*** 7 / 2 6 / 2 1 ----- day 15 ****** What changes have you made to your project(s) based on critique feedback from others? ***

*** 7 / 2 3 / 2 1 ----- day 14 ****** What connections did you make between diffusion and motor proteins to random walks? ***

*** 7 / 2 2 / 2 1 ----- day 13 ****** What do you think will happen in a Gambler's Ruins problem when the odds are slightly not fair? For example 51% to 49% odds for the two gamblers. (Hint: Both M1 and M2 are relatively large.) ***

*** 7 / 2 1 / 2 1 ----- day 12 ****** What pebbles did you pick up about the locomotion of other organisms from Dr. Nicholas Gravish's DLS talk? ***

*** 7 / 2 0 / 2 1 ----- day 11 ****** What concerns to you have about the feasibility of your robotics project? How will you address these concerns? ***

*** 7 / 1 6 / 2 1 ----- day 9 ****** How is the function of the ribosome in your cells the same as or different from the python DNA translation program you worked with? ***

*** 7 / 1 5 / 2 1 ----- day 8****** Compare python programming with another language you are familiar with. What are the advantages and/or disadvantages of each? ***"When you ask a question of someone, you are borrowing their brain. At that moment, you have two brains." We had a brief discussion of learning during our Robotics Lab today. Dr. Dad-del told us that in order to learn something, one of the best ways to absorb that information is to teach it. Eli then went on to share his personal experiences of learning through teaching.If you have extra time, play with your robot and finish your tasks.

*** 7 / 1 4 / 2 1 ----- day 7 ****** What "pebbles did you pick up" while watching Joshua, Serena, and/or Dr. Koehl's presentations?***Joshua's presentation was quite interesting to me because I hadn't been aware of such a device before. Joshua’s climate control device used a motherboard, motor, gears (there was a special one that translated motion perpendicularly), and an axle-like output. Second presentation — Serena’s old FM radio used circuits to operate buttons, a liquid crystal display, and a tuning device to change the frequency.Chapter 4 was about human judgement. We were given an example of a CEO and asked to judge his potential for success. Afterwards, we were also told that the past unstructured judgements had varied greatly. I also learned about how judgements are evaluated; we think about them until they feel right. In Chapter 5, I learned about measuring error and reducing bias. I don’t remember that much about Chapter 5, though.

*** 7 / 1 3 / 2 1 ----- day 6***What are your insights about the critique process? How has it already been useful or how do you think it will be useful in the future of this project?Since my group's project document has not been completely filled out yet, the critique process did not reap as many benefits this time around. However, I can definitely see how it can be helpful later down the line, as our project becomes more developed. As creators, we will go through iterations of the same design, but without others' insights we may miss huge potential improvements.

*** 7 / 1 2 / 2 1 ----- day 5****** What is the difference between bias and noise?***What are the truth tables for converses, inverses, and contrapositives?***What is the truth value of the compound statement (P⇒ ~Q) v R? ***

*** 7 / 9 / 2 1 ----- day 4****** How does Dr. Dad-del's sprayer tool work? ****** How many MegaPixels is the camera on your phone? ***Since I don't have a phone, I couldn't research the number of megapixels for my own phone's camera. Instead, I found that the Apple iPhone 12 is equipped with a 12-megapixel camera which has a wide and ultra-wide mode.How much money is $10,000 in 1983 today?I also found out that between 1983 and today, the value of the dollar has seen an average inflation rate of 2.65% per year. That means that $10,000 in 1983 translates to about $27,027.61 today!

*** 7 / 8 / 2 1 ----- day 3******What did you learn or experience from working with your robot today? ***Today was actually the first day I spent programming my robot. Though it took a couple tries to achieve an acceptable degree of accuracy, I was able to control my robot to drive 1 foot back and forth through simple blocks of code. In fact, one of the most important things I learned today was how to make my EV3 robot execute a 180 degree turn with block code. I can't wait to begin working in RobotC once my loaner computer arrives!*** What did you find most interesting about the DLS talk about developing vaccines? ***One of the highlights of today was the Distinguished Lecture Series talk by Dr. Robert Spitale. From his presentation I learned that the Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines were developed using the mRNA method. This means that when someone gets vaccinated, mRNA is injected and translates to spike proteins which the immune system is now able to recognize. The most impressive part was that scientists actually were able to develop mRNA vaccines that could both prevent hyperactivity of the immune system and produce protein that can be recognized by our immune system!How comfortable are you with adding journals and course content to this website?Another big highlight of today was creating a personal website to document my COSMOS experiences. Since the Carrd website builder is so easy to use, I definitely feel comfortable adding journals and course content to this website. Designing the aesthetics of it was fun!

*** 7 / 7 / 2 1 ----- day 2***What are your thoughts about the lectures today? What did you learn from the lectures and labs?In today's Biophysics lecture, Dr. Singh taught us about temperature. We didn't simply learn about Fahrenheit, Kelvin, and Celsius, though - Dr. Singh led us through a captivating journey that went deeper than that. Starting from the way measurements are taken, we went on to understand the way energy, temperature, and other properties of a substance impact one another. Kinetic energy is directly proportional to temperature, and the molecular world operates on the concept of equipartition of energy. Dr. Cone also went over the Jupyter Notebook environment in greater detail. I followed along with his instructions and I definitely feel more comfortable using various features now!We also had the chance to hear Dr. Dad-del's Robotics lecture today. In it, he gave a brief but informative history of computers and their parts. We then delved deeper into the processing specifications of the EV3 brick in our robotics kits (I learned that its main memory has 64 MB of RAM!) and dissected a sample RobotC program. Nevertheless, my biggest takeaways from this lecture came from the section about logic and reasoning. I wasn't very familiar with terms of logic such as proposition, negation, conjunction, and disjunction, but Dr. Dad-del's examples and definitions really helped me grasp the basic concepts.

*** 7 / 6 / 2 1 ----- day 1 ***Today was my first day at COSMOS! During our Robotics lab, we opened up our EV3 kits for the first time and built our base robots. Like Professor Dad-del emphasized, it was truly like playing with childhood LEGOs once more.In the afternoon, Dr. Singh's lecture about atoms and Dr. Cone's introduction to Jupyter Notebooks were really eye-opening for me. It has been been quite a while since I learned about the world on the atomic level. Did you know that the ratio of a human to the width of a strand of hair is equivalent to the ratio of a width of a strand of hair to an atom?I was really excited to meet everyone and I'm going to make the most out of the coming weeks. I'm sure it will be a tremendous learning experience, and I hope the virtual setting will not make it too difficult to create meaningful connections with my peers!