Aftermath, or, "We're so screwed" (even if they want to help)

It's hard to know what came out of the meeting yesterday. The Biology Department conveyed in no uncertain terms why sticking our stuff in the RAHC is not acceptable as far as we're concerned. But in terms of what we will do about our animal facilities, and how soon, and everything else... well, that's still up in the air. The big problem is that even if we get what we want – a new facility – it's several years away, and we have users in a substandard facility trying to run projects now. Even renovating the current building (short term solution) will probably result in a substantial interruption for the current users.

And just in general, the reluctance by administration to work on research space is angering me and a few of my colleagues.

We have a meeting with our new president, Bambi, in two weeks. I hope we can get some of these issues on the table then.

Confrontation?

The latest kafuffle between the biology department and upper administration is about to come to a head at noon. Here's the lowdown.

The Biology Department used to be in a different building (now the Health and Human Science Building). But when the Biology Department moved to the new digs, the Science Building, around 1996, one building containing the department's animal facilities got left behind. It's called the Biology Annex.

The Annex is in pretty bad shape, and because it's halfway across campus, it's underused. Initially, we were talking about renovating – fixing the air conditioning, etc. Then, at a meeting, our new president, Bambi Cardenas, suggested, "Why don't we tear it down and rebuild it?"

But somewhere along the way, something changed. Now administration wants to move our animal facilities into the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio's Regional Academic Health Center research division (this is the RAHC that I've shown pictures of in this journal before).

From my point of view – and everyone else in the department I've talked to – this is just an all-around bad idea from every angle. Nobody has seen a positive side.

We're having a meeting about it with some administrators today. Not sure which ones yet. The meetings at moon. About 90 minutes from now. I fully expect there to be – what's the politician's euphemism? – "a full and frank exchange of views." (Personally, I'll be trying to restrain myself from asking the administrators present what the hell they've been smoking.)

I could have a very interesting second post today...

Give it back!

Spent most of today trying to undo the damage that was foisted upon me by having my file munched by computer or software. Ran into a new problem with importing text – no matter how much I insist that I am importing English (a.k.a. "Latin") text, not Asian text, it still keeps marking the text as Asian with a limited font range. I got around it by importing plain text, but had to redo all the formatting. Annoying. But I think I'm almost back to where I was yesterday.

Munch

I spent a good chunk of the day working on my Society for Neuroscience poster today. The meeting is next week, and I like to have these things done in advance as much as possible.

And something went wrong. The drawing software crashed. I couldn't open the file with my poster on it any more. "Ah, that's okay," methought. "I'll open the automatic backup that's created every time I save the file.

And that wouldn't open either. Oh, no, no, no... ARGH!

I lost a lot of work. Nothing irreplaceable, but... damn. Just... damn.

Hot off the (virtual) press

Just got email in the last couple of minutes that my latest paper is now available online.

Now, let's see here... (opens file cabinet, pulls out folder, pulls out papers and scans them closely.) According to the publisher's "Copyright transfer statement," before I can link this page here, I have to mention that Springer-Verlag is the copyright owner, and this text must accompany the link:

"The original publication is at springerlink.com"

Although there are a couple of linking options for this article, I'm supposed to use one with a digital object identifier (DOI).

I think that covers all the legalese. If you have a subscription, you can now jump to my latest paper, "Mechanisms of behavioral switching," here.

(I wanted it to be "Mechanisms of behavioural switching." The editor for this set of articles was American, and I lost that argument.)

The proof of the paper is in the correcting

It's still mid-morning, but today is already a good day. I received the proofs for my latest (short) article that is forthcoming in Journal of Comparative Physiology A. For those who have a subscription to this journal, the article should be up about one week from today in the "Online first" section. It won't be much, as it's a short introduction to a special series of papers, but it's a publication. And according to tenure requirements here, a publication is a publication is a publication. It doesn't matter if its a one page comment in a journal that nobody's heard of or a massive magnum opus that makes the cover of Science or Nature -- it's still one publication for tenure purposes.

The proof also contained an order form for reprints, and I couldn't help but notice the cost of reprints. Now, I like reprints. It's nice to have something professionally printed on acid-free, archival paper. But for a short article like this (probably 2 pages, tops), it's so not worth it. The cost of 50 copies is...

(Wait for it!)

US$275! And the reprint order form notes, "If you order offprints after the issue has gone to press, costs are much higher." The mind boggles at who could actually afford reprints then. The guy who owns Wal-Mart, maybe. It's one of those things that makes me very glad that scientific publishing has gone digital. Most people will be able to get PDFs and print their own copies at a fraction of the cost of what the publisher can offer.

But... having to do something like this makes me feel good. It reminds me that I have actually accomplished some stuff this year. And that's an important thing when so often, I feel frustrated at my inability to get things done fast enough.

The animals do what they please

One of the logical corollaries to Murphy's Law is known as the Harvard Rule of Animal Behaviour. It goes something along the lines of, "You can have the most beautifully designed experiment with the most carefully controlled variables, and the animal will do what it damn well pleases."

That is currently one of my biggest problems. I changed my entire teaching schedule on the idea that the ascidian species I was working with last year would be back again this year.

Nope.

These little babies just have not shown up again. Whether it's En Nino, sunspots, bad luck, or whatever, I'm sort of stuck without the animals I wanted to work with. 'Tis a quandry. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have a student who worked with me last year ready to do a series of follow-up experiments. Eeep! So now I have to think of a back-up plan.

Still, I find this problem less aggravating than my other major problem, which is the seeming inability of getting anything I order here promptly.

A surprisingly good day

A few positive things happened today.

First, free food! We had a social with our graduate students today (a suggestion of mine, as it happens), and they brought in some food for the students. I was reasonably pleased. We got about a dozen of our students there, and I met two new ones for the first time. It was good to have a chance to chat to them a little. And there was pretty good cake.

Second. I whipped off a quick letter of intent for a grant that's due at the start of October. I wouldn't bet on my chances, as I've submitted to these guys several times before and have yet to go to the full proposal stage. The problem with this particular grant system is that they only provide you with a rejection, and no indication of why they're not asking you to submit a full proposal. But I keep kicking at the can nevertheless.

Third, I finally got some supplies that I ordered back in... June? April? May? It's been so long I honestly don't remember. But it has been months since I tried to order it – not days or weeks. But it is here, which means I actually have something for one of my students to start working on now.

Fourth, I got word from a copy editor asking for fixes to one of my upcoming manuscripts. Now, "fixes" usually aren't a good thing, because it reminds you of the mistakes you've made. In this case, though, the fixes were easily done. This is good, because it means the paper is in the production pipeline, and hopefully will be out either at the end of this year or early next. Right now, anything to do with a manuscript coming out makes me happy, because it makes me feel a teensy bit like a waste of space, scientifically.

There might have been one or two other things that went right today. But for the moment, I'll just savour those little pleasures.

People unclear on the concept?

This morning, I got an email asking if people would be willing to teach classes between Christmas and New Year.

Our university has a traditional fall and spring semester, and two summer sessions. This year, they experimented with a "mini term" in the few weeks between the spring and summer sessions, which apparently was reasonably successful. Administration is now asking about the possibility of a winter mini term between the fall and spring semesters. It would run December 20 to 11 January, with three days off for Christmas and two for New Year's.

My reply was, "You have got to be ****ing kidding."

I cannot help but wonder at the split personality of administrative decisions. On the one hand, we hear, "We want to become a research university." On the other hand, we get this email that says, "More classes. More, more, more!" When are faculty supposed to be doing research? Writing grant applications? Having a chance to even think about these issues?

Now, I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression here. It's not like faculty would be forced into teaching these mini terms. They'd be an opportunity for extra money for those faculty who wanted to teach them.

Still, I think it amply demonstrates how far administration's mindset is in thinking about research. This university has grown on the back of ever increasing student enrollment, and has chugged along quite nicely on student fees. I think university administration smells an opportunity for more tuition, and are chasing that with far more seriousness than they are talking about investing in faculty's ability to write and secure major external research grants.

Mysterious deaths, 7 day work weeks, and other reasons for cheer

I drove out to the Coastal Studies Lab last week, and brought back many animals. Some hermit crabs, ghost shrimp, sand crabs, and tunicates. All had survived well in tanks recently. But for some mysterious unknown reason, just about all of the hermit crabs and ghost shrimp keeled over in less than a week this time! About half died on Sunday, the other half on Labour Day.

This is one reason I was glad to have come into the uni every day this week. It would have stunk to high heaven – both literally and figuratively – to have come in to all those corpses after a long weekend.

