The SweeTango Apple

This week the New Yorker had an article on the history of apples and the University of Minnesota apple breeding program.



http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/21/111121fa_fact_seabrook

Minnesota's newest apple, the SweeTango, is a cross between the Honeycrisp and Zestar varieties, both of which were also developed in Minnesota.  The article points out that until the last twenty years or so, there were only a few types of apples available at supermarkets--Red Delicious and McIntosh and not much else.  Minnesota turns out to be an apple breeding leader and is one of the institutions responsible for the explosion of new delicious apples available.  The apple breeding process reminded me of high-throughput drug screening.  Breeders start out with two decent apples, but the offspring from the mating can be dramatically different from the parents.  So thousands of offspring are tested, and there's one guy (David Bedford), who tastes them all (500-600 apples per day).  I have now discovered what I'm going to do with my life if MD-PhD doesn't work out.


In other, much less exciting news, I have completed the neurology sequence of second year med school, which is supposed to be one of the most challenging.  It was three weeks of stroke, multiple sclerosis, infections, epilepsy, sleep, migraines, neurodegenerative disorders, neuropathies, muscular dystrophy, eye and ear disorders.  All of it was very interesting, although the ear has got to be one of the most amazing organs:

The Cardiac Exam

We just finished two weeks of Clinical Foundations of Medicine, which included practice with the history and physical as well as two electives! My electives were Health Policy and Video Making for Physicians. In the health policy elective I learned about who's winning (drug companies and device manufactures) and who's losing (everyone else) as health care costs skyrocket. We talked about the idea of a monopsony (single buyer), and how in other countries having the government as the sole buyer of health care helps keep costs down. And we discussed Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), which are networks of primary care physicians, specialists, and hospitals. These organizations are paid a set amount per person assigned to the ACO by the insurance companies, so there is an incentive to keep costs down rather than ordering unnecessary tests and procedures. There would also be bonuses for health care providers who improve quality metrics while keeping down costs, further incentivizing high-quality, low-cost care. ACOs are a major component of the Affordable Care Act.

In the video making elective, we made a 2-minute video showing some parts of the cardiac exam. The idea was that videos are an excellent way to convey medical information to colleagues and patients. Here are both groups' videos--me and my deranged jugular vein are in the first one.

Greatest game ever?

The Michigan Wolverines beat the Notre Dame Fighting Irish 35-31 last night, after 3 touchdowns in the last 1:12. At 1:12, Wolverine phenom Denard Robinson threw a touchdown pass to Vincent Smith to make it 28-24 Michigan. The Fighting Irish stoically marched down the field and responded to make it 31-28 with 30 seconds left. With 2 seconds left on the Notre Dame 16, Michigan showed remarkable courage by going for the TD rather than kicking a field goal to tie it. Robinson connected with Roy Roundtree to win it for Michigan. This game would have been incredible under any circumstances, but it turns out that it was the first ever night game played in the Big House, with a record attendance of 114,000.

I moved into a new house last weekend with four other med students and 1 undergrad. The place was an absolute mess: there was a hole in the ceiling that leaked water during a storm; the dishwasher is broken; there were leaks in the basement; the kitchen was full of dirty dishes and soggy rags; the refrigerators were stocked with months-old rotting food and were growing mold; the living and dining room were trashed and the carped badly stained; the backyard was buried in old furniture, mattresses, and decades-old desks and chairs; and the front yard was overgrown with bushes and weeds. Last week all of us have put huge amounts of money and effort into the place to get it in working condition. Here are some pictures after we removed all the trash, scrubbed, painted, mowed, and brought new furniture.

Dining room

Living room

Kitchen with new pegboard for pots and pans I installed. Moderately tacky but functional.

New cabinet we installed

Two fridges

My room

Deck

Behind house/parking (we have a shed to the right of this)

Addendum to previous post

Sky Cowboys

Up and Down From Ground Zero

WTC

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, I thought I would write a quick post about the new World Trade Center complex. I haven't heard many people talking about it, but as of March 2011 (the last date when updates were available), 1WTC was 56 stories and growing. Here are some neat pictures of the construction.

