NSF Funding and Budget Allocation

Looking at the blue points, the NSF budget generally been increasing over the years with a few slight stagnations here and there. On the other hand, when adjusted for inflation rates according to 2014 is shown by the red points (this is generally how I think, which is apparently wrong). The proper adjustment should be adjusted to the rate of 1998, which is depicted by the green points.

In which more obvious behaviors are presented, in particular where the stagnations generally correlate to declines in the US economy. From 1998 to 2004 we see a steady increase in allocated funds, where starting after 2004 there starts an oscillation behavior in funding regardless of how you interpret inflation.

To be honest, while this image is rather stark on the state of funding, it was surprisingly less bad than I thought. Of course, I'm only looking at one scientific funding department, and I'm sure the NIH has a much more depressing outlook. We've been talking about government sequestrations, how funding has been cut back, and so forth, but in general, the overall trend is increase, albeit far slower than I would like to see.

I'm sure if we look at how funds are allocated as a percentage of government spending, it would produce a very different image however. That I have not looked into yet...

So why do I bring this up? More recently a friend of mine went on a Congressional Visit Day as representative of CMU for Materials Advantage. Just yesterday I attended a talk given by Kevin Finneran on whether the National Academy of Science is still relevant or not. I've been reading a number of articles on the Post-Doc population and lack of jobs for PhD degree holders after graduation.

And I've started realize these problems cannot be solved with science alone. It simply won't happen, because research isn't free (although PostDocs do provide an awesome bang-for-the-buck is what I've been reading), and we also only have a limited amount of funds. Those funds are currently dictated by policy makers and the government, which we as a scientific community apparently choose to ignore and not partake in. In that sense, that's why I do decide to write here though. Because I am openly providing information (albeit pointless) on my work, in which maybe someone in the general public may happen to be attracted to. I believe science funding can only be significantly increased if the public genuinely desires, and hence as scientist, we need to better communicate with them.

One thing I'll miss...

When I graduate are probably seminars.

And by seminars, I'm including both my own departments and everything else I've attended. To be honest, I absolutely love the campus environment and how readily information and knowledge is available. Yes, you can drop by a class, but without being there from the very beginning, this makes it very challenging to follow it somewhere in the middle.

Seminars on the other hand are designed in such a way that allow access for a wide range of audiences depending on their major and background knowledge. Therefore, there are little barriers of entry to free learning.

In particular, the one I attended yesterday was titled: "Context and Connection", being held by the School of Architecture. Short story, I learned some amazing designs for living modules of polar science camps (primarily in Antarctica). Secondly, in relation to my major, these designs are partially feasible only because of improved materials (such as fiber-glass structures) that provide both the adequate strength as well as insulating conditions. Aside from a material standpoint though, the design perspective needs to take into account human interactions on a daily basis such that they feel where they are living can be safely called "home".

Anyways, I've learned a lot of random things since coming to CMU. The seminars provide an escape from my field, in particular the further in connection they are. Other seminars I've attended included the department of music with a famous pianist, listening to a orchestral director held by the management of the arts, two students attempting to license out their design versus a startup, and so forth. I don't always understand or remember everything, but they continuously broaden my perspective of the world.

Get out there and learn, through whatever means and mediums work best for you.

Typography + Science

Okay more like science words (and more specifically material science terms)

I've been messing around ever since seeing...

To be honest, I've always had a little bit of a creative side. I'm still probably more logical than creative in terms of the brain, but I do enjoy doodling and messing around. Furthermore, art provides a further expression of my enjoyment of science. It's also far more fun as medium for conveying concepts versus preparing presentations, papers, and posters.

In particular with the "Grain Growth" and "Eutectic Point", I've been trying to describe the concepts with the letters. It'll probably take some practice, but maybe someday in the future I can make a coffee table book =P

The Expert

I just saw this short YouTube skit yesterday. If you haven't seen it yet, then go watch it first (and then remember to come back here!)

...

In all honesty, I've never been in that exact situation. I have hung out with friends, and in the midst of influenced conversations, have to crush their wonderful ideas. This arises when hanging out with non-engineering and non-science majors.(Although I did have some very creative, silly engineering friends too). Generally I was regarded as the realist, who apparently "ruins" everything.

I did do a brief student consulting jig once, which in itself was a unique and interesting experience. I was brought on because I was an engineer, I was a scientist who had some background in materials, chemistry, as well as toxicology. The product we were looking into was a cleaner that could elminate Norovirus, something that the typical restaurant cleaner doesn't handle. (For those who don't know, various strains of viruses, regardless of whether harmless or harmful, can be quite difficult in terms of their resistance).

