在祖国60年华诞之际，回想这过去的两个月里却没有做过几次fab, 心里既有些担忧，也有些欢喜 —— PhD忧虑症。
8月里主要做了一些测量工作，投出去一篇文章，写了些abstract和poster，还有就是帮老婆准备了一些婚礼上的事物。
老婆经过几个月精心的准备，最终我们在9/5日加州redwood city的pulgas water temple完成了非常完美的婚礼。这里要感谢同学和朋友的热心帮助。
我们请的摄影师拍的照片在：http://www.hongmingstudio.com/Client-Login/Wedding
weiwei 和 Alex拍的照片过些日子再上传。

9/7日晚上孙庆段遥请我们看了纵贯线演唱会，又匆忙投了另一篇文章，9/8清早便启程回国

7.30 MURI review，project managers真的懂得很多很广，问题与建议非常到位，真让我怀疑他们是不是professor出生。后来向老板确认他们的确只是政府官员。另外那天学校到处都是free food，难道是 free food day ?
7.31给实验室交换学生Nicolas送行饭，家属有点多，最后老板让大家AA，有些汗。Nicolas来自法国，19岁硕士一年级，非常聪明，程序写得非常好。来我们实验室交换了一个学期，印象很深刻。
9.5的婚礼还在准备之中，回国的计划一变再变，现在又有可能9月回去。

6月底去Cali和老婆在一起6天。准备了一些婚礼的事情。
和我们的minister Jan 见了一面，一位银发老奶奶。
去旧金山见到正在start up 的同学 Fergus. 他将是我的伴郎之一。我的三个伴郎依次是：小康(best man)，冲哥和Fergus.
7/2/09去Redwood city和老婆注册了 :)  非常快，签字，宣誓个人信息无误就结束了。不过要正式生效还要等到婚礼那天。
最后一天在stanford拍了订婚照，在我们的婚礼网站上可以找到：binandyan.com
老婆很pp :P 我的表情有些僵硬...
老婆为婚礼准备了很多很多，非常非常感谢

6.20 去PSU参加DRC (device research conference). 很有趣的一个会。收获颇多。
今年的一个hot topic是graphene devices，不过个人觉得除了physics比较有趣外，对于传统的application没有太大用处，可能作tunneling transistor有所优势. Who knows, we need to invent new devices.
另外一个讨论较多的是tunneling devices.
spintronics 的session人很少，IBM Dr. Stuart Parkin 关于racetrack memory 的 invited talk 比较精彩。话说我和Dr. Parkin 坐同一个航班到达state college的，只可惜当时不认识他，在机场延误的3个小时内也没说一句话...

PSU校园很大，有个很大的橄榄球场。整个学校被森林环抱，随处可见兔子，花栗鼠当然还有松鼠。真是所谓的"in the middle of no where"。

6.24号从PSU回来，25号便传来噩耗。本来不是很fan Michael Jackson，可是最近几天回顾他的一些演出越发觉得痛惜。只希望那些不负责任的医生能得到应有惩罚。
6.27另一个噩耗，硕士实验室的秘书 Vivian去世了，这学期3，4月份还见过她，通过信，没想到这么快。据说病因是癌症。前几天还在nytimes上看到关于cancer research funding 需要改制的文章。希望做癌症研究的工作者们能把资源使在刀刃上，尽快做出一些重要的突破。

bless

圣诞放了7天假出去玩，老板嫌短... 然后到现在又颓废了一周，算是补上 -___-!!

22号到Atlanta当天向老婆求婚了 :)       (之前一周还是挺有些忐忑不安的，多亏了baile师兄的教诲才会这么顺利，呵呵)

然后和段遥夫妇一起car pool到Miami&Key West玩了一趟。在去之前和同学聊起圣诞的出游计划时就发现很多人都去这两个地方，果然碰到了不少中国人。去这两个地方主要风景是海滩和湿地公园(everglades national park)。miami beach 的沙滩没有想象中的好，但是海水还是很美，更美的海滩在key west，碧绿和湛蓝交融在一起。Everglades Park 里的动物很有趣，而且第一次置身于电视上常见的湿地地貌之中，挺兴奋，只可惜没有见到螃蟹。另外还用了一天去潜水去看珊瑚（snorkeling, 不是氧气瓶那种），那天风浪大，我这种水性不好的很难游动，不巧又被水母蜇到胳膊和手上，痛苦了一天，没有见到珊瑚。。。被水母蜇还是有些危险，除了疼痛，当时手臂肌肉收缩很紧，手都张不开，同时胸口发烫，疼痛，呼吸困难，舌头发麻，心脏感觉也被压迫。经验是：除了及时用醋喷洒伤口，可以用棉球不停地擦拭，彻底把毒刺去除。

