As the simplest recipe I found, I decided to try this one first.
Ingredients:
4 tbsp dry lentils - I used red lentils, but any kind of dal will do
water to soak
Method:
Soak the lentils overnight (or until hydrated), and then use enough water and a whizzer to make them into a paste. Use like normal shampoo.
This is incredibly easy to make. I left it on longer than regular shampoo - I figured the longer the better. It smells very fresh (and lentilly) and did a surprisingly good job of cleaning my hair. The main drawback is that it took ages to get all the bits of lentil out of my hair - in the end I let it dry and combed them out. On the up side, because they weren't too small they did come out easily.
Verdict:
Pretty good considering it costs next to nothing, but not something to use when you're in a hurry.
Living the Good Life
Saturday, 22 December 2012
Wednesday, 19 December 2012
Dry skin, acne, carrots and Vitamin A
As alluded to in my olive oil posts from earlier this year, I used to have horrendous skin. Bad acne, greasy T-zone, the lot. Since then, my skin seems to have swung the full width of the scale and is now incredibly dry - so much so that I can put hand cream on my face in the morning, and still have dried-out skin by midday. Unfortunately the acne hasn't completely gone away, and at the age of 29 I am still tied to using medicated face washes. In short, since about the age of 11 I have had fairly rubbish skin, as I just haven't known how to deal with it. And I am fed up with it.
A while ago I bought a book about adult acne, which told me that the three chemicals I need to look for in products are retinol (vitamin A), salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide. Since learning that without one of these chemicals it's unlikely that there will be much improvement in my skin, I was amazed at how few of the marketed products actually contain ANY of them! I have succeeded in locating a few that contain salicylic acid (and only 1 at a significant percentage), none that contain benzoyl peroxide, and a couple of very expensive beauty creams that contain retinol.
The latter of these I find extremely interesting, as it seems retinol also has a widely mentioned effect on wrinkles and other skin imperfections. Excellent! But I'm not spending £12 on a teeny bottle of moisturiser.
So having done some more research I discovered that there are a few vegetables that have high levels of vitamin A: carrots, sweet potatoes, broccoli and butternut squash. So while I can't afford expensive creams I do normally have a carrot or two knocking around in the fridge which I can add to face masks. Other good sources are dairy products and meat - especially liver.
While I'm not up to a Victoria Beckham-style meat mask, I can very easily combine some grated carrot and yoghurt. I often use yoghurt on its own as a face mask as it really makes my dry skin soft, but the addition of vitamin A should help not only my spots but my encroaching wrinkles too. I've been using the recipe below every other day, and my skin seems to be responding well. Hopefully this increase in skin care will mean I can cut down on the money I spend on cosmetics too!
----
Super face mask for dry, acne prone skin:
1 tsp grated carrot/ sweet potato/ squash
1 tsp natural yoghurt
1/2 tsp honey
1/2 tsp oatmeal
Leave on for 10 minutes, then rinse off with water and moisturise.
A while ago I bought a book about adult acne, which told me that the three chemicals I need to look for in products are retinol (vitamin A), salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide. Since learning that without one of these chemicals it's unlikely that there will be much improvement in my skin, I was amazed at how few of the marketed products actually contain ANY of them! I have succeeded in locating a few that contain salicylic acid (and only 1 at a significant percentage), none that contain benzoyl peroxide, and a couple of very expensive beauty creams that contain retinol.
The latter of these I find extremely interesting, as it seems retinol also has a widely mentioned effect on wrinkles and other skin imperfections. Excellent! But I'm not spending £12 on a teeny bottle of moisturiser.
So having done some more research I discovered that there are a few vegetables that have high levels of vitamin A: carrots, sweet potatoes, broccoli and butternut squash. So while I can't afford expensive creams I do normally have a carrot or two knocking around in the fridge which I can add to face masks. Other good sources are dairy products and meat - especially liver.
While I'm not up to a Victoria Beckham-style meat mask, I can very easily combine some grated carrot and yoghurt. I often use yoghurt on its own as a face mask as it really makes my dry skin soft, but the addition of vitamin A should help not only my spots but my encroaching wrinkles too. I've been using the recipe below every other day, and my skin seems to be responding well. Hopefully this increase in skin care will mean I can cut down on the money I spend on cosmetics too!
----
Super face mask for dry, acne prone skin:
1 tsp grated carrot/ sweet potato/ squash
1 tsp natural yoghurt
1/2 tsp honey
1/2 tsp oatmeal
Leave on for 10 minutes, then rinse off with water and moisturise.
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
Writing up
This article was originally published for Cambio Ltd. on 17-12-2012. Access it here.
