Great Video!

This is a sweet video of a T4 bacteriophage invading an E. Coli cell, set to metal music. The fellow who put this video together took the original video published by the NSF and just added music. I know it's really nerdy, but man, I thought it was so cool when I saw it.

Research Update

I have visited two Moscow libraries to-date. The Russian State Library is the counterpart to our Library of Congress, because a copy of everything published in Russia is supposed to be deposited there. They issued me a library card and gave me carte blanche to flip through their mounstrous card catalogs and reference journals. I am not joking when I say that my fingers were black with ink after my first visit to their library. I couldn't find more than summaries and short bulletins of the full articles that I actually wanted.

The trouble I had in getting this stupid card doesn't encourage me.

I also visited the Sechenov Medical Library. After riding the metro over an hour to get there, I was turned away at the door because I couldn't prove that I was studying in a medical-related field. That was frustrating, but I'll try again next term with a signed letter from my Russian university (I'll make sure that they stamp the letter several times to make it look really, really official).

But there are bright spots in my thesis research! I have been emailing all the leading bacteriophage research professors about my thesis over the past couple months. I emailed Dr. Betty Kutter at Evergreen University in Washington and she put me in touch with Dr. Sarah Kuhl, who is an administrator at the Sacramento VA hospital. Dr. Kuhl is preparing to conduct a clinical study of bacteriophage therapy in recalcitrant diabetic ulcers in the veterans. That is incredibly relevant to my research on S. aureus bacteriophage therapy in burn wounds. In addition, she did a search on Medline that yielded four promising articles on phage therapy for staph infections. Dr. Danelishvili at Oregon State helped me order those articles and I should have them translated after another month or two. So, I'll just keep on trucking!

United Russia Wins Again ...

Hello from Klaipeda, Lithuania! It's been a while since my last post, and a lot has happened, but I don't have many pictures to share.

Last Monday and Tuesday I took the First Level State Russian Exam and got my results on Wednesday. I passed the auditory, reading, and writing portions of the exam and nearly passed the speaking portion. The central office is deliberating on whether or not they will let me pass the entire exam. If not, then I'll just have to retake the speaking portion next term (which I should be able to pass by then). Then I'll be able to study with Russian students in classes taught in Russian at Russian universities! Hooray!

The Russian parliamentary (Duma) elections were held on December 2nd and I did make sure to take pictures of that. It was a lot of fun because my host family invited over some of their extended family to eat before voting. My host mother, Tatiana, prepared a huge spread, with champagne, Malbec wine (my contribution!), a homemade fricassee followed by a broiled beef dish that tasted great, different Russian salads, and dessert included cheesecake, crispy homemade apple pastries, and meringue puffs. Then we walked next-door to the library where my host mother and sister cast their votes.

The sign reads: "Eastern Administrative District [of Moscow], 2nd of December, Votes for Deputies of the Government Duma of the R.F., Electoral site

The vote for our apartment building was held at the local library

Here's the ballot. Lots of choices!

This is my host mother placing her ballot in the ballot box. Can you see the Soviet mural on the wall in the background?

In case voting makes you hungry or thirsty, you can buy snacks.

President Putin's party, United Russia, won the parliamentary elections, which was no surprise. Dmitri Medvedev is set to become the new President of the Russian Federation. As for Putin, well, he'll probably take Medvedev's old job as Prime Minister and maybe chairman of Gazprom. The new movie Hitman speculated a different outcome of the Russian elections. Maybe it's good that there were no surprises during the elections . . .

Well, I flew out of Moscow from Sheremetevo-1 and landed in Vilnius, Lithuania a few days ago. My Aeroflot flight was an hour late, so I missed my hostel appointment and had to find another place to stay at 12pm. My Russian came in mighty handy when I had to explain my situation to the gypsy cab drivers who were hanging around on the street corner. I was pretty mad about that fiasco. But, I found a nice, clean, cheap hotel and had a nice night's rest. After walking around the old town in Vilnius (which seemed like a fairytale kingdom after so much overbearing and clumsy Soviet architecture) and smiling at strangers, who smiled back, I got on a 4 hr bus to Klaipeda and that's where I am now.

Chase and I have discussed it several times now: when a person leaves Russia, they leave behind a whole knot of stress. It's nice to be back in the West again. And things are so cheap here! Beer and wine are subsidized by the government, and the beer is great. The beer is especially nice after tolerating crappy Russian beer. I had quite a few beers on my first day in Klaipeda (catching up) and I walked around downtown with Chase. Klaipeda is a seaport on the Baltic. Nearby on the Curonian Spit (which connects Lithuania with . . . Russia - Kaliningrad) are some of the largest dunes in the world. I'll have to post pictures soon.

