Lovely Squirrel Dance

One day I was going to school and I saw one beautiful squirrel. It was crossing the road in search of something or just walking I don't know. I was walking on the side walk. I like these tiny rodents. Bushy tail, slender body, large eyes, soft, and silky fur. They are always active, doing something or at least running from here to there for seeds and nuts. They love nuts. When it saw me, started looking at me with its large eyes. I stopped and also started watching whatever it did.

 

It stood up with his (her?) hind-limbs with fore limbs together doing namaste to me, at least I thought in the begining but was not true. It was holding the nut! Then it started dancing and I just watched its dance.

Life cycle, Changes in life, Pictures

Life is all about change. There are ups and definitely downs too. Everyone (living creatures-plants and animals) has to have all these changes in the complete life cycle. I was just thinking about the plants which have to go through different stages even in a single year. They have to adjust their life according to the change that comes to the nature. And, selected some of the pictures that I took in Corvallis in the year of 2008. These pictures are taken at the same place or very close. This could be a lesion to us.

This picture was taken in December (12/19/2008), representing winter. Even though this place sees snow for couple of days in a year, these plants have to adopt this situation.

Street lights, Moon and Night Photography

Here are some pictures taken at night. I had OLYMPUS FE240/X795 camera. It is very simple camera. Lights in the night are fantastic. When I was returning from school, I took these pictures.I am not expert in photography and don't have very good camera for night photography. Just tried my best to capture street lights, moon etc and want to share with you..

 

Street lights

Fall Color in Corvallis, Oregon

It is already late to capture fall color in Corvallis. Fall in Corvallis is very beautiful. I was thinking to share some of the pictures since fall started and trees started to showing their colors.  I want to share some of the pictures taken today afternoon. Good news is that we have sunny days. 

Temporal trend of Power Use shows high in Winter

Power consumption is very important issue. In Nepal there is black out for 16 hrs in every 24 hrs because of power shortage. In developed countries like the USA also it is a matter of concern. For lower class and middle class families, power bill specially in winter, is a headache. Because of cold electricity is used to heat the house. I looked my own electricity for past one year and it shows power use is higher in colder months.

Fig: Shows the temporal trend of power use (kwh) in months in my apartment.

The figure above shows lowest use in August and highest in January. There are different ways to save power to lower your power bill. One way is to use CFL as a source of light. And careful use of heater to heat of your house. Because in winter most of the power is used for this.

I found this page useful to know how to save power money as well Environment. Here are some tips.

(1) Use space heaters to heat only the rooms you're in, rather than a central system that heats the whole house, and turning off the heat when you're not home.
(2) Replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescents
(3) Turn off your computer when you're not using it
(4) Wash laundry in cold water instead of hot or warm

Snow Fall in Corvallis

Corvallis has witnessed a week long snow fall so far this year. This doesn't typically happen in Corvallis. I remember last year and the year before last year. The snow didn't last for more than 24 hours. Normally Corvallis gets rain during entire winter rather than sun and snow. But this year less rain, more snow, low temperature.

This year it started late last Sunday and it is white all the days of the week and going to be like this at least next half week.

I took this picture while going to School this morning. It looks very beautiful, everywhere white and today it was sunny. I liked it. But this situation for long time doesn't make life easy. It drastically reduced the traffic on the road and then people. Homeless people had difficult time.

If you want to see more snow pictures from my camera and have facebook profile, visit the link below. I have uploaded some pictures on my facebook album.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/photo.php?pid=1151144&id=601397841&ref=mf

Realized Its Cold

Today afternoon, temperature of Corvallis, a small town where I stay, was 31F. This temperature is one of the lowest temperature here. This morning I had to wait for the bus for couple minutes, during that time I noticed that its cold today. It didn't rain though. I didn't care to wear enough warm clothing.

We had group meeting and I was the presenter in the meeting. It went well. Then I went to Gilbert (chemistry department building) for new faculty candidate seminar. Dr. Manish Gupta is one of the candidats for new analytical chemistry faculty. PhD from Harvard and Post Doc. from Standford, Dr Gupta seems very cool and his research is interesting. After the seminar, I got a chance to go for lunch with Dr Gupta. We had good conversation. We walked around the campus. After the lunch, I came to my lab, did some lab management work. But couldn't do more. I felt tired. and kinda sick So, came back home early~4.30pm. Heated up my room. Its all right now. I think its because of cold.

To see monthly average temperature and precipitation of Corvallis click here.

Some Photos around Corvallis

Gilbert Hall: Chemistry Building at OSU

The Valley Library

Nice Flower, you give name...

Time of Spring

Awesome dance in Spring Festival#Corvallis

The International Students of Oregon State University (ISOSU) organized an annual international spring festival in Memorial Union (MU) quad at OSU today. There were many booths from different countries. Free food and free musical shows attracted the audiences like me. Food was very good. Different varieties of tastes were available there.

More than the food, I want to mention two dances. One was belly dance by two beautiful ladies.

One of the two Belly dancers.

Number of audiences drastically increased when the announcers announced that the next performance was Brazilian dance by two gorgeous girls by pointed at them. How was their dance? Just wait for a while. First see the pictures.

She is one of the Brazilian dancers: Most attractive show
of todays program. I wonder if she was wearing full cloth then
the number of audiences wouldn't be so large.

