Posts

Posted on

Are You Afraid Of The Dark?

Scary movies are something I’ve come to enjoy relatively late compared with others.  Many (most?) of the modern horror movies are rated “R,” and thus, I wasn’t really allowed to see any of them until late-high school.  Therefore, I’ve probably seen more “scary thrillers” (e.g. “Se7en“) than I’ve seen “horror” (e.g. “A Nightmare on Elm Street“) movies.  I did, however, make it a point to see many of the “classics” of the 30s and 40s, including “Frankenstein,” “Dracula,” “The Wolf Man,” etc.  Alternatively, Brooke had something of a problem with nightmares when growing up, so her Mom (amusingly…) subjected her to quite a few in a (failed) effort to desensitize her.  While I’ve seen many of the oldies, Brooke saw more of the 70s and 80s classics.

Since we got married, though, we’ve tried watching more scary movies when October rolls around.  We do our best to watch “Hocus Pocus” every year if possible, but since we don’t have cable (and, therefore, don’t have ABC Family…which shows it every year without fail…), we may not get to see it unless we get that far in our Netflix Queue.  This year, I decided to put a few of them up here that we will be watching in the coming weeks.

We watched this one Saturday night. Quite honestly, I’ve never found “The Exorcist” to be all that appealing, and certainly not scary. I know people have said in the past that part of the “scariness” is that “it actually happened”…which it kinda didn’t, but whatever… Regardless, I’d seen it before and Brooke hadn’t, and I noticed awhile back that it was on Netflix streaming so we added it to the queue. Once we hit October, it was time to start watching scary movies. After finishing it, I wanted to play some games, but Brooke said we had to watch an episode of “30 Rock” so she’d be able to sleep… 😛

I’ve never seen the original “Night of the Living Dead,” but it’s on Netflix Streaming, so now’s the time. Brooke wanted to watch it last year, as it was one of those her Mom made her watch years ago, so I went out of my way to “find a copy” (cough…), however when I started showing the movie to her, she said “this isn’t ‘Night of the Living Dead’!” After going to great lengths to prove to her that this was the movie she had instructed me to find, she then decided that, apparently, her Mom made her watch “some other zombie” movie and she, in fact, had never seen it. Therefore, we’re going to watch it for realz this time.

“Scream” is one of the first “modern horror” movies I saw and set off a trend of newer slasher movies in the mid-to-late 90s. I saw all three of them (a fourth’s on the way) and, by far, the first one is the best. Brooke’s never seen it but I think she’ll enjoy it. It’ll probably scare her a bit, though. 🙂

“Poltergeist” is another one that I never got around to seeing, but Brooke remembers vividly from growing up. Brooke actually bought it on sale last October but we never got around to watching it. I guess this year’s the time.

I would bet that most people haven’t heard of “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” but it’s one of my “old school” favorites. It certainly isn’t scary, but it does involve the Wolf Man, Frankenstein’s monster, and Dracula. Lon Chaney, Jr. and Bela Legosi were both in it, but unfortunately Boris Karloff wasn’t playing the Monster. Regardless, it’s one of my old favorites and it’s up on Netflix Streaming. I’m sure Brooke will love it. And won’t be scared. 🙂

I’m going to go ahead and add this one to the list, although Brooke probably doesn’t realize that we’ll be watching this one, too.  This is probably my favorite “horror movie” for a variety of reasons.  For one thing, it does an excellent job keeping you in suspense for the majority of the movie, where you don’t necessarily who’s going to go at any given time (in most modern ones, you can see it coming a mile away, at least in the mainstream flicks).  Also, the movie involved no blood – you saw all kinds of deaths, but they weren’t particularly “gory.”  Of course, the movies that followed in the series all got progressively worse in that regard, but this one did a good job of making do with very little in the way of special effects.  The original “Halloween” is the movie that spawned the “Friday the 13ths” and “Nightmares on Elm Street” that would follow in the 80s, so in many ways, most modern horror movies have to pay homage to this first one.

Oh yeah, and the mask Michael Meyers wears is a William Shatner mask painted white.  How cool is that?!

A few “runners up” that we may or may not get to during the course of the month.  “Alien” is a classic that we own, but Brooke probably won’t watch with me.  We’ve got “Evil Dead” and “Evil Dead 2” – I need to keep my eye out for a good copy of “Army of Darkness” in order to complete the set.  “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is one I’ve never seen, but is available on Netflix Streaming.  Finally, I’ve added the new Rob Zombie remakes of “Halloween” and “Halloween II” to our DVD queue, as I’ve never seen them and the original is one of my all time favorites.  I may be watching all of these last ones alone.  And I’ll love them all.  🙂

Posted on

Primer: The Scientific Method

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.