The tunicates didn't die prematurely, but the work I was trying to do with them was not encouraging, either. They're about as easy to dissect as old boot leather.

On the plus side, I'm more glad than ever that I live within walking distance of the university.

In which the author is reminded of his numerous limitations

Late last night I get an email from the National Science Foundation advising me that my latest grant proposal was missing a section and I had one day to fix it. It was easy to fix; I had written the section, but for some strange reason, I hadn't uploaded it.

At today's faculty meeting, I'm afraid the entire faculty got lectured because I forgot to turn in paperwork. Consequently, the Dean's secretary spent a couple of minutes, in a huff, telling everyone that it's not her job to remind us when we need to submit paperwork for travel. Which was pretty much aimed squarely at me.

And I'm up to six independent study students this semester. I must surely be mad.

On a more positive note, interesting thing that happened today was meeting with some folks from the graduate school of the University of Texas Medical Branch, who have some support money for Masters students from our university who want to continue on into a doctoral program at their university.

Ripe for the picking

Our building has had an amazing rash of thefts the last few weeks. We've lost about five or six computers and other equipment, including two last night. So far, I have been fortunate, but I've backed up the most recent stuff on my desktop computer just in case. I'm really worried. It's not the computer that concerns me, but losing data is a huge issue.

In other news, classes have started yesterday. I've tried to lighten my teaching load this semester (two classes) so I could get some more research done, but it's going to be an uphill battle. I will be supervising five students in research projects, and have many manuscripts and grant applications that need to be completed. My major concern is a repeat of the summertime issues with ordering supplies (as in, having only half of them actually show up).

Passtimes

When I walk to work every morning and when I walk home every night, I pass right by the baseball stadium that is home to the Edinburg Roadrunners. Have done so for the past three years. Heck, we live so close that we get the fireworks displays on Saturday for free. I rather like baseball compared to most other sports, and I've sort of meant to go for three years. Of all things, Sarah got given a pair of tickets, so we went to the ball game last night. The Roadrunners were playing the Jackson Senators.

And a good game it was, too. The lead went back and forth, and at the top of the ninth inning, it was a 9-9 tie game! The Roadrunners managed to strike out the batting Senators in the top of the ninth, and I was sitting thinking, "This could go extra innings, but there's only one hit in it."

Edinburg player Ryan Webb gets up to the plate. First pitch...

BAM!

Over the fence! Home run!

I just had to laugh. Great, great way to end the game. They have a thing here where they pass out a tip bucket for the pitcher for striking out a player, or a player for hitting a home run. I put in a contribution for the batter for the one pitch, one hit end to a tie game.

The proposal has left the building

Despite a form getting stuck in the Dean's office, my latest National Science Foundation proposal has been submitted this afternoon on time. Huzzah! Now comes the waiting – I should find out the results around January or February. This is my third kick at the can with a major proposal for the NSF, so here's hoping this one actually hits.

Intellectual environments

You know, it occurred to me that I haven't been talking a lot about what my job ostensibly is: being an academic. I am anticipating making some progress on that front. At the end of last week, the majority of the tenure-track faculty got together at my urging. We decided to form a Biology Journal Club. The idea is that each week, we'll gather with our advanced students, some munchies and a recent scientific paper in hand -- probably something from Science or Nature, and see what we make of it. I'm really looking forward to it. I did a little bit of this with my colleague Fred Zaidan last semester, and discovered how much I missed it.

Of course, the main reason I don't talk about my tasks as a public intellectual is that I am spending so much of my time trying to get other people to do their jobs. Today is the deadline for a National Science Foundation grant that I've been working quite hard on this summer. To have the grant submitted, there's supposed to be a "transmittal form" signed by the department chair, the college dean, and probably a couple of vice-presidents. I sent that form on its way last Thursday or so – and it hasn't showed up in the Office for Sponsored Projects. The grant can't be submitted without it. So now we have to spend (waste) time tracking down this wretched piece of paper.

I would so much like to be spending more time on the former and a lot less on the latter.

Slow

I got reimbursed for attending Western Nerve Net today. It's "only" a month after the meeting. Yet again, anything involving money at this university is an instant headache. I currently have about four things I have to be reimbursed for, each worth several hundred dollars. But I don't get reimbursed if I have to pay interest charges on my credit card.

In fairness, I should say that I haven't been reimbursed by Louisiana State University either for my trip there. But that was only a couple of weeks ago.

The Lamberts have left the Island

Charlie (standing) and Gretchen Lambert (seated, perhaps obviously). Merci beaucoup to both of you!

Yesterday was another good day for my attempts to push forward with ascidian research. Gretchen Lambert was able to identify some more species. I think our final total is something like 15 species from a large number of genera, maybe 10 or 12. Interestingly, all of them seem to be invasive species that have been brought in on the bottoms of boats. This is a worldwide problem: many ports and harbours have lots of invaders.

Also, my colleague Virginia was finally able to locate some little baby tadpoles of her tunicates. She had been frustrated for some time because she couldn't find reproductive animals, but it turned out she was looking for baby tunicates in the wrong place. The species she had worked on previously turns out to have a reproductive system that is unique to that species, not common to all the species as Virginia had assumed. Now we can rear "clones" of ascidians from a known individual. This gives us the advantage of being able to work with a bunch of animals that all have the same genetics.

All of this slightly offset the crummy collecting I had for sand crabs. I turned over a lot of sand to find very few animals! I did find a mud shrimp (Callianassa, I thought, but apparently has been renamed as Lepidophthalmus louisianensis), though. This was the first time I'd ever pulled up one of them in one of my shovels. Also found two sand crabs with egss, which I'd not seen before in my collections.

More identifications

Day two of the Lamberts' visit went quite well, up until the very end when I got a speeding ticket coming back from the Coastal Studies Lab. We reckon we're up to about 15 species that we've found so far.

Visiting scholars

Day one of the visit by Gretchen and Charlie Lambert went well. So far, we've found 11 tunicate species in the waters around the Coastal Studies Lab, with positive IDs for six of them. And we've got two days left to collect and identify mroe critters.

Ringing phones

I have been getting a series of weird phone calls today. People phoning up with totally random question. The weirdest was some fisherman phoning up asking what I know about flesh-eating bacteria. Which, being a neurobiologist, is next to nothing.

A little while ago, I had some physician asking if there’s anyone doing cancer research here, because he’s going to have access to various kinds of tumors in his research. Considering that this is a basic biology department with strengths in ecology and plant science, that was also a big no.

And then there’s been the series of calls from students who seem to be unable to read the university catalogue and are asking for “advisement.” Most of the time, advisement is about as much fun as reading the rules on Oscar night. (I may be dating myself, since reading the rules got dropped from pretty much every awards show years ago because it was so tedious. But all those awards shows used to do it.)

And people wonder why I don't like phones.

Drowning in molasses

Three weeks and two days ago, I handed off a small purchase order for some supplies for one of my students, who is doing an independent study class with me. Because this is a summer class, the entire course only lasts five weeks. Today I learned that the company I wanted supplies from won't sell to this university, because they won't accept the terms of our small purchase order (payment in 30 days). In short, I spent 60% of course waiting to be told "We can't buy that."

The two major components of my job are teaching and research.

I can't teach if I can't get supplies.

I can't do research if I can't get supplies.

So just what am I doing here?

Dye killer; early weekend

In the lab, I am getting irritated. I've been trying to get various flourescent dyes and labels to work. These are new techniques to me, but are pretty routine stuff everywhere else. But I seem to be the jinx of dyes. I've tried four or five of them now, and none of them seem to want to work for me. I do not understand it at all.

Meanwhile, with the visit of Gretchen and Charlie Lambert, two of North America's foremost ascidian experts, to the Coastal Studies Lab coming up this weekend, I reckoned I would take the day off today to ruins some errands that kept getting put off, and to do a little relaxation, too. Because tomorrow I'll spend getting ready for their visit, and I know I'm going to be working like a dog for the three and a half days that they'll be here. I'm betting that by this time next Tuesday, I'll be very tired. I just hope I'm also very happy and that we'll have made good progress on identifying what we have to work with here.

Addicted

It's official, according to the Finnish army: the internet can be addicting.

My other favourite recent news piece was on the library of unwritten books.

Barracking

Go the Dees!

Piccies from LSU

They like their football at Louisiana State University. Their football stadium is huge, seating about 90,000 people. And it's only going to get worse at LSU, because...

...They were national champions last year. You might be able to see that the name of their stadium is "Tiger Stadium," so called after their mascot, Mike the tiger.

