March Theme - Post 1

It is interesting that I am writing this blog so soon after Richard Dawkins visited campus. This topic is actually something that I have thought about for a long time. Anybody who has taken a general biology course has heard the quote: “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” (Theodosius Dobzhansky – evolutionary geneticist). This statement remains controversial to this day ‘in light’ of the fact that we live in a largely religious world. The clash of creationism and evolution is something that I personally had an internal struggle with in my life. Being brought up in a Christian home I was taught that God created the ‘heavens and earth’ and formed them in the state they currently reside. In class I was taught that the current state of things was the product of billions of years of successive cause and effect. There are those that try to meet in the middle ground with the idea of Intelligent Design. However, in my life I have found that route ultimately unsatisfying. Why did God allow so much redundancy and some much ‘slop’ in biological processes and proteins if he was ‘directing’ the evolution of such? On the other hand, is it truly possible that evolution could have ‘selected’ for the thousands and thousands of protein interactions and a created such a complex system as the human psyche? These questions still remain, but ultimately I find myself choosing either one side or the other (sometimes depending on the day). The internal struggle continues…….

-Tyrell S.

March Theme

Internal Struggle…..
Life naturally lends itself to struggle. In many ways that is what has created us. It is easy to identify the external struggles of the life and times around us. However, we as humans are in a somewhat unique position to discuss an unusual struggle…..the one within.

February Theme Post 1

Entry 1-
I know exactly what began my infatuation with science. I know the year, the subject, the speaker and the television channel. It was the summer before my junior year in high school. Up to this point, science had been an easy but not necessarily interesting subject for me. Then one night sitting at home, I caught a show called “Desmond Morris’s The Human Animal”. The show possessed many elements that would instantly grab any 16 year old males attention. From the BBC description of the show’s topics: “the stages of courtship, and the aesthetics of physical beauty are studied, along with the anatomical mechanics of sexual arousal and copulation”. This translates to: sex, nudity and more sex; which, coincidentally, were the only three topics my 16-year-old brain was capable of attending to.
However, because Morris was a zoologist with a strong evolutionary psychology slant, the show had a lot of exciting and useful information concerning the “whys” of human sexual behavior. Suddenly I was watching to see if a girl I was talking to would twirl her hair or if she leaned towards me as we talked. Are her eyes dilated when she talks to me? Does she laugh a lot around me? To many women and more experienced men, these are obvious tips, but to a 16 year old boy these bits of scientifically derived information are gold! I felt like the most important mystery of my short life, “how do I not screw up around a girl”, had been revealed to me by an old guy with a charming British accent on TLC. I remember telling my male friends what I had learned and when the show would be on next so they could catch the stuff I forgot. I remember looking for more information of sexual behavior and reading more and more about sex differences and the “whys” of girls and guys. Four years later and two years into college I found psychology had finally overcome my art and music biased mind and I switched majors. Thus, an infatuation with the science of sexual behavior led to a strong interest in evolutionary psychology, which led to a love of sex differences and their exploration, and that is the story of my love of science (and Desmond Morris).

-RTJ

February Theme

How I Love Thee…
Dedicating yourself to a long and sometimes difficult task such as graduate school requires a certain amount of devotion. For many of us the attraction of science was pronounced and undeniable but for some it may have been a more subtle seduction

January Theme Post 2

Science should take a step back and question the assumptions it's been operating under. Last week I went to a science museum and noticed a group of kids playing with wands and a tray full of bubble solution. All of the adults were keeping a good distance because they were afraid to get soapy and thought they knew exactly how the bubbles would behave. But far too often we make assumptions about the general principles, and that gets us in trouble when we try to understand minute details based on incorrect assumptions. We should question these basic assumptions and not be afraid to get a little soapy in the process. And if the kids are any indication, we'll have more fun in the process.

-Katie N

January Theme Post 1

I would like the scientific community to commit itself to a period of rejuvenation. In my mind, scientists are the original great explorers and at times, it seems exploration into uncharted waters is too often sacrificed for whatever will minimize risk. I want science to resolve to renew their dedication to the expansion of all horizons of knowledge. Of course, this is a massive task. Science has become a big business and like in other corporations, shareholders demand a maximum return for a minimal investment. Science must resolve to emphasize the necessity of risk, exploration, and the hidden dangers of gaining some small increase in value at the expensive of laying the foundation for much larger and sustained long-term gains.

-RTJ

January Theme

Scientific Resolutions –
Resolutions are normally a very personal experience. However, in a relatively small field like the academic sciences perhaps the entire community can resolve to improve itself.

Neuroscience Holiday Party!!

*Neuroscience Program Holiday Party* Where: Radiology Building Entrance Lobby When: Tuesday Dec. 9, 6:00-8:00pm Who: All faculty, staff, students and postdocs in NSP labs How: Everyone is invited to bring a dish (and serving utensil), beverage, or dessert to share.Please RSVP to Chelsea (tiernan8@msu.edu) or Margaret (bellmar4@msu.edu) if you plan on attending and what dish you might bring so we can minimize duplicates. Hope to see you there!

RTJ Post 1

Hello and welcome to the MSU Neuroscience Program student blog. The goals of this blog are relatively simple:

1. To provide an output for short examples of student writing and to encourage such writing.
2. To provide an outlet for students to voice their thoughts and opinions on a wide range of academic topics.
3. To serve as an active and frequently updated gateway into the formal NSP website.

One misconception about how this blog might benefit the NSP is that a regularly updated NSP blog will increase the NSP’s search rankings. Unfortunately, the frequency of updates does not play a part in the Google search algorithms rankings. Below is an explanation of Google’s indexing algorithm:

We assume page A has pages T1...Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations). The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85. There are more details about d in the next section. Also C(A) is defined as the number of links going out of page A. The PageRank of a page A is given as follows:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

From: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

Thus, in order to increase NSP visibility we must increase the number of sites that link to the NSP main page (a blog would do this) and have these links be from pages that have many other links to them. However, the most efficient way to increase the visibility of the NSP in Google search results is to purchase sponsorships through Google.

Even though it may not increase traffic simply due to increased updating, the student blog may increase traffic as students, friends of students, and friends of friends of students link to it, due to its (hopefully) interesting and thought provoking content.

Sincerely,

RTJ

Test Post

This is a test post for the MSU Neuroscience Student's to view and decide if they enjoy this formatting.

The students in the Labs will be sending me (the webmaster) word documents and I will be uploading those to here so that every student can read this. A link to this will be placed on the MSU Neuroscience page that will allow them to easily click to see this blog!

Pictures of shirts from the MSU Neuroscience 2008 Retreat