The Oct 28, 2005, Science News Focus reported a glass ceiling phenomenon for Asian scientists. Kuan-Teh Jeang from NIH and Neuroscientist Yi Rao from the Northwestern University presented solid evidence suggesting that Asian scientists were discriminated at the leader level in biology science community. The community responded their comments quickly and positively. However, there was criticism about Jeang and Rao’s conclusion. Among them, refutation from Xie Yu and Pike were typical examples of bullshitting–trying to confuse readers instead of enlighten them.

Discrimination has two meanings: perceived discrimination and real discrimination. What Xie said was that because he (and some others) didn’t feel discrimination, the discrimination didn’t exist. When confronted with statistics, he dismissed the statistics by saying that “statistics” was sort of “nothing,” and not enough evidence “…to reach a conclusion one way or the other.” This falls into a refutation strategy—dismiss the whole thing as a mess. Instead of carefully examining the evidence, or providing other evidence, he waved his hands. How could he comment like that? He is a sociologist and a statistician. Didn’t others give him comments like “statistics” means “nothing” for his female scientist research? How did he response to this kind of question? Didn’t he know that individual’s own experience can’t represent the population’s experience? Xie’s unprofessional comments definitely disappointed me.

Pike and others pointed out that culture and language barriers might hinder the advancement of Asian scientists, which might be true. However, these comments were trying to divert the foci of the problem, which is another refutation strategy—providing some alternative interpretations that are impossible verified.

There are two things here: are these barriers making Asian scientists difficult to be promoted, or are Asian people innately unwilling to be leaders? It is unlikely to be the latter. It is more likely that because of the barriers, Asian people find difficult to communicate with others and lost interest to move forward. It is also likely that others are rejecting Asian people because of those barriers. This is discrimination.

The discrimination does exist, and Yi Rao’s statistics are evidence. If Yu Xie and others want to refute Rao’s conclusion, why don’t they provide their own statistics? Be professional.

目前禽流感的几点有效的防治措施

现在禽流感感染人类的病例数已经达１２１例，光今年就有７７例。美国和发达国家的人特别恐慌，好像世界末日就要来了。其实部分是媒体，部分是政客夸张的结果。

有一个关键，就是到目前为止，禽流感病毒还不能人传人（ＣＤＣ怀疑有人传人，但是尚未确认）。这说明病毒的变异还是处于自发的随机状态。还没有能够和人／猪病毒交叉。至于病毒自己变异成能传染人并且还人传人，病毒需要变异至少两处基因中的某些部位。如果没有导向，这样的变异其实概率还是非常非常小。

现在病例数的增加有两种可能：１）流感监测机构在疫源区的建立和完善；２）病毒变异的量和速度的增加。　

对第一点很容易理解。查得紧了病人就容易发现，病毒就容易确诊。毕竟病毒检测还是需要设备（虽然便宜）和人力。柯南提出我们会不会错过最有效的早期防止窗 口。偶认为这可能性有，因为这病毒确认需要１～２周。但是由于监测网的存在，在流感爆发期对禽流感病人的确认可以采用ＳＡＲＳ处理方法，根据症状对疑似病 人全部隔离，这种“宁可错杀一千也不放走一个”的措施是非常有效的。

现在ＷＨＯ在做的就是建立监测网，把流行消灭在摇篮中。美国政客整天光哼哼，不肯拨钱支援东南亚和中国。

对于第二点，这是最麻烦的。有一种可能是现在禽流感在禽内全球爆发，病毒量多范围广了，即使是禽病毒变异到人感病毒的极小概率事件也会出现很多。会不会病毒自发地变异成类似１９１８年毒性的病毒？或者人禽病毒交叉？这些都是有可能。但是因为一次成功变异就足够造成全球大流行，所以全世界的卫生组织都非常重视。

要防止第二点，就必须扑灭禽流感在禽内地流行。现在国内就做得非常好。动用大量的人力物力给鸡鸭打疫苗。这是真正的一级预防。中国到目前为止还没有人感的禽流感，部分功劳是因为这措施。

ＷＨＯ现在重点也在这个。所以从流感防止的角度上讲，中国和东南亚在ＷＨＯ的指导下搞得预防措施是正确的，也是目前最有效的。

至于准备人类疫苗，抗病毒药物等，这当然是必须的。准备充分的疫苗生产能力和相应的应急机制是目前各个国家首位任务。但是大范围在人群中用这些来预防禽流感是非常可笑的。一是覆盖面根本达不到群体免疫（herd immunity)的效果，另外药物的副作用可能造成的危害更大。

人类对未知事物有一种恐惧。ＳＡＲＳ我们没能够预测，禽流感进入人类也是不可预测的。类似１９１８年级别的流感大流行是可能的。

It is so amazing. Yesterday, I ran 5.33 miles. Think about it: 5.33 miles is 8,500m. I never ran this long distance before. The longest distance I did during my heydays (that is, college days) was 3km. If it was not for PE exam, I probably never tried 3km.