There are quite a few things that go flying by in the news that concern me (and I have posted about them here…at…length…), but one that really gets to me is public misunderstanding of Science.  As in, capital “S” Science.  Not really the fact that many people don’t know certain scientific facts, or don’t really understand how many things work, but more that they do not understand how science is done and what it really means.  I will seek to clear up some of that here.

First, however, what does Dictionary.com tell us?

Science – noun

1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.
2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
3. any of the branches of natural or physical science.
4. systematized knowledge in general.
5. knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.

Now, this definition seems to center upon the natural/physical sciences, however many, if not all, of the principles that “science” adheres to apply to the social sciences (e.g. sociology, psychology, etc.) and to many other degrees.  However, I will focus on what I know best.

“Systematically” is the word sprinkled about in the definition above, and rightfully so.  “Systematically” refers to how science is conducted, generally through what we refer to as the scientific method.  The Wikipedia article, as usual, is a good start for further information on this particular subject, but basically, here’s how it works:

  1. Formulate a hypothesis
  2. Test the hypothesis through experimentation and observation
  3. Use collected data to confirm or refute the initial hypothesis
  4. Form a new hypothesis based on what was learned in steps 1-3

A “hypothesis,” put simply, is an educated guess toward a question you have.  Many times, especially when you’re first learning the scientific method, you may phrase it in the form of an “If/Then” statement.  For example:

If I drop this rock, then it will fall

The “If” portion of the above statement represents the “Independent Variable,” while the “Then” portion represents the “Dependent Variable.”  Effectively, the Dependent Variable is what you’re measuring and the Independent Variable is what you’re changing in the system.  In this particular case, if you drop the rock, does it fall or not?  You can measure whether or not it falls.  If you don’t drop the rock, does it still fall?  And so on.  It is called the Dependent Variable because it “depends” on what you do in the Independent Variable.

You are generally allowed to have multiple Independent Variables in a given hypothesis (or series of hypotheses), but the Dependent Variable cannot change. What would happen if I dropped a rock on Earth and dropped another one on Mercury?  My results wouldn’t be comparable, because I changed too many things.  I could change the size of the rock, but if I’m measuring the rate at which the rock falls to the ground, I need to make sure the force of gravity is held constant.

Obviously, this is a very simple example.  If one were to ask something a bit more complicated, you could ask the following:

If Tylenol is administered to people with headaches, then they will experience pain relief.

The question above seems simple enough, right?  I could just give Tylenol to a bunch of people with headaches and see if we get an effect.  Then I would know if my hypothesis was correct or if it wasn’t.  But what would happen if I grabbed people prone to migraine headaches were participating in my study?  Or alcoholics (that don’t break down Tylenol all that well)?  The data I would receive would be flawed, as the Tylenol probably wouldn’t do anything to people with migraines and it may actually make alcoholics feel worse.  My hypothesis would be proven wrong.

Here is where we really need to consider “Controls.”  These are a separate series of experiments that you use to compare your experimental results to.  You may choose to set this up in your experiment in a variety of ways, but one possibility is to give those with migraines or the alcoholics (and all other test subjects) a “placebo,” or something that looks like Tylenol, but is actually inert.  Then, you can compare your responses to see if Tylenol had any effect or not.

Above, I mention that after you formulate a hypothesis, you must test it.  You must test it by holding as many things constant as you can while only varying a specific aspect of the experiment, especially an aspect that you can control to some degree.  This brings us to the idea of “testability.”  In order for your experiment to be considered “Scientific,” it must be testable.  If it isn’t “testable,” then it doesn’t satisfy the “systematic” part of the definition.

Over time, enough experiments are done to warrant considering a certain concept to be a “Scientific Theory.”  That is to say, a Theory is an idea that is supported by an array of evidence and co-exists with other known Theories that are equally verified by experimentation.  Assuming a Theory stands the test of time, it eventually is considered to be a “Scientific Law,” meaning it represents something truly fundamental on which the rest of science and knowledge rests.  An example of a Theory is “The Theory of Natural Selection.”  An example of a Law is “Newton’s Laws of Thermodynamics.”  Wikipedia also has a nice list of other Scientific Laws.

