Bradley's Pad

Puzzle Fun

2012-01-22T15:42:00.002-05:00

Learning to live life post-prelim has been interesting. I have a lot of time on my hands now. When you do research all day you need to come home to something else. I haven't been biking as of late due to the cold temperature that accompanies these winter months. As such I needed something else to do. I hate television, only have so much patience for reading (although I do read quite a lot), and don't want to waste time on the internet. Enter in puzzles! Here is a picture of my latest 1000 piece puzzle which I completed this weekend.

Springbok: Cathedral Rock

Angela Gronenborn

2012-01-13T15:13:00.000-05:00

Pittsburg

Three years ago this month I began the interviewing process for graduate school. The first school I interview at was the University of Pittsburg. I remember the very first investigator I met with, a very lively NMR spectroscopist named Angela Gronenborn. I remember the NMR facility being phenomenal; in fact, I have yet to see a facility that even comes close to topping it. Pittsburg holds a special place in my heat, it was there that I realized that I was going to go to graduate school, I just didn't kno where.

Audrey Hepburn
She's pretty <3

Last week I received word that Angela Gronenborn was coming to Duke to give a seminar. As a student I had the opportunity, which I quickly took, to have lunch with her and a few other students. Lunch was great! Angela told a lot of really neat stories. The most memorable being an experience she had while doing a post-doc in London. There she was, a young researcher, and she gets a call from Max Perutz asking for her help! For those who are not structural biologist it would be like a young, un-known actress getting a call from Audrey Hepburn asking for help on her acting; a big deal. It was awesome! Now Angela is a legend in her own right with over 400 publications.

The lunch conversation took several turns, from science to sports. I kept to myself as I usually do. That was until the conversation turned to the city of Pittsburg. The comments were all admiration for the city that seems to get very little credit. Here I had something to say because I had been there. When I did speak up Angela told me that she remembered interviewing me. In fact, she remembered more of our interaction then I did! Apparently after hearing my interestes she said that I needed to go work with Jane Richardson. It seems to me as if Angela Gronenborn is a prophetess! :)

Sacrement Talk: Priorities

2012-01-01T16:17:00.000-05:00

This is a talk I gave in my parents ward in Utah on New-Years Day.

Today I will be talking on individual priorities. When my father told me what I was to speak on I was confident that I would be able to write a talk on the subject with relatively little trouble. This assumption was validated as I pondered what I could say. However, when I did finally sit down to prepare the talk I found that I was having a difficult time organizing my thoughts. As such, I consulted various General Conference talks that addressed the topic of priorities. As a single adult, I came to realize the genuine value of belonging to a young single adult ward. The day-to-day priorities of a parent or child living in a family unit are vastly different from those of a single adult. The general authorities spent time addressing family home evening, little-league practices and games, parent-teacher conferences, etc. While most young single adults will have to deal with these things in the future, here and now they generally deal with a whole other set of day-to-day priorities. The goal for my talk will be to address a more basic concept of priorities that will hopefully be beneficial irrespective of where one is in life.

The concept of priority I am referring to is quite simple; it is the ordering, by importance, of activities in one’s life. However simple this concept may seem, priority directly determines how one lives their life. An analogy would be a living cell and how it lives its life. The cell does a lot of simple things in just the correct proportion to grow, divide and thrive. Cells prioritize their activities in the most efficient way possible. If one were to disrupt one of the essential cellular pathways, via genetic mutation, thereby disrupting cellular priorities, one would generally observe a ‘sick’ cell, if the cell grows at all.

Lets take the analogy further. The cell needs energy to accomplish its task of living and dividing. The cell has many spectacular mechanisms to produce the energy it needs, but these mechanisms require input resources. In the simplest of cases these resources consists of sugars and oxygen. From these simple resources the cell can accomplish something very complex, survive and divide.

Taking the preceding analogy lets examine the topic at hand, individual priorities. When prioritizing one’s life it is helpful to ask several questions. What task am I trying to accomplish? The cell is simply trying to grow and divide. Is there a time frame in which I must complete the task? Time is important for the cell to efficiently run. How will the task be accomplished? The pathways that the cell employs are already genetically programmed. For us however, it is not quite as simple. Figuring out how to accomplish a task is what makes us intelligent beings and thus is fairly difficult. For simplicity’s sake I will assume that we have no problem prioritizing the most basic of needs: food, shelter, hygiene, etc.

Tackling the first question, what is it that one is trying to accomplish? The answer to this question varies depending on the scope of examination. For example, one may look at a single day. What do I want to accomplish today? (Are you imagining a checklist here like I am?) While this is certainly a very important question I would like to focus on a bigger question. Allow me to retract the previous question and rephrase it. Who am I trying to become? This perspective takes that preverbal checklist we often create and puts it in its place. Enter in the age-old dichotomy of being and doing, a whole separate topic. Suffice it to say that this is a false dichotomy as both being and doing are equally important. However, for the majority of us it will be well to remember that doing is not more important than becoming, so put away the checklist. But I digress; back to whom ‘we’ are trying to become.

Who am I trying to become? This is not a simple question. Indeed finding the answer is a life-long endeavor. If you are looking to me for hints to this question you will be sorely disappointed. Talking to a diverse congregation I can’t even pretend to generalize on this question, unless, of coarse, we all share a common goal. The fact that we are here suggests that we all are believers in the gospel of Jesus Christ and His church. If we assume this we can say something about who we are trying to become. In 3 Nephi 27 the Lord asks ‘what manner of men ought ye to be?’ He the proceeds ‘even as I.’ We, as latter-day saints, are trying to become like Christ.

The next question posed was about time. Is there a time frame in which the task must completed? We all know that becoming like Christ will continue far past this life. The danger arises when we use this fact as a smart excuse to lazily float in the currents of life rather than actively rowing toward the distant goal. The reason we need to continue trying to emulate Christ is not simply because that is what we’ve been asked to do and we need to be obedient. The deeper reason truly benefits us individually. Just as rowing against the current strengthens us, trying our best to emulate Christ strengthens us also. This is where the rowing-against-the-current analogy breaks down. If we stop here we may falsely believe that emulating Christ will strengthen us in some preconceived time frame to overcome every personal obstacle (sin, relationships, ailments, etc.). A continual effort to emulate Christ does a lot more than strengthens us, it teaches, changes perspective and extricates false core beliefs, softens hard hearts, and allows us to grow. Again, we need to be careful not to give unwarranted weight to doing; we have every right to be confident when we have made progress, be it doing or becoming.

When taking the perspective of natural beings, where the time we have is limited to this mortal existence, it is dangerous to think about our task, emulating Christ. It is important to remember the principles of the Gospel that teach eternal progress. However, time, as we mortals think about it, can become important as we take baby steps toward our goal. It is sometimes helpful to set small goals within a specified timeframe. I’ll refrain from relating a comprehensive sermon on goals; rather I’ll rehearse the sections headings. Set doable goals, set a reasonable timeframe, and write them down. Most importantly, don’t be disappointed if you fail at the specified goal. Disappointment points to an amount of fear of failure, which fear will inhibit personal progress.

I’ve been addressing goals, which fits in the topic of the last question initially posed. How will the task be accomplished? When we talk about how to accomplish a specified task we generally layout steps that will get the job done. When putting together furniture from Ikea following the instructions (step one then step two and finally step three) makes complete sense; the job is simple and everyone is given the same material, or resources, to construct the piece of furniture. The nature of emulating Christ however is not even close to being as simple. One would argue that as Latter-day Saints we each are given the same resources to accomplish the task at hand. These resources include prayer, scripture, modern-day revelation and personal revelation. While these are certainly resources available to all, it can be dangerous to prescribe step-by-step instructions on exactly how one should employ these and other resources.

We are all individuals and should embrace our individualism. I would argue then that following the road to our goal requires that we take the time to learn the lessons that will teach us about ourselves. While this message is especially important for youth, it is also for those who lack the crucial differentiation from ineffective behaviors and beliefs. Having said that, the message of individually discovering how to learn and grow is ‘especially’ for everyone. With this in mind lets revisit the resources that I referred to earlier.

Prayer

Prayer is the channel through which we can communicate with God. For me prayer has evolved throughout life as I learn more about myself, Heavenly Father, and my relationship to Him. I have heard many sincere testimonies given on prayer; I can even bare solemn testimony on sacred experiences I have hade while on my knees. However, most of the time prayer is not that special. I know that the Spirit is not going to magically visit me because I get down on my knees and pray. The Spirit does visit me though, more on this later. The question you must answer is how you best communicate with God individually.

Scripture and Modern-day revelation

Scripture and modern-day revelation allows us to calibrate our beliefs. I have heard many accounts on how one approaches the study of the Word. Some wake up early and study their scriptures and conference talks before they begin their day. For others, like myself, bedtime is better. For some marking their scriptures in different colors is key for them to learn. That, however, is not the way I learn (mainly due to a lifetime of not writing). The number of ways in which one can study the Word rivals the number of lines that intersect a circle. The question you must answer here is how you best learn the word of God individually.

Personal revelation

Because we are individuals, personal revelation is requisite for us to learn and grow. While we need to listen to the words of the prophets, past and present, we need ask Heavenly Father what He would have us learn from a given message. If we only learn from prophets without inquiring God about the messages we frustrate the plan He has for us. We are here to learn for ourselves. Brigham Young conveyed this idea best when he said:

I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation, and weaken that influence they could give to their leaders, did they know for themselves, by the revelations of Jesus, that they are led in the right way. Let every man and woman know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not.

— Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 9:150
This quote iterates the principle of personal revelation that we all have the right and duty to pursue.

The question you must answer here is how to receive personal revelation. I would recommend studying the word and asking others about their thoughts on how they receive personal revelation. Use what you learn as a guide that will lead you to learn how you best receive revelation.

This talk started out on the subject of priorities; I’ve done a pretty bad job of keeping on subject. So how did I get here? Priorities directly influences how one lives their life. In order to address such a subject one must ask what one is trying to accomplish. I then assumed we were all trying to become like Christ and carefully addressed how one would tackle such a task emphasizing self-learning using prophets’ words as a calibrator. If you were looking for specific instructions for how to prioritize your life I am sorry to disappoint. This problem has no one solution; generalizing would mock our God-given individuality. The fact of the matter is that we must continue to learn in order to emulate Christ. An essential part of learning and growing is to go through the process of discovering how to learn and grow individually.

Earlier I said that I believed that praying alone didn’t bring the Spirit into my life. Indeed, using any one of the resources I’ve addressed alone doesn’t bring the Spirit nor does it teach anything. Rather it is the use of all resources available to emulate Christ that invites the Spirit. When the Spirit is with us we can learn and grow, which is the reason why we are all here on this Earth.

Testimony.

Post Prelim

2011-11-06T17:17:00.001-05:00

I was a cowboy for Halloween!

This has been a great week. The week started on Halloween when I had my preliminary exam. This is where I gave a thirty-minute presentation on my dissertation research proposal and then get questioned about my proposal and general biochemistry. As it turned out I was asked next to nothing about general biochemistry, I guess my proposed research was just that interesting. The research topic is rather unorthodox within the realm of scientific research. Almost all scientific research is hypothesis based; one proposes a hypothesis to explain an observation and then goes about to find supporting evidence, or lack thereof, of the said hypothesis. In contrast, my research is exploratory in nature. What this means is that I have no hypothesis, I have to go out and find one first. This fact led to a lot of interesting discussion in the prelim, which kept all of the questions on the research. The exam went a lot quicker than I was expecting. I passed and a celebration ensued. After the canonical lab party, the celebration continued as my lab mates and roommates took me out to Bull City Burgers. It was great!

On Tuesday I didn’t even go into lab, I needed a break after a solid month of studying for my prelim. Instead I helped out the missionaries; first, by taking one to a transfer meeting and then bringing a new one back and, second, by taking them out to dinner and accompanying them to an appointment. The rest of the week was spent either in the lab or in the yard. I got back to lab quickly, researching the usefulness of map correlation coefficients. Since I let the yard go while I was preparing for my prelim it was in desperate need of TLC. I cleaned up fallen branches, raked leaves and weeds, mowed the lawn, turned the soil over in the garden, etc. There is still plenty to do.

On Friday night I went to a concert given by Ingrid Fliter, an amazing classical pianist. I am absolutely in love with piano music. She played Beethoven and Chopin. It was nothing short of incredible! The pieces that she preformed were rather fast paced, thus her fingers were moving at a hundred miles per second up and down the keyboard. She made it look easy. Saturday I went to the volleyball game which is always fun.

Looking forward, I have to get ready for a talk that I have to give at department retreat, which takes place this weekend out on the coast. I will then focus 100% on my research.

Fish

2011-10-26T11:54:00.000-04:00

One of the coolest textbook figures I have ever seen! YAY randomness!!

"Principles of Biochemistry," Fifth edition by Moran, Horton, Scrimgeour, Perry. Pearson, Boston: 2012. page 278

Gratitude

2011-10-23T16:39:00.000-04:00

During a church service I received the distinct impression that I should be more grateful. As such, I dedicated myself to write down something that I was grateful for each day for seven days. This is what I came up with.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

I am grateful for my intellect. The ability to learn and grow is the very essence of true happiness. We must learn how to love, how to behave, how to serve, how to relate; we must even learn how to learn. Learning is something that we will do as a consequence of being conscientious. The choice is ours as to what we will learn. As a garden, it takes a great deal of work before something beautiful emerges but even left unchecked something will grow. It is therefore up to us to decide what we want to be. If we desire to be great we must begin by learning the attributes of greatness and then learning how to personally gain those attributes.

Monday, October 17, 2011

I am grateful for friends. Friends are truly God’s gift to His children. While I associate with many people at school and church, great friends occupy a much smaller circle. They are those who I know genuinely care for me; they even care for my silly pursuits simply because they are my pursuits. Friends are those who ask, ‘How are you?’ and sincerely mean it. While we may have true friends that sincerely care for us, it is us who chooses to let those people into the intimate aspects of our lives. If we do so we can find greater happiness than we can ever experience alone. The power of kindness, caring, and genuine love that true friends provide is yet another manifestation of our Father’s love for us.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

I am grateful for my body. I have been given a great body that can do a myriad of awesome tasks. Sure, it doesn’t work as most bodies work. Fine motor coordination? Shot. Balance? Not so great. Voluntary muscle contraction? Yes, at least for almost all my muscles I control them. Look at what else I can do. I can ride my bike for several miles, I can hike, I can sleep and eat. If you really think about it, I can move the way that I want to move pretty much unimpeded. I can also think, learn, solve complex problems, perform dissertation research in biochemistry. Cycling, hiking, learning, growing...are these not synonymous to being happy. It is true, I am very grateful for my body.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

I am grateful for my two wonderful PIs (primary investigators), Dave and Jane Richardson. They are my mentors here at Duke. I am especially grateful for their enthusiasm for science; it makes research in their lab exciting. They are extremely supportive of their students; they both are helping me a great deal to prepare for my prelim. I literally can think of no other scientists that I would rather work under as a graduate student than Dave and Jane. The research that is done in the Richardson lab is not only extremely interesting but also rather unique. They are both great scientists and I feel privileged that I get to benefit from their mentorship.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

I am grateful for hemoglobin. Yes, I just said that. I am studying allostery and as I am sure you all know that the prototypical model for allostery is the effectual binding of O2 to one of the subunits in the tetramer hemoglobin. I am now spinning on rollers rather than riding on the road. Stationary cycling allows me to focus on the aerobics side of cycling. I have been so grateful for all the hemoglobin in my blood willingly delivering the needed O2 from my lungs to my leg muscles as I stubbornly ignore their screams of ‘STOP!’, a.k.a. the buildup or lactic acid.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Today I am grateful for cold medicine, perhaps the only medicine that does what it is suppose to do. My body has been trying to come down with a head cold all week and finally succeeded today. Unfortunately, a cold seems to take the edge off my mental aptitude; as such, studying is useless. But hey, I have a presentation to get ready for! So I thank you Acetaminophen and Phenylephrine.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Today I am grateful for computers. My fine motor coordination isn’t exactly what it could be. As such, I have a difficult time with many of man’s mundane tasks: drinking out of a glass, tying my shoes, buttoning buttons, and, of course, writing. It is glaringly obvious that the computer has helped out a great deal with my inability to write. However, my gratefulness extends much further than that. I love biochemistry; I better, after all I am getting a PhD in the subject. A short twenty years ago one would highly doubt that I, given my physical limitations, could even attempt a PhD in such a field. Almost all biochemical research was done on the bench, I guess that is still true. But here I am in 2011 with no doubt that I can get a PhD in biochemistry. For that I thank you computers!

The preliminary exam prep

2011-10-16T22:37:00.000-04:00

Well, it has been quite a while since I have written now, has it not? A lot of rather neat things have happened since my last post. As you know I am getting ready for my prelim, the exam I need to pass to officially become a PhD candidate. ‘Prelim’ is short for preliminary exam. OK, what’s that?

The preliminary exam consists of two major components, the written and the oral. By far, the oral is the bigger part. Don’t get me wrong though, the written is pretty tough too. The written is basically an NIH grant proposal where the student proposes what they will do for their dissertation research. When doing a dissertation a committee has the job of judging the research, make sure that the student is really doing PhD level work. When you hear a PhD candidate say that they are going to defend, it is the committee to whom they defend, they are defending their dissertation research. But that is still many years off for me. Back to the prelim. I have completed the written portion of the prelim (research proposal). The committee then inspects it and, if needed, requests revisions. I am at the point now where I have received the revision requests and am making those. I should be done tomorrow, at which point I will send a final draft to my committee. The oral takes place in two weeks.

In the oral the student, me, gives a 30-minute presentation on the proposed research. After this the committee asks questions to the student pertaining to not only the proposed research but also any topic in biochemistry. The questioning usually lasts for 2+ hours. Based upon your answers the committee will either pass you, thereby declaring the student competent to pursue the proposed dissertation research, or fail you. If the student passes there is great rejoicing. If they fail the student hits the books harder and then tries the prelim again in a couple months. If the student fails twice Duke will hand out a Master’s degree and send them on packing. “Thanks for trying!”

