neurotopia | June 8, 2009One of my close colleagues got on eRA Commons and downloaded the challenge grants she was to review before eRA Commons went down for major upgrades in a majorly untimely fashion. This was a prudent move on her part since by the time eRA Commons would be accessible again, she would be traveling for multiple conferences and would have precious little time to download and review her grant assignments. So, she logged on. She was assigned 2 grants. She reviewed them while traveling and once home, with eRA Commons back up and running, went to upload her critiques the night before they were due…
neurotopia | May 20, 2009Challenge grant review assignments went out today. You know, the ones so essential to revitalizing the economy? Not surprisingly the reviews are due back soon- June 5th.
To access the challenge grants you use eRA Commons. However, eRA commons is going to be offline for the next five days for a massive infrastructure upgrade. Which means if you don't get your review assignment downloaded tonight, you can't access it until May 26th.
Genius. Download your grant assignments now, if you're reading this.
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neurotopia | May 4, 2009Every year the folks at the Alliance for Science have themselves an essay contest. The topic is evolution-themed, and since 2009 is so relevant to Charles Darwin-- being his 200th birthday and 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species-- we asked students to identify a modern scientist that exemplifies the characteristics which led Darwin to make his monumental discoveries.
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This year we had a very tight race... a 3 way tie for 3rd place. Do check out the winning essays, they are worth a read!
neurotopia | April 27, 2009I think I hit the wrong thing when trying to install a rotating blogroll, so Neurotopia may look like base model Movable Type template for a while. My apologies...
neurotopia | January 23, 2009My illustrious coblogger points out that by taking part in research studies, a graduate student can actually afford to do things like, well, eat. Normally relegated to scraping the crumbs off the post-seminar cookie tray, or sneaking into a urology luncheon and being forced to sit through an hour talk on ureter infections only to have the opportunity to pick through the dregs of the boxed sandwich choices (ultimately finding the pimiento cheese spread/sprout pita to be the sole viable option), graduate students eke out a meager existence where we're pitted against each other to fight for the…
neurotopia | December 31, 2008My illustrious coblogger already put up a New Year's wish from both of us, but I simply had to add this one. There's a big fake-o tree made of lights on the highway by my digs. It's supposed to spell out "Joy Hope Peace Love Faith" or something to that effect. Some of the lights burnt out, leaving us with this gem:
Someone. Please. Alert Failblog. Now. (Ignore the fact that it looks a bit like a dilapidated FAIU).
Happy New Year everyone! I hope your holiday season was a standout!
neurotopia | December 15, 2008The semester is finally winding down. Kudos to Scicurious for holding down the fort. After teaching 3 courses on top of my 40+ hour-a-week lab job, I'm rather grateful. No wait, I'm frakkin' ecstatic. Possibly rapturous. Don't get me wrong, I had a blast being an instructor. Most notably my Basic Concepts students told me they really appreciated my efforts, and a number of them did pass their departmental exams to enter their respective programs. That made me feel great. My Human Bio course was a bit of a sleeper, however, since almost every single person was there to fill a credit.…
neurotopia | October 1, 2008make Evil a dull monkey.
All work and no play make Evil a dull monkey. All work and no play make Evil a dull monkey. All work and no play make Evil a dull monkey. All work and no play make Evil a dull monkey. All work and no play make Evil a dull monkey. All work and no play make Evil a dull monkey. All work and no play make Evil a dull monkey. All work and no play make Evil a dull monkey. All work and no play make Evil a dull monkey. All work and no play make Evil a dull monkey. All work and no play make Evil a dull monkey. All work and no play make Evil a dull monkey. All work…
neurotopia | September 25, 2008Some people have been noticing erratic behavior from republican nominee John McCain lately. His most recent seems to be slight, but rather odd. Specifically, he appears to have developed ptosis--- a drooping eyelid--- which could of course be related to any number of causes, from an autoimmune attack on cholinergic receptors such as that seen in myasthenia gravis, to diabetes.
Ptosis can also be the result of a brain tumor that affects the oculomotor nerve (cranial nerve III). Sudden development of the condition at old age following multiple bouts of melanoma (which has a penchant for…
neurotopia | September 22, 2008The downside of this semester is that I am dog tired. Having 3 classes with exams all at once wasn't a good idea when I still have to work 40+ a week. I haven't had a day off in weeks. On the upside, I can afford to get the room reshingled. If the damn roofers will ever show up. I may also have a slightly different teaching arrangement and a reduced workload next semester, more on that later!
