crappy quizes

ok this is the first internet quiz i've taken, but it was the best idea i've seen, so i was kind of drawn. i'm not really sure i like the result though.



Which File Extension are You?

yay for published articles!

finally some of the work i was doing at psl in sydney has been finished and accepted for publication by biochemical journal. it sure has been a bit of a struggle - plenty of emailed versions back and forth between me in zurich and various people in sydney. now hopefully people will read and like it!

"mucin glycosylation changes in cystic fibrosis lung disease are not manifest in submucosal gland secretions" Biochem. J. (2004) Immediate Publication, doi:10.1042/BJ20041641. abstract.

so what does it all mean?

people with cystic fibrosis produce lots of mucous, especially in their lungs, and are very prone to serious and chronic bacterial lung infections. quite a bit of research has been done on the mucous they produce, since their could be something different about cf mucous that makes it easier for bacteria to grow there. one of the main sources of mucous in the lung (everyone's lungs) are the submucosal glands, so we analysed mucous from these glands from people with and without cf. but we didn't find a difference in the glycosylation, even if people had cf, had smoked for 40 years, or were otherwise healthy! so that means that the differences in the glycosylation of mucous in cf are probably caused by the infections they have, not the other way around.

weekend in amersfoort

amsterdam for a weekend with shell was never going to be enough. but fun it was.

a bit of adventure to start the weekend off - after meeting up on friday night at amsterdam airport (shell from london, me from zurich), we headed down to the train station so conveniently located right under the arrivals lounge and jumped on a train heading towards amsterdam. unfortunately it only went towards amsterdam for a short while, before continuing on to amersfoort, halfway across the netherlands towards the german border! whoops. luckily we had lots of friendly dutch helpers to explain to the mean ticket man that we were just stupid tourists not evil fare-evaders. but then, when buying our ticket to get back to amsterdam, we met up with 4 other people who'd also just flown in and ended up on the same train! so this is clearly a conspiracy of the dutch rail authority to get stupid tourists to spend more on train tickets while in the country. amersfoot was a nice place to have visited once though.



saturday we were ready to explore, and first hit a fantastic little cafe "bagles and beans" with superyum bagels and perfectly acceptable coffee, with a very groovy view over a cute canal! the van gogh museum was then our first hit, and it was simply fantastic. i'd not realized before he painted all his work in 4 years, and most of the simply awesome stuff in the 2 years before he decided he was producing rubbish and shot himself.



saturday night we gobbled up some little-bit-too-yum spacecake, but still managed to make it to a fantastic indonesian restuarant (curtesy of the old dutch east indies of course) to feast on a HUGE banquet. yum!

sunday was rijksmuseum time, for some rembrandt and other stuff from the 1600s, the dutch 'golden age'. the incredibly life-like portraits, landscapes and still-lifes are all amazing, but seemed to lack something of the humanity of van gogh. maybe i'm just spoilt by photography.

unfortunately there wasn't time for much else on sunday, except for filling up with some dutch pancakes. yum again. but the bagels still won for the weekend.

amsterdam also has lots of canals,


steep steps,


and strange aliens
.

go google!

uppsala 1996


how cool is google! i was an afs exchange student in uppsala in 95/96 and was good friends with alycia from minnesota (on the right in the picture). only we'd sort of completely lost contact until last week, when i managed to google her down, and get a reply! yay! brings back all sorts of fun memories from 9 years ago. almost a decade - that's a bit scary.