Nature 3rd May 2007 Summary

South Africa has finally stepped up towards the AIDS crisis: By 2011, cutting infection rates by 50%; 80% accessibility to treatment. Currently, some scary stats... 1.8 million South Africans have died so far of AIDS, with an annual infection rate of 530,000. Only 30% of a million patients have access to antiretroviral treatment. Children are particularly vulnerable, because identity and family consent are usually required for testing, and many are obviously too young to have, and too unfortunate to even have a family alive. Really, statistics trivializes things so much.

The new 454 DNA sequencing technique, which is 100-times faster than the traditional clone-based techniques, is being used to identify new emerging viruses quickly. Just a little more speed can be life-saving, come next SARS (which I hope not...).

A postdoc at Cancer Research UK, compared her work with that of a circus performer, as she struggles to keep up with her todo list, at the same time as worrying about her own and her husband's homelessness:

"After all, postdocs are expert jugglers: we constantly have multiple experiments, responsibilities and commitments up in the air. We are agile tightrope walkers: from start to finish, we have to balance our professional goals with our mentor's expectations, our family obligations and our personal priorities, sometimes without a safety net. We're capable contortionists: we demonstrate remarkable flexibility when put in a tight spot. Sometimes we're lion tamers, winning the cooperation and respect of those who can be notoriously challenging to work with. Most of all, we're dedicated performers. We know, always, that the show must go on."

which makes me ponder about the prospect of pursuing the academic career... Why is it that the financial rewards in the academic career ladder can be so incomparable with industry jobs? After all, it's still a job, and I don't think it demands anything less than a normal job.

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Nature 25th April 2007: Summary

Universities are traditionally organized as discipline-based departments: physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Looking forward, some long-sighted universities have already noticed the trend that science is becoming increasingly interdiciplinary. Bioinformatics is a great example: mixing computer science, biology and statistics. Stanford, Harvard and Arizona State are pioneering to set up interdisciplinary centres, based not on discipline, but on a clear societal goal. It actually paints an encouraging picture of unity: a team of physicists, chemists, engineers, computer scientists and economists actively engaged in issues that concern all of us: poverty, hunger, disease. Scientists are no longer stuck in their little ivory tower trying to make a living out of petty questions.

By the end of this year, China will likely overtake the United States as the number one country in greenhouse gas emissions, sad... (though per capita speaking, the US is still far ahead). The good news is that the Chinese government is actually very concerned about this, because global warming will affect China significantly (lower water supply leading to lower crop yields, floods and droughts, and Beijing 2008 reputation). If it weren't for these consequences that people take heed, the world would have already exploded. One more argument for why God allows bad things to happen in this world; if actions did not have consequences, where is the motivation to do anything at all?

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