Random Crystal

So there you have it. I am right in the middle of preparing for my orals, studying my butt off. The main problem with my research is that it is more physics than biochemistry; remember that the committee can ask any question pertaining to the field of biochemistry. So basically I am trying to relearn material that I learned 4 years ago at Utah State. I rarely feel stressed, its just who I am, almost nothing in this world is so serious as to cause stress, right? However, this past week I have felt pangs of stress as I have come to realize that I don’t, and can’t, know everything that I think I’ll need to know for the prelim. I have received a small amount of comfort as I was told that, in the end, the committee is more concerned on how you can reason rather than how much you know. Still, the best way to prepare to reason through biochemical problems is to study biochemistry and gain as much knowledge as is possible.

With two weeks to go I feel there is a long way to go before I can confidently declare that I am ready. Nonetheless, I feel like everything will work out just fine.

Utah State vs. Auburn

2011-09-05T22:20:00.000-04:00

So you probably all are wondering how my ride went this weekend, right? As it turns out I got a call Wednesday night from a fellow Aggie here at Duke, Mitchell, who happened to have an extra ticket to the USU vs. Auburn game. When an opportunity like that comes along I take it!

I met up with Mitchell and two other Aggie fans, Eric and Eric, on Friday afternoon and we started the long drive to Auburn, Alabama. We went through South Carolina and Georgia before crossing over into Alabama. It was a long drive but the exceptional company made the trip go by quickly.

The next day we caught a shuttle to the stadium. Of course, there were a ton of Auburn fans tailgating around the Stadium. This is where we first encountered the phenomenon known as Southern Hospitality. We were greeted more than several times with a “Welcome to Auburn” and a “Glad that you could make it down.” It made me ashamed of the way all the fans in Utah, choose any school you’d like, treat fans from other teams. I wish everyone could see what we saw and learn how you should treat others.

The game more than exceeded my expectations. Since we are Utah State and Auburn is the defending national champion I was only hoping that the Aggies would post a few points. I can honestly say that I have never seen Utah State play as well as they did that day. We consistently were getting first downs and marching right into the end zone. The Aggies had the lead most of the game. Unfortunately, USU’s weakness, the defense, showed as they let a ten point lead slip away in the final four minutes of the game. However, I was not disappointed! Utah State posted more yards than Auburn and the Aggie quarterback, true freshman Chuckie Keeton, looked sensational. I have little doubt about making it over 0.500 this year.

After the game we headed to Atlanta where we tried for an hour to get into the Boise State vs. UGA game but that didn’t work out. Sunday we went to the World of Coke in downtown Atlanta; it’s pretty much a Coke-a-cola museum on coke. The history of Coke with their classy marketing scheme was very neat. At the end there was a taste test where one could taste Coke products from around the word. Of course I didn’t taste any of it as my tummy cannot tolerate carbonation, but it was still fun to see all the different flavors of pop. After that we hit the road and made the uneventful trip back to Durham.

All and all it was a great time. Spending time with friends and making new acquaintances is always fun. I only hope that more road trips, with these great men, comes sooner rather than later.

Thank You!

2011-08-26T22:03:00.000-04:00

I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the many donors who have supported my ride to raise much-needed funds for the Easter Seals UCP of North Carolina and Virginia. Your generosity will help many children and adults with disabilities live a full and happy life. The ride was originally supposed to happen tomorrow and Sunday; however, hurricane Irene could not time her arrival at a worse possible time. It has started raining here in central NC this evening and will only get worse tomorrow. Thus the ride for tomorrow has been canceled; riding will happen only on Sunday.

I don’t ride on Sunday and this Sunday is no exception. However, I will ride the 64 miles for the Easter Seals UCP! I plan on doing it next Saturday, weather permitting. There are a few details that I need to work out. An important detail is how I can pull off 64 miles without the support I was looking forward to. After the ride I will post the details on how it went.

Again, I thank you for the support. I never imagined that I’d be able to raise nearly $2000 in ten days. Your generosity is much appreciated. As a person with a disability I know how hard it can be to ask for help but at the same time that help is greatly needed. It makes it easier when people offer the help. You have assisted a great organization that specializes in offering needed help to those who may need it the most.

Thank you,

Bradley

Cycling for a cause!

2011-08-16T14:28:00.000-04:00

As you are all well aware I love to road cycle. As of late I've been riding a lot; 25+ miles three times a week. I also love to help people by getting them to question their own perceived limitations. Last night I found an event that brings these two activities into one. This is a bike ride called 'Ride Without Limits' and takes place in Pittsboro, NC. This ride benefits the Easter Seals UCP North Carolina & Virginia (UCP is United Cerebral Palsy). As a rider I need to raise $250 to ride. BUT I am trying to raise as much money as I can for this great organization. All proceeds will go to help children and adults with disabilities, not just Cerebral Pal

sy. Here is a blurb from UCP:

UCP’s mission is to advance the independence, productivity and full citizenship of people with all types of disabilities, not just cerebral palsy. With a nationwide network of affiliates and help from people like you, UCP is making it happen. One legal battle at a time. One program at a time. One person at a time

I plan to do a 64 mile ride. However, I ride for a purpose!! I am asking that you give $1 (or $0.50, whatever fits your budget) for every mile but ANY amount will help! Please be generous and donate here:

CLICK HERE to Help Bradley Out!!!

Lets help people find the opportunities to live without limits.

Thank you,

Bradley

A Cyclist's Confession

2011-08-07T19:55:00.000-04:00

My name is Bradley Joel Hintze and I am addicted to road cycling. It all started on September 9, 2006 when my friend, Bryan (a heavy bicycle user), invited me to volunteer at a feed station for a race known as LOTOJA, the longest single-day US cycling federation-sanctioned race. We were stationed a mile or so below the summit of one of the three mountain passes on the course. As we handed food and water bottles to the 1,000 cyclists (facilitating the addicts) I noticed a few tandems. I eagerly turned to Bryan and said, “We should do this next year on a tandem!” Bryan liked the idea and encouraged me further. I was innocently introduced to this behavior but you can see how quickly I was planning to use. A month later I spent a large sum of my savings on my own road bike.

The time spent cycling went down as the bitter Cache Valley winter settled in; however, I did relapse in the middle of the cold season. This is hard to relate but it goes to show how this addiction can screw up your thinking. It was in the deep winter, we had several days in which the temperature struggled to reach freezing. I remember the day well, it was a cold but clear and the roads were dry although snow did cover the ground that wasn’t road. I had had enough holding back and I went and I used my bike. The temperature on my bike computer read 30 degrees! Crazy.

Well the next summer I became a heavy user of bicycles with the help of Bryan. We rode all over town, sometimes on our own bikes other times on the tandem. I remember a few sessions of use that lasted several hours: Logan to Salt Lake, we rode around the Wellsville Mountains, Logan to Bear Lake THRU Idaho… you get the picture. These sessions gave me great highs but nothing can compare to the LOTOJA. A year after I had innocently volunteered at a feed station I was riding the race on a tandem!

The time between then and now is fuzzy at best. There was a time when I moved across the country and left my bike behind. I had eight glorious months where I was clean. Then spring came with its trigger for the addictive behavior, warm weather. I couldn’t take it; I needed to use. So I had my dad mail me my bike and started using quite a bit. It’s been a year and a few months since I’ve had my bike here in NC and it has only gotten worse. I am now a habitual user of bicycle, essentially no soberness. I use three times a week, mostly in the mornings before I start in lab.

So what are the effects? First financial, in order to be a serious user you need money. There is the obvious; you need a bike, not just any though, you need an expensive carbon-fiber frame with the fancy components. Then there is the attire that users adopt, spandex with special padding. I am talking cycling shorts and they are not cheap. Then there is the maintenance; a heavy user will, out of necessity, maintain their bike. This is not free either. Second, the time factor; using takes a lot of time. For recreational users a quick ride around the neighborhood will suffice. The hard user, like myself, will literally dedicate several hours a week using. Third, psychological; certain ideas that are totally irrational to a healthy individual start sounding rational to the addict. Case in point, LOTOJA, riding 206 miles in one day. Spending a couple hours in a day where your average heart beat is greater then 170 bpm. Do this three or four times a week. Spend $80-$100 on one pair of shorts. Burn so many calories such that food intake becomes a chore. Does any of this sound rational in the slightest? Finally, as with other addictions, continuous bicycle use leads to longer, more intense use to achieve the same high. For a few months I was content with my 18.3 mile loop three times a week; no longer does that do the trick. I now have to do a 25.4 mile loop three times a week to get the same high. I’m sure I missing some of the unseen effects.

So there you have it, full disclosure. I am addicted to bicycle use with some pretty dire effects to my physical and emotional health. How do I feel about my addiction? I wouldn’t change a thing!

Backpacking Bryce Canyon

2011-07-23T14:42:00.000-04:00

I went to Bryce Canyon with my good friend, Christopher, to go on my obligatory summer backpacking trip. I think that backcountry backpacking is my favorite thing in the world. We left Sandy at 4AM to ensure that we caught the park shuttle to the other end of the park, to Rainbow Point. The plan was to take the ‘Under the Rim trail.’ This is a one-way 23-mile trail that extends through the entire park, almost. The problem with backpacking here is water; there are only two reliable water sources, that is the two places we camped. The first day was rather simple; from where we were dropped off, at Rainbow Point, we only had to go 4 miles to our campsite (Iron Spring). Shortly after we got there it started to rain. Considering that we were in the desert, it was a pretty healthy rain but short lived. There was a reliable water source, Iron Spring, but it had lots of minerals and silt in it the clogged the filter rather quickly. We hiked up close to the top of the ‘rim’ where there were some pretty neat rock formations. We then went down to where we heard water flowing and followed it up to find what I’m sure was the head of Iron Spring. Unfortunately fires are not permitted in the park so when night came we didn’t spend too much time talking, we went to bed rather quickly as it got fairly cold. A strange thing that I will not forget is the quiet that accompanied the night at Iron Spring. There was no wind, no crickets, no noise at all; it was kind of eerie.

The second day was a lot more grueling than either of us had expected. We had to go 13 miles to our next campsite. We had thought, ‘yeah, we can do 13 miles, no problem.’ It was almost as if we had failed to figure in the fact that we had 35 LBS on our backs. We started around 10:30 AM and didn’t get to camp until 7:30 PM. This stretch of the trail had no water to speak of. We had filled all our water at Iron Spring, it turned out that that amount was barely enough to carry us through the 13 mile trek. We were dead when we finally made it to the second campsite, Yellow Creek. There was another group at this site from Belgium. Luckily the ‘creek’ was right next to camp. After we filled our water bottles, we cooked dinner, setup camp, and went to bed. It was a very grueling day and we were exhausted!

The next day we took it easy and stayed around camp to allow our bodies to recover. We spent time talking, diverting the creek, damning the creek, bathing, etc. At one point we decided to follow the creek upstream. Well, the bugs up river had another idea. We got to one point where then coordinated an attack on us, it was horrible! So we quickly got away from the creek and made our way back to camp. The next day we packed up camp and walked the last six miles to Bryce Point. This was a very different portion of the trail. We went through a desolate sagebrush field, thick scrub oak, and finally a steep accent to Bryce Point. The accent was neat as we finally got to see those strange hoodoo formations that Bryce Canyon is famous for. We made it back, took the shuttle to the car, and drove back to Sandy.

All and all, it was a great backpacking trip. This was very different from the backpacking trips that I usually take as it was in the desert. Luckily it was the high desert so it never got too hot. Christopher and I had a great time together; it was just the two of us. I’ll have to find a new partner for next year as Christopher will be on his mission.

View from Rainbow Point, the start. We followed those cliffs that you see in the distance.

Starting Down the trail. (me)

Starting Down the trail. (Topher)

Pink cliffs, no pink ladies though :(

A cool chasm!

On the trail.

Starting to get in the hoodoos on the last trail.

Getting to the end of the trail. (me)

Getting to the end of the trail. (Topher)

Getting to the end of the trail. (random hoodoos)

6-27-2011 Bike Ride

2011-06-27T10:58:00.000-04:00

As my last ride for my three week vacation to Utah I did my 'Mama Bear' loop. 'Baby Bear', my 20 mile loop, was getting all my attention. Mama bear is almost 28 miles. Maybe in August I'll introduce you to 'Papa Bear'. Side Note: according to this site, I am burning as many calories on this ride as a healthy individual exercising three times a week should intake. No wonder I am ALWAYS hungry!!

6-20-2011 Bike Ride

2011-06-20T09:52:00.000-04:00

I am now biking three times a week. I usually do my 18 mile loop. If you include my ride into lab its actually 20 miles.

ACA 2011

2011-06-06T08:13:00.000-04:00

I spent this last week in New Orleans at the American Crystallographic Association (ACA) conference. I was there with my awesome lab mate and new roommate, Christopher. This is the same conference that I went to in Chicago last year. The conference happened two months earlier this year due to the international crystallography conference that happens this summer. The ACA conference is meant to get scientist in the crystallography community together to share their research. This really is a prime way to learn what others are doing, develop ‘research relationships’, and bounce ideas off one another. I feel that these conferences are an essential component to scientific discovery.

Getting to New Orleans happened to be a bigger deal than one would have anticipated, but we had a few lucky breaks and got there only a few hours later than expected. When Jane, my PI, picked us up, it was raining very heavily, the kind of rain that simply doesn’t occur in Utah. Getting out to the car was enough to get my feet soaked wet. On the way to the airport we drove out of the storm and I thought we were going to be in the air soon enough. When we got situated at our gate another portion of the storm rolled in and set up camp over the airport. Pretty soon they had to delay all in-coming and out-going flights due to lightning. The airport was shutdown for about three hours. It quickly became apparent that we would miss our connection. The agents were very busy trying to help passengers sort out their missed connections so we had to wait quite a while to talk to sort out our connection. The agent

confirmed us on a flight from Atlanta to New Orleans in the morning and put us on stand-by for a flight later that night. She told us that Atlanta was already backed up from the same storm system and we’d likely have to spend the night at the Atlanta airport. Long story short, a very nice agent in Atlanta put us on priority stand-by and we made it onto the later flight. We were in New Orleans only a few hours later than scheduled.

I have to be honest; in my humble opinion New Orleans is not as cool as Chicago but pretty neat nonetheless. My biggest complaint was that the city seemed dirty to me. Christopher had a fair point when he mentioned that it was an old city and old cities generally looked dirtier. They had garbage bins on every curb, which I thought was odd. As I looked around though I realized how cramped the city was, especially in the French quarter, where else could they put the trash? The food was great. We went to Red Fish Grill on Bourbon Street, it was by far the best food we had there. We also went to Johnny’s Po Boys where I got the New Orleans original, the Muffaletta (See picture). Of course, we had gumbo and jambalaya.

Red Fish Grill

Johnny's Muffaletta

On the last night we were there we went to a Thai restaurant which was on the opposite side of the French Quarter from our Hotel. We walked down Royal Street all the way to the restaurant. My pineapple-fried rice was yummy. When we were done we decided to walk the entirety of Bourbon Street. By this time the sun was setting and things were getting started on Bourbon Street. Suffice it to say that two devout Christian men were educated. The live music in every bar was neat, live music is always pretty cool. Other then that I have nothing good to say about that street. I can say that women are prettier with cloths on and the adult superstore does NOT sell adults. I don’t plan on making that stroll ever again.

We spent most days in the conference listening to talks and interacting with other scientists and even a few legends in the field. Wednesday we decided to go to the local aquarium, right next to the Mississippi River. After going to look at the river and take a few pictures we went into the aquarium. It was a very neat attraction! I could go on about the variety of colorful fish, the sea otters or even the penguin exhibit. I’ll spare you and tell you my favorite creature there, the jellyfish! They were small but I think I like them best that way. They move so gracefully and are simply beautiful.

On Thursday I had to give a fifteen-minute talk. I talked mainly about recommendations made by a task force that Jane was on. It was on validation of crystallographic structures deposited in the PDB. I also talked about a new tool that I created called MolProbity Compare, which allows the user to compare two validation reports of two different models. Unfortunately my talk was in the afternoon on the last day, a lot of the participants are gone by that time. Further, there were other sessions that were happening simultaneously that I had to compete with. I frankly was surprised at the 10-15 people in the room who listened to my talk.

There you have it, New Orleans in a nutshell.

New Orleans

2011-05-11T21:58:00.000-04:00

At the end of this month I will be venturing to New Orleans to attend the American Crystallographic Association conference. This is a research conference that happens every year; last year that I attended the same conference in Chicago. The main goal of these kinds of conferences is to disseminate knowledge gained through research. This dissemination is usually done through two kinds of presentations, oral presentations and poster presentations. Just about every student that goes presents a poster. If the research that you propose to present is good and of general interest they will pick you to give a talk.

So, how does one propose a research presentation? That is done by submitting an abstract, which is a short synopsis of your research. My lab mate and I submitted our abstracts a few months back. The conference organizers will typically tell you well in advance that your abstract has been accepted and what kind of presentation you’d be giving, which is a poster presentation 95% of the time. It occurred to me last week that the conference was right around the corner and I had yet to hear from the conference. I got worried when someone informed me that they had tried to email me but it had not gone through. Was I sent an email from the conference but didn’t get it? So I sent an email to the conference organizers explaining my predicament.

While I was waiting for a reply, I went to the conference website and noticed that they had published the conference program. If my abstract had been accepted my name would appear in my program. The list of posters was quite extensive, as such, I searched for my name using the browser’s find function. My name came up not under posters but rather under talks. That’s right, I have been assigned to give a talk.
The talk will be 15 minutes long and I will mostly be talking about work that my mentor did. She was on an international task force whose job was to recommend validation methodologies that will be incorporated into the Protein Data Bank (PDB). The PDB is where all published protein models have to be deposited. Everybody is interested in this topic as everybody wants to have a model that looks good and thus will p ass as a good structure using the new validation techniques. I will also be presenting some of my research.

So there you have it, my exciting news. As a side note, I will be in Utah from June 29 to July 19. I cannot wait to see everybody!

2011-05-01T16:15:00.001-04:00

Die tree, die!!

The past month has been pretty quiet. I have been getting ready for my initial committee meeting. This meeting is deigned to introduce my committee to myself but more importantly my project. For those who are unfamiliar with the process of getting a PhD this committee is made up of faculty members who will follow me throughout my tenure as a graduate student. Their job is to ensure that I am doing the things that I need to receive a PhD. Finally, at my dissertation defense I ‘defend’ my research to them. To get ready for the initial meeting one must prepare a short summary on my the research that I propose doing and prepare a very short presentation. I have also, of course, been continuing with my research. As usual in research, it is going slowly but going nonetheless.

