Breakfast casserole with sausage, mushrooms, onion, and spinach. I thought the extra veggies upped the class a little!
02.14.12 Dessert
I forgot to take a picture of our actual Valentine’s Day dinner, but six of us had pasta, salad, and bread for our “usual” Tuesday night dinner. Then, we had this cake.
02.07.12 Dinner
A Pinterest recipe: chicken breasts, cream cheese, salsa, corn, and black beans cooked all day in the crock pot. It looked kind of gross, but served with cheese, spinach, and more salsa on tortillas, it was pretty good! I made the leftovers of the meat concoction into a casserole with some rice and tortillas crunched up on top.
02.06.12 Dinner
This was an attempt to get Meg to eat with us. Peas, tiny shell pasta, bacon and a light cream-Parmesan sauce. She ate until she had a bite of bacon, then stopped and asked for a cookie.
Primer: Electrophysiology
These posts, tagged “Primer,” are posted for two reasons: 1). to help me get better at teaching non-scientists about science-related topics; and 2). to help non-scientists learn more about things they otherwise would not. So, while I realize most people won’t read these, I’m going to write them anyway, partially for my own benefit, but mostly for yours.
It’s been awhile since I posted one of these, but as I’m working on radically different science than I have in years past, and people ask me “what I do,” I figured I should take the time to explain, to some degree.
Wikipedia defines “electrophysiology” in the following way:
Electrophysiology (from Greek ἥλεκτρον, ēlektron, “amber” [see the etymology of “electron”]; φύσις, physis, “nature, origin”; and -λογία, -logia) is the study of the electrical properties of biological cells and tissues. It involves measurements of voltage change or electric current on a wide variety of scales from single ion channel proteins to whole organs like the heart. In neuroscience, it includes measurements of the electrical activity of neurons, and particularly action potential activity.
So, in the most general sense, I’m “listening to neurons talk to each other,” and occasionally, “interrupting their ‘conversations'” in various ways. When I talk about “conversations,” I’m referring to the act of neurotransmission, whereby one neuron sends a chemical signal across a synapse to another neuron, resulting in the propagation of that signal (an action potential), or sometimes the inhibition of another signal.
As I talked about in a previous primer, in order for an action potential to occur, various ion channels in the membrane of a neuron must open, allowing sodium (Na+) from outside the cell to come in, and potassium (K+) to go out. Other ions will play roles as well, including chloride (Cl-) and calcium (Ca2+).
Using electrophysiology, it is possible to measure the movement of these ions across a cell membrane using relatively simple principles of physics. Specifically, [V=IR], or [voltage = current X resistance]. If you hold two of the terms of this equation constant, it is possible to determine the third term. Effectively, we do this using a “patch pipette,” a small, sharp, glass tube that has a wire electrode running through it. If you know the resistance of the pipette, and you hold the electrode at a constant voltage, you can measure the current across the membrane of a cell (i.e. the flow of ions).
In short, this diagram describes the actual process of making this measurement, using a technique called “patch clamp“:
Looking through a microscope (like the one pictured above), you move one of these glass electrode pipettes to be just touching the membrane of a cell. You have to be very careful so you don’t puncture the cell, thus damaging the cell membrane to the point where you can’t make accurate measurements. You then apply a small amount of suction using a syringe to actually suck some of the cell membrane inside the pipette. Once you have a strong seal formed (typically termed a “gigaseal”), you can apply a brief, large amount of suction with your syringe to rupture the membrane of the cell, where now, the inside of the cell is being exchanged with whatever you put on the inside of the pipette. The internal solution of a pipette is usually something like potassium, basically trying to recreate what the inside of a cell would be, aside from all the organelles, however you can add compounds or drugs to manipulate the actions of channels you are trying to study. Typically, though, you apply drugs to the outside of the cell, as well.
So, a real-world example of how this technique is used would be in my study of NMDA channels. The NMDA receptor is a sodium channel and is very important in neurotransmission, but especially in memory. When I have a cell “patched” like in the diagram above, I can apply the drug, NMDA, to the cell and see a large sodium current on my computer screen, kinda like this one.
So, over time, when a drug like NMDA or this “Blocker” is applied, you can see a change in the current (measured in “picoamps”) across the membrane of the cell. In this case, we would read these data such that NMDA opens its channel and sodium ions flood inward, then that current is reduced by the “Blocker” that was applied for a few seconds, and then once the application of the “Blocker” was stopped and NMDA alone was applied to the cell, the inward sodium current increased again.
These traces allow you to get information about how channels are opening, what ions are flowing in what direction, and to what degree drugs like this “Blocker” are affecting channels. It is work like this, for example, that led to characterization of benzodiazepines and barbiturates, drugs that interact with the GABA receptor, a chloride channel. Without these techniques, it is difficult to know how a drug is affecting a channel at the cellular level. Just about every cell in your body has channels of some kind, as they are very important for maintaining the function of that cell. Neurons are just highly specialized to require ions more than some other cells do, though heart cells are also studied in this way, among others.
