How Yogurt Is Made

I like yogurt, but I never asked myself how it was made. I saw the label “with live cultures” on the yogurt container all the time. Until last Saturday when I sat down to consume a 6-oz 8% fat yogurt did I notice “with active acidophilus and bifidus cultures” on the outside. The biologist side got of me and I read the ingredients carefully and learned that it contained S. thermophilus, L. acidophilus, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, and bifidus.



In the Food Section of today’s New York Times there is an article about the sequencing of the Lactobacillus bulgaricus genome and how the bacterium had evolved to adapt to living in milk to make yogurt. This organism now only digests lactose, the main sugar in milk, and has lost its ability to metabolize other sugars. That is amazing, giving that people only discovered how to make yogurt about 5000 years ago in the Balkans and the Middle East. Yogurt is made when the above-mentioned stains of bacteria break down lactose to lactic acid that acidifies the milk and makes it to clot. This acidified environment also prevents other strains of bacteria from growing. The yogurt culture further breaks down lactic acid to glucose and galactose, giving yogurt its sweet taste.

So if you want to try to make yogurt at home, here is a recipe (borrowed from here):

1. Heat 1 liter of milk to 85 ºC and maintain at that temperature for 2 minutes. This step kills undesirable contaminant microorganisms. It also denaturizes inhibitory enzymes that retard the subsequent yogurt fermentation.
2. Cool milk in a cold water bath to 42-44 ºC. The cooling process should take about 15 minutes.
3. Add a few teaspoonfuls of the store-bought yogurt as the starter culture. Mix.
4. Cover the container to minimize the possibility of contamination. Incubate at 42ºC (in an oven) for 3 to 6 hours undisturbed until the desired custard consistency is reached. Yogurt is set when the mixture stops flowing as the container is tipped slowly.
5. Chill it and enjoy your fresh yogurt!

Guess how the 8% fat yogurt bought from Whole Foods tastes?

油画《2008-北京》

几个月前第一次见过这幅画，觉得画得很好。当时某博客上调侃说这是“闺蜜“最好的解释，各位说呢？

今天才知道这画名为《2008-北京》，作者是刘溢。这是有关此画的一点介绍。

五月二十九日补：好吧，给你们这些懒得按连接的同学们作些介绍：

2008年北京举办奥运会。咱中国有咱自己的Games－－麻将。画里的小姑娘们有的为摸了一副好牌而高兴，有的在下面做一些小动作，有的有些迷惑，有的就彻底晕菜。墙上还挂着一标准相：孙中山，蒋介石，毛泽东的中和。这画其实是中国现状的写照：有一副好牌，经济要腾飞。可旁边的佣人模样的小女孩，她做了很多事，付出了很多努力，却只能做佣人，心中有不满，手里有把水果刀，是不稳定的社会因素。画里的房屋破旧，河里都是石头。咱们的改革还是“摸着石头过河“。

Make Way for Ducklings

My Black & White Print from 2002

Make Way for Ducklings is an award-winning children’s picture book by Robert McCloskey about a pair of mallard ducks that decide to raise their family in Boston Public Garden. It is a very well known book. Everybody in Boston knows about it. The story also features a policeman who stops traffic on the busy Beacon Street to let Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and their eight ducklings named Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack cross the street. Last year I read the book myself. The pictures were drawn extremely lovely, and the story is forever cute.

People love this story so much that in 1987 a sculpture by Nancy Schön of Mrs. Mallard and her ducklings was installed in Boston Public Garden. Since then children come to hug and kiss and climb the ducks all the time that the ducks’ heads are all shining and smooth.

One Young Rider (2003)

This story also happens in real life in Boston. The hotspot is BU Bridge at Memorial Drive in Cambridge. This week I stopped on green in two days to let some duck families to cross the road. All the other drivers involved in this were as patient as me, and we didn't need a policeman to direct the traffic. I felt lucky to see the ducks crossing again.

These pictures were taken in February 2004. Hands were shaking. Focus was soft. It was an old camera.

幼稚的错误

估计昨晚博客写到太晚，觉没睡够，导致今天脑袋有点大，以至于没意识到用了错误的剂量。看到结果郁闷了两小时，本以为只会越做越好，没想到会这样。重新测量一遍，然后明白了多用了十倍。是这样子喔！虽然还得重做，可知道了为什么错。

让我想起了菠菜含铁量的故事。

罄竹难书

我的语文不够好，那个小测试才得了77分。不过我小学的时候就很清楚“罄竹难书“是什么意思，比陈水扁强多了。

A Baroque Concert and How I came to love Baroque

Appolo's Fire
The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra

Jeannette Sorrell with the Harpsichord

It took me some time to learn to love Baroque music. To my untrained ear, Baroque music sounded exotic, complicated, too polyphonic, and in a sense, over embellished. I preferred something that was simpler.

