Now these seats aren’t the grandiose luxury of seats, but for $2 pay per rides, a plastic seat with gum stuck on the bottom and maybe some engraved love or gang signs with an occasional graffiti mark is a seat a rider is entitled to. Every progressive year humanity just decides to backtrack making it’s way to the Stone Age in every way – language, behavior, attitude, food, materials, government, the world… and so forth. Language is a fun entry I will write about another day.

So these $2 seats. In NYC, there are a lot of… let me say “wide” riders who likes to take up more than one seat. Now by all means, being wide is not against the law nor means you are a bad person (though in this case it seems to be NYC wide riders are usually pretty bad). Without going into the details of why someone is wide, I’m sure there are good reasons. Wide riders usually take up 2-3 seats on the train. Understandable, these riders cannot move out of their way for you to sit next to them. But when there is one seat left, and physics says that seat will not fit your big and wide volume, please do not try and make yourself believe you are a size 0 and squeeze in.

There’s also the ignorer riders. Ignorer riders consist of those that act like they do not see or hear you when you tell them to scoot over from taking two seats when they certainly can fit into one. The first type of ignorer riders are men. For some reason, men feel the need to sit with their indurate legs spread wide open to let their family jewels hang for air drying. The second type of ignorer riders are sleepers. Sleepers like to act like they’re sleeping, or at times really are sleeping, and do not budge or move during the entire ride except for when they get to their station, miraculously, decide to spring into awareness and get off. The third type of ignorer riders are those who finds some form of entertainment to bypass time. These riders include book readers, Ipod-ers, newspaper readers, crossword puzzle, hand held casino poker, PSP, DS, etc. These riders certainly are awake and aware enough to entertain themselves, but will look away and make the effort to ignore you when you tell them to move for a seat. Now by all means I like to piss them off by being very polite when asking, and then poking them with my umbrella when I see the effort to ignore. I’m sure you can deny hearing my voice and a visual entity in front of you, but you cannot deny the annoyance of my umbrella, and perhaps pain, thrusting towards your direction.  Anyway, usually I get these seats are for my mom, so I also pull out the “how can you disrespect the elderly” card, even though my mom vehemently feels she’s not that elderly. I think if you’re over half a century you’re in the elderly category, but that’s another type of denial.

It occurs that women like to cross their legs while sitting on these lovely seats. I for one cannot figure out how you believe that sitting with your legs crossed equals to comfort while the train is rocking back and forth with sudden stops that you always seem to twitch and swirl your leg towards bystanders or the person sitting next to you. Better yet, these lovely legs are usually big and wide, and each of these legs have their own weapon. The shoe. The shoe weaponry is vast in collection. Let me just name a few. The slippers. In the summer I love to step on these ladies – and gentlemen – who thinks that their feet should be exposed to the confined little can with 60+ passengers is in fact, not aware their feet is not an air freshener.  This also applies to arm pits, especially during rush hour when the little can is +100 passengers.  The heels and the sneakers are also very brutal.  When these women swing their legs due to the movement of the train, their soles would strike someone, whether the person sitting next to them or the person standing in the vicinity.  There is no way you can deny the fact your shoe’s imprint is on someone else’s pants.  Of course, these women rarely apologizes for their shoe signatures (maybe they feel their shoe prints are very important?  showing their personalities of full of BS?).

A little taste of the NYC MTA.  Please enjoy your trip to the city next time!

I was crossing the street today around 6pm in an intersection, and there was another lady who was in front of me crossing as well.  The traffic signal was “walk” for pedestrians, with red lights for cars.  The traffic guard goes, “Stop!”  I’m pretty much half way through the street, he goes, “What if you get hit, what if you get hit!” and I said, “Hey, why aren’t YOU telling that to the other lady” (who is Black, and so is the traffic guard).

I think he’s thinking, “An Asian girl, let me pick on her to make an example!”  — yes, he did send cars our way even though the lights were red, but the cars aren’t supposed to even MOVE so therefore, it’s not MY cause of it, and definitely not my offense. Then I went, “I’m already half way you want me to stand in the middle of the road?”

