Hot Babes

Today I wanna talk about complacency. I was reminded of a friend from Germany when he added me in the Facebook. Yes, that popular "Book" that most youngsters nowadays are reading most of the time instead of their textbooks. I am not really into the facebook. Communication via the internet line has somehow locked people to the front of their computer. For the next generation, kids might not be able to imagine playing with insects or pets together with other kids in the park, and teenagers might not have any idea of going to a dancing party to meet his/her sweetheart. I am neither objecting nor denying the technological advancement; I can only be drifted by it.


Oh, I see. Andreas added me in the facebook, and I really wonder how he is able to find me. He was an exchange student from the University of Koeln last time. We knew each other on the basketball court in PGP, and he is a real hunk with superb bod. Here comes my topic about complacency. He always liked to charge from far for a layup, and I could always block his layup. So, there was always this idea in my mind that I was so strong that I manage to block a guy with his body, even though I was in fact very "lightweight" last time. The reality is, as I start to understand now that he was actually laying-up evade-minded, which means he was trying to keep minimal body contact. This technique, which is with the best chance of scoring, is in contrast to some of the PRC players who charges with the mind of knocking you down. Unluckily, I was still able to block his layup^^ So, I was complacent to think that I was strong, but my defense technique was still very good. Plus, non-basketball fan may not know that Jordan was not only best in scoring, but was awarded Defender of the Year in NBA before.


The above example led me to ponder if complacency is an attribute of the young-age. It's not! People need self-satisfaction of all kinds all the time. People like to be praised. It is like psychological vitamins. Well, this looks like an interesting project in investigating how self-complacency is related to mental health and quality of life. I don't know how much I need it, but I only see that everyone around me needs it. In the end, it become a food-web - some are predators while the others are preys.

p/s: I am writing my title "Hot Babes" to attract people to read on. A friend taught me this trick. Obviously, this post is meant for guys^^

Vol.12(2)

PART I

I would like to talk about the emerging field of biomolecular imaging, which comprises different biophysical techniques applied in observing either the time-average or dynamical picture of the nano-world within the cell. Please do not be confused with the already common but still improving medical devices in tissue scanning, like the ultrasonar, MRI, etc. Proteomics comes in as a post-genomics era, which is then followed closely by the interactomics. Genomics is still important, e.g. in the study of SNP and LOH in cancer patients. However, as gene therapy has never gained the expected success, people have to target the culprit molecular components, i.e. proteins. By understanding which protein interacting with which protein, we are able to elucidate the pathway, and plan our targets. It's customary to design either small-molecule compound or humanized antibody to block these faulty proteins. And this is the current big-money business.

Is it the end of story? Obviously not. As some of the "golden-bullets" produced by pharmaceutical giants had failed the clinical trial due to occurence of death, we are held back and start to consider the importance of looking deeply into the action at the molecular scale. Of course, there are several reasons that lead to the same goal, like answers to certain biological puzzles have been elusive, understanding of the dynamic factor in protein functions, etc. One of these puzzles is the conversion process of PrPC into PrPSc as well as where does it happen within the neuron (for your note, PrPSc is the causative agent of the incurable BSE, commonly known as mad cow disease, as well as other brain-wasting diseases). And this problem has been in my mind for over a year.

About a year ago, I handed in an assignment for the module "Protein Engineering". In that writing, I proposed to mutate four residues in the alpha-helical core of PrPC so as to engineer a non-native CCXXCC motif into this protein. A bi-arsenical fluorophore designed by Roger Tsien's group in UCSD is able to fluoresce by excitation only upon forming covalent bonds with the thiol groups of the four cysteine in helical topology [Griffin, B.A., Adams, S.R., and Tsien, R.Y. (1998) Specific covalent labeling of recombinant protein molecules inside live cells. Science 281:269-272]. I argue that the PrPSc conversion process may somehow has high enough free energy to disrupt the helical topology (please be reminded there are four covalent bonds there) and results in loss of signal. We may even change the scheme to a FRET system to observe gain of signal instead. By this way, we should be able to trace in real-time by confocal microscopy where the conversion happens. Of course, I am always proud of my idea. But in the end, I got only average grade for that module.

