Work(s) in Progress

Choose Research

A former lab technician of mine who is now a graduate student in a Department of Biological Sciences sent this to me today.  It may not be meaningful to anyone who has not spent time as an academic scientist but it made me laugh. Sadly there is much truth in this. If the text is hard to read, then click the image and it should open in a new larger format (warning, profanity).

People ask if I regret my career shift which is moving me away from the lab, away from research. Um, no. Never.

Do I still believe that basic biomedical research is the best way to understand and one day cure disease? Absolutely. Does it need to be me doing the work? Not anymore.

Pondering Memory

I sometimes feel like Judith in Clive Barker's Imajica. If you have not read this stunning masterpiece, this reference will be meaningless to you. Judith, at least the first Judith you meet, is a replica, her memories of things beyond about 5 years past are simply missing. For so many things, this is true for me. I simply do not hold on to most memories the way others appear to. If I were a computer, I'd say the memories were compressed and archived somewhere or perhaps the cache was simply cleared. On the upside, my fine brain has great processing speed, uncluttered by older unused memories.

Some learning theorists suggest that there is an advantage to suppressing old material to learn new. Obviously there are advantages to recovering the old information eventually, but sometimes you really do need to forget what you "know" to learn something new.

I'd say it was aging in my case but I've been like this for as long as I can remember. And granted, 5 years is an over-statement, but only barely. I was sitting watching the season 1 episodes of the X-Files today. Skinner made his first appearance. I know he is important. I felt an immediate joy at seeing him. I have/had a huge crush on Skinner but I have no idea why. Yeah, just call me Judith.

Pondering Watson

James Watson, the Nobel Laureate, recently made headlines for his controversial remarks on race. While he is known in the scientific community for his generally controversial and inflammatory nature, he may be remembered for these words and not for his role in the discovery of the structure of DNA: 

A profile quoted him as saying that he's "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really." He said that while he hopes everyone is equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."

After apologizing, he did try to clarify his words:

"We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things," he is quoted as saying. "The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity."

"It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science. To question this is not to give in to racism. This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers."

Many scientists and groups hastily distanced themselves from Watson, who has now retired from his position as the Chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory after nearly 40 years of service to the organization.

Similarly, the American Society for Human Genetics, of which I am a member, is preparing a rebuttal of Watson's controversial claims. Their statement, still in draft form, reads,

"The American Society of Human Genetics is committed to scientific integrity, and values the contributions of researchers and clinicians to the advancement of human genetics.

We consider the recent statements attributed to James Watson in the London times to be tragically misguided because there is no scientific evidence for differences in intellectual ability among racial groups.

Our organization promotes accurate reporting and rigorous interpretation of all scientific data to insure benefit to all people."

I started reading Guns, Germs, and Steel: The fates of human societies by Jared Diamond today. So far, it is fascinating reading, a brief history of the world from about 13,000 BC to present. Why did human populations around the globe develop and utilize technologies at different rates? The goal of this work, and I do not yet know the answer, is why some societies became "civilized" while others did not. With Watson's bias on my mind, these two paragraphs of Diamond's really stood out in stark contrast. How differently these two scientists approach the same question, the same set of "facts."

It seems logical to suppose that history's pattern reflects innate differences among people themselves. Of course, we're taught that it's not polite to say so in public. We read of technical studies claiming to demonstrate inborn differences, and we also read rebuttals claiming that those studies suffer from technical flaws. We see in our daily lives that some of the conquered peoples continue to form an underclass, centuries after the conquests or slave imports took place. We're told that this too is to be attributed not to any biological shortcomings but to social disadvantages and limited opportunities.

Nevertheless, we have to wonder. We keep seeing all those glaring, persistent differences in people's status. We're assured that the seemingly transparent biological explanation for the world's inequalities as of AD 1500 is wrong, but we're not told what the correct explanation is. Until we have some convincing, detailed, agreed-upon explanation for the broad pattern of history, most people will continue to suspect that the racist biological explanation is correct after all. That seems to me the strongest argument for writing this book.