When it comes down to my example today, it doesn’t matter the traffic guard was Black, the point is discrimination comes down to pre-conceived notions of race and culture.  I am Asian, and in the past Asians have been quiet because they were not as educated to make a response, did not want the trouble, or did not want to cause problems.  The Asians of today, as well as other cultures and races who have become educated after being in the U.S. for several generations, are able to know enough about U.S. law and speak good enough English to have a voice.  Often, my mother tells me if she was as educated as I am, she would be able to deal with her problems at work better.  Instead, she sucks up all the people who picks on her and completes tasks that other people should be doing, and comes home being upset at me when I ask her how her day went.  I do get annoyed she doesn’t understand when I ask how she’s doing, I mean it to the best of my intentions but because of discrimination at her work place, she doesn’t realize it.

Everyone has their life to carry on, and all of this is part of the routine that keeps us going. Is your routine efficient, is it potentially flawed? In a way, your routine is what you have become used to and we don’t think about it as much as we get older. It’s just a routine, something we’re doing to get by. For those ambitious souls who decide to be adventurous in life, they don’t have a routine but they have a hard time getting by. So, is having a routine (which will provide you a stable means for life) better than not having a routine (which will be a life lived in the way you want it to be)?

The Similes of Finals is what you would like to call finals as it feels and pertains to you. What are finals? They’re not just exams. They are more than that. They are pretty much what your life is, and in fact, they’re this month.

10. Finals are like burnt toast, you were looking forward to it in the morning but it just have to be ruined.

9. Finals are like your mother telling you to clean your room, and you decided to do so but only superficially so everything looks nice but you stuffed most of your belongings under your bed. Your mother eventually decides to vacuum and upon seeing your junk all over the place, you get in trouble. In other words, please study so you won’t have this problem.

8. Finals are like the smelly guy who decided not to shower or brush their teeth this morning to make it to the 9am exam because they decided to cram all night. Please, take care of your hygiene.

7. Finals are like ordering coffee from the new hip and chic cafe down the corner. There are so many options you go with your intuition. Yes, I bubble in my scantron – with intuition.

6. Finals sure are exams, but what are they exams of? They are exams of how well you read and how you interpret things. Thus, finals are like reading the opposite sex, you read or interpret them wrong and you get on their bad side (especially females). Finals are sure moody.

5. Finals are like rainbows (at least in my school). There are at least 8 different versions in 4 different paper colors.

4. Finals are like marathons. It’s the end of the semester, the final stretch. You run and run and… oh crap there’s next semester. Make this a decathalon until graduation.

3. Finals are the holidays. No, it’s not because this occurs in December and we have X’mas around the corner, nor is it because it occurs in May/June and you have summer vacation (yes it’s a holiday!). Finals are like holidays because they are special, they only occur once throughout a year. Just like the holidays, there is not enough time for them.

2. Finals are like playing football. You got a question right? SCORE! What? You’re stuck at a question? Yea the question pwned you back a few yards. Well, this technically applies to any other sport too, but football is rather painful and I for one is a tiny gal so finals are like huge guys to me.

1. Finals are like fancy guys (or pretty women for you males). They present themselves in an eloquent, formal way with verbal elusiveness. They entertain you, capture your focus, and when you think you finally got them, they turn you down. Finals are like that, they play hard to get with your grade.

In the spirit of finals, here’s a site Kura linked me on good eats for your brain during finals week: http://startcooking.com/blog/303/10-Tips-for-Healthy-Eating-During-Exams.

Two little cutaru waru pups are irresistibly kawaii! The creative minds behind webcomic Nemu-Nemu are Audra Furuichi and Scott Yoshinaga, who have recently reached their 200th comic! They created the funny and lovable webcomics about two little pups Anpan and Nemu in their journey of understanding the human world. Popularity is sure rising with their loyal fans displaying the pups on their facebook and myspace pages.

