FBI rounds up corrupt police officers

"FBI agents arrested scores of Puerto Rican police officers Wednesday for allegedly aiding drug dealers in what authorities said was the national agency's largest-ever police corruption investigation."

CBSnews

The social fabric of the nation is incredibly broken by a corrupt, oligarchic government, one that violates people's civil rights at the drop of a hat (or, most likely, a march or a strike). It is very easy to fall into despair at seeing the nation becoming increasingly ungovernable.
So many of us have experienced abuse at the hands of the police or seen them do highly illegal stuff while hiding their badges and threatening anyone that does anything to stop or report them.
So, for all my misgivings about the federal presence on my nation, due to the decades of abuse the citizenry has suffered at their hands, I'm really happy something is being done about the blatant corruption of the Puerto Rican Police officers.

Before you Die

Porcelain and alabaster
Decaying ever faster
Unaware of imminent disaster
Open up your eyes

As you ruminate the hopeless sands of time
Did you wander out your days lost and resigned
Or recreate the universes in your mind?

Everybody is a bastard
My world is like plaster
Crumbling apart from pressure from the blaster
Waiting for a sign

And the momentary pleasures take their turn
As a wistful boy runs out of things to learn
The episodes of yore are never to return

Scare up some hope, you're gonna need it just to cope
You are the decision, numbers don't lie
When you bite the dust, was it for purpose or for trust?
You'll never relive it, think before you die
Yeah, think, think before you die

Deficit and deprivation
In the wake of desperation
Rewrite the morals, rectify the nation
Now may be your time

As you ruminate the hopeless sands of time
Do you wonder how your life has been defined?
You know eternity can't ever change your mind
You know eternity can't ever change your mind

So think, think before you die
Woah, think, think before you die

I'm a Robotz!

While I was doing a practice ITC run and quite bored, Brit posted a quirky personality quiz and I did it. Well, I was hoping for a result as awesome as hers, Smartass, but it was not meant to be. So here's what I got:

Robot

You are 100% Rational, 29% Extroverted, 43% Brutal, and 14% Arrogant.

You are the Robot! You are characterized by your rationality. In fact, this is really ALL you are characterized by. Like a cold, heartless machine, you are so logical and unemotional that you scarcely seem human. For instance, you are very humble and don't bother thinking of your own interests, you are very gentle and lack emotion, and you are also very introverted and introspective. You may have noticed that these traits are just as applicable to your laptop as they are to a human being. You are not like the robots they show in the movies. Movie robots are make-believe, because they always get all personable and likeable after being struck by lightning, or they are cold, cruel killing machines. In all reality, though, you are much more boring than all that. Real robots just sit there, doing their stupid jobs, and doing little else. If you get struck by lightning, you won't develop a winning personality and heart of gold. (Robots don't have hearts, silly, and if they did, they would probably be made of steel, not gold.) You also won't be likely to terrorize humanity by becoming an ultra-violent killing machine sent into the past to kill the mother of a child who will lead a rebellion against machines, because that movie was dumb as hell, and because real robots don't kill--they horribly maim at best, and they don't even do that on purpose. Real robots are boringly kind and all too rarely try to kill people. In all my years, my laptop has only attacked me once, and that was only because my brother threw it at me. In short, your personality defect is that you don't really HAVE a personality. You are one of those annoying, super-logical people that never gets upset or flustered. Unless, of course, you short circuit. Or if someone throws a pie at you. Pies sure are delicious.

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.

2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Class Clown.
Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hand-Raiser, the Emo Kid, and the Haughty Intellectual.

Take The Personality Defect Test

The only thing wrong with the test was its inability to accurately detect my emotional programing, probably because my rage module is incredibly sophisticated.

Carl Sagan: A Universe Not Made For Us

Y llaman Universidades a criaderos de mutantes

Puerto Rican police beats parent for bringing food for his son

My alma mater has been on strike for the past few weeks due to proposed changes in services and increases in fees and tuition. Unlike mainland US, access to higher education is considered a right in PR, and increasing tuition (because the state cut about $100 million in funds for the university) would decrease access to working class and poor students.
The University of Puerto Rico plays a vital role in increasing social mobility. Plenty of us that are now in prestigious graduate and medical schools in mainland US wouldn't have had any higher education if it weren't that accessible.
The police department, however, has had a strained relationship with the university and the students since the 1960's. They have been banned from entry to the Rio Piedras campus since the Riot Police shot and killed a student that was in her apartment balcony shouting at them to stop beating the crap out of protesting students in 1970.
As I've posted earlier, it is quite common for the police to beat up UPR students for no reason. My husband was at the receiving end of one of those beatings when he was a freshman.
Unsurprisingly, this strike has been peppered with accusations and video evidence of police brutality against the students. In this instance, the police beats up a parent for bringing food to his son that is striking inside the campus.

