TREE ICICLES

According to standard weather records of Japan, the peak winter coldness is on the last week of January with varying low temperatures from north (-20 deg C at Hokkaido)to south (+15 deg C at Okinawa). I was glad that it was over and began to feel for the rise in temperatures. Instead, I felt the most chilliest of all, over this week, when the temperature dropped to well below zero degree centigrades following a fresh snowfall.





In such adverse conditions, one can also come across few brilliant natural spectacles too..The 'Tree icicles' is one of them.(I coined the word 'tree icicles' since I am not sure if they have any particular term). I was perplexed as to why it formed only on few of the roadside trees. I could see only on 3 of them while walking from my dormitory to my office, out of more than 25 roadside trees!!!!

On my research front, I did get first mouse microPET images following FES injection. Contrary to my expectations, I could perform the experiments with the help of Kobayashi-san without any major flaws.
Towards the end of week, I got an icing on the cake when I found my first research paper got published.
Feels like writing more..but, my fingers are getting numb being exposed to coldness pressing the keyboard as I am composing this at home!!!

Takes of the Week

The days seems to fly by as I realize it's already a week past since my previous post in the blog. Few things of interest do happened in this short period. I had a good discussion with Kobayashi-san about the new microPET (Hamamatsu SHR-41000) installed in our lab. He was kind enough to show me the basic operations of image capture window and reconstruction methodologies using the pc console. It was a necessity since there was no english manual currently available for the machine. The standardization was complete by the week and he informed me that I can perform the first mouse imaging on next week.
In this week's japanese lessons, I had a revision of "kanji" characters from two chapters (30 & 31) of Minna no nihongo 2. Though I tried to gobble up few of them before the actual class, it was a testing challenge for my visual memory. I feel that it is the most toughest task to recollect them even if you have observed them a few moments before. To be frank it is mental exertion at its peak!! However, at the end of day, I feel satisfied when I recognize the characters accidentally while I am out.
The week also brought a good news from my boss. I got a new post of Assistant Researcher since I am now in second grade of my doctoral program. It means I have to show up a job of 6hrs/week. Fortunately, it will be included in the already existing time schedule of my research work. So no more extras!!!
I also came to know that it costs nearly 23,000yen/FDG-PET scan with insurance cover in my University, an MRI scan as low as 5,000yen and that there are two PET facilities in Fukui...
Towards the end of week, boss came in and mentioned that a new Japanese Society of Molecular Imaging has been set up by a committee of 15 founding members and he is the key chairman of the society...also said that he worked hard for the past 6 months to make it happen...Amazing job!
Few other things too happened...had to finish here as i have to spare my time for other things..more next time....