Japan Culture Festiva, Millbrae, CA

Japan Culture Festiva, Millbrae, CA

10/2/2011, 北の恋祭り

IQ test

Here is an online IQ test created in Germany. Some people may not feel comfortable to do this king of test, but it's very interesting as a puzzle. My IQ? It was about 110, which was the score I got when I was a kid. Does it mean my IQ is not improving since then??? Anyway, it's fun. Try it!

IQ test

http://www.iqtest.dk/main.swf

荒唐からし仕込み

どうやら、”荒唐”は中国語で”ばかばかしい”とう意味だそうです。面白いものです。

Research?

I had a chance to talking with my old colleague about career goal and meaning of doing research. Everybody has different impression, but I believe we do research to make our lives happier. I'm currently working in aquatic toxicology laboratory to assess biological functions of contaminants in ambient water. I consider that all findings and achievements through my research will contribute to protect environment and pass down fragile beautiful nature to next generation. This is my motivation.

Research is not only for researchers. Everybody does "research" to make our lives better. Pizza chefs spend time and effort to make their pizzas better. Marketing managers analyze trend of their customers by statistical approach. One of the differences between researchers and those people is that we are not sure when our findings will benefit us. It can be in 5 years, or be in 50 years. People (especially students) involved in basic science sometimes struggle to recognize importance of their research and say "Why am I doing this??". Mostly it's because of insufficient communication with principle investigators.

I'm still learning a lot to become an independent researcher. There will be a lot of chances to write grant proposals as I develop my career. I want to keep it in my mind and design project with clear goals that people who don't have research background also understand.

日本語の起源 Origin of Japanese language

日本語は一体どこに起源を持つのでしょう？今日友人と話をして分かったのが、日本語の漢字の読み方が中国福建省の方言と凄く近いそうです。では、福建省はどこかと聞かれると、台湾の対岸、すなわち日本の遣唐使が紀元前773年から838年まで辿ったルートにほぼ重なります。沖縄でも、このルートを通じて古くから中国と交易が有りました。

中国語というと、国語である北京語を皆思い浮かべます。しかしながら、同じ漢字は使えども発音は全く異なります。福建省。この場所に、日本語のルーツを探る鍵が眠っているのではないでしょうか？

北京語を話す妻が日本語を勉強するのを見ると、なぜか不思議な気になります。

Where Japanese language came from? When I was chatting with my friend who was from China, we realized that the pronunciation of some Chinese characters by Japanese is very similar to that of people living in 福建省 in China. There are a lot of dialects in the area and my friend pointed out that Japanese is very similar to one of them. So, where is 福建省? It's located on the opposite shore of Taiwan, which was almost overlapping the route of Japanese messengers (遣唐使) traveling to 長安 from AD773 to 838. Okinawa also had trading with people in that area from ancient period.

People imagine "Mandarine" when they hear about "Chinese", but even Chinese and Japanese people use same Chinese characters, the pronunciation is very distinct. I guess there might be a "key" to figure out the origin of Japanese language in 福建省.

I feel a bit interesting when I see my wife, who is fluent in Mandarine, is studying Japanese.

遣唐使のルート (Route of Japanese messengers)

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ファイル:Kentoshi_route.png

福建省

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/福建省

Nature Blog

One of findings from our research group was introduced by media, inlucing Nature blog and Yahoo. Unfortunately my name doesn't appear on those sites, but it's still great achievement. This might be a small step, but good enough to encourage me to work harder as a scientist.

Nature blog

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2011/03/antimicrobial_soap_ingredient_1.html

US News

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/managing-your-healthcare/environment/articles/2011/03/31/antibacterial-soap-additive-accumulates-in-fish-study

EurekAlert

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-03/acs-fro030911.php

ACS

http://portal.acs.org:80/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=222&content_id=CNBP_026967&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=322669e9-b404-45d6-87f2-4790c70bcad1

Physorg

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-bioaccumulation-antibacterial-ingredient-tcc-fish.html

Yahoo Health

http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/hsn/antibacterialsoapadditiveaccumulatesinfishstudy

KEGG pathway map

Kyoto university has generated comprehensive pathway map for wide type of organisms. I believe this will facilitate pathway analysis and eventually strongly contribute "virtual tissues" which are proposed by USEPA.

KEGG: Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes

http://www.genome.jp/kegg/