Just a few days ago, I came across this publication [Roberti, M.J., Bertoncini, C.W., Klement, R., Jares-Erijman, E.A., Jovin, T.M. (2007) Fluorescence imaging of amyloid formation in living cells by a functional, tetracysteine-tagged alpha-synuclein. Nat Methods. 4(4):345-51]. Well, I am happy about it. It shows that I got the right guess what other people have in their minds and who are able to successfully produce the results, though there is a bit difference between our approach. Amyloid formation of alpha-synuclein is an Alzheimer's (AD) pathology, which might be closely related to PrPSc conversion. Besides, I have also listed other related publications:

(i) Martin BR, Giepmans BNG, Adams SR, Tsien RY. (2005) Mammalian cell-based optimization of the biarsenical-binding tetracysteine motif for improved fluorescence and affinity. Nature Biotechnol. 10:1308-1314.
(ii) Sigurdson CJ, Nilsson KP, Hornemann S, Manco G, Polymenidou M, Schwarz P, Leclerc M, Hammarström P, Wüthrich K, Aguzzi A. (2007) Prion strain discrimination using luminescent conjugated polymers. Nat Methods. 4(12):1023-30.
(iii) Liu B, Archer CT, Burdine L, Gillette TG, Kodadek T. (2007) Label transfer chemistry for the characterization of protein-protein interactions. J Am Chem Soc. 129(41):12348-9.

Vol.12(1)

Nope! It isn't 14th of Feb. Yet I am going to list out a few of my favorite romance movies, simply because I would like to recommend a french movie that I had watched for the second time a few days ago. Paris, je t'aime (2006) is a composition of 18 short films directed by different directors across the world. According to Wikipedia, 20 films were initially planned to represent the 20 arrondissements (areas/districts) of Paris, but two were later dropped out. Its online rating was not particularly high (IMDB=7.5, RT=84). Yet it is a beautifully executed composition, that depicts love of all forms, love of different ages, dramatic consequences of love, love between couples, between family members, love that strikes passerby and homosexual; all of which happened so miraculously in this City of Love, Paris. (Paris is indeed the City of Love, as implicated by the survey from Durex that Parisians make love most frequently compared to other people around the globe^^) Think about it, it's a film with ideas, conveyed by as many as 18 renowned directors in many interesting ways with distinct tastes. What more could you possibly ask for?


Trust me, there are a few "short films" that will definitely tickle your artsy sense, like Christopher Doyle's Porte de Choisy in which Faye Wong's 天空 was used as an accompaniment for a scene, the mimes in Sylvain Chomet's Tour Eiffel, and the vampiress in Vincenzo Natali's Quartier de la Madeleine. And believe me, the casts are really good actors. All in all, my fave has to be Alfonso Cuarón's Parc Monceau: a young lady meeting an old man, and talked along the way with a conversation that hinted at an affair, but...in the end...(zha dao!) The extra point point is: the whole scene was filmed in a single continuous shot! As a side-note, that lady (Ludivine Sagnier) has a superb body. Need confirmation, watch Swimming Pool (2003). Another side-note, I am also very impressed by the mexican director, Alfonso Cuarón. Two of his works that I have watched are Sólo con tu pareja (1991) and Children of Men (2006). Besides, Y tu mamá también (2001) is also an acclaimed film.

Well, if I am allowed to have ONE mistress, SHE would be Oliver Schmitz's Place des fêtes, which is about an African man being treated by an African female paramedic. (So, those f*cking racists should learn to be civilized!) You won't feel from my words. If you do, motion pictures will be meaningless. So, grab the DVD and watch it with any of your close ones, and not necessary on 14th of Feb! The followings are some of the beautiful lines that may interest you:

F: If you want to come, it's now or never.
M: Do you need me?
F: Yes. Yes.

M: Can I massage your feet?
F: Why would I let you?
M: Because they hurt.
F: Do they?
M: You were running in my dreams all night.

"If you let her get away, you'll die.
Death of the heart.
It's the ugliest death there is."

