Summer Shutdown

As you know, Amgen has a week off, paid vacation, starting today.  Here's how I'm spending it.

Friday, June 26: Went to Walmart to buy a TV stand.  My hutch accommodates my current 26 inch TV, but can't hold anything bigger.  It's also mega-heavy (maybe 120-150 lbs) and tall, with no good places to grip it, so it's a pain to move.  For my new TV, I contemplated getting a 26 in just to avoid having to move the hutch, but others convinced me otherwise.  So I wound up buying a 40-inch LCD ProScan 1080p for $500, which I'm picking up tomorrow (Saturday).  Anyway, I was at Walmart at around 9 pm.  The TV stand weighs 85 lbs, and it was a bit awkard getting it into the car, but I managed.  I started to put it together that night, but only got about a third of the way when I realized I needed another tool.

Saturday, June 27: After getting a required tool at Home Depot, I returned home to finish the TV stand.  Ben met me at Best Buy to help me load the TV, and followed me home.  Getting the old hutch up the stairs was a Herculean effort, like pushing a square boulder up a hill.  Here's the new TV and the new TV stand (pardon the glare.  That's not dust).  Oops, you'll see an unused cabinet door stored under the dvd player. That space is the only place I can put my minisystem, so for the moment, I'm not going to install that cabinet door.

6/27/09 The picture is good. But  I don't have HD (yet), but even without HD it's still sharper than my old TV.  At the time, I was using the yellow video jack for my dvd and the picture, quite frankly, looked grainy.  Though I might eventually upgrade my dvd player to an upconverting one or better yet, a Blu-Ray player, I took the easier way out and bought the component video cables, and in the progressive scan mode, the picture from the dvd player was much improved.  The sound from the TV is decent, but I get much better and deeper sounds by hooking it up to my minisystem, which has 5 speakers and a powered subwoofer (you can only see the center speaker in the picture).

6/28/09 I need to replace the shower tub spout in my guest bathroom.  I managed to unscrew the old spout, but it came out with the copper pipe attached to it.  So I need to replace the pipe and screw on a new tub spout, and then caulk it.  I've never done any of that, so hopefully I won't make a mess.

Happy Father's Day

UC Davis Lecture

Earlier in the year, Jackie, an organic chemistry faculty member at UC Davis, asked me if I would give a guest lecture for CHE 130B, an undergraduate course in pharmaceutical chemistry.  Since it sounded like a good opportunity, I readily accepted.  We agreed that I would give an overview of Alzheimer's Disease in general, and AMGN's efforts in this area in particular.  Because this would involve disclosing structures, I knew that I would have to get legal approval as well.  To make a long story short, I did submit it for legal approval, but I didn't learn until a few days before the lecture that the submission was done incorrectly, and so it was a mad scramble at the last minute to get the required approvals, but thankfully they all came through.

So early Monday morning, I flew to Sacramento, where Jackie picked me up from SMF.  Because class wasn't until 11 am, she took me to a diner called Cindy's for breakfast.  The last time I was at Cindy's was when I was about 10 years old.  After breakfast, we drove to UC Davis, and we had a little bit of free time so Jackie told me about some of her research projects. 

A little before 11, we headed for class.  Because CHE 130B is an upper division course, it's not a huge class.  Perhaps there were 30 people.  She took a few minutes to set up the projector and introduce me, so I had about 45 minutes to give my talk.  That's about how long I wanted it to be, but I didn't rehearse it as often as I would have liked, so I talked for about 50 minutes.  Hopefully the class enjoyed my talk.  They did laugh at my last slide, which was the list of People Magazine's 25 most intriguing people from 1999 (one of them was an Amgen researcher who studied Alzheimer's Disease).  After class, Jackie, the TA, and one other student joined us for lunch at the Gunrock Pub, which is the first time I'd ever eaten there.

From 1-5 pm, I had appointments with various faculty members who told me about their work.  I didn't know any of them personally, but many of the younger faculty and I have mutual acquaintances at AMGN.  I also met with Professor Balch, a relatively senior faculty member in inorganic chemistry (thus unrelated to my area).  He was a little perplexed as to why I requested to meet with him.  But when I told him that a) I'm from Davis, b) I'm classmates with his youngest daughter and in fact we were in the same 6th grade class, and c) he was the parent chaperone on my 6th grade field trip to Alcatraz, he definitely warmed up to me.

When the day ended, I walked to the Mann Lab parking lot where my mom picked me up, and we drove to the capitol area of Sacramento to pick up my brother, and we had dinner at New Station.  Then they took me to the airport. 

Universities and Prestige: Part I

I'm overhearing several discussions on college prestige (mainly amongst the high school students at my church, since deadline time for choosing a college is fast approaching).  I have several thoughts on the subject, but too many to fit on one posting.  But since the National Academy of Sciences just announced its new electees, it's a good time to bring up a few stats.

Membership in the NAS is considered one of the highest scientific honors bestowed in the United States.  But is it completely free of politics? No, of course not.  But it's not an old boy's club either, and so the number of NAS members from a given institution is a measure of that school's impact in scientific research.  Two caveats are in order.  Some schools are bound to have more members simply because they have more faculty members.  Also, certain warm-weather schools are a haven for retiring scientists, and this tends to overinflate their numbers, since many of these retirees are no longer active in research.  But with that said, here are the membership numbers within the University of California system. 

UCB: 127

UCSD: 66

UCLA: 31

UCSF: 31

UCSB: 28

UCI: 22

UCD: 20

UCSC: 8

UCR 2

People sometimes mention UCLA in the same breath as UCB in terms of prestige in the sciences.  But as this analysis shows, that is unwarranted.  They have about the same number of faculty, and yet UCB has four times the number of members in the NAS.  Even UCSD, which has fewer faculty than UCLA easily beats them.

Picnic Day Weekend

Sorry for the dearth of updates recently.  I flew to Oakland on Friday night, where Elaine picked me up and we drove to Davis for Picnic Day.  Picnic Day is believed to be the largest student-run event in the United States. I don't know when the last time I went was, although I know that it was during the Reagan administration.

I could tell the day was going to be warm, and in fact some people said it might have been the warmest one ever.  I was also worried about my allergies, and while I did sneeze more than usual, it wasn't as bad as I had feared it would be.  The Parade started at 10:10.  It started with the UC Davis marching band, and included many departments at UC Davis as well as groups belonging to the city of Davis, such as girl scout troops.

The parade ended around 11:15. My brother told me about the free popcorn at the Plant & Environmental Sciences building, so we went there next. Elaine and I took a quiz on identifying different plants, grasses, and legumes (given by the agronomy division), and we don't do so well.  I also found this timeline of tomato research.  If you can't read the caption, it says "Shang Fa Yang elucidates the pathway of ethylene biosynthesis, leading to many innovative ways to control plant growth and fruit ripening." The caption above highlights another Mann Lab scientist (Alan Bennett) saying "Alan Bennett's group clones the gene for polygalactouronase, a key enzyme involved in fruit softening."

We had lunch on the quad then went to the chem building, but the line for the magic show was ridiculously long.  So we went to the ARC pavillion for the doxie (dachshund) derby.

I was given two tickets to Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef's ice-cream social, so we went there next.  I saw a number of familiar faces, including Bob Kerr (my little league manager in 7th grade).  Here's E & I with the chancellor.

We went to the battle of the bands next, but I didn't take any pictures.

On the way back, I stopped by Mann Lab to see how Dad's tree is doing.  Its leaves are pretty.

Headed back on Sunday.