For the Record : NCAA Hockey

GO TERRIERS! I am happy to say that we are going into the tournament ranked #1 in the country. That said, Every year that I have followed them, they get upset in the NCAA's. I see them losing in the Frozen Four this year too. I really hope that I am wrong (like all my other sports picks)

Dateline 3/18/06

It has been a good weekend so far. I just watched BU beat BC in the Hockey East championship. Yesterdays game was amazing (blowing out UNH), not to mention in the middle of our day long drinking holiday that is St. Patrick's day. BU has a serious chance to go for the NCAA title this year.
As for the rest of St. Patricks day, I had no Sr. Project Lab work, so I was done with classes by noon. The rest of the day was spent watching movies, sports, and drinking with friends. Anyway, that brings me to today, where I went to work for the first time in 3 weeks. A funny thing happen too, I accidentily worked an extra hour. You know you have a easy job when you accidently work to long. I was supposed to leave at 5pm, but I was reading a good book (Planet Simpson) and didn't notice what time it was untill about 5:30. At that point there were 2 girls working out who I was not about to throw out, and I had nothing to do till the hockey game started at 7, so I just worked till 6 and changed my time sheet. We shall see if that flies... It wasn't a complete waste of time, I had little work so I actually penned a first draft of a speech for the speech contest to give the engineering commencement address. Winning this contest is not to likely, but I had the time, so why not.

Dateline 3/15/06

My team played a good game in broomball, although we lost at the end 4-2. Better than last week when we got mercy ruled after 2 periods. I am bruised all over, having fallen several times. The ice is much more slick this year because all the hockey players are practicing at Agganis and not putting traction-helping groves in the case ice. Anyway, I had a lot of fun, and my team is certainly getting better.

On a completely unrelated note, do not try to use the self cleaning oven feature on pans. I figured that the pan would clean in the oven if i left it in there for a cleaning cycle...turns out not . Actually I oxidized the outer layer of it. Instead of being smooth and grey, the pan is now tan and rough (and not really cleaner btw, although the new stains are now permanantly burned in). bad idea.

Dateline 3/13/06

I have entered the homestretch of my undergraduate career, and that stretch is off to a good start. I managed to combine the two main programs that I have been working on in my Sr. project together sucessfully this morning, a major milestone in my project. I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel on this one. Also today, I had to present a paper in class that I completely forgot about. I read the paper while the Prof. was getting ready for the class and made a great presentation of it. Makes me wonder why I am preparing for the one I have to give tommorow in another class.
On a completely unrelated note, on the shuttle back from the medical center, I ran into one of the researchers from my former lab group. We got to discussing our current research and he went into this long thing about the future of technology and how far it has come in the last 20 yrs. Then he tells me about how just recently gene chip micro arays have made his work much more quick and effective than he could have imagined when he started 4 yrs ago. He even got out one of the used arrays and explained it to me. So here I am at 9 at night on a city bus getting a personal lesson on DNA microarrays (with examples) from an Iranian expat. and I start thinking: does this type of thing happen to everyone in college? I think I am really lucky to go to BU, and I am going to miss it.

For the record : March madness

I just finished filling out my bracket at yahoo. I didn't make to many big upset picks. I picked Duke to come out of the atlanta regional with Southern Illinois and NC state pulling the only upset there. In the Oakland regional I picked Kansas to win after upsetting Memphis. I picked UCONN coming out of DC . In the other bracket I picked Villanova to win out, but watch for Boston College(even though they suck) and Seton Hall, who I picked to upset the first two rounds. In the finals, I had Duke and Villanova, with Villanova taking it. I just can't bet against the Big East.