This is the fifth tiger named "Mike" to serve as LSU's mascot. I have severe reservations about keeping an animal like this on campus, but I was pleased to note that they are collecting money for a new home.

Yes, they make and sell their own water at LSU: "Tiger Water." As I said: they like their football at LSU.

I will never cease to be baffled by the emphasis Americans place on university sports. It is insane.

One of the beautiful things about the campus is that they have many, many live oaks planted around the grounds. They are huge, beautful shade trees, perfect for studying underneath them. Many are "endowed" oaks, with plaques next to them paid for by someone or other, often in memory of a dead relative.

Another favourite thing I came across was that they have an open-air Greek theatre. Would be very cool to see something staged there.

Of course, the real reason I was there was to interact with research students. Thursday was presentation day for a lot of undergraduate researchers. I think there were 90 some posters, all told. It's very fun and interesting talking to the students, who are pretty sharp and knowledgeable about their work.

And I have to show off the one UTPA student who part of the LSU Undergraduate research program, Amanda Aguilar. She was litterally the first in the program for the 90 or so students.

Louisiana update

I spent a good chunk of yesterday with fellow neuroethologist Jim Belanger, commiserating over Provost woes, etc. I also stuck my nose into other people's neurobiology labs and talking to students about their research projects. And envying how LSU labs are about three times the size of UTPA labs.

Before I head back tonight, I'll be spending most of the day at the final poster presentation for the LSU undergraduate researchers, which should be a lot of fun.

Which reminds me: I have to think of a project for one of my own undergraduate students, who I put off a little until I got back on Friday. Which is tomorrow. A lot will depend on whether any supplies came in for me while I was away. We'll see.

Time, time, time, look what you've done to me

Yup, it was all about time yesterday. Like looking at my watch when the pilot of my plane to Houston announced that there was a light on in the cockpit that wouldn't go off, so they had to bring in a mechanic, turn off the electricity, deplane the aircraft, fill out some paperwork, and bring us all back on board, all of which had us taking off over an hour later than planned. I was sweating bullets as to whether I would make my connecting flight. It was supposed to board at 9:05 am. I got off the plan at about 9:15 am. I ran across the airport, caught the monorail, and made it. Barely. But I did get there on time.

But time wasn't done playing tricks with me yet. On the way in from the airport to Louisiana State University, I asked my host Sheri Wischusen how long I had for my talk. She said, "About 20 minutes." Ulp. I had reckoned on about three times that much. Fortunately, I'd given a 20 minute version of the talk a couple of weeks back at Western Nerve Net, so I was able to improvise, adapt, and overcome.

It was an interesting talk to give. Very multimedia. They had one student who was watching by remote, but I could see her on the screen behind me. She could see me and my slide, which were also projected up on the screen.

In any case, the students laughed in the right bits, and were good sports about me giving a 50 minute talk in 20. I finished about on time.

Them went to lunch at a place called The Chimes, which is a very good pub with various flags in its window, including Canada's (so I approve heartily). Then spent the afternoon walking around campus and doing some research at the library before going to dinner with fellow invert neuroethologist Jim Belanger at a great Cajun restaurant called... um... Boutin's (I think). Good food, live Cajun music, and a small swamp in the back with lots of turtles.

As for today, I'm planning on doing lots of networking and visiting with LSU faculty.

Can't sleep

My inability to sleep before a trip came in handy again today. I had changed the alarm to the right time, but forgot to set it. But I woke up well before the alarm was supposed to go off, so should have no problems making my flight.

Next post: from Baton Rouge, Louisiana (I hope!).

Did I mention the gods hate me?

Yesterday, I was just about done everything I could do that day, and was thinking of going home a little early, around 5:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. is a more typical end of day for me). My wish to go home obviously displeased some deity or another.

I was working on my talk for Louisiana State University next week. This PowerPoint show is getting to be a big file, so I decided to move it into a directory of its own.

And for some mysterious unknown reason, a whole bunch of pictures suddenly swapped positions with each other in my presentation. Where there was supposed to be a neuron, there was s distored picture of a hermit crab. And on. And on. Scattered throughout the talk. A few places just had white boxes with a big red "X" in the middle, indicating the program couldn't find the picture at all. Cussing ensued, followed by a determined effort to fix this before I went home. Fortunately, enough of the slides were still intact that it wasn't like I was starting from scratch. A couple of pictures were very insistent about not being fixed, leaving me to stare angrily at big red Xs over and over. I think I've finally got them beat down, but making all the repairs took me until -- you guessed it -- sometime after 6:00 p.m.

All those trials aside, I think it's going to be worth it. This talk has grown into something rather different and more comprehensive than what I planned, and I'm real excited about it. In fact, I think I may be able to squeeze a good review paper based on the preparation for this talk.

Staying in business

A few weeks back, I went to see a movie, which is something I try to do every week if there’s anything remotely interesting. This particular week, right around the long weekend, most of the munchies were sold out. (Spider-Man 2 had just opened and was doing boffo boxoffice.) There were no Reese's peanut butter cups, no Twizzlers, no chocolate, no lemon drops... just row after row after row of Hot Tamales.

Why raises the question: why does the theatre stock the things at all, if people won't buy them even when there's nothing else to eat? Heck, how does the company that makes Hot Tamales stay in business?

Mysteries of our time. Clearly, more research is needed.

Beached

My student Sandra and I made a run out to the Coastal Studies Lab today to pick up some animals, examine a few plots I set in motion, and got at least one new experiment set up. Because, hey, I needed a few more plates that I have to keep spinning...

More comics

Link of the day: Ph.D. Comics. I love it. It was one of the best things I learned about at Western Nerve Net. One of the best non-scientific things, that is.

Note that "Ph.D." is not short for "Doctor of Philosophy," but "Piled Higher and Deeper." This is an old joke that a "B.S." (usually Bachelor of Science) degree is short for... um... male bovine excrement. The joke continues that "M.S." didn't stand for "Masters of Science," but for "More S***".

The overall message of the comic: grad school is a weird thing to do. I've got news for grad students: so is a post-doc. And so is being an Assistant Professor.

Texas Weather Report

Today's weather: Heat that, when you walk out of an air-conditioned building, sucker punches you behind the head with a sock full of pennies than rolls you for your wallet and leaves you for dead.

The Twilight Zen

Cell phone.

Number 18

My eighteenth scientific paper got accepted at the end of last week. I finally had a chance to sit down today and make the few small required changes, so it will be off to the editor this afternoon. This one is significant because it’s the first one exclusively from UTPA, so its counts towards my tenure requirements. Sure, it’ll probably be only a page or two when it finally sees print, but a publication is a publication is a publication, as far as the tenure guidelines go. That is to say, a comprehensive 400 page monograph counts the same as a 2 page short communication in this tenure game.

I have mixed feelings about that, personally. There really isn’t much incentive to do quality work, but on the other hand, it’s not always possible to do work that’ll make the cover of Nature.

In other news, after agonizing about my species name error, I was pleased – no, relieved is a better word – to see the Society for Neuroscience had to send out a correction. I got an email saying that the time they scheduled for my poster was probably wrong, please disregard it, and they'll be sending another email soon. Heh. It's always good to know that everyone makes mistakes. My poster ended up being Saturday afternoon after all, which I'm happy about.

I was less pleased about getting a hotel for the Neuroscience meeting. The State of Texas – of which UTPA is a part – only pays $110 per night for a hotel room in San Diego. But that's actually pretty low for the hotel rates for this meeting. $150 a night seems to be more common, particularly if you're anywhere within walking distance of the conference center. So guess where the difference has to come from? That's right: my wallet. Most of those low-cost hotel rooms are already snapped up. (One colleague commented that getting a Neuroscience hotel was a “Darwinian” process.) I reserved a room that cost $115 a night, which means I'll only be out of pocket about $30, luckily.

Freakin’ taxonomists

I just got confirmation of when I’m supposed to give my poster at this year’s Neuroscience poster. I’m pleased that this year, I’m giving my poster on Saturday! First day of the conference before people are burned out! Yay!

But I’m red-faced now. I just realized there’s a mistake in my title: I have the species name wrong. I put the name of my lobster as Palinurus argus, when it is, in fact, Panulirus argus.

Now, in my defense, I am not the first person to make this mistake, nor will I be the last. You see, both names are scientifically vaid and describe genera of spiny lobsters. Apparently, back in 1847, a taxonomist named White decided to split the spiny lobster genus Palinurus into three genera. For his new genera, he chose anagrams of the original name: Linuparus, which is fairly distinct from Palinurus, and Panulirus – which darn well isn’t. And thus is was that Dr. White ensured my confusion, not to mention the puzzlement of many others, for years to come.

