Charleston, SC. Back to cotton

Kate

I am Kate Kate is writing this blog 

Hi nana

I am so amazing I love you so much Aleah is cocoo.

 I'm good at extra math.  How are you doing? Nana You are so nice nana

Epic road trip

We decided for Chris and Angela's wedding we would make an epic road trip to California. We would cross Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and finally stop when we got to the Bay Area. 

I didn't take any pictures in Nebraska. It is a subtler place the the rough crags of Colorado. We stayed with Rich for a couple of days before our next drive to Utah to visit the Cooks. 

They live in Fountain Green, home of lamb days and "helped" walk sheep at night. We also ate and ate. Tara spoiled us with homemade ice cream, cookies, tamales, egg rolls, Spanish rice, lasagna, and more. 

Becca was in heaven talking to the lambs and cows. The bummer lamb her favorite thing ever. 

We toured temple square in a bit of rain. 

But it didn't last. 

Now on the California. 

Kate at the hospital

Odd mushrooms in our yard

Anyone know what kind these are?

The Future of Science is Bright

Too often predictions of the future are dystopian, full of daunting challenges due to climate change, exponential population growth, environmental disasters, and economic woes.  Finding solutions to these problems seems so hard, but this last month I was able to peek into a much more hopeful future at the Intel Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF), where Monsanto sponsors a special award for plant science. I was a judge for the award and helped one day at a booth in the expo hall to talk to the thousands of parents, students and teachers about Monsanto. One day was open to the public and there were a lot of questions about genetic engineering, Monsanto, and plant breeding.

 Intel sponsors this science fair together with the Society for Science and the Public (SSP) for some of the brightest students from around the world.  This is the world’s largest international high school science competition with approximately 1,700 high school students from over 75 countries.  Each participant has already won their regional science fair or national fair and came to Pittsburgh to compete for around $4 million dollars in prizes.  We met students from the USA, Saudi Arabia, Korea, Japan, Russia, Egypt, Indonesia, South Africa, Thailand, Ireland, and many other countries.

As I wandered the two huge halls I was so impressed with the breadth and depth of the research presented by students that ranged from 10-17 years old.  Research topics covered everything from demonstration of how to build a trinary computer using Legos®, a method for improved silk production, 3-D printing custom implants and prosthetics, a homebuilt PCR machine with improved algorithms for controlling temperature, improved airplane wing design, environmental studies on changes in ocean pH and flora due to global warming, the mechanism for folding of cotyledons in radishes, and so many others. I kept thinking that many of these students had done Ph.D level science as high school students. 

After some significant deliberation, we chose the 2015 ISEF Monsanto Special Award winners:

1^st place --- Anna Marie McEvoy --- Drogheda, Ireland.  Aetiology of ‘bleeding canker’ disease of horse chestnut trees. Anna McEvoy noticed a tree growing by her school with an oozing disease lesion.  She wondered what it was and how common it was.  She catalogued and sampled thousands of trees throughout Ireland, cultured the diseased regions to find the candidate pathogen, sequenced its genome, compared the genomic sequence to other available sequences to potential origin of the disease, and developed PCR markers that could be used to quickly identify the disease in the future. 

2^nd place --- Saumya Ramadugu Keremane --- Riverside, CA. A rapid field detection of Liberibacter bacteria using lateral flow technology. (She was our 2014 3^rd place winner.) She worked to develop methods to detect citrus greening bacteria prior to the development of symptoms.  She made labeled primers and a single amplification PCR using wax and a coffee cup.  The results are read similar to a commercial pregnancy test. If farmers tested trees prior to the development of symptoms they could potentially remove and replant those trees before it spreads to the rest of the farm. 

3^rd place --- Vasu Chavanasupitchaya, Natchamukda Paibooi, Wanicha Khotwongsa --- Khonkaen, Thailand. The effect of crude extract of Imperata cylindrica and the survival and growth rate of Nilaparvata lugens Stal and its impact on predatory insects of Nilaparvata lugens Stal eggs. This team from rural Thailand noticed that rice pests avoided a weedy grass growing in their fields.  They made extracts from the plant and tested efficacy of the extract as a pesticide on replicated field trials on their own farms and in larger field level tests in four locations.

We also gave out 12 honorable mentions.  We really wished we could have given awards to them all.  There were that many great presentations.  The Society for Science has descriptions of the grand award winners:

https://www.societyforscience.org/content/press-room/intel-isef-2015-grand-award-winners

It is a hopeful future with such hardworking and bright young scientists.  I came home buoyed up with optimism.  

