Author Archives: Lascap

How I learned to stop being overwhelmed and love the meeting – or: How (not) to do SfN, part II

We already discussed the basics of the art of SfN conferencing in a previous post, but let’s add meat to the bones. Our story starts in a long forgotten era, a time before Facebook, Youtube and – ironically (?) – … Continue reading

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Food for thought

I am starting to get really psyched about the upcoming meeting of the minds. The 40th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience should be an epic event, in every sense of that term. However, it is important to note that we … Continue reading

Posted in Conference, Data driven lifestyle, Optimization | 5 Comments

The arrival of truly mobile computing

There is a well established correlation between physical fitness and long term health outcomes. In particular, lack of activity seems to shorten lifespan while daily moderate activity seems to extend it dramatically. In other words, I don’t care how much … Continue reading

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SfN 2010 preview: The venue

Out of the three regular SfN venues – Washington, San Diego and New Orleans (on hiatus since 2005 – slated to return to NO in 2012) – San Diego arguably features the most impressive architecture as well as the most … Continue reading

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Is reality retrocausal?

Science is concerned with systematically probing the fundamental nature of reality, determining what is and what is not the case. In other words, science is about figuring out what is going on and about understanding how the world works (with … Continue reading

Posted in Journal club, Psychology, Science | 3 Comments

From Podster to Padster

At the SfN meeting (as at most conferences), posters are much more abundant than talks, by about an order magnitude. This – together with the fact that one is not always granted the privilege of giving a talk, while one … Continue reading

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Even dwarfs started small…

As you know, yours truly was selected by SfN to report from the meeting in San Diego this year. It has come to my attention that this choice has – perhaps predictably – drawn the ire of some of the … Continue reading

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Matlab with Pascal: How to get stuff done, using Matlab

One of the biggest threats to my (and I suspect everyone’s) productivity is the very existence of the Internet. This is not particularly surprising, as the large amount of freely available information practically guarantees that something new and interesting will … Continue reading

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How I learned to stop being overwhelmed and love the meeting – or: How to do SfN, part I

In my experience, hardly are opinions toward any conference as polarized as those regarding the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. When asking my colleagues about their feelings towards SfN and whether they are intending to attend this year, … Continue reading

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The time is coming…

Once again, it is this time of year, when we all gear up to make the great trek to the Annual Society of Neuroscience (SfN) meeting. Calling it “great” might seem grandiose, but is in actuality understating its true nature. … Continue reading

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Pascal’s Pensees was chosen as one of the official SfN 2010 blogs!

Earlier today, it was announced that this blog was selected to cover Theme D: “Sensory and Motor Systems” at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society of Neuroscience in San Diego later this year. I do thank the committee for … Continue reading

Posted in Administrative, Conference | 3 Comments

Hello world! (nt)

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