ぼちぼちでなあ

I decided I didn’t want to tackle a new post until I’d had a decent amount of sleep. It’s been a busy week in Science and life this week and I think the title (meaning little by little) sums up my progress well.

With the great help of my collegues from Liverpool I had Josie working better than ever. Whilst this shoul of been fantastic news Josie is merely a platform for my research, not the project itself. The goal is to use Josie as a means to hold samples in the path of  focussed X-ray beam to produce images.

Sadly although I only slept about 7 hours between Tuesday and Friday trying to get this working, 何も見えなかった、I couldn’t see anything. Or at least maybe we saw something sadly we only had a small amount of sample and one result (whilst still a result) is not a significant one.

So of course after that I deserve a break right? Nah I’ve been stuck in front of a microscope all weekend preparing stuff for more experiments next week. This at least has gone fairly well. I managed to track down some bits and pieces of equipment, a pimping microscope, and my labeling work has borne fruit. It’s left me a little more confident for next weeks experiments.

What I’ve been trying to do is label the individual molecules that make up fibrous structures within living cells called microtubules. Each one is made up of many strands of 2 types of a protein called tubulin. These molecules arranged head to tail to form strands, which then coil together to form the tubules. I’ve been targeting particular amino-acids, the chemicals that make up the tubulin molecules, and labeling them with either a fluorescent residue or gold to help me see them.

Of course work isn’t everything and I’ve been a busy bee in other respects to. I’ve been working hard writing away recently. I’ve once again regained my passion for short fiction and have been furiously writing away and sending stuff out to see if I can get anywhere with it.

Having never been any good at art words were always my thing growing up and, whilst trying as best as I can to not sound conceited, I think I’ve got a bit of a flair for them. Either way this has actually culminated in something. About 3 months ago I entered a competition put out by the Diamond Light source, a synchrotron in Oxford. I managed to place in the top 15 (admittedly out of 65) but it’s a start.

All in all I’m pleased with the way things are going and it actually got me thinking about an odd quirk of the Japanese language. In Japanese you don’t really wish someone good luck. Instead you say “がんばってください“meaning please try your best.

It’s not that they don’t have a word for luck (“運”　for the record), I think it’s more a belief that one can achieve anything with perseverance and grit. I think it’s a mentality shared by us Brits and particularly northerners and I like it as an idea.

Grit is definitely what counts in science, and to be honest anything really. It is far easier to fail that it is to succeed; there are always more ways to fail right? But also no failure is complete, there is always something that can be taken from it.

Right that's all from me, busy busy. Here is a link to my story on light reading.

http://light-reading.org/LightReading/HiglyCommended.html

Ja ne.