Most Laws tend to be Physics/Chemistry-related, as these are the bedrock concepts upon which everything else stands.  You can’t really study Biology without fluid dynamics and quantum mechanics (well, you can ignore them for the most part, but they do get involved in certain situations).  Theories, on the other hand, are much less clear cut.  They tend to represent a constantly evolving field of research, where new data is being applied every day.  I will steal the US National Academy of Sciences definition to explain more fully:

Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena.

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not “guesses” but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than “just a theory.” It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact.

So in some ways, a Theory is treated on almost the same plane as a Law, but they really aren’t the same thing. A Theory can still be modified, while a Law is much, much harder to change.  In that first sentence, it says “no new evidence is likely to alter,” meaning you could still alter it, but it’s highly unlikely.

My overall concern with perceptions of what Science is stem from the various debates over climate change, evolution, stem cell research, etc.  In many ways, much of the political hubbub is regarding something that Science isn’t equipped to answer.  By definition, it can only give you a fact – it is up to the individual to decide how to apply their morals to that fact.  Science can tell you that Evolution is happening and that Natural Selection is the current Theory to describe how it happens.  It’s a “Theory” because more data is getting added every day, but the Theory is only strengthened, not weakened.  Overall, Natural Selection is what happens.  End of story.  Scientifically, embryonic stem cells come from an embryo, which is a collection of cells that does not fit the accepted definition of “alive” (i.e. self-awareness, self-preservation, consciousness).  Whether or not you agree that an embryo is not alive is up to you to decide, but arbitrarily suggesting that “Science says that it’s a life” is incorrect and a misuse of the term.  Saying that there are “gaps in the geological record,” so that must mean that God exists and God created the Earth in 6 days, ignores how Science works – God is, by nature, “untestable,” and therefore beyond the purview of Scientific understanding.  These are but a few of the examples of how some would misunderstand Science and try to apply it to things that it shouldn’t be applied to, or at least in ways it shouldn’t be applied.

The Study of Science is a systematic, logical progression that involves the formulation of a testable hypothesis, where testing involves experimentation, observation and collection of data to support or refute the hypothesis.  Hypotheses around a general subject can eventually add up to a Theory, and truly fundamental observations of the natural world become Law.  That’s all it is, folks.  No more.  No less.

Posted on

New Developments

In recent weeks, Meg has gotten quite a bit better about sitting up.  This, I’m told, is typical of most babies in their 6th month of life, so I guess it shouldn’t be all that surprising.  The crazy thing is just how quickly she seems to be developing!  Within the past few weeks, she has started getting much more “tactile” in her interactions.  She still doesn’t quite understand that her hands are, necessarily, “controllable” by her brain, but she has realized she has them and that she can pick things up with them.

"What can I do with this?"

The most interesting part to me, however, is how she has started to grab my face and grab Edie.  She takes such an interest in touching my face, almost as if she didn’t quite realize that I was alive, or that I was “real,” for the past few months.  As if she now has a different sense of me, or of people in general.  Maybe as if she treated all the people around her much like people on a TV screen: they’re there, but they aren’t really “there,” if that makes any sense.

Meg has always paid close attention to Edie, watching her walk through the house and so on, but now she can actually reach out and touch her.  Thankfully, Edie is just fine with this.  Meg reaches out and will hold onto Edie’s skin (more than the hair).  Meg just stares at Edie, possibly wondering if she’ll move or run off.

"I'm very proud of all my toys!"

Regardless, it’s been fun over the past few weeks watching her.  It’s just cool to watch someone learn things for the first time, things that we adults tend to take for granted.  Not even relatively simple things like “walking” or “sitting,” but just the realization that people exist and that you can actually interact with them, rather than watch them.

Posted on

One Decade Down

This coming weekend marks my 10 year Hickman High School reunion – The Class of 2000.  It took me awhile to find the Columbia Daily Tribune’s article about it (way back in their “archives”…that aren’t what I’d call “searchable”), mostly so I could remind myself of the statistics these kinds of things tend to include: 619 graduates, 73% of which were going on to four-year colleges, 13% to jobs, and the remainder to two-year schools or the military.

We’ll be heading down to Columbia this Friday to attend this year’s Hickman Homecoming Game, and hopefully we’ll get to see my old marching band play some of this year’s show while we’re at it.  Otherwise, the general “plan” is for people to get together for some Mizzou tailgating (which I won’t do, in favor of frolfing with Stu…) followed by a group dinner at Boone Tavern on Saturday night.  RSVPs for all of this were done over Facebook, so while I have some idea who is attending, I don’t know exactly because the invites were only sent to “fans” of “Hickman High School Class of 2000.”  If you weren’t a “fan” of that particular Facebook Group, you probably didn’t get the invite.  So yeah, to an extent, I have no idea who’s going to even be at this event, besides a few specific people I’ve chit-chatted with in the past few months.