On my official forms it says I have a minimum of 3 years and maximum of 4 years to complete my studies. I would be interested to know what the average time taken to complete a PhD is, because I know people who have had to wait for their 3 year ‘minimum’ in order to submit, and others who still have not submitted after 5 years. I am also a little dispirited by the number of academics who have said to me that you need to be extremely lucky to complete your studies within the 3 years.
For me luck has not been hugely forthcoming, owing to my PCR frustrations. However, ever the optimist, I am hopeful that I will find sufficient funding to sequence the ~1000 strains I have, and thus be well on my way to making my original scientific discovery. I am very aware that data is only part of the story though: I’ve been on enough science communication courses by now to understand that research is only useful if you can tell other people about it. A PhD is nothing without a written thesis.
A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to go on a GRADSchool course run by Vitae*. Towards the end of the week we did some goal setting, and gave ourselves targets towards getting where we want with our careers. Some people were going to sign up for training courses, some were going to investigate non-academic career options. Me, I was struck by our group leader’s definition of a good PhD thesis, which was simply a finished PhD thesis. With this in mind, and the end of my third year looming, I decided that the most constructive thing I can do, no matter my career choice, is to get the darned thing written. Seventy thousand words ain’t going to happen by magic!
So I’ve set myself a target to have 30,000 words written by my birthday in September, which coincides with the time my funding runs out – an extremely good motivator! This works out at about 700 words a week, and being a very visual learner I have of course set up a spreadsheet to keep me on track. I’ve also moved my working week around so that I have a day just for writing, which suits me much better than fitting it in around lab experiments. So far, so good: I have 7% of a thesis.
My only problem is that I am not a natural in the scientific lingo. Other forms of writing feel quite natural, but I am still getting my head around how scientific language works. It is a fine art, and in my experience there is a thin line between very good and very bad writing. The skill is to be technical and succinct without being grandiloquent or using too much jargon. The most helpful tip I’ve had is to write a sentence, then read the first 10 words: if you’ve not said anything useful, rewrite it.
Obviously the only way to improve at anything is practice, so all the more reason to get writing now – it’s easier to play around with badly written sentences than no sentences. I’ve heard repeatedly that “writing up takes longer than you think!” – so get writing!
* Having spoken to a number of people there (being a gregarious soul) I think I may have been the only person there of my own volition rather than ‘because my supervisor wanted me to go’, but I don’t think I met anyone who felt their time had been wasted. If you are a PhD student and your supervisor suggests you go, do.
On my official forms it says I have a minimum of 3 years and maximum of 4 years to complete my studies. I would be interested to know what the average time taken to complete a PhD is, because I know people who have had to wait for their 3 year ‘minimum’ in order to submit, and others who still have not submitted after 5 years. I am also a little dispirited by the number of academics who have said to me that you need to be extremely lucky to complete your studies within the 3 years.
For me luck has not been hugely forthcoming, owing to my PCR frustrations. However, ever the optimist, I am hopeful that I will find sufficient funding to sequence the ~1000 strains I have, and thus be well on my way to making my original scientific discovery. I am very aware that data is only part of the story though: I’ve been on enough science communication courses by now to understand that research is only useful if you can tell other people about it. A PhD is nothing without a written thesis.
A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to go on a GRADSchool course run by Vitae*. Towards the end of the week we did some goal setting, and gave ourselves targets towards getting where we want with our careers. Some people were going to sign up for training courses, some were going to investigate non-academic career options. Me, I was struck by our group leader’s definition of a good PhD thesis, which was simply a finished PhD thesis. With this in mind, and the end of my third year looming, I decided that the most constructive thing I can do, no matter my career choice, is to get the darned thing written. Seventy thousand words ain’t going to happen by magic!
So I’ve set myself a target to have 30,000 words written by my birthday in September, which coincides with the time my funding runs out – an extremely good motivator! This works out at about 700 words a week, and being a very visual learner I have of course set up a spreadsheet to keep me on track. I’ve also moved my working week around so that I have a day just for writing, which suits me much better than fitting it in around lab experiments. So far, so good: I have 7% of a thesis.
My only problem is that I am not a natural in the scientific lingo. Other forms of writing feel quite natural, but I am still getting my head around how scientific language works. It is a fine art, and in my experience there is a thin line between very good and very bad writing. The skill is to be technical and succinct without being grandiloquent or using too much jargon. The most helpful tip I’ve had is to write a sentence, then read the first 10 words: if you’ve not said anything useful, rewrite it.
