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This week I felt like my future biomedical research career was as strong as the dandelion fluffs. Just a focused and fierce blow of wind (like the terminations of funding in NIH) would be enough to throw the pieces apart. This made me read about the anatomy of a dandelion. Pappus is the name of the white fluffy seed head that forms after flowering. Pappus acts like a paracute and helps the seeds land after the strong wind. In the dandelion’s case the story of being blown away is a story of a rebirth. My son had his first winter gala this week. They acted out the words of the song: “--Do you wanna build a snowman? It does not have to be a snowman. Okay bye.” As cute and cuddly this screenplay is, at the same time made me recreate it “Do you want to build future therapies? We could even use AI to search”. My husband told me he learned about a very intriguing fact today. Prophet Jesus’s mom is Mary, right? Mary’s mother’s name was Anna and her sister was Elsa (Elisa). That is quite a knowledge for me. Apparently, Elsa --in the movie-- has superpower of making and shaping ice. But initially she thinks of this a dangerous defect. Only after she hides in her mountain top, she lets go of her powers to enjoy freedom at the cost of being lonely. That is another type of rebirth, in a way. At this point, I could not stop thinking: “What is Elsa gonna eat in the ice castle, where would she sleep?” Apparently she was not bothered by the cold, but as a human body you cannot go too long with slushes. There are several needs of a human being which can be staggered on the Maslow’s triangle . According to this ranking system, after survival needs, the most basic is safety and security. You can think of it as “safe and not eaten by bears”. You can also think about some sort of job security and confidence in your financial situation. Not being afraid of homeless soon is the most basic need of a human being. Recent changes in NIH definitely shattered some ground under our feet, like the 2.8 earthquake or a turbulence on the airplane. Things you have never considered before become part of a future illusion. The next most important human need is belonging , feeling part of, included. As we watch the news drop, initial reaction is about — funding — and it is not becuase we are “unsenstivie to DEI”. Obviously that is a big part of harmonizing together as a society. Exclusion, isolation and being separated has huge detrimental psychological effects on people. Polarization also comes into play here, only to disrupt the society further and draw people apart. What is pretty scary about this story is that, it is not silly or unimaginable now. I almost imagine it like there is an “avalanche falling” and we are just watching it pass by. Going back to dandelion, waiting for an avalanche, maybe we should stand up straight and wait for it. It might turn us into frozen and stronger dandelions -- if we stand up to it. What are your thoughts on human needs, security and belonging in a society? How stable or strong does your future career feel?

Writing a blog feels like pouring from my mental cup— once it’s full and overflowing. That is if my mental cup is not full, it is more difficult to write. I try to collect experiences, memories, senses to build a ‘body’ out of all these. And once my mental cup is overflowing, it needs to pour in an eye pleasing way. This imagination made me think of the song: River flows in you . If you have never listened to it, you should listen to it now. The melody brings me to the rivers that actually flow in me. Inside my blood vessels.   I imagine a red blood cell, tasked with carrying oxygen to bodily tissues. As the RBC navigates the narrow capillaries, it delivers oxygen to help tissues survive via oxidative phosphorylation. Think of this as —not oxygen burning the food you have digested to make ATP for you— but rather "Oxygen" giving a welcoming hug to 'energy deprived' electrons in the electron transport chain. Guess what this kindness creates—water. Our blood is 55% plasma. As a thick and responsible river, it continues to flow in you. RBC returns back to heart, to be deployed for recharging in the lungs. As we fill in and inflate our lungs, oxygen gets attracted to the heme on the hemoglobin, in RBCs — which also makes them red. Now recharged and ready for a new adventure, RBC continues to flow with a new pitch in the melody.  Once I had imagined to study the lymphatic vasculature and the smooth muscle cells around them. Similar to pulsatile movements in striated muscles, lymphatic vessels also pulse and return bodily fluids back to circulation. The idea of discovering unknown physiology and cellular relationships using scRNA sequencing data really attracted me to learn genomic data science skills that I was hoping to master. I had to swing towards more of the biostatistics rather than the bioinformatics, and I can only think there must have been a reason for it.  