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Guess who I saw last weekend!

Background: This diagram represents what goes on inside your cell as insulin is present. Specifically, this helps explain Type 1 Diabetes response. The GLUT-4 vesicle is a glucose channel, which normally is inside the cytoplasm. It is recruited to the plasma membrane when signalled by insulin through a cascade of events.
(side note: the method they used for detecting the movement of the GLUT-4 vesicle was by tagging a GFP (green fluorescent protein) to the GLUT-4 and viewing the cell under resting conditions then with an insulin stimulus they can visualize the vesicles moving towards the PM)

Today, in one of my biochem courses, we came across this slide. When the prof put it up, he admitted that he was sorry he had to do this to us. To some temporary relief, he said we didn’t have to know half of this pathway (until the next slide…). But as I listened to him chat off about what some of these proteins do (ex: Akt signaling many different pathways, like PDE3B (phosphodiesterase which converts cAMP>AMP) thereby inhibiting cAMPs which prevent activation of PKA (Protein Kinase A which phosphorylates the hormone-sensitive lipase and requires cAMP for activation)), I couldn’t help but laugh, because it was SO detailed, to think people out there have put this map together really blows my mind.

But what got me was that I saw this map and thought, How can people say there is no God? How can they believe that all this happened through random chance. Sure, evolution dictates that only the fittest and most efficient traits will be passed onto future generations, but there MUST have been a start point. Some creator that had designed this. Each pathway has its own set of regulatory systems, with the more important pathways having very strong levels of regulation. It’s fascinating to see how mutations in a single protein can result in cancerous growth because all of a sudden the cell is now proliferating out of control. As I tried to make sense of it all, I wanted to post this just to share it. I suppose Biochemistry is interesting. Lot of the material being taught goes back to cancer.

Addendum: If you notice, some of these names are so random: SHIP, ASIP, JAK, CRK, SOC, SOS, Ras, Mek 1/2, Bad, Grb1 (pronounced greb). While some scientists like to keep things simple (ex: MAPKKK > MAPKK > MAPK), others like to add to confusion by giving a second name to them but it’s really the same thing (same pathway: RAF > MEK > ERK)

Well, just in case you weren’t: A. at the condo the day I bought them (JasonC) or B. demanding a live update (teewee), the new item was in fact, the Cinema 220s. The name of the press event was originally chosen for the mac reference in an attempt to divert attention, but anyhow, the clues all kinda pointed to the speakers. Anyway, without further ado, the Paradigm Cinema 220 L/C/R speaker.

Right out of the box, with bad placement and no configuring at all, they sound rather tinny. This was a far cry from being blown away by Michael Buble’s Everything at the store. I had an idea of how they should sound and this wasn’t it. This wasn’t even close. This was like playing some KOSS computer speakers with the “DOUBLE BASS” button on the front, the button being off. I chalked it up to needing to “break in”, or “burn in” the speakers as we are so often led to believe. After a day of burning them in (which an audioholics article has actually proven to be useless) they weren’t much better.

I read more articles about setting up systems, speaker frequency response and crossover settings (oh my!), and it turns out that I was putting too much of the audio load on the 220s and not enough on the subwoofer. Now, with the size of these speakers (especially compared to the computer speaker size that we’re pretty used to), I was under the impression that they would carry most of the load and the sub would just be there for LFE (low-frequency effect). I was wrong, it turns out that these Paradigms have even less frequency response than the original Onkyos’ (claimed response) and so need even more help from the subwoofer.

The 220s frequency response is rated at 115Hz-20kHz +/- 2dB. The Onkyos are rated 60-50kHz without a dB rating or somesuch nonsense. I originally had the receiver’s crossover set to 80 Hz, which meant that I was actually sending the 80-115Hz range of frequencies to the Paradigms, which they couldn’t reproduce (or at least not well). After learning this, I set the receiver crossover to 120Hz and now the sound is a lot more full, and fairly tolerable.

However, due to not having an Audyssey microphone for the automatic speaker calibration that the Onkyo receiver is capable of, and also no real idea on how to set the equalizer manually.. I’m stuck with a sound which has the range, but sounds pretty flat and not rounded and “warm”, if you would. They’re far and away better than the Onkyos, especially off axis, but I’m fairly confident they haven’t reached their true potential as of yet.

My next step is to somehow get a hold of an audyssey microphone and calibrate the system properly. While first impressions of the 220s leave me happy with the purchase, or more accurately, the potential of the purchase, I have to reserve my full judgment until after the calibration.

The downside so far? The speakers have only too clearly revealed the weaknesses in the rest of the system.. which usually leads to one thing. Or many.

MARKHAM, Ontario – October 27, 2008 – TPX INDUSTRIES – [tpx]sadd3j announces a tpx press event: “Three’s Company”, featuring the unveiling and unboxing of a new toy. The event will go live on Wednesday, October 29th at 11:00PM EST.

=UPDATE= Unfortunately, due to logistical problems in the supply chain, we’re unable to proceed with the event this week. While it saddens us to do this, the press event will be tentatively rescheduled to Sunday, November 2nd at 11:00PM EST.

Read a recent (investing) article that quoted a convocation speech by J. K. Rowling (of Harry Potter fame), thought it was pretty good, copied the relevant section below.

Rowling’s speech was about two things: failure and imagination. As many people know, she has known her share of failure en route to becoming a literary sensation:

By any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

And although she found failure far from ennobling, she pointed out that few of us can escape it. “Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default,” she said.