I would submit a revised abstract to correct the title and add an author (my student Alana contributed work to this project after I submitted the abstract), but the deadline for that was back in May. Fortunately, this is just an abstract, but it is pretty embarrassing to have to put in “sic” next to the poster title in my curriculum vita.

Western Nerve Net

As I mentioned before, Santa Clara is a very pretty university, with a long history and Jesuit tradition. The mission (below) is very attractive, and has a wonderful rose garden next to it.

We had our Friday dinner in a faculty club slighty in back of the mission, and our first speaker on Friday night was the magesterial Ted Bullock, delivering a talk called "In praise of natural history."

Ted Bullock had to leave on Friday night, which I was disappointed with on the one hand, because he's got so much experience and insight. But on the other hand, it meant that my nightmare of Ted dissing my talk couldn't come true. Whew.

The meeting itself was small. There were only about 30 people all told. But apparently the organizers broke even, and all went well. I'm pretty sure I was able to have a conversation with just about everyone at the meeting. I was pleased that my own talk was fairly well-received. At the end of the day, we had dinner out in the residence courtyard.

 

Note the large number of people around the the beer, and the small number of people around the trays containing the barbeque...

Thanks to John Birmingham for reviving a great little meeting. And I look forward to doing it again next year! (Right, Megumi?)

Feel the chill

There is no hot water in the showers where I’m staying. This makes for a rather rude awakening, especially after a night of poor sleeping. I never sleep well in a new bed the first night, and this bed is not particularly comfortable. It has a very spongy pillow. I also dreamed about giving my talk, and getting patronized at the end by Ted Bullock, who (in my dream) said something like, “It was a good effort.” I’m hoping the reception for my talk will be a little warmer. Warmer than the showers, at any rate.

In the waking world, Professor Bullock gave the opening talk last night, which was very good. I'll describe him in a little more detail later, but for now I'll just mention that he is in his seventh decade (!) as a practicing scientist, but still active and still sharp as a knife.

Unfortunately, I’m unlikely to be able to post any pictures until Monday. I realized that I don't have the right USB cable to hook up my camera to a computer, alas.

Feel the burn

Ah, the mild California weather has played its evil trick on me. Because it’s nowhere near as hot as Texas, I spent most of the afternoon wandering around campus and nearby environs, taking pictures, checking things out. Looked in the mirror tonight, about ready to go to bed, and realized that my skin is pinker than usual. And it’s been a few hours since I got out of the Santa Clara fitness center. Argh. I’m just hoping that this is a mild sunburn, and that the only consequence will be that I look slightly goofy when I give my talk tomorrow morning. I could rather do without any pain or peeling skin tonight, thanks.

Been up since 4:20 a.m., and it's now past 11 p.m. Texas time. Well past time to go to bed.

California dreamin’

I’m typing to you today from Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California. The first university in the state, apparently – and it sure smells nice. There are plenty of plants and flowers, and you can really smell them as you’re walking around. What particularly surprised me was catching the scent of pine – something I probably haven’t smelled in three years since leaving Canada.

It also about 7°C cooler here than southern Texas. This, and some very interesting southern California architecture and Jesuit sculptures make walking outside pleasant rather than an occasion to be avoided (if possible) or dreaded (if not avoided).

I hope to have some pictures up later. But in the meantime... food. I've been up since 4:30 a.m. (!), and it's now 3:20 p.m. back where I normally live, and I need sustenance.

Well, that was unexpected...

Life is full of little surprises. Like car repairs. More examples are rolling in today.

First surprise. I am leaving to go to a meeting tomorrow. I thought I had finished my talk, and was preparing to do other things this afternoon. But while doing a little research, I stumble upon a paper that is directly related to what my talk is about. One the one hand, it’s great, because it basically answers a question which I had, and the results reported in this paper are totally in line with my own. On the other hand, it’s annoying, because I can no longer write a grant proposal asking for money to do this experiment that I had planned, because it’s already been done. On the third hand (I study crustaceans, many hands are allowed), it’s good because it adds more depth to my talk. On the fourth hand, it means I have to make a new slide quickly and revise my PowerPoint presentation again.

Second surprise. Our Dean calling a meeting on about 24 hours notice yesterday, and there was a little speculation on what it would be about. Nobody predicted that he would announce he was leaving our university in less than two months (end of August), citing personal reasons. He’d only been here for about a year and a half. He’d been the driving force behind UTPA getting a $1.3 million Howard Hughes Medical Institue grant.

I’m rather hoping that the rest of the day is sedate and uninteresting.

Has it been a week?

Whoops. Guess it has been that long since I posted. I spend most of today getting ready for Western Nerve Net (my abstract is up on line now). I gave a practice talk this morning. It clocked in at slightly too long, which I expect I can fix by Saturday. The rest of the day was spent tinkering with the talk, implementing a few ideas that my colleagues gave me for improvement.

Tomorrow, I plan to make a quick (probably very quick) trip out to the Coastal Studies Lab. I just learned today that we're going to have a faculty meeting for the College tomorrow, which our Vice President of Academic Affairs will be attending. I hope to get back in time for that, since that particular VP is very rarely seen at these sorts of things, so I suspect something important might be up.

The next day, I get on a 6 a.m. plane bound for California. Ugh... I don't even want to think about what time I have to drag my sorry butt out of bed.

Speaking of talks, I've also wrangled myself a second trip this month. I'll be heading to Baton Rouge for a couple of days, and will be giving a talk to the Biology Sciences Department at Louisiana State University. This happened because LSU has a summer research program, and they have a couple of slots reserved for UTPA students. So I decided to try to take advantage of some of those existing ties and ask for an invitation. I'll be there in a couple of weeks to spread good will and cheer. Or something.

Edit: No trip to the Coastal Studies Lab for me tomorrow. Our car needs fixing. Expensive fixing. Splud!

Double failure

Failure number one: I have to meet a student today. Which means I'm going to campus instead of getting a day off.

Failure number two: My most recent effort to get asked to write a full proposal for a Whitehall Foundation grant failed. Over 100 letters, of which they asked 22 people to write full proposals. And I – I was not one.

Happy Dominion Day!

Dating myself with that entry title. Call it Canada Day, if you prefer. I'm celebrating by trying to take the day off. We'll see if I can avoid going to uni today. If all goes well, a little matinee, a little shopping, and the like. With the amount of work I have to do, I know I’ll regret this decision tomorrow. But I’ll cry tomorrow. For now, I goof off.

Homework

I'm here at home tonight and not exercising like I want to be. I got a phone call this afternoon from one of my colleagues, who had some bad abdominal pain last week. This guy's had heart problems in the past, so went to see a cardiologist and is going to have a bit of surgery tomorrow. It turns out there aren't too many people available who have any other expertise in the summer class he's teaching, and asked if I would do it for a day or two. Me, being a nice guys, said sure. But this means I've got a lecture to write for a (groan) 7:45 am class tomorrow.

Back to work I go...

I feel pretty, oh so pretty...

Two of my students met. After they had parted, one said of the other, with a tone of surprise in his voice, "She's pretty." It apparently had never occurred to him that someone good-looking would be involved in research projects. I made some comment about being wary of stereotypes.

Obviously, there's still more consciousness raising to do.

President Bambi

Our new president-designate, Blandina Cardenas, also goes by the name (nickname? dimuntive?) of Bambi.

[Pause.]

I kid you not.

[Pause.]

As an essayist, I have to say that it's wonderful knowing that a rich mine of comedic opportunity has just dropped into your lap.

Be that as it may, I rushed to the Coastal Studies Lab this morning, did some very quick animal collection and pick-up, rushed back to the university in time to see President-delegate Bambi's introduction to the university. I sat in the university auditorium, still with sand and salt in my shorts. My buddy Mike offered me a dollar if I went up to our president delgate and introduced myself and declared that I has sand in my shorts. Didn't take him up on the offer.

President-designate Bambi said a few encouraging things about research and workload, but I still get a vibe when I hear her speaking that makes me uneasy. Just a little too much like a seasoned politician. She has the sort of delivery that leaves you wondering how much is an act for the occasion, and the cameras, and how much is real.

How to win friends and influence people

Now isn't this an interesting way to start a new job... Our new president said some things in public that she thought was private, according to this story. It should certainly add a certain frisson to her coming into the new position with people knowing she wants to swing the axe at a few people.

New President

Blandina Cardenas is our new university president. In my book, this is not great news, but it's not bad news, either. I reckoned she was in the middle of the pack in my assessment of the candidates. I was personally hoping for someone with more research experience. Instead, we get another president who's background is in education -- just like we've had for the last two decades.

