Jadism

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2010-03-08T12:17:00.001-06:00

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Publication List

2010-02-23T14:05:00.000-06:00

Jade Q. Wang, Trent Nicol, Erika Skoe, Mikko Sams, Nina Kraus. Emotion and the Auditory Brainstem Response to Speech. Neuroscience Letters, 469(3):319-23, Jan 2010.

Jade Q. Wang, Trent Nicol, Erika Skoe, Mikko Sams, Nina Kraus. Emotion Modulates Early Auditory Response to Speech. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21(11):2121–2128, 2009.

Heng Zhao, Jade Q. Wang, Takayoshi Shimohata, Guohua Sun, Midori A. Yenari, Robert M. Sapolsky, Gary K. Steinberg. Conditions of protection by hypothermia and effects on apoptotic pathways in a model of permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion. Journal of Neurosurgery. 107(3), Sept 2007.

Heng Zhao, Takayoshi Shimohata, Jade Q. Wang, Guohua Sun, David W. Schaal, Robert M. Sapolsky, Gary K. Steinberg. Hypothermia Blocks Nuclear ß-catenin Translocation Downstream of glycogen synthase kinase 3-ß in Focal Cerebral Ischemia in Rats. Journal of Neurosurgery. 58(2):400-401, Feb 2006.

Heng Zhao, Takayoshi Shimohata, Jade Q. Wang, Guohua Sun, David W. Schaal, Robert M. Sapolsky, Gary K. Steinberg. Akt contributes to neuroprotection of hypothermia against cerebral ischemia in rats. Journal of Neuroscience. 2005 Oct 19;25(42):9794-806.

And one more in the oven. Stay tuned.

Then the Lord said to the Accuser:

2009-11-02T21:06:00.000-06:00

"Have you considered my servant Job? Blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil."

"Does Job fear God for nothing?" the Accuser replied. "You have blessed the work of his hands, his flocks and herds are spread across the land. But strike everything he has, he will surely curse you to your face."

Then the Accuser went out from the presence of the Lord.

...for your listening pleasure. Feed it through your good speakers.

01. The Accuser
02. The Fall
03. The Saviour
04. The Joy

Download zipped album.

You can also write a review. Or better, share this post in your Google Reader. :)

500 Days of Summer

2009-08-15T16:54:00.002-05:00

Went to see this last Friday with RM.

This is a story of boy meets girl. The boy, Tom Hansen of Margate, New Jersey, grew up believing that he'd never truly be happy until the day he met the one. This belief stemmed from early exposure to sad British pop music and a total mis-reading of the movie 'The Graduate'. The girl, Summer Finn of Shinnecock, Michigan, did not share this belief. Since the disintegration of her parent's marriage she'd only love two things. The first was her long dark hair. The second was how easily she could cut it off and not feel a thing. Tom meets Summer on January 8th. He knows almost immediately she is who he has been searching for. This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story.

summer move forward and paint me the fabric of fall...

No, without the death and darkness of Vienna Teng's Drought -- it is the remedy for that sort of thing -- a source of perspective, an enlightened* film about dismantling the myth of 'the one' (and basically taking a vivisecting approach to all the well-established clices of the romantic comedy genre) in the context of modern love. All set to an awesome soundtrack. (Officially on my wishlist, that is, after a backlog of other acquisitions.) If you dislike romantic comedies for any of the usual reasons, this is for you. If you like romantic comedies, you've probably seen too many of them, and you need a good dose of this.

* enlightened := broad in scope, applying picasa's 'i feel lucky' to a zoomed out photograph. meaning it rings true.

Current music: Trifonic - Good Enough

Wanted: dogsitter for a week-ish

2009-08-13T01:01:00.000-05:00

Must love dogs. This dog here doesn't know he's a dog. He thinks he's a midget human.

see more Coco pix
Compensation: $100 (negotiable) for one week-ish (8/29 - 9/6) of puppy love.
Actual tasks: 3 walks a day, refill (dry) food and water as needed. Multiple hugs and snuggles required. He might want to play fetch sometimes or stalk squirrels. More often than not, though, the squirrels get the upper hand. But he's pretty happy napping in a sunny window too.