Yesterday evening before dinner (that was a mistake, I was starved to death after the exercise), I went to gym as I had promised to my wife. I first did an aerobic training program for 20 min, which was about 2 miles. Since I have done a 3 mile program a few days ago (which by itself is amazing too because it is about 5km and already more than I had ever done before), I switched to the 5k program just to see how that program is set up. Kind of by instinct, I started to run.

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Last week I was troubled by a treacherous simulation problem. The problem was set up as a slow convergence example and was to demonstrate some techniques to improve its convergence. But the wicked part of the problem was that the instructor had overdone the setup so that it seemed to never converge, partly due to his own mistake in his code.

In fact, after I fixed instructor’s bug, the revised program never converged (at least in a manageable time). The simulation kept on running 24/7 on my two laptops. My heart sunk with the constant fan noise. This was not good.

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I have been watching Rachael Ray’s 30 minutes food show for years. I am not a crazy fan though I do like her presentation style. What attracts me most is not her beauty but her magic and pleasant smile. You see, as in the picture, when she smiles, her big mouth stretches your nerves. In the show, when she talks, her not-so-sweet voice is bright and sexy. Her gesture and every movement invigorate you.

Rachael is a chef with no formal training. She grew up in a middle class family but is full of ambition. Her success seems both determined and accidental: working in food industry because her mother once owned a restaurant; teaching food preparation methods because she was working in a food store; doing food shows in a local TV station because somebody heard her talk in radio; and miraculously moving up to the national Food Network because the representative liked her presentation style. And the way she presents, I believe, is the secret of her success—always being pleasant, accommodating, and aggressive.

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Although the consensus on overweight definition is body mass index (BMI: computed as weight/height2) >= 25 kg/m2, the criteria for Asian people may be different.

A new proposal suggested that for Asian people, BMI >= 23.0 Kg/m2 would be an appropriate cut-off for overweight. Furthermore, the more physiologically hazardous central obesity is defined as waist circumference >=90 cm for men and >=80 for women, while among white population, the cut-off points are 102 cm for men and 88 cm for men.

The ethnically defined criteria are by no means to differentiate people. Instead, they are more appropriate to measure the obesity and to compare the obesity prevalence among populations. The new criteria are based on physiological effects of body fatness. For example, given the same BMI, Asian people have more percent of body fat than Whites.

So what’s next?

Exercise and control your diet to increase your energy expenditure and reduce energy intake. No other solution.

In the yesterday’s JAMA (and captured by today’s new media), cardiologists from Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, called for revoking the approval of a new diabetes drug–Pargluva® (muraglitazar), a dual alpha/gamma PPAR agonist.

PPAR, the abbreviation for peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor, has been extensively examined in biomedicine. PPAR gene is an upstream gene family including alpha, gamma and delta. Through various ways, PPAR can activate fat storage in adipose tissue, stimulate fat oxidation (burning fat) in muscles, and other fat related activities. In short, PPAR genes are thrifty genes which facilitate fat utilization and storage, thus reducing free fatty acids in the blood, increasing insulin sensitivity, and improving lipid profile. They are fine tuned by our millions of years of evolution.

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This year’s Nobel Prize for economics went to two Game theorists: Robert J. Aumann of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Thomas C. Schelling of the University of Maryland. It is a bit of surprising because the 1994 Prize also went to John Nash and the other two game guys.

These two economists are kind of weirdoes. Mr. Aumann has been an ardent supporter for intelligent design and bible code cracking. He has helped his colleagues write bible coding papers for statistical science. He is a seriously religious person. Maybe he views himself as a Rabbi.

The Mr. Schelling is an applied person who translates mathematics to daily language. For this, he should be applauded. However, in today’s WSJ:

In his 1991 presidential address to the American Economics Association, Mr. Schelling, always the iconoclast, pointed out that even if the earth warmed by as much as 4.5 degrees Centigrade (climatologists now think it will be less), the effect on developed countries would hardly be noticeable and might be good: He pointed out that when people retire, they typically move to warmer climates. Although the effects on poor countries would be more serious, he noted, compensating them would be cheaper than investing $200 billion a year ($300 billion in today’s dollars) to slow global warming.

Is this view weird? Yes, it is true that most developed countries will benefit from global warming because they are in northern cold areas (forget about Australian). How about the tremendous cost of submerged cities such as New York?

Guangdong province (Canton), China, is a beautiful place: lots of water, quite some green trees, numerous rice plots, and very hot. People have been living there for eons. But for many modern western people, Guangdong is known because of its neighbor– Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a nice (and rich) place too. But these days, Hong Kong is denigrated (again) by a vicious word—flu.

There are many different types of flu viruses–H1N1, H3N2, H5N1, and so forth, all named after their respecting hemagglutinin [HA] and neuraminidase[NA]. But one troubling thing is that they are also associated with lots of Chinese names: Hong Kong 111, Fujian 222, Guangzhou 333 etc.. Imagine that you hear the news paper reports “this winter we will have a deadly Fujian 222 virus,” it sounds like we Chinese somehow spread the virus to the world. What a bummer!

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I pick a dish from a tree
I think it isn’t funny
And I throw it at a bunny
And the bunny throws back to me