The new WTC will have five skyscrapers and the 9/11 museum & memorial. 1WTC will stand 1,776 feet tall and will be the world's 3rd highest building when it's completed in January 2013. It will have quite an arsenal of safety features:

In addition to structural redundancy and dense and highly adhesive fireproofing, the building will include biological and chemical filters in the air supply system. To assume optimum egress and firefighting capacity, extra-wide pressurized stairs, multiple backups on emergency lighting, and concrete protection for all sprinklers and emergency risers will be provided, in addition to interconnected redundant exits, additional stair exit locations at all adjacent streets, and direct exits to the street from tower stairs. All of the building's life-safety systems - egress stairs, communication antennae, exhaust and ventilation shafts, electrical risers, standpipes, and elevators - will be encased in a core wall that will be three feet thick in most places.

It's architecture is not particularly noteworthy, but check out the dinosaurian transportation hub:
The rebirth of the World Trade Center cite is inspiring and exciting. I'm glad that 1WTC will be even higher than the old twin towers (although the roof of 1WTC will be exactly the same height as the original 1WTC; only with its spire will it rise to 1,776 feet). Some developers wanted to rebuild the old towers pretty much exactly as they were before 9/11. In my opinion it was better to make a new design representing a stronger, reinforced New York. If only Daniel Libeskind's original design was used, New York's skyline would look like this:

Michigan LP Bike Trip

*Itching madly from mosquito bites*

I'm writing from the Detroit Metro Airport Super 8 Motel, the only major casualty from a 7.5-day bike trip in Michigan. Here's the route:

I started at the Ralph A. MacMullan Conference Center in Roscommon, Michigan on July 31. This was the last day of our MSTP retreat. There were two seminar sessions and one poster session at the retreat, with lots of games and drunken merriment mixed in. The day I started, I must admit I was suffering rather severely from hangover and lack of sleep. Fortunately I felt better once I started riding in the early afternoon after the morning's scientific talks. Here are some notes from the trip, with pictures at the end.
Day 1: Roscommon to Gaylord. Best sight was Lake Otsego on a sunny, breezy Sunday with lots of beachgoers. Spent the night in a motel to be sure I got a decent sleep.
Day 2: Gaylord to Mackinaw. Rode today on the Gaylord-Mackinaw Rails to Trails Project. Gaylord (aka the Alpine Village) is on a "plateau" of something like 1000 feet in elevation so the first part of the day was a gentle downhill. The trail was well-groomed all the way to Mackinaw. I dropped my things at the Teepee Campground a couple miles south of Mackinaw City and then pedaled into town to catch a ferry to Mackinaw Island. There I was amazed to find thousands of bicycles EVERYWHERE and horse-drawn carriages for the heavier loads and lazier tourists (automobiles are outlawed). I had a picnic on the lawn beneathe Fort Mackinac and enjoyed a sunny summer evening.
Day 3: Mackinaw to Fisherman's Island State Park (1.5 miles south of Charlevoix). It rained hard, pretty much all day. I was in northwestern Michigan now, so it was hilly as well. I took a wrong turn and ended up cutting across Michigan's middle finger (don't know any other word for it) rather than hugging the coast as planned. But this allowed my to see some very nice rolling farmland, so no problem. Rolled through the haughty resort town of Charlevoix and spent the night at a campsite on Lake Michigan.
Day 4: Fisherman's Island State Park to Traverse City. Relatively short day down to the surprisingly pleasant town of Traverse City. Had an awesome dinner at the Dish Cafe, and a slice of cherry pie from the Grand Traverse Pie Co.
Day 5: Day trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes. Best cycling day of the trip. Covered beautiful rolling farmland over Michigan's "pinky" finger. Somewhat serious climbs for Michigan, including a hill with a runaway truck ramp (!). Pedaled through Glen Arbor and Empire, the two main towns in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Seashore. I hiked up the "Dune Climb" and got a superb view of Lake Michigan.
Day 6: Traverse City to Highland Lake Campsite. Long and at times tedious day through unremarkable terrain, but terrific campsite on secluded lake, where I went swimming!
Day 7: Highland Lake to Grand Rapids. Rain again for much of the day. Rode on the White Pine Trail for the last 20 miles into the city, then followed the Grand River to the Holiday Inn in downtown. I felt like splurging a little bit. Most impressive thing about Grand Rapids is the Grand River, which actually is pretty big. I recognized a lot of sites from the entertaining Grand Rapids Lip Dub Video.
Day 8: Grand Rapids Downtown to Grand Rapids Airport. Hardest day of the trip, seriously. I started out by going to the Gerald Ford Museum, where I decided that Gerald Ford was a nice guy but not a particularly good president. Then I rode (in the rain again) through Grand Rapids, and after a couple turns noticed that I was seeing the same street names I had seen a half hour earlier. Mentally I was not prepared for a wet, confusing ride and got somewhat upset with myself before I got my bearings. Eventually made it to the airport where I picked up a rental car and booked it back to Ann Arbor to exchange my bicycle and soaked gear for hiking boots and fresh clothes, because I was planning on meeting my dad in Yellowstone for a few days. Unfortunately, delays that accumulated throughout the day led me to miss my flight, so here I am...stuck in a motel a few miles down the road from DTW, but content to have an extra rest day before flying out tomorrow.

