Student Report: Fatigue in running

Hello again! It’s been a little while since my last post and I need to post for this week or I’ll be docked points from Dr. Myers. I’ve been a little bit behind on things as I’ve been preparing for my upcoming senior seminar, but I did have time to check out at least one cool article I found on different energy systems used while running.

I had a race today and I noticed that every time I do an 8k (5 miles), about three miles in I hit a wall of fatigue. I get dizzy, it’s hard to focus on the guy in front of me, driving my knee up feels next to impossible, and the only thing I care about is eventually getting to the finish line. I know that much of this is probably because I’ve depleted a good portion of my glycogen stores and have worn out my muscles fairly well. But how does this tie in with my nervous system?

According to the article, a good portion of my glycogen stores are found in my liver. If too much of the glycogen is used hypoglycaemia can occur resulting in brain damage. Other bodily harm such as myocardial ischaemia, heat stroke, and severe ATP depletion from my muscles can occur too if my body is allowed to be pushed far enough.

Luckily for me, my muscles have a built in negative feedback to stop me from killing myself out there. My muscles somehow know to send a signal up to the brain for a release of serotonin and inhibition of dopamine secretion, which results in a further lack of ability to move, which results in a slower time, which puts Morris on the backburner in terms of our men’s cross country team. I’m still wondering though, how do my muscles know when to signal my brain to cut back on the neurotransmitters? And how much does mentality (a positive attitude towards the race, or the expectation of a good run) play a role in the regulation of my muscles (do I release more ACh and endorphins by simply having a good attitude, or is the causality the other way around?)? Either way, if you haven’t moved in a while, get out and enjoy this great October weather while it lasts. Or you can check out this pretty funny link of a band I found on youtube.

There is a difference

Josh talks about the difference between teaching about ID and teaching ID. There is a huge difference that the Discovery Institute does not seem to understand.

I am opposed to teaching Intelligent Design in the classroom. It’s an absurd idea that is unsupported by any evidence — it has not earned a place in the curriculum as a legitimate scientific hypothesis. The propaganda novels that the DI has tried to peddle in the past, Of Pandas and People and their new one, Explore Evolution, do not belong in the classroom. They are badly written, and incompetently push completely false ideas as valid. They should be rejected on their low merit.

On the other hand, I do teach about ID … in fact, this next week is the week I’ve set aside to specifically address creationism in my introductory biology course. I’ve prepared them with some of the history of evolution, and maybe a little bit more of the evidence for the idea than was easily digestible, and now I’m going to cover the fallacies of interpretation of the theory, which will include social Darwinism as well as creationism. Students are bombarded with these bad ideas, and I don’t think we can afford to pretend they don’t exist — we have to confront them head-on.

The strategy I’m using is to ask the students themselves what arguments they’ve heard against evolution. They wrote some lists down this week, and this weekend I’m putting together a lecture where I specifically take these misconceptions and answer them. It was rather fun reading their lists: the arguments are very familiar, everything from “if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?” to “there are no transitional fossils” to “organisms are too complex to have evolved.”

I also encouraged the students to go to our local creationist tent revival meeting, which was very conveniently timed. We’ll also be discussing how to refute his arguments in class next week.

That’s teaching about creationism. I’m all for it. It’s how we prepare students to criticize lies after they leave the classroom.

Lua muses on…

Adult neurogenesis

The creation of new neurons, known as neurogenesis, is an important process. It is by this process that the brain forms, and most of it occurs during pre-natal development. An early theory proposed by neuroanatomists that has recently been refuted by experimental evidence is that adult neurogenesis does not occur. In adult neurogenesis, it has been observed that most of the new neurons die shortly after their formation, while only a few become integrated into the functioning structure of the brain. So what is the significance of adult neurogenesis?

While the functioning of this process is not known, it has been speculated that it is important for memory and learning processes, and is linked to stress. Stress causes a lot of people a lot of harm, and has been linked to many disorders, such as depression. Depression is a condition that is regulated by antidepressants. Know what other activity is regulated by the activity of antidepressants? You guessed it, NEUROGENESIS! A recent study showed that the brain responds to stress-relieving situations, such as those that build learning and memory, with increased neurogenesis. Stressful situations, such as those that induce physiological or psychological stress, are marked by decreased neurogenesis. A decrease in neurogenesis has been indicated to be a key factor in the progression of depression.

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Tenure-track position in vertebrate biology

Are you trained in vertebrate systematics or natural history? Would you like to work at a liberal arts college with undergraduates? We have the perfect opportunity for you.

Tenure-Track Position in Biology
University of Minnesota, Morris

The University of Minnesota, Morris seeks an individual committed to excellence in undergraduate education, to fill a tenure-track position in vertebrate biology beginning August 18, 2008. Responsibilities include: teaching a two-year rotation of undergraduate biology courses including upper level electives in vertebrate systematics or natural history and sophomore level human physiology; contributing to the university’s general education program; curating and maintaining the discipline’s vertebrate collection; advising undergraduates; pursuing a research program that could involve undergraduates; and sharing in the governance and advancement of the biology program as well as the campus at-large.

Candidates must hold or expect to receive a Ph.D. in zoology or a closely related field by August 18, 2008. Two years experience teaching undergraduate biology is required. (Graduate TA experience is acceptable.)