I have another 400 pages to go, but I suspect it will be fascinating reading. If nothing else, it will serve as a reminder that perhaps the most important quality a scientist can have is an open mind. 

A note to new investigators

Academic scientists like myself have three major responsibilities: teaching, scholarship (i.e. research), and service to one's discipline. As part of that service component, I review grants for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through the Center for Scientific Review (CSR) several times a year.

I have a love-hate relationship with this aspect of my career. On the one hand, I get to see the science before it has been done. The ideas to be tested. Innovative new techniques. The potential not yet realized. I love this. On the other hand, most grants (more than 90% in my discipline) will fail. Most very good and even excellent proposals will not be funded. This is depressing. There are very few other funding sources which means that these scientists, especially new scientists, may end up not succeeding in their academic careers. I could write about what this will mean for the quality of higher education in the coming years but I have a different sort of rant in mind today.

This cycle I have several proposals from new investigators. Like everything else, grant writing is a SKILL. You must practice it to become proficient. Graduate education in the US generally provides only a small opportunity (e.g. 1 class with 1 or 2 mock proposals) to develop this expertise. Thus, most new investigators make many mistakes in grantsmanship when they first start submitting proposals. I have a few otherwise interesting proposals in my stack this time from new investigators. However, flaws in grant writing with the current funding environment, mean that it is very likely that these proposals will be seen again by this or another study section.

I will confess that my business education has shortened my attention span. I am looking for explicit, not implicit, explanations. If you think that your proposal may go to me or someone like me then please consider the following:

