Day 315: Neural Engineering in a pandemic
For the past week or so my PI has been away, so I’ve had the chance to work on other projects from home. Unfortunately he returns this week so I’ve got to switch gears from protests, working from home, and undergrad mentoring back to experiments and experimental setup. As the senior student in the lab, I’ve got a lot of responsibilities.
Day 314: It’s all part of the act…
Step right up boys and girls! Hurry, hurry to the greatest performance you’ll ever see… Who doesn’t love a good show, right? I mean you get to escape reality for a moment, forget your troubles, and see a whole different world. Unfortunately, once the show is over, it’s business as usual and that can’t happen, not this time. So why are the people in charge doing the same song and dance?
Day 313: Solid Modeling – Week 3
This course will all be taught using free software so have no fear, you can do it too! For those just joining us you can find all the posts in this series in the handy Solid modeling for beginners category. For the past two weeks I’ve been going over best practices. The reason is the tools are straightforward to learn, but how we use them is what separates someone who is learning from someone who is a pro. I have had some thoughts about what I wanted to cover this week for that reason, but this week we’re making something and by me we, I mean you! First, let’s do a quick recap of what we’ve learned and we can get started.
Day 312: Yes, the protests are still going…
It still appears there is a media blackout on the protests (first mentioned in my other post). That doesn’t mean we’ve stopped though! It also unfortunately doesn’t mean the police have stopped. In fact we’re seeing some really… umm scary tactics being used by the police to * checks notes * beat us until we stop protesting police violence.
Day 311: When voting isn’t enough
Rawr! Beware, the Gerry-mander!
I’ve been debating about writing this post and it’s just been rattling around in my head for the past month or so. Voting can change the course of history, frankly we saw that in the 2016 elections, but we also saw something else. Your vote doesn’t matter and that isn’t by accident. But wait, I just said voting can change the course of history, so how does it not matter? Well for that we need to go back, way back.
Day 310: Review – Interfacing with alpha motor neurons in spinal cord injury patients
Spatiotemporal spinal maps of ipsilateral a-MNs. (A) Experimental set-up for ankle plantar flexion. (B) HD-EMG is decomposed into a-MN spike trains using a convolutive blind-source separation technique. (C) The spinal output to generate the neural drive to muscles is estimated from the a-MN spike trains.
The world is on fire, we’re protesting for a future, but today I have my review paper due so instead of writing about my frustrations I’m going to share my review. Today we’re looking at the effects of trans-spinal direct current stimulation (tsDCS) on alpha motor neurons and how we can determine that effect using electromyography. It’s actually a very cool paper, the work is well done, and it’s open source so you can read it if you’re interested.
Day 309: No tests, no worries
If I ignore my bills, I would have very few, if any. If that logic seems, well wrong, then I’m not surprised. Ignoring something doesn’t make it magically go away. Yet, Trump has touted, yet again, that if we slowed or stopped testing, we would have very few, if any cases of COVID19. I mean, with that kind of logic, you could have no more bills with this one weird trick!
Day 308: Don’t be ableist
Believe it or not, there are some people who can’t even lift a hand, much less hold a glass of water.
For those of you just tuning into my corner of the internet, I’m a disabled vet. If you looked at me most days you wouldn’t know it, but not all disabilities are visible and my TBI, back issues, shoulder issues, knee issues, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, memory problems, PTSD, aphasia … I could keep going, but you get the idea. My disabilities are (mostly) not visible. So today I have a very simple request, don’t be ableist.
Day 307: COVID19 and BLM or why you should wear a mask
Despite the media blackout the Black lives matter protests are still going strong. To say I’m proud would be an understatement. Unfortunately with all the protests going on people are claiming that COVID19 isn’t as bad as people said it was, or that the protesters should stop because of the pandemic. The critiques all miss the point, this one simple trick will slow the transmission and it really works.
Day 306: Solid Modeling – Week 2
We’re back again with week 2 of solid modeling for beginners! For those of you just joining in, you can read the introduction (pre-week 1) in this post. You can also find all the posts in this series (including week 1) in the Solid modeling for beginners category. Solid modeling isn’t too difficult, but it does take time and it does mean you need to learn to think about objects in different ways. Week 1 did a great job of introducing this type of thought process and today we’re going to continue from where that left off. Let’s just dive right in!
