Hsien-Hsien Lei, PhD

To distract travelers from delayed and canceled flights, Singapore's Changi Airport installed a 40-foot-tall super twister slide that they can zip down at 19 feet per second.

If you spend $22 in the airport, you get two free ride tokens on the Slide@T3. I guess if you get people laughing and having fun while plummeting towards the earth, they'll be less anxious while flying. Too bad we'll never see anything like this in the United States, there would be lawsuits disgorging themselves from the bottom of the slide on opening day.

Super Slide Opens in Singapore Airport [Intransit.blogs.nytimes]

An interesting paradox in the technology world is that there is both a shortage and a surplus of engineers in the United States. Talk to those working at any Silicon Valley company, and they will tell you how hard it is to find qualified talent. But listen to the heart-wrenching stories of unemployed engineers, and you will realize that there are tens of thousands who can’t get jobs. What gives?

The harsh reality is that in the tech world, companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced, engineers.

And engineering is an “up or out” profession: you either move up the ladder or face unemployment. This is not something that tech executives publicly admit, because they fear being sued for age discrimination, but everyone knows that this is the way things are. Why would any company hire a computer programmer with the wrong skills for a salary of $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduate—with no skills—for around $60,000?  Even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead. The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: they will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don’t carry any “technology baggage”.  As well, the older worker likely has a family and needs to leave by 6 pm, whereas the young can pull all-nighters.

At least, that’s how the thinking goes in the tech industry.

In their book Chips and Change, Professors Clair Brown and Greg Linden, of the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics and census data for the semiconductor industry and found that salaries increased dramatically for engineers during their 30s but that these increases slowed after the age of 40. At greater ages still, salaries started dropping, dependent on the level of education. After 50, the mean salary of engineers was lower—by 17% for those with bachelors degrees, and by 14% for those with masters degrees and PhDs—than the salary of those younger than 50. Curiously, Brown and Linden also found that salary increases for holders of postgraduate degrees were always lower than increases for those with bachelor’s degrees (in other words, even PhD degrees didn’t provide long-term job protection). It’s not much different in the software/internet industry. If anything, things in these fast-moving industries are much worse for older workers.

For tech startups, it usually boils down to cost: most can’t even afford to pay $60K salaries, so they look for motivated, young software developers who will accept minimum wage in return for equity ownership and the opportunity to build their careers. Companies like Zoho can afford to pay market salaries, but find huge advantage in hiring young workers. In 2006, Zoho’s CEO, Sridhar Vembu, initiated an experiment to hire 17-year-olds directly out of high school. He found that within two years, the work performance of these recruits was indistinguishable from that of their college-educated peers. Some ended up becoming superstar software developers.

Companies such as Microsoft say that they try to maintain a balance but that it isn’t easy. An old friend, David Vaskevitch, who was Senior Vice-President and Chief Technical Officer at Microsoft, told me in 2008 that he believes that younger workers have more energy and are sometimes more creative. But there is a lot they don’t know and can’t know until they gain experience. So Microsoft aggressively recruits for fresh talent on university campuses and for highly experienced engineers from within the industry, one not at the expense of the other. David acknowledged that the vast majority of new Microsoft employees are young, but said that this is so because older workers tend to go into more senior jobs and there are fewer of those positions to begin with. It was all about hiring the best and brightest, he said; age and nationality are not important.

So whether we like it or not, it’s a tough industry. I know that some techies will take offense at what I have to say, but here is my advice to those whose hair is beginning to grey:

1. Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design; switch to sales or product management; or jump ship and become an entrepreneur (old guys have a huge advantage in the startup world). Build skills that are more valuable to your company, and take positions that can’t be filled by entry-level workers.
2. If you’re going to stay in programming, realize that the deck is stacked against you. Even though you may be highly experienced and wise, employers aren’t willing or able to pay an experienced worker twice or thrice what an entry-level worker earns. Save as much as you can when you’re in your 30s and 40s and be prepared to earn less as you gain experience.
3. Keep your skills current. This means keeping up-to-date with the latest trends in computing, programming techniques, and languages, and adapting to change. To be writing code for a living when you’re 50, you will need to be a rock-star developer and be able to out-code the new kids on the block.

My advice to managers is to consider the value of the experience that the techies bring. With age frequently come wisdom and abilities to follow direction, mentor, and lead. Older workers also tend to be more pragmatic and loyal, and to know the importance of being team players. And ego and arrogance usually fade with age. During my tech days, I hired several programmers who were over 50. They were the steadiest performers and stayed with me through the most difficult times.