1. Use the spell check function of your word processor. If you cannot pay attention to this tiny detail why would I trust you with millions of our hard won tax dollars? The answer is, I would not.
2. Tell me explicitly why your work is important. How will your experiments make things better for many of us on the planet, or even a small group of us suffering from your favorite orphan disease?  Given where the funding line is, your work must be important and have "impact." Remember, these are our tax dollars at work. What is the win?
3. Do not ask for 2 years of funding when you are proposing 4 years of work. One criterion that I must assess is feasibility. Is it feasible for you to do 4 years of work with 2 years of funding? That would be no.
4. Do not propose every possible experiment related to your disorder of interest. Yes these are all reasonable things to do but it is unlikely for one person to do all of them within the given grant period.
5. Do not propose to utilize a variety of technically challenging techniques that you have never done before as the basis for your proposal. Again, this is a feasibility issue. Is it feasible for you to develop these techniques within the proposed grant period without having lined up experts to help you with them? That would be NO. If you need a technique that you have not yet mastered, please do identify and get a letter from someone who can assist with the technique.
6. Please do tell me how this proposal will lead to the next proposal. This is related to the win. If all of your experiments succeed as proposed, how will science be different? What new avenues of research will open because of your results? Please do answer the question: and then you will what?
7. If you show me bar graphs and tell me some factor is reduced by 50%, please tell me whether this data has reached statistical or biological significance. I am not impressed by n = 1. Please do share your p values, statistical tests chosen and sample sizes. Did your experiment have sufficient power to detect a difference?
8. Are you using animal or human subjects? Select agents? Have you completed all of the regulatory sections appropriately? Have you justified your sample sizes (see #7)? Are the protections adequate? I will flag your proposal for administrative review if you have not addressed these sections adequately.
9. Can we talk about independence? If you have matured into an independent position but are still sharing space with a former mentor, please address this explicitly. We will talk about it at the meeting. We want you to succeed. We want you to have your own lab and your own office. We want to see letters of support from you mentor or department chair that should you win this proposal that these will be granted to you. A collaboration is great. Indentured servitude is not.
10. How about format? Grant proposals with all of their supporting documents can run more than 100 pages. Furthermore, you can submit up to 10 appendices. I would be very grateful if you did not. We get the proposals on disk & now need to print them ourselves. I do mine at home since it is not a grant appropriate expense for me. If you need to include one or two to prove you have the expertise great, please do, but otherwise, spare my toner cartridge.
11. What about white space? Please oh please do not overwhelm me with half-inch margins and no spaces between paragraphs. Please do break your large paragraphs into smaller ones. Please do include figures or tables or bulleted lists. It's daunting when it is just page after page of the smallest font allowed.
12. I read the shortest grants first. The 150 page documents overwhelm me so I start with the shorter ones. Yes some proposal need all those pages (e.g. clinical trials, epidemiological studies, and multi-PI proposals) but most do not. Less is more. Truly.
13. Letters of collaboration. This may seem obvious but if you say in your proposal that Dr. X is going to do amazing technique Y for you, you need to have a letter from Dr. X that enthusiastically agrees to this. Also, be sure that the letter from Dr. X is current, not from 5 years ago.
14. Laboratory resources. If you tell me that you are going to do amazing technique Z, please have all of the required instrumentation needed for amazing technique Z. At the very least, have it in your budget to purchase it. If the nearest instrumentation is 3 states away, please line up a collaborator with access to that instrumentation.
15. Innovation. This is a tough one. We are asked to review and rank it yet at times this criterion competes with feasibility. It may be innovative but if no one has done this is it feasible? Yes I know this is not fair. Reviewers vary individually as to how they weigh these at times opposing criteria. At the very least, use some state of the art methodology perhaps to a problem that has not yet been approached this way. The creation of new models using old methods is still considered innovative.
16. Acronyms. Please define all of your acronyms at least once. Feeling especially kind? Put all of your abbreviations in a single list somewhere for me to refer to. Making lots of mutants in a gene family, please be kind and make me a table to summarize them all. Even better, add a comment as to why you chose these specific mutants. I am sure you had a reason so please do share it in a clear easy to find way.
17. Expertise. Do not assume that your reviewers are experts in every aspect of your proposal. Perhaps we use the same model system. Perhaps we use the same techniques. Perhaps we study the same pathway using different methods. It is unlikely that we are a 100% match since that would put us in a conflict of interest situation where we needed to recuse ourselves from reviewing your proposal. For example, if your proposal uses both mouse models and in vitro culture assays, one reviewer may have mouse experience, one reviewer may have the in vitro assay experience and a third reviewer may study your same biochemical pathway. Be kind to all of us and put your experiments in context in a general way at least in your specific aims.
18. Resubmissions. These days it is very likely you will end up resubmitting your grant. Our reviews will likely make you angry and upset since we will have missed some points or misunderstood others. However, you need to respond to us when you try again. BE POLITE. I do not care how angry you are, your introduction should begin with something appropriately obsequious like "I would like to thank the reviewers for their astute and insightful comments. I have greatly improved the proposal based on their comments. Reviewer 1 noticed X. Based on his/her comment, I have now revised specific aim 1 to address this concern." Be sure that you somehow mark the changes in the revised document (e.g. thick line down the border, change of font, etc.). You may hate this advice.  But we reviewers spend hours reading your proposal and writing our reviews. We want to help you win your grant. We are trying to share with you, in a polite way, our concerns and recommendations so that should we see your grant again we can improve our enthusiasm (i.e. score). You may think we are idiots just please do not write this into your grant resubmission.
19. Sob stories. Please do not share these. Many of us are in the position where if we do not get our next grant we will not keep our jobs. Do not burden your reviewer with this. We are sorry. This is a hard path and many will not succeed. But, it will not help your score to whine about it. The major exception to this is an act of nature. Baylor flooded a few years back. New Orleans was decimated by Katrina. By all means if your laboratory tools were ruined by acts of nature and your resources lost, please do explain why your productivity is down.
20. Time lines. These are not required but they are incredibly helpful. Please do create some sort of GAANT chart that shows when each specific aim or sub aim will be worked on during the grant period. Often times we are asked to cut 5 year proposals into 4 years proposals and this will help us see what will be lost or whether the proposed request is reasonable.
21. Dependencies. This one is tricky. If you have a 5 year grant with 4 aims, you do not want all of the aims to be dependent on the success of a single aim. That is, do not have the majority of experiments dependent on the success of Aim #1 which is to be completed in year #1. Have a back up plan. Have alternative approaches. Be sure to share these with the reviewers. Be sure to explicitly tell us what the anticipated results are and how you will proceed if the experiment fails - either in outcome or technique. Have related parallel plans.
22. Review criteria. A final reminder. We review you (can you do it?), your institution (do you have everything you need?), your approach (is this the best way to do it?), the significance of your work (do we care?), the innovation of your work (is it shiny?), your budget (is it realistic?) and your compliance with regulatory issues (will you follow the rules?). Together these need to make a strong package. Failure to address any one of them can kill a proposal these days.

