So, that sounds impressive, but at most you patch clamps neurons, not nerves, and the relationship between activity nociceptive neurons and perceived pain is complex. Even were you able to record the activity of all nociceptive sensory neurons responding to the stimulus, you could not from that predict how the pain would be experienced in the brain, where the experiencing part is actually happening. (Heck, right now I'm working with sea slugs, that don't have brains, but instead just a number of ganglia, and even in that system of vastly fewer parts we can't make that kind of prediction.)

The canonical use of the term patch clamp refers to pulled patches - where you remove a small piece of membrane from a neuron to examine the activity of one or a small number of ion channels in that patch. I suspect what you're thinking of is whole cell patch clamping* where you use similar electrodes to create a similar seal, but rather than pulling a patch away from the cell, you blow the patch and instead clamp the whole cell, measuring the change in voltage or current in the whole cell (the "clamp" bit refers to holding one steady while measuring the changes in the other).

* Which, to be fair, is a ton of fun. And whole cell patch clampers - which is what I learned first - often use the term patch clamp without modifiers, just to confuse things.

While it's true that it's difficult to ask a mouse about its gender, sexing them isn't that hard.

Actually, I am laughing.

(Biomed, by the way, is one of the fields with great gender parity, but since previous generations - at least of mice - are in question, your point holds.)

There already is body of research about various hormonal reactions in mice that are sex specific. So, likely, yes.

Well, no, it suggests that a male one might well. (The summary is incorrect.)

...though in fact, it's men that do. (The summary is wrong.)

It describes that it is a preventative measure for food poisoning, not so much how.

I love to know exactly what kind of pathogen they're envisioning - something that infects the mash (which admittedly is a rich culture, and if it starts out sterile it's not going to stay that way for long) and then infects the cows in a way that will be a problem for humans. E. coli is already in the cows (hence the regulations concerning the use of fresh manure on crops likely to be eaten raw) and cows will do a lot of their own processing. Milk products are generally pasteurized anyway. Somehow I'm not exactly seeing a spent grain prion vector...

I'm doubting this will go through. Now, if they're really worried, funding a small study to look at whether it's a likely vector might make sense.

(Not that I'd be sad to see more spent-grain bread. Tasty, that.)

One of my old jobs was managing this transition, with a lot of performance analysis, reliability, scability and disaster failover / recovery work as part of it. At least in that environment, the majority of devlopers I worked with were highly unreliable wrt these issues. (And I successfully pushed for getting involved with the projects earlier - and to have access to the test resources associated with the development teams so that my folks weren't totally overwhelmed or bogged down with scut work - so that more of these concerns were being addressed earlier in the dev cycle.) Yeah, sure, they could get their code to run beautifully in under simulated load on their own machines, but they had little understanding of how their hothouse flower systems on a box differed from a production environment and how to do failure analysis, etc. etc. And yes, some of this is a matter of education, hence getting involved earlier and maintaining a liaison to work with the dev teams - but some of it is just a different mindset.

It was always pretty hard to find people who had the right combination of skills to be part of my group.

Depends on the tech level - not hard to produce, but not something I'd want to be dealing with under really primitive circumstances. (Sterile conditions may be easy, but antibiotics are not.)

The biggest limitation has to do with space and distance - you don't want to have a long weapon in too close of quarters, that will suck. And it's not going to be at its best for someone who has succeeded in closing with you.

But yeah, spear is pretty awesome. And I really need to do more of it.

I wrote this elsewhere, but let me emphasize the point.

I like kids. Under the right circumstances, I'm not against having kids. But.

It is not my job to be a brood mare. And I don't want my role in society to be marginalized because my primary role is being a brood mare. (Also, even without modern technology, we can probably keep infant mortality down far below historical norms just with modern knowledge - even low tech sterile conditions do a lot.) Having control over when to have children broadly gives women control of their lives.

Technically it'd probably be staff (I like ones roughly my height or a little longer, but shorter heavier ones certainly have their charms) and then spear - I was mostly thinking that if scrap metal is available, spearheads are pretty easy to make, and spear can be very effective. It's also somewhat situational - for some things you want shorter weapons. There are certainly plenty of clubs with sharp bits.

Sounds like fun ;-) Not on my immediate trip list, but who knows?

Electronics is a hobby for me, these days, thoughI'm not sure my caveman chemistry is up to producing etching solution, and while smelting copper is easier than most metals that would also be an issue. (Hm. I've been playing around with doing copper deposition on glass, and then etching that, mostly because the thought of ornamental glass circuitry amuses me, but haven't had the time to take it further. But I've done some glass blowing, and that's another one you can do reasonably without much tech.) Speaking of low tech batteries - have you run into references to the Egyptian batteries most likely used for electroplating? In both cases you need the right metals, but it's totally doable. (Post apocalpyptic has some interesting definitional problems. How much is left? How many people? What's lingering things are likely to cause health problems? What's the weather like?)

Natural rubbers depend a lot on where you live - they'll be around somewhere, but not many of the places I'm most likely to be residing. (Also, I'm allergic to latex, which makes it too good of birth control for me. OTOH, in theory at least my fertility is already in decline.) But you're correct - the classic french letter is classic for a reason. In terms of making things... there's an awful lot of stuff that's pretty easy to make with the right chemical substrates, but where do we get them? Oh, some are easy - alcohol, vinegar, lye, etc. etc. But some require a lot of processing, and getting access to many requires a transportation infrastructure.)

There's modern medicine, and then there's modern medical knowledge. I suspect we could get infant mortality down to something more lik 25% (barring undefined environmental problems) mostly on things like decent sterility. (And as mentioned below, yo, pressure cookers. There are four in my household all ready. But even lower tech measures are likely to make a big difference.)

But that's not even really my biggest concern. If at all possible, I would strongly prefer not to live in a society with massive segregation of gender roles and where women are largely required to serve as brood mares. And the two biggest things that will influence that are access to education and birth control. Also, sex can be a lot of fun, and in a society lacking in other diversions, sex with minimal consequences could make everything go a little easier. (That all being said, if it came to a choice between autonomy or sleeping with men, I'll take the autonomy.)