2015/11/13
Pummelo
Every Friday the Physics graduate students have a "happy hour", I mean, an "h-bar hour" how we call it. Today's special attraction was a drink in a pummelo. The pummelo was caved and the flesh was replaced by some liquid. It apparently still tasted of pummelo! I've just never seen a pummelo before, so that was really exciting (I heard of it, but that was really special today - always these weird Europeans who only now potatoes ;) ).
PPP
Published paper pressure - slight shakiness of any human being entering nearly any stage of academia and looking at other people's CVs.
Since I had my first internship in a lab, people talked about papers and how many they should publish, they actually had published and the wish they had published (and all three numbers are different...). I heard of a frequency of about one paper per year you should stick to as a graduate student. But then somebody else told be that he'd been working on an algorithm to simulate proteins for three years and hadn't written any paper, but now he just has to alter a tiny detail and publishes again - every three months.
You could also start reading CVs of researchers which are online sometimes, but that's not recommendable because you might start feeling bad for every free minute you had in the last few days (including eating).
Thus, I tell myself not to freak out when I'm asked for my number of publications and conference talks. Of course, it's nice to have a large number of papers, but there's way more than that which makes a good researcher, e.g. the actual content and quality of the paper, the gained skills and experiences, funding, open-mindedness, etc. So I try to be a person, not a paper ;)
Since I had my first internship in a lab, people talked about papers and how many they should publish, they actually had published and the wish they had published (and all three numbers are different...). I heard of a frequency of about one paper per year you should stick to as a graduate student. But then somebody else told be that he'd been working on an algorithm to simulate proteins for three years and hadn't written any paper, but now he just has to alter a tiny detail and publishes again - every three months.
You could also start reading CVs of researchers which are online sometimes, but that's not recommendable because you might start feeling bad for every free minute you had in the last few days (including eating).
Thus, I tell myself not to freak out when I'm asked for my number of publications and conference talks. Of course, it's nice to have a large number of papers, but there's way more than that which makes a good researcher, e.g. the actual content and quality of the paper, the gained skills and experiences, funding, open-mindedness, etc. So I try to be a person, not a paper ;)
2015/11/10
Race
On Saturday morning we had our first "race" as a rowing team. It was at Newport Beach which is near LA and to be on the water at 8 am on Saturday, we left Santa Barbara in the evening and stayed with the parents of a team mate. That was super nice and interesting because I saw an actual American home and the family was really nice, providing us with pizza, drinks and breakfast and coffee in the morning. Although you're not hungry at 4:30 am when you get up, eating something before a competition is a really good idea ;)
I think we were on the water at around 07:30 am and it was already getting really warm! We had to race for 10 min with a certain split (number of strokes per minute) and who got furthest, won the race. But during the first twenty seconds, two boats crashed! We had to re-start etc. After some time we were finally rowing together which was fantastic! The boat becomes faster and it feels lighter.
After cleaning the boats we went to a shopping mall to get lunch and there was already a Christmas tree built up! But we were wearing shorts and rowing T-shirts - we still have to work on the Christmas atmosphere a bit ;)
At Newport Beach.
I think we were on the water at around 07:30 am and it was already getting really warm! We had to race for 10 min with a certain split (number of strokes per minute) and who got furthest, won the race. But during the first twenty seconds, two boats crashed! We had to re-start etc. After some time we were finally rowing together which was fantastic! The boat becomes faster and it feels lighter.
After cleaning the boats we went to a shopping mall to get lunch and there was already a Christmas tree built up! But we were wearing shorts and rowing T-shirts - we still have to work on the Christmas atmosphere a bit ;)
2015/11/08
Actin network
About a week ago I started creating my own in silico actin network (I'm kind of proud that I learned next to the expressions in vitro (experiment outside a biosystem, e.g. on a petri dish) and in vivo (in a biosystem), in silico which is any "experiment" carried out by computational simulations).
The network starts with the creation of actin filaments, which are polymers (long chains of the same chemical unit, which is repeated). Actin networks are super important, since they determine the structure and form of cells, but are also involved in muscle activity. After creating the actin filaments, I added nodes wherever the filaments had a common point. But if I do that I have to make sure that my entire network is actually connected and I don't get several, separate clusters of actin networks! In my code, this becomes a long "while" loop which started taking a lot of time when I run it. I understand more and more why people want more computational power for simulations... It's so exhausting to sit in front of a screen and wait for 4 min. or the like and you can't start doing something else! I could start collecting statistical data of the muscovy ducks (Flugenten) in front of my window and the likelihood that they survive Christmas ;)
Color-coded actin filaments in a cell (merged stack of images from a confocal microscope, not all filaments are in one plane!).
