God and Whose Imagination?

Half a lifetime ago I had a girlfriend who suggested to me one day, without rancour or the spur of some conflict, that I did not have a speculative mind. The diagnosis has haunted me ever since. It reduces me to being an empirical sort, and I've always believed that quality to be a characteristic of the English mind, whereas I would far prefer to share in what I like to think is the more interesting Irish mind - a wayward, fanciful, visionary, imaginative mentality

SynapseJ: An Automated, Synapse Identification Macro for ImageJ

While electron microscopy represents the gold standard for detection of synapses, a number of limitations prevent its broad applicability. A key method for detecting synapses is immunostaining for markers of pre- and post-synaptic proteins, which can infer a synapse based upon the apposition of the two markers. While immunostaining and imaging techniques have improved to allow for identification of synapses in tissue, analysis and identification of these appositions are not facile, and there has been a lack of tools to accurately identify these appositions. Here, we delineate a macro that uses open-source and freely available ImageJ or FIJI for analysis of multichannel, z-stack confocal images. With use of a high magnification with a high NA objective, we outline two methods to identify puncta in either sparsely or densely labeled images. Puncta from each channel are used to eliminate non-apposed puncta and are subsequently linked with their cognate from the other channel. These methods are applied to analysis of a pre-synaptic marker, bassoon, with two different post-synaptic markers, gephyrin and N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor subunit 1 (NR1). Using gephyrin as an inhibitory, post-synaptic scaffolding protein, we identify inhibitory synapses in basolateral amygdala, central amygdala, arcuate and the ventromedial hypothalamus. Systematic variation of the settings identify the parameters most critical for this analysis. Identification of specifically overlapping puncta allows for correlation of morphometry data between each channel. Finally, we extend the analysis to only examine puncta overlapping with a cytoplasmic marker of specific cell types, a distinct advantage beyond electron microscopy. Bassoon puncta are restricted to virally transduced, pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPN) axons expressing yellow fluorescent protein. NR1 puncta are restricted to tyrosine hydroxylase labeled dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc). The macro identifies bassoon-NR1 overlap throughout the image, or those only restricted to the PPN-SNc connections. Thus, we have extended the available analysis tools that can be used to study synapses in situ. Our analysis code is freely available and open-source allowing for further innovation

History as literature : the 1916 Easter Rising

In the 1968 issue of the New Statesman immediately prior to Easter, the Irish poet W.R. Rodgers contributed an article, "Ireland and her Past.“ He began it with an anecdote. In 646, in the battle of Moira, one of the most famous battles of the north of Ireland, Cenn Faelad, a descendant of the high kings, received a sore blow on the head. So severe was the blow, says the Irish Chronicler, "that his brain of forgetting was stricken out of him." After that he remembered everything. "And he fitted a pattern of poetry to these matters and wrote them on slates and tablets." Rodgers comments shortly, "It sums up, in a way, the condition of Ireland." The point is readily conceded. A fascination for remembering, for the past, seems to be the national hazard of being Irish. It takes a multitude of forms: the traditions of folklore and superstition, the strength of ancient shibboleths and alliances, rural lothness to abandon ancient agricultural methods, the recurrence, common in Irish politics, of surnames from another generation. The whole Gaelic revival and its relative success was based on this interest in the past. Naturally such a fascination is thoroughly ambivalent; the finest elements of Irish culture are preserved and treasured (probably), but so also are the worst. The No Popery parades of Ulster are even more sacrosanct than the Georgian mansions of Dublin. The I.R.A. seems to be as durable as the Irish language. For good or bad the past clings. There is an old Gaelic adage that Sean O'Paolain quotes several times in his first novel, A Nest of Single Folk. “The dead man's grip." it runs, "is stronger than Samson alive.