So at some point there needs to be a post about how awesome my family and friends are and how I had such a nice thanksgiving and birthday because the people I love are incredible. But this is not that post. Because I really should be studying. But since this kind of relates to school, I'm granting myself a few minutes to share with you a list of words...that I really hate. I might not even explain some of them. I think you'll understand.
This list was inspired by reading the chapter on brain development in my textbook. I literally do not know of any other topic that has so many disgusting sounding words. Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful that we develop past the initial ball of cells. I just don't love the way someone labeled that process. Here goes!
8. nascent: I actually really like the meaning of this one. "just coming into existence; displaying signs of future potential." That's beautiful. But that word sounds like someone has a bad case of nasal drip.
7. angiosperm: this has very little to do with brain development but it was used in an analogy and I've decided I'm just not a fan of a word that combines a female's name with the name for reproductive cells. Actually, I'm not a fan of really any word combined with sperm.
6. mesoderm: this one is high on the list, meaning I don't hate hate hate it. And that's because it kind of sounds like a dinosaur. But not enough for me to really enjoy saying or reading it.
5. optic cups: while the definition of this may be self-explanatory, its placement on this list may be a little less obvious. It just makes me think of an eyeball rolling around in a plastic cup. So yeah...ew.
4. gastrulation: I read this word and I pictured gastric juices and intestines undulating together. In reality, it just refers to a single-layered ball of cells becoming a triple-layered ball of cells (including, you guessed it, #6 the mesoderm!)
3. neurulation: despite my love of all thing "neuro" (neuropsychology, neuroanatomy, neurodegeneration, etc), I don't like the "o" being turned into a "u". again, reminds me of undulation. which is also not a favorite word of mine.
2. cephalic flexure: this is kind of a cool concept...it's when the early brain bends for the first time, which occurs at the mid-brain. it's what lets embryos look a bit like upside-down seahorses. nonetheless, I don't enjoy saying, reading or hearing the word cephalic.
and my current #1 LEAST favorite word...................
1. invagination: EW. I may be basically 8 years old but I just do not like that. The term refers to when one part of a structure is infolded into another part. So I want to know, why couldn't we just say that then? "Gastrulation begins as the local infolding of a subset of cells in the very early embryo." That totally works. I'll start a petition.
Ok, now it's probably time to actually study...instead of fake study...which is what this is. But thank you of reading! I hope you kind of enjoyed my dislike of words regarding development. By the way, in case I don't always make it very clear through my posting, I am actually learning a lot here in grad school. And I love it :)
Happy almost Friday!!
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Recently encountered words
Magnanimity: virtue of being great of mind and heart (used in an article about Phineas Gage (ask me or google him if you don't know who that is) to explain how his mother and friends responded when the doctor asked for Gage's skull)
comminuting: to break into several fragments, or reduce to a powder (used to explain how the tamping iron affected part of the frontal bone in Gage's skull)
falx: a sickle-shaped anatomical structure
paresis: weakness (as occurs often as a result of damage to the precentral area of the frontal lobe-- the primary motor cortex)
witzelsucht: neurologic symptom of frontal lobe damage: an addiction to telling inappropriate jokes and, ironically, an insensitivity to humor
obtundation: less than full mental capacity, associated with reduced levels of alertness
corollary discharge: neural signal that indicates movement of the eyes, which allows the image of the world to remain still
Fun fact: Hoarding useless objects can occur as a result of damage to the prefrontal area of the brain. This behavior can persist even after interventions and knowledge of negative consequences.
Here's a good quote from my textbook: "All neural roads lead to the frontal lobes." (Kolb & Whishaw, 6th ed.)
And now I'm off to get ready for the holiday!
Happy thanksgiving!
comminuting: to break into several fragments, or reduce to a powder (used to explain how the tamping iron affected part of the frontal bone in Gage's skull)
falx: a sickle-shaped anatomical structure
paresis: weakness (as occurs often as a result of damage to the precentral area of the frontal lobe-- the primary motor cortex)
witzelsucht: neurologic symptom of frontal lobe damage: an addiction to telling inappropriate jokes and, ironically, an insensitivity to humor
obtundation: less than full mental capacity, associated with reduced levels of alertness
corollary discharge: neural signal that indicates movement of the eyes, which allows the image of the world to remain still
Fun fact: Hoarding useless objects can occur as a result of damage to the prefrontal area of the brain. This behavior can persist even after interventions and knowledge of negative consequences.