Current music: Aimee Allen - Calling the Maker

oh my deer

2009-08-06T16:55:00.002-05:00

"See, there you go with that head-tilt thing. You know, you think you're all badass but whenever you need something it's all, 'hey'."

"Just be glad I don't flip my hair. I'd own you."

From oh my deer

Current music: Immortal Technique - The Illest

how to choose secure passwords

2009-08-01T12:48:00.000-05:00

"I need to change the password on my email account. Someone managed to figure out the old one."
"That's why your password should always include numbers as well as letters. Everyone thinks its fun to use the name of your dog or boyfriend, but that actually makes it easy to crack."
"My old password was Gj7B!X."

Greetings from a former RCC. This post exists because a friend fell for phishing, and it worked due to universal password usage. Universal passwords are bad, bad, bad. *finger wagging*

Guidelines for password selection:

use at least one number and one letter.
use both upper and lower case letters if possible.
also use at least one special character or punctuation mark (if permitted).
be at least seven characters long.
do NOT use dictionary words (especially in English), names of people/pets, addresses, birthdays, SSN's, driver's license #'s, passport #'s, variations of your usernames/aliases, or phone numbers. or for that matter, fundamental constants (e, pi, the speed of light, square root of 2, sequences of perfect numbers, fibonacci sequence, or if you do choose one of the irrationals, don't start in the first five digits or so)
do NOT use patterns on the keyboard (i.e., qwerty, ;lkjh, or 2468)
And change your passwords every three months.

You might ask: how the hell am I supposed to memorize a unique something like Q34jp$s! for every account I have? and change it every three months?! Who do you think I am? River Tam? Veronica Mars?

Actually, it's easy. Pick a novel, movie, or a book of poems. Pick a page/passage/quote at pseudo-random. Pick a sentence with a number in it. use the first character of each letter, preserve punctuation, use actual numbers to represent the numbers or constructions like "some1" If you're really desperate for numbers. (Okay, fine, you can take every prime-th decimal digit of pi. I'll allow you that.)

Now you have secure passwords. Remember, passwords are like underwear. Change often, don't share.

Current music: Slow Runner - Make you love me

total insanity

2009-07-21T21:32:00.000-05:00

is the reason I have not been vocal lately. And none of those sources of insanity are up for public consumption. (too bad?) except I'll tell you that all current sources of complete occupation of my waking hours (aside from the inability to fall asleep properly), are all good things.

Current music: X-structure - The Saviour (draft?)

(seen on t-shirt) forget the dog, beware of me

2009-07-03T14:37:00.000-05:00

Actual conversation. Over ice cream. After Quartino's and Blagojevich Superstar for J's bday.

RM: Honestly, I'm actually scared of Veronica Mars. (long pause)
Me: (slowly, while looking at RK) I am *not* scary.
RK: (equally slowly) Yes. You. Are. You're intimidating.
Me: Not on purpose.
JZ: (quoting t-shirt seen earlier in the evening) Forget the dog, beware of me! hehe...
Me: (shocked expression) Oh, is that why MK was hiding behind you like you were a tree?

Current music: Sneaker Pimps - Spin spin sugar

Garden Salad 2.0

2009-06-28T20:56:00.003-05:00

Materials:

romaine lettuce (3/4 bowl, chopped)

fresh basil leaves (1/4 bowl, also chopped)

vine-ripe tomatoes (chopped into half-bite-sized pieces)

fresh mozerella cheese (also chopped into half-bite-sized pieces)

jalapeno peppers (1 or 2)

garlic cloves (about 1 head of garlic)

shredded parmesan

fresh lemon balm (finely chopped, optional)

juice from 1 lime

olive oil

salt & pepper to taste

Methods:

1. Peel all garlic cloves (partial-smashing is an acceptable method for peeling).

2. Decapitate and disembowel jalapeno peppers, and chop into cm^2 pieces.

3. Pan-sear garlic and jalapeno pepper pieces in a small frying pan with olive oil until soft and cooked.

4. Combine all remaining ingredients in one large salad bowl.

5. Toss in the contents of the frying pan. Add the juice from one lime.

6. Mix well. Consume.

behold, the mustard squeeze bottle centrifuge

2009-06-24T22:23:00.003-05:00

Do you ever wish your kitchen had a centrifuge so that the mustard squeeze bottle would actually dispense mustard?

