So somehow time has been passing, and it's almost Thanksgiving. How the hell did that happen? I'm still adjusting to the idea of it being fall instead of summer, and now it's almost winter. What gives??
Yesterday was the third 'cross race in the Eugene series. Only 4 beginner women showed up, and I managed 2nd place out of the 4, coming across the finish line about 50 feet behind the winner. If I hadn't dropped my chain after the first barrier on the first lap, I might have been able to stay on her wheel and maybe pass her before the end. Oh well. I seem to manage to drop my chain pretty often during races - always either after barriers or run-ups. I think that when I put together my new 'cross bike for next season, I'm going to go with a 1x9 setup, with just one chainring and no front derailer. This means I can put chain guards on either side of the chainring and pretty much prevent chain drops. No chain drops means no swearing after barriers. I definitely let out a "Fuuh" before I saw that there was an under-10-year-old right there. Oops - sorry, Dad!
Anyway, by my calculations (based on OBRA BAR points awarded for placement in the Eugene series races), I'm currently leading the women's beginner category for the series, despite never having won a race. There are still 2 races left in the series, though, so I have a chance to get a first-place finish, and even if I don't, I'll still feel like I accomplished something. Next season, I'll upgrade to the B category, which means no more top-half finishes unless I work my butt off training.
OK, back to work: analyzing movies of filet-prepped larvae. Trying to confirm that my genetic scheme is actually expressing tetanus toxin in the neurons I think it is - judging by lack of activation of the muscles they innervate. This means staring at movies, inserting reference points, and trying to determine whether there's a difference between the contractions seen in muscles innervated by neurons expressing the toxin versus neurons expressing an inactive version of the toxin. Off to the computer lab - my powerbook can't handle the movies I'm making.
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
book mini-review: quantum neurobiology edition
On a recent (though not the most recent) trip to Portland, I had the chance to stop in to Powell's Books (indeed, what's the point of going to Portland if you can't go to Powell's?). Despite having had several drinks earlier in the evening (or perhaps because of it) I picked up two interesting-seeming books; when I got home from the trip, however, I lost interest or got busy and set them aside. I picked one of them up again soon, and in the intervening time, however, I've been able to finish the first and get about a quarter of the way into the second, and am going to spend some time tonight working my way through the second book. They're fairly similar, despite having been published a decade apart, and extremely timely, despite one being 17 years old.
The first is Information in the Brain: A Molecular Perspective by Ira B. Black. It's an enormous book, despite only being 225 pages (including references and index) - so it's going to take perhaps a whole re-reading to fully understand, but it's basically a great overview of neural signal transduction and how molecules store information. The most salient argument to me is his assertion that biology is behavior and behavior is biology - that there is no delineation between the metabolism of an organism and its behavioral output. The book was published in 1991, so many of the questions he has no answer for have been solved by now, but it's still a wonderfully compact (though dense) introduction to the way brains store and recall information, and an unprecedented synthesis of ideas that any student of developmental or molecular neurobiology should read.
The second is Jeffrey Satinover's The Quantum Brain, with a subtitle sufficiently new-agey to scare away most serious readers, I'm guessing: "The search for freedom and the next generation of man." Smells like woo, right? But so far, it's pretty interesting, and he definitely backs up his claims with good science. It's from a much more computational/AI/systems approach, as opposed to the cellular approach of Black... I'm not far along enough to make a judgement about the quality of the content, but I'm finding the AI/computational/theoretical approach informative, if a bit abstract. From the introduction, I'm guessing that he plans to have a thing or two to say about how these ideas relate to (and redefine) "God"... and the woo alarms will be ringing when this happens, but hopefully he'll save it for the conclusion and leave it at a philosophical discussion.
Anyway, I'll have more to say about both these books in the future, and hopefully will make some sort of insightful tie between the two that will be interesting and informative. On the other hand, I might decide that the Satinover book is just a bunch of hooey (this is the author of a book entitled Cracking the Bible Code - seriously?)... we'll see. I can say that so far, neither of the authors have addressed the problem of how brains form in the first place; I have my own opinions about trying to understand the brain without first understanding its development, though many disagree with me.