My learning journey for omics analysis had a “first” this week. I found myself singing: “For the first time in forever,  I got a hard time installing packages For the first time in forever, Need to make R speak to fortran and java, Going back and forth I am somewhere in betweeeeen. MetaboanalystR, I will figure you out, one day!” My son had his 4 years' shots, he has been walking in what he calls “slow motion” :) I taught him a song to feel competent to wear his pants and socks himself:  I am very smart I can do everything  I can use my brain I can do everything Once he accomplishes the task, he turns around and says, “Mommy, I used my brain”. I wonder why I did not teach a similar song to my girls. My middle daughter was struggling with rounding numbers. We opened chat gpt, asked it to help her learn the method. As patient of a teacher it is, disappointing to see that it was making mistakes in basic algebra. Maybe we should consider deepseek like many others these days.  I had my guilty pleasure of reading before I went to bed, instead of creating more figures. One thing I noticed in the “ Keeper of Happy Endings ” was that, all it takes for a woman to fall in love with a man is to see his “kindness”. To see that he would care for her. The romance is pictured in such an aesthetically pleasing way, you can feel the kindness in between the words and the lines. More than the romance, the deep personalities and back and forth of the story to fill in more gaps as it evolves are the hooks. I am now going to go back to my IHC, singing my son’s song in my head. Are there any songs that you find satisfies your cerebellum with aesthetic pleasure, keep rocking your head to the tune? What are some thoughts they bring?

Yesterday we had 30 high school students visit us for a “lab tour”. They were so young and curious. We made an agarose gel together and practiced pipetting. Their eyes were sparkling when I told them “They slayed the experiment like the kings and queens” My daughter had some difficulty with the measurement subject. There is a ruler and a car, and she needs to measure. We had big disagreements. Then I suggested that she practices with ChatGPT. It went perfectly! They became “Besties” very quickly and you should have seen the capitalized —“YOU GOT THIS!!! SLAY QUEEEEEN!!! ” — messages full of emojis, from ChatGPT. It is amazing that it adopts so quickly to whomever is using it at that time. This week we heard the good news that my older daughter got into Moody, from the waiting list. She was number 33. As a celebration, we spent part of our evening dancing together to “freeze dance, gummy bear, raining tacos ” songs. When I was her age, I also got into Antalya Anatolian Middle School from the waitlist on the last day. But not all days were equal. She also had to internalize what costed her from one simple misunderstanding. Was it a joke? Was it real? How can we be more emotionally wise and alert? I have my own threshold for “losing it” and that costs me in some type of currency. Today’s loss was in messing up my diet. Having experienced this again and again, how can I become a better me tomorrow? What is stopping me from becoming the person I want to be? James Clear wrote: ~if you cannot do the due diligence to get to your goal, maybe you do not want it for real. Just release the desire. “Goal vs obsession” was another topic I thought of. Maybe I made bioinformatics and genomics analysis an obsession for myself. I feel this skill will make me very powerful. But I do not have the resources. I started a new youtube playlist called Bioinformatics with Dr. VDB . He is live coding and has some music in the background. It will take time but I will need to practice one by one. This week I am reading " Emperor of all Maladies " from Siddhatha Mukherjee. This is a very thick book about the history of cancer and cancer therapies. It is very readable and full of stories. I was telling the stories to my mom and she insisted “What happened next?” There were many historical mistakes that caused people to have cancer and could have been prevented. This makes me think what are the mistakes we are making now and not aware of. We had some discussion with my kids about ultra processed diets and how they can make cancer worse — even if you eat them as a child. They were so frightened and ate 6 apples and 5 oranges to revert back to healthy eating and cleansing. My son enjoys the “ What happens when you eat? ” flip book, which reminds me the “ inside the body cartoon ” from my childhood. Vitamin C is checking on an RBC with a stethoscope and the RBC is smiling. When there is too much sugar, then RBCs are upset. It is more of a responsibility for us than for them. The knowledge is there, the motivation is there. The desire is there. What is stopping me from becoming a better mom in serving them healthier foods? I cannot afford to release this desire. What I can afford is to aim for “good enough”. Maybe if they had eggs and cucumber for breakfast, they can have a snack and that will be “good enough”. I can stick to my diet 90% of the time and slip off sometime. That should still be “good enough”. Do you agree with me that we should stop beating ourselves for perfection? Let’s embrace— good enough— and release the guilt and tension. Let’s hold onto the desires—keep crawling—and hope that we will get there one day!

