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Summer Struggles

Reflections of a Recovering Control Freak

Credit: Frozen by Walt Disney Pictures

I have a hard time letting go. Oftentimes, there's a nagging little voice in the back of my mind stirring up doubt.

Are you making the right choice? 

Are you doing everything you possibly can to ensure the optimal outcome? 

What if something goes horribly wrong and it's all your fault? 

While this voice may present itself as an advocate for my self-interests, it can have a nasty tendency of holding me back. In an effort to eliminate any liability for making the 'wrong' decisions, it is often easiest to simply avoid stepping up to challenges and opportunities that come my way. The emotional reasoning is rather straightforward: if I simply opt out of anything for which I can't ensure a positive outcome with near perfect certainty, nothing bad can happen, right? Not quite. This premise falls apart when considering the fact that life is inherently risky and uncertain, and that every decision has a collection of trade-offs. And although fear may tell me otherwise, 'opting out' of a challenge comes with its own set of disadvantages - namely the development of potentially crippling indecision, self-doubt, and regret.

Perhaps the area of my life where this is the most relevant is public speaking. Every time some opportunity to present my work comes up, that nagging voice of doubt starts speaking up. And while I'm generally confident in my communication skills, it's very easy for me to start listening to that voice that tells me to be afraid of everything.

What if you freeze during your presentation?

What if you blurt something inappropriate out while you're speaking?

WHAT IF YOU SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUST!?!?!?

And while I could engage in a mental debate with this voice all day, actions typically speak louder than words when it comes to managing fear. While fear would tell you that opting out to avoid negative outcomes is the 'safe' option, opting in for the positive outcomes is what ultimately makes the voice of self doubt more quiet in the long run.

I've gradually been coming to the realization that many life circumstances (or perhaps even most of them) are well beyond my control. If I tried to explain this to myself just a year ago, I would have found such an idea legitimately terrifying. But through the process of acceptance, I've come to find this reality rather liberating. I used to hold the belief that unless I had complete control of a situation, terrible things could happen (and for the anxious mind, could and would are synonymous). What I now realize, though, is that not having control gives me permission to devote my mental energy to the only thing I can control - how I handle myself and my circumstances in the present. For me, this simple idea completely shifted my perspective on how I approach life. With public speaking in particular, I try to remind myself that while I can't control exactly how nervous I'll be during a future presentation, I can always choose to push any fears aside, step up to the opportunity, and see what I can gain from the experience, regardless of what happens.

You Can't Change the Weather

The winds begin to howl,

Yet for this night owl,

The pressure to be a morning fowl

Just makes me scowl.

Deep breath, body relaxes.

Don't worry about taxes,

Just watch as the moon waxes.

But alas, clouds leave the moon obscured.

How absurd

But rest assured,

In the past you have endured.

My mind begins to wander,

And ponder

Just how much time I squander.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Refocus that doubt,

For now is not the time to work out

The problems that make you pout.

Finally on the verge of sleep

Not a peep or a beep

And I'm done counting sheep.

Suddenly, a quick jerk!

Have I gone berserk?

Nah, but it does irk

Because in the morning I have work.

The clouds have grown ominous

I lie in bed with somnolence

Yet to be honest,

My mind is just obnoxious.

It's always darkest before the dawn, I yawn

...Said the moron

Who also couldn't sleep early on.

A crack of thunder

Like the sky is about to sunder.

And I wonder,

When I will slumber?

On the verge of losing my mind,

Yet I find that the storm left behind

Clouds that are silver-lined. 

Outside is silent, 

Leaving a peaceful climate

The moon with a halo quite vibrant.

Overthinking

Easy Task

 Overthinking an Easy Task

Hopeful: Sharpie (black and silver)

Cooking for the Super Lazy: Fancy AF Edition

In today's installment of 'Cooking for the Super Lazy,' I present my recipe for lemon chicken.
(Adapted from this recipe here by The Slow Roasted Italian)

You will need:

• Two chicken breast fillets (one for leftovers)
• 3-4 Lemons
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Salt and Pepper
• Garlic powder (or if you're a non-lazy heathen, fresh garlic)
• Olive oil
• Cheap pinot grigio (That's what makes the recipe 'fancy')

So let's get started!