Finally, I don’t know of any university, including the ones I teach at, that tells its engineering students what to expect in the long term or how to manage their technical careers. Perhaps it is time to let students know what lies ahead.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa  is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwaand find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

Once you’ve done it, you’ll be making ringtones faster than you can download them. It is not, however, the most obvious process. Here’s a how-to guide to help you out for both Mac and Windows users.

Simply follow the steps outlined here to create your own tones right from your computer. Let us know how you got on — and what songs you ringtoned — in the comments below.

Choose Your Song and Edit It

The first part of the process is more or less the same for both Mac and Windows users. In iTunes, select the song you want to use, right-click on the track and hit “Get Info.”

Select “Options” from the menu along the top, then change the “Stop Time” of the song to 15 seconds (or how long you want it to be — reports vary, but apparently ringtones can’t be longer than 30 seconds).

Now, in the “Advanced” iTunes menu, select “Create AAC version.”

You will now see a second version of the song. Be sure to go back into the original song’s “Get Info” options and delete your “Stop Time” setting, or else the song won’t play past this point in the future.

Converting the File for Mac Users

Mac users should right-click on the new, 15-second version and hit “Show in Finder” in order to change the file extension from .m4a to .m4r. This can be done just by clicking on it and overtyping. You also want to make the file name as short as possible too, so rename this in the same way.

Now, still in Finder, drag the .m4r file to your desktop and delete the version that is in iTunes. When this is done, you want to import the file back into iTunes. To do this, open the iTunes “File” menu and select “Add to Library,” find the song on your desktop and add it back in.

Converting the File for PC Users

PC users will do this last part a little differently. Once you’ve got the AAC version of the song, you need to find it on your computer. Unless your default settings have been changed, it’s likely you can find it by clicking through the following folders: My Documents, My Music, iTunes, iTunes Media, Music and then the relevant artist’s folder.

You need to change the file extension from .m4a to .m4r by clicking on it and overtyping. If you can’t see the file extension type (just the name) then you need to enable that functionality first. Go to your control panel and click “Folder Options.” Then, untick the option that says “Hide extensions for known file types.” Going back into the iTunes folder and you will now be able to see the extension to change it.

Once it’s changed, you need to import the renamed file back into iTunes through the “Add to Library” option in the “File” menu.

Getting the File onto Your iPhone

Now, both Mac and PC users will see the file under the “Ringtones” category on the left of your iTunes display.

To get the ringtone where it needs to be — on your phone — sync your iPhone to iTunes. If this is the first time you’ve added a ringtone in this way, make sure that the “Ringtones” tab is set to sync.

To change the ringtone on your iPhone to your chosen song, go to “Settings,” then “Sounds,” then “Ringtone” and you should now have a “Custom” list above the pre-loaded “Standard” list. Just touch the song you want and you can be free of that pre-loaded “Marimba” forever!

More iPhone Resources from Mashable:

- 10 Useful iPhone Keyboard Shortcuts, Tips and Tricks
- 10 Incredible iPhone Portrait Photographs
- 10 Incredible iPhone Photographs
- 10 Ridiculous iPhone Accessories [PICS]
- 5 iPhone Apps to Help You Learn to Dance

More About: free ringtones, how to, iphone, iphone 4, itunes, ringtones, trending

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• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

A unique spin on the concept of co-working space, Sunfire Offices was started three months ago by ex- Google engineering manager Niniane Wang and and ex-Facebook engineering manager Yishan Wong. While there are plenty of other co-working spaces in downtown Mountain View, like Hacker Dojo and Plug In Play,Wong and Wang, not satisfied with the available options, decided to create a co-working space of their own.

They found an office space and got funding from a number of angel investors including Keith Rabois and Justin Calbeck, who completely sponsored Sunfire Offices, meaning that Wong and Wang were then able to offer space rent free to other startups and individuals working on personal projects, “Our goal was to build a co-working space focused on top-tier talent.”
(They shied away from talking about a future business model.)

While it does incorporate incubator type qualities, the two emphasize that invite-only Sunfire Offices is not a incubator,“We’re optimizing for the quality of people, since they’re what really matter in a start-up,” says Wong. They wanted to “avoid the problem often associated with incubators: the theory that stronger startups don’t need an incubator so the startups that apply to incubators tend to be weaker ones, resulting in incubators naturally selecting for poorer startup performance.”

