我在中研院的日子

一提到麥金塔(Mac)電腦，相信在多數人腦中的第一個印象應該就是「很漂亮的電腦」吧！但雖然如此，其在國內卻一直屬於非主流的電腦產品。形成這樣結果的因素當然有很多，比如"系統中文化"不夠、"與PC相容性不高"、"軟體不夠多樣"或是"價格偏高"等因素...。而時下流行的MP3隨身聽卻沒有上述電腦的問題，所以Apple公司所推出的"iPod"承襲了該公司產品一貫的漂亮設計，在國外馬上引起一陣搶購風潮，成為地球上佔有率最高的MP3 player。但是iPod在台灣的銷售不如國外這麼常紅，個人覺得一個很重要的原因是---因為台灣人通常不會把"外型設計"放在考慮購買的第一要件。
這是一個有趣的現象，除了國民所得之外，台灣相較歐美日等其他先進國家不足的地方的就是"審美觀"，普遍來說我們好像不太在意"美"與我們日常生活的關係，從一般的建築設計、穿著品味或學校教育就可一窺端倪。我們比較注重的是價格(便宜就好)、功能(越多越好)、成績(德、智、體、群、都比美來得重要)，素不知"對於美的重視"可以為整個國家與人民帶來多少好處與進步呢！
美麗的建築與環境會為身心帶來健康與愉悅、帥哥美女總是賞心悅目、國民教育中對美的啟蒙與重視其實是往後工業產品中創意與設計的基礎... 在逛書店時無意間發現一本書名為"漢寶德談美"的好書，我非常同意作者對美學的觀點，推薦大家可以去看看...
"美"是一個很主觀也很複雜的觀念，從建築系出身的漢寶德先生筆下所講的"美"比一般"美學"出身的學者更切實際也更容易瞭解呢！

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I always use my notebook after I was in Acadamia Sinica from January 2004. Because my desktop computer in lab is too old to do most works. Finally I have a whole new computer now. Especially the new LCD monitor, it is very comfortable for long time working. Although I have to spend time for setting it up, I still feel very happy.
Can you imagine that the resolution of my monitor is 1280 X 1024? ^_^

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It was a nice weather for visiting freinds and taking a breath in the country. According to the recommendation of louise's colleague, we drived toward Long-tan(龍潭) by highway to look for a special resturant "Wusulin(烏樹林)". About one hour distance from Taipei, we arrived this wonderful place. There are many beautiful flowers and large grass there.
This resturant was built by a family. The older sister is the chef, brothers were responsilbility of architechure design, parents manage the big garden... No matter weekday or weekend, there is no empty table always.
You can click here to visit the webpage of this wonderful place.

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Because the last effort of proof for diagnosability of hypercubes. I did not touch on anything about bioinformatics for a long time (about 2 months). Today I tried to search something interesting from Internet. So I typed "hypercube and bioinformatics" for a keywrod with google searching. Then I was surprised that there were not few results on the webpages. I picked one paper published in 1994 and read it immediately.
As we know, DNA keeps the genetic information and the genetic code (codon) is a triplet of nucleotides (A, C, G, and T). The authors encoded the triplet codon in to 6-bit binary code accroding to the chemical and H-bond properties.

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在北台灣油桐花盛開的季節裡，許多風景區都推出賞花的行程，離我們家比較近的地方(東湖-汐止山區)也有很多盛開的花呢!!心血來潮騎著小綿羊載著louise一起到東湖往汐止的小路(內溝)去探險，出發之前我們還特別準備了三明治和飲料等，準備找個地方來野餐一下。
沿路上鄉村的景色還蠻吸引人的，內溝溪也經過台北市政府的整治與規劃，還不時有遊客騎著腳踏車經過。我們越騎越深入後，決定停車下來翻翻地圖，確定一下方向，但是誰知道地圖才察看了幾秒鐘，就覺得全身發癢，「唉呦~好多小蚊子呀!」頓時發覺清況不妙，我們身上已經被叮了好幾口(後來清點我共10處、louise共3處)，想也不想就趕緊戴上安全帽騎車逃離這個可怕的地方，我想用"落荒而逃"來形容當時的處境真是一點也不為過吧...
回到家趕緊處理被叮咬的傷口(用肥皂清洗，希望能中和一些蚊子毒液的酸性成分)，不過根據以往的經驗，此時再上任何藥已經於事無補，大概只能暫時止癢讓身體不要那麼不舒服了。
經過了這一次的經驗，我們決定換上長袖衣物，而且將交通工具換成了"汽車"，路線也跳過內溝，直接開往汐止的五指山上賞花，一路上輕鬆愉快，與一個小時前的慘劇相比，真是有天壤之別呀!!
ps. 後來在網路上發現不少有關這些可怕小黑蚊的資料, 也提醒大家要多注意喔!!

