Computer Lab . . . once again

Sitting at a Computer. (period and end of story)!

Today's Discovery Lecture

As usual, we discussed the lecture today. Our outcome was - even through his glory through his status - was not as decent as the last few. His voice often trailed off in his monotone manner, for example, as it also often trailed off onto different, sometimes irrelevant. More so, he even contradicted himself in the end (for those of you who could read it, for it was not tested well and many images, words, and graphs ran off of the page) by telling us to use airplanes because they are safer, which is against the "leave a smaller carbon footprint" speech he gave us.

However, the information and completed/relevant graphs he showed to us were superb. If the graphs were made from his own work, then this guy is a genius. His work gives us - or maybe just me - some more hope to Earth's future, if that does not sound corny enough.

Back to COSMOS, I went to the price center today with a few friends as well as another friend from my school who happens to be at UC San Diego for a different science program. That was (spectacular) my first time there. I cannot wait to go back again and buy some things.

Even more about what I have gained from COSMOS, I am now getting fairly decent at spinning poi, which is great. I love the things I can do now =)

We must go now, I will return later.

Swing, Swing from the tangles of my heart

I had an emotional break-down yesterday. Yes, tensegritophobia is the fear of building giant geometric shapes out of sticks and rubber bands.

I have it.

And I was just upset that this was what we would be doing for two weeks under Dr. Oliveira. He's nice, however, and really enthusiastic.
Last night I won 1st prize at bingo. Hooray! Price Center money! I'm splitting it 50-50 with Tiffany because we both called out the numbers. XD. Then we thought the day was well accomplished so we stowed away in a dark corner and finished our anime.
This morning we watched a presentation about global warming. I popped the "global dimming" question, HA~!

*wonders what Dr. Oliveira looks like with his hair down*

Hopefully we can all be mature adults and learn to grow a pair of manners and be considerate to each other. What do you think is the point of Cosmos? We must extrapolate our intellectual creativity.

Anyhow, I loved the dance. Had the chance to dance with some nice ladies, including an RA (it was dark). She ditched me though because I had bad teeth.

Basketball is getting better. We're starting to learn how to do tensegrity structures (basically origami with sticks and string.

Peace.

J.M.

Today was the first day of Cluster 7's second part of the course: Tensegrity and Modeling of the Red Blood Cell Membrane. Mainly we were just playing around with sticks (with holes and slots), elastic cords, and caps. In the morning session we did some basic work with one stick and a few strings and then later tried to build a Snelson prism (three sticks with the strings attached in such a way that the structure was self-stabilizing yet the sticks did not touch). Our group (Chantal, Amna, and I) was unable to successfully complete the Snelson prism, so in the end Dr. Oliveira had to help us learn how. After that Amna and I continued to make prisms with four, five, and six sticks based on the same principle.

In the afternoon session we were given the manual for the Tensegritoys set and allowed to build anything we wanted from it. Amna and I both failed in successfully completing the tetrahedron, but we did build a nice icosahedron. Afterwards Amy and Rachel attached 6 icosahedrons together for a really cool structure.

So, tomorrow is our next Discovery Lecture. It should be pretty interesting, just like the past two.

Well, tonight's activities will start in half an hour. I know there's dodgeball and cookie making/decorating, but I don't know the rest of the activities. I hope I find out soon whether I'm in Gotcha or not. I don't mind either way (it would be fun to either watch other people tag and get tagged or to actually be involved in the game), but I want to know...

Anyway, I'm sure this week will be a lot of fun, with Karaoke Night tomorrow and Talent Show on Friday. Good night!

~CS

So, Family Weekend. As I said before, it's been very quiet and a little lonely around here with so many people gone, but it's nice to have the laundry room and dining hall so empty. Anyway, they'll all be back soon. I'm glad I got my laundry done already when there was almost no one.

Today was a really good day. Speaking of laundry, I was happy that I managed to get free drying for both of my loads. Yay! Plus the COSMOS residential life staff got extra tickets to Batman, so even though I was too late to sign up I still managed to go. Thanks Pat and everyone else! I'm really glad I got to go. The movie was very exciting and intense.

Well, now after a very relaxing weekend I have to restart on my work. My last assignment for the bioengineering part of the cluster. I'm happy to be starting the tensegrity part; it sounds really cool and really fun! We get to play around and build models of the cell membrane as a tensegrity structure.

It's sad that COSMOS is half over already... these two weeks have gone by so fast...