Waking Up

So, slowly but surely I'm coming out of my depression. However, my social anxiety is still pretty crappy. For some reason I can either talk to people face to face or through email/text, but talking on the phone really freaks me out! But whatever, things are getting better.
On the crappy side of things, I gave up on my thesis project on my 5th year. That protein is simply not suitable for that type of experiments and I just have to deal. But it fucking blows - 2 more fucking years here. Thankfully my new project is with a protein that knows how to behave.
Also, I'm going back home in a week! And for the first time my youngest sister is old enough to drink and drive (obviously not both at the same time!) and so now all three of us can leave our respective parents (and their dramas) at home and go chill out at the beach.
It's so weird to have my 'baby' sister grow up - but it's also very awesome. My middle sister has always been one of my best friends, and more and more so as we grew older. But the age difference was 6 years, so as soon as she hit about 16 we could, you know, talk about stuff. But my baby sister is 12 years younger than me! And in addition, we are from different marriages so we never had the opportunity to live together for very long. I have only seen my sisters sporadically the last 5 years, since I've been stuck here in grad school. And during this time she has grown up to be a pretty awesome almost-adult! I'm really, really looking forward to go back home and spend some time hanging out with them both and get to know my youngest sister better. There are few people in this life I love as much as I love them.
So here I am, waiting for the storm to get the fuck out and hoping for Spring to bring some good times.

Happy Belated Blasphemy Day!!

Usually I avoid posting shit that would bother the theists. Today is not an usual day. Nothing is sacred, and everything should be open for questioning. Even here, in a country where there is supposedly both free speech and a separation of church and state, open criticism and questioning of religious institutions can result in exaggerated pious whining, violence, and threats of violence. I lack the creativity to make some cool blaspheming so I'm turning to blasphemous music!

PR Police Fucking Blows

I'm probably making a longer post about this at some time, but although enraging, this is unsurprising behavior by cops towards the students from the state universty's main campus. They even shot students that were telling others to get into the college residence with tear gas. And by shot I don't mean into the air like they are supposed to. I mean to they aimed those things at the students and caused bleeding.
And again, unsurprisingly, the media coverage of the incident is full of air quotes around police brutality and the insinuation that the students deserved getting beaten by batons and thrown tear gas for swearing at the police.

Stupid is as stupid does

I skipped going to the lab on Saturday because I was too hungover. So I went to bed early, got ready to take the 1st bus, walked 10 min to get to the bus stop and 30 min to get from the closest bus stop to the lab.
I wished for another shower as soon as I got to the lab. I don't remember being this sweaty in Ithaca ever - this is something I only associated with PR, not the north-fucking-east. I put on some music and started working. Everything was going fine until I chose the wrong centrifuge tubes. I lost my goddamn samples for being stupid and not running the centrifuge with empty tubes first. GRR. Wasted Sunday due to my stupidity. I would have been comparatively ahead if I just skipped coming to the lab yesterday.

Cuando respiro en tu boca

I'm too hungover to go to lab today. Thankfully my culture pellets are stored @ -20C. I'm doing my Sunday chores today and going to lab tomorrow- so lets start the Sunday cleaning and dancing music!

Me alzo y salto entre tus dedos sabré caer
ojalá que sea cierto que odio tus dedos
me estiro y espero que algo enrosque tu
espalda en flor ojalá que sea cierto que
odio tu espalda cuando respiro en tu boca
y penetra tu ojo en mi ojo cuando respiro
en tu boca me escondes como sangre a la herida

me pongo de pie y perdono al daño que
a mi oído destrozó que sea cierto que
odio el silencio cuando respiro en tu boca
y penetra tu ojo en mi ojo me precipito
hacia el cielo cuando respiro en tu boca
cuando respiro en tu boca de par en par
tu flor tensión y caída cuando respiro en tu boca

Sensing your Clitoris

Let's talk about sensing. You have touch receptors over all your skin. The number of touch receptors in the skin depends on the body part. For example, your fingertips have more of those receptors than your arm. The motor cortex in your brain processes this sensory information from all your body parts. Unsurprisingly, those body parts with more touch receptors are processed in a larger area of the motor cortex.

This can be represented in a sort of body map, called homunculus, in which the size of the body parts is proportional to it's representation in the cortex, and is placed onto the region of the cortex that represents it.