110807 Michigan LP bike trip

Visit to Los Angeles

This weekend I traveled to Los Angeles to visit my Uncle Jonathan, Aunt Julie, Grandma Elise, cousins Rivkah, Dvorah, Hannah, and Akiva. And my dad, step-mom, and brother Alex drove down from Sacramento as well. We visited the Watts Towers, constructed over a period of decades by Simon Rodia, an uneducated Italian immigrant who moved to Watts in 1921. Rodia was a laborer by day and in the evenings and weekends he would work on the towers, which are made of rebar covered in concrete. Rodia covered the concrete with shards of glass soda bottles, broken plates, tiles, sea shells, and other found objects like a boot. He used only simple tools like a hammer and chisel and bent the rebar on the nearby railroad track to make the curved structural elemets. He didn't use any scaffolding either so climbed up the towers to work, until he finished in his late 70s. At one time the city tried to tear down the towers, claiming they were an eyesore and not structurally sound. A truck pulled cables attached to the tops of the towers, but the cables snapped and the demolition effort was abandoned. The towers have not wavered despite many earthquakes and being exposed to the elements. They are truly an amazing piece of artwork.

We also visited the University of Southern California campus; USC has graduated the most Olympians of any university in the country. And we ate dinner at Shiloh, the best Kosher restaurant I've ever been to.

The family, minus Dad.

More pictures:

Summertime!

I just finished the third week of my summer lab rotation. Most of the folks in the lab come from a chemistry background, so I'm learning a lot from them and trying to dust off the cobwebs from orgo. I ran a thin layer chromatography experiment this week and everyone made fun of me because I cut the silica strip WAY too big. It's interesting contrasting a chemistry-based lab with the biology labs I've been in previously. Just as in biology, there are certain generally accepted methods for doing things. For example, when doing chemistry one does not use a pipetman with plastic tips, so ubiquitous in biology labs. Instead, one uses a glass syringe that won't be dissolved by organic solvents. It's funny though, the chemists in the lab often break cardinal rules of the biology lab. For instance, people pore the supernatant from a bacterial culture down the sink. Or they leave the plumbing of chromatography equipment sitting in aqueous buffers, making it prime real estate for bacterial growth. I'm enjoying sharing tips and hints with labmates from different backgrounds.