So, where's my list? Well, I think poster is really part of the movie^^









This is a list of romance films that are special enough to stay in my memory. I may have omitted some good ones that I haven't watched yet, and it does not include my fave from the East as well as cartoons. Furthermore, there are some crowd favorites that may not have impressed me that much, e.g. Ghost (1990), Titanic (1997), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Notting Hill (1999), Love Actually (2003), etc. I have just watched the highly rated Notebook (2004) a few weeks ago, and it turned out as a canonical american love story. You see, the problem with me is that I am watching romance movie by myself, without a loved one, so I generally demand something else from it, while it might have touched deeply for other couples. Nonetheless, the lesson I learnt from Notebook is: when a guy truly fell in love to a girl, he would make a dream for her and realize it with his life. I deserve no love, as I have been thinking about myself, making my own dreams. One movie of this genre that I am going to catch is Across the Universe (2007), which cast the beauty Evan Rachel Wood^^

p/s: I have my review on Before Sunset and Before Sunrise here - http://leoe.blogs.friendster.com/leos_annalen/.

Vol.11(4)

I am sure people do need a break in between their works. Moreover, my work was stucked at a problem of which I am still waiting for my boss's answer. So, I rented a few DVDs from the shop in Dover that I haven't had visited for a long time. How nostalgic^^ Hoshi no koe (2003) (English: Voices of a Distant Star) is the short film that I wanna talk about here. It depicts love that transcends across space and time. I am not going to put up the trailer here, as the whole film that runs for 25 mins is already short enough. Two things that had come across my mind: the japanese are really good at making "beautiful" animation, and that the kind of love which is so innocent and too much of a fantasy is only attainable during high school. Animation from the Western has very distinct characteristic compared to Anime. On technical aspect of 3D animation, Pixar animation may well surpass their japanese counterpart, though the japanese might be the first to create 3D CG in animation production, I am not sure. However, I find that anime always has the extra spice in their stories being presented by characters and events that are beyond normal perceptions and imagination. Pixar films have always been made by sticking to reality as much as possible (the furthest they could go maybe in Monster Inc.), and they always have to tell about some morals and family values, which is why their stories are as predictable as one-dimensional walk.

The second thing is about beautiful innocent love. Well, I always think that high school is the golden time to experience such kind of love, as students have no worry about adult's responsibility or perhaps, money. Even though that beautiful first love may not last forever, we may never able to get one after we have grown up. Hence, I always have this regret, and of course, I will make sure my son or daughter will have a better luck.

We can also learn from the experience of people who gain success through their interests and talents. The director, Makoto Shinkai (新海城), was working in a company with access to CG softwares back in 2000. He won the grand prize in a CG competition by his 5-min monochrome work, She and Her Cat. So, he thought he might be able to fulfill his teenage dream of making an animation. Cellphone sms was already popular back then. And he started his idea from a sketch of a girl holding her cellphone in the cockpit. The progress was slowed, and he posted his sketches online. Then, this company called Mangazoo contacted him, and he immediately quitted his job for the project. There is a very encouraging quote that goes something like this: "Opportunities are everywhere, but we have to prepare ourselves well for it when one comes." He took seven months full-time to complete Hoshi no koe, of which he claimed was very difficult as he lacked certain techniques on manipulating those CG softwares. Well, I will definitely agree. A weeks ago, I attended a intro session by the NTU Visual Arts Club. (In fact, there are many interesting clubs in NTU.) I was really impressed and fascinated by the arts they presented then. Of course, those are works from professionals around the world, and not from them. After that, they taught us some drawing skills in Photoshop and CorelDraw, after which I thought I am already well-equiped and able to draw anything, but it came out the converse. There was a logo design competition with first prize that worth S$2000 offered by the newly "upgraded" Center for Quantum Technologies in NUS. I was very enthu and tried to draw it in Photoshop, and of course, I failed. So, my last resort was to sketch on paper and then scan it into softcopy. I was very fortunate that WeiWei was studying for her exam in sps that evening, and YenKheng told me that she is very good at Photoshop. With her help then was I able to color the logo and touch up so that it's more presentable.



