The last blog assignment - Ming-Wei

It will be my second academic year after this summer. Fortunately I passed the Integrated Oral Exam of our program so that I could begin my research carrier in OSU this summer. Doing lab work and taking class at the same quarter are very hard; it is even harder for a Ph.D. student who is expected to do both theoretical and experimental works. Fortunately but also unfortunately, that's what my current research group expects.

This writing class gives me a lot of practices to write articles, and it is really the best way to learn a language. Although I still can not find the best way to divide my time form my tasks in summer quarter, the experience is still valued. Moreover, I am so glad to learn and grow with this class.

In the past year, I was getting adapted studying in OSU with people's helps. Although all ESL courses were required for students whose English was not satisfied the exams in the first quarter, I am still glad that I can make friends and learn many things besides English from my ESL classmates from different countries. For example, an Iranian friend told me about their traditions of New Year celebrations. Hence, I always believe that studying abroad is not only obtaining the degree, but also experiencing the life.

In the next quarter, I am going to take courses, do research, and be a TA in the same quarter; all you can imagine is an overloaded student living on OSU campus. The good news for me is that I will be able to clean all course requirements in my second academic year; however, the bad news is, I still have three courses to take. Therefore, if you see a student walk hurry around chemistry and Physics buildings, please give me a warm smile and encouragement!

A movie named "The Double life of Véronique" is one of my favorite movies. Having a double role in the same school (student and TA) more or less makes me feel like an actor – playing different roles.

That's life. I have to congratulate all of us in the end of quarter, and hopefully keep contact with each other!

Homework

1. The next draft of the critical review and the complete draft of the final paper is due on Sunday, Aug 20. The final drafts of both the critical review and the research paper are due on Aug 27.

2. If you are concerened about your critical review grade, please send it in early.

3. Final Blog: Say goodby. What are you going to do for the rest of the summer? next quarter? How's life going?

Instructions for postng your blog to wikipedia

1. go to www.wikipedia.com
2. Go to create account and set up your own account. If you don’t want to do this, I’ll use my account.
3. Enter the key term in the search engine to make sure the term has not been discussed (Although I asked you to do this first, it is okay – just let me know.
4. If no article is found, click on create article and add your text in the word processing program on the page.
5. If you want to add images, click on upload files in the left column. You can use the tutorial at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Uploading_images.
6. You can read an introduction and take a tutorial at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction
7. If your article is long check the format and the layout that Wikipedia uses. If you have any references, please include them. They will ask you if you don’t.
8. You are going to have to reenter your links. You can create both internal and external links and even links to related articles in your native language. You can use the icons on the program to create your links. To learn how to do this, look at the tutorial beginning at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial_%28Wikipedia_links%29.
9. Go to Edit Summary to create a summary. It should be no more than 200 characters. Click on the link to get more information
10. When you are finished, save the file.
11. If you have any problems, let me know.
12. To get credit, send me the URL of your entry. Check back later to see how people have edited your file.

"Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring" - the second draft for wikipedia by Ming-Wei

"Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring (暗戀桃花源)" was the second stage plays performed by the "Performance Workshop (表演工作坊)" in 1986, and also the first successful modern stage play in Taiwan. The play is combined with two different stories -a tragedy and a comedy- on the same stage, so that this play is mixed with serious and bantered atmosphere. A remarkable feature of this play is "extemporization", because this play is extemporized by the director, Sheng-Chuan Lai (Stanly Lai, 賴聲川), all actress and actors. The originality renewed the view of Taiwan's drama, and then affected the Asian's performing arts.

This stage play stats that two drama troupes were arranged to have a rehearsal at the same time because of an unknown reason, one of the workshop is playing a modern tragedy named "Secret Love", and the other one is playing a costume comedy named "The Peach Blossom Spring". The problem is, both these two plays have to perform in two days. Since they have only one stage for their rehearsals, how should they do? "Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring" creates a unique experience of stage play by mixing up the costume and modern, sorrow and delight.

