Fishing

I went fishing last Saturday with Dr. S.
That was my first fishing in a decade.

An old Chinese proverb says: "If you want to be happy for an hour, get drunk. If you want to be happy for three days, get married. If you want to be happy for a week, kill your pig and eat it. If you want to be happy forever, learn to fish."
I got no fish, but I will go fishing again. I would like to be happy forever.

Clams

HT, a friend of mine, sent me a lot of clams. He said, "the clam ia a suitable substitute for your brain. The operation will be successful. Good luck!"
Thank you. It would be enough for my brain.

Lost generation

Japan's National Police Agency released the report on suicide in 2008 in Japan. The figure of suicide in Japan has exceeded 30,000 for the 11th consecutive year. In particular, suicides in their 30's has been gradually increasing.

The data in the "Society at a Glance 2009", a recent report published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), shows that Japan is the nation having the third highest suicide ratio in 2005 among 29 OECD nations. Some reports from other databases refer that the ratio is the highest in Japan among OECD nations in 2008, and is closely correlated with the number of unemployed.

Like "Generation Y", Japanese in the 30's (called "Dankai Jr.") are the offspring of baby boom generation.
The people in the generation, including me, spent their school days in 80th in an excessive competition, graduated into the post-bubble period in 90th, and are now suffering from layoff under the worldwide financial crisis. Sometimes media call us "lost generation", but we should not lose our lives.

Intaglio

Mac OSX uses PDF (Quartz) as standard vector graphics instead of legacy PICT (Quickdraw). Unfortunately, most of applications (including Keynote and MS PowerPoint) do not support any function to edit PDF directly. I used to save each file as PDF and edit it on Adobe Illustrator.
It is not a smart way, and so I tried Intaglio, a drawing application on Mac OSX.
http://www.purgatorydesign.com/Intaglio
The application requires only 15 MB of disk space but supports both Quartz and QuickDraw. It retains traditional drawing features of MacDraw and can convert old Claris/MacDraw drawings to Quartz graphics.




The exporting procedure of Intaglio is quite smart. Click and hold down the mouse button for a second: the cursor will change to a copy cursor and it allows you to drag graphics into other applications.


However, the exported objects are recognized as image on Keynote and PowerPoint. I send e-mail to Purgatory Design, the software company, inquiring about the limitation.

>> I guess Intaglio should have a saving option to export it as Keynote or Powerpoint file.

Answer: One option you can investigate now is to add the LinkBack plug-in to Keynote and enable LinkBack export in Intaglio's clipboard preferences. In this mode, Intaglio includes editable information with the PDF it exports to Keynote. If you want to edit the PDF later Intaglio will use that editable data instead of the PDF itself. For more information see:
http://www.linkbackproject.org

LinkBack is an open source framework for Mac OS X exporting graphics to other applications with a link that enables the graphics to edit via the original one. It is in a similar way to Microsoft OLE or Apple's "publish and subscribe", and of course, these objects are unable to edit without the original applications.

OpenOffice and EasyDraw can export their drawings to PowerPoint or Keynote files. I wish Intaglio will have the function in the near future.

Chocolates

I got Wonka's candy bar.
It looks something different from that in the movie, but is pretty good.

Last week, I and Ken watched the DVD "Charlie and the Chocolate factory". That kept us amused throughout the movie. How come Wonka failed to make chocolate that would never melt? The chocolate palace build by him had melted down under a boiling sun, unlike his ice cream.

On the other hand, I love dark chocolates. I used to have extra-dark chocolates, but now I eat pure cacao mass all day long. I am very glad to hear that my chocolate addiction is making me smarter and saving the environment.

No melt ice cream

--You can even leave it lying in the sun on a hot day, and it won't go runny.
--But that's impossible.
--But Willy Wonka did it.


A shop in Japan invented a new way of making an ice cream that won't go runny for hours without a freezer.
http://kanazawa.keizai.biz/headline/photo/538
Of course that is eatable.

Know why? It has a secret recipe.

Durian

Ken hates durian.
"Durian smells than daddy", he said.

Ken, you are right, but maybe you use wrong comparative expression.

Cried red monster

"Cried red monster"

A red monster lived in a University. He hoped to be closer with students and put a bill on the door of his laboratory:
"Welcome to my lab. A gentle monster is here. I'll treat you with delicious tea and a lot of candies."
But no one visited his lab.


In the original story by Hirosuke Hamada, the red monster (Oni) in the village became friends with people after a self-sacrificing effort by blue monster.

To date, no student belongs to my lab. "I really did not want to be here, but I knew I had to come", the President Obama joked at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. Will undergrads say something like that in my lab? No, I believe they won't.

"President Jokes @ White House Correspondents Dinner"

Fishes

On May 2, Saturday, I saw Ken for the first time in the week. We went to Mooka city in Tochigi with Mari, her mother, and her sister to experience Dr. fish spa. That tickles, but was comfortable. Since the fish (reddish log sucker) feeds dead skin, Ken attracted few of them, but my feet chummed.



The next day, we went to Nakagawa Aquarium Park with my parents. Ken's grandpa had pleasure in teaching him about fishes. His grandma gave him a jigsaw puzzle. Ken played with it again and again.

Cake

During I was in the hospital, Mari stayed home in Niigata city, and Ken was at Mari's parents' house. She came in my hospital room on a holiday and brought me a rolled cake from a well-known shop. It was very delicious, and we hoped to get it again on my discharge day.


But we saw a long line of waiting people, which extended to the street.
We gave up the item and bought macaroons at other shop. That is one of my favorite sweets now.

