The Scientist in the Yellow Hat

The Call of the Wild?

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 23:00:00 +0000

In the wide sprawl of Stanford, all devoid of inclines,
You'll find many green trees in too-straight lines.

One of the main things I miss about Berkeley is probably the surprising amount of wilderness within campus - Strawberry Creek supplied many beautiful places to sit and rest among the redwoods and to forget for a couple minutes that I was actually in the middle of a city. Here, there's almost nowhere on campus that is out of sight and out of earshot of roads and cars.

I want trees towering overhead, engulfing me in a cocoon of nature, providing me with the kind of scenery that my eyes and brain were made for, the kind of scenery that is easy on my visual cortex and doesn't require as much attention to take in. Fewer straight lines, fewer edges, fewer people and cars and brightly-lit storefronts.

I want to perch on a log among fallen leaves to read an interesting book, undisturbed by the noise of humanity, outside of the words in my hand and head. The susurrus of the wind through the trees, the gentle rush and bubble of the stream winding its way through campus, the occasional chittering of an agitated squirrel - just evoking those ideas in my own mind to write them out here is calming. It's peaceful. It puts my mind at rest.

Vampire worms!

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 20:09:00 +0000

I've got a post up at the Stanford Neuroblog about vampire worms and a cool comparative connectivity study. Check it out!

How do you justify your life?

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 23:57:00 +0000

One sunny spring morning, I walked along a road by the coast of Monterey. The lighter blue of the sky contrasted the darker of the sea, though the border between the two was difficult to make out in the distant horizon's haze.

I soon reached my destination, the Hopkins Marine Station, where we were to have our annual neuroscience student retreat. I walked into the little conference building and immediately gravitated towards a cup of tea (though like Ikea furniture, it was not pre-assembled). I sat down, chatted with some of my classmates for a bit, and settled down for some excellent talks.

Alas, our first guest was unable to make it, so we moved on to a panel discussion with the five professors we had in front of us. Some smiled amicably, while others retained their normal, stern countenances. There would be curious questions, a little friendly banter, and perhaps some grains of wisdom about life after a PhD that some of us could incorporate into our sand castles of self-confidence.

Then the first question was picked out of a hat.

"How do you justify your life?"

How do you live with the path you have chosen? the question asked. You are obviously extremely hard-working, brilliant people. Why haven't you put these characteristics to use in a way that helps more people? Why aren't you doctors and directors of non-profits that seek to educate, heal, and bring people out of poverty?

Kind of a loaded question.

That day, my own answer to the question (though it was not asked of me), was simple. You need to hone a knife before you can use it to its greatest extent. My PhD will teach me skills that will allow me to do a whole bunch of things. I will discover something in my research that will help a large number of people at once, rather than just one or two for a short time.

But some days, I simply can't justify it. I spent at least a quarter of my college career doing a minor in Global Poverty and Practice. I rode the roller coaster through Ananya Roy's class on the hopes and challenges of trying to alleviate poverty.

The challenges, the factors that encouraged poverty were systemic. They were entrenched so deep in the laws and the culture and even the language that it seemed impossible to budge them. Austerity measures, neo-capitalism, why couldn't people see how badly these things hurt the countries they were meant to help? Or did they, and did they persist because of the gain to their own? How could you possibly change the world when it looked like this and when people had purposefully made it so?

And then, hope, most often from the bottom up, from people who worked tirelessly in some small patch of the globe, focused on a simple goal. Getting clean water to a village, teaching the next generation of children principles of sanitation and hygiene and that disease is not always inevitable. Empowering a woman to establish a livelihood with a micro-loan and a way to keep her savings. Working with a constituency to design structures that fit their needs. Small things, perhaps, but each person involved was an agent of change. With so many agents in the field, that change added up, and society began to change in a positive way.

But then there were the moral quandaries, those that came with speaking for another population, with trying to change a long-held tradition simply because you thought it was for their benefit, with the patronization and the view that there was a single path to being "developed".

But again the fact that we were being trained to avoid many of those pitfalls, or at least to think deeply about the unintended consequences of our desire to help, reminded me that there was a chance things could work out.

Then I spent a month teaching, doing science experiments with kids in rural schools in India, and good god, that was frustrating! And exhilarating. And extremely rewarding. I prepared for that for a semester, and still I didn't know how to navigate the differences between what the teachers wanted out of me and what I wanted to contribute. But I muddled through it, and it felt like I had done something, something tangible, something to help the world. It wasn't just voluntourism, I had gone to my own country, to a place where my skills, especially my ability to communicate in both English and Telugu, were useful. I worked with the teachers, I tried to design experiments that fit into their existing curriculum, that were cool but taught essential scientific principles, that the teachers could continue to do after I was gone.

