Tummy at 3 days before defense date (27 weeks)

Definitely starting to show! I'm starting to get "when is the baby due?" questions from relative strangers. It's about time since it has been 27 weeks now, seems like forever. This marks the beginning of the third trimester and our 1st wedding anniversary :) In addition, and probably most importantly at this stage, I am just 3 days from my defense date (Weds at noon in room 109 of the IBMR, in case you would like to attend), after which I will hopefully become a Ph.D.

I've been enjoying looking a little more indubitably pregnant. I've actually been wearing more form fitting clothing now that I have a legitimate bump to show off. The baby is playing the part too! She is kicking around a lot more vigorously. I'm constantly grabbing Chris's hands to put them on my tummy so he can feel when she starts moving. According to Chris, the baby is pumping her legs to mimic walking. It feels like she's pumping her little arms too and rolling around. It's a very weird feeling, very alien, it's hard to imagine someone living in there. In my imagination, it seems like it must be uncomfortable being all squished and dark and loud and hot... but I'm sure she's quite cozy. 

I, on the other hand, have been an emotional, anxious wreck. I've spent most of the last few weeks mostly studying and writing and worrying, having weird dreams about failing my defense/giving birth to squid-like creatures, yelling at Chris about the house being cluttered, and just generally weeping and laying around, when not doing one of the other above mentioned things. I was in CVS the other day picking out Father's day cards for my Dad and for Chris. And for some reason, I was incredibly touched by all of the cards. So there I was with a bunch of sappy hallmark cards in my hands just crying in the card aisle of CVS and trying to get a hold of myself so I could go buy the stupid cards. I must have looked insane, or maybe people understood, like, "how cute, she's pregnant and emotional"... but probably not.      

I'm hoping some of this gets better after my defense on Wednesday so that I can finally relax and just work 9-5 and spend the rest of my time eating ice-cream and doing prenatal yoga. Which is really all I want to do at the moment. Just 3 more days of studying and preparing... I think that's about all I can take.

Can we save Binghamton, NY with evolutionary theory?

I'm at the Psychoneuroimmunology conference a little bit outside Chicago right now. It's been the first full day, 11 hours of lectures and catching up with old friends about their research/ lives. There's been some fascinating talks, a few highlights have been Steven Maier's talk about the PNI of stress, Jonathan Kipnis's talk about T-cell modulation of cognition, and a very inspiring lecture from Ginny Sanders. It's always nice to be reminded of why I love research. The people I admire the most are the people that seem to get better with age. They seem to gain energy rather than having it slowly drain away. I hope that I will continue to be one of the lucky ones.

David Sloan Wilson seems to be one of those scientists who sees the power of theory to change the way the world works (or at least he's trying). This article in Nature caught my eye, mostly because it's about my old undergraduate home. According to a 2011 Gallup pole, Binghamton, NY is one of the top 5 cities that is most disliked by its own residents. No surprise there; the place is strikingly horrible. Crime is high, the weather is bad, and everyone hates each other... no exaggeration.

"Wilson, who works at the State University of New York in Binghamton, has been a prominent figure in evolutionary biology since the 1970s. Much of his research has focused on the long-standing puzzle of altruism — why organisms sometimes do things for others at a cost to themselves. Altruism lowers an individual's chances of passing its own genetic material on to the next generation, yet persists in organisms from slime moulds to humans. Wilson has championed a controversial idea that natural selection occurs at multiple levels: acting not only on genes and individuals, but also on entire groups. Groups with high prosociality — a suite of cooperative behaviours that includes altruism — often outcompete those that have little social cohesion, so natural selection applies to group behaviours just as it does on individual adaptations¹. Many contend that group-level selection is not needed to explain altruism, but Wilson believes that it is this process that has made humans a profoundly social species, the bees of the primate order."

Wilson believes that by creating policies that "select for prosociality", he can enhance the evolutionary fitness of Binghamton and aid it's survival. Interesting idea. It's clear from the article that the authors sort of think he's nuts. It's also obvious that although Wilson's ideas are informed by evolutionary theories, the things he's doing are in general are NOT science. But maybe he's on to something. Check it out.   

Superhero baby?

Last night, as we were running home during a thunderstorm under an umbrella, but still soaking wet:

Chris Corona- "The good thing about this is that if you got hit by lightning right now... there is a good chance that Charlotte will have super powers."

And by "good chance", he was thinking about 99.9999%. Because that's how it works, right?
I didn't get hit by lightning, however, so Charlotte won't be joining the ranks of the X-men anytime soon. darn.