Effectively, these techniques allow you to determine how a cell works.
Protip
I’m fully aware that many believe I sit in front of a computer all day and stare at Facebook, posting articles and comments and shirking actual “work.” In actuality, I’d argue that I only have “http://www.facebook.com” on my web browser 15 min per day, on average. On a “busy” day, when I’m in the middle of a conversation/argument, more like 30 min.
How is this possible, you ask? Why, it’s the power of RSS readers!
“RSS” stands for “Really Simple Syndication,” and the idea for it goes back as far as 1995, though the first official version was integrated into Netscape in 1999. In many ways, RSS is what gives blogs the power they have today: the ability for the headline and a brief description of an article or posting to be “aggregated” for easy digestion by the reader.
Note: This very blog has and has always had an RSS function. That’s what the cute little orange icon in the upper-right corner that pops up does.
So here’s the secret: I’ve got 45 different blogs aggregated into my Google Reader account. This means that my phone, my Kindle Fire, my Chrome web browser, and the Reader website itself all tie into a single repository that collects new posts from each of these sites almost immediately after a new article is posted. I’ll wake up in the morning and have 75+ articles to wade through, to see if there’s anything interesting, and I can do this easily on my phone, swiping with my finger to scroll through the list.
Any articles I think may be interesting (based on the title, usually, but sometimes after checking the description), I will press to add a “Star,” effectively bookmarking it for later reading. Then, I can just click “Mark All Read” and my list is cleared out, ready for re-population. Once I sit down at a computer somewhere, or with the tablet, I will then skim the articles I found to be most interesting. And sometimes, I’ll share relevant articles on Google+ or Facebook.
So, quite rapidly, I can skim through articles from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or the Columbia Daily Tribune without ever having to actually visit the sites themselves, thus avoiding ads and thus saving me time.
And furthermore, you can share articles to Facebook or Google+ directly from most of these blogs, as this is how they generate their traffic. You just have to click “Share” from the page in question, or from within Google Reader. A little box shows up and you write what you want to post, along with the link. And you never have to actually go to Facebook.com to do this.
So yeah, a little “protip:” use an RSS reader of some kind to make your blog reading more efficient. You are more than capable of getting information throughout the day without getting bogged down in Facebook or on blogs themselves. You can, in fact, get work done and still provide useful information on subjects that interest you. It really isn’t that hard…
Pirates on the High Seas (of the Internet)
I read a pretty spectacular article from Forbes.com today about how the MPAA and RIAA are fighting a losing battle against piracy. The article echoes statements I’ve made in the past, though not on this blog (…that I can find, anyway…).
The author is blunt and to the point: the movie industry is being dragged kicking and screaming to a future that practically all their customers want, and they’re losing revenue in doing so. They could make their money back on volume by making their movies a). easier to access, and b). cheaper.
The primary problem movie studios have to realize is that everything they charge for is massively overpriced. The fact that movie ticket prices keep going up is astonishing. How can they possibly think charging $10-15 per ticket for a new feature is going to increase the amount of people coming to theaters rather than renting the movie later or downloading it online for free? Rather than lower prices, they double down, saying that gimmicks like 3D and IMAX are worth adding another $5 to your ticket.
They have failed to realize that people want things to be easy. Physically going to the movies is hard enough without paying way too much for the privilege. Going to a store and buying a DVD instead of renting or downloading is generally an impractical thing to do unless you A) really love a particular movie or B) are an avid film buff or collector.
Here’s the part I’ve been most concerned by: rising ticket prices. Why go to a movie theater to spend $10-$15 on a ticket, plus an additional $10+ on “food?” Granted, I have a toddler so my movie viewing in theaters has decreased tremendously in the past few years anyway, but with the advent of Netflix, I have all kinds of things to watch, and now I have the will to wait until a movie comes out on DVD. Especially when the summer blockbusters are looking more and more like that “Battleship” ad you saw during the Super Bowl. Now, if I could see a non-IMAX, non-DTS movie in the theater and get a medium-sized non-refillable soda for $10? I’d do that. No question.
Finally, the author suggests a solution to this problem: the movie industry needs their equivalent of the gaming industry’s digital distribution platforms (e.g. Steam). Heck, they need Apple’s iTunes. Make buying the product so stupid simple that it takes less effort to buy it than it does to steal it. As he points out, it takes 7 steps to download a movie illegally, and depending on your internet connection, you could have an HD-quality movie in a half hour. If the movie industry would just get behind an Apple or Amazon model of 1). find movie, and 2). click “buy” (for a reasonable price).