Time will tell if she'll work out. It always does.

Tired

Whew. I was kept busy today with all four students working non-stop on their projects and needing guidance from me. I am pretty tired. And it'll probably get worse before it gets better; I'm planning to run out to the Coastal Studies Lab tomorrow to dig up more sand crabs and the like, which is usually fun, but not relaxing.

Less than an hour until the new President for the University is announced. The new preident will be on campus tomorrow afternoon; I don't know if I'll be back in time for the conference they're holding at 2:00 pm. Doubtful.

Cherry!

Here’s an example of one of the "cherries" of data that lined up in my scientifc slot machine at the end of this week.


Each one of those small black spheres is the cell body of a motor neuron. The lines extending into the center are the axons. You can’t see them go all the way out the nerve because this piece of nervous system is thick enough that the microscope doesn’t have enough depth of field to focus on everything you’d like to see at once.

This is a very good example of a technique called cobalt backfilling. The editor for one of my papers called this technique “old-fashioned,” but so what? I can see everything I need.

Strength

After grumbling in my last entry about having to work late on Thursday to work (made necessary by a couple of animals dying en route from our Coastal Studies Lab to my lab), I was working even later yesterday finishing what I'd started on Thursday.

The lobsters I was working with on Thursday were intended to be part of a project for my student Alana. I planned to have her finish yesterday what I'd started on Thursday. Alana who usually arrives in the morning, but didn't come in until afternoon yesterday. She started to finish the tissue staining I started, but didn't quite get all the way through. SO I was left to do the last few steps on my own.

But it was well worth it. Everything worked. And not only did everything work, it did so near perfectly. It was definitely a "Yessssssssss!" moment when I looked at what we'd done. I was pumped.

I often compare the experience of doing science to being a gambler. (Or, for you psychologists in the audience, a rat in a Skinner box on a random reinforcement schedule.) You keep pulling the lever on the slot machine, but you never, ever know when those three little cherries are going to line up in a row. The jackpot comes at random. And that, according to much psychological research, is the situation that tends to lead to the strongest drive to perform the behaviour. Rats trained on the "jackpot" schedule press their little bars for food faster than any other reinforcement schedule.

I probably shouldn't be comparing my profession to unhealthy addictions. Though I doubt I'm the first to do so.

Give me strength!

I think everyone has days where they ask what it is that keeps you going. This was one for me. I had been holding some spiny lobsters out at the Coastal Studies Lab. I had three of them shipped into our main campus today. When I got them in mid-afternoon, two had died! Not again! These animals seem dedicated to being pains in my butt. This meant that if I was to get any useful information from these animals, I pretty much had to dissect and stain both of them now before the tissue started to go bad. Which pretty much shot any other plans I might have had for that afternoon and early evening.

But what might keep me going is that if I come in tomorrow, and get some beautiful stains of neurons... all will be forgiven, and it will all be worth it.

More grants...

I was just informed that the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston got a major grant to help funnel students into graduate studies in research (I believe it's a Bridges to the Future grant). Why do I care? Because our university is a partner in that program. I'm one of the faculty who's listed as a participant. I should be able to get money to support some students and their research, which is good and useful.

I seem to be unable to generate a successful grant on my own, but at least I'm a small part of teams that put together successful grants.

The big squeeze

After we finished interviewing candidates this week, I spent most of the rest of the week working with students on research projects. I've been really pleased: they've all entered into the spirit of things, have been attentive, and generally making excellent efforts. And because they need guidance, I've been spending time in the lab, slowly organizing and cleaning (which the place needs!).

The downside is that while I'm working there, I'm not able to write. And I really need to write grant applications and manuscripts. I'm stuck for time. And I'm not sure how I'm going to make time to do both yet. I need to train student students to generate data, but I also need to get that data on the printed page.

'Tis a quandry.

A new President

My University will be getting a new President in a little over a week. I'm quite anxious to learn the outcome of this process. One of the administrators here pointed out that at most universities, Presidents come and go with little impact on the daily routine of the institution. In this case, however, a new President will be a big deal, considering that this institution has had the same president for well over two decades. The right person now could make a huge difference to this place. Huge.

The end is near

Of my job as Biology Search Committee chair, that is. That was the twelth on-site job interview since February, all of which I was responsible for overseeing. (Remember, you can't have a dozen without "Zen!") Our last on-site interview ended today, with our candidate getting on the plane as scheduled. At least something went as scheduled -- these last three job interviews have been rife with moved appointments, missed appointments, rooms that were supposed to be reserved for seminars being switched over to classroom use with no notification... argh!

With so many people coming and going, I'm just glad we didn't injure anyone.

Meanwhile, I've got four(!) students doing summer research projects with me so far: Mike, Eric, Alana, and Jessica. In typical Pan Am fashion, I had some students express interest in doing summer projects who never showed up and nevercontacted me to say, "I'm not going to be able to do this." Fortunately, a couple of the students above joined at the 11^th hour, so I should be able to hand off projects planned for the deadbeats -- I mean, other students -- to them.

But for now? I'm going home after a day of getting candidates on planes and showing students techniques. I'm kind of burned out.

A day at the beach...

...Is no day at the beach. At least, not when you're a biologist. I went out to muck around and dig for sand crabs for stduent projects. And as pleasant going out to dig on the beach sounds, it's hot, backbreaking work. Lots of shoveling and bending in about 35 degrees C weather. Fortunately, a CSL intern from UT Brownsville named Gibbs was there to help me out.

We managed to get our 11^th on-site job candidate away without injury. Only one more on-site interview to go, at the start of next week. And one way or another, we are done after that.

The week that exploded...

...and it was only Tuesday.

We're having two more on-site interviews this week. Monday, as I noted, was a holiday, so nobody was around. On Tuesday, it seemed like every time I turned around, something was going annoyingly – but luckily, not badly – wrong. The room we had reserved for the candidate’s seminar got taken over by a class (with no warning that our reservation had been pre-empted), then we had to try three more rooms before finding one that was empty where we could hold the seminar.

And it seemed absolutely everyone wanted to reschedule meetings with the candidate.

And we ran out of money for snacks at the afternoon social.

And I have about five undergraduates who want to start research projects.

And... Well, I think you probably get the idea. But by this time next week, come what may, there will be no more job interviews! No more phone interviews. No more campus visits. So my job as Search Chair will be done soon.

Holiday, apparently

South Texas has begun its regular "heat that beats you like clubs when you walk outside" only slightly later than scheduled. I was greatful for the repreive, I suppose, with a cooler spring this year than last.

Today is apparently an American holiday that, being Canadian, holds no special importance for me. I was in my office trying to work bu tnot getting very far, as my main unfinished job right now is to order supplies for my students. And that means I need to get quotes for shipping costs, that sort of thing.

My major task for next month is to somehow start getting grants and manuscripts happening. I'll keep you posted.

Not yet, maybe soon

I still haven't managed to get anything new started, but I think I'm getting closer. The search committee stuff, and the two on-site interviews next week, are both taking major chunks out of my time. Luckily, one way or another, those searches should be over in two weeks.

Road trips

I got back yesterday from a pleasant and productive trip to the Austin area. I visited with my colleague Virginia Scofield, but more importantly, got to visit several people in the University of Texas Austin Section of Neurobiology. Although the visit was put together on rather short notice, I was able to meet a few people, and quite a few people attended a talk I gave. I was pleased that they were asking very perceptive questions, and seemed genuinely interested in the story I had to tell.

The downside to visiting the particular day I did was that UT Austin was engaged in cleaning its entire power system. Apparently, this involved blowing steam through some massive turbines. This process is going on apparently all week, and it involved noise like few things you've ever heard. Have you ever stood next to a jet engine at full throttle? Louder. They had construction guys handing out earplugs on the street corner, it was that loud. Fortunately, some areas inside the building where I gave my talk were relatively quite. The offices of some of the people I met were not so lucky.

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In other news, I’ll be turning off the option to comment on this blog, even though I haven't received a single one yet. Call it a premptive strike. I visited another blog, and saw a whack of “comments” that were nothing but typical spam advertisements. Gah.

When will they end?

I am still keping busy trying to finish projects that I seem unable to start any significant new ones.

For instance, I am still working on Search Committee stuff, trying to fill two more positions. We're arranging on-site interviews for two more candidates to come for the first week of June, with another one possible the second week of June. At this rate, the Search Committee work won't be done until the end of next month / early July.

I still have three of my four Honours students who have yet to hand in their final draft. One more should be done tomorrow, though.

