I've Come So Far...

And giving up is no longer an option.

The moment I said yes to the Erasmus Mundus scholarship offer, it is already the plan that I'd complete my studies end of this month. Here it is, the final few days of tension and that's the end of it. Perhaps deep down inside me, I didn't want it to end, that's why I didn't want to complete the dissertation. No will, no way. That's why there's a saying, "Where there's a will, there's a way".

Maybe, I fear the unknown, uncharted future lying ahead of me. I thought I was going to Cambridge for my Ph.D, all seemed so planned - the timing at least, when the scholarship which I applied to informed that the results would only be out in September. But... But... The offer for Ph.D. would start on 1st October. Ermm... If they only inform me in mid-September that they are willing to sponsor me, would I have time to apply for a student visa within two weeks? And to find accommodation?! The only option is to defer to the next term (January 2014), and be fattened up for three months in Malaysia (like I'm not fat enough now). Ok, that's not the point... The point is... uncharted waters means there would be possible sharks in it, possible dolphins too. Oh yeah, I like dolphins. Again, I'm missing the points. I'm just... scared.

According to what I know, there are at least 365 phrases of "Be Not Afraid" in the Bible, one for each day. I just need to trust. Yeah, just trust that if God brings me to this, He'd open the doors hindering it. Nothing to lose to go home. Who knows, something interesting is there. And yeah, singing with the English Choir for Christmas once again would be awesome. Thank God I left my files and all with my friend in Kota Kinabalu. That's something to look forward.

Ok, I missed the whole point of my title for this entry. I should try to finish up my dissertation because I CHOSE TO DO THIS MASTERS! End of discussion. LOL!

Jeremiah 29:11

Two years and two months ago, upon discernment and rather careful planning, plus a "YES" to God to venture into uncharted waters, I resigned from a rather stable 5-day job and bade goodbye to teaching career upon completion of the 3-month notice. It was a strange day where nobody seemed to care. Yet, I knew I was doing exactly what I was called to do, and going to exactly where I was called to go.

It was a miracle when a month after the scholarship results was out and I was on reserved list (which literally means, "with sincere apologies we would like to inform you that you are not selected to be in our scholarship program) that I was offered that very scholarship again. I could only attribute this miracle to God and His plans for me. I was on a roller coaster when I said the second yes.

The first yes was to attend World Youth Day in Madrid, Spain, when I didn't even have financial means to pay for my flights nor registration fees. The second yes was to accept the scholarship and stayed back in Spain rather than to fly back. It would be a brand new chapter in my life. Two sides of the same coin - adventurous and scary at the same time.

I'm a planner by nature, so I've decided that I should travel a bit before the studies commenced. To end the chapter of a working young adult and jump into the chapter of a mature student. By April 2011, I had almost everything worked out - where I would go after WYD, where to leave my 25 kg luggage (all that I could bring for my two-year or more stay in Europe), transportation and accommodations during the Eurotrip, etc. I got really good bargain for my Rome accommodation, and managed to visit a fellow Couchsurfer in his family home in Crailsheim, Germany, and my two South Korean friends in Freiburg. So my journey started on 9th August 2011 when I left Malaysia (with the rest of the WYD team) until further notice.

Upon arrival to Madrid, I took the train down to Cordoba and met with the flatmate of the CSer who housed my luggage for a whole month while I traveled with my Deuter 45L backpack. From Cordoba, I took a bus to La Linea and met up with the group and walked over to Gibraltar where we spent almost a week there for the pre-WYD event. It was spiritually awakening indeed. From Gibraltar, we all took a bus back to super hot Madrid for WYD and yeah, I met Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in Madrid during the weekend. After WYD ended, I bade goodbye to my church friends and started the solo travel to Barcelona on overnight bus. I arrived very early in the morning, took a train to Manresa and walked to the monastery where I stayed for three nights. I was blessed with the presence of an American Vietnamese priest, Fr. Tri Dinh, who guided me on personal retreat for a day. I never knew that the La Cueva was where St. Ignatius of Loyola stayed and wrote the Spiritual Exercises until I arrived and was given basic information of the monastery. So, for three nights I spent in silence getting enough rest, and be amazed by the love of God. After recharging myself, I met up my old classmate and her friend in Barcelona for two days to catch up and walked around the city of Gaudi. From Barcelona, I flew to Rome and spent four amazing days there. From Rome, I flew to Basel and took a train to Germany. Finally, I returned to Basel after about 5 days in Germany to fly to Spain again - to start my studies.

I'm on Erasmus Mundus Masters Course (EMMC) Scholarship, so every semester I moved to another country where my host university is. September 2011 we started in Madrid, by February 2012 we moved to Lisbon. I went back to Malaysia for the summer, spending about 3 weeks in West Malaysia and the other three in East Malaysia, and attended a close friend's wedding in Kota Kinabalu before I flew back to our 3rd country - the UK - in September 2012. I'm blessed with the opportunity to work on a project here in the UK so I'm here for the whole academic year. By November 2012, I started making enquiries about PhD vacancies. I know I have to get a PhD anywhere before I return to my homeland to start contributing again to the society, or anywhere God leads me to. Out of all the applications and enquiries, only Cambridge is all the way with positive answers...

