Now on ScienceBlogs: And so, driven on ceaselessly toward new shores
The trials, tribulations, and joys of a Neuroscience gradute student writing her thesis in the postmodern, post-Y2K world.
Shelley Batts is a Neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Michigan. She studies hair cell regeneration in the cochlea, and is just embarking on that quixotic quest called 'thesis.' She lies awake at night pondering how science intersects with politics, culture, policy, money, medicine, and religion in an attempt to be more than just a niche scientist sitting in the oh-so-lovely ivory tower. Follow me and my parrot on the quest to get funded, get a PhD, and stay sane.
Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life. ~Rachel Carson
Cochlear Hair Cell Regeneration
Interview With Dr. Irene Pepperberg
On Religion and Taking the 'Red Pill'
Neuroscience of Cocaine Addiction
Parrots Have Object Permanance
Retrospectacle is now Of Two Minds!
January 31, 2008
Category: Announcements
Just a quick reminder that Friday (tomorrow) is the last day to submit the potentially prize-winning entry to name the brand new blog that Steve and I are starting quite soon. Read more about the prizes here, and leave your...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 6:27 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Tastes Like Neuroscience
Brenden Maher at Nature emailed me this morning to clue me in on an anonymous survey that their editors are doing on the topic of cognitive enhancers (a spawn of the commentary piece on the same subject a few weeks...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 11:21 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Guest Articles
The following is a guest post by Joshua Hartshorne at the Cognition and Language Lab. The first scientific paper I wrote states, in the second paragraph, that "language depends on two mental capacities with distinct neurocognitive underpinnings": vocabulary and grammar....
Posted by Shelley Batts at 9:49 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 30, 2008
Category: Birds
I'm already so excited to read and review this! Irene Pepperberg's memoir, tentatively titled "Alex and Me," covers her 30 years with the parrot that could count to six, identify colors and even express frustration with repetitive scientific trials. It...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 12:09 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Guest Articles
Cochlear implants are true cyborg technology. They stimulate the auditory nerve of deaf individuals to allow them to interact with the sounds of the world again--although those new sounds are at first alien and foreign. A few months back I...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 9:17 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 29, 2008
Category: Sound and Fury
People, I need to say this. Its never a good idea to stick things--including Q-tips--in your ears. Despite the illusion of 'cleaning' your ear canal, often Q-tips just shove the ear wax further into the canal, or worse, can cause...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 11:17 AM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Genetics
Wouldn't it be great if there was some magical institution which mapped out the developmental expression of mouse genes, and then made it freely available on the internet? And wouldn't it be cool if all that data was compiled in...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:52 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 27, 2008
Category: Announcements
My time here at Retrospectacle has been glorious, magnificent, awesome! However, I have decided to end things here and start a brand-spankin'-new blog (yes, here at ScienceBlogs) with Steve Higgins from Omnibrain as a co-blogger. I'm in my final grad...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 8:06 PM • 150 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 26, 2008
Category: Creepy Crawlies
At Cracked.com I came across a fantasticly irreverent article about the five most horrifying insects in nature, including the bullet ant, the Japanese giant hornet, and of course, the botfly. There are dozens of varieties of Bot Fly, they're each...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 3:08 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 24, 2008
Category: Academia
Every now and then I do a Google News Search for topics I'm interested in to get good blog fodder ('neuroscience' and 'parrots' are of course perennial favorites). This time one of those searches popped up an interesting news piece...
Posted by Shelley Batts at 1:17 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
