projects

quotes from "the right to pain relief and other deep roots of the opioid epidemic"
02 november 2023 | books

A thought-provoking book that should be read by anyone interested in the study and management of pain. I provide select passages fr[...]om the book and will update with additional quotes in the future.

long-term optical imaging of the spinal cord in awake, behaving animals
25 may 2023 | neuroscience

How does the spinal cord process sensory stimuli in awake animals? A brief overview of results from our recent preprint describing [...]a spinal implant chamber, fibrosis-inhibiting materials, computational methods, and end-to-end pipeline for large-scale bilateral recording from multiple segments of the spinal cord. This allowed us to conduct long-term (months to over a year) imaging of individual axons, microglia dynamics, and Ca2+ imaging of neurons—all in awake, behaving animals.

Several of the approaches described, such as fibrosis inhibition, are applicable to preparations and experiments beyond the spinal cord.

satellite-based videos: eastern europe during the russia-ukraine conflict
30 november 2022 | satellite

To visualize the nighttime lights of Eastern Europe, with a focus on times before and after the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, I updated [...]my geoSatView R code originally built to view forest fires in the west coast of the United States to use satellite data from VNP46A1 and other datasets collected from the Suomi NPP VIIRS satellite.

I then created higher-quality movies in MATLAB by using the VNP46A2 Black Marble dataset collected by the same satellite, which has reduced cloud and other artifacts due to additional data processing. This allowed me to quantitate a permanent reduction in nighttime lights within Ukraine (in line with my initial hypothesis) and identify a multi-stage reduction of nighttime lights in Kiev's outer neighborhoods/metropolitan area that was greater than that seen in the city core/center. This highlights the utility of public satellite data to quickly test hypotheses and visualize large-scale changes.

I will go over how the Black Marble dataset is collected and processed along with how I created the movies and the advantages/disadvantages of each data source.

Using this platform and codebase, in follow-up posts I will look at 2021 Texas power crisis during the winter storms, vegetation changes in deforested areas or after conservation efforts, and other events.

imaging pain-related neural activity in freely-moving animals
30 may 2022 | neuroscience

Our book chapter detailing the entire pipeline from surgeries to analysis for calcium imaging of pain-related neural activity has been publ[...]ished.

This can prove a useful reference for those new to calcium imaging (esp. in freely moving animals) or researchers who want to see how others perform certain experimental and analytical steps along with the rationale. Please reach out if you have any specific questions, happy to help!

humanity's dirge
14 june 2021 | filugori

A short dirge that introduces one of the themes of Filugori, my planned book on man's conquest of space.[...]

howard hughes medical institute hanna h. gray fellowship
18 february 2021 | science

I recently became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Hanna H. Gray Fellow. A brief post thanking my amazing mentors and highlighting (some o[...]f) my goals as a Fellow.

geosatview: creating videos from satellite data
14 september 2020 | satellite

I created geoSatView back in 2018 to visualize fires on the West Coast of the United States. This entry briefly discusses [...]geoSatView along with providing example videos and links to the code.

dslr chronicles #1: getting ready for mars
09 september 2020 | photography

San Francisco looks good in red. Select pictures from a Martian-themed bike ride around SF.[...]

wary statistics #1: the tale of cdc mortality
06 april 2020 | statistics

I will briefly discuss properly interpreting data you might see in the mainstream or on social media. The takeaway: if recent data for some[...] measure (e.g. pneumonia deaths) from this year looks to be different than prior years, make sure to check that it is not an artifact of data collection or compilation.

the origin and evolution of life
01 january 2020 | origin and evolution of life

I am starting a new blog focused on the Origin and Evolution of Life. Here is the first post.[...]
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