Halfway

So it's family weekend. It has been relaxing and stressful at the same time. I definitely got to catch up on sleep. However, I think computers hate my family. There's always problems with computers. Oh well. I cannot wait until I go back to COSMOS, I already miss the people and the learning (but definitely not the homework).

The dance was tons of fun. I had a great time, despite the technical difficulties. Hopefully the next dance will run a little more smoothly.

I cannot wait until we jump into our next topic, tensegrity. Building stuff is always fun. I do not know much about this topic either so it will be exciting to learn something I have not been exposed to before.

I cannot believe we are already halfway through COSMOS. I wish it could last longer, knowing after this is over I must go back to school soon. I plan to enjoy every minute of the next two weeks.

-Rachel Gurlin

Last night was the COSMOS dance. The food and drinks were very nice. Tiffany, Shannon, and I all didn't dance, so we sat at a table and played cards. It was still pretty fun, even without dancing.

So, this weekend is Parent Visitation Weekend. It was nice to go with my parents to Price Center just for a morning. We got a nice UCSD sweatshirt. =D It's kind of lonely now in the dorms, though. While everyone else was on the mall trip, for example, only Shannon and I were in our entire suite, probably floor, and quite possibly building. And right now we're the only two in our suite as well. In a way it's nice and relaxing, I suppose. No waiting for showers, at least. Still, I'll be glad once everyone comes back.

Mom and Dad, if you're reading this, thank you for all the food and the visit!!!

Good night!

Please don't stop the music

Whoot!!! Last night we had the Dance. It was crazy... except for the disfunctional music machine, grinding, and the monstrous B.O. Srsly boys... spare us...
But the dance scene is always fun if you have a bunch of friends. I couldn't drag Christina, Shannon, or Tiffany on to the dance floor (like teh Silver Bullet--*hem*hem I see a pattern here -_-). But at least I had fun >=D

I'll be home for the weekend so I hope the Cluster 7 people who stayed behind rock the boat.

Sayonara desuuuuuuuu~~!

Amazing Stuff

Today is the last lab with Dr. Vera, and I am very disappointed. He's a pure genius, and I've learned so much just by talking to him and asking him questions. He always answers my questions patiently and then points me to new questions, which is awesome. Today we learned something I thought was pretty incredible. I was aware that mRNA undergoes post-transcriptional processing which keeps the exons and removes the introns but I had not known the significance of this process. Dr. Vera explained to us that eukaryotic cells have an advantage because of this processing- it allows for specialization of cell functions and greater diversity of cell proteins by being selective. For instance, muscle cells may process their mRNA differently from brain cells to better fulfill their functions. Then this means a cell's DNA does not determine its destiny. Well, not directly. I think a cell's post-transcriptional processing is regulated by cell signals and chemicals... which are coded for by the cellular DNA. So the cell DNA regulates its own regulation... This is some amazing stuff. I am as excited as the time Lakers got Pau Gasol.

-Min Lee

Today is our last lab in the bioengineering part of this cluster, so it's our last day in the amazing high-tech lab with Ms. Green. We're running an agarose gel electrophoresis right now to analyze for wild type or heterozygous mice genotypes.

Yesterday was a good night. I ended up going to the Rubik's cube tutorial and helping out a few people. Later that night we got a nice warm Pizookie from BJ's and some good chicken burritos from Chipotle. Tonight we have a ton of fun activities. There's slip-n-slide, a picture scavenger hunt, and the COSMOS dance. And parent weekend is tomorrow. Lots of fun stuff... The activities the RA's have been planning this week have all been really good.

Have a good day!

~CS

Shoot for the Stars

I'm listening to Min do a Q&A with Dr. Vera. He's confirming everything I explained to him. I told him that the labs 8 and 9 weren't related. He seems intent on finding a link.

Anyways... water polo was fun. Rob G the RA dove in to "rescue" me and tipped me over. It was terrible, cuz' I had fallen, and I couldn't get up. Other notable events was that I threw the ball OVER the net, being extra excited to score.

Ice blocking didn't go as well. I had to scoot along like a dog after using the great outdoors.

Sincerely,
J.M.

Livin' la Vida Loca

Last day in lab with Ms. Green. It was funny watching her and Ms. Nicely argue. Ms. Green scolded a group for dropping their sample, but Ms. Nicely said that we were first-timers and mistakes happen.

Raizor Ramen: Positive attitude! HOOOooooo~!

Seeing parents tmrw. Wish I could go watch Batman. Looks epic.

Arrivederci

Jumping Hot Java

Lately, the hot (or iced) coffee area in Café V has been a favorite of mine. My friends and I seem to be increasing our java intake each day not because we have too much work at night, but simply because we have so much fun during activities instead!

