Hey Europe enthusiasts,
In case you didn’t know, Eurovision is a yearly competition between songs from each European country. It is very interesting to see how the style of music picked as best by each country matches their respective cultural, political or economical situations. For example, Ukraine has a rock/rap political song, Turkey a very traditional belly-dancing kind of tune and Sweden competes with a heavily American flashy song. I’ve randomly listened to just a few of them and I think it’s fascinating how diverse they all are. It’s stuff like this that brings admiration / uncertainty to the whole EU idea. Here’s the link if you are so bored that you want to listen to bad European music:
http://www.eurovision.tv
Friday, April 29, 2005
Eurovision
Here's an e-mail I sent to my friends Sarah and Jason because I am too lazy to write a post.
rock my sock
Last night I went to the Chevelle concert that happened in the Greek amphitheater here on campus. I guess I could say I had fun but, most importantly, I realized how old I am. I came to the sad conclusion that Chevelle was probably the last angry-music concert I would ever go to. The cohorts of immature highschoolers really annoyed me. I think I realized how ridiculous I was at that age and I decided that I didn't appropve of my immature self. From now on I will only listen to angry music at home, in the car, or while working out and I'll reserve my right to go out to chilled out bars.
Having to wash my tennis shoes because they were heavily stepped on sucks too.
Having to wash my tennis shoes because they were heavily stepped on sucks too.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Go Bill
Bill Gates is speaking up against the limitations imposed on the number of H1-B visas given each year (photos here). For those who don't know, H1-B are temporary working visas for about six years given to professionals with higher degrees in technical fields. One of the conditions is that the employer can show that no Americans were available to fill the job.
After 911 the H1B visa cap was reduced from 135,000 to 60,000 and the effects on the econmony are now just starting to show up. Knowledgeable, and highly motivated foreign workers make a big chunk of the American IT industry. It is also known that 60% of the entrepreneurships and job creating companies are started by immigrants that come to America with a dream.
Another effect of 911 and the craze for security is a drop by 30% in the enrollment of international graduate students in the sciences. The universities are especially griping about this one because grad students function as the big workhorse for science departments: teaching, grading, research. If I recall correctly, the new policy of the government regarding international grad students in the tech fields is "Secure borders, open doors", which translates into: "If you have all your papers, we'll give you the visa." I know people who a few years ago were rejected a student visa even though they had full financial aid offers from Ivy League schools.
Asia is starting to seriously threaten America's lead in innovation and technology. And globally, the technology gap is getting smaller and smaller. It is no secret to anybody that the level of basic education in the States is not that great. If America stops being a brain magnet things will go down a slippery slope and become very hard to correct. Far from being biased, I hope that the government will open up the job market and if not encourage, at least allow employment of highly qualified internationals.
After 911 the H1B visa cap was reduced from 135,000 to 60,000 and the effects on the econmony are now just starting to show up. Knowledgeable, and highly motivated foreign workers make a big chunk of the American IT industry. It is also known that 60% of the entrepreneurships and job creating companies are started by immigrants that come to America with a dream.
Another effect of 911 and the craze for security is a drop by 30% in the enrollment of international graduate students in the sciences. The universities are especially griping about this one because grad students function as the big workhorse for science departments: teaching, grading, research. If I recall correctly, the new policy of the government regarding international grad students in the tech fields is "Secure borders, open doors", which translates into: "If you have all your papers, we'll give you the visa." I know people who a few years ago were rejected a student visa even though they had full financial aid offers from Ivy League schools.
Asia is starting to seriously threaten America's lead in innovation and technology. And globally, the technology gap is getting smaller and smaller. It is no secret to anybody that the level of basic education in the States is not that great. If America stops being a brain magnet things will go down a slippery slope and become very hard to correct. Far from being biased, I hope that the government will open up the job market and if not encourage, at least allow employment of highly qualified internationals.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Yesterday I successfully defended my thesis. I think the profs liked the work, but I was not fully content with my presentation. Now I am contemplating modifying the paper and submitting it to Inquiry, a journal of undergraduate research. If it gets selected they pay $1000, which I desperately need. Also, both Dr. Pulay and Dr. Vicic begged me to do a little more work on it and try to publish something in an inorganic chemistry journal. It would deffinitely be nice to have a publication before I move on to grad school.
Also on the list:
Also on the list:
- make poster for Thursday
- e-mail Colorado people
- reformat and update paper for Inquiry
- Numerical Analysis homework and programming
- Kinetics notes
- Statistics homework
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
the face of America
Most of the people form their opinions about America from indirect sources. Some learn about the US from commercial movies, some look at the decisions of an illiterate president, others just read the news. Sometimes I feel so frustrated because all these sources depict an average reality. I know that a common view in Europe is that Americans are just a bunch of TV watching, burger eating, ignorance breeding arrogants. I agree. You can find many Americans to fit that image, but few know about the people on the other side of the scale. Since I came here four years ago I have always been amazed by the compassion, love and openness a lot of Americans guide their life with.
