Dentistry From The Heart

I know plenty of artists and students without dental insurance.  I hope that organizations like this can help.

My Awesome Retainer

Fifteen years ago, back when I had a retainer, if I remember correctly, it was a glow-in-the-dark retainer.  I also had some glow-in-the-dark keychains and a glow-in-the-dark bedspread covered with cartoons of glow-in-the-dark cows.

It was with great delight this spring that I learned how to doctor frankenstein up some glow-in-the-dark E. coli.

Here's the abstract from my paper about the experiment:


Abstract:

The DNA in Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria can be transformed using novel DNA from non-bacterial organisms.  This is done by altering the DNA plasmids in the cell.  In this experiment, we will alter E. coli DNA by undertaking a transformation protocol that requires the use of pGLO plasmid.  The pGLO plasmid DNA will confer antibiotic resistance and fluorescence to the bacteria, allowing colonies of E. coli to grow in the presence of the antibiotic ampicillin.  The fluorescent qualities of the pGLO plasmid can only be observed in the presence of arabinose sugar.  We are able to analyze the efficiency of our transformation after counting the number of colonies that fluoresce after being transformed and cultured on an agar plate that contains LB media, ampicillin, and arabinose.  

My pictures aren't as clear as the ones on wikipedia, but I think they're super cool anyway.



  
Downside: glow-in-the-dark E. coli tarnishes my memories of my awesome retainer.

Art Appreciation: Kara Walker vs. Maya Lin

Starting in July I will be teaching a section of Art Appreciation at Southwest Tennessee Community College.  One of my favorite assignments in this class is to write a comparison essay about the work of two contemporary American artists who have many things in common while seeming to hold absolutely different ideas about what art can and should do for its audience.  These artists are Kara Walker and Maya Lin.  Both artists have been featured in the wildly popular PBS Art21 series.  Both are women.  Both are minorities.  Both use historical narrative in their work.  Both use reductive processes in their creative work and both do amazing things as they cut away at their media and the stories that they tell.

I've given this assignment several times and have seen students craft really interesting comparative essays about Walker and Lin.  So how are these essays useful?  What other contemporary thinkers share as much in common as these two while producing such radically different work?  Is reading about the raging disagreement of E.O. Wilson vs. Richard Dawkins just a more sophisticated version of watching MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch-- of course not.  But in order to understand the conversation we can't just take a side, we have to work to understand the worldview that shapes each side on its own.  We have to participate in the conversation.

There is an anecdote about Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel that describes how Darwin sailed the seas carrying information about Mendel's research without ever opening the envelope in which that research had been sealed.  I think we all wonder what progress could have been made in the early stages of genetic research had the two men been able to fuse the results of their research rather than relying on later scholars to make connections or engage in debate about the meaning and relationship of their ideas.

So here is my question:  which two contemporary monoliths would you throw into the cage together and what would you expect to gain through their discussions?

Special thanks today goes to The University of Memphis Biological Sciences Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/UofMemphis-Biological-Sciences/232013370188384 for working to make connections among students of biology through a series of gentle nudges toward interesting research material, generally presented via photographs of cute animals (because on the internet cute baby animals are king!).

Running Zombies

My husband made me an app.  It has a picture of Will Farrell on it and is called "I'm Streaking" and it counts the number of days on it since I started running with this game called Zombies, Run!  It is my very own app but you can see it at http://chandler-runs.herokuapp.com/since/2012/3/25.

Because of this Zombies game and because of my husband's support (which comes in more forms that just an app), I have built up a pretty significant streak.

I used to think that if I ran enough it would stop hurting, but I'm starting to realize that it's probably not going to stop so it's my job to stop caring that it hurts.  I am not advocating denial--but it's become very important to me to understand the difference between pain that comes from discipline and pain that comes from disease.

