Genecks

Attention posters: If you plan on speaking a foreign language in a thread in an academic manner, you need to provide a translation.

Yeah, you're fine. I don't know if you're a viable sperm candidate for a prestigious graduate program, though. People who get that kind of GPA and have a decent background make me wonder what their issue is. Perhaps they've been so busy with coursework they haven't had time to find their interests. I suggest if you plan on putting in 5+ years of your life, you think really fast within less than a year (if you don't want to waste too much time) about what you want to focus on (or at least a general idea and find an institution that covers a spectrum of that idea and focuses in and out). Anyway, what is missing here is a well-described representation of the kind of graduate research you want to focus on. Once you get that down, you'll be able to narrow what kind of professors you want to work with and what kind of research you want to do. I know plenty of graduate students who just get into neuroscience research without really having a feeling for what they wanted to research in the first place. Maybe that's just my institution. Perhaps these are people who are drifters who met the GPA requirements and unsure of their next step in life. If you really focus on studying biochemistry, you can get involved with the molecular side of stuff. I suggest going to graduate school and then saying you want to get involved with the neurochemistry of things and gain biochemical skills. Personally, I think not caring about the psychology side of neuroscience is simply doing cytological research. You'd probably be better off researching developmental neurobiology at that rate, as there is a lot involved with genetics, proteins, and cellular development in that realm. My primary interests are between brain repair/regen and its relation to memory and cognition. Thus, combining outward behavior with mechanics that are occurring inside an individual (bug, human, rat/mouse, w/e). But I think it's seriously important to get involved with a research institution that covers a variety of research interests that you have, rather than a place that does neuroscience research but none that really interests you. Because I'm at a place that has a limited range of neuroscience research that I'm interested in. Personally, I think UCLA is a lot more interesting than UIUC or Northwestern. I'm sure Northwestern has some interesting stuff, but I've looked and found few things of interest besides prestige. Why? Lack of brain repair/regen research. Ugh. Personally, I would like to take the world's neuroscientists and focus them on nervous system repair and regeneration. We get that puzzle cracked, and there is a lot of goodies inside. I've taken some neuroscience classes with graduate students. Personally, I think many of those classes are absolute B.S.. Reason? Well, I can recall the general overview neuroscience courses I took. These acted more like the professors advertising their research to the students. This absolutely p'd me off, because I did not care for a review course. I wanted to have some specialized, focused knowledge of neurobiology. Instead, it was miscellaneous information about neurobiology from different professors. Personally, I think a neuroanatomy course would be more valuable than someone talking about T1, T2, T3 aspects of the thoracic cavity and then moving onto some aspect of sensation and perception. Bah! Other aspects were doing research similar to what other professors were doing. BORRRING! I had no care to do snail research and hear the dude defend the dying paradigm of his snail research, although I've gained an appreciation of invertebrate neurobiology from it all: This is a valuable paradigm in terms of understanding neurobiology networks and evolutionary aspects of organisms: Prime game for a person interested in mapping all that stuff out and looking at the intracies of how neurobiology networks are similar amongst species and then abstracting these aspects to other species, such as humans. I personally would have been more interested in the synaptic plasticity of lamprey, because their anatomy is more close to human anatomy. I didn't get to do that. If you know what you want to focus on, can find a graduate program that offers such focus, then go for it. Personally, as of late, I've had this whole "the American educational system is broken; I'm thinking about going for the money because the guardians have turned corrupt" mentality. You're fine. Programs will let you in. They'll teach you and bias you to think like them. But make sure you choose topics and professors of whose biases and knowledge you want to keep with you as a researcher. Personally, I think that is what education is about and finding one's path as an academic/researcher. For some odd reason, the system is setup to prevent people from doing that the majority of the time. Also, unless you were in labs that made you memorize/know the rxn mechs for bunches of organic reactions and in a lab that had you going through the machinery involved with cell signal transduction pathways, you don't know the bio or chem yet. I think orgo is worthless unless related to biochem. But the signal transduction stuff is seriously important and fundamental: You would get plenty of such in a developmental biology course. Also, if you can, avoid organic... It's just mindless B.S. that will give you PTSD. I've not been given a chance to really use the majority (like over 90%) of the organic chemistry knowledge I gained in two semesters of organic chemistry. I think joining a biochem lab would be a lot more entertaining and useful, but if you tell people you won't be around longer than a year, they more than likely won't want you there. Biochemistry>Organic. ---- Additional info: Of the graduate students I have come across, some do not have the biological background of a biologist. As such, it is often requested of them to take a course, such as cellular biology. Essential Cell Biology by Alberts (most recent ed) should give you a general idea of the cellular biology involved. A genetics class is more logic and math based. I don't have a background of proteomics knowledge, so I can't really discuss what that's all about. But many cellular aspects are based on protein-gene interactions, and epigenetics is becoming a topic of increased discussion. I don't think taking a year of organic chemistry is worthwhile. I think a semester of organic chemistry may be valuable in order to understand stereochemistry, nomenclature, and be schooled in thinking about pathways and flow-chart logic (rxn mechs). But first semester orgo is a bit of a shock to the system. If you're willing to put in the time and effort, I'm thinking the graduate school would either just give you the graduate classes and tell you to do research and/or do that and make you take some undergraduate classes. There are also graduate level cellular biology classes if you're game for something like that. I suspect they are more intense... and that's probably not going to be too much fun (but practical to beat if you put in the time, visualization, and effort). Physics would more than likely be useful if you have a strong foundation in physics, thus modelling complex aspects of something, such as neural injury and how the brain changes on impact of some object.... Gen chem... everyone should have a year of that. But... I think it still involves a lot of inorganic molecules.... but the physical aspects of the chemistry describes can be applied to biological systems quite well. Calculus is useful for understanding the biophysics of signal transduction. There is a whole realm of biophysics to explore.

