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

Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring - the draft of article 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. The success of this play rewrote the Taiwan’s history of theatre, and ignited further creative works of modern Chinese drama in Taiwan.

Homework for this weekend

Writing (Due Sunday)

1. Finish final draft of your summary paper. On the final draft, put your name and the bibliographic material. Use whatever format is used in your field. Also please please spell-check your papers. You can also use the grammar checker but be careful of the suggestion.

2. Write introduction and one issue/summary of your critical review.

Homework (due Tuesday)

1. turn grammar worksheet in

Blogging: (due Tuesday)

1. We are going to try to publish something on Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com). First I want you to visit the site and find something you know about that hasn't been published or something you can update. It can be on any topic you want. After you decide on your topic, first post in on your blog so we can edit it.

Kittichai's Plan for this quarter Paper

Application of using diffractive optical elements for beam-shaping of laser micromachining

The paper I am planning to write this quarter is related to my M.S. dissertation that I am working on and plan to finish it by June 2007 in order to graduate from the Welding Engineering Program at OSU. The research topic I am working on is related to laser micromachining technique using diffractive optical elements on polymer samples.

This project can be thought as a combining of two technologies together. First, laser micromachining has been used to fabricate channels for micro-devices, biomedical components, or electronic components by craving channels out of material surface to create desired patterns. Either the sample itself or the laser beam must be controlled by computer programming based on the desired paths and patterns. More interests have been emphasized on using femtosecond or ultrafast pulse laser for this application to minimize the damage due to heat developed in the material. With addition of the diffractive optical elements which shape a circular beam into a desired shape such as a square, triangle, doughnut, fonts, or other complicated shapes, the machining can be performed much quicker without having to move laser beam or the samples. The diffractive optical elements apply the diffraction of light principle to create a 2D or 3D image out of a single laser beam as both destructive and constructive diffraction patterns are created similar to what we learned in general physics class when a light pass through a single slit or double slit.

In the paper, I plan to discuss both femtosecond laser micromachining and application of diffractive optical elements for laser beam shaping. Other possibilities include comparison of other beam shaping techniques by other researchers for beam shaping and laser micromachining application. The emphasis should be placed on the quality, feasibility, and economic considerations of each technique.

My thought of website http://book.sina.com.cn/

After I visited this website http://book.sina.com.cn/ I am amazed at how well the website and information is organized. There's such a lot of interesting links to books, reviews, writers, etc. It's pity that I could not read Chinese even I wish I can. After I clicked on the picture of a book, it took me to either the writer's blog or something with a lot of list which looks like episodes or volumes of the books/novels with story within. I really love this feature as it must be very useful for readers to take a look of the book itself as well as opinions and critics from other readers as well as writers. I also love the fact that they give the biograpy books of famous people in fashions, entertainments, sports, etc. on the first page with pictures which attract more visitors to take a look. Overall, this is a very interesting website and I agree with Kiki that it would be great if a Chinese version would become available even though I have no idea how many people outside of Chinese will actually visit this website. Maybe it would be great if the website can become more international with foriegn books; in this ways people can enjoy visiting the site in addition to just website like amazon.com or bn.com.

One of my favorite websites

For many of you and many people in USA and around the world, Thai food is among the most favorite food in the world. Thai food is well known for its spicy, healthy, delicious, tasty, and nutritious food. However, for most people in USA, very few have experienced what real Thai food is exactly looked like and tasted like here since many Thai restaurants or Chinese restaurants that have "Pad Thai" and other Thai dish in menu is only few of them. "Pad Thai", the most favorite Thai food for Americans and many others, is not the best dish you can find once you are in Thailand since there are a lot more our country can offer once you visit Thailand. In the website templeofthai.com, you can find pictures, menu, ingredients, recipe, and even shopping for Thai groceries online!! The carving decoration on the vegetable and fruits are also presented for everyone to see how neat Thai people are to prepare each meal. For more details of regional Thai cuisine, the Wikipedia provides a better resource and you will learn the variety of the food in our country.

Evaluation of Wei-Ching's Favorite Blog

Ruiwen's blog is a record of her traveling experience, pictures, and life in Europe. The owner of the blog is currently living in Czech with her husband. Besides Czech, they also visited several European countries such as German, Spain, Poland, … etc. This blog shows the owner's sentimental notes of their travel and life with beautiful pictures mainly took by her husband. In addition to the notes of travel and life, this blog has a small section about cooking. Although cooking is a part of life, she still makes it as an individual experience: besides the impression of different culture. It is very impressive while I first visit this blog, these pictures really attracted my sight. Her husband looks like a person who adores photographing because of two features. First, the equipments they have, it has been one of my dream and still is a dream since I am not that rich to buy such fantastic equipments. Second, there is a small section showing all her husband's photograph in this blog, and implying him a skilled photographer. This blog also shows people how we can live with travel, and it has been one of my other unrealized dreams! Since I am still poor, not only my bank account but also my skill in taking picture, this blog gives me a source of compensation: temporarily filled my lack.

