Setting goals and beyond

Main video

 

Sub-title: English

Video transcription

A crash course in biomathematics (ongoing)

Setting goals and beyond

(This subtitle is for the edited version)

Preliminaries

Hi, my name is Jorge Guerra Pires, and I am talking on the behalf of my group.

Which is the PhD called Ilaria Pietrantoni, and professor Roberto Maggio which is a kind of supervisor

He was the person that introduced myself to Ilaria and we intend to have him as a kind of “external eyes” of the project.

On this video, we are going to explain you in short words what is the project what is the main goal and since initially we intend to make something very nice of course you may try to find a definition of “what is very nice” and we can that it would be full of animation “special effects” is very nice or something scientific plausible is very nice.

The definition of “very nice” can change a lot but I, we, are engaged to make something as nice as possible.

So, on this video, which is the first video of the project we are trying to set the goals, to explain, the reasons of the existence of the project. 

This project was born…I’ve created the idea, it came to me two months ago I have sent the proposal to professor Maggio we discussed by emails and finally, after several problems to meet, we decided to go on with the project.

And…Ilaria got interested on the project and we started to decide to make a…to make this project to exist…

As we are going to see on the slides the main goal (aim) of the project is very simple

It should create a course about biomathematics

So how far we are going to achieve is a good question, we don’t know so. It’s a…it is a project that we intend as well to learn all over the project we intend as well to achieve new stuff, that we could not calculate (figure it out) so.  

I think that the minimum, the basic, we plan to achieve (to conquer, to do) is a set of videos that will be available in youtube, likely a set of posts, and a set of ideas, that is about biomathematics.

We do not intend to propose something new, we do not intend to propose a new area of knowledge we do not intend to propose anything at all.

We just…our own goal here is to spread out information. To make…to make our own interpretation of what already exist.

So it is not something about to propose what is biomathematics not to propose a definition of biomathematics it is not about anything like this.

It is just about to take what already exists in the literature and make in such a way that people, general public, can learnt it, can see it.

And as well in the end to propose…that is the point in which we propose, propose a course, a set of ideas, a prototype for a course in biomathematics.

My background is… is engineering, mathematics, and life sciences, something like systems biology, and so on.

 Ilaria has a background in biology, and now she is doing a PhD in medicine. Prof. Maggio is a doctor, he has a background in medicine, works with pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.

And we hope that as well in the partnership we are going to learn from each other, to enforce our…our engagement, our work as a group.

So, nowadays it’s getting easier and easier to spread out (broadcast) information, let’s say that in the past the only way to spread out information was by journals they were even not digital as it is today. 

Today the printed journal is getting each time rarer and rarer to find, useless somehow, because, e.g. I have books that are from very nice journals and papers that stay on my room and I never use it, I always use the digital versions.

 As so, since it is a new project, the advantage of new projects, as a new idea, is that you can adapt what is going on

And today we have a “rain of” Youtube videos, and we have famous (dishonorable) universities, e.g. MIT and Harvard, which are pretty famous, they have Youtube channels, in which they publish lessons (lectures) and so on.

And we intend (plan, are committed) to make use of that because, mainly, it is a new project, we have no other way to do it, for instance at the current moment, as we have discussed during our last discussion (summit), at the current moment we cannot make it otherwise.

Youtube is very “cheap” (free of charges), you do not have to pay, there is no charge. We cannot make like a conventional course, right now. And maybe, as I talk to myself, even if I could, I don’t know if I would. Because we…the conventional (classroom-like) courses are full of rules, making these course the way we are doing we expect to have more flexibility.  

Youtube is very famous, you have from “bad stuff” to “good stuff”. It is not a very good place if you have reputation (to be kept). So you may ask me, why should trust you? The group behind the project I believe is “respectable”, We are using a quite ease way to publish, but we have a very good group, I believe, it is not very famous, but I believe, we a PhD student, we are working, we are “scientists” (researchers). We take it serious what we do.