However, although a bunch of body parts have been localized in this "body map" in our cortex, it was still unknown where the clitoral stimuli is processed. Swiss scientists worked to fill that gap of knowledge and studied 15 healthy women to map the somatosensory representation of the clitoris (Michels et al., 2009). The Neurocritic gave a great discussion of this paper. Go visit and take a look at the brain image and where the clitoral stimulus is processed.
Curious about their methods?

Prior to the imaging session, two self-attaching surface disc electrodes (1 × 1 cm) were placed bilaterally next to the clitoris of the subjects so that we were able to stimulate the fibers of the dorsal clitoral nerve. Before the start of the experiment, electrical test stimulation was performed to ensure that subjects could feel the stimulation directly at the clitoris. In addition, the strength of electrical stimulation was adjusted to a subject-specific level, i.e. that stimulation was neither felt [as] painful nor elicited – in case of clitoris stimulation – any sexual arousal.

(It makes me want to make a pin-the-tail type game with a fMRI image of the brain and some body part cartoons.)

THE DRAMA KINGS ARE OUT!

OMFG you guys, 2 of the colleagues with serious issues are out! One graduated, and my PI ran out of money to pay for the research associate. Also the crazy visiting professor is MIA. I can work! Uninterrupted by stupid comments! I can drink coffee without people making an issue of it!

A couple of weeks ago I finally solved the project boundaries issue with the senior research associate. I told the PI to please make a list of the projects within the grant project and specify to whom each task belongs to. I also asked to pump up the projects of the sen. res. assoc. and make mine look simple and uninteresting to avoid having him feel cheated/taken advantage of.
The PI gave us both the list and the sen. res. assoc. approved - and actually quite liked- having things set down on paper like that. So my professional relationship with him is good now, and we are collaborating nicely.

LAB PEACE YAY!

Update: Lab Wars

I have a new Twitter account, and due to that and the unfolding lab drama I haven't been posting here as often as I would like. Lab-wise, up to now, I have been able to avoid getting into the petty lab war currently going on.
After the first, open phase of Lab War, I made the point to stay far away from Lab War conversations by anyone involved. My theory that the war started by a failure to communicate properly about a collaborative project still stood, so I don't necessarily think anyone is on the right.
Despite the warnings not to go to the next groupmeeting, given by RA2, I went. I expected him to bash the guys involved, certainly, but I didn't expect him to appropriate basically all the projects in the lab - including my thesis project.
This was a low blow. Up to this point I hadn't had any problem with RA2. Au contraire, he has always been very kind and respectful towards all the women in the lab. So I went out to have a really good lunch, some awesome blueberry vodka with champagne, and some venting time away from all the other people pissed off about the meeting.
Mid twitter venting- by this time I was having a sangria in some other place- my boss emails me to go talk to him. Damn. I calm down as best I can and head back to the lab.
The boss agreed that what RA2 had done over groupmeeting was wrong and over the top, and promised to talk to the guy about it.
Then on Saturday, when I came over to do some benchwork, RA2 showed up to talk to me. He apologized if he had 'hurt my feelings' (my feelings? WTF? That has nothing to do with anything!). I listened for about an hour, trying to make him understand that I just needed to have my part of the project to myself without him going paranoid over people 'stealing his projects' and/or taking advantage of him.
I told him that the umbrella project that has my thesis project, as well as a lot of other projects was not clearly divided by our PI. I told him I wasn't upset at him, just upset there weren't some clear boundaries between the different projects to allow us to work without stepping in each other's toes, and that it was our PI's responsibility to place those boundaries.
The conversation with him made me realize that, regardless of how things have actually happened, RA2 feels that a lot of the projects of the lab work thanks to him and people don't give him enough credit. He also thinks that basically all the projects with my protein - with the exception of the electrophysiology studies- are his. And no matter how you broach the matter, as I later learned from another of the female grads that had also talked to him that day, he would not change his mind.
This meant that somehow I had to get my professor to set boundaries in the project without upsetting RA2. Regardless of people's personalities I have to collaborate with lab members on both sides of the Lab War, and I rather work on good terms with people.

Britni's moved!

Brit's got a spanking new address, so update your bookmarks!

Another smart woman murdered

A student of one of my much-loved chemistry professors was murdered back home. She was chilling out in la calle San Sebastian at Old San Juan when a 15- year old kid from La Perla (a nearby black market slum) opened fire trying to get some dude that was hiding behind her.

La calle San Sebastian is part of the tourist areas, and everybody hangs out over there. I have cousins that live in that street. Usually the bichotes know better than to mess with the tourist areas because that means the cops will be all over their asses. But apparently the bichotes are now recruiting minors as shooters because they get served lighter sentences.
Puerto Rico, like Miami and NYC, is one of the biggest drug ports in the US. However, the resources it has to deal with the drug market are minimal. And every year the violence related to drug traffic gets worse.