This week I had the opportunity to go see a performance put on by the Young Ambassadors of BYU. Their program included singing and dancing. The performance followed the ideal life; childhood, adolescence, marriage, adulthood and growing old. They were very good at what they did…suffice it to say it reminded me of Saturday’s Warriors.

Unfortunately, the only biking that I get in is my daily commute to and from lab. I’d like tpo do more but another activity has taken priority, working in the yard. Yesterday I started to take down a tree in the backyard. A vicious vine was overtaking this tree, it was a matter of time before the vine would kill the tree. It also was in the way any time that I wanted to take out the garbage or mow the lawn. I was only able to take down half of it as there was only so much room in our yard waste bins; I’ll do the rest next week.

That’s it for now.

SBB Seminar

2011-04-12T21:42:00.000-04:00

This past week has been rather busy for me but also very exciting. Busy because I had to give the seminar talk in front of my whole program on Monday. That includes graduate students as well as faculty. Further, the seminar talks are usually 50+ minutes long; I had never given a presentation that long before. The problem was that although I have done a lot while I've been here, the stuff I have done isn't very presentable. I needed a concrete example of the use of a method for which I had made tools for. Its like I had made a sledge hammer, something brand new and never before seen, but I had yet to show it could tear down walls. Thus, the last week or so was not filled with antagonizing over what to say or how to present my work, rather it was doing the work so that I had something to show for it. Now I will explain what I actually did, so feel free to skip the next paragraph.

I work on methodologies to improve model accuracy given low-resolution crystallographic data. I am specifically focusing on proteins. Getting an accurate model with little error at low resolution is very difficult. In fact, there has yet to exist a mode with little error given low-resolution data. In order to get an accurate model one needs to have a good backbone. This is like saying, in order to have a sound building you must have a solid foundation. Current low-resolution structures don't even have good backbone. There are methods by which you can use hydrogen bond restraints that will keep certain regions of the backbone look like they are suppose to look. These are like extra support for the backbone. However, defining these restraints is fairly tedious. In fact, this process is simply not tractable for large molecules. My tool allows one to easily defining hydrogen bond restraints. After you do this you have to put your model through a process called refinement, luckily the computer does this step. The is where you can get backbone errors but hopefully the restraints keep the errors from occurring. So what I did was take a low-resolution model and refined it without and with several different restraints. The results were good, kind of. The backbone in regions where hydrogen bond restraints were defined looked great. However, other areas gained more errors. That means more research for me, YIPEEE!

Suffice it to say that the presentation went better than expected. I had practiced the talk the day before and got worried because I quickly got tired and my dysdtonic movements got worse making it even more difficult to talk. All though this worried me I was relatively calm going into the seminar. I decided to do something unorthodox that I had done before which is to sit rather than stand to give my presentation. It worked like a charm. I also believe that I did better live because I was getting feedback from the audience. I made them laugh, I could tell that at least some in the audience were engaged, and asking rhetorical question at the right time to further engage them. It was great. I got two similar comments, that I've actually received before, saying that my use of humor was great and actually added to the presentation. I am glad it is done now though!!

Now onto the exciting news. Las fall I had applied for two fellowships. One through the NSF and the other through the NIH. These fellowships pay for my stipend and one helps with tuition. This simply takes the burden off my PIs. I heard back from the NSF and I got the fellowship! After I had received the award letter I decided to check the status of my NIH fellowship... The status bar said that my application had been reviewed but I would nor receive word on wether or not I got funded til council meets in May. However, I was able to see the reviewers comments and the score that the gave me. The score I go was 10. OK...what does that mean? When I started reading the reviewers comments I knew 10 had to be good as there were very little criticisms. But I didn't learn what 10 meant, I went to the web for that. It turns out that what the reviewers do is score the application on different criteria on a 1-9 scale, 1 being the best. then all the reviewers come together, average their individual scores and time by ten to give you your overall score. That mens that the overall score ranges from 10-90. I was flabbergasted! Now I have to see if they'll fund me. I think they will. Now I have to see if I can take both or choose one. This is a dilemma that I don't mind having.

Lawrence Berkley Labratory

2011-03-20T23:06:00.000-04:00

This last week I was in Berkeley California at the Phenix developer’s workshop. Phenix is a software package whose goal it is to advance the automation of macromolecular structure determination. The workshop was held on the grounds of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, situated on the hillside right above the campus of UC Berkeley. I liked the area a lot. As I showed in my last post, the lab has its own resident turkeys. Further, black-tailed deer can be seen further up the hill. The mornings were awesome, they reminded me of mornings in Utah. I think it is because there was a large hill immediately to the east, thus the direct-sunlight wasn’t seen until later in the morning.

While at the workshop I had the opportunity to work with lots of cool people. I truly enjoyed working with my Phenix friends. My PI had a great idea for a research project that I could tackle to be part of my dissertation project. While there I told a colleague about the project and he suggested a way in which I might accomplish the project, he even had code that advanced my project by several steps! However, this has mad me keenly aware of the fact that I have a ton to learn!! It is good though as this gives me direction whereas before I feel I was lacking a clear direction.

The fight home was my first red-eye. Its very difficult to fly east with the time change. Anyway, we left San Francisco at midnight, Pacific Time, and landed in Durham around 9:30 AM, Eastern Time. I find it hard to sleep in a bed let alone on an airplane. Needless to say, I did not sleep on the plane, one of only a handful on the flight. By the time I got home I was, surprisingly, wide-awake. I didn’t go to bed until 11PM that night making 39 consecutive hours without sleep, a new record for me!

Anyway, it was a great trip and I am looking forward to the next Phenix workshop this fall here at Duke.

LBL

2011-03-14T01:10:00.000-04:00

What, may you ask, is LBL? Well, I'm here to not only tell you but show you also. LBL stands for Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. It is on the campus of the University of California, you know, the one in Berkeley. This happens to be where I am right now, for a collaboration workshop. This workshop, which is held every six months, rotates between here, Duke, and Cambridge. I may have more to say when all is said and done at the end of the week. Until then, enjoy these pictures I managed to get with my phone this morning.

Looking down onto the campus from LBL.

The LBL guest house.

Trees and the overcast sky.

Resident turkeys.

A resident.

A random building.

Look out on the bay.

Opposition in all Things

2011-03-09T22:50:00.000-05:00

So, from my last post it looks like I promised to write a new post a few weeks ago. Obviously, this did not happen. I have been quite busy with life in general; taxes, research, class, TA duties, and yard work…you get the idea. Yup, you heard right, I said yard work. It has been warm as of late and I have been turning the soil over in my garden. I meant to get early crops in but time was not to be found. I have been really busy in the lab, learning a new programming language, Java. Programming is quite simple, all you are doing is telling the computer to take input from the user and if that input is some action, such as a right-click, then do thing A. There are really only a very few primitive commands that you need to make a program, quite amazing. I have been busy doing other school activities too, class and TA responsibilities (A.K.A. thermodynamics and grading).

You may ask then, what do I do when I am not in lab or doing the school thing? I do bike but not a lot. When I get done with the day I usually go home trying ever so hard to keep school and lab things behind. One thing I do not do when I get home is sit in front of the TV; I can’t stand TV. Instead I read. Since I am a great believer in opposition in all things, I have chosen to read Stephen Hawking’s ‘A brief History of Time.’ How does this introduce opposition? Quit simply really. You see, as a student of structural biology I am working in a world where measurements are made on the angstrom scale. An angstrom is a whole magnitude of order less than a nanometer! Certainly almost all have heard of a nanometer but that doesn’t mean that you have an intuition of how small that is. Let me try to instill some intuition about the nanometer and then the angstrom.

I will assume you are familiar with the length of a meter. One tenth of a meter is a decimeter (or 0.1 meter) and one tenth of a decimeter (or one one-hundredth of a meter if you’d like) is a centimeter (or 0.01 meter). Approximately 2.5 centimeters is the length of an inch (this will be the only reference I will give to the cockamamie U.S. convention of length measurement). So, a tenth of a tenth of a meter is a centimeter. Are you with me so far? Good. A tenth of a centimeter is a millimeter (or a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a meter or 0.001 meter). Now think of a human hair, the average size of which is a tenth of a millimeter, pretty small!

This will be the last reference of anything observable to the human eye as anything smaller is fairly difficult, if not impossible, to see with the naked eye. We’ve come a long way but the millimeter is not even half way to the angstrom! Go down three orders of magnitude from a millimeter and you’ll arrive at the micrometer (or 0.000 001 meter). Lets jump down ANOTHER three orders of magnitude, we’ve now arrived at the nanometer (or 0.000 000 001 meter). Recap: three orders of magnitude below meter is millimeter, three more orders down is the micrometer, and three orders down still is the nanometer. Now we go just one order of magnitude below the nanometer and we finally arrive at the angstrom (1 angstrom = 0. 000 000 000 1meter). I hope you followed; my goal was simply to underscore the fact that I am constantly thinking in these small lengths within my research and schoolwork too.

I have yet to answer the question that brought on that rant, why does reading ‘A Brief History of Time’ introduce opposition at all into my life? Well, you see, being a theoretical astrophysicist and all Stephen Hawking tends to write about length scales that are, quite literally, astronomically big. It is nice to come home and peek into another world where people are always thinking about large distances rather than small distances, as I do.

Opposition is like taking a break from a grueling run. It does not only feels amazing but is essential for physical and mental health. Did I just compare my research to a grueling run? Yes, yes I did. I’m ok with that.

My eventful 2011 thus far

2011-02-12T10:01:00.000-05:00

So, I have had quite the eventful 2011. It all commenced on the first day of 2011. I wrote about my Christmas break and that first day of 2011 on January 2. I have chosen to share it now because I was foolishly paranoid that this somehow could have been used in court. Here the delayed post from January 2:

I have just returned from my holiday break. It all started on Sunday December 19, when my good friend Jeremy and I went up to my bother’s home in Virginia. The next morning we flew out to Salt Lake where we surprised my family. I had my Aunt Pam pick us up from the airport then we went to lunch; I had Pam invite my parents and my grandma to lunch. Jeremy and I were waiting at the back of the restaurant. As soon as everyone was seated the host informed us and we walked in. The reaction from everyone was priceless. My parents were so excited; it was great. That night we went to surprise my two sisters’ and their families. Jonna and her family were excited to see me; despite being called a brat, I enjoyed the surprise. We then went to surprise Becky. Becky’s reaction was the best! She was laying on the couch, eyes glued to the television, which allowed me to sneak up on her, putting my face next to her face. At this point she proceeded to jump on the couch, like a four-year-old, screaming, “I KNEW IT!” several times in a row. She then hugged me with her arms AND legs causing me to fall back on the couch. Very special moments indeed.

I was initially worried that Jeremy would be rather board at my house but surprisingly we kept pretty busy. We went skiing, well I did, Jeremy snowboarded, it was his first time! We did that on three of the days. We also went to the movies twice and went on two hikes. Not to mention all the Christmas parties. It was really great to spend time with my family during the holidays.

The puzzle that we did at my parent's home in Utah

Jeremy and I on top of the Majestic lift at Brighton Utah

Jeremy an me with Big Willow in the background

We flew out and in to Washington DC. When we landed Shane and Becky picked us up. We took Jeremy to Union Station to catch a train north. I stayed with my Shane’s family and spent a few days spending time with them. We went to see a movie; besides that we simply hung out at home and did puzzles, which I loved. On new years day I stated to drive back to Durham. It was a rather uneventful trip until I stopped for dinner and to get gas. When I was getting onto the freeway, on a rather curvy onramp, I started to slide and my tires hit the soft shoulder and I ran into an embankment. When all was said and done I had no front bumper and some sort of fuel was leaking out from beneath to car rendering it un-drivable. There were no witnesses but a passer by called the Virginia State Troopers. They called a tow truck, filed a report, cited me with reckless driving (I have to go to court Feb 8), and they then dropped me off at the Days Inn where I had a VERY restless night. Be at ease, I was not hurt at all but my car is in pretty bad shape. Now we have to wait until the business week to start to see what the insurance company will do. What a joy. Not the best way to end the trip but it is what it is.

Here is the rest of the story:

As explained in my January 2 post I was in an accident in a little town in southern Virginia, South Hill to be exact. The next five weeks were hell, nevertheless an awesome learning experience. Not only did I have to deal with my wrecked car but I was also was on a new medication for my dystonia that had horrible side effects, the worst of which was playing with my cognition and emotions. Suffice it to say this fact compounded the hellish nature of the situation. NOTE: I have since weaned off the medications and will no longer take ANY meds unless something drastic changes.

Now to my car and dealing with my insurance company. I called and reported a claim the same night of my accident. I was assigned to an agent in Massachusetts; why I was not given a local agent is beyond me. The agent got back to me fairly quickly. I explained where my car was and that the mom and pop body shop didn’t have the capacity to make a proper estimate; she needed to send an adjuster. Luckily, the insurance covered a rental, which I picked up later on in the first week. The body shop told me that an adjuster did come by and look at my car but that they needed the adjuster’s estimate and report. Two weeks after the accident I got a message on my phone from my adjuster indicating that they had made a check out to Honda Finance and me for the amount of the repairs. I was confused as I was under the impression that the insurance company was suppose to be working with and ultimately paying the body shop not me. I promptly called my adjuster and, as usual, she didn’t pick up the phone and I left a message telling her that I was confused as to why she sent me the check and why she was not sending the body shop the requisite documents to repair my car. After leaving two or three messages like this without a response I was getting frustrated.

I finally had my dad and the body shop, as well as myself, call on the same day and leave her a message, one from each of us, demanding that she send the documents and get back to us. I guess that was the trick; she sent the adjuster’s report and the body shop started to work on my car. It took two weeks to make all of the repairs. Last week I heard from the body shop and they told me that the car would be ready by the weekend. As such, I decided to go and cash the check that the insurance company had sent me. However, since the check was made out to Honda Finance AND myself, I could not cash the check. After going to the Honda dealership I found out the necessary hoops that I needed to jump through to get the money to the body shop. Long story short, I learned that Honda Finance had no interest in my car and that the insurance company needed to cut me a new check with the proper lean holder. After signing a legal document saying that I authorized the said body shop to repair my car, which they had already done, they sent a check straight to the owners of the shop. This put considerable delays in getting my car back. I was to turn in my rental before I had my car. After arguing with the insurance company they grudgingly agreed to extend the rental for three days. It was very apparent that the check would not get to the body shop in time and I would have to go without a car for a day or two. Normally this would not be a big deal but I had to be in Virginia for my hearing on the reckless driving charge. The insurance refused to extend the rental even though their incompetence caused the delay. I will tell you about my hearing in a future post but I had to pay for a rental so that I could get up there. The day of my hearing the repair shop got the check and the next day, this past Wednesday, I was able to retrieve my car.

I am so sorry to vent but it helps ☺. Plus my siblings want to know what happened. There it is in sufficient detail. I will post a more pleasant post tomorrow. Have a wonderful day!

North Carolina is not a Continuous Function

2011-01-30T23:12:00.000-05:00

Hi folks. I am sincerely sorry for not updating my blog sooner. It so happens that I have actually written a post explaining the fun I had during Christmas and the event that ended the break and the fun. However, out of paranoia, perhaps, I am choosing to wait to share that post until later in February.

This semester, besides research, I am taking on another tutorial-based course (statistical thermodynamics) and I am a TA for another course (macromolecular structure). The tutorial class is by choice where as the TA assignment is not. At Duke, graduate students in my department are required to TA one course. For some odd reason they assigned me to TA the macromolecular course (this was written in the most sarcastic tone…believe me). The TA duties, as of now, revolve around copying class handouts and grading the weekly assignments. Grading is not fun; no wonder math professors higher undergraduate math majors to grade assignments!

Statistical thermodynamics on the other hand is an absolutely fascinating class. Since it is tutorial based, the class, all 5 of us, get to dictate how fast we go. We are now taking time to get the proper mathematical foundation needed for the rest of the course. For me, this means learning math that I have not had before, differential equations. To learn such things I have found that reviewing basic calculus requisite. Luckily, calculus is roughly analogous to riding a bike; once you learn it a quick review brings it all back again. I find math amazing and fascinating. As I learn these new mathematical methods I keep on thinking, ‘You know if I wasn’t doing this PhD gig, I‘d totally go for a second bachelors in math’.

We are learning how to find an extreme on a 3D-surface; how cool is that?!! I know you’re all dying to know, ‘How can I do that?!’ I highly recommend you watch a video or two on Lagrange multipliers; there are a few good ones on youtube.

So Friday night Jeremy put an idea in my head by asking, ‘Road trip?’ You see, we both had no plans for Saturday and the weather was supposed to be phenomenal. I has heard of this place called ‘Hanging Rock’ here in NC and had always wanted to go. I went home and researched the matter. After finding out the Hanging Rock was a state park with numerous hiking trails a mere 2 hours away, I was sold. At 11 PM I texted Jeremy and we planned on a 7 AM departure. The drive there was uneventful. The state park was beautiful, complete with a lake, campsites, hiking trails and a hidden pond. The terrain was relatively rugged; mind you, the ‘relative’ term refers to the state of North Carolina. In fact, that is where the title of my post comes from; ‘North Carolina is not a Continuous Function’. This is analogous to saying that there are actually cliffs in NC. We hiked to the highest point in the park; a tad over a whopping 2500 feet (sarcastic tone). At the top there is an old fire-watch tower; it’s pretty cool. Jeremy brought his camera and I’ll be sure to post the pictures ASAP. Until then, enjoy Jeremy’s panoramic video from atop the watch tower.

Hanging Rock Video

NIH Grant, DONE!!!

2010-12-14T09:37:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. Suffice it to say that I was preoccupied; I was writing a ‘big’ grant for an NIH fellowship. Big relative to this stage in my ‘career,’ if you will; I’ll be writing much bigger grants in the future. It was due yesterday and I was able to get it in with a whole 11 minutes to spare! The final product was a 42 page PDF! Luckily I did not do it on my own. I have to thank Dave and Jane, my PIs, Marsha Brooks, our staff assistant, and my three referees (those who wrote reference letters; Sean, Joanie, and Terry). Now I can get back to doing graduate stuff, a.k.a research. I am excited to get back into the research, It’s difficult but the challenge comes with numerous learning opportunities. It is my personal belief that learning, personal growth, and happiness are synonymous.

