Merge pull request #16 from yuyuslab/blog

non-sciency activities related to my passion for science research done

_blog/2025-01-03-blog.md

@@ -11,13 +11,13 @@ I'm now about to get into my fifth year at university (the curriculum is technic
 
 Coming back to my home physically in Tokyo and consciously in biological science, I realised the power of natural science especially biology – I don't deny my bias towards biology which fits my personality. From there I have been more leaned on training myself to develop my own research plans. Why? Just by following someone's idea is safe but not motivating.
 
-Having said that, I started from following my prospective lab boss' ideas in a his class partly to showing him my wants to join his lab. From there it was thankful that I could start a little study with ants and simulations though it's literally just started. I thought it was going well so I just needed to continue my style of developing ideas for research. But, thankfully, it was not that easy. In a microbiology class, I was trying to come up with a small experiment idea, which took me hours with sort of implicit tricky assists from an instructor. I did manage to make one experiment though the words from the instructor really articulated what is lacking in my scientific skills.
+Having said that, I started from following my prospective lab boss' ideas in a his class partly to showing him my wants to join his lab. From there it was thankful that I could start a little study with ants and simulations though it's literally just started. I thought it was going well so I just needed to continue my style of developing ideas for research. But, thankfully, it was not that easy. In a microbiology class, I was trying to come up with a small experiment idea, which took me hours with sort of implicit tricky assists from an instructor. I did manage to make one experiment though the words from the instructor really articulated what was lacking in my scientific skills.
 
 Since I was told the words, it has been my challenge to think based on my experience, which sounds sooo basic but I was just not doing that mush until now. I think it was my habit to look for information that's already available inheritted from software development work, because I was just good at searching not remembering. Also, a firend of mine, what people think a smart guy, showed me how to connect dots of information from experiments so that they compliment each other.
 
-All the things mentioned thus far happened just within a month though I realised that they were like a digests of my past several years of learning how to do science, which were not firmly dissolved in my skills so as to utilise them. But that's okay. I have now have many indexes of various knowldge fields that I can draw on from experience. Then, I'm ready try to get my a** do science.
+All the things mentioned thus far happened just within a month though I realised that they were like a digests of my 1st and 2nd year in biological science department of learning how to do science, which were not firmly dissolved in my skills so as to utilise them. But that's okay because I was studying for what's relatively far from science to store my experience in them, so that I can draw on later...of course I forget about science hahaha.
 
-The reason why I took distance from doing science wasn't because I'm not favour of it but I thought it wants more than what it is per se. Explicitly saying, science has got to reunite with other knowledges so that it can reach out its hands to what has not been possible. I honestly don't know exactly how we do that yet, and that should be my pursue after getting my masters. Why after masters? because I want to do sciency science now on for two years so that I can dissolve it in me. Then, after the masters, I can blend it with my non-sciency experience drawn from indexes I have made past several years with new ones I'm hoping to encounter during my PhD. I care about science so I learn what's far from science so that I can know what is good about it and how it needs others to do more.
+The reason why I took distance from doing science wasn't because I'm not favour of it but I thought it wants more than what it is per se. Explicitly saying, science has got to reunite with other knowledge systems so that it can reach out its hands to what has not been possible. I honestly don't know exactly how we do that yet, and that should be my pursue after getting my masters. Why after masters? because I want to do sciency science now on for two years so that I can dissolve it in me. Then, after the masters, I can blend it with my non-sciency experience drawn from the repositories I have made past several years with new ones I'm hoping to encounter during my PhD. I care about science so I learn what's far from science so that I find what is good about it and how it needs others to do more.
 
 # How do my past several years of non-sciency activities show my passion towards science that is connected to my research interests?
 
@@ -29,50 +29,61 @@ The reason why I want to see science meeting other ways of perceiving the world
 
 When I was a high school student, I joined a conference where students simulate themselves how the United Nations works. I faced neatly impossible challenge where representatives from countries all over the world somehow make a consensus and propose statements for eradication of poverty. Needless to say, it ended up with no consensus statements, and a chair of the conference was as vexatious as he had tears in his eyes.
 
-Since then I wanted to somehow contribute to solving the problems that are associated with poverty. As a student who was interested in science, I came to know that one of the famous problems associated with poverty, global warming.
+Since then I wanted to somehow contribute to solving the problems that are associated with poverty. As a student who was interested in science, I came to know one of the famous problems associated with poverty, global warming.
 
 My high school small project was dedicated to knowing about how environment can be fairly treated in terms of the economic values. And as I was looking for the problem, I found an institution called Salk Institute where scientists modified plants to store more carbons than they do in wild. Though it was not my research topic, I was attracted by the study and that was my main motivation to enter the biological science department at my current university.
 
-While I was studying in the 1st and 2nd grade, I unexpectedly had to learn humanities courses because of the university's motto and the requirements for my teacher's certificate course. It turned out to be very intellectually curious time in my life so far. I didn't know until then that knowing something is free and anything can be connected.
+While I was studying in the 1st and 2nd grade, I unexpectedly had to learn a bunch of humanities courses (of course basis of science as well – packed!) because of the university's motto and the requirements for my teacher's certificate course. It turned out to be very intellectually curious time in my life so far. I was shcked how creation of knowledge is so versatile and anything can be connected.
 
