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Welcome!

Perhaps your love of science brought you here.  Or was it a Lenovo product?  Cute scientists?  A combination of the three? However you arrived, I hope you enjoy stories of scientists, from academia to industry, discussing their work and the Lenovo products they use for getting their work done (okay, and helping with some play).

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Taking One-Megapixel Photos like it's 1999

4/15/2018

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It’s been way too long since I’ve posted on here.  Unfortunately, just about all my time has been dedicated to grad school.  Now that I’m generating next-generation sequencing data, I have been determining how to analyze the data with R, Matlab, and a Circos software package.  Anyhow, I will write about that later.  Instead, I will focus on an item that has kept me a little bit sane:  My Sony Mavica MVC-FD88 from 1999!  Originally retailing for $750, it boasted an 8x zoom, a max resolution of 1.3 megapixels, and a max aperture of F2.8.  Its most unique feature:  It stores the photographs on a floppy disk (unusually, it is a 4x drive, but don’t kid yourself—this camera is slow).  All of this in a 1.3 pound package.

It comes as know surprise that I enjoy vintage technology.  I like understanding how we progressed from the inchoate years of digital photography to the mature cameras we have today; I was already a teenager when this camera was released, but it was well outside my price range (and I did not yet even have a PC!  I was still using an electric typewriter).   I do not, however, simply put my old technology on a shelf—I go out and use it.  So what do I think of this camera?  Well, the resolution is obviously limited, but it is essentially high definition, so it is fine for Facebook and the like (I remember when this camera was released, many of us were still using monitors displaying 800 x 600, so this resolution wasn’t so bad.  In fact, my IBM ThinkPad 560 from 1998 cannot display beyond that resolution).  The colors are accurate, at least in bright light; in dim lighting, the image quickly becomes grainy and the flash inevitably overexposes the pictures.  The camera, with its macro feature, can take better close-ups than my cell phone…focusing, however, is not so easy.  With a shabby 2.5”, 84,000 LCD screen, it is often difficult to determine if a picture is in focus until it is displayed on a PC.



Okay, so in an era where we can fit hundreds of images on an SD card, how many high-res images can fit on the 1.44 MB floppy?  Only four images.  But ejecting the floppy and quickly inserting a new one is so much fun that I don’t mind carrying a stack of them.
Here are some photos I took with the camera in Providence.  Hopefully you’re inspired to save some of these devices from becoming electronic waste.

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A Storied Legacy:  My Own ThinkPad Story

11/6/2017

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It's been a long time since I've had a post (I've been quite busy working on my PhD), but with the 25th Anniversary of the ThinkPad having recently passed, I want to pay homage to my ThinkPad T400....





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Before starting graduate school in 2008, my sole requirements for a laptop were reliability and a great keyboard. My Lenovo T400 handled those tasks with aplomb, despite intensive use for at least sixty hours a week involving anything from statistical analysis, recording data in my electronic lab notebook, or typing a (rather long) thesis. What I was not expecting during this period was the emotional attachment I would form to this seven pound workhorse during that time: As my master’s drew to a close, my friend Marc was deployed to Afghanistan. Though he was unable to make phone calls abroad, he was able to receive Emails…and for the next nine months, as I promised, I wrote daily about my own occurrences, just to keep him anchored to life at home. Fortunately, Marc returned home safely; though I could have stopped cataloging my life at this point, I found that I developed an addiction. For the past six years, my ThinkPad has served as an electronic journal. It has captured memories of a fellow graduate student, Jonathan, and family members who are no longer alive. It has served as repository for the day I met what I would consider a first true love. It accompanied me to Alberta, Canada, where I presented research for the first time in my life (this also marked the first time, at 22-years-old, that I flew in my life); the research that I presented, where we described trout antibody being analogous to a Swiss Army knife, would later result in my first publication, which was also written on this machine. It came with me by train for training in Pennsylvania for my first job as an analytical scientist. It served as a portal for pen pals in South Africa, who I would later visit and with whom I would remain close friends. At times, it seems wherever I’ve been for the past decade, during great times and not-so-good times, my T400 has been by my side. 

