Today begins the open-book portion of my qualifying exam, which I think makes me a Ph.D. Student as opposed to a Graduate Student if I pass.
My topic of research, for which I have one week, is Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy. I think I’ll post some of my findings here as I go. That way, I’ll have a record of my research, and any of you who might be interested in the subject can get up to speed along with me.
On my mark, get set, go.
Pictures here, video (from my neighbor) ,here (100 MB). The video is uploading as I write this, should be done by 17:10 CDT.
Here’s a sample:
I’m going to Heart Rhythm this year without my laptop for the first time in three years. In fact, it’s probably the first time I’ve gone much of anywhere without a laptop, and I’m looking forward to having a ligher load. I acquired a few items yesterday that should help me work without it, which I’ll talk a bit more about in the next post.
Someone tells it like it is, or at least pretends to… the 100%-real data is nice (read the whole article, it’s not all in the quote below)Kovar/Hall;
Electrons in germanium are confined to well-defined energy bands that are separated by “forbidden regions” of zero charge-carrier density. You can read about it yourself if you want to, although I don’t recommend it. You’ll have to wade through an obtuse, convoluted discussion about considering an arbitrary number of non-coupled harmonic-oscillator potentials and taking limits and so on. The upshot is that if you heat up a sample of germanium, electrons will jump from a non-conductive energy band to a conductive one, thereby creating a measurable change in resistivity. This relation between temperature and resistivity can be shown to be exponential in certain temperature regimes by waving your hands and chanting “to first order”.
I was a strong advocate of moving our lab away from SGI, which was expensive and slow for our purposes, and on to Linux.
WSJ.com – Silicon Graphics Files For Chapter 11 Protection
Silicon Graphics Inc., a long-struggling maker of high-performance computers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
A group of bondholders agreed to trade their debt for a stake in the company, which filed for Chapter 11 protection Monday morning in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.
Silicon Graphics is known for desktop workstations and larger server systems that are favored by engineers and others who demand sophisticated graphics, including Hollywood studios. But the company has suffered a long slide, partly due to competition from machines based on standard components used in personal computers.