Standard Model Higgs?

There was a big exciting seminar at CERN today regarding new Higgs search results. The short summary is that there is 2 - 3 sigma (not good enough to say for sure) evidence for a Standard Model Higgs particle around 125 GeV in a few channels. Awesome scientific summaries can be found here and here.

My first thought: how close was Fermilab? (Second thought: which people think they are getting the Nobel Prize for this). Remember that the Tevatron was also built to find the Higgs. Everyone on it tried really hard, but didn't end up doing it. I did some searching for Tevatron Higgs results (especially looking in the channels where the LHC experiments are seeing signals) and the picture is somewhat painful. The Tevatron had hints in the right region for the two photon channel.

The image above shows the level of exclusion for the different Higgs masses from the Tevatron. The lower the thick black line goes, the more sure the Tevatron people are that the Higgs isn't there. The dotted black line represents how good they thought they could do. It is interesting to not the 125 GeV region. First, it is one of the "highest" points on the plot, meaning that they had the least ability to say "there isn't a Higgs there". Second, it is about 2 sigma up from what they expected to see.

If further LHC data shows that the Higgs is at about 125 GeV, this means that the Tevatron had come very close to seeing it. Perhaps with a little more time they would have gotten it. On the other hand, there could be tricky backgrounds in that area that affected both experiments.

Accepted!

After consulting a proof-reader, cursing the existence of referee 3, and finding one last mistake: my Cerenkov paper has been accepted to Physics in Medicine and Biology! I thought I would feel... different, somehow. But no. My to-do list isn't any shorter and I still don't have a PhD. What was the point of all of that work then?

Gendered Science Kits

Remember the good ol' days of chemistry kits filled with things that could potentially be dangerous in any way whatsoever? I barely do. The only one I ever had like that was 2nd hand - probably originally from the 80s.

From my own experience trying to buy "educational" toys I have found that anything that isn't a videogame is considered educational. Toy trains and trucks? Professional Development. Nerf gun? Hand-eye coordination. Stuffed animals? Biology! I don't buy it.

Sadly, "science kits" have gone a bit downhill as well. I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with a slime kit or crystal growth kit, but there is too much "value added" plastic crap in these kits as an attempt to justify the high price tag. But it has gotten worse - these kits are becoming increasingly gendered.

Professor Janet D. Stemwedel at SciAm Blogs has an excellent series on this topic:

• Science Kits for Girls
• Some reasons gendered science kits may be counterproductive.
• Gendered science kits aren’t so great for boys either.
• How do we make room for pink microscopes? (More thoughts on gendered science kits.)

CERN Attacked by Aliens

News organizations love exciting titles, so we end up with 'UFOs' Disrupting Search for 'God Particle'. Unfortunately there aren't glowing lights in the Geneva night sky. It is just (unidentified) stuff falling into the beam pipe, blocking the protons. So this isn't exciting at all, it is just another item on the list of things that have gone wrong with the LHC.

Physics Bets

The New York Times recently published an excellent story about a bet between two physicists: Janet Conrad and Frank Wilczek, both of MIT. I am very fond of the betting tradition in particle physics - a letter written up with the bet, signed by the parties. I have seen a few at SLAC. Sometimes the bet money is even attached - a nickel or dime. The case in the NYT article is a bit unusual, being chocolate candies.

I haven't heard of this tradition existing outside of particle physics, where people often bet on experimental results or which theory will prevail. It is hard to imagine it quite working in medical physics or biology. I hope to find some way to participate in this great tradition, and have my own quarter taped to a wall somewhere.

Conflicting Commitments

The deadline for TA applications was the week before Thanksgiving, and at roughly the last minute, I realized I should TA next quarter. Specifically, I miss teaching. And my schedule would allow it. So I put in my application, putting an upper level course as my first choice. I wanted to TA for Physics 120 (Intermediate E&M) because the professor cares about teaching, I can handle the material, and I haven't TAed an upper level course before. I really like the intro classes for biologists and engineers, but part of a faculty interview at many schools is teaching an upper-division course, so I wanted to have some experience.

