make a Conference Trip from Australia to the USA - Without Killing Yourself!

In April this year I might have found the best combination for a trip to the USA from Australia incorporating an important international conference and several lectures. Try this schedule if you can.

1. Allow for a low activity week prior to departure. You will likely have visa and travel arrangements, family visits and last minute supplies to organise.
2. Make certain that all you computer backups are be up-to-date.
3. Test that all your essential files are accessible via the internet while you are away. With "cloud computing" you can now have a shared folder to use from anywhere. I use "dropbox" and have a 50 Gb space there. Just watch out if you go to China, you might be blocked by the big firewall. With DropBox you can use a folder you have already created, but cannot access the web interface.
4. Subscribe to a "hotspot" wireless network so that you can check email in the airports and coffee shops without incurring Telstra roaming fees (I find Boingo is the best).
5. For non-electronic communications, set up paper mail forwarding, letterbox checking and junk-mail removal by the your neighbours. Also notify neighbours you will be away.
6. Delegate academic tasks requiring deadlines to trusted colleagues.
7. Pay cellphone bills and top up credit cards in advance so that your telephone doesn't go off-the-air before you return.
8. Carry a secure thumb drive with your recent work on it.
9. Check that you have done the ISTAR USA visa form on-line (this is even necessary for Aussies. We are descended from convicts remember!).
10. Don't drive yourself to the airport. You will be too rushed. If the taxi service is not 100% reliable, have a backup plan. Preferably, pay the extra $50 to have a private car service take you to the airport.

In the USA, address the issue of Jet Lag by arranging a schedule as follows:

• When arriving in the USA from Australia, try not to do anything critical for at least 4 days. If you immediately attend a conference you will sleep through it and learn nothing so your whole expensive trip will be wasted. Therefore, one strategy is to enter via Los Angeles on Monday or Tuesday, then continue straight through to Las Vegas for 4 days rest (Wed-Sat).
• Day 1-4: Sleep as much as possible, swim and walk around the streets for exercise and experience the sunny climate which helps you change your sleep/wake cycle. You don't have to gamble but Vegas never sleeps so at 3 am you can go out to eat. The Hotels are excellent with world class variety shows. Also, there are great outdoors attractions such as the day trip to the Hoover dam. All the top US technology stores are available and fast internet is the norm if you need to work.
• Airlines in and out of Las Vegas might be less reliable as they are the cheap flights. Also they have luggage limits sometimes.
• Day 5-9, (Sat-Wed): Travel to your final conference destination.
• Maximise your conference value by staying in the actual conference hotel because you can take a nap in the middle of the day so as to be fresh for the afternoon sessions. You also save bus travel time and/or cab fares. When looking at the actual extra cost, $150 per day extra is probably money well spent.
• Day 9-12, (Thur-Sun): Take a second break incorporating the weekend. This might involve a travel day and a rest period in a city where you can visit relatives or friends.
• Day 13-17 (Mon-Fri): These are more work days travelling to visit colleagues, conduct business, give seminars etc.
• Day 18-21 (Fri-Sun): These are final wind-up, consolidation and recovery days in preparation to travel back to Australia. In my case this involves one day of travel back to Los Angeles. Then during this weekend I recommend staying in Burbank - actually the Residence Inn - where you can have a hotel suite, free internet and free breakfast. While organising for travel back to Perth, do some final shopping, see a movie, enjoy the climate and throw away anything you don't need (especially conference materials). On the Sunday morning, my "must see attraction" is the Page Museum in central LA which incorporates the La Brea Tarpits which have trapped hundreds of prehistoric mammals. The LA Museum of Art is next door with a nice restaurant. Finally, allow two hours for a visit to Fry's Electronics, the world's largest electronics and computer gadget shop (it has 68 checkouts).
• Day 21-22 (Sun-Tues): Fly back to Australia. Realistically, four hours of low intensity laptop work, reviewing manuscripts etc. might be done during the trip. However, dry eyes and poor posture often limit this to less. Don't start something you cannot finish in the time available - you may not get back to it for several weeks. If you plan laptop work make sure you charge the PC before leaving. Sometimes the older planes do not have a compatible power connection, even on business class.
• Day 23-25 (Wed-Fri): Only essential work duties are possible. Don't expect to safely perform high level patient care or intensive administrative activities. My typical day starts at 4-6 am with 2-3 hours of email and document work, then 4 hours at the University from 9 am -1 pm, then a 2 hour nap after lunch and then an evening event from 6-9 pm.
• Day 26-27 (Sat-Sun): Perform activities necessary to follow-up from the international trip and revert to normality.
• Day 27-30 (Mon-Wed): Allow for a gradual return to normality. I notice that a depressed mood can continue until 12 days past the day I left East Coast USA. Thus, on the above trip, which allows for three final recovery days in Los Angeles, I am completely normal one week after arriving back in Perth.