I found myself questioning today. I was watching lecture-youtube videos on Mantel Hansen odds ratio and Cochran- somebody something test. What am I doing with my life?  Clearly, I was not cut out for formulas and advanced math. I am grateful at least up until now I was not drown in it. Where did the genomics aspect go? Do I need to learn them all by myself? I found another kind lady’s youtube playlist Bioinformatics 101 . I will stick to hers for a while, she does not have background music and her font is bigger. Today I noticed I could not read detailed labels on the ppt slideshow on the screen. Oh boy, I am getting old. Well the vials of retinol and vitamin C was telling me that as well.  When I was a kid, I used to go to my dad’s printing office to help in the summers. This place was a 3 story production company with all sorts of printing machines. Yes we also had the one where you line up metal letters one by one in inverse order. My dad founded the company with a friend he met, when we moved to Antalya, only because they were both from Konya. Initially the company was in good condition and growing, even had a jingle in radio. Until one day, his co-founder just left and founded a new place. My dad himself was not a printer and he was mostly on the graphic design part. He has a natural talent for machines but not enough to make the whole business run. Especially when things got tougher every day.  I remember working on the offset with my hands colored here and there. Adding paint to rollers, tiny blobs at a time and let it smear all over the roll. There were times I made mistakes and my dad would open his eyes wide. Not because he was scared of things, several times he gave me a ride in the back of his Kawasaki (or whatever sports motor) to dangerously speed up. I remember closing my eyes and screaming at my highest pitch. He liked taking risks, which also meant losing "a lot" in the stocks. The most dangerous machine obviously was the "paper cutter". It is like a guillotine that has no mercy. It required you to press two buttons at the same time to make sure the papers are clear of hands. I remember other workers push a pencil into one of the buttons and then still try to use their hands to stabilize the stack of papers. Not sure how that happened, one day my dad also got part of his thumb chopped on the cutter as well.  When the printing office was going down sharply, my dad had ideas to rescue it. He tried to make a facial tissue folding machine. -- He was good at making machines even though he did not even finish high school. Once he made a "roll-sticker" machine from scratch. That would print a bee image onto yellow circle stickers to be put on cherry tomatoes. -- This new machine would rotate a huge roll of facial tissue and then fold it and make perforations. Back then if you bought gas from a station they would give a free box of facial tissues to keep in your car, with the name of the gas station as an advertisement.  The facial tissue folding machine proved to be a very difficult project. We all had to come in and help since there were no more employees left. My mom would put folded papers into boxes. The boxes themselves also needed hand folding and gluing.  It is not hard to guess what happened next, we had to close the business. My dad also had a loong time to process what happened. He is a very smart person with an extraordinary brain. Just not cut out for running a business.  I wonder if he had his episodes of thinking “what should I do with my life?”. He had 4 kids to feed, which -- at the end of the day -- forced him to push by working abroad in Dubai as a construction worker, working as an employee for another printing company, doing repairs, delivering packages etc until miraculously retiring later on. One thing he said many times when we went on walks together was “these days are the best days of our lives”.  I notice big changes in federal work structure and employment opportunities. Many people might find themselves asking the same question: “What should I do with my life?”. This is an essential and painfully sharp question. I also notice more polarization and more hatred, among these news.  Sometimes there is little control over how the river will flow. No matter how much we want to contain it, the bed shifts and it finds its peaceful new route. Rather than consuming my brain by questioning, maybe I should start observing. I could pull myself outside the situation up up up above like a bird. Observe how the river is flowing, the bright sparkles and bubbles it makes as it hits the rocks. Was that a fish that just jumped? An orange fish?  I think I know what I should do with my life. “Enjoy it”. I should enjoy it deeply and acknowledge that there will not be a repeat of this very moment. Without knowing what the future holds, I should enjoy it thinking that these are the best days of my life.

