insulin (IGF-II) growth factor protein reinforces memory and prevents forgetfulness

An international research study has shown that, in animal models, type 2 insulin (IGF-II) growth factor reinforces memory and prevents forgetfulness. The results of the work, developed at the Mount Sinai Hospital Medical School in New York, in which Ana García-Osta, researcher at the Centro de Investigación Médica Aplicada (CIMA) of the University of Navarra took part, was published in the latest issue of Nature.

The article describes the role played by IGF-II in the processes of consolidation of long-term memory. “Through microarray studies (gene identification) we see that the gene that codes this protein increases in the brain of rats exposed to a learning session. On administering IGF-II locally into the hypocampus (the part of the brain where memory is acquired and consolidated) of these animals, we observe that the animal undergoes reinforcement of memory and prevention of forgetfulness”, explained the CIMA researcher.

Also, the blocking of the expression of the hypocampus IGF-II gene impedes the formation of new memories, showing that that it is an essential molecule for memory to form and be consolidated. “We believe that the IGF-II could be a new target for the design of therapies which enhance the cognitive function”.

After obtaining these results, Dr. Ana García-Osta has been working at CIMA on a research project to see if the administration of IGF-II is capable of reducing dementia in an animal model with Alzheimer’s disease.

via Basqueresearch.com: News – A protein reinforces memory and prevents forgetfulness.

Extreme X-ray pulses create unique image of intact virus

Janos Hajdu – They are entirely too small to be seen even with the most powerful microscope. But now an international research team has managed to capture an image of an intact virus and a membrane structure from a photosynthetic bacterium with the aid of extremely intensive and ultra-short x-ray pulses from the world’s first free electron laser. This new advance in structural biology is being published today in two articles in the journal Nature.

The findings for the two studies pave the way for studies of biological structures at the molecular level, including viruses, individual cells, cell organelles, and living bacteria. The technology enhances the possibilities of imaging individual biological molecules that are too small to study even with the most powerful microscopes.

- Biologists have long dreamed of being able to capture the image of viruses, single-cell organisms, and bacteria without having to section, freeze, or mark them with metals, as is necessary in electron microscopy. Our studies show that it is really possible to create images with the aid of extremely intensive and ultra-short x-ray pulses that would otherwise destroy everything in their path, says Professor Janos Hajdu from the Division of Molecular Biophysics, Uppsala University.

Together with his colleague Henry Chapman, he has co-directed the international research team, which also includes Inger Andersson’s team from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SLU. The entire international group is currently at Stanford for new experiments with the advanced free electron laser.

X-ray diffraction has been an irreplaceable instrument in identifying biological structures, but this technology requires crystallized samples of sufficient size. Many particles are therefore packed in crystals. For single particles the x-ray dose needs to be increased so much that the particle is destroyed, especially if it comes from biological material. A number of years ago it was suggested that extremely short pulses from a so-called free electron laser would be able to create an image before the particle had time to be damaged. It is this method (read more about the technology below) that is now being tested on biological material.

In the first study, the method was tested on Mimivirus, the world’s largest known virus, discovered as recently as 1992. It is larger than some single-cell organisms and the only virus that can be infected by a virus of its own. Its size and special surface structure entails that it cannot be studied using conventional imaging methods such as electron microscopy or x-ray crystallography.

In the other study the team shows that x-ray pulses can also be used to study the structure of vitally important membrane proteins – in this case a protein complex that captures sunlight and converts it to energy in photosynthesizing organisms, here a photosynthetic bacterium. Membrane proteins are essential to life processes, not only as energy converters but also as the cell’s transporters and receptors for drugs – but they are incredibly hard to study using conventional methods. The new technology means that huge “blank patches” in structural biology will now be accessible for study at the level of the atom for the first time.

via Extreme X-ray pulses create unique image of intact virus.

Neurobiologists find that weak electrical fields in the brain help neurons fire together

Ephaptic coupling leads to coordinated spiking of nearby neurons, as measured using a 12-pipette electrophysiology setup developed in the laboratory of coauthor Henry Markram.

Deborah Williams-Hedges – The brain—awake and sleeping—is awash in electrical activity, and not just from the individual pings of single neurons communicating with each other. In fact, the brain is enveloped in countless overlapping electric fields, generated by the neural circuits of scores of communicating neurons. The fields were once thought to be an “epiphenomenon, a ‘bug’ of sorts, occurring during neural communication,” says neuroscientist Costas Anastassiou, a postdoctoral scholar in biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

New work by Anastassiou and his colleagues, however, suggests that the fields do much more—and that they may, in fact, represent an additional form of neural communication.

