The question of how neurons find each other to connect was recently studied with experimental connectomics--altering neurons and then mapping their synaptic circuits with electron microscopy--in this paper by Javier Valdes Aleman et al. 2019 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/697763v1 , using Drosophila's somatosensory axons and central interneurons as a model.
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Having recently visited the Yellowstone National Park, the situation you describe for the North Sea side of Germany applies but worse, the cell phone data connection being non-existent, and with the added issue that only one hotel offered wifi, and it was out of service for the entire duration of our visit.
It's a national park - this is an intentional policy. There is some cell service, but the park specifically does not want cell towers everywhere.
> In 2009, Yellowstone completed a plan for wireless communications in the park. The plan dictates that cell phone and wifi will only be allowed for visitor safety and to enhance park operations. It restricts towers, antennas, and wireless services to a few limited locations in the park, in order to protect park resources and limit the impact on park visitors.
I think that's fairly common in a lot of the bigger and more remote national parks. Death Valley has decent cell reception at Furnace Creek (the main visitor center and lodging area) but AFAIK there's none in the rest of the 3,000 square miles.
Death Valley is also in a valley surrounded by tall mountains loaded with cell tower equipment so the signal propagates pretty easily because there are minimal line-of-sight obstructions.
I can't say I've ever noticed cell phone reception outside of the immediate Furnace Creek area but it's possible you can pick something up from whatever is up on the mountains in some locations.
Last time I was in Death Valley in December I could barely get any signal outside of Furnace Creek. Even in FC it was terrible. I had two cellphones on T-Mobile and AT&T for that matter.
But this is the place where you might get lost and without cell service, you are really lost.
This is quite annoying in the US, that national parks or deserts have no cell service. The places that need it most (life and death situations) - this is basically a health service there.
In comparison to Europe the mobile density is quite sparse there.
Please. If your attitude is that if you get in some kind of trouble, you can just use your cell phone and have someone come get you, you should just stay out of wilderness areas.
You're endangering yourself which I wouldn't care that much about but you're also potentially endangering any search and rescue teams that have to come looking for you.
As for the lost scenario specifically. I don't know. Maybe carry a (paper) map and compass? In addition (not instead of) a GPS doesn't need cell reception to operate and works most places. (Some exceptions, like narrow canyons.)
There are options these days like the inReach that I would recommend for hikers that will be out in the wilderness for an extended period of time and/or might be away from easy access to help. Of course standard protocol still applies like telling someone what path you will take, when they should expect you back etc. but I would feel much safer with an inReach with me just in case.
Part of me dislikes the availability of equipment that puts you in contact from pretty much anywhere--in part because it creates the expectation that you'll avail yourself of such equipment.
But, if I'm being sensible and I'm off by myself in a remote area, yeah, I'd probably take one.
ADDED: And, yes, it's nice to be able to call for help if you really need it. But way too many folks think they can just get in trouble because they're really not prepared, call 911, and everything will be great. A number of states actually collect costs from people if they were negligent these days.
I'm not sure what "that situation" is. inReach-type devices are probably prudent for certain activities in remote areas.
Though if someone is unresponsive after falling in a gorge, I suspect S&R arriving many hours later--and many more hours getting to a hospital--isn't going to be of much help.
It's certainly not routine for individuals or even groups to carry such devices in wilderness areas even if cell phone reception is spotty. I can go 2 hours north of where I live and hike on steep trails where there's no guarantee of cell phone reception.
The didn't. If you fell down into a crevice, you died. You could apply the same spurious argument to anything - how did people ever get by for thousands of years before antibiotics/vaccines/electricity/water purification existed? They didn't, they lived their nasty, brutish and short lives, and died.
I could argue that cell phones (etc.) are technology that is basically: "Come rescue me." There are plenty of other technologies that we can use to help ourselves (maps, compasses, matches, and so forth). I'm at least somewhat uncomfortable with saying that calling for help is quite in the same category.
There’s a reason it’s called wilderness. One should have basic orienteering skills if they venture away from the popular, touristy locations. If things really do go awry, bring (and use) an EPIRB.
I would never rely on a cellular phone for safety in the wilderness. Cellular service and geolocation was never be 100% reliable, and batteries die. A paper map, a compass, basic skills, and knowledge of one’s limits go a long way.
I'm not sure how big I am on even encouraging everyone who gets off the beaten track to carry an EPIRB. However, if I'm being honest, if I did any amount of solo backpacking--especially in less traveled areas--I'd probably consider it these days.