Opinion : Dubai Port Deal

Well the Company finally gave in, and congress is claiming victory. But is this good for the US? Probably not, because this is clearly sending the wrong message to other countries. For the last 100 years we have been pushing other countries to open up their economies to free trade as we have and telling them that capitalism should rule out over politics. Now we are slapping around one of the few arab countries that tried to follow this. First of all, I don't see how the person owning the equiptment has anything to do with Port security in an american port staffed with americans. Second, wouldn't arabs be less likely to attack ports that they own? If the government of Dubai wants to invest in making american freight hauling operations more efficient, why would we try to stop them. The fact that the ports used to be owned by a bunch of rich British men only reinforces the fact that the objections to this deal on the grounds of nationalism or globalism are baseless and irrational. Following are own principles, there is only one thing that I would have done differently if I was negotiating for the Bush administration: I would have demanded more money.

On a side note, I do wish that if the government outsources operations for anything, they should outsource them to American companies. The government would be getting more tax revenue (an automatic discount) and it would be helping the economy for the same amount of money. If the american contractors were not doing a good job, then the government should simply threaten to take the operation over themselves or hire a consultant, not sell the contract to foreigners.

Dateline 3/9/06

My friend Hiren has come up with a plan to do everything that he believes one should do in life before they grow up, before we graduate. Put into effect at the beggining of the semester, I have participated or helped out in going to the Blue man group, and going to play Paintball. Both activities were fun, but the next two should be even better. On saturday we are going to go hiking on the skyline trail south of the city. Also later this semester we are going to go skydiving. Should be a great time. Also as far as recreation goes, the Hockey East playoffs start tommorow and I have tickets to all three games this week. GO TERRIERS!

Dateline 3/8/06

This week has been good for getting things done. I was unable to go anywhere good on spring break but I have been relaxing, so that's a good change. So far this week I have been doing everything that I have been putting off for the semester. This includes my state and Federal taxes, financial aid, student loan consolidation, cleaning the apartment, applying for jobs, watching a bunch of movies and updating this blog . I have also been into the lab several times to work on my Sr. project, which I must say is coming along very well.
On the Graduate school front, I was surprised last Friday to get an acceptance letter from the MS program at the Roswell Park Cancer institute, which is part of the University of Buffalo (SUNY). This is a great fall back option, but I must admit I would really not rather have to go there. It isn't a great program, and my premed advisor cast doubt on how much use it would be to get me into medical school, not to mention the fact that it is too unspecialized to lead to a good career. As for other plans, I applied to a bunch of consulting and public sector jobs this week, hopefully this will provide another option. I had what I thought of as a good interview on Saturday with the NIH, only to get an email later telling me that they probably would not have a fellowship available for that lab. Anyway, I am no closer to figuring out what I am doing after graduation than I was 3 months ago...