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Sometimes it does feel silly developing an emotional attachment to an inanimate object, so much so that it has been listed under “Six things I could never do without” on dating websites. But this steadfast box has never failed me once in nine years (not a single component has been replaced, other than the keyboard…cat fur under the keys was driving me mad) and has seen me through my early 20s to my early 30s. I suppose when I consider the love some of us form for a leather journal, a family heirloom, or a trusty fountain pen, the sentiment that I’ve developed for this tough guy was inevitable. And though I’ve amassed a collection of both IBM and Lenovo ThinkPads, from the rare IBM TransNote to a 1994 ThinkPad 360C, this commonplace model, its rubberized surface scarred and worn from being repeatedly pulled in and out of my bag, reigns supreme in my collection.  I'm optimistic, however, that my latest ThinkPad, the ThinkPad 25, my primary work machine for my PhD, will have similar sentiments attached to it as we grow together.
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Some Non-Professional Advice for Organizing and Preserving Memories

5/11/2017

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I apologize for a long overdue post, but I have been preoccupied with my PhD program, which seems to be consuming every aspect of my life.  Even so, I have maintained a few hobbies, one of which is photography.  Now, while I like to think of photography as an escape from science, I’m finding that often my lab skills bleed into this amateur hobby.  
Take for instance how we track the rainbow trout in our studies.  Ideally, I could recognize my fish by eye, but, alas, I’m horrible with faces.  Instead, we insert a PIT tag into each fish, which, when scanned, provides a unique ID for the fish.  Associated with each ID, in my lab notebook, are the treatments the fish has received, the white blood cell counts, the level of antibodies, and so forth.  Keeping track of this data can be overwhelming, but detailed, clear notes simplify the process…
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Keeping track of hundreds of rainbow trout is a daunting task. Thank you, PIT tags!
Okay, so how does this relate to my photography, you may be asking yourself.  Well, like many people, for years, I took digital photographs, which were either left on an SD card, transferred to a CD-R or hard drive, or uploaded to social media.  Unfortunately, with time, I have found some of the CD-R’s are no longer functional; more commonly, I simply have forgotten the significance of many of the photos.  I recognize the people in the photos, but I ask myself, Where were these photos taken?  What did we do that day?  Who else came on the trip?  Yes, physical media degrades or simply becomes obsolete (how many of us can extract photos from a ZIP disk?)  Memories, like the media, fade into nothingness…and for this reason, I have come up with some simple ideas to preserve memories for generations.  As you would guess, actually printing the photographs instead of keeping them on file is key to me (I assume my children will have a much easier time figuring out how to sift through images in a physical album than one on an old CD-R)
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A common sight to anyone who has been saving photographs for the last ten years. Not shown are my many floppies and SD cards.
I guess before I begin with how I tackle my photographs, I’ll begin with a philosophical question.  What is the purpose of your photos?  Do you intend to pass the photos to relatives, or are they merely mementos to you?  This will likely affect how much effort you put into managing your photographs.  Think about that question as I go through my process of cataloging memories.

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  1. Record the dates of the photographs:  Because I have switched to largely film photography, I jot down the dates that I took photographs.  For the larger digital audience, you can find this information in the metadata.
  2. Record some memorable events that happened either in a word processor or a notebook:  Why did you take the photograph?  What funny events happened on that day?  Who was there?  Do this the day of the event while memories are fresh.  I have done this on my trusty ThinkPad since 2011.  If you are on vacation, consider carrying a notepad or journal and, at the end of the night, recording your day.
  3. Print the photographs as soon as possible and record the relevant information from steps 1 and 2 on the back of the photo in indelible ink:  It becomes daunting to sort through hundreds of photographs (part of the reason I went to film!).  Working in manageable chunks makes life easier.  Recording the date the photograph was taken and some key memories of the event will ensure, as Kodak says, that you “Make those memories last a lifetime.”   ​​Store these photos in an album!  Scattering them in shoe boxes or envelopes is sure to lead to future frustrations.
    1. ​​If you intend on passing these photographs to other generations, state who is in the photograph and your relation to them.  Future generations want to know their relation (or lack of relation) to every person in the photograph—they will want to know if a given person was significant to you or just an acquaintance. 
  4. If you have printed doubles of photographs or have negatives, mark the contents of the envelope in which they are contained:  Having had to sort through the contents of dozens of unmarked envelopes for negatives, many of which were from previous generations of family members, I can say life is so much easier when you don’t have to hunt for the one negative or photograph that is a needle in the haystack.  
  5. Bonus idea:  Admittedly, I am obsessive with some areas of my life.  Rather than just jotting down a few key memories of the day, I keep a daily journal.  Perhaps consider the photographs as a part of your storybook…they only provide a visual to the story of your life.  I do hope that one day, my children and grandchildren will go through my diary and match the dates with the photographs.  By the way, my journal (and photograph captions) is entirely honest; I don’t want my ancestors to get a Kodachrome vision of the past, where they think all the world’s a sunny day—we have people in our lives who we don’t care for.  There are political issues that anger us.  We have days where we want to crawl under a rock.  These are common threads that tie humanity together.
There you have it.  I know much of the information is common sense, but maybe I have a few tips that you haven't considered.  I am sure, like me, many of you have inherited photo albums from grandparents in which you cannot identify the majority of the people in the photographs, let alone the dates the photographs were taken or memories associated with these dates…let’s assist future generations in feeling tied with the past (After all, isn’t this yearning the reason we have such websites as Ancestry.com?)  
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Do you know who this is? Neither do I. I inherited this with a set of photographs, but no information was provided.
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Gaining Experience In Science When You Have None.  A Summer Internship Opportunity! 

