You are batting 1%!

"You are batting 1%" is a baseball term, means hitting the ball very poorly, below average. The term is also used to mean you are performing extremely poorly in a situation where success is measured by a percentage, essentially indicating you are only achieving a very small fraction of desired results, similar to how in baseball, a "batting average" of 1% would be incredibly low and signify almost no hits at all. 

Some text was provided by AI-enabled search engine results.

Renege

To renege means to go back on a promise, undertaking, or contract. I learned this word in recent news on CNN that mentioned president Biden reneged on his promise and pardoned his son Hunter. Other synonyms include revoke, renounce, or abandon. 

Throwing a Fit

 I heard this term first when my son casually mentioned a couple of times "I had a fit" or "I threw a fit" when going over his day's events last night.  To "throw a fit" or "have a fit" means to become very shocked, angry, or worried. Other synonyms are: blow a fuse, blow one's stack, blow up, combust, go ballistic, lose one's temper.

Calling shotgun!

 Calling shotgun is an American idiom used to express your desire for the front row car seat, or claim it, when a group of people go out together. Especially if a family has more than one young kid, the siblings may compete to sit in front with the driver.  So, they usually run to car and say "I called the shotgun"! This saying has roots to Wild West era, 160 years ago, when the person next to the driver was protecting him:

https://www.businessinsider.com/wild-west-origin-shotgun-front-seat-car-2019-8

Impossible Triangle

 Here I thought I know a lot about math, geometry, patterns, numbers .... till my little son yesterday told me he wants to draw and Impossible Triangle! "What is that?", I ask.  "A triangle that you can draw but cannot exist in real world! It is an illusion." he says.  Wow, and I looked it up and it is exactly that!  I have learned many many things every day since becoming a mother that I could not keep up with in this blog, as the long pauses suggest, but never thought a triangle would be one of them!  The Impossible Triangle is also called a Penrose Triangle*.

Image Credit: https://www.andinet.de/en/images/optical_illusions/penrose_triangle.jpg

*Reference:  Penrose triangle - Wikipedia

Why people may not seek treatment?

There are many people with undiagnosed mental health issues. There are also many who refuse seeking treatment despite being asked to do so by their family, friends, employer, or primary care giver.  Why is that? Why would not want to seek help and get better, or just figure out if they need help or not, when well-intended individuals advise them to do. Well, there can be many reasons:

1. They may not trust their privacy is honored. They may think this information will be shared with others, or be used against them in future.
2. They may not have a good health insurance and not have the financial means to seek help.
3. They may be too sick, too depressed to even see things clearly or have the energy and will power to do anything.
4. They may not see anything is wrong with them since that is the only way of life they have known. They have normalized and rationalized their behavior.
5. They think they are smart and capable enough to be able to cure themselves.
6. Subconsciously they do not believe they deserve to get better or have a better life.

While they may have good reasons to believe any of the above, not seeking treatment affects their quality of life and loved ones around them. The very first step, is to make an appointment. To accept help, or acknowledge needing it.

Pt/Co scale

One of the measures of water quality, or pollution levels in water, is its color; How is this color measured? The scale for such color measurement for water quality is Platinum-Cobalt (Pt/Co) scale or alpha-Hazen scale introduced by Allen Hazen, a chemist in 1892.   This scale measured how yellow tinted water samples are. One Pt/Co unit is how much 1 milligram of Pt/Co taints/colors 1 liter of water!  How they measure it is another story, and apparently there are standard tests defined for this purpose.

Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pt/Co_scale

Mentor vs Career Coach

I was wondering what is the difference between a mentor and career coach at work. Here is what I learned today:

A mentor is someone more experienced who shows you the way to do something and help you navigate a preexisting, well-defined path. So, if you are a new hire, joined a new program, ... you can ask a more senior person, a veteran in that position, perhaps your predecessor, to be your mentor and show you how things are done.

A career coach is someone who helps you create a new way, find a new path, to better fulfill your professional goals.  If you are an innovator, entrepreneur, leader, wanting to do something for the first time, build a new initiative or program, develop a company or product, you can benefit from a career coach to create that new way of doing things.

Nybble

It amazes me that during all my years of studies and career as a computer scientist, I just came across the term nibble or nybble, meaning half a byte, or 4 bits.

In the Nick of Time

In the Nick of Time: just in time, just before it is too late, the last moment.

Jupiter! We are almost there.

As most Americans get ready to enjoy the fourth of July long weekend with barbeques, fireworks, or traveling to new places, NASA is getting ready for their own celebrations and fireworks, and exploring new worlds! Juno mission is expected to enter Jupiter's orbit after a five year journey! It will then orbit the gassy planet for a year to achieve many scientific objectives like mapping Jupiter's magnetic field, looking for its solid core, understanding its origins and evolution, and as a result origins and evolution of our Solar System.

No spacecraft has ever got this close to Jupiter. Jupiter poses many dangers and risks to Juno among it is the high levels of radiation so deep in the radiation belt. Juno orbit insertion (JOI) is challenging.  In fact, Juno spacecraft will risk Jupiter's fireworks for Science.  Here is our 4th of July movie trailer:

So this 4th of July, when gathered with friends and family, if you want a SciFi thriller movie to watch, watch the real deal!

p.s. I cannot believe I had started this blog exactly 5 years ago on July 5 and even wrote about Juno's launch.


References:

[1] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html
[2] https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/
[3] http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-announces-coverage-media-activities-for-juno-mission-arrival-at-jupiter
[4] http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6538

Starchips!

