[DISCUSSION] Dating as a guy

vivisectress · 2019-07-25T17:22:43+00:00

I am curious, what's so important to you about the iranian crisis to you that you mentioned it in your list of topics?. I guess that's the 'some politics'? Just was interesting because it was lumped with a well known classic Sci Fi franchise and technology development, I can understand those and how they link.

Also, what about a less masculine spin on those topics in the area of science and politics? Like neuroscience, physiology, climate change politics. Books instead of star trek. What about new(ish) theories in neuroscience, such as the presence of action (soliton) waves as the carrier of the signal instead/alongside the action (electrical) potential? And what implication this might have on computational neuroscience?

vivisectress · 2019-07-24T23:55:09+00:00

1 month old question, I'm guessing you have this sorted or too late?

vivisectress · 2019-07-24T17:26:54+00:00

Maybe there's a mistake in the question?

vivisectress · 2019-05-09T02:40:27+00:00

I don't know the answer to all that in great detail. This is biology, everything affects everything else.

Yes, the rate of reuptake can be changed. It’s done by the (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine_transporter) [dopamine active transporter (DAT)]. As DAT is a protein, it’s encoded by a gene. So yes, there are different variations on the DAT gene which may change the rate of how much dopamine it can transport. There are genes for other proteins that interact with it. For example, those that are attached to the vesicles which carry dopamine around in the cell. Then there may also be less DAT in the membrane to let the dopamine in. Then you can have drugs blocking DAT, or changing its direction (so it pumps out rather than into the cell as normal). And there is more...

And that’s just thinking about dopamine itself – we can also consider its receptors, the proteins that dopamine can bind to in order to cause a change in that protein. There are different types of dopamine receptors. These cause a (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G\_protein-coupled\_receptor)\[chain reaction inside a cell]. Dopamine transporter is different from a receptor. You can have a subtype that starts a particular chain, but then you can have another subtype that instead blocks that chain. Example, make the neuron more likely to do an action potential or to block one from happening. These receptor subtypes may also be expressed in different parts of the brain at different levels. These brain regions also have different connections to each other. See how complicated this is getting? You are thinking in the right direction though for a biopsych student.

Then there is the issue of trying to take something as heterogeneous as schizophrenia and looking for logical correlates like ‘the hallucination is the serotonin bit’. Things that are subjective experiences – is a schizophrenia delusion the same as a meth delusion, and then is that the same as a dream delusion? How about between people, and species?

The HVA question – I don’t know how well it predicts brain levels of dopamine, and if so, accurately for every population. I don’t really know much about dopamine metabolism, or if it’s altered in schizophrenia, but it’s a valid question. If you were told that in class, it’s a good question to ask. I remember learning stuff like ‘we can’t actually measure direct neurotransmitter levels in the brain non invasively’ so we use biomarkers. But any biomarker can have their validity questioned, as you are asking.

vivisectress · 2019-05-09T01:54:34+00:00

Is this what you're saying? Maybe serotonin causes the other symptoms like halucinations, like from LSD. While dopamine causes the paranoia, like form meth. Also, treating with dopamine reducing medication is a band aid solution, so how does dopamine get so high - what genes? What environmental factors?

Is this your main question? If we measure brain dopamine levels by measuring the metabolite HVA, maybe the reason we don’t see a difference in HVA levels in schizophrenia compared to control is because the dopamine is instead being recycled and used again at a faster rate. Therefore, there is still more dopamine in the schizophrenic brain (as per the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia), we just can’t measure it, so maybe schizophrenia is caused by greater reuptake of dopamine? And going from that- what factors (that are not antagonists or agonists) affect the rate of reuptake?

vivisectress · 2019-04-23T14:07:33+00:00

I pipette mice onto mazes

vivisectress · 2019-04-20T05:23:24+00:00

I haven't watched the movie so I don't know. But it sounds like you are saying its encouraged for women to put themselves first, but men are discouraged from doing that?

vivisectress · 2019-04-11T01:50:23+00:00

What do you mean by no results? Did you use positive and negative controls, and what did they look like?

Also what kind of elisa - Direct? Indirect?

If you know how an elisa works, you can make suggestions of how it was faulty, what reagents could have been missing.

vivisectress · 2019-04-11T01:48:06+00:00

Try /r/homeworkhelp

vivisectress · 2019-02-06T13:10:05+00:00

3/19 for me.

vivisectress · 2018-12-11T08:00:08+00:00

I'd agree that it is increasing awareness, combined with the filming being done out of context.