Opinion : Energy

George Bush claimed in his state of the Union address that The US is addicted to oil. Now, the surprising part of this is that a former oilman would admit this, yet thee fact itself has been clear for decades now. A more interesting comment however was made a few days later when he claimed that technology would be the answer, and that we were on the verge of amazing breakthroughs, yet as a good politician, he did not actually mention any. Many people quickly dismissed this as conservative rhetoric and a way to admit the addiction thing without actually turning to conservation, which I will admit, may be exactly what Bush was thinking. Yet, I actually think Bush is right, albeit for the wrong reasons. The fact is that there does not need to be a breakthrough in technology to break our addiction to oil, there needs to be a breakthrough in economics. I would argue that the technology to move away from oil is already widely available (and has been for a while); we just need an economic shift to bring these solutions into the mainstream.
First, let me purpose the solution to the Oil problem. The key uses for oil in this country are electricity generation, transportation (mostly cars) and as an industrial input (mainly chemical synthesis). The latter need is an unavoidable reality, but I believe that the US produces enough oil domestically to cover industrial uses. The plastics industry in particular could also hedge its volume through recycling programs. This brings us to electricity, a problem that should have been taken care of in the 70's. The fact is that a bunch of nuclear power plants built across the country would cleanly and cheaply generate all the power that oil burning plants do. Unfortunately, the public has an irrational fear of nuke plants and they are expensive up front. Of course, we could just burn more coal, which we have a lot of domestically (even if it is more dangerous than uranium to mine). Recent innovations have reduced the pollution from these plants quite a bit and increased their efficiency, and they have always been cheap. A more progressive solution would be to put windmills all over the place. I have never understood why more people do not do this, as wind generators are the cleanest and easiest way to generate more power. Why not simply put them on the tops of most large buildings? On an average day, they would take the building completely off the grid. Putting them in yards and along highways would generate lots of cheap, clean electricity. Also, I think they look cool...
This would bring us to the most pressing problem of oil usage: transportation. We need to either stop using gas and diesel or substitute something in their place. Simply driving cars that are more efficient and driving less is downright un-American, so conservation is probably out of the question. Even if electric cars were practical, their use would just shift the problem back to the power companies. This means that alternative fuels are the best option. Luckily, these fuels already exist, and they include ethanol and Biodiesel. These fuels are petrochemicals that can be synthesized in large volumes from plant materials. This is great for the oil situation because the substrate (usually corn) is renewable and available domestically. Most gas is already thinned with around 10% of ethanol, but this can shorten the life of conventional engines. We simply need to re-engineer these engines to run with higher mixes of ethanol, and this is where the economic problem comes in. The companies that make the cars are not gaining anything by making automobiles that run on fuels that are not widely available. The most obvious solution in my opinion is for the government to simply require it to be sold in a 5 yr. period (see unleaded gas, R2 refrigerant). The only people that this would hurt would be OPEC. Anyway, I do not expect to e seeing that kind of leadership from either party in Washington, so invest in oil futures, and spend your windfall on a ethanol hybrid when gas hits $4 a gallon.

Opinion : Healthy Living

Recent medical studies have been striking at the heart of common nutrition guidance lately by showing no benefit to the people who follow these programs. The NIH lately has been funding large pharmaceutical-quality trials to look into common health problems recently. These trials are very accurate because they are multi-center (no geographic bias), double blind, (no apriori bias) and include a huge number of participants (high statistical significance).
Surprisingly to health buffs but not so surprisingly to some scientists, these studies keep finding null results. One study involved the question of whether eating a low fat, high fiber diet reduces risk of cancer in older people. A now famous study, which I cannot find, shows that by country, the less meat and calories eaten per capita, the less risk of cancer there is. Now I would argue that this is somewhat foolish because first of all, countries that eat less meat tend to be poorer and have other health problems associated with poverty. I would also point out that individuals within a country tend to be closely genetically related (except the US) and this study is useless unless it can correct for local genetic differences. Either way, conventional wisdom is that healthy eating means less cancer. Unfortunately, recent studies find no correlation. The only thing this seems to help is you heart, which is a good reason to eat healthy, but don't expect it to effect your oncogenes.
A similar study looked at giving calcium supplements to older women to prevent bone loss. Now the logic here is clear: postmenopausal women have too little calcium, so give them more of it. Cynics would say that this solution is the equivalent of sprinting the last mile of a marathon after walking the first 25. The studies showed that the cynics were right, calcium supplements do little to bone density in old age, and several scientists claimed that they always said that bones must be built when the person is still growing to function properly in life. My cynical spin on these two studies is that we need to stop fighting and learn to love genetic determinism. The fact is, if you have genes that predispose you to cancer or osteoporosis, there is not much you can do to prevent it.
Another area the NIH and the FDA have been interested is the effectiveness of non-regulated health supplements. Another recent study focused on the effects of glucosimine and condriton on joint pain. This study also gave some patients Vioxx (or similar cox-2 inhibitor) which is the current clinical treatment for this condition. Well it turns out that G and C did no better at making people feel better than sugar pills, which oddly enough made two thirds of the subjects feel better. Of course the Vioxx made nearly all the subjects feel better (and in theory only caused 1 in 10000 of them to have strokes...) which seems to strike a blow for herbal medicine. Now some people would argue that since G and C is all-natural and has few side effects, who cares if people take it as long as they think they feel better. I will argue , however, that the millions of dollars that are spent on these useless herbal cures would be much better spent on serious medical research on drugs that actually work, such as making Vioxx safer. Also, sugar pills are much more affordable (and tasty) ...

