All excited and geared up for this one…

Yahoooooo – happy birthday to meeeee. As I complete mortal 23 years & close to ten months in USA, surely is a good reason to celebrate!!! Yuppie…

How was my 1st birthday in USA? Well, I have been asked this question (feels like) close to million times now by all friends and family, back home, In India. So what’s better then describing it here… for all to read!!

To start with, I started getting calls from friends a day ahead (Indian Standard Time) actually. I was trying to prepare for the Tuesday Mol Bio quiz (terror) at UGL and was sprung up with phone calls, only to realize my birthday has started =) All of a sudden, the fire alarm goes on we are all asked to vacate the library.. I wonder whether it was a hoax alarm or actually something happened, but I least bothered to go back…

Next comes the best part, the pampering Well, that’s what friends are for.. I guess I’d the opportunity to get my friends do anything for me, whatever I wanted… LOL, couldn’t have got much better or worse later… Birthday bumps (just wiki’ed it, interesting ways to give bumps, like pulling the ear lobes ) It is now a tradition amongst all the residents of DeRoy Apartments to bash up the birthday boy (oh mannn, it pains!! x-( ). And literally, the beating makes the poor scapegoat so miserable that he actually curses himself, either for being at DeRoy on the birthday or still worst… being born in the first place at all. Jokes apart, I kinda enjoyed it later, the pangs of pleasure and pain. The best though is the birthday cake. You get a chance to cake bathe, iced up of course with all good kitchen food, from coke to chocolate syrup to ketchup to turmeric powder to eggs to ranch to vegetable oil.. you think of anything and you’ll find it on the birthday boy/girl. Guys, I have still better worse ideas so now my friends BEWARE.

At the end of the day (wasn’t it tooo short), here I am trying to put down a few things I need to change or do (which includes more blogging amongst the top one’s). I actually can’t think of a way of thanking my roommates and friends for making this day fun! My first birthday here… Thanks folks!!!

Pictures awaited.

Life is a roller coaster ride… filled with a plethora of emotions. Busy as we are, we also look forward to a break from these earthly mundane elements, to get a punch, a kick start… something thrilling to shake this mundane life. Now that school is in full swing, we have piles of home works and assignments pending, quizzes every other week… I look forward to a break!

CDC is taking us for a one day trip to Cedar Point and what’s best, it is during the Halloween weekend with free all you can eat pizza … I’d been to Cedar Point some time back and planning to go there once more. All the rides are fantastic. My favorite ones though are Dragster and Twister. I could feel the adrenaline rush during these rides. The snake river falls was refreshing and the thunder canyon, which is a comparatively slow boat ride in water fall was fun also. I wished the demon drop was for a longer time… It takes you high 131 feet in the sky and then simply drops you down… A friend of mine on this ride was petrified, shouting ‘why did I come here in the first place!’… lol

Maxiar was good too… It swings you in the air like you are nothing… Magnum XL is one of the oldest ones there, I read somewhere and that’s a nice kinda slow (to me) family ride. Time runs like anything there, and you also keep on asking for more. Surely, good time to take a break from busy college schedule and I hear there are going to many added attractions during the Halloween weekend. All and all a complete fun-filled day… looking forward to see you guys there.

It has been quite some time since I wrote about something scientific going around at Wayne… So I thought why not share this new invention… Ultrasound (US) with Computed Tomography (CT) technique, invented by Dr. Peter Littrup.

Breast cancer is one of the most deadly diseases, not that it cannot be cured, but its early diagnosis and the effect of treatment play a significant role in curing tumor completely. Of the existing techniques, mammography is the effective, but it involves radiant x-rays, ultrasound and MRI’s can be costly and are sometimes less precise.  As diagnosing the size and extent of tumor is of utmost importance, new techniques that give more accurate location and extent of growth; would make combating this disease more helpful.

