“I have the stripes, but where is the zebra?”

Hi Everyone.  Sorry I haven’t posted anything in the long time.  My apology is a post that even longer and more meandering than usual.

I’m at Indiana University for the Biocomplexity X workshop on Quantitative Tissue Biology and Virtual Tissues.  It’s been great — perhaps because there are many physicists converted to biology.  There have been several talks that touched on non-linear elasticity, though most people’s background is in foams and not granular matter.   Rene Doursat gave an especially good talk today on agent-based models of morphogenesis in which he mentioned another alleged quotation, attributed to Alan Turing, who made either the titular comment or said “The stripes are easy, it’s the horse part that troubles me!” in reference to the ability of certain systems of equations to create seemingly biologically-relevant patterns without necessarily providing biological insight.  Brad has

Our Shrinking World

The schools of Duke and Coastal Carolina continue to get closer together. The first overtures were made when I went from graduate school in the Triangle to a job in the Grand Strand. Since, the link has remained strong. John and Ann visited in the spring to speak to my physics seminar classes, and I’ll be venturing back up to Duke very soon to collaborate with my former advisor, both activities I hope will become standing. An extensive interstate system will simplify the route between home cities. But perhaps the most important link between the two happened just this past week: CCU just got its very first Jimmy John’s.

Brontosaurus in Need

Brontosauruses have a lot of problems these days.  Foremost being that they don’t exist.  But that had never stopped the Durham Brontosaurus at the Musuem of Life and Science.  Unfortunately, some teens were too much for it and decapitated the landmark (well, a landmark in my mind, at least) last month.  Fortunately the museum has hired a sculptor to repair the behemoth.  It make actually work out for the best since the mueseum had been letting the elements have their way with the brontosaurus for quite some time (somewhat understandable given the upcoming dinosaur trail, which I expect will be awesome).

If the sculpture meant anything to you (having your wedding pictures taken there is not a prerequisite, please think of making a donation or buying a t-shirt at the Farmer’s Market this Saturday.

Grant Wishes

I suppose I can now call myself a real scientist. I have applied for funding from the NSF.

I’m listed as a co-PI on a Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) grant proposal. We’ve called it Improving the APplied Physics Laboratory Experience, or iAPPLE. The purpose of the grant would be to create a junior-level lab course sequence,

Artist’s conception of iAPPLE.

which hasn’t existed to date. Instead of doing the “classic” experiments, though, students would propose, design, and carry out independent projects. They would have to create mathematical models (using Mathematica, naturally) for the phenomena they’re investigating and produce some sort of physical apparatus of demonstration equipment-level quality. In turn, these would be folded back into the introductory courses, and the lab students would be responsible for assessing the quality of their work as it’s used in the intro classes. Therefore, a feedback loop is created, in which students come into the program and learn from materials more advanced students have made, then they make more materials for the next “generation”. These educational materials would accumulate in our department over time. It’s win/win/win… or so we believe.

 

The grant-writing process itself has been hectic, especially toward the end. I was gone on vacation for a week, though, so I missed a lot of the slog of writing and editing. I feel a bit guilty about it, but my responsibility in the actual execution of the grant is quite significant. But the last few days since I’ve gotten back have been a constant cycle of re-writes and edits and meeting to talk about grammar and re-formatting. We submitted it today, though, so the pressure’s off. We think we have a very good shot of getting funded. We’re all very excited about the project anyway, regardless of the NSF’s decision.

Now, it’s on to write another NSF grant about starting an REU program here…

Apocryphal or not…

Last week I attended both the first ever workshop on Virtual Tissues conveniently (for me) held at the EPA’s RTP campus (though it was a EC-US Task for on Biotechnology event) and a partial reunion of the Lunchtime! crew. Dr. Tighe and Tina were in town and we managed to make it to the Ale House, though with no Martha and Dr. Bunton busy dealing with fires in Conway, some of the old magic was missing.

