Sumer Is The Earliest Known Civilization That Had To Do It To Us

Flyover of Jupiters North Pole in Infrared via NASA https://ift.tt/2EM34s1

derin.goya.fishing on ig 🐙

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

Zora Neale Hurston (via berghahnbooks)

Genetics are weird and interesting!!

From Twitter.

How does the brain learn categorization for sounds?

Photo credit: Xiong Jiang, Georgetown University

Categorization, or the recognition that individual objects share similarities and can be grouped together, is fundamental to how we make sense of the world. Previous research has revealed how the brain categorizes images. Now, researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) have discovered that the brain categorizes sounds in much the same way.

To find out how the brain categorizes auditory input, the researchers invented new sounds using an acoustic blending tool to produce sounds from two types of monkey calls. The blending produced hundreds of new sounds that differed from the original calls.

Subjects listened to several hundred calls and categorized them under two arbitrary labels that were created by the researchers. The researchers used functional MRI prior to and following the training to image subjects’ brains while they listened to the sounds, but did not yet label them. The results showed that learning to categorize the sounds had increased the brain’s sensitivity to the acoustic features that distinguished one sound from another.

Researchers believe these findings reveal what may not only be a general mechanism about how the brain learns, but also about how learning changes the brain and allows the brain to build on that learning. The work has potential implications for understanding individual differences in language learning and can provide a foundation for understanding and treating people with learning disorders and other disabilities. 

Learn more here: http://bit.ly/2vri3Ij 

Can we talk? Starting a career in science communication

“Here is how science is relevant and has an impact on your life, and more importantly, here is how it can empower you.” ~ Mónica Feliú-Mójer

In this week’s featured podcast, “Sci on the Fly,” our own AAAS Science and Technology Policy fellow Allyson Kennedy interviews neurobiologist Mónica Feliú-Mójer, communications and science outreach director at Ciencia Puerto Rico. 

We’ll let them take it from here: bit.ly/2ITDur3   

Above:  Mónica I. Feliú-Mójer delivering the keynote talk at the University of North Carolina STEM Diversity conference,  Credit: Katherine Gale Stember Feliú-Mójer is also associate director for diversity and communication training at NSF-funded iBiology, where she produced a series of videos that is rethinking the narrative of “diversity in science”: https://goo.gl/3xmTET Below:  Allyson Kennedy, Ph.D., a developmental biologist and 2017-18 Science & Technology Policy fellow at NSF, in The Dickinson Lab at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she did her graduate and postdoctoral work,  Credit: Allyson Kennedy, Ph.D.   

https://www.nsf.gov/od/oia/activities/aaasfellows/bios/kennedy.jsp

Above: Kennedy at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she led one arm of a multidisciplinary project investigating the effects of e-cigarettes on embryonic development,  Credit: Leah Small, VCU Public Affairs https://www.aaaspolicyfellowships.org/ Below: Feliú-Mójer filming a segment for Univision that featured Latinxs in higher education. She is showing the camera the model organism she used for her PhD research, the nematode C. elegans, Credit: Mónica I. Feliú-Mójer, Ph.D 

Academics

In popular culture: wear tweed/plaid/some sort of bland pattern; often in suits; pristine appearance, maybe with wild hair or ink stains; drink tea and coffee; constantly reading books for work and pleasure; erudite conversationalists; love what they do

Me: mostly wear sweatshirts and leggings with a messy bun because if no one needs to see me then screw getting into nice clothes; my blood is tea at this point; ink stains were surpassed long ago; spend a lot of time crying over theory texts and papers; eat a lot of ice cream and watch a lot of Netflix to avoid work; love what I do

Sharpless 249 and the Jellyfish Nebula

Image Credit & Copyright: Albert Barr

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So I stumbled onto the Etsy shop of this academic who–in real life–is an expert on cuneiform–and on the side, makes little trinkets with Sumerian on them and OH MAN THIS SHOP HAS MADE MY ENTIRE WEEK For the price of about thirty bucks, you too can have a clay necklace that says “Like a farting butt, the mouth brings forth too many words” in the oldest written language on earth https://www.etsy.com/listing/537034173/choose-your-words-carefully-like-a?ref=shop_home_active_23

Or a necklace that declares “I have ferocious features that exude sexiness” https://www.etsy.com/listing/540406774/i-have-ferocious-features-that-exude?ref=shop_home_active_54 Or be the ultimate hipster and anti-capitalist before capitalism even existed with “Wanting more riches when already wealthy offends the gods”  https://www.etsy.com/listing/543598245/wanting-more-riches-when-already-wealthy?ref=shop_home_active_6

Sumerian erotic poetry? Got it. Sumerian drinking songs? Yep. A little something for everyone on your Akitu gift list.

Hide the cheese and crackers guys, this raccoon skull is W H I T E!

Seems like heating peroxide to a comfortably warm temperature makes it work twice as fast. This skull now looks like a plastic replica rather than a real skull. Its also 100% complete! My first complete raccoon skull. No cracks, no missing teeth, nothing. Just absolutely perfect.