Loose thoughts

2009 is the year of Darwin

200 years since his birth
150 years since the publication of the "On the Origin of the Species"

Until recently I was quite reticent regarding the impact of evolution on current research. Training in biochemistry seeks immediate understanding of direct relations between genotype and phenotype, gene and protein, between structure and function... specially in crystallography where everything is static, though quite beautiful... I still remember my first protein crystal, lysozyme :)

The most important thing I've learn during the past year was the crucial role of time, that sweet independent variable which allows the Human brain to perceive the dynamics underlying biological systems.
Macroscopic but rather subtle differences between mammals, birds, plants, fishes... that's what Darwin could observe back in his time and what an extraordinary observation and impartial description he made! Guided by his insatiable curiosity, persistence and sense of opportunity, he began the most important conceptual revolution in Humanity since Christianity.

"Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of Evolution" (Theodosius Dobzhansky)

Though... I wonder... how could natural selection allow the survival of such a self destructive specie as we, humans, are?
Against all the odds we proliferate... we beat natural selection, we overcame the limiting step: cheating mother nature.
And here we are better than ever, the more advanced society Earth has ever seen, addicted to material satisfaction ("I can get NO satisfaction..." is now out of date)...
Everything has a cost:
so that some can be well fed others must experience daily starvation,
so that some can smile others must cry,
so that some can control others must obey,
so that some can yell others must be kept quiet,
so that some can live others must die...

Drift ?
No... organized and powered drift...

First conference on my own

Second week of the new year and here I go to London, first time in the city apart from the airports, sponsored by Virgin trains! Quite fast I must say, 1h30!
Time to rencounter Rodrigo, meet Sílvia and on the next day rencounter an old friend that I haven't seen for a couple of years... Great dinner (Wagamama sponsor) great people... what can I say more? It was really nice :) Thank you*

But I was there in "work", to spy on Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance! hehe
Can you guess who I encountered there? People from Gulbenkian! And another guy doing his PhD in Edimbra, from the Gabba program. The world is really a small place! :)

On my last day I decided to spend a couple of hours at the National History Museum. There I was looking at the fossils when suddenly I hear "Please find your nearest exit. This is an emergency evacuation" ... everyone starts to look for the exit and when we finaly got there, the security guys were letting people entering the building !?!?! "There's an emergency call? Ok, Stop right there! Do not try to come in!" Whatever!
Let's keep moving and come back to the peaceful Birmingham :)
See you next time London! ;)

Work after holidays

Why do we always have the feeling that holidays are short?

After two weeks of pure entertainment and pleasure (you dirty minds!!) I had to come back to Birmingham, sponsored by Ryanair as usual. The "self-contained flat" where I live was freezing and on the next day I woke up with a beautiful snowfall :) This scenario kept repeating for a few days giving me enough time to develop a nice strategy to not fall in the side walk: walking on the grass is much less dangerous! ;)
I had this thing (they call it compulsory exam) on Wednesday, something about statistics for post-graduates and I had only 3 (long) days to study for what turn out to be an exam impossible to fail: we could consult the handouts, which actually helped me to answer a whole group of theoretical questions by looking (for the first time) into the corresponding slides; many of the exercises had an working example counterpart in the notes; 55 questions for 1h45m and of course the pass mark was (I wonder if this is the only place in the world where this is so...!) of 40% !!!
Ok, no, I didn't scored 100% (not even after passing the tight evaluation of Professor Dinis Pestana, that great Statistician!), I couldn't do better than 74% :(
(what you're looking at? I'm in the "First" range! ahah lol...)

In this same week I had to finish my 3 month report... where I learned how to do a gantt chart and realize how empty and meaningless it can be...Nevertheless, is was worth to see the long time and work I still have to... to do what? let's make a list:
- travel to exotic places
- meet extravagant people
- discuss the state of the world with creative/optimistic minds
- visit all my friends around the world (I know I owe you that ;) )
- spend time doing nothing
- learn how to not stress
- laugh every day
- develop the multiscale model, write the thesis and go to somewhere sunny! :))

Totally doable :D

Happy New Year