Last year I had surgery to remove internal scar tissue that had built up, probably as a result of a couple of unacknowledged kidney stone situations.  It was not until after the surgery provided relief that I realized how severe the pain that I had been in was.  I spent months coming home from work every day and curling up in bed in pain, avoiding friends and family because the pain in my abdomen was intense that it regularly brought me to tears.  My students must have thought I was pretty peculiar when I would suddenly grab my side or back during critique and grimace while simultaneously telling them that their assignments showed a great deal of talent and effort.  I found myself using lamaze techniques just to get through a short drive and counting the minutes until I could take another Aleve.  http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20120517/9913/pain-tolerance-sports-athletes.htm 

Now that surgery provided relief from that painful period, I am happy to bring the coping mechanisms I used at that time to my habit of endurance running.  The distraction of the Zombie game coupled with a tolerance for a little pain in my shins has made this streak into a fixture of my life.  I plan to join the United States Running Streak Association as soon as I qualify and to keep running every single day for as long as I can put one foot in front of the other.

Zombies, Run! pretends to be a fitness game, but proves to be a meditation on mortality that borders on something religious.  

Pillow Talk

http://www.dirtsastudio.com/

I recently bought a pillow from this lady.  It's for the daybed in "the windowless room that we retreat to when tornado sirens go off in our neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee".  That is a really long name for a room, so maybe I should change it to The Reading Room.  Sometimes we call it the guest room, but we read there almost every day . . .

Do you name rooms in your house?  Do you want to know a secret about the importance of naming rooms to mnemonics?  If you feel compelled to study a lot of different things (like me) and end up memorizing a large quantity of stuff at once you find this useful.  It's called the Method of Loci or memory place. You're supposed to remember things by assigning them places in a familiar domicile or landscape.  One time this strategy came in handy for me was a little over ten years ago when I was taking a class in Chinese painting and I had to memorize the first five dynasties in China in about five minutes (having not prepared for a quiz that day, probably because the quiz was at 8 am on September 12, 2001).

The dynasties were the Xia, Shang, Chou, Qin and Han.  I memorized them by pointing to the Sky for Xia, my hair for Shang, my mouth for Chou (chew), my chin for Qin, and my hand for Han.

This memory technique was featured in the BBC series Sherlock in the Hound of Baskerville episode (which also featured a wonderful bit of trivia about pGLO bunnies--I'll talk about those bunnies in a future post.)  Sherlock solves the case by visiting his "mind palace."

What techniques do you use to remember essential information? 

Eugenics discussion continued (The DNA Learning Center)

One of the tools Dr. Taller provided our biology class with last semester was a link to the DNA learning center, a comprehensive website with more information about genetics than we could cover in several weeks of study:  http://www.dnalc.org/

This website includes a link to information about the history of Eugenics, forced sterilization, the Third Reich and the Gene Age http://www.dnai.org/e/index.html

This website suggests that "coming to grips with the past failings of eugenics may allow us to move with greater confidence into the gene age."

toothbrush fountain

Vinegaroons and Interrobangs

Here's something I wrote before exam week after a particularly exhausting chemistry lecture during which I was the only student who was participating in the lecture.  It was unusual for me to be the only vocal participant in this class and I felt a little hazed after it was over; I was so wiped out that I came home and wrote this essay rather than doing the work I needed to do for lab.  That was probably not a good decision with regards to my grade on that lab assignment, but writing this helped me pull myself together and motivated me to do really well on the subsequent test in the lecture class.

Did you know that just like ants depend on formic acid to fight ant wars, there's a type of scorpion called the whip-tailed scorpion that uses acetic acid.  Part of my job a few years ago depended on my ability to convince kindergardeners that, although this giant ferocious-looking arthropod from Nevada looked really scary and had big claws and a three inch long "stinger," it is really a delicate creature that deserved careful study and was far more breakable than it's tough exoskeleton might lead one to believe.  A vinegaroon (or grampus or whip-tail if you prefer) has one defense: a vinegar solution it can squirt from a gland below its tail.  My job was to convince the grampus to crawl over the hands of five-year-old children and have everyone come out of the scenario alive.  Like most jobs I've had (graduation photographer, art instructor, barista, etc. ) it required a calm voice and a confident hand and paid just above minimum wage.