This play was first performed on March 3rd, 1986. In these twenty years, the play have been adapted to a movie and revised twice: the first revise was in 1999, and the second will perform in September, 2006. Each performance has its own specifity. The first performation addressed the creation of style of modern play, the first revision in 1999 included some young performer and implied the translation between two generations of performer. The second revision in 2006 involves a famous Taiwanese opera (歌仔戲) group: Ming Hwa Yuan (明華園) in the play. The combination between stage play and Taiwanese opera is another innovation of performance in Taiwan. The success of this play rewrote the Taiwan's history of theatre, and ignited further creative works of modern Chinese drama in Taiwan.

Acknowledgement:
Francesca Silvestrini, review and comments.
Chun-Ying Wei, discussion and comments.

Homework for August 8th

Homework.

Fill in this worksheet before writing the introduction to your research paper.

Writing

Write the introduction to your research paper.

Blogging.

Edit your blog for wikipedia. Add as many links as possible.

sample critical review

Although the two groups propose a new role of γ-TuRC in late mitosis regulation, the model organism, the mutated proteins, mutation extent, and observations in the two papers are different, which influenced their deduction of the potential function of γ-TuRC in mitosis regulation. First, the protein mutated in Leah Vardy’s experiment is Alp4, which is one of γ-TuRC components in fission yeast (Vardy et al., 2002), while in Prigozhila’s research, γ-tubulin in Aspergillus Nidulans was mutated(Prigozhina et al., 2004). Vardy deleted a fragment of Alp4 protein, which is a severe mutation way and could cause the observed loss of γ-TuRC from SPBs and the formation of abnormal monopolar spindle. Since the monopolar spindle formed before the premature septation occurred in the mutant, directly correlating mutation of alp4 with the premature mitotic exit sounds arbitrary. The evidence to exclude the cause-and-effect relationship between defective bipolar spindle formation and disruption of late mitotic events are necessary for their speculation of the potential negative role of γ-TuRCs in late mitosis regulation. It is also worth noting that such deregulated mitosis only happens or was observed in the second mitosis in their Alp4 mutant instead of the first mitosis. Therefore, Vardy can not exclude the possibility that the observed premature septation is a secondary effect of loss of γ-TuRCs, say, a consequence of unobserved or undetectable defects accumulated in the first cell cycle either.

Compared with Vardy’s deletion of Alp4 protein, Prigozhila and colleague, however, chose a relatively mild mutation way. They only mutated two amino acids on γ-tubulin, which minimized the interference of the microtubule nucleation function of γ-tubulin on γ-TuRC. Their video also show that the bipolar spindle formed normally in the γ-tubulin mutant and can exert force on chromosomes as normal cells. In this way, they demonstrated that the observed disruption of late mitotic events did not result from the defect in spindle formation. Furthermore, the fact that premature mitotic exit happens in the first mitosis also excluded the possibility that such disruption is a consequence of defects in the previous cell cycle and demonstrated that the two-site mutation on γ-tubulin is directly responsible for the disruption of mitotic events in one cell cycle..

Both groups proved that the disruption effect of the defective γ-TuRC in their mutant is not carried out through the Mad2 checkpoint pathway, though they used different methods: Vardy showed the Mad2 activation in Alp4 mutant and Prigozhila showed that the γ-tubulin is synthetically lethal with Mad2. Because γ-TuRC do not change their localization throughout the whole cell cycle (Oakley and Akkari, 1999), Prigozhila and colleague’s implication that the mutant of γ-tubulin deregulate the mitotic events by loosing the correct spatial or temporal binding of mitotic regulator to SPB is thought-provoking and inclusive with the notion of Leah Vardy.

Homework due Tuesday August 1

Writing

Revise the first part of your critical review and then finish the paper with the second part and the conclusion.

Homework:

I'm going to assign you partners to revise your postings before submitting them to Wikipedia.

1. Cut and Paste your partner's posting and correct any grammar problems you see. If you have any questions, feel free to mark them down. Also you can ask them to add any links that you think you want more information. On Tuesday you will return these to your partner and he/she will edit their postings.

Kiki-Jungmee
Imhee-Selene
Haiyue-Wei Ching
Zhizhan-Chini
Ming wei-Francesca
Na Zhang-liu
eegirl-christina
gao-xia wang