When I was at the conference… March 13, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in electromagnetics, engineering, physics, research.Tags: conference, engineering, physics, research
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When I was at the conference last week, I had one fellow come up and look at my poster. He is working on a similar problem but in a different application, and he made some comment about how he definitely thought what I was doing had merit. (After seeing his talk, it made sense because he was trying something similar.)
However, we spent about 20 minutes arguing as to what we thought was going on in one of my plots. He kept suggesting something that I had ruled out with experiment.
Tonight I’m looking at papers on some theory related to this project, and I think I have managed to find the answer to that mysterious plot. Sadly, I was way off in my explanation, but I have to admit that apparently I wasn’t the only one. The fellow I was arguing with had it wrong as well.
The real answer appears to be way cooler than either of us thought. I love physics.
Making sure I don’t get a big head February 7, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, feminism, research.Tags: email, research
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Things have gotten crazy at work. The university sent out a press release on the Widget, and it’s getting a fair amount of press. (Much more than I expected.) In the past couple days, I’ve gotten several emails and have even been interviewed. I’m having a hard time keeping up as I still have my normal work to do, too.
Like a good midwesterner, I try to anticipate that not all things will go well, so I shouldn’t get too excited. And the universe dutifully complies and lets me know that this is prudent.
This time, Dr. Husband got an email addressed to both himself and the Minion asking if they were interested in looking at some technology related to the Widget. The email wasn’t copied to me, and I wasn’t addressed in the introduction. Incidentally, the articles which had our names also had me listed first in the research team. There is a good reason for this.
Just an FYI: if you want someone to buy your stuff, leaving off the lead author and main architect of the project is not the smartest move.
Against all odds January 6, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, research, science.Tags: funding, grants, proposals, research, white paper
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I was speaking with a colleague who mentioned that he was happy the latest defense bill had been passed and signed as it meant there would be some money behind a couple funding announcements he’d to which he’d submitted white papers
Of course, he noted, he was unlikely to get them. One of the calls had received over 1500 white papers…for something like 10 awards. That meant less than a 1 percent chance of receiving anything. If he’d had the ability to submit 5 white papers, this would have resulted in about a 3% chance of receiving something. Had he known that there were that many applicants, he might not have bothered.
I have been shaking my head ever since this conversation. You know what will happen with these awards: likely they will all be given to top 20 schools. And yet, any school that is not in the top 20 will still be evaluating faculty based on how much money they’re bringing in and papers.
When you pretty much have no chance of getting funding, how can that be fair? It’s not just an individual that brings in the funding: a lot of it also has to do with the reputation of the school and the facilities available. It is not strictly a function of an individual, yet the individual is the one held accountable for all factors.
I just don’t know how a person is not supposed to be intimidated (or even just plain scared) when hearing these types of numbers.
Why I really work with my husband October 31, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in family, grad school, papers, research, work, younger son.Tags: children, family, Mike, papers, research, work
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This past week, I’ve been trying to get a paper ready to submit to a conference. My husband is a co-author on the paper, so we spent a good chunk of the day cranking away at it. I worked on the text while he fixed all the LaTeX issues we encountered. This is my first time submitting a conference paper using this method, and I wasn’t acquainted with all the nuances of the IEEE style. I guess I’ve lucked out because I either used Word (up until I finished my thesis) or let my co-authors deal with the issues that arose from LaTeX. Either way, the paper was submitted at 5:30 p.m., a whole 5 1/2 hours before the deadline.
Then we came home. He took the dog for a walk, and I went for a run. He cooked dinner, I showered. He took younger son trick-or-treating, I handed out candy while trying scarf down my dinner. (Older son held back Gigadog so that she wouldn’t a) try to steal candy out of the dish and b) slobber all over the trick-or-treaters to show them how much she loves them.) And now I can finally get to writing tomorrow’s lecture and grading while he gets the younger boy to bed. Oh yeah…and Mike has work to do, too.
It’s a good thing I work with my spouse or I’d never get to see him.
The poster session I didn’t attend October 24, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in papers, research, work.Tags: conference, logo, posters, research
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About two weeks ago, we were informed that a couple abstracts we’d submitted had been accepted for a poster session at a regional industry conference. Oh…and we had ten days to prepare the posters.
This was rather amusing as the information about the conference presentations had come out a couple weeks before, and until we received notice, there had been nothing indicating there was a poster session.
