I'm doctor in medicine

Yes, I finally made it! It's almost one month since I defended my PhD dissertation. It all happened the 2nd of November 2005 at the Oude Academiegebouw of the University of Groningen.

The main goal of my arrival to the Netherlands was achieved almost six years later. I know it took a little longer than expected, but it was not a easy task. Anyhow, it is quite an achivement as for any other science researcher.

The subject of my thesis project was to improve the clinical use of a technology to only assess the blood perfusion in living tissue, which is called laser Doppler perfusion monitoring (LDPM). In my case, I proposed and tested alternative operational methods to increase the reproducibility of the measurements performed for diagnosys purposes. For a more boring description read the book.

From now, I am a doctor in medicine but don't call me "doc". Thanks :)

Dutch weather

Dutch weather is famous in Europe as being terribly bad and changing. It is true, I confirm it. However, this sort of weather allows you to truly enjoy atmospheric phenomena. For instance, this morning on the way to work I have enjoyed of one the most beautiful rainbows I have ever seen in 30 years. It was a complete rainbow so strong that it had a second rainbow showing all the colors as well. Again, I regret not having my digital camera with me. Using Google I have found a photo of a rainbow that looks alike. Awesome!

$100 Laptop

It's a dream come true, but it won't be marketed in the "first world". This is an excellent and beautiful piece of technology only meant for developing countries. There is more information and pictures at the official website:

The $100 laptop is being developed by One Laptop per Child (OLPC), an independent, non-profit association based on the "constructionist" theories of learning pioneered by Seymour Papert and later Alan Kay [...] Its founding members are AMD, Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, and Red Hat, all of whom have funded both OLPC and the MIT Media Lab.

The proposed $100 machine (see the picture) will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop that will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. This rugged laptop will be WiFi-enabled and have USB ports galore. Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel.

Although I support this fantastic idea, I foresee it would not take a long time before we can get those laptops from the black market or something. Many pople will pay more than $100 to get one and those children and their parents ain't stupid either not to sell it. This is how "our" capitalist world actually works. What a shame.

Copia este libro, por David Bravo

Ya sé que no es muy típico de mi publicar dos veces en un mismo día en este blog, como tampoco lo es que lo haga en castellano. No puedo dejar pasar esta oportunidad para hacer publicidad de una de las obras de divulgación mas importantes del 2005. Copia este libro por David Bravo Bueno explica de forma amena y bien documentada qué es el canon por copia privada de música y el abuso que hace la SGAE imponiéndolo a los consumidores.

Recomiendo que leas el libro. Aunque el formato impreso es muy difícil de encontrar, existe una versión en PDF (y otros formatos) y, ahora también, una versión web.

¡Abre los ojos!

Meditation increases brain cortex thickness

My good friend Nasshh may be right after all. He practises reiki for more than a year and says that it has "some effects" on oneself difficult to explain. Because of he, I have grown some interest on oriental medicine and practises. I've decided to sign in to a Yoga course to learn meditation because it may help me to control the beast inside me... just kidding :P

Seriously, today I've found this article that describes a study in which it has been found that Buddhist Insight meditation may produce an increase of brain mass in the cortex. All this with only 40 minutes of meditation per day. Researchers found that most of the stimulated regions are in the right hemisphere. Interestingly, the stimulated cortical regions are related to sensory, auditory, visual and internal perception. I will get the article soon to learn the nitty-gritty details.

Before I join a meditation course, I need to know what sort of yoga fits my wishes... I can't do most of the contortionist postures :D

Next stop, Venus

Today, I had to wake up early, about 2am, and drove for about 30min. I attended the live broadcast on ESA TV of the launch of the Venus Express satellite. The event took place at the SpaceExpo in Noordwijk (the Netherlands). Before the launch, we got a very intersting presentation of what Venus Express is and what are its objectives.

The name "Express" of this probe makes reference to the short time that has taken from the concept to the launch. It all hapened in about 3 years, thanks to the work previously done for its cousin satellite Mars Express. These two satellites share many structural and functional details.

The blast off happened at 4.33h CET. The Soyuz-Fregat rocket lifted "effortlessly" the Venus Express to a parking orbit. In this circular orbit the Fregat orbital vehicle accelerated the satellite and pushed it off the orbit in direction to Venus. About 5 months from now, Venus Express will arrive its destination.