The weather was warm and sunny the past week, so I got out for plenty of bike rides and runs. Two weekends ago I ran in the Dexter-Ann Arbor half marathon, a beautiful race mostly along the Huron River. I thought it was an impressive show of community spirit, with many of my friends and professors running and a large post-race rally followed by the Taste of Ann Arbor festival. Picture at one representative point on the course:

After taking a two-hour nap following the race, I traveled to the Detroit Institute of Art with a group of medical students and professors as part of a Arts and History in Medicine trip. The museum's most famous piece is a multi-wall mural by Diego Rivera depicting Detroit's history and industry; here is just one wall:

The DIA has many other famous works, including some by van Gogh and Picasso, that we saw only briefly, so I'll definitely need to return.

And finally, I'd just like to note that it's been great to see hordes of bicyclists out and about on the streets of Ann Arbor. I've noticed that only a fraction of bicycle commuters wear helmets in Ann Arbor. Usually people out for long rides wear a helmet, but folks on short trips tend to forgo them out of convenience. The bicycle helmet debate is still raging, with conflicting scientific evidence on both sides regarding the efficacy of helmets. If you were to compare the outcome of a helmeted rider versus a helmetless rider in any given crash, the helmeted rider probably has an increased chance of faring better. However, there's evidence that helmet laws decrease the number of cyclists on the road (increasing the risk for the remaining cyclists due to the "safety in numbers effect," not to mention diminishing the huge cardiovascular health benefits to cyclists in general), cause cyclists to ride faster, and cause motorists to pass cyclists more closely.

On the other hand, the evidence for the efficacy of motorcycle helmets is pretty much irrefutable, yet the state of Michigan is currently looking into repealing mandatory helmet use for motorcyclists:

http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/06/repeal_of_michigans_motorcycle.html

The argument for repeal is that the helmet law is hurting tourism in Michigan...I have trouble imagining someone canceling their vacation to Michigan because they have to ride with a helmet on their motorcycle. Meanwhile, the health care savings due to helmet use in Michigan are in the many millions of dollars.

Phlomax Pics and Video

M1 year is over. And I'm at home for the Memorial Day Weekend, kayaking in the Magothy River, feasting on salmon with black beans, and visiting the new R.E.I. store in Columbia, MD--finally my favorite store has come to my hometown! On Monday I'm heading back to Ann Arbor to start on my first lab rotation, in which I will be developing a dendrimer. A dendrimer, as I learned this week, is a molecular dandelion seed.
It is a collection of functional groups radiating out from a simple chemical core. Dendrimers can be used as contrast agents in MRI, for studying cellular biology like signal transduction, and for drug delivery. I'm excited to report my project is TOP SECRET, so I cannot reveal any details.

And now for the video and pictures of Phlomax's Med Student Love.

Phlomax

Between this my last post, I completed the 5-week infectious disease sequence, which is generally regarded as the toughest sequence of M1 year. Tough because there were dozens of pathogens to memorize with associated microbiology, pathology, clinical presentation, and mechanism of transmission. Then there were just as many drugs with mechanism of action, side effects, and uses to memorize. It was still a mostly fun sequence though because it was very well taught and it was our first clinically oriented sequence. Now we're on embryology which is horribly taught but fortunately will be over soon. Last we have one week of human growth and development before summer vacation begins after Memorial Day. I'll be starting my first lab rotation with Dr. Jason Gestwicki on May 31.

A lot has happened in the last month and a half. For one, the weather has dramatically improved, which means I've been getting out for regular bike rides. Last week I did a complete tune-up of my road bike, installing a new cassette, front chain rings, and chain. I've also been training for the Dexter-Ann Arbor Half Marathon coming up on June 5. Yesterday I went out for a long run loop but drastically under-estimated the length of the loop and ended up walking 4 miles at the end.

