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The end of the beginning
27 slides, including the title and the acknowledgement slides, 2o minutes of presentation, one hour and half of Q&A, and then done. On 19 April 2011, 1 pm, I finished my defense. Although I knew it was just a formality, I still felt awesome when being called “Dr. Wang”. In the rest of the week,…
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My thesis preamble
Seven days before flying to Toronto for graduate studies, I attended Asian Technology Initiative Entrepreneurial Conference 2006 in Shanghai. One theme of the conference was Web 2.0, the key feature of which was user-generated content. Wikipedia, Facebook, blogging websites, YouTube, and Twitter all fell into this category. Although those social media websites were just fledging…
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An article every chemist should read — to stay relevant by meeting global challenges
As I am in the process of looking for a postdoc and thinking about my own research topic in the not-so-distant future, I seek guiding lights. I look to those who offer a bird’s-eye view and who can see the future through the lens of the past and the present. And I think I finally…
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MRS Spring Meeting
Last week, I blogged for MRS spring meeting. This is the first paid job I had outside research and TA. It was absolutely fun. During the meeting, I often got back in my room at around 9-10pm, and slept for 4 hours, woke up, wrote a post or two, and then slept again for 4…
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Richard Feynman: Physics is fun to imagine | Video on TED.com
Richard Feynman: Physics is fun to imagine via Richard Feynman: Physics is fun to imagine | Video on TED.com. Some thoughts: 1) Feynman once said if our civilization ever pass one piece of knowledge onto the next civilization, whatever form of life that civilization is, it is the structure of an atom. 2) The video…
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New Year Greeting Letter – nerd version
It occurs to me today that if time travel is possible, not only will the chain of causes and effects be disrupted, but also the law of mass conservation will be broken. Science fictions seem to like exploring the consequences of the former, a few of which I happened to watch this week, such as…
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Science Pitch Talk in CHM 139, 2009F
Last Tuesday, it was the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, and this year is also the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. This event has inspired many discussions in the scientific community about Darwin and the theory of evolution. I intend to give you one of the…
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Take it slow, make it happen.
I always wanted to create a website of some sort. I started my first trail in 2005 for When Pigs Fly, and it was a disaster. At that time, I was overconfident about my ability, overestimated my free time, and had very little idea of how complicated it is to build a website completely from…