Amazing Grace - go see it!

Friday, four of us attended the opening show of Amazing Grace, even though we had to make a bit of a drive to get to a theater showing it. The acting was well done, as was the movie itself. The movie follows the attempts of William Wilberforce to end the slave trade in England via debates and bills in the House of Commons. He also worked to end slavery, but only his work towards ending the slave trade was included. The story is very well presented, and keeps the viewer interested. I never once thought they should "get on with it," which is quite impressive for me.

Two of the people in our group are historians, and so I asked them about the historical accuracy of the movie overall. Surprisingly it is quite accurate, and even gives a nod to the debates that are still occurring about the accuracy of some conjectures made in that time period. For instance, the former slave Oloudaqh Equiano that assists Wilberforce claims to have been a prince in Africa, but many historians believe that he was actually born in South Carolina. In the movie he makes this claim, but some of Wilberforce's adversaries spread rumors that he was actually born in South Carolina. Some events that seemed like they must be fictitious were also accurate, such as how certain votes occurred and how Wilberforce suffered physically.

It was also interesting to find out that the biography Equiano wrote was the best selling biography until Benjamin Franklin's biography was printed. Another tidbit was that when many people stopped putting sugar in their coffee to protest slavery it was actually a sacrifice, as coffee was usually brewed at the beginning of the week and then re-boiled throughout the week so that by the middle of the week it was quite syrupy. Usually sugar was the only way to make it taste even vaguely appetizing.

Whether or not you enjoy history, you should see Amazing Grace for the interesting story, great acting, and original characters.

New Dell Laptop

So, I'm getting settled with my new laptop and I definitely like it. I have 4 USB ports (finally!), and media keys on the front! I've missed having keys to control the music player ever since my wireless keyboard that had them bit the dust a few years back. I think the computer is actually surprisingly pretty, given that it's a Dell. It is a light shiny gray on the top and inside, the bottom is black (which makes the rest of it be noticeable), and there is a banding of white all around the keyboard area and the lid. Even my officemate who is a Mac lover thought it looked nice!

Although it is a 14" screen, it doesn't seem all that small, which is definitely a plus. It also feels lighter than my old HP, which is fabulous. Another thing I love about it is the fact that it has a slot on the side for an SD card, which is the type of memory card my new camera takes! It makes it much quicker to get photos off, especially since Vista has a built in card reader that actually works. The speakers are also on the front, which means if I have the lid closed I can still listen to music without headphones very easily (especially with those media keys).



Vista is awesome (I have Vista Business), although it definitely has some annoyances. They did make it easier to do some things though, like getting rid of certain items in the system tray, and changing computer settings. I absolutely LOVE the sidebar, which you can customize with different gadgets and either have disappear behind other programs or stay locked on the screen. I have it locked so that I can always see it. I have a clock (I rotate between the 8 choices, I used to have one with a pokemon character on it), a picture slide show (currently with my India pictures), a weather bar, a system meter to show my CPU and RAM usage, and a large calendar so I can easily find the date. :) Many of these things I had in some way or another previously (desktop photo changer which was annoying, weather bar in firefox that wasn't very useful, task manager minimized in system tray), but now they are finally useful, constantly accessible, and pleasing to the eye.



Of course, there are a lot of annoying things about Vista as well, like the dialog boxes that warn me I need administrator rights to do certain actions even though I am logged in as an administrator and it works. It also asks for permission to run any program, which gets really old when you have a new computer and are trying to install a lot of things. I'm sure you can turn these messages off, but I think they are there for a good reason (preventing programs from installing themselves). There is also plenty of software that is not yet compatible with Vista. Even Visual Studio 2005 (made my Microsoft!) has some compatibility issues with Vista, even though it does still work and seems to only be minor issues.

BTW, my desktop image is a picture I took.

Overall I'm very happy with this new laptop. Since this is everyone's favorite part of Vista, here's a screenshot of the program changing (windows key + tab, instead of alt + tab):

Airlines -- Domestic (USA) vs International

In January I had my first real opportunity to fly internationally as I traveled to IJCAI (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence), which was held in Hyderabad, India. The trip overall was great, and I realized that flying internationally has many perks over flying domestic.

One of the great things about a long flight is that they actually feed you. I've spent most of a day flying from the east coast of the USA to the west coast of the USA without being given a single meal on board the flight (coach class). However, when flying to India via London (Boston -> London Heathrow -> Mumbai -> Hyderabad) I was given more meals than I actually needed, due to the time changes. Even when flying back to the USA, when the time change did not bring meal time quicker than usual, I was still fed enough to not have to find food in the airport or risk starvation.

