Blog Posts

Alas, the instructions for installing the Conjecturing package for Sage posted on Nico Van Cleemput’s Conjecturing website did not work for me right out of the box. So, in hopes of saving others a little time (or misery) here are instructions to perform a local installation of the Conjecturing package for Sage on macOS Mojave, as of 10 November 2019. Only use these if you strike out using Van Cleemput’s instructions. ... Read more …

I’ve just submitted my first conference paper to 10th ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics (ACM-BCB 2019): Identifying Conserved Human RNA Structures Using RNAz-LocARNA-RNAz Analysis Pipeline, co-authored with Hosna Jabbari. Keep your fingers crossed for us. Abstract: Identification of conserved RNA structures is of great importance in establishing causes of and potential therapeutic targets for genetic diseases. It has been estimated that over half of human genetic disease is due to alternative or disrupted RNA splicing, possibly caused by interrupted/damaged common structural functional motifs. ... Read more …

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. — Abraham Lincoln

This coming Wednesday, I’ll be giving this presentation to Prof Jabbari’s bioinformatics algorithms class.

Not the best thing to see on a day with two final exams… But just half a block away, the world was redeemed with this… …and to all at Groovy-UV: GOOD LUCK on your finals!

“If you really wish to learn you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial”. – Wilbur Wright (Thank you, Jim Hefferon)

Among all the other things I have on my plate, this summer I’ll be coding a simulator for a combinatorial architecture proposed back in 1998 by Berkovitch and Berkovitch. Their paper “presents a new principle for microprocessor design based on a pairwise-balanced combinatorial arrangement of processing and memory elements.” This was suggested to me by Prof Alan Ling. Just an exercise at this point. Should be fun. ;) [1] E. Berkovitch and S. ... Read more …

An encounter today… Walking from campus to downtown, I see a group of young children and their caretaker outside the Y Annex. They are looking down at the sidewalk excitedly. “What’s all the fuss? I ask. A little girl runs up to me, grabs me by the hand, and tugs me over to where they are looking. “We found a worm!” “Oohhh. Well. Let’s have a look.” They all point, and sure enough, there’s a worm right at the edge of the sidewalk. ... Read more …

Seen and heard about town today… The sound of birds returning – and skateboards. A woman driving down Main Street with her elbows on the steering wheel, flossing her teeth. A man with a prosthetic leg, walking a dog with three legs (none prosthetic). Someone texting while driving, who drove over the curb, knocked down a street sign, and left their vehicle marooned on a snowbank, bottomed out, with all four wheels spinning in the air. ... Read more …

Seen about town today… A old-timer with a walker and oxygen therapy tank and tubes, stopped to have a smoke. Call this “unclear on the concept”. I thought of 21 Grams. A girl with a surgical mask to keep from spreading germs. Her mask was decorated with a dog nose and whiskers.