(The only thing better than reading for pleasure: Reading for work (ok, indirect work) and pleasure simultaneously! I love it!)
The first is Information in the Brain: A Molecular Perspective by Ira B. Black. It's an enormous book, despite only being 225 pages (including references and index) - so it's going to take perhaps a whole re-reading to fully understand, but it's basically a great overview of neural signal transduction and how molecules store information. The most salient argument to me is his assertion that biology is behavior and behavior is biology - that there is no delineation between the metabolism of an organism and its behavioral output. The book was published in 1991, so many of the questions he has no answer for have been solved by now, but it's still a wonderfully compact (though dense) introduction to the way brains store and recall information, and an unprecedented synthesis of ideas that any student of developmental or molecular neurobiology should read.
The second is Jeffrey Satinover's The Quantum Brain, with a subtitle sufficiently new-agey to scare away most serious readers, I'm guessing: "The search for freedom and the next generation of man." Smells like woo, right? But so far, it's pretty interesting, and he definitely backs up his claims with good science. It's from a much more computational/AI/systems approach, as opposed to the cellular approach of Black... I'm not far along enough to make a judgement about the quality of the content, but I'm finding the AI/computational/theoretical approach informative, if a bit abstract. From the introduction, I'm guessing that he plans to have a thing or two to say about how these ideas relate to (and redefine) "God"... and the woo alarms will be ringing when this happens, but hopefully he'll save it for the conclusion and leave it at a philosophical discussion.
Anyway, I'll have more to say about both these books in the future, and hopefully will make some sort of insightful tie between the two that will be interesting and informative. On the other hand, I might decide that the Satinover book is just a bunch of hooey (this is the author of a book entitled Cracking the Bible Code - seriously?)... we'll see. I can say that so far, neither of the authors have addressed the problem of how brains form in the first place; I have my own opinions about trying to understand the brain without first understanding its development, though many disagree with me.
(The only thing better than reading for pleasure: Reading for work (ok, indirect work) and pleasure simultaneously! I love it!)
Sunday, November 2, 2008
sunday (sunday sunday!)
Took today off from almost everything; even though I was up by 10 and was moderately productive, it still feels like a lazy day. We're into the dark days of the winter now: with the time change today it's now dark by 5:30. And although I'm closer to the equator while Seattle is closer to the north pole, I can't really tell the difference in day length. Maybe at the solstice it'll be more obvious.
Here's something really cool: Images of the brain by DTI.
DTI, or diffusion tensor imaging, is based on detecting diffusion vectors of water molecules within the brain. The coolest thing about it is that it's noninvasive: you can get an extremely detailed picture of white-matter connections in a living subject relatively easily. Read the full article at MIT Technology Review. There's some awesome brain eye candy in the article; it's worth it just for the pictures. (via SEED daily zeitgeist)
On the edge of my seat waiting for the election to be over... everyone, remember to VOTE! (Duh.) Got my fingers crossed for a better outcome than 2004...
Here's something really cool: Images of the brain by DTI.
DTI, or diffusion tensor imaging, is based on detecting diffusion vectors of water molecules within the brain. The coolest thing about it is that it's noninvasive: you can get an extremely detailed picture of white-matter connections in a living subject relatively easily. Read the full article at MIT Technology Review. There's some awesome brain eye candy in the article; it's worth it just for the pictures. (via SEED daily zeitgeist)
On the edge of my seat waiting for the election to be over... everyone, remember to VOTE! (Duh.) Got my fingers crossed for a better outcome than 2004...
Sunday, October 26, 2008
flying by
It's already the end of October, and the election is just over a week away... where has the time gone?
It must be passing so quickly because I'm so damn busy. I love being busy, though - it keeps me productive and sane. When I'm not busy, I tend to get lazy - it's kind of an all-or-nothing approach, I guess.
