Having lived here less than a year, I’m not entirely confident that I’m qualified to comment on the Southern California environments. However, I would imagine that it is in these first months that the differences between “here” and “there”—that is to say, Maryland—are the most salient, and are thus a fine source of raw material for this space. SoCal doesn’t quite understand the concept of seasons, at least not in the same context Maryland’s schizophrenic weather patterns has provided me over the years.
First of all, there’s no snow, and without even the possibility of frozen crystals from the sky (and the chill required to sustain it) I refuse to acknowledge that we had a winter. In its stead, we’ve had something that could possibly be called “Autumn” or “Spring,” but is likely more accurately referred to as “wet.” I say Autumn not only because it sounds better than “Fall”—when we first got here, one response to us explaining that we were from Maryland was, “Oh, that’s where the leaves change colors, right?” In the end, the differentiation between the autumn and spring phases of Wet is that the perpetually-in-bloom Bird of Paradise flowers are slowly losing their color and vitality, while in Spring, it’s returning. Now it’s April, which means it’s time to get out the shorts for the six-month summer. Ready to come visit?
I am a bit surprised that I’m already a week into the quarter. I signed up to give a presentation on the first day of Journal Club, which means I’m already done presenting in that class for the rest of the quarter. My group even managed a little April Fool’s joke, beginning our talk with a summary of a paper from NCBI ROFL, a site highlighting some of the more ridiculous studies that make it to publication. I’ve always liked the idea of April Fool’s Day jokes, but when I was a kid it didn’t seem like that many people paid attention to a day with so much potential. Thankfully, the internet takes the holiday and makes it into something great every year.
I haven’t filed all the official paperwork yet, but I’ve decided for sure that I’m going to stay in Dr. Salvador Soriano’s lab, the one I’ve been in since January. I’m using models of Niemann-Pick type C disease (NPC), which has some interesting parallels to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), to try and learn more about the mechanisms of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s. I didn’t know much at all about AD before I came to this lab, and even less about NPC. Since then I’ve made a lot of intellectual progress, learning about the field and helping to design the experiments the lab is going to undertaking this year.
Progress in terms of carrying out experiments has been pretty slow so far. The lab is still getting set up, so there has been a lot of ordering equipment and supplies and waiting for things to be delivered. There have been a lot of fits and starts, but I’m hoping to start getting some data this quarter, and doing experiments in earnest over the summer.
I enjoy listening to music at work, and lately I’ve been getting a lot of stuff from hear now. My friend Kristopher, a stylish gentleman with impeccable taste, curates the blog and has been posting his highlights from 2010. There’s some great artists on there and a playlist at the end of every post.