Gone for today, 17/06/09!
Posts for behindcrazedeyes, sauronatemylightsaber, ithinkthusmaybeiam, and madmanscholarworkshop will resume the following day.
Cheers to all!
From the mouths of babes – The truth about toddler talk
The sound of small children chattering has always been considered cute – but not particularly sophisticated. However, research by a Newcastle University expert has shown their speech is far more advanced than previously understood.
Dr Cristina Dye, a lecturer in child language development, found that two to three- year-olds are using grammar far sooner than expected.
She studied fifty French speaking youngsters aged between 23 and 37 months, capturing tens of thousands of their utterances.
Dr Dye, who carried out the research while at Cornell University in the United States, found that the children were using ‘little words’ which form the skeleton of sentences such as a, an, can, is, an, far sooner than previously thought.
Dr Dye and her team used advanced recording technology including highly sensitive microphones placed close to the children, to capture the precise sounds the children voiced. They spent years painstakingly analysing every minute sound made by the toddlers and the context in which it was produced.
They found a clear, yet previously undetected, pattern of sounds and puffs of air, which consistently replaced grammatical words in many of the children’s utterances.
Dr Dye said: “Many of the toddlers we studied made a small sound, a soft breath, or a pause, at exactly the place that a grammatical word would normally be uttered.”
“The fact that this sound was always produced in the correct place in the sentence leads us to believe that young children are knowledgeable of grammatical words. They are far more sophisticated in their grammatical competence than we ever understood.
“Despite the fact the toddlers we studied were acquiring French, our findings are expected to extend to other languages. I believe we should give toddlers more credit – they’re much more amazing than we realised.”
For decades the prevailing view among developmental specialists has been that children’s early word combinations are devoid of grammatical words. On this view, children then undergo a ‘tadpole to frog’ transformation where due to an unknown mechanism, they start to develop grammar in their speech. Dye’s results now challenge the old view.
Dr Dye said: “The research sheds light on a really important part of a child’s development. Language is one of the things that makes us human and understanding how we acquire it shows just how amazing children are.
“There are also implications for understanding language delay in children. When children don’t learn to speak normally it can lead to serious issues later in life. For example, those who have it are more likely to suffer from mental illness or be unemployed later in life. If we can understand what is ‘normal’ as early as possible then we can intervene sooner to help those children.”
The research was originally published in the Journal of Linguistics.
(Source: ncl.ac.uk)
A Peptide to Protect Brain Function
TAU researcher develops a protein to protect and restore nerve cell communications
A structure called “the microtubule network” is a crucial part of our nervous system. It acts as a transportation system within nerve cells, carrying essential proteins and enabling cell-to-cell communications. But in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s, this network breaks down, hindering motor abilities and cognitive function.
Now Prof. Illana Gozes of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine has developed a new peptide in her lab, called NAP or Davunetide, that has the capacity to both protect and restore microtubule function. The peptide is a compound derived from the protein ADNP, which regulates more than 400 genes and is essential for brain formation, memory, and behavior.
Prof. Gozes and her team of researchers, including Dr. Yan Jouroukhin and graduate student Regin Ostritsky of TAU, observed that in animal models with microtubule damage, NAP was able to maintain or revive the transport of proteins and other materials in cells, ameliorating symptoms associated with neurodegeneration. These findings, which were reported in the journal Neurobiology of Disease, indicate that NAP could be an effective tool in fighting some of the most debilitating effects of neurodegenerative diseases.
Prof. Gozes is the director of TAU’s Adams Super Center for Brain Studies and holds the Lily and Avraham Gildor Chair for the Investigation of Growth Factors.
Securing passage through the brain
In their investigation, the researchers used two different animal models with microtubule damage. The first group was made up of normal mice whose microtubule system was broken down through the use of a compound. The second group were genetically-engineered mouse models of ALS, in which the microtubule system was chronically damaged. In both groups, half the mice were given a single NAP injection, while the control half were not.
To determine the impact of NAP on nerve cell communications, the researchers administered the chemical element manganese to all animal models and tracked its movement through the brain using an MRI. In the mice treated with NAP, researchers observed that the manganese was able to travel through the brain normally — the microtubule system had been protected from damage or restored to normal use. Those mice that did not receive the peptide experienced the usual breakdown or continued dysfunction of the microtubule system.