I'm attaching a picture of me preparing to present the vinegaroon to a group of kids.  If you've watched the Harry Potter movies you might recognize it from this scene (although this one doesn't have a tail and has a few CGI enhancements): http://youtu.be/kG4XLZUAot4

This post may really be just bug trivia.  But, maybe it's a discussion about empathy.
Being a freshman again can be a horrible feeling.  I keep thinking I will get used to it, but some days are really emotionally draining.  I went to an honors high school (the Alabama School of Math and Science) and was surrounded by kids who now work at NASA or teach chemistry at Mercer or do neurological research at the Karolinska Institute, wherever the heck that is.  I went to college at the University of Alabama with lots of scholarship money and won the Sophomore Achievement Award from the school of Arts and Science.  It came in a large frame.  I was in several honors programs, lived in the honors dorm, and my classmates there went on to Harvard Law or to become professors of computer science or artists written up in the NYTimes.  Keeping in touch with these people does plenty to humble me.

I married my high school sweetheart and we came here so I could study art.
I finished my MFA in four years because I spent one of those years with a light course load and a newborn to take care of.  I do not have any family in Memphis, but we managed to do just fine with diapers and story time and all of that.  After I got my MFA I taught at community colleges and at UM for a few years before I took another look at my talents, disposition, and interests and made a decision.  

I want to learn Chemistry.  But sometimes I have a bad habit of turning lecture classes to chatty Socratic seminars; I can't keep my mouth shut to save my life.  I want to be a dentist; that's why I'm doing this.  I try to be good-natured, friendly, cheerful and optimistic in class, even if more often than not I am perplexed, befuddled, and more easily frustrated than I'd like to admit.  Sometimes I feel lower than a vinegaroon's belly.

I used zero question marks thus far in writing this post, and maybe today in class I wasn't using as many as we thought.  Maybe this e-mail is more about interrobangs than bugs or kids or acetic acid.  Without question marks, I'm not sure there's anything for you to respond to here.  I am learning to be more articulate and share facts in a factual way.  It's a habit I need to practice every day.

When I started writing this the clouds were turning black, but now it seems the storm is over.  Spring weather.

Eugenics discussion continued (Sally Mann)

SALLY MANN

#1 Scarred Tree, 1998

Gelatin silver print

40 x 50 inches (101.6 x 127 cm)

Ed. of 10

http://www.gagosian.com/artists/sally-mann/

Eugenics discussion continued (Altshuler study)

What do you call Stevie Wonder and Hellen Keller playing tennis?

Eternal love.

“The reason we do it is because we want to use genetics to pry open the black box of how disease works,” Dr. Altshuler said. “Not to personalize existing treatments, but to develop new treatments that are more effective.”And that, he said is “a work in progress.”  

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/health/research/dnas-power-to-predict-is-limited-study-finds.html

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/02/a-warning-against-genetic-testing/

According to a group from Johns Hopkins University, led by two scientists known for breakthrough discoveries on the genetics of cancer, genomic sequencing “fails to provide informative guidance to most people about their risk for most common diseases.”

The problem, they say, is not the state of current technology and knowledge –- which is limited –- but a more basic problem: genetics plays a surprisingly small role in determining the chances that we'll get sick. Score one for the environment.

That's why, at this point in time, "prudent screening, early diagnosis and prevention strategies, such as not smoking and removing early cancers, will be the keys to cutting disease death rate," according to Dr.Bert Vogelstein, M.D.,co-director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

http://www.cancer.gov/ncicancerbulletin/040312/page4

Happy Birthday E.O. Wilson

Happy Birthday E.O. Wilson!

Oh hey!  It's my birthday too!  Woot Woot!

Eugenics discussion continued (Walton Ford)

http://www.pbs.org/art21/images/walton-ford/falling-bough-2002

"Falling Bough," 2002
Watercolor, gouache, ink and pencil on paper, 60 3/4 x 119 1/2 inches
Private collection, Tennessee
Courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York

"The passenger pigeons were the most numerous birds that ever lived in the history of the planet. It’s almost disturbing how numerous- billions upon billions of birds. It was a fecundity that was almost disgusting. I started thinking about a blame-the-victim kind of attitude you could take to that...to make it seem like they had it coming, that there was this disgusting empire of birds and that it was corrupt like Rome...that it was bound to fall. So I invest the passenger pigeons with every kind of sin that I can imagine. And the bough, this gigantic branch, is falling under their tremendous weight. Meanwhile they go about their bickering and their lusts and foibles and all the disgusting things that they are doing." 