Unlike most incubators, the only obligation at Sunfire is to attend a weekly mixer where one of the sponsors’ portfolio companies does a pitch or demo. This benefits Sunfire sponsors because they end up getting first look at potential companies and Sunfire residents because they get exposure to potential investors and recruiters.

Looking for “aggressively productive individuals” as residents, Wang emphasizes that applicant pedigree doesn’t matter. But the the inevitable Google and Facebook connection is strong, “due to our backgrounds, we are able to source from a very high-quality pool – Niniane knows all the great early engineers at Google, and I know everyone from PayPal and Facebook.”

Aside from free rent, office residents gain the being around intelligent people/environmental aspect of working at a giant company while still maintaining a small scale. “Working in coffee shops or at home can be very lonely and unmotivating,” says Wang.

Wang also brings up the example of a Nextstop engineer who didn’t want to move to Facebook when Facebook acquired Nextstop — preferring to stay at a startup.

“We invited her to come work at Sunfire, during which time she worked on a small project of her own while talking with various companies associated with our sponsors and network. And just last week, she accepted a position at one of those companies as their first full-time engineer.”

A visit to the offices reveals an amazing view and a lot of people hard at work on some secret and not so secret projects including YouTube co-founder Jared Karim, former astronaut and Google Manager Ed Lu, and co-founders of iTeleport Jahanzeb Sherwani and Vishal Kapur.

You can get an invitation to the Sunfire weekly mixer (and maybe even to Sunfire) by contacting office manager (and former Googler) Elaine Yu or tag along vicariously as they eat their way through Castro Street.

I know that eating too much refined sugar increases my risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and stroke, but it's so hard to resist sweet treats. If you have a hard time saying no to all things sugar-sweetened and chocolate-covered, here are some ways you can cut down on the white stuff.

• Don't go cold turkey. This plan usually backfires and you end up missing the sweet stuff so much you binge on an entire bag of M&Ms. It's best to limit the amount of sweets you eat gradually.
• Decrease the amount of sugar you add to foods. Stir less into your morning cup of joe and sprinkle less brown sugar on your oatmeal.
• Choose one sweet treat per day. Moderation is key, so if you can't live without a piece of chocolate after lunch or ice cream after dinner, then don't. Designate one time each day to indulge in a little dessert and limit your sugar intake for the rest of the day.
• Read labels and watch out for natural sugars. Brown sugar, molasses, Sucanat, and organic sugar are still sugar.

Curb your sweet tooth with these other tips when you read more.

• Say farewell to soda and other sweetened beverages. These sugary drinks are also high in calories, so choose water flavored with fresh lemon or lime, seltzer, tea, milk, or plain water instead.
• Modify your favorite recipes. I often find that cutting back on the sugar in baked goods doesn't change the flavor too drastically. Or you can whip up healthy alternatives to your favorite decadent treats such as this Frozen Raspberry Creamy, Dreamy Pie made with skim milk and egg whites instead of cream - the fruit makes it naturally sweet.
• Choose plain yogurt with fruit instead of flavored yogurt. You'll end up cutting back on sugar and the fruit offers vitamins and fiber as well.
• Curb cravings with fruit. Fresh fruit is full of natural sweetness, so the next time you have a cookie craving, reach for a juicy peach, some luscious strawberries, or dried mangoes instead.

Have tips that worked for you? Share them below!

If you're looking for ways to tone up your legs, we have you covered from cardio to yoga. Here are three different workouts all focusing on the lower half of the body. Mix up weight training with running to strengthen your legs, then add a little yoga for lengthening your muscles while working them. Each workout has a downloadable PDF for you to print and take to the gym. Be sure to review the details of the Lower Body Yoga Sequence and the Legs and Glutes Workout prior to working out. Did I mention the treadmill printout has four different workouts for you to try?

Y Combinator-backed Gantto is launching its easy to use web-based project management application to the public today. Designed to take on Microsoft’s project management software, Gantto focuses on helping users visualize and present project schedules.

Gantto, a play on words of ‘gantt chart,’ not only allows you to create project schedules but also lets users turn schedules into presentations. In previous work at a medical robotics company, Gantto’s founders had to manually reproduce their Microsoft Project schedules and charts in PowerPoint presentations when showing their progress in meetings. With Gantto’s application, you can present directly from the application.

New users can actually import their projects and data from MS Project, or create their own from scratch. The task management application also features drag and drop functionality, sticky note reminders, and the ability to format presentations by color, font and more.

And you can make adjustments in schedules and data on the fly within Gantto during a meeting or discussion. Eventually Gantto will create a collaborative system that incorporates email as well as other communications.

