Coming Out in November

When the European Rosetta sends its lander to Comet 67P, my Rosetta will send HUMANs to Comet 195F!

All in November!

最近翻唱的几首歌曲

1） 都是夜归人 （国语）

2） 难道（国语）

3）夜机（粤语）

4)  爱与痛的边缘（粤语）

5）夜半小夜曲（粤语）

6）你的眼神（国语）

On Being a PI (Book Review---At the Helm)

(This is a book review I recently published on a forum.)

“Scientists are notorious for being unable to say ‘No!’ and are very poor managers of their (limited) time. This leads progressively to an over-burdened, over-worked, harassed and distracted individual who has no time for lab or family.” (Caveman 2000)

1. The missing training with a well-trained scientist

So far I have recruited four undergrads who volunteered to work for 8-10 hours per week in my presently-empty lab. During interviews I told them, “You set your own schedule, but once you’ve decided on it, please try to stick to it. You’re welcome to bring homework to the lab if there isn’t much to do.” Having flexible hours is one of the biggest advantages of working in academia. The reason for me to be strict came from past experience working in my advisors’ labs. That is, for unpaid undergrads, except a few highly motivated, once they are used to not showing up, you’ll see them less and less often over time.

This is one example of what new PIs do---they make decisions and establish styles based on previous observations of what have or have not worked for their advisors. With extensive training in almost every aspect of academia, they have never been trained on how to be a PI. Although replicating the labs they have worked in can be an effective strategy in some situations, sooner or later they will run into challenges, because they are in a new institution, with different student qualities, and most importantly, what have been proven to be golden doctrines in an established lab with an experienced PI may fail a starter.

This book focuses on all kinds of issues that are likely to be encountered in the early stage of a PI’s career. I especially appreciate the fact that the opinions are not from a single source. For most of the topics that are covered, the author, Kathy Barker, has interviewed dozens of successful PIs throughout the country. Some of the arguments are contradictory to one another, because there isn’t supposed to be a universal answer. Given your skills, personality, and the environment, you choose your style and come up with your own solutions. As mentioned above, beginners tend to imagine there is an ideal way of surviving every situation, and they often resort to memories of their mentors. With the many options listed in the book, you may gain more freedom when designing your career, and the author tries not to make judgments on your preferences. There are questions with no answers, just to bring up your attention on the issues. Even if you have no idea what you would do facing those situations, learning the questions in advance can be a great help. “There are occasions when you have to rush, but more than often, composure is what people want the most from their leader.” (The Starlight Fortress)

Note that this isn’t a book that is meant to please you, i.e., to make you feel good about yourself (nor is the career as a PI in general, to be fair). It will point out mistakes you have made, and may even forecast the regrets you are going to have later according to others’ experience. You will read about issues you wish you’d never run into in your entire career, but bear in mind that the intention of the book is to be preventive; living through an imagined crisis is, after all, easier than handling it in real life. In the worst case when things do happen, it can be comforting to know that you aren’t the sole individual in the world who is suffering from an imprudent hire, or crying over the permanent loss of experimental data.

2. The guts to say “No”

Recently someone on this forum complained about being frequently occupied with various administrative duties and left with only scattered time slots for research. We really can’t afford that to happen! A PI should never grant others the right to take charge of his schedule. I work at an institution where everyone uses Google Calendar that allows colleagues or students to see one another’s schedules (they know you’ll be busy at a certain time without knowing the exact details). It’s easy for people to assume that, for any blank period on your calendar, you’ll be available at that time and they can just pop up or send you a Calendar Invitation to schedule something.  A colleague once shared his schedule with me, and I saw that he even put down “12 pm, lunch” on every single day! Poor guy, I thought.

A request can be difficult to decline if we indeed have an open slot, not one with which we forgot to note an event. However, having nothing scheduled does not mean you are obligated to fulfill someone’s request. Especially if that chunk of time has been intended for you to read papers or write grants or visit your lab, it’s actually not an open time slot and you should say no. Find another time, and if the meeting doesn’t demand much thinking, find a time with which you can’t do intellectual things anyway. If we can’t control our own time, how are we going to be the masters of our labs?

Speaking of time management, we all have some ideas about priorities, about sticking to our plans, but why do we still struggle for more time to do what we really want to do? The book categorizes a PI’s common activities into four categories.

1) Urgent and important, such as grant deadlines, personal (e.g., health) or professional (e.g., tenure) crises, equipment problems (e.g., broken machines).

2) Not urgent but important, such as reading papers, lab meetings, thinking and planning.

3) Urgent but not important, such as certain phone calls or mails, administrative meetings or duties.

4) Not urgent and not important, which can include a lot of things.

We admit that urgent and important things (Cat-A, grants, etc) have to be dealt with seriously in a timely manner. We don’t ignore urgent but unimportant duties (Cat-C, meetings, etc.), however reluctant or resentful we might be in carrying out the tasks. What matters is that, with only that many hours every day, plans that are important but time insensitive (Cat-B, reading papers, etc.) often get pushed aside. Sometimes Cat-B can even yield to Cat-D, such as sitting on meaningless committees or listening to gossips, mainly because we are unable to say no (another reason may be that Cat-B doesn’t pay off immediately). You could argue that we aren’t machines; what the fun of life is if we aren’t allowed to relax. That’s absolutely true when you have the leisure to dissipate, but not when little time is left for research.

We have probably all met a few businessmen-typed PIs. If you ask them about their current schedule, they have meetings every day, and two incoming grant deadlines.  Check back two months later, the same thing. This may work for a senior PI whose lab has several postdocs or scientists, each being responsible for his own project, attending conferences and keeping up with literature. In other words, the PI has well-trained people who are doing the Cat-B for him, and all he needs to do is pay for the publications. For a new PI with at most a technician and a few students who count on him to write programs and papers for them, this can be suicidal. Under the current funding situation, we are often advised to “keep sending proposals out”. Well, yes and no. Why should any organization fund you if you no longer advance in science?