About Walton Ford

Walton Ford was born in 1960 in Larchmont, New York. Ford graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with the intention of becoming a filmmaker, but later adapted his talents as a storyteller to his unique style of large-scale watercolor. Blending depictions of natural history with political commentary, Ford’s meticulous paintings satirize the history of colonialism and the continuing impact of slavery and other forms of political oppression on today’s social and environmental landscape. Each painting is as much a tutorial in flora and fauna as it is as a scathing indictment of the wrongs committed by nineteenth-century industrialists or—locating the work in the present—contemporary American consumer society. An enthusiast of the watercolors of John James Audubon, Ford celebrates the myth surrounding the renowned naturalist-painter while simultaneously repositioning him as an infamous anti-hero—who, in reality, killed more animals than he ever painted. Each of Ford’s animal portraits doubles as a complex, symbolic system, which the artist layers with clues, jokes, and erudite lessons in colonial literature and folktales. Walton Ford is the recipient of several national awards and honors, including a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Ford’s work has been featured at Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, and Forum for Contemporary Art in St. Louis. After living in New York City for more than a decade, Walton Ford relocated his studio to Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Ford and his family reside in upstate New York.

Eugenics Discussion (Slate.com)

As Will Saletan pointed out recently, Americans are generally in favor of knowing more about fetuses developing in the womb. The more information, the better, and knowledge is power, and all that. Unless you explicitly mention abortion to subjects in surveys, they support prenatal genetic testing whether or not this knowledge could lead to abortions in the case of more serious conditions (cystic fibrosis) or moderately serious ones (Down Syndrome) or conditions that aren’t conditions at all (being a girl). 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/06/07/fetal_dna_sequencing_raises_more_questions_than_it_answers.html

Eugenics discussion continued (Hume, no not that Hume)

The message about disability is loud and clear: the prospect of having a disabled child is not acceptable for many prospective parents. The message to all women is equally clear: it is neither socially acceptable nor responsible to carry to full term a fetus with a disabling condition. With the emphasis on "perfect babies" the message of the new technologies is that disabilities can and must be weeded out by eliminating fetuses with certain defective traits. This is clearly a modern version of the earlier eugenics perception that disability is inherently bad. Given the continuing widespread discrimination against people with disabilities, for a woman to give birth to anything less than a perfect baby is not only socially and economically undesirable but irresponsible.Thus the CDRC argues that emphasizing the elimination of disability through reproductive technology without addressing the social context in which they are promoted and applied has disastrous implications for people with disabilities such as:

• directing resources away from eliminating environmental causes of disability and from providing support for existing people with disabilities

• ignoring the extent to which disability is a social construct and the role of social structures in our oppression

• entrenching disability-phobic attitudes and practices.

The view that disability is inherently bad and people with disabilities lead blighted, tragic lives ignores and invalidates our actual lives and experiences. We have repeatedly asserted that it is not the disability so much which restricts equality and full participation in society, but the combination of social stigma, systemic barriers and persistent use of demeaning devaluing language.http://www.wwda.org.au/eugen.htmThis paper was written and presented by Joan Hume at the Women's Electoral Lobby National Conference, University of Technology, Sydney, 26th January 1996. Copyright 1996.

If Picasso Was Your Dentist?

You may have had or at least looked into Lasik eye-surgery, but did you know that lasers have been used in dental practice since the 1990s? 

As a matter of fact, Advanced Laser Training allows your dentist to become certified to use lasers by enrolling in online continuing education courses.  Since I'm still a couple of years from dental school, I will have to investigate this technology through AMD lasers youtube channel.


I have to say I'm a little skeptical about a dental laser named after Picasso though, knowing what he would do with it.

Needle-free injection applications in Dentistry?

In the near future you'll be able to get your vaccines without encountering needles.  http://www.pharmajet.com/news.html


Hypodermic needles are useful for dental work because they allow dentists to ensure that the injection is placed precisely and accurately, but it's interesting to think about how devices like this could be modified to be useful for more than just vaccines.

