We spent a wonderful weekend at the National Aquarium, Baltimore. The National Aquarium was packed but we truly enjoyed ourselves! The aquarium was very well presented and the variety of species held our interest. We enjoyed the jelly fish exhibit but too bad that we missed the highlight, dolphin show It’s a joy to see how much our 18 months old daughter enjoyed looking at the fish. She almost sticked her face on the glass and she wouldn’t blink!
Six hours car ride (with a fussy toddler on board!) is paid off when I see the Niagara Falls flows. Pictures are great, but seeing it with my own eyes and experiencing the powerful force is simply awesome!
Roaring American Falls
Thundering Horseshoe Falls
Maid of the Mist boat in front of American Falls (left) and Bridal Veil Falls (right, small waterfalls)
Observation Tower, where Maid of the Mist boat ride begins
American Falls and the Observation Tower
Cave of the Wind tour which takes us into the stormy mist zone at Bridal Veil falls
Hurricane deck, where you can experience the tropical storm-like conditions
This year, the winter has been a little but longer than expected. However, since we will not be enjoying this much longer, we are also enjoying every minutes of it. Here are some of the pictures .
The scientist and his companions puttered down winding waterways by boat, and bounced along dirt roads in a Ford Explorer. The longest of more than a dozen such trips into the Malaysian jungle took 10 hours.
Only then could the researcher from Penn State College of Medicine ask tribal leaders for the information he sought:
Surat warisan manusia. The letter of human inheritance.
That was Khai C. Ang's way of explaining the concept of DNA, and it was effective. Hundreds of villagers agreed to give blood samples, and now back in the Hershey, Pa., lab of Ang's supervisor, Keith Cheng, their DNA has begun to yield insight into a weighty trio of subjects: cancer, human migration, and race.
White people are prone to developing melanoma, as their pale skin is vulnerable to the sun's ultraviolet rays. Yet Asians, plenty of whom also have light skin, are relatively immune to the disease.
Cheng, director of experimental pathology at Penn State, thinks he can find out why. He chose to study DNA from the Malaysian jungle because its inhabitants have not intermingled with Europeans, for the most part, and because they have a range of skin colors - like a living mosaic of evolution.
The story begins more than 50,000 years ago with Vitamin D. The body needs sunlight to make it, so when humans migrated out of Africa, they likely became vitamin-deficient. Blame the weaker northern sunlight, and the fact that in the colder climate, they had to cover more of their skin with clothing.As a physician, Cheng fights cancer. But with genetic material like that at his disposal, he seems equally enthusiastic about anthropology, about the chance to describe a chapter of human history. "You'd have to be made of stone to not be curious how we got all these colors in humanity," Cheng said.
But people with lighter skin can more readily make Vitamin D. So those with that trait would have been healthier, likely explaining why they came to dominate the northern latitudes. One light-skinned group spread across Europe, the other across Asia.
Yet the mutations that gave rise to European skin were accompanied by about a 20-fold rise in melanoma. The skin of Asians, on the other hand, is somehow nearly as good as dark African skin at absorbing harmful ultraviolet radiation, keeping it away from the nucleus of skin cells.
On the advice of Oxford University scholar Stephen Oppenheimer, whose book The Real Eve describes human migration from Africa, Cheng sought answers in peninsular Malaysia. The region is home to three tribal groups that have been largely insulated from European influence: the Senoi, the Proto-Malay, and the Negrito.
At the national university near Kuala Lumpur, Cheng met Ang and quickly sold him on his idea to gather DNA in the jungle.
He explained how, once they had the genetic samples back at Penn State, they would test various genes by tamping them down in zebrafish, a popular creature in pet stores but also increasingly a valued lab tool. If a gene contributed to lighter skin color in humans, fish with that gene should follow suit.
But first, the team needed to get permission: from various Malaysian agencies, from the national university, from Penn State, and above all from the villagers. Among the concerns was that the tribe members grasp the goal of the research so they could give informed consent.
By June 2009, Ang was on his way, joined by health workers who handed out material on malaria, dengue, and other ills.
He spoke to the various tribes in his native Malay, which for them was a second language, carefully explaining the goals of the work. Besides collecting DNA, Ang also measured their skin color with a small device like a flash camera, which gauges the light reflected off a person's skin.
Sometimes, Ang had to wait a few days for a messenger to go out and summon hunters back to the village, so he showed movies to others in the meantime. It was also a way to alert the men that something was up in the village, as some were near enough to hear his sound system.
One movie was 1980's The Gods Must Be Crazy, about an African bushman's contact with modern society - an apt choice. Others includedLegally Blonde and one about the Monkey King, a character from Chinese folklore.
Race and skin pigment are sensitive issues across the world, Malaysia included. The fact that Ang was a native, coupled with his respectful demeanor, was a big help. "The idea that we were going to research people's skin color could've been a real no-no if handled in the wrong way," Oppenheimer said.