Sadly, the bulk of the preparation fell on the shoulders of one of my colleagues who is a mechanical engineer. While I was supposed to be responsible for one poster, I realized that half of what was on the poster was stuff that I couldn’t explain….at least not without making us all sound like idiots. I did, however, manage to conjure up some very pretty pictures of what we were doing. (And I was able to explain what I did, of course.)
When discussing these posters, I asked which logo we should use. We’ve had a couple different permutations over the years, and I wasn’t sure which one was in favor at the moment. It turned out that we had a new logo.
And a very bland one at that. So bland it was monochromatic…in greyscale.
When we put it on the poster, it was hardly noticeable under all the other info we were told to display by the conference organizers.
Nonetheless, the colleague who attended the conference said that some people did come and at least ask questions about our organization. I’m hoping the pretty pictures worked to attract their attention, but I have to give them credit for seeing the finer details.
And now I better get back to work as I just found out about a conference which would be perfect match for a paper I’ve been meaning to get out. Of course, the deadline is in one week.
Leave it to the experts: the homeschooling parents September 9, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, homeschooling, older son, teaching, younger son.Tags: education, homeschooling, research
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A friend on Facebook posted the following article: What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents
I agree with some of the sentiment of the article: helicopter parents are damaging to their children. On the other hand, I have enough experience not to buy this line:
For starters, we are educators, not nannies. We are educated professionals who work with kids every day and often see your child in a different light than you do. If we give you advice, don’t fight it. Take it, and digest it in the same way you would consider advice from a doctor or lawyer.
Most elementary school teachers are trained to deal with a room full of children. They are not heavily entrenched in child psychology, learning disabilities, giftedness, or many other things that can affect individual children and their functioning in the classroom. Their training is in dealing with large numbers of average children…a more sophisticated form of crowd control.
I am not trying to be mean to elementary school teachers; I am stating a fact about their education. (I considered becoming a teacher at one point, so I do know what types of classes are required.) The reality is that their education is limited, and they are reluctant to admit that. Now, there are exceptional elementary school teachers out there. I ran into a couple during my youth, and I’ve run into a couple as my children have gone through school. Unfortunately, my experience is that they are also the minority, if not completely rare.
Too often, teachers have told me that “they are professionals,” but they fail to realize that I am the expert in MY child. They will come to me with a complaint about the child’s behavior, and when I give them suggestions on ways to deal with it because, well, they asked, I am told that what I am suggesting is not possible. If these people are professionals, then why are they asking my opinion and, better yet, why are they then telling me they can’t take my advice?!
To add further insult to injury, I more than once ran into teachers who told me that my son’s difficulties in school were because of homeschooling. I remember clearly when the older boy’s third grade teacher said he obviously didn’t remember his math facts very well because he always performed poorly at Around the World…only to be told a couple weeks later by the principal that he’d done exceptionally well during their annual testing and that, “he obviously knows his math facts!” All I could ascertain from this was that the teacher was biased against homeschooling as well as having a poor handle on my son’s actual abilities.
I felt rather vindicated, therefore, reading the results of a scientific study on homeschooling done at a university – that is, it isn’t being done by opponents or proponents of homeschooling and therefore has no reason to be biased one way or the other. It was also funded by the Canadian government.
The study showed that homeschoolers who use curriculum are more likely to be accelerated in their studies relative to their publicly-schooled and unschooled peers when measured by standardized tests. They don’t look at the Big S (socialization), although they mention that schooling is an important form of socialization. (And it’s one that is a very poor form, if you ask me. I am still appalled by some of the things my son heard at school from his classmates.)
They weren’t certain of the factors that led to acceleration, but they mentioned more focused study on math and reading. When I homeschooled, I felt like the topics were more diverse than what my kids have encountered in a regular school. Also, we spent less time doing schoolwork than what my kids spend in a regular day at school…and that doesn’t include homework.
I’m certain that more studies will bear out the same result (in fact, most have), and help parents to be more confident that homeschooling is an acceptable and even superior alternative to a public classroom (and a cheaper alternative to private school). At the very least, I’d be happy if a few teachers paid attention and realized that parents can be as or more effective in working with their own children than the supposed experts.
