Tag: homeobox

jesus fucking christ i don’t understand neuroscience at all

i have to read a paper that’s basically about comparing how monkeys’ neurons fire/are connected when they do a basic matching/pattern-recognition task, versus a neural network trained to do the same thing, and they’re making some kind of conclusion based on–– well, i think they’re arguing that their neural network is a good model for the actual brains, and then based on that saying they can make a bunch of extended other predictions now using their neural network as a “good”/“accurate” model. which, yes, is just how all data-based model-building works. i have no idea what those conclusions are, but uh––they made them, maybe!

see, i can very roughly look at a figure like this 

and say, ok, the top is their biological data, the bottom is the model, and they’re arguing that the outcomes are similar enough that the model is doing a good job and can be studied on its own bc it’s potentially biologically relevant. i don’t know what any of these features mean (the x axis is milliseconds and the y axis is Hz, if you’re curious) or what it would look like for them to be disqualifyingly dissimilar, but sure. those look like they’re doing the same thing, why not.

but then they move into talking about the model on its own and like

apparently these graphs are of the “dynamical landscape” of neural trajectories.

my feeling on this: ‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽‽

Watch the brain jiggle with each heartbeat

pointlesslypointing:

sciencenewsforstudents:

With every heartbeat, fluid squishes through the brain and jiggles it like a bowl full of jelly.

A new twist on magnetic resonance imaging illuminates these pulsing brain ripples, movements so subtle that they had escaped detection by current imaging technology. Abnormal brain motion could signal trouble, such as aneurysms or damage from a concussion.

In the new work, scientists honed an existing method called amplified MRI, a technique that stitches together multiple images taken at precise times of the heartbeat. Using an algorithm that exaggerates tiny movements, researchers at Stanford University, Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., and the University of Auckland in New Zealand created a movie of the brain’s rhythmic writhing as blood and cerebrospinal fluid pump in and drain out.

This evokes a wholly unpleasant emotion I cannot describe

Watch the brain jiggle with each heartbeat

lazyevaluationranch:

5/5/2018

Today we found some duckweed growing in the little square ditch next to the garage. Each plant is a floating leaf that can reproduce by budding off a new leaf, which this species can do about once every three days if they have enough nutrients. So the amount of duckweed you have doubles every three days. This makes them pretty much impossible to eradicate – if you miss even one tiny leaf, you’ll have hundreds again soon.

Okay, so the ditch is about twenty centimeters wide, a meter long, and 10 centimeters deep. It contains about 20 liters of water, and currently about 10 grams of duckweed. This is fine. May 8th, there will be 20 grams of duckweed, May 11th 40 grams, and May 14th (Dance Like A Chicken Day) 80 grams. Seems reasonable.

There will be a kilogram of duckweed twelve days later, on May 23 (Lucky Penny Day). Lucky Penny Day, that sounds totally harmless.Twelve days after that, on June fourth (National Cheese Day!) there will be twenty kilograms of duckweed; it’ll weigh as much as the water in the ditch does. Mm, cheese. June 7th (National Chocolate Ice Cream Day), the twenty-liter ditch full of duckweed will be as dense as solid stone, and June 22nd (National Chocolate Eclair Day) it’ll be considerably denser than gold. I will encourage the ducks to swim in the seething hypergreen and eat some duckweed. They are unlikely to be interested.

Sometime around July 10th (Teddy Bear Picnic Day) the concrete around the drainage ditch full of half a space shuttle’s weight in duckweed will be crumbled to nothing. Somewhere around August 21st (Senior Citizens’ Day), the duckweed will begin to burrow down through the mountain we live on, heading inexorably toward the center of the Earth. Hooray! No more duckweed!

Things will be quiet on the duckweed front until December 25th, 2018, when the duckweed at the center of the Earth will have about 1% the total mass of Earth. Walking may be noticably more difficult. Satellites will start to fail. Merry Christmas, with love from plants that double in size every three days!

A month later, the duckweed will outweigh the rest of the Earth and start pulling down the moon. Happy Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day! Bubble wrap cannot save us now.

You know how most of the matter in the universe is “dark matter” that scientists claim can’t be observed, because the equations don’t work without something that outweighs the entire visible universe pulling everything together? I’m not saying it’s all duckweed out there, and scientists call it “dark matter” that “can’t be observed” because that’s less terrifying or anything.

Wait. No. That’s exactly what I’m saying.

cancerbiophd:

lmao a third of the tags on the lab fail astrology thing are “OMG THAT’S ME I’VE DONE THAT” and the other third are people yelling at me bc how dare i personally attack them like that

and the other third are those wondering how on earth one drops an agarose gel?? so i maked this figure 1:

image