Month: November 2013

The picture : The back gate of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Since, I have worked for Univ. of Virginia as a physicist. This is the longest vacation of this year. I planned to go to Philadelphia, NYC, Boston to visit Universities and Museum for 5 days.

On the first day. I went to Philadelphia museum. I love to go to museum. As a scientist, sometimes, I need inspirations from arts. (To be honest, I do not know how these arts and works inspire me.) Just watching beautiful and creative works make me feel relieved. These works give me inspirations beyond my rational thinking and also remind me how imagination is important for us.

On the museum, I re-realized how silver is beautiful. And elaborated oil paintings are so beautiful. Also there are a lot of arts made me stop. I can not express my feeling precisely, unfortunately!! But my subconscious must have gotten so many inspirations. I bought pin badges on which there are works. Even though these works are small but beautiful. I bought for souvenir, tell me if you want it, I will give it to you!!

I have not written this blog almost 2 weeks. Let me summarize my November!!

The last last week was Japan week for me. On the Tuesday, I was teacher of Japanese calligraphy at international center Univ. of Virginia. I really enjoyed teaching calligraphy. To be honest, I forgot a lot of things for writing by using special pen for calligraphy. And last Thursday, I attend language fair as a native Japanese speaker. 

We had a drinking party with some of Japanese in Charlottesville area. Since Japanese is rare in Charlottesville, we have never had the chance to have party here. I talk and listen Japanese a lot. That was so much fun.

I finished running the Richmond Marathon on Nov. 16th. My time was 4 hours and 18 minutes. Actually, this is not good result, but for me, I am proud of myself for running more than 4 hours in the rain. Even though every parts of my body feel sore, I would love to run again. I do not why, maybe I want to do the revenge. I should not have run faster the first half 13 miles, which made my the later half so hard. Running pace slowed down, I could not keep up with the other runner. So many runners passed me, which made me so nervous.

I finished big presentation last last Tuesday. The presentation was just 25 mins though, it was important, made me nervous. Making presentation is good chance, I can use 25 minutes of every person in the room if I could do make presentation well.

I am so tired today. I drove, I don’t know, for 8 hours?? While I was driving, I was listening the book called “Good to great” I actually could not follow the author’s point. For me, I could not find new things. Tomorrow, I am going to see the parade in NYC with my friend. I am looking forward to it. I will sleep early.

Have a good week everyone.

2013.11.27 Shinichiro Yano@Comfort inn near the JFK airport.

I am going to go to American Physical Society meeting (APS) next March at Denver. I am writing the abstracts of my presentation. I am a kind of exited because I have never been to Denver and I may have chances to talk my study in front of the most appropriate audiences. I am going to give 2 presentations. One is old system about orbital ordered material, the other is also old system about magnetic structural analysis.

I am pretty enjoying study now, two of my projects are close to conclusions. One of the projects, I spent 1 year and almost 9 months to analyze. This system is so complex. And since this system has been studied  extensively around 2000, so many experimental results and theoretical interactions which I have to, of course, be familiar with are published already.

I am thinking about the curiosity. How and where does it come from? As a Scientist, curiosity is one of the most important component (I could not find right word). I want to study harder as much as I can, and I want achievements, promotion, and grants. But I can not work until I am mentally broken. So then hardest working  working harder just before mentally broken state. No. The hardest work as a Scientist should be work hardest not enough to be able to keep abandoned curiosity.

By the way, I have to write something about me. So let me practice here.

I am an experimental physicist studying magnetism. As you know, physics covers wide range of science, such as Space to Particles. But, do you know how we categorize our field? We use “Scale”. Yes, of course you know it, don’t you? The scale is an object defines a set of point for measuring something, such as length, height, temperature, and so on. Our fields are classified the scale of length (more precisely, the scale of distance which interactions matter. ) For example, people studies larger that earth ( > 10^6 m ) I recognize they are studying Space, Also there are physicist studies particle physics studies smaller than ( < 10^-8 m). What I am working on is something like (Sometimes 10^-15) 10-8 m to 10-1 m, it is pretty wide range.

So, I am studying magnetism. Magnetism is a main issue in Physics. For the study of magnetism, basically there are two jobs. One is to know what the magnetic structure looks like, and the other is to know how the magnet becomes magnet. To do these jobs, I use neutron scattering which is produced only by a reactor or positron accelerator. Neutron have been used more than 50 years, still the strongest tool for studying magnetism. Why? It is because that a neutron has no charge and a neutron spin (which is the smallest unit of magnet in the material), which means a neutron has no interaction with electric charge in material but has interaction with spin in material. So we can directly see magnetism in the magnet.

Does it make sense? I have to go today. I would love to write again. I have a lot of things I want to write. Anyway, bye!!

Shakespeare wrote this title in Julius Caesar.