In other news, I traveled to Kalamazoo, Michigan a few weeks ago for the Michigan State Medical Society annual meeting. "Kalamazoo" is the Indian word for a footrace in which you had to run to the river and back before a pot of water boiled. The town didn't really have anything else interesting going on. At the conference we presented a number of resolutions, including one on which I was an author stating that the MSMS should urge Michigan city governments to implement bicycle sharing programs. Such programs have been implemented all over Europe and in some U.S. cities like Washington, D.C. One program is just starting this month in Madison, Wisconsin, and since the demographics of Ann Arbor are similar to those of Madison we thought Ann Arbor would be a good spot for bicycle sharing. Even people that own bikes can use bike sharing programs because they're great for one-way trips, and the bikes are weather-proof if you don't want to get your own trusty steed dirty. There are bike kiosks situated throughout town and members can check out a bike whenever they want with the swipe of a card and return it to any other kiosk. The price is usually free for the first half hour and increases steeply thereafter, to encourage quick commuting trips and discourage long lazy day trips. Anyway, the MSMS loved the resolution and it passed easily. Next we're going to present the resolution at the AMA national meeting in June.

And the other big event was the Biorhythms Spring Show, which was Saturday. The show featured a Mance (Man Dance), African style dance, jump rope dance, bhangra, and other dances and musical performances. And there was a rap! We called ourselves Phlomax and the name of our act was Med Student Love. We used the beats to Tupac's California Love and Eminem's The Real Slim Shady to make a rap about med student life with a surprise twist at the end. We changed Slim Shady to Dean Petty, the Dean of Education for the med school who is leaving for Wisconsin this year. We had her walk on stage at the end of the performance, which the crowd loved. Unfortunately I don't have a video of the performance, but I will soon.

DP Day

Yesterday I traveled to Detroit with five M1 colleagues to volunteer with the Detroit Partnership's DP Day. This is an annual day of community service in which Michigan students spend several hours drawing murals, cleaning up parks, clearing vacant lots, and working on gardening projects. Transportation and lunch are provided for free, making it an easy opportunity for students to learn more about Detroit and lend a helping hand. In the mid-20th century, Detroit was the fourth largest city in the United States, with a population over 1.5 million. In the last 10 years, Detroit's population decreased 25% to its current level of 750,000. My group was assigned to the Brightmoor neighborhood, which was once a beautiful, thriving community but is now full of abandoned homes and crumbling, vacant school buildings. There are no stores or groceries nearby, forcing residents to eat at McDonald's.

Upon arrival in Brightmoor, we ate lunch at St. Christine's Soup Kitchen, which serves hot meals every Tuesday and Saturday. There we met some children from the community and a couple of energetic community organizers. For lunch we had Shepherd's pie, salad, rolls, and an assortment of desserts. After eating we met Billie, a master gardener and community activist who had recently moved to Brightmoor with her husband to help revitalize the neighborhood. She showed us a park and community garden where they were growing fruits and vegetables for residents in this "food desert." Some things they could grow year-round in a greenhouse. Then she took us to an abandoned house that had not been lived in for a decade. We cleaned up trash in the lot, boarded up windows, raked up leaves, and leveled the front lawn, which had been disrupted by water flowing from a broken pipe. The neighbor to this abandoned house was very grateful and came out to help us. We went to two other vacant lots and cleared them of trash, of which there was plenty.

In the late afternoon we attended the DP Day Rally at Stoepel Park. This rally was unfortunately a waste of time, and I've told the DP Day organizers that it should not be part of future DP Days, or should at least be made optional. I learned a lot more while I was working than at the rally; the rally speakers were not inspiring or interesting (probably because we couldn't hear most of what they were saying). What's more, the students littered about as much trash at Stoepel Park as they cleaned up during the day--papers, pizza boxes, and Red Bull cans were all over the place, and some trash blew away into the community before it could be recovered. Our time would have been much rather spent with a couple more hours working than attending the rally.

Here are some photos:

Lunch at St. Christine's

The Team
Boarding up windows
Cleaning up trash

Tomorrow is Hash Bash Ann Arbor

I won't be attending, but was intrigued.