09年两大筹划：
夏天结婚；
research更要抓紧。

早上7:30就起床准备看8:00开始的开幕式，直到看完12:30pm. 很宏伟，把老外吓坏了，他们无法想象上千人如何能够那么整齐划一，配合有序。也算得上是中国特色。不过CCTV的解说还是以往的old fashion.，看图说话，缺乏内容。

下午去road test, 除了几次没听清楚考官的instruction(考官用他刚学的阴阳怪气地中文说，愣是没反应过来)，没别的问题， pass :) cambridge 考场，没遇到传说中的黑人考官。

从RMV出来经过AMC Loews，看了MummyIII，故事很仓促, simple + easy = boring. 没看头。

总之一天没做实验，没学习，以庆祝北京奥运会开幕！

A very good program from pbs.org:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html

From the Newton gravity to Einstein's general relativity, to the origin of the string theory, to the M-theory, it gives a good picture on how the theory was developed.

From: David Chandler, MIT News Office, June 30, 2008

"A new analysis of the setting for last month's devastating earthquake in China by a team of geoscientists at MIT shows that the quake resulted from faults with little seismic activity, and that similar events in that area occur only once in every 2,000 to 10,000 years, on average.

However, the researchers caution that because earthquakes can sometimes occur in clusters, people should still be wary of another possible large-scale earthquake.

The magnitude 7.9 quake struck Sichuan province on May 12 at around noontime, which may have increased the human death toll because many people were at school, and the school buildings turned out to be especially vulnerable to collapse because of poor construction. More than 69,000 people have been confirmed dead so far, and more than 374,000 injured, with fears of further casualties because several lakes created by rockfall dams may give way and cause sudden flooding.

Clark Burchfiel, Schlumberger Professor of Geology, and Leigh Royden, professor of geology and geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, have been doing extensive research in that region of China and the Tibetan plateau for more than two decades, but had found no hints that suggested such a large earthquake might strike the area. They and several colleagues, including MIT's Robert D. van der Hilst and Bradford H. Hager, who are both Cecil and Ida Green Professors of Earth Sciences, have published a paper analyzing the causes of the quake that appears in the July issue of GSA Today, a publication of the Geological Society of America.

The team operated an array of 25 broadband seismograph stations in this region of western Sichuan for more than a year. "Nobody was thinking there would be a major seismological event" in that area, Royden says. "This earthquake was quite unusual," and may have involved a simultaneous rupture of two separate but contiguous faults, she continued.

The region is extremely unusual geologically, Royden says, because of the very steep slopes at the boundary between the Sichuan Basin to the east and the Tibetan plateau to the west. The elevation rises sharply by about 3,500 meters (more than two miles) over a span of only about 50 kilometers (about 30 miles).

The area where the quake occurred is part of the boundary between two of the Earth's tectonic plates, where the Indian and Asian plates converge in an ongoing collision that has created the Himalayan mountains and the Tibetan plateau. But in central and eastern Tibet, unlike most other areas of continental collision, much of the movement of crust is hidden from view. Instead of thickening the entire crust by folding and faulting, the surface of the eastern Tibetan plateau is undeformed and is being lifted upward by thickening of a weak crustal layer more than 15 km below the surface.

The crust in this deep weak layer is flowing eastward away from central Tibet to escape from the area directly north of the Indian plate. But, in the area where the earthquake occurred, this rapidly flowing material is obstructed by a major obstacle, the Sichuan Basin. "The crust and mantle beneath the basin appears to form a hard, cold knot" that extends to 250 km depth, Royden says, that forces the flow to "wrap around the knot." The huge elevation difference between the surface of the plateau and the Sichuan Basin provides the underlying stress that led to the quake, she says.

As the surface of the eastern plateau has risen, it has become increasingly incised by rivers. Four of the world's 10 largest rivers, including the Yangtze, flow through the region, Royden says. "There are gorges two and a half to three kilometers deep, and hundreds of kilometers long--they dwarf the Grand Canyon," she says.