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We originally planed to drive to Miao-Li(苗栗) appreciating the tung flower (油桐花). But the distance is a little far for us and there are many tung tree in Taipei also. Therefore we change our journey that we first appreciate tung flowers in Pin-Hsi(平溪) and turn to the northeast coast to look for the "wild lily" (野百合).
In fact, I didn't see the wild lily before. According to the reports in news paper, this kinds of flowers usually grow on the side of cliff. And the northeast coast is exactly the good place for them. We started looking from Long-dong cape (龍洞岬) which has rich resources of terrain. When we went to the top of the cape, we could see a beautiful seascape. It really led us recall the days in Greece...
In fact, I didn't see the wild lily before. According to the reports in news paper, this kinds of flowers usually grow on the side of cliff. And the northeast coast is exactly the good place for them. We started looking from Long-dong cape (龍洞岬) which has rich resources of terrain. When we went to the top of the cape, we could see a beautiful seascape. It really led us recall the days in Greece...

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It is a wonderful website for our wonderful experience of greek tour last year (2003). If you like the atmosphere of Mediterranean or you are planning to have a trip there, we strongly recommend you to visit this website.
check this new version out from here.

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counting the boundary and internal edges of a connected component of hypercubes
If we obtain two values which represent the number of vertices and edges in hypercubes respectively, do we can determine the size of all possible connected components? For example, there are totlal 16 vertices and 32 edges in a 4-dimensional hypercube. Now we assume 10 vertices and 13 edges are remained in this hypercube. What are all possible cases?
Dose it exist two or more connected components in it? In fact, there is at most "one" connected component by giving such number of vertices and edges. But the problem is coming again, how to prove it? Oh! my head becomes bigger and bigger again...

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在作研究的過程中，我們時常要想一些證明來支持我們的理論，但是大部分的些證明不是都那麼的直覺簡單，有些甚至找不到證明的方法，也就成了open problem。我最近正好遭遇到這樣的問題，想了將近兩個星期，一點頭緒都沒有，中研院資訊所的馬自恆老師於是建議我使用probabilistic method來試試。在許多離散數學的應用中probabilistic method 是個很有用的證明工具(雖然我才剛剛接觸)，是由大師Paul Erdos將其發揚光大，其中證明Ramsey Theory是一個非常典型的例子(詳細的內容我們先不去管他)，但是根據先前學者們的描述，要找出Ramsey number R(m,n) 的lower bound是件"不太容易"的事，不過光是說"不太容易"這個形容詞無法讓一般人真正體會瞭解這些問題的困難，於是大師們便會在這個時候發揮幽默作一個淺顯的比喻：
如果有一天外星人攻擊地球，因為武力科技實力懸殊的關係，地球人先決定議和，不過外星人開了個條件，如果地球人能達到的話外星人就會撤軍。如果這個條件是希望地球人能在一個星期內求出 R(5,5) 的lower bond的話，那麼地球人應該盡快召集全人類的菁英並使用最快的電腦一起來破解這個問題。但若是條件改成 R(6,6) 的話，嘿嘿... 地球人應該考慮的是如何準備跟外星人好好打一場仗囉...
跟東方學者比起來, 外國學者似乎在傳道授業解惑方面加入了多一點的幽默感。
一本書名為"Proofs from the Book"的經典書籍，這是一本專門記載詳述各種數學定理的經典證明書，不過光從書名我們看不出他的真正含意。其實這書名之所以會取成這樣是有典故的：因為對於一個定理(ex. 畢式定理)可能有幾百種以上的證明方式，但假如上帝的手邊有一本記載所有定理證明(一個定理對應一種證明，也就是說這一種證明是全世界最漂亮的證明法)的書籍的話，該"Proofs from the Book"一書裡的證明即跟上帝手邊的那一本裡記載的一樣。
註：Paul Erdos 一生出版過無數篇論文，是大師中的大師，學術界中甚至流傳一個神秘定理"Erdos Number"，該數字指的是發表學術論文的作者與Paul Erdos的距離關係，假設"學者甲"與Paul Erdos共同發表過學術論文，則"學者甲"的Erdos number值為1，若"學者乙"又與"學者甲"共同發表論文的話，則"學者乙"的number值為2，以此類推的話，則所有人的Erdos Number值不會超過一個常數(確定數值我不太確定)，戲指大部分的學者都與Erdos有直接會間接關係啦！

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