For a quick academic update, the other day Dr. Vera showed us a NPR session from Dr. Benjamin Carson, the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Dr. Carson believes that "there is no job more important than parenting" and even though I didn't think of it first (I don't know why), I definitely agree. Note to self: must read Gifted Hands by Dr. Carson as a rec from Ms. Green. ABC actually has a new show called Hopkins which is a 6-part documentary about life inside Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. I've seen the first part and it was really interesting so I recommend this show to anyone interested in medicine or becomming a doctor, especially since Johns Hopkins is #1 in bioengineering.

Since I see COSMOS and UCSD students on Facebook practically every time I turn my head in the computer lab, I started thinking about my own online persona which I recently re-activated after I took my finals in June just to befriend other COSMOpolitans. In the midst of indulging the MnM's from the lab today, I realized:

0) It is much easier to cultivate one's profile than one's self. [Oh no, college apps!]

1) It is much easier to spend time on Facebook than doing other things, like homework and reading and cleaning one's room.

2) I miss coding in Java. I haven't opened Terminal since June 1. :(

Well, actually one of the main reasons I came to COSMOS was to find out if I liked biology more than computer science. I realized that I absolutely love this biology+medicine field, and yet I don't think I can bear leaving comp sci behind nor can I major in it. Bioinformatics isn't exactly what I'm looking for, but maybe I can still participate in comp sci activities in college. I still have some time to think anyways. [:

Off to ice blocking!

<3

PS - Connie just taught us how to cube up to the 3rd layer (for lack of time). SHE IS SUCH AN AMAZING RUBIK'S CUBE TEACHER. =D

spam.

I like M&Ms. Except we dirtied some tables today with M&Ms we weren't allowed to eat. That's all I have to say.

we just finished our m&m lab, it was fun, we even got to eat our data, today i have to finish two essays or homework or something like that....
ummm.... i am having fun and .......i have made a lot of friends..... i like it here a lot, i will be very sad when this month is over.

Aghh...;;

I have no idea what to choose for my individual project. =[
It's so frustrating!
Oh well - I'll think of something soon I hope!

The M&M lab today was fun, especially eating them!
There's supposedly a college/career fair today. I hope it'll be interesting.

We're eating M&M's and working with statistics.
The week is going really fast so far, compared to last week.
Uhh, so it turns our my parents are cancelling family weekend on me ;-;

Oh well. Were gonna watch the Dark Knight this week and go to the mall I hear.

uhh okay bye

Slam yer body down, a zigga~zig--ah!

Yesterday, I learned to salsa! Yay! *swishswish* We also ate salsa (lulz). My feet hurt because I danced barefoot. XD (I feel like I'm always blogging about where I ache).

Yesterday we also had lunch with Becky Hames and Dr. Tu at Middle Earth. Whenever I go near middle earth, I think of Lord of the Rings, but it is really just a lounge area (They should totally put LOTR wallpaper or forest-themed furniture).

Anyway, back to M&M lab.

Ciao

Yay, candy! It's for an educational purpose though. We're doing a statistical lab with M&M's.

So, yesterday we had lunch with Dr. Tu and Ms. Hames. It was pretty nice; I liked the box lunches (grilled chicken sandwich, Cheetos, cookies, and fruit salad in mine). I enjoyed getting to talk with them more individually, and it was nice finding out that ours was the most elite cluster (100 of the 305 COSMOS applicants applied to this cluster, and only 18 got in).

The activities that we have had and are going to have this week are pretty good. They all sound really fun; I'm not sure which ones I want to do! Monday I learned how to spin poi and saw the cakes that other people had decorated. Tuesday was movie night. Anchorman was funny, I guess. I'm glad I finally saw it; I've heard people talk about it many times without knowing what it was about. Yesterday I made a friendship bracelet, watched some people salsa dance, and ate salsa with chips. Today there's henna, swimming, Rubik's cube, and ice blocking. I may go see the Rubik's cube one briefly, but I already know how to solve it and I'm not anywhere near as good as the other cubers here. Maybe I'll get to learn some different techniques though. Anyway, I think I'll go ice blocking, which sounds really fun. There's a dance on Friday. I'm not really enthusiastic for it, but I guess it'll be okay.

Anyway, this week has gone by pretty fast; it's already Thursday! Looks like the rest of this week will be just as fun as the first few days, with the Batman movie and parent visitation weekend.

So, I guess I'll go back to my statistical analysis of the data. Have a good week!

~CS