According to the US government, I'm an alien. A legal non-immigrant alien with working privileges actually.
One of the first things you need to do when starting work in the US is to get a social security number (SSN). When dealing with gas, real estate, phone companies etc. for the first time, your SSN is a crucial component for a smooth transaction. Having a SSN is important. Without it, you can't get paid.
One of the first things I did after arriving in Boston back in March was to catch the subway (known as the 'T') to SSN headquarters in downtown Boston. As a government building, the usual strict security procedures were observed upon entering. After dutifully emptying my pockets to be X-rayed, I found myself waiting in a standard office-grey processing centre that housed the SSN bureaucrats. As I sat with all the other aliens, subdued alien conversations in Spanish, Chinese and what seemed like Russian filled my ear.
I expected a lengthy waiting period but was pleasantly surprised by the very efficient and quick processing of my application. In little time I was told my SSN would be sent to me in 4 weeks or so, and I was back out in the cold, blustery weather and on the T heading home.
I like being an alien.
21 November 2007
20 November 2007
Tips for removing an agarose overlay
Have you ever done a viral plaque assay that requires an agarose overlay and wondered how to remove the overlay without disrupting the cells below? Sure you have. Here's my method:
1. After seeing plaques in your cell monolayer, remove media and add 2 ml (per well of a 6-well plate) 1% formaldehyde/PBS to your agarose-overlaid cells. Incubate overnight at room temperature. This will fix your cells.
2. Remove formaldehyde, rinse wells with water.
3. Use a squirt bottle to squirt water along the edges of the well. This will loosen the agarose. Invert the plate over a biological waste bin and continue to squirt water into the well, while giving the plate a tap or flick. The agarose should slide out of the well and into the trash, leaving your cell monolayer unscathed.
4. Stain cells with 0.05% Neutral Red (or Crystal Violet) for a few hours, or even overnight, wash with water, air-dry the plate and count the plaques.
5. Viral titre (PFU/ml)= number of plaques/(dilution factor)*volume of diluted virus added to the well.
It took me a few attempts using other clumsy methods before stumbling on the squirt bottle trick. It's a method I haven't seen online anywhere so hopefully this will be helpful to a fellow scientist. Happy virus culturing.
1. After seeing plaques in your cell monolayer, remove media and add 2 ml (per well of a 6-well plate) 1% formaldehyde/PBS to your agarose-overlaid cells. Incubate overnight at room temperature. This will fix your cells.
2. Remove formaldehyde, rinse wells with water.
3. Use a squirt bottle to squirt water along the edges of the well. This will loosen the agarose. Invert the plate over a biological waste bin and continue to squirt water into the well, while giving the plate a tap or flick. The agarose should slide out of the well and into the trash, leaving your cell monolayer unscathed.
4. Stain cells with 0.05% Neutral Red (or Crystal Violet) for a few hours, or even overnight, wash with water, air-dry the plate and count the plaques.
5. Viral titre (PFU/ml)= number of plaques/(dilution factor)*volume of diluted virus added to the well.
It took me a few attempts using other clumsy methods before stumbling on the squirt bottle trick. It's a method I haven't seen online anywhere so hopefully this will be helpful to a fellow scientist. Happy virus culturing.
17 November 2007
Blogger Play
When Facebook-stalking your ex-crush isn't satisfying those voyeuristic tendencies anymore, check out Blogger Play.
It shows all the images that are currently being uploaded to Blogger. It's fascinating to see the diversity in what people post online. Blogger Play can be hit and miss, but is worth a peek when you've got a few minutes to kill.
It shows all the images that are currently being uploaded to Blogger. It's fascinating to see the diversity in what people post online. Blogger Play can be hit and miss, but is worth a peek when you've got a few minutes to kill.
More fuel for Blogger Play. If you've seen The Mummy Returns, you should know exactly where this is. OK, so it's Abu Simbel in Egypt...
16 November 2007
One face of humanity
The following occurred the other week during a really shitty weekend spent at work. I drafted this post on the day it happened, but after forgetting about it for a while, have rediscovered and polished it for publication. Without a blog, it's no doubt that this pleasant memory would have been lost in the dark, troubled, abyss of my psyche, and for this reason I am happy to have continued blogging. Now for the story, continue on dear reader....