Pondering Probiotics

Last year I became intolerant to both wheat and dairy. These were foods that I ate on a daily basis that suddenly caused me acute abdominal pain and nausea with a skin rash developing within 24 to 48 hours, generally on my belly with scaling skin on my hands and scalp. Through food elimination I was able to get rid of the skin symptoms and identify the "causes." The solution has been simple: avoid wheat (and gluten on general principles) and dairy (especially casein).

These symptoms coincided with the development and treatment of an ulcer, most likely caused by too many NSAIDS that I'd been taking for running pain and headaches. After a year of generic prilosec I'm working to wean myself off the medication. Currently I'm pain free taking it every other day.

There are some people who believe that intestinal permeability causes something called "leaky gut syndrome" which may cause food intolerance.

A few days ago I came across an article on Medscape (registration may be required) that used probiotics to ameliorate childhood atopic dermatitis. This was after all conventional treatments had failed. Atopic dermatitis is that itchy skin rash with no immediate known causes, but perhaps can be induced by food allergy.

Importantly, in this study "The children who received Lactobacillus also had a greater reduction in symptom severity over the first 3 weeks of treatment than did those receiving placebo, the authors reported." OK so this is only children, but are there any real risks for adults taking probiotics?

Here was the kicker for me: "Patients with atopic dermatitis seem to have increased intestinal permeability, and this disruption in intestinal barrier function may contribute to the development of atopic dermatitis, according to Dr. Glick. Probiotics have been shown to reverse increased intestinal permeability, and they also modulate the mucosal immune response and decrease inflammation in infants with food allergies, she explained." I have no idea whether this is my problem and whether this natural treatment works in adults. However, probiotics are sold just about everywhere and are not considered drugs.

I bought some Lactobacillus today. I figure I will take it daily for about a month and then perhaps eat a glorius slice of buttered bread or perhaps a decadent piece of pizza and see what happens. The worst case is that I will have immediate abdominal pain followed by a skin rash for a few days. Generally this is not worth it to me, but for the sake of science, why not?

Sometimes my job is not fun

I think that people sometimes think that my job as the acting director of a biomedical research institute is somehow glamorous or exciting. People who know the realities of my job know better.

This week has been long. It started with the 2AM phone call Monday to inform me that the air conditioning in my work was not functioning. We use a local service to walk our building at night to ensure that all of the lab equipment is functioning appropriately. If a -80 C freezer goes down in the night, scientific careers can literally end. So, while we have some equipment on electronic monitors, we also pay to have human beings tour the facility. This week their services have been worth every dime.

In most places loss of an air conditioner would be inconvenient but not a disaster. However, we have some unique genetically engineered mice that model human disorders in our building. It would take years to replace or recreate some of these. Mice can survive cold much more easily than heat. Luckily, the mice survived the temperature spike and the temperature has been stable since then.

Mid-week, I got the same 2AM phone call this time telling me that there was some water on a basement floor & there appeared to be a leak. Luckily this turned out to be a humidifier problem in our ventilation system. Not a lot of water, no damage.