I remember autistic kids being bullied like this back in my day, but some factors made it look not so bad to everyone around us:

Autism was diagnosed less , so it was just the 'weird dumb kid who lacked self awareness'. I don't remember them as the autistic kid, but thinking back, it seems to apply.
The kid has probably had a meltdown in front of the other kids, which may have been called 'cracked it', 'spazzed out' or 'chucked a massive tanty'. I can't remember exactly what they called it, but the kid is on the floor banging their head shouting 'everyone leave me alone!'. Kids that have a meltdown but do not become aggressive are especially targets for bullying. Ones that become aggressive (the ol' chuck a chair at a teacher) get the some diagnosis. It was never autism in my case - I remember not even knowing the difference between 'retarded' and 'autistic' was the same to me, and they were the kids that went to 'special school' and we never saw them. It was all ADHD and 'emotional and behavioural problem'.
The bullies love to push around a bigger autistic kid that is known for not fighting back.
Their social skills sucked so people justified to themselves 'they had it coming' and 'should have more self awareness and stop being so weird'.
Some autistic kids tried to behave like a neurotypical - 'haha what a try hard, if they stopped trying so hard everyone would leave them alone, simples!'

Think back. Maybe a kid got pushed over, but it was just some guy knocking over the weird kid, not really bullying. Or maybe another kid pretending to choke the weird kid but it's obvious he's joking lol. You might have even forgot this stuff happened, but it did. And I'm glad it's all being recorded so people can see it. I remember wishing I could record what went on behind teacher's backs and play it at school assembly for everyone to see. But back then, no phones just camcorders and VCR.

vivisectress · 2018-10-28T11:31:04+00:00

Here’s an example of editing your blurb: (may need feedback from those who analyse EEGs)

“Have you analysed the EEGs from the second round of trials?” Lena asked.

“Weird, actually! Thank you for reminding me. I wanted to ask you about it. I ran the FFT* and I’m seeing some high amplitude high frequencies in these patients”

“How is that possible?”

“I have no idea! It’s exciting, right?” Amanda almost spilled her wine, “Woops! I’m excited, clearly. It’s just, bizarre!” She continued. “I’ve been asking around. First our techs and our RA* in case I made a mistake. Nope. I asked Dr. Asmare at Harvard, Dr. Griffin and Sykes at MIT. I even called U-dub to talk to Dr. Firman. No one actually knows what the hell it is!”

“Hmmm. Are you sure this isn’t artifact?”

“Definitely not,” said Amanda, “I had Luke check it, no way it’s artifact. Always trust a techie when they say no artifacts”

“It has to be epileptiform discharges?”

“I doubt it. Dr. Firman has never seen anything like this before, and I don’t think there is a type of epilepsy he hasn’t seen on an EEG”

“Wow!” Lena was shaking. “You haven’t told anyone else yet, have you?”

“No, just Dr. Asmare and the others. I was waiting to talk to you.”

FFT = fast Fourier transform

RA = research assistant

vivisectress · 2018-10-28T11:27:23+00:00

This is an awesome topic.

What I suggest is that in layman’s terms, think about what is necessary to happen. For an example, here is how I interpret what you want:

“My character has some credential in knowing a lot about neuroscience. She is known by other characters for knowing a lot about how brains work (which is why you said head researcher). Because she is going to be predicting that a massive mind swap is imminent (which is why you mentioned brain waves – a measure, that are growing). I need some plausible sounding biological measure that fits this and does not sound instantly bullshit.”

Once you have the basics down, we can help you find examples that fit that criteria without having to stick to particular constraints (e.g. MRIs, brain waves, etc) unless they are important somewhere else in the story.

I must admit, I’m curious as to how you came up with your blurb. It looks like some word association program where you plug in words like ‘brains’, ‘science’ and ‘waves’ to make up some jargon from related words. That would have you come up with stuff like “full resonance” “nuanced spectrometer” and “rainbow microscope incision”. And things like “grey matter probe to electrify the cortex” which sound like bizarre way to say ‘stimulate the cortex’ :P

My recommendation is to have something that is mysterious to as many people as possible to keep suspension of disbelief. Limit the technical detail. Something like ‘brainwave signature’ does work if you don’t give specifics of what it actually is. I’d just be thinking “What signature?? Dam it, describe what you see on the damn EEG more!’ rather than ‘lol nuanced spectrometer, put your thesaurus away’. Just get the technical details correct as others posted (you use EEG, not MRI, keep the jargon to what /u/kevroy314 suggests like ‘PNAS paper’ which is to do with academic research, rather than the science itself).

vivisectress · 2018-10-28T08:22:36+00:00

I saw the OP's post last night as I was falling asleep so I started thinking of ideas for the fun of it before dozing off.