“In other words,” says Anastassiou, the lead author of a paper about the work appearing in the journal Nature Neuroscience, “while active neurons give rise to extracellular fields, the same fields feed back to the neurons and alter their behavior,” even though the neurons are not physically connected—a phenomenon known as ephaptic coupling. “So far, neural communication has been thought to occur at localized machines, termed synapses. Our work suggests an additional means of neural communication through the extracellular space independent of synapses.”

Extracellular electric fields exist throughout the living brain, though they are particularly strong and robustly repetitive in specific brain regions such as the hippocampus, which is involved in memory formation, and the neocortex, the area where long-term memories are held. “The perpetual fluctuations of these extracellular fields are the hallmark of the living and behaving brain in all organisms, and their absence is a strong indicator of a deeply comatose, or even dead, brain,” Anastassiou explains.

Previously, neurobiologists assumed that the fields were capable of affecting—and even controlling—neural activity only during severe pathological conditions such as epileptic seizures, which induce very strong fields. Few studies, however, had actually assessed the impact of far weaker—but very common—non-epileptic fields. “The reason is simple,” Anastassiou says. “It is very hard to conduct an in vivo experiment in the absence of extracellular fields,” to observe what changes when the fields are not around.

To tease out those effects, Anastassiou and his colleagues, including Caltech neuroscientist Christof Koch, the Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology and professor of computation and neural systems, focused on strong but slowly oscillating fields, called local field potentials (LFP), that arise from neural circuits composed of just a few rat brain cells. Measuring those fields and their effects required positioning a cluster of tiny electrodes within a volume equivalent to that of a single cell body—and at distances of less than 50 millionths of a meter from one another.

“Because it had been so hard to position that many electrodes within such a small volume of brain tissue, the findings of our research are truly novel,” Anastassiou says. Previously, he explains, “nobody had been able to attain this level of spatial and temporal resolution.”

An “unexpected and surprising finding was how already very weak extracellular fields can alter neural activity,” he says. “For example, we observed that fields as weak as one millivolt per millimeter robustly alter the firing of individual neurons, and increase the so-called “spike-field coherence”—the synchronicity with which neurons fire with relationship to the field.”In the mammalian brain, we know that extracellular fields may easily exceed two to three millivolts per millimeter. Our findings suggest that under such conditions, this effect becomes significant.”

What does that mean for brain computation? “Neuroscientists have long speculated about this,” Anastassiou says. “Increased spike-field coherency may substantially enhance the amount of information transmitted between neurons as well as increase its reliability. Moreover, it has been long known that brain activity patterns related to memory and navigation give rise to a robust LFP and enhanced spike-field coherency. We believe ephaptic coupling does not have one major effect, but instead contributes on many levels during intense brain processing.”

Can external electric fields have similar effects on the brain? “This is an interesting question,” Anastassiou says. “Indeed, physics dictates that any external field will impact the neural membrane. Importantly, though, the effect of externally imposed fields will also depend on the brain state. One could think of the brain as a distributed computer—not all brain areas show the same level of activation at all times.

“Whether an externally imposed field will impact the brain also depends on which brain area is targeted. During epileptic seizures, pathological fields can be as strong as 100 millivolts per millimeter¬—such fields strongly entrain neural firing and give rise to super-synchronized states.” And that, he adds, suggests that electric field activity—even from external fields—in certain brain areas, during specific brain states, may have strong cognitive and behavioral effects.

Ultimately, Anastassiou, Koch, and their colleagues would like to test whether ephaptic coupling affects human cognitive processing, and under which circumstances. “I firmly believe that understanding the origin and functionality of endogenous brain fields will lead to several revelations regarding information processing at the circuit level, which, in my opinion, is the level at which percepts and concepts arise,” Anastassiou says. “This, in turn, will lead us to address how biophysics gives rise to cognition in a mechanistic manner—and that, I think, is the holy grail of neuroscience.” …

via Neurobiologists find that weak electrical fields in the brain help neurons fire together.

Bill seeks to let one-armed people use switchblades

A local lawmaker has proposed a bill to allow one-armed people to have and carry switchblade knives.

State Rep. Sheryl Briggs, D-Mexico, said Friday that she’s asking Maine to comply with a federal law that allows individuals with one arm to own or carry any switchblade knife with a blade of 3 inches or less.

“Obviously, people with just one arm cannot open anything but that type of a blade, that type of a knife,” she said. “So all we’re asking is for the people with one arm to be exempt.”

A switchblade knife has a blade that opens automatically by hand pressure or opens, falls or is ejected into position.

Briggs said one-armed Mexico lawyer Paul Dumas Jr. asked her to propose the legislation.

“It’s a spinoff currently of federal law,” Dumas said on Friday afternoon. “If I had a spring-assisted knife and I was in federal jurisdiction, I wouldn’t be breaking the law, but under Maine law I would be.”

