#cleaned up my lab

[bqstqnbruin]

Somehow today I've done more work than I think I did all week and idk how I did that

[drumlincountry]

This is going to sound so stupid but I only today realised that a significant number of people like....look down on retail & service industry work.

[wetslug]

dont go into pathology guys its a trick its not glamorous it involves a lot of scrubbing human blood off surfaces

[treefish]

RetroSim Labs

[otaku553]

can I ask what ur summer research was about?!!! :0 (u absolutely don't have to answer if ur not comfortable, I'm just a giant nerd and loves to hear about research dhdnfjdmdjfng)

Of course!!! I’d be glad to talk about it!!

In short, my research over the summer was putting mice in mazes and looking at how well they remember mazes, how quickly they learn the maze, and how learning one maze can help them learn other mazes faster. More detailed under the read more!

Previous maze studies with mice have shown that mice can actually learn very quickly when they’re learning behaviors that are in line with their own evolutionary advantages rather than arbitrary associations. It’s the difference between telling a mouse “go around these tunnels and try to find water to survive” vs telling it “do these very specific and completely useless 5 things and then you’ll get water”. Maze navigation for mice is already a natural complex behavior: mice are burrowing rodents and already have the predisposition for running around tunnels. We set up a maze and cameras and infrared lights around it to record it doing its thing, so that we can look at its natural behaviors with no human interference.

The unique thing about this project is less the behavior and rapid learning of the mouse and more the maze that we use for the study, called the Manhattan Maze. I think my mentor created it but I’m not too certain? But the basic concept of it, as shown in the figure above, is that there are two boxes of parallel tunnels and one layer of acrylic in the middle. Through holes in the acrylic, the mouse can climb between the two layers and make a “turn”. Essentially, this maze is the most reconfigurable setup for studying mouse behavior in mazes possible, because the middle layer of acrylic, which we call a mask, can be changed 2^(n^2) ways (n being the number of channels in a layer) to make completely different mazes. For the figure above, a 4x4 Manhattan maze, we have 2^16 possible different configurations, but we were actually running it on an 11x11 maze, so there were 2^121 different possible configurations! This way, we can look at the mouse in tons of different mazes without actually having to make a new maze altogether and transfer the mouse every time.

And they learn extremely fast! The mazes we used were pretty much linear paths with small dead ends that weren’t far off from the main path, and required 9 turning decisions to get from starting point to end point. There were 3 of these different masks, and after training for one day on one of them, the next day, almost all mice that completed the training managed to learn completely new 9-decision masks in 3 hours or less!

[deus-ex-mona]

my five surviving braincells when something remotely good happens:

[befuddled-calico-whump]

Adoptable Comic!

A few years back I started a script for a whumpy superhero comic and forgot about it. While I still love the script and characters, I don't think it's something I'll ever be able to get around to finishing/drawing.

so, I'm taking a different approach, and essentially making what I wrote public domain. Anyone is welcome to complete the script and turn it into a comic of their own, use the characters or scenes as inspiration or framework for a story, or just take bits and pieces to draw or add to!

Summary: This unfinished script follows Jet, a young vigilante trying to save her partner, Ben, from a villain he has a dark history with.

Google docs link to the script and original sketches of the main characters will be under the cut!

As I said, anyone can use this for their creative projects. If you do, please tag me! I'd love to see what comes out of this :D

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_7HEPKtmnt-glzkfExCK0mtwWC4l6dsF4NzmsCHqOis/edit?usp=drivesdk

For anyone who wishes to use this for visual art, feel free to alter their designs! This is just what I drew when I first had the idea.

