Blood-to-piss-body-parts

The recent popularity of the up-goer five editor (check out the #upgoerfive hash on Twitter) pin-points an important point in writing: It's bloody hard to express a coherent thought in science without any specialised words. And I don't mean jargon or strange abbreviations but words like function, vessel, pressure, kidney and medicine (This point is made much better by the Center for plain language).

However, trying makes for a good bit of fun. The original fun was had by the brilliant Randall Munroe at xkcd.com when he reproduced a technical drawing of the Saturn V rocket with explanations that only included the 1000 most commonly used words. This excluded the use of "saturn" "V" and "rocket", so it was called the Up-goer five. Now, Theo Sanderson has created an editor that tells you when you have used a word that is not among the 1000 most used words. Here is my attempt to explain kidney function and the effect of hypertension induced injury on blood vessel and kidney function.

My job is to understand how the body parts that make piss work, and why they get hurt by the force that the heart makes when it forces the blood around in the body. In the body there are two blood-to-piss-body-parts. They work by making piss out of blood using many small blood-cell-catch-things so that the blood cells stay in the body. Then the blood-to-piss-body-parts take up most of the water again so that the piss becomes strong, and the body can save water. The blood-cell-catch-things use the force-of-the-heart to push water out of the blood. 

However, the smallest of the blood-roads and the blood-cell-catch-things are not strong, and can be hurt by the force-of-the-heart. In the long run this hurts the blood-to-piss-body-parts, and make them stop working. Before they stop working they work less well for a long time. During this time they are easier to hurt in other ways. One important way is when the force-of-the-heart becomes too low, often because of lost blood, and the blood-to-piss-body-parts get too little blood. Too little blood, and too low force-of-the-heart makes it hard to push water out of the blood to make piss. You then get too much piss in your blood which makes you sick. 

At the same time, air is carried by the red blood cells in the blood and used for doing work in the body. Too little blood to the blood-to-piss-body-parts gives them too little air, which they need in order to take back water from the piss. When the force-of-the-heart is low they need to take back even more water than usual to keep more water in the blood and keep the force-of-the-heart normal. This makes the blood-to-piss-body-parts use more air even though less comes to them. Since the cells that make up the blood-to-piss-body-parts need air to live, too little air hurts them and some of them die.

In a blood-to-piss-body-part that has been hurt by too high force-of-the-heart a sick with too low force-of-the-heart hurts more than in a well blood-to-piss-body-part. This means that for each earlier hurt the next hurt will hurt more and lead to blood-to-piss-body-parts that do not work at all faster and faster.

Too high force-of-the-heart hurts the blood-to-piss-body-parts by hurting the blood-roads first. This hurt changes how much blood passes the blood-cell-catch-things, and how much water is taken back to the body from the piss. Doctors can keep the blood-to-piss-body-parts from getting hurt by giving doctor-stuff that makes them work less hard and by keeping the force-of-the-heart normal. When the blood-roads have been hurt a lot it is hard to save the blood-to-piss-body-parts. Is important to keep the force-of-the-blood normal as much as possible.

If you want to read some other examples go to Ten Hundred Words of Science. Lots of fun for everyone.

Productivity in writing, and otherwise

I just read a wonderful post by writer Rachel Aaron (whom I haven't read anything by) about how she boosted her writing from 2000 words per day to over 10000. Yes, that is right, the equivalent of two articles per day. However, she is a novelist, not a scientist. What she suggests is that if you just try to make sure you have three things in place before you actually start writing, you can be much more productive.

Those things are:

1. Know what you are going to write.
2. Track how much you are writing.
3. Get excited about what you are writing.

Sounds pretty straight forward. Number one is easy, there is a way you are supposed to write your articles. It is known as the IMRAD-format:

I ntroduction
M ethods
R esults
A well kept secret
D iscussion

Each of the sections have fairly well established patterns. Like the introduction:

Sentence describing a public ill. Sentence tying said ill to something vaguely connected with present study. Sentence about how present study is novel and interesting. 

New paragraph describing the actual background of the study. 

A paragraph describing what has actually been done. 

Final paragraph stating the aim and hypothesis of the study in a way that fits with the conclusion without giving it away.

The second point is more difficult. The end result of a day's writing may be a section of an article, say the abstract, that is 250 words. But in actuality you have probably written more like 1000 words, and thrown most of them away. So, given the word-limits of scientific articles, how do you track how much work you get done?

The third point is easy the first time, but then you re-write, submit, get refused, re-write, submit, get a revision, re-write, re-submit, get refused, rewrite... At some point here you aren't so excited anymore, and that is when you pick a bottom-line journal and submit one last time suggesting your best friends as reviewers.

 The strategy is also applicable to lab-work, teaching  and many other things.

1. Know what you are going to do in the lab.
2. Track how much you are getting done.
3. Get excited about the work you do.

Anyway, I think her post is more well-written. You should read it.

Rejections

Being in science is kind of like being a little boy. You and some of your pals get together and decide that you are just the best thing to happen to girlkind since the colour pink.

Specifically, to that impossibly cute girl with freckles and a ponytail. After fretting nervously, like little boys, for a very long time (anything from 10 to 20 seconds), you send forward one of your number to the coven of small girls in pink. While you stand there puffing your chests out and smiling broadly, you see the ears of the poor envoy turning red. Then you hear the sound of laughter like little bells in the wind, and the girls skip away to do what ever it is little girls in pink do.

The red eared envoy returns to explain that they (the girls in pink) liked the idea, and they agreed that, for being little boys, we weren't the worst they had ever seen. For all that, they still thought we were too much like little boys for them. They want real men, like Patrick Swayze, who can sing and dance and play hockey.

So, there you were, having thought that reading comic books, and building monsters out of lego was the way to go. What to do: Do you start to play hockey and learn how to sing? Or, do you just go looking for another girl, someone who likes comics and appreciates lego the way lego is supposed to be appreciated?