After I submitted the application I realize I had one big conflict: March meeting. In the past, March meeting occurs in March, which would be after the term is over. This year it is the last week of February. So it occurs at week 6 or something like that. I particularly wanted to go this year because of a tutorial and focus session on the "Physics of Cancer" - I don't yet know when the session is, so perhaps I can just go for the first few days.

Dear Nature: I have this excellent paper on hypercube...

There was a recent piece (of sh$$) titled "Womanspace" in Nature (a highly prestigious journal) that was meant to be funny, but did it by making an extended "joke" at the expense of women. Both the fact that plenty of readers are female, and the fact that women aren't actually a character out of a 1950's sitcom. The best theory is that this was meant to get a lot of publicity for Nature, given the comments from Nature editors (initially) that they were surprised over the lack of outrage. The journal did publish critiques recently, but that doesn't "fix" what was done.

Many people have given this article its fair criticism, and I yield to their superior blogging skills. What I particularly like is that many have found constructive things to do... I only swore a lot and thought about slashing tires.

Hate misogyny in science? Here are some fun things to try:

• Occupy Nature! Kate Clancy's blog is through a subsidiary of Nature, but instead of abandoning her blog she has decided to use it to highlight other bigotry. Find other things to be angry about at Nature? Send them to her.
• Submit your own crap! Lab Lemming points out that this is a a call for submissions - anything and everything. This is similar to using "postage paid" envelopes from junk mail to return bricks to them.
• Submit followup articles on gayspace, blackspace, and jewspace.

Further critiques of the article

• Dr Isis
• Janet D. Stemwedel at SciAm
• Anne Jefferson, All-geo
• Christie Wilcox , SciAm

Mistakes in Science

While I am happy about the coverage the OPERA faster-than-light neutrinos have gotten, I'm not looking forward to the eventual conclusion. The result will likely be overturned and be due to an uncertainty that wasn't well understood. Will that be reported on? Will the public understand? I know how hard it is to get undergraduate physics majors to understand error bars and error analysis, so I just don't think Fox News will give it a fair coverage. Either it will be "Physicists were wrong" or.... silence.

Biomedicine is a bit different. The rules are less firm, so unexpected experimental results get published much more often. But they also have bigger consequences. Recently a lot of attention has been paid to whether a certain virus causes Chronic Fatigue. One group has experimental results that it does, but many groups have not been able to get the same results. The result? People with CF have paid money for tests (and possibly treatments) that are ineffective.

While CF isn't a disease with many treatment options, some types of cancer are. If a study showed that Treatment A works very well, patients will be given Treatment A instead of Treatments B or C. What if the study was wrong? Patients may die who would have responded well to treatments B or C. A consoling point is that it takes a lot of work to get a treatment to the clinic - many papers that show Treatment A is effective. But what if mistakes get made?

The ethical violations of someone fabricating research are fairly clear. But what about unintentional mistakes? They happen. I've found mistakes in my own work, far after I thought I had a "final" result. I've found mistakes in published papers. Usually these things are small - though really, the big ones stand out. I dread the day that I find a mistake in my own work - after it has been published. The best thing we can do, as scientists, is to remember that the entire enterprise is meant to be like a conversation. We share ideas and data with each other in order to get feedback and improve our work. We must give reasonable feedback, be open to criticism, and be very honest.

The public has a right to expect us to not fabricate research, but they must understand we are only human.

"Live" Blog: Startup Panel at APS

I am at the APS California Regional meeting, at SLAC. They are having a panel on "How to Start Working for a Startup Company?", so I am going to try "live-blogging" it.

Panel Members:
Yi Cui
Stanford Professor
"Every professor on campus has a startup"
Says that as a 3rd year faculty member, he wasn't thinking about statups. But being in Silicon Valley, VC/entrepreneurs keep approaching him and he ended up starting a company.

Jessa Lee
Graduated Stanford in 2009 with BS Physics, MS EE
Works for Pacific Biosciences making DNA sequencers
Was interested in a startup instead of a PhD in order to "understand the ecosystem that science exists in"
Had interned for Pacific Biosciences before graduating, which interested her in industry rather than just going straight to PhD.

William E. White
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Company: Positive Light, TiSaph amplifiers
Started working full time on company in 1999, sold company in 2003. Then came to SLAC.