Dr. Peter Littrup, Professor in the Radiology department at the School of Medicine, and Karmanos Cancer Institute, came up with this innovation that involves ultrasound waves used in CT scan to get the extent and exact location of tumor. Confused??? Ultrasound and CT, together!!! Don’t be, it’s a sound application of best of both the modalities. Ultrasound, so far, have not found to be harmful even to the undeveloped fetus (though avoided). Thus, using these waves to diagnose the soft tissues in the mammary glands is a very safe way. This new protocol uses US waves round the gantry to capture the image which is then developed by the tomographic technique. The patient lies face down in the center of this gantry, thus, obtaining a 3-D image of the tumor. So far, this protocol has been used on roughly 300 subjects, and it provides clearer results than mammograms and US and is much lesser expensive than MRI.

With thousands of million dollars spent every year on treatment & an estimated new cases and deaths from breast cancer in the United States in 2009 been more than 40K, more and new effective techniques, that can even be afforded by low budget hospitals & diagnostic centers is a revolution in this field.

For more details: http://www.karmanos.org/detroitraceforth…

DeRoy 515, Aug 2009

One the biggest turn-downs for any Indian student coming abroad to study can be, missing the Indian festivals; or atleast for me it, it was. But, to my surprise and great happiness, we do celebrate with all the energy and spirit, most of the festivals as they are celebrated back at home. One of them being Ganesh Utsav (festival of the Elephant God) is a celebrated for ten days (wow!!) to mark the birth of Lord Ganesha. Lord Ganesha symbolizes bringing happiness and end of sorrow. Every aspect, every tradition , every ritual stands for something. It gets the people together.

In one of the apartments, the Ganeshji are brought, followed by prayers and ambrosia for ten days.  Everyone came and took some tasks voluntarily, like doing the decorations, to making food and so on… All in all, great desserts (three different types at a time) and all other goodness’s festivities make it a good thing about staying here!!!

Howdy people??? Enjoying the last few summer days, school going to start soon . Its not that I hate going to school or don’t like studying, I only believe in creative and mental well-being which schools hammer.  Jokes apart, don’t have a choice there, will have to return back. I bet that all of you have had a splendid time this summer, Summer 09 has been one of the best one’s in my life. Surely going to miss all the fun that had all this time!!! So before the summer is actually over,  here’s the continuation of the places one must see while in Detroit, may be use up the coming long weekend…

Detroit Zoo:

Their ad reads ‘Vitamin Z, essential for complete nutrition’… J  Located on 10^th Mile Road at Royal Oak; it is hardly thirty minutes drive from Main Campus. So, on any weekend, when you don’t have any plans and want to relax, it is the place to be. It covers wide range of animals, so you can hop with an Australian Kangaroo or dance in the rains like an Indian peacock or feed the African giraffes. The popular one’s are the polar bear that comes and swims over when you go through the Polar Passage, a tunnel that keeps underwater marine environment and the recently born lemur pair.  They also have this wild adventure ride ‘The DinoSimulator’ which is a must see when you are there. All and all, an exciting trip, inexpensive and not tiring. The tickets costs $11 and lesser if you go in larger groups.

More natural places to visit…

India dancing peacock and feeding the giraffe

There are many different small country parks, some state parks and a few national parks. And there are Metro parks, ideal for one day picnics and birthday party treats. The chain of Metro Parks, is quite popular. They may charge an entry fee of $4 or somewhere close per person. All you do in parks is play, fun place to play, and all you eat is barbecue in the summer & fall season, but they can be a good spot in winter too.
For the more adventurous kind there are places like the Stagecoach Stop and the hocking hills, where you can camp, hunt, fish and hike. For the bird lovers, there are parks like Metrobeach & Belle Isle. You can re-live the bliss of exploring the birds in their natural habitat – the woods. The easiest and most fun thing to do is to go to a bird feeder at these parks and wait and watch the different birds. You might run into birders and park staff who will tell you more about the birds, this can be exciting too…

