The first evolution debate took place today (June 30) in 1860

The first and most famous evolution debate between Thomas Huxley and Archbishop Wilberforce took place at Oxford University today (June 30) in 1860, not long after the publication of On the Origin of Species. Archbishop asked Huxley whether he was descended from an ape on his grandmother's side or his grandfather's. Huxley was said to respond, “A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for a grandfather . . . I would rather be the offspring of two apes than be a man and afraid to face the truth.”

Huxley was the first among scientists to embrace Darwin's evolution theory and tirelessly spread the gospel. After reading Origin of Species, Huxley wrote to Darwin on 11/23/1859, “I finished your book yesterday . . . As for your doctrines I am prepared to go to the Stakes if requisite . . . I am sharpening my claws and beak in readiness . . .”

Little did Huxley know that even now we still need to “sharpen our claws and beak”; ignorance is a very stubborn thing, refusing to go away.

Thomas Huxley’s grandson, Julian (see photo) was also a noted evolutionary biologist; he was one of the founding father of UNESCO and served as its first Director-General.

Time magazine arranged a debate between atheist biologist Richard Dawkins and Christian geneticist Francis Collins (current NIH director) several years ago.

One can see the evidence of evolution in daily medical practice; mutations are the basis of biological evolution. Mutation occurs extremely rarely (it is roughly in the order of 10-8 per base pair per generation for bacteria), and to have the crucial bacterial gene mutated that leads to antibiotic resistance is even rarer, a freak of nature. But given the enormous number of bacteria and the very short reproductive cycle, it can happen and it did and it will.

Coleus (彩葉草) is the new addition of Grand Garden

Coleus (彩葉草), a perennial plant, is the new addition to our garden; a Katy’s favorite. The Chinese name (彩葉草)—colorful leaves—says it all.

It stands tall among zinnia, geranium, and New Guinea impatien; 一點也不遜色 (no less colorful at all) or 毫不遜色. The luffa is climbing nearby.

The healthy Italian Squash: professional and tender care of Mr. Osso

Upon hearing Katy put up a garden, Mr. Herman Osso, a gardener of professional skill, came to plant several Italian Squashes, and thus officially began our garden. It was a very hot day next day after he transplanted the Italian squash, he brought some branch with leaves to cover them to protect from the heat of the scorching sun (Mr. Osso said to protect from the sun burn); tender care led to the healthy plants. Zinnia and tomato are also seen nearby.

Katy’s report on World Journal (世界日報) on INPEX today (June 19)

The 25th Invention & New Product Exposition or INPEX (美國發明展) was held at Monroeville Convention Center (Pittsburgh) June 16-18, 2010. Katy spent two days (June 17 & 18) inspecting and evaluating the new products, searching for the news in the exhibition arena. Inventors from Taiwan were awarded 15 Gold, 14 Silver, and 5 Bronze prizes; a very impressive achievements. (click the photo to enlarge it)

The photos are Katy’s reports on today’s World Journal (世界日報)—in the section of “Taiwan News” of the New York edition.

“Mine eyes desire you above all things”—Queen Catherine to Henry VIII

Today (June 11) in 1509 Henry VIII married his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, who was the daughter of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, who commissioned Christopher Columbus in 1492. How Henry VIII obtained the annulment of his marriage to Queen Catherine of Aragon (in order to get married with Anne Boleyn) was a great story to be told; it involved the Pope and ‘recommendations’ from the 17 or 18 universities across Europe. Even Oxford and Cambridge went along; talk about the independence of the universities. She wrote the following letter on her deathbed 3 days before her death:

“My most dear lord, king, and husband,

The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, . . . For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary [future ‘Bloody Mary’], beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. . . .Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.

Catherine the Queen"

It was said Henry VIII wept on receiving this letter.

D-Day the Sixth of June (六月六日斷腸時)

The Chinese translation of the movie of “D-Day the Sixth of June” is “六月六日斷腸時”. 六月六日 is June 6th. 斷 (break), 腸 (intestine), Chinese attach the intestine (腸) to emotion; intestine broken (斷腸) is equivalent to heart broken. 六月六日斷腸時 can be loosely translated into “June the sixth is heart broken day”.

柔腸寸斷 (the soft and supple intestine broken into pieces; each with a size of an inch) depicts the deepest sorrow that is almost unbearable.

Lawrence Cancelmi and still, no matter the culture, emotion is dwelling within the body, welling in an organ....whether broken intestine or broken heart...but it is interesting that the chinese succinctly define the emotion [pieces, each with the size of an inch]...hearts are simply 'broken'

The heavy heart of the Supreme Allied Commander on the eve of D-Day

Ike spent the night before invasion visiting the U.S. 101st Airborne Division. He wrote in his Crusade in Europe,

“I found the men in fine fettle, many of them joshingly admonishing me that I had no cause for worry, since the 101st was on the job and everything would be taken care of in fine shape. I stayed with them until the last of them were in the air, somewhere about midnight.”