Each comic strip consist of a 3-4 panel scene. The two pups fall into the hands of tween girls Anise and Kana, who each takes one pup as their own pet and pretty much treat them between a friend and their little sibling. The naive little pups do everything from making pancakes from magic, directing traffic toys and taking cocoa and donut breaks, to arguing with the sky and it’s thunderstorms. Every comic comes with a dose of silliness and adorable factor that I have come to appreciate! The comics at times seem to move quite slow because it doesn’t really stimulate your brain to think much, but I think it’s a nice and relaxing comic to ease your mind.. it’s like yoga, for the brain! There’s even a production of stuffed pups (which cost a bit steep at $50 a piece) and products to go with your addiction to the pups. Follow the journey of Anpan and Nemu with Anise and Kana at nemu-nemu.com! Enjoy this sampling!

Priorities are going to be a series of posts where I point out flaws that I see, and things that need to change. Please freely express your ideas and comments.

Since I attend school away from home, I rarely get a chance to know what goes on in the outside world. College dorm life is pretty much living in a bubble of campus atmosphere. Occassionally, I like to burst this bubble (and procrastinate from studying) when I decide to go to the world wide web and read some news. You might ask, well you have a tv don’t you? Sure I do, but when you’re a science student you’re pretty much reading your book most of the time than watching tv. In any case, I went to www.ny1.com for my hometown news. The top story: Yankees And A-Rod Reportedly Close To Deal. Please imagine me doing this: …-_-?? Great, that’s the top story that everyone is very concerned about? Don’t get me wrong, if you love sports good for you. But sports is not something that is do or die, unless you’re a sports gambler and please stop gambling. I read on for further stories: Fire Rips Through Lower Manhattan Skyscraper. Now why is this story not the top story? Why is the preference of sports over a skyscraper? In fact, why isn’t there a top story of a missing child that needs to be found, or an emphasis of a robbery or murder happening in your next zip code? I mean, are you going to worry about sports when you should have paid more attention to the picture of a robber who is standing behind you on line for a morning coffee?

Immunologists attempt to achieve an understanding of how our body responds when under attack by antigens. The following is an explanation of the importance of T-cells in the immune response system. T-cells are part of our adaptive immunity to foreign pathogens.

Two children of the Islayev family were found to have a flaw in their MHC. Tatiana and Alexander often suffered from chronic respiratory infections despite immunizations as infants. Analysis of their blood found low levels of CD8 T-cells, but normal levels of IgG, B-cells, and other lymphocytes which showed normal humoral immunity. Their parents and siblings were found to have normal levels of CD8 T-cells and immunity.

The difference in CD8 T-cells expressed in Tatiana and Alexander from the rest of their family was directly related to their inability to respond to respiratory infections. CD8 T-cells recognize MHC class I molecules which present endogenous antigen. The antigen is cut into peptides by proteosome and transported into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) by TAP where it binds to the peptide binding groove. The MHC molecule is assembled in the ER by chaperone proteins and leaves in a vesicle to present itself on the cell membrane. When a CD8 T-cell binds to it, an immune response is made. The cytotoxic T-cell recognizes the viral antigen presented and kills the infected cell.

A second class of MHC molecules is MHC class II, which present exogenous antigen. MHC class II molecule is synthesized in the ER with an invariant chain on binding groove and travels by vesicle into the cytoplasm. The invariant chain cleaves and leaves a CLIP fragment on the groove. Antigen enters the cell and antigenic peptides bind to the groove displacing CLIP fragment. MHC molecule expresses the peptide at cell surface to CD4 T-cells. CD4 TH1 cells activate macrophages. CD4 TH2 cells activate B-cells to become plasma cells and release antibodies.

In Tatiana’s and Alexander’s immune system, their MHC class II molecules were functioning properly but their MHC class I molecules weren’t. A mutation in TAP would prevent MHC class I molecules from fully maturing, therefore unable to present endogenous antigen to CD8 T-cells. Because Tatiana and Alexander inherited homozygous haplotypes from their parents, they have mutated TAP. The homozygous genes lower the number and type of peptide antigens presented because of the absence of MHC class I molecules on cell surface. With minimal MHC class I activity, they’re still able to have normal humoral immunity because their bodies produced normal levels of B-cells, T-cells and lymphocytes which recognize MHC class II molecules.

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