A Pause, A Break
While I may not be able to treat COVID, I’m happy that my family remains in good spirits. I face-timed my little sisters today and they seemed to be doing well. I loved hearing their voices earlier today. It helped me stay grounded and gave me the energy to get back to work. Week 4 is over and I can’t believe it? SWITCH is almost over. *insert cringe emoji* Also, I tried to do the snapchat thing from last week, ’twas not nice. But, I’m not giving up! My grandma says if she hasn’t given up, neither can I!
Gaze360
When I read this article for Gaze 360, I had to go back a few times because there was a lot to unpack there. The thing that stood out most to me was how much thought and work went into figuring out the positioning to make sure the datasets that they were collecting were accurate. Maybe it’s because I don’t have that kind of patience, but I could still appreciate the problem solving approach that went into it. I was also equally impressed with their ability to pinpoint what customers could be looking at even if it was slightly more than 50% of the time. I have to wonder though, is it just smartphone cameras that have a better “grasp” on detection in general or does it have something to do with the sensitivity of other functions on the phone that help guide/balance the camera. Upon typing this thought out, I feel like I should’ve just asked our resident camera guru, Chris.
Oncological Approaches
Both of our presentations this week had to do with cancer in some way, shape or form. Our first one up was from our very own Mary Jin. And, I hope I don’t grossly oversimplify this but she is using computer imaging to provide a more accurate view of cells and cellular anatomy in order to tag cells that may be cancerous. The biggest thing that stuck out to me from what she said, was the fact that sometimes the machine would hallucinate cells that may not necessarily be there. This for whatever reason blew my mind and has been all I’ve been able to share coherently with my friends on video chat. The main reason being that I know that sometimes programs like used with OpenCV can see “dogs” instead of flowers and things of that ilk but never in my mind did it occur that it could hallucinate cells. So cool!!!
We also got to hear from Brady Hunt and the research his team was doing in Brownsville and in the Barretos community. I was really invested in his work with cervical cancer because Brazil was an area of focus for me in undergrad and cervical cancer is no stranger to my family. It was good to know that he was addressing real issues of access within those areas and how there are cultural and other behavioral norms that stand in the way of women receiving life saving preventative treatment. I hope that Brady’s and Mary’s work gets pushed the forefront of what we are talking about because the earlier the detection and the easier the access, the better it will be for us to treat all individuals.
Keep up the good work, Mary! Don’t stop till you’ve hit space!