For Thanksgiving, I went to NOVA (a.k.a. northern Virginia) where my brother’s (Shane’s) family were kind enough to host me. It was a great dinner but the best part, as always, was to spend time with some family. I went up there the next week where I watched my Aggies play Georgetown, we didn't win but it was fun to see them play nonetheless.

I will work on my research for a week and a half and then I’ll be heading to NOVA yet again to spend Christmas with Shane’s family (thanks Shane). That is unless I find $600 dollars on my way to school, in that case I’d go back to Utah :).

Not much to this post because all my time has been spent on this grant. Until next time...

2010-11-21T18:15:00.000-05:00

(Not me:) but a great picture nonetheless)

So these last couple of weeks I have been writing and re-writing a couple of grants, as I said in my last post. Well, I finally got the first draft of the NIH grant done and will get comments on it back from my PI tomorrow. That’s pretty much it for school.

Yesterday I went on a 50 mile bike ride. I did the exact same loop a few weeks ago and surprisingly felt fine afterwards, save a few sore muscles. This time however was different. I was doing fine until I hit mile 35. I was running out of gas with fifteen more miles to go. I had no choice but to keep on going, so that is what I did. It was difficult and I had a very hard time constantly pedaling (for those who are unfamiliar with road biking that is what you do, pedal constantly). At one point in those last fifteen miles I stopped and got off the bike to stretch. A car was kind enough to pull over and ensure that I was alright. I told her that I was just taking a break. I got back on my bike and rode the rest of the way in. I think that the main problem was that I had not prepared nutritionally before hand and did not bring sufficient food for my travels.

As I often like to do, I will liken this bike ride to life. This journey we are on in mortality can provide us with stretches that are particularly hard to deal with. The hardships may come in a variety of forms. Whatever the case may be, I believe that, for at a few of those trials, they come because of our lack of preparation. I need only to cite the parable of the ten virgins to illustrate the point. Some tough days can be anticipated; these can usually be prepared for to one degree or another. However, some rough times may sneak upon us unawares. But let it be known that these trials can be prepared for just as those we anticipate by living the Gospel as well as we know how to. We need to keep it simple as Elder Ballard emphasized in the last YSA fireside. Read the scriptures, pray, ponder, re-read the conference talks, serve, repent etc. The simple things are what matters most. Some may say, “But I have issue A.” This matters not. Indeed ‘issue A’ may be very difficult but the simplicity of the gospel is not and, with patience, the with the simplicity of the Gospen ‘issue A’ will be overcome.

First we must have faith, “hope for things which are not seen, which are true” (Alma 32:21). Second we must repent. Third we must keep our covenants. Finally we muse seek the Spirit. The Spirit will tell us all things what we should do (2 Nephi 27:3). Simplicity is the key, no if, and or buts about it. The truth is that I simply did not prepare properly for the bike ride; I needed more food, my body was screaming, “I need carbohydrates.” The question then becomes, “What is my spirit screaming for?” Praying and pondering for the answer to this question, no matter if we are a smooth or rough spot, and seeking out that which is revealed will increase our endurance during the rough times in our lives.

One of my favorite scriptures. It doesn’t make a bad song either :)

“In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer.” Isaiah 54:8

Grants and a Road Trip

2010-11-14T17:17:00.000-05:00

My research has been put on hold as I attempt to get funding through two federal agencies, the NSF (the National Science Foundation) and the NIH (National Institute of Heath). Both these require a grant proposal detailing what I propose to research as a graduate student. The NSF proposal requires a personal statement, previous research essay, and the research proposal, each are confined to two pages. The NIH grant requires a one page detailing the specific aims of the project and a six page research plan. I am done with the NSF one, I’ve gotten pretty good at doing these as this is my third time doing it and my last year of eligibility. The NIH grant is new to me and require much more detail on what I propose. This one is due on in three weeks. So for the next three weeks I’ll be attempting to write a well conceived proposal.

Last Friday my friend, Tennyson, and I took a road trip to the Cherokee reservation in western North Carolina; up in the mountains. It took the whole day as it takes 4-5 hours to bet to the reservation. It turned out that we left way too late and had to reschedule his appointment for latter in the afternoon. This turned out to be a good thing as we were able to stop in Ashville, a town I’ve wanted to visit since I’ve arrived in NC. It is a hippie town with a lot of small shops and restaurants, this is where we ate lunch. We ate at an Indian buffet; it was very good. We then traveled to the reservation. We had to climb a high pass where there was a heavy dusting of snow. We took the trip mainly so Tennyson could go visit the dentist on the reservation. It was great to see the reservation and the mountains of NC. I hope to go back there again.

Yesterday I took a bike ride; it was spectacular as the temperatures were in the sixties and the leaves were at their peak, reds, yellows, and oranges. On my ride I stopped to visit Dave and Jane at their home, which was nicely tucked away in the woods. Their home is very unique, like noting I have seen before. They have a central foundation up from which a steel pole emenates. The main house cantilevers from that pole in a circle. They then have an addition roughly in the shape of a soccer ball, very cool! Unfortunately I have no pictures to show.

These pictures are from the aforementioned road trip. Enjoy.

This was at a cool shop we stopped at that had a bunch of crafts and home-made foods.

NC Snow!

Costume shop, Ashville, NC.

Ashville, NC.

Halloween

2010-11-02T10:41:00.000-04:00

This weekend was, as wee all know, the great holiday where we celebrate scary things and eating an abundance of candy. For those unfamiliar with this holiday one usually dresses up for the festivities. As such I dressed up as a zombie cyclist. Enjoy the pictures!

Zach

Wardrobe malfunction. Me and Hayley

Zach, me, Jeremy

Grants and the state fair

2010-10-26T20:54:00.000-04:00

In school I have put my research on hold while I take up the proverbial pen and start writing grant proposals. I am writing my third NSF (National Science Foundation) GRFP proposal and it so happens that this will be my last year of eligibility. I am pretty much done with that one because I am using the same documents from last year save a few minor changes. I have also decided to take on a bigger proposal through the NIH (National Institute of Heath) though the amount of money is considerably less. I am doing this one mainly because it will force me to write down what I plan on doing for my dissertation. This will require a lot of thought on my part as well as thought as I discuss my project with Dave and Jane, my PIs. Further, this process will go a long way in preparing me for my preliminary exams, specifically the written portion. Overall, it is a very worthwhile exercise.

This weekend was a blast. I went to the North Carolina State Fair, which is always loads of fun. My goal is to go there every year that I’m here. We saw old-fashioned crafts, a gristmill (powered by a waterwheel!), huge vegetables, and many livestock. We went on Saturday, which was a beautiful day, sunny and the perfect temperature. There was a beautiful garden exhibit. I am bummed that I didn’t take my camera.

The food. We ate at a Methodist ‘diner’ where we had very good food (cheeseburgers, BBQ pork, onion rings, ham biscuits, etc. At the gristmill we had very good hush puppies for free! We then had to try some fair delicacies, deep-fried whatever. This year’s big feature was the KrispieKream cheeseburger where a KrispieKream doughnut was the bun. I did not try that! What I did sample was deep fried Oreos, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, and cookie dough. These were not as bad as I though they were going to be, not that I am claiming they were delectable either.

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death” -- Albert Einstein

The Spill and YSA conference

2010-10-10T21:14:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long time between posts. I’ve had a lot of fun and unfortunately a pretty bad fall. The fall happened while I was going 20-25 mph on my road bike. My tire got caught in a crack, nay, a small chasm in the pavement and that was the end thereof. I am here to testify of wearing of one’s helmet. Without my helmet I’m pretty sure that I would have permanent brain damage. Luckily a passerby took me to the hospital. Luckily Duke was three minutes away and I had enough sense to insist that he take me to student heath rather than where he wanted to take me; the ER, yikes.

While the doctor was looking me over he asked me, “Start at one-hundred, take away seven and keep going.” I quickly responded, “100, 93, 86, 79, 72, 65…” by the time I made it to 44 he said enough and concluded I had no concussion or other mental damage. He also asked if I’d be getting back on the road bike. After I responded to the affirmative he shook his head. Would you expect anything else from me? I experienced the oft-repeated response of many cyclists after a bad fall; “I’ll heal. How’s my bike?” I am happy to report that the damage to my bike and body was all cosmetic. The bike shop realigned a few components and it was good to go. My body had a bunch of road rash as well as a rather deep abrasion on my hip. Not too shabby for going down on asphalt doing 20-25 mph.

This weekend we had a YSA (Young Single Adult) conference. We had a great turn out with people driving from as far away as Atlanta to attend. Friday we played games, had dance lessons, but mainly just socialized. Saturday morning we were split up into teams to do various service projects. Our team spread mulch on one of the many trails running through the Duke Forest. In the afternoon we had several workshops that we could choose to attend; I attended one on humility and one on the commonalities between Mormons and Jews. We then had Elder Gibbons (our area seventy) talk to us. The spirit testified that he was indeed a general authority; it was awesome!

I hope to have a more insightful\inspirational post next time. Until then…

The parable of the bike ride.

2010-09-13T11:16:00.000-04:00

This week was nothing out of the ordinary; research, learn, sleep, eat, and bike. Therefore, I feel no need to rehash school related activities; I’ve done plenty of that in this blog. Rather, I’ll focus on the activity that I am growing to love more day-by-day, cycling. I put 100 miles on my bike this week alone.

LOTOJA took place on Saturday (the longest single-day US Cycling Federation sanctioned race) starting in Logan, UT and ending in Jackson, WY covering a grueling 206 miles. It’s hard to believe that it was a whole three years since I completed it tandem with Bryan Bornholdt. I am getting into biking so much now that I am considering attempting LOTOJA again in 2011, this time on my own bicycle. I feel I should share with you an experience I had on my ride Saturday.

In commemoration of LOTOJA I decided to cover 1/4 the distance of the real race, 51.5 miles. Considering the condition I was in I felt this was within what I could do but knew that it would push me. As I have yet to go such a distance here in North Carolina I needed to come up with a route that would take me that distance. Luckily, I found, what I will refer to as, ‘dairyland.’ Indeed, there is a road out there with the name ‘Dairyland.’ This wondrous mass of land is relatively close to my house (a sort 15-mile ride). Dairyland is to cyclists as Disneyland is to children. This is because dairyland is rural, thus there is no shortage of paved road with little to no traffic. What more can a cyclist ask for??

The commemoration ride had to be planned because, as previously stated, I had yet covered the said distance, but also I had not yet experienced the joys of dairyland and thus was unfamiliar with the roads there. Google maps too the rescue (I love Google maps). I used the directions tool within Google maps to set out my course and measure the distance. After trying several alternate routes I found the one that would put me at my desired distance of 50+ miles. I typed up the directions on my iPod so that I could have directions on the road if so needed. As I was in bed that night I gave my best friend a call, I call him dad, and I told him my plans for my ride. Since he was on the computer I had him bring up Google Earth and I took him though my route from memory with no major problems. I was pretty proud that I knew this brand new route from memory!

I woke up early; oddly reluctantly and excitedly simultaneously. Reluctant because it was 5:30 AM on a Saturday and excited because I was going to go on an awesome ride. In the words of Freddie Mercury; ‘ I love to ride my bicycle, I love to ride my bike!’ I knew the route to dairyland fairly well as most the route followed one of my usual loops. However, once I crossed into dairyland proper I was in new territory with nothing save my memory and directions on my iPod to guide me. I was fairly confident in the first 8 miles in the new riding country but then the road I was traveling on, supposedly Dairyland Road, started to turn in a way that I thought it shouldn’t. Did I miss a turn? Was I even on the right road anymore? I stopped to get a drink and look at my directions. Unfortunately, the directions were only text; I had no map. Thus the directions were of no assistance in identifying what road I was actually on. Luckily I was in dairyland, with cyclists aplenty, one of whom was slowing down for a stop sign near by where I had stopped and I took the opportunity to ask him if the road I was on was Dairyland. He told me it was and, although the road was turning in a direction that I thought was not right I had confidence to keep going.

I was back riding, confident with where I was headed as I had confirmed that I was on the right road and just reviewed my directions. As I continued for the next few miles I was looking for my next turn: however, it was not coming. I got really quite nervous as Dairyland Road ended in a ‘T’. When I saw the name of the road that Dairyland ran into I was relieved for I recognized the road, but it was not the road that I had been looking for. This was due to my mistake while writing the directions; I had left out Orange Grove Road. As I turned on the road I was confident that I was on the right road and knew the way back to familiar territory. But wait, wasn’t I just as confident a few miles back just to be surprised that I was looking for the wrong road? However, this time my confidence was true and I found my way back to familiar country and on to my house with exactly 51.5 miles under my wheels.

So, why do I tell you this long-winded story of a bike ride? As I do with a lot of life experiences, I found profound parallels with the Gospel. Are these parallels simply coincidences’? I think not. This experience taught the importance of reading the scriptures and the words of modern-day apostles and prophets. Not only reading, but actually knowing the Word. This experience also taught that here in mortality there are plenty of people to help you but you need to take the initiative and ask, as I asked help from my fellow cyclist. Also, our perspectives may not be correct thus consistent reading of the Word, or map in this mortal experience, is requisite to find our way home. Not only was Dairyland Road turning in an unexpected direction, I was looking for the wrong road! A map here would have cleared everything up. All-in-all I take away from this parable, if you will, that consistent sincere study of the Word is required for us to find our way home.

My route!

View 50 Mile Loop Durham NC in a larger map

School & Cycling

2010-09-05T15:35:00.000-04:00

This last week was the official start of classes. As indicated in my last post, this means almost nothing for me; I’ll simply continue what’ve been doing all summer, research. However, I do have a tutorial class on macromolecular x-ray crystallography, which I started on Thursday. It was great; it was me and another student in the lab sitting and being taught in my PI’s (primary investigator) office for about two hours. This will occur weekly throughout the semester.

I found something exciting on campus this week and that is a shower near my lab! Why so exciting you ask? This means that I can take my rides (cycling) in the early morning and go straight into lab. My road bike has become an integral part of my routine, as it is practically the only real exercise I get, not to mention the only exercise that I can stand when there are no mountains to climb. On Tuesday and Thursday I took a ride in the country that lies between Durham and Chapel Hill. A lot of the land is owned by Duke and is known as the Duke Forest, none of which is developed. The rest of the land is made up of estates, horse property and sparkly spaced modest homes. Being in the middle of North Carolina, the land is thick with trees. In other words is gorgeous. (When I tell locals I miss the mountains they retort, ‘I bet its nice to have trees though.’ While it is nice to have trees, to compare having trees to having mountains is like comparing having a salad to having steak and potatoes; sure, salad is substance but surly not as rewarding and satisfying as steak and potatoes.) I also took a ride on Saturday in the same area but made a bigger loop. In all, I put 75 miles on my bike this week; I’m slowly getting back into shape.

I went on a date Friday. I was a half hour late though as I put the wrong address into my GPS. But she was cool about it. We ordered Italian food to go and had a picnic on the lawn of a LDS church. Afterwards I helped her set up for a YSA dance that she was in charge of. I met a lot of new people as most of the participants were from the Raleigh singles ward. It was a great time.

Below are a few pictures that I took with my phone as I was riding out in the country.

School Starts and Poison Ivy

2010-08-29T15:58:00.000-04:00

Classes are about to begin here at Duke University, all this means for me is that I will start to attend seminars and begin my one-on-one tutorial on x-ray crystallography. I will be continuing my research that I was doing during the summer. My PIs returned from their summer at their cabin. I talked to both of them about what I was learning and proposed I side project. They were both enthused about what I was already doing and what I had proposed. I will, as always, be busy; I’ll never have to say ‘I wonder what I will do tomorrow?’

I had my first exposure to poison ivy and can say I react very badly to it. I went to the doctor and she prescribed some medicated cream and Benadryl. However, the thing that I think worked the best was a $16 4 ounce tube of poison ivy scrub. It took about two weeks in all to get over it. The only place I can think of that I contacted poison ivy is when I was weeding in my back yard. However, subsequent investigations of the yard have yet to identify any poison ivy. I am a little more tentative about working back there now. Enjoy the pictures below.

The quote for this post comes from last General Conference in which President Uchtdorf gave a great talk on patience in the priesthood seesion:

‘There is an important concept here: patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can—working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!

2010-08-15T18:16:00.000-04:00

Finally I can write another post! The past three weeks have been hectic with getting ready for my trip to Chicago and Utah, the trip itself, and getting back into the swing of things here in Durham. First I went to Chicago for a conference, the American Crystallographic Association. It was in the heart of down town along the Chicago River. The conference featured talks from three 2010 Nobel laureates. It was awesome to hear of their work and that they we normal scientists with big ideas. The conference had other talks during the day. Poster presentations and social events took place in the evening. I presented a poster on my research that I have been working on for the past year.

Chicago itself was an AWESOME city. I would definitely recommend a vacation to simply visit the city. There are tons of things to do. We went to the top of the Sears Tower looking over the city and Lake Michigan. We went to Navy Pier and watched the fireworks. Also, we rented bikes and rode along the shore of Lake Michigan for about an hour. Millennial Park is definitely a must when visiting Chicago; it’s a neat park!

While there Transformers 3 was being filmed. The coolest part was that it was being filmed right by where we were. In fact, there was a scene set up immediately adjacent to our hotel. We were only permitted through at one point because we were staying at the hotel. As we walked by they were shooting a scene! There was a woman on an overturned bus saying her lines with newspaper blowing all around. The coolest part, by far, was a night when we were trying to go to dinner, as we were walking along the river we could tell that they were about to shoot a big scene. People lined the river. In the river there were boats that had been wrecked and were obviously some kind of props. As we walked a man told up to keep moving because ‘this is not going to be a good place to be in a few minutes. As we got to the bridge to cross the river they were not allowing anyone to cross. We didn’t mind as the tension was clearly building, something big was about to happen! A few minutes later the helicopter with the big camera flew in, maneuvering between the tall buildings like it was nothing. Then it started. The boats in the river were set ablaze and very large, bright, white, flaring fireworks were set off from the top of about ten different skyscrapers. It was clear that a Decepticon was raising hell going after some Autobot. It will be fun to see what it looks like in the real movie.