These findings were corroborated by a subsequent study conducted in the UK, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, which found that NAP was able to ameliorate damage in fruit fly models of microtubule deficiency, repairing nerve cell dysfunction.
Slowing down cognitive dysfunction
NAP appears to have widespread potential in terms of neuroprotection, says Prof. Gozes, who was recently awarded the Meitner-Humblodt Research Award for her lifelong contribution to the field of brain sciences.
Previous studies on the peptide, conducted through a collaboration between Allon Therapeutics and Ramot, TAU’s technology transfer arm, have shown that patients suffering from cognitive dysfunction — a precursor to Alzheimer’s Disease — showed significant improvements in their cognitive scores when treated with NAP. Additional studies have also shown that NAP has a positive impact on rectifying microtubule deficiencies in schizophrenia patients.
Prof. Gozes notes that more research must be conducted to discover how to optimize the use of NAP as a treatment, including which patients can benefit most from the intervention.
(Source: aftau.org)
WHAT IF other planetary bodies orbited our world at the same distance as the moon?
whoa Jupiter kinda in my personal bubble thanks
Jupiter would actually be terrifying.
Is that Earth orbiting Earth
there are no rules in this universe
Deepsea hatchet fish is what nightmares are made of.
(Source: thatscienceguy, via gerryomegashitsonyou)
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New tasks become as simple as waving a hand with brain-computer interfaces
Small electrodes placed on or inside the brain allow patients to interact with computers or control robotic limbs simply by thinking about how to execute those actions. This technology could improve communication and daily life for a person who is paralyzed or has lost the ability to speak from a stroke or neurodegenerative disease.
Now, University of Washington researchers have demonstrated that when humans use this technology – called a brain-computer interface – the brain behaves much like it does when completing simple motor skills such as kicking a ball, typing or waving a hand. Learning to control a robotic arm or a prosthetic limb could become second nature for people who are paralyzed.
“What we’re seeing is that practice makes perfect with these tasks,” said Rajesh Rao, a UW professor of computer science and engineering and a senior researcher involved in the study. “There’s a lot of engagement of the brain’s cognitive resources at the very beginning, but as you get better at the task, those resources aren’t needed anymore and the brain is freed up.”
Rao and UW collaborators Jeffrey Ojemann, a professor of neurological surgery, and Jeremiah Wander, a doctoral student in bioengineering, published their results online June 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In this study, seven people with severe epilepsy were hospitalized for a monitoring procedure that tries to identify where in the brain seizures originate. Physicians cut through the scalp, drilled into the skull and placed a thin sheet of electrodes directly on top of the brain. While they were watching for seizure signals, the researchers also conducted this study.
The patients were asked to move a mouse cursor on a computer screen by using only their thoughts to control the cursor’s movement. Electrodes on their brains picked up the signals directing the cursor to move, sending them to an amplifier and then a laptop to be analyzed. Within 40 milliseconds, the computer calculated the intentions transmitted through the signal and updated the movement of the cursor on the screen.
Researchers found that when patients started the task, a lot of brain activity was centered in the prefrontal cortex, an area associated with learning a new skill. But after often as little as 10 minutes, frontal brain activity lessened, and the brain signals transitioned to patterns similar to those seen during more automatic actions.
“Now we have a brain marker that shows a patient has actually learned a task,” Ojemann said. “Once the signal has turned off, you can assume the person has learned it.”
While researchers have demonstrated success in using brain-computer interfaces in monkeys and humans, this is the first study that clearly maps the neurological signals throughout the brain. The researchers were surprised at how many parts of the brain were involved.
“We now have a larger-scale view of what’s happening in the brain of a subject as he or she is learning a task,” Rao said. “The surprising result is that even though only a very localized population of cells is used in the brain-computer interface, the brain recruits many other areas that aren’t directly involved to get the job done.”
Several types of brain-computer interfaces are being developed and tested. The least invasive is a device placed on a person’s head that can detect weak electrical signatures of brain activity. Basic commercial gaming products are on the market, but this technology isn’t very reliable yet because signals from eye blinking and other muscle movements interfere too much.