After dancing on the stage, my guess they felt "why to dance only two girls and others watching. Lets encourage audiences to dance with us." Then they went to the audiences and asked to come to dance.

In this photograph, the dancer is trying to convince a small boy to
dance with her. 

Now turn is of Men.

But because of unexpected invitation of the lady dancer to dance 

with her, this guy is kinda scared. May be its cultural shock.

After a while he agreed to watch her steps carefully.

Finally he started to dance. And enjoyed a lot.

Why should be I left alone there, everybody was taking photograph with the ladies. However I couldn't dance with them. Kinda shy.



Now its time for the video. See how they move their body parts. Enjoy it.

Some time with Nobel Laureate "Roderick MacKinnon"

I have no dream to become a Nobel laureate but I wanted to see and talk to such great persons. In 2004, first time, I listened a Nobel laureate giving his remarkable speech in BICC, Kathmandu during 4th National conference on Science and Technology. Today was the second time to see and listen to a Nobel Laureate from very close. It is always a matter of curiosity to me about them. How they speak, response to people, their life style. Are they normal person like us? What is inside their brain that makes such achievements?

Professor Dr. Roderick MacKinnon gave a talk on the topic "The principles of potassium ion channel" in ALS 4001, OSU followed by a informal discussion with students during refreshment.

His talk was about how potassium passes the membranes through potassium channels. According to him these channels are very selective to potassium ions. For example when about one thousand to ten thousand potassium cross the membrane only one sodium ion is able to cross through the channel although the size of sodium is much more smaller than potassium.

He is a professor at The Rockefeller University. Before he moved to this school in 1996, he was a faculty at Harvard Medical School. About his academic degrees: he did his undergraduate study in Biochemistry from Brandeis University, MD in medicine from Tufts University. He won Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2003.

Great lesson from him is that if you don't like, not interested in and not enjoying whatever you are doing, don't do it. This is his suggestion to undergraduate students who are going to graduate school soon. He himself is an example of this. He did his undergraduate in biochemistry. His undergraduate research adviser suggested him to go to graduate school but he decided to go to medical school. He didn't enjoyed his time during that 7 years and finally he came back to the lab working with same professor. He was trying to explain why he didn't like medical school and this career in the informal discussion with undergraduate students from department of biochemistry and biophysics at OSU. It was lots of memorizing stuffs and he was not good at memorizing. He couldn't enjoy the period. It was his important and hard decision to leave medical career and going back to graduate school.

He lives with his wife. They don't have child. He is proud of the work he has done and contribution to the science and The Nobel Prize. Answering to a question from a student about his wife's support in his success he said its great support and encouragement.

About the secrete of his success he mentioned interest and hard work are main driving forces. He always see the things in different ways than other people see. He doesn't go by the great things. He likes to work on the small things.

You can read more about him and his findings in following links.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2003/mackinnon-autobio.html

http://www.rockefeller.edu/labheads/mackinnon/mackinn-lab.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roderick_MacKinnon

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=interview-with-roderick-m

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eODp6lCI3PA

Corvallis ranks as fifth smartest city in U.S.

University community boosts Corvallis into Forbes Online Magazine's top 25 smart cities

Melissa Petersen

Corvallis was recently ranked fifth on a list of America's smartest cities, compiled by Forbes online magazine. The list was based on the percentage of people per city aged 25 and older with at least a bachelor's degree.

According to the study, more than 93 percent of Corvallis residents have graduated from high school and nearly 48 percent have a bachelor's degree or higher. Almost six percent of the residents have a doctorate, while about two percent have a professional degree required for doctors, attorneys and architects.

The majority of the top cities chosen boast a university within their vicinity, which has a direct correlation with the concentration of people with higher education degrees. Also, having a university in a small town drives residents toward pursuing higher education because of easy access.

Hewlett-Packard, Good Samaritan Hospital and OSU are all major employers of the Corvallis community. A big factor for Corvallis earning this ranking is the large impact OSU has on the community. Many staff and faculty members live in Corvallis along with their families.

"When the faculty and staff of the university have children, they are likely to push their children to succeed, and so after a few generations you're left with a group of people that are very well-educated" said Alex Graham, a senior majoring in chemical engineering and pre-pharmacy.

Until recently, OSU and Corvallis have not received any national recognition, mainly because Corvallis is considered to be a small town and out of the way from major areas like Portland, Salem, Eugene and Medford.

The cities on the Forbes list have populations ranging from 80,000 to 4 million people.

According to Forbes.com, the presence of a university was the main factor contributing to a number of smaller cities, such as Corvallis, appearing on the list.

The top spot went to Boulder, Colo., with most of its population coming from the University of Colorado.

Metro areas rounded off the list, including San Francisco and Seattle - some of the country's biggest high-tech centers, drawing in well-educated people who tend to be recent college graduates.
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Published in TheDailyBarometer

Corvallis Covered with Snow!!

This year Corvallis is getting more snow fall. This morning it was completely covered with snow. This small city, formally known as cow town, rarely gets snowfall. Last year I saw snow on Corvallis only once and that didn't go even few hours. Last week also we saw Corvallis covered with white blanket. Oregon State University had issued a yellow alert to faculty, staff and students. I was expecting the school would be closed but it was open today and everything went not bad. I want to show you some pictures from around Corvallis Campus of OSU.

White outside as seen from my Window.

Enjoying snow while going school in the morning.

Infront of Chemistry Building