Already 40 years…already 40 years that what is perhaps the greatest achievement of mankind, led to having the very first earthling fooling around on the moon. It was the ultimate achievement of one entire nation fulfilling J.F Kennedy promise back in 1961. A 3 stage-programs (Mercury, Gemini and Apollo) and billions of dollars spend, led not only to having men on the moon but also great scientific progress and to an extraordinary technological leap forward, skyrocketing the entire world into today’s reality. We can thank the cold war for fuelling a frantic space race between the USA and USSR. But the legacy of such space race is massive and everywhere in our today’s life.  Going to space and to the moon required a handful of technology that we didn’t have. Where to start?  The benefits of the space program are virtually everywhere.  For instance, home insulation, cordless power tools appliances, LED light, laser, lightning protection, shades, robotic, portable breathing system among many others. UNIX is also a spinoff of the space program.

Most of all, the space program and the most of all the lunar explorations by Apollo 11 to 17 (except 13) provides an extraordinary reservoir of dreams for billions of earthlings…for decades. Which kid doesn’t want to be an astronaut as some point? Which one of us didn’t say  ”I wish it was me on that freaking Space shuttle even if I have to throw-up during the 15 days of the mission? right?

As for myself, that brings me to get an airplane pilot license and to apply to the European Space Agency astronaut selection program in June ’08. Luckily, I got selected and I touched for a little bit of what being an astronaut could be while having my butt kicked during the tests in Germany.

Apollo 11 Landing anniversary must remind us that we should not stop investing in great and ambitious programs such as the space exploration. On another level, the Concorde program brought many technical achievement that are not only in use in all nowadays airliners but in all vehicles, computers, etc…. Just as a reminder, at the time of the Concorde program, only very few military aircraft were able to sustain mach 2+. Concorde was able to comfortably cruise at mach 2.02 for 2+ hours at 60.000ft…advanced military aircraft territory.

To realize how great it was, let’s imagine that the mighty SR-71 blackbird was probably the only aircraft able to overtake the Concorde during a transatlantic crossing without refueling. The legend wants that one day somewhere over the Atlantic an SR-71 blackbird flying at mach 3 was overtaking a Concorde cruising below at mach 2. The crew of the blackbird suddenly realized that they were sweaty, tired and strapped in a rather uncomfortable space-suit, breathing cold and dry oxygen while just below, 100 passengers flying at twice the speed of sound, where having foie gras, caviars and delicious Champagne…In a similar manner of the Apollo program France and UK spend billions to make Concorde a reality.

As today’s economy is going side-ways, it is the time to massively invest in very ambitious programs during the coming years. Tomorrow’s world will thank us later.

I just come back from a very pleasant trip to South-Korea where I visited the Kyungpook National University (KNU) in Daegu. A very nice and inspiring trip overall. I met great individuals both at the university and off-campus with whom I had very very interesting chats. I definitively need to spend more time in Korea. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen much of it because of a too short of a trip.

Happy 4th of july! This year we kinda missed the first minutes of the fireworks. We sat in our comfy folding chairs to enjoy the rest of the show though. It was nice, but I have the feeling it was shorter than the previous years…Are fireworks another victims of the crappy economy?

The battery of our fancy HDD camcorder ran out of juice in the middle of the show….here the grand finale shot with my iPhone. Not too shabby isn’t?

I love chasing the sunset with my Langster. Yesterday my buddy (Langster) and I went to the end of the runway 16 (Davis University airport) to catch one of the greatest sunset i’ve seen in weeks . I can’t get tired of the awesomeness of the sunsets in California. The end of the runway 16 is my favorite spot in Davis to find peacefulness and to regenerate after a long day at work. It is a quick and highly rewarding trip either by bike or running.

Heavy C-172…

Saturday June 6th, we had the annual spot landing and flour bombing contest at the University airport in Davis (KEDU). It was a lot of fun! This year I flew the C152 N24774 with Jackie as a bomber. Masayo was on the ground filming everything. The flour bombing rules are simple: be the closest to the target (a white circle of ~10 meters in diameter) drawn right in the middle of the runway/taxiway, fly no lower than 600ft, no slower than 80Kts (~92MPH). For the landing contest the rules are also simple : land the closest to a specific mark. To make it more difficult it has to be done without power meaning that while midfield parallel to the runway at 900ft the power has be set to idle and then glide to the mark with two 90 degrees left turn and no slip for landing. That’s tricky and a lot of fun to do.

