Presentations, Day 1

Maria Magdalena: "Low Frequency Vibrations of Trans-Stilbene"

Onur: "Least Concave Utility Functions"

Anna: "Costly Nash Paths"

Andrey: "False Discovery Rate in Case of Small Number of False Hypotheses"

Jessica: "The Mechanisms of the Pro-Migratory Function of Synaptojanin-2 and its Role in Actin Rearrangement and Extracellular Membrane Remodeling during Invasion"

Oren: "Modeling Magnetization Transfer NMR of Semi-Solid Biological Tissues under Magic Angle Spinning"

Ivonne: "Interaction of Pluoronic Blocks Copolymers with Single Wall Nanotubes Observed by Spin Probe EPR"

Marina: "Reversible Charge Separation Followed Exciplex Formation"

Erin: "Characterization of a Naturally Occurring Single Gene Mutation in Barley and the Role of Silicon"

Jonathan: "Evolution of Transcription Factor Binding Sites"

Joel: "An Investigation of Anisotropic Stochastic Dynamics: Mean First Passage Time for a Random Rod to Rotate in a Confined Domain"

Daniel: "Transcriptional Regulation of the Oncogene miR-373 by Mutant Forms of p53"

Rachel: "The Role of BDNF in Antidepressant Treatments"

Me: "Determination of the Thickness of Graphitic Planes in Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes using Transmission Electron Microscopy"

Maciej: "Calculation of the Feed-Downs to the Meson Transverse Momentum Spectra Measured in PHENIX Experiment at RHIC, BNL"

Oren and his magic!

Joel speaking about how a random walk is similar to being drunk, 

something he enjoys as much as exploring fundamental scientific principles

Unfortunately, I missed the opportunity to snap photos of Jonathan and his worms 

(Brigsey, Gramps, and the other one, I think...), which were beautifully drawn

Day 63 - Day of rest?

As usual, my once-weekly chance to sleep late again fell on Saturday. I had no plans and didn't intend to make any, so there was no reason to get up. After breakfast, some brief blogging, and checking my e-mail, I showered and got dressed, and headed out of Clore. My destination: work, excitingly. Since I'll be missing a day during my final week and it's getting to be crunch time, I wanted to take the chance to get as much done as possible.

I was expecting to find Noa in, but instead found Patro, again. He was working on Matlab homework exercizes as he made some samples, and I just sat and processed images. For five hours. I didn't get up, or eat, or anything except listen to Kenna and measure distances in ImageJ. How I did this I don't know, but, magically, I am again, and hopefully permanently, DONE with all the images I have and plan to use! It's truly wonderful.

Once I arrived at this landmark point, I tore myself away from the screen and left Perlman. I was hungry, and learned that a group was heading out for dinner soon, so I stashed my stuff and chilled for a bit until everyone was back from the gym and showered. David, a Weizmann student, was having a large picnic outside to celebrate having been in Israel for a whole year, so I mingled with Ivonne, Maria Magdalena, Claudia, and Yovav outside and tasted a few of the many cakes which kept appearing among the other food. The picnic was really chill; music was playing as people sprawled on blankets on the lawn in front of Clore or tossed a frisbee (and later an American football, which puzzled me as no Americans were present) around. Claudia took an amazing picture of Maria Magdalena and I both making characteristic "Becca" faces, an image which I hope makes it to facebook.

Soon, though, Maciej, Onur and I joined Tanmay, Clay and Zvonimir at Hertzl Bar. I had a huge craving for meat, so got the hamburger, which is an ambitious undertaking. Onur and Maciej did the same, while the others had puny little sandwiches at the next table. They planned on seeing the Batman movie (again, for Tanmay and Zvonimir, but for the first time for Clay), and so went back to Clore to get ready and such. The three of us lingered a bit over coffee. Maciej and Onur suggested something I'd been contemplating for a while: asking the waitress whether the place had any of the coffee cups and saucers with an image of Hertzl for sale. Unfortunately, we learned they didn't have enough to sell any. Sadness.

After finishing our beverages we headed back to the dorm. I decided not to tag along to see The Dark Knight again, mostly because it was hot out and I didn't feel like walking. Maciej and I hung around at the picnic, which was still in full swing. I got a chance to catch up with Dan about his trip to Portugal with his family, and we had a discussion as to what defines cute (in his words, a large head-to-body size ratio: i.e. an iPod plugged into a TV = cute). During this discussion we also discovered that there was a cooler of liquid nitrogen at this picnic (how dorky and scientist-like). It had to be gotten rid of, so we made frozen treats out of the remainder of the picnic desserts. The frozen chocolate truffle was particularly delicious.

