I got new monkey physiology data this past Friday. The renewal for the monkey grant is July 19th, the supplement we can put in is due June 21st, and our meeting this past Thursday basically indicated: 'if you have any really bright, explosive ideas, now is the time.'

So I mentioned all of the remaining I wanted to do to completely bleed dry any brain + behavior + physiology analyses.

My favorite/pet theory was granted with unusual enthusiasm by the co-head of the project, who had previously been wary to send anything my way because "we can't just give all of our data to a graduate student". Indelible hatred, like claw marks in slate. But I guess desperation has swung things in my favor.

I got glucose regulation data.

This is important shit thusly.

The brain is 2% of our total body volume, but it gets 15% of cardiac output, 20% of respiration, and a quarter of the glucose we utilize to stay alive. As we get older, the ability to utilize this energy in different regions begins to decline--remarkably so for people with type 2 diabetes, inflammatory conditions, or certain kinds of cancer. These regions are critical for being able to create and maintain autobiographical memory, self-referential reflection, and higher order thinking.

The thing is, next to no one has systematically investigated just how energy utilization in the body affects brain atrophy with aging. And no one has seen if you can slow or stop it with a therapeutic intervention.

That is until I got my hands on the data.

I have circulating fasting glucose, insulin, glycosylated hemoglobin (which deals with post-translational protein folding to get the fuckers to work right), the degree of insulin sensitivity in the pancreas (which releases insulin), general insulin sensitivity, and several variables related to a glucose tolerance test.

I have found some bizarre results. Results which I thought completely contradicted the existing literature. That's not the case, though. At least that's the case I'll make with Dr. Silver tomorrow. Hopefully the 60+ hours of work I've put in since last Friday morning will pay off.

If so, I think with the other stuff I've helped to contribute and what the MD/Ph.D. student has put in histology-wise, we should get a favorable response.

Of course that'd mean I'd have to eventually sit through new monkey scans, but then I'd have so much fucking data I'd need at least 3 graduate students to even begin to mine it properly. There is a stunning amount of papers that could be published.

I think that's why I'm glad I stayed in Wisconsin. That and U. Penn. gave me a rectal what-for with their sudden turn-around. But apparently getting training funding is increasingly difficult. The days where you started as an assistant professor in your late 20's are gone. I think I can land that gig roughly by the time I'm 35. Trying to find any kind of faculty job anywhere is very difficult because of all the baby boomers latching on to the teat of employment until someone pries them off or they get senile enough to become non-competitive with grant funding. Granted, I'll probably be bitched about in such a way someday, but I am young, ravenous, and would be perfectly capable of picking off one of these creatures if this were the wild and all I had was a club.

Didn't get home from the gym until 10pm. I need to buy some weight gain powder and fat burning supplement. While I like the gains I'm making, I can probably do better by going to the gym every day and getting my body fat percentage down by 3 points. Mostly I'm lacking definition, which I think is important because I want to be just moderately more cut than bulky. Not enough bulk yet for my taste, though.

Christ I am self-indulgent today. Well fuck it.

previous - next