I'm a biomedical engineering student at Washington U. in St. Louis, entrepreneur, molecular microbiology researcher, culinary connoisseur and blogger. This is where I share my ideas and links.
I saw this in a bookstore this weekend. If you have never heard of quantum physics, here is my brief intro: Take the book, close your eyes, and throw it. Quantum physics says the book is now a wave instead of particles. Ta-da, your mind is blown.
‘If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.’ -Niels Bohr
I’m currently halfway through A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I find theoretical physics fascinating and what I have enjoyed about this book thus far is that it has expanded upon the more basic quantum physics and relativity concepts I have studied quantitatively in class and qualitatively explains where they fit in the overall picture of physics.
I saw the movie Micmacs while in Pittsburgh over the weekend. It was an excellently written and executed piece that balanced humor with some drama in a way that kept the film enjoyable. Below was one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
My textbook for Organic Chemistry has an uncharacteristically specific passage about the science of cocaine. It discusses methods of ingestion and their respective effects on the rate of absorption of the drug. It then discusses how to make the compound odorless and less volatile. It even compares methods of efficiency for converting cocaine to crack cocaine, eventually concluding that sodium bicarbonate, the household chemical known as baking soda, is the best method of synthesizing crack cocaine. No other single chemical received such attention in the textbook. . .
The WSJ today features an article about autonomous computer-based trading. I find this type of technology fascinating, and the book Quants (by a WSJ writer) does a great job of detailing the successes and failures of such trading strategies. I feel that this technology will ultimately benefit society in a similar manner to video games. Video games pushed the limits of computer hardware and ultimately helped to make fast processors and video cards affordable for the average consumer. Computer trading will attract the most brilliant minds due to the promise of extravagant profits and their innovations in the area of artificial intelligence, or more specifically computer logic, will be able to be applied to a variety of other uses. Computers may be able to better handle large sets of data and make informed decisions in place of humans where error can have dangerous results. I foresee this technology being used in air traffic control, weather prediction, medical diagnosis and many other fields. However, we just have to hope that the mistakes off of which they learn don’t destroy the stock market before society can benefit.