Here's a good quote from my textbook: "All neural roads lead to the frontal lobes." (Kolb & Whishaw, 6th ed.)
And now I'm off to get ready for the holiday!
Happy thanksgiving!
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Grant writing and dragon chasing
I wanted to post last week but every last ounce of my writing ability has been used up lately by a grant application I'm writing that is due on Friday. At the massive length of...6 pages...I am very much looking forward to submitting it. 6 pages, you say? I know, it sounds short. It's comprised of 3 different essays: personal statement, previous research, and proposed research - and each essay could be no longer than 2 pages.
It sounds great- 2 pages is nothing! But that's precisely the difficulty. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, graduate students all across the nation apply for this grant and it is extremely competitive. I have technically been working on it since the end of August, but I've really been putting excessive effort in since the beginning of October. And the deadline is almost here. I have revised my essays so many times (with the help of some wonderful students and professors who selflessly edited for me), and now, I have to laugh when I look back to my first drafts because they seem so poorly written. (It's kind of like how I feel when I look back to the essay I submitted with my application to Knox College. Yikes! My high school senior writing skills were definitely not as up to snuff as I thought they were.) But I think that type of improvement is a good sign. It's hard to delete sentence after sentence, word after word, that I meticulously put into place, just to get down to 2 pages. Having my near-final essays, however, I see how helpful that tedious process was.
So what it is this opportunity exactly? Well, this is a 3-year grant that would be in place of the tuition support and stipend that I'm currently receiving from the University of Iowa. A grant like this really provides freedom, to pursue the research I want because, although I'll are working in the Health, Brain and Cognitive Lab, I'd be much more independent. The purpose of the grant is to foster developing scientists, particularly scientists that hold promise of benefiting society. Although one of the essays is a proposal of the research I plan to conduct in the next few years, the personal statement and previous research essays were also very important because, as so many people told me, I'm "selling myself as a scientist to the panelists." Everyone's applications will get reviewed by 3 separate panelists and will be given scores on "intellectual merit" and "broader impacts", so those were some of the things I had to emphasize in my essays. It's also a little scary to think that each reviewer will read my entire application for only 10-15 minutes, before making a decision. I attended a workshop at the beginning of the year focusing on this grant and all of the leaders emphasized just how quickly the reviewers have to get through the applications. For that reason, the flow of the essay is incredibly important because you don't want there to be any "sand traps" where a reader might get stuck.
So do you want to know what I proposed? I'll give a little run down :) I'm currently working in the Health, Brain and Cognition Laboratory (check this out if you want to know more) and, after a 10 week rotation in a neurosurgery lab, I plan to come back to this lab for good (i.e. for the rest of my graduate career). In that time, one of the things I'll be learning is how to analyze data from structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We, in the lab, have access to a large dataset from the University of Illinois, of an exercise intervention run with senior citizens in the Champaign County area. It was a 6-month intervention study, isolating the differences between aerobic exercise (walking), dancing and stretching and toning. They also assessed multiple cognitive abilities through various tasks and experiments. We will eventually be working with that data to understand specific neural changes in association with the interventions. Ultimately we want to elucidate the best types of exercise, so that those can be used to help prevent (or recover from) age-related diseases.
