More About Laminin

Previously, I had blogged my opinion on the protein Laminin and its supposedly “cross” shape. The shape of this protein was seized upon by one evangelist, Louie Giglio to support a proposition in his sermon. I did not know much about the protein at that time (except what I wrote in that blog) and I was reluctant to believe that a scientist would say that the protein was “cross” shaped partly due to the sensationalism of Louie, I must admit. However, I now have found some interesting information regarding this protein’s role in cancer research.

Recently, whilst I was reading the [excellent introductory pathology and core text in my course] book, Cell, Tissue and Disease by Prof. Neville Woolf (2000), I came across this little paragraph about laminin:

“Laminin is a cross-shaped glycoprotein present in both the basement membrane and the interstitial stroma. In normal cells laminin receptors occur on the aspect of the cell apposed to the basement membrane and are occupied by basement membrane laminin. Invasive cells, however, have laminin receptors diffusely distributed over the entire cell surface and these are often unoccupied. If such tumour cells are treated with the receptor binding fragment of laminin, their invasiveness is greately reduced” [my emphases]

Firstly, the author refers to this protein explicitly as “cross-shaped”, so Louie’s description was accurate. Secondly, it appears Laminin fragments reduce the metastatic potential of a neoplastic (tumorous) growth and hence, rids the neoplasm of its dangerous property. This potential therapy can be used if the cancerous growth had not metastasized already. Even if the cancer has spread, it could (in theory) arrest further spreading. It should be noted that this is less likely to happen naturally even when there is enough laminin in the body [to arrest the spreading of a cancer] because there is little laminin fragments freely floating around in the body. I suspect that the laminin fragments have therapeutic potential because they don’t have the binding domain for the basement membrane, otherwise (I think) they might actually help the invasive cell to adhere to the basement membrane and achieve malignancy easily!

So, the cross shaped Laminin not only proves God’s promises to be true, it helps scientists to cure cancer! 

Nothing new under the Sun

By now we’ve all heard the carnage that happened in Mumbai. Though I’m appalled by these terrorist attacks, I feel sort of apathetic to the whole situation. There is nothing new under the sun.

Is terrorism new? No. Are terrorist attacks against India new? No. From the time I can remember, it was a fact of life that Kashmir continued to be terrorised by similar heinous acts. So when the 9/11 attacks happened and a big deal was made about it, I was like, there is nothing new here. I had grown desensitized by the amount and frequency of evil that was being committed continuously in my own home country. By the way, is the fact that the Indian PM blaming Pakistan for terror attacks new? Hell no! Why would he want to break that ugly tradition? Rather than apologising for the lapses in the security of his own land, the guy starts playing the blame game! How sad. All I can say is clean your own house dude. And before you do that, take that plank outta your eye.

I’ve always thought that terrorists are cowards (counter intuitively) who can’t fight a straight up war against an army. During the majority of the times they use self-destructive tactics (hence, the counter intuitiveness) aiming for the maximum number of unarmed innocent lives they can possibly take. For the past few days I have struggled to understand the thought processes that would have led to undertaking such a level of attack. *sigh* Extremism. Is it new? No. There is nothing new under the sun.

Men are Parasites on Women

Its been quite a while since I posted something. I had started my second year at University and I’m finding less and less spare time. This is going to be a quick post of what I posted to my University blog.

Recently while I was in a lecture in Human Genetics, I heard this thing uttered by a lady who lectures on Human Genetics. I was rather surprised by such a thing coming from such a position. So I posted this to my other blog:

For the comprehension-impaired, this is a little rant on a statement made during a Human Genetics lecture by [name with held]. My female colleagues are understandably finding my impatience quite amusing. But I, being a man, could not take that statement lightly. Here is the context:

The lecturer stated how all of one’s mitochondrial DNA is inherted from his/her mother and in so doing, threw out a little dig. Since the sperm does not contribute to the mt-DNA, it was suggested that, this kinda lends some support to the idea that men are merely parasitic on women.

I don’t know about you, but apart from being gobsmacked by the irrationality of such a supposition, it was strangely amusing to consider the implications. I guess this is one of those ideas where the vagueness of it keeps you in the dark about how exactly the proposition “men are parasites on women” follows or is related (however tangential it may be) to the fact that the mt-DNA of every single human has maternal origins.

The sperm is anthropomorphized. Poor little thing. The word “parasite” suggests that, the sperm is in someway harmful [to women]. I have no idea how this could be supported. But everything I know suggests otherwise. After all, the sperm is required to fertilise the egg cell to produce an embryo. Furthermore, “parasite” suggests that sperm has nothing of value to contribute to the whole shebang. It strikes me as a rather naive thing to say.

