drail

Here goes:

During my dissertation, I was lookig for information on the emissiom of 172nm scintillation light in mixtures of gaseous Xe and CO2 (95:5% - 98:2%), with results being difficult to come by. I found a collaborator who had tested this at lower CO2 concentrations (0-0.5%), but nothing else, no predictions or generalizable applications. Not knowing the optimal search engine terms or what textbook to look in for rules governing gaseous light emission, I ended up looking in fluorescence chemistry papers (my previous field of study) which had something called the Stern-Volmer relation for different concentrations of quenchant in a fluorescent solution. I figured gas scintillation queching was probably similar to liquid fluorescence quenching, but the standard relation didn't quite fit below 10% additive.

I dug around more and found a modification of this relation for diffusion-limited quenching of fluorescent solutions (the same limitation imposed in gas mixtures, quenching due to random Brownian collisions) that employed an exponential term, allowing for a smoother curve down to low additive concentrations. This perfectly matched the available data and allowed me to model the predicted behavior. I discussed this with the one member of my committee who was available, an organic chemist (my PI was on vacation, everyone else was sick, and my dissertation defense was in 2 weeks). He said my reasoning and math for using this formula made sense and gave me a thumbs up to include this analysis. When my PI came back from holiday, he asked me why I didn't use some equation generally used in the field, or even just a generic exponential fit. I was ignorant of his suggestion, but it provided the same general formulation as Stern-Volmer, though Stern-Volmer was more rigorously derived mathematically.

Mixing fields is super cool and can allow a much deeper understanding of the underlying principles, as opposed to limiting yourself to one branch of science. While my PI's recommendation would have given approximately the same answer, understanding and applying Stern-Volmer allowed me to really dig at the principles at play and generate a more accurate and in-depth model, which I managed to write up and defend at the 11th hour.

Tie between:

If anyone needs me, I'll be in the angry dome

angry muttering as the PES flies away

and

Well Susie, it isn't foreigners, it's global warming

Gwabu wabu?

Uh, sure...

Yup!

Fianceé's dad is a Senior Level Employee and he was told he'd be safe for at least the first 2 rounds of layoffs, but they couldn't guarantee he'd survive round 3. Expect two more cullings and for them to get increasing severe: if a ~20 year Boeing vet, 40 year industry vet, working the worst hours with the worst people isn't safe, nobody except the executives are (he is forced to comply with another country's work hours halfway across the world AND be present in the office for normal working hours).

I can't get over how bad the pelican's broadcast audio is. Everything sounds like the broadcasters are sharing a webcam mic. I don't remember pelicans audio sounding like this in the past...

Nuggets truly rounding back into form. Jokic is producing more than ever, but we need to scale back his usage more as the other players each start hitting their marks.

I am a new CA resident, moved here just in time to register and vote. Thank you to CAA & HJTA for dissenting against everything good so that I didn't have to know anything (I actually spent 2 hours researching the ballots and candidates to make sure of the right choices, but it was nice to use that as a sanity check.)

Prop 34 was truly insidious in how it was written, I spent half the time filling my ballot trying to figure out why a bunch of shitty groups were supporting a boring, procedural sounding prop about federally funded prescription revenue spending.

North of the Border

His name is Adam and he likes to make tiny nerdy things. He makes dioramas of nerdy stuff, sometimes normal, some times with too many teeth, fingers, and/or toes.

I

Wish the Nuggets would do the Mountain or city skyline, kinda boring court as is.

The SEM+EDS machine in one of my school's materials labs ran 98 and there was exactly one thumb drive on campus that was allowed to be used if you wanted to pull data. The lab coordinator had to pull the output file to his computer and email them, but made it sound like the biggest inconvenience in the world if you, ya know, wanted your data.

My school gave up on printing/binding theses, so they also gave up on thesis formatting requirements. As long as your advisor approved the thesis and the title page had all the relevant info, it could be formatted however you wanted.

After finishing my dissertation, I spent maybe 20 minutes emailing the library staff about dissertation edits (date format/placement on title page mainly) and otherwise was told any other requested changes were optional so long as my advisor signed off. I have to get my dissertation printed and bound myself, but that is a small price to pay compared to the nightmare that is univeristy thesis format compliance.