MS Project currently has over 20 million users so the market has significant potential. And Gantto is a nice alternative for any bootstrapped business because it’s free, scalable and simple to use. Of course, Gantto faces competition from web-based project management applications such as Basecamp.

Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
The $99 Kindle - Why e-readers will soon cost less than $100.  —  Late last month, Amazon unveiled a new version of its Kindle e-book reader that, like every new Kindle, is thinner, lighter, and smaller than the previous one.  It's also the cheapest Kindle ever—the new Wi-Fi version sells for just $139.

Photo: Shutterstock

Inspired by the slow food movement, a growing cadre of bloggers have abandoned the rapid-fire style of blogging (yes, employed by this blog you're reading right now) in favor of "slow blogging."

Sharon Otterman explains in this article published in The New York Times back in 2008 (still highly relevant today, and I suspect will still be highly relevant a few years from now):

... slow bloggers believe that news-driven blogs like TechCrunch and Gawker are the equivalent of fast food restaurants — great for occasional consumption, but not enough to guarantee human sustenance over the longer haul. [...]

Some slow bloggers like to push the envelope of their readers’ attention even further. Academics post lengthy pieces about literature and teaching styles, while techies experiment to see how infrequently they can post before readers desert them.

This approach is a deliberate smack at the popular group blogs like Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Valleywag and boingboing, which can crank out as many as 50 items a day. On those sites, readers flood in and advertisers sign on. Spin and snark abound. Earnest descriptions of the first frost of the season are nowhere to be found.

In between the slow bloggers and the rapid-fire ones, there is a vast middle, hundreds of thousands of writers who are not trying to attract advertising or buzz but do want to reach like-minded colleagues and friends. These people have been the bedrock of the genre since its start, yet recently there has been a sea change in their output: They are increasingly turning to slow blogging, in practice if not in name.

“I’m definitely noticing a drop-off in posting — I’m talking about among the more visible bloggers, the ones with 100 to 200 readers or more,” said Danah Boyd, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies popular culture and technology. “I think that those people who were writing long, thought-out posts are continuing, but those who were writing, ‘Hey, check this out’ posts are going to other forums. It’s a dynamic shift.”

Burnout is a big factor, as Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish explains:

He said in an interview posted on the magazine’s Web site that during the election, his readers became so addicted to his stream of posts that he sometimes set his blog to post automatically so he could go to lunch. When he took two days off to make sense of “the whole Sarah Palin thing,” his audience flipped, thinking he was dead or silenced.

“You can’t stop,” Mr. Sullivan said in the online interview. “The readers act as if you’ve cut off their oxygen supply, and they just flap around like a goldfish out of water until you plop them back in.”

More at the NYT: Link - via TYWKIWDBI and kottke

How can a pea grow in a man’s lung? That's been a water cooler topic for the better part of this week.  It happened to 75-year-old Ron Sveden,  who had a half-inch-long sprout removed from his lung, which was first reported by a 20-year-old news intern at the Cape Cod Times on August 8.

The story was picked up by TV stations, newspapers and websites around the world.

Sveden was very sick when he was hospitalized on Memorial Day – he was having more difficulty breathing than he usually does with his emphysema.

Sveden was expecting to learn he had lung cancer.  Instead, he tells a Boston television station: “I was told that I had a pea seed in my lung that had split and had sprouted.”

Dr. Jeff Spillane removed the obstruction.  He tells CNN at first he couldn't see that a pea had been lodged in the lung because there was so much infected, swollen tissue around it.  "His whole lobe was collapsed and there was pus behind...it was entrapped in what we call granulation tissue."  But once removed, he says it looked like a pea or a bean. “It had a shoot coming out."

Spillane,  a thoracic surgeon at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts,  doesn’t know how long the seed was in Sveden’s lung, but he believes it stayed in the airway because Sveden’s existing lung disease didn’t allow him to breathe very well and he couldn't cough it out.

“Most of the time I'm dealing with pretty devastating illness,” Spillane says.  But this case is different. “He really did get a very good outcome.”

As for the likelihood of something sprouting inside the body, experts say it’s not impossible.  Walter Reeves, a horticulturist, author and radio host in Atlanta, Georgia, says it’s conceivable if a seed gets lodged in a lung.

“Isn't that what happens when a seed is underground and gets moisture and warmth?  They [seeds] don't need light” he adds, at least not for the first two or three days.