Obviously the only way to improve at anything is practice, so all the more reason to get writing now – it’s easier to play around with badly written sentences than no sentences. I’ve heard repeatedly that “writing up takes longer than you think!” – so get writing!
* Having spoken to a number of people there (being a gregarious soul) I think I may have been the only person there of my own volition rather than ‘because my supervisor wanted me to go’, but I don’t think I met anyone who felt their time had been wasted. If you are a PhD student and your supervisor suggests you go, do.
Monday, 17 December 2012
No 'poo #2
Earlier this year I attempted to go without shampoo for a month, instead using bicarb and vinegar.
It did not work.
I don't know if it's because of the hard water where I was living, the way I was doing it, or my hair itself that was the problem. Either way, after a couple of weeks the crown of my head was permanently greasy and more than a bit gross. I may be a bit of a hippy, but I do care about my appearance. So out came the bottle of shampoo...
In an attempt to save my growing hair I also cut back how often I wash my hair to twice a week, and try not to use elasticated hair ties so much. But my hair remains unhappy, so it's time for me to try something different again.
Using the experience I gained I will be doing things a bit different this time. I think a more appropriate name for this experiment may be "no detergent" - I intend to try out a variety of 'traditional' shampoos, and report back on how they have worked for me.
My hair is now quite long and remains very thick, very fine (as per a chinchilla) and a bit greasy - I can go 3 days without a wash, but the fourth always requires dry shampoo (for which I use cornflour and a lot of brushing). I long ago stopped using chemical dyes, and rarely blow dry my hair. But because it is so fine it quickly gets very knotty, and because it grows so slowly it also tends to get ratty at the ends.
The first experiment showed me a few things that really did help with these last two things:
1) vinegar and lemon juice make excellent conditioners. I now keep an old washing up liquid bottle containing 1 part cider vinegar, 1 part lemon juice, 10 parts water and a cinnamon stick in the shower to rinse my hair after washing. It really softens my hair and makes it feel much less dry.
2) olive oil is also an excellent conditioner and detangler. I run a tiny amount through the ends of my hair by hand or by rubbing this small amount of oil onto my hairbrush. My ends seem much healthier, and less knotty as a result.
3) henna is amazing! I have more than a few grey hairs now, and it also helps with this. At about £7 for a block of Caca Rouge from Lush, it works out at just over £2 per dying session - much cheaper than chemical dyes, and much better for my hair. Obviously only useful if you have dark hair!
My main priorities with finding an alternative to standard shampoos is that it should be cheap, easy and not reliant on fossil fuels for its production; I am reluctant to use the words 'sustainable', 'green' or 'ecological', but these would also be relevant. If I can find it in my kitchen cupboard, so much the better.
Let the experiments commence!
It did not work.
I don't know if it's because of the hard water where I was living, the way I was doing it, or my hair itself that was the problem. Either way, after a couple of weeks the crown of my head was permanently greasy and more than a bit gross. I may be a bit of a hippy, but I do care about my appearance. So out came the bottle of shampoo...
In an attempt to save my growing hair I also cut back how often I wash my hair to twice a week, and try not to use elasticated hair ties so much. But my hair remains unhappy, so it's time for me to try something different again.
Using the experience I gained I will be doing things a bit different this time. I think a more appropriate name for this experiment may be "no detergent" - I intend to try out a variety of 'traditional' shampoos, and report back on how they have worked for me.
My hair is now quite long and remains very thick, very fine (as per a chinchilla) and a bit greasy - I can go 3 days without a wash, but the fourth always requires dry shampoo (for which I use cornflour and a lot of brushing). I long ago stopped using chemical dyes, and rarely blow dry my hair. But because it is so fine it quickly gets very knotty, and because it grows so slowly it also tends to get ratty at the ends.
The first experiment showed me a few things that really did help with these last two things:
1) vinegar and lemon juice make excellent conditioners. I now keep an old washing up liquid bottle containing 1 part cider vinegar, 1 part lemon juice, 10 parts water and a cinnamon stick in the shower to rinse my hair after washing. It really softens my hair and makes it feel much less dry.
2) olive oil is also an excellent conditioner and detangler. I run a tiny amount through the ends of my hair by hand or by rubbing this small amount of oil onto my hairbrush. My ends seem much healthier, and less knotty as a result.
3) henna is amazing! I have more than a few grey hairs now, and it also helps with this. At about £7 for a block of Caca Rouge from Lush, it works out at just over £2 per dying session - much cheaper than chemical dyes, and much better for my hair. Obviously only useful if you have dark hair!
