Ashish Patel

I’ll be attending the LEAP conference in San Jose, CA. I put my name into the barrell back in 2005, and finally a spot opened up for me yesterday. This event will run from Feb 26 - March 2.

Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc. (LEAP) has been intent on “growing leaders” within the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities across the country. When LEAP opened its doors 25 years ago, it had a simple yet powerful idea: that in order for AAPI communities to realize their full potential and to foster robust participation in the larger democratic process, those communities would have to begin producing leaders who could advocate and speak on their behalf.

Through the creation of culturally relevant workshops and programs, 125,000 people across the nation have participated in over 2,500 leadership development programs, organizational development workshops, career management and diversity trainings for an extensive roster of clients, including colleges and universities, community and student organizations, federal and state government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies across the country. Click here to view client list.

I’m really looking forward to meeting all the people from various organizations. It will be really interesting networking opportunity.

We’re also being put up in a sweet mansion, yep you heard that right…a MANSION. Its the Dolce Hayes Mansion in SJ, CA. Check it out below:

Once upon a time, in a far away city, I did some work for the Glenrose Rehabilitiaton Hospital in their Orthopedic Engineering Research Group (OERG). I worked here as a student doing biomedical engineering and building software diagnostic tools brace technology to assist doctors in diagnosing and treating scoliosis patients. This morning I came across an article on the University of Alberta website that talked about some work that I helped start-up back in 2001. The article Engineers at the forefront of medical research talks about a device called the active bracing system, in which a scoliosis brace automatically tightens itself if it has loosened. The OERG focuses on understanding how to treat and assess scoliosis - an abnormal curvature of the spine which can limit range of movement, cause pain and result in an asymmetrical look to the torso. The goal of this system is to facilitate more accurate diagnoses and better treatments, decreasing the need for surgical intervention. I worked on the beginnings of this system under the supervision of Dr. Edmond Lou. Its nice to see that the project was continued well after I completed my student summer internship. I’m sure the code has undergone many revisions since then!

“It’s a failure if a child comes here and ends up having surgery - we don’t consider those successes,” said Jim Raso, who heads up the OERG and is associate director of the Glenrose Rehabilitation hospital… “Children with scoliosis may have to wear a brace for 23 hours a day,” said Lou. The hard shell holds the curve of the spine in place, forcing it into proper alignment, but its effectiveness can be compromised by daily activities, which can cause the brace to loosen. “One of my systems is able to maintain the interface pressure between brace and body. So if the system senses it’s too loose, it will pump air into the force pad area and when it’s too tight, it will release the air,” said Lou. The group is also developing computer software to accurately measure the physical surface of the back. “Surface typography produces a map of the back and shows where the bumps and valleys are,” said Raso. The technology allows clinicians to track physical changes associated with scoliosis and determine if there have been changes to the spinal curve. This offers some information that an X-ray can’t provide. While X-rays are low-dose, radiation exposure is still a health concern for clinicians and patients.

A little update on my participation on the World Community Grid project. I’ve been running one of my desktops at work on the project for over a year now and the progress is looking quite impressive.

Each project has unique minimum requirements. If your computer does not meet the minimum requirements for a project, you will not receive work from that project. I have been involved in the following projects:

• FightAIDS@Home
• Genome Comparison
• Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy
• Help Defeat Cancer
• Human Proteome Folding 2

My statistics from the day I started this project include solving 1511 results and accumulating over 350000 points, ranking me a mere 8790 in the project. So much for being number one I strongly encourage anyone with an idle computer to join the program and put that computing power to bettering mankind!

I have gotten my first tutorial on IBM DeveloperWorks published! The article is called “Build ARM performance monitoring in your applications“. Read it and feel free to comment This article/tutorial comes from a paper I submitted to the Computing Measurement Group (CMG) in Reno 2006.

The Eclipse Test & Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) project released an open source and Application Response Measurement (ARM) V4.0-compliant implementation in June 2006, based on TPTP V4.2. This tutorial describes the TPTP project and explains how ARM has been implemented and integrated with TPTP. The trade-offs involved in getting to this point are discussed, along with the challenges in moving forward. Specific examples show how to get started using ARM for your application with TPTP.

This tutorial describes how the Eclipse Test & Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) project is extending its toolset to use The Open Group Application Response Measurement (ARM) instrumentation methodology for response-time tracking. Starting with TPTP V4.2, performance analysts will be able to use Eclipse TPTP — or products based on TPTP technology — to identify and monitor individual transactions as they pass through the various components of composite applications. The implementation of ARM described here was released as a Technology Preview with TPTP V4.2 in June 2006. In the future, it will be fully integrated into TPTP.

This YouTube video illustrates my latest frustrations as of late.