Reeves doesn’t have more details about Sveden’s situation than what’s been reported in the news media, but he points out that this could  happen only with raw peas or beans or peanuts.  Cooked peas or other legumes cannot germinate or sprout.  Reeves says a raw peanut could easily sprout, as could dried peas, after soaking in water. “Those are quite capable of germinating.”

Spillane says children, in particular, are known to have a peanuts go down the wrong way and get lodged in the lung, which is a very serious problem.  “Kids have died from that stuff,” he says.

Spillane is a little surprised at all the attention this story had received.  He says removing objects from patients’ lungs happens frequently.  “A week later [after Sveden’s surgery], I pulled a tooth out [of another patient]."

Dr. Steve Georas, a pulmonologist in Rochester, New York, agrees.  He says people inhale things into their lungs frequently, probably because the trachea and the esophagus are so close to each other.  “We had a similar case at the University of Rochester where I practice.  A patient had a pea wedged in his bronchus – it didn't turn into a plant."

Spillane says he went into surgery to help people and to "pull the thorn out of the lion's paw. " Sveden’s sprouting pea, the surgeon says, “was the ultimate thorn in a lion's paw, I guess.”

Surprise, surprise! The average American worker slacks off about 1.7 hours per work day. Almost half of them spent this time unproductively on the Internet (sorry, guys! I know Neatorama’s not helping your productivity!), 1/5th socialized instead of worked, and the rest … Oh, I’ll finish this post l8r.

Link

Looking Smart in a Casual Envionment by imogenl on Polyvore.com

Busy Mum casual by imogenl on Polyvore.com

Boing Boing developer Dean Putney found these great advertisements for Pilot's Extra-Fine ballpoint pens. They're so thin you can draw these intricate tattoos on Lego people!

[via Flavorwire]

Quite a line-up of celebrities!

Eva Longoria, Meryl Streep, Mario Batali, Stephen Colbert, Malcolm Gladwell, Yo-Yo Ma, Mike Nichols, Kristi Yamaguchi, Elizabeth Alexander, Queen Noor and Louise Erdrich have all submitted DNA tests for a new PBS television series FACES OF AMERICA.

Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. airs on Wednesdays, February 10 – March 3, 2010 from 8-9 p.m. ET on PBS.

FYI. I tweet about genetics and related science topics under The DNA Network Twitter account @DNAnetwork. Are you on Twitter?

by Tweet Cloud

That’s right, baby!

via Buzzfeed

Matchmaking services are adding DNA testing to their list of offers. The DNA test analyzes HLA genes of the immune system that influence a person’s body odor. The theory is that people are attracted to those whose HLA genes and body odor differ from their own so that their potential offspring have the possibility of inheriting a more varied set of HLA genes leading to enhanced health due to a stronger immune system.

In an Associated Press article, Dr. Rocio Moran, medical director of the General Genetics Clinic at the Cleveland Clinic said:

They are just trying to make a buck. That if it’s genetic, it must be real science.

That’s the kind of argument some shady companies are making about direct-to-consumer genetic testing. It reminds me of the ruckus earlier this year over companies that offer genetic testing to parents who’re interested in having their children tested for athletic prowess and other abilities.

If it’s genetic, it must be real science.

If it’s science, it must be true.

Anyone living in the real world knows that genetics and science can only carry you so far. In the end, what it comes down to is the kind of person you are in spite of your genes. That doesn’t mean a genetic test is worthless. If you’re the kind of person that thinks a DNA test holds some kind of magic then maybe you will be able to find a mate who thinks the same way. After all, there’s a lid for every pot.

Larry David found out last night on Lopez Tonight that he “fails as a European” being only 63% European according to a DNA ancestry test. David seemed genuinely surprised by the remaining 37% of his ethnicity. Watch the video to find out more about the 37% or click on this link from Twitter.

Now we know that claim is misleading. Maury Povich and other talk shows have been offering DNA paternity testing for years but I guess those shows are on during the daytime. In any case, Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiam will get the results of his DNA test tonight 11/10c on the Lopez Tonight show on TBS. Probably not as entertaining as the Maury Show but interesting nonetheless.

via Orlando Sentinel

Congratulations to Meb Keflezighi of Eritrean descent, who won the New York City Marathon last Sunday and was the first American to do so since 1982!

Why did I mention that he was born in Eritrea? Because critics say that an immigrant like Keflezighi who moved to the U.S. at age 12 isn’t a legitimate American.

A post on Letsrun.com said:

Give us all a break. It’s just another African marathon winner.

How about making that African-American?

