Tag: science

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“C” is for cookie…


So, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, did a little blurb for a site called TrueMajority.org. It seems to be mostly a liberal-leaning website, but I think they’re trying to bring a more moderate message to issues relevant to our time.

In the Flash animation (linked to above, if you click on the image…), you get him talking for a few minutes about what the site is, but mostly about his “Oreo Analogy”…which is why you should spend a minute and watch it. He breaks it down by saying one Oreo equals $10 billion, and the Dept. of Defense gets 40 Oreos. Then he describes how much our social programs get (Head Start, Education, etc.) and how much is going to the defenses of other nations that could hurt us (i.e. Russia, China, etc.).

Anyway, it’s amusing and enlightening. Working in science, I’m very aware of the NIH budget, where most science dollars in health research comes from. The NIH budget is $35 billion and hasn’t increased with inflation in years (meaning that we’ve effectively got decreases in funding progressively).

One Oreo cookie shaved off the top of that defense budget could help cure a lot of people. And help education. And feed the hungry.

And no, shaving a few cookies off the top of that stack won’t “let the terrorists win”…

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"C" is for cookie…


So, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, did a little blurb for a site called TrueMajority.org. It seems to be mostly a liberal-leaning website, but I think they’re trying to bring a more moderate message to issues relevant to our time.

In the Flash animation (linked to above, if you click on the image…), you get him talking for a few minutes about what the site is, but mostly about his “Oreo Analogy”…which is why you should spend a minute and watch it. He breaks it down by saying one Oreo equals $10 billion, and the Dept. of Defense gets 40 Oreos. Then he describes how much our social programs get (Head Start, Education, etc.) and how much is going to the defenses of other nations that could hurt us (i.e. Russia, China, etc.).

Anyway, it’s amusing and enlightening. Working in science, I’m very aware of the NIH budget, where most science dollars in health research comes from. The NIH budget is $35 billion and hasn’t increased with inflation in years (meaning that we’ve effectively got decreases in funding progressively).

One Oreo cookie shaved off the top of that defense budget could help cure a lot of people. And help education. And feed the hungry.

And no, shaving a few cookies off the top of that stack won’t “let the terrorists win”…

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SfN 2007

So, I was away in San Diego from Oct 31 – Nov 7 for two scientific meetings: National Parkinson Foundation and the Society for Neuroscience. These were my first real “meetings” that I attended and my first experience with people “in the field” that I’m working with (and there are a lot of the, apparently…).

The Parkinson meeting was over two days and was very helpful. The whole thing was set up so that there were presentations that were grouped along certain topics, discussed by people who know what they’re talking about, and educating the rest of us on this aspect of the Parkinson’s research field that we would otherwise be unaware of. Most of the discussions, it seemed, focused on the genetic forms of Parkinson’s disease (which only account for maybe 10% of total cases…) and that was informative, as we don’t really focus on the genetic forms, per se. Regardless, we met some folks, heard some good talks and learned more about the field.

While the Parkinson meeting involved 100-120 people, the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting involved…oh…30,000 people…which meant that I learned a little bit there, but not as much as before. You come to a point where you get overwhelmed by all the posters and topics that your head spins…and after 6 days of straight brain research, you get tired and ready to go home. I learned a bit at the SfN meeting, but there was honestly too much to learn, and thus, it was a bit overwhelming… However, Newt Gingrich did speak to us…more on that later, perhaps… 😉

San Diego itself was decent, although Macarthur was right in that the place seems “artificial.” By that I mean that the downtown area didn’t have much character: you can go to Dogtown, Soulard, and The Loop in St. Louis and get a feel of “character,” but San Diego didn’t really have such things. That, and it was hazy the whole time – it was only sunny for one day in “sunny southern California” while we were there…

Anyway, it was a good trip! Certainly informative for a first meeting and I look forward to going to more in the future…hopefully an international one next time… 😛

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Still here!

Well, I’m sitting in the convention center in San Diego, CA waiting another hour before I present my poster… It’s been an informative and interesting trip, to say the least, but I’m ready to come home…there’s only so much neuroscience that a brain can handle… 😛

I’ll try and recount the experiences in a few days after I’ve recovered a bit – I fly back to St. Louis tomorrow morning, so it’ll be busy for the rest of today and tomorrow. Until then, I’ve got a few pictures up on my Picasa page (click on the Picasa Web Albums plug-in to the right-hand side of this page) if you wanna see what’s been going on so far in the trip.