Yes, I ran into this problem when making a sandwich. The solution: a piece of string.

The basic construction involves 2 tight loops (one around the neck of the bottle, another around the 'waist' or skinnier portion in the middle), and a handle (attached to both loops so it stays centered when you spin it).

You can use whatever topology suits you best, but my method used one continuous piece of string, somewhat similar to tying a ribbon around a gift box. By similar, I mean ribbon^2(giftbox) where giftbox = mustard bottle.

Also discovered that the two red wires in my thermostat were switched, but that it didn't matter for heating, only for cooling. I'm on a roll.

Current music: Don't worry be happy.

live, from the frequency domain

2009-06-19T11:31:00.003-05:00

F*** you Neuroscan. For being clunky and ugly. (Why can't you be cute like a Mac?) For your idiotic power-of-two requirement of number of points and not zero-padding for me which any sane and forward-looking developer would have put in. The only reason I'm not doing this in MATLAB is because MATLAB runs out of memory when dealing with files this large. =

Current music: Nomoredolls - Electric Sheep

Google Reader Feed Streams

2009-06-18T12:38:00.002-05:00

Yes, indeed, it's possible to create google reader pages for different tags. It's like me editing a personalized magazine of what's out there.

So, here we are.

Jade's science feed (journal articles, news/blog clippings)

Jade's music feed (an assortment of free music downloads)

Jade's eco feed (green-ness)

Current music: Boxing Fox - Do you live?

partly cloudy? partly sunny?

2009-06-16T19:57:00.003-05:00

The chickpea sprouts in the garden have all been consumed by small furry creatures. My mother left for China. My eyes hurt from reading ~60 pages of technical stuff.

So, yes, it looks like it's seriously raining. And so, Coco can't be walked.

But Z just told me Eclipse has a plugin for Matlab and it will make me more efficient with coding. And subversion for version control. Less headache. More awesomeness.

Current music: Thievery Corporation - Amerimacka

Sigh

2009-06-10T23:25:00.000-05:00

Wow, my mother is very whiny when she doesn't get to level up in Wii Tanks...

On Math, Muses, and Poets

2009-05-28T17:43:00.003-05:00

When RM sent me this highly entertaining NYTimes column (by Strogatz) on using diff equ's to model love, I had to share it. Of course, in the process of said sharing, came another little gem from the Journal on Applied Math (from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics).

An excerpt from the abstract:

Three ordinary differential equations are proposed to model the dynamics of love between Petrarch, a celebrated Italian poet of the 14th century, and Laura, a beautiful but married lady. The equations are nonlinear but can be studied through the singular perturbation approach if the inspiration of the poet is assumed to have very slow dynamics. In such a case, explicit conditions are found in the appeals of Laura and Petrarch and in their behavioral parameters that guarantee the existence of a globally stable slow-fast limit cycle. ... The result is that the calibrated model shows that the poet's emotions followed for about 20 years a quite regular cyclical pattern ranging from the extremems of ecstasy to despair. All of these findings agree with the recent results of Frederic Jones, who, through a detailed stylistic and linguistic analysis of the poems inspired by Laura, has discovered Petrarch's emotional cycle in a fully independent way.

In summarizing the work of Jones, the authors state that Jones made the assumption of the cyclical nature of Petrarch's emotions, and "on the basis of this conjecture, Jones... put all undated poems in chronological order." But in this case, the authors set up some basic behavioral parameters:

And found the solution to be a limit cycle.

Oh, and more pretty graphs:

The paper is highly entertaining, very readable, and not as verbose as you might otherwise expect. Really, papers in the humanities should read like this. Characterized by precision, humorous, and defended up to the limits of falsifiability. Well worth the effort to read it, for poets and scientists alike, not just the slender intersection of the two.

