Dusting the cobwebs..

Figured it's been a while since I came here and dusted the cobwebs.. Caught up with a friend after almost 7 years and the very fact that she remembered my blog and told me she was reading it made me want to come back here and post something just to keep this space active.
I don't have much to say - except that life's going on well.
*Life is science is life.
*I drive, therefore I am.

*Looking forward to my fifth consecutive year at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions - the annual convention for cardiovascular researchers and cardiologists. I can't believe that I've been making it through for the last half a decade. The acceptance rate for the conference, I believe is 17% or so. Many thanks to my mentors and God for that.
*Happened to watch English-Vinglish yesterday. I liked the movie. The climatic speech had a couple of take home messages, at least for me, one of which was you got to help yourself first so others can help you.
*My prediction about the next nobel laureate seems to have come true - Dr. Shinya Yamanaka it is! Congrats Doc. I think your (postdoc's) work really did deserve the nobel.
* Proud of my sis who just completed her first half marathon on Sunday. I enjoy walking and hateee running and so I hope that some day I can complete the Susan G Komen 3 day - 60 mile walk for the cure of breast cancer. Ya my sis and I are diametrically opposite. It makes life more spicy!
* And while we are at it, I think the women in my life- my mom and my sister have played quite a huge role in what I am, the way I think and also what I do. It's not family day or anything, but just want to acknowledge their presence in my life.
* Got invited to be a speaker at a conference on experimental and clinical cardiology. I haven't accepted it, but I felt good because the disclaimer said.  - "You are receiving this email because of your eminence in the field of Cardiology." I know what I am in reality, but sentences like this do make you smile even though you know the truth of how good/bad you are.

And so with that, I'm gonna get back to reviewing the papers, grad students papers and thesis proposals that are piled up on my table. I need to dust the cobwebs out there...

Wooohooooooooo!

Am having an extremely good week. Thank you God for everything you're giving me!
Got the American Heart Association 2012 Western States Affiliate Postdoctoral fellowship Award/grant. It's my first ever grant to get funded.
I'm extremely excited and superrrrrrrrrr grateful for everything He's giving me. Mentors, projects, referents, Strength of mind, patience and of course results. This is the second time this is happening.. 2 awards in 2 days.. the last time this happened was Nov.
Jab Uparwala Deta Hai, Chappar Phadke Deta Hai!  
True that!! Thank you!

Finally the BCVS Travel Award! :)

Control Number:  183

Presentation Number: 51

Abstract Title:  Nucleostemin Induced by Pim-1 Kinase is Critical to Maintain Pluripotency and Enhance Regenerative Potential of Cardiac Progenitor Cells

Dear Dr. Hariharan,

On behalf of the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences, we are pleased to inform you that you have been selected to receive a BCVS 2012 Travel Award for Young Investigators for your abstract presentation during BCVS 2012.  As you know, the conference is scheduled for July 23-26, 2012, at the New Orleans Riverside Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana.  ....

...This award, which is meant to help defray travel costs to the conference, will consist of a check in the amount of $500 and will be presented to you at the conference.  We also will waive the conference registration fee. ....

...Because you will be recognized at the BCVS Council Dinner, you will also be provided with a complimentary ticket to this event. We ask that you make every effort to attend. ....

This Travel award has taken 5 years to win (of course all along I was targeting the Scientific sessions travel award). But still an award is an award. Thank you God for everything.. especially for such exceptionally good mentors and projects.

The Demi-Gods

What happens when 2 of your colleagues think they are Demi-Gods?? Not only do they think so, they are also treated so by some. They talk like they own the scientific world. I agree there is scientific rationale behind the questions they ask.. but somehow, some where the manner in which the questions are asked transcend from being just out of scientific curiosity to getting personal. When you're asked to critique a paper, is it okay for you to doubt and assume that the scientific credibility of the researcher is a whole load of crap?? And how does it fit if it's your own peer? Even as a neutral person watching this kinda treatment meted out from one 1 peer to the other, I'm getting weirdly uncomfortable. It's okay to give critical feedback, but it needs to be done in a professional manner. Yes, you're asking out of professional/scientific curiosity but it DOES get personal, if not to you, definitely to the researcher whose work you're beating the crap out of...
Professionalism.. that's what this whole thing lacks... my 2 cents..