On another note, it’s about 65 F here…and I hear it got into the mid 30s last night in Missouri… 😉

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Moment(s) of truth…

Lots of stuff going on, folks, so here goes:

1). Tomorrow, I’m turning in my 8-page research proposal. Assuming it’s approved (sometime next week), I’ll expand it to a 25-page NIH-style research grant and then, once that’s approved, I’ll orally defend the research proposal in early December. So yeah, this is one of those things you’ve gotta do to get the Ph.D. and, for the most part, is the absolute hardest thing I’ll have to do to get through this thing. So, if I’m studying a lot over the Thanksgiving holiday, that’s why… ;-P

2). I’m going to San Diego, CA. on Oct 31 for the annual Parkinson’s Society meeting and the Society for Neuroscience meeting. I’ll be gone until Nov. 7th, so it’s going to be a long trip! We’ve been getting our plane flights, hotel reservations, reimbursement shenanigans, etc. in order for the last few weeks and I think we should be ready to go, but I’ve still gotta get my poster done. These meetings typically involve “seminal presentations” from the big names in the field (i.e. Nobel Prize winners, etc…smart peeps, yo…) and then “poster presentations,” of which I’ll be presenting my research with pretty pictures and graphs. All told, it should be a good practice time for me to answer questions about what I did to others in the field that know infinitely more about the subject than me, which is really good in preparation for my oral defense a month later. Either way, it’s a paid-for trip to California, so I’m not complaining… 😛

3). We’re holding Grounded again this Sunday. Check out the website that I set up (should look familiar, compared with this one…) and stop by if you’re in the St.L area at 6:30 on Saturday night!

I think that’s about it for now? Sorry for the list… I’ve been kinda busy… 😛

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W.W.J.D.?

So, Pastor Paul mentioned a month ago when Brooke and I visited Columbia that he’s looking for people to talk to the 9th grade confirmation class about “what Jesus means to you,” and as I understand it, in the context of where your life has gone since the 9th grade. He was shooting to get a relatively wide range of age groups represented, and needed someone in their mid-20s. Somehow, I got asked… 😛

Anyway, I’ve been contemplating how exactly to go about this. In all honesty, I’d never really thought about the issue, certainly not in recent years. It is further complicated by the fact that I’ve got that whole “go to church on Sunday” thing and then “do science and research” for the rest of the week – two things that don’t necessarily jive well with everyone, but is still certainly doable. There are certain things with Christianity and science that tend to not mix, but are rather key… For example, while one could argue that “Creation” occurred, the specifics behind how that came about would be looked at very differently if you asked someone on the street and if you asked someone with a heavy science background (i.e. me). Or, the immaculate conception…or many of the miracles talked about in the Bible.

Therefore, for the purposes of the discussion on Sunday, I think I’m going to steer away from those issues, but still acknowledge that it’s something that I struggle with frequently, even as I get older and learn more about life. It’s something that it’s O.K. to struggle with and, in my opinion, it makes your beliefs stronger when you feel that you can question them and that it’s alright to really think hard about the Bible and how things should be placed in the context of those that were writing it back nearly 2000 years ago…

So, I guess I view Jesus himself (as that’s really what I’m supposed to talk about…not Christianity as a whole…) as a representation of who we all should strive to be. Someone that taught by his actions. If someone was sick, he healed them. If someone needed defending, he defended them. It didn’t matter who you were, you deserved the same treatment as everyone else. And, at least according to the Bible, he didn’t scold you for being who you were, either.

The man lived by example, and that’s the thing that many Christians don’t do today, in my opinion. Many of them go to church on Sunday and then on Monday return to having the same prejudices against Arabs and homosexuals and unwed mothers that they had earlier. It’s as if many of us today took that message and forgot the “forgiveness” part, and that’s the key. Whether you believe Jesus actually turned water into wine, or died and rose again is a plus…but for me, it’s more important to know what he stood for and how he stood for it, rather than all the “neat stuff” he did, too.

So “What Would Jesus Do?” He’d show his beliefs by his actions, not by telling you you’re wrong. He’d lend his help to anyone that needed it, including his enemies.

And that’s what Jesus means to me.

Any thoughts?

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Andy's a teacher?!

So, I got my first taste of teaching recently… As I may have explained before, the Pharmacological and Physiological Science Department at SLU (of which I’m a member…) runs a class for undergrad non-science majors every Fall titled “Drugs We Use And Abuse.” It accepts 50 students a semester and tends to be pretty popular, mostly because instead of learning basic biological principles, you learn more about specific drugs and their effects on people and society.