The main objective of Venus Express is to study the atmosphere and surface of Venus. There are lots of secrets hidden under the dense Venus atmosphere. It is so thick that on the surface there is a pressure of about 90 bars, thats like diving thousand meters in the see. But the pressure is a minor detail because the temperature of about 450 ºC (as hot as a pizza oven) could turn you into ashes in a few of minutes.

Venus Express is not the first satellite to visit Venus. Russian and USA satellites and probes have tried to unveil Venus secrets since early 70s. The most important contribution was from the Magellan satellite launched by NASA in early 90s, which provided us with impressive radar images of Venus surface. however, the Venus Express mission has some remarkable aspects:

• It is the first ESA mission to Venus.
• It has taken a fairly short time from the mission concept to launch. This is why it is called "Express". This could be achieved by reusing much of the Mars Express design.
• The mission will make intensive use of the new ESA antenna located at Cebreros (Ávila, Spain).

Go Venus Express, go.

Improvising destiny

Two days ago, I was driving on my way work. I stopped the car to wait for another to park in a side lane. The photo on the left, from Google Maps, shows the approximate crash place (red square).

The car before me had to stop to let another to park in the side parking lane, thus I stopped as well. The guy behind me didn't see me or had no time to react, so he hit me. The strike was at low speed, I think, because I bounced slightly forward but I didn't hit my head back against the seat. Due to the impulse, my car hit the car before me too. Curiously, my car had the biggest damages in the rear-right side and it may be declared total loss because the reparation cost may be larger than its actual market price.

As usual, one may tend to think about what would have happened if... I don't believe destiny is written, and this event did not change my mind though. I don't usually take that route, but I did it several times before. That morning, my regular route was atypically congested, so I decided to take an alternative path instead. I also decided to stop or not to let pedestrians cross the street. In all, I'm sure that a simple variation in that sequence of events would have not led to the accident.

As final conclusion, we all improvise our own destiny... Every second.

60 minutes

60 minutes is the time I have to get drunk enough so I cant type. Because I don´t drink without reason, the motivation this time is that I´m not getting drunk for long time. Besides, I don´t have to work on my thesis so I can relax and ejoy myself with some spare time.

Lately I´m not feeling very well. I get up tired after being on bed for 7 hours. Some people find that enough time for rest, but if you don´t get any rest and get up as tired as the previous night; something is not going fine. I have this for the last 3 weeks, or more.I can´t actually remember because it also affects my short-term menory and my concentration. Oh, yes. I have been underperforming at work too. Shhh, don´t tell to my boss :P Its our little secret here.

The "fun" part of writing a thesis in the evenings is the little rest you get. After some weeks, you won't perform well during the day at work or in the evening on the thesis. After some months you are running behind schedule and, therefore, obtaining shity results whatever you do. You get frustrated, more stress and anxiety, and all becomes an endless vicious circle.

Tonight is my chance to break the cricle. I need a reset...

Two new URIs

I have recently registered two Internet domains: Aimak.com and Fernando.Morales.name. They should be working by now.

Dreams?

Hopelessly, I was trying to fall asleep. I heard aproaching steps. Was it her?. We were the only two persons in the house. I felt a close presence. Is she checking if I'm sleeping?. I did smell her scent. No doubt it was her, but a rush of fear invaded me. What does she want? I doubt for a couple of seconds. Heck! Lets face the situation. I turn my head and open my eyes. There it is. I'm alone in the room.

Always use protection

It is important to be protected.

Returning home

At this very moment, I'm at Viena's airport. I'm waiting to board the plane to Amsterdam (flight OS375). Now, I could not resist the chance of posting in my blog by using the WiFi network and free internet access. Yes. Viena airport has a public wlan with free internet access They may change this sometime soon, though. This is damn cool!! It's my first time using a public internet access, from my laptop!

I'm off to home after spending a week in Graz (Austria). I attended a congress, well, they call it symposium: IAA Humans in Space Symposium 2005.

Nice city, great weather, awesome girls!

I'm in Wikipedia

Today, I'm nicely surprised to find an entry in En.Wikipedia about me. Well, it isn't really about me, but of what "Aimak" is. Now, for the record, I shall narrate how/when did I find my Internet nickname.