Day 305: Trump, Godwin’s law, and history
Straight from the man himself, this is a very real tweet by Mike Godwin (Here).
Godwin’s law states simply “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” Coined by Mike Godwin, Godwin’s law is often invoked when talking about Trump or the horrid state the so-called US democracy is in. Here’s the catch, the law was suspended by Godwin himself when talking about Trump and company, for very good reasons.
Day 304: It’s still just the first wave
♫ One of these things is not like the other… ♫
COVID-19 is making headlines again and news reports are claiming the second wave is here. Well, that’s not quite right, we never actually stopped the first. We literally cannot have a second wave of outbreaks if the first wave is still going strong, it’s just a continuation.
Day 303: Police food fight
Well here’s something I never thought I would have to write about, the food is all right. Contrary to reports by police, no one is poisoning their food. In fact, every time a new story comes up regarding tapered food and the police it turns out the officers involved were (surprise!) lying outright. There are strangely so many of these incidents that it’s hard to keep up with, what is it about police that makes them think it’s okay to keep lying?
Day 302: The supreme court weighs in and LGBTQ+ lives matter!
Well as if we didn’t already have an overabundance of apocalyptic events occurring all at the same time, now we have trump rolling back protections for the LGBTQ+ community while the supreme court ruled in favor of protections for LGBTQ+ people. It’s all very confusing, but while we’re trying to burn down the system, need to build in protections for the LGBTQ+ community too.
Day 301: We mourn the loss of a beloved… wendy’s
Rayshard Brooks was murdered by police. Murdered isn’t quite a strong enough word for what the police did, but we’ll go with it. He was murdered. I don’t know the man, but I can tell you he had three daughters and a step son. I can also tell you he was murdered for being responsible. He was murdered for celebrating his daughters 8th birthday. He was murdered for doing the right thing. But today we mourn the wendy’s that was burned down.
Day 300: Protest media blackout
The protests are still going strong and that makes my heart happy. You knew the protests were still going on though… right? I don’t blame you if you thought they had died down, turns out when protesters aren’t burning down buildings the media doesn’t seem to care, even when police decide to use excessive force and LITERALLY run people over.
Day 299: Solid Modeling – Week 1
Welcome to solid modeling for beginners! Each week I’ll post some new and exciting things so you can try your hand at solid modeling. It’s easier than it looks to get started and once you do, you’ll be able to create amazing things that you can 3D print, plans to build something really cool, or maybe you just want to create some art! You can do anything you want with solid modeling, that’s the beauty of it! Let’s get started.
Day 298: A slight delay
Well today I was planning on posting a quick tutorial for everyone who wanted to learn solid modeling. Have no fear! We’re still going to do it, but that will have to wait to tomorrow. I’ve got a lot going on at the moment and creating a good tutorial from scratch will take a bit of time. What am I doing now? Well, I’m glad you asked.
Day 297: Solid modeling classes, free for all!
Luckily teaching my course online makes it easier, not harder!
Today marks the start of my summer class. It’s a small group and while it doesn’t directly have anything to do with brain-machine interfaces (frankly none of my research in the lab does) in the age of commercialized 3D printing knowing how to solid model is an important skill that can be applied to basically anything, yes even brain-machine interfaces! Best of all, you can learn with us for free (software included)!
Day 296: Review – Spinal Rhythm Generation by Step-Induced Feedback and Transcutaneous Posterior Root Stimulation in Complete Spinal Cord–Injured Individuals
Transcutaneous posterior root stimulation: Paravertebral and abdominal skin electrode placement (this is just a portion of figure 1 of this paper.
Normally I’m somewhat excited to post these, but with everything going on you’ll have to pardon my lack of joy. However, it’s been two weeks so I need to review another paper so I’m sharing it here as well as sending my PI a copy. The study is a few years old, but it’s open access so you can read it if you’re interested. Transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation (TSS) is one part of my research in case you couldn’t tell from all the spinal cord and TSS studies and posts. I find it interesting and it gives me hope that we can help a whole lot of people living with spinal cord injury. Anyway give it a read and get out there and protest for a better world.
Day 295: Back in the lab
“What do you mean, I look nervous!?”