Indeed, though the problem is often people activating them for situations not truly life-threatening. In some cases, misuse has resulted in hefty fines. Most people don’t need them because most people don’t actually do “backcountry”, let alone solo it.
It should be understood that an EPIRB should only be used in the most dire of circumstances.
Cell Towers have no place in National Parks/Forests and other nature preserves. If you're in the middle of the ocean you're not going to have cell phone service either, and you should plan accordingly.
Do roads have place in national parks? If so then cell towers also.
I mean if I see asphalt then it is quite reasonable to expect also cell service.
I was i national parks in Europe and I always got cell service. I might be lucky (considering the article and posts about Germany) but in US I was in one park (actually two, but I don't remember situation with mobiles in one) and I did get cell service even before the gates.
I don't expect to have cell service if the park doesn't have roads, just hiking tracks.
Wait, how could you possibly get really lost in Yellowstone? If you are leaving your car and heading off into the back country then presumably you have the skills to do so. If you are staying on the normal roads then you will have no problem finding a ranger, a ranger station, an information booth, etc. I've probably been to Yellowstone 10 times and I can't fathom anyone getting really lost.
Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. I seriously doubt there is cell service in the interior of the Greenlandic ice cap. Does this mean the Kingdom of Denmark has shitty infrastructure?
The only reason you find mobile coverage sparse in the US is because the US has large, nearly unpopulated areas, whereas Europe doesn’t.
It's also recommended reading if you go to the US West and your expectations are mostly informed by tooling around the countryside of Western Europe (or the eastern US for that matter).
Other articles by Tom Mahood are a great read as well. Highly recommend subscribing to his blog. There is lots to learn from his piddling around the American Southwest.
Short abstract snippet (the "parallel circuits" are other, non-giant descending neurons that also trigger the escape behavior upon a looming stimulus):
"Intracellular recording of the descending giant fiber (GF) interneuron during head-fixed escape revealed that GF spike timing relative to parallel circuits for escape actions determined which of the two behavioral responses was elicited. The process was well described by a simple model in which the GF circuit has a higher activation threshold than the parallel circuits, but can override ongoing behavior to force a short takeoff. Our findings suggest a neural mechanism for action selection in which relative activation timing of parallel circuits creates the appropriate motor output."
This could be one case where using a preprint server like the http://biorxiv.org/ would be key. Getting positive peer reviews when peers are opposed in principle is hard: no amount of data will convince them.
That said, she stated to be new to the field. She should have a publication record from work in her prior field of research.
The problem with chronic lyme - the data for it is extremely weak, in the form of single case reports or small case series that have been poorly written. And getting in pubmed is not the problem - nowadays, you can cough onto a poster at a conference and it will show up. Furthermore, infectious disease docs are easy to convince if you have good data - it is one of the more experimentally accessible fields in medical science. When the spirochete for Lyme was isolated and cultured, and the initial antibiotic treatments proven, the field was quick to accept it.
That plus we see a steady stream of patients mistreated and told they have "chronic lyme" that end up in the hospital due to antibiotic complications, or because the "lyme doctor" told them to stop their other medications, gives a lot of us pause regarding anything mentioning "chronic lyme".
“Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats” by I. B.-A. Bartal et al. (9 December 2011, p. 1427). On p. 1428, the last full paragraph of column 1 was incorrect. The paragraph should be replaced by this corrected text: “All female rats (6/6) and most male rats (17/24) in the trapped condition became door-openers. Female rats in the trapped condition opened the restrainer door at a shorter latency than males on days 7 to 12 (P < 0.01, MMA, Fig. 3A), consistent with suggestions that females are more empathic than males (7, 12, 13). Furthermore, female rats were also more active than males in the trapped condition (P < 0.001, ANOVA) but not in the empty condition (Fig. 3B).”
Odd to me is that they use 24 males and only 6 females. In my work (which is biology), we would usually use the same group size unless we had reason to know better.
For example, there's a new-to-us model that we think might have differences between strains, sexes, and vendors. We ordered in 8 mice of each type to run a pilot.
You wouldn't necessarily care about genetic diversity for this sort of experiment. This experiment isn't trying to say "all animals" or "all rat species" exhibit this behavior; the interesting thing is that any animal does.
For me, the more important question is not whether all test subjects were genetically diverse: it's more important that the free rat and the caged rat are dissimilar. The situation would be vastly different if the rat pairs were related, since there is a genetically selfish motivation for caring for those within the same gene pool.
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