The book especially urges beginner PIs to spend adequate time thinking and planning. It can be tormenting not to have publishable data for the first year or two, and the quickest way to circumvent the problem is continue on your previous projects---“to tie up loose ends, to bolster earlier conclusions with still more evidence, and to explore side issues” (Vermeij 1997). Different opinions are offered here. Some think that having a productive project as soon as possible is all that matters; you can always explore new ideas later. Others caution on this strategy because once you have something going, you are less willing to take a risk in a new area that may involve investments in new equipment and endless trial and error.

Whichever path you adopt, be sure to think carefully and don’t rush into actions. I once came across a quote related to novel writing. “One of the problems we have as writers is we don't take ourselves seriously while writing; being serious is setting aside a time and saying if it comes, good; if it doesn’t come, good, I’ll just sit here.” (Maya Angelou) So instead of putting down “12 pm, lunch” on my calendar, I have reserved a whole afternoon every week marked with “Cat-B”. I’ll go all the way to protect that sacred time, and if on a particular day, for some reason, I couldn’t read papers or write computer programs or create research plans, I’ll just sit there.

Note that sometimes we have to say no to offers that appear to be attractive but do not essentially agree with our best interest. After I had recruited the undergrads, I was called for a meeting with the Director of the Graduate Program in our college. He encouraged me to take a couple of Master’s students by promising full tuition coverage. Had I not read the book, I might have considered it. At the moment I have enough to worry about my own future. The last thing I want is the responsibility of another person’s future. I don’t feel too bad to engage the undergrads in cleaning and shelving, but I would be sleep-deprived knowing that, in a year or two, the Master’s students will need something for their theses. On this forum we have also read stories about the regrets a PI can have by taking Ph.D. students that have been offered “for free”. After spending a tremendous amount of time and energy in training a student, a PI may end up in a fruitless mentorship. The frustration to both the PI and the student can be painful, although it may bring excitement to other lab members as they speculate “Is he going to fire her?”

All right, there is a fine line between selling a book and pirating its content, and I should probably stop here. If I have to give a negative comment, I’d say that the arrangement of the topics can be improved. For example, the section on Working with a Secretary / Administrative Assistant appears quite early in the book. Maybe it’s just my field, but I’ve never met a PI who has the luxury of hiring a full-time secretary to work solely for him. When fifty pages later I saw the prudence one needs to have in evaluating candidates, I had already finished my hiring process.

A final message. It’s not rare to come across negative or passive attitudes from PIs on this forum, evidenced by complaints of losing interests in research, or statements that being a PI is just another job to pay the bills. There can be various reasons for it to happen (some are listed in the book), but I hope people realize that it is to their own benefit to stay motivated with their projects, because research is more productive if we genuinely care about it, and life is more gratifying when we feel proud of what we do (this applies to any type of job). Off topic here, over the years I’ve noticed a trend of “devalulization” (I know this isn’t a real word) among certain Chinese, here and in China, towards arts, science, and faith. Does it look smart or cool if a person appears to care nothing about spiritual things, I wonder. But it’s a personal choice. To me, being a PI is about enjoying the fun of science despite funding pressures, setting realistic goals without forgoing your wildest dreams, hanging on a little longer after others have all quit.

About being yourself and yourself alone.

CLAM is alive!

My space science fiction short story, CLAM, was published today.

Link to Amazon

When Devin arrives at Planet Mullos 17 b twelve years later, he is determined to retrieve his lost memory about the last mission, during which three astronauts were mysteriously gone. Before he and his new colleagues land on the planet, they find themselves on an exotic journey to one of the planet’s moons. As their adventure proceeds, the past and the present coalesce to unfold the destiny of an advanced civilization. The hard part is not to believe the unbelievable, but to discover what they thought they had known.

CLAM - A Short Story (Chapter 1 The Moon)

CLAM is a short science fiction I hope to publish in a couple of weeks. Here is the first chapter.

Chapter 1   The Moon

“Looks like you are holding the last can,” said the old man, leaning back in his chair, his hand fumbling inside a pocket. Before he put a simulated cigarette in his mouth, he murmured something like hate it.

“Aren’t you a biologist?” Devin said as he peeled the lid off the can and poured the precooked clams into a bowl. With a deep breath, he momentarily forgot about the gray-haired biology professor sitting at the same table. To Devin, eating was an effective way to deal with anxiety, and his anxiety had been progressing as they approached Mullos 17 b, a planet located eighty light years away from home.

“Why would somebody ask me this question every time I smoke?” Roland smiled. The wrinkles around his eyes reminded Devin of the growth rings on a clamshell. Roland had a small figure, an aquiline nose, and eyes that always expressed interests in his surroundings, although at the moment, Devin could not think of anything fascinating in the windowless kitchen of a spaceship.

“A biologist is a human,” Roland continued. “And humans don’t stop doing things just because they know the harm.”

Devin made no reply and quietly ate his clams. He tried to concentrate on the food and ignore the questions that kept popping up in his mind. Was he really here twelve years ago? How could there be no memories left? And his three colleagues who …

“Sometimes I wonder,” Roland interrupted at the right moment, “what’s the point of living a life as a clam, or … or a lobster? Well, at least lobsters have brains.” He gazed down and frowned at the fake cigarette, but soon decided to resume smoking. “As clams, do they even know they exist? I mean, after they are born … You know, in my junior year I was once interested in clams’ reproductive systems. They can be male, female, or hermaphroditic …”

Devin suddenly lost his appetite. The idea that the mushy gooey stuff in his mouth may have been self-conscious turned his stomach. He enjoyed talking to Roland most of the time. Well, most of the time! He dumped the unfinished clams with the shells into a garbage bag and cleaned up the table. He needed a moment alone.

* * *

He climbed up with ease the long and narrow stairs leading to the bridge. At the age of forty-nine, Devin was swifter and stronger than most of his peers as a result of regular exercise. He had tanned and tight skin, bright eyes with superb eyesight. Health, career, and personal life had been great, barring the last mission that had made him a hero to some people, and to others “a coward who ran home alone with his colleagues left to die”.

And unless he retrieved his lost memory, he could argue against neither, even to himself.