I could justify that.

I came home, and I dealt with the aftermath, with thinking about how to continue helping that NGO (the Rural Development Foundation, if you're interested), with analyzing what I had actually done, what I should have done, what my role was in the world.

And then I went to grad school to do basic research in neuroscience because that was what I had always wanted to do and because discovering the unknown was exciting! Perhaps I turned away from because it was so confusing. I settled back into my comfortable life plan. I'd get a PhD, do some groundbreaking research, go on to win the Nobel Prize, etc. etc. But I feel like I've abandoned a part of my life. I put so much time into thinking about issues of poverty, and my interactions with professors, classmates, and the people I worked with in India changed the way I thought about a lot of things.

Now here I am. I haven't followed through on the helping people part. I'm not working to alleviate poverty. Sure, I've helped teach some kids about the brain here, tried to get them excited about science, but I'm at Stanford, in the middle of Silicon Valley in California. Shouldn't I be helping where I am most needed? The vast majority of the middle and high schoolers in the immediate area are fairly well off, but then again, it's often difficult to see those who aren't. It's much easier to see and want to help spatially distant neighbors than spatially proximate strangers (I'm taking these words from this excellent GlobalPOV video at the bottom of the post). There's good for me to do here, so why have I narrowed my focus to grad school?

I was being selfish.

I am being selfish.

Do I have the right to be selfish?

How do I justify my life?

Some days, I think I have the right to do what I'm doing. Neuroscience is a passion. This is what I'm good at (when I'm not feeling the effects of imposter syndrome). My time is best spent where I have the most skill, and that is where I will make my contribution to society. I need to learn to focus on one thing, become a master of one trade rather than a jack of, in the end, none. I don't know where exactly my path will go, but I believe that in the future, I can still help people, whether through my work or outside of it.

Some days, however, I just can't quite justify my choice (because it is a choice). I guess this is one of those days.

Who Sees Poverty?

Salsa soulmate

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Several weeks ago, for the first time since the month I got here, I went to the biweekly salsa social on campus. And realized that there's actually quite a few good leaders here (though nobody seemed to know the reverse cross body, alas). Why on earth have I been missing these events?!

Dancing is like a high for me. If I'm dancing something I enjoy, the effect is like alcohol - loosened inhibitions, living in the moment, lots of dopamine reward. So I have no problem asking guys to dance. This has nothing to do with my skill level. I may be a fairly decent follower now, but even when I was first learning swing by going to the occasional Lindy at Night in Berkeley, I didn't care who I asked so long as I got to dance.

So with this attitude, at some point during the evening, I went up to a guy standing near the door and asked if he wanted to dance before I realized that he had his jacket on and was probably about to leave. But he said sure, so I was happy to dance.

I don't think I've ever danced with someone so...effortlessly. I lost track of everything but where he was, where I was, and what his movements were telling me to do next. Without a basic in sight, he spun me through a variety of figures. And at the end, when we stopped, he just kind of quietly said, "Wow." And I was still kind of in shock, so all I could think of to say was "Thank you," like you say after any dance, and then he said thank you and we both walked away. Oops.

I still don't really know what I should've said, besides telling him that I enjoyed that dance as much as he did, but I want to go back to the next salsa thing (which unfortunately will have to be 3 Saturdays from now because I'm going to Tahoe this weekend) and see if I can find him again. I wonder if he'll be there, or if he looked for me at the last social that I wasn't in town for. I'm hoping I can recognize him - I think he was handsome, but it was dark, and remember how I mentioned that dancing was like alcohol for me? Even if I can't recognize him by his face though, I think I can definitely recognize him by his dancing.

Good Choice

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

And now we finally come to the last one on the last day of the year. I'll end this series on a sweet note.

Challenge 11: In fifty words write a love story with a foreigner and a bottle.

Good Choice

“What do I do with her?!” he asked, voice panicky.

“Just be natural,” came the tired reply. “She’s yours too.”

Dale glanced down at the crinkly-eyed, blanket-swaddled baby. For a second, she seemed so small, so strange, so…foreign. But as the warm bottle arrived, he smiled, glad he’d returned.

