Arlen Ward dot com

Hmmm. It sure has been a while since I have posted! I seem to be missing the whole month of April. Sorry about that!

Things have been crazy, but I am still alive. So here’s the cliff notes version of April:

• School
• Work
• I helped build a train track around the boy’s room.
• School
• Work
• I went to Munich for a Hyperthermia Conference
• School
• Work
• I gave a couple of presentations on protiens including measuring denaturing energy with an atomic force microscope and computational methods for simulating folding.
• School
• Work
• School
• Work

More updates in the near future.

As a professed data presentation nerd, I have always liked the postings over at Strange Maps.

Recently there was a post with a map of the United States, shaded by leading church body in each county.. This one caught my eye, just with the clustered groups of various denominations. No conclusion, I just thought it was interesting.

If I had an observatory at my house, I would be out there all the time. If I had big telescopes at my house, you would have to pry me away with a crowbar. People would be sick of hearing me talk about the stars and planets, and they would run and hide every time I got out the pictures.

But alas, it is not so for everyone.

As reported in the Independent, Pope Benedict XVI is moving the observatory off the grounds of his summer residence.

Science is to make way for diplomacy at the Pope’s summer residence, with the dismantling of the astronomical observatory that has been part of Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, for more than 75 years. The Pope needs more room to receive diplomats so the telescopes have to go.

Moving it to make more room to receive diplomats? I think the stars would be more interesting, but nobody died and made me Pope.

Just in time to make the rest of us feel better about the cold temperatures around here, the National Science Foundation opened the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

Just to make the single digit temperatures here feel like nothing, take a look at the webcam of the site, and note the current weather.

For the last few years, The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has put up a website to track Santa’s progress overnight.

It looks like they teamed up with Google Earth for a few extra goodies this year.

So for your entertainment on Christmas Eve, I give you:

NORAD’s Santa Tracking Website

The previous post on engineering and autisim was oringinally written for a different blog a year ago when the IEEE article first came out.

What reminded me to post it here was a YouTube video of Steven Wiltshire, an architectural artist from the UK. He was diagnosed with autism at age 3, and has been drawing architechture since age 11, when he recreated the London skyline from memory after a helicopter ride.

In the video, this ability is demonstrated by taking him to Rome, flying him around for 45 minutes, and then giving him three days to recreate the skyline. All without additional reference, based solely on his recollection.

Here is the panorama that he drew over the three days.

There is a lot we have yet to learn about how the brain works.

I would have done better, but apparently I can’t spell Massachusetts or Connecticut.

It is a bit of a cop out that you don’t have to place them on the map too.

The other day at work we got a notice that the 2008 IRS rate for mileage reimbursement was being increased to 50.5 cents per mile. For 2007 it was 48.5 cents per mile. Now it is my understanding that this is supposed to cover the cost of operating a vehicle for business purposes. So lets ponder that for a minute.

Let’s assume that there is no increase in maintenance costs for your vehicle (which isn’t true, but makes this a conservative calculation). That leaves changes in the cost of gasoline as the major contributor to the cost hike.

I drive a truck that gets about 16 miles per gallon (MPG). Given the vehicle I drive, and the increase of two cents per mile, this would cover the increase in cost of gasoline to the tune of 32 cents per gallon. But it turns out that in Colorado, the last year saw an increase of 73.8 cents per gallon, according to the Department of Energy. (That number will change weekly, I’m sure)

That means I would have to drive a car that got 36.9 MPG. More than twice what I actually get. So that got me thinking: “What kind of car would I have to drive to have the actual increase in cost covered?”

It turns out that, according to the EPA, for 2008 models, nothing but hybrids will hit 36.9 mpg. In fact, even most of the hybrids miss the mark. Only the hybrid Prius and Accord exceed that MPG rating.

“But wait!”, you say. “These numbers aren’t decided by Colorado! It is for the country as a whole!”

“Good point”, I say. For the US as a whole, it went up only 70.7 cents per gallon. So our meager improvement still only brings the necessary MPG rating to 35.3. That doesn’t change much related to the cars.

It just makes you wonder how they come up with these numbers.

Next time you look over and your kid is licking thier cotton-candy covered fingers after the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, think about this.

There are always interesting things at the exposition halls that accompany most conferences that I have been to. IEEE and ASME meetings have vendors with really cool measurement systems, books you can’t find anywhere else, and other fun and exciting things for those with skewed interests such as me.

Working for a medical device company, I have attended shows that are meant for physicians, places like SAGES, or ACS. Those expos are full of other strange and interesting things. It took a little while to get used to the videos of surgery or some of the more heinous devices people were showing, but all in all it was cool stuff.

It was all good until I walked though the exposition hall of the annual meeting of the AAGL. (Go ahead and click the link to see who they are… I’ll wait.)

There are things I never needed to know existed. Most of them are in that room.

I’m just sayin’.