Homework

Homework:

1. Fill out this form and send it to me by tuesday.

Blogging Homework

1. Find one of your classmates' favorite online sites. Visit it and write an evaluative summary of what you think of the website or the blog

Writing (for Thursday)

1. Revise your five summaries. This paper will be graded although you will still have another chance to revise if you want.

The plan of my paper this quarter - Ming-Wei

Being one source of air pollution, alkoxy radical have been studied for several years. By using fossil fuel, human beings make plenty radicals and pollute the atmosphere. Different radicals in atmosphere play different roles in air pollution, for example, the chlorine radical dissociated from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) is the major source of ozone depletion, the nitrogen oxide (NO) dissociated from nitrogen dioxide with radiant energy in atmosphere can form the photochemical smog. Alkoxy radical in atmosphere can react with oxygen radical, oxygen gas, ozone, and several gas molecules / radicals the form organic peroxide and then become an important intermediate of acid rain, photochemical smog, and so on. Besides studying the kinetics or dynamics of alkoxy radicals, spectroscopists pay more attention to the structures and intra-molecular motions of alkoxy radicals. To understand the structures and intra-molecular motions of the alkoxy radicals can help scientists to build more precise model to predict the properties of alkoxy radicals such as the chemical bonds breaking energy, the energy barrier of a chemical reactions involving alkoxy radicals and various further research. To start the series of research, scientists have to solve the simplest alkoxy radical: methoxy radical (CH3O). With the promotion of laser techniques applied on spectroscopy, scientists are able to take higher resolution spectra than before, these higher-quality data reflect several tiny interaction among the components of the radical and disclose the complexity of methoxy radical. The complexity is true, and required to build a more complete model of methoxy radical. Due to the efforts from some research groups, the study of methoxy radical is approaching the limit of experimental techniques now a day. The next step is to build the complete model based on the current results of methoxy radical. Once the model is built, scientists can either do deeper research of methoxy radicals or study the larger alkoxy radicals to test the reliability of the model generated from the simplest alkoxy radical. To imitate a proposal in my major, I am going to make a paper similar to a proposal of further works about the research of alkoxy radicals, including the basic knowledge, experimental techniques, introduction of model, and the practicability of further research extended from methoxy radical.

(Word Count: 365)

Two websites I like, by Ming-Wei.

It’s very hard to choose my “most” favorite website or blog, since the purpose of using the Internet is quite various. Therefore I am going to introduce two websites which I feel useful: “RF Cafe” (a website) and “the Pinstriped Morningside Heights” (a blog).

The first website is a tool on Internet, people can find out the definitions, equations, constants, etc. of several useful general scientific and engineering terms. Since I am not a guy who has good memory in all terms in such many fields, the website gives me a choice not to bring my huge reference books anytime. In some cases when I am able to use the Internet, RF Cafe is one of my preferred sources of knowledge. I also collect the hyperlink of this website in my personal website since it is very useful: as you know, I am not good in memorizing things!

The other one is a blog, composed by CCLu, a Taiwanese Ph.D student. His blog has an interesting name: the Pinstriped Morningside Heights. If I tell you that CCLu is one of the Yankees’ fans, most people who know a little bit about major league baseball (MLB) should realize: the name of the blog is about New York Yankees (NYY), a MLB team. Although I am not a real Yankees’ fan, I still pay attention to NYY because of two major reasons: a young Taiwanese pitcher, Chien-Ming Wang, play for NYY currently, and of course, I am a “baseball” fan. The feature of this blog is written by traditional Chinese characters but referred to the local references in United States. The owner of the blog has convincing view of baseball business (especially in NYY), and no biased comments of each play. If you are a baseball fan and like to read Chinese characters, I will like to recommend this blog. If you are a Yankees’ fan and can use Chinese, I will expect that you already know this blog.

Homework - due July 11

Writing

1. rewrite the three summaries you sent and add two more. please send all the articles you have summarized.

Blogging

1. Choose a favorite blogsite or website you enjoy reading. Write a six-sentence summary about the blog and include the link.