Today's 2 AM call was much more exciting. The walk-through person noticed a small amount of water on a laboratory floor that had damaged some card-board boxes that were stacked there. He could not tell where the water was coming from as the areas under the two nearby sinks looked dry. He could not tell me the room number and given the floor location I feared it was my laboratory. I dragged my husband with me to go see the problem.

We found this (click image for a larger view). Minor I thought, nothing to worry about and not my laboratory. We moved the wet boxes up on the counters & I notified the director of this laboratory so he could assess the damage. Whew. 

But then I decided that we should check upstairs (un-renovated floor) to see where the leak was coming from, since like the security folks, we could not find the source of the leak inside the laboratory. We found water pouring in from the ceiling and pooling in the hallway. I could have cried. Luckily we have many large rolling trash bins and I was able to put these under the major drip locations.

I realized that I needed to check that location (NE corner) in the building on every floor. The worst hit area was our conference room. The other laboratory floors had minimal leakage like the first picture. I think the floor drains on those floors help.

Luckily our facilities folks are on emergency pagers and their cell phone numbers are posted around the building. Within about an hour, a liaison was on site. We discovered that a roof drain had clogged and the pooled roof water was leaking in. The drain was re-opened and the rain had stopped so the flow of new water into the facility also  stopped. By the time I left a company that remediates water damage was on its way. My husband and I got home just as the sun was rising.

I just got a call from another scientist that the remediation was on-going (fans & dehumidifiers everywhere) and there did not seem to be any major areas of concern or damage. We got lucky.

I like...

I like....

Running at sea level. I'm in DC for a few days for NIH study section. I love running where there is ample oxygen and high humidity. It is such a joy. I feel so fast and strong.

Colin Powell on the Television. I never watch TV at home. But when I travel, I take the opportunity to remind myself why I don't watch and to overload on Law and Order. Tonight I caught a glimpse of Colin Powell chatting with Larry King. They were discussing which presidential candidate Colin might ultimately support. His answers were so smooth. Of course he will ultimately pick and vote for a candidate but may or may not make that endorsement public. I love this man. I saw him speak about a year ago. I wish he would run or at least I hope he will let us know, with his inside opinion, who he would respect as a candidate.

Reading new research proposals. I have been a member or an ad hoc member of an NIH study section since I was first awarded a federal research grant back in the spring of 2001. While it can be depressing giving a grant proposal an unfavorable numeric score, I love to see the science before it is done. It is so thrilling to see an idea when it is still a concept, in development, before it is done. My first study section was so exhausting. My brain literally hurt. I was exhausted from the process of reviewing so many scientific proposals. Now, I just enjoy it. My stamina is better. I am not so frightened of the process. As a brand new investigator, who was I to judge the merit of some scientific superstar? How could I possibly judge the merit of such a proposal? And now, I have seen many proposals. Some simply outstanding. I wish I could have written them. Some, well, less well developed and conceived. All built with passion or love.

DC. I have never lived here but it feels like home. I love our nation's capital. It is so green and lush. My brother lives here although I only see him 1 trip out of 4 given his travel schedule. This trip I'm staying at the Watergate Hotel (yes that Watergate) on the Potomac River. Ah. Lovely. 

Resisting Change

Dave Cheong, who is writing again after taking break when his  child was born, wrote a wonderful article entitled Embrace Change, Your Life Depends on It. Wow.

There are very few people who naturally adapt to and embrace change. It is in our very nature to resist and fight. To keep the status quo. Change is scary. For those of us who like stability, all changes, even good changes, can be incredibly frightening. I fight this fear every day.

My own organization and I have been in a constant state of change since 2003. Acquisition by a local university. Changes in job expectations and duties. Change of Director. Death of Founder. Layoffs. Planned move to campus. More Layoffs. Search for a new Dean to oversee us all. I think it is fair to say that even those of us who are driving some of these changes feel a bit overwhelmed by the chaos of this process. Thus, Dave's article was incredibly timely. He introduced me to the Satir Change Model (link to an article by Steven M. Smith describing the model that is outstanding).

