11

Feb

Tragedy strikes CMU’s new artificial life MRI program

A project that started as a collaboration between members of the Department of Psychology and artificial life researchers in the Machine Learning Department has been shut down following an incident on the program’s first pilot run.

“I really don’t know what happened,” said Dr. Tim Verstynen, the lead researcher on the project in Psychology. “In trying to move away from all the zombie neuroscience nonsense, I wanted to get back to doing real science. But now I worry I didn’t think the problem all the way through.”

The project, first of it’s kind in the world, was a low-field gingerbread magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device designed to monitor brain development of genetically engineered gingerbread people, developed by the Departments of Biology and Machine Learning and funded by a DARPA “tasty soldiers” initiative.

“Everything looked really good going into the first scan,” reports Verstynen, “The test run without a subject looked really good. We loaded in our pilot subject and just completely forgot the coating of the candied sprinkles that make up the gingerbread people’s eyes. It was horrible… the things just popped right out!”

Given the magnetic strength of the MRI, human subjects are typically screened of all metal before entering the scanner via a questionnaire that asks questions like “Have you ever had a surgical implant?”, “Have you ever been shot by a bullet or bb gun?”

“We just completely forgot to ask whether any part of the subject was composed of or tastily coated in metal,” says Verstynen. “We are currently taking down the facility by a warm fire with a glass of milk.”

Verstynen reports that a new facility will be baked as soon as changes have been approved by CMU’s IRB.

95 days ago Short URL Comments

Psycho? Logical? Bulletin (Satire)/Timothy Verstynen

04

Feb

Super-science-mom spotted in the wild

Your PLB editors have received several reports that, after receiving the distinguished Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences, Professor Lori Holt has decided to “step it up a notch.”

“We all knew that Lori was such a superb scientist, but who knew that she could juggle her work and personal life so elegantly???” says Dr. AW, a professor at the University of Arizona who commented on the condition of anonymity (for concerns that Lori may or may not be reviewing a future grant submission).

True to form, Dr. Holt was spotted giving an hour long lecture on auditory physiology to a packed house at U of A, while simultaneously taking care of her 5 month old son.

“It was absolutely incredible,” said another witness, “She would seamlessly bounce back and forth between talking about the psychophysics of frequency tuning, fielding questions about the pitfalls of imaging the auditory cortex and singing the theme song to Dora the Explorer. By the end of the lecture we all felt very bonded with her at an intellectual and maternal level.”

When asked for a comment comment on the experience, Dr. Holt simply replied, “Screw it. A working mom’s gotta do what a working mom’s gotta do.”

103 days ago Short URL Comments

Lori Holt/Psycho? Logical? Bulletin (Satire)

28

Jan

Rakison Considers New Night Job

Pondering what to do with his “off hours”, David Rakison told our PLB Editors that he wanted to move away from the mental grind and do something more active.

“You know, you spend so much of your day in academia just sitting down,” said Rakison, “You sit in meetings.  You sit writing papers.  You sit in the lab.  When I’m not at work, I just wanted to do something more active.”

One night after his wife returned home from a movie with some friends she suggested a novel & more active hobby.

“It was an absolutely brilliant idea,” Rakison said, “I just had to find the right trainer.”

While being somewhat reluctant to tell the PLB precisely what this new part time hobby is, Rakison has admitted to seeking the advice of a movie celebrity who was in Pittsburgh filming a movie (pictured with Rakison) and had recently trained for the same “hobby”.

“Now I can’t tell you who this person is,” reports Rakison, “but I can say that I feel very confident in taking the next step in my new hobby and think it might be more financially more lucrative than academia.”

As soon as the PLB learns more about this new career choice, we will inform our faithful readers.

109 days ago Short URL Comments

David Rakison/Psycho? Logical? Bulletin (Satire)

21

Jan

Marcel Just Stumped By Kotovsky’s Brain

Marcel Just’s latest efforts to decode the semantic organization of the human brain hit an apparent snag last week.

Dr. Just (shown left above) was in search of a test subject to try out some new tweaks on his fMRI decoder algorithm.  This program promised a more efficient readout of neural activity from fMRI signals that could predict what a subject was thinking while in the scanner.

Ken Kotovsky (shown at right above) just happened to be walking back from Schatz when he ran into Dr. Just.

“I was just walking by, you know, and Marcel asked if I had anything to do this afternoon,” said Dr. Kotovsky, “I thought… why the hell not?”

Unfortunately, after only a few minutes in the scanner, it became apparent that something was not working properly.

“You know, it was the strangest thing,” said Dr. Just, “No matter what stimulus we gave him to think about in the scanner, we got the strangest output from the decoder.”

At this point Dr. Just holds up a list of visual stimuli presented to the test subject (Dr. Kotovsky) and the predicted image generated by the computer (shown below).  ”No matter what we showed him, the computer kept coming back with images of essentially the same thing!”

No word yet as to whether the error resided in the algorithm modifications or the test subject.

116 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Ken Kotovsky/Marcel Just/Psycho? Logical? Bulletin (Satire)

14

Jan

Faculty Meeting Dedicated to Novel Funding Opportunity Found in Department Head’s Inbox

 

Last week’s faculty meeting was dominated by the looming fiscal crises that the department faces due to “shifts in funding priorities” by NIH & DARPA. Department Head, Dr. Michael Scheier, proposed a novel funding opportunity that he was made aware of 15 minutes before the meeting.

“I was going through my Inbox this morning,” said Scheier, “and I came across something that I think looks really promising. I got an email from a guy, he says he’s a prince in Nigeria. Now I don’t know what that means, because I didn’t think that Nigeria had a monarchy, but listen to what he has to say.”

Scheier then proceeded to read a rather long email, riddled with grammatical errors, from an individual claiming to be a “prince in exile” who had $1.56 billion in holdings that were locked out after the coup that overthrew his family. According to the author, Honorable and Nobel Prince William Shatner III, the only way to get out of the country with his money is to transfer the funds into an American bank account first. If the department was willing to just send Prince Shatner the account and routing numbers for the department, then the author stated he would be willing to give the department a 10% cut.

“If you do the math, that’s $156 million dollars!” exclaimed Scheier, “Now I don’t know you you’d all feel about this, okay, but I think it’s really something we should consider. Especially given our recent shortfall on graduate student stipends”

Overall, the faculty opinion appeared mixed on the idea.

“You know I think this is fascinating,” said Dr. Brian McWhinney, “Really interesting offer. But I’d like to say, that my experience working on the Niger-Congo languages, I’d want to clarify what he meant by ‘dire circumstances’. That could mean a lot of different things if translated incorrectly.”

“What’d I’d want to know is whether that’s in US dollars or Nigerian naira,” said Dr. Ken Kotovsky, “I mean that conversion rate is a real pain in the ass.”

Others were not quite a supportive.

“Are you f$%#ing kidding me!” said Dr. David Klahr. “I don’t know why we’re even having this conversation? Our funds are locked in through the university. We’d have to get their approval and you know how long that’d take. He’d have found someone else before we even know what our account number is. Seems like a waste of time to me.”

Throughout the conversation, Dr. David Rakison kept interjecting “Zzzzzzzzzz” from his perch in the corner of the room.

Despite having six other agenda items, the entire faculty meeting was dominated by debate on the details and merits of the offer. No consensus was reached, however, beyond an agreement to “get more details” before the next faculty meeting.

 

 

123 days ago Short URL 3 Comments

Brian MacWhinney/David Klahr/David Rakison/Ken Kotovsky/Mike Scheier/Psycho? Logical? Bulletin (Satire)