Kay Summersby drove Ike for this trip (I once wrote an article of “What’s in a name? Telek, Ike’s dog; what’s a dog got to do with love?” but in the spirit of talking war, not love, let’s put the “love story”—as Kay claimed in her “Past Forgetting”—in back burner) and Ike confided to her, “I hope to God I know what I am doing.” and “It’s very hard really to look a soldier in the eye when you fear that you are sending him to his death.” After seeing hundreds of planes taking off, Ike said, “Well, It’s on. No one can stop it now.” There were tears in his eyes, according to Kay.

Is the weather always neutral in war? Ike didn’t think so

On the eve of D-Day, let’s talk about war, not love (and put Burns’ “Red, Red Rose” in the back burner). Weather was very much involved in war, Normandy invasion was no exception and it is neutral. Ike disagreed, he wrote, “Some soldier once said, ‘The weather is always neutral.’ Nothing could be more untrue.” In Tunis, Italy, France, and Germany, mud was a formidable barrier to Allied advances (see photo).

Ike was worried about the weather for D-Day 21 months before the event; he wrote to Patton on September 5, 1942, “I am searching the Army to find the most capable chaplain to assure a fairly descent break in the weather when the big day comes.”

The final conference of D-Day preparation took place on May 15, 1944; King George VI, Churchill and generals by the score were there. All set to go; the day and time to attack was in the hands of the weather. Ike needed the darkness (night) to conceal the greatest armada (4000 ships and several thousand smaller crafts), the moon light for air bombardment (11,000 first-line aircrafts), and low tide so that Rommel’s beach obstacles could be exposed and removed.

Ike met with the Meteorologic Committee twice a day (9:30 PM and 4AM); let’s not forget the ‘weather men’ were our heroes, too.

German meteorologists were convinced June 5-7 couldn’t be the days of attack; German Field Marshal von Rundstedt had stated that the Allies would need four consecutive days of good weather for a cross-Channel assault and no such four day clear weather was forecast. Rommel went home on June 4 for his daughter’s [Lucie] birthday. German navy thought the seas too rough to send out their patrol boats. The German defenders knew the long-waited attack had begun when the first shots were fired at them.

Lawrence Cancelmi the weather is NEVER neutral in battle....napoleon would attest with conviction....history should have taught the german army to always think of the weather, and in two instances they failed to read the opponent's manner of utilizing the climate....al stewart's road to moscow descrides the battle of stalingrad very well, including general gudarian.[inventor of the 'blitzkrieg'] to the exile of many of the russian army to siberia for being prisoners of the german army

The Battle of Midway—the sweet revenge for Pearl Harbor attack for the Americans (報一箭之仇)

Today (June 4) in 1942, the Battle of Midway began; it lasted for 3 days; it was a decisive victory for America and a disaster for Japan; they lost 4 aircraft carriers, a cruiser, 332 aircrafts, and 3,500 men. Two of the aircraft carriers sunk took part in the Pearl Harbor attack 6 months earlier; it was a sweet revenge for the Americans (報一箭之仇).

In FDR’s letter to Churchill on June 6, 1942, we read “The business in the Pacific is going well and I am sure we are inflicting some very severe losses on the Jap fleet. The outcome, however, is still indecisive but we should know more before the day is over. I am sure our aircrafts are giving very good account of themselves. I will keep you informed. Roosevelt.”

The picture shown is American Douglas dive bomber about to attack Japanese aircraft carrier.

What’s Robert Burns got to do with Phipps Gardens and Lincoln?

There is a Robert Burns statue at the south side gate of Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens; I always wonder why the statue of the Bard of Scotland is there (in Scotland he is the Bard, not Shakespeare). I found the answer while attending the Pittsburgh Folks Festival on May 8.

I saw a picture of that statue prominently displayed at the booth of Scotland; a lady in attendance noticed I was interested and came to chat. I learnt that Robert Burns was the hero of Andrew Carnegie (also a Scottish American industrialist/philanthropist) who donated the statue. As you may be aware that Phipps Garden is a stone’s throw away from Carnegie Museum and Library.

Lincoln fell in love with Burns since his teenager years and read and recited him toward the end of his life. A clerk in Lincoln’s Springfield law office once said that Lincoln “could quote Burns by the hour. I have been with him in that little office and heard him recite with the greatest admiration and zest Burns’ Ballads and quaint things.” Many of his Illinois contemporaries said the same thing of Lincoln’s mastery of Burns’ poetry.

On the pages of his 1860 presidential biography written by William Howells, we read “When practicing law before his election to Congress [in 1846], a copy of Burns was his inseparable companion on the circuit; and this he pursued so constantly, that it is said he now has by heart every line of his favorite poet.”

While sailed down the Potomac River to visit Grant at City Point, Virginia in early April 1865, only days before his death, John Hay (Lincoln’s secretary, who later became the Secretary of State of Theodore Roosevelt) recalled that Lincoln recited Shakespeare and Burns to entertain his entourage.

Our roses and Shakespeare's

The photo is the roses beside the side door of our house. Let’s see what Shakespeare said about his roses in his “garden”.