We didn’t do well on the bombing, but oh well! who cares? We had a lot of fun flying this day. Then, after a quick BBQ, Masayo Jackie and I went for a flight above the Lake Berryessa with the C172 N4634D. We climbed to 6500ft to fully enjoy the scenery. The view was stunning up-there… and we were flying among clouds: priceless!  What a great day of flying.

A storm is upon us, clouds at 500 ft / overcast at 4000 ft and falling, visibility <3 miles, humidity at 99%, pouring rain, freezing level quit low. This sucky IFR weather should last until Monday…Damn! I was expecting having a great time this weekend with either N4624D or N4870G, but Mother Nature decided otherwise. Both 24D and 70G are old C-172 ladies but they are well maintained and still kicking. Although it is a lot of fun to fly them, it is probably better to stay on the ground and wait for the storm to pass. The good thing is that they will get a great bath and finally get clean.

A cool picture of the hexameric enzyme Quinolinate Phosphoribosyl Transferase (QAPRTase) of S. cerevisiae showing its electrostatics intimacy. Blue are +, red and – and the field-lines are displayed. The very interesting thing here is that the field-lines are rooted from each active site outside area (6 of them). I used ABPS for the electrostatic calculations and VMD 1.8.7-alpha to visualize. The substrates Quinolinate and PRPP are basically sucked-in into the active sites following the electrostatic field-lines. It is an obvious result, but those kind of analysis are cool don’t you think ? So…what about the release of the product synthesized ?

Well I have been very busy lately. I went to France for a couple of tenured-track faculty interviews at the CNRS national labs. Overall, it was an interesting experience. I had a pleasant time with the committee 16 “Chemistry for living organisms and medicinal chemistry. Design and properties of compounds of biological interest”. However, my research proposal was a little bit out of scope for this particular committee unfortunately. But overall, it was good talking with this committee.

A week after I was interviewed by the committee 21 “Molecular and structural features underlying biological functions” and the fun began. I found what I hate the most among tenured-track faculties in France: very narrow-minded person, rude for no reasons, not listening to me at all…well pathetic people for most of them. The icing on the cake was when I was explaining my current project in the US about the molecular modelling of protein (funded by the NIH). I am a crystallographer but I am currently doing protein-modeling stuffs. The committee was obviously a group of hardcore old-school experimentalists and they violently told me that it is bullshit..meaning protein modeling is bullshit…. should I laugh now and tell them they are wrong, narrow-minded and stupid or should I save that for latter…My current research in protein modelling is all about models-validation with an experimentalist (X-ray crystallography) point of view!! The committee 16 was pleased with that, so why did you guys from the 21 didn’t get that?? Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. That’s must be the reason (sarcasm). 

Some of my friends who went through this hassle before me in different committee experienced the same fun. Awesome ! In my case, I guess it was just a bad experience on that one. But, don’t get me wrong. Working in France at a CNRS or INSERM lab is cool. You don’t get much salary compared to the US, but you do get plenty of vacations, a stress-free working environment (please don’t tell me you are under stress right ?) and if you move your ass a little, you can get some grant money to do good research. But you might end-up working with some people with this typical French narrow-minded mentality where they expect you to fall into a specific old-fashion category. If you are a little bit too atypical you are over.

This being said, it leads me to think: What the heck am I applying for positions at the CNRS or INSERM anyway? right ? Do I want to work with this kind of people? I feel so much better working in the US in every possible ways. Then now, ask yourself why so many of us leave France after graduating with a PhD and never come back in the French academia system ?

Wind, rain, cold, and wet, slippery: I felt almost sorry for the guys biking at 30 mph with this bad weather. However, it is kind of cool having the start of the tour of California in Davis. So we hang out a little, outside Wheelworks downtown to see the guys warming up and racing a couple of laps around the blocks. Well, those guys are dam fast with their top-notch bikes: impressive!

My bike, Bullitt, doesn’t like having wet tires…. too bad, I’m sure she would have love racing a little with those rookies, especially with Lance A.

