Saving the World

I usually try to post at least every couple days, but I've been AWOL for a little while. Let me tell you the reason. Within a week's time, I'm going to be leaving for India. I'm going there of course to visit family, but I have a second reason as well.

We have a minor at Berkeley called Global Poverty & Practice. It's not like most minors. You do take your 4-5 classes, but that's not enough. You have to do a practice. Something in real life. You're supposed to go out into the world and help alleviate poverty (or at least learn about it first-hand so that you can do the real work soon in the future with knowledge of what kinds of things are going on). They encourage you to go abroad, and that's just what I'm doing.

The students in the minor are involved in a diverse range of projects, from self-led to student-run to NGO-directed. From creating crops for sustenance farming to helping medical teams service remote villages to fighting disease in urban slums. And me? I'm going to be working in education. My practice project is going to be improving science education in a couple of rural schools by making it more interactive.

Sometimes when I hear myself talk about it in comparison to all these other things people are doing, I wonder if it seems like my project is much too narrowly focused. But, to paraphrase and contextualize the Pareto principle, 80% of the problems come from 20% of the causes. You just have to pick the right 20% to fix. There was a study done in rural China that showed how the presence of a science lab in a school, even after controlling for financial differences and student self-selection, was correlated with students attending school for 1.8 more years. If a little science lab can encourage some interest and keep students in school, isn't it worth having?

At any rate, I've been working on finding/modifying/writing lab protocols, lessons, and questions for some of the simple experiments I've picked. I'll go into more detail later, but I should also let you know: I'm planning on creating a new blog for me to talk about my project while I'm there. I won't abandon this one of course, but all posts to do with that experience will probably go there (and possibly be duplicated here). More info will come when I've decided what exactly to do. Ciao for now!

People Who Know More Than You

Okay, so the Maker Faire story is taking a while. I was only there for 5 hours or so and there was still a ton of stuff to write about, and I'm being slightly lazy.

In the meanwhile, let me fill the gap by talking about presentations, since one of those is the reason I was in Berkeley the last few days. Basically, I had to make a little presentation in lab meeting on Wednesday about what I've been doing. A little background about the project and the techniques, a quick recounting of my various failed attempts, and the display/explanation of the data from the one trial in which things did work, followed up by a short list of where to go from here.

I'm not usually nervous about presentations, but this one had me worrying a little bit. I've realized that it's quite nerve-wracking to give a presentation to people who know the subject better than you. Hell, the main paper involved was written by my PI. Who knows it better than she does?

Two days before, I was still figuring out thresholds for comparing the experimental and control data, turning my huge tables in Excel (240 rows x DW columns is no joke) into pretty graphs, and figuring out the best way to show off my awesome-looking results.

Negative control on the top left - no response. With the thing  I'm testing - huge response. Inhibiting the thing I'm testing - no response again. Woooo, the assay works!

That lasted up until the evening before the meeting. Now it was time to start on my Powerpoint.
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Yeah, a little late, but I actually don't procrastinate unless I know (unconsciously) I can make the deadline without too much stress. And this is something I've been working on for a whole semester, so I've got a pretty good understanding of it. Making the outline and the Powerpoint itself didn't take long.

The thing was, though, I'd seen some of the grad students in the lab presenting at lab meetings as well (one was practicing for her quals). They got asked a lot of tough questions. When I started, it was background, and nobody asked any questions. They all knew the stuff back and forth (I did mix up an important part, but my post-doc mentor was the only who caught it, and he waited until afterward to tell me). So I thought I was off the hook.

As soon as I got to my results, though, it was like a frenzy of (rather friendly) sharks. Most of the questions I got were on my data. How did I analyze it? Did I do this particular statistical analysis? Did I compare those two things? etc. Oh man. There were plenty of things I still had to do, so I couldn't answer everything, but apparently I still did a pretty good job.

So even though I'm not usually nervous about presentations, I've got to say: Whew. I'm glad that's over. For now.

My Future

I've been looking at grad schools this week. Which ones have the best neuroscience graduate programs, what do I need for their application, what's the curriculum and rotation schedule like, etc. There's some obvious ones, like UCSD, UCSF, UCLA, UC Berkeley...but I don't really know much about those outside sunny California. Except Columbia.

I really, really want to go to Columbia. What I like is that their program is very interdisciplinary, but still well established. And they have Professor Eric Kandel! He literally wrote the (8 lb.) book!