Back in 1997, I met the Internet and started to chat in IRC rooms. Many people started this way. The most important tasks at that time was to choose the right nickname. I disliked, I still do, those nicknames based on famous people, fiction characters, or things. It is also common to see people using god's names as nicknames, mostly greek and scandinavian gods. The words "Zeus", "Ares", etc were too popular. I wanted something unique and exclusive. Who doesn't?. The question was: Where can I find a "really cool" nickname?. Because Google wasn't an option at that time, I decided to try the traditional source of knowledge: an enciclopaedia.

I found at home an old enciclopaedia dated not later than mid 80s. Umm, I have got 14 volumes to choose, I thought. I also thought that it was a huge enciclopaedia. I had plenty time to think about stupid questions. As I was saying, I had to put down a list of requirements for my definitive and unique nickname. It was an important issue because the chosen nickname should identify me in the Internet and should not be changed anymore. The task was getting hard enough to not repeat the process again in the future. Here are some of the requirements I used:

• It has to be short word, but no less than 4 charaters.
• It has to sound well. Something cool.
• It has to start with the letter A or Z. This should allow to quickly find it in alphabetically sorted lists.
• It should be meaningfull, thus it has to be in the enciclopaedia.

I pulled the first volume. I opened it from the first page. I carefulle read every single entry. No success on the first page. I terrible thought came into my mid: Man!, this is a tough task. I'll never manage to find anything of my taste. I remember I had few candidates, but I wasn't sure about any. None sounded well to me.

As far I can remember, the book say that "Aimak" is the name of a scandinavian god. I could not find anymore if this is true. Years later, I belive around 2002, I used Google to find out more about my nickname and only got what Wikipedia shows now, more or less.

It is very interesting how a nickname chosen only to be used in the internet can become a part of you. Nowadays, some people call me by my nick and I anwser the same way as if it were my real name. Hope I'm not getting any psychological problems due to this. If it happens, I will post it here. Promise ;)

The ultimate gadget

I've just read a comment on Slashdot.org that made me recall about a NASA project of a autonomous free-flying camera. I know about this device since long time, perhaps since it was tested during Columbia's STS-87 mission. Its goal is basically to help the crew during extra-vehicular activities (EVA), and to perform inspections of the shuttle or ISS from the outside. A pretty useful gadget, I may say. Nowadays, it seems to exist an improved version of the AERCam/Sprint prototype called simply AERCam.

What other gadgets has NASA in their labs?

What's that?

It is white, tiny, cold. Yes, you know it. Snow.

Snow all around. Only white landscape in all directions. It is beatuful. As beautiful as irritating. I'm a southern spaniard, thus I haven't seen much snow before I landed in the Netherlands. Neither the Netherlands gets that much snow in winter. Not in the past four winters.

Since wednesday, we are all enjoying snow and ice. Specially people like me that work in another town. Everyday, I drive about 30km to work on local roads mostly. Those kind of roads that get the least attention from the local authorities and, hence, aren't well maintained.

It is the first time too that I drive in snow. The road gets icy and the breaking distance enlarges out of control. Pretty scary, though. In the first drive-with-snow attempt I almost had a collision. The car glided when I wanted to do a stop at a crossroad. I panicked, by the way, when I felt my car out of my control. Instinctively, I steered the wheel hard to the left to "avoid" the front car. Luckily, the car's rear-right wheel hit the sidewalk border. My car stopped. I got an adrenaline shoot at 10 km/h. Live threatening, indeed. Needless to say that I arrived home completely exhausted due to the tension of driving in such conditions. An experience that I'm interested to repeat anytime soon.

In all, it was an impressive week of snow in Europe.

Full success

Yes. After 2 years, the qualification flight of the new Ariene 5 ECA is a success by Arianespace, ESA, and Europe. The most advanced european launcher managed to put into orbit the XTAR-EUR satellite and the MAQSAT-B2 satellite. The flight 164 got lift-off few minutes passed 22h CET after 70 minutes of delay over the planned schedule caused by a technical problem with the payload. This time the hold was at 56 seconds from ignition, like a typical action film. Because this was a test flight, they didn't want to take any extra risk, so they double-checked all the systems before restarting the countdown. The XTAR-EUR satellite was the first put into orbit 26 minutes after launch. This satellite is a joint venture of Loral Space & communications and Hisdesat. Its purpose is for some kind of gubernamental communication, military perhaps, covering an area from east Barzil to Singapore. The second satellite released is the MAQSAT-B2 meant to simulate the weight and size of the average communication satellite. This hardware also aimed to measure several parameters from the rocket during its mission (TMA) and record images (DVCAM). This satellite also carried an interesting experiement: the SLOSHSAT-FLEVO. The microsatellite Sloshsat-FLEVO (Facility for Liquid Experimentation and Verification in Orbit) is supported by the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory and the University of Groningen. This satellite will orbit the earth for several weeks carrying 33.5 liter of water in a tank of 86.9 liter in total. The goal is to test a fluid dynamic model in microgravity. Apart from the technologcal and commercial implications, I'm surprised they didn't use beer instead of water. By the way, the FLEVO name makes reference to the region of The Netherlands where this satellite was built, Flevoland. The overall experience was very positive. There were many persons attending the event and plenty of food too.

