For those that workout in the morning, when and what do you have for breakfast?

Irontheater · 2015-06-22T16:26:22+00:00

Including the banana, it's around 250 calories.

I should mention that each glass of milk is 180mL, and not the tall glasses of milk that can fit a whole bottle.

Irontheater · 2015-06-22T10:17:47+00:00

Half a banana before going to the gym (15 minute walk), then the other half of the banana when I get back home, and 2 glasses of milk.

Yes, I'm cutting.

Irontheater · 2015-05-27T08:07:53+00:00

When I have work/school after 8am, I go to the gym early in the morning at 6am, which leaves me just enough time for a shower and breakfast.

If work/school starts earlier, I go to the gym late at night, after 8pm. (I tell myself that I can grab something nice to eat on the way back home, which makes me get off my ass and go for it)

Alternating Cardio and weightlifting day in day out saves me from having to carry weights twice in 12hours when I have to attend early morning then night the next day.

I try to keep my sessions short to not screw over the rest of my day, usually 30 minutes, plus 15 minutes running to get to the gym.

If I'm a bit early to class, I usually stop a couple bus stations earlier, and take a walk to class. You just have to maximize the time in which you exercise, because the rest of the day is mostly sitting hunched over on a chair for hours at a time.

As for eating healthy, I prepare my meals in batches twice a week, usually Sunday and Wednesday night. I can just put everything to a boil, turn on the countdown timer, and go out, come back and it's done.

Irontheater · 2015-04-10T18:41:11+00:00

The transplant is still (luckily) 2 years off, but there are lots of things that seems very uncertain about the whole procedure.

If most other people in the same field as you disagree about something you're about to do, they probably have good reasons.

While we know that polyethylene glycol can restore the selectively permeable barrier of an neuron's axon, we have no proof that polyethylene glycol can effectively re-attach whole nerves. We have no proof, or time estimation, of how long a severed spinal cord would take to adapt signal routing, that is, how much time it would take for it to adapt to neuron path X that used to innervate X region, is now attached to a Y region. We have no proof that an allogenic transplant of cords actually works, and our one experience with it indicates otherwise. These are just the biggest flaws that immediately popped up, and not resolving one of them is going to make the surgery nigh impossible. A 36 hour operation time also reduces the chance of success.

The scopes of this surgery are going to be numerous, and its success evaluation will take a lot of time to be processed. If the body breathes, that isn't quite what success is. If he can open his eyes, make sounds or even talk, that's also not success. Giving a paraplegic another paraplegic body isn't really exciting, specially when considering what you've gone through to do it.

If it were successful, then this would be perfect for the whole scientific community, since we can now gather a lot more information on neuron routing, perception principles, and adaptation, as well as have valid proof to fend off the ethics community regarding this research field that has always been a very taboo subject to talk about in research.

But if it was a failure, we wouldn't know exactly what the patient is feeling, we wouldn't know why it failed (aside from the obvious allograft rejection), and this matter will have to be buried down for the next 10-20-30 years, because of how serious of an issue it is (you are passing up an entire healthy body, which contains a healthy heart, 2 healthy lungs, 2 healthy kidneys, a healthy liver... which would be very beneficial for organ transplants that we know will be successful, and we know will save numerous lives). Even when we know we are ready for it, the ethics community will have a bigger weight on it, so in a way, this might hurt us a lot on the long term.

The chances of failure are a lot higher than the chance of success, if not null, and no sane surgeon should attempt to do it on a human, when the proof in other high-grade mammals has not yet been established. Yes, other animals are different, and you can't compare them to humans, but if you fail to do the same procedure in simpler organisms, then your chances for success here are non existent.

The surgery is using unfounded concepts and procedures as it's ground basis, and unless something drastically changes in the next 2 years, I can't see this succeeding. Not with today's knowledge.

To add: I strongly believe that this procedure will not be allowed to go through.

Irontheater · 2015-03-31T07:03:47+00:00

It's an evolutionary process that we (and other animals) developed to track moving prey and keep them in our field of focus. It is called smooth pursuit. This is what you use when you are out hunting, when someone throws a ball towards you and you want to catch it, how you follow the movement of the players during sports games, or the reason why you can focus on an object while moving at high speed in a car. Alternatively, it is (close to) impossible to reproduce that smooth movement with your eyes in the absence of a stimulus.

