Congradulations

No real surprises on either of those guys. I wonder if my brother will sell his 2 billion Wade Boggs baseball cards now.

Shumatsukon.

Japanese word meaning 'weekend marriage'. I discovered it via this article.

Actually a lab mate of mine has a weekend marriage. She's chinese though. I guess it works out for them. Kinda odd for us westerners.

Heh, guess we were right after all; i was part of a high school research team to count the number of craters of mars, and we found at low elevations there were less small craters than at high elevations. So we made the supposition that erosion by water erased them, like what happens here on Earth.

Water in the form of ice has been found on a crater on Mars using a European space agency probe and a high-resolution camera. In recent decades a mountain (or glacier) of evidence has put forth the idea that Mars does indeed have water, and at one point, billions of years ago, it was warmer, and had liquid water, lots of it.

Planetary studies are very slow because of the few missions, but it reminds me alot of how science really works, first an idea, then a test, then more and more and more, until the idea is a theory, and more or less accepted by the scientific community. There can be no doubt now that there is definately water on Mars, but how did Mars become etched with flood-like patterns is not known, although the most obvious explaination is that billions of years ago, it was warmer.

Actually, quite old. Lava sledding Basically this guy builds 'sleds' to go down gravel/dirt slopes, some quite long. If only there was someone man enough to sled down an active lava flow. That takes real...something.

If this act gets passed, making it illegal to have a fake purple heart. All I can say is, great.

Just saw the launch of the space shuttle, wow, emotional is all I can say. There is a video here, dunno how long it will be there though. They now have cameras on the shuttle and on the main fuel tank, so we got to see the whole launch from start to main fuel tank detachment. Anyway, real cool. People in FL are lucky to be able to see this; i'd like to see it one day.

Another article in Slate about airport delays, written by a economics professor. He thinks its due to the fact that major carriers use a hub and spoke business model, that is, all their flights connect at Chicago O'Hare. One problem is that all these carriers schedule huge batches of flights at once, between 10-20, at peak times of the day. Such an overload by itself drowns the system because air traffic control can't let planes take off so quickly (another issue is wake turbulence, generated by aircraft while taking off, which causes aircraft behind them to get caught in unstable wind vortexes).

The hub-and-spoke model is in contrast to low-cost air carriers such as southwest, who mostly do point to point operations, no transfers involved. Since all their flights are regional, they don't overwelm one major airport with massive amounts of takeoffs and landings. But southwest also has flight delay issues too. From the FAA, in May 2005, Continental was on time 83% of the time, while SW was on time 86% of the time. But, if you look into the details (available at the FAA website here) you'll see that while Continental had 9.5% of flights delayed due to 'national aviation system delay', only 2.25% of SW flights are delayed due to that. So basically the theory holds, using these two carriers as models. My wife likes to travel SW for the convenience factor, but I trust Continental more.

Anyway here are some tips to avoid airport delay.

1) If you are using a major carrier (ie Continental) in a hub (ie Houston, Chicago), find off-peak flights if possible; look at all their flights leaving that day from that location, and find the one with the most time before and after that flight, ie pick a flight that leaves at 8am, since only 5 flights are leaving at 8am, vs 9am where 10 flights are leaving.

2) Book an early flight which originates locally (not always applicable to everyone. But most all of Continental's early morning flights originate from Houston, so there is no dependance on waiting for an aircraft to show up.

3) Book a regional carrier from a smaller airport. On the other hand, if there is a problem with one aircraft, then it will be harder to find other aircraft to 'take up the slack'.

I still prefer taking my chances with a big carrier; I've never had a problem with Continental yet. Several times my wife and I were stuck at thankgiving waiting for a SW flight to show up.

Interesting story in Slate (a good site if you have the time). Basically one economist in the 80s postulated that the gender gap (more boys than girls) in Asia is due to maltreatment of girls. Another economist, Emily Oster, found that about half of the 'missing' women were never born, due to the surprising ability of pregnant women who have hepatitis B to give birth to boys rather than girls (a 7 or 8 to 1 preference).

Then there's the story of Baby Emily, who's parents taped her babblings in the crib, and gave the tapes to friends who are psychologists. They found these babblings were much more complex than her normal speech to her parents. It illustrates a problem of changing big theories based on studies of one child. Guess who the child was? Emily Oster.

From business2, kinda buried. I was surprised that at least half of these pearls of wisdom i learned in grad school (the hard way).

From Michael Yon, who is the Ernie Pyle of Iraq War 2.

Story here.

Hard to believe how much munitions are available in Iraq, but according to Yon, the street price of mortars has risen from $3 to $20, so that says that the military/police efforts are working.

Lots of news on this topic, but a recent study reported in Hypertension, showed 12/8.5 mmHg heart pressure (s/d)decrease in patients that ate dark chocolate for 7 days. Okay, not (too) surprising. (Also they had somewhat lower cholesterol levels) But what is surprising is the all-important control group: this group of patients had white chocolate which contained no flavinoids, but had everything else that dark chocolate has. So it's really the flavinoids in dark chocolate that makes the difference (also found in red wine, certain veggies). More ofa reminder to myself that the controls are just critical, regardless if its clinical data or biochemistry.