And I still have analyses to do of my pilot project for teaching technology. And I haven't been able to find time to order teaching supplies for my summer students, which is surprisingly time-consuming. And then there are the manuscripts I should write, the grant proposals I should write... yikes!

I'm also trying to accomplish all this while I am simultaneously preparing to visit the Austin area on the weekend and early next week. I'll be visiting my colleague Virginia Scofield, then spending Monday networking with the faculty in the Section of Neurobiology, among others. I'm giving an informal seminar, so I'm prepping my PowerPoint slides right now.

People have been asking me, "Are you going to go back to Canada for the summer?" (or "on vacation," or some such). My stock response is to laugh and say, "I have real work to do."

The big news

A few posts back, I hinted that there was some good news coming. Now, I can finally tell you what it was. Thanks to our College Dean, Mike Eastman, UTPA received a $1.3 million grant for undergraduate research from the Howard Hughes Medical Institution. The university even got mentioned specfically in the formal HHMI press release. (Edit: The success of this grant got noticed by the University of Texas Chancellor, who sent a congratulatory email to our president that is now making it down the line to me.)

I was involved somewhat in helping to prepare the grant application last summer (I mentioned it here), so I am hoping to reap some small benefit from it. Although a planned laboratory bus got mentioned in the press release, actually the bulk of what we'll be doing will be in the Biology and Chemistry Departments. We'll have undergraduate fellowships, a much needed seminar series, and undergraduate research symposium, and more.

I had a two-part response to hearing this news, when the Dean "leaked" it to me a little in advance. My first thought was, "Yes!" My second thought was, "How much more work am I going to have to do because of this?"

In the not so good news, the microelectrode puller request isn't going to happen, as the particular University fund I was hoping to tap into is supposed to be for equipment replacement rather than new purchases.

And several faculty in the Department had their requests for teaching release to do research turned down. I think this may be the first time anyone in the Department has had this request turned down. It's made for some very unhappy campers, and I can't blame them. It's a fast and efficient way to demoralize people.

In the better news department, I've submitted abstracts to give talks at two meetings. One in July at Western Nerve Net (the meeting I gave my first "pro" presentation at), and one in October at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting. The Society for Neuroscience abstract is always a bit frustrating, because it has to be sent in so far in advance. You often have to something based on your preliminary data, and hope that they productive experiments you do in the intervening summer don't change the story too much...

Successes

The first good news is that all four of my Honours students have successfully defended their theses, with my last student, Anna, doing her defence today.

I also got word that I'll be able to purchase a Sutter P-2000 microelectrode puller using money collected from a "technology transfer fund" students pay into. The reason I was able to tap into this was that I'm creating a new class, Neurobiology Methods, which is a lab course. It's been approved at the university level, but since nobody does anything remotely like this, I will need lots of equipment for the course. This was one of the bigger single purchases, and is a pretty pricy piece of kit (over $12,000!). I'll be able to put it to good use in research, too, when the class isn't running.

And I love the idea of having a piece of equipment with a laser capable of melting solid rock! (The puller can make electrodes out of quartz, and quartz is rock.)

Three down, one to go

My Honours students Gloria and Marco both successfully defended their projects today in back to back presentations. Makes for a long day. It's just 4 in the afternoon, but it feels like it should be 6 or 7 in the evening.

Perhaps part of that fatigue is because today was the last official day of the semester. Marks were due to be handed in this morning, although I met my self-imposed deadline of getting them in at least one day early. I am now cast adrift, with no courses to teach for 3.75 months... to do grant writing and manuscript writing and supervising students on lab projects. Going to two more forums for candidates for a new university president. And let's not forget that there are three job positions that I'm actively trying to fill, in my role as Chair of the Search Committee.

The grapevine has it that there is good news for the University to be announced soon. I don't get to tell you what it is for a few days. But it's cool, and will be very helpful to a lot of people here.

One down, three to go

The first of my four Honours undergraduate students, Nisha, successfully completed her defence today. Yay! Now, I just have to get three other students through their defences on Friday. And about a dozen other things to do by Friday, but oh well...

I also just put together a small request for a big piece of equipment: a microelectrode puller with a sticker price of almost 13 grand. We'll see how it goes.

The beauty of data

I was analyzing some results from a simple little experiment that I had done. The picture below is a recording of neural activity in the tail of a crayfish.

Notice the large, regular spikes? They start slow, speed up, and then slow down again. Those are from a single neuron: the tonic stretch receptor of a muscle receptor organ. This is a little sense organ that detect bending in the tail: the more it bends, the faster the neuron fires spikes. I've shown a recording of them in this journal before, because they were the first neurons I was able to record from in my lab.

You can see there are a few other neurons firing in this trace: a few bigger, most smaller. Using the marvels of computer technology, I can sort all of those by shape so that I'm left with just the one cell I'm interested in. In practice, it tends to miss a few spikes here and there, but in this case, it did a pretty good job.
Now I can focus in on just the response of the one, single neuron I'm interested in, shown in red.

Because this neuron fires all the time when stretched very consistently, the major thing we're looking for is, "How does that firing rate change?" Yes, I can see it gets faster and slower, but I'd like a bit more detail than that. I plotted the instantaneous frequency of the firing rate (spikes per second, calculated spike by spike rather than an average).

And I was shocked by what I saw.

Clearly, this neuron didn't just speeding up and slowing down once. It sped up, then went slower and faster several times, resulting in these distinct peaks in the firing rate. It wasn't visible in the initial trace, but was blindingly obvious when you did this simple analysis.

The shock wasn't just over realizing that the neuron's spiking was a bit more complex that I first though; the shock I felt was the shock of recognition. I looked at those dots, outlining a shape with the distinctive series of "scalloped" edges along the top. I'd seen that shape before. I'd seen it a few times in a recordings I'd made myself during my Ph.D. work. Mostly I had seen that shape in scientific papers by other authors, like these two traces here.

From Figure 1 in Wiens, T.J. 1993. J. Comp. Physiol. A 173: 435-444.

What that picture shows you are intracellular recordings from two muscle cells. A neuron is being stimulated by the experimenter (Ted Wiens, in this case), and the muscle cells are responding to each little puff of neurotransmitter that the neuron releases. (You can tell it's an old picture by the grid of dots visible in the second trace. This was probably photgraphed straight from an oscilloscope, which usually had a little grid to help you measure things. This was back in the dying days of analog neurobiology, before computers were fully integrated into neuro labs.) What's shown here is the muscle cells electrical response, but the amount of contraction -- the tension -- created by that muscle cell will closely parallel the electrical activity. Each peak of the trace above is the muscles response to a neuron firing once (in this case, the motor neuron fired four times).

But I wasn't recording from muscle. I was recording from a sensory neuron.

I put together what this trace was showing me in a flash. Somewhere in this preparation, a motor neuron was activated and firing action potentials. In fact, it's probably just a one motor neuron, because crustacean muscles have very few neurons to control their muscles. The motor neuron is firing, the muscle it's connected to is contracting. These little muscle twitches cause just a little tiny bit of tension, so slight that you can't even see the tail moving in the dish. But it's moving the tail just enough that the stretch receptor is picking up the tension, and reflecting the muscle's activity in its firing rate.

It was beautiful.

And because beauty should be shared, I went looking for someone to share it with. Because it was Saturday, not many people were in there office, but poor Chris had to bear the brunt of me geeking out over this trace. I did not feel guilty about this, since he was pulled me into his office and was waxing rhapsodic about some plant rust (fungal infection) or something a few days before.

It's beautiful to me not because it's any great discovery. I mean, neuron fires, muscle twitches, sensory system tells you "muscles twitching" is pretty basic stuff. No, I think what's beautiful is to see so directly this sensory neuron pick out what are, in all likelihood, the activity of single motor neurons is amazing to me. That, and the experience of looking at the data, having that rush of recognition and almost immediately knowing what's going on... It's exhilerating. It really is. It's pretty much what we scientists live for. Admittedly, we hope that sometimes it's on a larger scale: bigger data sets, more important experiments, things that push the envelope of knowledge, and so on. But even little moments like that are pretty special.

After the intital rush, I became interested in why this experience was so strong for me, and I think it has a lot to do with the immediacy of what I went through. I plotted the data, recognized the shape, and had an explantion in the space of a few seconds. I think this demonstrates just how important exploring and visualising data is. I'm a real admirer of Edward Tufte (last name pronounced "Tuft-ee"), and he talks a lot about this in his works. I wonder how many discoveries have been lost over time because people didn't have the right graph. For example, in this case, I was able to immediately recognize the shape because of the particular plot I chose. What if I had plotted the frequency not spike-by-spike, but averaging the firing rate every 0.1 seconds instead?