Currently, I am shy of the financial assistance. I'm almost there, just the money which is stopping me from telling everyone that I'm going to Cambridge for PhD in October. It all got very exciting when Fitzwilliam College added me to the FB graduate group and started knowing who are the ones who would be in the same college as I do, and reading about the traditions of Cambridge. Yet, I'm right now in the 2nd phase of consideration for a scholarship which may fund my 3-year studies. I'm nervous, I'm worried, I'm scared. I'm just being human. Yet I know, I have done all I could. I had completed the documentation they needed, and emailed them right before I started writing this entry. Now, only God is left. If it is His will that I will receive some Cambridge education, there I will be, just on time, not a day early, not a day late.

As much as me being a stubborn mule, this time, may God's will be done in my life. For I know that His plans are greater than mine, more intricate and better than what I have in mind. And all His plans are to prosper me, not to harm me (c.f. Jer 29:11).

Amazement of these Ph.D people

"There was once upon a time when a girl wanted so much to study medicine. As she continued growing, she dreamed of becoming a doctor of philosophy (Ph.D). Alas! Until this day, none of the two was realized. Now, she's so amazed by these Ph.D people, not only their talents and skills in research, but also their creativity."

Yeah... It was really an amazement to actually find myself searching and continue being amazed by the choreographs and the movements they made... These skills, talents and creativities... All are from God to God for His People. And yeah... WE are His People... I, in particular, love "A Molecular Dance in the Blood" by Prof. Vince LiCata, made easy to understand the whole concept of the tetramer in RBC (the hemoglobins), and also the modern dance choreographed and danced by the scientist Dr. Miriam Sach herself about cerebral activation patterns. Besides that, the other two categories (graduate student and popular choice) also performed excellently. The Physics Tango by Landry was great... I can't imagine how a person could coordinate so well their movements. Do notice that the male dancer would put his foot and changed the whole dance pattern while the female dance seemed to float smoothly passed all these. I bet they had practised for ages in order to shoot this vidz. The lovely sunshine and plum fairy in Sue Lynn Lau's vidz depicts her hypothesis of Vitamin D affecting beta cells in liver in secretion of insulin. All these stuffs, so scientific, yet so beautiful... I guess that's the real beauty of science for the benefit of mankind.

Here's the full article as taken from Biotechniques, a scientific journal which I still subscribe till now. To view the original article, please click here.

New York, NY, Nov. 20—The winners of the 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) “Dance Your Ph.D.” contest have been announced.

A panel of nine judges has selected a winner in each of the four categories from the entries posted on YouTube. The dances were judged on creativity in expressing the scientific essence of their theses through dance.

Each winner will be paired with a professional choreographer who will create a four-part dance based on one of the Ph.D.'s published peer-reviewed research papers. The four dances will be performed at the 2009 AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago.

The winners are, by category:

* Graduate Student: Sue Lynn Lau from Garvan Institute of Medical Research/University of Sydney, Australia, for the interpretation of her advisor's paper “The role of vitamin D in beta cell function”

* Post-Doc: Miriam Sach, post-doctoral researcher, University of California, San Diego, “Cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs with positron emission tomography. A comparison between single subject and group analysis”

* Professor: Vince LiCata, professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, “Resolving pathways of functional coupling in human hemoglobin using quantitative low temperature isoelectric focusing of asymmetric mutant hybrids”

* Popular Choice: Markita Landry, graduate student, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, “Single molecule measurements of protelomerase TelK-DNA complexes”

The contest was open to anyone who had received or was pursuing a Ph.D. in any scientific field or science-related fields, and challenged Ph.D.s to communicate their research through body movements.

“In my view, song and dance should be an integral part of culture,” said Lau, 2009 Dance Your Ph.D. winner, in a press release from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. “Its how people communicated in the past, how oral traditions were handed down. Somehow we seem to have lost that participative aspect to music in our society.”

According to the organizers, last years inaugural Dance Your Ph.D. contest was very successful, and researchers from around the world were eager to compete in this years contest.

2009 Dance Your Ph.D Winner (Post-Doc category - Miriam Sach)

Ph.D.: Cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs with positron emission tomography.

The findings of this thesis demonstrate that regular and irregular verbs are processed in the same neural network as opposed to separate cortical areas for regular and irregular verb inflection.

This piece is subdivided into 3 sections:
1.) Introduction of regular verbs,
2.) Introduction of irregular verbs,
3.) Common neural network of regular and irregular verb inflection.

1.) Regular verbs are represented by the walking at the very beginning of this piece.
The walking is simple, straight forward and without irregularities. It is accompanied by the sound of crackling fire a metaphor for the firing neurons.