Pittsburgh for the Intel Science Fair Finals

When I think of Pittsburgh, I think of one thing: steel.  It is a city that was built as a mill town at the convergence of two rivers.  Frankly, I did not have a very good impression of Pittsburgh before I went, but was happy to be proven wrong.  I stayed right downtown near a hockey rink and the conference center. 

The downtown is flanked by rivers and defined by steel bridges.  This bridge was covered in locks inscribed with names of couples.  I think this is something that people do in France, but apparently in Pittsburg as well.  

I rode a tram up the hill and took some great pictures of the valley.  It was a relatively easy city to get around because there were buses or trains from 5 AM to midnight. 

I walked the length of the downtown and ate at some great restaurants.  

Carpets in Abu Dhabi

While I was in Abu Dhabi, our friends took us to this great Suk in Sharjah.  The outside was covered in great blue tile and sat next to a Mosque that was full of taxi drivers for their evening prayers. Parking was a little crazy, but we arrived early in the evening before the heavy shopping hours. We came directly from the beach to choose Persian carpets for their apartment.  

Mall food in Abu Dhabi is different than I expected, obviously no Orange Julius. Surprisingly, the busiest kiosk sold sweet corn. They served a large kernelled sweet corn that was a little bit starchy, but nice flavor with butter and a choice of spices. They also sold fresh potato chips fried on a stick.  That would make a killing at the Iowa State Fair.  

So many of the buildings in the Emirates were so new that this older building really was striking. The bottom floor was almost entirely gold and jewelry stores, and lots of gold.  Everything from a gold necklace that looked more like a breastplate it was so wide and thick to thin wire hoop earrings. Upstairs were a number of carpet shops that had piles of carpets to the ceiling in the back of each shop, smaller rugs hanging on the walls, and rugs on the floors.  

The shop owners were happy to sort through the piles of carpets to show the different color combinations.  Our friends had been their before and the shopkeeper remembered which carpets in the pile she had been interested in before and laid out the options on the floor. He would tell for each carpet where it was from and whether it was an unusual pattern or color.  

The most expensive carpets were woven from silk instead of wool and were extremely thick and plush. I was interested in this thin carpet that I thought I could fit in my luggage to bring home.  The large thick carpets weighed easily 50 lbs and this one was still pretty large, but very light.  Since our friend was buying a few carpets the shopkeep talked me into buying this one.  It is not as fancy or intricate, but had a series of geometric patterns and I loved the red and blues.  So I bought it.  I put the carpet upstairs on the landing.

Prélude n°1 aux tubes musicaux (boomwhackers)

Korean television invasion

Today's NPR's Planet Money hit close to home.  They talked about K-pop, Korean hip-hop, that is getting more and more popular.  At our house Emily hasn't been listening to K-pop, thank goodness, but she has been entranced by Korean television shows.  It started when she and I were on Netflix looking at international television shows.  I mocked the Korean dramas because they recycled the same plots over and over.  In three shows in a row, a girl decides to dress as a boy and either attend a boy's only school, join a boy band, or whatever.  Hijinks ensue as she falls in love with one of the boys and the boy falls in love with her, although he doesn't usually know she is a girl at the time.

To the Beautiful You

Can you find which character is a girl? This was the first show that Emily started

watching. The main character is a girl that enters a boy's school to help motivate an Olympic high jumper.  Somehow no one on the show ever guesses till the very end.  I must admit though the characters are very likeable and the plots are funny.  Even funnier is listening to Emily laugh, groan, sigh, moan, and burst out with the show.

You Are Beautiful

The girl has to impersonate her brother who has won a spot on a K-pop band.  She falls in love with the guy in a tie.  Apparently it was good.  That is what I am told.

Kpop Extreme Survival

Larger band.  She just wants to be in the band.  Her uncle knows but most of the band does not?  I couldn't sit through this one, but Emily and Leila watched every minute.

So if you are hunting through Netflix and looking for something that is kind of soap opera lite with mistaken identities, girls that dress like boys, and fancy prep schools, Korean television has what you are looking for.

NYU Abu Dhabi

I stayed with our close friends at NYU's Abu Dhabi campus. 

I went to a piano recital on campus and tried to pay attention to key landmarks so that I could make it back without getting lost. 

The pianist was superb, but the music was difficult to connect with. Modern sometimes means really weird   

I got so lost on the way home. All of my landmarks I watched for repeat throughout the campus. 

