Light and Stimulation

What is the similarity between giving an Operations order and Elemental TD? (A map on the RTS game: Warcraft III: Frozen Throne) Let me make your life a little easier and provide you with a hint, Darkness, Light and Earth.

If you answered Captain Planet, you are like 4 elements short. If you answered Armageddon, I can’t fault you completely but no, I’m not referring to Armageddon as well. If you are thinking of something like, “what the hell are you talking about? I came to read your personal blog not to ponder upon questions!” I like your style, really, I do.

In the context of this post, the similarity is Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, in other words, LASER. Laser does play an important in our everyday life. But to keep it short, I shall only expand its usage, or rather, my usage of the laser technology with the above 2 entities.

When I’m giving an Operations order, the laser pointer is, without a shadow of a doubt one of the most important equipment I have. It allows my audience to focus in on important points and make sense on what is presented to them. On a lesser scale, like academic presentations, I also use a laser pointer on key components of my talk as well as to orientate my audience to any diagrams that I might be presenting. Having this simple tool does bring life to a 2 dimensional picture and text based presentation and to certain extends, facilitate interactions between the speaker and audience.

Elemental TD is a single/ network multiplayer game where you prevent a group of enemy from successfully navigating a route by killing them using strategically placed towers. One of the main towers I will build will be the laser tower due to the high damage. This property enables it to have the potential to effectively attrite (on first pass) and finish off (on second pass) creeps when they are passing on towers which are utilized in a 2-pass position. If deployed on a single pass position, it’s a good finisher when supported by a tower which slows/reduces amour of your enemies. Ok, how does this apply to the technology of laser? It’s simple really, the application of fibre optic communication technology to support your network infrastructure.

50 years ago, the first laser was operated. This was made possible by a man by the name of Theodore H. Maiman. This spawned the downstream effects of subsequent mass scale productions and applications of lasers.

Lasers are applied in many fronts in daily life but it is an enigma to me, on 2 fronts of principles and development. I have to admit that I do not fully understand anything of lasers beyond stimulated emissions and it can be attributed on my apparent lack of enthusiasm for the fields of physics. The second enigma on development was more towards who should be accredited for laser? Is it Theodore H. Maiman who built the first laser? Is it Gordon Gould who won the patents for laser? Or is it Albert Einstein who came up with the Quantum Theory of Radiation, laying the foundations for laser?

Enigmas aside, I do agree that Laser has impacted modern science as well as daily life. Indeed, 3 cheers to all the founding fathers who contributed to the development of LASER.

Now if we go all Stars Wars in the future, that would indeed be cool.

BABE-SIA

If you are wondering if this post will be due to some hot babe I met in Australia by inferring from the title. You are wrong. If you are thinking of pork (which is babi in Bahasa Melayu) you are wrong as well.

The title is in reference to the protozoa Babesia. Slightly more information, Babesia of the phylum Apicomplexa , is a parasite is blood-borne, ixodid tick transmitted parasite.The definite host of this parasite is not a human but a mammal. Humans are considered an incidental host. Hey, you just cannot tell a tick who to bite can you? Now here is a sneak peek into the parasites life cycle. Firstly, the life cycle in a definite host. The tick takes a blood meal and it transfers the Sporozoites (cells that infect new hosts) into the host. The sporozoite infects the erythrocytes and develops into trophozoites. These trphozoites will then develop into merozoites, through binary fission, which reinitiates into the trphozoite replication cycle and/or develop into gametocytes. Another tick will bite the host and the gametocytes will be taken in and becomes a zygote inside the gut of the tick. The zygote will become a kinete and this phase allows the parasitic organism to travel around the tick. Once the kinete reaches the salivary gland, Sporozoites develop after which, this cycle continues.

In humans, we are dead end host. So after being bitten by an infected tick, the life cycle remains pretty much the same except for the fact that gametocytes are not formed. The merozoites will keep on reinitiating the trophozoite replication cycle within the host. Therefore, a human to human transmission route is only possible through blood transfusion.

Ok, I now fresh out of Geeki-ness and shall continue with my post proper.

Last year, I thought it will be the last time I had to have anything to do with Parasitology but, Parasitolgy is not done with me. Ok, I admit I was being daft when I made that statement last year. I’m in the field of microbiology and guess what, parasitology does spill over to the microbiology section so yup, sucks to be me for saying that. It’s not that I do not find it interesting, I did enjoy the parasitology module but it’s just that it is a “neglected” field and the hype wasn’t sustainable. Thinking practically, how am I going to survive in the field of parasitology if I’m back in Singapore?