There is often a temptation to extend a USA trip with academic activities at the end. My experience is that I am looking forward to going home by three weeks and I always regret the fourth week away. So in reality, a conference in the USA requires at least 14 days of related activity and 7 days of recovery time. If extra lectures are planned then allow a 50-50 split between R&R and work or you will burn out. Tomorrow I leave for a three week USA - Europe - UK - Asia international trip with just a carry-on cabin bag. My best record for this is 5 countries on three continents in three weeks but it was gruelling and my follow-up afterwards was very inefficient.

Words to avoid in presentations and in speech

This month I have decided to go public with my list of “meaningless words” which should no longer be used in public, especially not in meetings or presentations and never on TV or radio. Here are the ones I recall today.

1. Basically
a. This word has become a favourite of scientific people especially when they are answering questions. I am also guilty. Example as follows - Question: If the DNA is copied until the primer just falls off, how is it that all the pieces of DNA end up exactly the same length? Answer: Well, basically, you are almost correct however, only the first copy gives a random length. After that, basically, the primer in the next cycle has to start 637 base pairs from the start point of the first copy. So, basically, all except the first copy are the same length, basically 637.
2. I mean
a. This seems to be used as a spacer between sentences, where the speaker continually likes to embellish details and add ideas. I mean, just as one would normally give the listener person a chance to talk by leaving a short gap in the conversation, by using “I mean” the gap is stolen back so that the normal person might not get a word in edgeways. I mean, let’s say that it was you being the listener, and you are a nice polite person; I mean, like Marj in the Simpsons. Then you never have a chance to speak because ...
3. Sort of
a. A vague term implying that the speaker has not put any thought into the discussion and is sort of making stuff up as he goes along. This seams to be common in presentations from young artists.
4. Yeah
a. Australians have become adept at placing this word in the middle of sentences as some kind of emphasis. I think it is very common in interviews with surfers; yeah – .
5. Absolutely
a. Television personalities, especially on gardening shows, continually say absolutely. Then the show “Absolutely Fabulous” started up perhaps as a send up of this trend. Recently it has been used more and more by almost everyone. By adding this word, a very vague concept suddenly becomes absolutely correct and proven beyond all doubt. Also, other words can be added to it, especially “fabulous” to make something rather mundane and boring into something apparently exciting. Take the concept of picking up handfuls of animal poo. We don’t have smellovision yet, and the warm temperature of a putrefying heap is hard to transmit to the gardening audience. But I can call it compost and say how this material is absolutely the best thing for your garden. How absolutely fabulous it is to feel the warmth as you thrust your hands into the pile in order to experience nature as the good bacteria convert biodegradeable organic material into absolutely perfect plant nutrients. Actually, it sounds rather attractive as I write this.
6. Umm
a. A non word, also used as a spacer to stop other people butting in. Luckily there is no need to use this on TV interviews because a smart editor will cut out all the wasted time anyway, so as to add more content, or another “non umming” person to the time allocated for the story.
7. Like
a. This word is more often used by teenagers – or even myself actually – as emphasis in a story. But it is used rather informally, among friends, with alcohol on board usually, and often as a preamble to an acted out part of the story telling. I am having trouble explaining it but here goes. Just say that I am telling you about a scene from the movie Avatar. So the main actor Sam Worthington is just a dumb marine so he’s like, “I need to walk again so I will do anything to pay for an operation”; but Sigourney weaver, she’s like some kind of genius professor so she’s like “don’t break the machinery you dumbass!” etc.
8. You know
a. Everyone uses this Phrase, again a spacer to show that you probably don’t know all the facts but what you say is probably about right. Of course, as the brainy listener, you probably have more information or already have heard this story, but if you do know it you would not be so rude as to correct the speaker or embellish his own story. You know.