Cloning Teeth

Say you were interested in using human stem cells to clone teeth for dental implants--where would you go?  Well, I hope you like the beach because in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Nova Southeastern University’s dental researchers are using polymer scaffolds, human stem cells, and growth factors to create fully functional replacement teeth.  Will these replacement teeth become commonplace in your dentists office?  Probably.  When?  We'll see!

http://www.nova.edu/commgov/forms/tooth_harvest.pdf

Eugenics discussion continued (C.S. Lewis)

A creature can never be a perfect being, but may be a perfect creature — e.g. a good angel or a good apple-tree. Gaiety at its highest may be an (intellectual) creature’s delighted recognition that its imperfection as a being may constitute part of its perfection as an element in the whole hierarchical order of creation. I mean, while it is a pity there should be bad men or bad dogs, part of the excellence of a good man is that he is not an angel, and of a good dog that it is not a man . . . A good toe-nail is not an unsuccessful attempt at a hair; and if it were conscious it would delight in being simply a good toe-nail. 

 -C. S. Lewis: Letters to Children

Eugenics discussion continued (Wilson)

It was all but inevitable, the watchers might tell us if we met them, that from the great diversity of large animals, one species or another would eventually gain intelligent control of the earth.  That role has fallen to Homo sapiens, a primate risen in Africa from a lineage that split away from the chimpanzee line 5 to 8 million years ago.  Unlike any creature that lived before, we have become a geophysical force, swiftly changing the atmosphere and climate as well as the composition of the world’s fauna and flora.  Now in the midst of a population explosion, the human species has doubled to 5.5 billion during the past 50 years.  It is scheduled to double again in the next 50 years.  No other single species in evolutionary history has even remotely approached the sheer mass in protoplasm generated by humanity.  

Darwin’s dice have rolled badly for Earth.  It was a misfortune for the living world in particular, many scientists believe, that a carnivorous primate and not some more benign for of animal made the breakthrough.  Our species retains hereditary traits that add greatly to our destructive impact.  We are tribal and aggressively territorial, intent on private space beyond minimal requirements, and oriented by selfish sexual and reproductive drives  Cooperation beyond the family and tribal levels comes hard.  

. . .

Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually extinguishes itself.  

Wilson, E. O.. (1996). In search of nature. Washington DC: Island press/shearwater books. p184-186

Drinks

Have you ever wondered what a barista would do with a microscope?  William Legoullon's fingerprints of drinkable culture gives us a view of what we're putting in our mouths every day.  Take this lovely image of espresso:

http://legoullonphotography.com/portfolio/wip/microscopic-beverages/

Very nicely done.  My daughter and I will have to try this out this afternoon with the microscope she got for her birthday.  One of these would come in handy someday too, but she'll have to wait a few years for that one.

Eugenics discussion continued

The first sterilization against the passing on of a hereditary taint was carried out as early as 1897, when the gynecologist Kehrer of Heidelberg operated on a married woman who had borne several idiotic and feeble-minding children.  . . . Generally, the consequences of negative eugenic measures by the state on a people’s entire genetic substance cannot be over-looked.  

. . .Experience up to 1945 proves that disregard of life, of human individuality and personality must result in the destruction of people and community. 

Harmsen, Hans. (1955). The german sterilization act of 1933 “gesetz zur verhütung erbkranken nachwuchses”. Eugen Rev.. , 46(4), 227-232.

Seeing and Hearing with Your Mouth

Artist Anne Hamilton has been using her mouth to record what she sees since her 2001 series called Face to Face, a photographic experiment in which Hamilton turned her mouth into a pinhole camera.  Now in 2012, Aisen Caro Chacin has designed a device to allow the mouth to "hear."  Chacin's Play-a-Grill uses bone conduction to allow a person to "hear" music by vibrating the skull.  More information can be found in Chacin's proposal here:

 http://makingtoys.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/chacin_aisen_play-a-grill.pdf

Play-A-Grill device merges the arbitrary music fashion object and empowers its function by making it the music player itself. Would hip hop fans wear this device? Most of the responses have been positive. The grill is the perfect music related jewelry piece to serve this function because it allows for alternate technologies to emerge, such as bone conduction hearing. The idea of a digital sound player in the mouth has potential of embodying different forms. For example audio players that can also be recorders and serve a short memory function, allowing the user to record their conversations. Another application can be to apply receivers and transmitters such as the Audio Tooth Implant concept, but instead using radio transmission, so the devices can operate as walkie-talkies [1].