Step 1

Line a glass baking dish with an oven bag (unless you want to spend the rest of your evening cleaning up afterwards), and add slices of freshly cut lemons along the bottom. Glass is recommended, because acids (such as lemon juice) tend to corrode metals like aluminum.

Step 2

Add a generous layer of rosemary and thyme. I recommend adding them on top of the lemon slices, as the vapor will better carry the flavor of the herbs during the baking process.

Step 3

Season both sides of your chicken boobs breasts with salt, pepper, and copious amounts of garlic powder. Place them in the dish on top of the layer of lemon slices. Add additional herbs on top of the chicken. For those of you who are like me and have a strong fear of working with poultry and catching some terrible food poisoning plague, this is the only time you will have to touch the raw chicken. Obsessively sanitize your hands afterwards, just to be safe.

Step 4

Top with a final layer of lemon slices and douse with a generous amount of olive oil and pinot grigio wine. Close the dish and place it in the fridge for at least an hour to marinate. If you're impatient, you can do steps 1-4 in the morning or prior to bed and cook the chicken the following evening for dinner.

Step 5

When you're ready to cook, preheat the oven to 450F, and collect ingredients for the accompanying rice.

You will need:

• Rice of your choice (I use brown rice here)
• Olive oil
• Garlic powder

Step 6

Bake the chicken for 45 minutes. Meanwhile,  add rice:water to a cooker in a 1:2 ratio (the ratio may vary depending on type of rice). Add garlic powder and a splash of oil, and cook the rice.

Serve

Serve chicken with rice on the side. Add a couple of the lemon slices on top and pour yourself a glass of that pinot grigio to simulate fanciness. If prepared right, the chicken should be super juicy and flavorful. Enjoy!

The Direction Websites are Going

10 Things People With Misophonia Wish They Had the Courage to Say

Misophonia, which translates to 'hatred of sound,' is a rare, probably neuropsychiatric, condition in which specific sounds trigger an intense physiological and psychological response of emotion, ranging from rage to panic. Sounds can be of any volume, but are typically repetitive bodily noises that people make without realizing it, such as crunching food or slurping a hot beverage.

In my own experience, the incessant sounds can trigger a flight or fight response that is not always easy to manage. At its worst, the entire core of my being is telling me to either eliminate the source of the noise (i.e. punch the person in the face) or to just GTFO. Thankfully, this doesn't happen often, and I typically cope by using various mindfulness techniques and practicing good sleep hygiene (sleep deprivation makes triggers n times worse). It can be frustrating, however, when your ability to focus in lecture settings is compromised because your attention is mainly devoted to maintaining composure.  Because alas, one can't simply tell the trigger source to stop eating and breathing lest they want to come across as completely bonkers. Additionally, there are assholes who think it's funny to provoke someone with their trigger noises. In this post, I list 10 things that people with misophonia wish they had the courage to say to others.

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Ethnically Ambiguous

The Paradox of Perfection

Why perfectionists are rarely happy with their accomplishments.

Seasons on Steroids

Here on Earth, we're fortunate enough to orbit the Sun along a nearly a circular path. The result is a fairly stable climate system with a globally averaged temperature that is more or less constant year-round. Nevertheless, our planet's rotation axis is tilted at about 23.4 degrees relative to the plane of our orbit. This physical configuration allows for the seasonal cycle that we can observe each year. In Northern Hemisphere summer, the North Pole is angled towards the Sun, allowing the hemisphere to receive more light over one day. This allows for warmer weather. Meanwhile, the South Pole is angled away from the Sun and receives less Sunlight, making it colder.

A diagram depicting how the tilt of Earth's spin axis (the red arrow pointing from the South Pole through North Pole) creates seasons.  Position 1: Northern Hemisphere summer, Southern Hemisphere winter. Position 2: Northern Hemisphere autumn, Southern Hemisphere spring. Position 3: Northern Hemisphere winter, Southern Hemisphere summer. Position 4: Northern Hemisphere spring, Southern Hemisphere autumn.