Silly me. I thought that naturalized American citizens equal American citizens at birth with the same rights and privileges (with the exception of getting to be the President of the United States). Leaving that debate aside, however, the belief that East Africans are genetically endowed for marathon running has also clouded Keflezighi’s celebration.

The success of distance runners from Kenya and Ethiopia has fostered a lore of East Africans as genetically gifted, unbeatable, dominant because of their biology. Scientists have looked for — but not found — genes specific to East Africans that could account for their distance ability, said John Hoberman, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies race and sports.

Truly American? Debate Dogs a Triumph in the Marathon – NYTimes.com

No doubt Keflezighi has genes which enhance his physiological capabilities for endurance and other traits found in winning marathoners. This does not mean that Keflezighi is any more or less American than other non-East African runners who have the same genes.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “nationality” in two parts:

nationality

noun (pl. nationalities) 1 the status of belonging to a particular nation. 2 an ethnic group forming a part of one or more political nations.

Even though ethnic groups are mentioned, the U.S. is clearly a country of many ethnic groups so genes should not be part of the debate when discussing whether someone is American or not.

Quite frankly, I’m not even sure what makes a person American and I don’t think anyone else does either. I hold an American passport and spent the years between ages 6 and 26 in the U.S. I’ve lived in six different countries in the past 10 years and as a result, my national identity is slightly muddled. My son is even more confused. He holds an American passport as well but has never lived in the U.S although he’s lived in four different countries in his seven years. He was born in Japan so some days he says that he’s Japanese and now that he lives in Singapore, he sometimes says he’s Singaporean. I’m sure some people would say he’s not American at all.

It might be simpler to say we’re global citizens with ties to more than one country. Truth be told, I’m proud to say I’m Chinese-American with the accent to prove it.

Edited to add this video of Meb Keflezighi on David Letterman:

A little over two years ago, I confessed that I was “just a little scared of genetic testing.” I have two young children and almost every day I see traits in them that I’m pretty sure they inherited from me whether via genes or behavior. If you’re a parent, I’m sure you can imagine that there’s a lot of self-blame going on in our house.

So when it comes to genetic testing, I should want to know but I don’t. At least not right this minute. Haven’t I got enough to worry about?

From Middletown Journal’s month-long series on the battle against cancer – Many with cancer gene don’t want to know.

There are people out there who may not want to know. There’s a subset of people who if they knew would act on the information and benefit and there are others who would rather bury their heads in the sand.

~Dr. Michael Watson, director of the American College of Medical Genetics

NIH Director Francis Collins, however, falls squarely in the camp of those who not only want to know, they act on the info. Well done!

Collins hits the gym following genetic testing from The Great Beyond, Nature blog

Maybe if a genetic test could motivate me to go to the gym and lose weight, it would be worth it.

Hey criminals! Here’s how you get out of taking full responsibility for your dastardly actions:

1. Fake your DNA sample
2. Blame it on your identical twin
3. See if you have the genes that predispose you to whatever crime you’ve committed

Murderer Abdelmalek Bayout and his attorneys chose option three. Bayout admitted in 2007 to stabbing and killing Walter Felipe Novoa Perez in Italy. During the first sentencing, he was found to be mentally ill. This year, neuroscientists also found abnormalities in brain-imaging scans and five genes linked to violent behavior, including MAOA.

Although there have been numerous cases since 1994 in which the defense argued for leniency based on MAOA deficiency, this is the first case in which this tactic has been successful. Based on the scans and genetic testing results, the judge reduced Bayout’s sentence by another year.

Not everyone agrees with the judge’s decision.

"We don’t know how the whole genome functions and the [possible] protective effects of other genes," says Giuseppe Novelli, a forensic scientist and geneticist at the University Tor Vergata in Rome. Tests for single genes such as MAOA are "useless and expensive", he adds.

Even worse, this verdict could open the floodgates to claims of all sorts the more we know about genetic influences on behavior. That list above is just about to get longer.

Source: Scientific American

Image: “Structural (left) and functional (right) MRI scan data shows that subjects with the violence-related version of the MAO-A gene (MAOA-L) had reduced volume and activity of the anterior cingulate cortex (blue area in front part of brain at left and corresponding yellow area in at right), which is thought to be the hub of a circuit responsible for regulating impulsive aggression. The color-coded areas show where subjects with the L gene type differed from subjects with the H gene type.”