Here is the paper's abstract. Can't get the full paper unless you have a subscription (i don't of course)

Okay, this is just bizarre. Actually, no, it's pretty normal. Remember the kids that died while playing in the trunk of a car? Remember their idiotic parents not looking in the trunk? Well, a lawsuit may be pending, since the autopsy now reveals that the kids were alive but unconscience when the cops showed up to search the place.

story here.

(MI=heart attack).

Story here.

What's cool to me is that a blogger right here in Houston got treated a block from me, using a stent that was developed relatively recently...We learned alot about this type of medical technology and how there is a huge market for it (billions of dollars). It's an extremely quick method of care, I dunno how much it actually helps. Guess it all goes back to diet and exercise...So this isn't an excuse to chug down that beer and twinkie.

Was thinking about ebaying this. I think i'll hang onto it a little longer. It's a old matchbook from the WTC bar on the top floor. Still looks pretty good.

I couldn't make this up. A pathogen using felines as a carrier can cause behavioral changes, so researchers say. Exerpt:

Infected men, suggests one new study, tend to become more aggressive, scruffy, antisocial and are less attractive. Women, on the other hand, appear to exhibit the “sex kitten” effect, becoming less trustworthy, more desirable, fun- loving and possibly more promiscuous.

More sex kittens roaming the streets? Oh, the horror.

story here.

Another good story from the region (link here)

Basically the region of Saddam Hussein has left the country poor in information, especially technical/medical news. Anyway US military personnel launched a drive to request medical texts for the region of Tikrit. The drive has proven so successful that overflow is reaching other areas of Iraq. I am going to talk to our local used bookstore and see if i can get them to ship some of the used texts to Iraq. Not surprisingly, there are a ton of really good medical texts available here at the med center; unfortunately each book costs 50-100 bucks.

So...why is it that stupid reporters have nothing better to do (ie Geraldo Rivera), than wait at the beach for the storm, to describe what it's like being in a blender.

Actual quotes

"it's really bad"
"Dennis has arrived"
"the wind is horizontal and stinging the skin"
"it's really gusty"

First, I'm sorry i've been out of touch from basically everyone. So i had my committee meeting yesterday. The last one. El fin. I've learned how to play the game, and I think I won this round. Anyway after alot of blood and sweat and tears, particularly in regard to my presentatoin, dear god that was 48 hours of hell. I convinced the committee that the time has come to wrap things up. Some of them want me to schedule my defense right away. There will be no more meetings. I have to write up my experiments in to a scientific publication for peer review, and submit it. Then I have to write my thesis. Then I have to defend the thesis. Then I have to make corrections to the thesis that the committee told me to make.

Somewhere along this point I have to finish the last few experiments for the paper. When I submit the paper, it will get either rejected out of hand, or they will ask for more experiments. I will then do those experiments as quick as possible, and then resubmit the paper and hopefully it will get approved. Usually this process takes 6 months to one year. I hope i can get it done before then. Once the paper is accept, I can switch labs, but not before. So basically time is of the essence, and I'm pretty stressed out.

Anyway I probably won't be in contact with anyone until i graduate and leave the lab. Right now the plan is to defend around October. There are alot of external pressures, mostly from my boss, that I have to deal with. Basically they are going to try and squeeze me dry before I am allowed to graduate, that's how the game works. So, play the game, punch the ticket, and say goodbye.

For some reason a whole bunch of people got together to starwatch on the beaches of oahu, to look at the comet impact mission Deep Impact. Story here. Wish i was there!

Found this at the Chronicles of Higher Education site.

The similarities between prison and academe are several. Both places have tiny rebellions and mutinies, mostly insignificant, sometimes violent. Most people are involved in sports. Everybody else reads. Lots of free concerts. There's also very bad pay. Squalid living conditions. Remedial classes. Drug use. Unusual carnal activity. Tattoos.

The most common parallel, though, is one's inability to leave either after years of regimen.

It's so true. I daydream of telling my committee "This isn't school, it's prison, and I'm making a jailbreak". Maybe i will tell them, at that.

Hope everyone's 4th of july is good. Hard to summon up much more patriotic spirit than the usual, i'm running, sprinting, to get ready for my last committee meeting. I've finished the results section of the manuscript, and was supposed to meet a with a key committee membet today. Of course he forgot about it. Not a big deal though. I am trying to get a post-doc with him, as my boss will soon be out of money. One of the ironies of grad school, when your boss is out of money is when you graduate, because they can't afford to pay you any more. The senior students in the lab (me and another person) have come to realize it's all b.s., it's called 'the game' and it goes something like this: You need to graduate, and your advisor needs you to get research done to get her papers. Each has something the other wants, so there is a delicate dance.

My boss is good at this game, but i don't think she is good at the larger game, since she is so issolated; she rarely goes to work anymore, perfered to pondificate and write from home. So she is very issolated and in a real ivory tower of sorts.

Anyway i can't wait to be up from under her foot; as soon as i defend, i'll be off her funding and basically free; i can do whatever i want. So i am expected alot of the problems to be resolved by that simple fact. Of course i may have new problems with my committee member and hopefully soon to be post-doc advisor, but that's a different story.

Michael Yon, the journalist who is accompanying CSM Mellinger, has another update. CSM = command seargent major, the highest ranking non-officer there is. Anyway, it's riviting stuff as always. story here