Quotable Quote

"The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days."

-Smooth and Easy Days with Charlotte Mason

Molecule of the Month

Ribosome is an essential component of the protein producing machinery. It is a megacomplex of several proteins and ribosomal RNAs. 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists for their outstanding study leading to identification of ribosome structure to the atomic level. There are many web sources describing the structure and function of ribosome but I found the following link a simple and yet most informative one.

RCSB Protein Data Bank : Molecule of the Month - 70S Ribosomes

If you want to see the video of "ribosome in action" go to this site from Venki Ramakrishnan lab:

http://www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/ribo/homepage/mov_and_overview.html

Enjoy your weekend knowing the miracle of ribosome.

How to Succeed in Science

If you're a young scientist working in the lab, you might find the following articles published in journal Nature very interesting. Though published in 2008, you might miss reading these ones. They are in two parts.
Part I
PartII

Have fun and feel free to drop me your thoughts.

Sam Gye Tang: the korean food I prepared myself for the first time

I am always keen to taste any new food that looks tempting and excuisite. But rarely have I tried to prepare a dish that is VERY new to me. So I decided to start by preparing a new food which was not "so new" for me and I opted for Sam Gye Tang: a Korean Chicken Soup. I enjoyed it a few times before and had a feeling that I could prepare this dish. The only thing needed was a recipe which I got here:http://korean-cuisine.blogspot.com/2008/09/sam-gye-tang-ginseng-chicken-soup.html. The blogger put the recipe and cooking method so effectively with pictures that even a non-cook can prepare the dish. I made slight modification to the recipe: after stuffing the chicken with all the ingredients, I placed the chicken in my favorite slow cooker with plenty of water as shown in the picture. I set the cooking time HIGH for 2 hours and then LOW for 10 hours flipping the chicken once halfway through the slow cooking time. Started in the morning, the cooking was done in the evening by the time my family had waited impatiently to devour the chicken soup. I was little worry if my family like the taste of chicken soup because we mostly fry the chicken first for whatever chicken dish we want to prepare and sam gye tang was the only chicken dish that was prepared just by boiling. But to my delight, both my wife and my kid liked the taste and enjoyed the soup very much. Hurrah.....quite an achievment for me. If you want to give it a try go to the site I listed above and hone your culinary skills.

Mirror lake, Utah

Mirror lake--situated in the Uinta National Forest in Central Utah- is a tiny but very beautiful lake. Its clean blue water perfectly adds to its natural beauty.

Wow....it has been nearly three months since I last wrote in my blog. Well, this summer passed very well. I became the dad of a second child-Smriti. This time my wife and I were better prepared as parents than when our first child was born. The hardest part now is to manage time between the lab and the family. We have been through few experimentations to churn out an schedule that works best for all of us and we are still working on it. Talking about last summer, we had several get togethers, few potlucks, few short trips around Utah and other fun stuffs. Due to our very young children, we did not make any long trip and we are not hoping any for one more year. Hopefully, that won't let our "enthusiasm for travelling" let up. There are many interesting stuffs piling up in my mind which I will surely pour into my blog so stay in touch and I hope you also enjoyed your summer.

Marshy, balloony land raised above the ground....

It was downpouring this late afternoon here at Salt Lake City. Fortunately, I happened to see an amazing natural phenomenon right infront of my apartment at the West Village: a swampy land filled with water, as if it were a balloon, and raised above the ground. The neighbors were having fun. This video shows how the marshy land looked like.