As discussed in my previous post, the presence of a second star can gravitationally perturb planets into more elliptical orbits. Kepler's first law of planetary motion states that all planets orbit their star in an ellipse, with the central star at one focal point. The magnitude of how elliptical an orbit is is specified by a quantity called eccentricity. An eccentricity of zero (e = 0) corresponds to a circular orbit, whereas an eccentricity between zero and one (0 < e < 1) corresponds to an elliptical orbit. Within this range, higher eccentricity corresponds to an orbit that is more elliptical.

Four color-coded orbits of equal max. diameter (to scale) for eccentricities 0, 0.25, 0.5, and 0.75. The bottom left plot displays the radiative power per area received by the planet over time for each orbit (1 Solar Constant = average value for Earth). The bottom right plot displays the orbit-averaged value for a given eccentricity.

In an elliptical orbit, the planet can approach the star more closely, thereby receiving more radiation and reaching higher temperatures at the distance of closest approach. Much of the orbit, however, is spent further out than for a circular orbit of the same diameter. Averaged over one orbit, the amount of radiation received by the planet increases with eccentricity. So what does this all mean? Supposing that Earth's orbit were more elliptical, global temperatures could rise and fall (potentially significantly) over the course of a year. These global seasons could be quite extreme for planets in binary star systems.

This summer, I was able to run some preliminary models. Using initial conditions for a simplified Earth, I simulated how the climate would behave under orbital eccentricities of 0.4 and 0.6.

The above map shows monthly averaged surface temperatures for a planet at month of closest approach for an orbit with e = 0.4. Maximum temperatures exceed 340K (67C = 152F). Yikes! How can we better understand what this map means for humans? Thanks to biological evolution, humans have been able to adapt to warm climates by means of sweating. When sweat evaporates off our skin, it draws heat from our body, thereby cooling us down. This effect can be measured using what's called the wet-bulb temperature. In essence, this is the coolest temperature that our bodies could reach by sweating, and depends on environmental humidity.

The above map, then, can be used as a proxy when examining basic human adaptability to climate (Sherwood & Huber 2010). When the wet-bulb temperature approaches body temperature (37C = 98.6F), a human can no longer shed heat into their surroundings, and internal temperature rises. Prolonged exposure to environmental wet-bulb temperatures exceeding 35C (95F) can thus pose the risk of heat stroke. We can then make a map showing regions that are deadly for humans.

The above map depicts wet-bulb degrees Celsius above 35C. Luckily, our orbit is circular, but if you were to travel to a similar planet at e = 0.4, you may want to invest in air conditioning!

As would be expected, temperatures get even higher for e = 0.6. Spoiler alert: A/C won't help.

Some PhD students just want to watch the world burn.

Deadlines

Disappointment vs. Satisfaction

Healthy Cooking for the Super Lazy: Recipe #1

How do cook?

So you finally decide to get off your couch and go to the gym, but when you're done, you're exhausted and all that's on your mind is food. You're really too tired and lazy at this point to cook anything substantial (so you think), but you'd rather not spend money on fast food because that kind of defeats the whole purpose of your exercise, no? You also live in a tiny studio apartment with poor ventilation, and would rather avoid anything messy, stinky, or difficult to clean up.

So if it wasn't clear already, the above situation is one of many challenges that I've faced since living on my own and having to feed myself. While I have yet to become a cooking expert (I still can't cook anything with poultry without irrationally obsessing over getting salmonella), I have found one go-to recipe that's super healthy and so easy you can use a microwave. Without further ado, I present

Nathan's Fantabulous and Quick Meal

Total time: approximately 20 minutes
Difficulty: elementary

You will need:

- 8oz fillet of trout or salmon

- 1/2 cup of rice (uncooked)

- Paprika, white pepper, and dill to taste
- Chili powder if you're feeling like a badass
- Optional lemon juice

Instructions:

1 - Add 0.5 cup of dry jasmine rice + 0.75 cup of water to a rice cooker. Cook it.

2 - Season your fish to taste. (Don't actually taste the raw fish, though. This isn't a sushi recipe.)

3 - Microwave fish for 3.5 minutes on high.

4 - Serve.

Voila

Now I know what you're saying - Fish? Microwave? Didn't you say you live in a tiny apartment with terrible ventilation? In my experience, I haven't had any odor issues with this meal - any smell typically dissipates quickly, and cleanup is pretty straightforward.