Great quotes

My favorite qoutes, in no particular order:

Funny:
"equations are the sentences of the devil"
-Colbert show

"I don't like it when you shoot anyone, you violent, crazy bitch!"
-Hiren to my roomate Al during paintball, after al asks if hiren didn't like getting shot

"There are only two kinds of men who wear those shirts, and you don't look like a big fat party animal"
-me quoting Homer Simpson, to my frien ryan, who happens to like Hawaiian shirts

Prof: Whats missing from the conclusion of this mortality study?
Drew: The subjects...
-BE 500 class

"Biomedical engineering is the best BS at Boston University"
-Prof. Lutchen(dept. chair)


"Do not needlessly endanger your lives... until I give you the signal."
Dwight D. Eisenhower







Profound:

"all life is an experiment"
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy."
- Pres. G W Bush in State of Union

"Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it."
- Lou Holtz

SPEED KILLS. Slow down and live.
- uhaul inc.

"No pressure, no diamonds."
- Thomas Carlyle

"The greatest of all faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."
- Thomas Carlyle

"A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus."
- Thomas Carlyle

"Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law."
- Immanuel Kant

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-Isaac Asimov

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
Isaac Asimov

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right.
Isaac Asimov

"Free will is an illusion created by our inability to recognize our own motivations"
- Charles Darwin

All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.
Thomas H. Huxley

Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life.
John F. Kennedy

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Other Good stuff

Great links, sites, ideas, etc.

My First Scientific Article:
Biomolecular Engineering Volume 23, Issue 1 , March 2006, Pages 41-54

My current BT Current Download site: isohunt.com

Facebook profile: http://bu.facebook.com/profile.php?id=906680

Facts

Random Facts about me:

• Favorite Color: Red or Blue, depending on my mood

• Height and Weight: 5'9'', 145lbs

• Place of Birth: Rochester, NY

• I have never been outside of North America

• current computer: Dell Dual Xeon(2.8) Workstation

• current vehicle: 1993 Toyota Corrolla (which I only drive in the summer)
• favorite vehicle I owned: 1992 Nissan Sentra.
  

• Current residence: Philadelphia, PA
  

• Jobs I have held: Warehouse hand (twice - furniture and auto parts), Telemarketer, Carpet Cleaner, Camp Councelor, Special needs - Direct care worker, Driver (handicapped vans), Office Asst. , Fitness Room supervisor, Bioinformatics Researcher, QC / product development engineer, Radiology researcher.
  

• I got a1450 on the SAT's and a 33Q on the MCAT.

• My favorite pet was a rat named Smokey

• I was president of the Marine science association (although I never was a marine bio major) and Vice president of the BU Premed society (although I couldn't get into Med school)
  

• My approximate Net worth is $-32,000 (thank you Quiken for pointing that out)

• Best Ebay purchase: 52 inch Big screen TV
• Worst Ebay purchase: can't say I have regretted any of them

• Favorite TV show: The Simpsons

• At a Boyscout Rally several years ago, I saw BIll Clinton give a speech. After the speech, I ran under Airforce One as it was taking off. the SS did not bother me because I was with a Handicapped individual (who I had told to lead the way)

• favorite sport to watch is hockey, to play is tennis

• favorite pizza topping is artichoke hearts and ricotta cheese. add olives and mushrooms, and we have a slice of heaven.
  

• I was arrested once (prank gone wrong) but have never been charged with a crime. I did get a traffic violation last year though (while driving a NY state vehicle btw)
  

• I had my state taxes audited in 2003. NYS found out that I owed them an extra $4.72

• I pay taxes in NY but I vote in Massachusetts (registered Republican), live in Pennsylvania, and shop in New Jersey
  

• Favorite Video games: Super Mario Brothers, GoldenEye, SimCity 4

• Preferred Dishware: Cobalt Blue

• My worst subject in High School was Math (by grades at least). I wanted to be a Civil Engineer but after I accepted entrance to BU I realized that they did not have this major so I switched to Biomedical Engineering.