The bridge was a circular room with windows providing a 360-degree view. Pleasant hums surrounded various machines that had been deliberately arranged to make use of every available spot. To his surprise, Mina was still sitting at her station, and he couldn’t recall seeing her at all in the kitchen. The young Asian woman was scrutinizing something on the screen in front of her. The long smooth hair lay freely on her back, and her right hand was habitually holding the black-framed glasses. With simple and effective eye surgeries—Devin reflected—few women still wore glasses nowadays. Somehow she persisted.

“This isn’t right,” she glanced at him and said. She had a freckle-free face with long eyebrows and limpid eyes. A very “clean” look, Devin always thought.

He kept walking and ignored her comment. Girls are always paranoid. He knew that as a father of two teenage daughters. He stopped at the front of the room and surveyed the blue planet ahead. Still far, it resembled Earth in many ways with notable dissimilarities. The side of the globe they were facing at had a single ring-shaped continent. Inside the ring there was a large lake or a small ocean. A massive white cloud with a swirl hole at the center perched on the northwest of the continent. There could be an island hidden underneath the storm, but Devin couldn’t tell unless he resorted to the computers.

Then the sour feeling stirred his heart again. How could he not remember seeing the planet? Over the past twelve years not a single day had passed without him trying to recall details of the previous mission. And what happened to his colleagues?

“This just can’t be real!” Now Mina was almost screaming.

Devin exhaled and left for her desk. Her screen showed a shadow-like image, roughly oval-shaped except for the large crack that ran all the way from the surface to the center. Mina tapped her fingers on the screen to make the object rotate. At certain angles the crack was revealed as a hollow sector of thirty degrees or so, and it went so deep that it almost split the whole thing into halves.

Creepy! Devin straightened up and shook his head. He knew they were looking at the smaller moon orbiting Planet Mullos 17 b, since he had just spotted the other moon in front of the planet. It wasn’t uncommon for celestial objects to carry signs of intensive collisions, normally in the form of humongous craters or cracks on the surface. But such a clean and deep cut could not have been natural.

“What do you think?” he heard Mina asking.

“That’s why we are here, right?” He tried to sound relaxed. “Looking for evidence of life. This thing gives us a heads up.”

It was true that the goal of this mission, as well as a series of other missions to different planetary systems, was to discover extraterritorial lives, but Devin had just realized they weren’t ready for what was waiting ahead. To date humans had also built various facilities on Earth’s moon, but what would be the reason for taking away a large chunk of a celestial body? And how could anyone have managed to carry out the task?

Soon, Roland and Kenton joined them after receiving Mina’s brief message. The four of them gathered in front of a large screen, watching new details being filled in as Belief-II slowed down and entered the small planetary system. Just as Devin thought things couldn’t have become eerier, the scanning of the moon surface was completed. Rather than an olive with a chunk of it taken, a better description of the moon would be a relatively flat bottom attached to a half-open lid, or valve. In fact—Devin swallowed hard—the whole thing looked like one of the clams he had just consumed.

Quotes for Today II

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” ~Steve Jobs

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.” ~Oprah Winfrey

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.” ~Benjamin Disraeli

“If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” ~Jim Rohn

“If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.” ~John D. Rockefeller

On Public Speaking

If you ask me to offer some advice to all the WSNs, I would tell them: to me, the biggest problem with you lot is not your sloppy clothes, or untidy hair, or your awkward English. Not even the stinky smell. (Ugh!) The first thing you need to learn is stand straight. Don’t droop your shoulders or tilt your head or bend a leg. If you don’t believe me, go watch a video of any political leader in the world. They may be tall or short, lean or brawny, dressed in different styles, but they always keep their bodies upright.

The same goes for public speaking. The moment you step onto a stage, before you have a chance to open your mouth, people will begin judging you. Unless you wear inappropriate clothes, their first impression will be determined by your spirit, and not standing straight is never associated with passion or self-respect. Some of you may worry about being too stiff or serious on an informal occasion, but relaxation should come as a result of your friendly speech or warm smiles. A slack posture doesn’t win you favors.  

1. It’s all about the atmosphere.

We sometimes hear people say, “I’ll just give the same speech again.” You can never give the same speech again when the audience changes. Below is how William Safire, author of Lend Me Your Ears --- Great Speeches in History, defines a speech (my review of the book can be found here: http://fionarawsontile.blogspot.com/2014/05/book-review-lend-me-your-ears-great.html).

“When did a speech become a speech---when it was drafted or when it was given? … What makes a draft speech a real speech is the speaking of it; but without that articulation, without the strong presence of the deliver, without the audience to be aroused or moved, all you have is a polemic on a page. A speech is an event.”

Recently I gave two research talks within a couple of months. The first was to a group of forty faculty and students, the second to a lab of six members. During the latter presentation, I was shocked by how differently I organized the phrases and explained the science, with the same Powerpoint presentation. Speech is a type of communication. It should be interactive. Even though the audience remains silent during most part of your talk, you need to have an expectation about how your speech is likely to be received, constantly monitor their reactions (mostly reflected by their body languages), and adjust your loudness, tone, speed, but most importantly, the content. You may have to give more basic background or skip certain things if the audience look confused. Kill the question you’ve planned to ask if they don’t appear enthusiastic, or add one if you believe you will succeed.

Sometimes it’s impossible to see actual faces of your audience. The worst scenario is to give a speech to a camera, while knowing that thousands of people might be watching it now or later. Still, your speech is affected by the occasion. The size of the auditorium, the echoes of the microphone, the gravity added by the camera, everything will make your talk different from the rehearsals at home. Some suggest creating a few imaginary listeners in those situations. When you can’t have eye contacts with individuals, you don’t want to stare at a fixed point in the air or sway your gaze too frequently. Novice speakers tend to make the second mistake, thinking that they’ve got everybody “covered”. Have a steady gaze, and occasionally looked in different directions.

I never read. I’ve been giving public speeches since I entered elementary school. Some of them required memorizations of long stories. I know many politicians have a few cards to remind themselves of possible topics they may want to cover, depending on the time and atmosphere. (Queen Elizabeth II has been criticized for reading prepared drafts, but considering how many speeches she has to give in her entire life, we can’t be too hard on her.) Imagine that one of your colleagues comes to your office and before you say anything, pulls out a piece of paper and starts reading to you. That’s not communication! Besides, how could you speak one sentence in the perfect manner without knowing what will come next. You may argue, “I do know. I wrote the whole thing.” Well, you don’t; otherwise why would you need to see the draft? Have everything written in your mind. Let it grow itself like a fruit so that you have to deliver it when it’s time. Or it’ll fall.

