Monthly Archives: May 2020

Derailed nesting instincts

Rants

yep there is a screw loose in society…. i contemplate it every time i go to my daughter’s house and discover what she focuses on…. she is quite focused on making a stained glass suncatcher for her boyfriend …the activity itself is not bad…. i laud it, the amount of time is inordinate…. however, i have come to the conclusion that this is the way she nests….. excessive thinking about every tiny detail to the exclusion of appropriating time for the necessary things (housework dishes etc)….

it was an epiphany i had yesterday when she has also mentioned again that she wants badly to make a quilt of her kids old tee shirts (i have made such memory quilts for other people, and my for own sister from her mickey mouse tee shirt collection… i know the deep seeded internal pressure to do these types of things…. this is actually a manifest of the nesting instinct… i understand it, as every august something in me says “make a quilt”

the origins of these feelings in me are almost unknown to me (outside of the obvious preparation for cold winters)… i dont conjure them up… they just come up on their own.

As a young woman i wanted nothing in life more than to work on the tiny things to make a home and decorate it, paint walls, make curtains, quilts, garden, make trinkets…. it was an individual (non commercialized) way to build a nest. i got a big dose of that instinct, she got a big dose too, but she also got my x’s compulsion for perfection (which i truly did not get from anyone in my tree)…. that is a recipe for slow and tedious — but it produces some of the best works of art, and some of the most personalized (never monetized) and highly rewarding artwork…. i think the rise of commercialization, cheap excuses for home building and nesting, have no meaning, and therefore to go find meaning we change out the cheap things for more cheap things….

my grandmother (actually both grandmothers) was an artist…. but her artwork was in the beauty of her clothes and quilts (no surprise there) and needlepoint and crochet… i have some of her lovely hand made lace…. not monetized….

another thing lost is the ability to “use what we have in front of us”… i use trash… how funny is that in todays society…

we need to release china from mass production of cheap stuff and return to “nesting” home building with our own resources at hand…. i think so anyway….. the missing satisfaction is from the “i did it myself” and that leaves our satiety unsated

Gratitude: for my mind and body

Good Grief!, Rants

Gratitude: for my mind and body?  It has taken 76 years for me to arrive at this point. This should tell you that all this time I have really not appreciated the uniqueness of myself, my family (sibs, parents, grandparents, children too) particularly in the way my mind works.
It certainly works differently than most individuals I have met. I have wondered why, what differences in wiring, differences in the myriad chemicals, synapses which bring about the following cute list:

(posted from Hormones and chemicals linked to emotion):affection, anger, angst, anguish, annoyance, anxiety, apathy, arousal, awe, boredom, confidence, contempt, contentment, courage, curiosity, depression, desire, despair, disappointment, disgust, distrust, dread, ecstasy, embarrassment, envy, euphoria, excitement, fear, frustration, gratitude, grief, guilt, happiness, hatred, hope, horror, hostility, hurt, hysteria, indifference, interest, jealousy, joy, loathing, loneliness, love, lust, outrage, panic, passion, pity, pleasure, pride, rage, regret, relief, remorse, sadness, satisfaction, self-confidence, shame, shock, shyness, sorrow, suffering, surprise, terror, trust, wonder, worry, zeal, and zest.

I am sure the list could include some for every day of the week, every holiday from every culture that are not in this a-z set.
I marvel at what interests me, my energy levels, my need to constantly reinforce visual order/chaos at a balance that is somewhere between compulsive order and total chaos. These are likely governed by levels of satisfaction (seratonin, endorphins, oxytocin, dopamine, epinepherine and a host of others I know in a shallow way, and the host of others not recognized yet.

I am just thinking about the art that I create (found as stained glass patterns, as counted cross stitch, peyote stitch patterns and beads and relics, as scientific journal cover art (this blog), as polymer clay sculpture, as paintings, drawings, quilts, murals, walkways, landscaping and mosaic — just to name a few that come to mind.
I am not meticulous, and it might be nice to be a little more compulsive (a trait in my kids and my father) in my artwork (i am not sure which of the neurotransmitters keeps me from that trait, ha ha), but I am just full of joy and wonder and loving the beauty of nature, having a good time (most of the time) journaling my walk through life leaving behind silly artistic reminders of those steps.

My greatest regret is that I dont have an infinite amount of time to learn, and express the infiniteness that is out-there. I make no apologies for the time spent on art, or science, I am happy my mind works like it does. I cannot imagine being one that sits and does not “do”. I am blessed.

Background LUT peaks from same image:

surfactant proteins A and D

Background noise when finding the LUT plots for surfactant protein D is a problem. Its not difficult to see how the tiniest little sneeze, or faltering or airconditioner dust, ambient foaters, can create a huge impact on background dirt in all microscopy. This post is really not an examination of dirt, but of whether the peak of the LUT plots is systematically changed when a line to plot runs over some background objects and reassigns a different grayscale based on nearest neighbor or some other algorithm.  I did a few tests deliberately going over the same spot, in this case the scan is anisotropic and i used it in the dimension which shows the most ripples but those peaks were identified by FIJI as similar in LUT value.  For the following image, which is Arroyo, supplement Figure 4-A the background from 7 different locations parallel but not including any part of the dodecamer produced the following mean, with no background noise over 90 luminance points (0-255). The cut off line for peaks is at the 100  mark in grayscale.
N:79
Sum:842
Mean: 10.65+/-sd 6.75
Variance s2: 45.61736901

Image below shows the lines from which background plots were obtained. Deliberately taken along lines against the “waves” as taking a line in between would lead to a false sense of low background noise.

Here is a comparison of the background noise vs one of the prominent peaks of an SP-D image. (not withstanding the algorithms that were used to convert that original image into grayscale).

The bottom line for this particular image would be that anything under 100 grayscale points is background, and any peak under 10 grayscale points is background. Thus a peak of 16 or 35 in the diagram below would be considered as valid.

 
It is a little bit disconcerting that i think the best way to assess the validity of a peak in these micrographs is to individually calculate their backgrounds (perhaps 4 plots each) then use that mean grayscale value to determine whether a plot in the SP-D arm -plots are greater than background mean background noise.

Converting and resampling in grayscale

surfactant proteins A and D

I remember the diagram in a previous search on the impact of converting color images to grayscale (Kanan and Cottrel). I am just re-listing the different processes captured in this one post. It is difficult to figure out which method is optimal for determining peaks and valleys along the arms of SP-D images to assist in modeling the collagen-like domain of this and other c-type lectins.

I dont believe that anyone has taken the “color” versions of AFM micrographs and tested to see which method of converting to grayscale is appropriate (necessary for measuring LUT values in Image2 (FIJI)). It may be that because those images are monochromatic that it doesn’t matter at al. Maybe I should test it.

Average: averages the values: (R + G + B) / 3
Gleam
Intensity
Luma
Luminance
Lightness: averages the most prominent and least prominent colors: (max(R, G, B) + min(R, G, B)) / 2
Value
Luster
Decolorize
Luminosity: weighted average 0.21 R + 0.72 G + 0.07 B