That all aside, we’re due for a visit to Columbia.  We haven’t been down there for a few months now and Mom is itching to take Meg shopping for some winter clothes (which is good, ’cause Iowa is COLD).

But back to the Reunion.  This will be the first time most of my “Group of Friends” from high school meet Meg.  In a few cases, this will be the first time they meet Brooke!  I guess part of the fun of going to a 10 year High School Reunion is “reconnecting” with friends you haven’t seen in years (or a decade), but it’s going to be fascinating to see what trajectories we all ended up on.  I was friends with a wide variety of folks in high school, ranging from valedictorians to band geeks to space station simulators.  To date, I’m the only one I can think of from high school that was part of that group and also has a child.  I’m also one of the few that is married (although most have “significant others,” to some degree).  Considering 10 years has passed, I find those particular milestones to be rather interesting, as I’d argue that the preceding generations had a higher percentage of individuals that were married and had at least one kid 10 years after graduating high school (my Mom had 2 kids within 10 years of graduation).

I guess  I’m just reflecting on how I ended up here, as compared with others from my graduating class.  Whether it was always subconsciously in the plan to be married, have kids, and have a Ph.D. in time for my 10 year reunion.  Whether that notion was part of other people’s plans, or whether their lives took them in completely different directions than they’d otherwise intended.  Whether I will be considered the odd-man-out, or whether someone else’s shocking revelation will trounce anything I could come up with in this post.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not worried about going to the reunion.  On TV, you see people fretting about going back to their high school reunions, usually that they’ll seem somehow “less successful” than their brethren, or that they have memories of the “high school experience” that no one else remembers like you do (think of the season three 30 Rock episode, “Reunion“).  Despite my questions above, I’m just genuinely intrigued by the idea of how my experience differs from the experiences of the other people I hung out with in high school.  Personally, I think if we were to rate attendees based on their “successes” post-graduation, I’d rate fairly highly.  I guess I’m just wondering if I meet the expectations that my friends had 10 years ago, and if they will all meet mine.

I guess I just find it all to be “curious.”

Posted on

God is (Un)necessary

I listened to an episode of On Point on NPR this past weekend, where Tom Ashbrook interviewed Leonard Mlodinow, co-author with Stephen Hawking of a new book titled “The Grand Design.”  I had never heard of Mlodinow before this episode, but I’d certainly heard of Hawking, the theoretical physicist that is confined to his wheelchair as a result of advanced ALS who wrote “A Brief History of Time” back in the 80s.  His first book, “A Brief History…” was relatively short (heck, even I was able to read it) and did a reasonably good job at helping explain to the layman some very advanced cosmological concepts.

Their new book, “The Grand Design,” is set up to answer the question: “Is God necessary?”  Or more generally, does all life in the Universe require the hand of an all-powerful Creator being?  According to their book, the answer is “no.”

Now, as Mlodinow says in the interview, that answer doesn’t mean “there is no God.”  He points this out a few times: Science itself cannot determine whether or not God (or any Creator) exists, but many or all of the questions of Creation can, in fact, be explained by Science.  Hawking was quoted when the book came out as saying that “there is no God,” but that was a mischaracterization of what the book describes.

Interestingly, around the 12:30 mark of the podcast, Ashbrook plays some tape of an interview with Hawking from a few years ago.

Interviewer: “Do you believe in God?”

Hawking: “The basic assumption of science is scientific determinism. The laws of science determine the evolution of the universe, given its state at one time. These laws may, or may not, have been decreed by God, but he cannot intervene to break the laws, or they would not be laws. That leaves God with the freedom to choose the initial state of the universe, but even here, it seems, there may be laws. So God would have no freedom at all.”

While I realize this is something of a cryptic answer, my interpretation is that Hawking kinda believes as I do about this whole “Creation” thing.  Hawking is describing the idea that our Universe is based on a series of Laws (e.g. gravity, the speed of light, etc.) and our Universe is well-suited to the existence of Life (as we know it…).  If the Universe did not have the Laws it currently does, then Life would not exist (as we know it).  Therefore, God set a series of Laws (or adhered to previously existing ones) that allowed for the existence of Life.  Therefore, we humans eventually showed up on the cosmic block.