This is my first time teaching the class, and teaching in any form for that matter… I got to teach the Alcohol section, which consisted of two lectures, the first of which was Alcohol and the Body (i.e. mechanisms and physiological effects) and the second was Alcohol and Society (i.e. alcohol on campus, alcoholism, Prohibition, etc.). The first lecture was infinitely more interesting for me, and for the students too, I think. I talked about how alcohol works on the body and had a decent number of questions… The stuff today was pretty straight-forward and largely consisted of things the students already knew (as in, heavy alcohol use tends to lead to drunk driving, violence, skipping school, etc.).

So yeah, I think I enjoyed the experience overall. I had to write a quiz for my section, then wrote a few exam questions that will be administered in a week or so. Perhaps next year I’ll expand a bit and run more of the class, and more lectures. It’s team-taught, meaning that we each get a section to work on and all contribute to the exam for each section.

Regardless, I’m still planning on the “going into industry” route after graduation (in three years…), but teaching wasn’t bad! Maybe I’ll get more into it later on? Who knows…

More and more craziness, I say…being on the other side of the desk for once… 😛

Posted on

Andy’s a teacher?!

So, I got my first taste of teaching recently… As I may have explained before, the Pharmacological and Physiological Science Department at SLU (of which I’m a member…) runs a class for undergrad non-science majors every Fall titled “Drugs We Use And Abuse.” It accepts 50 students a semester and tends to be pretty popular, mostly because instead of learning basic biological principles, you learn more about specific drugs and their effects on people and society.

This is my first time teaching the class, and teaching in any form for that matter… I got to teach the Alcohol section, which consisted of two lectures, the first of which was Alcohol and the Body (i.e. mechanisms and physiological effects) and the second was Alcohol and Society (i.e. alcohol on campus, alcoholism, Prohibition, etc.). The first lecture was infinitely more interesting for me, and for the students too, I think. I talked about how alcohol works on the body and had a decent number of questions… The stuff today was pretty straight-forward and largely consisted of things the students already knew (as in, heavy alcohol use tends to lead to drunk driving, violence, skipping school, etc.).

So yeah, I think I enjoyed the experience overall. I had to write a quiz for my section, then wrote a few exam questions that will be administered in a week or so. Perhaps next year I’ll expand a bit and run more of the class, and more lectures. It’s team-taught, meaning that we each get a section to work on and all contribute to the exam for each section.

Regardless, I’m still planning on the “going into industry” route after graduation (in three years…), but teaching wasn’t bad! Maybe I’ll get more into it later on? Who knows…

More and more craziness, I say…being on the other side of the desk for once… 😛

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March of the Giant Penguins

Giant penguin

I know I need to get a “vacation post” up, likely later today, but I just had to point this out… Apparently, according to an article in PNAS (a decent science journal), as reported in National Geographic, giant penguins used to roam Peru. New fossils discovered show that one species lived around 42 million years ago and were 3 feet tall, about the size of a modern King Penguin…but the other kind was 5 feet tall and lived 36 million years ago… It also had a foot-long beak to spear fish; both species were more “warm-adapted” than their modern cousins.

w00t, giant penguins! Let the Linux community rejoice! 😉

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Of inspiration and life-direction…

So, as many of you may have heard today, “Mr. Wizard” Don Herbert died today at age 89 of bone cancer. Slashdot reported on the death and, if you read through some of the comments after the posting, you can see what this man meant to a lot of geeks and scientists, let alone the general public. I, personally, remember watching the show back in the 80s on Nickelodeon, but can’t remember specifics, really. I can certainly visualize the studio set and the kinds of experiments he did, but not necessarily specific ones like others can…

Reading through those Slashdot comments, you can see how much of an effect Mr. Wizard had on generations of scientists (his first show was in the 50s…had another in the 80s…), and that for many, he is solely responsible for their interest and fascination with science, much in the same way Carl Sagan is for others.

I guess it makes me wonder how many people can point to a single event, TV show, book, etc. that determined their careers and course in life. It’s the kind of thing you put in your college admission essay, really… For me personally, it was probably “Star Trek: The Next Generation” that piqued my interest, then other science fiction writings/shows after that, but these really only affect “scientific” careers. And moreover, even people that like “Star Trek” or science fiction don’t necessarily become scientists, engineers and mathematicians. What about people that have “always wanted to be a lawyer,” “always wanted to be a banker”, or “always wanted to be a doctor?” Are these people just as inspired by celebrities, books, television shows, and the like? Or are they getting their career direction more from parents and people they know? Are there kids out there that are inspired to become doctors because they watch Zach Braff every week on “Scrubs?”

Either way, much like Carl Sagan, Mr. Wizard brought science into the homes of millions of children, making it accessible to them and their parents. I just hope he knew the effect he had on the world as a whole.