I think it might be fun to add a few more of these and give funny examples. It would be good practice for a screen writer in a sitcom. My son reminded me of a program we used to have which converted normal speech to “Jive” which was a kind of black American street gang speech which most Australians would hardly ever hear but probably rappers and people from Los Angeles might be familiar with. Time is up – I can’t spend my life just doing a blog. Back to real life.

Singapore Airlines wins Hand Towel Stakes: Secret Technology Revealed

Nobel Laureate's Travel Log: Hot Towels! Who would have thought they were so difficult to get right. The best hand towels are from Singapore Airlines. The luxurious cotton towels arrive hot but not scalding, damp but not dripping wet and are very lightly scented. In comparison, Qantas towels are tiny scraps of material with no pile on the towel, usually dripping wet, and often too hot or too cold because they don't have enough substance to retain any heat during distribution. Emirates towels are a little better but no-where near the SA standard. Cathay Pacific are close but not quite as nice as the SA towels.
So that I could spend the remaining years fo my life sometimes using decent hand towels, I obtained the secret hand towel formula from SA. Here is how they do it (this could be a draft S.O.P. for the rest of the airlines).

1. The plush cotton towel weighs 21g dry and 55 grams wet.
2. It is 12 inches by 9 inches and has the SA logo in the top left corner (see picture)
3. The required amount of water is added to the towels.
4. The towels are microwaved to reach a temerature of not more than 50C
5. Before distribution, the temperature of the towels is tested with the back of the hand to make sure they are safe to use.

The sad thing is that Qantas staff probably never fly on other airlines, or apparently have no way of providing input into the proceedures they use every day. The low quality hand towels have persisted for several years already so maybe they can try to match the world best. I have other suggestions for Australian travel industry which I will put here from time to time under "Travel Log" subheadings. Watch out for next week's entry which will be "Security".

On the Anniversary of Darwin's Book - More thoughts on his illness

It is 1:15 am in Perth, but only 6:15 London Summer Time so I can still say this entry is on the 150th anniversary of Darwin's book "The Origin of Species". I have been too busy to spend a lot of time researching Darwin's illness but it is very easy to conclude that he had a gastric illness by searching the Darwin on-line archives located here. If one searches for "stomach" or "my stomach" you can find about 70 instances where he refers to his illness. If one searches for "heart", "my heart", "palpitations", "pulse" etc. you can find only a few references and most are to do with his normal emotions rather than his physical organic cardiac symptoms. Thus it seems to me that the idea of a cardiac illness is rather over-rated (notably some kind of sympathetic or parasympathetic disturbance caused by chronic Chagas' disease).
However I do concede that Darwin refers often to "flatulance" but rarely if ever to disturbances of the bowels e.g. diarrhoea. Thus it seems that his flatulance symptoms are actually a feeling of distension in the episgatrium which are commonly related to and releived by aerophagia (swallowing air) and eructation (burping) respectively. This type of symptom is common in acidic conditions such as duodenal ulcer and is especially so when accompanied by hiatus hernia and gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GERD/GORD). But the nausea and vomiting he often suffered from makes gastritis and duodenal ulcer a likely associated cause.
Flatulence can also be due to lactose intolerance and this has been invoked to explain his illness by several authors. This year, Mike Dixon finished a book (Darwin in Ilkly by Mike Dixon and Gregory Radick) where lactase deficiency is championed (I have not read the book yet so cannot give an opinion on the evidence). If Darwin did have milk intolerance then it seems to me that he would have worked out himself that he was lactose intolerant e.g. drink milk = abdominal gas and +- diarrhoea and farting with a lead time of an hour or two. It is interesting to speculate that if lactose intolerance is genetic, then it could be diagnosed on his remains at some future date.
Getting back to my ulcer/Helicobacter hypothesis now, I have previously noted that he took bismuth and various antacids at the hight of his illness. Also, when he was especially unwell, his father prescribed "calomel", which is mercury, yet another heavy metal. At other times he took arsenic. Of course everyone took these things in the early 19th century because there weren't any other antimicrobials. But each of these heavy metals might have been expected to kill H.pylori in the stomach and cause a remission if taken daily for 2-4 weeks.
So, I admit that I am curious about the language Darwin used and the meaning of his "flatulance". I have several secret strategies for finding this out. If it was colonic anal rectal expulsion of air then the case for a carbohydrate malabsorption (lactose intolerance) is strengthened. This could be correlated with a diary of his illness to see if milky foods could correlate with his apparent gassy problems.
Once more I have not discussed psychosomatic causes of his symptoms - there does not seem to be any need to invoke this.
By the way, there is quite a nice new book out by John Van Wyhe which contains facsimiles of some original Darwin research notes in little pockets on the pages. Nice work John. My clock just struck 2 am - time to go.

