Tag: Lectures by Smart People
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Maker Culture: More than Consumers
Have you heard of the Maker Movement? Last night I saw a documentary called Maker. (See trailer below). Maker Culture?consists of people who convert ideas into physical products, through creating, hacking, and exploring. This could be in the realm of art (think of sculpture made from scavenged materials), technology (think of robots), or gadget design…
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Speaking Tips from a Lecture on the Brains of Fruit Flies
Have you ever wondered how a fruit fly thinks? Maybe?not! But chances are that you’ve wondered about your own brain. I attended a Janelia Farms “Dialogue of Discovery” called Taking Action: How Small Brains Make Big Choices. The scientist, Gwyneth Card, PhD, gave a dynamic presentation describing her research on the thought process of fruit…
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Cognitive Anchors: What Weighs You Down?
“Cognitive Anchors” are facts we know to be true — so that all incoming information must wrap around these facts. What are your Cognitive Anchors? Last night I went to a “Dialogue of Discovery” at Janelia Farm, a research campus funded by Howard Hughes Medical Institute, to hear a practitioner of “curiosity-driven science.” (And isn’t…
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Brains & Beer
What do you know about your brain? Would you pay the equivalent of a six-pack so that scientists could understand it better? Let’s call that “your brain on beer.” The Howard Hughes Medical Institute built a campus in Loudoun County called Janelia Farm. In return for getting great tax breaks, Janelia occasionally sponsors lectures that…
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My Brain Is Your Brain
It was my elder daughter who told me I could get my head examined. So yesterday I spent an hour in an MRI machine having my brain scanned, even though I am perfectly healthy. I was a subject in a research study whose purpose is to examine the relationship between HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders and aging,…
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The Environment & Your Health
Everything is connected. Our actions created reactions and interactions between organisms. 24% of global disease is caused by avoidable environmental exposure, according to the World Health Organization. Pollutants don’t disappear because the garbage man comes on Tuesday. Perhaps you’ve heard thoughts such as these before. I know I have. Yet they’re easy to ignore. Who…
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Breast Cancer Notes
These notes are from a lecture by Dr Claudine Isaacs, who co-directs the Breast Cancer Program at Georgetown University. If you know something on the subject and I got something wrong, please correct me! It’s amazing that I put these notes aside for about a week and already I am not certain that I understood…
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Brush Border & other GI miracles
Did you know you have a “brush border” that keeps you alive? The brush border is the little fingerlings that line your small intestine and absorb nutrients from the food you eat. It is only one cell thick. Think about that. There’s one cell between the food you eat (mixed with stomach acid into chyme)…
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Stem Cells
One of the great things about living near Washington DC is having access to something like Georgetown’s Mini-Medical School. My husband and I attended this a few years ago and have just started a new round. For eight evenings, on consecutive Tuesdays, we will listen to experts in various medical-related fields talk about the latest…
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What I Learned from Mouse Vocalizations
Mouse Vocalizations and the Brain. Sounds like a date night, doesn’t it? Last Wednesday Doug and I went to a lecture at Janelia Farm, which is a research institute funded by Howard Hughes money. Picture a lot of smart people doing laboratory research about various brain-related topics. Every couple of months someone gives a lecture…
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Blood & Bones
Without any advance planning, this weekend turned out to have a Lost Civilizations theme, which turns out to be a rather gory experience! On Friday night, we watched the movie APOCALYPTO, which is Mel Gibson’s movie set in the Mayan civilization shortly before the conquistadors arrived. I put this movie on our Netflix queue because…
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Mental Health Awareness, a Lecture by Kay Redfield Jamison
Did you know that May is Mental Health Awareness month? I didn’t until it was almost over. On Tuesday night I went to my local library to hear two people from NAMI tell their stories of mental illness. I hope to blog about that in the future because their stories were powerful. This evening I…