Rose, the queen of flowers, either “O, rose of May!” (Hamlet, Act 4 Scene 5) or Thomas Moore's last rose in summer, inspires poets to produce beautiful verses and lyrics throughout the ages. The following is from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act 1 Scene 1)

Theseus

But earthlier happy is the rose distilled

Than that withering on the virgin thorn,

Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.

What’s in a name?

One doesn’t need to read Shakespeare to know “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose . . .” This was uttered by Juliet when she learned that her love, Romeo, is from Montague, a family that bears ‘ancient grudge’ with her own family Capulet.

Shakespeare’s penchant for using plants and flowers in his plays led him often to use ‘wither’, just like Lincoln’s ‘perish’, to avoid using ‘die.’ So we see “Wither one rose, and the other flourish, / If you contend, a thousand lives must wither.” (also in Part 1 Henry VI Act 2 Scene 4)

The neuro-pharmacology of narcotic and addiction in literature

I enjoy reading science, and a good writing in science particularly pleases me. In 1680, Thomas Sydenham (an English physician) wrote, “Among the remedies, which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his suffering, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.”

The fact that our body has endogenous (producing from within our body) opioid peptides or called endorphins (β-endorphin, enkephalin, dynorphin), each with different affinity to various opiate/opioid receptors (mu, delta, kappa) or (μ, δ, κ)—the picture only shows μ and δ receptors—proves God has mercy on us. If we do not have those opiate/opioid receptors, what’s good about morphine?

Opiates/opioids (narcotics) exert the therapeutic effects by mimicking action of endogenous opioid peptides at opiate/opioid receptors. And that’s all there is to it.

Morphine was first isolated and named after Morpheus—the Greek god of dream—in 1806, codein was isolated in 1832 and Merck (the founder of Merck Co.) isolated papaverine in 1848.

If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

This is how Shakespeare opened his Twelfth Night. And this has been used by many professors in talking about the pharmacology of drug abuse/addiction.

The signal transduction in the nervous system: the story behind Oliver Sacks’ “Awakenings”

(The target of this note is for those in or aspires to be in the medical field or those with an inquisitive mind—now you have no choice but to read it as nobody wants to be the one without an inquisitive mind.)

Not all the Nobel Prizes in Medicine are equal or as important/interesting. The 2000 awards for “the signal transduction in the nervous system” are really exceptional. Arvid Carlsson is charismatic and influential in guiding the direction of development in the field of neuropsychiatry to the European pharmaceutical giants. Eric Kandel was honored for his elucidation of the molecular biology of memory storage; his “In search of memory” is a treat to read; the first one third of the book is about the history of neuroscience, for which I bought the book.

Carlsson established dopamine is a neurotransmitter; in his Nobel lecture, he said “when the rabbit gets excited after using dopamine, so do we.” The success story was told by Dr. Oliver Sacks in “Awakenings”; you might have seen the movie, if not read the book.

I love this beautiful and telling picture which comes from Paul Greengard’s Nobel Lecture (“the neurobiology of dopamine signaling”). This depicts one of the 100 billion neurons (nerve cells) in our brain showing various receptors for neurotransmitters/drugs that we come to know so far. On average each of these cells communicates with one thousand other cells; signal transduction is how these cells communicate each other. Greengard’s work elucidates what happens after neurotransmitter binding to the receptor: 2nd messengers (cAMP, calcium ions, etc) activates distinct protein kinases, which activate effector proteins, and so on and so on.

Listening to “Green Green Grass of Home” on Memorial Day

I love the song of “Green Green Grass of Home”; it is particularly fitting and sad to listen to it one more time on Memorial Day. This is by Tom Jones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u81CTfbc99c

This is by Joan Baez:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQhKqlOccHE

This is the lyrics:

"Green Green Grass Of Home"

The old home town looks the same as I step down from the train,

and there to meet me is my Mama and Papa.

Down the road I look and there runs Mary hair of gold and lips like cherries.

It's good to touch the green, green grass of home.

Yes, they'll all come to meet me, arms reaching, smiling sweetly.

It's good to touch the green, green grass of home.

The old house is still standing tho' the paint is cracked and dry,

and there's that old oak tree I used to play on.

Down the lane I walk with my sweet Mary, hair of gold and lips like cherries.

It's good to touch the green, green grass of home.

Yes, they'll all come to meet me, arms reaching, smiling sweetly.

It's good to touch the green, green grass of home.

Then I awake and look around me, at four grey wall surround me

and I realize that I was only dreaming.

For there's a guard and there's a sad old padre -

arm in arm we'll walk at daybreak.

Again I touch the green, green grass of home.

Yes, they'll all come to see me in the shade of that old oak tree

as they lay me neath the green, green grass of home.

Team physician for the Pirates

Someone asked me where one can buy a Pirates hat with one’s name inscribed on it; I said all you need to do is to obtain a position as the Pirates physician. It was actually a Father’s Day gift from my “3 girls” last year.