Why "upgraded"? I suppose it just means more money have been pumped in. Hence, they are now called the Cluster of Excellence. Hmmm...this term sounds so familiar. Yes, in order to promote competitiveness, the Germany federal government have been devising a scheme to pick the Universities that are doing well and award them with more grant and a title of recognition. As a result, some groups that are excelling in their research are granted "Clusters of Excellence". But I don't really see the point of it in Singapore. How many quantum groups are there in Singapore? Regarding the level of research as well as its recognition, Germany is likely on its way uphill, and the same can been seen in Australia. As told by my friends, the ranking of Australian universities by Times has climbed, which is with solid reasons. Recently, I have seen a few really ground-breaking research published by the Australian groups, in medical science as well as optical field in physics. Plus, the Medicine Nobel Prize laureates two years back are both working in Australia.

Vol.11(3)

I promised my fren a few weeks ago to help her take some photos for a write-up to a magazine, http://www.fleursdeslettres.com/. The photos were supposed to depict "hotness" in Singapore. But, we were simply out of ideas how to get the right ones, and in the end, we failed, but finished the shopping that she wanted. In fact, it's very rare to find ppl submerge themselves in the warmth bath outside, as everywhere was boxed by reflective glass panes and chilled at the expense of natural resources. The Ministry of Trade and Industry has just announced that they are planing to innovate energy production and cut down consumption by forgotten which year. Let's see what is in their bag of tricks. OK, back to the pics. I need macro-shot of melting ice-cream, close-up of sweating old man, and wide-angle of a street with people only walking inside the chilling box...

Vol.11(2)

I had actually gone to bed. With all the scenes and music still swirling in my head, I pulled myself together to post this recommendation. Isabella《伊莎贝拉》(2006) was a HK-made entry in the 56th Berlin Film Festival, and snatched (only) the Silver Bear for best film music. My experience with the film was unbelievable, in the sense that, it is made by a HK director, but not Mr Wong Kar Wai. Of course, no comparison should be made here with Mr Wong's films, as the master usually took a long period to ferment his pieces of art, and paid attention to microscopic details. Isabella is more direct, less-narrative, and obviously, easier to catch. Nonetheless, this work from Pang Ho-Cheung certainly breathed new variety into HK film industry. It is artsy enough, but able to convey the points in a conclusive way. It utilizes color (like Wong Kar Wai's), some ultra wide-angle, and the touch of Portuguese music with the Macau broken down backdrop, to set the mood and the story. I highly recommend it, and was quite frustrated by the VCD video quality. Initially, my intention was to watch Isabella Leung's (梁洛施) acting. To my surprise, the gem that I discovered was Chapman To (杜汶泽) instead. In fact, there are a few more beauties in cameo, and one of them is 焯匀. Trust me, you won't lose googling her images. Another cameo is Josie Ho (何超仪), who is acting herself as the daughter of Stanley Ho, the "King of Gambling" in Macau. So, take the chance to enjoy the show^^ I have also included here a damn hot make love scene between Rainie Yang and Isabella Leung in Spider Lilies^^ It's as hot as you can imagine!

Vol.11(1)

This is a new hit from Fish Leong, 梁静茹^^ It is such an interesting MV to me since the scene of her speaking into the hole on the wall is a resemblance to Wong Kar Wai's films, and I can recognize that the venue is actually where BoA made her MV for "Meri Kuri". Since the church was built with such architectural beauty, I have to look for more about it. Unsurprisingly, the Church on the Water in Hokkaidō prefecture, Japan, is one of the works from the master - Tadao Ando, 安藤忠雄.



Oppsss! I haven't told you the title of the song yet. 《崇拜》 is actually one of the theme songs of the new movie from 桂纶镁^^ - 最遥远的距离。Check out its trailer! I have a bad feeling that it could disappoint me:(

Vol.10(1)

It has been so long since my last post. There have been too many thing happened that could change my life in totally unimaginable way. But...im not going to tell all of them. 那是不能说的秘密啊^^ Anyway, this emergency post is about two thought-provoking videos that I have just seen.