Andrei Terebilo
PhD at UCLA, dissertation on SSRL
Works for Pacific Biosciences

Question 1: How hard is it to come back to academia?
Bill: It depends on what you do. Some fields it is harder than others. It seems easier to come back to a National Lab, compared to a University.
Advice Do internships. The culture is different, so you can figure out rather quickly if it is for you.

Question 2: How do you get funding?
Yi: Establish credibility through publication of research, etc.
Bill: Take business classes while you have access to them.
Andrei: Join a small company where you can learn these things.

Jessa: It is very helpful to do non-technical internships to learn about product development on the marketing side. It needs to be a good product, not just good technology.

Yi: If you come across as very capable and credible (ie, Steve Jobs) the investors will give you money, no matter what the idea is.

Question 3: How does one protect their IP - ie, get money for it?
Yi: Students need to understand the value of the idea, then get patent protection before going out and giving talks on it.
Bill: Dealing with patents easier in the academic setting. In companies, it is so hard to fight patents, people just keep things secret.

Question 4: What are the options for a theory student?
Jessa: Do you want to keep doing theory? Companies are always looking for smart people. If you want to branch out - computing, modeling - there is a huge industry.
Yi: A theorist can found their own company.

Question 5: Does industry prefer Masters degrees to PhDs?
Jessa: Bigger companies have more specific ideas; startups tend to be more flexible and will want you to do everything.
Bill: I've hired a lot of scientists and the interview - how you are perceived - is more important than Masters vs PhD.
Andrei: The "inflexibility" reputation may come from how complete PhD's expect to understand and know a problem and the solution, compared to the standard in the business world.

Question 6: What type of skill set is academia actually looking for?
Jessa: Communication skills are critical.
Uwe (moderator): It is important to have an expertise, rather than be a jack of all trades and a master of none.
Yi: When interviewing, I drill people on their technical skills.
Bill: Don't underestimate the value of a network. I know who I want to hire before I post the job. Because these industries are small, everyone knows if you leave a company on bad terms.
Andrei: Really research the company, know what their big problems are. Show your application to that in the interview.

Question 7: How does the current economy affect the jobs? What are the pros and cons of a startup vs a government job
Bill: I don't think it is hard to find money if you have a good idea right now.
Yi: (Analogy about sinking boat) A company is a small boat where everyone is bailing, the government is a big boat that takes a long time to sink but no one helps bail.

23% Hate Everything

Living in California, I get to see some incredible elections. Yesterday I voted on school district board members, community college board members, fire district members, and two propositions. One was a bond measure of the community college, and the other was "fire district appropriations". The text was:

Measure F: "Shall the appropriations limit applicable to the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, currently set at $40,000,000 pursuant to Measure G approved by the electors of the district on November 7, 2007, be continued at $40,000,000 for a period of four years from the date of the election?"

This isn't even an increase in funding. And right now, it isn't enough money for them to run the fire district! A "no" vote would mean a decrease in funding. In our voter guides there was a page with the argument in support. What was the argument in opposition? There was none!

This isn't the first time where I have seen a measure which seems like it shouldn't be up for vote. There have been measures that were superseded by the legislature, so the voter guide said votes don't even matter on it. But I consider these unique opportunities, from a "science" point of view. After all, they are a sort of control. How many people vote yes on a law that even those responsible for getting it on the ballot don't support? How many people vote no on something like this fire district appropriations?

23% voted no on the fire district measure. Who are these people? Do they want their house to burn down? Do they not understand how flammable everything is here?

Putting it out there

I first had a webpage around the time google was founded. Since then I have designed and maintained a variety of web pages - for student groups, EXO, surveys, petitions, and most recently the Undergraduate Women in Physics Conference. Unfortunately my technical ability to do things with HTML is not matched by any ability to design things that look nice.

For some time I have thought about making some sort of personal/professional website. I had imagined something that would be an HTML equivalent of my resume, and decided I could use it as an opportunity to learn the magical new world of HTML 5. I didn't start it for some time, but then the press coverage of my Cerenkov work made me realise how little control I had on the information available about me.