I found this specific image of the model (also Copyright by Steven M Smith) here.

My own organization is muddled in resistance and chaos (also known as the pit of despair). There are many transforming ideas, but they have yet to take hold to to be integrated. I strongly support all of the changes that have been happening as I can see how they will lead to the new status quo, which will be better, but it is hard to keep that in mind when one struggles with the chaos.

Let me end with a quote from Dave:

To change your life for the better, you have to introduce a Foreign Element, trigger or change agent. Shake things up. Do things differently. Adopt an improved mindset. Be a different person.

Your life depends on it.

Why I do what I do

A few days ago Stacey posted a link to a blog with the following comment, "I have NOTHING to complain about and EVERYTHING to be thankful for." Curious as always, I clicked the link she provided. It is a blog written by a man who was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; Lou Gehrig's disease) a disease I have been studying since 1995. As a scientist, disorders like ALS are a great puzzle, fun even. What causes the disorder? By what mechanisms does the disease progress? Where, when and how might we intervene to stop the disease process? It is easy as a scientist to step back from the human element and focus only on the fun of solving these scientific mysteries. It is risky to do this because it takes away the urgency of the problem.

The anonymous writer of the BrainHell was diagnosed with ALS 1223 days ago, meaning he has already survived longer than many who receive such a diagnosis. He is a young father of two children who was diagnosed at age 41, an age not much older than my own. The process of research can be frustratingly slow. While there are exciting advances all of the time, none of them are likely to help this man or others like him who are sick today. I hate this. Like many who become researchers, I went into this field of work to make a difference, to prevent suffering, to cure disease. Time marched on and those goals became smaller, more realistic, to simply add a piece to the scientific puzzle so that others may one day build on it to develop cures and prevent suffering.

I am teaching a class later this week for a group of cognitive neuroscience students. I was asked to speak on ALS even though very few people with this disorder develop cognitive dysfunction. Normally on slide #1 I introduce ALS as "a fatal neurodegenerative disease leading to paralysis and death within 2 to 5 years of diagnosis" and move into what is known. So dry. So easy to walk away from. This time, as an introduction, I am going to have them read a post written by BrainHell's friend about his 24 hour visit. I will also have them watch Lou Gehrig give his incredible speech about being the luckiest man in the world (definitely worth the 3 minutes of your time if you have not seen it). I hope that by presenting the human side, the topic will be more cogent to this group of young healthy students.

If ALS interests you, there are many ways you can help.

• Donate your time
  • Care givers need days off more than just about anyone
  • Support groups always need volunteers - both the MDA and the ALS Association sponsor support groups; there are also many local independent support groups
• Donate your money
  • To support groups - many provide equipment and family resources
  • To research endeavors - find a local scientist in your community or support one of the national organizations like MDA, ALS Association, ALS Therapy Development Institute, Project ALS or the Packard Center for ALS research
  • As with all charitable giving, do investigate how your money will be spent. You almost always can restrict your gifts so that the funds are spent in ways that are most meaningful to you.
• Participate in a fund raising event for ALS like a walk or triathlon.

potpourri

Late at night when I am too exhausted to sleep I browse vacations on-line. I need one.

My husband learned this week that he passed the Colorado Bar exam. Ho! Ho! Ho! He finished up law school in December and took the exam in February. Since then it's just been waiting. (I hate waiting). While I am thrilled and relieved for him, I am sad to say that his school had an abysmal passage rate. Only 53% of his peers passed the exam. Other schools in our region have a much better (90%) passage rate. So with him having passed the Colorado Bar and the Patent Bar, I am hoping that the job offers will start coming in. So if you know anyone searching for a harding working shiny new attorney who is interested in IP work, please let me know.