Another great thing is that you have better movie/tv/radio choices, at least versus many of the US domestic planes. The only flight I think did better was the Song flight I had last year. On my Virgin Atlantic flight from London to Mumbai I actually had video games to play as well, so that does improve on all of the others. I would fly them again just to have that sort of entertainment available. Not to mention the fact that they give you a bag of essentials: toothbrush, toothpaste, socks, and a mask to cover your eyes when trying to sleep and all of the lights are on. When you get stranded overnight in London on your way home with no extra clothes or toiletries in your carry-on bag, Virgin Atlantic becomes the best airline in the world.

I also found that with being on a bigger plane there was less chance of motion sickness. One of my landings was a little rough, but otherwise it didn't feel nearly as choppy as most of the domestic flights I've taken in the past few years.

Granted, those perks are rather minor when compared to the large difference in cost, with my total bill being about $1600 for a round trip from east coast USA. However, this large price was due to two factors beyond my control: the location (Hyderabad) does not have an international airport that is cost effective to fly into, and January is tourist season in India so all of the prices hike up and all of the cheap plane tickets are bought long before we found out our work was accepted at IJCAI.

International flights could also be less enjoyable if you were stuck in the middle of a row of 5 people, especially if you had to use the restroom in the middle of the night. Luckily for me I was sitting in the aisle on every single flight, and the only time I slept on the plane I was in a front row so no one had to wake me to get through. So although that could be a negative, it doesn't apply!

Women win Hack Day.....so?

All Female Team wins Yahoo! Hack Day Overall Prize

I congratulate the winners for a job well done, and I am rather amused by the project they did. However, it makes me sad that such a big deal is made about the fact that it was a group of women. Yes, it's awesome that a group of women won since there are so few of us in technology. But it shouldn't be surprising or unexpected that a woman could do better than a man! The probability of them winning is not based on the ratio of women teams to men teams...

I do think that advertising their win and the competition is a positive thing though, because hopefully girls who have the misconception that they are inherently not as good as the boys will note that maybe they are.

I guess my main question is why the title of the entry was not something more like "First place team hacks purse."

Article Review

I think I'm going to turn this blog into a review of articles, which is basically what I had in mind originally anyway. I have at least 5 articles that I've bookmarked for comment over the summer, and I hope to soon get to those. I'm hoping to have at least 1 per week that I want to write about. If that happens, this blog will be active again soon!

Although I did not go to Switzerland to present my work, a colleague of mine went and stood by my poster to answer basic questions I prepped him for. My work was deemed interesting by a few different people, but unfortunately I do not know who they were so I can't follow up. I think that is a good start to grad school anyway though, and I have other papers being reviewed right now at a conference and a journal. Publish or perish!

Academia: Disillusionment

Academia is an odd animal, at least for Computer Science. To succeed as a graduate student it is known that you must have plenty of publications and do plenty of networking. To network you must attend conferences that your work is accepted at, and go to many talks that you can. All of these requirements are quite reasonable and easy to understand; if it doesn't sound interesting, then academia is not where you should be.

However, the odd part comes with the money. It is hard to get funding for travel, both from your own university and from the conference itself. For an example, I will not be going to my conference in Switzerland because the conference would only waive my registration fee and the department could only give me enough money to cover less than 1/2 of the cheapest plane ticket I could fine. The university may have been able to give me more, but their deadline for applying was before the acceptance date at the conference and required proof of acceptance. However I don't know the probability of getting university funding; it may be slim, or may be high. Of course, if it works the same as with the department where the student must pay up front and then be reimbursed it almost doesn't matter; I do not have the ability to buy a $1200 plane ticket, even with credit cards.

So I am disillusioned at the requirements coupled with reality. We are expected to do things that are near impossible. We certainly cannot afford most conference trips on our student salary, but yet it is difficult to find funding. How ironic that one of the most important things is so far from our grasp. I even know of someone whose advisor has good funding (mine currently does not), but her advisor would not (or could not?) fund her for a good conference her paper was accepted at. What a lost opportunity.

Overall, we are better off than non-science graduate students as we have almost-guaranteed salary funding, but we still have a long way to go before overall funding is realistic. The other part of academia that disillusions me is the fact that I'm being paid less this summer than I pay in rent; but that's an issue I'll have to strike up later, probably when I start wondering why I went to grad school right out of college instead of taking a few years to save up some money.

Switzerland, here I come!

