Genius of the Rules-Style System

Chapter 974: Chapter 490 The same project, different treatment!_1

Yan Xuelin considered himself to be reasonable. As the director of the Biomedical Research Institute, he would undoubtedly support the research projects within the institute.

Some basic research projects, relying solely on funding from scientific research foundations, indeed cannot be completed. And there are projects that are not even within the scope of the foundations’ support, making applications impossible to pass. Hence, these research endeavors require the institute’s financial support.

In fact,

the R&D funding of research institutions mainly consists of two parts, one being the funds allocated by the government, the other being the support from the institutions themselves.

The institute’s financial support is a significant aspect because it is only with the emergence of many scientific achievements that the institute receives its annual research funding.

This portion of funding is at the scientific institutions’ discretion to use freely.

Although that was the case, what frustrated Yan Xuelin was hearing several researchers gathering together and publicly saying "The institute has plenty of funds; if it’s not enough, we’ll just ask for more from the institute."?

Their tone sounded as if they were planning to "scam" the institute’s funds.

If the institute’s funds were scammed, then so be it. It wasn’t a big deal talk-wise; many laboratories thought of applying for separate projects when they lacked funding for existing ones, seeking a bit of financial support to prop up their original projects.

This was the "unwritten rule" regarding funding within research institutions.

Although it seemingly didn’t sound very positive, at the very least the starting point was good. The goal was to secure funding for research; it’s just that when faced with regulatory constraints, one had to devise ways to circumvent the rules.

But no matter what, outright scamming the institute’s funds and loudly discussing it within his earshot simply couldn’t be justified.

Yan Xuelin felt it was a blow to his dignity, particularly since they had acted as if they hadn’t seen him and kept talking amongst themselves about not needing the institute’s money.

"These guys..."

"It’s really too much!"

Yan Xuelin took a deep breath, adjusted his mindset, and walked in with a stiff smile, then inquired about the project they were planning to do.

If it were any other lab, he would have turned around and left, making a mental note of the incident.

Zhao Yi’s lab...

Ahem.

As the leader of a research institution, one must be magnanimous toward research staff. Being ignored isn’t a big deal; what’s important is providing support for research.

Yan Xuelin reminded himself.

The others couldn’t keep up their pretense either and awkwardly greeted Yan Xuelin, before starting to discuss the project they wanted to apply for.

"Neural signal transmission!"

Just mentioning the name almost explained it all.

Neurology is an important branch of medicine. Neural signal transmission is a fundamental research area in medicine, yet its importance and influence could be said to go beyond medicine.

At the same time, decoding neural signal transmission is considered to be one of the medical challenges that humanity is unlikely to solve in the short term. Its complexity and difficulty are comparable even to that of brain analysis.

"If we can decipher the mystery of neural signal transmission, humanity will achieve a breakthrough understanding of itself."

"It would be a revolutionary advancement in medicine, a revolutionary scientific progression." fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com

"It could easily change the world..."

These are the original words of the world-renowned medical expert Ben Moore.

For nearly a century, the scientific community has been trying to understand nerve impulses, which are the methods of neural signal transmission.

For example, when one steps on a tack, the painful signal reaches the brain in less than a second, with the signal traveling along nerve fibers at roughly thirty meters per second.

Sixty years ago, researchers studying nerve transmission acquired the technology to measure the potential difference inside and outside the cell membrane and discovered that when a signal travels along the nerve and goes by the electrode, the membrane potential undergoes a rapid change within milliseconds.

Two British scientists, Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley, discovered that during neuron excitation, sodium ions rush from outside to inside the cell membrane, followed by an efflux of potassium ions from inside to outside of the cell membrane, restoring the membrane potential to normal.

Their proposed Hodgkin-Huxley model became a cornerstone of neuroscience, for which they were also awarded the Nobel Prize.

The success of Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley seemed to indicate that humanity had deciphered the method of neural signal transmission, but in reality, the complexity of nerve transmission far exceeded the range of the Hodgkin-Huxley model.

For instance, touch, vision, or other senses all rely on neural signal transmission.

If it were solely about changes in membrane potential, certainly humans wouldn’t possess such a variety of perceptions. The modes of neural signal transmission, and the ways that signals are transmitted and information is acquired and analyzed by the brain, are challenges far beyond human grasp.

Over the past sixty years, many have questioned the theoretical outcomes of Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley, or hoped to add to the understanding of neural signal transmission methods.

For example, the neurobiologist Tanzaki Yijiro, a skeptic of the Hodgkin-Huxley model, gained fame in the field of neuroscience for discovering action potential jump conduction at Ranvier’s nodes and conducted a revolutionary experiment forty years ago: dissecting a crab’s leg to expose a bundle of nerves, then placing a tiny piece of reflective platinum on it under a microscope. He then shone a laser on the platinum piece, and by measuring the angle of the laser reflection, it was possible to detect whether the width of the nerve bundle changed slightly when an action potential passed through it.

He and his then-postdoctoral researcher Iwasa Kunihiko performed hundreds of measurements.

After a week, the data clearly indicated that when an action potential passed, the nerve bundle slightly widened and then narrowed again. The whole process lasted only a few milliseconds.