After I spent weeks and months listening to a music course on-tape by Prof. Greenberg (thanks to Ping for introducing me to this great course) on my commute, I finally was equipped with the knowledge to understand Baroque music. Music is like sports; if you know the rules, you’ll understand and enjoy it. It took me a long time, too, but I learned the rules of baseball and football in time to watch the Red Sox and the Patriots win and to experience the excitement of competitive sports. Now I know the rules of music, I really enjoy Baroque music.

Baroque music also falls into certain forms. They are usually short and easier for me to figure out what is going on (the rules of the game). I now quite like to hear the polyphonic nature of the Baroque music and I love Bach's fugues. What I didn't know was that Baroque music can also be very descriptive. This concert I went to in Feburary clearly demonstrated to me how wrong I was:


Earth, Wind & Fire: Vivaldi and Rameau do battle with Nature
Taking its name from the classical god of music and the sun, Apollo's Fire is known for its brilliant performances of 17th- and 18th-century music. For this program of turbulent orchestral showpieces representing the drama of the French Baroque stage to a storm at sea, Apollo's Fire is joined by Baroque dancers Catherine Turocy and Carlos Fittante masterfully recreating the struggles of Nature from Rameau and Vivaldi's colorful musical depictions.

I went with H and her mom. The concert was at the First Church in Cambridge. The church is quite impressive, but I only brought one fixed lens and could not get the full view. The director of the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, Jeannette Sorrell, came out early to tune the harpsichord. It turned out that during the concert they moved that instrument quite several times and each time tuning was required after the move. The orchestra played on period instruments, enabling us to hear how the music was supposed to be heard when it was written. The choice of the music was amazing. I never thought that Baroque could be so vivid and modern sounding. The two dancers were truly fantastic. I also learned that back then in the 18th century, composers wanted to sound hip, too.


(As you can see that it took me a long time to write this post -- three months. And at this late hour at night (it's actually early Wednesday rather than the posting day Saturday) my brain isn't functioning right. But here it is, a belated posting on a concert that I really enjoyed.)

杨振宁

昨天，不，前天，Jade居然接到了杨振宁先生打给她的电话！杨先生亲自出马，想说服Jade去纽约州立石溪物理系任教，无赖Jade已做出了其他的决定，杨先生无功而返。Jade接到电话的时候，吃惊不已，且抑制不住对偶像的崇敬之情，以至于后来都不记得自己说了啥。然后Jade立刻博了一篇客,表达了要续写传奇的决心。

我此生还是见过一次杨先生的。大约是十几年前了，是杨先生七十大寿那一年吧。在科大的水上报告厅，我只能挤在最后一排座位的靠背和墙之间(亏得我还够瘦)，踮着脚尖听先生关于做学问的报告。当时的我听得热血澎湃，觉得一定要为崇高的科学而奋斗。可是这么多年过去了，我好像离那个目标越行越远，也知道差错不只是在一处两处了。所以我为着有Jade这样的朋友(当然还有其他很多我没有提名字的，我并没有忘记你们)感到特别地自豪，为他们的成就而高兴。也许就在我的这些挚爱科学的朋友们中就会涌现出下一个杨振宁呢。

我呢，也要尽我的努力。

Hit-Counter Added

Yes, I can't help wondering how many hits I get. So now I have a hit-counter installed in my blog. I myself have already accessed my blog half a dozen times to confirm that it is working fine.

In any case, I figure half of all the hits will be from me, me alone. Haha!

Do I sound very narcissistic?

Weather Forecast

Haven't seen the sun since last Tuesday May 9. I'm very depressed to see this report on Weather.com.

Added May 18th: Thank God the sun finally came out late Tuesday afternoon. It has been really nice both yesterday and today.

Life Drawing from Three Years Ago

下雨天，多发贴吧。这是当年和Jade一起上素描课时我的大作。模特非常年轻美丽，所以说我爱看美的东西是有缘由的，就是让人画得心情舒畅。相信这一点Jade是有相同的体会。以下是当年写得心得。

I took a beginner's life drawing class in the fall of 2003. Thinking that we probably would start with still life, I went to the class and was only shocked into speachlessness when the model took off her clothes and we were told to draw. After 10 weeks I feel comfortable working with models and now I see human bodies as objects of art. I hope you think so, too. Here are some of my charcoal drawings of 10 to 20-mimute poses.

郁金香 Tulips in My Neighborhood

上周日阳光明媚。我背着相机在周围走了一圈。邻居们有漂亮的花园。拍了一些郁金香放在这里，祝我的妈妈母亲节愉快!祝我认识的妈妈们母亲节愉快!