Flying High

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Only one more to go, but before I get there, a little taste of something slightly longer. This is the "Cheating" Challenge, and was supposed to be 200 words maximum. Maximum?! What is this craziness? It's supposed to be 200 words EXACTLY. So that's what I did.

See if you can spot the Tom Swifty ;)

Challenge: Write a short scene in which a character "cheats."

Flying High

As Dorian settled the helmet on his head, he could feel the adrenaline rush starting. One strong kick and the motor began to thrum. He looked out over the scene in front of him and grinned. This was going to be fun.

With a twist of his wrist, the bike growled and came to life. Dorian leaned forward excitedly as he sped down the slope and then up again off the ramp.

Yes! Finally, he was flying again!

The familiar black-robed figure appeared floating by his side. “This time, you really are coming with me,” said Death grimly.

The audience cheered for their newly returned hero, then gasped as the realization struck them: with this trajectory, Dorian would never clear the last truck.

Dorian had been waiting for this. The stadium fell silent, he pressed the button, and the release from the hidden canister of compressed nitrogen pushed him to safety. The tire spun in the air two inches from the edge of the truck, and he landed to an eruption of cheers.

Pulling off the helmet, he looked to his left. The reaper was gone, and he had once again cheated death. Now that was what life was about.

When You Have Eliminated the Impossible...

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Based on a great Sherlock Holmes quote.

Challenge 6: In fifty words, write a whodunnit.

When You Have Eliminated the Impossible...

Davis dug through the cupboard, searching for his carefully hidden box of Marshmallow Pebbles. Pouring them into the bowl, he noticed a distinct lack of the chewy, colorful title objects.

He considered the possibilities. Jimmy was on vacation, Barry couldn’t reach the top shelf, which meant…had he been sleepwalking?

His Ears Will Be Ringing

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Challenge 3: In fifty words write a story with three mood changes and apple pie (in any quantity).

His Ears Will Be Ringing

“I got you a present!”

Sherry put on the lovely green ring, admiring the color as it turned blue.

“Now, you’ve gotta promise not to get mad,” Jerry continued, eyes flicking to the ring. “I’ve gotta tell you something.”

“…'Kay.”

“I…kinda ate the whole apple pie.”

The ring turned black.

Packed Bleachers

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

One of my favorites, for sheer how-on-earth-did-I-come-up-with-this?

Challenge 2: In fifty words write a cliffhanger including a rubber duck and a vegetable.

Packed Bleachers

The Millikanville Town Fair’s final, nail-biting event had arrived: the Oddly Shaped Vegetable contest. The Obama-mato had been rejected on the grounds that it was a fruit, but the dragon carrot, the anatomically precise cabbage brain, and Mrs. Winston’s rubber-duck turnip were still in the running.

“And the winner is…”

Pirates of the Sea++

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

New Challenge 1: In fifty words write a story that includes a pirate and rubber gloves.

Pirates of the Sea++

“Zack, what are you doing?”

“Hold up, mom, I’m seeding the last season of Chuck.”

“You’re 25! If you’re not going to get a job, you can at least help out around the house!” She entered, flinging a pair of rubber gloves at him. “Clean the bathroom.”

“Mommm –”

“Now."

“Fiiine…”

On-the-Job Training

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

50 Words was gone for a while, but returned in its second generation with a whole new set of challenges.

Challenge 1: In fifty words write a story that includes a pirate and rubber gloves.

On-the-Job Training

“This is a stick-up,” said the cutlass at his throat. “Rubber gloves behind your head.”

“…you serious?”

“I’m dead serious. And you’re plain dead unless I get my booty.”

“You’re probably new at this –”

“The loot, dammit!”

“Look! I’ve been trying to tell you – this is a fishing boat!”

Time Waits For No Man

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Challenge 28: Story must be centered around the phrase "Be careful what you wish for".

Time Waits For No Man

More time, that’s all he’d wanted. Time to finish his presentation, time to play with his kids…

He’d chuckled as his daughter urged him to toss a coin into the well. He’d humored her.

Well, now he had time. All of history, in fact, if this really was the Paleozoic.

Breakout

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Challenge 27: Story must include someone seated, someone standing, and a view of the horizon.

Breakout

Dorian sat at the balcony’s edge, legs dangling between the posts. Gazing through the bars of his prison, he followed the endless cornfields till they met the sky. In two weeks he’d graduate and be done with this place.

First things first. Sighing, he rose and returned to his desk.

A Warm, Fuzzy Feeling

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

A silly one.

Challenge 27: Story must include someone seated, someone standing, and a view of the horizon.