In the UMDNJ news

How to write a paper without annoying the readers and driving them crazy

I am no expert in writing papers. I have not written too many of them either (just 8 in total, of which 2-3 were my writing). But I have read quite a few papers to know what is considered ABSOLUTELY annoying to the reader. A lot of scientists, when reviewing papers only look at the scientific content and the data. They don't care much about the writing. I on the other hand, care a LOT about the writing. The text of the paper. May be its because I'm too dumb to make sense of the figures directly without having to read through the text, but I think the text in the paper is an integral part. As an author you end up spending a LOT of money to publish your text.. also think of the trees getting chopped up to make paper to accommodate the text!! So my 2 cents is that an author needs to, and in fact most authors do, spend a LOT of time and energy "writing" and effectively communicating their findings to the scientific audience in a coherent manner.

We recently reviewed a paper for our journal club meeting and a colleague picked a very recent Cell - Stem cell paper for all of us to discuss. Before I go any further, for all of you "non-geeky" readers, if any, I must tell you that Cell - Stem Cell is a journal with one of the HIGHEST impact factors among life science related journals. It doesn't get any better or bigger than a Cell paper and getting it published there is extremely difficult. But this recent paper that I'm referring to was a piece of crap in terms of the writing. The first figure legend (for the non-geeks: it's the text at the bottom of the figure to tell the readers what the figure actually means, as in all the stuff about the type of cell used, the amount of drug/chemical/reagent added, the time, what the graph/picture shows and all that jazz goes in the figure legend) had 2 words in it. I'm not kidding. Figure legend 1A had 2 words "Colony size", with no explanation what so ever about what the colonies are, where they came from.. nothing!! I'm of the opinion that a figure legend needs to be so good that the reader needs to get most of the information about the experiment without having to read through the "Methods" section, or actually having to search through the entire paper for the explanation. But I did search through the paper since this was just figure 1 and I HAD to read through it entirely. And when I did search, I couldn't find it there. Later I figured that the explanation for figure 1A was after figure 3. Turns out that there were 3 authors who had apparently contributed equally to the paper, and my guess is they just sat and pasted each of their texts together and did not have anyone read through it. I have no idea what the PI (principal investigator) or other people in the lab did when they read the paper.. turns out the prof is quite big in the field which is probably why it got into Cell Stem Cell.
Anyways, I'm okay with authors getting confused with their drafts and accidentally using an older draft/version of the text while focusing on the figures entirely.. accidents happen...but seriously what were the REVIEWERS of the paper doing?? Did they only look at the name of the authors and the figures and absolutely ignore the text??? Did they not even skim through the text, if not read it word by word??? Do most reviewers do that?? I'm seriously wondering how stringent the review process is, especially with journals like Cell Stem cell. Totally drives me mad!

Mebbe I'm being too dramatic about this.. but I just think that when you're writing or doing something that other people will judge you for/about, you might as well put your heart and soul into it and do a great job and stop getting on people's nerves by communicating effectively and doing it the right way. And when you're asked to judge somebody else's work as a reviewer, please realize that it's your responsibility and your job to point out and clear up that somebody's crap before it goes into press and gets read by nitwits like me. That's the bottom line of this seemingly endless rant...

For my own future reference - the link from Circ Res with all the best papers in 2011.

http://circres.ahajournals.org/site/misc/circres_awards2011.xhtml

The plaques

I managed to click pics of the plaques and here they are.