Fingerprints and Infectious Diseases (e.g. Swine flu)

After I discussed the issue of fingerprints and 'flu virus transfer with a few people in London, I was told this story about the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
Apparently, they were planning to use fingerprint readers for I.D. at the athletes' access gates but the French medical team objected because the print readers might transfer some diseases and infect their healthy team (which presumably had been quarantined before the events). So lanyards and bar-coded I.D. cards were used.
So in 2000, it was already known that fingerprinting devices were a health hazard!
Well, too late now. The horse has bolted.

Does Fingerprint ID at Entry Portals Spread Swine Flu?

On May 26th 2009, one month after the Swine Flu pandemic started, I entered the USA at Newark Airport, on my way to conferences in Winston Salem and Chicago. As I passed through Passport control I was asked to press my four fingers and then my thumb of each hand onto a glass plate and have my photo taken. The officer stamped my passport and then allowed me through with a cheerful remark.

As I walked away I looked back at the hundreds of people waiting in the Non-US Citizen lines, who were about to press their fingers on similar flat glass panels. I looked at my hands and wondered how many hundreds of people had touched that same glass panel before me. A looked to see if anyone was wiping the glass panels but did not see anyone doing that. From my own experience I knew that these devices worked best with slightly greasy fingers.

This happened five weeks after the first deaths from H1N1 were reported in the United States. I suspect that all non-US-citizens coming into the USA from Mexico would have had their fingerprints taken in the same way, since the procedure was adopted by DHS late in 2008 .

According to my sources, when many people touch hard surfaces in a short period of time they are very likely to spread viruses. Fingerprint recorders might be able to spread flu to hundreds of people.

It is June 29th 2009 now and I have just attended another flu pandemic lecture by experts in Europe. I was told today that the US pandemic has passed 1 million cases and the country is preparing for 100 million cases next winter. Luckily, I have not had any illnesses this trip. I wash my hands a lot now, and enter bathrooms by pushing the door with my elbows. I shake hands much less and gradually spend less time kissing and hugging people who are not close family members. I recall that Queen Elizabeth always wears white gloves when touching people - perhaps that would be a bit extreme - but perhaps not. I carry hand cleaner and wet-wipe tissues in my laptop bag now.

As I prepare for the long flight home to Perth Western Australia, my paranoia builds. My mind fills with questions such as.

1. How many Non-US citizens developed flu after passing through US immigration?


2. Do persons not fingerprinted (US Citizens?) have the same rate of flu as Non-US-citizens?


3. How many people, after travelling abroad, then developed Swine flu but, as far as they knew, had never been in contact with a case?


4. Do fingerprint machines still work if they are wiped with alcohol between people?


5. Would it be possible to give everyone a little hand towel after passing through so that we needn't worry?


6. Are the fingerprints really being used for anything or is it all just a practice run?


7. Is there anyone at CDC who has tested these machines for viruses using a sufficiently sensitive and validated technique?

I sneezed once this afternoon but I feel quite well. It's probably an allergy. Have I still got my box of Relenza? I will make sure it is in my carry-on. Fingers crossed. Time to hit the sack.

Darwins Illness was Helicobacter Pylori

It is almost midnight on 12th of February and I am writing from Orebro Sweden so I have one more hour before it is midnight GMT. Today was the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday. One aspect of Darwin's life which has not really been analysed much in recnt years is the cause of his illness - a type of "nervous dyspepsia" according to his quack phyician Dr Gully at Malvern in 1849. In brief, Darwin spent most of his life with a gastric complaint, complaining of nausea and stomach pain. Like almost everyone in Victorian England, and the rest of the world, Charles Darwin most likely carried Helicobacter. Of people with Helicobacter, 10% have chronic peptic ulcer in their lifetime and maybe an equal percentage have chronic dyspepsia. I will elaborate more later - and try to have a short paper published on this - which so far has been rejected. Suffice it to say - the origin of the species which troubled Darwin was Helicobacter. End of Story!