Well it finally happened. We’re doing experiments again. It’s kind of scary to be honest to be working in a hospital again when the pandemic is going on and we have protests still happening. While I could do without the pandemic, I hope with all my heart that the protests don’t end until the corrupt system that caused them ends first.
Day 294: We can’t stop now.
Yet another day for protesting and another day for police brutality. Every day I check to see what’s been happening and what is currently happening with the protest and I hold my breath every time I wait for the current update. I’m nervous the protests will slow down, I’m nervous we are going to get tired and stop.
Day 293: TERF is NOT a slur
The I’d march with you… if I weren’t so busy discriminating against you defense.
Sex, gender, depending on who you ask it’s very simple or infinitely complex. I’ll give you a hint the science is settled and it isn’t as simple as people who shout, “but biology!” would want you to think. Sex and gender are most definitely a spectrum, it’s literally what the biology tells us and if you disagree, well then quit trying to use science as a defence for your shitty opinions.
Day 292: Thoughts for the day
Yeah, totally justified…
Well would you look at that, Seattle issued a ban on CS (tear) gas for 30 days. Yeah, you read that right, 30 days. Why 30 days? Well if I had to bet, I would bet that is exactly how long it will take before they get more. In other words they ran out. They’ve been using so much CS gas that they ran out of it. I have a lot of thoughts today apparently, so let’s just dive into a small stream of consciousness.
Day 291: Dear America, The power of indifference
Suddenly your absent-minded thoughts are shattered by a loud noise. Quickly you look around, to the left of you, you see it. A child has been shot. You see them bleeding heavily. People are standing around with their phones, some calling emergency services, some filming, but most looking confused and scared. No one is actively trying to help. What do you do next?
Day 290: A guide for treating tear gas
When exposed to CS gas (tear gas) do NOT use milk.
Well this won’t end and frankly it shouldn’t end until there are sweeping changes to institutions who refuse to make those changes. In the meantime good and innocent people are being subject to CS gas (tear gas) and there are a lot of ways people are suggesting you treat it, some are better than others. Let’s talk about what CS gas does and how to treat it best.
Day 289: Classes started today
Well today we kick off our summer internship courses. It’s just a little hard given everything that is going on in the background, but here we are. It’s tough all around for the black and minority communities, but as an institution we press on to teach. I’m still disheartened that we can’t even pause in a moment of turmoil like this, but institutions like this are part of the system so they can’t meaningfully acknowledge what is going on.
Day 288: The things we do in the dark Part – 2
As with most mornings I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about, but my topic found me. He who controls the flow of information controls the narrative. Wars are won and lost by the control of public information. The government knows this, it is a tactic the government has used for decades and they are at it again.
Day 287: Racism and our pale blue dot
If I were to show you a map of the known universe the size of a large building, the spot marking earth and where this photo was taking would be overlapping. Feel small yet?
We don’t learn from our mistakes, the 1918 flu for example. We learned nothing from it and were doomed to repeat history when COVID-19 came around. Look at the news right now, any of this look vaguely familiar? It should, even in my lifetime we’ve seen this happen several times over, but nothing has changed. We refuse to learn.
Day 286: On the militarization of police
Photo from Slate
The US is under attack, not by some foreign power, but by the people tasked to protect us. The police have increasingly become more militarized and as such their power to incite violence has increased exponentially alongside its budget. Notice I said incite violence, not end violence.
Day 285: Interesting times
Yet another disgusting and violent tirade from Trump.
My Co-PI lived through the fall of the USSR. I told him that must have been an interesting time to be alive. He responded by telling me that they actually have a curse for others that goes something along the lines of, “I hope you are cursed to live through interesting times.” We are living through interesting times now and I can see why that would be used as a curse.
Day 284: The things we do in the dark
It’s the least they could do.
Disinformation is a powerful tool. We are often taught that while previous wars had the overall and almost total support of the American people, the Vietnam war did not. You may think this had to do with the sentiment at the time or a cultural shift. However, this was most likely due to something far more innocuous, the television.
Day 283: Lies the police told me
Depending on who you are and your experience in life the police are either heroes that are looked up to or they are oppressors that are feared. The truth is that they are all part of the same racist system and that inevitably makes all police bad. You may not agree, that’s fine and I would bet that you are most likely white. To which I would say, it is okay not to notice the systematic racism until it is pointed out. It’s normalized, so why would you notice?