Checkups for my pituitary gland

From Apr 27 to May 2, I had been examined for the function of my pituitary gland. The hospital, Toranomon hospital, is located near the Tokyo tower. I stayed in a room on the 7th floor for a week and received the checkups.


The first day.
I arrived the hospital at 11 am and registered for the hospitalization. In the day, I had six exams: electrocardiography (ECG), ECG after an exercise, vital capacity, forced vital capacity (FVC, the maximum volume of air that can be exhaled after taking the deepest breath), cardiac ultrasonography, and X-ray of my head and chest.

The second day.
At 6 a.m., a tolerance test of pituitary stimulating hormones. I was administered four hormones, namely, growth hormone-releasing factor (GRF), corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH), and luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LH-RH), from my vein and had blood drawing before and 15, 30, 60, 90, and 120 min after the administration.
At 10 p.m., blood collection. Four-handred ml of my blood was drawn for autologous transfusion and preparation of the autologous fibrin glue.
In the afternoon, an MRI of my brain.

The third day.
An adrenocorticotropic hormone test, which measures circadian secretion of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and cortisol in the blood.
I had blood drawing at 8 a.m., 12 a.m., 4 p.m., and 23 p.m..
From 3 p.m. to the next 3 p.m., 24-hour urine collection.

The fourth day.
At 6 a.m., blood drawing for the measurement of fasting blood glucose.
From 9:45 a.m. to the next 9:45 a.m., dynamic electrocardiogram (DEG).
I was connected with electrodes and recorded the daily electrical activity of my heart by a mobile cardiac telemetry (see the photos).


The fifth day.
X-ray absorptiometry to measure bone mineral density.

The sixth day.
At 10 p.m., I was discharged from the hospital

In the hospital, I felt ill for the treatment. Some nurses were not well trained and could not explain about the exams. Nevertheless, I will take the operation there on Aug 5, because that has a specialist for pituitary tumor.

Fat and obesity

Some of recent news regarding fat and obesity.

"Carbon emissions fuelled by high rates of obesity"
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine compared a population of 1 billion lean people, with weight distributions equivalent to a country such as Vietnam, with 1 billion people from richer countries, such as the US, where about 40% of the population is classified obese. They found that the fatter population needed 19% more food energy for its energy requirements, and additionally, greater car use by the overweight.
The study was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. "Population fatness has an environmental impact," says Phil Edwards, one of the authors.

Original paper: "Population adiposity and climate change"


"Obesity: Be cool, lose weight"
"To lose weight, would you rather diet, exercise or subject yourself to cool temperatures? The last choice is not such an odd one, as adult humans have brown fat tissue that burns calories in response to cold."
A review in the News & Views of the Nature journal says that.

Fat is mainly stored in two types of adipose tissue: white and brown. White adipose tissue (WAT) stores fat as lipid droplets, whereas the brown adipose tissue (BAT) burn it to produce heat and regulate body temperature.
It has been thought that only small mammals and newborn humans have BAT. However, three recent studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine identified BAT in adult humans, primarily behind the muscles of the lower neck and collarbone as well as along the spine of the chest and abdomen.
BAT can be activated in response to various stimuli including exposure to cold. It seems that the process is more prominent in the young and lean than in the old and obese, and in women rather than in men.
Recently, it was revealed that brown and white fat cells have different stem-cell origins (Nature 454, 961-967, 2008). A transcriptional regulator called PRDM16 controls a bi-directional switch in cell fate between skeletal myoblasts and brown fat cells. Additionally, BMP7 was identified that promotes brown adipocyte differentiation and thermogenesis (Nature 454, 1000-1004, 2008).
"Drugs that mimic its action might also be effective anti-obesity agents", says the review.

Original papers:
"Cold-Activated Brown Adipose Tissue in Healthy Men"
"Identification and Importance of Brown Adipose Tissue in Adult Humans"
"Functional Brown Adipose Tissue in Healthy Adults"


"Dietary Fats Trigger Long-term Memory Formation"
"Having strong memories of that rich, delicious dessert you ate last night? If so, you shouldn't feel like a glutton. It's only natural."

Researchers from the University of California, Irvine (UCI) reported that eating fat-rich foods triggers the formation of long-term memories of that activity. They found that administering oleoylethanolamide (OAE), a fatty acid derivate, to rodents improved memory retention in two different tests. The team previously reported that OAE regulates feeding by inducing satiety through activation of the nuclear receptor PPAR-alpha and reduces the body weight gain (Nature 425, 90-93, 2003). The actions of OEA were mimicked by PPAR-alpha agonists and abolished in mutant mice lacking PPAR-alpha.
Daniele Piomelli, the team leader, said that the OEA's memory-enhancing activity seems to have been an important evolutionary tool for early humans and other mammals by helping mammals remember where and when they have eaten a fatty meal.

Original paper: "Fat-induced satiety factor oleoylethanolamide enhances memory consolidation."


MEGMILK "Metabo-free yogurt"
In Japanese, "metabo" is a synonym for "fat" or "obesity". Of course the word derived from "metabolism", and was associated with "metabolic syndrome". So "metabo-free" does not mean no metabolism: this product contains no trehalose, which is need for cryptobiosis, but no fat.

Employment chain reaction

On this May, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (MEXT) decided to supply 500 millions yen (5 millions dollar) to businesses to save a hundred of postdocs. Since most of Japanese companies have a bias against hiring doctors, the MEXT provides a primer for the employment chain reaction.

I escaped from Limbo, but face a financial crisis. I had been only a Sweet'N Low daddy.