2/1/2017

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One of the most frustrating parts of my undergraduate career was trying to find an internship to gain experience in my field when those internships required experience (and I had no experience).   Getting one’s foot in the door is often the hardest part.  Fortunately, since the summer of 2016, UMass has eliminated this barrier for applicants to their Marine Biology Internship Program.  Instead of seeking students with a lengthy résumé , they are instead searching for motivated, diligent  individuals  who may have lacked the opportunities of their peers.  First-generation college students, members of groups under-represented in science, and veterans are encouraged to apply.  

Over ten weeks, students will  work with professors in anything from studying the invasive Asian shore crab, the ecology of eels,  and coastal ecosystem dynamics.  The package gets even better.  Students will receive a generous stipend, they will be provided with on-campus housing, and are invited to participate in fun activities with their fellow interns (after all, the school is nearby Providence and Boston).  The deadline of February 15, 2017, is rapidly approaching, but I urge you to apply at umassd.edu/marineresearch. The internship is competitive:  last year, students from the West Coast to the East Coast were accepted from community colleges and universities big and small. As a disclaimer, I should mention that I have no part in the selection of candidates.  

Full details can be found in the image below:  


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Happy birthday, Lenovo!

11/1/2016

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It's hard to believe that two years have passed since I first wished Lenovo a Happy 30th Birthday!  I want to take a few minutes out of my day to wish Lenovo for not only making a great product that I've depended on for eight years, but also providing me with great friends in the Lenovo Insiders.  To many great years, and product, ahead!
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Wishing you a Happy Halloween from 1990

10/30/2016

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Until today, the eeriest part of this Halloween season had been Trizol contamination in my samples and rampant RNA degradation…that was until I came across these photos from 1990 or 1991.  
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Me with my sister...and like you, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be, other than a grateful blue dinosaur that likes pink.
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Costumes were clearly hand-me-downs in my family. Even then, Alf was a bit dated. At least my brother looks less awful than I do.
I'm not sure why, but costumes in the 1980s and 1990s were awful.  I just don't understand why masks were supplied with plastic aprons advertising what you were supposed to be.  Why?!  And, yes, like you I'm cringing just slightly at my costume.  Why I'm a dinosaur wearing pink, I'm not sure.

Yes, photographs can be a bit embarrassing, but I'm grateful that my dad took abundant photographs and video when I was a child.  Get out there, have a great Halloween, and feel free to embarrass your children.  And for those of you who will be staying indoors, aside from the usual tradition of watching Hocus Pocus, let me recommend starting a new tradition:  Reading Bradbury's ​The Halloween Tree​.  You won't be disappointed.  
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And in case you didn't believe that my mRNA integrity was really that scary...
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From Russia with Lenovo

10/10/2016

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Unfortunately, I have been so wrapped up in my PhD program that I have been remiss in updating my blog.  It was a wonderful Email by Andrew Taranov, the R&D manager of the Academy of Geniuses in Russia,  that motivated me to finally create another entry.  In Andrew’s own words, here is some information on the academy he and Julia Taranova, the creator of the school, run:    
 
The Academy of Geniuses is a company that is engaged in training children of all abilities information technology.  Above all, the academy aims to instill important life qualities:  analytical thinking, logic, and perseverance in achieving goals.  Second, the academy teaches practical skills:   a robotics courses helps the children understand the basics of mechanics, engineering, constructing robots, and controlling them using computer programs, whereas  the programming club teaches students how to properly manage their computers and how to use the PC to solve professional problems.  On the other hand, the system administration courses gives the students the opportunity to learn the skills required of servicing an entire network.  Not surprisingly, with the proliferation of mobile devices, one of the most popular courses instructs students on developing mobile applications on Android phones and tablets.  Though the students may be young, courses are designed with pragmatism in mind:  all professional languages the academy uses are in demand in the labor market, be it Java or 1C programming language. Ultimately, the pupils are instilled with a belief that the positive changes they can bring about in the world outweigh the monetary rewards.    



