Research paper, round 1 - not KO yet!

It is one thing to have ideas about a subject, another thing to get expertise in that same subject, but a whole different thing to write about it and be assessed on it. I wrote my scientific research paper and the paper was reviewed by two of my peers and my instructors.
To be honest, the process of wrinting the paper was much more frustrating than recieving feedback. People were generally very nice to my paper and I (is that even a good thing?) and gave really constructive feedback. Their comments were really specific and helpful which made me gladly notice that they took the time to read and understand the paper. But bottom line, they all understood what I meant without the background I had on the subject. They understood it all, and I guess that's really what I wanted to get for a first draft ever.
They also liked the studies I used to illustrate my argument... It took me so long to find them. The truth is there is very little research done on stress on the continent, and the few (very few) people that do, well the simply sell it. That article was a blessing, and I hope to find one or two more for my second draft (fingers crossed) as it was suggested to me by my instructor.
The areas I need to work on are paragraphing and wrapping up. The first one is fairly easy to do, but the second one is a bit more complex. I had started talking about coping mechanisms in my first conclusion and my reviewers found it very interesting. They wanted to know more about it. But coping mechanisms make up a huge topic in their own. And I'd have to do more research on it. Coping mechanisms are often cultural and are studied by anthropologists or behavioural psychologists - areas that I have been avoiding slightly because they can be so vast and because I guess I wanted to keep the paper as scientific as possible. I guess I'll have to struggle with it now, better now than never right? And isn't struggling to get answers the whole point of taking  this class anyway.

Off to work I go!

Lessons learnt

What is worse than addressing a crowd of smart, critical, curious and empowered young leaders? I would know the answer to that after having stood in front of an auditorium pretty full of them.

Okay, fine! I admit. It was not that bad. It was actually very enriching and fulfilling, but also quite intimidating.

My research topic (as I had presented it in a previous post) was about the physiology of Stress. As part of the scientific research course requirement, I had to share it with the ALA community in a 15 minutes power point presentation. So, what did I learn?

1.      About making power points: It can get really fun if you love Art like me. I actually got to be creative (with colors, pictures and fonts) with some heavy biology and psychology material.

      My tips:

-          Use font colors that contrast with background color (best example of this is black on white!)

-          You can use interesting looking fonts but only for the title; otherwise you end up having a text that looks like this (can you read this?) instead of that (Can you read this?).

-          Use diagrams to present the heavy material. And feel free to make them interactive (arrows and pictures popping up, highlights or sound effects, etc.).

-          Take your time and don’t rush through any slide. Hence, rehearse your presentation and get rid of the superfluous information.

-          Do not put a whole text on your slides. People want to listen to you; they don’t want to be swallowed trying to understand the complex scientific terminology and phrasing. Save them that pain and present it in a bullet point format.

-          This might sound unnecessary but symmetry is key. A subtopic title in slide 2 can’t be red, size 24 and Bahaus font when the title of the next subtopic in slide 4 is blue, size 36 and Algerian font. You will get your audience confused even though you might not notice it. 

2.      About presenting the material: I though this would be the most challenging part. But people actually followed throughout the presentation. I was glad when I got many interesting questions after the presentation.

My tips:

-          Do not assume that the audience has even a third of the information you have gathered for about 2 months or so. Some of them might, but the majority has probably never heard of what you are talking about.

-          Be ‘generous’ with your explanation. Give the meat of your argument, not just the bone that would suffice you: examples, illustrations (pictures, videos, your own body movement, etc.), analogies, etc.

-          Repeat! If you see that half of your audience is giving you the ‘it went o-ver my head’ face, stop and repeat what you just said.

-          Do not speak like you would speak to yourself. Speak clearly, making sure the unfamiliar terms you are using are explained on the slides or while you are talking. Speak loudly, making sure that people don’t have to guess what you just said (chances are they won’t even be able to with the little information they have on the topic).

  

3.      About stage presence: I tried as much as possible to feel comfortable on stage and fill in the space with both my voice and body language.

My tips:

-          Walk around the place you will be presenting from some time before you get on stage. Make sure you know the place so that you can own the place.

-          Make eye contacts if you are that type of person. It helps you to connect with the audience (you wouldn’t talk to your friends looking at their feet, right?). If you are shy, it’s also fine because you can fake the eye contact and look at the foreheads instead.