A more invasive alternative is to surgically place electrodes inside the brain tissue itself to record the activity of individual neurons. Researchers at Brown University and the University of Pittsburgh have demonstrated this in humans as patients, unable to move their arms or legs, have learned to control robotic arms using the signal directly from their brain.
The UW team tested electrodes on the surface of the brain, underneath the skull. This allows researchers to record brain signals at higher frequencies and with less interference than measurements from the scalp. A future wireless device could be built to remain inside a person’s head for a longer time to be able to control computer cursors or robotic limbs at home.
“This is one push as to how we can improve the devices and make them more useful to people,” Wander said. “If we have an understanding of how someone learns to use these devices, we can build them to respond accordingly.”
The research team, along with the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering headquartered at the UW, will continue developing these technologies.
![theweekmagazine:
Burger King’s Enormous Omelet Sandwich
Clocking in at 730 calories, 47 grams of fat, and 1,860 grams of sodium per sandwich, it’s no wonder Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock told USA Today that Burger King should have offered customers “a $5-off coupon for [their] first angioplasty.”
5 more enormously unhealthy breakfast sandwiches](http://25.media.tumblr.com/2efcf265d3947bd80b572a9e33f5c17c/tumblr_moamrbnjCQ1qdjbb7o1_500.jpg)
View high resolution
Burger King’s Enormous Omelet Sandwich
Clocking in at 730 calories, 47 grams of fat, and 1,860 grams of sodium per sandwich, it’s no wonder Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock told USA Today that Burger King should have offered customers “a $5-off coupon for [their] first angioplasty.”
Lagos Speaker, Adeyemi Ikuforiji
Money Laundering: Lagos Speaker, Ikuforiji, Aide Face 56 Fresh Charges -PM News, LagosBy Akin KuponiyiNigeria’s anti-graft agency, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has filed 56-count amended charge of money laundering against the Speaker of Lagos State House of Assembly, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, and his personal assistant, Oyebode Alade Atoyebi.
Tension In Kaduna Following Bomb Scare
By SaharaReporters, New YorkA bomb found in Kaduna town this afternoon caused panic and pandemonium in the city.
Security men said they found following reports, by passers-by, of a suspicion package at a busy road intersection.
It’s not just the brogrammers. Silicon Valley’s gender imbalance starts at the top. Data collected by Catherine Bracey, who used to run the Obama campaign’s San Francisco tech office, shows that 89% of the executive teams at companies that got seed funding in the first half of 2010 were all male.
And America’s tech hub isn’t doing much better when it comes to race: The dudely founders of these companies were 82% white. Fewer than 1% were black or Hispanic.
Adaptation Of “Things Fall Apart” As America Celebrates Prof. Chinua Achebe
Professor Chuck Mike, an artistic director and professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia directed a stage play in honor of Professor Chinua Achebe during a moving memorial at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington DC on Sunday.
WATCH HERE
‘Albert Einstein’ in space: Europe launches cargo spacecraft named for scientist
The European Space Agency launched its penultimate mission to the International Space Station on Wednesday (June 5), expending great energy to lift a record amount of mass aboard a spacecraft named for the scientist famous for linking the two units with the equation “E=mc^2.”
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 (ATV-4), an unmanned cargo freighter, lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 5:52 p.m. EDT (2152 GMT). The second to last of ESA’s five planned station resupply spacecraft launched since 2008, ATV-4 was named “Albert Einstein” after the iconic physicist known for the theory of relativity.
Einstein’s theories have been put to the test in space and his work has guided robotic spacecraft to other planets. ATV-4 is the first spaceship to bear Einstein’s name, at the suggestion of the Swiss delegation to the European Space Agency. Einstein was born in Germany but studied and spent his early career in Switzerland.Lifting off from the jungle spaceport along South America’s northeast coast, ATV-4 soared spaceward with Europe’s largest-ever load of dry cargo for the station. Packed with science experiments, crew supplies, a 3D printed tool box and even copies of Einstein’s manuscript explaining the foundation for the general theory of relativity, the craft is destined to dock with the orbiting laboratory on June 15.
via collectSPACE.com
