She challenged me to think deeply about the research questions I ask and to form detailed, multi-level hypotheses. I gained an invaluable cellular, local circuit, and network level understanding of the brain from working with her. But, as with Bilbo Baggins, I was ready for an adventure. Blake was not entirely sure of starting a PhD and was mainly looking for research jobs in New Zealand.
He was elated to find Professor David Bilkey in the Department of Psychology at Otago was looking for a research technician for an in vivo electrophysiology project to uncover the neural mechanisms of self-control. Generous support obtained through a grant to David from the Marsden Fund of New Zealand helped to make it finally happen.
So, after getting a student visa I was off to Middle Earth. For example, what happens in our brains when we decide to put in the energy to exercise rather than sit and watch TV? For example, you may remember the last time you exercised you had more energy the next day and could focus in school more.
These positive memories could help motivate you to exercise again in the future. In order to understand how the brain remembers the costs and benefits of experiences and then uses those memories to make decisions, Blake applies his in vivo electrophysiology knowhow to record cellular and population level neural activity in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex of rats as they perform effortful tasks.
I am investigating how energetically demanding experiences are represented and remembered by neural networks when different amounts of effort are expended to obtain a food reward.
We only cared about ourselves. We did not even care about the future selves we would see in their children. Or our grandchildren. Or the children across the oceans. No, we cared only for our current selves. And it was not a lack of education or evidence, it was a lack of compassion.
How dare we allow them to benefit from coal as we did. How dare they burn coal when they could build solar. They pollute more than we do.
Their fault. Their problem. They were fucking it all up. Yet, each of them polluted less than half as much as each of us. And we had already reaped so much of the benefit. But we still did not care. There were as many Indians without electricity as there were Americans in total. A couple in Indian would need to have 20 children to have the consumption impact equivalent to a single American child. Though they had fewer resources, they invested more of them into renewable energy than we did.
But somehow it was they who were fucking it all up. We would sacrifice nothing. Not for them. Not for their children. Not even for our own children. As I told you earlier, we needed our big houses, our fast cars, and our tasty burgers. And we put in charge those implemented these selfish values. You should have seen Obama ratified the Paris agreement. And while it felt good to some, it was so little, so late.
Meanwhile republicans freaked out and rejected this small but meaningful commitment to the future. We fought renewable energy subsides tooth and nail. Oh, and we had a presidential race that year. In all three presidential debates, climate change was never mentioned. You would have thought ISIS was a code name for climate change, seeing how it was talked about as if it was somehow the scariest thing the world faced. One of the candidates even called climate change a hoax and claimed he would cut all clean energy development.
We fought over what women could do with their bodies and in what capacity gay people were allowed to love and what humans were allowed to go where and if the rich were comfortable enough with their current tax rate and if pharmaceutical companies were making enough profit and of course, who could use what bathroom. So many of these issues had clear virtuous answers yet selfishness out rang freedom and liberty.
We were all so apathetic as we sat in our air conditioned homes, munching burgers, watching it all get fucked up before our eyes.
Though, you should have seen how much we cared when our past choices began to catch up with us. It was around South Florida collapsed. The Army Corps of Engineers could no longer pump enough water out. Housing prices had been declining but sudden they collapsed.
My goal is to assist and care for patients during their unique pregnancies in order to optimize both the maternal and fetal outcomes.
Learn more. Pediatric Doctors. Medical Interests Areas of Interest: Twin gestations Fetal anomalies Maternal-congenital heart disease and diabetes Diagnosis treatment and ongoing care throughout complex pregnancies Medical complications of pregnancy Obstetric complications of pregnancy Prenatal ultrasound and diagnostic procedures Percutaneous umbilical blood sampling and fetal transfusion Resident and Fellow Education in Maternal-Fetal Medicine Fetal Growth and Growth Restriction Ultrasound.
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