My main priorities with finding an alternative to standard shampoos is that it should be cheap, easy and not reliant on fossil fuels for its production; I am reluctant to use the words 'sustainable', 'green' or 'ecological', but these would also be relevant. If I can find it in my kitchen cupboard, so much the better.
Let the experiments commence!
Monday, 26 November 2012
Building real friendships
I've just returned from a GRADschool course in Windermere run by Vitae (and paid for by SGM - THANK YOU!!) which I was warned might change my life, and has indeed done so.
Aside from boosting my confidence no end and giving me some very firm nudges in the right direction career-wise, it has reaffirmed my desire to live a life that I find fulfilling, nourishing and challenging. It also highlighted to me that I am a very people-oriented person. I just love caring for and bringing the best out of people, getting to know them, supervising projects so that everyone does their bit (it turns out I'm a Belbin co-ordinator) and making sure everyone knows how vital they were in getting stuff done.
So whilst evaluating my time there, one thread that stood out was my pain at not keeping in touch with my friends better. Every time I miss a birthday or a marriage or a birth I cringe. How do I not know my friend's addresses, mobile numbers... birthdays?!
Unfortunately a large part of the answer lies in Facebook.
It has become my crutch. Where I once had an address book I now just send people messages online. I decided this won't do, so tonight I culled about 100 people off my friend list. I began with people I haven't spoken to in the last year - which was a surprising number; most of these I haven't really spoken to since I joined Facebook back in 2006. Once the ball was rolling, it was easier to remove people who I am awkwardly friends with through other friends, people I went to school with, and people who generally just make me feel shite about myself. Now I'm down to 146 friends, which still seems an awful lot.
Since I became friends with my mum, my aunties and my vicar, I have to say I've been putting a lot less stuff on my page (!), but the weird thing is that online etiquette has changed in recent years, and I've become accepting of some seriously detrimental things. Since when was it ok for people I barely know to write upsetting things in my personal space? Since when do I need to share my personal details with people I haven't really spoken to in 15 years, or with friends of friends? It's bizarre, and I can understand how Facebook has been found to have profound mental implications. I know far more intimate details about certain conference contacts than I do of some of my work colleagues.
So I've chopped my social sphere down to people I like and want to stay in touch with, which surely is what Facebook should be for. Who knows, I may yet give it all up completely... but for now I'm happy to have a bit more control over who can see my personal stuff, and begin making a proper address book.
Thursday, 15 November 2012
Diversity
This article was originally published for Cambio Ltd. on 14-11-2012. Access it here.
In my original project description there is a very innocuous sentence that reads “rhizobia diversity will be assessed by PCR fingerprinting with REP/ERIC/BOX PCR”.
The problem is, it won’t.
Unfortunately, neither will RP01, RP04 or RP05 RAPD primers, or NodA or GyrB primers, as 2 years of tweaks and frustration have shown me. It would seem I’m at a dead end. So with a year to go, 1000 strains and a £2,000 budget I am faced with the dilemma of how to address my project title of “Rhizobia Diversity in Farm Soils”. Hum.
One of the main problems of this is the more I delve into the topic, the more I wonder what ‘diversity’ means. A quick look in my Chambers dictionary yields the definition:
n diverĖsity state of being diverse; difference; dissimilarity; variety.
But how much difference? How much dissimilarity? How much variety?
I’m beginning to see why I will be a doctor of philosophy…
My original hope was to use banding patterns to identify my strains. My NodA assay very reliably gives me two very different banding patterns for the two bacteria I work with: Rhizobium leguminosarum bv. trifolii and Sinorhizobium meliloti. But it doesn’t give me any finer resolution, and I can already identify with some reliability to the species level because of the plant I’ve isolated them from in the first place. And I must say looking at a plant is a much quicker way of discerning that level of diversity!
So discernment to a species level is pretty easy when you’re coming at it from the direction I am. If it comes off an alfalfa plant, chances are it’s S. meliloti. No need to spend a week showing that molecularly. But my project is aimed at discerning more subtle differences that might have been responsible for crop failures in a previous project: perhaps changes in a gene that affects nodulation ability under low pH, or desiccation, or Ca deficiency. Or something that improves N-fixation ability. Or, or, or… something!
So how do I find that difference?
There are currently 92 species of ‘true’ rhizobia in 12 genera, though it sometimes seems that these classifications change on a bi-weekly basis. I think I’m right in saying that they’re based on 16S rRNA profiles: differences in sections of housekeeping genes that are similar, but whose differences merit their classification as a separate species.
This week I had my first lesson in metagenomics and phylogeny, a combination of brain-crunching pain and excitement at delving into the private lives of my bacteria. Using the 16S rRNA sequence data for 4 wild-type strains of S. meliloti, including its sister strain S. medicae, I crunched them in BioEdit and found… very little difference.