About a month ago I found out that my abstract was accepted to the AI 50th Summit in Switzerland this summer, to be presented as a poster. Although being accepted is great news, I've been worried about the large cost of going there, as my advisor doesn't have money to send us (another person in my lab also had an abstract accepted). I did, however, just get some funding from the department, and am hoping to get one of the student travel grants from the conference to pay for the registration fee and a few meals. The department funding is enough to pay for half of a plane ticket if I can't find cheaper plane tickets than I've found so far. Therefore, I'm optimistic that we will find a way for it to work out!

Although I've had a paper accepted at a conference before, this conference will be the first one I go to. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to meet people in the AI field, as well as to learn about their research. I'm hoping that either my advisor or the other person in my lab will also go, as I've also never traveled to Europe before, so having a big trip to my first conference all on my own will be a bit daunting. I can do it, but I would enjoy it more if I had someone else traveling with me that knew what was going on.

I'm very excited about the trip, and I hope that it all works out. This summer is going to be filled with a lot of short trips, so hopefully I will be able to do everything else I want to do. Since this trip will be my first trip to Europe, I hope that it goes well and that I have time to sightsee in Switzerland while I'm there!

Cancer Stem Cells

Event: Robert Weinberg
Date: Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Time: 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM

This talk was on cancer stem cells, a topic very pertinent to my research. The beginning of the talk was on basic cancer information, which made it very obvious that it was occurring at an undergraduate venue (Amherst College). He did reaffirm a few numbers for me though, such that a cell can only split a max of about 50 times and that that probability for mutation is very low (at most 1 in 1x10^6 according to him).

The later part of the talk was actually on stem cells, and was interesting after we got past the description of what the different types were (stem, progenitor, differentiated). Apparently it is possible to separate stem and non-stem cells from a group by the proteins they each have on their surface. The stem cell will have a different type from the other ones. So, you can bind a die to an antigen that will bond with only the stem cell protein, and then bind dies to antigens that bond with the other cells' proteins, and use light refraction to see the different colors and separate them out. That is very interesting for both cancer and regular medical/biological research.

Also interesting was a discussion on whether or not tumors are organized hierarchically like regular cells are. In regular sets of cells, we have stem cells that are a sort of "super parent" in the fact that they can create any type of cell (most people would know this just from the regular news). These cells can create progenitor cells (he called them "transit-amplifying cells" and I like to call them "blast cells") that are capable of differentiating into a specific type of cell. The children of blast cells eventually become differentiated cells, which are basically a mature cell that will not change its function during its lifetime. Blast cells can also create more blast cells, and when stem cells split they create a new copy of themselves (so that there is one blast cells and one stem cell). Originally it was assumed that tumors were only made of mature cells, and that stem cells did not exist in a tumor as stem cells are less likely to mutate. There was speculation that a tumor cell might incur a change that turned it into a tumor stem cell, however.

So, at this talk he described a study showing that tumor stem cells did indeed exist. A group apparently split apart tumor cells the same way that regular cells were split apart, using antigens. Tumor initiating cells appear to be a small minority, which is a property of stem cells. This makes sense, as other cells would be unable to split enough times to form a proper tumor, although personally I'm not sure that limit would still be in place in a tumor cell. When an experiment was done with the separated cells, however, it was found that the cells they thought were stem cells could create a tumor in a mouse if only 200 of them were implanted whereas 20,000 of the others failed to form a tumor when implanted. Usually researchers implant 100,000's of cells to get a tumor growing, so it is interesting that only 200 of a specific type would be necessary. This experiment is why many agree that tumors do have stem cells.

One implication from the existence and ability of tumor stem cells involves metastasis, which is when a tumor migrates to another part of the body or tissue to become cancer. If only tumor stem cells are capable of growing a tumor, would only tumor stem cells be involved in metastasis? If so, could we stop metastasis by killing the stem cells?

There are still many things that are not known though. For instance, no one is sure if regular stem cells are likely to become tumor stem cells. Since stem cells don't replicate often and the majority of mutations are going to occur due to replication (or at least be spread by it), it seems unlikely. Most people currently assume that progenitor cells are the ones that become tumor stem cells, as they are only slightly different from stem cells to begin with.

There are treatments out there (he named "Gleevac") that can kill off all of the tumor except the stem cells. So once you stop with the treatment, the tumor is just replenished from the stem cells. Companies would like to make a treatment to kill the tumor stem cells, but no one can figure out how to do that without killing the healthy stem cells as well (which would probably kill you in the end, as the body is constantly killing and replenishing cells). The reason the current treatment doesn't work is that it ruins a cell's DNA, and cells that split frequently end up dying because they can't fix their genes in time to split. However, stem cells don't replicate frequently, so they are able to repair the damage before splitting.