Rawrrrrrrrrr

This poem goes out to the teaching assistant I had a large crush on. The professor was pissy at me liking a woman more around my age range, instead of me hitting on the younger women. His arrogance of getting between me and a woman I was interested in after a long depression and apathy towards romantic relationship made me want to kill his child because he had been so lucky in love that he appear to seem that all other humans aren't capable of love. Fudge that jerk. His taint rudeness made me consider beating the shit out of him in front of the 400 students that were surrounding us. His death would have been quick if I struck him... These days I've become an emotionless, psychopathic, megalomaniac who can only hope to feel or conceive of emotions such as love. Soon your health will fade and your child will become more vulnerable than ever. And then my friend, you die. Naw, I'm just trying to seem cool. I found this poem from a while back... 2010 Title: Panda Shirt There I saw a goddess Sure perhaps some normal woman Standing out in the open Showing her intelligence and rhetoric to the world Something overpowered me to get close to her. Wow. Black hair A love for nature A desire to save the world And a shirt with a panda bear There I saw a goddess Not some Wiccan witch Who had this personality of a bitch the kind who would ditch you I just remember looking at her I could feel a beat in my heart She was definitely a work of art Maybe it was this aggressive side The kind I saw inside her office room with the posting of the bullet holes in targets she didn't hide Maybe it was her love for animals Or the rock climbing or the spirit of adventure she has... Wow. Wondering how to talk to her Observing her movements Wondering how to say, "I thought someone like you didn't exist." I don't remember the last time I was crazy and out of my mind She was the goddess I would never find It's too bad that she saw me point a gun to my head and pull the trigger wishing I were dead because of all the pain I must endure as I attempt to refrain I would have given her My love My heart My everything She made me feel like a giddy little boy *bang* And then in my rampage of hate and loneliness I forever endure, I continued the path of world destruction I had before I met her.

I saw her almost major punk ass talking down to people She couldn't put on lock on the issue and get people to stop talking to other people And after a while I considered that the reason she likes to ride her bike with her sunglasses, curly hair, and ugly ass glasses Is because she is a dyke The sun got enough glare for you yet?

