A Hypochondriac Investigates the Evolution of Medicine

This exhibit will open to the public in February 2014, but until then I have my work cut out for me. I am currently researching various aspects of medical history spanning from the mid-1800s, through the Civil War, to WWI. Thus far I have read accounts of women volunteers during the American Civil War, important changes that went into effect during WWI, and an overly detailed description on how to perform tooth extractions according to the latest science of the 1860s. [excerpt

What I\u27ve Learned to Expect

“Hey bitch!” someone yelled. “Biiitttch!” I heard again from the car. Music blared from inside. I pretended not to notice. Don’t give them the satisfaction, I thought. Don’t do something you’ll regret. So I stood there until the cars stopped whizzing past, pretending to ignore a car of boys yelling insults. When the light changed, I hurried across Carlisle Street, got into my room, and lost it. I was furious. Being reduced to an insult while walking home from a movie for class is infuriating. But, what really got under my skin was that incidents like this seem commonplace. While surprising in the moment, it doesn’t feel unexpected to be called a “bitch” and “whore” by a passerby, to be whistled at provocatively or to be talked about as if I am an object. It’s just part of life. [excerpt

Toeing the Line between Offense and Education

Medical history can be gruesome. People shy away from blood and guts and images of death perhaps because it makes us question our own mortality or perhaps because it reminds us a bit too much about the origins of that hamburger we ate for lunch. Whatever the reason, a lot of humans cannot stomach the truly heinous. [excerpt

Monte Carlo Methods for Simulation of Optical Coherence Tomography of Turbid Media

We describe two importance sampling techniques for a standard Monte Carlo (MC) method that could enable fast simulation of signals from optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging systems. These OCT signals are generated due to diffusive reflections from either multilayered or arbitrary shaped, turbid media, for example, tissue. Such signals typically consist of ballistic and quasi-ballistic components, of scattered photons inside the medium, in addition to photons that undergo multiple scattering. We show that MC simulation of these OCT signals using importance sampling reduces its computation time on a serial processor by up to three orders of magnitude compared to its corresponding standard implementation. Therefore, these importance sampling techniques enable practical simulation of OCT B-scans of turbid media, for example, tissue, using commonly available workstations

Sparsity in Bayesian Signal Estimation

In this chapter, we describe different methods to estimate an unknown signal from its linear measurements. We focus on the underdetermined case where the number of measurements is less than the dimension of the unknown signal. We introduce the concept of signal sparsity and describe how it could be used as prior information for either regularized least squares or Bayesian signal estimation. We discuss compressed sensing and sparse signal representation as examples where these sparse signal estimation methods could be applied

Do You Doodle?

If you were, are, or will become a student, then you have probably thought about doodling during class. Fear not! We are not the only generation to draw in the midst of a lecture. Today’s research escapade led me to investigate George Currier’s notes from his time as a student at the Medical Department of Pennsylvania College. [excerpt

#paperwork

This is history, not bureaucracy, right? I am fairly certain that my methods professor did not mention anything about a thirty-page report, so why the paperwork? In order for Special Collections to request objects for loan from specific institutions, I have to complete what is called a “General Facility Report” which is a comprehensive document that inquires about facility conditions. [excerpt

Modeling of a Two-Phase Jet Pump with Phase Change, Shocks and Temperature-Dependent Properties

One of the primary motivations behind this work is the attempt to understand the physics of a two-phase jet pump which constitutes part of a flow boiling test facility at NASA-Marshall. The flow boiling apparatus is intended to provide data necessary to design highly efficient two-phase thermal control systems for aerospace applications. The facility will also be capable of testing alternative refrigerants and evaluate their performance using various heat exchangers with enhanced surfaces. The test facility is also intended for use in evaluating single-phase performance of systems currently using CFC refrigerants. Literature dealing with jet pumps is abundant and covers a very wide array of application areas. Example application areas include vacuum pumps which are used in the food industry, power station work, and the chemical industry; ejector systems which have applications in the aircraft industry as cabin ventilators and for purposes of jet thrust augmentation; jet pumps which are used in the oil industry for oil well pumping; and steam-jet ejector refrigeration, to just name a few. Examples of work relevant to this investigation includes those of Fairuzov and Bredikhin (1995). While past researchers have been able to model the two-phase flow jet pump using the one-dimensional assumption with no shock waves and no phase change, there is no research known to the author apart from that of Anand (1992) who was able to account for condensation shocks. Thus, one of the objectives of this work is to model the dynamics of fluid interaction between a two-phase primary fluid and a subcooled liquid secondary fluid which is being injected employing atomizing spray injectors. The model developed accounts for phase transformations due to expansion, compression, and mixing. It also accounts for shock waves developing in the different parts of the jet pump as well as temperature and pressure dependencies of the fluid properties for both the primary two-phase mixture and the secondary subcooled liquid. The research effort on which this document partly reports described a relatively simple model capable of describing the performance of a two-phase flow jet pump. The model is based on the isentropic homogeneous expansion/compression hypothesis and is capable of fully incorporating the effects of shocks in both the mixing chamber and the throat/diffuser parts of the pump. The physical system chosen is identical to that experimentally tested by Fairuzov and Bredikhin (1995) and should therefore be relatively easy to validate