-          Move around; play with the audience so that they are not tempted to fall asleep.

-          Ask the audience questions and trust them to give you the right answers. You will get them engaged and attentive.

-          Just be your everyday (appropriate) self and relax because your time will be up before you even realize.

-          If you make a mistake, do not panic. Correct it once you realize it and move on swiftly.

One can guess by the length of this post how much I enjoyed doing my presentation and how much I learnt form it. It was not perfect but it was extremely fulfilling. 

Seeing  people’s facial expression showing interest in what I was saying was a huge reward.

Finding a vaccine for HIV - Dr LeGalle presentation

Who ever learns about how the HIV virus infiltrates human cells and reproduces there can't avoid being fascinated. HIV is a 'smart' virus, like most of the retro viruses. But unlike them, it is killing many people in places such as subsaharan Africa, where I happen to be living.

Dr Legalle, from the Ragon institute, gave a talk in my scientific research class last friday about the flows of the virus that are currently being explored to find a vaccine. Although I didn't fully understand some of the heavy chemistry in the presentation, I could get a valuable sense of the current research on HIV vaccine.

What stroke me the most was the variability and adaptability of the virus. It is amazing how much effort HIV can put into not beiing recognised. It actually can control the number and forms of the protein it generates and that bind to the host membrane. Because they are too few and always different, T helper cells have a hard time recognising them.

What's most sad about all this is reverse transciptase(the process by which HIV is able to get DNA from RNA, thus doing the reverse  of the normal process from RNA to DNA). This process that will generate a strand of DNA that will be combined with the DNA in our cells (sort of stealing our identity to live and reproduce). Reverse transciptase nakes so many mistakes in the process that it is often times absolutely impossible for the body to have a sencondary immune response. Okay... I feel like all this is going over the head of some people, so let me try to make sense of this!

So what happens in your body when you get an infection? The army of white blood cells in your body start arranging themselves to respond to the infection. Then starts primary immune response that can take quite a while.While it is being fought, certain of these soldiers will make sure they get the 'finger print' of the cause of the infecction. This way, the next time the same infection comes, the body doesn't waste time responding to it. This quick and effective response is called the sencondary immune response. Have you ever wondered why you don't get chicken pox twice? ... Your welcome!

So coming back to what I said earlier, because the virus changes it's 'identity' so much, there is almost never this secondary immune response. Now it feels like we are stuck in this seemingly unsolvable dilemma.

However, all hope is not quite lost. Dr Legalle showed many other ways of looking at the HIV infection and virus structure that bring some hope into the equation.

HIV is indeed truly fascinating, but just as scary. The urge to eradicate it in places such as subsaharan Africa is growing bigger and bigger everyday. so if you like science and happen to want to save Africa, this is a good place to be working on - ALA students, hint hint!

What did you learn from the talk by Dr. Walker and Dr. Burton?

                                                                                                                                                            “You can actually be a scientist and live in nice places like La Jolla, California

I knew I shouldn’t have dropped maths! Well, I still have Biology. One day I might end up in St Petersburg, Florida.

But let me not diminish the impact Dr Walker and Dr Burton had on me last Tuesday.

I first met with them, along with Sir Griekspoor over lunch. They both seemed very interested in how ALA was different from other schools, and how well we dealt with the high expectations of being here (Kenyan coffee! Just kidding!). We also got to talk about the image/brand Africa had for the rest of the world.

A few minutes later, I could not imagine that I had just had dinner with the people in charge of leading biomedical research institutes in terms of finding an HIV vaccine.

Dr Burton was the first to talk. He leads the initiative to find a vaccine for HIV. He gave us a very entertaining account of his background. What particularly stroke me in his story was his determination to challenge himself.  Although he knew what he was deeply interested in, he also studied physics and studied in Swedish. Being ready to challenge oneself is one difference between good and great leaders. 

His work on finding an HIV vaccine gave the audience a lot of hope.  Knowing that there is a whole program dedicated to helping millions of people suffering from HIV had a sort of relieving effect. The truth is that many infected Africans don’t have regular access ARV’s. Patients end up dying of opportunistic infections, or develop drug resistance that can as well kill them.