Day 282: Review – Transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation of the cervical cord modulates lumbar networks
Experimental Setup and tSCS electrode placement (A) H-reflexes were evoked via stimulation of the tibial nerve and recorded in the soleus muscle during a consistent background contraction of ≈5% peak muscle activity. The left leg was held static in an extended position, and stimulation to evoke the H-reflex was delivered with the left arm at 0°. (B) tSCS was delivered via two 2.5 cm round cathodic electrodes placed midline at C3-4 and C6-7 (cervical) or T11 and L1 (lumbar) spinous processes. Two 5 × 10 cm rectangular anodic electrodes were placed bilaterally over the iliac crests.
It’s that time again! My biweekly critical review paper is due for my PI. He gets a copy and so do all of you. This is a particularly interesting study that falls in line with a lot of research that I am doing, so it’s interesting to see how other groups are progressing. Overall I think this is a great study and while it is behind a paywall, I think I summed it up very well. The drawing they did (above) is awesome, especially for a scientific journal where we normally use simple line figures. Anyway, let’s get to it.
Day 281: The New Colossus
The march of time stops for no one, yet we shut down the world. Only for a moment. Then that moment passed, but not by choice. There is a pandemic going on, tomorrow we will most likely pass the somber 100,000 official deaths from COVID-19 in the US. There is a very good chance the actual number is much higher. It hasn’t stopped, it won’t stop, but somehow we are choosing to ignore it.
Day 280: A somber remembrance
“I swear I didn’t kill anyone” by the incredibly talented Lora Zombie.
Memorial day brings mixed feelings for me. It’s the inevitable culmination of militarism and hero worship. It’s a yearly reminder of my failures and losses. It’s a memorial for the civilians that are blind to the abuses of the military. It’s for those who greedily accept the most we can do is have mindless celebrations and for those who enjoy the egregious use of platitudes that punctuate the day. Well now, it’s time for some cold hard truth that you don’t want to hear.
Day 279: Juggling (a lot of) tasks
Since the pandemic hit I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on what I’m doing in school and things that I need to finish. Turns out I’m juggling a lot. I’ve touched on this before in other posts that I have a lot going on, but it never really hit me until recently that I have all these things and none of them seem to be ending. It’s kind of frustrating and extremely anxiety inducing.
Day 278: Teaching… virtually
We are about to start the big summer internship program at school. I’m actually kind of excited about it. I enjoy teaching and mentoring and this is just as much a chance for me to learn as for the people I work with. However, this year we are doing it all virtually, so there are some growing pains and a lot of challenges that come along with this. Let’s look at what I will be teaching this year and how I’m going to deal with the need to teach virtually.
Five tips to survive the apocalypse
The world is on fire right now. We’re literally living in a real life horror movie. Depending on your proclivity for survival you are stuck almost exclusively inside your home. Yet, everyone on the internet, your PI, and maybe even colleagues seem to tell you the same thing, you can now be more productive! Yes, we are at home almost exclusively and more and more people are suggesting to use this extra time to be more productive. Well fuck that, instead here are my five tips to help you survive all this.
Day 276: Survivor Bias
This is my mother with me as a baby. She wrote notes on the backs of the few photos I have. It’s surreal seeing her handwriting, but it sounds like she really wanted to be a mom. I will always regret not getting the chance to know her. She may still be alive, I just don’t know and apparently no one else does either.
I have suffered more than most. I like talking about it, especially mental illness because keeping it to myself helps no one and hurts a lot of people who think they are alone. Today I will attempt to do something I am not known for, I will concisely tell a short version of my life. I will then tell you how I succeeded despite the odds. I will tell you that I struggle every damn day, but that I made it. Then I will tell you, you probably won’t and that breaks my fucking heart.
Day 275: Summer Mentorship
It’s summer, so we’re taking a break from my DI…why?! series to talk about my favorite thing about working over the summer. We get to do mentoring! As you may recall, mentoring is my favorite part of the job. Over the summer we get students from high school, international students, as well as undergrad students from all over the place to visit our little lab.
Day 274: DI..why?! – Removing the forever cabinets
Today we’re going to do some demolition! Woo, time to break things!!! Actually I was hoping this was going to go smoothly, but I’ve already ripped out some of these cabinets and they are not easy to do, even after thinking I had the experience I needed to rip them out. Let me introduce you to the forever cabinet.