I know it’s hard to remember every word of a long speech, but this should be treated as an advantage. Many politicians intentionally add pauses and uncertainties to their well-rehearsed speeches, to give the audience an illusion that they are thinking on the go. In that sense, it’s better not to recite. Yet I bet you’ll remember the exact phrasing of your crucial points. If not, maybe they aren’t as crucial as you’ve thought.

2. Aim low to achieve high.

Believe it or not, it’s hard to speak slowly. Most people naturally speed up when they are nervous.  A few of them do this to achieve the effect of fluency. If you can, record your performance and examine it later, because you always speak faster than you’ve thought. Remember this: whether it’s in China or western countries, talking too fast with no pauses is usually a sign of low social status. It reflects the lack of confidence, i.e., the fear that the listeners may lose their interests at any moment. We’ve seen TV programs in which everybody talks fast, either due to a time limit, or as a result of “diluted content” with which you have to talk a lot before a meaningful point is reached. The speeches we normally give should never be rushed. Ideally, every word you say should be clear to most of the audience. What’s the point of saying something that’s not intended to be heard? You may skim through certain words like articles or conjunctions, but the audience should be able to fill the gaps easily. You don’t want them to wonder, “Ur, did I just miss something important?” After each critical message, pause for a few seconds to let the words sink in.

I’ve always heard people complaining about the difficulty of providing sufficient background information without sacrificing the “fancy” stuff. My philosophy is, whenever you try to explain something, explain it well. Make it thoroughly understandable. You may not be able to cover all the great stuff you’ve done, but that shouldn’t be the aim of any speech. Pick the important ones, and however abstruse the science is, there should be a way to make it conceivable. “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” (Albert Einstein)

3. Draw them right in.

I began this article with a message to WSNs. Alternatively, I could’ve presented you with the definition of speech by William Safire. The fact that you’ve read it this far indicates that I’ve succeeded in hooking you up. I know, especially for scientific talk, sometimes we have to go with the traditional way, but giving an example related to our daily life, creating suspense, or throwing in a quick joke in the early stage of the talk can usually bring up spirit and attention, which sometimes would last for the duration of your talk.

Now I’ll say a little more about jokes. When people experience a catastrophic event, they often remember the details both before and after it. The same with jokes. If you make your audience laugh hard, they are more likely to remember the science, and they’ll do better not to fall asleep. Many believe jokes that work best in a talk are self-deprecating. They can instantly abridge the distance between the speaker and the audience. This works particularly well when the speaker is an authority (“So he isn’t that formidable!”) or is from a different culture (“I didn’t know Chinese got humor.”). I still remember the joke given by a professor in our department when he introduced a more senior woman professor at a seminar, “Although her judgments were usually right, she did make one notable mistake during the three decades she worked here, which is the decision to hire XXX (his own name).”

I heard in the “gold old days”, you didn’t have to start a grant proposal with the Significance. It’s hard to convince people that you are doing something fascinating without first telling them what it is. But we live in a practical world nowadays, and there is a good reason why we should start with the significance. I’ve been through talks that went like---we did this, we found this, and we’ll do this in the future. Who cares? Whenever you introduce a new concept, say something about why it matters. Better still, bring up the problem you aim to solve before introducing the concept.

4. Kill the fourth tone.

I don’t have a scientific explanation for this, but based on experience I think we Chinese use too many “downward” tones than we should’ve. Below is an example. Try to read every word in the fourth tone that has a preceding asterisk.

“I *think this *is the best we could *find, but I could be *wrong.”

To me, a speech has to be rousing. Yes, that includes research talks. Otherwise, why don’t we just sit there and read papers together? A speech is like a novel. When well delivered, it can be quite convincing, persuasive, and intriguing. A monotone or a series of downward tones are just not that rousing. If I am to speak the above sentence, I’ll only have the fourth tone with the very last word, “wrong”. For the word “find”, I’ll use the second or the third tone.

And there are other habits you have to work hard to get rid of. I once had a colleague who didn’t know he frequently touched his chin with a hand until he saw it in the videotape. I say too many interjections in between meaningful sentences. Can’t help it. The worst I’ve seen was a student in a public-speaking summer class. We all knew he was a Christian because he would make several Signs of the Cross during a speech that lasted a minute.

5. Walk around the question.

What’s the strategy to deal with tough questions for which you don’t have an immediate answer? If it’s completely out of your knowledge, just admit it. If you need time to think about it without creating awkward silence, some people suggest repeating or rephrasing the question. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, except that when you repeat a question, people know what you are doing. Another way to handle the situation is to walk around the question and bring up relevant things that, even if in the end you fail to come up with an answer, may still provide the audience with some insights on the topic.

（插入作者高妹/Fiona的话：向大家推荐我正在连载的玄幻---武打---佛道---言情故事《魅羽活佛》，晋江链接：http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=4880087  故事简介：鬼道中的魇荒门，七个师姐妹都以绝世美颜著称。然而这次的任务中，二弟子魅羽却要化作一个中年油腻肥秃僧，卷入佛国、道门，和修罗界的斗争. 还要让咱们古往今来文采武功都称霸天下的帅哥活佛，对她一见倾心，矢志不渝。）

I once talked to the professor I mentioned above before going to a campus interview. He said our ability to carry out a conversation during job interviews is often overlooked. We are advised to be prepared, but we shouldn’t be too prepared. That is, few people want to hire a colleague who considers going through a list of prewritten questions as the sole purpose of a one-on-one meeting. You may have some vague ideas about what you want to discuss with the person, but the execution really depends on how your conversation goes, and you may end up not mentioning your ideas at all. He suggested that I watch some of the popular TV shows and study how the host and the guest managed an engaging conversation for half an hour with a topic that was far from being meaningful?

So I studied a few Late Night with Seth Meyers on Youtube (since my son was born six years ago, cartoons are the only programs we see on the TV), and that’s how I came up with this walk-around-the-question idea. Let me make up an example here. If you ask me, “How do you like Mitbbs?” I’ll say, “It’s a fun website and I visit it often.” So that’s it! The conversation is done in a few seconds. What would be Meyers’s way of expanding the question?