Maine’s law states that anyone caught with a switchblade knife or who makes, displays, offers, sells, lends, gives away or buys such knives, is guilty of trafficking in dangerous knives. It is a misdemeanor crime.

In a March 2010 letter to Briggs, Dumas wrote, “This statute utterly fails to accommodate persons who cannot use two hands to open a knife.”

He also stated that such a bill “would be a plainly common-sense amendment to Maine’s knife law.”

“It gets tough to open up a knife one-handed,” Dumas said Friday. “I use my teeth sometimes and that isn’t very safe.” ….

via Bill seeks to let one-armed people use switchblades | River Valley.

Teenager killed after a slug causes traffic light failure

Katie Dagley, 19, was driving home from work when she approached a single lane bridge controlled by lights that had malfunctioned just 20 minutes earlier.

She drove her Ford Ka onto the bridge and collided with an oncoming Fiat Punto.

The teenager, who had dreamed of becoming a chef, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Senior police investigator Andy Stevens told an inquest into her death that he had carried out a detailed examination of the scene in Alvecote, near Tamworth, West Mids, and confirmed that the traffic light fault was caused by a trail left by a slug or a snail.

He said: “There are traffic lights at either end and there are white lines across the road.

“The fault was logged at the monitoring agency and sent to county highways at 10.52pm, some 20 minutes before the collision.

“The reason for the fault was due to a slug or a snail.

“There was a trail across the circuit board and it had short-circuited it – it was one of those things, it’s a tragedy.”

Warwickshire Coroner Sean McGovern returned a verdict of accidental death at the inquest in Coventry last week.

via Teenager killed after a slug causes traffic light failure – Telegraph.

Chinese boy has 31 fingers, toes

A Chinese boy with 31 fingers and toes is set to undergo an operation to remove the extra digits.

The six-year-old boy, whose name has not been released, has 16 toes and 15 fingers.

One of the fingers is incomplete and appears on X-ray photographs as a “fork” sticking out from the right thumb.

Three fingers on each of the boy’s hands are also fused together by skin.

The boy, from Shenyang in China’s north-eastern Liaoning province, beats the current world record held Indian boys Pranamya Menaria and Devendra Harne, who have 12 fingers and 13 toes.

Doctors will today attempt to remove the boy’s extra digits.

The condition is known as polydactyly.

via Chinese boy has 31 fingers, toes.

Worthless website awards: safemanuals.com and manualnguide.com, etc.

I went looking for a .pdf manual for a Motu 828 mkII firewire rack mount device because I can’t get the front mic inputs to stop feeding into the SPDIF channels. The manual for the MK3 didn’t help due to differences between the old and new versions and no PDF version of the 828mkii manual seems to exist.

While searching, I found some truly annoying web sites. They returns high on Google rank if you do a search for manuals, but they are 100% worthless! The links and text seem to lead to what you are searching for, but they lead only to advertising. I’d like to slap the creator of these lame sites with a salmon for wasting my time.

Avoid all of the following worthless web sites that come up in a google search for manuals:

 

diggipdf.com
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You can remove any site from a google search by typing “search terms -site:example.com”. Replace “example.com” with the site you want to avoid in your results. Using this technique, I’ve made a filter. Click my link here to do a google search avoiding these crap sites: Google Manual Search Minus Crap Sites.

Just add your search terms such as “Motu 828mkII pdf” before the first “-site:” after you click the link and then search.

With this filter I at least get some real pdfs about the device I have … but not the manual since one doesn’t seem to exist.

Top 20 Songwriters, who is #20?

If I had to name the top 20 songwriters who have had the biggest influence on me, I can only come up with 19 for sure …

1. Paul McCartney (the Beatles)
2. John Lennon (the Beatles)
3. Paul Simon (Simon and Garfunkel)
4. Cat Stevens
5. John McCrea (Cake)
6. Jeff Lynne (ELO)
7. Andy Partridge (XTC)
8. Sting (the Police)
9. Jason Mraz
10. Bernie Taupin (Elton John)
11. Mark Zemple (Folkenstein)
12. Tom Scholz (Boston)
13. David Bowie
14. Freddie Mercury (Queen)
15. Kerry Livgren (Kansas)
16. Neil Peart (Rush)
17. Jeff Davis (the Balancing Act)
18. John Woloschuk (Klaatu)
19. Anton Barbeau
20. ?

Not sure who would be #20. People put in on the top of their lists, but Bob Dylan never had a big influence on me. John Fogerty (CCR), Scott Warren (America), Joachim Krauledat (Steppenwolf), Edward Van Halen and George Harrison (the Beatles), Sonia Rutstein (Disappear Fear), Lindsey Buckingham (Fleetwood Mac) all did. I can’t decide.