Vol.9(4)

Emergency post!!! It was a fantastic night that when I was playing dota with frens at home, a main pipe suddenly blown up and dunno-wat-water started to flow out of its top!:0 OMFG!!! There are interesting conversations if the volume is tuned up...Enjoy!



And this is our toilet...Im happy to invite everyone who read this blog to come to our house warming party this Thursday evening^^

Vol.9(3)

This was the same poster that I saw

Vol.9(2)

While digging through my youtube "Favorites" videos recently, I found myself nostalgic for those videos of which I used to watch unwearily during the waiting time of my final-year project experiments. I would not be able to survive my FYP without them. Thanks for the people who uploaded those wonderful clips. So, I would like to share with you this fan-made video from JennyProd92 (http://youtube.com/user/JennyProd92). She has made quite a number of interesting MVs of J-, K-, Tw-drama and movies. But I found this one her best - the music matches the mood and is superbly matched by the editing!


"Pride" is quite an enjoyable Jdrama. In the first episode, when Haru (lead actor) first saw Aki (lead actress) in the pub of their club, he was immediately attracted to her and thought that she must be someone from the last century. And you will be able to find out why she is such a lady. 我也希望有一天，能遇见这古代的女人。The story revolves around the special relationship between Haru and Aki, as well as the development of Haru into a mature ice-hockey player. This is the reason why I prefer J- to K-drama. People are not perfect beings, but rather in the process of learning to live happier and suit themselves to the people whom they care about. This drama also reminds me of playing basketball, of the moment at the highest point when I scored "beautifully". I really enjoyed the game, and I remember I used to go down to the PGP court and sweat myself whenever I was unhappy. The following clip is the main theme of the drama.


Enjoy!

Vol.9(1)

Since my boss came back from Switzerland two weeks ago, I have been busy like hell. There are simply too many flashes, emotion, experience, and thoughts that I would like to, but unluckily no time to share here. I am currently trying to familiarize myself with spectra assignment using CARA (http://www.nmr.ch/), a powerful NMR spectra analysis software developed by Dr. Rochus Keller as his PhD project under Prof. Kurt Wüthrich.

As usual, I will showing some interesting pictures. There was one event called the "Malaysian Night" held by MSL (http://www.nusmsl.org) in the evening of 31st Oct. As explained by my fren Mun Keat, the originator of MSL, MSL is a "semi-official" student union run and joined by the Malaysian students studying in NUS (National University of Singapore). Someone told me that there would be hot girls dancing. So, I went to PGP with the necessary apparatus, a Nikon D50 with Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6 lens borrowed from my fren Jia Tong, since my lens is just too short for this special kind of photo-taking. Unluckily, I was so late that I missed their sketches. Hence, I could only show one picture here. The later two pics were from a very pretty gal I saw in Clementi McDonald around 12pm after the event. The pics were quite blur as I was pretending to shoot my fren sitting in front of me. Clearly, the camouflage was spotted, as the gal was confidently swaying her hair backwards to let me shoot from afar^^




Since the 300mm lens was on my hand, it's a good chance for me to shoot the full moon. The first pic was shot with my EOS 400D (50mm f/2.0 ISO100 RAW==10Mpixel) 4 months ago back in my hometown Kota Kinabalu. To compare with the second pic (300mm f/5.6 ISO200[max in Nikon D50] FINE==5Mpixel), it's not too hard to convince you that, "WoW! A tele lens is such powerful!" OK, nvm, im just crapping. Enjoy the last one. He is my fren Mun Keat. If you ever interested in the gal beside him, contact me^^ (I have to give credit to Mr Ng Tien Tjuen for his creativity in the last pic.)

