Caltech Letters

In Chapter 4 of "Not My Thesis," Jane Panangaden explains the abstract world of pure math and the delights of exploring it, as well as her work advocating for tenants' rights in Pasadena. While dividing her time between writing proofs and legislation, Jane grapples with how we apply our skills, technical or otherwise, to bring a different world into existence. She asks us to consider: why do math?

You can find out more about the Pasadena Tenants Union, including the ordinance they wrote, here (http://pasadenatenantsunion.org/). Read about what the Socialists of Caltech are up to here (https://socialistsofcaltech.com/).

To learn more about the history of eugenics at Caltech, check out this Caltech Letters viewpoint article (https://caltechletters.org/viewpoints/rename-millikan). In recognition of this history, Caltech recently decided (https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-to-remove-the-names-of-robert-a-millikan-and-five-other-eugenics-proponents) to remove the names of some of the eugenicists from campus buildings. Hear Jane and others in conversation with the Caltech Archives in this (https://youtu.be/iHF6JEOLFVU?t=2287) video.

Find Not My Thesis on Caltech Letters or by searching for “Caltech Letters Podcasts” on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. The transcript is available here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/17JeOaGmMi286cnNx2m1Cz-uP4DT_WHAK/view?usp=sharing). You can contact us by emailing [email protected]. Music for this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions, and our logo is by Usha Lingappa. Find more Caltech Letters content at https://caltechletters.org/podcasts/.

In Chapter 3 of Not My Thesis, Mia de los Reyes discusses the galaxies lurking in the empty parts of space, the constraint of light, and how she’s helped expand the membership of the scientific community. Astronomy, Mia reminds us, may not always be useful. But it is certainly cool.

You can find more information about galaxies eating each other here (https://www.universetoday.com/108696/vampire-galaxy-sucks-star-forming-gas-from-its-neighbors/) and read about our collision with Andromeda here (https://www.space.com/15949-milkyway-galaxy-crash-andromeda-hubble.html).

If you want to hear Mia or her fellow astronomers amaze you even more with the wonders of the universe, check out Astronomy on Tap or other online events (https://www.astro.caltech.edu/outreach/). And if you are interested in making your scientific discipline more accepting, check out Mia’s write up on inclusivity (https://astrobites.org/2018/05/25/lgbtq-inclusivity-in-astronomy/).

To read about mental health in academia, see this Nature article (https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4089) or this Caltech Letters one (https://caltechletters.org/viewpoints/mental-health).

Caltech Letters has a number of articles by other astronomers. Check them out! (https://caltechletters.org/science/stellar-hello, https://caltechletters.org/science/chemical-archaeology, https://caltechletters.org/science/galaxy-simulation, https://caltechletters.org/science/the-cow)

Find Not My Thesis at https://caltechletters.org/podcasts/not-my-thesis/ or by searching for “Caltech Letters Podcasts” on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. You can contact us by emailing [email protected]. Music for this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions, and our logo is by Usha Lingappa. Find more Caltech Letters content at https://caltechletters.org/podcasts/.

How does evolution give rise to new features of living things? Mistakes drive the vast diversity of life on earth through mutations (random errors in the information carrying molecules of a cell). A core question of evolutionary biology is how hard it is to make useful, new biological components via these random mutations and natural selection. Joined by special guest Heidi Klumpe, Caltech graduate student and host of the Not My Thesis podcast (https://caltechletters.org/podcasts/not-my-thesis/), we explore cases where mutation gives new function shockingly easily (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04026-w), and others where success is harder to come by (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4476321/). If you are an insect, one change might give you legs where your antenna should be.

Heidi, Aditi, John, and Julian discuss how they deal with mistakes in professional settings and the disappointment and stress they can cause. Ever needed advice on how to handle a pipetting robot or the escape of a massive colony of vicious ants? We offer some tips, but mistakes may be a necessary, albeit painful, teacher.

Note: this episode was recorded prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, in October of 2019.

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***Cover image: Don't cry over spilled milk. Photo by Julian Wagner for Caltech Letters.

In the current pandemic, many normally harmless activities like grocery shopping are suddenly frightening. But is fear a necessary, or even good, function of our nervous system? Where does it originate from in the brain? Can we directly control emotions like fear, and what consequences would that have for the human experience? Tomás Aquino, a fellow Caltech grad student and neuroscientist friend, joins us this week to discuss these questions and the double-edged role of fear in the graduate school experience.

This episode was recorded before the pandemic began, so you will hear us all in a room together, but rest assured that right now we are all social-distancing. We could not have predicted how timely this topic would be or how much graver it is given current events. We wish you all the best and hope that this bit of interesting science gives you something fun to think about during such serious times.

For more neuroscience news and research from Tomás Aquino, check out his Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_technetium

In the episode we discuss how scientists manipulate aggression through the hypothalamus in mice using an advanced technique called optogenetics. For more details about optogenetics, and viruses like modified rabies that Tomás mentioned, check out this article in Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/optogenetics-controlling/

We also discuss the peculiar case of a patient who does not experience fear in her life due to a missing amygdala (for privacy, the patient’s name is abbreviated as just S.M.) For more on this patient, check out this article in Discover Magazine: https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/meet-the-woman-without-fear

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***Cover image: The Scream by Edvard Munch, one of the most famous artistic depictions of fear. Did Munch have the amygdala in mind? (bad pun intended) Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Scream.jpg (public domain)

As the world grapples with an ongoing pandemic and billions face financial uncertainty to a higher degree than ever before, it’s easy to feel like the rug’s been pulled out from under us. But as we face our own fragility, we can also remember that life itself emerged in an early Earth that was unstable and inhospitable, and it thrived.