So yeah, as the authors point out, a Creator may not be “necessary” in a Scientific manner, in that our Universe is apparently set up in such a fashion that Life can and does exist.  From that standpoint, God is “unnecessary.”

However, I would argue that God is, in fact, “necessary” for our lives, at the very least for the social and moral implications.  Sure, God may not be “necessary” for our existence, but He is “necessary” for bringing meaning to that existence.  For providing a moral compass to follow.  For helping define who we are and who we all want to be.  It all depends on how one views “God” (whether in the Christian, Muslim, or Judaic traditions, amongst others), but all faith traditions provide us with a relatively clear idea of the kind of people we should be.  The kind of people we all want to be.

I guess I’ve always felt this way.  I’ve never felt that the “Creation” part of the Bible was all that important to who I was.  The Book of Genesis does not define my life.  It really isn’t important how I was “created.”  However, it’s important that I’m here now.  I do exist, regardless of how it happened.  My existence entails a sense of responsibility that I conduct that existence in a manner I can be proud of.  So for me, God is necessary.

Side-note: Tom Ashbrook asks Mlodinow multiple times to explain how you get “something” out of “nothing,” as in, how exactly did all of the things we know just “spring up” out of the void of existence (e.g. the initial “Creation” itself).  He tries explaining a few times but it was still pretty difficult to follow…may just need to read the book…  I think he was trying to explain it in terms of quantum mechanics in that, according to what we know from quantum theory, you can actually have things just “appear.”  He never said “Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle,” but I think that’s what he was getting at.  Heisenberg stated that you can either know where an object is in space or how fast it’s moving, but you can’t know both at the same time.  As I understand the theory, there’s all kinds of math involved that suggests you can actually get “something” out of “nothing.”  Mlodinow also talked about multiple dimensions in his answer.  In short, I don’t really understand it either, but it was addressed in the podcast as well…. 😛

Posted on

It’s getting colder!!

So, our good friend Carol made us a few things to help us survive the frigid Iowa winters: car scrapers with wool sleeves to keep your hands cold!  She knows all too well how cold it can get up north in the Norse country.

Regardless, thanks Carol!  We (obviously) appreciate them and look forward to using them…likely…daily…  🙂

We ended up having to use the A/C a bit last week, but thankfully the temps have dropped to more reasonable levels.  The lows this week are in the 40 F to 50 F range, so we won’t be needing it anymore, we hope.  Honestly, I’m ready to unpack some long-sleeved items and move into the Fall, though I’d rather delay the snowfall until closer to never.  Granted, in moving to Iowa, we knew that snow would end up being a bigger deal than it ever was in St. Louis (or the entirety of Missouri, for that matter), but it would be nice to get an extended period of “Fall” this year rather than jump directly into Winter.

Either way, I think we’re both ready to go with some cooler weather.  We just hope it holds at “cooler” rather than “freezing” for a month or two.  At least we’ve got some nice, warm, window scrapers to tide us by!

Posted on

Teaching Experience

About a month ago, the FUTURE in Biomedical Sciences group here at the University held a forum, of sorts, to help answer questions from graduate students and postdocs regarding what it takes to get a job at a Liberal Arts institution, especially in the State of Iowa (where these four individuals reside).  The FUTURE group, now in its second year, has multiple professors from Liberal Arts schools across the state (this year’s participants came from Loras College, Drake University, Morningside College and Wartburg College) come to Iowa City to do research for the summer, learning some new experimental techniques and generally expanding their horizons beyond what they can do at their respective institutions.  The forum was very informative, covering a variety of topics including how to write up your resume, what kinds of places to apply to, what to look for in a school, when to start looking for jobs, and what the jobs tend to be like.  More than anything, however, they all stressed the need for experience: the more experience you have on your application, the better chance you’ll stand against other applicants.  I’m not really looking for another job yet or anything, but it’s really good to have this information at the back of my mind as I keep building up that resume.  Hearing them talk about their jobs makes me want to get to that stage even more, providing me with some much needed motivation to get a few things done while I’m here!

Thankfully, I already have a leg up on that one.  Back at SLU, I had the good fortune of getting to teach in “Drugs We Use and Abuse,” a course run by the graduate students of the Pharm/Phys Department.  It is team-taught each Fall to around 50 non-majors (e.g. Business majors, History majors, etc.) and generally centers around…well…just what it sounds like.  If you ever wanted to learn what meth, cocaine, opiates, depressants and caffeine do to your body, then this is the class for you.  I taught in it for 3 years: I was a section director for 2 of those years and course director for 1 year.  The experience was very good, so much that I decided I want to do it full-time as a career: teach at the undergraduate level.