Utah was great. The first full day I was there I went to the eye doctor to get a prescription. Later we ahd a BBQ at Grandma J’s where I was able to see most the family. Then late that night I picked up my friend from Duke, Jeremy Block, who had taken the old Zepher from Denver to Salt Lake. It was a 15 hour train ride, beautiful but long. I spent the next few days showing him around Salt Lake and the surrounding area. We went to Music and the Spoken Word after which we took a long car ride. We went up Big Cottonwood, over Guardsman’s Pass, and down into Park City. We spent a few hours in Park City browsing though some of the stores on main street and grabbed lunch at Wasatch Brewery. We then went by Jordanelle, Heber, and Deer Creek. We stopped by Sundance to get a drink and then took the Alpine Loop.

Then bright and early, ok, dark and early, at 4:30 AM we started our car ride to the Uintas where we backpacked for three nights. Those who went were Jeremy Block, Christopher Davis, Kyle Metcalf, Sterling Adams, and myself. We stated at the East Fork of the Bear trailhead and hiked up to lake Allsop; a lake I had visited on my first backpacking trip when I was 13 years old or so. Most of the day was spent getting up to the lake and setting up camp. Tuesday we took a day hike to one of the ridges in the bowl that we were in. We hoped to summit Yard Peak but we found this too technical so we just topped the ridge at 12,000 feet and called it good. The ridge provided great views of the canyon just to the west where Priord Lake and Norice Lake reside. Wednesday was a cold rainy day. It didn’t rain a ton but just enough to make you want to stay around the campfire.

Thursday morning we woke up to some high clouds and decided to see what would happen. We took a walk around the lake to take pictures. The clouds were thickening so we decided to go down rather than stay another night. As we packed up and started to head down the canyon the clouds disappeared and it was as sunny as could be, deceivingly sunny. The trip down was slow going, it was not like the other backpacking trips that I’d been on where the trail is so steep that the trail is a factor in helping you get off the mountain quicker. The last half of the decent clouds started to thicken up. Then with three-mile left it started to sprinkle. The last mile and a half was a downpour; Jeremy and I were soaked and muddy as could be. It was not fun being soaked but an overall GREAT trip. Here are some pictures.

Friday We recovered at home taking it easy. Saturday we went downtown to do some genealogy research for Jeremy. As expected we didn’t find much due to repeated destruction by Jewish persecutors of towns where his ancestors hailed from. We then headed up to the Rendezvous Service Ranch where I addressed the boys on how to become successful. All in all, I believe it went well. I was invited to speak again next year and plan to do so if timing permits.

This Last week I’ve been getting back into the swing of things, getting up early, doing research, being social, etc. It is great to be home.

Trip Prep

2010-07-25T00:47:00.000-04:00

I have had quite the exciting week getting ready for my upcoming trip to Chicago then out to Utah. In fact, I am sitting at my gate at Raleigh/Durham International Airport as I type this post. My flight was delayed 2 hours!! I’ll be here a while! The main task that had to be done before I left was to get my poster done for the conference that I’ll be attending, the American Crystallography Association (ACA). For those unfamiliar with the scientific research culture, one way in which we present our research is through poster presentations. The posters consist of figures and text. During a poster presentation session one stands by their poster and presents what is on the poster to those who are interested; some people take a quick look and then move onto the next poster. I present on Monday evening. Poster presentations are not the only event that happens at scientific conferences, there are also talks, workshops, social events, etc. This will be my first scientific conference so I am very excited, plus its in Chicago!

I have also been trying to ride my rode bike more; I average two mornings a week and around 20+ miles per ride. I hope to increase both those figures as I slowly get back into shape. An interesting fact is that I weighed myself a few months ago when I was not riding (because I didn’t have my bike) and I was surprised to see that I had gained weight, I was between 145-150, fairly divergent from my consistent 140 that I got use to in Logan. I’m happy to report that due to my return to road cycling, I am back at a happy 140! I found a new route in which I go west of Durham. Although the roads are narrow, there is very little traffic so it’s not too bad.

On my ride yesterday I had a scary moment. I was going down a small hill probably doing 20+ MPH when a car behind me decided to honk for no apparent reason (probably a cyclist hater), I got startled and moved as close as I could to the non-existent shoulder, which was not entirely necessary because there was no cars to speak of around us. Unfortunately, I skimmed the gravel, overcorrected, and lost control as my front wheel was wildly swerving back and fourth. I knew I was going to go down and it was going to be bad! However, help from above helped me recover control. Who says miracles don’t occur?! Despite staying on my bike I did get a small cut on my knee, somehow my knee hit something on my bike (like my handle bars?). It was quite the experience. Aside from that, the ride was great and I’ll be doing it again as soon as I get back to NC.

My garden is looking great save one tomato plant. The garden is surprisingly fairly low-maintenance. My corn, on the good half of the garden, are a good four feet high! I hope to see ears when I return. I have pictures below. I look forward to seeing all my Utah friends and family next week!

Ashley''s Visit

2010-07-18T18:21:00.000-04:00

Sunday July 18, 2010

Last weekend my niece, Ashley, came to visit from northern Virginia. We had fun just passing the time with each other. We toured Duke campus and went to see Toy Story 3 on Saturday. Of course, the Duke campus was magnificent, you kind of get use to it when you se it everyday so it is a treat to show someone else around. Toy Story was also magnificent and I HIGHLY recommend it. That night we went into my lab and played Wii Fit Plus. Our favorite game was an obstacle course that you had to run/jump through. On Sunday we went to church, took it easy, then we watched a movie. Monday we went to Eno River State Park and out to lunch. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I decided to escort Ashley back to northern Virginia as well as take my roommate to DC. I then left the next day, a quick trip but well worth it!

The rest of the week was spent designing a poster for a conference that I am attending I Chicago. The conference is with the American Crystallography Association and I leave this coming Saturday. The poster is coming along but is most definitely a work in progress. I hope to finish it up by Wednesday so I can get it into the printing company. I am in Chicago for 5 days then I go to Utah! I’ll be in Utah from July 29-August 9.

Here are some pictures from Ashley’s camera:

Moving

2010-07-04T15:47:00.000-04:00

This week I helped my brother, Shane, and his family move from Round Hill to Ashburn, both in Virginia. It was no small move as he has a large home with four children. We did a lot of lifting and moving. It was very hard work! At the end of the days I thought my arms were going to fall off! After many trips between the two homes (about 30+ minutes apart) we got all the stuff moved.

I drove home Friday night so that I could get some work done on Saturday. The drive from northern Virginia to Durham never seems to get shorter. Saturday morning I worked in my backyard weeding the garden, trimming the tomatoes, and mowing the lawn. The garden is looking good, particularly the tomatoes and squash. The corn, unfortunately, is looking half-good, quit literally. One half of my three rows look great while the other half is not growing so good. I hope they’ll perk up soon!

I took some pictures of the garden. Enjoy!

Sacrement Talk

2010-06-27T16:51:00.000-04:00

I had to give a talk in sacrement meeting and decided to post it her on my blog. Here you go.

Faith In Jesus Christ and how it applies to my life.

By: Bradley Joel Hintze

Today the Bishop has asked me to talk on having faith in Christ and relate it to my life. But before I begin I want to talk about something that took me many years to learn and that is to be teachable. I believe that this will be beneficial as you listen today, and every week for that matter, in church. In fact, this may be applied outside of church. As we listen to anyone we need to be teachable. By ‘teachable’ I mean let go of all of your beliefs and perceptions about the topic at hand. I have found that you can be taught, meaning someone is teaching you, true principles but you cannot learn, which is your end of teaching, those principle correctly if you have an incorrect view of the given principle. This will inevitably skew truth such that the principle that you take away is not truth at all. Letting go of your beliefs and perceptions is very difficult because, well, you believe them but if we ask for help, from Him where all truth emanates, we can be teachable.

Now onto faith in Christ and how it relates to my life. To give context, allow me to tell you about my physical condition. At my birth there were complications such that I was deprived of oxygen for some time. The doctors had no idea what the future would hold. I could have a myriad of problems such as mental, physical, social etc. Only the future would tell. It took me longer than usual to hit developmental milestones; for example, it took me twenty months to walk. As I grew up it was obvious that I had problems in my fine motor coordination and had a gait in my walk. When I started elementary I went to resource but it quickly became apparent that I had no trouble learning, my problems were limited to the physical realm. As a result the doctors gave me the ambiguous diagnosis of cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is just an umbrella term that doctors use when they see paralysis and have no ideas what else to call it.

As a child my only real limitations were writing, buttoning shirts, and anything that required me to work with small objects. When going through puberty I was hit with an additional condition known as dystonia. This condition was a lot more severe than the one I had grown to know. Dystonia causes the muscles in my neck to involuntarily contract causing my head to tilt and my speech to be impaired. Initially, it was hard to deal with the new condition but, with time, it became just another part of me. While there are some hardships because of my condition, for the most part I am able to deal with it similar to those who are unfortunate enough to have the inability to roll their tongue, it’s simply not a big deal. But, again, there are times of trial because of my disability.

One such trial, which is a just a fancy term for a learning experience, that I recently had was when a few of us in the ward made a video for Mother’s day. In the video we sang the Primary song “Mother I love you.” Some of you may have seen the video or were privileged enough to see the live performance. I think most of us have experienced that shock and perhaps horror when we hear our own voices or observe ourselves on video. Well, I have not seen much video of myself so when I saw the Mother’s day video I was taken aback. Seeing that video actually discouraged me quite a bit because of my awkward dystonic movements. While I am very aware of my physical condition, I have become quite use to it so I really don’t think as myself having such awkward movements.

The trouble I was having with the video was thoughts of low self-worth because of my condition. I am a guy who is always thinking, especially about spiritual matters. As I was contemplating on the situation I realized that something was not adding up. I had lived with this condition my entire life, sure it may have worsened when I was a teenager but that was over ten years ago. I had experienced relatively little distress relative to my condition; something was amiss. So, I decided to ask Heavenly Father for help so that this could be dealt with in a healthy way. As I was on my knees asking for help the Spirit revealed to me that I already had complete faith that everything would be fine and I would feel little to no distress because of what I saw on that video, complete faith. I knew that Jesus Christ had made this burden light in the past and would continue to do so.

The lesson here actually had little to do with my physical condition and how I dealt with it but rather was a lesson in what I will call situational faith. I compared the faith that I had about the Lord helping me deal with my condition to faith I had in other areas of my life and the contrast was stark. The Lord was teaching me that, while I had great faith in the help that He gave me in dealing with my condition, I needed to increase my faith in Christ in all aspects, or situations, of my life.

So how do we increase our faith in Christ? I am afraid the answers are nothing new; however, I invite you to listen nonetheless with an open hart and perhaps the Spirit will teach you something new. In other words, be teachable! I am going to share five aspects of increasing faith in Christ and then share personal experiences that I have had in each of those aspects.

Desire

In Alma 32 we read a great parable on faith where faith is compared to a seed that must be planted in our hearts. We oft times correlate this parable with receiving an initial testimony of the gospel but this parable can be applied by each of us daily to increase our situational faith. We learn that desire is enough to start. If we just desire to believe that Christ will help us in a certain situation you are good to go.

From the earliest I can remember, I’ve been blessed with a sincere desire to do what is right. Consequently, I sought the truth of the church early in my life. After reading the Book of Mormon when I was 14 I followed the council given in Moroni 10 to pray about its truthfulness. Because of that experience alone I can bare solemn witness that the Book of Mormon is true and the stories therein truly did occur. I know that Jesus is the Christ through which all happiness emanates. Desire is always the seed of truth. If we desire a testimony of anything we are on the right path, albeit at the beginning of the path.

Praying

What did I have to do to receive the witness of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon? I had to pray as Moroni instructed. Brothers and Sisters, prayer is a crucial aspect of exercising faith. Satan will try everything in his power to keep you from praying because by doing so he is depriving you of truly knowing your Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. If you truly knew Them you would know of the unconditional, endless love that They have for you. Satan does not want us to know Their love, for Their love is the ultimate motivation to live righteously. Pray daily, multiple times, privately, publically, and in your heart.

As mentioned earlier, I’ve always had a deep desire to live righteously. It may sound silly now but the naive boy that I was thought that my biggest spiritual struggle in life would be something like thinking bad thoughts. As I grew up certain experiences taught me otherwise. This realization was devastating to me, and ‘devastating’ here is most definitely an understatement; it hurt like nothing I had felt before. While praying one night when my heart was truly in pain I felt the love of the Lord despite my imperfections. Words cannot describe the love of the Lord. I’ve tried; I attempt to describe his love as greater than the sum of all positive emotions that we can feel but still, this description doesn’t began to describe His love. I know that he loves ALL in the exact same way and invite you to ask Him to feel of His love.

Work

In James 2 we read that faith without works is dead. Just as we cannot expect help from the Lord on a test that we did not study for, we cannot expect the Lord to distill knowledge upon us just because we ask, even if we do so with all sincerity. Whether its gaining a testimony of the Temple or increasing faith in Christ we must work at it. Faith, itself, is a word that should conjure up scenes of action, such as, studying, writing down things you learn, teaching, serving and so forth.

Since all my spiritual examples of work would take to long to tell and are perhaps too personal to relate I’ll tell of a temporal example that certainly can be paralleled to the spiritual realm.

In the fall of 2006 I volunteered at a feed station for a cycling race know as LOTOJA, which stands for Logan to Jackson. It is the longest single-day United States Cycling Federation sanctioned race, 206 miles. As we handed out food and drinks to the 1,000 cyclists, I saw a few tandem cyclists. I turned to my buddy, Bryan, and suggested that we do LOTOJA tandem that next year. He got very excited and said absolutely. A month later I dropped an undisclosed amount of money on a really nice road bike and started training.

The training waned in the winter but picked up again in the spring. Bryan and I put several thousand miles of training in the summer of 2007 in preparation for the big race. We worked very hard in our training. When the day of the race came we were ready to go. We left Logan at 7:45 in the morning. The ride was longer and harder than I had expected. However, The training that we did allowed us to cross the finish line 13.5 hours later.

If one were to say to me that I would complete LOTOJA a year or two before I participated I would have laughed at them on the basis that I simply had not the strength nor endurance to complete such a feat. However, months of hard work proved to provide sufficient strength and endurance for me to complete LOTOJA. Is there any righteous desire in your life that you believe is beyond you? If you work at it hard and long enough you might well find that nothing is beyond you, with the Lord’s help, of course.

Study the words of the Lord

We have been commanded and are consistently reminded to read the scriptures each day. The constant reminders are not meant to nag but are rather a plea from those who care for you and your happiness. The scriptures provide yet another way, a crucial way I might add, in which we can come to know Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. The words of modern day prophets are yet another resource we must study. Applying what we learn through our studies will increase our faith in Christ as well as His words. In this last General Conference Elder Christofferson said “In the end, the central purpose of all scripture is to fill our souls with faith in God the Father and in His Son, Jesus Christ—faith that They exist; faith in the Father’s plan for our immortality and eternal life; faith in the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which animates this plan of happiness; faith to make the gospel of Jesus Christ our way of life; and faith to come to know “the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom [He has] sent” (John 17:3).”

A scripture that helped me through my realization many years ago that I would not be perfect in this life is found in 2 Nephi chapter four 17-21.

• 17 Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.

• 18 I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me.

• 19 And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins; nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted.

• 20 My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep.

• 21 He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh.

Experience

The last aspect of increasing your faith in Jesus Christ is perhaps not typically a separate topic covered in this context and that is experience. So far I have covered desire, prayer, work and studying the words of the Lord. Are these not all experiences? We have many experiences throughout our lives, some good and others seemingly bad. We are the ones who get to decide what we will learn from a given experience. It is easy to say I learned a great lesson from a given miraculous spiritual experience but what about the so called ‘bad’ experiences? Here we have a choice. Am I going to learn something of value and move forward or become a tad more bitter and move backward?

In my life I’ve had to learn how to take lessons from seemingly bad experiences that were great trials in my life, trails totally unrelated to my physical condition. In hindsight these experiences, although horrible and painful at the time, were crucial to increase my faith in Christ. D&C 122: 7, although way too dramatic as it relates to my experiences, rings very true to me:

7 And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.

I would exhort you all to keep a journal, a journal in which you are not afraid to pour your soul into. While it is fun to look back and read things that were seemingly trite when they were written it is more important that we write down our spiritual experiences.

Although the following quote from Joseph Smith was directed at leaders of the church it certainly applies to our individual lives.

“Here is another important item. If you assemble from time to time, and proceed to discuss important questions, and pass decisions upon the same, and fail to note them down, by and by you will be driven to straits from which you will not be able to extricate yourselves, because you may be in a situation not to bring your faith to bear with sufficient perfection or power to obtain the desired information; or, perhaps, for neglecting to write these things when God had revealed them, not esteeming them of sufficient worth, the Spirit may withdraw, and God may be angry; and there is, or was, a vast knowledge, of infinite importance, which is now lost.”{To Draw Closer to God pg. 124}

Write down your testimonies no matter what stage that they are at and write it down often. Write about spiritual experiences; write what you learn. These writings then should be read in the future again and again. Doing so, I believe, will do much to increase our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and perhaps increase the faith of our posterity.

Testimony.

Research & Yard Work

2010-06-12T21:30:00.000-04:00

Currently, two activities are taking the majority of my time; research, as a matter of course, and yard work. I have been a little stir-crazy now that school is out and I have no mountains to climb. I asked my friend/room mate/lab mate/landlord, Jeremy, if I could do something with the back yard, he graciously obliged. First, let’s discuss research.

In the lab I am working on a program called MolProbity Compare. First, MolProbity is a validation tool used by structural biologist [translation: MolProbity is a computer program that can tell scientists what’s wrong with a protein model that they are proposing, think of this ‘model’ as a virtual Skittle for this purpose. MolProbity can find imperfections in the Skittle]. Sometimes one would want to put two of the ‘same’ protein models through MolProbity; the two models are the same in the sense that they are the same protein but differ in another way (i.e. resolution) [translation: continuing with our Skittle model, a scientist has two virtual green Skittles but surely they are different if you look really close]. It would be useful to compare the MolProbity output of the two models [translation: its useful to compare the two green Skittles.]. MolProbity Compare allows the user to compare two models of the same protein, which will point out differences in the models [MolProbity Compare, which is a computer program, allows the user to compare the two virtual green Skittles thereby uncovering differences in the Skittles.]. This program will be useful in my research for potentially uncovering systematic errors made in low-resolution crystallographic structures [translation: forget it!]. MolProbity Compare will also be useful to others; therefore, I am converting the program to a web application so that anyone can use it.