So I created a website for myself. It doesn't look as amazing as I would like, and doesn't have all of the functionality I would like. But it has my papers, talks, and activities. It is what I want the world to see of me.

But there is one problem, of course. It doesn't seem to show up in google searches! I have tried to link to it on my profiles (linked in, facebook) in a few places. But yet, it just doesn't show up in the Google results. I have google analytics running on it, which shows me what search terms ARE getting people there. For reasons I don't understand, the search phrases that have brought people to my website are "adc mapping osirix plugin", "stanford html template sandstone", and "stanford software".

Now I must find ways to actually make my page exist in the great Google database. Or, re-craft my career to be about adc mapping osirix plugins.

Airport Scanners

One session at the American Association of Physicists in Medicine conference was on the new scanner technology being used in airports. The session had a few speakers, each with their own expertise, covering both backscatter x-ray technology and millimeter wave technology. The focus was on the science, regulation, and policy - not privacy or security efficacy. I'm very glad I went. Here is a summary:

Packing for Vancouver: My first bio-med-phys conference.

I'm attending the annual American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Conference next week in Vancouver. Yeah, it is joint with the Canadian Organization of Medical Physicsts. My poster is (basically) ready, though not printed. I think I have plane tickets, a hotel room reserved, and a conference registration. So is the hard part done yet?

I haven't started looking at the conference schedule to figure out what I am going to attend. I don't even know if I need to do so. At the APS (March or April meeting) conferences there are so many parallel sessions that it is impossible to just wander and hope you see the right talks. APS even has a helpful schedule planner on the website. It is much easier to do planning ahead for APS meetings rather than trying to use the booklet to plan once you get there.

I haven't started collecting a list of other events I want to go to. I know there is a Geant4 meeting/get together the first evening, which I will attend. There is a Stanford get together the same night, so I don't know if I will be going to that. I don't know if there are other things I would want to go to. Again, at APS there were often breakfasts and evening meetings for students or specific interests. Some of the breakfasts required advanced registration.

I haven't looked at the poster authors and speakers to see if there are people I know who will be there. I don't know that many people who are going from Stanford, so it would be great if my social circle at this meeting had more than 3 people. Otherwise, I will take a lot of books. Which means I need to go stock up at borders...

I haven't started packing. This is my first time going to Vancouver, so I don't know what type of weather to expect. Worse, I don't know what the indoor climate will be like. My assumptions about Anaheim were pretty spot on - it was usually freezing in the convention center. It is hard to pack minimally when the error bars are 10 degrees. I also don't know the level of dress that I will feel most comfortable in. At American physics conferences (opposed to European ones) talks are regularly given by people (students, usually) in jeans and tennis shoes. The audience looks similar. An e-mail reminder about the AAPM conference stated that the dress code in business casual, which I expected. The medical physics crowd is used to clinic dress code, which - here at Stanford - is conservative business casual. I'm not entirely sure I could put together an outfit that satisfies the clinic dress code here, but I hope to never need to... Also, I might want to pack enough so that if the US economy collapses I can just stay in Canada (-:

Smartphones: sexist?

It looks like I will be the one getting a new smartphone. I'm mostly overwhelmed by the options and features. I barely keep my current cell phone with me, and rarely actually have it on me to know if someone is calling. I've thought about not having a phone at all. So, a smartphone seems like a reasonable solution - I bet they are rubbish for actual calls. But have all sorts of games!

I went in to the Verizon store to look at them today. I realized why I think of them as being very redundant with a tablet... I don't think smartphones are any more portable than tablets. When I look at a smartphone, I see a device that will sit in my backpack all the time. Granted, my current phone normally does this. But sometimes... sometimes... it goes in my pocket. A smartphone will never do so. It is too damn big.

Are the tech companies to blame for this? No, it is just an unfortunate truth of women's fashion: pockets tend to be very small, if they exist at all. Specifically I am thinking of front pockets on jeans and slacks. A phone like the X2 or iPhone will not fit in the front pocket of the majority of my jeans. Could I get a cell phone holster? This was my solution back in the day, but I don't know if people use them anymore. I don't want to look geeky, right? A belt-holder for a cell phone is only a partial solution: it will work with chunky belts that are structural, not those skinny belts. Honestly, I've never figured out how to wear the skinny belts anyways.

