Tag: Day 7

Department of Health and Human Services- Day 7

Today, I went to Wilmington with Dr. Moore. We attended an event hosted by the Cape Fear River Watch, a community group primarily concerned with the Cape Fear River and its environmental contaminants. The day-long forum included presentations and talks from different experts and community activists about two main pollutants: hog waste and chemical leakage. Hog farms store pig waste in large lagoons and when it rains or the reservoirs overflow, the waste runs off into the river. This waste contains high levels of nutrients that feed algae growth which, in turn, depletes the oxygen necessary for fish and other animals to live. In addition, Chemours, a spinoff company of DuPont, the manufacturer of Teflon and other “forever chemicals”, has been allowing a type of chemicals called PFAS to leak into the river, causing numerous health issues to residents, including thyroid cancer and birth defects.

Day 7

Today in our teams meeting, I showed Dr. Summerville the data on maternal milk and formula and then asked her questions about the research paper that I would turn in. Dr. Summerville clarified many things and then assigned me to transpose the huge dataset that had more than 10,000 cells. I knew it would be a daunting tasks to I made sure to start as soon as possible. I quickly had many questions so I was able to clarify everything through email.

Almost There!

Yesterday, I spent most of my day commenting on my code and play-testing our model.

Since I added a lot of new bits of code to the existing code, I had to add comments so that anyone who looks at my code in the future will be able to easily understand it.

I then began play-testing our model in both the web-based version of NetLogo and the offline version. Basically, I was trying to find conditions that would yield “interesting” scenarios like the bacteria overpopulating or the fungi overpopulating.

Here’s a version where the bacteria overpopulate–the bacteria is all the green stuff, by the way.

And here’s a version where the fungi overpopulate–the fungi is the dark blue stuff.

Lenovo Work Experience Day 7- Penultimate Presentation Prep!

And here we are on my second-to-last day of school! How exciting. Much fun. Anyways, not too too much to say about day. We mostly worked on preparing our final presentation and condensing all our research into three slides. The slides are:

  • Intro to Blockchain – Jack​
  • What are the different parts of the crypto ecosystem – Rohan​
  • Use cases beyond cryptocurrency​
  • NFTs – Rohan​
  • Dapps – Jack​
  • DAOs – Sarah​
  • DeFi – Sebastian​
  • Impacts on the world – Sarah​
  • What does the future look like with blockchain/crypto – Sebastian​

My slides are pretty cool- DeFi stands for Decentralized Finance, and is how NFTs and blockchains do transactions without a bank or other intermediary. The future obviously is about the future of blockchains. I figure I’ll elaborate a bit more in tomorrow’s post, yeah? We’re going out for sushi and finalizing our presentation there, so that should be enjoyable. It was a great work experience!

Day 7: WebEx Custody Court & Court Tour

Today, I again attended WebEx court, this time on custody cases. In each case, Judge Davidian called in witnesses including the parents, the guardians, and a social worker in charge of the supervision of the children as evidence to show how well the parents are doing. Judge Davidian then rendered his decision about who gets custody of the children (parents, relatives, or the county) and explains his reasoning to the court, including analyzing the background and behavior of the parents as well as reading a report prepared by a Wake County social worker on the condition of the child

Typical NC District Court Tour

1 – Judge’s Stand – This is where the judge’s preside over the trial. One interesting different about Wake County courts is that judges in Wake County are missing the iconic gavel that is common in courtroom TV shows and movies.​

2 – Court Clerk – This is where the Courtroom clerk sits during the trial, although Wake County courts are trying to digitize operations, I still saw a lot of paperwork needing to be organized and signed after each trial. Their job during a trial is to maintain court records and organize paperwork for judicial orders.​

3 – Jury Bench – This is where a 12-person jury would sit if it were a jury trial. Jurors are selected at random in a list of Wake County residents who are registered voters or have drivers licenses.​

4 – Witness Stand – This is where witnesses for both the prosecution and the defense would sit after being sworn in for testimony. Note the microphones present on every bench to make sure everyone can be heard by the whole courtroom.​

5 – Prosecutor’s Table – This is where the District Attorney would sit during a trial. The DA’s job is to prosecute the suspects in a trial and to represent the state in the trial.​