16S is clearly not the gene I will be using for this method.
There are other options though, and with the age of next-generation sequencing upon us it is much easier to analyse diversity at a very fine level using this method: it is clearly the way forward. The problem is the cost. I have almost 1000 strains, far more than I can afford to sequence. My alternative is RFLP, which is cheaper but a nightmare to analyse for that many samples, and won’t give me such fine detail. So I am left with a dilemma that must be familiar to a lot of university-based researchers: how do I squeeze the best value out of my funding? How can I get some original, publishable, rigorous results? At this point I’m considering paying for the sequencing myself!
In my original project description there is a very innocuous sentence that reads “rhizobia diversity will be assessed by PCR fingerprinting with REP/ERIC/BOX PCR”.
The problem is, it won’t.
Unfortunately, neither will RP01, RP04 or RP05 RAPD primers, or NodA or GyrB primers, as 2 years of tweaks and frustration have shown me. It would seem I’m at a dead end. So with a year to go, 1000 strains and a £2,000 budget I am faced with the dilemma of how to address my project title of “Rhizobia Diversity in Farm Soils”. Hum.
One of the main problems of this is the more I delve into the topic, the more I wonder what ‘diversity’ means. A quick look in my Chambers dictionary yields the definition:
n diverĖsity state of being diverse; difference; dissimilarity; variety.
But how much difference? How much dissimilarity? How much variety?
I’m beginning to see why I will be a doctor of philosophy…
My original hope was to use banding patterns to identify my strains. My NodA assay very reliably gives me two very different banding patterns for the two bacteria I work with: Rhizobium leguminosarum bv. trifolii and Sinorhizobium meliloti. But it doesn’t give me any finer resolution, and I can already identify with some reliability to the species level because of the plant I’ve isolated them from in the first place. And I must say looking at a plant is a much quicker way of discerning that level of diversity!
So discernment to a species level is pretty easy when you’re coming at it from the direction I am. If it comes off an alfalfa plant, chances are it’s S. meliloti. No need to spend a week showing that molecularly. But my project is aimed at discerning more subtle differences that might have been responsible for crop failures in a previous project: perhaps changes in a gene that affects nodulation ability under low pH, or desiccation, or Ca deficiency. Or something that improves N-fixation ability. Or, or, or… something!
So how do I find that difference?
There are currently 92 species of ‘true’ rhizobia in 12 genera, though it sometimes seems that these classifications change on a bi-weekly basis. I think I’m right in saying that they’re based on 16S rRNA profiles: differences in sections of housekeeping genes that are similar, but whose differences merit their classification as a separate species.
This week I had my first lesson in metagenomics and phylogeny, a combination of brain-crunching pain and excitement at delving into the private lives of my bacteria. Using the 16S rRNA sequence data for 4 wild-type strains of S. meliloti, including its sister strain S. medicae, I crunched them in BioEdit and found… very little difference.
16S is clearly not the gene I will be using for this method.
There are other options though, and with the age of next-generation sequencing upon us it is much easier to analyse diversity at a very fine level using this method: it is clearly the way forward. The problem is the cost. I have almost 1000 strains, far more than I can afford to sequence. My alternative is RFLP, which is cheaper but a nightmare to analyse for that many samples, and won’t give me such fine detail. So I am left with a dilemma that must be familiar to a lot of university-based researchers: how do I squeeze the best value out of my funding? How can I get some original, publishable, rigorous results? At this point I’m considering paying for the sequencing myself!
Thursday, 8 November 2012
Free stuff, w00p!
I read in a Lawrence D. Hills book that "there is no honour amongst gardeners" and I'm inclined to agree. Over the past year or two I have become used to finding random vegetables amongst my plants, where people have clearly flung their unwanted stuff. Quite what is wrong with their compost heaps I don't know, but the bizarre thing is that most of the time it seems fine to me. Free veg, great!
Today I went to our Reading allotment where I am continuing to strip it down as we now have *the new allotment*. As it's autumn time it's time to take the beans down - and on arrival at the beans I discovered a whole pile of someone else's bean plants (which just seems plain cheeky).
The thing was, amongst the 'waste' there were absolutely loads of beans. It was here that I decided once and for all that people in this country are mad. We just have too much cheap food - otherwise why would you throw away perfectly good protein in the form of beans?
Personally I will be storing them to grow next year. There's all sorts of runner bean varieties and a few borlottis for good measure. But there may just be too many to grow, in which case, that's some free food.
Thank you wasteful person!
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