Thursday, July 02, 2009

A Field Switch

So in the field of my research, I begin work on a new field.

I stay within the broad realm of 'Biomedical Imaging and Image Processing' but my topic of research shifts from the field of 'Imaging for Virology' to 'Computed Tomography (CT)'. As I begin on this path, a vast plethora of information comes up. There is information of various types - historical, business-related and technical. Historical information includes: when the CT was invented (1937), when major advances were made (1960-s by Hounsfield in EMI labs, the same company which owned the Beatles label!), and so on. Business-related info deals with leading CT scanner manufacturers (Toshiba, Marconi...), costs of various technologies etc. The technical angle translates into the literature survey, or papers I would have to read (YES.. it's pretending-to-read-the-paper-but-actually-sleeping time).

And while treading my first few steps on this path (the de facto first step was reading the Wikipedia entry), I came across a nice video (embedded below) about a group of researchers giving ideas for improving CT technology. I loved the presentation style. So I watched other videos by this group (on different techonologies) - I especially liked these two: On controlling a helicopter by neural control, On inexpensive Virtual Reality.


PS: One query for the writing gurus out there.... Is the usage of de facto in my post correct? Or would you suggest something different?

7 comments:

kaushik said...

"The term de facto may also be used when there is no relevant law or standard, but a common and well established practice that is considered the accepted norm."
~Wikipedia entry on de facto

So the question that needs to be asked is:

Is it common and well accepted practice among researchers to check up the wiki entry of their research topic before diving into the technical (and boring) papers?

Puranjoy said...

Interesting question. I am curious about the 'was' after 'de facto'.
Here's what I think. By using 'was', you made the sentence to mean either 1)about your particular instance, in which case a better construct would be "I followed the de facto first step", or 2) in the past, the de facto first step used to be reading the wikipedia entry, but now it's some other step.

Heh. let me know if you ever resolve this.
-phanonfo

Rohit Anand said...

i liked the background music playing in the video. could you recognize what it is, at least very similar to something very famous?

Saumya said...

apart from the suggestions md by others ...the topic itself needs a lot of grey matter..
hey i wanted to tell u that..
i rilli want an xplanation for the mathematical biologist part..
coz it has fascinated me a lot..
i even got thru a couple of books..and one of the was..MATHEMATICAL BIOLOGY BY J.D.MURRAY...but hardly cud undersatnd the stuff xcept for a few chapters......can u just gimme a reference to have a fair idea bout that stuff??

Unknown said...

Hey, that expression is quite frequently used in my field! "De Facto" in lay man's language means "in fact, though not documented / acknowledged". Similar to "pseudo". So now YOU have to judge whether the use in this context is proper or not!!

kriti said...

@all:
thanks to all the people who gave suggestions/advice on the 'de facto usage'...

my final understanding: the word has the meaning that i intended but the usage can be improved (thanks to puranjoy for pointing that out).. will make that edit...

@sobriquet:
1. i guess you have a biological background so the book might be difficult to understand... i cannot immediately remember any book which helped me understand this

2. also did you see the wikipedia entry on Mathematical Biology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_biology
.... after all, it is the de facto first step to do so!!!

3. or google for "Mathematical Biology" and read the easy to understand pages e.g. http://www.bio.brandeis.edu/biomath/top.html

4. did u get the concept OK? basically mathematicians were asked to help solve biological problems... and they started to apply their techniques e.g. statistics, equations to fit the specific biological problem in hand...

Saumya said...

HEY...THNKS @KRITI..
but long time after u did post ur last topic..
vil sureli try out these suggestns..n let u know..
thanks again..