Brain Image Reproduction

Starting a few years ago I began to wonder if it would be possible to record what you saw like a video.  Or keep track of all of the great and fleating thoughts that you had throughout the day, without having to write them all down.  What if you could take an image that you created in your imagination and make it come to life without the need to have great fine motor skills.  That would be great for minds like mine which are creative but forgetful and lack some of the skills required to express or recreate your thoughts and ideas.

Apparently research being conducted in japan at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories is working on solving this problem.  As of right now they can only roughly recreate black and white images viewed by a person.  But maybe the ability to read neurotransmisions and rectreate there significance digitally is not an acheivement that should be prefaced with the preposition “Only”.

More info at: Pink Tentacle

Knee Surgery

For family and friends, and anyone else who wants to know, I was struck by a car while riding my bike on September 10th.  On November 18th I underwent surgery to repair my meniscus as well as other damaged cartilage (I do not remember the technical name for the other parts of my knee that had lost cartilage), my ACL was replaced with a donor ligament, and scar tissue was removed from my MCL and other parts of my knee.  I was told that I would most likely need a complete knee replacement later in life if I wished to walk unaided.  I was also informed that I could no longer run as a sport, that running would have to be limited to “life and death” situations.  This was all very disheartening to me, but the good news is that I should be able to continue snowboarding, although if I do I’m sure I will need that knee replacement sooner than I otherwise would.  The following link has a small amount of blood, but shows my knee 24 hrs after surgery for those who wish to see it.  knee.

As of right now I am recovering well, and hope to be healthier than before by the begining of next snowboarding season.

Research Abstract

I recently submitted my first abstract for a materials Conference.  The first conference to which I have submitted the abstract was PACRIM8, hopefully I will still submit the abstract to ACERS and TMS.  below is the current draft of the abstract.  Research as always is continuing and the project develops as time goes on.  Check back for updates, or ask any questions you may have.

Crystallographic Characterization of Rare-Earth Hafnates

Thomas J. Anderson

Dr. Rick Ubic

The nature and degree of disorder in the Ln₂Hf₂O₇ (Ln = La → Lu) series has never been fully quantified. The purpose of this study is to investigate the structure of such pyrohafnates and specifically to determine the degree of both cation and anion disorder, both of which have implications for ionic conductivity. Towards that end, several lanthanide pyrohafnate compounds, Ln₂Hf₂O₇ (Ln = La, Pr, Nd, Tb, Dy, Yb, and Lu), have been synthesized via a solid-state reaction mechanism. The crystal structures were determined by electron diffraction, and Rietveld structural refinements were conducted using neutron diffraction data collected at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center. As expected, low-Z lanthanides result in pyrochloric compounds whereas high-Z lanthanides form fully fluoritic ones. Intermediate lanthanides form partially disordered pyrochlores, and some show anionic disorder unconnected to cation disorder. As expected, the fluorite-equivalent cubic lattice constant was found to decrease as Z increases.

Face to face

My freshman year of college (2001), I thought it was weird that people would IM people when they where just down the hall. I quickly found myself doing it realizing that I could talk to everyone on the hall AND pretend to do my homework, and surf the web all at the same time.

One night late at IHOP (2005) I was sitting at a table with a friend, his date and her sister, you can see where this is going. I actually thought the sister was cute, so instead of pretending to go to the bathroom and dragging him along like a couple of middle school girls, I texted him to ask him about her, and if she may be interested, I also asked her sister something of the sort. They both pick up there phones and then I see her pick up her phone, realizing that one of them texted her. within 30 seconds everyone is on there phones texting and I feel like we are in 7th grade passing notes. I couldn’t stand it that long and turn to her and start conversation to end the weird circle of texting.

then when I first met my wife’s family (2006), they are all a bunch of NERDS! I was baffled to find them all one saturday morning in the living room together. I thought oh, how cool, a family that spends time together casually. Then I realized that there where 5 people using 6 computers, and that no one was verbally talking to each other. I sat down and picked up my laptop to check my e-mail, thinking that everyone was busy working on something important. Then my wife IMed me. I wasn’t 6 feet away from her. apparently they were all doing something. but in addition via e-mails and IM’s they where plotting a surprise for her mother while she was in the room. Almost everyone was in on it. The weird part of this communication was that you knew what you said, and what was said to you, but because we weren’t in a chat we had no idea what was being said to mom.