On to the yard work, my outlet from lab work. This week Jeremy gave me the lay of the land in our backyard. He then said I could beautify as I saw fit. I subsequently mowed the lawn, cut down two trees, pulled weeds, and began to turn the soil in a bed by hand. I quickly found this work very slow and not producing the desired results, I needed a tiller! Looking around the yard I realized the expanse of not one but three large beds and decided to just go ahead and rent a tiller. This morning I spent a good three plus hours wrestling with a tiller. For those who are not familiar with the joys of handling a tiller allow me to explain. Have you seen a child walking an over-anxious dog where the dog is taking the child for a walk? It’s kind of like that. I wish that I had taken ‘before’ pictures but I did not. Here are shots of the beds that I tilled in our backyard.

Quote for this post:

'Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps, till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself.'

--W. C. Doane

Shane's, Seminary, and moving

2010-05-26T22:36:00.000-04:00

This last weekend I went up to my brother’s, Shane’s, home to visit with him and his family. Shane and his wife Becky have four kids at home: Nick, Gabe, Katie, and Mike. I drove up there on Thursday afternoon; it is about a five-hour drive. Becky was running a conference, so mainly I hung out with Shane and the kids. We mostly hung around the house. Saturday we went to see Robin Hood; great 2-hour prequel, it’s worth seeing. Oh ya, I went to visit my friend from USU, Mary, she and her husband were at her dad's in Manassas. It's always fun seeing friends from Utah on this side of the country!

While up in Virginia, I had the very special privilege to be the guest speaker at an LDS seminary, which is for high school aged students. After my brother introduced me I took the remainder of the time talking about facing, NOT overcoming, adversity. I made it clear that my message was based in reality; I was not there to tell of mystical sunshine and daisies. ‘Overcoming’ is not the word/message that I wanted to share because, while we may overcome a particular trial, we will always face some sort of adversity. I talked about five overarching themes: determination, hard work, being teachable, experience, and, underscoring the roots of reality, the value of failure. I would expound on these but stay tuned and you may see a new blog, by yours truly, dedicated to topics such as these. After the talk I had many of the students thank me; their sincerity was amazing, we have great youth!

In the lab I am trying to find a way to represent differences in MolProbity analyses for two related (identical) structures, one at high resolution and one at low resolution. This means I am comparing the quality of two very similar protein models. So, basically I sit at the computer and code (write computer code) all day. But I’m being paid and get to bike to the lab, which I enjoy immensely. The protein structure I helped with at Utah State, Mtr4, will be published in EMBO soon. I submitted another manuscript describing the software I wrote at USU, ResDe. Hopefully it will be accepted, that would be my first primary author publication!

Yesterday I moved rooms; I now live on the second floor of the house. The move took all day as I was organizing my room as I moved in. My new room is HUGE; by far the largest room in the house. I have a king sized bed and two sitting areas. I took pictures for y’all.

Looking into the room on way.

Looking into the room the other way.

Looking toward the two dormers.

Dormer 1

Dormer tw0; great east-facing window where I read my scriptures in the morning.

Looking back toward the door.

Me desk.

Me.

A wall with sconces.

Weekend Fun

2010-05-19T22:30:00.000-04:00

This last Saturday I had very social day. In the morning I went on a ‘hike’ at Eno River State park with a friend, Anchen, and her boyfriend, Jeremy. We went on the Cox Mountain Trail, the longest trail in the park, all 3.75 miles. Also, the map legend said that it was strenuous. It was hardly strenuous, maybe I should stop comparing these trails to hiking trails in Utah.

That afternoon I went to a barbeque that my fellow first-year biochemistry student, Zach, put on to celebrate the end of classes. We had all of our first-year class there except two, Riddhi and Wayne. It was a great party; good food, enjoyable company, and great weather. Zach has 9-year-old twin neighbors and they are not shy. They asked us to play kick ball, we ended up throwing a football around. We (my cohorts) mainly sat and socialized. It was great fun. Here are some pictures.

Eno River

2010-05-08T19:58:00.000-04:00

This has been a very hard, stressful week. I took my first take home exam and decided the I much rather prefer the regular exam style. Its over, let's leave it at that.

In attempts to recover from the difficult week I went 'hiking' at Eno River State Park. The quotes around hiking are appropriate because a walk trough the woods with a elevation gain of a whopping 300 feet hardly qualifies as a hike. Anyway, here are a few pictures.

They have a river at Eno River State Park, neat.

The beautiful power line cut through the park.

Some guy on a bridge.

Some guy with a cheesy smile.

A sign marking the trail that I took.

See, I went uphill.

End of semester

2010-04-25T23:57:00.000-04:00

The semester I wrapping up and consequently I am rather busy; however, less busy then I would have expected. I have one more week of physical biochemistry lecture then a final on May 7 and I’ll be finished with that class. In my structure class I have a final project, which is to make a Wikipedia page on a topic related to protein structure. If one desires they can see my page here: Click here. It is a work in progress and is not due until mid-May. After I’m done with these two classes I will not have to take a class ever again, at least not a canonical class. I am taking a ‘class’ in the fall I am quite excited about. It is a one-on-one tutorial with a faculty member. I will be working with my PI, Dave Richardson, through the concepts of protein crystallography. ‘But Bradley,’ you might ask, ‘weren’t you in a crystallography lab for three years and haven’t you taken numerous courses on the subject?’ The answer, of coarse, is yes, I have. However, I still am having trouble grasping the concepts at the level that one needs if one is to get their PhD in the field of crystallography. I am pretty excited for this one-on-one tutorial; it’s a unique opportunity.

Not much else has happened besides school. I did have the opportunity to participate in the day of service put together by the LDS church. I could have chosen from about a dozen different locations but settled on helping out at the Piedmont Wildlife Center. There were several volunteers; we were split into groups and helped out on a variety of projects. The team I was with was given the assignment to erect a three-walled structure to hold a compost pile. We did this by building a three-sided square (one side was open) log cabin. The hardest part was digging the postholes. I then went into the woods where I helped clear out an area for a sitting area where children visiting the park could sit and be instructed. It was a great day; I felt I was back in Utah as there were equal amounts of children and adults .

That’s it. The next time I write I’ll be done with my classes, woohoo! After classes I’ll be researching full-time.

‘Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.’
--Brian Adams

Dirve for fun.

2010-04-11T23:43:00.000-04:00

I have had two weekends to tell of. They were full of fun and driving long distances to have that fun. First, two weeks ago I drove up to northern Virginia where my mother was visiting from Utah. Due to the brevity of the trip, my mother was convinced that she would not be able to see me; and I encouraged her in that mentation. On Wednesday, immediately following my class, I started the long drive up to my brother’s abode in Virginia. I arrived at approximate 10 PM and thoroughly surprised my mother; it was quite amusing. Sadly, we only could spend one day together. It was a very special day as my niece was turning 14 years old. I said good-bye when we went to bed. When I awoke she was gone.

The next afternoon we all drove down to Virginia Beach. At this time, we were experiencing 85 degree weather; of course, the beach sounded fun. When we got there, fog hid the ocean from view and the temperature was a lot closer to 45 than 85. The next morning we scouted out Atlantic Avenue surveying the shops as well as the beach. While we waited for the temperature to rise we visited the aquarium in town. It was actually a pretty cool aquarium with different exhibits and a large variety of very interesting aquatic creatures. After spending a few hours there we went back to the beach where the water was slightly warmer than the mountain lakes I’ve become accustom to. Subsequently, most of our fun was had in the sand. Mike and I were buried, into the same hole, up to our necks’. It was a blast! Later that night we went to the priesthood conference, during which the Easter bunny visited. After watching Duke demolish West Virginia we went to bed, woke up, and drove to our respective homes.

I watched the NCAA final at my friend, Zach’s house. We had a few people over including Zach’s parents. What an exhilarating finish, it could have gone either way. God shed his grace and Duke won. Pandemonium followed on campus complete with a huge bonfire. Naturally, I elected to stay off campus as I am clearly above such silliness. I believe that is why one word explains the feeling I had after the game, anticlimactic. It was, however, fun the next day whe we welcomed the tam back.

This weekend I went to a YSA (Young Single Adult) conference put on by the LDS church at property the church owns in the middle of North Carolina; it was approximately two hours away. Being in North Carolina, the property had a plethora of trees. The property included a large mess hall, several cabins, and a small lake. My friend and I left early Saturday morning arriving just in time for the service project; landscaping. We improved the entrance to the camp by raising flowerbeds, weeding, laying sod, and planting a good number of perennials. We then had ‘spiritual training’ where we participated in two different workshops and heard the area seventy speak. The messages were well thought out and very good; the Spirit was definitely there. We then had 'physical training’ where we participated in a variety of events, the highlight of which was an obstacle course in the woods. We had a dance that night following dinner. The next day (today) we had an awesome Sacrament/testimony service. It was a spiritual uplifting weekend. My favorite part was connecting with a friend and meeting new people.

That’s all.

"It is impossible to live without failure. Unless you live so cautiously that you avoid life - in which case you fail by default."
--J.K. Rowling

Duke Gardens

2010-03-28T23:20:00.001-04:00

Spring in NC. Pictures taken March 20, 2010

'The process is the outcome through which the outcome is the process.' -Unknown (Love life NOW!)

Phenix and a New Car

2010-03-14T19:01:00.000-04:00

So I’ve has been very busy this past week; it was spring break. For me, all that meant is that I had no classes; I still had to go into lab. We had a very special week in lab as we hosted the Phenix conference. Phenix is software used in crystallographic structure refinement. The Richardson lab, of which I’m a member, is one of the developers of Phenix. The exciting aspect of the conference for me was that my code, that I wrote as an undergraduate (and am still developing), might be incorporated into the Phenix package!

The conference was great! I met a lot of awesome people from all over the USA and a few from Europe. We had developers and industry people there. The industry people were from a variety of drug companies. There were two industry people that worked in Copenhagen. Both were from Norway but understood me when I sang Happy Birthday in Danish. The conference was a time to cash in on free meals. We went to a different restaurant each night and had a variety of lunches each day. It was very busy as the earliest I got home was 9:30 between Sunday and Wednesday.

For the last couple of weeks I have been shopping around the Internet for a car. Last Saturday I decided to go look at two cars at a used car lot in Raleigh. The first car had a strange sound emanating from the engine while the second car smelled HORRIBLE. My roommate, Jeremy, then led me to the near by Honda dealer. We mainly looked at 2007 Accord lease buybacks. The top choice was an Accord with 3,900 miles on it, which was put on the lot the night before. The car was owned by a 92 year-old woman who had her license revoked with a year left on the lease. I wanted it but was beat to the punch by a couple that was trying to qualify for financing. So there was a possibility that I could still get the car. I had to wait until Monday to hear whether the car was mine. After a long weekend I received a phone call indicating that the couple didn’t qualify. A few hours later I was driving home my new car (see below).

That’s all for this week. Enjoy the pictures.

As you can see, Grandma did some contact parking.

My room mates. Oh ya, me and my new car are in there too.

My Lab Choice

2010-02-24T22:35:00.000-05:00

The last two weeks have been rather uneventful; school, eat sleep, etc. I am wrapping up my third and final rotation this week. As such, it is time for me to choose a lab to do my dissertation work in (where I will spend the next 5+ years). I’ve made it pretty evident which lab I hope to join but had to jump through the hoops. Last Friday I officially asked Dave and Jane Richardson if I could join their lab. It took them less than a millisecond to answer in the affirmative. We had a great discussion! It will be an exciting, albeit a very challenging, 5 years. In laymen terms, and a rather crude analogy, I am going to be resolving a clear picture from a low-resolution rendition of the picture. Of course this simply means I will be attempting to improve methodologies of low-resolution x-ray crystallography protein structure building and refinement.

The reason for the Bill Nye picture: So, one of the hoops that I had to jump through is to turn in a sheet upon which I request my first a second choice for the lab that I want to join. As explained above, I had already discussed joining the Richardson lab, so there was no reason for a second lab choice. Naturally, I had to think of something smart to put on this official document. After much consideration, I chose Bill Nye.

I did finally go on a date Saturday. It was pretty low-key. We walked to TGI Friday’s then went back to her dorm where we talked a tad bit longer. It was a great date; since we walked to the restaurant we had a lot of time to talk. She is an electrical engineer undergraduate who likes reading and taekwondo. There is going to be a second date, where we will actually do something other than eat.

I have gone to a few basketball games here at Duke. The student fans are notorious for being crazy and loud. After going to a few games I can confidently say they have nothing on Utah State fans. While the students here are loud, the students in the Spectrum, where USU plays, are just as loud but USU has a lot more students that are at the games. Having said that, the Spectrum is not Cameron Indoor Stadium, where Duke plays. Cameron is most definitely sacred basketball ground.

The quote for this week comes from Neal A. Maxwell

‘We can learn that at the center of our agency is our freedom to form a healthy attitude toward whatever circumstances we are placed in!’

Second Semester

2010-02-09T23:58:00.001-05:00

Yay, a new post! Sorry about not posting anything for a while. The end of the semester/Christmas/beginning of the semester kind of threw me off. All I have to say about my long winter break is that I am glad it is over and I’m back in school. I love to be busy, especially busy with biochemistry!

This semester I am taking two classes and a few seminars (I am sitting in on a class trying to learn Java too). The two classes that I am taking are physical biochemistry and a structural biochemistry course. The two seminars I am taking are the Biochemistry (departmental) seminar and SBB (Structural Biochemistry and Biophysics). Speaking of SBB, I have decided to affiliate with SBB since my dissertation research will likely be in, well, structural biology and biophysics! All this really means is that the Department of Biochemistry will award me my degree and I will get a certificate from SBB.

Also, I am currently in my third and final (thank goodness) rotation. In the beginning of March I will have to choose a lab that I want to join. The rotation that I am in now does NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) of macromolecules (big molecules or proteins to the layperson). In there I am learning magic (a.k.a linear algebra and complex math; i.e. imaginary numbers) so I can do some computer programming for the lab. All I can say is math is SO COOL! Without math we would all still be naked, running around Africa (When watching the monkeys in Washington DC, seems like we’d be better off naked in Africa).

The weather here has been erratic. In January, we were enjoying sunshine and 60s. However, the last two weeks have been cold and rainy/slushy and even snowy (albeit, nothing like what my brother, Shane, has got up in northern VA).
Mostly it has been cold and rainy; cold enough it should be snowing but its not.

Its entirely to late so I shell leave you with my ‘quote of the post:’

“It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.“
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) English philosopher and mathematician.

Thanksgiving

2009-12-06T17:19:00.000-05:00

I am now done with all my classes so I can write a post about Thanksgiving break. I didn’t know what I was going to do for the break until about a week before. Shane and his family decided to stay home for Thanksgiving rather than head up to Maine. So, I decided to head up to northern Virginia. However, I had a very difficult time trying to find a ride up there; I had already secured a ride home with someone in my ward. I have an awesome roommate who sent out a massive email trying to find someone going up to DC and she got a bite, I got a ride! Just like a miracle! :)

It was a GREAT Thanksgiving break! I wet up there on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and stayed until Sunday. I spent a little time on a final paper but it was mostly a very relaxing weekend. We mostly hung out on Tuesday and Wednesday doing whatever; watching movies, playing video games, sword fighting (contact me for further details), etc. Thanksgiving was good; we had about 25 people there. Tyler Moselle and his girlfriend came, it was great to see Tyler again and to meet hi girlfriend! They are great! Other than that, the rest of the people were families from the ward and the sister missionaries. We had lots of yummy food; turkey, stuffing, cranberries, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, pie, etc. It was a fabulous dinner! We then went to see 'The Blind Side.' AWESOME movie; I highly recommend it!

Friday was really fun; we went to a Christmas tree farm. It is right by Shane’s house so the drive wasn’t like the drive’s we took to get Christmas trees in Utah. Luckily, Katie took a lot of pictures; so I’ll tell the story with the pictures.

The Christmas tree farm was up on a hill. This is looking out, off the hill.

The Family

Which tree...?

Mike cut the tree down.

We took turns pulling the tree.

The employees than put the tree on a big shaker to get rid of dead needles.

They then wrapped the tree up.
It was a great day!

We then went home and put the tree up and decorated it.

That was pretty much the weekend. Great time with great people!

Walkingg to My Lab

2009-11-09T08:23:00.000-05:00

This morning I had a very interesting walk to my lab. As I was about to descend some stairs, I noticed two policemen interrogating a guy on a park bench. As I got closer to the scene, it became rather obvious that the man had decided to stay the night on the bench. From the looks of it, he had a very late night of drinking and had not yet slept off the affects of the alcohol. I had to chuckle as I walked by and heard him struggling to answer the officers' questions. I must stress that this is very atypical of Duke. Or perhaps it isn't and the good officers just had a late morning. :) Either way, it added quality entertainment to a rather mundane walk across campus.

Second Rotation

2009-11-05T23:48:00.001-05:00

I attempted to upload a picture but couldn't...sorry :(

I have finally started my second rotation. I was supposed to start it about two weeks ago but I had to wait for my post-doc mentor to finish up his dissertation. I didn’t mind the time off as I had most my time occupied with plenty of class related activities. The rest of my time was filled with writing three essays for an NSF (National Science Foundation) fellowship application. This NSF fellowship is kind of a big deal; in all I’d be getting a tad over $120,000 over three years (not all at once and not directly to me). In my second rotation I am trying to redesign a protein so that it will bind a new molecule. So currently I am spending a lot of time looking at this protein to possibly add a modification that will allow the protein to bind the new molecule. Ok, enough science.

I went to my first Duke Basketball game. Even though it was an exhibition game, the arena was full. It will be fun for the season to begin! Duke Football is currently on a three game winning streak and have an ocerall record of 5-3. The new coach is doing AWESOME in his second year! Keep your eye on Bluedevil football; they may surprise you.

