Day 4

Laber Labs: Day 4

Today’s workday was over a Zoom meeting, in which Justin Weltz of Duke University taught us about various sampling methods and social networks. We learned about the pros and cons between random sampling and biased sampling, as well as how to apply sampling probabilities to specific mathematic formulas. Additionally, we learned more about reinforcement learning (which we had touched upon previously) and its relationship to artificial intelligence and machine learning. We also got to ask Mr. Weltz about his experience as a current graduate student doing research projects at Duke, such as what it’s like to work on research projects and how to set goals for these projects, advice for graduate school, and what topics in math and programming he would advise to learn if one is interested in pursuing a career in data science.

Back today! A few kids were out sick, but one kid and one teacher came back from vacation to a total of 6 kids and 4 adults. We had a relaxed day with a morning trip in the Kinderwagon to the grocery store to get fresh fruit and vegetables. When at the grocery store, we put everything directly from the shelf to the crate we brought, with no plastic waste or packaging – just fruits and veggies in the crate! My host family does the same thing, loading up the crates. Last week I accidentally stole from the kindergarten and today I returned my thieved item. After taking my glass mineral water bottle home, I had to bring it back once empty to put it in the crate of water it came in. Once the kindergarten has the crate full of empty bottles, they then bring it back to where they bought the water and get money back for bringing the glass back to recycle. I thought this was very neat because it’s a more eco friendly recycling system with accountability because of the buy back. My host family buys crates of mineral water by the dozens, and does the same thing. It was nice to better know the sustainability practices of work in Germany! Pic of much loved nap room

Day 4

On the fourth day, I started with a Teams call to show the list of research papers about Bacillus in human milk donations. From the papers, I learned that Bacillus cereus is the most common bacteria that causes milk donations to be disposed of. During the meeting, Dr. Summerville explain to me that the papers all had summaries of data and what we needed was to look for raw data so we could analyze it. She said that raw data would be a csv (comma separated values) file which I would then need to convert to excel. My assignment for the day was to look for this raw data and also to research milk banks that were for-profit instead of nonprofit and just learn how they functioned.

Day 4 Opening Day

Today was opening day for the salamanders and to help them out we were handing out wristbands to the people who payed for the all you can eat option with their tickets.

then after 4 innings we took our break got some food and watched the game for a little. After our break we then got to follow Sal the Salamander around for a little bit before we were done.

Department of Health and Human Services- Day 4

Hospital Group Fights Rejection Of Medicaid Management Contract | WUNC

Today I heard from the Secretary of North Carolina Health and Human Services, Kody Kinsley. He, along with a few others, spoke at Dorothea Dix Park and announced new leadership for the NC Department of Health and Human Services. His speech laid out his goals for the next few months and gave everyone insight into how the restructured NC DHHS with the addition of new departments would help facilitate better access to resources for North Carolinians. At the end of his speech, he encouraged everyone to mingle with others, challenging us to meet 5 new people we’ve never met before. Dr. Moore took me around to meet Secretary Kinsley and other leadership within the DHHS as well as his current and former colleagues. This social hour gave me the opportunity to talk to other people within the DHHS that don’t operate under the Public Health Division. This allowed me to hear other people’s perspectives on current policy and operations as well as their journey’s to the position they are in now. Hearing all these leaders speak was inspirational and helped me gain a better understanding of what they do on a daily basis as well as in the long run!

Lenovo, Kaeshev and Leo, Day 4

It turns out 20,000 review is a lot, and it’s not all smooth sailing. We began running into difficulty in separating data into meaningful categories (especially since 1/3 of people didn’t write more than half a sentence), and our code began to have some issues. Besides looking for solutions, we did some more detailed analysis on the smaller sample sizes, and gave our report.

Hashmap diagram (what we are trying to get to work):

Synthesis

After this morning’s meeting, most of today was spent fine-tuning the model. The one new feature I did add was making it so the glucose would slowly spread out over a large area, causing the fungus to have to chase after it more. Most of the variance for the temperature setting was created by using a slightly-controlled random number generator, which made the increase and decrease in effects very linear, but I received an equation from Emily which would make it a more natural bell curve, shown below.

This marks the first step in combining our models. Tomorrow, we will meet again and work to combine my fungus growth and temperature control with her dissolved o2 and PH controls, among other things, into one complete model, and we will go from there. I was planning to make all of the simulated organisms and nutrients move from one side of the screen to another to simulate water flow, but I questioned Dr. Aziz and he said focusing on the interactions in the existing model was more important, so I’ll scrap the idea for now.

Lenovo Work Experience Day 4

Well now, here we are again for today’s late-ish work experience blog post of Doom and Despair! What fun we shall have, ladies and gents. Anyways, for the most part what I did was collect a lot of articles (that I still need to read through, for the most part) and research Cardano, Wax , and OpenSea a bit more.

So what are those three things?

Cardano is another market for selling NFTs. It was founded by one of the cofounders of Ethereum after he split from the company following a dispute with one of the founders over making the company for-profit (the split guy wanted it). Cardano is proof-of-stake, and uses Ada instead of Ether.
Wax is a different market. It uses proof-of-work and is mostly designed to be more energy efficient than Ethereum and Bitcoins, despite using Ether as well. As well, it’s targeted more at gamers through partnerships with Capcom and Atari
OpenSea, finally, uses Ether and proof-of-work. It’s big selling point is that it you can make items for free, though you need gas money to actually sell them.

And that’s the three markets. See you next time!

Day 4: Evidence for Untreated Nets for Malaria Control

As our research begins to wrap up, I focused today on untreated malaria nets and how effective they are compared to treated malaria nets. When I say treated and untreated, I mean whether or not the nets are treated with pesticides. Obviously, treated nets use pesticides while untreated nets do not. I found a lot of support for the use of untreated nets. Because malaria vectors are becoming increasingly more resistant to pesticides, pesticide treated nets are becoming less and less effective. In a study conducted in 48 villages in The Gambia, untreated nets prevented approximately 60% of malaria infections and 35% of clinical disease. In another study done in Papua New Guinea, untreated nets significantly reduced malaria vector survival and infection. In some trial sites, evidence suggested that high coverage with untreated nets delivered “significant gains ahead of the widespread use of [insecticide treated nets]”. After 4 long days of research, it’s finally time to start putting our presentation together!

Day 4: Calendar Calls

Today, I was able to attend Judge Davidian’s calendar call, which was done via WebEx. During a calendar call, attorneys that represent clients convene to schedule trial or hearing dates to make sure the defendant can attend court at the time and that the attorney has no conflicting meetings during that time. Viewing this behind-the-scenes meeting made me realize the amount of additional work judges and the court clerks need to do to make sure the court system runs efficiently and to ensure lawyers can represent their clients as effectively as possible.