Of course, there is then the problem of skirts and dresses and all of the fashion choices that don't have pockets or belt loops at all. I rarely have this problem, but if I dressed according to the Stanford Clinic dress code, I would. So when the people perceive that tech gadgets are predominantly a men's market, I believe that this is at least fashion driven. Not because the X2 doesn't come in pink, but because women in a business environment won't have as easy of a time carrying them around. If I accept I'll be hauling some sort of purse or briefcase around to carry my smartphone, I might as well just have a netbook or tablet.

So no, I don't think smartphones are sexist. They just aren't very compatible with women's business attire.

The Computer Culture War

Our household will be increasing its quantity of computer gadgets. Some number of laptops/tablets/smartphones will be purchased in the next few months due to expiring contract, expiring backlights, and a general sense of patriotic consumerism (lol). While the majority of the responsibility of this lies with Tom, I am part of conversations and the phone decisions. The upcoming purchase is quite different in tone to my recent (few months ago) purchase of a netbook. I hadn't appreciated the capability-to-cost ratio in modern netbooks until a vist to Fry's, after which I did some online research and returned to Fry's the next day to purchase one. I knew I would be working in Ubuntu ~100% of the time, especially after installing more memory than Windows would support.

Now Tom is going to buy an apple product or two. Other products have been considered, but some sort of iThingy looks like the new addition to our digital household. Through this process I have decided that digital gadget monopolies - I mean, brands - are a sort of geek culture war. There is often little room for compromise and we may view those who hold different opinions as being responsible for the current destruction of society. Here are my sides in this battle:

Med School (sexist) Softball!

I'm playing on the Radiation Oncology team in the Stanford Medical Center Co-Ed Softball league. It is lots of fun - I'm getting to meet many people from the medical side of the department who I haven't interacted with before. Also, I get to play softball and drink beer. It is a touch better than when I was in Junior High playing softball and drinking iced coffee. People are much nicer now than when I was in Junior High. I'm not a better softball player though. I might, in fact, be worse.

I can deal with being a bad softball player, because it is all about having fun, right? Unfortunately there is something severely limiting the fun I'm having, and it has nothing with my inability to throw/catch/hit. It turns out that the rules for Co-ed softball (which I first assumed were just for this league) are disturbingly sexist. I knew some of the "strange" rules coming in - the men and women are pitched different sized balls. But others I only learned at our first game last night. I was pretty pissed off and decided to make it a battle against the power-that-be who make the softball rules. Unfortunately, these are the "official" rules of the Amateur Softball Association. So my battle is going to be difficult.

Women in Dark Matter

I'd like to compare and contrast two articles:
Women Atop Their Fields Dissect the Scientific Life, NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/science/07women.html

Possible Sighting of Dark Matter Fires Up Search and Tempers, Science (requires subscription)
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6034/1144.full

The Times article talk with a few female scientists, one of whom is Elena Aprile, about being a woman in science. The Science article talks about the personality-laden conflicts in the field of dark matter. One of the researchers involved is Elena Aprile, and another is Rita Bernabei.

Dark matter has been a contentious field for some time. Many of the professors in charge of the experiments have "large" personalities and some of the results are contentious. I've seen many dark matter talks given and thought some of the attitudes and phrases bordered on being unprofessional. But when one researcher calls the results of another experiment "pure, weapons-grade balonium" at a large physics conference, it sets a new bar for unprofessional behavior. Seriously, Prof. Juan Collar actually had this on a slide about XENON's results at the APS April meeting. I spoke with some researchers at the conference who aren't connected to the dark matter community and they were amazed. I wasn't as surprised.

Can Rotational Motion Effect Radioactive Decay?

This post is an analysis of "Changes of decay rates of radioactive 111In and 32P induced by mechanic motion" by YuJian He, Fei Qi and ShengChu Qi, located at http://www.springerlink.com/content/x1q13217t2427059/

Summary: Two different radioactive isotopes were put in a centrifuge and spun. The half-life appeared to increase if spun one way and decrease if spun the other way.
Claim: There is a difference and it can be explained by the chiral dependence of the weak force.