Here is an example of people volunteering to come to Romania and help raise children in an orphanage. They pay about $2000 out of their pocket, pause their life for a couple of months and travel to a place where they are total strangers. All this just so they can save the life of a child. I know that the common Romanian mentality is: nah, you're so naive. It can't be true, they are up to something. It's really sad that doing good things has become suspicious. Believe it or not, there are still people in this world that truly believe that helping others is the right thing to do.
Here is an example of people volunteering to come to Romania and help raise children in an orphanage. They pay about $2000 out of their pocket, pause their life for a couple of months and travel to a place where they are total strangers. All this just so they can save the life of a child. I know that the common Romanian mentality is: nah, you're so naive. It can't be true, they are up to something. It's really sad that doing good things has become suspicious. Believe it or not, there are still people in this world that truly believe that helping others is the right thing to do.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD)
Here is the recording (.asx format) of a radio show with Karen Buechler, president and chief technology officer of the ALD Nanosolutions Colorado-based company. Dr. Steven George, the co-founder of the company, who I will be working with for my Ph.D. is one of the inventors of ALD, which was named one of last year's best innovations by R&D Magazine.
social embeddedness and economic governance
That is the title of a paper (pdf) by Dr. Raja Kali, an economics professor at University of Arkansas. I just came back from his talk in the lecture series Why Math, our math club Pi Mu Epsilon organizes this semester. The talk pointed out some fascinating aspects about how social interraction affect the success of an economy. The main idea was that applying random graph theory to the social interractions between individuals, a society can fit in two models.
1. A relational model, where individuals cluster up and have a few connections. The best example would be a system where each point of a graph can reach at the maximum length of 2. A real life example would be Afghanistan or most of the 3rd world societies where there is trade only within each social, ethnical or religious cluster. In fact Dr Kali said that there is a strong correlation between underdeveloped countries and a relational model of social interaction.
2.A small world model, where a few points are randomly connected to other points that are far away. It turns out that this is the predominant model for most of the succesful economies. It also applies to systems like the internet, oil pipelines, electricity grids, telecommunications, etc. Small world refers to the fact that any two points on this kind of graph, or individuals in a world, are connected to one another in very few steps.
The next step was to graft on top of this model the idea of the prisoner's dillema, one of the basic concepts in game theory. This comes as no surprise because economical interraction and any kind of business decision can be looked at as a game. It turns out that the main deterrent from having a long distance (outside of the comfort circle) business relation is the possibility of being cheated. In a modern society, the legal system is very well put in place and therefore electronic commerce, or global businesses are a viable thing to do. This increases the interconnectedness of the system, it makes it a "smaller world" and this leads to a better economy altogether.
But how can a relational economy be transformed into complex, small-world economy? If we want to transform Afghanistan, a country with no infrastracture and a lot of social tension into an American model, where in similar conditions, very different ethnic groups decided to collaborate and develop a complex economy, what should the first and most effective step be? Should we start with creating institutions like police, administration and judicial system to make sure that long distance connections are not too high of a risk? Or maybe we should pay more attention to the institutions of information, like schools, that promote the formation of such long distance relationships. Applying the mathematical model, Kali's result is that if the starting material is a very backward relational society, then creating police is the best thing to start with. If we want to improve an already rather complex system then investing in information is the way to go.
If you had the patience to read all the way to here it may seem obvious how this can be related to the Romanian economy. I have my theory that what ex-communist countries lack the most is effective communication. People are not open to each other and don't know how to send their ideas around concisely. Also there is a serious lack of trust, because 45 years of repression made you think twice whether to trust your next door neighbor or not. So now it is clear and mathematically proven: for the Romanian economy to get out of the hole, the first step is to strenghten the legal system and the police. I assume that this is what the new administration is set on doing anyway, so maybe things are not so bad after all.
1. A relational model, where individuals cluster up and have a few connections. The best example would be a system where each point of a graph can reach at the maximum length of 2. A real life example would be Afghanistan or most of the 3rd world societies where there is trade only within each social, ethnical or religious cluster. In fact Dr Kali said that there is a strong correlation between underdeveloped countries and a relational model of social interaction.
2.A small world model, where a few points are randomly connected to other points that are far away. It turns out that this is the predominant model for most of the succesful economies. It also applies to systems like the internet, oil pipelines, electricity grids, telecommunications, etc. Small world refers to the fact that any two points on this kind of graph, or individuals in a world, are connected to one another in very few steps.
