Ben Sauerwine's Website

December 6, 2007: So now that a semester has passed, let me fill you in on what I've been doing. This semester I was teaching Physics 2 for Engineers, a choice based on my admiration for the engineering profession. We often take for granted how everything we own--tiles on the floor, our furniture, our tools, our cars, even the smallest parts, the washers, nuts and bolts were all designed and optimized meticulously by some very brilliant person. Further, every piece of equipment necessary to manufacture these items, and every piece of equipment necessary to manufacture or obtain the raw materials for that item, was designed by someone with an intimate knowledge of metallurgy, automation, and who knew how to otherwise take all of this vague science and make it tractable and manageable.

I finished reading 1984 the other day, and was briefly discouraged that I believed that what it was saying was very plausible--our nature is to be selfish, and precisely because of that selfishness our needs will never be fully met despite the possibility being within our grasp. I believe that it is the force of those who selflessly bring technology and thus power to the people that keeps such a regime at bay--a regime of those who have power and resources and seek only to consolidate and perpetuate it. Thus, it was just a tiny bit satisfying when one of my sections applauded me at the end of the last recitation; I hope that I served them well.

Over break I'll probably be spending most of my time studying for the oral qualifying exams in January. It's unfortunate that I don't get to see my neglected family or friends very much but I recognize that my first priority is to finish my PhD so that I can move on with my life. I have been in the education system for 20 years now and quitting so close to the end is not an option in my mind. I love the resesarch I've been doing--RNA folding with Mike Widom. Truly, I don't believe I've ever known someone with such a broad spectrum of insight. It seems like he could listen to a 30-minute talk on anything but yet come away with a disproportionate level of understanding on the same topic despite only this small taste. I've been practicing this technique in hopes of being able to do the same someday, but it seems that I tend to fill in the gaps with things I think I know rather than converting the raw information to understanding in real time.

Right now the focus of our research is on microRNA, whose purpose is to interfere with normal RNA sent to ribosomes for protein coding; Wikipedia will tell you more about it but the research could lead to drugs which allow you to selectively turn off genes that are undesirable.