So if we can research tumors in a similar way to regular cell growths, and figure out how to get rid of those stem cells, we've cured cancer! Which of course is easier said than done.

Global Climate Crisis

I saw Al Gore give a talk at Google on Friday, April 7th, and even got to shake his hand afterwards. It was a great talk about the state of the climate changes and global warming. I was incredibly impressed with the fact that his talk concentrated on the facts, and was not political. There were of course political jokes here and there, and slight pokes at the current administration, but I do not feel that they detracted from the point he was trying to get across. The Q&A session afterwards had more of a political agenda due to the questions that were asked, but overall I think it was very well done.

Below is a summary of what he talked about, including quick facts. All of this information will be in the movie coming out this year entitled An Inconvenient Truth, which I recommend seeing and plan to see myself.

• He calls it the "climate crisis" because "global warming" doesn't truly encompass the issues, and makes it sound less like a local problem
  
• The word "crisis" is written as a combination of 2 characters in Chinese, one for "danger" and one for "opportunity" -- this tidbit of information is a good summary of the talk
  
• There are a lot of global places that are showing signs of global warming: Mt. Kilamanjaro is out of glaciers, and Glacier National Park is out of glaciers, for 2 examples.
  
• You can compare the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by checking the amount in glaciers (they save the gas in pockets of air) and comparing it to numbers taken over the past 40-some years. The amount of CO2 has never gone over 300 ppmv (parts per million), but is now at 400 ppmv. 45 more years of following the same increase trend as the past 40 (there was a graph) would be catastrophic due to the large amout that would then be in the air. We are talking exponential growth here.
  
• The actual temperature of the ocean is higher than predicted by an actual computer monitor taking only natural causes in to account. A computer model that predicted the increase based on human interference from 30 years ago has accurately predicted the temperature up until now. That model shows it to continue to increase at a rate that will probably kill off most of the sea life in our lifetimes.
  
• In March 2004, Brazil had the first typhoon in South America; a very big sign of changing global climates and ocean temperature.
  
• We are having more flooding and more drought: the heavy rains cause flooding, but due to the rains all coming down at once the aquifers do not have time to refill, causing drought in the non-rain time.
  
• Glaciers:
  
  • We have lost 40% of the thickness of hte arctic glaciers
    
  • There is currently a higher temperature increase at the north pole than at the equator. If these glaciers melt, the ocean will be warmed a great deal because these glaciers currently reflect a majority of sunshine in the winter months. If this warming occurs, the therma-haline pump between Canada and Europe could stop working, which currently helps control the ocean temperature and warms Europe. Europe could be thrust in to an ice age if this happens, with high consequences to the rest of the planet as well.
    
  • Larsen Ice Shelf in Antartica disappeared. It is just completely gone, this huge piece of ice. The small melting areas tunneled to the bottom of the glacier, heating the water and causing the land based ice to fall.
    
  • Land based ice melting causes the ocean height to rise, because that water was not part of the ocean previously. Water based ice melting does not cause the ocean height to rise, because it was part of the ocean to begin with.
    
  • Greenland melting (which it has already begun to do visibly) will raise sea levels worldwide by 20 feet, as all of those glaciers are currently land based. Currently 50 cubed miles are lost a year from the Greenland glacier. If this melting is not stopped, all of the Netherlands (not to mention most of Florida and many other regions) will be entirely under water in our lifetime.
    
• Due to this warming, there is less frost on the ground during winter, and therefore invasive speacies come sooner. This is causing devastation to whole forests and other natural habitats.
  
• Coral has died in the Caribbean because of warming ocean temperatures.
  
• There will be more infectious diseases and mosquitos due to this warming, as they will be able to survive easier.
  

The year to fear is 2050...yes, if things keep going as they are, we will have a flooded and possibly uninhabitable planet by that time.

If you take nothing out of these bullet points, there are 2 things I want you to remember. First, 53% of the news puts global warming in doubt, whereas 0% of actual scientists doubt it. Big oil companies and others are literally paying people to act as specialists and claim that global warming is fake. Two, we are basically the one big country that has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and it cannot succeed without us because we output much more CO2 than the other countries, even per person. The rest of the world understands the problem, and wants to fix it but for some reason we are too worried about what it will do to the economy. But by not following the Kyoto Protocol and decreasing our emissions, we are losing some of our economy. For instance, our car makers are suffering right now; if they made more fuel efficient cars they could sell them to other countries, but right now they can't because their cars are not up to the standards required!