“We’re really glad to have you here, Fiona. You look fabulous.” “Thanks. I was on maternity leave when you last saw me.” “That’s right. Congratulations by the way. So my question is related to Mitbbs, an online forum based in the US for users who can at least read in Chinese. We know there are a few major websites like this, each having its own established culture and readership. To me, this website is notable for being constructive and informative and it seems to have developed a self-censoring mechanism that can effectively subdue the occasionally-observed profanity, personal attack, etc. My question for you is, I know as a writer and scientist you’ve been participating in a few learning communities and constantly thinking about issues related to public education. So, in your view, what would be the influences on this website as Mainland China keeps adjusting its educational philosophies and sending fresh blood to the US? During the clash of two major cultures, what should we do to thrive as a whole without scarifying individuality?”

Well, that’s the walk-around way of making up a question, but I think the same principle apples when you’re trying to answer a question. You start with something remotely relevant (not the maternity leave, though). You walk around it, trying to tackle the problem through different perspectives. As you close up the distance, you yourself may have gained a better understanding of the topic. Remember, to address a question you don’t have to solve a problem. Can you come up with an experiment that has the potential to provide us with an answer? Can you make a prediction of the possible outcomes? A logical elaboration is usually enough to satisfy your audience.   

6. There are no informal speeches.

In my department we have a Friday-morning seminar series. I used to treat it as an informal gathering of students and faculty for exchanging preliminary ideas, until one day I saw a senior faculty canceling her student’s talk, because she wasn’t sure about the conclusions the student was going to make. In academia, there is no such thing as an informal speech. People judge you based on what they see. Their memory of your presentation at an international conference may not be stronger than what they get from a casual conversation with you, or one of your students. To me, informality always has the risk of being mistaken as carelessness in research. Given that our colleagues are the ones who have the biggest impact on our careers---they decide on our tenures and write support letters for our awards, I would always show them my best side.

John W. Gardner said, "Life is the art of drawing without an eraser." Anything that has been said cannot be taken back. So, practice before you give your speech. You may say something wrong, but you don’t want to say anything you are uncertain of. After months or years of hard work, this is the time to “live out loud”.

Between Mother’s and Father’s Days

“There is no such thing that’s age inappropriate. Individuals are vastly different from one another, yet our society has a tendency of mass producing a few prototypes.” – My father’s philosophy transcribed.

That’s why I got the book, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres by Copernicus, as a fifth grader. I didn’t have a clue when I read it through, but for kids, books don’t have to be understood; the critical part is the exposure. Long before I entered college, I had sampled all kinds of outlandish books about religion, philosophy, UFOs, Qigong, and certain Western literature that was generally considered age appropriate. I guess it’s not common to see parents exchanging books with their teenagers on a daily basis. We visited temples and churches; we participated in several major forms of Qigong in the early nineties; we had planned a trip to the Purple Mountain Observatory, although that never happened with the arrival of his next marriage.

He’s a person with an unusually broad interest in almost everything. He majored in western medicine, but is more accomplished in Chinese herbs (he currently works in a pharmacy and occasionally teaches in a hospital or an institute). He plays guitar, accordion, digital piano, and probably other instruments I never heard of. He composes music and songs. He creates mini-symphonies using simulation software. Less often does he write short stories and crosstalk. When I was in second grade, he had me apprentice with a professional storyteller who used to perform in those Tea Taverns in the old days. I only had several classes with that old man, but the influence on me as a writer and speaker was enormous.

So far I would say, he’s probably had several thousands of friends in his life. I’m not talking about acquaintances. When he gets to know people he knows them well. He served in the navy for almost forty years. In fact, I can’t even estimate how many soldiers he had interacted with before he retired. He routinely took me to those yearly veteran banquets held in the base. It was mindshaking to watch those big men hugging one another, crying and collapsing to the floor. That’s why I always feel a special attachment to the military, especially the navy. After he retired he continued to befriend people with various social backgrounds, from jobless loners to managers of four-star hotels, from youngsters of my age to old ladies who could barely see or speak. He has the talent of winning people’s trust in a short time period, if not instantly. “Talking to the patients is an indispensible part of Chinese medicine,” he said. “望，闻，切，问。The modern clinics are so crowded that the patients often get the prescriptions even before they have a chance to describe all the symptoms.” His philosophy made him a popular doctor among old people.

Regardless of the type of a party, he’s always the focus of people’s attention. He has numerous stories, jokes, anecdotes, tricks. Never runs out of topics. To give you an example, he said he once met an old man, who told him an couplet displaced on the door of an old temple.

He said some of the words can’t be found in dictionaries, but are real. The second and the fourth words in the first half of the sentence read Ying3 and Hua2; the third and the fourth words in the second half read Suo3 and Lang3. I don’t know how true this is, but I loved it!

He always has sleep issues. Once he said to me, “Those who fall into sleep as soon as their heads touch the pillows just can’t be too intelligent.” I said hey, Dad, please don’t say that, although I think it’s generally true. His first marriage with my mother was almost ideal. I heard they never had a fight or an argument. They met in college before he went back to the army and she volunteered to go to the poorest village as a request of the Party’s Call. My mother had four younger siblings and was the only one who went to college. She was a diligent student, a singer and a dancer. Now my aunts and uncles still speak of her with ultimate admiration. “The moment I entered high school,” my oldest aunt always said to me, “I was recognized by all the teachers as XXX’s sister.”

To be fair, I feel bad for the aunt who was outshadowed by my mother. My aunt is an extremely nice woman who’s highly accomplished in women’s work. “See!” My uncle-in-law once showed me a yellow bed sheet. “Your aunt embroidered the whole thing before our wedding. All the flowers, the butterflies, the garden. Isn’t that amazing?” My grandma is strict with our women’s work. A constant criticism I received from her as a child was “Your stitches are too coarse. Be more patient!” I know this ancient activity is more about cultivating one’s virtues. Unfortunately, I’m never a person with much patience.