I never really thought it could bear fruit (as an individual start-up company).

But I couldn't tell people that yet. We surveyed the restaurant market around us, to whom most weren't even aware of Norovirus, meaning no demand. Furthermore purchasing their cleaner was often bundled with other kitchen supplies and goods, meaning there was difficult penetrating the supply line. But we were forced to present the pluses, to give some positive outlook on the fact that even though there was no market, it could be created. We tried to present it as best as possible as a disruptive technology, but the whole time it felt like a false story.

Ultimately, and thankfully, we suggested that it would be a better product to combine into another suppliers line rather than marketing alone.

But that's my short story in being the so-called "expert"

The Online Classroom

One of my professors has been playing around with the concept of the online classroom. Video lectures are provided before the class, in which students are expected to watch and come to the class with questions. All the class sessions are also recorded as well and posted later for anyone who may have missed class or those who are not physically in Pittsburgh but interested in the lecture content.

It's been an interesting experience to say the least in the "flipped classroom" question where the students ask the questions. My professor has a tendency to ask questions to everyone in the class while he lectures to ensure everyone is following along (where he also randomly selects people). This is perhaps the biggest loss since we have gone from an actual lecture to an online classroom. The general check-up questions he asks are automatically assumed that we have learnt from the video lecture. The video lecture also gives students the advantage of re-watching the lecture several times to catch these details. But even then, the questions asked by the professor test if the fundamental basics are even understood. That is to say, without the foundation, everything else is lost...

The big advantage though, it that for what questions are asked, become a thorough, in-depth discussion. The can go much farther and beyond the scope of the course, and may sometimes to be tied to some people's research a little bit, providing more beneficial information, or just satisfy people's curiosity (and as graduate students, we have a lot of curiosity). But at the same time, these questions may appear off-topic from the class, or complete tangents of unnecessary information for the rest of us. Establishing the right type of questions, seems to be a difficult thing to determine.

I've talked with the professor a little to understand his expectations as well. And he presents the interesting point that he thought graduate students would picked up on the situation better than undergraduates (he's also attempted this previously for another class). Graduate students are much more accustomed to self-learning. This may be reading journal papers to implement understand a new technique, or referring to a textbook to teach themselves something they're not familiar with but plays a major part of their research.

To which I'm guilty for not going above and beyond in my learning... I guess that's a sign to go back to work.

Technology + Smartphones

For those who know me, I've usually been behind the times. So when I upgraded from a LG flip-phone to a iPhone 5C last December, it was a big upgrade for me.

Since getting my phone, I've been playing around with how to better integrate my research/academic life with it. While my friends call me a smartphone addict (which I cannot deny), I've been curious on how I can increase my work efficiency on the iPhone. The general trend of being more on task and responding to emails immediate aren't things that directly correlate to more productive research unlike other technology heavy fields. My curiosity has been how can I integrate my research activities into my smarthphone. Obviously there are the usual things such as maintaining a calendar or checking emails, but here are some other things on what I've found so far:

When I'm on the school network, I can access journal papers (I'm sure I can figure out a way to VPN onto the CMU network, but haven't bothered). There is no Google scholar app (or any general web journal searching app as far as I'm aware), but the usual website in Safari works just fine. While reading PDFs on a small screen isn't favorable, it is doable and can be useful for looking up quick facts in papers you might've read previously.

On the topic of scientific news, I do enjoy the following: Science and Nature. Both contain a mix of actual scientific news in terms of research, but also development of the scientific communities. I do also have the Journal of Material Science (JMS) and IOP Science (the latter I haven't used as much). The few times I have used JMS, it allows me branch out in my field, but within my understanding of material science still.

On the topic of networks, I recently learned about ServerAuditor. This enables SSH into a server to access the command console, and compiling and executing codes. This hasn't proven useful to me yet as most of my codes resides on my personal work computer in the first place. Furthermore I don't run any repeated computer simulations. Most of my codes are for analyzing raw data and therefore involve a significant amount of file I/O as well. I should mention it's even possible to VIM (but in all honestly I normally use another wrapper).

More recently, my friend provided corrections to a draft of a manuscript I'm working on in Word (horrendous right?). Microsoft Office Mobile was recently released as a free-to-download app, and while one cannot edit a document, one can still read all corrections all there. Having a Microsoft account with SkyDrive allows easy access.

Am I truly more productive? Or am I just finding an excuse to mess around on my smartphone some more again? I don't know the answer yet.

Anyways, what have you played around with?