The awards

American Heart Association Scientific Sessions,2011 will be memorable for me. Was blessed with 2 awards - One was the "Best Manuscript Award, 2011" from Circulation Research, which was awarded on Sunday, November 13 at the Peabody International. I knew about this a while back and I've already blogged about this. But quite unexpectedly and as a fortunate stroke of serendipity, another award was handed to us on Tuesday, November 15 at the Hard Rock Cafe. This one was the "Most Downloaded  Original Research Article from Circulation Research, 2011".
Was damnn thrilled to receive the 2 awards :) An amazingly ecstatic feeling..
Before I go any further, I HAVE TO pay my thanks to everyone who contributed to the paper - the collaborators for their mice, plasmids and reagents, Yasu - the post doc in Dr. Sadoshima's lab for helping me with the paper and most importantly to my mentor, Dr. Sadoshima himself. No amount of "Thank you"s will be sufficient for him and of course to God! Am putting up 2 pics of me getting the awards. I will click pics of the plaques separately and put it up here! Its a nice feeling.

Once nice thing about these pics is that I have both my mentors (past and present) standing next to me! Both pics aren't of the greatest resolution, but I waana put 'em up here for the memories they will carry for the rest of my life! The first one's from Sunday and the second one's from Tuesday!

A Million thanks to God for being extremely kind!

Just found this picture from the Circ Res Facebook page - Sunday's award -

4 years and still waiting..

Missed the travel award from AHA for the 4th year. Seems quite elusive this one.. Here's my saga with this award... I didn't apply for one in 2008, in my first year of submission at AHA when it was an oral ppt. In 2009, it was a poster - so dint get it. 2010, I had an oral ppt but it did not fit into the categories listed out by AHA. 2011- again a poster. The chances of getting the award while your abstract's selected for a poster ppt is very bleak.. I guess it's because of the scoring. Your abstract gets selected as an oral or poster presentation depending upon the score it gets, with oral being the higher of the two. It's obviously not the end of the world that I haven't gotten this.. I'm happy with the award I just recently received (Needless to say, infinite thanks and gratitude go out to the mentor).. But I really want to keep track of how long it's actually gonna take me to win the AHA travel award.. I don't know why.. but just want to. I remember a friend got it the very first year she applied, and I know of colleagues who have received it 2-3 times (although you're allowed to receive it only once).. but its still evading me. And I will wait to see if sometime in the future I can succeed in living up to my expectations wrt this award. Amen!

Best Mauscript Award

Found a mail from my mentor with a letter stating the following -

"Dear Dr. Hariharan and Dr. Sadoshima, 


 The Editors of Circulation Research are continuing a new initiative implemented two years ago, the annual Best Manuscript Awards, which is aimed at recognizing the most outstanding articles published in our journal. The presentation of the Best Manuscript Awards will take place at the annual Circulation Research editorial board dinner during the AHA Scientific Sessions 2011 in Orlando, Florida. 
Five papers will be recognized among all 219 original research articles published in Circulation Research from July 2010 to June 2011. We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript {Hariharan et al., Deacetylation of FoxO by Sirt1 Plays an Essential Role in Mediating Starvation-Induced Autophagy in Cardiac Myocytes. Circ Res. 2010;107:1470–1482} has been selected by the Editors as one of the five winners of our 2011 Best Manuscript Awards. Your article has met high standards of scientific excellence in terms of novelty, impact, and methodology; it has been widely read online following publication, and represents some of the very best work published in Circulation Research. 
We cordially invite you to attend the annual Circulation Research editorial board dinner, where the award will be presented to you. The dinner will take place at The Peabody Orlando on Sunday, November 13th at 8:00 PM (7:00 PM Reception). The favor of your response is greatly appreciated. 
Congratulations again for an outstanding article and for your contributions to Circulation Research. 


 Sincerely, 
Roberto Bolli, 
MD Editor-in-Chief Circulation Research, 
Journal of the American Heart Association" 

 Thank you God and Dr. Sadoshima for guiding me all through!

4th year!

Am a wee bit thrilled as I always am during this time of the year. Its another acceptance at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions. Happy that its the 4th year in a row. This year it will be a poster. So Orlando for the second time. Thank you God for all my mentors, past and present!
I obviously wish it were an oral, but considering I just started working on this project in April and submitted something in May and it got accepted.. I shd definitely be grateful!

Small pleasures in life

It feels great to walk into the lab early in the morning, open your inbox and find this in an email... " We are pleased to highlight these important articles from the latest issues ", followed by my paper! And finding this specially at a time when you're slogging your butt off, clocking in crazyy hours, being the first person to open the lab doors and the last one to lock it up for three back to back days. Life's worth it! :)

lifes the same.