It is a beautiful campus, but seems like it was designed by MC Escher with stairs everywhere that look identical. The balcony levels seems like the ground floor because it is all beautifully landscaped with olive trees, grass, bushes, and flowers. 

There is even a patch of sugar cane on the upper level. Each of the buildings has an atrium that opens up to the upper landscaped balcony. 

. 

A formula for healthy living that doesn't drive me nuts

Sometimes observational health studies differences in risk functionally are not very large. Dr. David Katz was on the America's Test Kitchen Podcast and cited this study, that had a large population - over 23,000 participants, over a relatively large period of time - 8 years, to show that an 80% reduction of risk for cancer, heart disease, and diabetes was due to four relatively simple things: 

1. No smoking,
2.  3.5 hours per week of exercise, 
3. A diet based on "high intake of fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain bread and low meat consumption", and 
4. Low body mass index.

Pubmed citation

Too often trying to understand what to eat is a minefield of fads, personal testimonials, advertising, and hype.

 He describes this in another article, "What REALLY Kills Us." as doing the right things with our hands, feet, and forks:

"In other words, the actual, underlying "cause" of premature death in our country fully eight times in 10 comes down to bad use of our feet (lack of physical activity), our forks (poor dietary choices), and/or our fingers (holding cigarettes).  (David Katz, 2013)"

The other component that he talked about that I agree with 100% is that people need to feel loved. We need social interaction that is meaningful. We need to feel like we we have family and friends. We need a social net to catch us when we fail, when we mourn, when we age, when we are sick.  I think this is why in the Book of Mormon the people pledged:

 8 And it came to pass that he said unto them: Behold, here are the waters of Mormon (for thus were they called) and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light;

 9 Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life— (Mosiah 18:8-9)

A healthy lifestyle and a healthy community I think is the secret to a long life over all.  Individual tragedy can be healed only with help from outside.  

Pasted from <https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9739005#editor/target=post;postID=8833046268776657418>

It's the little things.

As I was gearing up for this next trip to Abu Dhabi I was struck thinking about how much Huxley feels like home. I was washing my hands in the airport next to a very frustrated Muslim man trying to wash his feet so that he could do his evening prayers before getting on the plane. This place was so frustrating he told me. The last straw was the inconvenience of trying to wash feet in a lavatory sink. We have moved around quite a bit from Utah to Texas, Indiana and then Iowa. I was think those little things make the difference.

Some recent things that make Iowa even better. 

1. Date night - Emily has grown old enough to babysit the rest of the minions and we finally don't have an infant. This has made our lives so much better.  We aren't real inventive. Mostly we go out to eat. On date night we have found:

El Palomino in Des Moines.  Small Latino market with fresh masa, posole, menudo, bulk dried peppers, and cuajada!

Pamel market in Ames - schwarma, biryani, samosas, and gyros. Nice Turkish  family. 

The Ames movie theater. The dollar theater closed. They couldn't afford to upgrade to digital projectors. 

2.  Mr Quick's hardware store. It is nice to be able to stop in and get advice on how to do just about anything. 

3.  Mike and Lisa next door. I was feeling itch and lonely Super Bowl Sunday. I dropped in uninvited and was given a spot on the couch. 

4.  Our ward. We have been there long enough that the teens I taught in Sunday  school are on missions, or home from missions and getting married. 

5.  Farmers cheese at Fairway.  Everything fairway. I could write and ode to that store and one is opening in Huxley. 

6.  The owl in our tree. I haven't heard him recently but all winter long as I lay awake in Becca's room I listen to that owl. 

7. The bike trail. They made a trail out of the  old railway lines between Slater and Cambridge. It actually runs most of the way across the state but my/our section is the only part I have used. 

8. Ballard schools. I am proud of the good teachers, the band, that the middle school principal tells Kate that she brightens his day when she cuts through to use the bathroom. For some reason she won't go at her school but waits until she gets off the bus and then cuts through the middle school to do her business there. 

9.  Honey, eggs, beef, pork, gardens. We buy honey, beef, and pork from coworkers home farms. A woman in Kelly sells us eggs. It is more common to have a vegetable garden than not. 

10.  My kids think of Iowa as home. They have good friends without seemingly the pains I had as a kid trying to fit in and make friends. 

Back blogging

Emily's awesome self portrait. 

I have been thinking a lot in the last few weeks about what I have been doing online. Between work, email, Facebook, Studio C, Slate, google news, and the weather I have felt like the internet was shrinking. So I have been trying to expand what I do online and improve the quality of what I do. What do you use the internet for besides chasing links on Facebook. I have enough of that. 