Here are some photos from my sister Liz's visit last weekend:
These were taken during a walk over the Argo dam and along the Huron River, on a very sunny Sunday afternoon. On Saturday Liz and I attended a conference in memory of Sujal Parikh, a fourth year Michigan medical student who was tragically killed in a traffic accident last year while doing research in Uganda. The conference was called "The Social (Justice) Network"and it featured talks by professors and students on efforts to bring health care to disadvantaged people around the globe. The keynote speaker was Peter Mugyenyi, founder and director of the Joint Clinical Research Center in Kampala, Uganda. He talked about how the recent economic recession has led PEPFAR and other aid agencies to drastically reduce funding of ARVs for the treatment of AIDS in the developing world. The conference organizers hope to make it an annual tradition.

Liz's visit coincided with the final exam for our Central Nervous System Sequence, which was mostly neuroanatomy. The anatomy practical exam was especially tough, but fortunately it was the last anatomy exam ever! Our next sequence, starting Monday, is infectious diseases. This past week we learned how to do the neurology, ear nose & throat, and oral physical exams. We also learned a little about the in-depth mental status exam that psychiatrists do, and we had several interesting lectures on the Tuskegee experiments, child abuse, and LGBTQQ patients. On Thursday, our interpretive projects for the Family Centered Experience curriculum were due. My partner Kellianne and I made a video based on the everyday sights and thoughts of patients with chronic illness (my patient has type I diabetes, Kellianne's has multiple sclerosis). Kellianne happened to have knee surgery to repair a torn ACL several weeks ago, so I accompanied her to surgery to get some hospital footage. You can watch our video here. Our video project will be presented along with many others at a special reception on April 20 for the FCE families.

I'm starting to become very busy with the heap of extracurriculars I've taken on for next year. I'm a student coordinator for the Delonis free medical clinic, co-coordinator of the Students Teaching AIDS to Students program (med students teaching local high schoolers about HIV/AIDS), an editor for the Hippo med student magazine, and one of the leaders of the MedRunners group. Most exciting of all, I'm leading a group of 8 student rappers on a performance at the spring Biorhythms show May 14!

Spring Arrived Today!

Buckminster Fuller and Avalanches

This is the most un-springy spring break--it's snowed pretty much every day this week. We still made it out on Thursday afternoon to the Henry Ford, a massive museum in Dearborn, MI that chronicles American politics, art, and culture. There are many fascinating exhibits at the museum, from the Rosa Parks bus to the rocking chair President Lincoln was sitting in when he was assassinated in Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. One of my favorite exhibits was the Allegheny locomotive, a monstrous steam engine built in 1941 that pulled coal-carrying trains more than a mile long.
Another exhibit I enjoyed was the Dymaxion House designed by Buckminster Fuller in the 1920s. Buckminster Fuller was not the man who first synthesized buckminsterfullerene, or C60 (that distinction goes to nobel laureates Harold Kroto, Robert Curl, and Richard Smalley of Rice University), as I originally thought. No, Fuller is most famous for inventing the geodesic dome. He's also well-known for his Dymaxion House, a cheap, sustainable, and virtually indestructible home. The house looks kind of like a big bag of Jiffy-Pop right before you take it off the stove. It's made of cheap and light aluminum, giving it a very shiny futuristic appearance. The house is suspended by one central post, so the whole thing can swing back and forth in an earthquake or storm. The round shape of the Dymaxion House maximizes living space while minimizing building materials. There are also rotating shelves and closets operated electronically to maximize space. Sadly, the Dymaxion House never went into production, even though it seemed pretty livable and cost about as much as a high-end car--I don't think I would mind living in one, if it was a little spruced up.
Today I attended a Winter Wilderness Medicine Workshop at Kensington Metropark about 30 minutes north of Ann Arbor. The workshop was taught by some very knowledgeable instructors--including emergency medicine residents and attending physicians. Most of the docs had been on mountaineering expeditions and had some amazing stories to tell. I learned about the Gamow bag, a simple but ingenious and effective piece of equipment for treating patients with altitude sickness. Patients crawl inside the bag, the medic closes a super strong zipper, and then someone uses a foot pump to pressurize the bag. The pressure in the inflated bag can reach the pressure at an altitude over 5,000 feet lower than the actual altitude.