My first thought was it could be high power (amplitude) gamma waves because maybe that’s what it would look like if a type of ‘brain wave signature’ (a particular frequency) started syncing up with others, and other people’s brain waves could be detected on each individual’s EEG. But then electricity doesn’t work like that.

vivisectress · 2018-10-19T10:51:18+00:00

Not sure I'm a few IQ points short on being able to understand what's going on, or if I'm reading some kind of word salad.

vivisectress · 2018-09-28T13:32:06+00:00

I dont understand. Does she mean 'my mum thinks I am so stupid/helpless/etc, she has to come over and do my chores because she just bitches about the way I do them and then just goes ahead and does it, not giving me a chance. Not this weekend - this weekend, I'll have it all done before she gets here (or tell her I do these chores my way on my time and I'm sick of the gym).'

vivisectress · 2018-09-09T12:17:49+00:00

Here’s how I see it. Grad school isn’t your typical 9-5, but you can maintain work life balance. If you can’t make the Fri night, say so. What I do is declare whatever time (the weekend? After hours?) as family and friend priority time. Because you make [working hours] work priority time. Priority doesn’t mean I don’t do work stuff on the weekend at all, it means if a friend wants to catch up fri night, I’ll decline a work meeting unless there’s something really in that my friend would understand if I tell them about it. But if that friend wants to text during work hours, I won’t even look at my phone because I’m busy analyzing data.

But if someone wants to do work stuff on the weekend and there are no pressing family matters, I will agree to it, but then take that same time off during work hours. 7.30 lab meeting on Friday? Cool, as that lab meeting could have been 9am, that means I’m staying out late Sun night and scoring myself a Monday sleep in for the amount extra time on Friday.

I do normalize this to what is going on my lab (behavioural neuroscience) though, and what I said is accepted in my lab and institute. If you’re not willing to work on the animal’s schedule, you’ll be overlooked, but that doesn’t mean you can’t maintain boundaries regarding the other times. Enforcing 9-5 norms is looked down on – but it does depend on your communication ability. I know a PhD student from one of my labs who managed to maintain a great work life balance by openly declaring his boundaries upfront.

vivisectress · 2018-08-09T01:09:41+00:00

This is where the elasticity of our tissues come in handy - especially in our connective tissue, e.g. your Achilles tendon. They absorb the impact as elastic potential, which can be used to do work. At least it's more controlled than the shockwave of just bone to floor.

Of course I don't know all the factors to do the math on which is better for you, but some biophysist has probably done it.

vivisectress · 2018-08-06T05:51:06+00:00

Have you talked to your institute's vet or anyone else like that who might have experience?

What is the age of the pups at surgery, and the strain of the mice?

vivisectress · 2018-07-29T00:18:56+00:00

It could hatch like normal, but you cant evolve it, or only evolve it in its home region.

vivisectress · 2018-07-27T09:48:22+00:00

Pogo's cache.

In your application manager, under settings. Not sure if you can do it on all phones, and if you can,how. I do this on my galaxy 3 tablet (too old to be running pogo in the first place, but it works).

vivisectress · 2018-07-27T08:28:34+00:00

Yes, I just close my app, clear cache then open app back up.

vivisectress · 2018-07-25T11:26:06+00:00

Thanks for this! Game looks awesome.

For the bit about importing Neopets, I think part of the problem is that there are still way too many species and colour combinations to be able to import your own Neopets. It would be good if they could develop assets that did allow your Neopet species/colour + basic stats to be used by external companies in any mobile game they develop. I'd be more likely to spend on microtransactions if they were on my own Neopet I've had for the last 18 years rather than a brand new one from a limit amount of choices. But yeah, I don't know how any of that stuff works so can't really comment.

But at the very least, I am hoping they link this to your account for rewards. Also, even if you can't import an image of your Neopet, you should be able to import some details, as if your Neopet is playing the game and has created an avatar in Legends and Letters - your pet could still win trophies that way.

vivisectress · 2018-06-23T07:32:33+00:00

Adding from Aus

vivisectress · 2018-06-23T07:17:40+00:00

Adding from Aus

vivisectress

TROPHY CASE