• Strengths: Intelligence, work well in groups, honesty (so much that this can be a weakness)
• Weaknesses: I can't make up names or titles for anything, insensitive, awkward
  

Predictions

I may not be Miss Clio, but here are a list of my various goals, forecasts, and predictions:

Sports:

Superbowl 2006
shows why I do not bet on sports...
March Madness 2006

Eagles will finish below .500 in 2006 season



Personal Goals:

New year's 2006


Business:

1. GM will go bankrupt. If a car company can't make money selling cars, they should stop existing


Technology:

1. Windows Vista will be slightly better than XP, but it will still be dissapointing, mainly because of the ridiculous computing power necessary to run it (translation : it will be slow). Competitors will not gain market share however and MS will make a fortune on it.

Book Reviews

I honestly Don't read much, but I can and therefore must, so here are my thoughts on literature:

Reviews:
The Handyman by Carolyn See

All time favorites:
A brief history of time, Hawkins (best science book, best non-fiction)
Genome, Ridley
Complications, Gawande
How to argue and win every time, Spence (best advice/self help book)
How we Die, Sherwin and Nuland
Hitch Hiker's guide to the Galaxy (best funny story)
Catch 22
America, the Book Stewart
The Quiet Man, (best short story)
A Brave New World,
The Giver, Lowry
Who's looking out for you? Bill O'reilly
MacBeth, (best Shakespeare play)



Other books that I will admit to having read(mostly for classes and in no order):
almost every shakespeare play
tons of poetry, carpe diem is the best
anything on my bookshelf (see below)
The Great Gatsby



On my bookshelf (In no particular orer):

A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
Complications, Atul Gawande
The Universe in a Nutshell, Stephen Hawking
The Theory of Everything, Stephen Hawking
Do Fish Drink Water?, Bill Mclain
Genome, Matt Ridley
Nature via Nurture, Matt Ridley
Google Hacks, (O'reilly book)
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
The Bible, God
Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003 and 2004
E equals MC squared, David Bodanis
The Physics of Christmas, Hirschfeld
Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins
Creations of Fire, Cobb and Goldwhite
World Almanac
Mind Hacks, (O’reilly book)
To engineer is human Petroski
The Handyman, Carolyn See
Defying the crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity, Sternberg and Lubart
Gray’s Anatomy
Running Linux, (O’reilly book)
Almost Everyone’s guide to Science, Gribbin
Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and
the Diet of Worms, Stephen J. Gould
Telecommunications Convergence, Shepard
Chaos, James Gleick
The Intern Blues Robert Marion
How to argue and win every time Gerry Spence
US armed forces survival guide
A Room of One's own Virginia Woolf
Guns Germs and Steel Jared Diamond
Death in Venice collection Thomas Mann
The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne
The Red Badge of Courage Crane
The Outsiders Hinton
Macbeth Shakespeare
The Death of a Salesman Miller
Oliver Twist Dickens
The Diary of Anne Frank
Alice Adventures in Wonderland (original version, dated 1895)

NSC First aid/CPR manual
Kaplan MCAT Review
A crapload of engineering textbooks

My Opinions

Never one to keep my opinions to myself, here is an index of editorials I have written (listed chronologically)

The economics of college
Web sites and kids
Traffic Circles
Immigration
Healthy Living
Energy
Olympics
Insanity Defense
Gift Buying
Stem Cells
The American Empire
Green Day
National Health Care Registry
Red Sox
Social Security Reform
Fox News
Women In science
Tort Reform
Biomedical Engineering
NHL Lockout
Steroids in Baseball
Global Warming

Article

Wow, my first scientific paper has been published. Actually I am only the 4th author and I only contributed the Blast sections, but everyone has to start somewhere:

Biomolecular Engineering Volume 23, Issue 1 , March 2006, Pages 41-54