Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Overlapping Neural Networks

"One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor--with both memory-storage and information-processing elements--than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth" stanford november 2010 neuron imaging synapse processing" https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2010/11/new-imaging-method-developed-at-stanford-reveals-stunning-details-of-brain-connections.html

There could be more than one type of molecular switch in a synapse, each type involving different neurotransmitters. This suggests that the synapse instead of acting as a microprocessor could simply change the path of the information from one neuron to another depending of what neurotransmitters prevail in that moment at the synapse.

Now we can think of the brain more like a dynamically re-configurable hardware with the possibility of multiple different (or even simultaneous) "neural pathways" between the same group of neurons. And if the neurotransmitters are not spread uniformly throughout a region, there goes the "classical neural network" model in favor of some ever changing and overlapping multiple neural networks.

It is obvious that until this discovery described in the article linked above was made, nobody could imagine this model.

However, let's hypothesize that a certain combination of neurotransmitters is distributed uniformly throughout the brain at a certain time. (Although it cannot last very long since these are very dynamic processes, as neurotransmitters are being secreted in different areas of the brain and also metabolized).

Nothing will happen, the brain would freeze in a certain state and thought pattern.

According to this there can be different "brain modes", depending of which type of molecular switches are favored or what mode the brain is in or how many of the overlapping networks are activated at a certain time, and if one is dominant.

It is possible that since memories being "written" when inside a certain area of the brain a certain combination of neurotransmitters is attained, to be retrieved by recreating the same combination of concentrations? Yes, but those conditions are being hard to achieve except by the brain itself, because i think there are gradients of the concentrations of different neurotransmitters that intersect each other creating that combination in very small areas.

Since some neurotransmitters are associated with emotions that means some combination of emotions at a certain time can lead to retrieving those memories?

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Maia

How many things are wrong and we ignore? May 1st, 1962. According to Stellarium, a free planterium program for Linux and Windows, the Sun is within the boundaries of Arjes. I myself am not a Cancer but a Gemini. According to the same program my wife is not a Scorpius but a Libra... Etc. However, the news publications always have a horoscope section. Always wrong...

Is the difference because of the differences between the Gregorian and Julian calendar? I don't know...Why astrologers don't get serious and fix this problem? The whole Zodiac is wrong because it does not use the actual, real, scientific position of Sun within constellations...

Stellarium screenshot

Friday, November 16, 2012

Can't Get Weirder Than That

Something really weird happened on Veterans Day in Texas. It's been in the news for a week now. And obviously, we don't know what really happened yet and probably never will. I looked on Google News a minute ago and they are as right now over 1400 news articles on this "story"so far. By the time you are reading this post they will be more. Until one day when this news is going to die.

What we know so far.  "speed limit through Midland was increased last year from 40 mph to 60 mph in order to facilitate not blocking traffic. Also the eyewitness says the crossing gate came down right on the people, so clearly that was functioning". From a comment taken from here. It's been a week and yes, the Police ID'd the victims so far. No word on the guilty. While we assume attempts are being made to "re-conciliate" everybody involved until they go quiet.

The crossing gate came down on the people. And there is no sensor to show that and attempt to stop the train. Also probably no sensor to pick any car that by technical reasons have been caught on the rail while crossing gates are coming down.

So far i was saying to myself this is the weirdest damn thing i've read in the news lately. Then i went and opened the first link given by Google. This one. "Texas had 822 railroad crossing accidents during the three years ending in December 2011".

Lately i've been browsing job offers. For the better paying state jobs and not only, there usually are long descriptions impossible to read and understand. So many requirements i've never heard of that discourage me from even finishing reading the description. Sometimes i'm wondering if those requirements can be matched by a single individual.

But somehow i started to believe the longer the description the better is that job being "protected" from outsiders so it can be given to whoever.  There is no other explanation for what is happening there. A lot of people working for the state of Texas are not doing their jobs. I'm just curious, how many rail crossing accidents that had not made "the news" happened there since this one?

And then i realized. They shouldn't even call those "the news". They should call them... i don't know, the bait?

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Ode (In Antique Metre)

by Mihai Eminescu - 1883

Never thought i could learn how to die;
Always young, covered in my mantle,
My serene dreamy eyes were searching the star
Of loneliness.

When suddenly you arose in my path
Sufferance you, painfully sweet...
To the bottom i drank the voluptuous death,
Unforgiving.

Lamentably burning alive like Nessus.
Or like Hercules poisoned by his shirt;
I can't possibly quench my fire with all
Water of the sea.

Of my own dream, consumed i am weeping,
On my own stake, i'm melting in flames...
Can i ever revive shining from it like
The Bird Phoenix?

Disappear the troubling eyes from my path,
Come again to me, sad indifference;
So i can peacefully die, myself
Give back to me!