NIMH Clinical Brain Disorders Branch

Garfield is Stephen’s second greatest love, second only to Lego. Lilian’s Sean first introduced Stephen to Garfield in London when the two were about five years old but it wasn’t until a few months ago that Stephen really started understanding the sly jokes and not-so-subtle sarcasm that underlies the comic. He’s also a big fan of The Garfield Show on the Cartoon Network. I can see how it appeals to Stephen because it’s completely off-the-wall ridiculous with storylines that feature a time-stopping stopwatch, robots, and a mind-reading helmet but may I just say that this CGI bastardization of Garfield the comic strip is not really Garfield at all.

The trouble with Garfield is that Stephen feels compelled to try out some of Garfield’s sayings and mannerisms. He identifies with Garfield the curmudgeon and his distaste for Mondays and waking up, and his glee in thwarting Nermal (who I suspect Stephen equates with his sister).

Thinking that it might be healthier for Stephen to identify with another little boy rather than a fat orange cat*, I’ve been trying to introduce him to Calvin and Hobbes because Lilian mentioned that Stephen reminds her of Calvin. Although I should probably read some Calvin and Hobbes first to make sure Calvin is an acceptable role model. I must confess that I’ve never really gotten the humor in the strip but might be able to understand it better from the parents’ point of view. In any case, if GeekDad says Calvin and Hobbes is good then it must be good!

Other comics Stephen has enjoyed include the Geronimo Stilton graphic novels and the Bionicle graphic novels. Adeline’s RK likes Asterix and Obelix.

As for me, my favorite comic strip is The Far Side by Gary Larson. Marv’s is Dilbert.

What about you and your kids? Have any other comic strips to recommend?

*Super Skinny Stephen once made some comment about being too fat to get on some piece of playground equipment. I started stressing about eating disorders until I realized his comment came from Garfield. argh

Also visit me at: Eye on DNA - How’s it going to change your life?

Google Seeks to Help Children Search Better – NYTimes.com

Good grief. What a misleading headline.

While I agree that learning how to use search engines to find information successfully is an important skill, I don’t know if I want my kids to search "better" per se. For primary school children, I’d want them to learn how to search in a limited, controlled environment.

When considering children, search engines had long focused on filtering out explicit material from results. But now, because increasing numbers of children are using search as a starting point for homework, exploration or entertainment, more engineers are looking to children for guidance on how to improve their tools.

Kids apparently like Bing because it uses more images than other search engines. Also, I did not realize that children tend to focus on whatever’s on the bottom of the computer screen because that’s what they see first when they look up from the keyboard after pecking out their search.

As for Stephen, I’ve installed Chrome on his computer and while he usually doesn’t have to search for much, he already knows that he only has to enter an approximation of the correct spelling and the computer will offer up the correct search term or URL to him. Frightening to think what he’ll be able to unearth online in the future. Perhaps some of what I’ve written about him but have since locked up….

If you’re interested in alternative search engines specially designed for kids, check out AskKids.com and Tyler Wainright has a list of safe and secure web browsers for kids.

A few weeks ago, on my drive to work, I heard the three DJs on Class 95’s Morning Express going through their spiel about the Panasonic Lumix GF1 micro four thirds camera. Despite the fact that I work in advertising now, I’m not as immune to commercial persuasion as I’d like to think.  The three DJs actually sold me on the camera! They presented just enough technical info to get a gadget geek like me excited.

On the second day of hearing the same pitch, I researched the camera and made my decision. What features appealed to me?

1. Size – With the 20 mm pancake lens, the GF1 is a Micro Four Thirds camera that is only about half the size of a standard DSLR.
2. Interchangeable lenses  – I don’t intend to change my lenses frequently because I’m deathly afraid of getting dust and other dirt on the camera sensor but it’s nice to have the option.
3. Speed – The new 20 mm (F1.7) pancake lens is faster than my point-and-shoot.
4. Movie capture – There is a dedicated button on the GF1 that starts shooting in movie mode immediately and in exceptional quality.
5. Built-in flash – There’s a pop-up flash on the GF1 with adjustable brightness.
6. Manual controls – I wanted to be able to adjust aperture, ISO, white balance, etc. to produce a wider variety of photos.

Yes, I know that in the end it’s the photographer’s skill that matters more than the camera but having a better camera can’t hurt.

I mulled the idea over for a couple days because I wasn’t sure if I should spend more than a thousand dollars on a camera. In the end, I justified the purchase by telling myself that designer handbags cost even more than the camera and since my handbags never cost more than $100 SGD, I could darn well afford to buy myself a camera. So I emailed John 3:16, the camera shop where I’ve bought two of my three past digital cameras, to reserve it. Several days later, on 4 December, I was told the camera was ready for pick-up.