We are wrapping up the search for my new boss. Over the past few weeks we interviewed three candidates, each for two days. I am grateful to be on the search committee, to have a voice in this decision. The three candidates we brought in were all at the top of my personal list based on their resumes, vision statements, phone interviews and letters of recommendation from the larger pool of candidates. Each has a very different set of strengths and weaknesses. While I liked some of the candidates more than the others, I'm uncertain as to whether this matters. I think all of the candidates are good and could do the job. I suppose the hard part for me is that I enjoy working with my current boss. Yet this change is coming. In a few short weeks or months someone else will be in that role, but I cannot yet see any of these candidates in that role. I suppose that this is good in a way as I am unlikely to be disappointed by whomever is finally chosen.

The sheer scope of preparing a 50,000 square foot research facility for closure so we can move the labs to campus has been an incredible learning experience. I sit on a variety of regulatory committees at my University (Animal, Biosafety, etc) that help make research safe. However, I was not aware of the myriad rules involved with moving the tools for these things from one place to another, on public roads. Some of these things are regulated internally, by the state, by the feds and in some cases by the city. I have been trying to create a document for the laboratory staff that addresses most of the major issues. Luckily, another university has also been moving laboratories from one campus to another and had many documents which I could modify for our use. One major concept that I've learned over the last month that is critical to building out our new laboratory space correctly is that of the "air plenum". We have certain work spaces that cannot have the air shared with other spaces and need to be negative to the the halls and other rooms. Thus, you can seal off the room, above the ceiling tiles, to enclose the "air plenum" to prevent this contamination. Neat.

Not much I can say on the biotech front. The technology is progressing nicely. Many hours have been spent with investors. Several have asked for our PPM recently which is promising. There are bursts of activity and then it gets quiet for a few days or weeks. We spent Saturday with a potential collaborator/competitor who asked very pointed questions about our technology, our business model and our competition. It reminded me of being in graduate school, the hostile Inquisition challenging the precious hypothesis. It was nice to be mostly an observer and note taker. There is a local man who would like to step in as CEO. He's had a lot of experience in CEO jobs with larger companies taking devices through FDA approval. I think his experience and expertise would be helpful but as with the search for my new boss above, I have very mixed feelings. I like the person we have now with whom I've been working with for the last few years.

I had an odd conversation with a colleague the other day. He said to me "Cathy, you've taught me that sometimes it is the low hanging fruit that tastes the sweetest." It's oddly accurate. I do generally like and value very much what I have and what is available (possible) and yet I am always striving for more, better, shinier.

I have a hard time admitting, even to myself, the things I really want. I applied to attend this HERS institute in Denver in the Fall. DU will be sending two faculty to attend. Although I have an incredibly non-traditional position, I am really hoping to attend.

My Nana (mom's mom) is losing her mind to Alzheimer's disease. She is my last living grandparent. I do not have anything lasting, aside from pictures, for my other grandparents so I started a separate blog about my Nana. My mom has been sending me Nana stories for years. I wished I had saved them all. I have begun to collate them all here. Ultimately I will intersperse more research and development into it, but for now it is a real time look at the ups and downs of living with a person with Alzheimer's each day.

Fitness. Pfft. Pants are tight. I started lifting weights again this past week. Diet is OK in content but not volume. I know what to do I am just not spending enough time doing it. I think for me it all starting falling apart when I stopped tracking every gram of food, every minute of activity. I thought I was getting OCD about it but I think it it is necessary for me. The only thing missing is the time where I will fit it in but it looks like my schedule is only going to stay crazy so I just need to find a way. When I was teaching I kept telling myself, things will ease up when the Quarter is over. But now it's time move a 50,000 sq foot building. When that's done surely something else will spring up in its place. Look for a formal plan soon, although I may track it all on my muscle tank profile. It's pretty boring to read about 5 meals of chicken and asparagus with a workout tossed in. But I need the public math for some odd reason.