Day 273: DI..why?! – How to install a smart light switch
Today we are installing a pair of these, we’ll cover how to install one and you’ll be able to do as many as you want once you get the first one down!
I had three options for a post today, so we’re going to go with the simplest and probably most helpful. Here’s the scenario, you want to change out a light switch, but you don’t know how to do it. You could pay someone, but why spend the money? You’re in luck, this is a simple job and I think anyone can do it, why did I change out a light switch, well I’ll tell you my reasons, but they may not be the same as yours, that’s fine too. No judgement here!
Day 272: DI..why?! – Holes in walls
You may notice my wood ladder, I built it to get to the ceiling.
Today we’re going to go over a few other patch jobs I’ve had to make around the house since I’ve been here. These were intentional as you’ll see. I needed some outlets put in and in order to do that holes were made, luckily I have some photos of that portion of the work just because it was so fun to watch. While, the plugs were installed professionally, the patches were done by me.
Day 271: DI..why?! – Awkward lighting
What do you do when you want to install this, but the electrical box is 8 inches to the right? Well let’s go over that!
Well since I anticipate a lot more DIY posts, I’ve created a new category for them! I’m calling it DI…why?! because every time I try to fix something, I find something else that was wrong with the way they built the home. To kick this off, let’s talk about the curious case of the cockeyed casing. Or without the alliteration, the stupid builders put the electrical junction off center for no apparent reason and we’re going to fix that.
Day 270: The to-do list
When I say I lived in my car, I really did. This was my 84 trans am, I bought it for $600 after I got out of the military and immediately drove it cross country (like >3,000 miles). It doesn’t look like much, but it kept me dry when it rained and I absolutely loved it.
Well I’m making a list… and checking it… twice? Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Well here we are at the precipice of something interesting. I want to show everyone that you can have a life and a PhD at the same time. Or in my case a hobby or two, maybe not a life, I don’t have one of those, but that wasn’t because of the PhD. Anywho I digress. Buying a home is a lot like buying a used car and today I will explain why!
Day 269: A preview of the weeks ahead
Robots don’t need to social distance, but we do, so no beach trips for me this summer.
Well we’ve officially transitioned to the spring/summer break. Since I am doing my own little 365 days of academia challenge, it’s important to point out that there will most likely be a marked change in the content. So let’s look at what we’ve done to this point and what will be coming up! I’m excited, are you excited? I’m excited!
Day 268: Review – Magnetospinography visualizes electrophysiological activity in the cervical spinal cord
This is the results of the cervical spondylotic myelopathy subject. The left graphs are the ascending spinal cord evoked potentials (this was electrophysiological recordings taken from the epidural space) by stimulation of the lower thoracic cord showing conduction block at the C4/5 disc level. The right graphs are the reconstructed currents at the midline of the cervical spinal canal (red) and 2 cm lateral (blue). The leading component (the first waveform in red) attenuated and disappeared through C4–6, and the trailing component (the second waveform in red) disappeared at C5/6. The perpendicular inflow components greatly attenuated at C4/5 (the second waveform in blue).
Another two weeks, another critical review. This time I was more critical than review, unlike the last one where I was blown away at the possibilities. Why was I more critical with this one? Well in my opinion, the authors took a baby step when they should’ve taken a leap. All that aside, it is an interesting study and one I hope has several follow up experiments. This one is open access as well, so have a read for yourself if you’re interested.
Day 267: The problem with exams
I like to take my anti anxiety medication with a light snack thirty minutes before the exam. That way I get the full effect from the meds at about 30 minutes into the exam. The effects don’t last long enough to make it the entire exam, so I split the difference and this gives me the best result since I can’t stop half way and take more. Unfortunately, they don’t help, they never really do. I feel jittery, like I had too much coffee. I can’t remember the things I need to know and screw up even the simplest parts of the exam because I’m more focused on keeping my heart from exploding out of my chest!
Day 266: Pandemic research pressure
Think of research like the post office, nor rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor pandemic, we will be there working. My dumbass had to make the transition from design to human experimenting the year before a pandemic. I could be safely at home designing cool robots in solidworks, but no we need to collect human subject data and despite the pandemic, I’m feeling the pressure.
Lunatic Laboratories 