Ang brought back the precious vials of blood, keeping them cool by stopping at restaurants along the way to replenish his supply of ice.
Now at Penn State, he and Cheng seek to learn which genes make a difference, by testing them in the zebrafish.
In the lab, hundreds of the small, striped fish are zipping back and forth in tanks, some darker, some lighter, some in-between.
Scientists have used many animal "models" to study genetics - mice, worms, fruit flies. Cheng is partial to the fish because like humans, they are vertebrates, yet they are quick to reproduce and their skin color is evident within two days of hatching.
Once they identify the mutation or mutations that are the key to Asian skin, it can be traced back to see when it originated, and how it matches archaeological evidence of human migration.
And then there is the question of skin cancer, and why Asians are not prone to it. The answer likely has to do with melanin, the pigment that protects the nucleus of skin cells. It comes in different forms, and its granules are distributed differently in people depending on skin color, said Murray Brilliant, director of the Center for Human Genetics at the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin, who has been following Cheng's work.
"It's a fantastic and important study," Brilliant said.
Cheng, a rare scientist who is equally at home in the lab and in explaining his work to the public, has drawn notice for his work on skin color before.
In 2005, he and colleagues discovered a single mutation that was responsible for a large part of the difference in skin color between black and white people. He found that a physical trait responsible for no small amount of historical prejudice and misunderstanding, in other words, was caused largely by the merest of genetic quirks - a change in one DNA base pair out of three billion.
Brilliant invited Cheng to discuss the work in a public lecture at the University of Arizona. And Cheng, an accomplished pianist, chose to supplement his talk by performing selections from Bach's Goldberg Variations.
Drawing inspiration from his idol, famed pianist Glenn Gould, Cheng spoke of how the music was like science, with many threads merging into a melodious whole.
"It's trained me to parallel-process a lot more," Cheng says of his music. "You actually have to keep track of different voices at once."
And if the DNA from Malaysia reveal their secret, Cheng will shed light on the different voices, and colors, of humanity too.
I love my coffee since young. I remembered that when I was growing up with my grandparents, my grandma will brew a pot of coffee every morning and I love the smell of it. Coffee brewing on stove top! And for those who brew their coffee over stove top, you know, you will get a strong brew!
However, I can't drink my coffee just black. I need, at least, sugar in my coffee. Growing up in Malaysia, that also mean I love my coffee serve cold. I also love my coffee with milk. As such, I love a good cup of coffee with milk from the typical Malaysian coffee shop. I always prefer that over the typical chain-store coffee.
Nevertheless, it's hard to get good coffee bean over in Malaysia. Coffee in Malaysia are always roasted in a traditional roasting house, which sometimes also mixed caramel in it. I love that too, but for some reasons I never tried brewing my own cup at home. I always opted for the instant coffee.
Now that I am in US, getting a cuppa means you head over to Starbucks or other coffee place. However, most shop here serve to-go. It is also very expensive. Since then, I have learn to brew my own coffee. In these two years, I have tried many ways of brewing my coffee, from coffee machine to dumping my ground coffee into hot water then filtering it! Now, I have my coffee prepared using a dripper. This way, I don't have my coffee ground in my drink.
Recently, I learned how to cold brew my coffee. It is so simple and effective. Cold brew coffee produce a very smooth coffee without the bitter taste and is suitable for iced coffee too. There are also a few advantages for cold brew coffee.
1. It's simple and easy to prepare
2. Less caffeine (which is debatable to be good or bad) per cup. But I drink about 2 cups a day, this is good.
3. Less acidic
4. Less bitter, which promote smooth flavor.
5. Promote the flavor profile to be expressed. If you are into flavored coffee, cold brew coffee will help to get the flavor out better.
6. You wont burn your coffee. Brewing a good cup of Joe also means that you need to have your water temperature right. If it's too hot, you will burn your coffee ground.
7. I can store this stock for a week in refrigerator. This also mean I can bring the 'stock' to office and dilute it with water and milk when I want a good cup at my office without having to settle for mediocre coffee from coffee machine or pay exorbitant price for a cup at the shop.
Here is how I make my cold brew coffee:
1. I put 1/3 cup of coffee to 4 cup of filtered water. Stir to mix the coffee ground well. I put my coffee ground into my pot before I add water.
2. I leave it overnight (minimum 8 hours; can be up to 24 hours) on a pot in room temperature.
3. Filtered the coffee using filter paper to remove any ground coffee. This is my coffee stock.
4. Dilute 1:1 coffee stock with water and milk. Depending how strong you like, adjust to the ratio you prefer. Remember I love my coffee strong.
I keep this coffee stock in my office for about 5 days.
I love iced coffee too. I use my coffee stock to make ice cubes. This way, when I put my ice into my coffee, I don't dilute my coffee.
Try it and let me know if you like it.
Disclaimer: All shot done using Canon 650D/ Rebel T4i