The program thus far has been a remarkable success.  More than 750 children of the Kalinigrad region have attended the summer classes—naturally, robust equipment is needed to serve so many students (especially young students).  For this reason, the Academy of Geniuses has opted to use more than 40 Lenovo computers.


For anyone who can speak Russian, I encourage you to learn more about the academy on their Facebook group or the PDF that I have enclosed.  I would like to congratulate Andrew and Julia for their remarkable work.  I and Lenovo wish them many more years of success!
Академия_гениев_all___1__1_.pdf
File Size: 617 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

  

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LENOVO TO HOST SECOND ANNUAL TECH WORLD WITH INDUSTRY TECH GIANTS

5/10/2016

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Lenovo today announced that #LenovoTechWorld, the company’s strategic technology conference, comes to San Francisco on June 9, 2016. The second annual conference brings together some of the industry’s top leaders along with Lenovo chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing for the keynote address where they’ll probe the most promising and emerging topics in innovation, including virtual reality, smart connected devices/IoT and harnessing the power of the cloud to transform people’s lives. Lenovo will be joined by fans, media, influencers, press, analysts and other guests from around the world.


The official press release can be found here:  http://news.lenovo.com/news-releases/lenovo-to-host-second-annual-tech-world-with-industry-tech-giants.htm

Lenovo will livestream the keynote at 10:00 a.m. PST on June 9, 2016 at: www.YouTube.com/lenovo

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The Yoga 900:  Not Quite Flexible enough for my ThinkPad

3/21/2016

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Since joining the biomedical engineering program as a PhD student several weeks ago, I am proud to announce that the Lenovo Yoga 900 has been supplementing my aging ThinkPad T420s.  Now, before I get into why it has only been assisting my ThinkPad, let me briefly describe what I love about the system.

First, everything I liked about the Yoga 3 Pro a year ago has only been enhanced:  The screen, a 13.3-inch, 3,200 x 1,800 touch display is gorgeous—it is a delight using the system to read journal articles in portrait mode and creating figures for my papers at hours at a time without suffering from eyestrain; regardless of the angle the screen is titled, color shift is not present.  Quite frankly, it makes me realize how abysmal my T420s screen is.  
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It always amazes me how much better the screen is on my Yoga 900 (right) than on my ThinkPad (left)
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One of my favorite uses for the Yoga 900 is to fold it and use it as a tablet for those journals! (SOS response reading)
 With 16 GB of RAM, I have had no problem running MatLab with several YouTube videos open, PowerPoints, pdf’s, etc..the system crunches through the programs with aplomb—it does so with some fan noise, owing to the system’s thinness, but the noise is infrequent and not distracting (however, my T400 is SILENT, so this is a bit of an adjustment).  I timed battery life on this system, and I easily exceeded 6 hours even after heavy use (thus, Lenovo’s claim of 7 hours isn’t so far-fetched).  I was quite amazed by the sound quality of the system—it booms and is crystal clear; equally amazing, the direction of the sound changes depending on the mode of the system (e.g., Tent mode vs. laptop).  This has proven to negate my need for external headphones—and considering that many of my professors have made many of their lectures as YouTube videos, this has proven to be much less cumbersome than being tethered to a system—I have never owned a ThinkPad with sound quality that could be described as anything above mediocre, so this is a surprise.  Finally, as for durability, it approaches my ThinkPad.  It is solid and the screen does not exhibit any wobble, owing to the gorgeous hinge.
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And now to my biggest complain...yes the Yoga keyboard on the left is clean but it lacks the functionality of a ThinkPad keyboard, one of the finest ever made.
Yes, I have exuded praise for the system.  So why is it not my primary computer in academia?  It boils down to the keyboard!  The keyboard seems to be a second thought for such a beautiful system—the Shift key has been shrunken, the keys are crammed and the layout is confusing (check out the location of the Home button), the function keys have been combined with the volume keys, etc.  Worse, the integrated mouse buttons just do not function well—I find myself accidentally right clicking when I mean to left click…and for me, a TrackPoint is a must.  On a positive note, the tactile feedback is good, considering that key travel is less than that of my ThinkPad.  For most users, I think a mediocre keyboard is expected and will suffice.  We have entered an age where people rely more and more on touchscreens and less on a physical keyboard.  But for me, when I switching between EndNote, Microsoft Word, a PDF, and a PowerPoint for creating a figure, I rely entirely on a keyboard.  Dedicated buttons, a TrackPoint that allows me to keep my hands on the keyboard, and a logical layout mean my brain is entirely focused on the task on hand and not on correcting a mis-click.  So, yes, my ThinkPad T420s, with its horrid screen, terrible sound, lackluster battery life, and aging performance remains my primary machine for typing papers simply because it has one of the best keyboards of any machine.  For the average consumer who may be more focused on multimedia, gaming, and typing papers for class, this is a fine machine; for those of us, however, who grew up with a ThinkPad, the keyboard just falls far below the gold standard….For that reason, my Yoga 900 is my primary tool for reading PDFs, creating figures (the colors are accurate and the resolution is superb), and watching YouTube videos for class (the sound is clear and the battery goes on and on and on).  But for everything else, nothing beats a ThinkPad.  
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A Little Help from the X230 to Study Habitat Use and Bioacoustics of Odontocete Species in Two National Marine Sanctuaries