The Kandel book, as it is called, despite the presence of two other authors on the cover.

Still, there's one other thing that I've been thinking about. I was tipped off about this program last spring, when someone came into my History of India class and spoke about it. Since then, I've heard of it from multiple other sources, and done some research for myself. One of my roommates is also going to be doing it beginning next (school) year. It's called TeachForAmerica.

The program selects the best and brightest undergraduates to teach in schools in underserved areas for two years. And it's highly competitive. This year, it got some 35,000 applicants and accepted about 4,000 to train and send off into the education world. Something like 10% of the Harvard graduating class applies to this program. What are the chances I will get in?

If by some chance I do make the cut, I have to think about how I will deal with grad school. Grad school is definitely my goal - I want to do research. This is something I've been working for since high school, and it's really my dream. But I've had a charmed life. I've been extremely lucky. I want to spread some of that to kids who haven't had what I grew up with, to help make their lives better and open up all of the opportunities waiting for them in the future. This is also something I really want to do.

The ideal situation would be getting into a graduate program that will allow me to defer for two years, get that teaching experience, and then return to studying the brain. TeachForAmerica is a well-known program, and they have arrangements with many schools to allow such deferrals. Neuroscience, however, is a pretty specific field, and I haven't seen any of those on the list on the website. So it falls to me. I need to call up each of the graduate schools that ends up on my semi-final list and see which ones would allow me to take 2 years before I begin. If none of my top schools will allow it, or if I don't get in to TFA? Then I guess I'll go straight to grad school and find another way to get kids interested in learning. Don't worry, I've got a few ideas on what to do in such a situation...

Watashi no Tanjoubi

Today was a beautiful day. It was one of those days that reminds me why I love living in California. Bay Area weather is never the same two days in a row, and it's been raining in alternating spurts of 2-3 days. I guess it takes after bipolar Mother Earth ;)

But what this means is that on the good days, it's really really nice:

Look closely, you can even see the Golden Gate Bridge off in the distance. Okay, it's hard to tell in the picture, so here's a zoomed-in version of the center of that picture:

Hmm...the pixelation that happened because of my zoom-less phone camera actually looks kind of cool. Like a painting, almost.

I was baked a cake by one of the people in my lab. She's been making different kinds of cakes for her sister's (I think) wedding and testing them out on us. We, of course, have no complaints. This one, however, was a delicious birthday cake. Chocolate with an orange zest, topped with candied orange peels:

And to top it all off, I got a lovely little present from my roommate. Apparently she's been planning this since almost last year. Isn't he cute?

Why Neuroscience?

I've talked about why I do science in general. Now I want to talk about why out of all the interesting, amazing, and groundbreaking fields out there, I chose neuroscience.

For me, neuroscience is the next frontier though we still have yet to foray further than a figurative few feet into space and the ocean's depths (believe it or not, that alliteration was accidental).

Get out there, do some learning about the nervous system! Grab the spinal cord by the (dorsal and ventral) horns!

I want to know what makes me me. I want to know why I think the way I do, whether others think the same way, how it came to be that humans are able to do all of these tasks that would be tough for a (current-day) computer in a snap.

Wait, humans are faster than computers? I must have that backwards, right? The majority of us may not be able to do math at the speed of electricity, but we perform computations on problems that would take hours just to input into a computer in a matter of seconds, or less. Where a computer has to work through all of the possibilities for a thousand little variables that may be affecting the situation, we can take one glance and intuit the solution.

As Jonah Lehrer posits in How We Decide, our feelings and emotions and instincts and hunches are not inferior to the careful, methodical calculations of computers; they are actually the product of massive parallel processing that takes place beneath your consciousness. The problem is knowing when something is off in that processing, when a variable is not right, when a thought from a nearby stream is interfering - when to trust your instinct, and when not to.

In order to know when to trust our gut, however, we must know how we think so we can keep a mental eye out for those mistakes.

That brings me back to the point I want to make. After looking at the world around us, we've finally turned our attention and our questions back to ourselves. And now we've got the tools to actually get some of those answers.

Dream A Little Dream

Why is NASA so important? It provides a dream for the progeny of a nation. It inspires, and catches and holds the scientific interest of the naturally curious - children. Including myself.