The network starts with the creation of actin filaments, which are polymers (long chains of the same chemical unit, which is repeated). Actin networks are super important, since they determine the structure and form of cells, but are also involved in muscle activity. After creating the actin filaments, I added nodes wherever the filaments had a common point. But if I do that I have to make sure that my entire network is actually connected and I don't get several, separate clusters of actin networks! In my code, this becomes a long "while" loop which started taking a lot of time when I run it. I understand more and more why people want more computational power for simulations... It's so exhausting to sit in front of a screen and wait for 4 min. or the like and you can't start doing something else! I could start collecting statistical data of the muscovy ducks (Flugenten) in front of my window and the likelihood that they survive Christmas ;)
2015/11/04
6k
For simplicity (and probably for coolness), some people introduced the expression "k€" which corresponds to "kilo-€" - I'm in favor of "10³€", but that's probably too scientific. However, our "k" was the 6 km-test in rowing we did on Tuesday (caution: no ft-measure!). We basically rowed 6 km without a stop on ergs (the machines you row on) as fast as we could. That takes about 25-35 minutes and afterwards you're done for the day; oh, well, nearly, we got the rowing shirts saying "UCSB ROWING" on them, which is quite nice.
And good to wear at the soccer match on the same day at the evening! We won, but my contribution was only of decorative function, I think. It was great fun though and we're admitted to the play-offs.
But don't worry, I do something else than sports here as well: My simulated actin network "worked out" ;) and I did some signal-to-noise ratios on the intensity profiles I extracted from the sea urchin fluorescent images so far.
This morning at the lagoon, 6:10 am.
And good to wear at the soccer match on the same day at the evening! We won, but my contribution was only of decorative function, I think. It was great fun though and we're admitted to the play-offs.
But don't worry, I do something else than sports here as well: My simulated actin network "worked out" ;) and I did some signal-to-noise ratios on the intensity profiles I extracted from the sea urchin fluorescent images so far.
2015/11/02
Faraday discussions
I am used to the probably most common time of seminars where everybody presents a paper for maybe 20 min., everybody else listens and then there should be questions - often, that part's finished after 5 min. and the next talk starts. After a couple of presentations I usually really have to concentrate to listen up and to raise a question.
To keep everybody a bit more awake and to rise the audience's activity, we will have "Faraday discussions" in one of my lectures (Biomaterials). In Faraday discussions the presentation-question-ratio is nearly inversed, i.e. we will have five minutes of presentation and 20 minutes for questions (if not even more!). The terms and conditions are, that the non-presenting people have to read all papers which are going to be presented and have to send two questions per paper to the instructor beforehand. It seems that the presenters get the easier part this time, but you still have to answer questions for 20 minutes ;) Indeed, there might not be only questions, but also comparisons to other papers because they all concern the same topic (hydrophobic drug carriers - that's exciting and new!). I'll talk about hypersensitivity reactions (HSR) which are caused by common cancer drugs.
However, (which might be even more difficult) you have to sum up a paper in 5-7 minutes! I got a review which is twelve pages long ;) - this is going to be fun and a really good challenge, I think.
During the next session we are going to switch roles, so I'll be part of the audience (together with all the people who are presenters this time) an the audience will give the talks. But the group numbers are not exactly equal and I got lucky, so I won't have to read eleven papers, but only nine in two weeks ;).
PS: I don't have any clue why it's called "Faraday" discussion - there's nothing on the Internet about it. I can only speculate, that Faraday liked to discuss, what a guess...
Taxus baccata / yew tree - its bark provides a chemical for producing taxol, one of the most common anti-cancer drugs.
To keep everybody a bit more awake and to rise the audience's activity, we will have "Faraday discussions" in one of my lectures (Biomaterials). In Faraday discussions the presentation-question-ratio is nearly inversed, i.e. we will have five minutes of presentation and 20 minutes for questions (if not even more!). The terms and conditions are, that the non-presenting people have to read all papers which are going to be presented and have to send two questions per paper to the instructor beforehand. It seems that the presenters get the easier part this time, but you still have to answer questions for 20 minutes ;) Indeed, there might not be only questions, but also comparisons to other papers because they all concern the same topic (hydrophobic drug carriers - that's exciting and new!). I'll talk about hypersensitivity reactions (HSR) which are caused by common cancer drugs.
However, (which might be even more difficult) you have to sum up a paper in 5-7 minutes! I got a review which is twelve pages long ;) - this is going to be fun and a really good challenge, I think.
During the next session we are going to switch roles, so I'll be part of the audience (together with all the people who are presenters this time) an the audience will give the talks. But the group numbers are not exactly equal and I got lucky, so I won't have to read eleven papers, but only nine in two weeks ;).
PS: I don't have any clue why it's called "Faraday" discussion - there's nothing on the Internet about it. I can only speculate, that Faraday liked to discuss, what a guess...
2015/11/01
And that's been Halloween.
Apparently Halloween was yesterday, that's at least what the date says. And nothing happened. Nothing means that there were more police officers than partying people around. When you go to the students' district, Isla Vista, there's usually a huge party going on and you hear music from everywhere - unlike Halloween, no music, overall quietness, and people running around in costumes. So we had a nice walk through Isla Vista as if it was a normal autumn afternoon walk and everybody had dressed up.
So the most important part of Halloween was the preparation (which costume???) and the security. And: Food! There was free food from in our resident halls for a small Halloween-warm-up party which was nice - you can make a lot of things with pumpkin!
So let's prepare for Christmas now, it's nearly tomorrow...
Isla Vista: after Halloween = before Halloween.
So the most important part of Halloween was the preparation (which costume???) and the security. And: Food! There was free food from in our resident halls for a small Halloween-warm-up party which was nice - you can make a lot of things with pumpkin!
So let's prepare for Christmas now, it's nearly tomorrow...
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