Anyway, school is going well so far. My rotation work has me working pretty hard, but I am really enjoying the work, and learning a lot. Flies are very different from fish - the turnover of generations is so much faster, you have to really maintain your stocks in an active way. I'm having trouble getting into the rhythms of fly pushing, but I think it'll come eventually. I've got a pretty large data set so far on behavioral analysis, and have acquired but not processed confocal images of the expression of various driver lines I'm using. The idea is to then cross these driver lines to a line carrying a latent tetanus toxin gene, creating expression of the toxin in a subset of neurons, effectively silencing them. The ultimate goal is to understand the genetic control of neuronal circuit formation during development. Pretty awesome, if you ask me. Anyway, that's my research summary for now.
Then there's the other half (ok, much less than half in terms of hours spent) of my life these days: the bicycle. I went for my first ride with the whole UO team yesterday, and had fun. We put on about 35 miles as a group, pushing my daily total (including commute) to a little over 40 miles. I think that's the biggest day I've had since moving here. Got to see a few more of the roads around the area, and got some ideas for changing up my routine solo ride. (The scenery is beautiful on the route I usually take, but something tells me it'll be nice to vary the ride up a bit come November, December, January, February...) Here's the ride we did yesterday.
Today turned into an off-day, due to a missed connection for an afternoon ride. Probably good to take a day off, though, since my plan is to start upping my training for the next few weeks in order to do better at the next 'cross series races in late November. (22nd and 30th; see flier here; come race or just yell and ring a cowbell if you're in the area!) My goal is 3rd in the series, since 1st and 2nd have pretty much been decided unless the promoters enforce a category change for these two women; they're both sandbaggers, as far as I can tell.
Also considering doing the LiveSTRONG Challenge in Seattle next June. Say what you will about Lance and believe what you want about his past; it's inarguable that the LAF does a lot of good in the fight against cancer. And let's face it, cancer sucks. Expect more about that in the future - I'll have to raise some funds to be able to participate, so I'll be begging for money out here in blogging-land as well as IRL.
Anyway, that's the sum of it for right now. Bicycles and science, onward ho!
It must be passing so quickly because I'm so damn busy. I love being busy, though - it keeps me productive and sane. When I'm not busy, I tend to get lazy - it's kind of an all-or-nothing approach, I guess.
Anyway, school is going well so far. My rotation work has me working pretty hard, but I am really enjoying the work, and learning a lot. Flies are very different from fish - the turnover of generations is so much faster, you have to really maintain your stocks in an active way. I'm having trouble getting into the rhythms of fly pushing, but I think it'll come eventually. I've got a pretty large data set so far on behavioral analysis, and have acquired but not processed confocal images of the expression of various driver lines I'm using. The idea is to then cross these driver lines to a line carrying a latent tetanus toxin gene, creating expression of the toxin in a subset of neurons, effectively silencing them. The ultimate goal is to understand the genetic control of neuronal circuit formation during development. Pretty awesome, if you ask me. Anyway, that's my research summary for now.
Then there's the other half (ok, much less than half in terms of hours spent) of my life these days: the bicycle. I went for my first ride with the whole UO team yesterday, and had fun. We put on about 35 miles as a group, pushing my daily total (including commute) to a little over 40 miles. I think that's the biggest day I've had since moving here. Got to see a few more of the roads around the area, and got some ideas for changing up my routine solo ride. (The scenery is beautiful on the route I usually take, but something tells me it'll be nice to vary the ride up a bit come November, December, January, February...) Here's the ride we did yesterday.
Today turned into an off-day, due to a missed connection for an afternoon ride. Probably good to take a day off, though, since my plan is to start upping my training for the next few weeks in order to do better at the next 'cross series races in late November. (22nd and 30th; see flier here; come race or just yell and ring a cowbell if you're in the area!) My goal is 3rd in the series, since 1st and 2nd have pretty much been decided unless the promoters enforce a category change for these two women; they're both sandbaggers, as far as I can tell.
Also considering doing the LiveSTRONG Challenge in Seattle next June. Say what you will about Lance and believe what you want about his past; it's inarguable that the LAF does a lot of good in the fight against cancer. And let's face it, cancer sucks. Expect more about that in the future - I'll have to raise some funds to be able to participate, so I'll be begging for money out here in blogging-land as well as IRL.
Anyway, that's the sum of it for right now. Bicycles and science, onward ho!
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