You really do learn something new every day
Today's novelties:
Gantt charts: who's heard of these? Apparently they are useful tools for project planning. To me, those kind of words suggest corporate psychology and buzzwords, which are kind of offputting, though aspects of corporate psychology are interesting in their own right, like the Myer-Brigg test. ENTJ!
But the intricacies of the utility of various planning tools are amazing. Who spends this amount of time on this stuff? I am in awe. Look at how this discussion has evolved. The charts in that thread all just begin to look like so many pixels. But it is fascinating to think of project managers in charge of million dollar construction projects using these things to plan.
Caenorhabiditis elegans, a worm used to study, among other things, the development of the nervous system. The complete wiring of their nervous system was published about 20 years ago. This has not been done for the human nervous system! But even knowing how all the nerves physically connect up in this worm is not sufficient to explain its behaviour, so how can we hope to explain human behaviour? Looking at *how* connected nerves communicate in the worm is one way. An action potential is the rapid transmission of electricity along a nerve which usually results in something happening in the end of that nerve and then a messenger being delivered to one or many adjacent nerves. There is current debate about whether these worms' nerves actually fire action potentials. But there are other types of potentials, or electric signals, sent through nerves, which encode different communication signals. So it's like logic programming - different computation will arise depending on the gating. Understanding how this simple organism communicates, whether by action potentials or other ways of signalling will be super informative, to link anatomy and neuronal function to behaviour (these worms show forms of Pavlovian conditioning!). I never knew worm research was so important to neuroscience. It's a place to watch.
And, less information-dense: the discovery that mouse pups are very cute and that the mother is a wonderful nurturer, chivvying them back into the nest when they stray. Their eyes are still not open 6 days after birth.
Gantt charts: who's heard of these? Apparently they are useful tools for project planning. To me, those kind of words suggest corporate psychology and buzzwords, which are kind of offputting, though aspects of corporate psychology are interesting in their own right, like the Myer-Brigg test. ENTJ!
But the intricacies of the utility of various planning tools are amazing. Who spends this amount of time on this stuff? I am in awe. Look at how this discussion has evolved. The charts in that thread all just begin to look like so many pixels. But it is fascinating to think of project managers in charge of million dollar construction projects using these things to plan.
Caenorhabiditis elegans, a worm used to study, among other things, the development of the nervous system. The complete wiring of their nervous system was published about 20 years ago. This has not been done for the human nervous system! But even knowing how all the nerves physically connect up in this worm is not sufficient to explain its behaviour, so how can we hope to explain human behaviour? Looking at *how* connected nerves communicate in the worm is one way. An action potential is the rapid transmission of electricity along a nerve which usually results in something happening in the end of that nerve and then a messenger being delivered to one or many adjacent nerves. There is current debate about whether these worms' nerves actually fire action potentials. But there are other types of potentials, or electric signals, sent through nerves, which encode different communication signals. So it's like logic programming - different computation will arise depending on the gating. Understanding how this simple organism communicates, whether by action potentials or other ways of signalling will be super informative, to link anatomy and neuronal function to behaviour (these worms show forms of Pavlovian conditioning!). I never knew worm research was so important to neuroscience. It's a place to watch.
And, less information-dense: the discovery that mouse pups are very cute and that the mother is a wonderful nurturer, chivvying them back into the nest when they stray. Their eyes are still not open 6 days after birth.