Kopitiam in Boston

This is not my first time living abroad, but I don’t think I will ever be able to get over Singaporean food (yes, not even with bacon and eggs and grits). So I was really excited to go to an event organized by the MIT Singapore Students Society, Kopitiam, for homemade Singaporean food!

One of those reflections on life

We had a guest speaker for our class on Friday, a stay-at-home mom with a child diagnosed with autism. She told us about her experiences – bringing her son up, his problems with digestion, her struggles with their doctors, and the camp that her son went to this past summer. She briefly mentioned that before she had her children, she was working at MIT.

Her stories resonated with me for several reasons.

Mushroom walk in Lincoln

The mushrooms that Matt and I found. For the life of me, I couldn't see anything on the ground that didn't look like fallen leaves.

Getting out of bed at 7 am on a Sunday morning isn’t usually my thing, but for what I went to, it was totally worth it. I went to a mushroom walk in Lincoln, hosted by Trish Adams of the Boston Mycological Club. Pictures!

Drug synthesis – an example

Oxazolomycin A core. Looks pretty bad!

Drugs are exceedingly complicated molecules. The process of getting to know what a drug should look like is, in the words of Edward Holson, Director of Medicinal Chemistry at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, “like a chess game.”

Nature’s mirrors

Once, I heard that the more symmetrical a face between the left and right sides, the more attractive it is. This occurred to me again when I was doing my eyebrows last night and accidentally trimmed a little too much off my left eyebrow. But while our reflections in the mirror act exactly as we do, the same certainly does not hold true for molecules.

Ashtanga yoga moon day

Crescent moon. Image obtained from Wikimedia.org

Today was a ‘moon day’ for ashtanga yoga practitioners. It reminds me of the time when I was in India practicing at 5am six days a week, unless, of course, there’s a moon day.

Introducing.. Carbon Dioxide Fertilization

Bison in Yellowstone National Park. Copyright XiaoZhi Lim 2007

I have just been introduced to a whole new concept, coined the carbon dioxide fertilization effect, when I came across an article published last week in Nature Climate Change. Can carbon dioxide actually act as a fertilizer, helping plants to grow bigger and faster with higher levels in the atmosphere?

Fish, mercury and ADHD

Got out of bed at 4am for super, super fresh sashimi. Best meal in my life - Tsujiki Fish Market, Tokyo. Copyright XiaoZhi Lim 2009.

I was browsing through EurekAlert the other day for new studies to blog about and came across this title: Low-level mercury exposure in pregnant women connected to risk in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Now, I normally wouldn’t follow through on such an article, as I am: a. not pregnant, b. everyone knows mercury is toxic, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it causes problems. But the word ‘fish’ in the press release got my attention because I love eating fish and yes, I like to know what’s going on with my food, so I clicked on it and read the paper.