Well said, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

A Confidence About Confidence

Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
 

I ran across this poem for the first time in a while today (thanks Maura Kelly!). The last time I read it, I was not as self confident as I am today. I thought, 'Well of course I determine my own fate. I make the choices, after all.'

I Love My Parents. Sorry.

No matter how I build myself up (or down), my parents can break me with a word, a breath of air. When there are things bothering me that I'm not showing, that I'm maybe even ignoring in my conscious mind, a few words from my mom can have me crying in her arms. Crying is healing, it's amazingly cathartic.

And it goes the other way too. I don't get angry at most of the people in my life, but I can blow up at my parents with small provocation sometimes. I think they are my emotional outlet. They are the only ones around who I am comfortable enough to show everything. Even my best friend doesn't usually see my anger directed at her. But it often strikes me that this is a horrid way to treat my parents, though it means that I trust them implicitly.

There are certainly situations when I get angry at them and realize they are right later. For instance, when I’m trying to forget something, and they keep bringing it up. I’m trying to think of happier things and not dwell on the problem. But they’re trying to help me deal with the problem instead of running away. There has to be a balance.

I take that into account nowadays, and I argue with my parents a lot less than I used to. Even when I argue, I remember to take their advice later. I guess I’ve gotten past that rebellious teenager phase? Well, it only exists in America and the West anyways, so with my being perched on a hyphen, I guess I only ever made it halfway there. Either way, I'm glad I have a good relationship with my parents, even if it doesn't always show.

The Autistic Spectrum

Autism has fascinated me ever since I first learned about it in middle school. Why? Because at the time I was able to see a little bit of myself there. Autism comes on a spectrum, and so it was possible for me to see myself near the top, high-functioning enough that I could pass for normal.

I constantly questioned myself as to whether I was really on there, or whether I was being a hypochondriac, or whether in the back of my mind, I really wanted that gift that comes with being a savant, even at the expense of a normal life.

I don't think so anymore. Nowadays, I think I can say that the last bit is probably not true, but what about the first two? I mean, sometimes I think I fit, but I don't know where to draw the line.

How wide is the autistic spectrum? What does it cover? On the far extreme, it can be pretty obvious. Those children who cannot bear the onslaught their senses throw at them, who are unable to interact with others, who feel emotion but cannot empathize and catch others reactions. The ones who spend their days rocking, drawing, solving puzzles, all while locked in their own heads.

But what about the other end? How brilliant does one have to be in order to be placed on the spectrum? How much geekish, nerd-like, or introverted behavior is necessary to push you in that direction?

Why I Do Science

"There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality." - Richard Dawkins

To me, science is indeed poetry.

Grace, beauty, and harmony, the characteristics that define poetry outside of literature, abound in nature.

For a scientist, as for a child, the world is a puzzle to be fit together, and the beauty of that lies in the ways these complex four-dimensional pieces join.

It shows in physics -
Atoms are made up of protons and neutrons, and if you can characterize those, you can attempt to decipher the behaviors of these tiny particles, despite having no way to sense them directly.

It shows in chemistry -
In high school, you learn that certain chemicals react. As you delve deeper and deeper, you begin to see how the orbital distribution of electrons not only affects but effects those interactions.

It shows in biology -
Enzymatic interactions require not a simple lock-and-key fit, but rather, a spatial positioning that can become a lock-and-key fit, which helps to drive the reaction. Cells and organisms have complex feedback pathways for regulation that work based on the activities of these enzymes.

It shows in the way those fields fit together, in how you find chemical reactions happening because of physical properties, and biological reactions happening because of chemical properties, and psychological reactions happening because of biological properties.

Could there be anything more beautiful?

Perched on a Hyphen

I said I would do a post a day in 75 words, but I didn't say I would give up my longer posts (and I didn't say I wouldn't, thought that was mainly because it didn't fit under the 75 words). And this one is most definitely long, but it's okay, because I've finally discovered how to put things after the jump!

I've mentioned this before, but I'm Indian-American. I don't mean American Indian, or rather, Native American (honestly, just because Columbus got his geography wrong doesn't mean we all have to). I mean I'm a desi. I'm from the Indian subcontinent. Except I was born here in America.

As I used to say when I was younger, I'm 100% Indian (genetically, from both my parents) and I'm 100% American (born and mostly raised here). Unfortunately, I've always been extremely skinny and I have no twin or clone, so anyone who looks at me knows that I am obviously not 200% of a person.