I like stories where I get to know each of the “threads” first and then I notice how they wrap around each other to make an elegant braid. But the most amazing part is how the story again untangles to reveal the original threads. This week, we had hesitations about buying a new Dyson. Our v10 has been broken and not fixable for several weeks now, but the concept of buying a new one still felt not justifiable .  A close friend of mine mentioned that she is trying to be “ minimalistic ”. I find myself far from being one. Yet the urge for minimalism or guilt of being far from it sinks heavily. What does it mean to be “satisfied”? If you ask a neuroscientist, you might hear about certain parts in the brain being stimulated. When I was teaching action potential at WM, this stimulation was described merely as opening & closing of voltage gated ion channels. Ions flooding in, pumps working to revert it back. Pretty disappointing, right? What is it that is making me unsatisfied and thus requires the movement of ions across a cell membrane? I used to work with an American dietician and she told me that I have “Disordered Eating” problem. I think she is correct. Why would I need repeated opening and closing of same channels by eating 4 bars of chocolate? I remember hearing my boss complain about people not sensing that they are full: ‘They would not need to eat 4 hamburgers to be full and something is broken’. Now that I work with my Turkish dietician, diverging from my plan and eating chocolate feels like a sin. I find my confessions to be like confessing my sins.  We ordered the new Dyson, which almost felt like an innocent sin. On top of that I also asked for a 34 inch curved screen for my home study. Well, that feels far from minimalistic and bigger as a sin. It is as heavy as the curse of rotten bananas.  The ones that I need to make them “ disappear ” time to time. I can put some of the other type of leftovers  in the backyard for squirrels . But rotten bananas — they have little chance. They wait in the freezer to be made into a banana bread. Even if they become a banana bread, there is again not much chance to be consumed by humans in our house.    Yesterday, we had the big event of this week, which was the “Super Bowl”. As you might guess, I have no clue and I did not watch. I tried to make sense of why people are “ satisfied ” or “ unsatisfied ” with the half time show, with the advertisements, with the game. I must be culturally incompetent to even understand the discussion — but I tried. I felt like I was going down a rabbit hole, looking for rabbits. Came out like “Where are the rabbits?” The balance of minimalistic and wasteful should hover somewhere in between: “well taken care of”. I noticed in the backyard, at the left corner, our fences grew bright green mold . In this case, they were ignored to get in bad shape. Balancing our attention to navigate the needs of our environment and fight out false=made up needs of cursed brains is like surfing in a cavalier outfit. You would need to focus attention on real deficit.  Tomorrow, we will have one more snow day. I am hoping to get some work done on my magnificent curved screen, minimizing my time  getting lost in rabbit holes that I do not belong, and focusing on deficits in my diet plan to have an earned day. I will have to feed to browning bananas to the kids, on a pancake with some maple syrup. That should do it.