Efforts to create virtual tissues are certainly ambitious. The idea is to create a sufficiently accurate simulation of biology that the effects of perturbations (such as a toxic substance) are emergent;, rather than hard-coded. There are numerous challenges ahead and it may or may not even be possible, but as I mentioned tot he Ale House attendee’s someone presented an extremely pithy pair of quotes. They may or may not be apocryphal (a word whose own meaning is apparently somewhat dubious), since I cannot find either quote outside of this pairing, but it’s certainly an entertaining idea relevant to ;any technology on the cusp of feasibility:

On October 9, 1903 two interesting things happened.

The New York Times wrote “Hence, if it requires, say, a thousand years to fit for easy flight a bird which started with rudimentary wings… the flying machine that will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years…”

On that same day in North Carolina, Orville Wright wrote in his diary.

“We unpacked rest of goods for new machine. We started assembly today.”

PS: I found a reference to the NYT quote!

In Memory of Sir Olaf Pol

Sir Olaf Pol, 2002

Sad news, everyone. I heard from his son today that Sir Olaf Pol passed away early this morning. As you may or may not remember, Sir Pol lived in Durham for many years. He was an amateur quantum physicist who presented his findings to a group at Duke several years ago, coincidentally on this date. His most striking—and controversial—contribution to his science was taking the “gedanken” out of the “gedankenexperiment” of Schroedinger’s Cat. A shocked audience listened to him describe how he took in stray cats of the streets of downtown Durham and Chapel Hill for these practical applications. Sir Pol’s son reports that three and a half of the cats survive.

A Motley Crue of Toxicologists

Motley Crue Still Exists -- Who Knew?

Three years ago this month a phalanx of Duke physics grad students, including most all Lunchtimers except “field theory” Brian descended upon Baltimore, MD for the American Physical Society’s “March Meeting.” At the time most of us were desperate to find post-doc positions or other jobs given that in January several of us had been told there was no funding left to continue our research past May.  I must have gone on a half-dozen interviews myself, including a memorable one for Wolfram’s theory group.

(Incidentally, nuclear people do get to go to an APS meeting every year, just not the “March Meeting.”  They have to settle for the “April” meeting, which this year is May 2-5.)

Little did I know that three year’s later would find me with a permanent job (inexplicably in toxicology) attending another March conference in grey and chilly Baltimore.  This time around I’m here for the Society of Toxicology’s annual meeting. 

Best… Review… Ever…

I’m finally back in town and have speedy internet access again. Had to stop into work today because I received 36 pages of proofs for a paper that just got accepted (post forthcoming) on December 22 with a 48 hour deadline. I decided to let my out-of-office email handle that one for me, but I felt bad enough that I did dash in to iron things out this afternoon even though I’m technically still on leave. Things will likely balance out on Friday (Jan 2).

My parents gave me a sweet black Xbox 360 wireless controller (since an Xbox 360 is essentially a tiny Microsoft PC the peripherals are compatible with Windows desktops) and the game Bioshock. It turns out that you need a wireless receiver to use Xbox wireless stuff with a PC, so as I was browsing reviews on Amazon I came across a review of a battery pack recharger by Dennis Millarker.

The Annual Christmas Night Movie: 2008

I told the story last year about my family’s annual Christmas tradition of going to the movies. This year, the choice was Bedtime Stories. I was not thrilled, but the rest of the gang (my brother, our cousin-in-law, and her two sons) enjoyed it.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Call it a comeback

Despite having lost to Duke just two weeks ago, Michigan won against Duke in Ann Arbor today.  It was the second time Michigan had beaten the number four team in the country, having usurped UCLA in the 2k Sports Classic to get their first shot at Duke.  In the previous game Michigan had looked like they belonged on the court, but Duke had been clearly better.

I was already happy enough that Michigan had improved from their ice storm days when they hardly even seemed to be playing the same sport.  (Can you believe that it will be six years ago tomorrow that we watched Michigan play in Cameron in the midst of the aftermath of the great North Carolina ice storm of 2002?  I recall Brian shouting “Devils!” every time Ryan cheered “Go Blue!).

These days it seems like Michigan might actually stand a chance of making it to the tournament for the first time since my junior year.  Of course, if they were more consistent then they would have beaten lousy old Maryland this week.  By losing they left the Big Ten at 5-6 in the most recent ACC-Big Ten “challenge.”