So when my father was remarried in less than two years after my mother passed away, you can imagine the fury from my mother’s family. Dare I say I was the only one who understood him? We are the same kind of persons who would tell everybody the minor mishaps that occur in our daily live, but the true suffers we endure are deeply buried in our hearts and revealed to nobody including family members. Since the funeral day some 26 years ago, the only brief conversation we ever had with regard to my mother was my inquiry about the disease that took her life. We never discussed about our sorrows. We never showed tears in front of each other. The one incident that almost slipped past my father’s guard happened when, one day, I attempted to improvise a melody on the piano (for a while, he had the habit of taking naps during my practice, although now, in retrospect, I wonder if those were true naps). It was a very short and simple melody. At the end I heard him saying, “I’d like to name this song, I’m Waiting for You.”

After I finished my first novel, I once tried exploring how my protagonists, Geneva and Sterling, would have gone through at the end of their lives. I had Geneva die a few years earlier. Sterling actually got remarried and had another son right before he left. I should never have done this! During the few weeks I was writing it, you could’ve caught me running experiments alone with tears all over my face. The pain of losing a loved one can be unbearable. It seemed logic to me that, if Geneva had outlived Sterling, she would’ve stayed single, but not the other way around. That’s because emotion-wise, men are more fragile than women. A lot more.

Because my father wasn’t able to face the loss and the loneliness (or the “desertion”, you may call it), he rushed into another marriage that made his next ten years miserable. I’m so glad to see that he’s living happily with his third wife now, so that I need only worry about my own stuff. It’s a real fortune to be born as a descendent of a wise man, who constantly exceeds the boundary of life, and helps others do so as well.

On Scientific Writing

“The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.” (Oscar Wilde)

           1. Adopt the Right Attitude

Just like everything else, before we start, we have to believe what we do matters. If we can’t persuade ourselves, how are we going to persuade others? Writing scientific essays should not be considered as an obligation, or a pain we go through to create a nice-looking CV. It is true that we have the duty to publish what we have done. “If you don’t publish, you didn’t do it,” my PhD advisor used to tell me. But bear in mind that the development of any discipline would not have been possible if people didn’t know what one another was doing. Consider the current stage of a research field as a mansion, and your publication as a brick that may appear anywhere from the basement to the roof. Insufficient details make it difficult for others to replicate your work; ambiguous phrasings can cause misunderstandings. A single badly crafted brick may deteriorate into a leaky passage.  Too many substandard materials can cause the mansion to collapse.

Let’s not treat essay writing as a burden. Maybe you are lucky to have worked in a modern lab with cutting-edge equipment, or not that lucky like me who sits surrounded by antiques and cockroaches. No matter what, after conducting your experiments for months or years, now it is the time for you to reach out to other smart people, to show your findings and gain their respect. Your writing doesn’t have to impress people---although, if you can, by all means do it! At least it should provide them with a fair chance to judge your work. You deserve it.

The good part about writing a paper is that, unless you give up, it usually ends up being published somewhere. Another form of scientific writing is to prepare research proposals for funding applications. Given the fact that both governmental and private budgets for non-clinical projects are shrinking almost universally, it can be quite frustrating to spend months collecting data and writing a proposal just to have it rejected. But don’t be so pessimistic. There are several benefits of writing grant proposals.  First, it helps you clear your mind and nail down what you really plan to do. “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.” (Joan Didion) You may have a vague idea about a brilliant project. By writing it down you are forced to work through your logic and examine its feasibility.

Second, it garners valuable opinions from your peers. A pair of fresh eyes can help catch flaws in your design; somebody might have done similar work that you are not aware of; you might have overestimated your ability to step into a field without having acquired relevant expertise … It can be painful to face criticisms, but you always learn something. Even if all the reviewers misunderstood you, you know you need to tell a better story (to the lesser men, if that makes you feel better).

Third, it makes things happen, not just being dreamed of. To collect preliminary results, you can’t wait for the best time to come. You gotta start it right now! Nothing inspires us more than an approaching deadline. And remember, in the worst case that your application is dismissed, you may have a manuscript ready to be submitted.

In short, attitude is important. "Love the writing, love the writing ... the rest will follow." (Jane Yolen)

2. Hone your craft

Here I urge everybody to learn the basic techniques of creative writing. It’s true that we need to write professionally, but a boring article may discourage the readers from digging out the treasure buried in your monotones and sloppy grammar. Right off the top of my head I could think of several tips.

First, use active voice. I know, scientific writing is one place where passive voice is indulged, if not encouraged. There have been constant debates about whether active or passive voice better serves scientific writing (like this one: https://cgi.duke.edu/web/sciwriting/index.php?action=passive_voice). I don’t want to go in depth to discuss their pros and cons. Here is an example from one of my old papers: “Activity evoked by low-level background noise is reported to be more suppressed by inhibitory inputs than is tone-evoked activity”. If I were to rewrite this sentence now, it would be: “Inhibitory inputs generate stronger suppression on activity evoked by low-level background noise than by tones.” The original sentence has 19 words, whereas the revised has only 15 words. In addition, it is clearer which is compared with which in the revised sentence. In my experience, changing a passive voice into active usually introduces a strong verb (e.g., generate), which is better than “is found, is observed, or is reported to be”.

Second, expand your vocabulary. In scientific writing, we tend to use the same words again and again. Next time when you want to write the verb “show”, consider its synonyms such as “demonstrate”, “display”, “exhibit”, “indicate”, or “suggest”. I’m not saying you should randomly choose a synonym just to avoid repetitions. These words differ from one another and depending on the context, one of them will be the most accurate. For example, “display” and “exhibit” give a more passive feeling, whereas “demonstrate” implies some kind of proof. “Suggest” sounds more active than “indicate”. By doing so, your writing will slow down. But, here is one of my favorite quotes: “Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.” (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus)

Third, pay attention to the melody and vary the sentence length. It’s very tedious to read an article that has one long sentence followed by another. Short sentences are punchier, but too many in a row gives the impression of lacking sophistication. The best is to have long sentences interleaved with short ones, but by all means, avoid complex structures with layers of meanings. It’s hard enough for others to understand your basic science. Don’t play word games here. In fact, for more skilled writers they would even vary the structures of adjacent sentences. Another commonly overlooked aspect is what the word sound like. Many novelists believe that the sound of a word is, at least, as important as its meaning. This might be a high standard for scientific writers. I would say, the least you can do is to stay away from mouthful phrases.