So these are a couple of random stories of my experience of using electronic comunication despite the ability to talk to people face to face. The reason I bring all of this up is because I was in a lecture on the NASA campus where someone explained the trends of human society and claimed that by the time my children (they aren’t born yet) are in college that it will not be in person.

He claimed that people will replace almost all of there face to face duties with electronic equivalents. He went on to discuss how that there are certain jobs that would seem to need a human touch. Obviously doctors are not being replaced, but a piece of equipment can often times do what there skilled hands cannot, and it may not be too long before they are no longer holding the scalpel.

an tangible example he gave was hospice/nursing homes. You may think that the elderly would prefer to talk to someone. In japan a robot was developed to give them there daily medicine, bring them drinks, etc. After a brief period the patients came to prefer the robot to the person. They resented a person for telling them what to do in there current position, but they thought of the robot as more of a helpful pet.

What do you think? will face to face interaction become obsolete. Think about this as you are reading a blog and posting a comment as opposed to sitting down in a meeting discussing it. How many times would you rather conduct business via teleconference, e-mail, text, etc. rather than sitting in a meeting discussing it in person.

Polyimide Foam

I haven’t written hardly all summer, so I thought I would give a quick update on my summer project and what is going on.

So NASA Langely Developed a polyimide foam for use as insulation in naval ships.  It was found that this foam was also a very good sound absober.  It is 95% open cell, but still has a large amount of cellular wall material, or membrain.  The way the foam absorbs sound is by deflecting the sound wave and then by thermal absorption of the energy in the sound wave.  

We have been working on a post production process to make the foam more sound absorbent because although it is sound absorbent and cost effective to manufacture it is not as sound absorbent as the engineered fiberglass that is currently used as sound insulation on airplanes, which is where the foam would be used as a sound absorber.

The research over the summer seems to conclude that we have found a repeatable way of making the foam more absorbent then current fiberglass on the market, but more confirmations still need to be done.  You can look forward to a technical paper on my research within the next couple months.  And then a research paper, hopefully this year. (I don’t have as much influence with that, when anything “officially” comes out of NASA it takes forever.

bigger picture

This is the a microscopic image of the foam partially processed, taken with an HRSEM – “high resolution scanning electron microscope”

NASA Langley

So this week it was made official that I am going to be interning this summer with the LARSS program at the NASA Langley base. I’m not exactly sure what LARSS stands for, but it is the program through which all of there interns are assigned mentors and projects. I still don’t know a lot about the position just that It is in the “Research and Technology Directorate”, and the project consists of “Fabricate and Test advanced acoustic polyimide foam for subsonic fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft.” That is all I currently know, and probably wost of what I will be able to say about it for the rest of the project, many things in the projects we are involved in are confidential. I think this will be a great opportunity, and hopefully a lot of fun. I was on the base last summer, but I was interning for a subcontractor, Jacobs Engineering.

New Blog

to kind of keep things separated. I have started another blog for my rants and raves, and spontaneous ideas.

hukit

welcome to my page

Just a quick reference for people new to the page, which will be most everyone for a while.  If you are a potential employer, please check out my resume, if you have already received a copy of my resume it is likely that this is more recent or more full.  The links page is simply links to my myspace etc.  I hope you enjoy your visit to my page.

first blog

I’ve just started this blog to be able to communicate with friends and largely potential employers. I don’t have much up yet, but hope to have plenty of things in the future.