So a big shout-out to my coblogger, two weeks into it and we've already got Boingboinged! Great work Scicurious!!!! We'll be getting a bit of a redesign around here as well, some drastically…
neurotopia | September 9, 2008This is one of those things I simply can't fathom. How does a woman pretend to be pro-women and then charge other women for basic forensic services following a rape?
She justifies it as necessary to cut taxes. Which begs the question: how much of a tax burden did sex crimes place on the town of Wasilla?
If your answer is "not much", I simply can't understand how this basic service now becomes the responsibility of the victim, who has to rebuild her life after a traumatic event. (Unless you're one of them thar self-loathin' wimmen who blames the victim, but that's another can 'o' worms…
neurotopia | September 8, 2008In a bit of a shift, I've decided to take a co-blogger. I'm up to my ears in work and whatnot so I think it would be worthwhile to have another voice here. Look for the official introduction in the next couple days!!!!
neurotopia | September 3, 2008McCain is bitching about supposed sexism from Democrats when this is what is being worn by Indiana delegates at the RNC?
What a bunch of bullshit.
By the way, ignore my previous post. That was IRONY, dammit :)
neurotopia | September 3, 2008This is so many degrees of wrong. Start your "so this is how Palin got the job" jokes if you want, but please remember that HER DAUGHTER IS IN THE FREAKIN' PICTURE TOO YOU SICK BASTARDS.
neurotopia | August 28, 2008....by releasing them from a mink farm. This is what happens when you set animals free without regard to the consequences.
Now whether you think raising and killing animals for their fur is immoral or not, it takes a special kind of mind to cogitate that an appropriate solution is to spontaneously decrease the mink population by getting them killed.
Welcome to Mink Psychology 101: Remedial Minktation -- mink raised on a farm don't know anything about how the world works. When you let 6,000 of them out of their cages and 500 of them manage to escape out of the open farm gate, should…
neurotopia | August 21, 2008I signed up to teach 3 courses at the community college this fall; Human Biology and 2 sections of a Basic Concepts in Biology course. The latter is "remedial" biology, designed to catch up people with little or no biology experience so that when they take Intro biology, they're all on the same level. We give them a basic smattering of cell biology, molecular and genetics. Apparently the program has had decent luck with this course, and the students who take it often do well compared to those that don't. I think it is a fabulous opportunity to teach motivated but basically naive…
neurotopia | August 19, 2008Lots of attention has been paid to the capacity of great apes to use objects as tools. Well, here we have an example of a chimpanzee at the Honolulu Zoo using a toad as a "marital aide". I feel bad for the poor toad, it certainly doesn't deserve to be treated like an object.
There's not more I can say about the subject, frankly I'm still simultaneously trying to process it and scrub it from my brain. Again, not safe for work viewing.
neurotopia | August 13, 2008So when does trying to advance one's career become a Bad Idea? How about when you're trying to recover from a nightmare postdoc so you take a part-time lab job while you regroup, then apply to a few teaching spots only to find out that you're only missing one qualification-- more teaching experience-- else you'd be gainfully employed?
The obvious solution is to get more teaching experience. For me, the only realistic option for doing this is to teach at the local community college. I taught Intro Bio this summer and it was really fun. However, as most people know, adjuncting at a…
neurotopia | July 23, 2008We've all had that R21 or R03 come back with completely useless comments. Months and months of work, hours or weeks spent in the lab collecting that preliminary data (which is supposedly unnecessary for those R21s). More time spent waiting and waiting. Revisions. Resubmissions. The same useless comments back to you.
Come on. We all know it's a racket. In a tight funding climate, nobody in charge of the purse strings wants to fund a competitor. But they gotta find a way to reject your grant in a way that is completely noncommittal. Hence, weasel words.
Here's my favorite: "The…
neurotopia | July 21, 2008Normally I don't run for any sort of competitive purpose. Ok, so I've never run for any sort of competitive purpose. I took the opportunity this time, though, so that I'd have other runners to help me push my pace.
I'm pretty out of shape right now but I can still do a 7:30 minute mile pretty easily, on hills. When I was in good shape 2 years ago, I my best time on my toughest 1 mile run (which was all uphill for the last half mile, on 14th St heading south towards Walter Reed if anybody knows the area), I could do 6:40. Which makes me reasonably certain I could've broken 6:00 on a flat…