Hopefully that all made sense :)
And now for the dragons part. I just think this is so cool. I went to the gym Saturday night after returning to Iowa City from home (where I had a lovely time celebrating Abby's birthday!!) and I didn't have a clear idea of how I wanted to work out so I just found one of the stationary bikes and did a little warm up. I had noticed this particular line of bikes previously but had never used them, but they have a screen and are connected to this super cool video game with various courses and races. Now, I like a mind-freeing, only listen to music, get lost in the workout, kind of workout just as much as the next guy (and maybe more) but sometimes, to give yourself that extra motivation to work...you need some competition! The graphics are sweet, the scenery is surprisingly pretty, the other riders are fun to beat and it just was way more fun than I expected. Saturday night I think I "rode my bike" around a course with Redwood trees and a stream and then around another one by the ocean. I liked it so much that I went and did the exact same thing Sunday night, after a full day of studying, writing essays (for the grant!) and...this is the important part...not eating very much food. I hopped on the bike and warmed up, just like the previous night. I went through a half an hour or so of normal "race" riding and was feeling great. And then I found this awesome section called "chases". There was only one available but it was a game where you ride around grabbing coins and finding dragons of different colors for different points and finding special lanterns that either make you go really fast for a while or make everything extra points. And it was way fun. And I got way too into it. I just really really wanted to get those dragons. So much so that when I was on 16th gear and I had to suddenly go up a really sharp hill to get a coin, I just stood up and pushed as hard as I could to make it. I won't say it wasn't fun...because it totally was. But the lack of food got to me or something and I think by the time I got off the bike and put my leg down by my knees I was about 5 seconds away from passing out.
Moral of the story? Don't chase dragons on an empty stomach.
But I will totally be working out on those bikes again because that actually was super fun, besides almost fainting, of course.
That's all for now! Thanks for reading :)
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Bedtime stories
So as it turns out I won't be able to tell you everything. And that's because there just isn't time. Nor is there a fancy tool to turn my thoughts into actual posts (that would be super cool!) because then I could just blog away while riding my bike or running on the treadmill. What a multi-tasking genius that would be. Then again, if I did that there'd be so many posts that I doubt anyone would ever read this again. So, in thinking about the things I want to reflect on from the past two weeks, I'll henceforth do my best to pick only the best ones.
Oh and new words and definitions coming soon. I'm in bed now so this is not prime word-learning time (nor do I want to get out of bed to grab my word notebook).
First: Stories from SfN (Society for Neuroscience Conference in New Orleans)
The conference center was huge. Gigantic. It took at least 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other, and even more if you wanted to go up any stairs and continue the journey. They had lectures and symposia and mini-symposia and nano-symposia and baby symposia (ok, that last one I made up) They also had enough posters to fill a football field. Each day. Twice. Each session had posters labeled A-Z, with somewhere around 20 in each letter group. And then there was AA-ZZ, again with 20-some in each group. And then, get this, there were AAA-ZZZ, with more in each group. I literally could not get my mind around it. Tuesday afternoon was the best poster session for me. There was a whole section in the "Cognition and Behavior" theme that was titled something like "Individual differences and training effects on cognitive functions." Right up my alley! I talked to a bunch of people, asked questions about their projects and then also got to meet a lot of the people from the University of Illinois who know my PI (principal investigator--the person I'm working for), Michelle. It was really awesome to just chat with them about a project that they have developed and run, but that I will be helping with the analysis for.
Besides all the academic stuff, there were also socials that were organized by SfN and, luckily, were in the hotel we happened to be staying in. The first night we wandered around being "social crashers" until we came upon the Alzheimer's Research social, where we found some new orleans masquerade masks and candy. We also spent some time in the "Ingestive Behaviors" social, where a lovely Australian boy struck up a conversation with us simply because we were wearing the sweet masquerade masks.
The second night, much to my surprise, was a really awesome graduate student and post-doc reception. Now, I expected some food. And some alcohol. And some music. And there were all of the above. PLUS DANCING. There was a lot of dancing. I stayed the entire two hours, sweating pretty much through my shirt and messing my hair all up, but it was so worth it. Not only is it awesome watching neuroscience geeks (myself included!) bust some moves, but I also got to swing dance, salsa and just jump around. One of the best parts of the nights was when I was salsa-ing with myself (yes, there was still a severe lack of dancing partners that actually knew ballroom), and a nearby guy says "Where are you from?" Amidst the loud noise and inhibitory ethanol particles affecting this boy's brain (a.k.a. alcohol), I had to say "Iowa" about 6 times. Each time he said back to me, "IowA? IOwa? Eiowa?" Finally, realizing I was getting nowhere I said "the midwest." Still nothing. "Here! America!"
"OHHHHH" (that one worked) "America! From here? Excellent"
--pause--
then he says, "but how are you such a good dancer then?"
Come to find out, this boy was from Brazil. I wasn't even dancing with him, but I guess we were just dancing salsa near each other and somehow I made myself seem less American than I truly am.