When I took the position here at the University of Iowa, I asked my mentor if it would be alright for me to continue teaching occasionally alongside the rest of the research I’m doing.  He was kind enough to allow it (if anything, he was excited that I’d take a few lectures off his hands).  This October, I’ll be teaching two classes of Advanced Toxicology, one talking about neurotransmission and the other talking about neurotoxic agents (e.g. cocaine, methamphetamine and ecstasy).  Both of these subjects are within my proverbial wheelhouse, so they shouldn’t take up all that much preparation time.  That, and I have the previous year’s lectures in a Powerpoint file to help me throw something together.  While Drugs We Use and Abuse was directed at non-major undergraduates, this class is for graduate students and there are only 12 in the class, so the dynamic will be quite a bit different than what I’m used to.

I will likely get the opportunity to teach in the Spring as well.  That course is in our department, Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, and is also targeted at graduate students (and will likely be just as small, if not smaller).  Not sure when we’ll get that going, but it probably won’t be until January, knowing how things go around here.

Either way, I think I’m doing a reasonably decent job at preparing for what’s ahead, with regards to that whole “career” thing.  At the very least, getting to add a few “guest lecturer” points on my CV is always a welcome addition.

And maybe I’ll even have a little fun doing it.  🙂

Posted on

The Meaning of Efficiency

One of my favorite video game genres is the “Real Time Strategy” game, or “RTS.”  In such a game, you generate resources in order to build units that the allow you to conquer the other player.  Starcraft II is, perhaps, the most recent example of such a game, and one I’ve been playing a great deal of recently, however the Age of Empires series is, perhaps, best-suited for explaining more clearly.  In an RTS like Age of Empires, you start the game with a few units (Villagers) that harvests resources for you, like wood, food, stone and gold.  These four resources help you to produce other Villagers, but also Military units.  When you’re starting out in the Dark Ages, you primarily need food and wood for “Clubmen,” but as you advance toward “Swordsmen,” you need more diverse resources like gold.

These games are generally part of a larger game mechanic called “resource management.”  Basically, you begin a given game with a finite amount of resources and you choose how to spend those resources.  Some of them should go to more resource-generating (e.g. investments), while other resources should go toward the ultimate goal of the game.  It’s up to the player to decide to what degree they go in either direction.  If you want to win quickly, then you pour more resources into building military units so you can take out the other player.  If you want to “tech up” to a more stable position, but take longer doing it, you pour those resources into investments.

As I said, I’ve always liked this kind of game.  But I’ve never been terribly good at it in real life.

Brooke and I have never made huge amount of money, but the move to Iowa cost us a great deal.  Brooke was unemployed for the first 3 months of living here, and she’s still only been able to get work part-time (but that’s going to steadily increase).  That combined with the fact that we have a baby now means that our collective (limited) resources have been directed in other avenues than what we are used to.  Child care alone is a ridiculous, but necessary, cost.  Therefore, we’ve been doing our best to maximize our available resources as best as possible.  With various payments that one has to car loans, student loans, life/auto insurance, etc., that only leaves a relatively small percentage of cash that you can adjust for whatever purpose is required.

A few summers ago, we started with helping limit our energy costs by getting a single-room A/C unit for our bedroom.  That helped save us $100 in a single summer, paying for the A/C unit itself.  We’ve been using it in our house in Iowa now, helping to limit the excess cost of cooling a much larger space than we were dealing with in St. Louis by only cooling our bedroom(s) at night, as opposed to having our central A/C running too heavily.  Thankfully, Iowa summers are substantially cooler than St. Louis summers, and the house is in the shade enough that it rarely heats up to a significant degree.  We’re already talking about ways to limit the amount of propane we’ll use in the relatively harsh Iowa winters, trying to defend against the northwest wind by insulating specific windows.  We’ll probably spend more time upstairs, as the heat will collect there.  We’ll probably try keeping the house cooler than we had it in St. Louis, as well.

We’re also trying to limit travel to some extent.  When we can take Brooke’s Scion xA on longer trips, we’ll take it (37 mpg), but when we need a larger vehicle, we’ll have to use the Sportage (27 mpg).  I’m driving the Sportage to and from work every day and, on those trips, I’m doing my best to stay around 65 mph, as an engine runs most efficiently within that range.  Doing so, I’ve been able to help limit my gas costs to a reasonable degree.  I’ve also started getting up earlier, getting to work around 7:00 am and leaving around 4:00 pm, thereby allowing me to miss the traffic that frequently causes me to speed around people.

