Developmental Neurobiology

Staple childhood nostalgia follows: While growing up, I changed my mind about what job I wanted to do as an adult lots of times. I started with predictable choices, such as an astronaut or a robot scientist. Later on, I wanted to become a teacher. That was replaced by computer science, then by physics, biology, mathematics, until I ended up back in computer science (which is what I am currently studying). Still, I hold these sciences in high regard, especially mathematics (for which I have developed a fear over the past few years, ironically). Needless to say, I enjoy following these fields a bit even now and I would really love to dedicate myself more to them, even if it's just as a hobby.

For today's novelty, I decided to look into a science I've been neglecting. So, I was to read a scientific paper on a science I am unfamiliar with. After searching for a while, I came across developmental neurobiology, which is concerned with the process of the development of the neural system in animals, as far as I understood. I know a few things from here and there about how the brain works, mostly from Artificial Intelligence courses and a passing interest back in school. Of course, this university-level article I was to read was way above any understanding I might have, discussing very specific things, which my mind could barely grasp what abstract and general processes they were part of.

The book was Developmental neurobiology, by Marcus Jacobson, Mahendra S. Rao. At first, I started reading through chapter 9, "Guidance of Axons and Dendrites" but soon I had had enough and went back to the front cover, then started reading chapter 1. I was moderately surprised to find out that it was in not any less confusing. So, I just read.

Soon, I discovered that it discussed the initial process of the formation of neural systems in embryos. It had four case studies, which is four different animals: The xenopus (a type of frog), the chick, the mouse and... well I forget which one is the last. They had their differences but each had some different advantages in being studied, like how the mouse was easy to genetically manipulate and how the xenopus was easy to manage and observe.

There seemed to be lots of keywords, around which other concepts were explained. As time passed, I began to pick up things about these and eventually I managed to decipher what some of them meant. Still, I didn't understand much from the context about most. However, this enabled me to do something else. Since semantics were removed for the most part from my understanding, I began to clearly see the structure of the text: I slowly was able to see the objects under discussion and which their properties were. I could see processes described and how their steps worked. Since I love abstraction (you should, too!) it was rather interesting to aknowledge the structure meta-data of the text.

Sequential Knowledge

When I was younger, my parents sent my brother and me to summer camps. Save for the first time, it was always the same one. It made for good times and good memories, I guess... most of the time. Anyway, you know how these things have many little cabins? The funny thing is that we always ended up in cabin #16. I'm not sure if someone was doing it on purpose but for all the four or five summer months I spent there, I didn't get to sleep in any other cabin than that one. It was the worst one too. It was half-buried into the earth on one side, with a window exactly there. It was hell to clean it and we had to do so every morning. This has led me to loosely associate the number 16 with fatalism.

Now, you may wonder: "What kind of one-of-a-kind one-hour activity relates with someone's experiences from summer camps? Well, I'm sorry to disappoint but it was just a trap to make the reader wonder that. For this day's novelty, I did reading again. I picked up volume 16 from the home encyclopaedia and just started reading it. I read about "kamikaze", furnaces, the Camorra, bells, bell towers, a handful of important historical and/or mythological figures and an indeterminate number of small villages. As always, keeping my concentration was half the work I had to do; only now am I realising how bad this thing is.

So, among other things, I learned that:

• Kamikazes were named that because the same name was used before for a wind that created problems for the Mongolian fleet when it tried to attack Japan.
• There are way more types of furnaces than I thought there were.
• Bell towers took their shape from watchtowers.
  
• Greece is full of little villages that just need to have an entry in an encyclopaedia.
• Tommaso Campanella lived an interesting but tough life (and I really liked him for some reason).

A Study on my (not particularly fast) Reading Skills

I have noticed in my life, that I have my hobbies and my perceived hobbies. What I mean is, there are lots of things I find myself wanting to do, on a theoretical level, but never actually investing in. This is a depressing situation, when you think about it. One of those things is reading. I have always loved the idea of reading but never really made a habit out of it. On top of that, I'm distracted rather easily, which makes reading anything, particularly non-literature an exhausting and frustrating experience. However, there was a time when I managed to almost make a habit out of it. It but a few years ago that I read something before going to sleep. One of my teachers once said that reading on the bed before sleeping is a cure for insomnia, because it makes your mind make you feel tired in order to escape from the labour. While I can't say I fully endorse such sentiments, I can't deny that that time is not the best for understanding concepts and clear thinking.

Then, it happened, during a visit to my godfather. He has a really immense bookcase in his house, it's actually a whole room. He asked me whether I read books and I replied that I did, almost every night, before bed. He frowned a little and said "Well, I only read in the morning, so I don't miss anything". So, that's how I stopped reading before bed. Then, I started reading books during the breaks in university, but that's a different story.

So, yes, I read: occasionally, some periods more, others less. These days, it's the latter. I started reading a book containing all the works of Edgar Allan Poe a few months ago. Unfortunately, I only went as far as the first story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". It's a pity, too, because although that story didn't leave a really good impression on me, I loved the way it was structured and the way Poe had with words.