Going so wrong that it has to be right August 11, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, research.Tags: engineering, engineering research, mistakes, research
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The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it) but ‘That’s funny…’ 
- Isaac Asimov
What the world really needs… May 16, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in papers, research.Tags: citations, papers, research
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Is an interactive citation manager…
I know there are some journals that do this electronically. You pull up a paper and you see a list of everything cited in the article along with all the other papers citing that paper. IEEE and APS journals are great about this.
What I’d really like is something more personalized – something where I can add notes and identify if I’ve read the paper or not and perhaps leave notes about a couple key points. It’s be really bonus if I could navigate it strictly by clicking.
I do like to use Menktosj’s Papers program to keep my research papers organized. Unfortunately, I’ll be reading through and see a citation which I can’t remember if I’ve read or not. It would be nice if I could scan through references with a little something to jog my memory about a paper’s important points.
Busy day! February 4, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineerblogs.org, engineering, research.Tags: patents, research
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I have a lot on my plate today, so I might do a links dump later in the day but I’m not anticipating anything else. In the meantime, please head over to Engineerblogs.org and check out my post, Patent (De)Pending.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
Free Market != Sophisticated Healthcare February 2, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, research, science, societal commentary.Tags: innovation, research, science, science funding
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The older boy knows someone who, on his blog, posted a link to information about a very sophisticated and cool medical widget. Then this person turned around and said something to the effect of, “Innovations like this are why we need to keep healthcare private.” I bet the older boy that 1) this device was developed at a university, probably state-funded and 2) the development of the device was probably done with some sort of federal funding.
I wish I’d made the bet for cash. It turns out that after asking the internet, I was right: state funded university with department of defense grantitude.
I was rather blown away that someone would make such an obvious mistake. But then, I’m a scientist and an engineer who knows people both in industry and academia. I’m probably more familiar with the process of technical innovation than the average joe. (In fact, I’m probably going to be discussing that Friday on http://engineerblogs.org.)
There are a lot of people that have misconceptions about what real scientist is or does. My guess is, that most people, when they hear the word scientist, think of the following:
(As a huge tangent, my ex-husband’s last name was Brown, and I was very reluctant to change my last name after we divorced. I wanted very badly for people to call me “Doc Brown” once I earned my PhD.)
Back to the present, we all know and love the stereotypical mad scientist: he (always a he) toils away in his basement to create some amazing gadget that will miraculously change the way human beings interact with their world. Bonus points for crazy hair.
Unfortunately, this is a very naive and pretty remote possibility. Since World War II, scientific research has been recognized as being something that our country can and should invest in order to put us “ahead of the game”. Serious science research, whether it is paradigm shifting or not, can seldom be done in the basement or garage. There is seldom “low hanging fruit” such that research doesn’t require a significant investment of time, money, personnel, and capital equipment.
Probably with the exception of electronics, which is riding a huge wave of capitalistic materialism, many of the things that have enhanced our standard of living over the past few decades has been the investment of public money into public institutions. This is especially true with health and medicine. Free market healthcare may make it easier to get access to things like MRI, but much of the initial research into medical technology comes from federal and state governments. Think about it: many of the most advanced, cutting edge medical research is done at hospitals with university medical school affiliations.
It is depressing to see that the US, especially the newly elected republican congress critters, are trying to drastically cut federal research funding while places like China doing exactly the opposite. Believe it or not, I’ve already heard about researchers going to China to do their work because they’re finding it easier to get funding and equipment time. China has seen that investment in science works, so they’re following suit. They’re being a lot smarter than we are.
I remember in the 80s (yeah, I’m that old) when everyone was so impressed that Tang was something that NASA developed. In fact, NASA is still making efforts to let people know how the organization benefits them. However, as obvious as it may seem to those of us in science, the average person may not really have a clue how important NSF, NIH, and other funding organizations are to both economic and technological leadership. It almost seems like, if they could afford it, these institutions need to be banging their own drum a bit louder, letting people know how important they are to everyday life.
But sadly, the reality is that most people don’t know or don’t care about where all our modern conveniences come from. They keep being told that the “free market” is what makes it all possible and that government spending is wasteful and useless. They believe it, and so they don’t realize how badly we as a nation are shooting ourselves in the foot if we fail to maintain or increase spending in research of all stripes.
Next time you see a gadget and think that it’s an example of what makes the United States a great nation, try to remember that there’s a good chance that gadget had some of its origins in public funding. By trying to end such funding, we are destroying our scientific and technological legacy.