References

Rinaldi, Sergio. Laura and Petrarch: An Intriguing Case of Cyclical Love Dynamics. SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Aug., 1998), pp. 1205-1221

Current music: The Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You

So what type of combat training do you have? ... Fencing.

2009-05-27T16:31:00.000-05:00

Verbatim review of Star Trek from D's parentals...

Father: "Fascinating from a cultural perspective. I don't empathize much wit our macho delinquent protagonist. Though obviously this appeals to a lot of people. At least his skill at hanging off cliffs by his fingertips saved his life many times."

[Pause]

Father: "I may have some Vulcan sympathies."

[Pause]

Father: "Although giving a success probability estimate of 4.3% for anything involving the decisions of a small number of people has too many significant digits. Really, it's a caricature of reasonableness in risk evaluation procedures."

Mother: "Yes... I didn't much like Spock's mother. She was a bit of a sop. Especially for that sort of environment."

[Pause]

D: "Didn't she only have about one minute of screen time?"

Mother: "Yes, but that minute was just filled with wide-eyed, soulful stares."

Current music: Paper Tiger - Jolien

teatime between bits of MATLAB coding...

2009-05-25T22:00:00.004-05:00

Mother: I worry for those birds. That's not a stable branch and their workmanship on that nest is rather shoddy.

Me: I don't think there's much you can do to help. (Pause.) Oh, you meant you're going to super-glue the structure so it doesn't fall...

Mother: But they're likely to detach in the breeze if I don't! Or I could build them another nest...

Current music: Modern Music - Sixteen Going On Seventeen

I can shine even in the darkness

2009-05-24T22:44:00.003-05:00

Current music: Lamb - Gabriel

thoughts about H1N1

2009-05-20T11:15:00.005-05:00

If the low death rate from H1N1 in the U.S. is due to superior medical facilities and early detection, then the Third World is in for some serious decimation. Can you imagine what might happen if H1N1 exploded in Sub-Saharan Africa? There would be few accurate numbers on the rate of spread, and there would be little or no access to the effective anti-virals.

Sure, you hear lots of people talk about how hundreds of people die from seasonal epidemics every year, and in this case, look how low the death rate is if patients are found early and given adequate treatment. That's because these people are assuming the entire planet looks exactly like the U.S., when they are much more likely to just die off in such large numbers, no monument can hold their names. The only way to stop from decimating the Third World is to slow the spread of H1N1 enough such that we get a vaccine in production before it's out there.

Current music: The Magnetic Fields - Washington, D.C.

H1N1: pandemics in perspective

2009-05-12T15:27:00.002-05:00

My dear critical readers, I know you're a smart bunch. I recognize the need to not freak people out, but seriously: what is wrong with presentation of the following data set?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The swine flu virus that has sparked fear and precautions worldwide appears to be no more dangerous than the regular flu virus that makes its rounds each year, U.S. officials said Monday. [That's last week, Monday a week ago, mind you.]

"What the epidemiologists are seeing now with this particular strain of U.N. is that the severity of the disease, the severity of the flu -- how sick you get -- is not stronger than regular seasonal flu," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday as the worldwide number of confirmed cases of swine flu -- technically known as 2009 H1N1 virus -- topped 1,080.

The flu has been blamed for 26 deaths: 25 in Mexico and one in the United States, according to the World Health Organization.

First, reporting the raw numbers of deaths in the upswing of an epidemic tells you nothing about the dynamics of the situation. Moreover, "how sick you get" or the severity of the illness is NOT the same thing as how "dangerous" an illness is. I don't know if I'm the only one who thinks this, but I would evaluate the "dangerousness" of an illness as its fatality rate, that is, if you get sick, this is the probability that you will actually die. For instance, the probability you will die in a given skydiving jump is 1 in 100,000 (0.001% fatality). [1] Similarly, "you would have to jump 17 times per year for your risk of dying in a skydiving accident to equal your risk of dying in a car accident if you drive 10,000 miles per year." [1]

The fatality rate for the 1918 H1N1 flu was > 2.5%, as compared to < 0.1% [2]. In comparison, fatality rate is about 0.1% for the Asian and Hong Kong flus,[3]. Let's take a quick, back-of-the-envelope look at the numbers for the 2009 H1N1 virus. It has been in Mexico the longest, so we have the best sample size in terms of latency. 58 deaths divided by 2,282 cases gives us 2.54% (5/12/2009), which looks pretty similar to the 1918 H1N1 virus.