That’s all. End of Rant.

I was trying to understand where she was coming from. I’m still puzzled by her very short comment. It was neither explained nor justified. Just an offhand remark.

The converse of this happened today on a lecture in Human Genetics, only this time it was from a guy. He was discussing Human Pedigree Analysis and in explaining women as “carriers” for certain X-linked traits, he indicated that women have something “hidden” and guys are more “open and honest”. One could hear the murmurs of women all over the lecture theatre the moment he uttered it! I must hasten to add that his tone was very light-hearted and he was smiling as he said it. Everyone could see he was joking around. And atleast everyone had a vague idea how this comment is related to the Human Carriers, unlike the previous “parasite” comment from the other lecturer.

Mike Guglielmucci + porn addiction = Cognitive Dissonance in excelsis

This is huge everywhere. For a reliable source of this news check out the links in ChristianityToday’s news page.

Okay, I neither want to beat a dead horse nor do I want to repeat all the accusations against Mike, ad nauseam. I’m not like OMG! Mike is teh sux0r!1!0!1!

I first came across the news of Mike’s deception a while back, though I never really realised how big it was. Mike apparently wrote one of the popular song, Healer and performed it to a huge Hillsong Australia crowd. Now, I’m not a huge fan of Hillsong by any means, though I do have one album of their youth team United. So, it is no surprise that I did not know of this whole shebang before. And, it is a good thing. I’m not into hugely “emotional” ways of worshipping where stuff like this can creep into quickly [though, I do not abhor appropriate emotion entirely in worship settings].

Although I can empathise with the reactions of some of the young Christians, I feel that some of their very negative reactions are hardly reasonable, and hardly “Christian”.

As a dude who is interested in the psychology of things, it was interesting to note that some of the physical symptoms Mike was showing originated when his porn addiction began:

“When he was about 12 he did vomit all the time, he’d get really really sick,” [Danny Guglielmucci, Mike's father] said.

“He was in the Adelaide Children’s Hospital for seven weeks at one stage; he didn’t eat and we thought we were going to lose him.”

“They took out his appendix, thinking that it might be that, but they realised that it wasn’t.”

“We signed him out from hospital and then he would go a few months and then he would get sick again.”

“We’d always take him to hospital; we’d always do the proper thing but they couldn’t get to the bottom of it until now.”

“We have watched our son go through what we thought was cancer,” [Mike's father] said. “My wife and I, over the past two years, have watched him vomit in buckets, having nosebleeds, and even his hair fell out in clumps at one stage.”

“Every time we saw him, we saw symptoms. He stayed with us for a while where we had to put a special air-conditioner in one of the rooms because he would heat up so much in the middle of winter.”

“He had this cold air-conditioner blowing on him to try to keep the heat down. As a professional minister I’ve stood in front of my congregation and cried and said to pray for my son.”

From here

That’s quite extreme, you know, the symptoms. Its like tons and tons of guilt blowing up inside. The fact that Mike is a youth pastor would have contributed much to his depression, I reckon. All that cognitive dissonance is on a completely different level on Mike’s case. It must have been mind blowing. If what is related by Mike’s father is accurate, I truly feel sorry for this man.

Vox DA20 Guitar Amp: A review

Before I bought the Vox DA20, I found it harder find reviews about this amp around the web. With this review along with pictures, I hope to give some idea about the features of this amp and how it sounds to prospective buyers. If this was useful to you, please comment. Also, if you have any questions regarding this amp, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments.

I bought the Vox DA20 mainly to use for practising. This amp does not have valves/tubes in it and it is a digital modelling amp [wait! don't write it off just yet]. At the shop, I did have the choice of the “AD15 Valvetronix” amp but since I’m a student, I didn’t want to bother with tube amps-mainly due to maintenance concerns.

front view

I gather from reviews of the valvetronix line of amps that many don’t like the front “metal grill” style view. But its fine with me. Don’t mind the reflections in the metal grill in the above picture. The 2×8″ speakers you can see is the coolest bit of the amp IMO.

The controls section is divided into two–the ‘amp section’ and the ‘effects section’. Overview of the controls of the amp (with pictures) after the break…

Inspiring Teachers

At ScienceBlogs, a teacher blogs about why it is dangerous to teach evolution in wherever he works in America. This guy who goes by the handle Coturnix opines:

You cannot bludgeon kids with truth (or insult their religion, i.e., their parents and friends) and hope they will smile and believe you. Yes, NOMA is wrong, but is a good first tool for gaining trust. You have to bring them over to your side, gain their trust, and then hold their hands and help them step by step. And on that slow journey, which will be painful for many of them, it is OK to use some inaccuracies temporarily if they help you reach the students. If a student, like [Natalie Wright] who I quoted above, goes on to study biology, then he or she will unlearn the inaccuracies in time.