Is it yet a typical Saturday?

Oh, yes!. Its another typical Saturday here in The Netherlands. Windy, rainy, and about 10˚C (één graad of tien, so they say in dutch). It is one of those days that you feel extremely encouraged to stay in bed. Great!.

I don't have much plans for today: some clean up, shopping at the nearby mall, working on my thesis, and going to work. Yes, I know. Going to work in the weekend is not good for my mental health. I can't help it. I have no tv at home and I feel like watching the launch of the Ariane 5 ECA, quite a historical event for the ESA though.

At work, they usually organise especial events around important ESA achivements. In events like today, because ESA's mission control is at ESOC (Germany), I have very little chances to follow all the happenings from the front line. We can't have all fun here at ESTEC. Thus my only chance is to watch all via the ESA's tv channel. Today at ESTEC, the evening programma starts at 19h with a short presentation speech by a guy from the University of Groningen. Around 20h we should get the tv feed directly from the Spaceport in Kourou. I'm hopeful the Ariane 5 will not fail again as it did on december 2002. Let keep fingers crossed.

Now I must go on. As I said before, I have some things to do today before the fun start. I shall write more on this evening happenings.

Adios

Fernando Morales

• Languages
  Spanish and English (fluent) and Dutch (fair).
• Career Interests
  Very interested in research and development of biomedical technology. In general, a job which requires the use and development of my knowledge and skills.
• Career
  
  • Present - 2004/07
    Life sciences instrumentation engineer at the European Space Agency, Noordwijk ZH (NL). Full-time contractor position provided by Serco FM BV, Katwijk ZH (NL).
  • 2003/12 – 2000/01
    Ph.D. in Medical Sciences, November 2005 at the University of Groningen (NL). Dissertation title: “Improving the clinical applicability of laser Doppler perfusion monitoring”.
• Academic Education
  
  • 1993/09 – 1999/09
    University of Granada, Granada (Spain).
    Master in Sciences (Biology), September 1999.
• Work Experience and Skills
  
  • Technical support in biomedical research and development activities.
  • Conceptual planning and implementation of biomedical test set-ups.
  • Analysis, evaluation, reporting and interpretation of data from biological or physiological experiments.
  • Good oral and written communication.
  • Excellent team working.
  • Very autodidact.
  • Learn quickly any method and technique.
  Other highlighted skills:
  
  • Advanced user of computer hardware.
  • Advanced user of Windows and GNU/Linux.
  • Data analysis and statistics software: SPSS, SigmaPlot.
  • Generic applications: office software, LaTeX, image manipulation.
  • Programming languages: XHTML+CSS, and some of VisualBASIC, C, Linux shell scripts.
  • Driving license class B.
• Hobbies
  Photography, astronomy, sports, music, films, salsa dancing.

Kind of fun

It finally arrived!

Today I stepped into the mail room and suddenly I noticed an odd smell; pretty stinky, thought. Then I looked around and, GREAT!!, it was there standing. A small box that my mom packed with some tasteful food, including a piece of cheese. I recognised right away what it is that stink coming from. Yes!!, the cheese. So delitious. I'm looking forward to go home and give it a try. Well, actually the cheese is meant to be spreaded on bread because it is very creamy.

Quickly as I just had stolen something, I ran to my office. I only had one tought in my mind: get the fucking stinky cheese in the car ASAP!!!. The box just stayed in my offcie for 2 mins, and now I've got a deep fragance stuck in here. But not only that. The whole corridor stinks, back and forth from my office. It was fun to hear how people passing by were sniffing hard trying to recognise and/or pin-point the odour. I better keep myself in anonimacy.