Bonus Recipe: Super Duper Kefir and Egg Whites Protein Drink

Total time: <5 minutes

Difficulty: If you can mix two ingredients in a cup, you can make this drink.

You will need:

- Kefir of your flavor choice (kefir is essentially yogurt in beverage form)

- Pasteurized egg whites

- Optional: cinnamon, to taste

Instructions:

1 - Add one part egg whites to cup.

2 - Add two parts kefir to cup.

3 - Whip it good.

4 - Add  optional cinnamon and enjoy.

Basic Nutrition Info
(Meal + protein drink)

Total Calories: 797
Carbs: 91g
Fat: 15g
Protein: 72g
Fiber: 0g
Sodium: 350mg
Cholesterol: 150mg

Enjoy!

Alertness

Random Musings on Uncertainty

Public Domain

In science, uncertainty must be quantified. For every measurement or calculation, the precision of that value must also be specified for the sake of completeness and integrity. In essence, us scientists have to have a level of certainty with respect to uncertainty. Life, however, can be somewhat different, in that the experiential uncertainties we face on a day to day basis may leave us with questions that are completely unanswerable.

Where will I be in five years? Ten years? Or (((gasp))) fifteen years?

I hope I made the right decision. What will happen now?

What if [insert catastrophic scenario here] were to happen?

While it may seem to be theoretically possible to narrow down the possibilities with enough data and analytical thinking, this very process would inherently disrupt the course of events it seeks to predict in the first place. Say a particularly nervous graduate student (totally not me...) were to put all of their time, energy, and resources into predicting their postdoctoral job prospects and planning future decisions accordingly. If this were the case, they wouldn't get anywhere because they would never be able to do anything else! Even if this information were attainable via clairvoyant means, the student's knowledge of the results could alter the outcome. This scenario is an example of the observer effect*, in which the very act of observation fundamentally disrupts the observed processes.  In non-technical terms, this means that obsessing over life's mysteries may distract us from living and experiencing what is beyond our control in the first place. As with the paradoxical case of Schrödinger's cat**, some future outcomes may have to remain unknowable until the metaphorical box is opened.

*While it may share some qualitative similarities with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the two are not quite the same.

**Meow. What's this link lead to? You won't know until you click!

Why are People so Afraid of Science and Math?

Math source: freeimages.com/valium88

"LOL, I'm terrible at math. I could never understand what you do."

"That stuff is way beyond me. I'm no rocket scientist!"

"Calculus? I barely got through algebra!"

When I talk to people about my research, I'm used to getting these types of responses, typically accompanied by wide-eyed looks of astonishment, confusion, fascination, and/or fear. Oftentimes it feels like I'm some kind of crazy person trying desperately to communicate my enthusiasm to an audience that speaks a completely different language than I do. Most of the time, I try to take these situations in stride and hope that people walk away knowing just a little bit more about what I do. Nevertheless, I still finish these conversations feeling somewhat disappointed that scientific illiteracy and innumeracy are so prevalent, and at the same time, so accepted. You would never hear someone be proud to say "LOL, I suck at reading!"

I'm not here to shame people for lacking a full understanding of quantum mechanics or general relativity. What I am questioning, though, is why the general public seems to be so intimidated by anything related to science and math. On a personal level, it's frustrating to feel like I can't easily communicate what I do to non-scientists without leaving them scratching their heads in confusion. At a societal level, it's even more frustrating to see a substantial fraction of high-profile politicians debating the existence of anthropogenic climate change and a large movement of misguided parents refusing to vaccinate their children against preventable diseases.

I'm under the impression that people are scared away from these fields at an early age. Given how cumulative mathematical topics tend to be, it is easy for grade school students to fall behind at some point and to struggle to catch up during the remainder of their education.  Such circumstances would lead these students to assume that they lack the natural aptitude for anything quantitative.

"I'm just not a math person..."

While it may be hard for many who know me to believe, I've been a victim of this mentality on occasion, myself. Due to some learning differences related to processing speed (i.e. how quickly the brain processes information that it takes in), there were times when I struggled with my more mathematical coursework. During my undergraduate experience at Caltech, these difficulties were especially apparent considering that everything was taught at a highly accelerated pace. The curriculum often felt like a speeding school bus that would never stop - if you fell off, you were left behind on your own with no one to help.  With the right academic accommodations, however, I was able to graduate comfortably and to reach where I am today.