The next step was to graft on top of this model the idea of the prisoner's dillema, one of the basic concepts in game theory. This comes as no surprise because economical interraction and any kind of business decision can be looked at as a game. It turns out that the main deterrent from having a long distance (outside of the comfort circle) business relation is the possibility of being cheated. In a modern society, the legal system is very well put in place and therefore electronic commerce, or global businesses are a viable thing to do. This increases the interconnectedness of the system, it makes it a "smaller world" and this leads to a better economy altogether.
But how can a relational economy be transformed into complex, small-world economy? If we want to transform Afghanistan, a country with no infrastracture and a lot of social tension into an American model, where in similar conditions, very different ethnic groups decided to collaborate and develop a complex economy, what should the first and most effective step be? Should we start with creating institutions like police, administration and judicial system to make sure that long distance connections are not too high of a risk? Or maybe we should pay more attention to the institutions of information, like schools, that promote the formation of such long distance relationships. Applying the mathematical model, Kali's result is that if the starting material is a very backward relational society, then creating police is the best thing to start with. If we want to improve an already rather complex system then investing in information is the way to go.
If you had the patience to read all the way to here it may seem obvious how this can be related to the Romanian economy. I have my theory that what ex-communist countries lack the most is effective communication. People are not open to each other and don't know how to send their ideas around concisely. Also there is a serious lack of trust, because 45 years of repression made you think twice whether to trust your next door neighbor or not. So now it is clear and mathematically proven: for the Romanian economy to get out of the hole, the first step is to strenghten the legal system and the police. I assume that this is what the new administration is set on doing anyway, so maybe things are not so bad after all.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Goodbye MIT ..... weeps
Dear Mrs. Brighton,
Thank you and the entire chemistry department for the Ph.D. offer I received from MIT. Unfortunately, I decided to accept the offer from University of Colorado at Boulder, where I will be working with Dr. Steven George in atomic layer deposition. My decision was between MIT, Colorado, UT Austin, and U of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
I was impressed by the chemistry department at MIT. The visitation weekend was helpful in offering me the opportunity to meet with the faculty I was interested in working with. My final decision was based mostly on finding a good research and personality match with an advisor, and Colorado turned out to have the best offer for me.
I am honored to have received the acceptance and great financial offer from the mighty MIT. I hope that somewhere along the way my scientific career will meet again with that of your institution.
Sincerely,
Dragos Seghete
Thank you and the entire chemistry department for the Ph.D. offer I received from MIT. Unfortunately, I decided to accept the offer from University of Colorado at Boulder, where I will be working with Dr. Steven George in atomic layer deposition. My decision was between MIT, Colorado, UT Austin, and U of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
I was impressed by the chemistry department at MIT. The visitation weekend was helpful in offering me the opportunity to meet with the faculty I was interested in working with. My final decision was based mostly on finding a good research and personality match with an advisor, and Colorado turned out to have the best offer for me.
I am honored to have received the acceptance and great financial offer from the mighty MIT. I hope that somewhere along the way my scientific career will meet again with that of your institution.
Sincerely,
Dragos Seghete
Improv everywhere
Last week's This American Life is just brilliant. Act II is about the troup Improv everywhere. They create unrealistic improvised situations in daily life situations. In one of the skits they had a group of 12 volunteers looping a sequence of events in a Starbucks. One guy would spill the water, dry it off, go to the bathroom and the repeat. A couple would come in, get in an argument and leave. Some other guy would just go through the store listening to a boombox. And so on. Each actor would repeat the sequence over and over, until customers in the shop realized what was going on. After a few loops the crowd started to predict the future, call relatives to let them know about the "Groundhog day" experience. They have a lot more stories and they get even better (or worse). Absolutely brilliant !!!
Victory
Done. Kaput. Gata. I finished writing the first version of my honors thesis. It's not the best of my work but the result is pretty interesting. It shows that I have done my work and allows me to move on.
DOC version here. PDF version here, thanks to PDFonline.com
DOC version here. PDF version here, thanks to PDFonline.com
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Friday, April 15, 2005
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
My molecule
I am testing Hello on my laptop computer because I can't make it run on my desktop. I am in the lab so the first picture that came in handy was my molecule. Let's see if it works...
optimized molecule - after 272 cycles
optimized molecule - after 272 cycles
Monday, April 11, 2005
creativity test
This test has been coming up in a number of blogs lately. I took it and scored 72, with high scores on curiosity and complexity of ideas.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Romania in the press
A lot of people here in the US talk about Prague and Budapest as the best places to go visit in Europe. However, nobody's heard of Romania yet, and that's probably because the touristic infrastructure is still lacking. These are the first articles I have found that talk about Romania as a touristic destination.