Was attending a Australia Institute of Food Science Seminar last night. Ok, attending might be a tad bit wrong; it’s politically correct to say, assisted in hosting the seminar. The topic was on Parasitology in Food and the speaker introduced the pathogens as well as plausible control measures. My reflections after the seminar were primarily on the food science industry. Yes, it is true that you here reports of people getting down with diseases due to consumption of unsafe food. The agent responsible for this varies between Bacteria, Viruses, Fungi, Parasites, Toxins and Metals. Everybody is at risk of getting a food borne disease, no matter your diet. Therefore, there is a need to ensure that our food supply is safe; food science has become a necessary science.

It’s necessary science, but it is not exactly a ‘wow’ and ‘hyped up’ kind of science. Compare and contrast between this, Synthetic DNA and coliform count. Guess where the young and aspiring minds will want to be? While the current measures of safe guarding food are somewhat working, things do slip off the cracks. Microbes are not exactly dumb. Ok, maybe a single microbe will be dumb but in a community niche, they kick ass real hard and show us the power of evolution and ultimately, become a survivalist in this world. But with that being said, proper processing, cooking and handling of food can keep the bugs at bay. Only when we goof up, they go rouge. However, I feel that we should not be complacent on this. I personally feel that we know the bugs but we do not understand the bugs, there are biological pathways we have yet to discover, proteins left uncharacterised, genetic elements not totally understood. There is still reason to persist and fund research on these fronts.

This brings me to the point that not much funding is being channelled to these researches. Yes, I did mention that everybody is at risk but due to current food safety regimes, incidence of disease are not really that high and people are not really dropping dead. This is of course relative to killers with a non-communicable status like cancer and heart disease. Money tends to go to research on these areas based on the simple fact that people die more frequently due to these illnesses. It is indeed an altruistic move, I must say.

However, do not quote me on this but at the back of my head I got a feeling for another reason of funding research on killer illness is the want for people to live longer and have quality of health. While this is altruistic, I do view it as the world economy is sustained not by trade, but by people. So if people are falling left right and centre, in a way, the world economy will be shaken. We have all witness the fragility of it (world economy) because we are living in these times. GDP growth seems to be a measure that most countries proud themselves with, but the bottom line is still this, without people, you can forget about GDP growth. Without people, how do big pharma companies stay afloat?

Just to clear the air on the above paragraph if ya’ll got lost in my train of thoughts. Firstly, the research I’m talking about is Food Microbiology and food safety, not Microbiology in general. Secondly, the whole GDP muse thing, I’m not professing a socialist model. Like I said, it is just my personal musing.

It might seem that I’m partial to Food Microbiology. For the record, I am not partial to any sub-field within Microbiology yet, and I must emphasis the word yet. For the record, my stance is pretty much neutral and I’m at the phase where I’m absorbing what I can and as much as I can on various topics in Microbiology. My honours project is a testament to that, a nice blend of Food Microbiology, Microbial Genetics, Bacteriophage, and Bioinformatics and if time permits me, a glimpse into forensic microbiology (Epidemiology and ecology).

In closing, I saw that Orchard road was flooded yesterday. 2 thoughts came to mind. Firstly, was the thought of, “AWESOME, we got a flood? I thought it was mentioned somewhere in the year 1999 that Orchard road was not meant to flood?” The 2^nd thought, which I agree is related to this post and the reason for me to blog and mention the parasitology seminar, was on the protozoa Blastocystis. I’m not really sure on all the parasites that Singapore faces but this is one that comes to mind, apart from Plasmodium. Blastocystis has been detected in Singapore since a long time ago and Research on 2008 with National University Hospital as its sample group show that among that population the most prevalent subtype of Blastocystis is the subtype III, which is a typical human to human transmission subtype. Singapore is an urbanized place hence, it’s not really surprising. It colonizes the gastrointestinal tract, meaning the route of entry is faecal oral. Therefore, with the flooding I’m sure faecal and sewerage water might be washed up as collateral event. So are you feeling safe wallowing in the flood water? Knowing that there might be parasites?

By the way, I left out possible examples of bacteria and other microbes that might be in faces and floating around the flood as well. I saw from pictures that Starbucks was submerged. Are you feeling safe to drink a coffee knowing that the place might possibly be contaminated with faecal material that may possibly carry microbial pathogens?

Be afraid. No, I’m kidding~ or am I?

Cheers!!