2.) In contrast, irregular verbs are represented by a huge variety of different movements: jumps, slides, turns, rolls, level changes. Irregularities are also displayed musically by using syncopes and off-beat emphasis in percussion as well as further changes in instruments.

3.) The sound of the falling rain is a cleansing moment with no movements to introduce the final section of the dance: the common neural network of regular and irregular verb processing. It is the first time that symmetrical movements occur to emphasize the common network for both verb forms. In addition, both regular and irregular movements are shown to elucidate the presence of both entities in this network.

Overall, fiber connections in the brain representing the connections between regular and irregular verbs are shown by wavy arm movements.

2009 Dance Your Ph.D Winner (Professor category - Vince LiCata)

Human hemoglobin, in your blood cells, displays precise changes in internal cooperativity in response to exactly how the first two oxygens bind to it.

This video depicts, in dance, the study: "Resolving Pathways of Functional Coupling in Human Hemoglobin Using Quantitative Low Temperature Isoelectric Focusing of Asymmetric Mutant Hybrids"

Hemoglobin is a 4-subunit protein (a tetramer) that binds and transports oxygen. Individual alpha-subunits and beta-subunits come together to form almost inseparable dimers (boy-girl pairs with matching eye-goggle and gloves in the dance). How dimer-1 interacts with dimer-2 in the whole protein, however, depends on the exact combination of bound oxygens (white balls). If one dimer gets 2 oxygens to itself, cooperativity is reduced and it does not interact well with the other dimer. If both dimers get at least 1 oxygen, they cooperate with each other, and usually bind 2 more oxygen molecules (for a total of 4). In normal hemoglobin, the two dimers are identical. Hemoglobin tetramers with two differing types of dimers are called "asymmetric mutant hybrids" (hence the different colored goggles and gloves on each "dance-mer"). "Low temperature isoelectric focusing" is a method that freezes (literally) and takes a snapshot of the dimer-dimer interactions at different times.

2009 Dance Your Ph.D. Winner (Graduate Student - Sue Lynn Lau)

PhD title: The role of Vitamin D in beta-cell function.

Graduate student: Sue Lynn Lau

Performers: Members of the Diabetes & Transcription Factors Lab Group

Synopsis: Every PhD begins in the dark, but it takes only a few bright sparks to kindle the flame of discovery...

The crucial role of sunlight exposure as the most important source of vitamin D in humans is highlighted. Vitamin D is newly recognised to be involved in the function of many organ systems, including the beta cells of the endocrine pancreas. These cells make insulin in response to glucose stimulation.

Initially, the beta cells are in an unstimulated state, with minimal activity. At the arrival of the sugar plum fairy (symbolising glucose), the cells are able to sense the presence of glucose through the enzyme glucokinase. When glucose enters the cells through glut 2 transporters (marshmallow feeding), it is metabolised to produce the energy molecule, ATP. Through a number of steps, this leads to a rise in positive charge inside the cell, which ultimately triggers the export of insulin-storing granules by a process known as exocytosis (depicted here by the blowing of bubbles). Normal insulin secretion requires the coordinated function of beta cells via intercellular connections and communications as they work in concert.

We are investigating whether vitamin D has an effect in improving beta-cell function and increasing insulin secretion... are they "walking on sunshine"??

2009 Dance Your Ph.D Winner (Popular Choice Winner - Markita Landry)

I copied this from Youtube page. Personally, I think this is super duper cool~ Dance Your Ph.D~ ^^ I'll update more when I get back from Bundu Tuhan~~


Our official entry for the 2009 AAAS Science Dance Contest.

Title of PhD thesis: Single Molecule Measurements of Protelomerase TelK-DNA Complexes

Name:Markita Landry

University:University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

Dancers: Florin Bora and Markita Landry

Expected year of completion: 2009 and 2011, respectively.
My Ph.D. work involves the use of a relatively new technology called optical trapping. Using focused laser beams, (1064 nm = infrared beam = red dress) can trap dielectric particles (we use grey/black microspheres = black shirt). The laser holds the beads in place, but it is ultimately the motion of the beads that allow us to take our measurements, and that must be followed extremely precisely (in our case, our resolution is 3.4 angstroms, which is a very small length scale). This precision with regards to following the motion of the beads was my motivation for expressing the theory of optical trapping through tango, which is a dance that is heavily dependent on the ability of the follower to follow the steps that are led. These steps are non-deterministic and are made up by the leader on a real-time basis, so the follower never knows what to expect, and must always be acutely aware of their partners motions to follow correctly.

For my Ph.D. work, I am using optical tweezers to study protein-DNA interactions on a very small scale. I am studying a prokaryotic version of Telomerase, Protelomerase TelK. Telomerases are an active field of study due to their major role in protecting cells against premature aging. However, hyperactive telomerases are also involved in various forms of cancer. Our goal is to characterize the mechanism by which TelK forms DNA hairpins in its DNA substrate, and how the kinetics and binding modes of this mechanism vary with applied tension.