2. Write a 300-word description of the paper you plan to write this quarter.

Kittichai's 2nd Blog (comment response)

Hi,

It's very nice to be part of this class and blog :)

About my name, some people like to call me by my given name, Kittichai. Some like to call me "A" which is my nickname. In Thailand, people in family and friends like to use nickname, however, in school or formal situation, we will use first name not surname like in USA or China. I don't know how I get my Chinese name but I just learned I have one about couple years ago in which my grandparents gave it to me since I was born (I guess). However, since I was born in Thailand and my father is also born in Thailand, I am Thai both ethnicity and nationality. My Chinese name Zhen有明。(cannot find character for family name) is the name that I feel good to have as I like lots of things about Chinese cultures and heritages :)


Beto, it is very interesting to learn that your mom's hometown, Calandrias, also famous for horse carriage. I found a picture from the website and it's looks nice!!! I think there are lots of similarities between the two city besides the carriage and the dress of drivers looks different. I wish the cities can preserve this heritages for many generations to come :)

Travelling is one of my favorite. So far, I've been to Singapore, Myanmar (border of Thailand), USA, England (London), and China (Beijing). My next favorite would be Japan, Germany, or India. I would love to experience both new cultures and at the same time architects and nature scenes. For those of you who never come to Thailand, I do strongly invite you to come. I would be more than happy to take you around if you would let me know :) We can go to beautiful beaches, scuba driving, banana boats, shopping, eating yummy foods, and lots to do like spa, massage, riding elephants, rafting, etc. :D

Long weekend has almost gone and I would like to share a firework picture in downtown Columbus that I took on Monday with all of you. I like this blue dazzling and lovely one. Which color and shape of firework is your favorite? For me this is my first time to see fireworks on two consecutive days (downtown on Monday, and at Hilliard on Tuesday) ^^ I wish many of you enjoy seeing fireworks and have a good long holiday :)




KS

Ming-Wei's HW#02 - a brief summary about the articles I am summarizing

The topic I chose for assignment this quarter is about the research of methoxy radical (CH3O). The reasons why I chose this topic are because this radical is the simplest and interesting alkoxy radical (RO) and my current research advisor is one of the authorities of methoxy radical. Methoxy radical is an important chemical existed in atmosphere and had an important role in combustion chemistry. Because of using the fossil fuel, many different chemicals produced by combustion and cause more or less impact of the environment. Being an important intermediate of chemical reaction in atmosphere, scientists work on studying the formation of alkoxy radicals to understand the structure, reaction dynamics and kinetics. This knowledge can help human beings know the key point of reaction involving alkoxy radicals and then try to prevent the air pollution by breaking the process such as creating new chemicals which are not able to produce the radicals. A very famous example is the substitution for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). When we go to grocery stores and buy the pressurized air duster, the product must has “CFC-free” label because people have already found the substitution and CFCs since CFCs are on of the source of ozone depletion. Not only CFCs, but also many radicals produced by humans’ action can produce radicals and pollute the environment. Since alokoxy radical can be produced by any kind of combustion reaction which involves hydrocarbon molecules and oxygen, the plenty alkoxy radicals would be another source of air pollution. Our group works on methoxy radical for several years because methoxy is the simplest and almost solvable radical by laser spectroscopy now a day. Referring to the previous published articles, the group analyzed many vibronic levels in the first electronic excited state and had a more precise picture of the physical and chemical property of methoxy radical. These results can help us to build a “catalogue” of methoxy radical for further experimental and theoretical researches. Another reason why I chose this topic is because I am one of the members who participate in this project from this year (our group has some other sub-groups dealing with different projects), this assignment also gives me a chance to search the articles and collect more idea about my future research topic(s). It’s hard to discuss the detail about methoxy radical in a 300-word article, but I will be glad to try my best to discuss more about the topic if any of you are interested in the experimental and theoretical parts of my topic.

(Word count: 418)

Response of comment from HW#1

Thanks for your comment, zizhan; I am glad to have friends from different fields. “Chemical Physics” is our program’s name, it doesn’t really mean a new scientific issue differing from Physical Chemistry. I would prefer to say, our program is combined with several different scientific fields such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering, and so on. The core research topic in our program is spectroscopy, the knowledge about dealing with the structure, interaction, and many events of atoms and molecules. Today, spectroscopy becomes a subject to study atoms and molecules based on fundamental sciences and several techniques. That’s why we have faculties from different departments in OSU. Besides a student in science, I am also interested in other fields related / not related to science. Learning has no end because no one can learn everything in her / his whole life. The issue is based on our limited but unlimited life…