Lev, Julian, John, and Aditi discuss just a couple of the hotly-contested questions around the emergence of life on Earth. What came first? Our genetic code (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26876/, https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/05/09/what-is-the-rna-world-hypothesis/#693811e73ac3 ) or our metabolic processes (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-simpler-origin-for-life/, https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-origin-of-life)? We also ask each other how we adapted to the new challenges and uncertainties of graduate school, not unlike the way life evolved throughout earth’s history.

On a personal note, we want to send our best wishes to everyone during these trying times. Stay safe, stay healthy, and if you are a healthcare worker, grocery store employee, bank teller, custodian, or anyone else showing us just what it means to perform an “essential service”, you have our profound gratitude.

For a great summary of the theories surrounding the emergence of life on Earth, check out this article (https://caltechletters.org/science/living-universe) from Caltech Letters by Caltech undergraduate alumna Elise Cutts.

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***Cover image: An artist’s depiction of early Earth, when life first began to emerge. Credit: The Archaen World, Peter Sawyer, Smithsonian Institution

Scientific impact can take many forms. Sometimes a highly-cited paper influences the most people, sometimes it’s a nifty website, and sometimes it can be just a few words of kindness.

In Chapter 2 of Not My Thesis, Shyam Saladi talks about everything from meticulous models of biological molecules to an automated service which literally changes the way we see our science. Reflecting on his work, he provides insight into what meaningful science is.

You can find Shyam’s paper on modeling membrane protein gene expression here (https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.RA117.001052), and learn more about the JetFighter here (https://elifesciences.org/labs/c2292989/jetfighter-towards-figure-accuracy-and-accessibility).

Find Not My Thesis on Caltech Letters or by searching for “Caltech Letters Podcasts” on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. You can contact us by emailing [email protected]. Music for this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions, and our logo is by Usha Lingappa. Find more Caltech Letters content at https://caltechletters.org/podcasts/.

In this episode, we talk about Assimilation, both in the case of a very clever sea creature and in the case of academia--that mysterious college and university setting where so many scientists strive to do their science. For this topic, we are joined by a special guest, Sarah MacAnulty (@SarahMackAttack), who does very important work in promoting science communication through Skype-A-Scientist (https://skypeascientist.com) and amplifying women’s voices in science. Be prepared to hear about the uglier side of academia. A powerful report analyzing career outcomes by gender, one of the issues discussed in this episode, can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1914221117

It’s usually pretty easy to tell apart plants and animals. For example, animals run around looking for food, while plants stick around in one place and photosynthesize, getting energy from the Sun. No animal can make chloroplasts, the cellular structure that plants and algae use to photosynthesize. But a rare few animals are able to steal chloroplasts from algae and use them for their own devices. For more information on this topic and more examples of creatures stealing cellular components from each other, you can take a look here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptoplasty). To dive more deeply into the case of the crafty sea slugs we discuss, you can start here (https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.046540).

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***Cover image: There is a reason why this image resembles a leaf--it’s the underbelly of a sea slug that has gorged itself upon the chloroplasts of many algae! Modified from a figure in this paper (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0097477, Pelletreau et al. 2014), which is distributed with a CC BY 4.0 license.

It’s easy to think of socially rich cultures as a uniquely human phenomenon. However, even animals with much smaller brains exhibit culture all their own! We discuss what this looks like in macaques (monkeys) (https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/1997/12/10/monkey-culture/7d0918a9-22da-4e06-92b7-e9546789fe69/) and birds (http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC4344839&blobtype=pdf) before tackling the real kicker: culture in fruit flies (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat1590). As a fun aside, sleeping in is a cultural trait in meerkats (https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.0611)! How does evolution and a universal need to fit in contribute to building these cultures? Tune in to find out!

Aditi, John, Julian, and Lev also discuss how fitting in and academic lab culture influenced how they picked their research group for graduate school.

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***Cover image: A cultured fly. Watercolor by Julian Wagner for Caltech Letters.

Answering an unanswered research question is a struggle. You do not know what the solution is, what it might look like, or if it even exists.

In Chapter 1 of Not My Thesis, Tal Einav talks about his particular version of this struggle, when building mathematical models to predict the unpredictable behavior of antibodies binding viruses or of enzymes binding DNA. Building a model that predicts complex data is easy; rather, the challenge is finding a model that uses a few simple ideas to (mostly) predict complex data. He explains how he unexpectedly finds the struggle to be the most productive part of discovery and how that informs his approach to teaching (https://magazine.caltech.edu/post/socaltech-tal-einav).

You can find his paper on RNA polymerase here (https://www.pnas.org/content/116/27/13340.short) and HIV (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405471219303151) here. He is currently a post-doctoral scholar at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

You can contact us by emailing [email protected]. Music for this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions, and our logo is by Usha Lingappa. Find more Caltech Letters content at https://caltechletters.org/podcasts/.

Not My Thesis is a podcast that explores the unpublished parts of the scientific process. We interview graduate students at Caltech about what their thesis is, but also what their thesis is not. We want to understand not just what they do, but how they do it, why they do it, and how the other parts of their life all feed into their passion for science. Join us as we seek to understand science via the hearts and minds creating it.

You can contact us by emailing [email protected]. Music for this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions, and our artwork is by Usha Lingappa. Find more Caltech Letters content at https://caltechletters.org/podcasts/.