My daughter is starting middle school next year. When I was in middle school, our discussions centered around “relativity of perceptions, and the possibility that we all were imaginary shapes and sounds in another’s world”. Yesterday we were coloring wooden bee hives with my son. He wanted to make the bees and the hive yellow. I added some black lines onto the bees. Then he smothered the black all over with his brush. The yellow was no longer a yellow.  There is a similar analogy of how each sin (you can think of this either religiously or something against your values) creates a black spot in your heart, which is as white as a sheet of paper. You can erase it by swearing not to do it again. But would the heart with many erased black dots ever be as clean and neat as a heart that was never spotted? I downloaded an app called “Days Since”. I am going to use it to wear myself off of my addiction to chocolates and junk foods. The motivation was a story I read in “Emperor of All Maladies” book by Siddhartha Mukherjee. The discovery of anesthetic and analgesic drugs was difficult for some of the physicians themselves. Around 1884 Dr Halsted learned about the anesthetic 'cocaine' in Germany. To test if the drug works he injected himself. He noticed that it was far from numbness -- but an energized state which allowed him to be clearer & untired for a long time. Over the years, the addiction persisted and got worse. Here is the key part. “With heroic self-denial and discipline” he transitioned to morphine from cocaine. He remained deeply addicted to morphine as he moved to Johns Hopkins and built a new surgical department while staying “astonishingly productive”. The story has multiple implications for me. First is that I need to accept my addictions. Second I need to be aware in such a level to be able to control it. Third is that it is possible to undo it.   This post somehow contradicts my last post where I belittled the action potential and how opening and closing of ion channels is not very impressive. In this case, we see that it is actually a life changer. When I was reading “Fight Right” I was surprised to see out of 3 types of people to not have a relationship, one was with “medical addiction problem and refusing to seek treatment”. At one point, my younger sister was married to one. If I had read this book beforehand, I could have been more supportive. The second type is where the dreams have no intersection in a Venn diagram: for example one wants to have a kid, the other one never ever. This was problem #2 in my sister’s marriage as well. The third one is domestic violence that became part of the character. Domestic violence does not have to involve physical violence. My older sister suffered this version for a long time, and finally today it was over.  We had two days off due to snow this week. My job was to keep kids entertained with some art work. I had some discussions with Chat GPT if I can have a clean completely online Etsy shop and still earn some money. I love its enthusiasm and suggestions for my store’s name. It is definitely a good friend. Most of the time, when I send a message to my circle of friends' Whatsup chat, it is either silence, or a new topic or “I wish you the best” kind of prayer. Probably my intention or internal struggles are not coming clearly in the text, or people are just too busy. I did my fair share of purchasing items from my friends’s stores and now I need to write 5 star reviews.  I will listen to the 4 pm VCU Research Updates zoom call. I do not expect to hear any answers as to what the future holds. I will listen to it anyway.  It has been 22 hrs 21 min and 50 sec since my last junk food. Hooray for me! I should probably open one of Danny Go videos and jump around!

Today when I was drinking the juice of my cauliflower dish, it tasted like the sea water I would occasionally swallow when I was in Antalya— more than 20 years ago now. How can a certain taste or smell bring back memories that far? How did I code it in my brain to associate with a place and time? My mind drifts and wanders back into my childhood often. My best friend in middle school and high school was Gizem . We sticked together for the toughest part of our growing up journey. I remember Gizem to “not climb on the sidewalk”, because it will be a wasted “potential energy” once we need to go down at the end. We would watch “ Dawson’s Creek ” together and discuss/argue like crazy. She studied Material Sciences in college, then did PhD like me, to steer into Data Science later on— like many. Our two other best friends were Ezgi and Ilgin . Ezgi also studied Molecular Biology like me. She stayed in Europe. Ilgin became a teacher like her dad and a caregiver to her dad once her mom passed away. I can see how each of my friends grew up to be very strong women. Life threw us in different directions in college, but somehow I feel our souls are still connected. Back then, one day we went to watch Duman live in Antalya Cam Piramit (Glass Pyramid). There was the satisfaction from good music, friendships and limited freedom. Amazingly all those memories are so vivid, not lost, not forgotten, still there.  