Question 1: Are the results "Significant"?
Statistically, is the proof strong enough to not just be a coincidence? Well... somewhat. For 111In they measure a "natural" half life of 2.83 +/- 0.03 days, clockwise is 2.75 +/- 0.03 days, and anticlockwise it is 2.88 +/- 0.03 days. None of this is the "3 sigma" difference which is necessary in particle physics (though not other fields) to claim an observation.

For 32P the natural is 14.29+/-0.03 days, clockwise is 13.75+/-0.03 days, and anticlockwise is 14.54 +/- 0.03 days. This is a "significant" observation if those errors are true.

It is somewhat unclear where these errors are coming from. They claim to fit their data in Excel, so perhaps that spit out a fit uncertainty. However, they quote the SAME errors for the other isotope even though the half life is an order of magnitude different. They don't provide any measure of "how good" their fit is - like a chi2 test.

Answer: Some of their results do not appear to be statistically significant. Their error bars are not explained so significance cannot really be judged. I can't say their results are "wrong", but they are not good science

Question 2: Is the mechanism they explain the effect with reasonable?

This is dangerous territory since they appear to be chemists and anything effecting radioactive decay half life would be a physics process. Unfortunately this section is poorly written, presumably because English is their second language. This makes it somewhat difficult to tell if what they are saying is nonsense or if it just sounds this way. The general idea is that elementary particles have a property called chirality that relates to spinning clockwise or counterclockwise. It appears as if the authors of this paper try to relate chirality to all sorts of things.

The first problem is that the "physics paper" they cite to discuss the chiral nature of the Weak Force is a Scientific American paper from 1990. This is scary! Scientific American has articles on whether robots will rule the world any time soon. It is not a good source for citing the fundamental rules of the universe. Yes, there is a preference for particles to "spin" clockwise vs counterclockwise. I don't think the authors understand what this means.

Spin is a technical term in physics and is inherently quantum mechanical. It is possible to align the spins of particles, but it must be done on a quantum mechanical level. The authors haven't modified the orientation of the spins of the atoms in their sample (for instance, by putting them in a very strong magnetic field like in MRI or cooling them down to almost 0 kelvin) so they will be randomly distributed. Basically, the motion of the centrifuge in this paper is too "big" for the individual atoms/particles to know that there is a difference between clockwise and anticlockwise.

Answer: No, they seem to misunderstand the physics concept they are citing

Final Conclusion: The most generous judgment is that they misunderstood the physics process and didn't properly consider their sources of measurement error. I would judge it "Sloppy Science" and am surprised it was published in a peer reviewed journal. Perhaps the reviewers didn't understand the physics either.

Science: Made in China?

Unfortunately the "rules" about diagnosing "Bad Science" break down when the research is done in another country, such as China. There are brilliant Chinese Scientists. There are wonderful research facilities and institutions in China. But there can also be a lack of communication between Science in China and Science in the USA.

So here is the scenario:

• A paper is published in a Chinese Chemistry Journal (in English) in 2007
  
• The journal is peer-reviewed
  
• One of 3 authors has no affiliation; the other 2 sound like good Chinese Institutions
  
• The results are surprising and have consequences in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology
  
• The authors explain the strange result via Physics, but are in Chemistry Departments
  
• It has only been cited 2 times, once by a different group not able to confirm the results and once by the original group rejecting the results of the 2nd group.
  
• There are some communication issues in the paper; it isn't written in the "scientific tone" that I am used to
  
• Of the 12 references, 6 are to papers written by the same authors
  

Diagnosing "Bad Science"

Science is often referred to as one entity (especially in political discussions), but there is no specific line between what is "Science" and what isn't. There is a bunch of "stuff" that gets done by people (many of whom call themselves scientists) and some of this "stuff" is done more scientifically than others. The scientific method we teach in primary school (make a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, etc) doesn't always map well to the research industry. Much of the time - especially in interdisciplinary research - it is difficult to know all of the possible effects and think of all of the variables.

Hence, there is a system for people (who identify as scientists) to discuss research. One arm of this system are conferences - face to face meeting filled with talks and posters. Another is journals, especially the "peer reviewed" ones.

Paper Submitted!