Fourth, avoid repetitions. Here is a perfect example. At the end of the last paragraph, I initially wrote “the least you can do is to avoid mouthful phrases.” Then I realize I have another “avoid” just below it. So I changed one of them. Another idea I want to get across here is that you don’t have to repeat in the text what is already there in the figure captions. In the captions, we tend to write, “The x-axis is … The y-axis is … The closed symbols are …” I have seen many authors who constantly repeat those phrases in the Results. Not necessary. Another bad habit is to repeat the entire results in the Discussion. The Discussion should really discuss. It should expand. If readers forget about a result, they can go back to look up for it.

Fifth, refrain from using adverbs or modifiers. Replacing a weak verb followed by an adverb with a strong and accurate verb is the number one golden rule of creative writing. For example, “He was walking leisurely in the garden,” should be rewritten as “He was rambling in the garden.” We also tend to say, “The change is very large.” Some people believe that, in scientific writing, any change should be either statistically significant or not. This rule is kind of hard to follow (note: delete “kind of” for better writing), but comply with it whenever you can.

Last, use informative subtitles, especially in the Discussion. Like what I’m doing here: “1, Adopt the Right Attitude”, rather than “1, The Attitude”. Instead of saying “The Negative Level Effect”, make it clear that “The Negative Level Effect Is Only Found for Localization in Elevation.” Under each subsection, instead of plunging into the results, first use a few sentences to tell the readers what to expect, such as in what order will the data be presented. Some people even suggest adding a summary sentence to the beginning or the end of every paragraph in the Results. Your choice. I would always have a summary sentence at the beginning of each figure caption.

In short, never underestimate the power of language. If you aren’t careful with what you say, people would wonder if you have been careful with what you do. Unless you are in a hurry, treat every email as an opportunity to improve your skills.

3. Tell a story

For research articles, different people write in different orders. I always start with the straightforward part, the Methods, which merely needs to be organized and presented in the clearest way. Then I describe the results. Although I tend to think I understand the results by the time the experiment is finished, there are always surprises waiting for me in the finalized figures. Then based on the results, I select what I want to include in the Introduction. Here is a tip: like writing a novel, instead of revealing all the findings, adding a little bit of suspense to the Intro usually keeps the readers more engaged, although they do know what to expect in general, assuming they have read the Abstract.

（插入作者高妹/Fiona的话：向大家推荐我正在连载的玄幻---武打---佛道---言情故事《魅羽活佛》，晋江链接：http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=4880087  故事简介：鬼道中的魇荒门，七个师姐妹都以绝世美颜著称。然而这次的任务中，二弟子魅羽却要化作一个中年油腻肥秃僧，卷入佛国、道门，和修罗界的斗争. 还要让咱们古往今来文采武功都称霸天下的帅哥活佛，对她一见倾心，矢志不渝。）

Now it comes to the critical part, the Discussion. Many people tend to organize the Discussion based on how they present the Results. I can’t say this never works, but why not give it another thought? Ask yourself several questions before you start. For example, “Why did we do this?” In fact, a better question would be, “Why did we have to do this?” Using my PhD advisor’s word, every study we do is a must-do; if it’s optional, we should’ve found a better way to spend the taxpayers’ money. You can argue that your study helps discover something new, or fill a gap between things we’ve already known. A common mistake people often make here is the assumption that anything unknown is worth studying, e.g., “We are the first to …” Well, it’s true only if you are paying for the experiment out of pocket. Otherwise, it needs to be a critical piece of information that solves a long-lived myth, settles ongoing arguments, or links segregated knowledge into a whole picture. Some prestigious journals may even want you to elaborate how your field will change once people get to know your work. Don’t be intimidated by this request. Changes rarely happen overnight. Know your strength, and talk about it with confidence.

Truth is impartial. It shouldn’t depend on the person who pursues it. But science is more than absolute truth. How individual researchers approach the same topic from different angles, how they test their hypotheses and interpret the results, make science colored with all kinds of human factors. We try to write as impartially as we can, but meanwhile, don’t be afraid of expressing your opinions---they might be wrong, but you’ll never know without them being articulated. “Let who you are … what you believe, shine through every sentence you write.” (John Jakes)

Now a bit off topic here. When addressing reviewers’ comments, there are two typical tendencies. One is to be overly flattering in hopes that the reviewers or editor will simply let it go. The other is to answer with strong emotions, almost getting personal.  Neither is the appropriate approach, especially the second one. I know you might be indignant for being misunderstood or mistreated; you might be shocked at the reviewers’ hostility or stupidity, but it does you no good to start a heated debate due to the nature of peer reviews. When you can’t exchange arguments with the other party in a freely and timely manner, things are frequently misinterpreted. Remember, don’t get personal. Just answer the questions, as calmly and concisely as you can. They may have acted unprofessionally, but you wouldn’t. And no need to be flattering either. Acknowledge their expertise, and say that the manuscript has been greatly improved due to their help. Note the last sentence is the key. It makes you and the reviewers collaborators, not enemies.

All right! That’s all I wanted to say. In short, you have to love what you do. And why not? Science is not only about inventing fancy machines or conquering diseases. Through scientific activity we learn to free our mind, we try to find out where we are from, and survive as better human beings.

Author Interview with DJ Edwardson

Fiona: It’s a real pleasure to have DJ Edwardson here and learn about his newly released science fiction, Through the Viscera, the second book in The Chronotrace Sequence. So, DJ, what inspired you to create the original story? A person, the idea of the bioseine/esolace, or simply the desire to explore post-apocalyptic life?

DJ: First off, thanks for having me for this interview. The original concept was to take the promise of science for the future and make it real---to make everything faster, better, more efficient, to stretch those things out to their limits and imagine what such a world might be like. For instance, computers are getting smaller and smaller, and it seemed logical to think that people would eventually want to just absorb the computer into their bodies so that they would be always “connected”. I took it to the extreme so that in this series there really is no distinction between people and computers. People become the computers. And yet it’s not what you’d think. They don’t look like robots, they still look just like normal human beings.