I had no idea what was waiting for me. I mean, I knew it was a camera and a step up from my Canon IXUS 90 (Powershot SD790 IS) point-and-shoot but other than that, I did not know how to operate such a fancy thing. At the exact moment when Samuel, the store owner, brought the camera out of the box, another guy came in the shop looking to buy the GF1. Sorry, no luck. Gotta reserve it first and stock should arrive the following week. This baby’s mine mine mine!

Before I had any time to learn about the GF1’s settings, I took some ok photos. Good enough for people to notice that they were not garden variety point-and-shoot shots but I didn’t know how to change any of the settings! I took it with me to a Ben 10 live show with the kids and had no idea how to take a picture of Stephen with the stage behind him without the background being completely fuzzy. As I studied the camera and all the different settings and with the help of DSLR owners Cindy and Lilian, I learned that I had to increase the F-stop to get the background as clear as the foreground. And I had to figure other important things out like what the letters stand for on the dial. Duh. By the way, “A” doesn’t mean automatic, it means aperture priority (and it also stands for addlehead).

For anyone interested, here are some great resources about the Panasonic Lumix GF-1 and photography in general:

• Digital Photography School
• My delicious collection of links on the GF1
• Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography Boxed Set
• Tutorials at Photoxels

I haven’t abandoned my iPhone and Canon Ixus. They’re just too handy to give up. I do think, however, that it is very apparent which camera was used to take which photo. Can you tell which camera I used for each of the following three shots? These photos were minimally edited.

What camera do you use? And what camera do you lust after?

If you’re in the market for a new digital camera, check out this list of best digital cameras of 2009 from neutralday.

Megan’s 18 months now and her personality grows stronger by the day. She’s taken to throwing a fit whenever she doesn’t get her way like when she wanted to play with roach traps at the supermarket and I wouldn’t let her. Right.

Then tonight, we were reading Treasure Island when she brought over one of her current favorite board books from the My Christmas Pocket Library set and insisted on reading it. When I told her to wait until we finished the chapter we were on, she again pitched a fit.

Stephen, who’s getting used to his little sister, said:

Just read it to her! Or else you’re going to have a miserable life.

Very sensible! We did end up giving in to her only because Stephen was ok with it. That doesn’t mean she’s going to get her way that easily. I’ve had plenty of experience dealing with her brother and nothing fazes me now!

Here’s the little imp copying me getting ready for work.

Tweet Cloud via @sarasteinmd

In a day when "social network" is a buzz term from colleges to board rooms, the members of Wednesday 10 show the benefits of old-fashioned networking. "We were all young kids starting out, and it is easy when you are so involved in building your career to lose touch with other people who are outside your field," says Mr. (Robert) Menschel, who has been at Goldman Sachs for 55 years. "It helped me to understand why other people do what they do—which is important in life and in business. You don’t learn anything from talking to sameness."

An Old-School Social Network – The Wednesday 10 – WSJ.com

I couldn’t agree more.

Almost three months ago, I took the leap and joined a multi-national marketing and advertising agency as their social media editor. I had some doubts about committing to something that, on the surface at least, had nothing to do with science. But, my gut told me that it was a rare opportunity to learn something that is also relevant to science communication. I am pleased to say that I have learned a lot during my time at the agency from filling in timesheets to creating PowerPoint “decks.” And I have already had the opportunity to apply those skills to the science arena as media consultant to the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO).

Leaving the sameness wasn’t easy. I often think it’s all very surreal that I’m overhearing and even participating in conversations that involve branding, customer engagement, KPIs, ROIs, FMCG, etc., etc. Just to show how out of it I can be, when working on a project, I often forget about including costs until the project manager reminds me!

It’s a whole different mindset and I’m being pushed to develop a new identity and to go outside of my comfort zone. Although it sure has been fun getting dressed nicely for work and having a mini-vacation from the kids! They are handling my return to work very well even on days when I am out at client meetings until 7 pm. I couldn’t have imagined that a year ago.

In the coming year, I hope to be able to take some short overnight business trips if necessary (I’ve already had to turn one down). And, I hope to have the opportunity to continue learning, progressing, and contributing both at work and at home. Wish me luck! 

Photo: In my car on my way to work.

Also visit me at: Eye on DNA - How’s it going to change your life?

This snapshot from a video of the kids dancing the twist makes me laugh. Megan looks like she’s kicking butt!