In terms of Salsa, I was pretty okay with that :)
Other fun things I did in New Orleans:
Grouplove concert at the house of blues (it's a lovely little indie band and a great music venue)
Ate alligator sausage, jambalaya, gumbo and, of course, fro-yo :)
Walked down Bourbon Street and some streets in the French Quarter. For the record I did NOT like the way too revealing strip club storefronts. More than once either a lady in lingerie or a pregnant lady attempted to entice us inside. No thank you. However, I DID like this awesome little artsy street with a small plaza, which was totally full of people selling homemade goods. The best part? Right in the middle, there were pieces of sidewalk chalk laid out and people had just gone to town and drawn whatever they wanted. I couldn't help myself, I had to write SfN in pretty handwriting and some squiggles. My friend drew a cat. And then we walked a few feet away and noticed some neurons and a beautiful synapse!! Other neuroscientists had been there! That was lovely.
Listened to some really good live jazz.
Walked along the beautiful waterfront.
Laid in my hotel bed, ate cheese and crackers and read papers for lab (that was about the extent of work that I got done the whole week- haha)
Drove through a horrendous storm on the way home (yeah, this was not so much fun as just rather eventful)
After arriving home at about 4:45 am on Thursday, I slept for 2 hours, got up and went to class and was surprisingly more alert and invested than I am many other days. And that's saying a lot because I love that class and am pretty involved every single day. All in all the day went well and it wasn't until that evening that it all hit me and I crashed ridiculously early. And then the next day I had an early meeting, went to work and then headed to Knox for homecoming :)
Homecoming was lovely because I got to see friends and professors and the cute little room in the library where I studied Saturday afternoon. It was really nice being back, but it also made me realize how happy I am being where I am now. Knox was fantastic and it served me well. I will always love visiting, but I realize now that I have used up my time as a student there. And so it feels right to be moving on.
Skip forward one week and I got to go to a fantastic concert with two of my friends from Knox. It was at the BlueMoose Lodge here in Iowa City and now that I know what a great music venue that is, I'm definitely going to try to take advantage of that more often. And then, like very youthful college girls, we watched a chick flick and fell asleep on the couch.
Forward one more weekend (this weekend!) and I got to go home, cheer for my beloved Cyclones, see my mama and kitty and my sister and brother-in-law, and randomly introduce myself to a boy whose music videos I've seen and admired on youtube (That certainly took some courage! but now I can cross it off my new year's resolution list :)
And now it's Sunday, feeling like it should be after midnight, but thankfully it's not! Falling back one hour always does me well. Then again, so does eating my mom's delicious food, sleeping in the same bed as my cozy kitty, laughing with my sister over the awesome computer games we had years ago and also seeing my church family.
Homework is pretty much done and I have a busy and early morning so I better get to sleep. Stay tuned for an exciting edition of "Words Rachel didn't know!".
Happy daylight savings time to all and to all a good night.
Oh and new words and definitions coming soon. I'm in bed now so this is not prime word-learning time (nor do I want to get out of bed to grab my word notebook).
First: Stories from SfN (Society for Neuroscience Conference in New Orleans)
The conference center was huge. Gigantic. It took at least 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other, and even more if you wanted to go up any stairs and continue the journey. They had lectures and symposia and mini-symposia and nano-symposia and baby symposia (ok, that last one I made up) They also had enough posters to fill a football field. Each day. Twice. Each session had posters labeled A-Z, with somewhere around 20 in each letter group. And then there was AA-ZZ, again with 20-some in each group. And then, get this, there were AAA-ZZZ, with more in each group. I literally could not get my mind around it. Tuesday afternoon was the best poster session for me. There was a whole section in the "Cognition and Behavior" theme that was titled something like "Individual differences and training effects on cognitive functions." Right up my alley! I talked to a bunch of people, asked questions about their projects and then also got to meet a lot of the people from the University of Illinois who know my PI (principal investigator--the person I'm working for), Michelle. It was really awesome to just chat with them about a project that they have developed and run, but that I will be helping with the analysis for.
Besides all the academic stuff, there were also socials that were organized by SfN and, luckily, were in the hotel we happened to be staying in. The first night we wandered around being "social crashers" until we came upon the Alzheimer's Research social, where we found some new orleans masquerade masks and candy. We also spent some time in the "Ingestive Behaviors" social, where a lovely Australian boy struck up a conversation with us simply because we were wearing the sweet masquerade masks.