(五月十六日补：我妈很喜欢这些照片。下回一定奉上真花一大束。我爸说：“取景很好，很漂亮。“ 其实，我只能哄一哄外行而已。这些只是糖水片，没什么新意。）

顽固的音乐

昨天傍晚干活的时候听音乐。 因为前阵子听多了古典，就听些流行吧。听了十首容祖儿，又听了二十首孙燕姿（小孙不错啊，第一次听，我想我已经落后一个时代了），中间听了Britney Spears的Baby, One More Time（非常符合她现在的状况啊）（瞧我这欣赏水平），再听了两小时Josh Groban，又看了ER，巨反战的一集。然后倒头欲睡，却发现容祖儿（第一个歌手哎！）已经顽固地留在我的脑海，不知是触动了哪根神经，无论我如何翻来 覆去也不能摆脱。痛苦，多花了一倍时间入睡，虽然已经累到不行。

早上吃早饭的时候听WCRB（我的古典电台），是莫扎特的双钢琴协奏曲K365，最后的欢快的乐章就印在了我脑海。必须说,这比容祖儿可要好多了。

五月十五日补：昨天晚上改成Vivaldi的《四季》了，具体的说是《夏》。电台昨天播了不下两遍。今天早上我想起了贝多芬的华丽的第五钢琴协奏曲《皇帝》，那第三乐章又是不停地在我脑中响起。

Nostalgia

My First School Library. Building is 84-years-old.
Photo Courtesy: Dr. Xiao

I checked my high school class homepage today, and saw that Dr. Xiao had uploaded lots of pictures of our school and its neighborhood. Suddenly I was hit by nostalgia. I was so familiar with that landscape, yet now I had to look hard to find the place that was ours. A lot of old buildings still exist. More new ones are making it a completely different place.

Stone Bridge. It is OLD!
Photo Courtesy: Dr. Xiao

I remember the river. I used to walk by it four times a day. I often walked with friends, talking about all sorts of things including what we’d be in twenty years (did I predict mine right???). We didn’t really enjoy the smell of the distillery on the river, but we did like the dried yams that were shipped there daily. And one day we chased a duck and a chicken into the river, only to be surprised that this chicken could swim! So much to the commonsense or knowledge from books!

We had a secret hiding place behind the school. A short hike led us down to the riverbank. We enjoyed basking in the sun, reciting the famous poem (野渡无人舟自横), and daydreaming. From there we forded a small creek to come to the foot of the reservoir dam. One day we thought we persuaded a girl from jumping into that reservoir. Of course this was probably all our imagination. But you can see that we learned to cherish life from a very young age.

Those were the good old days, fading back into my memories. When can we all get back together, telling each other our own stories of the past twenty years?

The Joy of Printing

Columbines, Grand Teton National Park
Handheld, 1/15s

Many a night in a window-less room, where the only lights were a couple of faint red ones, I remember seeing images emerging from a tray of developer solution, ever so gradually yet decidedly. It felt like it suddenly opened a window to the world from that window-less darkroom. Be it a landscape picture, or a portrait of a loved one, it always gave one a mysterious feeling of how wonderful photography was. It was not just me. Other photographers told me that they loved this moment, too. That was why I enjoyed printing, the who process of making an image and improving it. Now we do most everything in a digital darkroom, but I still think I benefit a lot from my experience in a real one.

Grand Teton
I went to the same spot where Ansel Adams made his famous shot. The foreground trees had grown considerably taller.

Trees on a trail
那天下午我不自觉地做了一只大灯泡,对吧,Jade?

All photos taken on Kodak TriX 100. Printed on Kodak Multigrade paper.

快乐烦恼都是如此简单

Thursday, happy. Reasons:

a) First sunny day after three days of cold rain.
b) Protein expression worked super. Learned how to make it super.
c) First purification step worked super.
d) I jogged 1.5 miles after two weeks of zero exercise.
e) dogs were cute and sweet.

Friday morning, happy. Reasons:

a) One PI had a new baby girl.
b) Another PI had a successful heart transplant surgery.
c) Yummy breakfast.

Friday afternoon, frustrated. Reason:

In the second step of protein purification, where did 75% of my input go? No leaking was visible around the lines on FPLC.

Frustration lasted for two hours until we spotted liquid in the injection superloop jacket. Sure it was protein, and it took another two hours to confirm it was OUR protein. Damn superloop. Blamed the last person who used it. Of course it was someone from another lab.

Took another 30 minutes to convince myself to fix the superloop rather than using a smaller one twice. Took one hour to realize it was the O-rings that caused the problem and replaced them.

In the end, a two-hour run took us about 14 hours to finish. But I was happy because I figured out what the problem was.

An Interesting Test

Inspired by Roj, I finally did my Nerd, Geek, or Dork Test.

Guess what am I?

And what are you?