Brooke has done an excellent job over the summer growing vegetables and canning them for later months.  We’ve been able to save a pretty decent amount of money on food already, but those savings will continue on into the winter months.  So far, Brooke hasn’t had to buy much solid food for Meg, either, as the carrots and squash she’s been eating were grown in our garden.  Brooke froze down more of it so she can make more in the next few weeks.  As Brooke already posted about the cloth diapers, we’ve already saved a pretty large amount of money over disposables.  Otherwise, we still shop at Aldi, as always, but are making a more concerted effort to limit the “extras” (although, Brooke has already demanded that her ice cream allotment not be limited).

Our entertainment costs have dropped dramatically, as we don’t have cable anymore and our internet connection is fast enough that we can Netflix or stream everything we want.  I’ve seen one movie in theaters this summer and have decreased the number of games I’ve purchased, as well.  We also aren’t going out to eat as often, partially because we have to hold Meg and would rather have her in a high chair or something (which she isn’t…quite…ready…for…).

We’re still looking for improvements, but I think this is a helpful, albeit stressful, experience.  As in RTS games, if you build up your resource-generating units early on, you get a strong economy that can then provide you with better military units later in the game, allowing you to conquer and win.  It takes keen resource management to do this, as you have to be very, very efficient with the military units you do build early in the game, while instead putting those resources into things that can help you later on.

Let’s hope we learn something now, so that we’re prepared for later stages of the game.

Posted on

Primer: Neurotransmission

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.

As I’ve mentioned…oh…countless times, I became interested in my chosen field primarily because of a class titled “Psychopharmacology,” offered by the Psychology Department at Truman.  As the name suggests, the class primarily focused on how drugs modify an individual’s mental state, whether it’s an illicit drug that changes the way you act (e.g. methamphetamine), or one that’s used to help you cope as you carry out your day (e.g. diazepam [Valium]).

Back in June, I posted about Pharmacology, the study of how a drug acts within an organism.  One thing I discussed, but did not elaborate on, was that many drugs function at receptors, and the modification of these receptors is what gives you the desired effect of said drug.  However, in order to understand how these receptors actually do something to your body, you need to understand the basics of how neurotransmission works.

Basically, neurotransmission is a signal sent between two specialized cells called neurons.  These cells make up a large portion of the brain (i.e. there are other cell types, including astroglia and microglia) and provide all the processing power you need to carry on with whatever task you wish.  Therefore, if you want to modify something about that task, these are important cells to consider and/or target with a drug.  Neurons take advantage of channels in their membranes that allow selective transfer of ions like sodium, potassium, chloride and calcium.  When these ions cross the membrane from outside the neuron to the inside (or vice versa), an electrical charge is produced.  These channels open and close selectively to allow certain things through, and keep other things out.  For example, sodium channels in neurons typically allow sodium into the cell, while potassium channels tend to allow potassium to leave the cell.

Many of the receptors that drugs are targeted toward are channels, or the drug-targeted receptors somehow affect the ability of channels to open or close.  Therefore, if you can target your drug toward a specific channel, you can keep it open longer, or close it sooner, allowing you to affect whether a neuron is able to continue propagating its signal.

So, the electrical signal caused by transfer of ions across a neuron’s cell membrane (or “action potential“) travels down the neuron, from end to end.  On one end is the “cell body” (or “soma”) and on the other end is the “axon terminal.”  The electrical signal always goes from the cell body to the axon terminal.  The cell body is covered in “dendrites,” outcroppings of the cell that receive a signal from another neuron’s axon terminal.  Therefore, typically, (1) a signal will start at the dendrites; (2) travel down the axon; (3) trigger a set of events in the axon terminal resulting in (4) the release of a neurotransmitter that (5) crosses the synapse until it reaches another dendrite and (1) starts the process over again.

What happens between the axon and the dendrite can best be described by this image, stolen from Wikipedia:

Neurotransmitters are packaged in “vesicles” that are directed to release their contents into the synaptic cleft where they travel across the cleft to the opposing dendrite, setting off a similar cascade in the next neuron.  There are also “reuptake transporters” in the cleft to help remove excess neurotransmitter, so you don’t have that opposing neuron continuing to fire too long.