-At the end of my 2nd year, I was planning to study abroad to gain experience from relatively non-scientific culture because it was too hard to miss chances to dig in possibilities of studies other than science which help me with exploring my research question. One of the chances was to join a new student club/community for developing products using techology to solve social issues. The other was to study abroad in Australia as an exchange student. Of course I tool both opportunities.
+At the end of my 2nd year, I was planning to study abroad to gain experience from relatively non-scientific culture because it was too hard to miss chances to dig in possibilities of studies other than science which potentially fuel the exploration into my research question. One of the chances was to join a new student club/community for developing products using techology to solve social issues. The other was to study abroad in Australia as an exchange student. Of course I took both.
 
-I experienced a lot of new things during my 3rd year apart from my major in biological science and I learned these points:
+I experienced a lot of new things during my 3rd year apart from my major in biological science:
 
 #### Philosophy
 - Concenptual base of my interests e.g. developing abstract statement for my research question
 - Objective measurements of logics e.g. induction, deduction, fallacies, etc.
+
 from which I learned that logics can be systematically investigated via organised conceptual frameworks.
 
 #### Indigenous (Dharug) studies
 - Experiencing non-scientific epistemology e.g. notion of Country, relationality, etc.
 - Recognising identities e.g. distinguished culture, individual sense
+
 from which I learned that science is not the only way to prosper knowldge in the world.
 
 #### Software engineering
 - Team project management e.g. sharing a common criteria, division of concerns, etc.
 - Structural understanding of subjects e.g. modularity, architecture, etc.
+
 from which I learned that complexity can be handled by devising tools and structural understanding
 
 ####  Organising communities
 - Collaboration via relationships, interests, and environments
 - Inclusivness of expressions and understandings
-from which I learned that human interactions with an embracing atmosphere are the source of new impactful ideas
+
+from which I learned that human interactions with an embracing atmosphere are the source of new ideas
 
 #### Cognitive science
 - Theory deriven natural science which was highly interdiscplinary study e.g. theories of multi-tracking objects by eyes
 - Science that is impossible without the advancement of technology e.g. MRI, EEG, MEG, etc.
+
 from which I learned that a theory and empirical practices both drive science
 
-Even after exploring various ways to pursue my interests, for me, science has been the centred perspective of my pursue that gives me the most precise feeling of knowing in depth. In other words, I believe that science allows me to create a question that precisely reflects what I am intended to know.
+Even after exploring various ways to pursue my interests, science has been the centred perspective in me that gives me the most precise feeling of knowing the principles of things. In other words, I believe that science allows me to create a question that precisely reflects what I am intended to know.
 
-In my 4th year (not graduating because I extended one year for studying abroad), I came back to practicing natural science. However, my perspectives has changed a bit from a year ago. 
+In my 4th year (not graduating because I extended one year for studying abroad), I came back to practicing natural science. That when I realised my ignorance of science due to immersing myself in other cultures for a while. My centred perspective is science so, as I mentioned before, I have been kicking my a** to do as much science as possible. But the way I see science is way different from what it was like a few years ago. I see it with even more potentials to mingle with other cultures to transcend or even dissolve the boundaries between them.
 
-"*How do people with different backgrounds collaborate to reach a shared goal?*"
+I said previously that I don't know exactly how to reunite knowldges from science and others. But I have made an attempt to do that. During my studying abroad in Australia, I made my interests abstract and tried to find anyone who has done or at least ponder reuniting knowldges and "*How do people with different backgrounds collaborate to reach a shared goal?*". Then, I extracted an essence of the information to meet a concept of "The Division of Cognitive Labor" by Philip Kitcher in philosophy. I read the paper as if I was like a disiple of the notion.
+
+In a fourth year of an undergraduate, there is a lot of chances to bring own insights into assignments mostly via lab reports and small research presentations. In the latter of an evolutionary biology class, I digged into a concept of the division of labor in biology to find relevance to the philosophy. Since it was too challenging to find a match with a whole concept of that philosophy in biology, I picked one of the components, named "jump off a ship". Essentially, the concept was derived from a situation where agents in a situation where multiple approaches to a question exist. Agents are to aim for an optimum expected utility by maintaining the balance in the distributions of themselves pursuing different approaches to answer the question. And "jump off a ship" appears when the skewed distribution has got to be fixed by some of the agents in the major approach moving to the minor.
+
+I had discussions about whether I can relate the concept to biology with the convener of the evolutionary biology class, who is my prospective lab PI at this moment. One piece of advice from him to me was that similar concepts can exist in various research fields but they have are sometimes named differently so you just need to find that by digesting what a concept meant to be but not just the face value of it. I was searching for papers with that in mind. Then, the darkest place was under the candlestick. I came to read some papers written by him, the prospective PI, one of which seemed to match with the concept of "jump off a ship".
+
+I kept organising information around the study, and made a presentation that summarise the concepts related to the main paper. As I had him review my compositions and presentation about the summary, he suggested that illustrating the precise connection of such a biological phonomenon to a broad concept in philosophy requires much more investigation and consideration, which is probably too much for a small research propject during the class. I also realised by myself that I mixed up some concepts in the summary (though they don't affect the core), so I reorganised them.
+
+With this little attempt to blend science with other cultures, I'm starting my research on ants' collective behaviours which I talk more about in a separate blog.
 
-into...
 
-"*How genetically identical agents with different propensities together make an optimal decision?*"