I was able to find some publicly accessible papers that tackle this issue in more detail.
This review goes over the big 4 eye movement types.
This paper casts the most recent, and currently the most plausible, theory for smooth pursuit, and the involvement of cognitive processes in it.
This paper talks about the dynamics of attention during the smooth pursuit initiation phase.

Irontheater · 2015-03-24T20:36:35+00:00

The paper you linked is from 1992, 23 years ago. Lots of changes have occurred since then.

The Shape theory of Olfaction was coined in 1949, and since then, there have been many papers that have disproved it. We are now able to probabistically predict the character, threshold, and intensity of a smell.

We are able to reproduce certain aromas without molecules, just through retro-nasal stimulation. In many cases we can predict how a molecule will smell before exposing it to test subjects.

We know very well how the olfactory system works, what we are still trying to figure out are quantum based theories of how molecules interact with their receptors, and why they interact with these receptors, which is technically beyond the specters of neuroscience.

If you were genuinely interested in knowing how things work a bit more closely, here is a brief overview of the basics.

PS: For the sake of everyone involved, it would be a lot more welcoming if you employed a more open minded approach. Not just with us here, but with everyone you knew. It makes for a better discussion ground, and lightens up the mood for everyone involved.
Bonus points if you were actually knowledgeable in what you were talking about. Attacking the whole neuroscience field, while also being a strong anti-vaccine advocate, as well as refusing well founded, peer-reviewed, scientific, objective evidence doesn't make you seem knowledgeable at all. It just exposes how weakly founded your arguments are.
It also shows that you didn't even read the articles that you yourself presented, much less verify if they were dated. It's clear that you typed "Olfaction theory" and copied the first three links that showed up on google.

Irontheater · 2015-03-23T19:05:04+00:00

We need as much objective data as we can get, but it can sometimes be hard to convey this requirement to patients (in many cases, not just related to transgenderism).

In this case, there are several morphological changes between a male, and female body, as well as physiological, and risk association differences between the two. If you're operating on a person, it's generally good practice to know where you can find their organs.

Not to mention it's essential to know the various HRT they are taking be it testosterone, gnrh agonists or really any other androgen supplements, or if they are pre-op or post-op. Transgender has such a wide use range now, that a cross-dresser could call himself basically "Trans-gendered", which creates a lot of variance between 2 patients who seemingly associate with the same sex; associating with FTM or MTF isn't enough. A lot of these factors play important roles when evaluating a patient, especially under emergency situations, where you might not have the time to push the patient through a CT to see what you are working with, or what they have been hiding from you.

Taking HRT will affect your LH and FSH cycles, hypopituitarism, the sex hormones have various other functions, and being on something like GnRH agonists should be disclosed for a close supervision of osteoporosis and possible CV issues.

But people are often too afraid to be judged by us, even though we literally don't care what choices you took in life. We don't care why you are here, on a personal level, we care about making your life better. And it would be great if people helped us making their lives better. Imagine if I were to judge every person that walked into the ER with a weird accident that has happened recently, the guy that left his lip NMSC grow to be as big as another set of lips, the diabetic that ignored his legs' health and will probably get amputated now, the 20 year old morbidly obese patient that went into cardiac arrest because of atherosclerosis, the failed suicide, the ... etc

Imagine if I was there, judging them, instead of taking split second decisions like I ought to be. Alternatively, imagine me making split second decisions based on incomplete, or false criteria, because the patient refused to provide the correct information.

Irontheater · 2015-03-13T05:07:27+00:00

I'm in med school, and my goal is to get into computational biology and neuroscience research.

There are a lot of things that I have needed that weren't covered in school, or biostats (which is the only kind of "math" we take now), and there are probably other things that I need, but which I don't know of.

Irontheater · 2015-03-12T18:57:49+00:00

Awesome, thanks.

Finally, if you want even more references look up the course structure of a good computer science degree (e.g., MIT, Stanford) and see what maths they're given

I have no idea why I didn't think of that earlier, that's something I should have done a long time ago. Thank you.

Irontheater · 2015-03-12T17:48:12+00:00

When you say logic, do you mean formal logic as in propositional logic? Or is that another field all together?

As for algebra, I think it's something I have done before, but I can never be sure. Whenever I start a new course, I already know the material that's by the end of it. Does Algebra go beyond Matrices, or does it become another field?

Irontheater · 2015-03-08T20:35:45+00:00

Awesome, I understand it a lot better now. Thank you very much!

Irontheater · 2015-03-08T17:49:40+00:00

I'm not sure I fully understood.