Let us recall music piracy of the late-90s/early-2000s for a moment. Back then, you could go on Napster or Kazaa and search to find music you wanted, but you’d easily find tens or hundreds of the same track, each one with different sound qualities. You could easily download a track you thought was good, but after downloading, you’d find actually had multiple “hiccups” in the file. iTunes streamlined the process. Search to download one song that you knew was of relatively high quality and was consistent with the rest of your iTunes library. Moreover, you’d see that you could get a song for $1, but the entire album for $10, undercutting what was easily $15 at most brick-and-mortar retailers. So in many respects, at least with iTunes, there was a chance you’d “up sell” your customer on getting the whole album, rather than just a single song.
iTunes made it easy and people flocked to it. Does music piracy still happen? Absolutely, but now, people have a reasonable, viable alternative that I’d argue most people consider before pirating albums.
Steam did the same thing for the gaming industry, making it stupid simple to download a digital copy of a computer game without having to search through seedy sectors of the internet looking for a pirated copy (that could include viruses or other malware). They can even upgrade your graphics drivers and more for you when you install the game, streamlining the process further to make life for the consumer that much better. Many PC games are released day and date with their “physical media” counterparts. In many cases, you can actually have the game downloaded and then get it “unlocked” at midnight on its release day. For PC games, you can’t get much more convenient. You don’t even have to get out of your pajamas…
If piracy has taught us anything it’s that the movie industry thinks that an audience watching their movies on a computer or TV screen, while that same movie is still out in theaters, is important. If this is really the case, the movie industry should do the smart thing and release movies online day and date with their release in theaters. Charge $10 to rent it, making the cost comparable with a ticket to the theater (though that $10 is then divided up among the number of people watching the movie in your living room).
Obviously, some people don’t care if the movie is in IMAX or has super-duper Dolby Digital Sound or smell-o-vision: they just want to watch the damned movie. They don’t want to deal with crappy popcorn prices. They don’t want to deal with screaming kids or people talking through the whole thing. They don’t want to fight for a decent seat in a packed theater. They don’t want to drive their car and park in a lot. They don’t want to pay upwards of $30 to see a movie on a Saturday afternoon. There are any number of reasons folks don’t want to go to a movie theater, while others still like going. There’s no reason the movie industry can’t cater to both demographics and make money doing it.
So, take heed, Movie and TV Industry. You’re being surpassed by other content purveyors. Make it easy to access your content and I assure you, people will return to you and buy more of your stuff.
And stop taking your anger out on Netflix…that isn’t helping anything…
01.31.12 Dinner
Mini breakfast pizzas on whammy biscuits and orange-berry smoothies.
Also, between this meal and the last one I posted, we had three chicken noodle soup meals (plus one more for lunch). It was so delicious, I forgot to take a picture, though! That’s five meals from one chicken. Pretty good investment of $5, I’d say!
01.25.12 Dinner
Pinterest to the rescue! More roasted chicken reheated (if you’re counting, that’s meal #2 for that chicken), green bean casserole, and potatoes with cheese, bacon, and green onions. Those Pinterest potatoes were really good. I sliced the potatoes into about half inch rounds, then baked them at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, turning once. Then, covered them with the cheese and bacon and broiled for just a minute more. If I had been thinking straight when I made my last gallon of yogurt, I would have not made the whole thing vanilla so we could have had a little dolloped on top of things like this in lieu of sour cream, but I’ve never been known for thinking ahead, so no dairy deliciousness for our potatoes. Oh well…
Homemade Presents for Christmas-Updated!
Now that we’re a full month out from Christmas, I thought I’d share our “homemade” Christmas gifts with you. Our house was a mess from the time we moved in in late October until… ummm, actually, there are still boxes that need to be unpacked. But, we managed to give some pretty cool and personalized gifts. In the end, I don’t think we saved very much money, but the gifts we gave were definitely worth far more than anything we would have been able to purchase for the same amount. I thrifted/repurposed/cleared out my stash for most of these projects, so not only did we end up with a fairly inexpensive gift list, but also with a very “green” holiday! Helped to offset our vapid consumerism the rest of the year, I suppose! We probably won’t go to this extreme in the future, but will definitely add homemade touches and do a few things here and there!
The list:
- Handkerchiefs, both two sided with flannel and unhemmed hand dyed knit
- Pocket squares
- Shaving cream
- Wool cooler cups/koozies (I learned how to do a blanket stitch for those!)
- Apple cider mustard
- Alcohol: black pepper vodka, ginger-orange rum, creamsicle rum, cranberry vodka, cherry bounce
- Vanilla extract
- Hot cocoa mix
- Pajama pants
- Spiced nuts
- About a million vanilla-peppermint soy candles
- Vanilla-peppermint lip balm
- Frosted votive candle holders
- Scarves, scarves, more scarves, and flower pins
- “Cream of everything” soup mix
- Star crayons for Meg’s school friends
- Cloth napkins
- Framed handprints
- Granola
- Coffee Beans (ok, not made by us, but by people we know!!)
For full-size version of these images, click on over to our Picasa album.