Friday 25 September 2015

21st Sept: Teaching, workshops and a couple of breakthroughs

It's been a busy, busy week - for a few reasons - but a good one.

Most significantly, it's Fresher's - sorry, Induction Week. The undergraduates are back, and the campus is buzzing. I like the rhythms of the academic year: the calm of the student vacations, the frenetic pace of teaching. Things are always changing. I mentioned last week that this time of yead always has the sensation of racing towards a narrow gap in a solid wall. Well, this point is the gap. If you're not prepared, you'll be in for a chaotic 11 weeks. I think I'm there: slides, handouts, tutorials, projects ready. Only an exam to write: that's not bad at all.

Of course, this week has also been busy because we've been marking presentations from students returning from industrial placement and celebrating their achievements. And I've been at a fantastic neuro-engineering workshop, learning about the challenges of actually implanting devices. A little outside my area, but relevant to rehabilitatiin and spinal injury, and there are some exciting potential cross-overs with my biomechanics work.

Another big event this week was a Medical Humanities workshop in diagnosis. It was a great opportunity to get together with humanities researchers from History, English and Sociology and get their views on what diagnosis means, and some of the social, ethical and practical challenges it presents. A very productive meeting, and I'll try (no promises!) to write up my thoughts as a separate blog post sometime.

But the main business this week has been on the grip research front. Firstly, the revised version of FATKAT has survived its first test in data gathering, with the issues of lag and data losses in Network Streaming now resolved. That's a big landmark, and a vindication of the time I've poured into it over the last three weeks.

And my grip model has just survived cross - validation, which is another big landmark. We've just got to actually write it all up now!

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