First question, what is truth here? Or is it Truth (capital T). Most likely it’s the latter since the guy denies NOMA. Second, why teach your Truth: your spin interpretation of the scientific data and concepts as the truth in a public school/college? Whatever happened to the noble ideal of secularism.

As a student, I say if ever I knew that my biology teacher was using NOMA to gain my trust, only to teach his version of the “truth”, I’d be mad. Thank God, my A-level (and high school) Biology teachers were not like that. If they were, it will only have served to destroy the respect I have for whatever truth the teacher represents.

I do not understand why it is necessary to use some ‘inaccuracies’ about evolution in order to “reach” the students (is it some kind of evangelism?). I mean Coturnix is most definitely not teaching about evolution to little children; rather to teenagers and adults I guess. So why the need for ‘inaccuracies’? And by the way, the students are not gonna like you for teaching inaccuracies (or lies if knowingly done) if they find it out later on in their academic life.

Reading Coturnix’s article, initially I thought I found a positive thing to commend:

If there is a potential resentment of my lectures, I have to thread carefully. I have to remember that I am not trying to turn them into biologists, but that I am trying to make them think for themselves and to understand evolution even if they do not want to ‘believe’ it for religious reasons.

However, I found his intention very insincere in light of his other desires.

Now I will mention some of the things about my science teachers that inspired me and put me steadily on the path to becoming a scientist.

Bone Diggers

This is a hilarious parody of Kanye West’s song Gold Diggers with the theme being Evolution. The lyrics’ got digs at Paleontologists. No offence to them! I just find the pop culture understanding of stuff like this funny.

Lyrics after the break….

Storm the Gates of Hell

“Storm the Gates of Hell” is the title for the latest album from the Metal band, Demon Hunter. I had quite high expectations for their newest album since I loved the previous one (The Triptych). I got the ‘Special Edition’ of the album as I like to watch interviews with the band members and hear their commentary about the album. What follows are some thoughts from a fan so it might not exactly be a dispassionate critique of the pros and cons of the musical complexities expressed in this album. So here we go…

One thing that impresses me of this band is the whole presentation of the album. The covers and the booklets are well designed. The cover design is a departure from the conventional CD cover design (a positively artistic departure at that):

I like how the cover opens like a door; Hell’s door with the logo of the hunted demon on it. The demon is ‘hunted’ because of a hole in its head–presumably made by the Hunter’s weapon. I liked the symbolisms. As you open the doors you see a statement on the inside of the doors…

“Hell Hath No Fury At All”

I liked the very bold statement. This statement of rebellion to dark forces is very appealing in the midst of bands that sing about embracing darkness. The irony is that those bands that sing about embracing darkness started out as a rebellion themselves! Now there are so much of them that they are the “mainstream” and bands like Demon Hunter are the rebels!

All this prepared me for the sonic pleasure that awaited. As usual, I played the CD in my home theatre and the first song was “Storm the Gates of Hell”. The start sounded like the stampede of the hunters and the hunted but what followed it could only be best described in the words of the bassist, “…pure aggression from beginning to end, no ceasing, no letting up, no choruses, not giving you chance to breathe…y’know just pummeling from beginning to end…”. Nearing the end of the song, the phrase “Hell hath no fury at all” was screamed/growled by the lead singer Ryan Clark with ’squealies’ flying off the guitars like arrows in the background. It…was…pure headbanging awesomeness. A phrase like that found its ultimate expression from the mouth of Ryan Clark. It really does makes one think, “Hell hath no fury at all”, indeed. Oh yeah, I was screaming it in my mind too since I did not want to ruin Ryan’s vocal performance by doing it audibly myself.

The song “Sixteen” captured my interest. It had guest vocals from Bruce Fitzhugh of Living Sacrifice. The vocals by him reminded me of the album Burning Bridges by Haste the Day. It was different and dare I say a bit refreshing as well. This type of growling is one of the deepest and darkest form of vocals I have heard. When a whole album is comprised of vocals with only one type of vocal style it would get rather monotonous and grow stale before you know it. The original vocal style would then quickly become unoriginal. However, employed like in the song “Sixteen” it adds to the texture of the song very well while maintaining variety.