The second night, much to my surprise, was a really awesome graduate student and post-doc reception. Now, I expected some food. And some alcohol. And some music. And there were all of the above. PLUS DANCING. There was a lot of dancing. I stayed the entire two hours, sweating pretty much through my shirt and messing my hair all up, but it was so worth it. Not only is it awesome watching neuroscience geeks (myself included!) bust some moves, but I also got to swing dance, salsa and just jump around. One of the best parts of the nights was when I was salsa-ing with myself (yes, there was still a severe lack of dancing partners that actually knew ballroom), and a nearby guy says "Where are you from?" Amidst the loud noise and inhibitory ethanol particles affecting this boy's brain (a.k.a. alcohol), I had to say "Iowa" about 6 times. Each time he said back to me, "IowA? IOwa? Eiowa?" Finally, realizing I was getting nowhere I said "the midwest." Still nothing. "Here! America!"
"OHHHHH" (that one worked) "America! From here? Excellent"
--pause--
then he says, "but how are you such a good dancer then?"
Come to find out, this boy was from Brazil. I wasn't even dancing with him, but I guess we were just dancing salsa near each other and somehow I made myself seem less American than I truly am.
In terms of Salsa, I was pretty okay with that :)
Other fun things I did in New Orleans:
Grouplove concert at the house of blues (it's a lovely little indie band and a great music venue)
Ate alligator sausage, jambalaya, gumbo and, of course, fro-yo :)
Walked down Bourbon Street and some streets in the French Quarter. For the record I did NOT like the way too revealing strip club storefronts. More than once either a lady in lingerie or a pregnant lady attempted to entice us inside. No thank you. However, I DID like this awesome little artsy street with a small plaza, which was totally full of people selling homemade goods. The best part? Right in the middle, there were pieces of sidewalk chalk laid out and people had just gone to town and drawn whatever they wanted. I couldn't help myself, I had to write SfN in pretty handwriting and some squiggles. My friend drew a cat. And then we walked a few feet away and noticed some neurons and a beautiful synapse!! Other neuroscientists had been there! That was lovely.
Listened to some really good live jazz.
Walked along the beautiful waterfront.
Laid in my hotel bed, ate cheese and crackers and read papers for lab (that was about the extent of work that I got done the whole week- haha)
Drove through a horrendous storm on the way home (yeah, this was not so much fun as just rather eventful)
After arriving home at about 4:45 am on Thursday, I slept for 2 hours, got up and went to class and was surprisingly more alert and invested than I am many other days. And that's saying a lot because I love that class and am pretty involved every single day. All in all the day went well and it wasn't until that evening that it all hit me and I crashed ridiculously early. And then the next day I had an early meeting, went to work and then headed to Knox for homecoming :)
Homecoming was lovely because I got to see friends and professors and the cute little room in the library where I studied Saturday afternoon. It was really nice being back, but it also made me realize how happy I am being where I am now. Knox was fantastic and it served me well. I will always love visiting, but I realize now that I have used up my time as a student there. And so it feels right to be moving on.
Skip forward one week and I got to go to a fantastic concert with two of my friends from Knox. It was at the BlueMoose Lodge here in Iowa City and now that I know what a great music venue that is, I'm definitely going to try to take advantage of that more often. And then, like very youthful college girls, we watched a chick flick and fell asleep on the couch.
Forward one more weekend (this weekend!) and I got to go home, cheer for my beloved Cyclones, see my mama and kitty and my sister and brother-in-law, and randomly introduce myself to a boy whose music videos I've seen and admired on youtube (That certainly took some courage! but now I can cross it off my new year's resolution list :)
And now it's Sunday, feeling like it should be after midnight, but thankfully it's not! Falling back one hour always does me well. Then again, so does eating my mom's delicious food, sleeping in the same bed as my cozy kitty, laughing with my sister over the awesome computer games we had years ago and also seeing my church family.
Homework is pretty much done and I have a busy and early morning so I better get to sleep. Stay tuned for an exciting edition of "Words Rachel didn't know!".
Happy daylight savings time to all and to all a good night.
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