Recently, I received an e-mail from Mr. Sashank Malisetty, which informed us that the tuition fee for students doing Curricular Practical Training (CPT) / Internships has been modified. It says that, a student can participate in a full-time internship (CPT) by only registering for one credit hour and will be maintaining their status as an F-1 student. Previously students had to register for at least three CPT credits to participate in a full-time internship (CPT). It all started with a sincere effort led by Sashank to help the international students facing economic hardships during this recession period. A series of e-mails were written to the concerned authorities, to explain the importance of such a step and petitions were signed by around fifty students. All these efforts take shape and we have what is reasonably needed.

What exactly does this mean… Wayne State recognizes the importance of internships, a key component to graduate engineering students, for those who don’t opt for thesis. However, many students don’t opt for internship as finding an industry (during such recession) is difficult and some students do work as engineers on full time basis. The three options available to students are:

• Option A: Thesis, wherein a student takes up research / project under the guidance of a advisor (up to 8 credits).
• Option B: Essay, a scholarly paper that can be planned with the help of the advisor.
• Option C: Without thesis / research: wherein, the student has to complete the number of credits prescribed by the department, by taking up courses.

Now, a new option, Option D is been implemented wherein internships are credited (which most other Universities don’t) & mandatory as a part of the degree program and the fees of students opting for this option has been reduced. It will be implemented by all the engineering departments soon. Thus, registering an internship will help the student to maintain their full-time student status as per the rules laid by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This gives exposure to the industry, relaxes the fees and can earn experience which goes a long way.

Efforts of the fifty students and Sashank have paid off, thanks to Dr. Grimm, Dean Ralph Kummler, Linda Seatts at OISS for such a timely decision. As always, Wayne has proved again to be a student friendly university… Way to go Wayne…

Recently, I had been to Novi theater to catch up a new BOLLYWOOD movie, Love Aaj Kal (English title: Love, these days). I loved it!!! Saw a refreshing and nice movie after a very long time.

The plot of the movie is simple. The director tries to portray the love life of our generation today. Two stories run parallel, the older version been narrated by Rishi Kapoor to this attractive lad Saif Ali Khan, whose story represents today’s generation. A new style of story-telling! You are bound to relate to the characters. The protagonists of the movie, Deepika and Saif, are career oriented and try to make all ‘practical’ decisions in life. At the end of this, they realize their mistake and correct it bringing the story to an end. All in all, nice, naïve, sweet, simple movie full of twists and turns with crispy dialogues and perfectly timed jokes. The story is of any of us…On the critical aspect, the foot tapping music is festive, fresh and a definite USP of the movie. Nice colors, perfect national and international locations make it a treat to the eyes. Well acted my all the actors. It is a ***** must watch at least once movie.

What surprised me, or rather didn’t, was the fact that the cinema hall was packed with all kinds of audiences. Besides the South Asians, who obviously had a reason to come (Saif is popular amongst the girls and Deepika is hot favorite among the guys) were non-Hindi speaking / understanding crowd enjoying the movie. I have a friend, American, who I believe follows Bollywood movies more regularly than me. She sings some songs, even which I wouldn’t know. She dances on all her favorite Shahrukh Khan (Bollywood superstar) songs. With more and more movies been made recently on international locations, these movies are aimed to a global audience and they are doing pretty well. Out of last fifteen latest releases I might have seen, fourteen have been shot either partially or completely, internationally.

Boundaries have just becomes lines on maps, I feel, now. I don’t miss much part of life in India, here, thanks to the advancement in technology and availability of resources. What’s wonderful was last Wednesday, when I went for a haircut to ONA’s saloon. The barber was seeing my favorite movie Ghajini, which stars my favorite actor Aamir Khan.

It couldn’t have been any closer to a saloon in India where the TV screen shows a live cricket match or the latest movie songs. Loving it here, has the international exposure with a tinge of Indianess…

My favorite song from the movie…