I have found that I am horrible with names, which I kind of already knew. It is extra pronounced in my church. Unlike Utah, here I only see the people in my ward for a few hours on Sunday. It has been quite embarrassing to forget someone’s name when you know you’ve asked them twice already. I am learning name slowly. The ward here is awesome! An interesting fact: most of the grad students in the ward went to undergrad either at BYU or USU. I have yet to meet an Utah alum. ‘

There you have it; my life, in order from Monday to Sunday; school, sports, and church.

2009-10-25T16:22:00.000-04:00

Hi folks! Bradley here (yes, Bradley is my name not Brad; see my birth certificate for further details) reporting on the goings on in his life.

Last week marked the official date that my second rotation was to begin. Despite this fact I spent all of last week in the Richardson lab (where I did my first rotation). I have a second rotation lab just no project. I did not mind this because I am super busy with classes. In two of my classes I am reading two papers for each class a day and in another class one paper a day. That comes out to be 12 papers a week. These are scientific articles so you can't just quickly read the paper and expect to understand them. You have to really pay attention to what you are reading. So it takes a lot of time.

I went to a Duke Basketball team scrimmage which was a prep rally too. it was really fun. Even though I had been inside Cameron Indoor Stadium, quite a historic venue, I never realized how small it was.

Anyway, that is all I have unless you want to read about the molecular mechanism behind allostery. The Aggies did win their second game of the season, way to go! I would like to thank TCU, they did a great job destroying, dismantling, and otherwise embarrassing BYU. I only wish the slaughter would have been on TV (stupid Mountain West Conference, grrr!!)

Last week The Richardson lab moved into a new space. Since the space is so radical I have decided to share a few pictures. Here they are:My work station.

Conference

2009-10-05T11:58:00.001-04:00

So this weekend I went to visit Shane's (my bro) and his Family. I got a ride up to Washington with other students that also go to Duke and Shane picked me up on the Mall. We had a lazy weekend sitting around the house, just what I wanted.

Saturday we went to watch my nephew's, Mike's, football game. Mike was injured and couldn't play. The Tuesday before Mike's jaw had a tragic collision with his Brother's, Nick's, knee during a front yard football scrimmage. He had to have surgery to fix two fractures. His jaw is wired shut for a month and he has to have nothing but liquids for six weeks. It's tough but he's a trooper.

We then went to the Priesthood session of General Conference. It was an awesome session with great talks. I love that the Lord has provided a way for us to learn and grow. It makes me so happy!

Sunday we watched conference while Becky was so kind to give everyone a foot massage with her oils. Thanks Becky, it felt great! Sadly I had to go home Sunday evening despite the fact that I have fall break and, therefore, have no class Monday of Tuesday. The bright side is that I can get my homework done!

I hope all of you are doing great. Drop me a line and let me know.

Duke Basketball Season Ticket Campout

2009-09-17T23:53:00.000-04:00

So this last weekend I attended the well established tradition of Duke Basketball Season Ticket Campout. For those who are not acquainted, allow me to give background info. Basketball at Duke is s HUGE deal. Duke is consistently ranked in the top ten teams in the nation. The venue for home games is Cameron Indoor Stadium. It holds less than 10,000 spectators. It is, arguably, the toughest place for an opposing team to get a win. The student spectators are affectionately referred to as the ‘Cameron Crazies.’ As you can imagine, acquiring tickets at such a venue is not an easy task.

Duke, like other schools with great basketball traditions, has a lottery system to attain tickets for their graduate and professional students. This was implemented in attempts to make it fair, but not easy, to get tickets. Unlike other schools you have to endure a 36 hour campout to even get your name in the lottery! This is known as the Duke Basketball Season Ticket Campout.

A few weeks before the campout, everyone who wants to participate must register online. The campout starts at 7PM Friday and ends at 7AM Sunday. We were allowed to set up our tents Thursday afternoon. We had to check in by 7PM Friday. We claimed a spot Thursday by setting up our tents. That was the easy part. Getting to our spot Friday was fairly difficult. Some people opted to bring U-Hauls to sleep in rather than tents. Now how many people are we talking? Well over 2,000! Traffic was a nightmare, U-Hauls everywhere, we weren’t allowed to unload anywhere near the site, and it was hot and humid. We had a lot of food and two coolers; one of which could easily be used to hide a body (that had all the beer). We had to haul those for about a mile.

Once we were settled we checked in and they explained how the campout worked. We were not to leave and to ensure that we didn’t they held roll call at very random times; we had no idea when it was going to happen. The way it worked is a siren would go off and then everyone, a 2,000 plus, had to join their line, designated by last name. They were about 15 different lines. They then checked your name off surprisingly fast. If you had not checked in within ten minutes of the siren going off you had officially missed the check in.

The first check in was not until about 11PM. Then there were a few more until after 2AM. The check ins started up before 6AM and were very random throughout the day. They again did check ins until after 2AM Sunday morning. They then called us at 5AM and told us to begin the end of the campout. They had us clean up EVERYTHING before they would let us know the results of the lottery. We had to take all our gear to our cars. We also had to have all trash put in the dumpster. We were not done until 8 at which point we got into our lines. We went up individually and were told if our names were put in the lottery and if we were selected to buy tickets.

So there is how the lottery went. The rest of it was a HUGE 36 hour party. Complete with copious amounts of alcohol and loud music. There was very little sleeping. The girl’s basketball team came to visit the first night. We all went to listen to them. The second night was a real treat. The men’s basketball team came, even Coach Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K)! He is a legend! He currently is the head coach of the USA Olympic Basketball Team. He, along with his team, won Gold in Beijing in 2008. He explained some changes at Cameron and how we should act as fans (be loud and irritate the opponent). He then took questions. Let me say I’m glad I didn’t ask him a stupid question; he doesn’t like those! Suffice it to say he came across as very arrogant and surprisingly rude. The arrogance I don’t mind, he has accomplished a lot (not that that’s an excuse). But the rudeness I could go without.

To wrap it up I won tickets! We had a group of five, three of us won tickets (we beat the odds; there were only 700 tickets). We will divvy up the ticket and the cost thereof between the five of us.

There you have it. It is now entirely too late. I will say Good Night! GO BLUEDEVILS!!

Here are some pictures.

My Homework

2009-09-09T21:16:00.000-04:00

I thought I'd share my PhD level homework. We were given a coloring book and told to color two figures. Who knew Crayons would be required for graduate school? Thank goodness for Photoshop!!!!!!!!!

Can you see the 3D character given my shading?

PhD programs are tough!

Two Weeks!

2009-09-06T20:14:00.000-04:00

Random Picture: Wellsville Mountains 2006

I have, thus far, been in class for two weeks. I am taking three seminars and two lecture/discussion type classes. We do a lot of reading! We read articles out of scientific journals and then have group discussions. There are no tests. Interesting; but why?

The idea behind this is that we are being trained as scientist, research scientists to be specific. As undergraduates we were taught principles of various aspects of science and then were tested to see if we had learned the principles. This approach does not allow too much wiggle room to seriously question what is being taught. Sure, as undergraduates we can ask, ‘how do they know that?’ If known, the professor can explain an experiment that was used (or may have been used) to ascertain the information. In undergraduate courses this system works great because the courses, for the most part, teach established data. However, as “PhD’s in training” we are now focusing on how scientific knowledge is gained. Also, if we are given a lecture, the material will most likely be penetrating the current boundaries of knowledge. It does no good to read an article and then say, ‘That’s it; we’ve figured it out.’ We need to seriously analyze the data and see if it makes sense. As scientists we have the responsibility to question the publication and, if we have the same research emphasis of the article’s authors, perhaps perform experiments to confirm or discredit the publication. Enough on the processes of scientific discovery.

This last week I started my first rotation. Again, a rotation is an eight week projects in a research lab that allows the student to essentially ‘test drive’ the lab. We do rotations in three different labs and then we can choose the lab that fits us the best. There is a story about how I got into my first rotation. I was looking at three different labs for possible rotations. There was a fourth lab that actually really wanted me. They had a computational project and I was an obvious fit as computation is all I do. However, working at McDonald’s was slightly more appealing than working in that lab.

Anyway, I had three labs that I was seriously considering for a first rotation but none of them could really take a student for the first rotation. Two were going to be gone for most of the first rotation and one was moving to a new lab. So I had a choice; see if I could rotate with the lab that was going to move or I could go to the fourth lab that really wanted me. I took the former course of action. When I explained the situation the PI, he said that I could do a rotation despite the eminent move. Now they have another set of hands to help move!

If you care to know what I do in my rotation, by all means keep reading. If not, that’s perfectly fine; I’ll say good bye and thanks for reading.

In my rotation I am working with a husband and wife team; the Richardson’s. They are very significant figures in the field of computational structural biology. In the lab I am trying to find patterns of errors in low resolution models. Now what does that mean?

(Disclaimer: The following may not be scientifically correct but gets the correct ‘concepts’ across nonetheless.) Protein structures (models) are made from shooting a crystal of the protein with x-rays. For the current discussion suffice it to say that we take very crude ‘pictures’ of the protein (scientists: please read disclaimer). Imagine a picture of a clock. At high resolution we can see the hands, the numbers, the screw holding the hands on, flaws on the face, every little detail. With this ‘picture’ we can then make a fairly accurate model of the clock. But you very well could have a low resolution ‘picture’ too. You can imagine that it is going to be difficult to make a model from this ‘picture.’ However, when low resolution is all you have you do your best. My goal is to find patterns of errors in models derived from low resolution ‘pictures.’ I hope that made sense.

I hope you all are doing well. Feel free to drop me a line. Have a wonderful week!

The Difference Between USU and Duke

2009-08-20T23:31:00.000-04:00

So this week was orientation week. We had the typical information sessions that accompany orientation. However, most of the time was taken up by PIs (Primary Investigators or research professors) trying to recruit us to their labs. As graduate students we have to do rotations. Rotations are 6-8 week projects that are completed in a research lab. We have to choose three labs that interest us. After we complete the rotations we then choose one of the three labs to do our dissertation work (research) in.

I have one lab that I will definitely do a rotation in, the Richardson Lab. There is another lab, the Oas Lab, that I may rotate in. The PI of this lab is trying hard to recruit me. If I were to join this lab I would be here a long time as I would be required to take upper division stats and math (differential equations and linear algebra) before I could really dive into the research. I have yet to choose a third lab to rotate in.

The week is not done yet though. Tomorrow we set out for Beaufort, NC where we will receive ethics training. We will be taking buses and will stay til Sunday. Beaufort is on the coast; we get to play on the beach.

One day this week was the Graduate School orientation. This was given by the Duke Graduate School given to all new graduate students rather than the small department orientation. There were quite a few speakers and a question and answer session. One thing that hit me was something the provost said. Duke is such a great university not because they’ve somehow magically arrived at some whimsical state of being rather they recognize that such a state is false and improvement is constant. They are constantly looking and implementing improvements. I really liked that.

There was a faculty panel that then took questions. Before that though, they each said a few words. I was able to relate to what one of the faculty members said. It reminded me of a lecture I received fourteen years ago as I left elementary school and was about to enter middle school. One of my sixth grade teachers told us that although, as sixth graders, we were the fearless leaders that the younger kids in the elementary looked up to, things were about to change. She said that as seventh graders we were going to be relatively irrelevant. I believe her exact words were that we were going to be ‘just another fish in the pond.’

Anyway, back to present day Duke. One of the professors told us that we had gotten into Duke, something that, she assumed, we bragged to our friends about. Indeed, this was no small feat. The Duke Graduate School received over 7,600 applications but there were only 689 new students. Then she put us in our places by saying that we may have been stars at our undergraduate schools but here the playing field had been leveled. I find this to be very true for me.

At USU I was a star receiving many different accolades. I was even recognized university wide by receiving the Legacy of Utah State Award. In Utah I would tell people that I was pursuing a PhD in Biochemistry and most were amazed at both the degree and field of study. Here at duke I am indeed just another fish in the pond. No one is impressed that I am getting my PhD, but that is because they are also pursuing the same degree. I can actually talk about my research and the listeners actually know what I am talking about.

Having said that; I know that I am here to be an example beyond academia. I know to be that example I just need to do what I do. Which, ironically, is do what all my peers are doing; pursue my degree.

My home in Durham!

2009-08-15T18:20:00.000-04:00

My house as you walk in the front door.

My Room as you walk in.

The house

Looking down one direction of the street

Looking down the other direction of the street

The Back Yard

The Move to Duke!

2009-08-14T13:07:00.000-04:00

Here I am in Durham, NC. I have moved into my house where I am currently living with Jeremy, who owns the house, and two girls that are summer interns. The girls are moving out this weekend. I will be getting three new roommates by the time fall semester starts; two girls and a boy. Of course, Jeremy will still be here. Stay tuned for a post with pictures of my new place.

Here I am starting out in Logan, UT.

The drive was long but fun. I got to see a lot of places that I had not seen before. I loaded my stuff in Logan then my friend, Clark, and I drove to St. George where we loaded Dallin (Clark’s brother) who will be attending the University of Georgia. We stayed the night there. The next day we headed to Albuquerque, NM. I drove the U-haul from Marble Canyon to Flagstaff.

Here I am ‘standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona.’ Probably the ‘dump’ city of Arizona.

The next day we went to Oklahoma City. Not much to tell about this day. It changed from desert to grass lands. I drove the U-haul the length of northern Texas.

The next morning we went to the Oklahoma City Memorial. It was a very sacred place; very beautiful.

Here is the reflecting pool.

Here are 168 chairs to honor each victim of the tragic event.

We then drove to Memphis, TN. This is where we started to see the trees. In Memphis we went downtown. It was Saturday night so they had the streets blocked off. There were tons of people! We tried to eat at the Hard Rock Café but there was so many people we couldn’t be seated. We ended up eating al Wendy’s.

Here I am in Front of The Hard Rock Café in Memphis.

The next day we drove to Athens, GA. This drive was pretty much solid trees. We stayed the night in Athens and in the morning we moved Dallin into his new apartment. Clark and I the drove to Durham, NC. After we moves my stuff in we returned the U-haul.

Here I am at Duke!! YAY!

There you have my road trip in a nutshell.

Bells Canyon Backpacking Trip

2009-07-31T12:24:00.000-04:00

I have been very busy getting ready to move to NC an wrapping up things in my lab. Besides that I have no excuse for not posting anything. :) I start the long drive this Wednesday!

I have been at my parent’s for the past couple weeks and have been doing a lot of hiking. This past Monday I started a backpacking trip up Bells Canyon here in Utah. Bells Canyon is probably the most beautiful canyon along the Wasatch, but I am not biased at all:). There is abundant amount of water year round. There are even bogs up there. It is so green that those not acquainted with the Wasatch would hardly believe that they were in Utah.

I went up with three young friends; Christopher Davis, Austin Duncan, and Bryan Miners. We started hiking at 6 AM Monday morning. We had packs ranging from 35 to 45 lbs. The trail is said to be 4 miles (it feels longer though). There is a 4400 foot elevation gain; so the trail is rather steep. We made great time; we were at Upper Bells Reservoir (were we camped) just after 11 AM. We spent three days swimming, hiking, and just goofing off. We came back Thursday. Here are some pictures from the trip.

Upper Bells Fall

This is a meadow above the Upper Reservoir

This is The same meadow as above

This is a stream in the meadow

This is looking down on the Upper Bells Reservoir

Me in a meadow further up from the first meadow

Christopher In the upper meadow

A stream near the upper meadow

The upper meadow

Decending from the upper meadow

This was a solo hike I did (the boys were pansies and didn't want to climb the extra 1,750 vertical feet to the top). This is on top of South Thunder Mountain.

Looking at the back side of Lone Peak from South Thunder Mountain.

Looking south from South Thunder Mountain. Box Elder peak is in the foreground and Mount Timpanogos is in the background.

Bear Lake & Dystonia

2009-06-14T15:27:00.000-04:00

Last Wednesday I went up to Bear Lake again, this time with my family. We stayed until Saturday, My parents, Grandma Jensen, Becky’s family and Jonna’s family were all there. We stayed in a condo on the west side of the lake, Unfortunately, this has been an unseasonably wet June and it rained everyday except Friday. Friday was a beautiful mostly sunny day but it was too chilly to have an enjoyable day on the beach. Luckily there was an indoor pool where we spent a lot of time. The kids had a blast swimming; even the two babies (Kenedie and McKinley) enjoyed it!

Random tidbit: I have started ‘The Fellowship of the Ring…again. This time, though, I really believe that I will finish it.

I have to share a link that was sent to me about dystonia:

Tyler's Hope

This family is dealing with primary dystonia; I was diagnosed with secondary dystonia. I have contacted the father, Rick, about helping the Tyler’s Hope organization. He replied and expressed interest in having me be a science advisor for Tyler’s Hope, as well as promoting the organization. If you have a desire to give money to someone other than the IRS Tyler’s Hope is an excellent option. 100% of funds raised goes to research! Visit: www.tylershope.org

Update

2009-05-25T00:08:00.000-04:00

So here is my update since getting home from D.C. Work in the lab, hiking, dating, and seeing Star Trek. Thats it. I've been hiking multiple times with a co-worker, Anna (see below). I took two girls out. With Clarissa, we played catch, gotta love a girl who owns a baseball mitt, and went out for ice cream. With Sam, we went to dinner and then to Logan's little zoo, Willow Park. I saw Star Trek a few more times; I have now seen it three times! Oh ya! I also biked 51.1 miles around Bear Lake.

Anna and I went hiking Saturday on the Crimson Trail. See pictures below.

Looking down Logan Canyon.

Anna.

Me.

An extention of 'The China Wall,' upon which is the Crimson Trail.

Washington DC

2009-05-08T16:57:00.000-04:00

On Sunday I flew out to Washington DC to present my research, with 59 other undergraduates, for the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR). The purpose of this trip, and CUR, was to promote undergraduate research especially to those who bring most of the funds to basic research, the US congress. I went to DC with my research mentor Sean Johnson. We met with both Utah senators, Bennett and Hatch, and Utah Representative Jim Matheson. We only had two minutes, if that, with Senator Hatch, enough for a picture. We sat down, separately, with Senator Bennett and Representative Matheson, for about five minutes and discussed the importance that research plays in undergraduate work. All and all I believe it was a very good trip. I hope we were able to convey our message.

Sean Johnson, Representative Matheson and Me

Sean Johnson, Senator Hatch and Me

Sean Johnson, Senator Bennett and Me

I then went to spend time with Shane's (my brother) family. I plan to post anther message about that as soon as I get back to Utah. I'm posting this from Shane's home in Round Hill, VA.

