Interests:Sharing current events, ideas, and experiences with people is one of my biggest interests. In my blog, I not only hope to see someone who supports my ideas but also others who contribute their constructive criticism. Occupation:Student
In the summer of 2006, when I was still a college freshman filming a speech class for my work-study, I remembered the professor commented on abama's 2004 speech saying that "It has been a long time I haven't heard of a speech like this. I urged you all to listen to it." At that time, I was wondering, who is this guy called Obama? Out of curiosity, I viewed it on youtube. I was amazed. Today, if anyone is wondering why this black guy who only served the Senate for a year or two can gain this much support and popularity, well , these people are probably the ones who haven't heard him speak. In his 2004 speech in national convention, He redefined the United States in a way that is different from his colleagues. "...there are those who are
preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace
the politics of "anything goes." Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a
liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of
America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and
Asian America -- there’s the United States of America."
He talked about his belief on the war. (he was one of the very few who voted against the Irag war which was not a wise political choice for him at that time.But he insisted on what he believed.).
"..in a dangerous
world war must be an option sometimes, but it should never be the first option. "
His March 18, speech in Philadelphia where he
addressed race relations head-on has been touted by many as one of the
best speeches in the annals of history. In fact, his speech
has been compared with Martin Luther King Junior's ''I have a dream''
speech and John F Kennedy's Houston Ministerial Association address.
"I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white
woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather
who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas.
I've
gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the
world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries
within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass
on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces,
nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered
across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget
that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible. "
In his 2004 speech: "I’m not talking about blind optimism here --
the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just
don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just
ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more
substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom
songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a
young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a
millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a
funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too."
Yes, this skinny kid with a funny name is going to places. A place called " White house"...
On the first day of my research, we
started by painting and decorating the walls of a small computer lab inside the
bio lab with the combining theme of biology and Math. We painted three faces of
the wall: one with double helix DNA coming out of a computer and fades into
mathematical symbols such as omega and pi which represents computational biology,
another with pictures of bacteria cartoons which represents “micro-biology” and
the last with a Dinosaur representing the “macro-biology”. On the computer screen, I painted “THINK
OUTSIDE THE BOX” with blue color, which is the favorite phrase of Dr. Campbell.
Dr. Campbell, a biology professor,
is my academic advisor who loves teaching. He just won Hunter-Hamilton Love of Teaching
Awards at commencement. Dr. Heyer, a math professor, is my academic advisor as
well as my summer research advisor. Dr.Campbell and Dr.Heyer are always enthusiastic
and eager to help. And they are fun to work with. For example, on the first
week, they let us paint and decorate, told us to leave our hand prints on the
wall, loaned us a movie called “Enigma” to watch in Dr.Heyer’s house, and bought
Hawaii shirts for all of us to wear in the bio lab on Friday (Davidson Hawaii
day, yeah!!!).
There is a team of students doing the
IGEM research (international genetically engineered machine competition hosted by
MIT). The team is divided into two sub teams: the math team and the biology team.
They are still exploring what to do this summer. As far as I know, they are interested
in data encryption inside bacteria. The last time I checked, they were thinking
about using the concepts of hash function and then cellular automata to encrypt
information in Ecoli. It is kind of quirky because they are using bacteria to
imitate cellular automata which is an algorithm that imitates life.
Recently, National Science Daily,
Scientific American and other publications reported on the IGEM project done
two summers ago which Samantha participated. It is also a quirky project called
“bio-computer” which is about using the bacteria to solve the notorious
burnt-cake problem that can take computers days to solve.
Samantha and I are doing our own individual
projects. She is working on a way to engineer ecoli cells to make them become
competent. And I am trying to develop a visualization tool for the BioBrick foundation.
BioBrick is a collection of biological parts, devices and systems. A part is a
particular sequence of DNA that has a particular function. Devices are composed
of parts and systems are composed of devices. The idea of the BioBrick
Foundation is to introduce the concepts of standardization into synthetic
biology.
My idea is to represent the parts
and devices as nodes (as icons) and edges and indicates other functions of the
parts in the graph. For example, if a particular promoter is used in many other
devices, then the size of it will be relatively larger so that users can know
it is a popular (and thus more likely to be a reliable part). I can also use
color coding to indicate whether a ribosome binding site is strong or weak and
whether a part is working and available.
My biggest and (bold) ambition,
however, is hoping that I can find a way to convert the data into RDF (resource
description framework) using the semantic web approach so that the users may be
able to ask inference questions like “What is the name of a ribosome binding
site that is strong and is between 100 and 200 bases?” .Well, this is just hard and I am not likely
to be able to do this in this summer project (with only 8 weeks left). But this
is certainly something that interests me and I am looking forward to working on
it in the future.
Please help the victims of the cyclone in Burma (Myanmar)
Burma has been devastated by the cyclone attack. Foreign aid workers in Yangon have concluded that as many as 50,000 people died in last Saturday’s cyclone, and two to three million are homeless, the worst disaster in the country’s modern history, and of a scale comparable with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The latest official death toll was 22,500, according to Burmese state media. But even after three days there has been no comprehensive survey. Assuming that there are many casualties to be revealed, and that a significant proportion of the 41,000 listed as “missing” are dead, the final toll will be much higher.
Food and Fuel prices have gone up several times. For most people in Yangon, there is no electricity, no clean water, and bus fare now exceeds the daily wages. For those (probably two to three million) who survived in affected townships and villages, they are now homeless and helpless.
The international community is pledging emergency aid for Burma.
Also, on Google’s homepage just below the search box, you can see the line: “ Support victims of the cyclone in Myanmar (Burma). “ It is a link to a page on which you can easily help the victims by donating to UNICEF, the world's leading international children's organization, or to Direct Relief, an organization that provides medical assistance to improve the quality of life for people victimized by poverty and disaster.
Your 5 or 10 $ can SAVE LIVES!
Note: thi s is the direct link: http://www.google.com/myanmarcyclone/