I’ve always wondering what is the ratio of peer-reviewed scientific publications that just bring nothing really new to the field. Also, what could be the ratio of fake data being published every year? 

Those questions have been bugging me for the last couple of weeks. Ok, I don’t pretend that my papers are among the greatest ever published, however, the data I present are genuine and I always try to have a thorough analysis of a given question.

I’m writing this, because lately I came across a lot of papers that just garbage inaccurate to me. In no specific order, it can be: recycling old data into new one, controls experiments are missing or inaccurate, data too perfect to be true, writing a whole paper with experiments that just bring nothing new to the field, among others….

There is so many journals out there that it is somewhat easy to get a paper publish. If it failed to one journal, we just have to send it to another journal with a slightly lower impact factor. Even if in general, a correlation exists between impact factor and quality however, high impact factor journals are not immune of bad papers.

Nowadays, it is so tough to get funded that it had raised the bar very high in term of publications. A PI and a lab have to produce a lot of papers. Unfortunately it tends to seriously impact the quality, enhance the tendency of over-interpreting the data or fake them. I think the whole thing is definitively not moving in the right direction and that’s made me sad/angry.

I wish you all the very best for 2009.

Things to do : Party plenty, work plenty, stay focus plenty, have fun plenty, love plenty, give plenty, enjoy life plenty, keep an open mind and don’t take things too much seriously…

• Be more mindful
• Wake-up early
• Drink less coffee
• Read more books
• Stop wasting so much time scouting the internet
• Be more efficient so I can scout the internet more
• Stay focus on my research and my work
• Get a tenure-track faculty position
• Life is good, be happy
• Fly safe
• Write a SF book
• Run the full San-Francisco marathon
• Get a speed ticket with my single speed bike

Here a great story (after the jump) which has been around for a while. Is-it a true story ? It sounds plausible. However, a similar thing happened to me a while back when I was a student pilot flying cross-country in a C152. My instructor asked Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) a groundspeed check in order to cross-checked my calculations. Right after ATC replied, a guy flying a much faster plane with a million bucks avionics in it (King-Air) including accurate groundspeed asked ATC a groundspeed check. Come-on ! Wanna play this game ? ok…

Read more

The winter weather is definitively upon us. We have this very thick fog everyday, a high humidity level, low temperature and bad visibility. Most of the planes are grounded, no flights, no fun…borring. Well, in some sense, that’s good because I have a lot of work to do, proposals to write, refine, perfect and articles to finish and very little time for anything else.

How can I treat myself with this rush of adrenaline I get when I am on short final for a tricky crosswind landing and wondering if I should throttle up to max power and abort the landing ?  X-plane 9 an ultra realistic flight simulator (sic) is here to help.

I purchased it few weeks ago when I was wandering at the Apple store at Arden Fair Mall. Before starting flying real planes I was ok with simulators like “Microsoft Flight simulator”, it was fun. But now I don’t like it anymore because it feels and reacts weird/not right. I might be picky on that one. However, I have to say that I’m having a blast with X-Plane 9. It is fairly realistic and I have pretty much the same feeling flying the real C172. It is just few settings/adjustments away from being almost perfect on how the plane reacts. The program relies on the blade element theory, which uses fine descriptions of specific airfoils to do real time computations on lift/drag for instance. Other simulators use lookup tables to get the lift and drag for a given flight condition.

There are numerous settings to play with and can also get the real-time weather. X-plane automatically download METAR files and translated them into very realistic weather conditions. The graphics are also really nice and it comes with over 80% of the world terrain on 6 DVD. That’s a hefty 70Gb after installation….The source code of the program seems to be optimized but you still need a good machine with a kick-ass GPU fully loaded with RAM to get most of the awesome graphics. It runs great  and smoothly at a native resolution on my 07′ MacbookPro 2.4Ghz 4Gb/GF 8600M GT 256Mb. It uses around 1.5Gb of RAM and almost all the GPU Ram at the default settings. Sometimes FPS dropped below 20fps in VFR conditions with 25+ miles visibility with lot of terrains, trees and some clouds. Other than that, it runs great.

See Ya ! I’m going back to X-plane. I’m trying to get off the ground with a hefty Cessna 152 in Telluride, CO (9,078 feet above sea level) with 35C outside air temperature … I have this gut feeling it’s not going to be pretty