There's no reason not to try to fix our mistakes and save the Earth. Otherwise, our children might be the last generation before we plunge back to the dark ages or become extinct. It really is that imminent, and something really does need to be done about it.

If you are unsure of terms or why I think something matters, just ask. I did a semester project on global warming when I was an undergraduate, I took a geology class where we discussed much of this, and I have a full year of college level chemistry behind me. I could write a post on each of those bullet points I think, but I will refrain from doing so for now. However, it really is a very important topic, and we really need to take care of our planet because IT'S THE ONLY ONE WE HAVE!

Please see his movie or research more on this topic (preferably not in the american news, as there are many lies there) if you are not already familiar with the key points. If we do what we are capable of doing with the technology we have now, we actually CAN get our CO2 levels down to that of 1970! It's only a matter of trying and making the government know that it should be a priority! Because really, what's the point of fighting terrorism and finding cures to diseases if we aren't even going to have a planet in 50 years?

Airlines -- United vs Delta

I've flown twice in the past month, each time being on different airlines. Usually there is at least a few months between flights, so I don't tend to notice much difference between the airplanes or the airlines. However, I've noticed recently that there are some big differences. All of these comparisons are in coach; I have flown United first-class before and did not have nearly as many problems as I have in coach.

United is the airline I have flown on the most. I always assumed that they were a better airline because they were slightly more expensive and I knew that my father preferred them. However, I found this past weekend that I was not very fond of their airplanes or their service. The flight was very uncomfortable in every aspect: the chairs were not proportioned correctly at all for my body size, giving me a headache; every setup they have for movie screens is horrible, they tend to either be too far away or right above you; the headsets they require you to use are uncomfortable; and they never have room for everyone's carry-on luggage.

I noticed a distinct difference between airplanes while flying United, as well. I flew on a Boeing 757 as well as an Airbus. The Boeing 757 was the most uncomfortable for 2 reasons:

1. The first reason relates to the seats themselves. It seems that the seats are meant for anyone about 5'6" in height or taller (they can extend up). However, if you are short and do not have a lot of body fat to push you out from the seat in the lower area, the headrest pushes your head forward in an incredibly uncomfortable fashion. Sitting up straight is impossible due to the headrest, and slouching is impossible due to the lack of legroom.
   
2. The second reason I disliked the Boeing was the fact that the underseat area for luggage was smaller for the aisle seat than for the other 2! I could not fit my bag easily under the seat, even though the same bag had fit fine on my earlier flights when I was in either the center or the window seats. This problem baffles me, and made my flight even more uncomfortable than it would have been in one of the other seats; ironically, I have always preferred the aisle.
   

The Airbus was only marginally better. The seat backs were still horribly painful to rest my head on, but slightly less so than on the Boeing. The aisle seat also seems to have the same size area for carry-on luggage as the other 2 seats. But everything else was about the same as the Boeing.

Delta Song was a MUCH better experience. I flew them last month, and was impressed by their planes and service and even more impressed after flying United this past weekend. They incorporate the movie screens into the backs of the seats, so that everyone has their own screen. This setup eliminates the problems of United's screen placement. Also, everyone can watch a different tv program or play a trivia game, making it less likely that you will be bored out of your mind. These screens actually make the provided entertainment entertaining as opposed to something to notice in the background. Their seats are also much more comfortable for those of us that are height-challenged. I was not forced to have my head at an awkward angle if I leaned back in my seat, which in itself makes me want to fly Delta Song from now on.

On a related note, they give you the small earbud headphones which do not pinch on your head as the other ones can, and they will always fit in your ear. I enjoy these much better, although I wonder if they are usable for people with hearing aids? Also, we did not have any trouble fitting our carry-on luggage on the plane. With United, they never had enough bin space for everyone.

The only problem with the Delta/Song acquisition is that Song is being phased out and soon everything will be just Delta. I hope they keep all the great things about Song instead of phasing those out with the name, because right now Song is the only airline I will actually put effort into getting tickets on. Previously I just picked the cheapest ticket, but if I can get a Delta Song ticket for a little more, I'd be willing to pay it (emphasis on "a little"...I'm still a poor grad student).

Too bad I signed up for United frequent flyer miles instead of Delta Song miles...maybe I should buy stock in Delta if they are going to keep the Song amenities.