The University of Minnesota, Morris (UMM) is a nationally-recognized, small, selective, residential, undergraduate liberal arts campus of the University of Minnesota. It has an enrollment of about 1700 students with over 120 faculty members. The campus is located in west-central Minnesota, 160 miles from Minneapolis, in a rural community of 5000 people. The college is organized into four academic divisions, of which Science and Mathematics is one. Disciplines represented in the division are Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geology, Mathematics, Physics and Statistics. The college attracts excellent students many of whom go on to graduate or professional studies. Visit www.morris.umn.edu/positions/ to learn about other open positions at UMM.

This tenure-track position carries all of the privileges and responsibilities of University of Minnesota faculty appointments. A sound retirement plan, excellent fringe benefits and a collegial atmosphere are among the benefits that accompany the position. Appointment will be at the Assistant Professor level for those having the Ph.D. in hand and at the Instructor level for others. The standard teaching load is twenty credit hours per year.

Applications must include a letter of application, resume, transcripts, a teaching statement (in which teaching goals and methods are discussed), a research statement (proposing a research program that is viable at a small liberal arts college and accessible to undergraduates), and three letters of reference. Send applications to:

Biology Search Committee Chair
Division of Science and Mathematics
University of Minnesota, Morris
600 East 4th Street
Morris, MN 56267-2128

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Screening begins January 7, 2008. Inquiries can be made to Tracey Anderson, Search Committee Chair, at (320) 589-6324 or anderstm@@morris.umn.edu.

The University of Minnesota is committed to the policy that all persons shall have equal access to its programs, facilities, and employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, disability, public assistance status, veteran status, or sexual orientation.

Peeking inside Nature

Attila takes a tour of Nature headquarters — it looks like they’re doing some cool, progressive, net-friendly innovation there. I was jealous of one thing: they’re using an internal corporate blog instead of email. It’s an easy and obvious solution, and I wish there were a way to implement that kind of thing at my university — we use godawful mailing lists for everything, which means notices about campus assembly meetings and student issues get all clogged up in my inbox with staff putting lawn furniture up for sale or disposable nonsense about football games.

We really should have a discussion about the future of intra-campus communication here sometime…or maybe about the ten-years ago of communication.

Once again into the assumed silence of the homogametic sex

Prompted by the skewed gender representation of a recent survey of science blogs, Zuska asks why there are no great women science bloggers. That’s an ironic question, of course: there are great women science bloggers, but there is a strange blindness to their contributions, just as they are neglected in the greater blogosphere, and in science, and in politics, and in everything other than raising babies and making attractive centerpieces for the family dinner table, etc. It’s a curious phenomenon that we have to try consciously to rise above, an effort hampered by the fact that there seem to be a lot of people who want to argue that you aren’t allowed to make a special effort to avoid gender bias — it’s apparently “unfair” to try to overcome a history of unfairness.

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Textbooks, again

Everyone in academia knows it: textbook publishers abuse the system. Jim Fiore decries the high cost of college textbooks, and I have to agree completely. Basic textbooks at the lower undergraduate levels do not need a new edition every year or two, not even in rapidly changing fields like biology.

Churning editions is just a way for the publisher to suck more money out of a captive audience. It makes it difficult for students to sell off their used textbooks, it gives faculty the headache of having to constantly update their assignments, and if you allow your students to use older editions, it means we have to maintain multiple assignments. It’s extraordinarily annoying, and to no good purpose at the university (to great purpose at the publisher, though).

Right now, I do tell my students that I allow them to use the current or the past two editions. I also tell them where they can pick up copies online, and I even encourage them to get them used. I am doing my best to subvert the publisher’s evil schemes.

On the plus side of their ledgers, though, I also urge the students to keep their textbooks once the course is over. These are valuable reference books that they may well find handy throughout their college careers and in their life afterwards. I’ve never quite understood the rush to dispose of those books the instant the semester ends — I kept my undergraduate biology and chemistry books until they fell apart (another gripe: the increasingly cheap bindings of these books), and I still have several of my old history texts on my shelves.

Thursday is going to be a busy day

Hey, University of Missouri-Columbia readers: Elliot Sober is coming your way. At 4:00 on the 20th (this week!), Elliot Sober will be speaking on Evolution versus Intelligent Design. It should be fun; somebody report back to me, OK?

Closer to my home, Steve Pinker will be speaking at the Minneapolis Public Library at 7:00 on the same day on ‘The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature.’ I might be able to make it to that one.

About student posts appearing here

I expected that my students would get a little trial by fire in the furious life of the public intellectual, and the commenters here certainly provided that. Maybe a little too much of that. Dial the ferocity back a notch, OK? Constructive criticisms are greatly appreciated, but the nasty stuff is not. I suppose it’s useful in the sense that it’s going to toughen up the students, but it doesn’t reflect well on you. One thing I’ll be doing in class next week is making up some lists and handing them out in class: a list of the jerks (“You can ignore these commenters, they’re wasting your time”) and a list of the good people (“These commenters say useful stuff, pay attention to them”). That’s right, we’ll be talking smack about you.

Here are some other clarifications and concerns.

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