Work in progress

Leila stripped off one layer of wallpaper only to uncover four more to go. I watched a number of YouTube videos that argues that hot water and a scraper would work as well as a steamer without all the mess. 

I went to Quick's Hardware and Mr Quick was skeptical. He told me that I would need the steamer and that he would see me at 8 AM to pick it up. He was so right. Again. He is the owner of the hardware store in Huxley,  It is a small hardware store, but with just about everything you could need.  Mr Quick takes great pride in his customer service and really isn't comfortable with people wandering through the aisles looking for stuff.  He knows where it is and is eager to tell you what to do.  I tried to by an oil primer once.  He was insistent that I really wanted the latex primer, but I was firm that I did not.  He had oil primer, but refused to sell it to me.  He told me I was welcome to buy it at Lowes, but he was not going to sell me a product I would regret using later.  I don't regret the oil primer, but I have learned that I can get a lot of great advice, fast service, and sometimes a discount if I go directly to him when I go into the store and tell him what I am trying to do.  

Such an improvement. The wallpaper came right off and it was less mess than hot water. That Mr. Quick was right again.

While my mom was here over Thanksgiving we were have having problems with the kitchen sink backing up, the toilet clogging, and then leaking at the base. The original plumbing looked like something at a waterpark with tight turns and dips.  I thought maybe it was plugged somewhere so took it apart.  Looking again on youtube I decided that maybe the problem was that the sink is not connected to the sewer vent.  Why it would stop working now after 20 years of no venting, I can't explain.  I showed this picture to Mr Quick and he found me all of the new pipes I would need, cut them approximately to size and showed me how to put it together on the counter along with advice on how to assemble it dry, mark it, cut to size and then glue together.  

 Here is the finished sink pipes, remarkable similar to his demonstration.

 This is harder to see, but the black cap on the PVC pipe is the vent that really did help the sink drain better.

For once, feeling like home repair is not impossible.  We also tackled the toilet problems.  Our downstairs toilet gets most of our use and has been clogging a lot recently.  I mean a lot.  Then it started to leak.  I tried to replace the gasket underneath with Emily late one night, but after a big clog, it started to leak again.  On Thanksgiving.  When my mom was here.  And friends from church.  So we went to talk to Mr Quick.  He had a new toilet in stock that he assured me would not have the problem.  He also had a reinforced toilet wax seal that was easier to install and wouldn't smoosh off or fall out of place for only two dollars more.  That Mr Quick was so right again.  

Now, I just need to finish the walls we stripped, redo the bathroom upstairs, take off the garage gutters and fix the wood in the corners, replace that last piece of siding, and then start the kitchen remodel.  Ugg.  Maybe I will go ask Mr. Quick about that. 

How transparent is the GMO regulatory approval process?

I posted this to Facebook today, but wanted to post it here as well. 

A student of a friend of mine recently asked me about the regulatory process around GMO's. She wanted to write about how the process should be more transparent. As part of my response I was excited to find that all of the regulatory documents and decisions have been compiled in a searchable database:

http://www.isaaa.org/gmapprovaldatabase/default.asp.

If you are interested in reading thousands of pages of regulatory approvals and environmental impact statements, they are actually available.

Too often this kind of thing feels like something from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This is from his exchange with demolition crew boss come to demolish his house to make way for a bypass.

“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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Finally getting back to normal

Fall hits like a hurricane for me.  Every year I think, I have it all together.  I have a good plan.  I can do this.  Then, reality hits.  Everything not related to corn harvest and data analysis gets shed, which means this blog, running, church callings, and anything fun or productive around the house.  I tried to stay home for a few hours while the kids were awake, but even they were neglected.  Leila really covered for me.  However, I am determined to get back to normal or better.

It has started to snow and winter is here, but I still have chores that need to be finished, now in the cold.

1. Insulate around the upstairs 
2. Replace siding by the kids bedroom. - should have that done Monday. 
3. Finish stripping wallpaper in computer room - I chafe against calling it the computer room and would rather call it the library, but the computer draws our attention in like a moth to flame and we don't notice the half removed wallpaper so much. 
4.  Repainting the hall.  
5. We ordered a door for the kitchen - that is an expensive upgrade, but the cold air slides through the current door all winter long.  
6. Make stuff in the workshop.  I don't have a clear plan, but I would like to re-upholster a chair and make some benches.  I really want to take some classes from this woodworking shop/museum that is near here.  They teach classes for 250, which includes materials and three days of instruction.  Anyone want to join me?