I don't find this graph as pretty as the one with just the dots, but I probably still would have recognized the shape. But what if I averaged the firing rate over every half a second instead of every tenth of a second? I would have seen this...

Clearly, a lot of information's been lost. I can tell something is contracting somewhere, but I can't see the exquisite sensitivity of the stretch receptor and how closely it seems to be tracking the muscle tension. So sampling at a higher frequency is better, right? Not necessarily. The original line graph (two above) took the average every 0.1 seconds; the one below takes an average every twentieth of a second...

Ack! That is one ugly graph! I might have recognized what was going on here, but I strongly doubt that I would have come to the conclusion that what I was seeing was beautiful. Even if I changed the line colour away from that gaudy pink.

And if I had plotted the exact same data not as a dots or a line, but as a bar graph of spike counts, I doubt I would have drawn any conclusions about what was going on besides the obvious (the neuron fired faster, then slowed down).

Incidentally, this is the same sampling rate as the first of the "pink line" graphs above: counting spikes every tenth of a second. Yet in one case, the graph reveals; in another, the graph conceals.

There are several lessons here. This example shows that creating a good graphic of the data is not a straighforward thing. "Show me the data" is a constant refrain among experimenters, but there will always be multiple ways to do that. If you don't take care in representing that data, particularly graphically, you will miss evidence for some very interesting things. And it also speaks to why a really good graph or image is so powerful: the immediacy. In this case, it was allowing me to see, in a measure of rate of one neuron, to trace the activity of two others -- and to see it, graphically, as clearly as if I had recorded from those other two cells.

Science is often about simplicity: the simplicity of realizing that what you thought were two different things are really the same thing. And I think that is why I experienced this small little set of nothing data as beautiful: in examining one thing, I saw another.

Living cliches

So I was at work this morning, had set up a time to meet my SO and was running a wee bit behind. On the way back home, ran into two of the Biology student. One said held out some flower and said, "What's this?

"A plant," I replied (well, it was).

She asked me to smeel it and I said no. She said, but it smells nice, and I said I was kind of late and had to go.

"So you're too busy to stop and smell the flowers?" she said.

My life in a nutshell.

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Next post: an essay on the beauty of data.

My recent days

Get up. Work. Eat dinner. Excercise. Sleep.

Add matinee movie if Saturday or Sunday, but not both.

Man, I'm so ready for something different...

Rhino. Renault. Know the difference!

 

Hint: The rhino's the white one. The difference may seem obvious, but this article shows that it isn't.

Cyber meanderings

Don’t ask where I got this from...

Doctor Zen Guppy Agility 1 | Strength 8 | Stamina 0 Battle Rating 9Origins Doctor Zen was won on Ebay

Can your fishy beat Doctor Zen ?

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Small advantage of keeping this blog? I got a chance to test the much ballyhooed new web email service that Google is launching soon. I’m such a ‘Net junkie, the last thing I really need is another email account. I have, like, 4 or 5 already: home, work, Hotmail, and I think I have a Netscape one that might still be active. No, I got this to conduct an informal study: how long will it take from when this new service starts testing (which was around 19 April 2004) until I get my first email advising me that gains of even a big six inches is possible? Or that I can have low cost prescription drugs or refinance my home?

More jobs; more Bethesda

I confirmed a day or two back that we have another candidate who has signed on the proverbial dotted line, so I would like to be the first to publicly welcome Dr. Kristine Lowe to UTPA. And I'll say it again: Hope you survive the experience...

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Promised that I would describe more of my visit to Washington, but realized there wasn’t a whole lot to say. Let’s see... in addition to all the useful stuff I learned about my electrophsyiology software, Spike2, I learned you can get a vanilla creme at Starbuck's in hot as well as a cold iced drink. I found a great French resto and boulangerie that reminded me of how much I miss good croissants. (French bakeries are another thing in short supply in south Texas.) I had a raspberry with cream cheese crossiant. Yum.

I found an excellent comic store called Big Planet Comics where I spent far too much time looking for something to read in my hotel room that night. I was reminded while I was in there about what “cosmopolitan” really means when a French woman came in with her kids asking what French comics they had. The staffer behind the counter didn't blink an eye and pulled out a bunch of European imports. They had Asterix, but alas, no Blake & Mortimer.

For dinner my last night in Washington, I went to a Rock Bottom restaurant. Arguably a strange choice as I don't drink beer. But I got lucky. My waitress came, and I happened to say, “How ya goin’?” and she smiled and said, “Nobody ever asks me that.” She introduced herself, and I said, “Excuse me, did I hear you right?” I thought I heard her say, “I’m surly,” but I thought, “That can’t be right.” Turned out it was right – or almost. She had an Armenian name, Serli (which means something about love), and the “r” is supposed to be barely pronounced. But nobody could get the subtlety of how it was supposed to be said, which is more like “Say-lee,” so she became “Surly,” as in mad. So when she said, “I’m surly,” I missed the chance to utter Sean Connery's famous Bond quip, "But of course you are." Fortunately, she was anything but. She was a lot of fun, recommended a great desert, and earned a generous tip.

In retrospect, I wish I’d arranged things to have a little more time on Saturday. I got up early, hopped on the metro, and went down to the mall – which I love. I was again reminded of just how far away I am from anything down in south Texas, when within the hour I had to walk around, I passed I don’t know how many museums, including the Smithsonian Natural History museum. I’ve got more pictures, but being a biologist, this one takes pride of place...


I wanted to get down to the west end, which has the reflecting pool – it’s my fave, and I really wanted to get a picture of it. But I didn’t have enough time. I might have been able to make it, except there was construction going on around the World War II memorial (which is being dedicated next month), which would have required a long detour to the reflecting pool. I was kind of in a hurry, but even then I was able to experience art and culture just casually just by walking around the outside of the Hirshhorn Museum of Modern Art and seeing some of their sculpture garden. The piece below is “The Drummer.”


Arguably you could experience more culture and science in Washington D.C., in a few months than you might get in many years in the Rio Grande Valley. But I’m not bitter.

As I walked out past the modern art museum, I walked through a marathon or some sort of extended run, for which they had closed off the street. Then I was on the L’Enfant Plaza metro station, going on my way back to the airport. Even though I was an hour before the plane was scheduled to depart, they were already warning people to use the washrooms before taking off. There's a relatively new rule that 30 minutes after taking of or landing in Washington D.C., nobody – and I mean nobody – is allowed to get out of their seat for any reason. Certainly not for something as trivial as relieving your bladder. Not when Homeland Security is at stake.

And that was the extent of my trip last week. Very successful intellectually and in advancing the things I’ll be able to do in my lab, and I even managed to sneak in a little fun, as you can probably tell.

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Signs you've been away from home too long: A student asked me if I was Canadian. When I replied that I was, she said, “I’m from Canadia too!”

“Canadia?!??”

Jobs; Bethesda

Here's the latest total for one of the five positions our department has been trying to fill. We had one person turn us down before we could bring them to campus, did two on site interviews that did not result in a hire, had two more people turn us down, and a third on-site interview that did not result in a hire. So we're now talking to candidate number 7. Some people would start believing in curses at this point.

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Anyway, I wanted to provide a little more detail about the trip I took last week to Washington, D.C. I've been to the city before, and enjoy a lot about it, particularly the mall. One of the surprises was that the last time I flew in, I remembered the airport being rather dingy. Maybe it was Dulles, but the Ronald Reagan National Airport was rather pleasant, as you can see. Oddly, I flew from the George Bush Airport in Houston to the Reagan airport in D.C., making it feel like some weird Republican presidents' travel line...

Another thing I like about Washington is they have a good metro system. I was able to take the metro all the way from the airport to the hotel for $2.30. Much cheaper than the $30-$40 one person in the class spent on cab fare! The D.C. metro's not as good as Montreal, but not bad. It has two things that I'm not wild about: first, though you can't easily tell in the picture below, it's all dimly lit. Second, a lot of the entrance ways are quaite far down, and have long, steep escalators that are almost vertigo inducing.

And while I was riding the mtero, I was reminded of something I'd thought about before. Whenever I take a metro, I always half-expect someone to run through, being chased. In movies, metro are used big action scene; nobody ever just rides them. (Hellboy was the most recent example of this.) Even Speed, which was famously set on a bus, saved the metro as the scene for its climax. I wonder why no other public transport attracts moviemakers attention...?