The steep slopes within the river gorges make the region especially vulnerable when earthquakes occur, she says. "When you shake those valleys, everything just slides down into the river gorges and eventually washes out to sea," she says.

Because of the extreme geological environment of this region, Royden says, it may be possible to learn about mechanisms taking place there that may also occur, at a smaller scale, in other places. In this way, it may reveal processes that are also relevant in other parts of the world but that would be much harder to discover in these other locations because they would be more subtly expressed.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation. The MIT scientists are currently collaborating with geophysicists of the China Seismological Bureau (in Beijing and Chengdu, Sichuan) on a study of the structure and seismic hazard of the region."

以下为日全食经由国内的路径 （from NASA.gov）：
北京时间下午7:00在国内可以看到全食

5月底去给老婆过生日，在加州只待了4天... :( 然后回来赶试验写paper。直到会议的deadline前两天发现试验还是不成功，用的wafer不好使，然后狂赶了两天simulation交了。像phd comic里一样，deadline又被推迟了一周，于是又改了一周paper...
6.6号参加了毕业典礼。原来本不想打算参加的，因为有朋友问我要guest ticket，想想毕业典礼总共也就3次，还是蛮珍贵的，于是租了袍子报名。6.6早上7:30全体本科生和研究生到体育场集合（博士生的待遇不一样），到9点大家分不同的系排好队由几个手持金杖装束像教皇的白发老人领向mit中心圆顶前的Killiam草坪，Mass. Ave.交通中断了大约半小时。mit本科和硕士的服饰完全看不出来区别，只有袖子的形状略有区别。研究生是长方形的，本科生据说是尖头的(三角形？)。也没有清华本科毕业不同颜色的领子。Killiam草坪不大，（大约20m宽，30米长？），1/3的位置留给本科，硕士和博士毕业生（难道每年就毕业这么点人？当然也有些人不参加典礼，不过学生还真是少），2/3给家属。经过教授，校长，学生代表发言之后便开始授予学位，所有毕业生的名字都被念一遍，大家排队上台领学位。由校长和另一个人（教务长？）一起颁发学位证。这个过程持续大约有3个小时，辛苦校长了。我排在另一列队伍，没能和pp校长握上手..

两年了，原来朝夕相处一起锻炼身体的哥们们都已经毕业了，时间真是过得飞快，也希望自己能早日修成正果。

p.s. 这几天Boston天气燥热，感觉有些倦怠，效率很低。

前天同层的台湾同学给了一包炸酱面的酱包，于是今天晚上便去尝试一下炸酱面。等到肉燥和蔬菜炒好，开包放入面酱的时候被包装上的生产日期震住了: 960508~970507.
心里当时狂郁闷但又觉得很蹊跷...总之，由于本人的无知浪费了一锅菜(不过酱还是过期了一点的... -__-!)，还险些伤害了两岸人民的友谊...
竟然不知道台湾是使用民国年份的...
中华民国1912年元月建国，孙中山当选第一任总统，到2008年为民国97年。

Boston今年的春天比去年似乎来得早一些，上周的时候已经可以感觉到春暖花开了。
今天天气非常好，阳光灿烂，虽然春风还带有些寒意，河边已经有很多人在慢跑，河面上也有很多白色的BU, mit的帆船。
中午和同楼层的几个同学吃完剩饭(leftover from Peking U getting together in Mulan)，喝了点小酒，决定出去活动一下筋骨。于是漫步到mit对面的Charlse河岸边踏青。
在Boston待了也快两年了，我竟然不知道mit对面有一个很美丽的小公园...真土。除了坐地铁去机场，真是很少跨过Harvard Bridge到河对岸的Boston去，今天稍微走了走感觉Boston真是挺不错的地方。
上传了一些公园里拍的照片，发现自己的照相水平还不烂(上传得几张看不太出)，决定还是有必要买个单反的 :)
顺便去Prudential逛了一圈，被tiffany shock了。

开学两周，已经开始累得不行，因为开始要fab了，这周一直在各种仪器上培训，从早到晚，每次出来都是腰酸腿肿，饥肠辘辘。结果今天早上lift-off失败了，又得从头再来...  不过也好，能培养一下细心的品质 :)