6 – Defense Table – This is where the defendant or the suspect in a court case and his/her attorney would sit during a trial. In the trial I witnessed, I learned it was crucial for the attorney and their client to remain in constant communication during the trial to effectively devise a defense strategy.​

* Sheriff’s Deputy’s stand is next to the Clerk’s table and he is in charge of maintaining order and security in the courtroom. ​

​

Seventh Day Stories – with Rick French!! :)

This morning Kendyl, Linda, Sonia, and I had the pleasure of meeting with the chairman and CEO of French West Vaughan- Mr. Rick French. During this Q&A session, he so kindly explained his extremely versatile career path. We asked questions about where his curiosity in pubic relations stemmed from, what his interests were at our age, and how he maintains a good work-life balance with all of his involvements. Mr. French discussed with us his time as a journalist and professional tennis player before founding the agency. He stressed the importance of enjoying one’s “involvements” so they don’t feel like work. Evidently, his work as a producer for Prix Productions, owning a minor league baseball team (the Daytona Tortugas), serving as a national trustee for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and countless other astonishing achievements do not feel like work to Mr. French. Despite these countless other commitments, Mr. French adamantly prides himself on the integrity FWV has upheld for the past 25 years! The four of us greatly appreciated the time he took out of his busy schedule to sit down and talk with us!

selfie with Mr. Rick French in his office after our meeting with him!

Dying Inside

Today was supposed to be mainly debugging and wrapping up, but my model hit a crucial wall because I wanted the fungus in the model to be sustainable and to make it grow endlessly, or at least like Dr. Aziz said where its food source, wood chips, wouldn’t have to be replaced for a considerable amount of time. However, the lignin in my model was running out incredibly quickly. I tried fixing it, but all this resulted in was an ever-expanding fungus population as the fungus didn’t die off before the lignin was replenished, and it was revitalized each time, shown here.

The aging fungus, however, didn’t produce the enzymes used to break down the pollutants, so even though there was a lot of it, most of it was useless. It also caused copious amount of computer lag due to the incredibly high numbers of simulated fungus later on. The problem was that the lignin amount was tied to the fungus, not the background like it was supposed to, but separating them will take much work. I’m attempting to do that now, but I don’t know if I’ll have enough time in the WEP to do so.

Day 7 – Data Centers and Technology

Today I got to see a lot of the technology that SAS uses and distributes to their employees. I saw hundreds of phones and laptops and computers and cables all in storage waiting to be used, fixed, and reused. First thing this morning I met with Joel Langley an IT project manager. He ties together development, manufacturing, fulfillment, and sales. Then I got to meet with Jonathan Hairr a man who is similar to Mr. Harris at Cary Academy. He listens to internal workers problems with hardware and software and solves their problem. He finds the right cables to connect a pc to a project and he hands out phones to employees and much more. He works on the top floor and he shares floors with all the highest up in SAS including Dr. Goodnight, in fact, I got to see his huge rock collection. It was incredible!

Jonathan also showed me some data centers and he explained how it all worked. He said that there are some cables that are the same size as others, but they operate at 7 or 8 times the speed as others. I was very fascinated by all of the technology.

During lunch, I met with Charles Sayre and two of his friends who were all programmers. They all had very interesting and fun personalities! Charles went to NC State, another went to Duke, and the other man went to UNC. After lunch, I met with Jonathan Smith who showed me similar things to what Jonathan Hair showed me. Both Jonathans were on their feet a lot and they rarely sit down in their offices. I used a VR headset for twenty minutes and played games while Jonathan Smith spoke with his co-workers. It is crazy how SAS has so much extra fascinating technology that is unnecessary but raises morale. After that, I met with Will Philips who drove me to SAS’s (somewhat) hidden main data center. He talked about how it was all cooled and how efficient it all was.

Day 7: Road trip!

Today at SEPI, I met with a construction project manager, and we drove about 2 hours to a meeting with multiple contractors where they discussed the progress of a community center that was being built. The project was basically completed, but they were just talking about finishing touches on the building. We spent the rest of our day driving back. Fun times!

A picture of another project site that the manager was working on.
Skip to toolbar