Finally advances in technology is making it possible for big minds like Stephen Hawking to achieve their big dreams, not by building larger and larger instruments, but by fitting as much technology as possible into smaller and smaller gadgets. For the first time, it is becoming plausible to consider interstellar travel that can happen during one's lifetime not thousands of years. The approach sounds simple: build thousands of small smart chip instruments. starchips, and set them on their way.  Do not worry if many gets lost or do not reach the destination, you can afford this risk. But if only one succeeds, you are unlocking mysteries never known before. And that makes all the difference. Learn more here:

Forget Starships: New Proposal Would Use 'Starchips' To Visit Alpha Centauri

Moral equivalence

Thanks to Facebook discussions, today I learned a new term "moral equivalency":

1. "Moral equivalence is a term used in political debate, usually to criticize any denial that a moral hierarchy can be assessed of two sides in a conflict, or in the actions or tactics of two sides."
   
   
   Reference:
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_equivalence

What is ALS?

These days social media is full of #IceBucketChallenge videos, aiming to raise awareness about ALS disease.  Eventually, I was challenged by a good friend of mine.  If it was not during such a busy time for me, I probably would have also joined the fun and would have a video of ice water poured on me, in addition to donating for the cause.  I did donate to ALSA for the cause, and I encourage you to do the same for ALS or other research areas related to human body and health.  Instead of pouring ice bucket on me, I decided to do something from behind my desk, like I mostly do.  I thought to myself, how much do I really know about ALS? Not much, I realized.  So, I figured let that be my lesson of the day today and help raise awareness and spread the word.   Here are a few things I learned by a quick search.  Would you like to add anything?

ALS stands for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.  It is also referred to as Motor Neuron Disease (MND).  However, there are five different motor neuron diseases.  ALS is the most common among the five.  In the United States it is also called the Lou Gehrig's disease.  Lou Gehrig was a major league baseball player who died of ALS in 1941, and his fame made the public learn about this disease.

ALS is a neurodegenerative disease, causing  "progressive loss of structure or function of neurons functions".  Initial symptoms include weakness of muscles where neurons are damaged.  75% of people with this disease experience muscle weakness in their arms and legs.  Other symptoms may include difficulty swallowing or cramping. "Over time, patients experience increasing difficulty moving, swallowing (dysphagia), and speaking or forming words (dysarthria). "[2]

The average survival time of this disease is 39 months.  Only 4% of the patients survive more than 10 years.  The exceptional case is that of Stephen Hawking who has lived with the disease over 50 years!  His survival seems as exceptional as his science!

 References:

[1]http://www.alsa.org
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis
[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Gehrig
[4]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking

Business communication

Would not it be nice if people acknowledged receipt of emails, even if they do not yet have answers to them? Would not it be nicer if they actually read the text of work emails, without quickly hitting reply and answering an unrelated assumed question?  Sometimes I find myself repeating the same thing five different times and ways before the message is really received and understood by the other side.  Do you have the same experiences? Do you find yourself in unnecessary email chains that could have been avoided if the initial recipient had first carefully read the text of the email?  What are your solutions? I think sending short emails, with one question and a different subject line for each, make it harder for recipients to get confused.  At the very end, it seems to boil down to how responsible is the recipient, and how much s/he cares to take care of business.  I understand scientists and engineers not being the best communicators.  However, when someone's job is to provide customer service, especially for life changing matters,  I cannot grasp their non responsiveness.  Change your job for God's sake if you do not want to provide service to customers and answer their questions.

Being green

Today I learned an English term. Someone said in an email that someone is "too green". Considering the context of the message, it did not make sense to me. What did caring about environment and nature have to do with her message? So, I searched for the term. When you say someone is too green, it means they are inexperienced, new to their job, not able to navigate and handle issues as good as an experienced person would. It all makes sense now.

Ocean inside Saturn's Moon

"NASA's Cassini spacecraft and Deep Space Network have uncovered evidence Saturn's moon Enceladus harbors a large underground ocean of liquid water, furthering scientific interest in the moon as a potential home to extraterrestrial microbes."

"Gravity measurements by NASA's Cassini spacecraft and Deep Space Network suggest that Saturn's moon Enceladus, which has jets of water vapor and ice gushing from its south pole, also harbors a large interior ocean beneath an ice shell, as this illustration depicts." 
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Reference:

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/april/nasa-space-assets-detect-ocean-inside-saturn-moon/#.U0b1cV6xG3F

Empathy vs Sympathy

Here is a nice short clip demonstrating the difference between sympathy and empathy, and how sympathy can be destructive.  

The great take away lesson:

“The truth is, rarely can a response make something better — what makes something better is connection.”

It seems to me that the requirement for emphasizing is feeling the hurt person's feelings and placing ourselves in their shoes.  However, what if we cannot emotionally handle experiencing and feeling that pain, or rather not to?  Does it mean we will be incapable of emphasizing with and helping the person in need?

Roaches

As humans we are not fond of cohabiting with many insects, especially roaches.  They are not sanitary and are messengers of old or dirty structures or remnants of food around the house.  That is as far as I used to think badly about roaches, till yesterday!  I was watching a sad documentary on TV about some government housing conditions in poor areas of New York; how people lived in rental apartments that had mold and many roaches; how they cooked and bathed there, getting sick, and landlords ignored tenants requests for repairs; how rate of Asthma for those residents was much higher than other neighborhoods; how finally a concerned mother after years of persistence and taking the subject to the media and her community, was able to force the management company renovate her bathroom and fix a pipe's leak instead of just providing a band-aid solution by cleaning and painting over the mold, which made mold come back soon later.  Anyways, apart from the interesting story, I learned that not only mold but also roaches contribute to Asthma!  One more reason why pest control and vacuuming often is more important than what you can imagine!

To learn more about the relationship between roaches and asthma please visit here. 

The mentioned documentary broadcasted on January 5, 2014 on NBC's Dateline program can be watched here. 

Mark Twain

I learned that Mark Twain was a pen name Samuel Clemens had chosen for himself!