In any case, I got to the hotel without too many mishaps, although I did have a bad moment when I realised the address for the hotel was 8400 Wisconsin, not 4800 Wisconsin. Whoops. But I got to the hotel (Four Points Sheraton), had a pretty good dinner at the on site resto, Chatters, and had a bath before packing it in for the night.

The classes were not exactly early the next morning, so I had time to explore a little. Although I've been referring to Washington, the actual course was held in Bethesda, in the neighbouring state of Maryland. The piece of Bethesda I was in was rather nice, and reminded me of how much I miss civilization in souther Texas.

The courses ran their course. I had to feel for the Cambridge guys, as they were down one man: one of their staffers had come back from South America, and when they went to pick him up to take him to the airport, he met them at the door extremely ill and didn't go. Lucky for me, it didn't make difference to the material I was there to learn.

More on this trip later!

The next President...

...Of our university will be one of these people. Let's say that there are some individuals out there that I'm relieved to see are not on the list.

On the way back

A quick note from the crummy complimentary computer in the hotel lobby... I arrived safely, did my short course, which was very useful and informative, and am now getting ready to wind my way back via the scenic route to the airport to head home.

More later!

Spread your tiny wings and fly away

This could be my last entry for a few days, as I'm flying to Bethesda, Maryland tomorrow to attend a short course. I don't know how much 'Net access I'll have until I get back on Saturday. My laptop is way past due for a replacement, so I will be looking for internet cafes or something to deal with emails, online teaching, and my journal. Hopefully I'll be too busy to worry about 'Net withdrawl symptoms.

I'm nervous about all the stuff I'll be missing while I'm gone. We have a job candidate coming in (#9 for this year!), who I won't get to meet. Ugh. I have animals in the lab that need occasional inspection. And students want attention, too. They need advisement, they need questions answered, and so on.

I'm pleased to be leaving on a positive note, though. I was actually able to sit down and run an experiment with one of my students today. And that always rocks.

RAHC update

Let’s see how the RAHC is coming along, shall we?


Okay, this is really just an excuse to show off a picture with my new digital camera, a beautiful 4 megapixel number from HP. My parents are upgrading, and while they liked this camera a lot, it didn’t take repeated pictures fast enough for doing the wildlife photography that they enjoy (and are, I might add, extremely good at). You might get a few more pictures in this journal from here on in. This is much better than old pictures of the RAHC I've taken and showed in this journal before (here, e.g. – though the crane adds a certain visual interest that the black tar paper, or whatever it is, doesn’t.)

New paper (again)

The final version of my "loss of giant neurons in scyllarids" paper is up at Arthropod Structure and Development (requires institutional subscription to Science Direct). Yes, I know I was telling everyone about that this was available as a pre-print less than two weeks ago, but this is the final version, with proper citation information and everything.

And it feels good. :)

Not for the faint of heart

CBC Radio Host Peter Gzowski once did a feature on Morningside about the reluctance of people to discuss just how much they made. This reticence seems to continue even when those salaries are in the public domain -- as they are in this university. That's right, you can find out how much everyone makes at my institution -- including me! -- here. I'm not listed by name, but if you know the department and the job level, you can pretty much narrow down what anyone is making to a very small range.

For an assistant professor in biology, it is somewhat depressing reading.

In a fit of masochism, my colleague Mike and I were trolling through the figures, looking for highs and lows, and it doesn't take long to realize that we're in the wrong business. (The wrong business if your main goal is to make money, anyway.) There are assistant professors (my job level) in the College of Business Administration who are making more than many full professors in their own department. Needless to say, they're also making more money than full professors in other colleges (including, needless to say, my own department). That just strikes me as wrong. Why are people in business worth so much more than other faculty? I mean, are they responsible for educating that many more students? Are they creating new knowledge? Are they really in that much demand elsewhere?

More projects completed! Huzzah!

The paperwork has been signed and our Department Chair got copies, so I finally get to welcome Dr. Anita Davelos to our department. Anita was hired in the genetics position we've been advertising for. She'll be bringing some expertise on the genetics of bacteria to the department, although her own research focuses more on ecology than genes.

Just so you can prevent personal embarassment if you should ever happen to meet her, her last name is pronounced with three syllables, not two. It's "Da-vel-los," not "Dave-los."

To paraphrase some classic Uncanny X-Men covers, "Welcome to UTPA, Anita. Hope you survive the experience."

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In other good news, I finally packed up the last manuscripts for "my" special issue of Journal of Comparative Physiology A today. This will be an issue containing papers based on the "Mechanisms of behavioral switching" symposium I organized last year for the Animal Behavior Society meeting. One reason this pleases me is that at the end of the symposium, the participants did a bit of "soul searching" on whether it was worth talking about neural mechanisms at an behavioural meeting, because attendance ran low near the end of the day. If it was kind of a misguided place to hold the symposium (and I'm not convinced it was), having all of the papers together in one place will make bring it to the audience that maybe wouldn't normally attend a meeting like ABS.

But just to give you an idea of scientific efficiency... I had 8 speakers at the original symposium. Two declined to present manuscripts, saying they were too busy to write them. The symposium was August, and the original deadline was January for receiving the manuscripts. I won't mention how many of the six authors made it, but let's say it was nowhere near all of them. Sigh. However, many harrassing emails and extensions have gotten three-quarters of the authors to get their papers in. I'm looking forward to seeing the final thing in print, as always.

It seems like such a cliche, doesn't it? Professors being bright, but disorganized and not really good with deadlines.

Hello Internet, I missed you while you were gone...

Something untoward happened to power somewhere on campus, which left me email-less, web-less, and generally bereft of all manner of the 'Net for most of the day. The shaking of my hands is now slowly starting to subside.

Meanwhile, I managed to get a "letter of intent" for a grant off yesterday. This will be the third for this particular foundation I've submitted. So far, I haven't even been asked to fill in a full application form. Will the third time be the charm? We shall see. Stay tuned.

Bring on the dancing... robots

Science fiction isn't what it used to be, because we live in a science fiction world. It seems like pretty much everything that was once the domain of that genre has either been done, or is being done. Compare the communicators on Star Trek to you average mobile phone; the Trek communicators couldn't even take a picture!

This morning, reading this story in New Scientist reinforced that view. Sons has an experimental robot called QRIO, and is making the rounds, and I must say that those demos are danged impressive. In particular, this movie (you'll probably have to save it to your hard disk; right click your mouse and choose "Save as...") is a sight to behold. Four robots dancing.

Robots, and how humans will relate with them, is one of the classic themes of science fiction. One need only look at this summer's release of I, Robot (based on Isaac Asimov's classic book). The ad campaign for the movie is a very clever imitation of the sort of real ad that Sony might have for its QRIO robot.

Just like cloning mammals arrived sooner than most people expected and left people scrambling for how to deal with the situation, I'm starting to think that we'd better start doing some serious thought about the legal ramifications of robotics.

I hate forms!

Arg. I send in a travel application, requesting a trip to go to Bethesda to attend a short course by Cambridge Electronic Design. I ask for the university to take pay for the travel using funds I was awarded from a Faculty Development grant. I get back... nothing. Is it approved? It is not approved? It's a mystery.

Anyway, without an “okay” to remind me, I forgot to check into the travel arrangements. They are, of course, sitting on the travel officer’s desk, and they’re waiting for me to book flights, etc. Of course, now that it’s closer to travel time, the flights are going to be more expensive... Argh. Argh. Argh. Yes, it’s partly my fault for not checking sooner. But still... why does so much information stall on other people’s desks?!

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Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles!

We have a new ice machine! And it seems to be working!

Of course, getting the ice machine was not without its trials. They were having some issues about putting in filters for the water, so they wanted to order some new filter holders. Turns out that in the time it took to order the machine and get it here, the holders for one of the filters went out of production. Yes, one last absurdity of the slower than slow process it takes to get anything done on this university.

No joke

Today was a good day because:

1. Nobody pulled any significant April Foolery while I was around.
   
2. I managed to do an experiment with a student.
   
3. The temperature has been rather cooler than this time last year. Fingers crossed that it stays that way for as long as possible.
   
4. The preprint of my paper is up, as I mentioned in an earlier post.
   

Announcing a great advance in science!

April Fool's! It's really just my new paper, which, though I'm pleased with it, is a modest advance in science.

If your institution has a subscription to Science Direct, you can now read a preprint of my newest paper on-line, here. Click on "Articles in Press, and you'll see an entry by "Faulkes, Z." I encourage downloading the PDF for purely selfish reasons: on the journal's main page, they keep track of the most downloaded papers for the year. And yes, I'm vain and enough of a shameless self-promotor to want to try to create a "NeuroDojo effect" to push my paper way up there in those ratings!