Vol.3(5)

So, the result came out as 1:2 for Eng:Ger, which is totally different from my prediction. Well, the game might have progressed as I imagined, but a little bit of "surprise" factor could easily turn the game around. As I said, England had created plenty of good but hard to score chances. We had glimpses of Micah Richards' brilliance for Lampard's first goal. It's just too bad Lahm couldn't cancel him, if I guessed correctly that Lahm was the left back with Arne Friedrich on the right. As I predicted, Lehmann was on-form to save point-blank efforts from Owen. But the "surprsie" factor here was that the usually very steady Robinson (England's goalkeepper) could make mistake. Another surprise package was Christian Pander from FC Schalke, who scored the long-range winner. In conclusion, as a product of Klinsmann's regime, Löw continues to build a young German team with discipline, resilience, and confidence in scoring.

On the road to Euro 2008 Final, I am pretty optimistic that Germany will win the group. For Czech Republic (14p) to overtake Germany (19p), it requires Czech Republic to win against Germany on the German tuft, and Germany to lose another game in the remaining five matches. The following video is specially for the babes. Opps...for the ladies. It is a video of the hottie in die deutsche Nationalmannschaft^^

Vol.3(4)

Germany will play against England at the Wembley stadium in London later tonight. As a hard core supporter of die Nationalmannschaft, I would like to comment a bit about the supposed-to-be highlight friendly of the evening. To the frustation of mine as well as of the other football fans, the injury lists for both teams are too long and with the absence of stars/regulars/experienced, the game could lose its motivation and spark.

From the starting lineup, England seems to have more depth than Germany. Although the news claimed that England is lacking options at the back, they have just enough players to fill in the back four: with Terry and Rio as the center back, and the new "Wunderkind" Micah Richards and Ashley Cole covering the flanks. Germany will have their usual "steady" back four, though it would be delighted to see Jansen adding some impulse down the left flank.

The midfield is where England has the upper hand against Germany, and I think this is the deciding factor for the prediction of a final score of 1-0 in favour of England. In parallel to the German absentees that include Ballack, Schweinsteiger, Frings, and Borowski, England will be without Gerard and Hargreaves. However, it is not as equal as it looks, since Carrick will be able to fill in the role of Hargreaves, while Lampard will "reasonably" spearhead the attack, with Joe Cole ready to reinforce Lampard's duty, if he is not delivering "again", who knows? Besides, they have effective subs like Wright-Phillips and Beckham. What about Germany?! Schneider, Hitzlsperger, Odonkor? That's all?! I have watched Hilbert playing before: he is just too inexperienced.

While England has lost Rooney, Germany will be missing both Podolski and Klose. Luckily, the most effective striker in Germany's recent games is Kuranyi. However, he needs de facto a provider like Schweinsteiger or Lahm, and screener like Klose. On the other hand, Owen could prove to be a lethal sub in this game. In conclusion, this German lineup will find it very difficult to gain possession and deliver crosses into the box; while England will see their chances of scoring but fail to score plenty against the German defense and upbeat keeper.

Verdict - Eng:Ger = 1:0

Vol.3(3)

It was a sunrise viewed at 4095m above sea level, on May 12th morning. This series of photos were not very well taken, as I was still new with dSLR. This is my third times summiting Mt. Kinabalu, which is situated at the heart of my lovely homeland Sabah, Borneo. It was some sorts of like graduation trip for some of us. There were eight of us: three Singaporeans with the rest from Peninsular Malaysia. It was a super saving and enjoyable trip that included countless hours of "Call of Duty II" in cybercafe and a day-trip to the beautiful Manukan Island, don't you guys agree?

As I said, it was my third time. I used to boast about my ability to reach the Laban Rata Guesthouse (3273m) from Timpohon Gate (1866m) in slightly more than 3 hours, 6 to 7 years back. Sadly, it took the hell out of my life this time - for more than six hours! Worse still, I was overconfident to go without the walking stick, and ended up hurting my knees the following day. This story tells us that, maturity is a deceptive camouflage for the loss of youth, while time is mercilessly taking away our vigour. Anyway, it can also be our excuse of not exercising regularly! The other issue I wanna talk about is that Kundasang (the town at the foot of Mt. Kinabalu) is not as cool as it was a few years ago, and I badly missed the freezing chill during the summit climb. I am sure it won't be hard for you to relate it to the comtemporary hot topic - global warming.