So the videos, in order to make our lives easier, the videos are going to be divided (uploaded) into three groups, the first one is the project itself, which is called “A crash course in biomathematics”, so this the project, this the core, are going to be the main videos.   

And we have some miscellaneous videos, which are videos that can be useful, e.g. I am planning to post…for example, videos from my papers, ideas, that I have developed, that think they could help to defend the channel, the project itself.

And others as well, e.g. if someone follows the channel, it could happen that, we do not know it yet, most of the details about this project, about this channel, we still have to define, Thus, we do not know yet about “what is going on”, We do not know yet how far we are going to arrive, which kind of achievement we are going to achieve.

So, maybe we can be luck enough that someone possesses very nice videos (interesting for the project), and would like to post alongside our videos. So you just have to send us, and kindly letting us know why you think we should post your video alongside ours. Further, partnerships is always welcome, especially if they bring to us new achievements, enforcements for what we are doing.

And, nowadays, if you already have the video uploaded in Youtube, you do not have even to send it, you must just send the link, and the video can be “borrowed” automatically. Then, it appears on the channel as a conventional video.

Introduction

So…it is not very easy to talk about (discourse) this kind of questions here, bearing in mind the subtle answers, the easiest one would be what is “A crash course in biomathematics”.

So, the “crash course”, the name “crash” (smash, “shrink” ), I am not quite sure you are familiar, for the first time I heard crash course, it is course that is very small (about in general an far-reaching issue), but I have noted some doubts about the term “crash course”.

I have decided to keep it, I believe that from the point of view of grammar in English it is not wrong.  I had this kind of crash course, so, I crash course is a course that is very short.

In Youtube bearing in mind we have a lot of space without any expense (charge, fee), people don’t have to watch everything, just what they want. We are planning to post, make a lot, if we succeed, to go until the end of the project, if we succeed to have a course, a classroom-like course, that course that is taught in person, in a classroom, 

So… in this case, 5 to 10 hours, that is the idea, 5, to 10 hours, like one hour each module, and during this time of 5 to 10 hours, we discuss from theory to code and math.

So…the second question…more important, what is biomathematics, it seems to have not, which I am aware of, to the best of my knowledge, any serious (well-known, strong) attempt to say what is biomathematics, the origins (genesis) of biomathematics, likely I think it is for the reason that  biomathematics itself is pretty complex to define, trace back its origins.

In the beginning, as we already know from the Greek Miracle, the age of reason, we have all fields of science investigate as one single big picture. They had no separation, no divisions, “territory”, they have no physics and mathematics as we have in this day and age.

The…one of the biggest differences came from, was born with, Newton…until his time it was called something like Natural Sciences, after him we started to have most of the divisions.

And also the other division was created after him, e.g. biology is one example and chemistry is another example. So they were created step by step. As we “evolved” (i.e. our rationale system) we saw, identified, the necessity to separate the branches of science, in order to study a specific idea, a specific set of experiments. 

So one can say that biomathematics comes from the last century. Bearing in mind the last century had scientists such as….( Nicolas Rashevsky)….he was very famous, a notorious scientist, there were as well scientists from quantum mechanics such as Alan Turing, mathematical model of embryogenesis (in 1952), Schrödinger with his book after his father’s death, what is life. Schrödinger predicted some difficult problems to come, e.g. protein folding, which could not be handled by the current mathematics. Schrödinger was influenced by Einstein regarding his studies.

So, a precise definition what is biomathematics is quite complicate. For instance, you can say that biomathematics is an abstraction for any form regarding making the life science more precise, “predictable”, with some attempts trying to create general principles and laws, e.g. in physics. Some say that this definition here is biophysics.

For me, honestly, biophysics and biomathematics they are the same, they are just attempts, endeavors to make the life sciences from up to mathematical treatments.

