or FAAH gene. In another word, Some people have "C" in a location of FAAH gene, whereas others have "A", and the one with "A" is more likely in good mood than the one with "C". This is their hypothesis.

Therefore, the authors collected the survey data and gene data from many countries and tested the correlation of happiness and gene difference. They did find a strong correlation between happiness and FAAH gene with "A" on the location of rs324420. I immediately checked my data from 23&me, and found that what I have is "C" rather than "A", which fall in the 77% Chinese carrying "C" and "16%" Chinese that don't feel "very happy".  While the top happy nation like Mexican has 46% people with "A" and 60% people feel "very happy". 

This is an interesting result, but it may not be the only correlated gene, and may not be the causal gene for happiness. If gene modification is allowed, we may modify our genes to change the natural happiness if we want, but what for?

The epic of Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh was a king of Uruk, who was strong and handsome but oppressed his people. He had a habit of bedding the virgin brides, until one day he met his comrade Enkidu, a wild man made by the Goddess to be his rival pair. They fought together in the cedar forest and killed the forest watcher Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. The Goddess punished them by killing Enkidu, and Gilgamesh lamented his comrade's sacrifice, then set out for a journey to look for immortality.

Since the beginning of humankind, we are looking for the meaning of life, which is the theme of most epic poems: kings fighting wars for sex or honor to leave their names on family trees or stones because immortality is impossible for human. This earliest epic poem from 4000 years ago caries many hints of human history: the contents of the Bible, the vanish of Neanderthals, the homosexuality, the polytheism, the instructions to the future kings...

"I will set up my name where the names of famous men are written; and where no man's name is written I will raise a monument to the gods." Isn't this familiar to us modern human? To be famous as celebrities, to be Nobel laureates, billionaires, champions, stars, Presidents, and the first to grow potato on Mars...

"He is shorter, he is bigger of bone, he is the one who was raised on the milk of wild beasts. His is the greatest strength. Now Gilgamesh ass met his match." After having sex with a prostitute for 6 days and 7 nights, "his body was bound as though with a cord, his knees gave way when he started to run, his swiftness was gone. Enkidu was grown weak." This may indicates the meeting of Neanderthals and homo sapients 50000 years ago in the middle East. And the death of Enkidu hinted the vanish of Neanderthals 30000 years ago.

San Antonio, 2015