/sci/ - Science & Math

stay classy /sci/

>>4663174
butthurt biologist detected

I want to get into engineering and biology

see what i did there

>>4663174
This picture is rather true, unfortunately. Lewontin is one of those belonging to the academic left who has the strange agenda of agreeing that evolution is real but that it somehow didn't happen to humans in recent times, and that certainly there are no human populations/'races', and if there are, there are no significant differences between then, and if there are, then it is bad to talk about it, etc.

Yeah, i don't like him.

>>4663157

The biology is the quintessence of the science.

The biology is the sum of all other sciences.

>>4663252
Brains don't evolve, you fucking racist pig... go back to your war against womyn.

what good has physics brought us anyway

>>4663273

>>4663273
A lot of vaporized Japs.

Biological systems are still under the same constraints as any other physical system, and can be described using the same physical models. Take the work of William Bialek as an example of that. Biology is as much a hard science as the variables you're measuring and the models you're plugging those variables into.

>>4663299
god bless physics

>>4663302
Nope.

Describe biological systems using a mathematical methodology without failing, eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_exclusion_principle

Soft science

>>4663274
I died

ITT: Physics majors who are unhappy with their career because they realized money isn't everything trying to troll Bio majors who choose their field of study because they have a passion for it.

>>4663323
this sums it up quite nicely

>>4663331
>>4663323
Anal-devastated low GRE scoring biofags who cannot into real science/math detected

>>4663311
Can I cop out and just link you to a paper where a Physics Ph.D talks about describing LIP neurons with a diffusion model? It'd be a pointless exercise to rewrite his discussion section.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627302010929

>excerpt
The attractor model is to be contrasted with accumulator or counter models commonly used in psychology [Ratcliff 1978], [Ratcliff et al. 1999] and [Luce 1986]. A similar model was proposed to describe the neural process in LIP for the visual motion discrimination experiment (Ditterich et al., 2001). According to this “integrate-and-decide” model, an LIP neuron selective to the left direction (L) integrates the input sL plus random noise, in the sense of mathematical calculus, so that its firing activity rL is described by drL/dt = sL + noise. Similarly, a competing neuron selective to the right direction (R) is described by drR/dt = sR + noise. Consequently, the difference X = rL - rR obeys the equation

X(t) undergoes a random walk in real time (a diffusion process), biased by a constant ramp (sL - sR)t (the rate of accumulation (sL - sR) increases with the signal strength, sL = sR for zero strength). When X(t) reaches a prescribed threshold ? (respectively -?), decision is reached for choice L (respectively choice R), and the reaction time RT = t is registered. The model for the saccade generation system proposed by Carpenter [Carpenter 1981], [Carpenter and Williams 1995] and [Reddi and Carpenter 2000] is similar in spirit, with an emphasis on the assumption that the rate of linear accumulation fluctuates randomly from trial to trial.

>>4663333
You can call me whatever you want to. You can call Bio a soft science as many times as you want to. Its not going to matter, you're still depressed about your career, and I'm still happy with mine.

>>4663323

Exactly.

>>4663334
>one example of a poorly written paper from some random low class university
>all physicists cannot do biology

>>4663339
You'd never see a Physicist Button say that. It would probably say "Will work for 300000 dollars a year minimum, a load of benefits and you can't fire ever"

>>4663311
Oh here's a good one. Just pop it open and read - If you're just entering year 2 of any physical science or engineering undergrad program, you shouldn't have any issue with it. It's about using statistical mechanics and information theory to talk about the efficiency of biological systems at detecting chemically (and behaviorally) relevant signals.

http://www.princeton.edu/~wbialek/our_papers/mora+bialek_10a.pdf

>>4663274
all of my rage at that picture

>>4663343
That work got Wang a tenured faculty position at Yale. http://wang.medicine.yale.edu/

He even used his models to predict the concentration of NMDA receptor in frontal cortex relative to other cortical areas.

Neuroscience is not biology.

>>4663343
No, there is rigor to that paper. Nothing you would see in undergrad biology but that's not really the point. All of the natural sciences are equally "hard." If you want a more suitable opinion, you guys should be comparing undergrad coursework.

>>4663345

Ph.D level science =/= B.S. level science. As a B.S. biology undergrad my friend repeatably told me that all he ever did was memorize facts. They take only the baby calculus series at my school.

>>4663345
>remedial statistical mechanics applicable to even sociology
>mathematical methodology
pick one

>>4663353
>>4663354
OP was not criticizing B.S. level Biology, he was criticizing the field. Bachelor's level Biology classes are not an indication of the field's rigor. On the other hand, I had no trouble understanding these papers as an undergrad (nor did I have any trouble speaking to the authors about their work).

>>4663352
The brain is a biological system subject to the same constraints as other biological systems.

>>4663323
>mfw nobody becomes a physics major for the money
>mfw everything about this is true >>4663331
>mfw I have no face

>>4663354
a B.S. in Bio qualifies you to be a glorified stamp collector.
Not that stamp collecting isn't fun.

>>4663373
Honestly >>4663331 is only true for a future mandatory school physics teacher.

>>4663379
True, you have to be a Ph.D to do anything fun in Biology.

>>4663384
I'd like to think many that would be interested in pursuing graduate biology courses are instead enticed by the glamour, riches and long, physically exhausting hours of being a medical doctor.

Hehehe I have a b.s. in biology and a job as a biomedical engineer, and I find nothing about it simple or irrelevant.

I don't know why anyone is talking about majors or degrees if they have self respect or ambition, but the development of modern biology is almost parallel with the development of physics in terms of how we approach the "hard" problems. As for practical applications, you can't apply one discipline without the other in the modern world, so eat a big ol' dick you elitist punkasses. You don't have to get along with everyone, but dynamics exist because people have common interests through different passions.