Barbara Kruger

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.  

-Chinese Proverb

image from http://www.barbarakruger.com/

Temporary Tooth Tattoos

Scientists at Princeton and Tufts are working on a superthin tooth sensor (a kind of temporary tattoo) that sends an alert when it detects bacteria associated with plaque buildup, cavities or infection. It could also notify your dentist, adding an extra layer of social pressure to make an appointment. The sensor may have wide-ranging use: the researchers have already used it to identify bacteria in saliva associated with stomach ulcers and cancers. While the sensor won’t last long on the surface of a well-brushed and flossed tooth, Michael McAlpine, the project’s leader, says that the sensors will be inexpensive enough that you can replace them daily. 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/03/magazine/innovations-issue.html

I like to imagine the world where, after brushing and flossing (and sometimes using a whitening strip) every day, people will take the time to stick little sensors on their teeth . . . but I'm pretty sure the people who are going to make the effort to use this device won't have as many cavities or infections anyway.  It's interesting to brianstorm about other ways that temporary tooth tattoos might be useful.

Wisdom Teeth and Evolution

One of the best genes that I inherited from my Mom was an absence of wisdom teeth.  I might be less keen on dentistry if I hadn't been congratulated repeatedly during my adolescence on this evolutionary advantage.  My Mom and I liked to joke that because we never developed wisdom teeth we must be highly evolved--forget any other alleles, obviously this one placed us at an advantage to all of the people around us who had to deal with that particular type of pain and the surgery that accompanies it.

One of the most disturbing things I learned when I returned to school this year was that when I returned to class as a student rather than as an instructor, it was hard for me to approach my tenured professors with my questions and concerns.  Knowing how challenging it can be to connect and to keep up with a large population of constantly bemused students, I wanted to keep my head low so as to not add extra "problems" to the workload of my professors.  I ended up being more intimidated as a fifth-year freshman than I ever was in my first half-dozen years in school.

It was with a great deal of trepidation that I approached my Biology professor, Dr. Barbara Taller, with regards to a specific quote from the study guide we were using in class this semester.  "If the disease trait interferes with health and reproduction it should be slowly weeded from the population because anyone with a single diseased allele is not as fit to compete for survival and reproduction."  Dr.  Taller spent a short time after class one day trying to help me understand how this comment was not a call for eugenics.  We did not address the subject in class at all.  Ultimately, now that the semester is over, I am still disturbed by the inclusion of this statement in an otherwise helpful collection of facts and study questions. 

I put together a collection of quotes and artwork that came to mind as I ruminated on this statement and shared it with Dr. Taller, and hope to better understand why this statement disgusted me so deeply while leaving my classmates unaffected.  I'd like to share parts of this collection in my next few posts and would appreciate any comments or discussion you can contribute to help me understand a wider perspective on this statement.  

This post is for Dr. Michaela Levin, saxophonist turned neuroscientist and who was my hall director in boarding school for Curie House at ASMS.  Here's what she said when I posted about this on my facebook:  

Wow, I have heard some bs in university classes, but this is the golden lemon. I would report it. And further, on a scientific level, Huntington's Disease does not "interfere" with health until well into adulthood. Age of onset depends on the number of CAG repeats. Many patients don't get diagnosed until they have children in their teenage years. I once sat in a room at UVa when a family received the news of being diagnosed with HD. While these are all very serious diseases, HD is probably the most cruel and tragic. People that suffer from all these diseases or are care givers deserve that we treat this with utter respect and compassion, especially when we are health professionals. What an absolute jackass statement!

e. chromi

http://www.echromi.com/

Baldesarri

This guy had a lot to do with my wanting to go back to school to become a dentist.  Not because of this:

But because when I see someone in pain I think of this:

This post is for members of my family who understand OCD better than me.