Creativity

I think I'm a creative person, though for the longest time, I didn't. At least, I didn't think about it all when I was young, and through high school up until this summer in college, I never considered myself an artist. And I still don't.

That's my point now, though. I always considered creativity to be the ability to come up with something out of nothing with no more than a thought, to create art, to draw, to paint, to write lush prose and transcendent poetry - but that's not what it is. Creativity is the ability to make something new, that's true, but the definition of new doesn't have to include spontaneity. So what exactly is creativity?

A Clear Sky

Tonight was the first time the stars had ever been so clear.

Today was a special day. A seven-year-old Sally stood in front of the school to share her dreams. "I want to be an astronaut," she began reading from her essay. The distinguished guest beside her had piloted two of NASA's missions already, and was here to visit his old elementary school. "I want to see everything that's out there."

Surely life hadn't seemed so simple back then, even to a second grader?

"Cool, I get a flightsuit!" exclaimed the exuberant fifth-grader. The first day of Space Camp was exhilarating, a flurry of goodbyes to parents and hellos to new friends and teammates. There was so much to learn for the Rocket Bowl on the last day. Team Intrepid was certainly going to win that competition. But in the meantime, there were simulators to try - the MMU, the 5 degrees of freedom chair, the 1/6 gravity chair. Space shuttle missions - Sally was going to be a mission scientist. And the zero-g wall! So much to do!

By seventh grade, the dream of becoming an astronaut had been pushed to the back. The desire was still there, but there were other things in the world that were so much more interesting. Friends, sports, and among academic subjects science, especially biology. But when night fell, she could still stare at the stars and watch for satellites, remembering what not so long ago was her only dream.

On the flat roof of a houseboat in the middle of the lake, surrounded by friends and family, fifteen-year-old Sally lay snug in her blanket. "Ooh, did you see that one?! That was a huge meteorite!" She smiled at the excited chatter of the six-year-old twins and scanned the sky for more, feeling more content than she had in a while. There was no light pollution out here in the middle of nowhere.

The stars had come to mean other things besides her dreams. They represented time spent with her dad, laying back in deck chairs in the wee hours of the morning, stifling yawns as they peered through the power lines for any signs of the Leonids.

When she was having trouble with adjusting to a new life in college, when she couldn't quite make it into whatever you tried out for, when work was getting tougher, sometimes all she needed was a friend to walk with her. At midnight, through the middle of campus, to try and find a terrace she had seen once before from which to gaze at the stars. She had to beware the sprinklers turning on as she walked through the grass, but otherwise, it bestowed a measure of comfort, a feeling of having your problems melt away. Honestly, they were so insignificant when you looked at the size of the universe and everything that could be happening - anything was possible out there.

Sally gazed out the window as the shuttle spun in its slow tango with the earth, bringing its partner into view. What were the chances? A neuroscientist was needed to study the effects of freefall on the brain? But it felt right, like this was where her choices had been leading her whole life. The stars were certainly clear tonight.

Introspectiveness

I over-analyze myself all the time. I'm a pretty introspective person. I know I'm not perfect. I don't really want to be perfect. That would be much too boring. But I do want to be the best person I can. There are still so many things for me to improve, and also so many things left for me to learn about myself.

Why, just these past two years, I've learned how to be extra-outgoing, and I've learned that while I like being social, I still need time to myself (or time with my family) to recharge. I've increased my ability to manage my time, to focus and stay on topic when I have work to do. At the same time, I've begun to try more new things, go for more new experiences (how, you ask? unfortunately, I've also been sleeping less).

♪ ♫I won't live regretfully/That's my new philosophy! ♫
Props to anyone who knows what I'm referring to.

Blue

I can almost never turn off my mind. My brain is always thinking. It's part of the reason I wasn't very good at things like Guitar Hero or DDR (or DsDsR, the handheld homebrew Nintendo DS version).

It's the unconscious brain that's faster. When master athletes and singers and dancers are doing their thing, they aren't thinking anything - their minds really are a blank. In fact, thinking about it inhibits their ability to do what they're good at. The same is not true for beginners, which is perhaps why I am quick to pick up new things but slow to master them.

In any case, I have trouble not thinking. Once I realized that was part of the problem, I worked on it, and I got slightly better with the video games, but there's still thoughts hanging around in there that I'm trying to ignore. There are only a few things, then, that can clear my mind effectively.