It was sort of that “what if science could do almost anything?” question that was the basis for creating the world of the Vast. And yet, just as strong was the concern that if mankind really did have that kind of power, what would happen if we reinvented ourselves and basically created our own ideas of right and wrong.

Fiona: Interesting! I found your world of the Vast horrifying yet enchanting. A constant praise you receive from your readers is the fantastic world building. How did you develop this type of skill? Are you always a person sensible to the environment?

DJ: Hmm…I’d like to think that the reason the Vast is an interesting place for people to discover and explore is because of all the work that went into creating it. I wanted the environments to feel very different from standard post-apocalyptic books. I didn’t just want New Los Angeles or a shelled out New York City, but something the reader could explore from a blank slate. The fact that the main character Adan has lost his memory made that even more of a necessity.

In one sense this made it harder to write the book because everything is brand new to the reader and almost everything has to be reinvented and explained. But I think this has the potential to help readers identify with the struggles of the characters without being distracted by pre-conceived ideas about how things should be.  The idea is for the readers to place themselves inside the story so that they’re thinking, “What would I do in that situation?” And the more familiar things are, the more sometimes I think we compare it to our own experience and start to think how it should be this way and that gets in the way of the story. That’s one of the reasons I love science fiction and fantasy. It is the other-worldliness that draws you in and you’re free to experience the events of the story on a more primitive, purely imaginary level, which I think enhances the story.

Fiona: In the world you created for us, a group of people can read one another’s minds and communicate instantly. What are the pros and cons for this type of society? Do you think it would make us happier? Is efficiency worth the price of individuals’ privacy?

DJ: You know, it would obviously have benefits in terms of the clarity of communication. One of the hardest things about writing is getting what’s inside your head onto the page in a way that readers understand. So in that sense it would be extremely helpful if we had something like that!

On the other hand, I tried to show in the novel some of the real problems such technology would create. Because just like with physical computers today, for these devices to be able to communicate and function properly, you need a shared system through which to communicate. And because it’s not natural, this system needs to be maintained. So you need system administrators and “developers”, technical people who will keep the thing up and running. But if people are really just computers, then the people who are in charge of this system would have inordinate power over the lives of the people on the system. And what do you do when there are “errors”? What if someone is starting to think violent thoughts? As the administrator it would be your job to spot that and fix it before it causes a problem. Ultimately, I think such a role would dehumanize people in the minds of the gatekeepers. They would tend to see them more like objects to be manipulated rather than people. Efficiency would be the only standard and things like human dignity and worth would be useless concepts. It’s not a pretty picture!

Fiona: We definitely need to think twice before taking that step. So far, both books in the series are hard sci-fi. What was the biggest challenge you encountered when making up the science?

DJ: One of the parts I most enjoy in writing science fiction is getting to invent and think of names for all of the different technologies. I spent a lot of time coming up with names that I thought were unique and evocative of what I was trying to convey. While there are certainly scientific ideas and concepts underlying what I wrote about (organic computing, for example), it seems to me that science is always changing and shifting and the sorts of nomenclature in use today might not still be around in the distant future. I felt a lot of freedom to sort of strike out on my own with new ideas.

My approach was to assume that science will reinvent itself in the future. I think down the road it’s very possible that there will be entirely knew paradigms and ways of understanding the universe, and I tried to hint at that by shying away from using standard scientific terms. I felt more comfortable imagining what science could do rather than being constrained to what current understanding says it can do. At the same time I worked very hard to make the technology operate in a consistent manner and to seem as plausible as possible without going into all the minute details of how everything works.

Fiona: From your first book, Into the Vast, I got the essence of friendship, love, and faith, which prevents us from becoming slaves of our own creation --- technology. Is there a similar theme in the second book, or are you going to present us with a surprise?

DJ:  I think you’ll find the themes pretty similar. There’s a quote by C.S. Lewis that I put in the front of the new book where he talks about how man’s conquest of Nature is paradoxically Nature’s conquest over man. Because this technology does not really change all of the baser things about humanity, if anything it makes them more pronounced.  The more sophisticated we become, the more danger there is that people will use this technology to remake the world according to their own designs, to impose their will on others, even for “good” reasons. Such endeavors will ultimately end up in tragedy if there is not some sort of outside moral, corrective force to intervene and I wanted to show that theme throughout the entire series.

At the same time, in the wake of the tragic events at the end of the first book, the characters also explore this idea of how to respond to tragedy. What do we do when things don’t make sense? How do we cope? How do we move on through loss? You’ll see a variety of different responses to that in the next novel and not all of them are good ones.

Fiona: I like the concept that during our conquest of nature, we risk becoming nature’s captives. I know that Into the Vast had some success on Amazon during the last year, reaching #1 on the Metaphysical Science Fiction chart over the summer. As a new author, could you tell us how you’ve met the challenge of getting your book out into the hands of a wider audience?

DJ:  Well, the first year certainly had its ups and downs. I do think I have ended up doing things a bit backwards, leaping first and looking later. I tried a little of everything the first year, doing interviews, getting involved in social media, just trying to connect with readers. I put a lot of work into my website and at one point was writing a weekly column there. But I think I still haven’t really found a consistent audience for my work despite some blips on the sales charts here and there. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun to see my book shoot up for a while next to other, more well-known authors, but when it’s all said and done, I have to realize that I’ve only got one full-length book out (well, two now), and that things don’t usually happen overnight.

In the first half of this year I’ve been focusing more on writing and less on promoting and my book hasn’t done so well, but I’m in this for the long haul. I think it’s important for me at this point to focus more on my craft and to maybe let things happen more slowly. I believe the most important thing is to write great stories that will connect with readers. Not everyone will like your work, but if you do that on a consistent basis, I think the readers will come back for more. That’s the plan, anyway, to just keep the ink flowing and the words coming and to try and write the best stories I can possibly write and to let the books fall where they may.

Before I go, I just want to say thank you again, Fiona, for having me for this interview. Your questions were really great and I had a lot of fun answering them!

Fiona: Thank you very much, DJ! Over the years I’ve been very impressed with your persistency and professionalism. I wish your new book a big success!