Walmart vs. Starbucks

This post at the Columbia statistics blog shows the relationship between the number of Walmarts and Starbucks per million people for each state. This is interesting (but so not surprising) to me because West Virginia has the fourth most Walmarts (approximately 60 per million people) and the second fewest Starbucks (less than 20 per million people). West Virginia's population is roughly 1.8 million, so doing some fuzzy math there should be about 100-110 Walmarts.
 
According to the Walmart Facts website, however, there are only 37 stores and 5 Sam's Clubs. That's one Walmart store for every 42,000 people. In Michigan, it's 111 total Walmart stores, one for every 89,000 people. So there is effectively twice the number of Walmart's per person in West Virginia, but the huge number implied by Columbia can't be right. And like one of the commenters mentioned, there are some Walmarts that contain Starbucks.

I'd like to see a graph of the number of Chinese products per capita as a function of the quantity of lottery tickets purchased. It's correlation, sure, but it can be so telling. Continue reading "Walmart vs. Starbucks"!

Back at it

I've neglected this blog venture for a long time, largely because I haven't felt that my early life in Ann Arbor is interesting. I plan to post more about more things. If they are interesting, great, if not, still okay.

Big news in people-I-know-who-are-moving-to-Asia world. Jarrod is all of a sudden in Shenyang, China. This life-altering development occurred over a span of eight days, with no time for long-term planning, second-guessing, or uncertainty. That's how Jarrod makes decisions - on the fly. Whether he's calling a drunk Morgantown girl pregnant, yelling at his behaviorally-dysfunctional students, or (now) relocating to another continent, Jarrod doesn't hesitate. Nick - my brother - also has Asian aspirations. He's moving to Hirakata, Osaka, Japan in August, where he will become engorged with sushi and manga for (potentially) a year. This is fantastic news for Jarrod and Nick, but it comes to me in Ann Arbor, with few decent Asian restaurants and a stressful job. No problem, though, because you can bet that I will be visiting Shenyang and Hirakata soon. Continue reading "Back at it"!

Show me the money

Today I submitted an application to the National Science Foundation for a Graduate Research Fellowship. It provides a tuition waiver, a $30,000/year stipend, and an international travel fund for three years. That's a big deal, so it is very competitive; fewer than 10% of applications receive funding. I've been working on the essays over the past few weeks, so I feel pretty good about them.

I still receive money from my department either way - I won't be going hungry - though not nearly as much. If I get the fellowship, I'm rewarding myself with a new laptop and some other cool stuff. If I don't, well...I'll still probably buy a new laptop. I'll just be broke afterwards.

Not that my application is complete, I don't have a lot to do for the next couple weeks. Honestly, after class tomorrow, I'm not sure how to fill my day. Any suggestions? Continue reading "Show me the money"!

Publication (hopefully) forthcoming

In college, I spent a year in a lab researching effects of caffeine in rats. I also helped write the manuscript based on that work. It was fun, and good experience. Now, we are in the throes of the publication process. The manuscript has been submitted, returned, revised, and is now ready for resubmission. Early next week, the graduate student I worked with will send it on to the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior. How exciting!

It's a nervous situation, though, because there is no guarantee they will accept this time either. We've addressed the original reviewer comments, hopefully adequately, but there is always more that could have been done.

If it's accepted, fantastic. Having a journal publication this early is still fairly uncommon. I'm afraid that if it is accepted, I will become uncontrollably excited. Seriously, I may paper the walls of my apartment in reprints. Continue reading "Publication (hopefully) forthcoming"!

Don't worry, they'll add it to the Collector's Edition DVD

Researchers at the American Museum of Natural History have discovered evidence that velociraptor (Velociraptor mongoliensis) had feathers. Velociraptors, as you may know, were made popular by Jurassic Park and its sequels. The size and cognitive ability of raptors was greatly exaggerated in the movies (to my dismay), and their presentation was very lizard like. This partly reflected the consensus of the paleontological community at that time. More recently, much evidence has been found supporting the view that raptors were small (think medium-size dog) and quite like modern birds.

The presence of quill knobs on a new fossil's forearms indicates that it most likely had feathers. Quill knobs are bony protrusions that serve as anchor points for feathers in modern birds. The researchers note the number of feathers on Velociraptor likely matched that of Archaeopteryx, the first reptile found to have feathers. This all provides further support for the now well-accepted view that dinosaurs (reptiles) are the direct ancestors of modern birds.

Figure to the left: Top two are the raptor fossil. The third down is a modern turkey vulture. You can see the similarity in quill-knob bumps.

This is all very cool, but I find myself wishing that raptors were actually more like those in Jurassic Park. The older I get, the less kick ass dinosaurs become. Tyrannosaurous rex, to me once the king of all predators, is now known to have been a moderately-sized, tiny-armed scavenger. It is sacrilege! Damn you, Steven Speilberg, for exaggerating the prowess of my favorite extinct animals!

At least megalodon has not been dethroned (yet).

Source: Turner et al. 2007. Feather Quill Knobs in the Dinosaur Velociraptor. Science, 317, 1721. Continue reading "Don't worry, they'll add it to the Collector's Edition DVD"!

Kinetic Sculptures

Theo Jansen is a kinetic sculptor. He creates moving skeletal structures out of very light materials. Once placed in an open area and given a push, the animari walk along, powered by the wind.



I haven't seen a video of one of these structures stopping, so if you are ever on a beach in the Netherlands, look out. Continue reading "Kinetic Sculptures"!

Graduate School: Week One

After five days to acclimate to Ann Arbor, I officially started graduate school this past Tuesday. So far, my week has consisted of running around the psychology building locating classrooms, labs, offices, and the keys to open them. Nothing notable has happened, though I did get to mount rat-brain slices today. It will be even more satisfying when they are my rats.

For the next several days, I will be busy reading papers, hoping to gather more explicit ideas for a first year project. More on that later. Continue reading "Graduate School: Week One"!