So, for this day's novelty, I took the challenge of starting reading the book again, as fast as I could, to see how far I could get in one hour. The second story is "The Mystery or Marie Rogêt". It starts on page 26 and ends on page 61. The results were really discouraging. I managed to read until page 49, which means one hour's worth of reading equals to a mere 23 pages read. That's about 0.4 pages per minute, which -with some rough calculations- amounts to about 208 words per minute. Even with my concentration constantly breaking, other thoughts creeping in my mind, especially ones about how much time I had left, I really expected more out of myself. I always thought I was a fast reader; apparently, I was wrong. Perhaps with enough training, I may learn reading faster.

Poe's style didn't help either. The story was about how the narrator and his genius-of-analyical-thinking friend tried to solve the mystery of a young lady's murder. It was full of supposed newspaper excerpts and huge monologues highlighting every logical or factual mistake of the aforementioned newspaper editors. Even with my slow reading and re-reading of certain part, I cannot in good conscience say I was fully confident in knowing what was going on. Oh, well. Still, I am looking forward to finishing this story.

Damn them Clouds!

You take a deep breath of salty air as the first raindrops
begin to spatter the pavement, and the swollen,
slate-colored clouds that blanket the sky mutter ominous
portents amongst themselves over the little coastal town
of Anchorhead.

Today I decided to step into a world of terror like no other: text-based adventure games / interactive fiction. After consulting PC Gamer's 365 days of free games, I reached the section on interactive fiction, at the end of page 6. Anyway, I told myself I shouldn't be picky so I chose the first one on the list, that is Ancorhead. The description was both ominous and exciting:
Lovecraftian Gothic horror, subtle and spooky. Be brave and enjoy one of the most atmospheric games ever.
So, I started playing. Then, as soon as the game started, I remembered how much descriptions bore me. The game was filled with descriptions of houses and streets and clouds. I'm not sure if there's some relation to the central plot, but in every piece of text that was presented to me, there was mention of the clouds.

I wonder. Is it just me or do these descriptions bore more people? I'm not sure if what I'm doing and thinking is right or wrong, but this is exactly what I feel. And what I feel, for all its lack of substantiality, is a sense of boredom when I need to read about the ominous clouds and the rain, especially when I have read about them ten times already.

So, I'm supposed to meet with a real estate agent in this game. I go to the place and I'm left with no instructions. Thankfully, my spider senses inform me that by saying "north" you go north and so on. Shouldn't there be some kind of instructions for people who haven't played games like this before? Anyway, the text is so full of north's and east's and southwest's that it's not really hard to get it.

So, I move towards his house and then knock on the door. After a few failed attempts at managing to word the knocking correctly (writing only "knock" results on you knocking on the sky by default, apparently). Naturally, nobody's there, so I start roaming the town. Using my trusty "north", "south", "northwest" commands I move from one eerie description to the next, totally oblivious to what else I could be doing. At some point there was a window. I tried to look through it but it was too high. I tried to climb but I couldn't. Then, there was some sort of obelisk in the town square. By some divine enlightenment I "examine monument"'d but there didn't seem anything I could do with it. Then, I got lost in some windy little streets. At first, I thought that some kind of strange thing was going on, but after a few tries I took the correct direction and got out. Finally, I went to the local pub. I talked and the subject was Michael's family, by default. Some old man told me that these things are better left undiscussed by decent folk. Then, I tried to ask them about the real estate agent but they ignored me.

A hoary monument of crumbling, moss-eaten flagstones,
Whateley Bridge is possibly older than any other
structure in the entire city. Ponderously it spans the
dark, torpid waters of the Miskaton River, connecting
the north and south halves of the city and occasionally
raining bits of gravel and mortar from its underside
into the water. It looks just wide enough for two cars
to pass each other between the flanking stone parapets,
but you wouldn't volunteer to try it.                   

Well, I don't want to come off as ignorant or biased, but I spent an hour playing this game and didn't get an inch closer to finding this real estate agent or anything. All I learned was a) Michael's family is a taboo topic, b) there is a strange monument in town that will mean something later in the story, c) the clouds are ominous. This was both embarassing and frustrating. Perhaps I'm lacking in reading comprehension or am just slow but I don't think any game should treat anyone in such a punishing way. So, I stopped.

A dank, drafty old drinking hole lit by flickering,
oil-burning lanterns. Smoke collects in greasy pools
among the rafters, and shadows crowd thick around. The
bar runs the length of the room to your right, while to
the south a low doorway opens onto the street.     
                                                 
Mill workers and fishermen occupy a few of the tables,
drinking beer or puffing grimly at long-stemmed pipes.
Each is wrapped in his solitude, soaking up the general
miasma of dreary fatalism.                           
                                                 
The lantern sitting on the table nearest you sputters
fitfully, throwing distorted shadows across the wall.
                                                 
>talk about real estate agent                       
No one answers you, or even looks your way.         
                                                 
>FUCK YOU ALL                                       
No need to get frustrated.                             

This is not the end, however. This type of game has me intrigued and even though my first attempt failed miserably, I won't give up so easily.