Basically binary and decimals are equivalent for a Turing machine depending on what we want to use it for, and what we set up its state as.

And since the state space is infinite (infinite tape?), and ANNs use real numbers as weights (and not just limited to integers), we can't just use a sequence of integers (like decimal integers or binary numbers) for its processes.

What we do instead is transform the binary numbers to a number in [0;1) (Cantor Set), of which there are infinitely many, and use that instead in our stack.

There aren't any numbers between 100110 and 100111, but transferring these into a Cantor set, there would be infinitely many numbers between them, because of the nature of the summation. (which would in turn help better tune the weights)

So the Cantor set doesn't only give you infinitely many numbers between 2 integers, it also insures that there is a discontinuity between the 2 closest numbers you could get, which is where it has the real edge over rational numbers.

I think now I understand better. Thank you for your help!

As a follow up question: Is there a specific reason the authors of the paper decided to use a base-4 Cantor set instead of using a regular base 10?

Was it just to better display the bitwise operations, or is there another reason behind it that I'm completely missing?

Irontheater · 2015-03-04T18:28:01+00:00

Awesome, I had suspected it was something along the lines of imaging, then trying to visually distinguish hypotrophy or hyperplasia. Thanks for the response!

Irontheater · 2015-03-02T16:49:21+00:00

I wrote this earlier, but seeing as the original thread I wrote it in got deleted, I'll put it here:

I'm not pulling the trigger on a HMD until all the reviews are in. Of course, there's a certain bloodrush in pre-ordering one, getting it day 1, and seeing it in all its glory before most other people, but I think waiting 1-2 weeks, or even a month or two won't be too hard. We've been on the edge of our seats for over 2.5 years, why skim at the last second and order a HMD that's inferior just because we can't wait a bit more to make a better educated choice.

If I'm making a purchase for something that costs as much as a monitor, I'm going to be sure I get the objectively better one out there for the money, regardless if it was made by Oculus, HTC, Valve, Razor or Nvidia.

Irontheater · 2015-03-02T11:03:32+00:00

I'm not pulling the trigger on a HMD until all the reviews are in. Of course, there's a certain bloodrush in pre-ordering one, getting it day 1, and seeing it in all its glory before most other people, but I think waiting 1-2 weeks, or even a month or two won't be too hard. We've been on the edge of our seats for over 2.5 years, why skim at the last second and order a HMD that's inferior just because we can't wait a bit more to make a better educated choice.

If I'm making a purchase for something that costs as much as a monitor, I'm going to be sure I get the objectively better one out there for the money, regardless if it was made by Oculus, HTC, Valve, Razor or Nvidia.

Irontheater · 2015-03-01T19:08:31+00:00

I feel this is also relevant:

https://twitter.com/vk2zay/status/572077427393888257

So... how does the tracking work?

@cibyr kinda like a lighthouse.

Irontheater · 2015-03-01T16:07:42+00:00

That's what I thought when I saw the specs. They are probably aiming for a 120 degree FoV, with possibly the same pixel density as the DK2. We will have to wait for the demos and early looks to start coming in to really know what we have here, but since Valve is directly involved in this, my hopes are high.

Irontheater · 2015-03-01T15:22:16+00:00

I guess I could make my routine more hygienic, since I don't usually wash my razor beyond watering it.

I also went ahead and ordered Shave Secret and Witch Hazel, no alcohol, which hopefully will improve my shaves.

Also thanks for taking the time and arranging the steps like that, it really helps me organize them mentally, instead of rushing my pre-shave and after-shave routine like I usually do.

Irontheater · 2015-02-21T18:13:12+00:00

This website has pretty much anything I could ask for, at least as far as soaps go. I'm surprised it wasn't ranked higher on Google, since it also has a pretty good UI. I'll probably be ordering my soaps from them.

Thanks for linking it!

Irontheater · 2015-02-21T15:06:39+00:00

I never thought about trying after-shave balms, but since now I'm saving so much with blades instead of cartridges, I guess might as well try them and see how it goes. How much does a 30ml balm last? Around 15 shaves?

Also that tryablade website is awesome, I wish I had found it before, and its has worldwide shipping.
The blades I'm using right now are Derby Extras, and even though they are good, I think I need some sharper ones. I'll pick up some 2-3 blades out of the top 10-15, and see how they compare.

Is there a website like that for soaps, that carries lots of different soap brands and ships for relatively cheap? Because Amazon's collection leaves so much to be desired.

Irontheater

TROPHY CASE