It was a mere 4 second observation, yet it was the highlight of my day and I've been pondering about it ever since.
I had just crossed a road on my way to work when I looked up and saw a tallish guy, head down, play-tackling with 2 kids, around 8 and 13 years old. Immediately I noticed that the guy was white and the kids black. The kids were laughing and having a great time. It was such an innocent playful gesture to witness that it instantly woke me from my iPod haze and made me smile. They were only a few metres away as I walked towards them.
Just as I passed them the guy broke the tackle and stood up straight. He was stunningly attractive, with short dark hair, fit, in his early 20's, and dressed simply in a tight white t-shirt and blue jeans: a poster image of a classic American boy. The kids were dressed like their favourite gangster rapper, in loose dark shirts and baggy pants, their black caps tilted. They continued to giggle and squeal as the poster-boy tickled them in the ribs.
The contrast of this strong, white, young man with the two small black children was striking. In the second that we crossed, I made eye-contact with the guy, and from the life in his eyes and smile on his face, it was clear he was genuinely having as much fun as the kids he was entertaining. That was perhaps the most surprising observation, as I would never have guessed that a guy like that would be so caring and paternal to such kids. I can only speculate about the relationship between the trio (neighbour, babysitter, step-father and sons?).
I don't know why, but the scene was deeply touching. It was a refreshing jolt after hearing the news that James Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA double-helix structure and Nobel Prize winner, had publicly spouted some scientifically unproven racist remark that black people were less intelligent than whites. From what I know from people who have met him or have seen him at talks, Watson has a penchant for being sexist, racist, arrogant and generally repulsive, so it was good to hear that he resigned from a high-profile post at a leading medical research institute in California.
Anyway, what I saw on my way to work was inspiring in that there was no hint of awkward racial barriers between the guy and kids, and this helped give me some hope that humanity may one day 'evolve past' racism.
Seeing the guy and kids playing made me ponder if I have profoundly affected another person in such an anonymously brief encounter? Probably not. But then again, have you?
It was a mere 4 second observation, yet it was the highlight of my day and I've been pondering about it ever since.
I had just crossed a road on my way to work when I looked up and saw a tallish guy, head down, play-tackling with 2 kids, around 8 and 13 years old. Immediately I noticed that the guy was white and the kids black. The kids were laughing and having a great time. It was such an innocent playful gesture to witness that it instantly woke me from my iPod haze and made me smile. They were only a few metres away as I walked towards them.
Just as I passed them the guy broke the tackle and stood up straight. He was stunningly attractive, with short dark hair, fit, in his early 20's, and dressed simply in a tight white t-shirt and blue jeans: a poster image of a classic American boy. The kids were dressed like their favourite gangster rapper, in loose dark shirts and baggy pants, their black caps tilted. They continued to giggle and squeal as the poster-boy tickled them in the ribs.
The contrast of this strong, white, young man with the two small black children was striking. In the second that we crossed, I made eye-contact with the guy, and from the life in his eyes and smile on his face, it was clear he was genuinely having as much fun as the kids he was entertaining. That was perhaps the most surprising observation, as I would never have guessed that a guy like that would be so caring and paternal to such kids. I can only speculate about the relationship between the trio (neighbour, babysitter, step-father and sons?).
I don't know why, but the scene was deeply touching. It was a refreshing jolt after hearing the news that James Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA double-helix structure and Nobel Prize winner, had publicly spouted some scientifically unproven racist remark that black people were less intelligent than whites. From what I know from people who have met him or have seen him at talks, Watson has a penchant for being sexist, racist, arrogant and generally repulsive, so it was good to hear that he resigned from a high-profile post at a leading medical research institute in California.
Anyway, what I saw on my way to work was inspiring in that there was no hint of awkward racial barriers between the guy and kids, and this helped give me some hope that humanity may one day 'evolve past' racism.
Seeing the guy and kids playing made me ponder if I have profoundly affected another person in such an anonymously brief encounter? Probably not. But then again, have you?
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