Convents and Monasteries and Graves, Oh My!

I know that the title of this post is cheesy. But hey, let's not mince words; I'm a cheesy person! Besides, it describes the pictures really well. The past two weeks, our group visited the Andrei Rublev Icon Museum, which is housed in the ancient St. Andronik Monastery. We also visited the Novodevichy Convent (New Maiden Convent) and its accompanying cemetery. Below, I begin with pictures of the St. Andronik Monastery, which suffered a lot of damage after the October Revolution.

To the left is the old refectory, which houses the modern Russian Icon Museum. To the right is the church, where services are still held today. In the middle is a plump, fur-wrapped Russian woman who decided to add her local color to my picture.

This is the group of us who decided to go the Icon Museum, which I have to admit was a little bit dry (but I learned a lot). I'll have to discuss with Dr. Farber the features of the typical "Trinity" icons that I learned about . Anyways, that's Andrei Rublev, the icon painter, in stone. He sort of looks like Moses.

A full view of the refectory.

The view from my window can be really beautiful ... in a nuclear winter sort of way.

This is the very plain grave of the famous writer, Mikhail Bulgakov, which you can find in the cemetery next to the Novodevichy Convent. Last winter I acted in his play, Zoya's Apartment.

This is Boris Yeltsin's grave. Also very plain...


...at least, compared to SOME people's graves. Graves like Khruschev's are a lot nicer.

I love Russia.

This is the church in the Novodevichy convent. The Novodevichy convent is notable for a few reasons; it is were Peter the Great sent his first wife (when he wanted a new one) and his older sister (when she led a rebellion against him), it is a fortress (I guess they were martial nuns or something?), and it was one of the richest of the church's holdings. When Peter sent his sister to the convent, he had the traitors hung in front of her house and didn't have them removed for a while, so she could think about what she did whenever she smelled them.

This is the part of the study abroad group that visited the convent.

What a sight. This is Moscow at her best (по-моему).

And in the strangest of coincidences, in a city of 15 million people, I bumped into my friend Susan from Alaska at the convent.

I hope you all enjoyed Thanksgiving. We threw a small Thanksgiving celebration at the dorms here in Moscow that morphed into a raucous drinking party, or so I heard. It happened after I left. I promise.

(Actually, I'm serious, Mom. I really did leave at 9pm because I was dead-tired.)

A PIG NEST!

Short Research Notes

About a week ago, I emailed Alexander Sulakvelidze, who is a leader in bacteriophage therapy technology, and he recently wrote me back. He is interested in seeing what I can turn up at the Moscow libraries. He has already sorted through many of the scientific journals that interested him here in Moscow, but thinks that there are still a few other papers for me to find.

My plan is to visit these two libraries before the current term is out (I have a second term to get into the library searches more aggressively):

Библиотек Имени Ленина (Lenin Library), which is the mammoth public library of the Russian federal government. My host family assures me that I will be able to find many papers there that will help me.

The other place I want to visit is the Центральная Научная Медицинская Библиотека (Central Scientific Medical Library), which is the main medical library in Russia. It belongs to the I.M. Sechenov Medical Academy.

I don't know if I, as a foreign student, can visit either of these places. I will probably be able to visit the Lenin Library, but I am not at all sure they'll let me into the medical library. I'll try both places; they are easy to reach by metro.

I should also clarify that I have to postpone my first translated paper until the end of November. I decided to abandon the translation of my first paper after getting a little further, because there was less and less content about bacteriophage typing as I went on with the translation. The second paper, which I am currently working on, should be done by the end of November. I'll also post the partial translation I've already made of the first paper (so you guys know I'm actually working and not just sight-seeing).

Vodka and a Snowstorm

Last Saturday our group visited the Vodka Museum, which turned out to be a dinky tourist trap, for the most part. However, there was some interesting stuff there and they offered us free shots of vodka. I went ahead and just bought a whole bottle. There is a price paradox in Russia; although it is the third most expensive city in the world (according to the Economist) and food prices have risen by 25% since the summer, some of the best Vodka is still half the price of decent Vodka in the United States. I bought a limited edition bottle of Vodka made to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of St. Petersburg for $20, and the last time I bought Grey Goose vodka in the States, it cost me $40 (If I remember correctly). Also, you notice a glut of vodka everywhere. Instead of stacks of cola sitting in the grocery aisles for quick sale, you see giant pallets of vodka - of every kind - being sold in the same way, and for almost the same price, as cola. The dark side of this, is, of course, the rampant alcoholism that is decimating the population.