Life as a post-doc a'int very different from a grad student's. You're still pushing yourself to work and get data. Data is just as precious now, as it used to be back when graduation heavily depended on it! You still spend hours in the lab slogging away with that western blot, trying to make sense of all the crap! But it's fun in it's own way. You still get paid pittance. The only difference I find - When I used to walk out of the lab at 11:30 in the night, I had to be watchful of crazy men ready to mug/gun u down in Newark, NJ. Now when I walk out of the lab at 11:30 PM in San Diego, I need to be mindful of some crazy scared animal in the open parking lot ready to spray you down with its stinky scent, because you invaded it's privacy by disturbing it in the night.
Such is life! Amen to that!

Back to the AHA grillmill.

Thrilled.. Yeayy!

My prof just sent me a congratulatory email for this -

"The editors of Circulation Research wish to congratulate you and your co-authors for having published one of the most downloaded articles in our journal. During October 2010, your Online First article, “Deacetylation of FoxO by Sirt1 Plays an Essential Role in Mediating Starvation-Induced Autophagy in Cardiac Myocytes,” was downloaded and viewed over 440 times, placing it in the top tier for the month.

Thank you for submitting this outstanding article and for your contribution to Circulation Research."

Yeayy! :)

The second one as first author

And there we go.. The first ever "Circulation Research" paper, my second one as first author. Yeayy!

"Dr."

:)
It's such a surreal feeling. It just doesn't sink in. It's soo hard to believe that it's happened and even harder to believe that it's probably gonna change your life forever. For me, my life feels just the same at this moment. In my head, I just think that it's not such a big deal..I felt I was more nervous, better prepared and FAR more excited when I completed my Qualifiers! But over 100 congratulatory notes in a few hours does make you feel special and reminds you of all the goodness in the world!
I feel extremeellllyy grateful to God for everything. Went and gave my thanks to the Dearest in Pomona. Lovee him.. Grown absolutelly attached since my first trip in Jan 2008.
And the evening I spent with my friends here in NJ. Laughed sooo hard that one of us really fell off the chair. :) (For a change, it wasn't me!)
A BEAUTIFUL day. Overwhelmingly grateful for everything and everyone. Thanks for this moment, for the people, for being there, for every Singlee thing.

First Author :)

And finally here is the first one as First Author. More coming soon. Keep going!

Ahaaa!

Finally! The AHA (American Heart Association- Scientific Sessions) results are out. AHA's Scientific Sessions is the annual International convention for cardiologists and cardiovascular Researchers. This year all 3 of my abstracts have been accepted. I'm happy about that. A good improvement over the years..
AHA 2008 - 1 oral
AHA 2009 - 2 posters
AHA 2010 - 3 accepted: 2 oral and 1 poster

November in Chicago! It's gonna be aweffullyy cold.. not looking forward to that. But still, its Chicago! :)

My views on a Review

Just finished writing my first ever review paper for a journal. Oh God.. I never realized writing a review will be soooo very difficult. It's SO MUCH MORE harder than writing your own research paper.
When you write a review, you have to read pretty much all the papers and be absolutely up-to-date with the literature. Usually if you read just one paper in a particular topic, then you are very likely to paraphrase/plagiarize what's written in it. And since that's a STRICTT NO-NO and considered highly unethical by the scientific community, you must read multiple papers in the topic just to broaden your perspective and to give you a clear understanding of the subject and matter. And then when you sit down to write after reading everything, you are so lost and confused that you need to start re-reading again! I had this problem a LOT. So for several days, I was glued to my laptop for hours at a stretch. And at the end of 4-5 hours of paper chasing and reading (and of course multi-tasking off and on.. ahem!)..I could finally write for less than a half hour before packing up for the day!
I always thought writing your own research paper was harder, especially when you have to make sense and beautifully package all those years of good and junk data! But this experience proved me wrong.
I'm satisfied with the outcome... mebbe because I haven't heard the prof's verdict and seen those red marks yet!! but still, a pretty tuff first-time experience its been for me!