In a lot of ways snails take care of themselves. So, yeah, you can attempt to create larger generations of snails. However, I would suggest having a very large sample of snails in order to pick those who grow the most. That way you save a lot of time. Again, space becomes a factor. You'll need to house all of those snails and buy tanks, and make sure they are clean, and so on.

Maybe I'm new-age, but that still seems like learning to me. Perhaps I work off an old paradigm. Meh. Association of stimuli leads to new behavioral output, seems like a kind of conditioning/learning.

Theoretically you should be able to induce point mutations like that, so yes.

Ions are using by the cell to establish and alter membrane potential and other physiological actions by the cell. And ions can be considered parts. What is your particular goal in asking these questions? I gave you some nice links that go into some detail in discussing the philosophy of consciousness, even some discussing how neuroscience plays into all of it. Otherwise, much is yet to be discovered about neuronal cells. Many people hope they can generate a model of the nervous system based on the neural coding that exists rather the extreme levels of cellular biology involves. However, I often considered that method without the reductionist cellular biology to be a poor statistical approximate of what is really going on in the nervous system.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm... Well, there are plenty of rat and mouse models you could experiment with in order to get the virus working with them. The first thing that comes to mind is the possibility that the virus starts attacking fat that's necessary for neural conduction. If that occurs, then the virus is bad and can't be used for marketing purposes. I suspect there are fat-cell specific proteins on the surface of these adipocytes... Well, your theory is testable. However, I'm unsure of the negative consequences. Perhaps it would attack fat reserves in particular organs that require fat... and perhaps the cellular death of these fat cells would release toxic chemicals too rapidly into the neighboring cells of that organ causing organ failure due to the toxicity... just a hypothesis. Yeah, it could induce acidosis. Well, men would take the drug. But then again, there might be very negative outcomes for the buttocks, and sitting would become difficult.

What is it that you want replies about? I believe there is a building and deconstruction aspect in relation to tubulin in reference to the recycling of dendritic spines. Probably also in reference to dendritic shafts, although my cellular biology knowledge is lacking in this department and I am tired at the moment. I believe the cellular construction of dendritic spines is quite contemporary, cutting-edge knowledge at the moment. Is it done in the same way? Mmmmmm... No, I don't believe so, because I believe there are transport modules that help the proteins go into place... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14704952 Organelles can be attached to the cytoskeleton, but I don't believe the generation of those organelles is the same as generating dendritic networks. Again, you'd more than likely want a hardcore cytologist to talk to about this. Perhaps there are enough evolutionary correlates to consider it the same, but I don't know cellular biology on that level well enough to say yes/no. I believe there is a bunch of actin construction and deconstruction that occurs due to remodeling of neural synapses, which are due to stimulation (or lack of) of neural networks. In reference to your last question, I don't think so. I would consider the peroxide ions and other junk to be waste if released improperly, but I'm not a biochemist, so I can't correctly answer the question.

I think I would ask, "Why are you guarding the door?" And then I would tell the dudes to screw themselves, and I would bust out like Majin Buu in Dragon Ball Z when he got sealed into Kami's hyperbolic time chamber. I've seen this riddle before. I've seen the answer. And I'm pretty sure if I meet these dudes, I'm going to just pull a Majin Buu. Maybe their job as guards is to make sure people actually do go through the doors. Hmm.

Testing out an old picture of me.

Probably stress-related.

Consciousness is a tricky issue with multiple people considering it to be non-existent if not a recursive consideration of the individual parts working together as a perceptual whole. But yeah, perhaps you could pull it off. You'd need a methodology in order to do it. This would most likely involve controlling large populations of neural networks, which I don't think the delicate technology exists as of yet. You'd need something that stimulates, computes changes in cellular physiology, and relays digital and/or analog neural codes to other cells. ... side-track I'm an identity theorist who believes that conscious is the recursive consideration of the individual parts working together. If you can't have the introspective aspect involved with the ability to take consideration of the limitations of the individual parts that make up the whole, then you've failed to replicate consciousness. Greater knowledge of philosophy, technology, and science may persuade me away from such a standpoint. Of the things I know, I know that identity theory is true on a physicalist basis. ... done with side-track That can so far be done on a really small scale but not a large scale like you're requesting, at least I would think. Perhaps something could contemporarily be done with the somatosensory system and motor cortex, but I'm not sure nor giving the idea too much thought. There is also the consideration that you can electrically stimulate the motor cortex to influence and efferent response while a person is alert and conscious, but I don't suspect that is what you're asking about. Links: 1) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/ 2) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/