Examples of neurotransmitters include dopamine, adrenaline (epinephrine), acetylcholine, nicotine and serotonin.

Now, you probably recognize a few of those neurotransmitters, right?  For example, you probably know that serotonin happens to be very important to your mood.  If you don’t have serotonin, you tend to get depressed.  So what can you do to help combat this deficiency?  Try taking an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor).  That drug targets the “reuptake transporter” in the cleft, allowing the serotonin you’re already making to stay in the cleft longer, helping to activate those neurons to keep your mood a bit happier.

You’d use an SSRI to help serotonin to reach its target neuronal receptors, thereby allowing for increased signal propagation through neurons.  But what if you want to limit propagation of signals, for example, in the case of an epileptic seizure when neurons are firing uncontrollably?  You can use a depressant like carbamazepine.  This drug targets channels and modifies them in such a way that the electrical signal (“action potential“) being sent down the axon is limited, or “depressed.”  It prevents the signal from continuing and, therefore, less (or no) neurotransmitter is released into the synapse.  That same drug can be used to help treat the manic symptoms of bipolar disorder, as well.

So, all of these principles are taken into account (as well as countless others…) when looking for drug targets, and when doctors are prescribing medications.  This is why you can have so many complications when you are prescribed a cocktail of medications, especially when you get older.  If you are taking, say, 10 different medications per day, prescribed by different doctors, it is easy for at least one of those drugs to counteract the effects of another.  There are many factors to consider when prescribing or taking these kinds of medications, as they have effects all over the body.  One simple example is methamphetamine.  This drug targets that reuptake transporter, much like an SSRI does, but it (1) does so for a class of neurotransmitters called catecholamines, and (2) reverses the transporter, rather than blocks it.  The class of catecholamines include dopamine and adrenaline.  So, if you take methamphetamine, you will be increasing the amount of dopamine and adrenaline in your body, not just your brain.  Your heart races because of the adrenaline, and the psychological effects occur because of the dopamine (including its addictive qualities).

In summary, neurotransmission is pretty complicated, but its basics are understandable.  The take-home concepts are:

  • Neurons are responsible for “processing” in your brain, and they use electrical and chemical signals to communicate with each other
  • Many drugs that affect your psychology target the ability of neurotransmitters to “continue the signal” from neuron to neuron
  • Some drugs affect more than one aspect of neurotransmission, and in more than one location
Posted on

Breastfeeding Savings

I debated about just adding this information to my Diaper Savings post, but decided that this topic might warrant it’s own comments!

Meg is breastfed and was exclusively (except for about an ounce of formula in the hospital because I was freaking out that she was hungry…I know better now) until she started eating rice cereal at 4 months. There’s another post coming about how that’s going for another time. I still continue to nurse and to pump while she is at daycare about 5-6 times each day, which I’m guessing gets Meg about 28 ounces of breastmilk a day, which should be plenty. I’m starting to think about weaning her to a combination of stored breastmilk and formula from a bottle in the next month or so, mostly because my work schedule is complicated and there’s not always time or a place for me to pump when I need to, and because I’m starting to feel like I’ve done my job in this arena. I have a feeling that weaning will go slowly to ease the hormonal and therefore emotional toll it will take on both of us (or all of us, really because Andy will have to deal with it, too).

I think to breastfeed or not is a very personal decision, just like I think most parenting decisions should be. It’s super easy to start thinking that your way of doing things is better than anyone else’s, and why this is true for each parent’s situation, I’m trying really hard to not worry what other people think of what I’m doing with my job and at the same time not judge other parents for their decisions.

That being said, when I was looking at how much money we’ve saved my cloth diapering, Andy was also interested in how much money we’ve saved by not buying formula. Here are the CDC’s statistics on the numbers of infants in the United States who were breastfed in 2006:
* 73.9% were ever breastfed
* 43.4% were still breastfeeding at 6 months of age
* 22.7% were breastfeeding at 1 year of age
* 33.1% were exclusively breastfed through 3 months of age
* 13.6% were exclusively breastfed through 6 months of age
So, obviously, most babies are being breastfed at least some, so this number isn’t this high unless a baby has only ever had formula. But, for a basic, name brand formula, for the first 6 months of life, you will have spent $717.93 to feed a baby. Breastfeeding is absolutely free!! In our case, since I have a pump and the necessary accessories for storing and feeding pumped breastmilk, the net savings is about $400.00. That’s pretty good from a purely monetary perspective, if you ask me (and I know you didn’t, but whatever…)!