Visit from my family, Singapore by night, Martini coarse-grained models

Guest spot: Anabelle Helsell and Spencer 'Dad' Helsell

I was recently visited by my dad and sister. Unfortunately, I got pretty sick shortly after I arrived, which truncated the effective length of their stay for me. After self-diagnosing myself with malaria (three week incubation period would match up with all the mosquito bites I got in Cambodia, plus cyclical flu-like symptoms- I was pretty convinced), I proceeded to mope in bed for three days, at which point Dad and Anabelle came to my rescue with medicine, fluids, and snacks. Then we went to the NTU clinic, where I got even more medicine and a blood test  to rule out any deadly mosquito-borne illness. Given that my health has rapidly improved and stabilized, it seems safe to say my fears were unfounded.

Anyway, we did a bunch of touristy stuff together in Singapore, a lot of which I hadn't gotten around to yet. Sentosa Island, S.E.A aquarium, Duck tour, restauranting. Here's some of Dad's pictures from the trip:

Anabelle near my dorm at NTU

A practical example of Singapore's 4 national languages

A view of the finance district from Boat Quay

Happy kid with a rattan ball

Arab Street

Art, Design, and Media (ADM) building at NTU

The Raffles Grill

Their hotel, conveniently located between Clarke Quay and the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station

Prayer clock

Unfortunately, Dad took issue with a certain unidentified smell emanating from the local hawker centers, so for the most part they missed out on what I would say is a key element of the Singapore experience. We had some good food anyway.

More nightlife

I've become pretty well resolved to take almost all invitations that come my way as a tactic to prevent stagnation and boredom. Recently, most of these invitations are to various clubs and night-time gatherings, so here are some pictures from that.

These are placed pretty regularly around the perimeter of campus, a common sight on evening walks

Trying to get into Pangaea, a club in Marina Bay Sands, for the advertised free-flow. They started restricting access though, taking like five minutes per person to check IDs

Pangaea hopes essentially dashed, I hung out on this bay-side overlook with other disillusioned friends

Pretty nice spot, all said

Outdoor bar near Clarke Quay

A flattering picture of me and some Singaporean friends

Snuck up to the top of MBS, this is the view of the Gardens by the Bay

The other direction- skyline turns out to be pretty difficult to photograph

Coarse-graining

Back on the home front, I've been converting my models from their atomically explicit state into so-called coarse grain models. Coarse grain models assign atoms to 'beads' comprised of about four heavy atoms in order to speed up computation and achieve longer simulation times. This has been a slow process, because there's a hang-up in one of the bits of software I'm trying to use that I can't quite work out. But with coarse grain models in hand, I can consider doing free-energy calculations for ubiquitin binding. If it turns out that ubiquitin binds more tightly in mixed membranes, I've essentially answered the research question.

The general concept at work

Super-imposed coarse grain on the right side of this nanodisc. These beads look a lot coarser than the ones I'll be trying to use.