2/23/2016

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Tammy Silva earned a B.S. in Biology from Stonehill College and a M.S. in Marine Biology from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. In 2013 she earned a NOAA Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship, allowing her to enter a Ph.D. program in the University of Massachusetts Intercampus Marine Science Program. Her thesis research focuses on studying habitat use and vocal behavior of dolphins in Massachusetts Bay. Outside of school, she works as a naturalist on whale watching vessels and a dance instructor. She enjoys swimming, attempting to surf and walking/adventuring with her dog, Tobey. 
Though I have known Tammy as a fellow graduate student for some time, I have only known her as a ThinkPad user for about a week.  Following her research proposal (a wonderful one, I should add), I asked if I could share the abstract of her work and if she could briefly describe what she has been using her ThinkPad X230 for.  Here we go!



Odontocetes (toothed whales) are abundant, globally distributed animals that play key trophic roles in ecosystems and may overlap with harmful human activities. Basic information on occurrence patterns, habitat use, bioacoustics and dive behavior are necessary for informing ecosystem-based management plans and for predicting and mitigating human impacts, yet we often lack such data. The Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (SBNMS) and the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary (HIHWNMS) are areas of national importance that lack critical biological and ecological data on odontocetes within their management areas. 
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Yes, Tammy's research does come with its perks...

The goal of my dissertation is to improve our understanding of odontocete ecology by gathering baseline data on habitat use, bioacoustics and dive behavior for relatively abundant odontocetes in and around each Sanctuary. Work already completed in the HIHWNMS focused on developing methods to deploy acoustic recording tags on small odontocetes (pantropical spotted dolphins) and to subsequently quantify their acoustic and dive behavior. Proposed research in the SBNMS will focus on four species (Atlantic white-sided dolphins, common dolphins, pilot whales and harbor porpoise) and will utilize two established methods for studying animal distributions: passive acoustic monitoring and incorporation of visual sighting data into species distribution models. Ocean gliders equipped with acoustic recorders and environmental sensors (temperature, salinity, chlorophyll) will be deployed in SBNMS and surrounding waters from November-January to acoustically monitor for odontocete presence and sample the environment. These data will be used to examine relationships between odontocete acoustic detections and environmental variables that may influence odontocete distributions. In order to acoustically identify species recorded during glider deployments, vocalizations of the species of interest must be previously described. My thesis will characterize the vocal repertoire of Atlantic white-sided dolphins using existing recordings and initiate recording and characterization of vocalizations from additional local species. Opportunistic sighting data gathered from multiple platforms between 2004 and 2014 will be input into species distribution models (Maximum Entropy, point process models) to examine seasonal distributions of odontocetes and assess species differences in spatial and/or temporal distributions patterns. This work should increase our basic understanding of odontocete ecology and is a first step in assessing overlap with human activities.
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...but it also comes with hard work; e.g., hours of analyzing acoustic recordings.
My Lenovo ThinkPad X230

Assessing the vocal behavior of the animals, the bioacoustics, often requires unique software and fast processing for visualizing and analyzing the sound.  I need additional processing power to run such programs as Raven Pro (Cornell University) and MATLAB.   This is where my trustworthy Lenovo X230 comes into play—so far, it’s been great at meeting all my research needs

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    About Gregory Costa

    Gregory Costa is a decent biologist, mediocre writer, terrible formatter, but true Lenovo enthusiast, who admires the use of their products in both the academic and industrial setting...when he's not busy delighting himself in science, nature, or his OkCupid profile.

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