“Mouths Open and Hearts Wrenched Out”

“We were on tour in India. We visited Prem Kiran–a humanitarian project in one of the red light districts in Mumbai, and it left us in shock. To see women enslaved in such circumstances is an outrage, but to see their own children growing up in such a completely hopeless environment was a tragedy. But there was hope. The team working at the project were taking the kids off the street and housing them, feeding them and giving basic education. They were working alongside the mothers, helping them find order in the chaos–a little peace in the storm. It’s hard for a band to know how to respond to things like this. Mostly we just stood there with our mouths open and hearts wrenched out–unable to be put back the same. We knew we had to do something, no matter how small. And so we have committed to give part of our royalties to Prem Kiran. This money will primarily be able to put food in the children’s stomachs but also help to provide school lessons and eventually re-house them and their mothers. Thanks for buying this CD and becoming part of the solution.  – D boys”

As I read this in the booklet accompanying Delirious?’s new album Kingdom of Comfort, I felt an immense sense of gratitude to the band. I was also humbled by the Love that motivates them to alleviate such pain.

These people in the “sovereign and secular” India live a life of hopeless despair and pain. The pain is so much that it numbs their hearts. All Indians know about this. The Indians who just get by hear it, see it and yet are unable to do anything about it. It desensitizes our hearts hearing it all the time. Such is life in the not-so-great parts of the Third World.

Then I got lost in thoughts of the people being helped….Thoughts the afflicted might be thinking as I got in to their mind…

As I was listening to the album I really liked the song “Love Will Find a Way”. The lyrics capture some emotions one goes through when thinking about these things…

I thought I believed but I just turn away from these souls living in this hell today

Tears are falling on my face from face

Love, love will find a way to break through

This Love, finds a way to shine through….

I try to make sense of the things I’ve seen between the poverty and the five star dream..

Love will lead me to your feet

Love won’t pass me on the street

Love will look me in the eye

Love won’t leave me here to die…

To your arms I’m gonna run and escape what I’ve become…

Faith is not Blind!

At the end of my previous blog post, I had indicated that biblical “Faith” does not mean “belief without evidence”. So what exactly does it mean?

One of my favourite apologist JP Holding in his article (link) regarding biblical “Faith” offers four different ways people understand the word “faith”:

1. A “faith healer” named Benny Pophagin offers to heal Joe of his lumbago. Benny lays hands on Joe and prays, but the lumbago remains. Benny waves Joe away, saying, “This is your problem. You don’t have enough faith.”
2. A Christian faces several objections to his beliefs that he cannot answer. He says, “I don’t care what people say, I still have faith.”
3. Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard “contends that the scriptures included in the Bible verify that the Christian belief system is based on a leap of faith, not on tangible proof.” This is because Christianity involves paradoxes offensive to reason.
4. The famous skeptic Mark Twain said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”

The third and fourth points are much closer to the modern use of the word ‘faith’ by skeptical polemic while the first and second points reflect the folk understanding of ‘faith’ by religious people. However, Holding indicates that:

The Greek word behind “faith” in the NT is pistis. As a noun, pistis is a word that was used as a technical rhetorical term for forensic proof. Examples of this usage are found in the works of Aristotle and Quintiallian, and in the NT in Acts 17:31:

Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

If you are used to thinking of “faith” in terms of our first two examples, this will assuredly come as a surprise. The raising of Christ is spoken of here as a proof that God will judge the world.

The concept of ‘faith’ is also expanded to include “trust”. Quoting Holding again:

With a form of pistis used over 240 times in the NT, it will not be possible to examine every instance of it. But it is enough to highlight some of the more obvious examples.

Matthew 8:5-10 And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed… When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

We see the definition of “faith” in terms of loyalty to, or trust in, a deserving patron, exhibited quite clearly here. The centurion knew of Jesus’ miraculous abilities (v. 8). His faith was not “blind” but based on the evidence of Jesus’ past works. He considered Jesus worthy therefore of his trust and came to him for help.

This is the sort of “faith” also exhibited by other people who come to, or are brought to, Jesus for healing. The man with palsy, the woman with the issue of blood, Jairus, the blind man (Matt. 9), the Syrophoenician woman (Matt. 15) — all came knowing of Jesus’ abilities to heal. Their actions were based on evidence and proof. Of course one may argue that their trust was misplaced and that Jesus was a charlatan, but contextually that is beside the point. Our point is that faith is not “blind trust.”

Now, this might come as a surprise to many; it was certainly to me when I first read it as I too had been caught up with the ‘blind assent’ characterisation of the word ‘faith’ and had mistook it for the biblical word ‘faith’. Holding’s article makes so much more sense as he develops the contextualised concept of ‘faith’. I can relate to this type of ‘faith’ readily as I come from a collectivistic culture.