biology

Mary Blue

Mary Blue is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mary Blue rather than just read about it. In short: Mary Elizabeth Blue is an American neurobiologist and computational neurologist. She is an associate professor of neurology and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a research scientist in the neuroscience laboratory at Kennedy Krieger Institute.

Key takeaways

Mary Blue belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mary Blue to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mary Blue from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mary Elizabeth Blue is an American neurobiologist and computational neurologist. She is an associate professor of neurology and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a research scientist in the neuroscience laboratory at Kennedy Krieger Institute.

Life Blue completed a B.A. in biology, cum laude, from Cornell College in 1977. She earned a Ph.D. in cell biology at the UTHealth School of Public Health in 1982. Her doctoral advisor was John G. Parnavelas. Her dissertation was titled, Synapse formation and maturation in the visual cortex of the rat. Blue conducted postdoctoral research in the departments of cell biology and neuroscience under Mark E. Molliver at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine from 1982 to 1989. Blue joined the Hugo W. Moser Research Institute at Kennedy Krieger Institute in 1989 as a research scientist. She joined the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1989 as an instructor in the department of neurology. Blue has served as director of the neurohistology imaging facility at the Kennedy Krieger Institute since 1990. She was promoted to assistant professor in 1992 and associate professor in the department of neurology in 2000. Blue also became an associate professor in the department of neuroscience in 2001. From 2000 to 2002, she was president of the Baltimore chapter of the Society for Neuroscience. Blue researches developmental neuroscience, systems, cognitive, and computational neuroscience, neural circuits, molecular neuroscience, and the neurobiology of disease. Blue and Ali Fatemi manage the animal surgery suite of the Intellectual developmental disabilities research center clinical translational core.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mary Blue

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mary Blue claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mary Blue before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mary Blue ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mary Blue

In research: Mary Blue appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mary Blue in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mary Blue is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century American biologists, 21st-century American women scientists, American computer scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mary Blue outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mary Blue in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mary Blue means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mary Blue out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mary Blue in simple terms?

Why does Mary Blue matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mary Blue?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mary Blue.