A Warm, Fuzzy Feeling

She leaned on the railing, gazing at the sunset. A cool breeze whipped past her, and she shivered.

He quickly wrapped her in a blanketed embrace, whispering in her ear, “At least your feet are warm.”

She giggled, for this was indeed true. Charlie the retriever was sitting on them.

Two Halves of a Rainbow

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Bit of a reference to something you might know ;)

Challenge 27: Story must include someone seated, someone standing, and a view of the horizon.

Two Halves of a Rainbow

Reds and pinks and oranges. Sunset colors.

Davy, standing behind her chair, placed his hands on her shoulders as they stared at the sea.

Would today be the day they would see the sky’s rainbow enhanced?

There it was!

The green flash!

Five years of waiting. It was finally time.

Gone

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Another one I'm proud to have written, though of the past rather than the future.

Challenge 27: Story must include someone seated, someone standing, and a view of the horizon.

Gone

Eyes glazed, hands trembling, she rummaged through the records.

She placed the needle and stumbled back, collapsing into the armchair.

Music wafted out. Their song.

She reached for the picture frame beside her. A happy couple, beaming at the photographer as the sun set behind them.

Teary-eyed, she smiled, remembering.

Childhood Dreams Fulfilled

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

This one is my absolute favorite of the 50-word stories I've written.

Challenge 27: Story must include someone seated, someone standing, and a view of the horizon.

Childhood Dreams Fulfilled

“It’s beautiful,” Gary remarked. “I’ve wanted to see this sunset since I was little.”

Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room, Sally looked up at him.

On the ceiling above her, Gary stood upside down, staring out the window at the curvature of the Earth.

“I know. Me too."

Judge a Horse By Its Cover

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

As my excuse, it was Christmas time, and, well, you know how I like re-lyricking songs.

Challenge 26: Story must include a horse, a prize and a happy ending.

Judge a Horse By Its Cover

Polly the mini dwarf horse
Was a very tiny mare.
Maybe you even saw her,
And didn’t notice she was there.

All of the purebred stallions
Designated her last place.
Whenever they ran derbies,
She could barely even race.

Judge by covers, broncos – look,
Now she’s on the Guinness Book!

Ring-Around-the-Horsie

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Challenge 26: Story must include a horse, a prize, and a happy ending.

Ring-Around-the-Horsie

“Please mom, two more dollars?”

“Okay, fine. But this is your last try, Marty.”

The money was exchanged for three rings.

Swoosh. Miss.

Boink. Oh man, that just bounced off the bottle!

Tink-toink. Finally!

“Here you go, little man. We ran out of goldfish, so you get the seahorse.”

“Cool!”

A Tempting Heist

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Not one of my favorites, because it requires you to know something about Dali (or look it up), but I wrote it, so here it is.

Challenge 26: Story must include a horse, a prize, and a happy ending.

A Tempting Heist

Francis strode purposefully through dark halls, weaving between statues, through archways, past Impressionist paintings.

Upon arrival, he gazed reverently at his prize, Dalí’s rendition of The Temptation of St. Anthony.

The plan was perfect, his part simple – just walk out with the painting. Time to take this long-legged horse home.

Time to Go

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Challenge 26: Story must include a horse, a prize and a happy ending.

Time to Go

She returned home that night to, “You’re late again, you bitch!”
As usual.
Gathering her things, she strode toward the door. Brutal arms grabbed her. An elbow in the thigh – Charlie horses weren’t debilitating, but they hurt – he loosened his grip, and she wrenched herself away with her prize: freedom.

Someday

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:50:00 +0000

Given that there have been no new challenges or progress on the book since 2010, I get the feeling that 50 Words on the Rocks: Short Stories to Sip On is probably not getting published. So how about I continue putting up the stories I wrote?

This time, though, you're going to get them one at a time, to sip on, as they were meant to be taken in.

Challenge 26: Story must include a horse, a prize and a happy ending.

Someday

“They won first place and lived happily ever after.”

A snuggle, a goodnight kiss. As I tiptoed out, closing the door, a tiny voice mumbled, “Mommy?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Can I have a horsey too?”

“Someday, dear.”

“…always someday…”

Someday, darling, you’ll understand why I saved for your college tuition instead.

SfN 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 20:05:00 +0000

(Oops, never clicked publish on this post.