Well, I think the closest thing comes from the the most recent movie I Am Legend, which is based off a book of the same title. There is a type of biological agent that supposedly cures cancer but turns people into light fearing, intelligence lacking, ravenous humanoids that go around attacking people during night. But the thing about zombies is that they are undead, that they are not obeying the natural rules of human physiology, and there is just something... unnatural about them. If there was a zombie apocalypse, I suspect there would be plenty of business in the medical science department and physicist department in order to determine how these unnatural zombies work. In terms of preparation, I figure fighting them would be similar to fighting Michael Myers from Halloween (one could only hope that the zombies are much less intelligent). In that case, you'll want to chop off their limbs and get out of the area as soon as possible (as they would piece back together). Probably building underground bunkers (people in America did this post-WWII because of continued nuclear threats) and having a Terminator III style nuclear bombing of the world might become a realistic consideration. Swords would probably come back into style as would sword fighting. In general, if you can't kill something, you should be able to trap it. Such was a case with Michael Myers. Idiots eventually decided to transport him somewhere, and that's how he got free. Also, trapping zombies might help solve the economic crisis if they have an unnatural amount of energy that is limitless. I suspect people would actually hunt the zombies and put them to work like slaves in order to power cities and towns. Perhaps having a zombie apocalypse would be a good thing. But then there would be ethical issues and so-on. And then we'd have to give them citizenship. Ugh.

Lock please.

I believe people haven't been extremely interested in sequencing a genome of that snail. However, there is published information on snail development. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10074/ The Early Development of Snails - Gilbert With that in mind, perhaps a large expansion in the knowledge of snail development could help you generate the large snails you desire. However, I think it would be unrealistic if not difficult to do yourself in a single human generation. Furthermore, snails take a while to breed. With that said, it would definitely be useful to sequence the genomes of large snails and molluscs for better examination of their neurobiology, since snails tend to have very large neurons that are useful for electrophysiology research. However, it would appear that people are more interested in lamprey because they have a type of spine unlike the invertebrate snail.

I've recently read of the possibility of amoeba learning, which would classify it as a single-celled learning lifeform. However, I'm not sure how realistic that view is. It's on my list of things to further research. http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.4179 Memristive model of amoeba's learning So, with that in mind, amoebas might communicate with each other. But perhaps people are being too liberal with defining the concept of "learning."

I think the primary issue is that we are in the midst of a technological shift. This involves the idea that we're more busy because of technological advancements. Because of technological advancements, we aren't socializing as much anymore: We're in our own cubicles. As with the technological shift, we're seeing advancements, such as online dating, social networking websites, and people using cell phones to socialize. At the moment, a lot of dating via Internet/social websites is taboo to some people. They don't like the feel of it. However, since the 1980s, for what I understand, online dating (a kind of arranged dating) has been increasing more and more. And so you see people advertising themselves online more than before. I believe as time progresses this century, more people will take up online dating. My most recent relationships involve women asking me out online. I honestly don't mind, because I find that I'm too busy to socialize/mingle/so forth. Despite all of this, I still find it a little cheesy to start up a relationship via the Internet. But I figure, "Well, whatever, I don't have time to go on dates over and over again." In my hometown w/ about 150k people, I didn't find many single women. When I came to Chicago, I found plenty of single women. I think one's location also has a serious factor in whether or not they will find people to date. Now, as a persona input about online dating websites, such as okcupid... There are a lot of female art majors on there... And it seems that the other extreme would be females from top unis who are done with graduate school. Maybe it's just my age group, though (mid 20s). As a guy, I have the advantage of pro-creating as I age, thus being enabled to date women of pro-creative age in order to have kids (not on my list of things to do, btw). I think out of all of this mess, women are going to have a lot of make-break situations where they must make quick decisions in who to date, because they're getting older and spending less time mingling (due to economic constraints). As such, women will more than likely be persuaded to date well-off gentlemen (perhaps more so than in the past). Online dating will give them an ability to choose amongst men who are well off: So, perhaps the need for a quick choice could be mitigated. This, of course, would drive men to work more, save more, have to be nicer, and be older before being able to date women. Not as large as a problem for men, though, because they aren't as limited by reproductive biology.