Given my own success in spite of learning difficulties, I believe that anyone is capable of understanding even the most advanced scientific and mathematical topics with the right education and support. With America's haphazard, cookie-cutter approach to teaching this material, it's no wonder that many of us fall off the school bus too early and develop the self-fulfilling prophecy that is "math anxiety" (which shouldn't even be a thing).

Even assuming that a large fraction of the general population were numerically challenged by nature, people tend to forget that scientific inquiry relies just as much on imaginative and creative thinking as it does on numeracy.  After all, computers are meant to assist scientists, not to replace them.  In the end, the same basic principles behind the scientific method (asking questions, making testable predictions and observations, etc.) can be applied to research in just about any field, from sociology and psychology to marketing and economics. Strip away all the fancy-talk, and science can be accessible to anyone.

"Sometimes it sounds like you're speaking a different language!"

To be fair, jargon can be difficult to understand, even among accomplished scientists in separate fields.  When a community of researchers starts relying too heavily on specialized terms that have different meanings or no meaning at all to others, a communication barrier can develop. It is for this reason why it is critical that scientists are able to discuss what they do with the general public in understandable language.  For some fields, this may be more difficult than others, but with a solid knowledge of the material and proper communication skills, any researcher should be able to make their work comprehensible to a broader audience.

Summary Points:

• When you tell a scientist "You're so smart, I could never understand what you do," that's almost more of an insult to their communication skills than a compliment to their intelligence. Instead of immediately tuning out, try to listen and ask questions. Maybe you'll find our work just as interesting as we do!

• No one is a "math person" by nature. Just about anyone can do algebra, or even calculus, with the right educational support.

• Math anxiety often develops because we ignore differences in learning styles. If my childhood education had measured quantitative intelligence using tests of speed and fluency alone, I would have probably fallen behind quite early. Additionally, little support is offered for students who fall off the proverbial school bus.

• A lot of research areas are jargon-heavy. It is essential that scientists (and mathematicians) are able to communicate what they do without the use of specialized terms specific to their field. Anyone's work should be accessible to the public.

For the sake of ending this blog post with humor, I thought I'd select a few random research papers from various fields and translate their titles into normal-people speak.

Astronomy

Actual title: Two New Candidate Planets in Eccentric Orbits

What it sounds like: Two Republican Planets in Peculiar Orbits Announce Candidacy for President

What it actually means: Two Potential Planets Discovered in Elliptical Orbits

Physics

Actual title: Observation of a New Boson at a Mass of 125 GeV with the CMS Experiment at the LHC

What it sounds like: Some Moron Seen Attending Christmas Mass of 125 AbC with the DEF Experiment at the GHI

What it actually means: New Particle with a Mass of 125 Giga-electronvolts Observed with the Fancy-Schmancy Equipment at the Large Hadron Collider

Atmospheric Science

Actual title: Development and Application of a Cubic Eddy-Viscosity Model of Turbulence

What it sounds like: Some Dude Named Eddy Made a Model Describing Crazy Viscous Cubes

What it actually means: How We Make and Use this Fancy-Schmancy Model to Describe Atmospheric Turbulence

Chemistry

Actual title: Electronic Properties of Disordered Two-Dimensional Carbon

What it sounds like: Electronic Estates of Schizophrenic Carbon Squares

What it actually means: How Impure Sheets of Carbon Interact with Electricity

Biology

Actual title: Phosphorylation of 3'-azido-3'deoxythymidine and Selective Interaction of the 5'-triphosphate with Human Immunodeficiency Virus Reverse Transcriptase

What it sounds like: ;aljwieht;oi:OAIH:lken;oiah;dP:AIOYHIOUC:H39989;:J":IOBNHK:XHPkkdh

What it actually means: *Shrugs* Any biologist willing to help me out here?

Honorable Mention Quotes of Scientific Ignorance:

"The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that's harmful to our environment is almost comical."

"Astronomy? What can you tell me about my sign?"

"How do we know dinosaurs really existed?"

"What journal are you planning on publishing your thesis in?"

"The Huffington Post."

"If humans came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"