My enthusiasm for the cognitive science is still going on. I have learned a lot Shawn Achor’s books. I am going to review some of books I ever read and I want to look at some of books from references of “Happiness Advantage” and “Before Happiness”. I just finished reading “Before Happiness”, I did not want to finish. This book has changed my life completely. Some of this idea is not new at all, some of them are my beliefs actually, but he explains better, prove with the data. I would love to read relevant subjects and books, There are too many books to read!!

Let me review a bit, I learned the cost of fear. Fear has trapped our mind though out our life. Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar,

“Cowards die many times before their deaths”

Also Tupac says,

”A coward dies a thousand deaths, a soldier dies but once.”

The fear we are feeling prevent us from actions. But we tend to fail to estimate the real cost of fear. Like Dale Carnegie said, ’95 percent of event we imagine never happen’ Do not worry so much. We have to know how to manage our fear. Will Smith also says, ‘The danger is real, the fear is a choice’

Let’s change the subject. I would like to talk about Paraphrasing. When I was in Japan, one of my teacher told me if you want to write paper, you should imitate someone native speaker’s writing. To be honest, this is wrong. We should not imitate other’s writing easily. Actually , paraphrasing is good excise. You have to rewrite sentences without changing meaning with using as much as possible different words. I will write some examples later.

And we are working on Adjective and vocabulary with my writing tutor. To learn new words and vocabulary, following lesson is good.  

For example: Write a paragraph which describe your favorite place in detail as possible as you can with using 5 new adjectives (adverse). Mine is like this (before editing), 150 words??

My favorite place in Charlotesville is Mille Joe coffee. When I go to this coffee shop, I always order a latte. At Mile Joe, Lattes are always made with elaborate patterns. (I do not know how they make it ) Sometimes, the pattern looks like real leaves, sometimes looks like an adorable cat’s face. I love them. Mille Joe is full of cozy furniture, which makes the place fabulous. What I am really into at Mille Joe is their bookshelf. There is a lot of stuff on it: a chess board, books, and an antiquated coffee maker, and so on. And Mille Joe is not only the place for coffee. They have two more booths in the shop. One sells chocolate, the other sells cheese. In each booth, a neatly dressed sales person is talking to their costumer. We can taste coffee with cheese or chocolate at the coffee shop. Sounds fun, doesn’t It?

Those who are English learner as a 2nd language this cite also helps you. This web site teaches us “Adjective Order and Punctuation”. I have never worried about the order of adjective because I did not notice. I just have used adjective with random in the way I feel right.

http://www.esl-library.com/blog/2013/03/07/adjective-order-and-punctuation/

I finished reading ‘Happiness Advantage’ by Shawn Achor. Also, I am currently reading “before happiness” by Shawn Achor. He is a psychologist studying the science of happiness at Harvard. He also gave presentation on TED. You had better watch TED talk first.

http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html

If you are interested in more, you can start reading his books. As far as I know, there are two books “Happiness Advantage” and “Before Happiness”. Both are good. I actually am inspired by these books which is categorized as cognitive science or psychology (I don’t know how we can define it). This kind of studies have been so active lately. For the general people, the tipping point is “Predictably irrational” by Dan Ariely (2008). He describes how cognitive science is important when we make decisions.

For me, “The Grouped” by Paul Adams (2011) was great. This book is a nice summary of recent extensive survey on the human relationship on the web. This study was surprising, even how information technology has advanced, human connects with strong small ties, like family, close friends, but also there is the importance of weak large ties which is the advantage of SNS.

For me also “The Habit” was another. I believe that most important job in 20’s is making good habits. Good habits make our life easier, but people have bad habits which is difficult to remove from our daily life. My question was how we can build the habit.

So so many cognitive science studies came out lately. So science start to understand how we are looking at our world, ourselves and how we make decisions. I have read a lot of books about this. I want to review these books one by one. If you are interested in, I think the book ‘the Grouped’ is good start. He wrote good summary and left us good references.

I am also reading ‘Every day’. I like this story. The main character wakes up as different person (I believe always he is a high school student.) every day. Girl or Boy, attractive or not attractive, does not matter. He has lived like this from when he was born. But one day, he was someone boy who had been liked by a girl. He eventually fell in love with her. He could not forget about her. The story sounds ridiculous, but make us think. And finally, I bought “Harry Potter” series. I would love to read these. I am excited. To be honest, many people suggest me to read, but I did not start reading because I did not think I have time to read. Yes, it is time to start reading.

Oh, by the way, I am planing trip for thanksgiving. I am thinking of going to Boston, NYC, Philadelphia or around. I have not decide which city and places we are going to stop by. Could you tell me if you have recommendation?

As a scientist, I am studying pretty creatively lately. Of course, I can not write what I am interested in. But I am obsessed with a project. I want to start the experiments soon. These concepts are not new, but its combination seemed rare. I am surveying the literature, paper, old textbook. So far, there is no extensive study of this system. I am thinking of spending several months to find out.

Have a good week!!