Dr Walker, head of the Ragon Institute that focuses on mechanisms of immune control in HIV infection, gave an equally ‘blow minding’ talk. In fact, he is in charge of the first biomedical research institute on HIV on the continent. He talked about the story of the institute and how much of the work being done there was as a result of philanthropic donations. He also talked about how far research about a vaccine for HIV has gone, and what are the limitations to it. One that he mentioned was the need for involvement from different expertise to enrich the research.

One thing I extremely liked was their belief in Africa’s potential. They are currently working to see the world’s biggest biomedical research center that will focus on HIV and other infectious diseases.

Stress: How does it work and what are its effects a the cellular level and on the general well-being

The number of things that can reduce the life span of an African is depressing: HIV, TB, Malaria famine, war and (unfortunately) etc. The continent’s situation seems at many times over our control. Countries are trying to solve their internal problems, keep up with globalization and the international expectations of better education, health care, and governance. With all the very urgent things to care about certain problems in our lives are left to wait for our upcoming development (dangerously slow though). Those problems, for instance rising stress level, can actually become another factor to reduce our life span even more.

A high number of people with high level of stress is usually correlated to development. In other words more of the most stressed people are found in developed countries. But here, statistics could also be interpreted as developed countries have more people that can pay for a consultation and get diagnosed with high stress level. The same reasons that reduce the life span of the average African could also cause him an expected high stress level. But that is not seen, and by “not seen” I mean not diagnosed, and by “not diagnosed” I mean that there is too little interest on the continent for such issue. However, that won’t take away the real problem that stress is becoming.

Stress has many other affects that go beyond panic attacks over overlapping tests. Stress has been in fact positively correlated to cancer, age related diseases such as Parkinson, weakened immune systems and depression. For these reasons, I think it’s very important that we get the right information about stress and perhaps consider it as an opportunity for research.

Thus, I chose to focus my scientific research journey to understanding how exactly stress works and what its effects are at the cellular level and general well-being. Hopefully I can bring some awareness and interest on the topic!

The Bigger Picture

It is easy to tell what is going wrong in our communities, and complain about it. It takes a few members of the community who not only spots the problem, but tries to understand it and find its real root, and proposes a solution to it.

Many people in our countries have probably noticed certain issues that are becoming alarming. But how many of them have actually tried to seek for the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of these phenomena? What is preventing them from doing so?

I like to think that ALA has equipped me with the right mindset not to limit my understanding of issues to assumptions. The education I am receiving here is not only providing me with the right tools to approach a problem, it is also inspiring me to always look to the bigger picture. Here, I have learnt to discover what I believe to be my purpose, what I am passionate about and how to go for my dreams. All of those are rooted into giving back to my community and working towards its development.

One of the problems I think deserves some attention today in Africa is certainly stress. A great majority of our societies are not individualistic. The group decides for the individual and problems such as stress are not recognized as real problems. The word ‘stress’ does not exist in many tribal languages in Senegal for instance. And as development and globalization are now surely reaching Africa, the stress level of people is expected to rise for many different reasons. This phenomenon is definitely one thing I am decided to look at in my Scientific Research journey, and beyond.

?

Human beings are philosophical animals. As human beings, inquiry is the foundations of any knowledge we pursue. We wonder, ask questions and the mere fact of trying to answer them brings us innovation. And we wonder more and ask more questions to finally find that we might not even be doing it enough.

During my journey into the ‘Scientific American’ wonderland, I discovered that there was so much to know and so much yet to be discovered. So many questions arose from my readings and it’s my great pleasure to share it today (we’ll go for a bullet point format, shall we?)

·       -  How does the human brain works? I mean REALLY! How do we explain emotions, free will, crime and abuse?

·       -  How do we fairly determine intelligence? Are IQ and EQ enough to do so? What do they even REALLY tell?

·        -  Should we condemn a sociopath because he was born with a tendency to hurt? Isn’t that just another disability?

·         -Why do we yawn and how is it contagious?

·        -  What makes human beings always go for the irrational decision in Game theory’s models?

To conclude I want to stress that our generation should feel extremely lucky. Knowledge has basically been offered to us. In the past, if someone had a question, it was up to that person to get answers. Today we can just type in our Google search boxes ‘apple’ and not only would we get several definitions of the word, but we’d even get  the symbolism behind it and recipes with it!

Let’s all embrace being part of the ‘microwave generation: everything here and now!’