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Category Archives: Fai’s sharing

Fai’s scientific sharing with lab members

The origin of laughter

Monday, June 8, 2009

Why do we laugh? Is there any evolutionary significance? Well, instead of pondering about these questions… why not tickle a primate to find it out? Humans aren’t the only ones who like it in the armpit. Our fellow great apes — orangutans, chimps, bonobos and gorillas — also squeal in response to tickling, and new […]

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The differentiation circuit of dopamine-secreting neurons

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

There are so many different kinds of neurons in the brain and they control all sorts of mechanisms. In C.elegans, several dopamine(a neurotransmitter) -secreting neurons are differentiated from different lineage, but they are all producing dopamine. This has raised an interesting question: are the genes controlling the dopamine synthesis regulated differently or the same way […]

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Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

If you haven’t watched it, it’s worth an hour of your life. Wikipedia entry of Randy Pausch.

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Silent mutations are not silent after all

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

We briefly mentioned the idea of silent mutation in the lab meeting the other day when we discussed how DNA mutations can cause diseases. In general, a polymorphism in the wobble (3rd) position of the DNA codon often would not change the amino acid sequence. However, that doesn’t mean everything would be the same or […]

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Animal can dance to music!

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

A scientific research paper can start with a viral video on youtube. A while ago a cockatoo called Snowball was shown to dance to music. Interesting questions were raised by this observation. Did the bird really dance to the music or did it mimic the human action? Dancing is a complex behaviour that requires coordination […]

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