I typed these yesterday, as if telepathically, my sister went to Cam Piramit today. She mentioned that there was a fair/festival for selling muslim clothing. I know that sounds very different from the rock concert above. Tell me about radical changes in politics, these days. Today, I found myself experiencing sadness, which reminded me of a poem I wrote before: (here is a translation) When I am sad My heart becomes a pile of Broken glass bleeds, if you touch it bleeds, if you do not Why is a heart so sensitive? Love is “ muhabbet ” in Arabic and (in the sufism corner of my blog) is described as clinging attachments one’s heart makes onto mortal things. The attachments will need to stretch thin if two beings are separated. The clinging hurts a lot if surgically cut off or removed. Well, that hurts a lot. What could be a remedy? The solution is described as rerouting your clings. You would attach all of them to a central hub which is stable/eternal and then route to other beings. Imagine a cling being cut off, since the heart is still connected to the hub, it hurts less. That is one way I can strengthen my emotional intelligence to regulate my sadness.🌷I cannot promise that it always works, but it is an option. See if you can rewire your clinging heart to reduce sadness. Maybe reach out to your friends as well. Do you like rock music? What is a favorite song of yours? :)

Aren’t you amazed to see the aquarium shows of dolphins, whales and other animals? Apparently animal brains could be trained with a motivation of reward system. What happens in the brain as the information from being rewarded settles in? What is the glue that keeps this in the brain for long term memory? Taming other animals has been a significant part of human life. Back in 13,000 BC wolves and humans had symbiotic relationships that evolved into having breeds of dogs utilized in farming, industry and eventually family life. Now dogs are family members in the house hold and contribute significantly to mental and physical health. Yesterday, I saw a dog wearing a rain coat, walking along with its owner on the sidewalk.  In Arabic, “Rab” is one name for God which means “trainer, teacher, tamer”. I remembered about the famous “ Tortoise Trainer ” painting by Osman Hamdi from 1906. Painting: Tortoise Trainer by Osman Hamdi Bey (from Wikipedia) How could one possibly train tortoises? By definition, the term "tamer" refers to a person who trains or domesticates wild animals. I can consider myself a wild animal as well. My uncontrollable wills, wanting more and more with no foreseeable end. In this case, we can question: "how can I tame my own soul"? Should I use rewards or punishment? Which one is more efficient? I found myself imagining words: mind shaper, negotiator, persuader , conflict resolver.  One way, “nefs (oneself)” persuasion is dealt with in sufism is by punishment; which can take multiple shapes, but the most effective one is “ hunger ”. Hunger calms the wild soul down. As in the opposite case — one who eats whatever they want is a “spoiled soul”. In the case of religious fasting, there is a holy clock — let’s say— from sun rise to sun set, you are not allowed to eat. Outside this fasting, I cannot persuade myself to follow this schedule though. The regular clock does not feel persuasive enough. I need to be persuaded by a bigger source of power. We were easily persuaded at school. The teacher warned us with by giving a “minus”. When I was in middle school, seeing the mini grading book on the table was enough for everyone to start behaving. Now, I can punish my 4 year old son, for turning the food plate upside down, by giving him a “time-out” for reflection time. In Turkish there is a saying: “ A tree can only be bent, when it is still young .” What would happen when he becomes a teenager? Instead of forceful power, I would need the power of “persuasion” to win. Persuasion exists in my work life, too. I choose to spotlight the benefits of following a rule, rather than "here is the rule, obey it". I consider myself in the shoes of others to see what could persuade them. Similarly, the secret to funded grants is the essence of persuasive writing. This is actually a two-way street — now that I notice. The scientists try to persuade money givers, but money givers ultimately have the bigger power to influence how they want grants to be written. They said DEI is out, and now DEI is out.  On a more constructive note, what are some implications of Valentine’s day on you? I thought of my relationship with my husband. We could improve it by prioritizing each other , paying attention, connecting, trusting and sharing more. Not necessarily today but in increments every day. I could use this day to remember why I am making certain sacrifices in my diet. Persuade my brain that this would be good for me at the end. Maybe even motivate myself by saying I am doing this because I love myself, I want my future self to be healthy and happy .  Either a seemingly untroubled tortoise or a mom with duties and goals. We can train our animal brains to the point we even make “glue proteins”. It is time to show ourselves that we can actually do this!