Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Looking for a career? Consider Geriatrics?

I learned today that there will be critical shortage of physicians trained in geriatrics in the next 20 years. ADGAP = asso. of directors of geriatric academic programs= has a report: we will need ~36,000 geriatricians in 2030, but at the current rate, we will only have 9000. Unfortunately, many physicians are not being trained. There are 468 spots/year for physicans to get additional training. Only 253 are filled in 2006-2007, of which 184 are foreign students.

Currently, 48% of primary care physician's patient load consists of those of age 65+. That will only increase..

Makes me wonder if I should have been a clinician? hmm. no. I think I am still cut out for academia rather than clinical work. Plus it is a bit late for me.. As I have now turned 29..

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Contributing to Wikipedia

So I decided to contribute to Wikipedia. I have written up translations of Theology of the Body notes by Christopher West - almost 4 years ago, and they have been sitting on my computer. Finally they will be useful to someone. They are in Korean, but please feel free to contribute! I wonder if Wikipedia is the best venue to release the work, since I don't think it has a lot of Korean viewers. But I don't really know of other venues.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Clinical Depression and Statistical Physics

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9861412

According to this paper published on Physical Review Letters, the wrist acceleration patterns over several days in healthy people vs. depressed people are different.

Nakamura et al. "Universal Scaling Law in Human Behavioral Organization" PRL 99, 138103 (2007) link here

Without doing the fancy math in the paper, you can tell who have depressive and non-dpressive patterns, because the healthy people sleep consistently, while the depressed people do not. I guess this was an unexpected finding, regardless of the scaling law.

The cumulative distributio of wating times of the activity bursts (that's a mouthful) follows a gamma distribution , and depressed people show a smaller gamma.

They claim that the smaller gamma could be a useful diagnostic tool, but the sleep pattern is good enough of a tool for me!

Friday, October 12, 2007

Boston Choral Ensemble

So I joined this choir that rehearses in the Back Bay area of Boston. I thought I could regularly take the T into the city, but I decided it is waaaaay too complicated and takes waaaay too long. So when I drive, I can get in and out in 20-30 minutes each way from Roslindale.

We rehearse at a Unitarian church, and as part of "rent," we have to sing a few services. Afterwards, we had a little party in Beacon Hill on top of one of the member's building. The View was amazing!

Some pix:

Little Q hot pot


after Theology on Tap, I decided to eat somewhere else because I knew that the kitchen at the bar we were at was backed up in orders.

I found this Taiwainese(?) place, that serves hot pots - big thing of broth of your choice, plus vegetables and meats to order. You dump it into the pot, which is heated by induction, and you pick out stuff and eat it.

I ordered the black chicken broth, which came with lots of chinese herbs, some of them I weren't sure what they were. Since I had a cold, this huge chicken soup was ideal! I ordered for one, but it could have fed a lot of people. I also ordered lotus roots and seaweed which I haven't had in a long while - something i only get to eat at my parent's place.

Cardinal Sean O'Malley at Theology on Tap


This event was in Quincy, a neighborhood of Boston about 30 minutes away from Roslindale, where I currently reside. The venue was "Bad Abbot's" one of the numerous "Irish" pubs.

The venue was packed, as expected. When Bishop Gregory Aymond of Austin spoke at ToT, same thing happened. Of courses, i had forgotten this fact, and decided to arrive right on time, resulting in me having to stand the whole time.

The talk addressed the fact that we as christians need mentors and need to be mentors to others. Be an example of courage, service, giving, etc. And that we should not settle for warm fuzzies that many modern religious movements seem to promote. Jesus did not die on the cross for the warm fuzzies, as he said.

He has a blog, http://www.cardinalseansblog.org/





This is me being a paparazzo, as he is getting into is ride:


The video of the event is posted on Google, so you can watch it anytime:



Sean Cardinal O'Malley at TOT


http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-2718382783437944078&hl=en

Cell-phone - Computer Woes follow up

Well, somehow I managed to get the software I bought for the phone to update itself without crashing repeatedly.

Also using advice on a web site http://mark.cdmaforums.com/MaxxVe.htm
I learned that Verizon disabled the mass storage function on the phone. Fortunately, I can access the phone through computer in a slightly devious way, so I put on the ending from "little tree" by Eric Whitacre as my ringtone yet again, after ~11 months of not being able to.

I also got pictures off my phone, so I will actually post them here.