I think human-animal hybrids for research are a great idea. Gene homology exists between animals for coding similar structures with similar functions. However, the gene code may not be the same. But if you replace the animal code with human code, you've (hopefully) made the animal more like a human for research. Now, the downfall is if things don't interact the same way during development and homeostasis. If that occurs, hopefully it can be pinpointed and improved upon. I have a feeling that the downfalls would be difficult to pinpoint due to lacking scientific knowledge. I suspect there would have to be ground-up gene replacements where we know very, very well what a gene does and the cytological interactions. From there, tinkering can continue to make an animal model more like a human. I'm not sure of current research, but it would be great if we could make, say, a pig heart more like a human heart for xenotransplantation. It might be more practical to work on that than actually build a biologically active artificial heart. Perhaps a hybrid of the methods might advance things even further. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jan/03/qanda.simonjeffery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenotransplantation

Perhaps it is the other way around, then. There are plenty of ecologists around the area who hold views that particular invasive plant species are bad and must be removed from the area at once. They hold the view that we need to keep the country's plants the same while attempting to maintain genetic diversity. AKA: Everything must be the same all the time except the underlying genetics in order to preserve how everything looks. It's like never moving the furniture around your house, bringing new furniture in, or removing furniture. It's like not living in your house, touching anything, yet having a programmatic way for everything to maintain itself in pristine order. No, that's unrealistic, and I find it to be another form of human selection. I believe it's natural for humans to start introducing plants to foreign lands. Bugs land on plenty of travelling animals in order to get new areas. As such, it's unrealistic to say that asian plants shouldn't be in America. Some kind of travelling is going to occur and ecologists tend to have a habit of saying what is good/bad in nature. Getting grants to support their views can only help to justify their belief systems.

Maybe I want to know what Siberian tiger tastes like. With only 700 left, we need to breed more of them for consumption. /end Maddox argument No, but really, unless something is keeping things in check, I find it natural that things revolve around dominating species. If humans are dominating, destroying, and so forth, yet this acts as a check-and-balance system for survival and progress, I don't see a problem with it. But the unnecessary destruction of life without attempting to enhance survival and progress is simply a waste of resources, thus not economically worthwhile. I seem to often find the trend that ecologists and conservationists' views are slanted by the grants they receive.

Sure, some cognitive disabilities are genetically related: Fragile X. There is much more to IQ than double-helix genetics, though. MicroRNA, proteins, epigenetics, mRNAs, and so forth play a role in cognition. Most tend to be determined by epigenetic control of double-helix genetics, though. People may have the same genes, but there might be different epigenetic controls on them, thus accounting for the IQ differences.

Science majors aren't worthless. But they tend to be worth more than social science, art, and humanities majors. Without the science majors, there would not be medical science advancements, and society would be at a medical standstill. Post-doc researchers make about 35k+ USD. I often see a positive correlation between individual salary and the worth of grants brought in by said individual. This trend tends to be the same in business firms if your boss isn't trying to screw you over. Yeah, business majors tend to make more money, though. Shorter time involved, and so forth. I advise people to actually get involved with business and some other major, because it's financially rewarding to do so. I would say check out the environmental studies major. Furthermore, start messaging some of the environmental/ecology professors around that uni/college and start asking them for advice. Maybe try to meet and talk with them rather than an advisor: Ask for open office hours.