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Paraplegic Rats Enabled To "Walk" Again
eldavojohn notes a paper released in Nature Neuroscience today describing work in which paraplegic rats were enabled to walk again as early as a week after injury and treatment. The process involves a serotonin-influencing drug and electrical stimulation of the spine, along with an incentive to the paralyzed back legs to move — namely, being placed on a treadmill. Soon a poorly understood spinal mechanism called the "central pattern generator" kicks in and the rats' legs move under the stimulus of a rhythmic signal from the spine (the brain is not involved). Eurekalert reports, "Daily treadmill training over several weeks eventually enabled the rats to regain full weight-bearing walking, including backwards, sideways and at running speed. However, the injury still interrupted the brain's connection to the spinal cord-based rhythmic walking circuitry, leaving the rats unable to walk of their own accord."
I have nothing useful to add to this discussion, but this mouse could use a treadmill.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
In the early 90s, I wrote an RPG called,"Intergalactic Bounty Hunter." I took what I learned from other RPGS and made better combat mechanics(actually worse in some ways after play testing). The setting was space after Earth was destroyed and warp drive was invented and cheap so lots of vehicles could travel in space. The idea is that there were only a few out posts where people lived and worked, but there was all of space to hide in. So criminals found it similar to the old west where they could rob and then flee to space. This is why there were bounty hunters.
,"No". He said,"You didn't roll. You roll for everything" So I privately rolled four 1d20, and if a 1 comes up, that is a rare success. I rolled all four 1s. So I had a strange look on my face and told him,"Ok, you don't know if they survived or not."
One time, my friend got a mutant power(blatant ripoff of Xmen), and he was able to charge things with kinetic energy(not like Gambit). So he found two mice and shot them at a guy with great velocity. He asked me if they lived. I said
The battle raged and then he went looking for the mice, but he couldn't find them because they were up in a melted plasma cannon turret, so the party continued onward. And me, being the devious GM that I am, figured the mice to mutate to be super smart with the mutant power even though they became parapalegic. They used parts from the plasma turret to rebuild their limbs and then they built machinery to enable transportation and survival. This was before Pinky and the Brain. They were two parapalegic mice trying to defeat the Quadlek(furry 4 armed mutant-Player Character) that made them this way.
Once they tracked down the Quadlek that made them this way and was about to kill him, he said,"Hey I may have crippled you, but I made you super smart too." And with that they decided not to kill him, but instead to conquer the universe. So they became yet another recurring character in the RPG. I also thought,"If only I knew someone to make a cartoon involving 2 mice trying to take over the world that it'd make excellent episodic content." and 1 year later Pinky and the Brain came out.
I'm really good at coming up with successful ideas that other people eventually implement! Its cool that I have a few ideas on my plate now. #1 is Voteandnews.com - Hyperdemocracy realized. #2 Is a governmental redesign of education that uses the Internet for resources #3 An ebay competitor that also allows people to list things permanently for sale #4 is roamingdragon.com #5 is an adaptation of Intergalactic Bounty Hunter that allows PNP to be adapted to game master driven CRPG
My old ideas are found here
God spoke to me.
I know it sux0rs, achieve any of the Influence, the
That is usually code for "we severed the spine so we could test out this technique"
That is usually code for "I disapprove of this research and will continue to do so right up until I get a spinal cord injury, at which point I will promptly forget I was ever opposed to it and will gripe about the research taking too long."
You sir are no better than who you responded to because you pidgin-holed a large group of people by saying something obtuse. It edges on trolling (though I doubt you will me modded as such).
When market speak is pointed out in MS articles, those posts get an automatic +5 insightful. Though I am not sure that is exactly what this is in this case. I strongly think paraplegic was only used for brevity and because it has an exact medical meaning. It wouldn't surprise me if another page of the report detailed exactly how they made the rats paraplegic, perhaps even using the words that the poster that you were replying to wished they did.
I do hate it when people word things that they think some groups might find disgusting so that it is round about. It undermines transparency when you have to read into everything to figure out what it means exactly. It undermines allowing society to digest something and figure out where it falls in their "morality and ethics". We have a place for squashing flies. We have a place for the death penalty. We have a place for war. We have a place for hunting. We have a place for slaughtering cattle. I am sure there is a place for paraplegic mice, too.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.