WE GOT HIM!!

WE GOT HIM!!!!!

We tried some tuna bait outside and attracted another cat but I went out to look one more time and saw him creeping into the crawlspace of the house nextdoor. He didn't come home but we found him.

Here we come 2008!

2007 (good riddens)

This year (as Matt will attest) has been one littered with misfortune for my household. Perhaps this was the valley to compliment the 2006 peak that not only saw us get married but also purchase and move into our first house. It all began with us trying to get out our apartment (lease) and struggling to secure a commitment from one Ms. Broward, failing, and then wrestling have the rental company for the last of our dignity, which for anyone keeping track is apparently worth a couple thousand dollars to us. Some of that money we tried to make back by participating in Yellow Fever vaccine studies but that also turned to misadventure.

On a brighter note, we did make some progress on the house and had a lot of visitors. All of our parents and siblings stopped by at one point or another during the year and some college buddies came out in September. Chad arrives tomorrow to cap off the year and to start 2008 off on the right foot. Also, I have to say that I did not fall terribly ill at any point in the year, though it was riddled with injury. I think the passing-out mentioned above was the first incident, but June was really where I kicked it up a notch. Who could forget my bloody-attic-insulation mess that resulted in an afternoon visit from an ambulance. While I did start wearing my helmet I still managed to hurt myself just a week later in a spill that took me over the handle bars of my bike. I went to the doctor the next day to hear that I had fractured my radius. They sent me to a sports doctor who said it was not broken (enough) for a cast and it would heal on its own. Finally, we had a car accident but luckily no one was hurt, save the Civic.

We both managed to take fruitful trips to Central and South America for our work and even managed to take part of a trip together. Everything went very well except that Lauren had her purse stolen while we were in the airport waiting to come home. Passport and ID were luckily on her person.

With a year that seems to have thrown so much at us it is nice to still be standing and until today we were doing better than that (practically dancing). Today, though, was one of those days that seems to avalanche on you; a series of failures like eraser strokes working on the optimism you've worked so ward to sketch out for yourself. I won't get into the steps in the progression, but a certain shortcoming is proving detrimental to the recovery of our spirits. This morning Lauren noticed that our cat had not been around all night (a rarity, especially following our 9 day absence). We are still looking but are fairly certain he slipped out last night and we left him out there. It rained all day (Gov. Purdue's prayers are being answered, I guess) and we haven't seen him, or any trace of him, yet. If he shows up soon, it'll save 2007 for me, if he's gone, then I can surely say that I am glad 2007 will be as well.

On My Block

Sometimes I think there could be an entire blog about my neighborhood, if only seen through the right lens. It's at those same times I hope I am carrying a camera. It might be there and gone or something static and I'll have a chance to go back and snap a shot. Last week presented one such opportunity and I took full advantage.

This shot was taken at the church on the corner two blocks from my house. It's about that time of year when everyone goes through the chore of cleaning up the leaves in the yard (it took em awhile but they finally fell off). Most people use the heavy-duty brown paper bags which you can buy at the hardware store. The city comes around once every other week and picks up the yard waste. The church decided to take a different approach. Maybe they didn't want to spend money on the bags from the hardware store but the bags they ultimately chose seem like they would be even harder to get your hands on. What's more, they chose bags that no one would pick up without thinking twice.
I'm happy to report that the bags were picked up, though I am not by whom or when.

Walk it Out

School is now over but I thought I would give you a taste of one last assignment. It was about measuring walkability on street segments. All of the segments were around homes of students in the class and two students rated each segment. The segments were initially rated using Walkscore.com but it is mostly based on crow-fly proximity to businesses so it doesn't say anything about walkability (for example how pleasurable it is to walk on the segment). The only real outcome we could obtain from the assessment tool that we used was a rating of the other pedestrians on the segment. We turned it into a presence/absence indicator and found that the number of land uses on a segment as well as a higher rating of the segment's sidewalk quality and interesting sights all increased the odds of observing pedestrians on a segment. It was a first look at some rough data but the results are not too unbelievable. We even controlled for median income, auto ownership, age of the neighborhood and density.

But why look at that? Is walking to the store or a bus stop really physical activity? I have a hard time convincing myself of that sometimes. Regardless educating people about what IS physical activity and how they can fit it in their lives is something that is talked about a lot in the field. I found this graphic (originally published in the New York times Magazine with an article about France's jogging President) to be very interesting. I think it is getting at the point that information about a behavior like physical activity can affect an individuals' behaviors. There was not much more than this graphic and it didn't fit with the article exactly but judging by the metrics and the jogging part of the piece I think that's what they're talking about. If I find more I will let you know but take a look it's really interesting. One thing I wonder about is why is the 'informed' group skinnier than the control at time 1?

Tox II

In an effort to increase public health awareness around anthrax as well as show off some of my classmates' work, I've offered this space to Micah (a classmate). Here she is with a guest post.

So as Jason said, we had an assignment for our Toxicology class to make a video about a toxic exposure of some kind. My group (me and my main peep, Kim) chose to do the 2001 USPS Anthrax attacks. While the assignment was more synapse-stimulating than a paper or an exam, we spent significantly more time on the creation of this video. Coming up with the idea for the creative genius you see before you took a good day or so, and the "hours" of footage (aka, 2 minutes of good film and about 80 of us laughing) took another good chunk of time. iMovie is a horrible creation unless you have vargo there for inspirational words and to show you how to do anything cool, and the walk to the video lab at school seemed farther and farther away every time we went. All in all, it was fun to complain about during the ordeal, but we didn't kill each other and who knows who might see this thing on this widely-read public domain. Anybody hiring?

Straight Diesel

In this string of updates about the projects I am working on I would like to present the latest; the Railyard Risk Assessment. This project focuses on a hazard, quantification of possible exposures, use of dose-response information to determine risk, and a summary that expands on uncertainties and tries to give an idea of what it all means. This, apparently, is risk assessment.

Thanks to Ben's extracurricular work, we landed a nice project right here in Atlanta. We decided to look at residences being built right next to two large rail yards on Atlanta's west side.
We modeled the emissions coming from the yard's activities (using a Cali yard as a proxy) and then used a model from EPA to obtain the resultant concentrations of diesel particulate matter at the new homes. The actual risk is still being determined but the results could prove to be very interesting. Below is a movie shot from one of the lots.
The most perfect irony of this is that these new homes are Earth Craft, a green building certification that puts the word "healthy" in the first sentence of its self-description. This is one example of how marketing and narrowly focused, under-developed certifications are capitalizing on 'green' (also read healthy) trends without necessarily furthering the whole objective.

GA Clean Diesel
interested in buying one these homes?
More photos of the yard here

Grad School

Sometimes my own understanding of where I am in life and who I am can seem really off. I think I'm in one place and acting a certain way and then I catch a glimpse of myself from another angle and I see of myself in a completely different light.

Grad school can be like that. Everyone is idealistic and determined and at the same time sick of it and fed up. And even though we're in our 20s sometimes we act really childish but we still feel like we're qualified to handle really big problems. If you're in the middle of it you may not even notice what you're doing. Plus we hardly have time to reflect on our work (if we get it back). Sometimes you get to put your work in front of people and then it becomes a good lens or perhaps a mirror in which to see yourself.

In my efforts to work on the really big problems that grad school presents (assignments) this is the latest creation of which I was a part. It's a mock newscast about a toxic exposure, in this case tetrodotoxin. Enjoy.