Posts (page 2)
School is going OK. I failed my first Bio quiz, but no one makes their first jump so I'm not letting it slow me down. Speaking with some other students at Oktoberfest ( as good a place for any for academic discourse ) I learned that the Mol. Bio. profs dump on the first years, but somehow everyone turns out O.K. I have another quiz this Friday and my fingers are crossed.
Computational Neuroscience is actually going really well because the work is primarily programming with a few diff. eqs. thrown in. It's going so well I've been helping other kids in the class. It takes me a while to grasp the underyling concept and I find myself thinking yet again "I'd read more if I didn't have so much homework to do".
I'm getting next to nothing done in lab. I'm trying to develop a state machine or something to appropriately stimulate patients suffering from foot drop but I don't know the first thing about anything. I'm just now getting the hang of the gait cycle analysis, but that all goes out the window when dealing with stroke patients. I'm feeling in the dark to develop an appropriate algorithm for processing this crap data. Zain Navabi deliver me!. The other guys in my lab are super pro. They don't sleep much. I wish I could manage with less but so far 7 hours is as low as I can go before I become retarded. As it is I'm ingesting a lot of caffeine.
bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bi- I went for a short ride today and it didn't hurt, but I still don't feel like I should force anything. I think I'm on the verge of healthy so hopefully by next week I will be able to ride regularly. That would make me unbelievably happy. Also next weekend is Oktoberfest in Germantowne!
I haven't mentioned this yet because I find it so unbelievably depressing: The day I stopped riding was the day I bought a Gary Fisher Utopia. The fork has a lock-out out on it which is so sweet for a pavement bike. It ships with 700s but can fit 29s so if I when like dumping more money into bikes ( which is often ) I know where to put it. Like I alluded to previously: riding fast is fun, but that doesn't satisfy the urge to take a bike off sweet jumpsz. I'm chomping at the bit people -ikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes
I get to "learn" tables of amino acid properties for my Mol. Bio. quiz this Friday. I am wicked pissed.
After I finish this case of Franziskaner no more bringing alcohol home. I promise.
Wrapping my knees all week long has helped a lot and I can almost get around without. Still weak, still can't bike. This sucks. Maybe in October?
Wasted time at the school health clinic today. I'm fairly sure they just google'd "knee pain", but that's what I get. I'm going to keep my knees wrapped for a while and see how I feel in two weeks. It's torture spending so much time inside.
In the waiting room I was subjected to daytime CNN. They were reporting on blogger's reactions to the vice president's biblical commencement speech. This is why I may never buy a TV or pay for cable ever again. That having been said she sounds absolutely insane. Kennedy deliver us if that pair is elected.
\begin{align}
y(t) &= \int_{t-2}^{1}( \tau) (-1)\ud \tau +
\int_{1}^{t-1}(-\tau + 2)(-1)\ud \tau +
\int_{t-1}^{2}(-\tau + 2)(1) \ud \tau \qquad \text{for } 2 < t < 3 \nonumber \\
%%
&= -\frac{\tau^{2}}{2} \Big |_{t-2}^{1} +
\Big( \frac{\tau^{2}}{2}-2\tau \Big) \Big |_{1}^{t-1}
\Big( -\frac{\tau^2}{2} + 2\tau \Big) \Big |_{t-1}^{2} \nonumber \\
%%
&= \bigg(-\frac{1}{2}-\Big(-\frac{t^2-4t+4}{2}\Big)\bigg) +
\bigg( \Big(\frac{t^2-2t+1}{2} - 2(t-1)\Big)-\Big(\frac{1}{2}-2\Big)\bigg) + \nonumber \\
&\qquad
\bigg( \Big(-2 + 4 \Big) - \Big(-\frac{t^2-2t+1}{2} +2(t-1)\Big)\bigg) \nonumber \\
%%
&= \bigg( \frac{t^2-4t+3}{2} \bigg) +
\bigg( \frac{t^2-6t+8}{2} \bigg) +
\bigg( \frac{t^2-6t+9}{2} \bigg) \nonumber \\
%%
&= \bigg( \frac{3t^2-16t+20}{2} \bigg) \label{29step3}
\end{align}
Well I know how to use LateX now
I want my knees back so badly.
First week went well. I changed my schedule yet again so now I'm taking: Bio, Computational Neuroscience, and Linear Systems. Bio looks like it will be a lot of memorization ( surprise! ) but the tests are apparently based on analyzing real data which might be kinda cool.
Comp. Neuro is mostly the prof. deriving various hierarchical models of the brain, I think this will be the killer class for the term but I need to learn it so there's no dodging the bullet. It seems like there are some people in the class who follow the material so I can get some help when I need it.
Linear Systems is actually not at all what I thought it would be. At NU it was pretty much the intro to Digital Signal Processing. Here it's actually about anaylzing Linear Systems ( surprise! ) , and is intended as a follow up to classical control. The teacher is really REALLY excited to be teaching us the subject. Ordinarily it would be fairly dry but I now think this will be fun class! The prof. is researching the application of Non/linear systems theory to biological problems so I think I may ask him to be on my thesis team ( we're required to have one advisor not from the BioE faculty ).
The first week of lab was spent mostly soldering. There is a procedure this coming Tuesday so there are a lot of lose ends (literrally ) that need to get cleaned up. I don't have any experience soldering so its slow going, but its a skill I've been meaning to develop when the opportunity presents itself. The PI gave me some EMG data to look at involving activating of various ankle muscles and their effect on foot drop. The goal is to improve the current paradigm and update existing prosthetics. I don't know how far I'll get in 3 months, but I think it will be fun. Also down the pipe may be some fMRI data and labView programming.
“For the modern [ Electrical Engineer ], the lure of the Laplace transform is its ability to map the complicated
operation of convolution into multiplication. This integral has for decades driven electrical
engineering undergraduates to contemplate theology either for salvation or as an alternative career.”
- Paul J. Nahin
