More BME Fun

Classes started back up yesterday. I'm taking two this term while continuing to work on my research project. Biophysics and Applied Quantum Electronics. The first excites me and the second scares me quite honestly.

Over Labor Day weekend our department had its annual retreat. This year we went up to our department chair's summerhouse in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. It was a gorgeous weekend and a great chance to get to know people more personally. On top of that Jen was able to join! Good food, good fun, good weather--that's hard to beat. As usual, I think I'll share some pictures:

On the Evolution/Inteligent Design debate

Real quick (I really should be in bed):
I found this in the hallway of the Science and Technology Center at Tufts (where I live). It's in reference to the finding that we share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees.


That the poster is advertising a DNA sequencing company makes it all that much better.

Zebra Fish Embryo

I saw this video (sans narration) in my Biomedical Engineering Seminar this morning (by Donald E. Ingber from Harvard). It was truly an excellent talk--wish they were all so good.

I think this video of the development of a zebra fish embryo is absolutely amazing. Enjoy!

Inadiquacies in the Naturalistic Evolutionary Model

I'm intimidated by that title, but it's the best I could come up with in six words.

I just got out of the most enjoyable Biomedical Engineering seminar in my life (I've only attended a dozen or two, but still . . .). It was interesting, well presented, and I actually had enough background to understand what he was saying. That's certainly preferable to sitting for an hour on Mondays completely confused and feeling inadequate. Perhaps I am actually learning something.

Well, the seminar was by David Walt (Tufts Chemistry Professor) on Optical Fiber Microarrays. Now I'm not going to pretend to understand what he said well enough to explain it to you (and I'm not going to pretend that you'd be interested if I could), but one comment he made in the Q&A section made me think.*

Someone asked if his setup (which can be used as a "nose") gives us any information about how biological noses actually work--how many specific types of sensors we have. He said that it's interesting because theoretically and experimentally it only takes about 100 distinct sensors to detect every (practically) possible combination of odors; however, humans (and dogs for that matter) have around 1000 distinct sensors. He didn't seem to think there's any practical reason why we should have evolved such a unnecessarily precise array of sensors. I was thinking, "Wow, God's such an overachiever. He's amazing." It made me smile.

* On the off chance you are actually interested: Here's his site which I'm sure has more information than you'd ever care about.

Encouragement from Unexpected Sources

I've joined a research lab at Tufts looking into non-linear optics. Presently I'm working with a couple friends trying to blast tiny (micrometer) holes in silk with a really fast (femtosecond pulsed) laser. We started actually shooting the silk with photons last Tuesday, and I can't tell you how glad I am to finally be working on something that isn't hardware interfacing. But that's not the point of this post. (If you're interested in the micromachining research then look here for a good understandable explanation of the sort of thing we're researching.)

Thursday morning we met up for round two of silk trials, but before Brian arrived Hannah and I were talking. Somehow it came up that I had moved here with friends. She asked why, and so I was able to tell her that we are a group of Christians who wanted to move to a world class city together to live out the teachings of Christ: learning and training how to love people, community involvement, and basically declaring that the kingdom of the heavens is here and available. As far as I've been able to deduce no one in my lab is a Christian, but nonetheless she was extremely encouraging and perhaps excited about what we're up here to do. When Brian arrived she even started telling him about why I was here and he likewise thought it was neat.

It was such an encouragement to hear that from people I know and like who don't necessarily share my beliefs. It got me to thinking about what I had read earlier that morning:

We are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?
--Paul describing how Christians are perceived in the world (2 Cor. 2:15-16)

If those who aren't Christians respond favorably to such news then perhaps they better fit into the category of those who are "being saved" than that of those who are perishing. Prechristians if you will.

I know I found the realization encouraging.

Grad School: Round Two

After my very long break (somewhere around 5 glorious weeks) I'm finally back to the grindstone, well, that is I will be after Jen and I go back to Texas this weekend to visit my parents.

A very exciting development (for me at least) is that I joined a research lab today. Professor Fiorenzo Omenetto kindly agreed to let me help him and his team look into the potential for ultrafast lasers (femtosecond pulses) and the nonlinear optics problems and potential they create. A "femtosecond is one billionth of one millionth of a second. For context, a femtosecond is to a second, what a second is to a hundred million years," from Wikipedia.

The project I'm currently working on is micromachining. Some other really cool research being explored includes optical tweezers (pretty much a Star Trek tractor beam on a really small scale), pulse shaping to control chemical reactions, and optofluidics to name a few. I won't go into details so as not to bore you, but it's really interesting stuff. So check out the links if you're even slightly interested.

The classes this term are looking up as well. I'm only taking two (which will leave me with one to go before finishing my course work--just thesis and seminars after that!):

• BME-101: Medical Optics and Lasers
• BME-131: Principles of Medical Imaging

I'm sure I'll let you know how things progress.

A Possible Definition of Education

The continual progression and realization of one's ignorance concerning the true nature of reality.

And So It Begins (again)

Tuesday was the first day of class at Tufts, and an exhausting day it was. Four two hour Biomedical Engineering (BME) classes (from noon to 8pm) and as many syllabi later I still haven't decided what classes to take this term. Generally schools consider three grad classes as full time, and two of my classes have been predetermined for me (Analytical Tools for BME and Intro to BME). So my question is, do I take the other class that is requited for the PhD students (I'm just masters) or do I take something else. Here are my options:

• BME – 0162 Molecular Biotechnology (the one the PhD students have to take)

• BME – 0100 Design of Medical Instrumentation

• BME – 0121 Engineering Challenges in Physiology I

Any of those sound like they'd be interesting? I think they all sound good, so I'm just going to the first few classes of each to decide based on professor/assignment/and schedule.

I think I'll let you know a little about the BME program here:

• There are about 40-50 grad students with ~10 of those being new this year (there is an undergrad program also)
• The faculty seems great, as do the other students
• We students have a wide variety of background (from purely biology to purely engineering, some with a masters already, some already working for engineering companies). I'm excited by this. Since BME is such an interdisciplinary field no one coming in (or perhaps ever) feels like they know everything they should. So I foresee quite a bit of (perhaps forced) interdependence and cooperation. We'll have to help each other along--that can only be good. Right?
• Research here is segmented into 2 areas: Tissue engineering and instrumentation/optics. I'll be more on the optics side (especially since I haven't had any real biology since high school), but there seems to be a good amount of cross over between the two. I couldn't ask for more appealing research areas as far as I'm concerned.
• We have a department retreat at Tufts Loj in New Hampshire this weekend--I'm very excited.

Well, I need to go grab some lunch before my next class. I'll try to update a little more regularly, but with grad school having started I make no promises. Shalom.