Tourism in Romania
Ceausescu's monster palace - second biggest building in the world
Tourism in Romania
Ceausescu's monster palace - second biggest building in the world
Saturday, April 09, 2005
math seminar, kinetics .... check!
I am done with these two culprits. I just finished posting the math paper on my website. I promissed to my uncle I would do that so I decided to create a Writing section on my website. I plan to put some of my lab reports and papers for display on there. Actually I've always wanted to post some of my writings just so people get an idea of what I am doing here, but I was never determined enough to act on it.
Tomorrow is thesis time. I am running a last calculation and it looks like it's still running but every once in a while just stops in the middle of a SCF step. Just weird.
Tomorrow is thesis time. I am running a last calculation and it looks like it's still running but every once in a while just stops in the middle of a SCF step. Just weird.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
more dough
I received two more scholarships from the chemistry department yesterday. That would help ALOT! The total amount is 900 which bring me up to about ... 900. :)
I still haven't started my Kinetics take home which is due Friday and takes about 10-15 hours of work. I haven't started writing my thesis which is scheduled to defend for Monday April 25th at 2:30pm. I have a homework and a program for Num Lin Alg. A paper for the Colloquium, a test coming up Stat (what a joke) and a poster to present for thesis. I am getting worried.
I still haven't started my Kinetics take home which is due Friday and takes about 10-15 hours of work. I haven't started writing my thesis which is scheduled to defend for Monday April 25th at 2:30pm. I have a homework and a program for Num Lin Alg. A paper for the Colloquium, a test coming up Stat (what a joke) and a poster to present for thesis. I am getting worried.
Monday, April 04, 2005
Let Colorado be my home
I have decided. I will get my Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from University of Colorado at Boulder. I will be working with Dr. Steven George on research involving Atomic Layer Deposition. I don't have time to justify my decision here, but it took me a while to reach it. I am so excited about this and I can't wait to get out there and start it all over again. If life has ups and downs, this is deffinitely a transition state on my PES.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Friday, April 01, 2005
Best news from Romania
This is going to be a weird post, but I must talk about it. Let's face it, I like to be up to date with the news and spend probably too much time browsing the net in search of cool news. What I am about to write here is by far the most positive piece of news I have heard since the recent elections in Romania.
My story's main characther is the cop Nistor Carbunaru from my hometown Piatra Neamt, who came out a few years ago and revealed the corruption and utter lack of professionalism that infused the state police. After making public his criticism to the press and to his superiors, instead of starting an investigation the Department of Interior sacked him. He was deposed of his ranking and assigned some dirty ground work although his qualification was penal investigation. He was moved to a different unit in a different town and prosecuted under military law for some b.s. charges. After a few legal terms he won in the regional appelate courts, the police appealed and the trial moved to the Supreme Court. After two years of trials, in December 2004 he won his job and rank back, giving a severe blow to the entire corrupt system that believed his resistence was futile and naive.
The story gets even better. After the centrist alliance D.A. won the Romanian elections last fall, the newly elected president Basescu vowed that fight against corruption would be number one on his priority list. Sure enough, the new governement fired all the state police heads and organized professional job applications with interviews, computer and English language tests and required a portfolio with a project proposal for reforming the state police system. The GREAT news is that yesterday Mr. Nistor Carbunaru passed all the tests and won the position of state police head. YES, he is now the boss of his old "friends" who sacked him for denouncing their acts of corruption. It sounds cliche, almost cheesy, but for Romania this is unheard of. I will be looking forward to his first actions.
December news. Yesterday's news.
My story's main characther is the cop Nistor Carbunaru from my hometown Piatra Neamt, who came out a few years ago and revealed the corruption and utter lack of professionalism that infused the state police. After making public his criticism to the press and to his superiors, instead of starting an investigation the Department of Interior sacked him. He was deposed of his ranking and assigned some dirty ground work although his qualification was penal investigation. He was moved to a different unit in a different town and prosecuted under military law for some b.s. charges. After a few legal terms he won in the regional appelate courts, the police appealed and the trial moved to the Supreme Court. After two years of trials, in December 2004 he won his job and rank back, giving a severe blow to the entire corrupt system that believed his resistence was futile and naive.
The story gets even better. After the centrist alliance D.A. won the Romanian elections last fall, the newly elected president Basescu vowed that fight against corruption would be number one on his priority list. Sure enough, the new governement fired all the state police heads and organized professional job applications with interviews, computer and English language tests and required a portfolio with a project proposal for reforming the state police system. The GREAT news is that yesterday Mr. Nistor Carbunaru passed all the tests and won the position of state police head. YES, he is now the boss of his old "friends" who sacked him for denouncing their acts of corruption. It sounds cliche, almost cheesy, but for Romania this is unheard of. I will be looking forward to his first actions.
December news. Yesterday's news.
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