I am at the Society for Neuroscience Conference 2011! I opted to use the online version of the conference program because it had an itinerary planner that you could use with your mobile device. I knew there would be >30,000 people here. I still goggled at the length of the list of poster sessions, but when my friend picked up her physical, paper program, my jaw completely dropped to the floor (or it would've if it weren't hinged on to the rest of my skull). This is what it looks like:

7 books. 7 WHOLE BOOKS. Wow. It's a bit overwhelming.

The jet lag doesn't help either, so I'm going to go check out the 10-15 posters/areas on my list for this afternoon and head back to the hotel for a nap.

Electrophysiology

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 16:41:00 +0000

Last month, I had my first experience with patch clamping neurons. In the neuro program here, the two weeks before the official quarter begins are spent in boot camp. The graduate students in this interdisciplinary field tend to come from various backgrounds, from electrical engineering to psychology to molecular biology. Boot camp, then, is meant to get everybody on the same page about certain important neuroscience concepts and techniques.

Neurons communicate with each other through the use of electrical signals. If you recall, a cell membrane is hydrophobic in the middle, which means that water and charged particles cannot pass through. A neuron uses this property to maintain a voltage across its membrane - it pumps certain ions in and certain ones out in such a way that there are more negatively-charged ions inside than outside, meaning the inside of the cell is more negative than the outside.

The electrochemical gradient of the sodium ion (Na⁺) depends on both the concentration and the electrical potential difference between the inside of the cell, and is set up in such a way that if a path across the membrane opens up, these cations will immediately flow inward. When a neuron is signaling, sodium-selective channels open and create that path through the membrane. This causes the inside of the neuron to become more positive than the outside, flipping the sign across the membrane; this is the beginning of an action potential. There are certain channels that only open up when the voltage change passes a certain threshold, but these allow neighboring regions of the neuron to pass sodium as well, such that this flip of voltage is passed down the length of the axon. Potassium (K⁺) channels open with a slight delay and do the opposite, so the membrane voltage is flipped back slightly past normal in a wave following the original depolarization.

In patch clamping, you start with a tiny microelectrode that consists of a very thin pipette containing a conducting solution, whose tip is on the order of 2-3 microns (1/50th of a millimeter). Using a control box called a micro-manipulator, you watch through a high-power microscope and move the electrode in increments of less than a micron until you can rest it on the surface of the cell you're trying to record from. Cell membranes are flexible, and if you've done this right, the membrane should stick to the outside of your pipet and form a seal across the open tip.

Now, for a whole-cell recording, you have to break into the cell. You want to break open the patch of membrane across the open tip without tearing the membrane away from the outside of the pipet, so that you have the only hole into the cell. This requires a most advanced form of technology, on par with expensive microscopes and carefully pulled microelectrodes: your mouth.

No, seriously. Electrophysiology is still a developing technique, and there is not yet that much standardization between labs. In order to break the membrane, you want to apply suction in a small pulse (or multiple pulses, depending on the lab's preferred technique). Doing this by mouth is actually pretty accurate once you get the hang of it, though sometimes you end up sucking large portions of the membrane into the pipette before you ever break it open. Luckily, the thinness of the tip means that even if you apply a lot of suction, only a small portion of that will be evident to the cell, and it does take a surprisingly large amount of suction to break in.

So now you're in, and thanks to slightly more modern technology, you can use your single electrode to clamp the voltage or the current at a set amount while simultaneously recording the current or voltage, respectively. And then you hope that this cell is not leaky, not dying, and will actually have an interesting response to stimulation. That's how science goes.

A Beginning of an End and a Beginning of a Beginning

noreply@blogger.com (Biocuriousgeorgie) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 07:55:00 +0000

Okay, time for me to be excited. I just got the keys to my apartment in Stanford's grad student housing today. It's actually pretty spacious, and furnished to boot. I a couple days, I'll start moving my stuff over and organizing everything, which will make me happy because my room at home is currently a total mess (it is over capacity - all available space is filled and even clean clothing must sit in piles).

The timing is perfect. All my traveling has been finished for a few weeks, and I've been heading towards being bored. Actually, I was afraid I wouldn't be bored by the time school started. This would be a disaster, because then I wouldn't want to start school and would have second thoughts about not taking a year off before grad and not be completely rested (because I wouldn't want to be burned out already!), etc. etc.

Turns out my summer was just more exciting than usual, and all I needed was 2 weeks of doing nothing to want to do something meaningful again. Phew. I feel ready to get back into things now. And actually having a schedule and work to do means I will probably return to updating this blog more often than once in 3 weeks. I hope.