Science research extravaganza

I finally had enough time to go through my research rss feed. Here are the links to the posts I find the most interesting and/or important for everyday living. Enjoy!

• Jonah Lehrer (remember cute guy pic from a recent CEFAD post - him) explains the Endowment Effect - or why I paid a ridiculous amount for a gorgeous ring I bought impulsively after my A exam.
• The first group of Bonobos is being relocated from the Lola Ya Bonobo sanctuary and into the wild!
• Dave explains a model of how we perceive maps, directions, and finally - video games.
• Isis's husband receives a very serious warning over eating the last ice cream sandwich - that's cold, man.
• Your stomach is a lying bastard. Dave explains a curious study that measured satiety when the control group was served by waiters and the others had a self-refilling bowl.
• Neuroskeptic has a very thorough post about the marketing of some antipsychotics when they are new, and just about as effective as previous treatments.
  

Hidden beliefs in science stereotypes predict size of gender gap across 34 countries

Please go read Ed's excellent piece on how biases and the gender gap in the sciences feed off each other.
Among the findings:

So the more a nation believes in the stereotype of the scientific male (even unconsciously), the greater the gap in performance between boys and girls in both science and maths. In fact, these hidden biases were a better predictor of the gender divide than what people actually said about science stereotypes. These explicit opinions accounted for about 2% of the international variation in the science sex gap, while implicit associations accounted for a much larger 19%.

Oh fuck it's on...

War has come to my laboratory, and although the root of the problem is my advisor's lack of boundaries regarding data and research ideas the blame is (of course) being slung about among the original parties of the problem (2 research associates) and the gossipy idiots that egg-on the people involved.

It all began in a groupmeeting. Research assistant 1 (RA1) gave a groupmeeting in which he discussed crystallographic data and some subsequent analysis of it. The problem? That crystal data was gathered by RA2, and the idea for the analysis was his as well. RA2 had not been notified and had not given permision for anyone else to use that data. Scooping someone else with their own data in the same lab = not cool.

RA1 is a young American, and RA2 is a senior researcher that had already retired from his professorship at the university of his country, and has been working under my PI for many years. His move to this "lower" position was mostly done to provide better opportunities for his kids . RA1 is from a segment of the lab that believes that RA2 doesn't know jack, and that everything RA2 does has to be, by extension, trivial and easy to do. This, of course, ends up showing in the interactions RA1 and RA2 have while working on a collaborative project. A lot of the projects in my lab overlap, exacerbating the 'lack of boundaries' problem our PI has.

After the groupmeeting, RA2 sent a very strong-worded email to RA1 stating that what he did was unethical, disrespectful, and illegal according to the university's code of conduct. RA1, instead of talking it out with the PI and RA2, proceeded to complain loudly and indignantly to everyone at the lab about the horrific and preposterous email he received from RA2.

And then everyone and their cousin had to stir the fucking pot.
An incredibly arrogant grad student went on to say that RA2 had to be 'put in his place'. A visiting scientist stated that all data belongs to the PI and he doesn't have to say anything to whomever acquired the data if he chose to share it (said visiting scientist almost scooped another labmate with her own data last year). RA3, who had serious issues with RA2 at the beginning of his post-doc in the lab, insisted they all go bitch about R2 to the PI with the hopes of having him let off.

Suddenly, when I didn't know anything of what was going on, RA3 and Arrogant Grad Student popped into my side of the lab, which is (due to my unwillingness to deal with their constant gossip, prejudices, and bitching) a very strange thing. They were trying to convince me of going to the PI to bitch about the problems I've had with RA2. I have made myself as scarce as possible after that.

Yesterday one of the non-gossipy grads, who shares the office with RA2, told me to skip the next groupmeeting because some serious shit was gonna happen. It's gonna be RA2' s groupmmeting. It's on and it's gonna be pretty bad.

Unexpected Violence

Early this month, a postdoc who was part of my umbrella program was murdered by her husband, also a Cornell grad, near Taughannock falls. I took a couple of classes with her, and we had friends in common. This was beyond unexpected. She was upbeat and outspoken, and her husband was a quiet grad from information sciences.

If you go by general descriptors, there was little difference on how would an acquaintance describe them and Mr.B and me. Yet he went at her throat with a knife and she died from blood loss in the woods. Most of us are just horrified and confused. It's like conceptually I totally get that some abuse victims do go on with no visible signs of their abuse. And maybe he was good enough at it that not even her close friends noticed. Or did he suddenly go insane all of a sudden? But my mind can't really wrap itself around it.