Zoomed into the above photo, we found evidence that Tang was going after Elene (I hope I spell correctly), someone we met on the way, and taking care of her tenderly from behind^^







Sayounara, 神山!

Vol.3(2)

In all of a sudden I am very excited to leave a post. After two weeks, I've started to fall for my new lifestyle - sleeping at 5 hours ahead of my usual bedtime, waking up in the morning rather than in the afternoon, enjoying the 45-min trip to my workplace, and starting the day afresh everyday. When I was rushing on the street with the sweat wetting my pants by the time I got onto the bus, I realized that there are many different kinds of faces moving at their own speeds, chatting their own interesting topics, and that's very fascinating to me. I no longer exclude myself from the world with a pair of earphones.

I have to write this down as I find my memory is deteriorating in keeping the moments intact. I have had this fairy tale-like dream that I was marrying a girl, of whom I knew in my dream but was unable to recall after I woke up. Of course, dreaming about wedding someone is definitely not my first time. But this time is special, in the sense that I knew her and saw her face in my dream, and we were faking it to please our parents, or perhaps my parents^^ We were dancing in the church, and then, near the end of the dance, I hugged her close and kissed her. Instantaneously, I fell in love with her and wished that we were not faking it. Boom! It's another morning.

Since I am becoming a member of the NMR community, I would be glad (and of course syok sendiri) to introduce the powerful spectroscopic method as well as to attract attention of my fellow peers in different fields to this highly potential tool for biological research. A simple outlook on NMR is understandably obvious: it is alien, too farfetch, and it is as difficult as is useless to the frontier of biomedical advances. The verdict on one hand is: it is really difficult at first attempt, 2nd attempt, and so on. You just have to keep on trying, at least it is true for me. As I am still learning it myself, I promise I will put up some guides for interested peers who are willing to take up the challenge.

On the other hand, it is in fact already a very useful tool for drug discovery (e.g. SAR by HSQC), while there's still potential in it waiting to be unleashed. Most people thought NMR is only related to solving solution structure of proteins. Put aside the significance of these structures for drug design most often overlooked by the biologists, NMR can also be used to study the dynamics of protein in solution, and probaly in vivo one day. Why the heck studying their dynamics? The term "intrinsically unstructured protein" may be too novel for scientists not familiar with protein science. There are, in fact, increasing number of protein domains being discovered to adopt no structure before they bind to their target proteins. But what the heck is the significance? I would say, the answer could probably lead you to a new perpespective on cell biology and signaling. Knowing from the history, biological research had benefited from technological advances on several occasions, e.g. PCR, RNA interference, etc. In my opinion and to my own liking, methodology development is essential and it may one day be helpful in getting rid of the hurdles and limitations faced by the current techniques in biological research.

Of course, you may question the significance of elucidating the molecular snapshot at atomic resolution. Phenotype associated to knockout of certain gene will immediately correlate it as a component of the pathway; keep on screening for the most efficient isotype in the serum of a challenged animal will eventually get you the gold-mining blocker. Why care about designing proteins? Biological system is robust and specific at the same time. Sometimes, you could solve the problem without any delicacy, just by shooting the culprit with an antibody bullet. It may not always work. Scientists have been scratching thier heads figuring out how and where in the neurons is the PrPC being transformed, and many groups are dedicating their 24/7 to look for the "Protein-X". Of course, I do not have the answer, but I just think that maybe the answer could be revealed by looking at the PrPC conversion at atomic level. I mean, the scientific community has to be coorperative as well as working in different directions as individuals. So, here I come. I hope to equip myself with the technique of NMR and being able to design an useful NMR experiment in the future to solve unforeseen problem. Lastly, as my last resort to convince you guys about its contribution, I would like to refresh your memory on these respectable Nobel laureates:

(Physics 1952) F. Bloch & E.M. Purcell: for the development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements

(Chemistry 1991) R.R. Ernst: for the development of Fourier Transform NMR

(Chemistry 2002) K. Wüthrich: for the development of resonance sequential assignment in structure determination

(Physiology or Medicine 2003) P.C. Lauterbur & S.P. Mansfield: for their discoveries of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)