[sciencewife]

Some 90s Caroline doodles for y’all

[lintwriting]

some of y’all are so weak when it comes to being horny. excuse me if you think that nobody can be into a milf young man pretending to be an old man with the prudiness of a fine young mistress, excuse me if you think the only way men can be attractive is if they’re peak gender role—muscled and abbed for days. what, you think I’m pretending to want to IMPREGNATE Shizun???? you think only a man designed to be a male power fantasy harem protagonist can be fuckable? stop projecting

don’t get me started on those who make Shen yuans prior self unimaginably pretty. fashionable clothing with tasteful glasses and a beautiful two block haircut and an ulzzang face.

don’t talk to me until you’ve thirsted imagining a horribly ugly incel Shen Yuan with a NON trendy short buzz cut that makes his fucking hair spiky thanks to how asian hair texture works, a weak chin, those terrible thin rectangle glasses that most real life nerds seem to land on, and an anime shirt ugly jacket combo that I saw everywhere growing up in a Asian American high school.

the algorithm brainrot has gotten to you if you can’t imagine old Shen Yuan that way, tbh. Mans was a lying flat syndrome hikkikimori neet aka an incel aka likely not the most interested in the extremely niche beauty standards that the algorithm pushes onto you, and trust me I’ve seen my share of Asian dudes that look like how I’ve described. God, I go on here and I feel like I’m TOO weird and freaky for thinking that Asian guys don’t gotta look like Pinterest boys to be beautiful.

[wizardnuke]

side effect of regularly digging in the dirt for assignment and research purposes is "why are your nails so dirty" well i don't wear gloves and even if i did the ones provided are way too big for my dainty waif hands so im putting dirt in a bag with my bare hands, chief. ive washed them three times. i still do this on the daily

[seherstudies]

Studying chemistry again after years of not having much to do with it is wild. Back to the basics baby because I forgot everything.

[get-more-bald]

the thing about X6 is that he's essentially a slave given to the Sole Survivor by the Institute. and I think that the fandom's treatment of him would be different if the game addressed it or even just said it

[blondiest]

shit is about to get sooooooo chaotic over here but i've missed working on this project so bad and i feel so in my element doing this type of work that i don't even really mind like. yeah i can be in early yeah i can stay late yeah you can call my personal number if you have any questions. if my other project asked this of me i would blow them up with my mind just for the audacity honestly but. for YOU [redacted science thing] anything my love

[shadowedvales]

jane does not accept sara hopper’s hair tie as a gift from jim, and not once does she wear it around her wrist. people often get the impression that because of her sheltered upbringing, jane is dumb, but she’s really, really not. once she finds out about sara, about how jim lost her, she would come to understand that’s why he was so protective of her in the cabin, why it became toxic and overbearing. she doesn’t excuse his behaviour, but she does understand it. and she understands that he was projecting his dead daughter onto her. after she’s recovered from closing the gate, and he offers the hair tie, she gently places it back into his hand, and says “i am janessa. not sara.” it’s important she start growing into her own person, that she stops wearing hand-me-downs and that she definitely does not wear something his biological child owned. jane asks about sara a lot because she wants to get to know her in her own way, she wants to see photographs and hear stories, but she does not ever want to be her. jim is not her father, jane is not his daughter. they both come from broken, fragile families, and have made a new one with each other, but should not be replacing the ones they’ve lost.

[patron-saint-of-emesis]

my cvs flare is OVER i am DRINKING LIQUIDS and EATING SOLIDS. i get my final denture fitting TOMORROW. AND my WEED PEN comes in TOMORROW. I STAY WINNING

[adelaidedrubman]

i hit post limit but its so goddamn important to me that you know i think faith smells the worst. you have to know my opinion. you hAVE to. john??? too much ego to stink. joseph??? can't smell like a typical apocalypse truther. jacob??? he probably stanks good but its not rancid. faith almost for sure smells like a terrible mix of chemicals and dirt. its not B.O., its not anything natural. its the unnatural chemical stink mixed with nothing but bliss. she smells unbearable.

!!!!!!!!!!! FELLOW FAITH STINKY TRUTHER you’re so correct for that. GOD you’re so right about the chemical stink too. on top of sweating in the hot sun and the rancid river water. and i know in my heart of hearts the bliss STINKS. flowers mixed with chemicals? not a pleasant smell. it stinky. and so is she.