Nowadays I have confidence in the fact that physics and mathematical are almost the same, they are not so different anymore. Thus, when we talk about physics we talk about mathematics and so on. If you want to make the separation for me it is not a problem. But for herein we are assuming biomathematics and biophysics they are the same.

So…it was developed…the way we see biomathematics was developed mainly in the last century, I am not talking about genesis, I am talking about the core, the main corners, the main ideas, the main principles, the cornerstones were laid down mainly in the last century.

The name biomathematics was used mainly in the last century, I rely on, especially because biology itself is new, from 19th century. At that time, they wanted to study life without being bothered by the question what is life. In the case of Antoine Lavoisier, was famous for “reinventing” the oxygen, after Joseph Priestley.

So…biology arrived trying to explain dilemmas such as elements of life. Lavoisier did the mistake saying that carbon just could be found on living systems. So this kind of ideas that was wrong from the very first time was “fixed”, re-studied and modified, by the new biologists, which was mainly called biology in the 19th century.

So…biomathematics, which is a mathematics on its own. I have written a paper on 2013, that I plan to make a video on it, two years ago, that this name biomathematics will vanish, the same way biophysics and so on. Mainly because in our time the engagement, the overlapping, between mathematics and life sciences is each time more and more normal. 

So…in a matter of time it will be useless, senseless, to us to talk about biomathematics and bioengineering, they will be just one big area, see that the same happen in evolutionary computing. Biomathematics endows us with several luxuries, advantages, e.g. if you understand properly a bio-phenomenon, you can automate.

Such as, one example would be…recently I was in a doctor appointment, as a requirement from the university, everyone from students to staff had to go, in order to make a routine control. And I had to fulfil a form before, so imagine if that form could be fulfilled online and then screened automatically. Certainly we would save some time from the doctor’s. In this situation the doctor is wasting his time working with forms, it is surely a waste of time.

In the net, using the virtual world, e-learning in action

So…in our time with the internet, the “Silicon reality”, as I have already mentioned, we may pin down advantages and disadvantages. We are constantly faced with tradeoffs in order to achieve the best of a situation.

In order situation, realm, we are going to adopt a kind of middle-way-out approach, from emails to facebook, the former is quite private and formal, whereas the latter is quite informal and “wild-opened”.

Email is very nice because you can exchange messages with colleagues. In the Einstein’s time, on the chase to make his ideas heard, he exchanges mails, It was more than ten years without recognition regarding his results on the special theory of relativity and also his paper about Brownian motion.

On the other way we have facebook, which is quite informal, it is a very dangerous place, you can exchange ideas with your friends, you can make publicity of your work, but you can also get involved in meaningless discussions.

We are in the middle way, we have facebook page, you are welcome to like it, to visit it from time to time. We have as well an Youtube channel, blog, site, there is a page on my own website, I have created a page just for the project. The blog you can follow it.

The Youtube Channel: setting goals and beyond

So…the youtube channel that I had explained before has a set of videos, as we have seen here, different kinds of videos. We are going to check it, what is it, the meaning of the videos.

The “crash course” it is a list, a playlist within the channel, which we will judiciously be monitored.   

We are going to try to do our best to ask people to give their opinions, feedback from the client, the costumer, to fulfil electronic forms in order to assess how people is reacting to the videos.

So all the videos will pass by a screening process, the screening processes are going to be made likely by the response of the users.

In the second group will be miscellaneous videos, various, which supposes to be quite generic, e.g. examples, case studies, anything that we calculate that could be useful.

The third group of videos, second from the list of supporters, supposes to be a place for “more flexible” types of videos. It could even happen that this group will not exist.

The playlist that is really important is this one, “A crash course in biomathematics.” This is the one that will be really really monitored. This is the one we are engaged to produce.

License for the videos

So…as I explained before (omitted on this version) the problem of copyrights is something quite serious and complicate. Notwithstanding, we are going to license the videos under the most malleable license, the Creative Commons License CC By.