One of the instructors used to work in alpine search and rescue in Utah and had done extensive research on avalanches. He told us about all the factors that affect avalanche risk, such as slope steepness, the direction the slope is facing, the type of snow that has fallen, the temperature, the wind, tree cover, and more. We got to play with avalanche rescue beacons used to find people buried in the snow, and we also practiced a fine probe search, which must be done when the victim is not wearing a rescue beacon. In the probe search, a line of people each carrying a twenty foot probe walk step-by-step over the avalanche field, every step pushing the probe in the snow on their left, center, and right. If someone thinks they hit something under the snow, the probe is left in the snow and another line of rescuers with shovels is responsible for digging to the bottom of the probe. Behind the probe line, specially trained dogs sniff for human scents wafting up through the probe holes. It is a painfully slow process. In fact studies show that if avalanche victims are not rescued within 15 minutes, their chances of survival are very slim. So by the time the search and rescue time arrives, they're usually hunting for the dead body. However, a device called an Avalung can buy the victim time. Although there is usually plenty of air mixed in with the snow that is burying an avalanche victim, the victim typically asphyxiates because the warm air he/she breathes out melts the snow immediately surrounding their face, and then the snow refreezes, sealing their face in a tiny air-tight compartment. The Avalung is just a tube that channels expired air behind the victim's back so that the area around their face is not iced in. When the Avalung is used properly, the limiting factor in survival becomes hypothermia rather than asphyxiation.

Here is a video of an avalanche:

Avalanche (Video)..Incredible! - Click here for more home videos

Spring Break!

These snowy pictures were taken twelve days ago, but it's already spring break! (Fortunately it has gotten above freezing the past few days.)
The walkway over Argo dam that I take on 50% of my runs.
Looking at the downstream side of the dam. A dam was first built on this site in 1830 to provide power for a mill. That mill burned down and was replaced in 1914 with a power-generating dam. In 1959 power generation was ceased, but today the dam still backs up the Huron River to form Argo Pond, a small recreational lake used by over 600 rowers from Huron and Pioneer High Schools, the University of Michigan, and the Ann Arbor Rowing Club.
A diver descends into the icy water from the Argo Dam walkway to clear out a dam intake valve in early February (picture from the Ann Arbor newspaper).

Argo Pond, frozen solid.
This is Barton dam, the next dam upstream from Argo (Ann Arbor has 4 dams total on the Huron). It was originally built in 1912-13 and generates 4.2 million kWh of electricity per year for the city of Ann Arbor.

I wonder how much electricity it generates when it's frozen.
Ice climbing, anyone?
Ducks and swans apparently don't mind the cold.

In the last month and a half we completed the GI, endocrine, and immunology sequences, all of which were challenging due to the large amount of new material. But to be totally honest, medical school so far has not been tremendously intellectually stimulating. I'm thinking back to college math problem sets or biology journal clubs or even writing political science papers, where I actually felt like I was problem-solving and thinking logically, rather than blankly staring at my notes, trying to squeeze one more fact into my brain that I will likely forget ten minutes after I take the test. What's more, college assignments usually resulted in some kind of finished "product" I could call my own, whereas in medical school we just file into the library at the end of each week, log on to a computer, choose one of five options a couple dozen times, and hit "submit." Fortunately we have a "Clinical Foundations of Medicine" Week after spring break where we will learn some more physical exam skills, which I also enjoy. Then we have a three-week sequence on the central nervous system, which I know will be fun because the brain is an endless, fascinating frontier.

I'll be sticking around Ann Arbor for the one-week break, catching up on some reading for my summer lab rotation and writing a rap or two for the spring Biorhythms show in May. Meanwhile, the Smoker--the musical in which students lampoon the medical school faculty (it's been occurring annually for nearly 100 years!)--is coming up in two weeks. I have a small acting part and am in one short dance.

Michigan hockey won a 5-4 thriller in overtime tonight versus Western Michigan. Go Blue!