A model of what the first alcohol still looked like - a milestone in Russian history.

This is how Russians originally bought and sold vodka: 20 liters at a time.

This is Russian Standard, which is vodka made from the original recipe of the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. He is more famous abroad for creating the periodic table of elements after seeing it in a dream.


We also visited Mosfilm, which is the biggest film studio in Russia and one of the biggest in Europe. It was very cold that day, in the middle of a mild snowstorm, when we visited. As you can see, though, the snow really looks beautiful.

An outdoor set of an old Russian movie set in the 18th century.

Kyle puts on one of the wigs made at Mosfilm.

A "ZIS" luxury sedan made for Politburo officials, such as Stalin. The acronym "ZIS" in Russian stands for "Factory named in honor of Stalin", which is the name of the plant that made these types of cars in the USSR.

I have no idea what this is, but it's cool, so I took a picture.

It was a beautiful evening after the snowstorm weakened, leaving everything covered in snow. I have never seen snow like this in Oregon. It is so cold and dry that the snow is like fine, white dust. Even when it is laying on the ground, it stays particulate and gets kicked up in the air like flour when you step in it. I took this picture on the campus of my host school.

Another picture of the snow from the sixth floor of my apartment building. The flash caught some falling snow.

I hope everyone is doing well!

St. Petersburg

Two weeks ago, our study abroad group stayed at a youth hostel in St. Petersburg and toured the city over a period of five days. The old imperial capital of Russia holds some of the most incredible history in the world. The capital was built by Tsar Peter the Great in the 18th century after his victorious war with Sweden over Karelia and the Baltic coast. It is a unique city, known as the Venice of the North, with large canals and it is the northern-most city to host Entamoeba histolytica, which causes Amoebiasis. So, you can't drink the reddish-gray water there. Below are pictures of some very famous St. Petersburg sites.

St. Isaac's Cathedral (Исаакиевский собор)

The stock exchange

A statue of Peter the Great built by Catherine the Great

The canals of St. Petersburg are home to a lot of ducks

Andrew and Chase pose in front of the Neva River and the Hermitage

During our trip to St. Petersburg, we also visited Tsarskoe Selo, where Catherine's palace stands next to the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin's old lyceum and church. The Tsarskoe Selo is part of the town of Puskin, named in honor of the famous poet.

A close-up shot of the detail on the outside of Catherine's Palace

Francesco Rastrelli, the Italian-born, Russian architect of Catherine's palace

The ballroom in Catherine's Palace, which you can see in the film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel, War and Peace

The lady's anteroom next to the ballroom, complete with two tall Dutch stoves, painted in intricate detail

A wedding party taking pictures in front of the palace

The Cameron gallery, which housed one of Catherine the Great's private art collections, and sits next to her palace in Tsarskoe Selo

Here is a 360 degree video that I took in the palace garden. It begins with the bath house, pans to the garden, the grotto, the Cameron gallery, and finally the palace itself.

We also spent one evening in a hookah club, where we smoked hookah and tried absynthe for the first time. The way they prepare it is really interesting and our waitress made quite a show of it. She dipped a cube of sugar in the absynthe, pulled it out, lit it on fire, and put it back in the drink to light the alcohol on fire. Then she swirled the burning alcohol around in the glass until it was warm enough and poured the drink into a shot glass and held it there until the flame was extinguished. Then I drank the hot absynthe in one shot. It's a very sweet drink that tastes like licorice and, of course, its warm going down.

I was wondering why she needed a lighter.


This is really involved...


Alcohol makes the coolest blue flame.


It's so hot!

Wow.

More of Moscow and a Short Research Update

Here are some more pictures of Moscow that I have collected. The temperature hovers around 0 degrees Celsius, and we could have snow any day. This coming Friday, we are going to a hockey championship game, which should be amazing.

My bedroom


Chase sitting on my bed

Chase and Susan at the Garden of the Fallen Monuments


Lenin in marble at the Garden of the Fallen Monuments
(he looks better in marble than he does in his mausoleum - yuck)


One of the fountains near Red Square


Inside the Goom super-luxury mall


Inside the substitute theater for the actual Bolshoi theater (which is under construction)

My translation of the Russian phage therapy papers is coming along and I am halfway through my first translation. I'll have it up on the blog by the middle of November. The paper is about phage-typing of Staphylococcus Aureus, which is an out-dated technique, but I'll finish the translation anyways since I'm halfway done already. I am also digging up English, Polish, and even Finnish papers on Staph Aureus phage technology that are very interesting.