There are a couple ways of looking at this. The fatality rate of swine flu is approximately 1 - fatality of anthrax (in 2-3 days). And given the population of the planet, even anthrax has no chance of ending civilization. And the Black Death, depending on your geographical region, killed 20-80% of the population. (The fatality rate of the bubonic plague is supposed to be in the neighborhood of ~50% in 3-7 days without treatment.) In comparison, the fatality rate of SARS was ~9.6% (globally, with medical attention), even though it varied widely by region. [4]

So... no, it's not the end of the world. 2.54% risk of death is not large in the grand scheme of things (looking at the planet as a whole), but it's pretty high for normal life. And remember, this is risk without potential reward, thrill, or even entertainment. On a personal level, my fatality risk acceptance is ~1% for, say, the magical granting a superpower of some kind (the alternative being 'life continues as normal'). Higher if I get to choose the superpower in question. Maybe about ~0.1-0.01% if I only level up. (Those who know me know that I am generally not at all risk-averse. For instance, when playing video games, when you don't die in real life.)

Seriously, wouldn't you rather go skydiving instead? Yes, go skydiving about 50 times a year for the rest of your natural life (assuming you're 25 now...)? Or go skating on thin ice? If there's a medical team within reach, your risk of death from hypothermia is relatively low.

Don't. Panic. But go wash your hands.

Current music: t.A.T.u. - Белый Плащик

hanging by threads of palest silver

2009-05-12T12:56:00.003-05:00

From spring 2009

Current music: Garbage - Stroke of Luck

Chirp-stream Digest

2009-05-11T14:49:00.006-05:00

Swine Flu Tweets:

real time updates: http://healthmap.org/swineflu
IL has a disproportionately high infection rate for its population. cause for concern? http://cdc.gov/h1n1flu/upda... #swineflu
the green line is the U.S. -- something isn't right today: http://bit.ly/LB3tU #swineflu
viral origins: H1N1-erine http://bit.ly/x1wAB
http://twitpic.com/4fmg6 - at brk

Berkshire Tweets:

It dawns on me that this is investment as a tool for intelligently planned production on the planet. #brk
Try drinking every time charlie says "I've got nothing to add." #brk
"that was slick, striking up a conversation with the guys we were cutting in front of..." -ar #brk
Best seats possible. Sprinting ability is useful. Yeehaw!
somalian cab driver named den. what's he doing in omaha?
http://twitpic.com/4ctvs - meta-image
http://twitpic.com/4crsf - Omaha old marketplace
http://twitpic.com/4cqkt - seen in omaha -- friends don't let friends...
http://twitpic.com/4c5gd - is this how you imagine Omaha?

Amusement, Cbae and TTL:

[RT from @TimTL] My neighborhood is burning! This is my parent's house at minute 1:05: http://tinyurl.com/cnun52
http://bit.ly/IGET6 organization. go veggie.
video games that never made it to the usa http://img8.imageshack.us/i...
this just in: our roomie @TimTL featured in one of China's biggest newspapers http://bit.ly/pZMc5
[via @anthonyha] miss those days & fail to see what she finds morally objectionable?! http://bit.ly/VvQjG the kid *chose* to draw into cbae.
[via @TimTL] takes guts to edit a vid, change the meaning, broadcast it & blame the victim for it being incomplete http://tinyurl.com/cyhuh2

Current music: Vienna Teng - Stray Italian Greyhound

cuteness prevails

2009-04-27T10:43:00.001-05:00

atonement among bears

2009-04-18T19:35:00.006-05:00

Such beautiful clever, peaceful creatures. Why hasn't hunting already been abolished?

Current music: Tracing Arcs - Through A Glass Darkly