My first paper is submitted to the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. This isn't to say it will be appearing - I've just sent it. Some editor will glance at it and decide if they should bother having someone else look at it in detail.

I've learned a few very important things in this process:

• ROOT sucks at making nice looking plots.
  
• It is important to look at the submission interface far before actually trying to submit.
  
• Histograms make more sense in particle physics than anywhere else.
  

I'm sure I will have much more to learn during the review process (if/when it occurs). Probably that the reviewers hate my plots. I wouldn't blame them. It could have been worse. I could have wanted to show a stacked bar graph. ROOT won't do that at all. But hey, it will make great histograms!

Cerenkov time!

I've been scolded for not posting in a while. On the one hand, I've been very busy. On the other, I got a cute little netbook last week that means I can practically blog anywhere, anytime. Like in class. Which, I'm not in right now. Promise.

The real reason I got the netbook was because I am working on a few papers and talk and being able to get away from my desks to do so is quite nice. I've seen my desk at work a LOT lately, especially at strange hours. It won't get better for the next two weeks.

I've been working on one project from December to March. I started working on the paper in January, submitted a draft as a conference abstract (which I find out about tomorrow), but found a few issues in the process of getting it ready for the conference submission. So the simulations were re-run...

And then I went back to my "other" project! The group has done some Cerenkov work and I meant to do simulation work back in the fall. I hit a wall (optics) and gave up... for a longer time than intended. So I'm working on Cerenkov "full time" again. Why? Back in January I submitted an abstract on Cerenkov to APS April meeting, thinking I was "almost done" with my other project. Silly silly me.

So with 1 month to go till April meeting, I had to get my act together and have something to show. So I presented a Cerenkov paper at group meeting to get me back in the right mindset... and found an exciting thing. That I had simulated and written up in a week. So that (short) paper is now in the editing stage and I hope to get it submitted to the Journal of Nuclear Medicine very very soon. Because I still need to work on the part of the Cerenkov simulation I said I was going to do for April meeting! In 2 weeks! That it now looks like I might be giving a press conference at.

While it might be silly to try to give a press conference on what I haven't done yet, it actually makes a lot of sense. Talks at April meeting are short - I have 10 minutes. And given that I want to present something on Biomedical Imaging to physicists, MUCH of that time will be spent on the basics of optical imaging. And then I can talk about Cerenkov Imaging (in general, with the work other groups have done over the past 2 years). And then I will have time to show 1 or 2 slides on MY work. Some of which will be what is in the paper I wrote this weekend.

So likely the press conference will be mostly about Cerenkov Imaging in general, and little about what I have done myself. I think that is ok. Usually the "big" results come from big collaborations - people present on behalf of 100 or more researchers. It is just strange to be presenting research done by a bunch of people who I don't represent in any way. I will give lots and lots of credit to other researchers and I will try very very hard to use data out of my own group whenever possible. I think Cerenkov Imaging is really neat and I would love to share it with journalists. If I just share with them my simulation data they won't think it is very neat... it is the big picture they'd like.

Of course, I'm not as crazy as I sound. I've scheduled a SASS (SLAC Association for Student Seminars) talk for the Wednesday before I go to April meeting (you know, next week) so I need to have everything ready for THEN. So I won't be working up until the last minute before April meeting. I'll be working nonstop until next Tuesday. And then taking the questions and comments from SASS and using them to improve my talk for APS.

So I haven't had much time for blogging lately, and I'm not sure when I will have time again. Possibly when my second paper is submitted...

Happiness in Medicine

Again and again, quality of life (QOL) in different forms is shown to correlate to better recovery from cancer (and other health issues). I find these papers depressing - we'll never get health insurance to pay for trips to Disneyworld, better food, or social programs for people with cancer. A recent paper in the Journal of Clinical Oncology shows a correlation of this type, but claims no causation:

Title: Decrease in Depression Symptoms Is Associated With Longer Survival in Patients With Metastatic Breast Cancer: A Secondary Analysis

Authors: Janine Giese-Davis, Kate Collie, Kate M.S. Rancourt, Eric Neri, Helena C. Kraemer, and David Spiegel

Pictures from Snowpocalypse