2009-04-22T21:11:00.000-04:00

This last weekend was a very nice weekend. There is a new graduate student in our lab (at least new this school year) from Minnesota. She loves the outdoors but is obviously unfamiliar with the area. So last weekend we took our first of many hikes together. We went to the Wind Caves up Logan Canyon. She loved it. The caves are always fun to see but the view from the caves is great too (see picture above).

I hope to get a few more pictures from her so stay tuned. Below is a picture from the trip I took with me friend Clark during spring break (I just got them).

My Decision Has Been Made

2009-03-28T22:27:00.000-04:00

UNC or Duke; that was the question. So after careful consideration I have chosen to attend Duke University. I chose Duke for two reasons. First, Duke is much smaller than UNC. I felt that I'd get more personal attention at Duke. The labs at UNC were large and I felt that it would be very easy to get pushed into some obscure corner by my PI (primary investigator; essentially my mentor). Second, the Richardson Lab. The Richardson's are to protein structure as Steven Spilsburgh is to film making. You simply can't beat their reputation! In this field there is such a thing as an academic pedagree. To have the Richardson's on my pedagree as my PhD PIs is something quite spectacular. Watch me go there and then decide to go into another lab after rotations, :).

I just made it official about twenty minutes ago by enrolling in the program. Now for the specifics: I will be in the PhD program in the Department of Biochemistry at Duke University in Durham, NC. YIPEE!!

Crash!!! (WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTO!!)

2009-03-21T21:38:00.000-04:00

So ya! I decided that since it was a nice day I'd get my road bike out. I was headed to beautiful 'downtown Benson' when I hit some gravel. If you didn't know road bikes do NOT do well in gravel! I went down! Luckily there was a head wind so I was only going 15+ mph. No worries, the bike is OK. I didn't fair as well. Road rash galore! It didn't hurt as much as you might think; thanks adrenaline!

FYI: There is a story on yours truly on the USU website. Click here!

2009-03-18T22:48:00.000-04:00

I got glasses! I had no idea the word was so crystal clear!! What do you think??

WAC Tournament

2009-03-17T20:12:00.000-04:00

So, last Thursday USU played its first game in the WAC tournament; which was in Reno, NV. My friend, Clark, and I joined a crowd at 3:30 to watch the game at Iggy's. We had plans to go to Reno but we decided not to at the last minute. Watching the game at Iggy's was fun. People were cheering every time USU made a good play. It was better then sitting at home watching it, but not quite like being there. So after we handed the other team an easy defeat we decided right there and then to drive to Reno 600 miles away. We left Logan at 7pm and got to Reno at about 3:30am. Motel 6 was a great place for us; clean and cheap.

The next day we went to see the house my mom lived in for a few years as a child. We then went and walked around Reno to pass the time. We ended up at Circus Circus where we played air hockey and a few arcade games. We won 321 tickets! We turned them in for yo-yos, matchbox cars, and candy. I've been playing with my yo-yo like a seven year-old with a new toy.

We then went to the games. First it was USU vs. NM State; the battle of the Aggies (of course we all know true Aggies bleed blue). This was a battle and a half! USU came out strong quickly gaining the upper hand. That didn't last long as NM State made every shot they threw up. They made 8 of 11 threes in the first half! We went into the half down 14. We came out of the half strong quickly coming within five, however, we never could get closer. That is until we got inside three minutes. We came within two and even one several times. We were down on with about 20 sconds left. We got the ball and played down the clock when Tyler Newbold mad a 12 footer leaving 3.1 secons left. USU wins 71-70.

The next day we decided to go to Lake Tahoe. Neither of us remeber going there, so we were suprised at how big the lake was. We walked along the windy and chilly beach for about 15 minutes and then we drove clear to the other side of the lake where we ate lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. This wa my first experience at a Hard Rock Cafe and I liked it alot, very good food! We then drove through Carson City and back to Reno.

We were both nervous about the final game of the tournament. We were playing the second seed, a very good Nevada team, on their home court. We had lost on that court to Neveda only a few weeks before. We came out on fire gaining a 21-4 lead. Nevada never came closer then three, and most of the time they were 9-15 points behind. Every time they had a run we would respond by having a run of our own. We ended the first half up five. The battering kept up in the second half. Our lead at one point was 19! They made a valiant effort to cut the lead but it was too big to overcome. We won the game by ten.

We are ranked 25 in the coaches poll and we will face number 24, Marquette, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Friday at 10:30 am. Go aggies

Apperently I'm blind

2009-03-08T22:48:00.001-04:00

So, apparently my vision isn't as good as I though it was. Friday I went to the DMV to renew my license. They had me do the eye test. So I looked down the black box and I couldn't see the letters all that good. I shouted out what I thought they were but failed miserably. They wanted me to go get my eyes checked. I was in total denial; I had great vision, after all I had never had a problem before!

So we went to the optometrist at Wal-Mart and guess what? 20/40 in one eye and 20/50 in the other! I couldn't believe it. I am getting glasses like the rest of my siblings (except you Becky, maybe you should go get your eyes checked). I'll post a picture when they get here.

(I know, the picture has nothing to do with the post but hey, its a cool picture! I took it while I was assisting at a feed station at the 2006 LOTOJA. Its in Idaho, Strwberry Cany0n, between Preston and Montpilier.)

Buffalo

2009-03-06T23:46:00.000-05:00

Here I am in my hotel room in Buffalo, NY. I just had a big day of interviews and facility tours at SUNY Buffalo. Very nice facilities, lots of labs that I could do research in, and nice faculty. However, I know that this doesn't feel right. I will either be attending Duke or UNC. Stay tuned!

UNC??

2009-02-27T18:32:00.000-05:00

I may have spoken too soon. I am currently sitting in my hotel room at UNC after a day of interviews. There was on guy that was doing some pretty awesome things with RNA structure. There would defiantly be a place for me in his lab. I will have to some more investgaing before I make my final decision.

Duke baby!!

2009-02-24T11:13:00.000-05:00

I have been accepted to Duke University in Durham, NC. WOOOHOOO! I have two more interviews (see yesterday's post) but they'll have to present something pretty incredible to change my mind. I am a BLUEDEVIL!!! GO DUKE!!!

Jan and Feb

2009-02-24T00:06:00.000-05:00

I have no excuse for not posting...:)

I have been traveling quite extensively. In the past 5 weeks I've been to the University of Pittsburgh, Duke, and UC San Diego. I have been interviewing for different graduate programs. All these school have been quality institutions and it has been a blast to visit different cities around the United States. Duke has a lab (The Richardson Lab) that would be a perfect fit for the type of research that I would like to do. UC San Diego had a few labs that I wouldn't mind joining. However, despite what people say San Diego weather is horrible! 70 degrees and sunny all winter...give me a break. I want seasons!

This week I will be going back to North Carolina to interview at UNC and then next week I'll visit the University at Buffalo. It is an exciting time and we'll just have to wait to see where I end up.

I have to tell you about a walk that I took last Sunday. I knew that I wanted to go on a long walk, so I started at 1:30. I went to the mouth of Logan Canyon and climbed up to the Lake Bonneville Shoreline Trail. The trail was completely covered with snow, ranging between six to ten inches. This trail is smack against the mountain. I passed above a golf course. Intermingled between the mountain and the mountain I saw about thirty deer. They were in groups of three to five. I couldn't believe how concentrated all of the deer were. After I passed the course I continued on the trail until I got to Green Canyon. I then walked home through the neighborhoods of North Logan and also Logan. At got home at around 5. It was a walk intended to get ready for the hiking season. I'm hoping to get started hiking in March after all my interviews. Don't worry, I have an ice ax.

Hoping to post sooner than later,

Bradley

2009-01-01T16:34:00.000-05:00

I had a very busy December both with school and in the lab. That is why I didn,t post anthing in December, plus when I did have free time I didn’t want to write a post. It was nice to get school done but, unlike previous years, my work was just beginning as I finished my last final. I am writing a program to assist structural biologist, as myself, build models of proteins. As this is not a scientific blog, I'll spare you the details.

I had four of my friends come and stay at my apartment for two nights. We did a lot of sledding on Old Main Hill. We went down on tubes and a large piece of plastic; its not the safest thing to do but fun nonetheless. I took two of the boys on a small tour of the campus; we didn't go far because it was snowing so heavily. I was able to show them what we do in our lab, they were fascinated, it was cool to see their excitement. We then went to the USU vs. Utah basketball game where USU won in a very close game.

I went to my parents house for Christmas on the 23rd. While at there I mainly spent time with the family doing puzzles and eating; that sums up every Christmas. I was able to spend a lot of time with my sisters and their families which is always fun. The weather over Christmas was pretty snowy; I think it snowed most days with some days heavier than others.

I am currently applying to graduate schools. Here is a list of where I have applied thus far: SUNY Buffalo, Harvard, U of Pittsburgh, U of North Carolina, Duke, U of Virginia, U of Utah, UC San Diego, and UCLA. GOOD NEWS: I got an interview with the University of Pittsburgh in about three weeks! I fly out there on January 22 and fly back on the 25th! I am pretty excited. I have yet to hear from any other schools but they usually don’t start reviewing applicants until mid January. We'll have to see where I end up!

I will be graduating this May; to do so I will only need to take 5 credits. I will be taking molecular genetics and a class known as senior seminar. However, I am also the undergraduate teaching fellow (UTF) for biochemistry 2 and, of course, I'll be busy in the lab. I have already started my UTF duties; I will be assisting the professor (Joanie) in teaching the class. I am currently helping her get ready for teaching the first section of material and preparing the first research problem (basically homework) for the class. This is going to be a great experience!

2008-11-30T15:47:00.000-05:00

This Thanksgiving was awesome! I went to my parent's home for two days; got to Sandy Wednesday and went home Friday. Wednesday night my dad, my friend, Chris, and I went bowling. I bought some bowling shoes; considering I've gone ~10 times this semester already, I thought it'd be a good investment.

Thursday was Thanksgiving at my sister, Becky's, house. We were there early, ~ 11 AM, and spent the day eating and watching movies. We watched a classic, 'Christmas Vacation.' I also got the chance to meet my two newest nieces, McKinley and Kenadie (sp?). They were so darling and so different. Kenadie was tiny and McKinley was solid. They are both angels.

I went home Friday and cleaned my apartment; its always nice to have a clean home for the last week of class and finals week. For my structural biology class we have to write a publication quality paper; so I worked on that. I also worked on more graduate application stuff. I got my application into Harvard and will be getting three more into different schools within the next two weeks. Luckily I have only two finals to worry about; it'll be nice to get those out of the way.

I did have some fun on Saturday; I went to tw0 USU games, football and basketball. Our football coach was fired earlier this month but agreed to coach out the season. We played New Mexico State. On paper, it seemed like an even matchup. However, I think that the football team wanted to show their coach their appreciation for what he had done for the program. Even though the coach was fired, he had taken a team and greatly improved it. We won the game 47-2. It was a fun game to watch! That night Cal Poly was in town for a basketbll game. Even though we are a young team, Stew knows how to coach and he can put together a pretty good team. Initially, I was worried about this year's team after watching the first few games. But, as usual, they seem to 'gel' as the season progresses. The real test will come when we play BYU in Salt Lake. Go Aggies!

2008-11-21T00:05:00.000-05:00

As I started my final year at Utah State, I reflected on the time I have spent here at Utah State University. Six years ago from the beginning of this semester my mother and I came to visit USU. We met with the Disability Resource Center (DRC). We found that they offered many accommodations that would make it possible for me to attend college. We then went over to the Department of Plants, Soils, and Biometeorology. Without expecting it, the head of the department ushered us into his office to tell us about the Horticulture degree. We were impressed with the experience and I was excited about the Horticulture degree. I wanted to attend Utah State!

However, I was worried about the cost and the brains. I certainly didn’t have the money and thought that I didn’t have the brains. With a little apprehension I applied. I was accepted and received a scholarship that paid my tuition for eight semesters. There were other resources that I used to pay my fees, books, and housing. It seems that my first concern about receiving a higher education was taken care of. But was I smart enough? That could only be answered by actually attending college.

Five years ago from the beginning of the current semester my parents and my sister, Jonna, moved me into Richard’s Hall. My mother reminds me that she had a very hard time driving away and leaving me on my own. I took it easy that first semester taking only ten credits; two of which were all but over the first week I was there. I diligently attended my classes and completed my assignments. However, I found that I had a lot of time on my hands. So, I actually read a novel, The Count of Monte Cristo, during that first semester. I have never have had time since to read anything other than text books during a semester. The second semester was a little more busy with 14 credits. Those first and second semesters, with relative ease, I received straight A’s. I thought; ‘This college thing is not as hard as I thought it would be.’

I was content being a horticulture major as I entered my second year. I had general biology that year and that changed everything. The first week I was panicking because the professor was going a million miles an hour, teaching things that I had never been exposed to. That Friday I was in my advisor’s office asking if I should drop the biology course and take a lower course. Even though she saw that I was panicking she had confidence in me; she knew that I had the tenacity to tackle this class even if I didn’t. So I kept the biology class and learned how to really study. That was the year that I found the library; the best place to study on campus. I took the first exam and received 98%. I was thrilled! I called my mother who was vacationing in St. George to tell her the exciting news. That first exam gave me the most confidence I had had to that date. It was truly the turning point in my academic career. Later that year I changed my major to Biology.

My third year I took genetics and ecology. The combination of those two subjects made me realize that Biology was not the major for me! Ecology was not relevant to what I was interested in. Genetics taught me about proteins that replicated, translated, and transcribed DNA. This fascinated me! These were molecular machines, cool. It wasn’t enough to know what these proteins did; I wanted to know how. I came to find that Biochemistry addressed the how. I was so excited that I changed to Biochemistry.

The summer after my third year I took two classes; human management and calculus 2. My math teacher that summer was a very special person, Bryan Bornholdt. We quickly became good friends who both enjoyed the outdoors. We inspired each other! He introduced me to cycling. A year later we completed a 206 one day cycling race called LOTOJA on a tandem bicycle. I also met Sean Johnson at the University of Utah where he was a pot-doc. He was to become a faculty member at USU in my department. I didn’t know it at the time but Sean would change my academic life forever and thus my future. He gave me a simple project to gather information on a protein complex that he was interested in researching when he moved to USU. I gathered information throughout the summer; I had no idea what a lot of the information meant.

My fourth year was a difficult one. This was the first year that I lived off campus; I had to cook for myself. I was taking three very difficult courses; organic chemistry (lecture and lab), physics, and statistics. On top of that I was taking two research credits from Sean. I also was going through changes in my personal life as well. Summed up, all this was too much. I was doing terrible in physics and had to withdraw. I even went to see a doctor in Salt Lake to ensure everything was alright. However, after I dropped physics the year went by pretty smooth. Unfortunately, I did receive my lowest grade of my undergraduate career that semester in statistics.

That spring I applied to and received a $7,500 year long undergraduate research grant. The first part of the research period was spent on a project with two other students creating a web based program called PIGS (Protein Gathering Information System). Although the students that I was working with were computer science majors and new programming, I had never been exposed to it. This got me interested in programming and I realized what a powerful tool it could be in my research.

My fifth year was a time when I was growing intellectually as well as personally. Possibilities for my future became evident as I did my research. I preformed very well in school despite a demanding schedule. I took biochemistry and loved it; I knew more then ever that biochemistry was the major for me. I was asked by the instructors for biochemistry 1 and 2 to be the undergraduate teaching fellow. I accepted to be the undergraduate teaching fellow for biochemistry 2 as I enjoyed the material and teaching style better.

After my fifth year I spent the summer getting into programming, specifically programming in Python. I created a suite of programs deigned to aid in building protein models. I found that I enjoyed programming as long as I was creating programs related to structural biology. I also took the general GRE in preparing for the graduate school application process.

As I close this entry, Fall 2008 semester is also coming to a close. It has been an interesting semester to say the least. I am super busy even though I’m only taking 10 credits. On top of classes I am applying to about eight graduate schools, applying for a BIG NSF grant, and doing research in the lab. It will be nice when the semester is over but only school will be done; everything else will still be present, especially research.

As I review the past I realize how blessed I have been here at Utah State. When I began college I was worried about financing; scholarships and grants have not only paid for school but has left me with money to spare. I was worried about my physical disability, the DRC has been great in providing accommodations and I found that most of the time, my disability was simply not an issue. I was worried that I didn’t have brains, apparently I do. But is it me that has made it this far? Of course not. The blessings that I’ve received have come straight from heaven. Everything I am I owe to my Father in Heaven and His Son, Jesus Christ.

2008-11-14T00:57:00.000-05:00

Well, this has been a busy week. I have assignments due in all of my classes tomorrow; one down, two to go. I have been so busy with school as I neglected it last week because I was focusing on my NSF grant. Now I have to prepare for two exams that I have next week! I can't wait until thanksgiving when all I have to worry about is finals week and preparing ~7 graduate school applications.

I have applied to two undergraduate research poster sessions: one is in Salt Lake City while the other takes place on Capital Hill in Washington D.C. I hope to get to present my research in D.C. so I can see Shane's (my brother) Family! All expenses paid, hopefully!

I hope all is well with you. Feel free to send me a comment or email.

--Bradley

2008-11-10T00:41:00.000-05:00

Kenadie Rebecca Bule! Here she is! November 9 6lbs 7oz 18 1/4 inches. This is my sister's, Becky's, first child. Now I have two new nieces that I have not seen. I can't wait til Thanksgiving when we'll all be together and I can see the two angels!

2008-11-08T00:57:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning to a beautiful sunrise. Of course this picture does not convey the ambiance of the moment but a beautiful view of the Wellsvilles nonetheless. Today my parents came up and took me out to dinner. They first had to help me get my NSF grant proposal off; thanks mom and dad!

2008-11-07T01:49:00.000-05:00

My dad and I went camping over the deer hunt. We brought a bunch of guns and shot everything except deer; poor clay pigeons. This is me shooting the only gun I own; a 10-.22. We stayed 1 night and man was it cold! We camped at the top of the somewhere between the top of Logan Canyon and the top of Black Smith Fork Canyon. We had a blast; yay for guns!

Blogging??

2008-11-05T17:38:00.000-05:00

What the heck is blogging?? more to come