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Shawn Robert Parker

In January-June 1997 i worked at Epson Portland Incorporated assembling printers. I remembered one night on the line we did 521 printers in a 25 people team, an Epson world record. I remember the name of the supervisor, a Mexican guy. Her wife was a QA auditor and many times she was spending minutes next to me trying to figure out how i do it without making one mistake. I was at the station 4 i guess and i put 9 parts on the printer, including gears and 4 screws with an electric screwdriver. In June one day i became sick. I went home and started not to be able to sleep, eat or drink. At night i was driving my car around on the streets. I went several times to different ER rooms. After about a week or so i went to the Beaverton Police, told them some of the story. They called an ambulance that took me first to the Tuality Medical Center in Hilsboro, then to Emanuel in down town Portland and they called a cab and sent me to Pacific Gateway Hospital in Sellwood, the one who lost its license and closed after Police shot an out of control Mexican inside. It was a mental facility that treated both mental and drug related conditions. I never used drugs in my entire life. Here is my picture after being released from there
In front of what used to be Pacific Gateway Hospital,
Sellwood, OR, July 1997
(Prozac Head, can still click me!)

One of the symptoms was chocking. I only wish i knew back then where that was coming from. It was a simple nose congestion due to some allergies and was preventing me from sleeping. The other symptom was severe stomach pain. It lasted from 96 to 06. No doctor ever explained to me why but now i suspect i might be related to spine alignment because it went away after going to the chiropractor. But the pain was real and was alleviated by antacids or acid blockers that i took for many years constantly increasing the dosage.

Many weird things happened in the hospital maybe one day i will tell the stories. But let's concentrate now on something else. A couple of weeks after coming from the hospital one day i was walking on Hall Blvd and talking to my wife and thinking about going to a Romanian church. But then i changed my mind, crossed the street and went into BNC (Beaverton Church of the Nazarene). A church in the shape of an UFO.

I was well received in there. Like they were expecting me. They prayed for me laying hands on each other's shoulder.  I met pastor Dennis Swift and others.
Beaverton Church of the Nazarene
The next day a guy shows up at our door. He asked us, me and my wife if we wanted to go for a ride in a boat. I looked over his shoulder and there was a big boat in the parking lot hooked to an old green Ford SUV. He insisted a lot and then i said yes. In the car they were his three daughters. I remember only the name of the younger one, Trinity.
Shawn Robert Parker with "his girls", near Cannon Beach, OR,
summer 1997

He took us on the Willamette river that day. Accompanied by my usual stomach pain and thirsty all the time, i didn't drink anything in the morning and Shawn only had a few cans of soda i couldn't drink because of my stomach pain. Still on Prozac. I think we started in St.John area and went all the way to Willamette Falls and back. We stopped on a channel near an island. I think we ended the day back at the Nazarene church.

I had this 83 Fairmont sitting in the parking lot for almost a year. He came one day with a 20 dollar bill and asked mE to sell it to him. The manager at the apartment already told me several times to get rid of that car so i sold it to him.
My ex 83 Ford Fairmont, at Sussex Village Apts, Beaverton, Oregon, 1997
In April 98 i was working at Quadramed. I was teaching my wife how to drive. She took the computer test and had a permit. I think i spent hundreds of hours on the right seat on Nimbus St. in Beaverton teaching her. I remember at first she was terrified by the cars that were coming on the other side of the road from the opposite direction. But in spring 98 she was driving OK and she drove all the way from Portland to Tillamook, some 70 miles. Then from Tillamook to the beach near Tillamook bay there is a narrow winding road and i kinda pushed her because i was impatient to get there but she was tired and driving under speed limit and in a sharp left curve she went with the right wheels on the gravel near the road. I think we were in legal speed limit. Quickly and gently i grabed the wheel with my left hand and corrected in time. But she reacted too after, and over corrected. Unbelievable, we went to the... left, inside the curve, we missed the bay, the huge truck parked on the right on the gravel, the incoming car from the opposite direction, made an 180 degree turn and rolled in slow motion in a ditch full of ... mud, that was soft. It is very hard to describe in words the trajectory of the car.

It took me about a minute to figure out which way was up, untigthen her seat belt and roll the driver's door down cause mine was in mud and with the broken window while she was kicking me in the head with her legs. Finally she made it outside and i followed. The only thing that happened to us was me having some scratches on my right arm from the broken passenger window.

The guy with the truck parked outside the curve, kinda illegal i think, on the right, that was kinda like waiting for us in there, with the cell in his hand. Minutes later five cop cars showed but no ambulance. But we didn't need one either. One of the cops cited my wife for careless driving with 180 dollars. Then they called a towing truck and they put our car back on the wheels and i started the engine and it was working.

View Larger Map

Then guess what? Shawn Parker with the girls unexpectedly showed up in a green van with windows also old i haven't seen before or after coming from the beach. He insisted we went with him back to Portland, but i was too attached to that 89 Escort GT to leave it there with the towing guys and i drove with no problems all the way to Portland. (I was also paranoid about that being a recognition of my part we've been somewhat hurt in the accident which we weren't. 04/26/2014).

Did i mentioned the prayers at BNC that morning for each of our country? Dennis repeatedly asked and we both went to the altar, me accompanied by Ron Boger and my wife by his wife. Than we had lunch at Old Country Buffet in Beaverton and i also saw a bunch of people from the church in there. Then we decided to go to the Ocean. Those days we didn't need much to take that decision because we were still young and full of energy.

This post needs to be extended. I will dig into my records to put in more data and pictures.