Eventually it got too hot to stay outside, and I kind of needed my computer adapter, which I had lent to Jordan but couldn't get back because neither Jordan nor Joel were around or in their room. When I mentioned this to Dan, though, he reminded me that his room adjoins theirs, so he helped me break in through the bathroom and get it back. I noticed some juggling pins on his floor, and of course made him show me his mad skills. He did the whole under-leg tossing thing, and other fancy stuff, and it turns out he attended a juggling conference here earlier this summer. Very cool. I had him give me some tips for starting out, but pins have always eluded me so after a few minutes and marginal improvement I called it quits.

Newly armed with my adapter, I went back to my room to grab my computer, and hung out in the lobby for a bit, chatting and blogging. Eventually I decided it was bed time, but who else was entering Clore as I went downstairs but Stephen and Ari! I made them come talk to me in my room where the air conditioning was actually effective, and Oren, Joel and Jordan came in and out periodically as Stephen and Ari told me about their weekends in Jerusalem, which had contained a few overlapping events (like Shabbat lunch). We all got tired at around the same time, though, so I kicked them all out and went to bed.

As promised, here are pictures of the Bahai Gardens. Enjoy!

Day 25 - Radially symmetric invertebrates

Work today was spent mostly processing images, adding the data to my growing excel file, and adjusting the plots to include the new points. The trends I'm seeing aren't changing shape, but the standard deviations are becoming smaller, which is nice. Yay for large sample sizes!

Exciting things today included lunch with XiaoMeng, her friend, and Asaf at San Martin and the math department cookie break, which I crashed because my eyes were starting to water from all the image examination. I went to Ran's cubicle at 3:25, then headed over to the lounge with him at 3:30. Apparently there was no hot water for the coffee or tea, but Jonathan had gone up a floor to get hot water for his tea, so he slurped it extremely loudly for the entire half hour I was there in an effort to inspire jealousy in the other warm drink seekers. I went back to my building to get my camera, then came back to Ran's cubicle room to record the contrasting images displayed below. Before leaving, he gave me a gift: a small porcelain figure of a fighter in purple robes wielding a yellow bat. His explanation was that he used to have twelve, 6 on either side, but someone took one from the other side so I was helping him re-achieve symmetry. I said I'd borrow it for the summer, for my unadorned desk.

After work, I went back to Clore to grab a bathing suit and towel, then met everyone in the San Martin parking lot. We all got on a bus for our first official KKISS trip, to the beach at Ashdod, also a huge port city. I sat next to Erin on the way there, which made for some interesting, and rather politically charged, conversation. We got there in about a half hour, and after helping deposit all the food in a central location, most of us headed to the nearby beach and took a dip. The water was warm and there were waves, but there was trash in the water, and many of us received minor jellyfish stings (except Claudia, whose sting was slightly worse than minor). I swam with Lisa and learned the basics of her life story, and helped prevent her from exiting the water with makeup dripping down her face. We got out and everyone photographed the group and the sunset. I met and chatted with Maria, a relatively new member of our program, after we examined a huge jellyfish which had washed up on shore. Finally, we headed back to the food, where Greta was finishing the grilling.

We ate pita, salad, cold cuts and grilled hot dogs as we dried off. Greta had told us this would be a "light meal," but most of us were stuffed by the time she brought out the fruit and marshmallows. Someone had assembled a pile of dry wood on the other side of the beach before we arrived, which was then lit as soon as darkness fell. Many of us headed over to the bonfire to dry off and attempt to roast the marshmallows. The latter task proved challenging, but eventually we rigged a system by which we insterted our small wooden skewers into the tip of a much longer piece of scrap wood, so that the marshmallow could reach the fire without the person wielding it having to get too close to the fire.

Eventually we headed back, grabbed the leftover food and dry goods, and packed up the bus. I sat with Lisa on the way back. When we got back to campus and unpacked the bus, I noticed that the driver had a bed and clothesline underneath the bus. Innnnteresting.

We walked back to Clore and as everyone wanted to shower, there was quite a backup. I hung out with Stephen and Jonathan as they got ready to go out; I was still undecided as to whether I'd join. Alissa and I watched the remainder of the Germany/Turkey game, and she decided to go to bed. I showered and was on my way out of Clore when I ran into Stephen on his way back. We decided to get an ice cream, and at the convenience store struck up what ended up being an hour-long conversation, in Hebrew, with another patron. The best part, though, was that I think I understood a good portion of it! Eventually, I reached the point where I was tired enough that I had to leave. As soon as I got back to my room I went to bed.

The whiteboard in the cubicle next to Ran's:

observe the math content

Ran's whiteboard:

observe the pirate ship, mountains, desert island, and pokemon

Left to right:

Tamara, Ivonne, Lisa, Anya, Andre, Claudia, and Maria Magdalena

Jonathan, before the application of the idea to use a longer stick

Ari and Zvonomir

Tamara, Joel, Lisa and Alissa

Erin with the spare meat some random dude gave us