Friday, October 9, 2009

“OCCC professor faces drug charges, on leave - Chickasha News” plus 4 more

“OCCC professor faces drug charges, on leave - Chickasha News” plus 4 more

OCCC professor faces drug charges, on leave - Chickasha News

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 10:18 PM PDT

Published: October 09, 2009 12:33 am    print this story  

OCCC professor faces drug charges, on leave

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An Oklahoma City Community College professor has been placed on leave for the remainder of the semester after being charged with drug possession.

Prosecutors have charged 39-year-old biology and chemistry professor Cassandra Meek with possession of methamphetamines, marijuana and drug paraphernalia. She's also charged with using a surveillance camera while committing a felony.

Also facing those charges are 33-year-old Bobby Shane Pierce.

Meek says she wasn't living at the house where the drugs were found and doesn't know who they belong to. She says she allowed recovering addicts to live in the home in exchange for working on the house

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Just like humans, monkey moms go gooey over newborns - Newstrack India

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 10:18 PM PDT

Washington, Oct 9 (ANI): Monkey mothers interact with their newborn babies in much the same way human moms do, suggests a study of rhesus macaques.

 

Published in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, the new findings show that mother macaques and their infants have interactions in the first month of life that the researchers say look a lot like what humans tend to do.

 

 

"What does a mother or father do when looking at their own baby?" asked Pier Francesco Ferrari of the Universit di Parma in Italy. "They smile at them and exaggerate their gestures, modify their voice pitch-the so-called "motherese"-and kiss them. What we found in mother macaques is very similar: they exaggerate their gestures, "kiss" their baby, and have sustained mutual gaze."

 

In humans, those communicative interactions go both ways, research in the last three decades has shown. Newborns are sensitive to their mother's expressions, movements, and voice, and they also mutually engage their mothers and are capable of emotional exchange.

 

"For years, these capacities were considered to be basically unique to humans," the researchers said, "although perhaps shared to some extent with chimpanzees."

 

The new findings extend those social skills to macaques, suggesting that the infant monkeys may "have a rich internal world" that we are only now beginning to see.

 

To reach the conclusion, researchers closely observed 14 mother-infant pairs for the first two months of the infants' lives. They found that mother macaques and their babies spent more time gazing at each other than at other monkeys. Mothers also more often smacked their lips at their infants, a gesture that the infants often imitated back to their mothers.

 

The researchers also saw mothers holding their infant and actively searching for the infant's gaze, sometimes holding the infant's head and gently pulling it towards her face. n other instances, when infants were physically separated from their mothers, the parent moved her face very close to that of the infant, sometimes lowering her head and bouncing it in front of the youngster. Interestingly, those exchanges virtually disappeared when infants turned about one month old.

 

The researchers concluded: "Our results demonstrate that humans are not unique in showing emotional communication between mother and infant.

 

"Instead, we can trace the evolutionary foundation of those behaviours, which are considered crucial for the establishment of social exchange with others, to macaques."(ANI)

 

Three to split Nobel chemistry prize - Local

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 12:17 PM PDT

Published: 7 Oct 09 14:18 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/22514/20091007/

Dictionary tool Double click on a word to get a translation

Three chemists are to share the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work in revealing more about how cells go about using bits of DNA to form the blueprints for living organisms.

The prize will be split three ways between UK-based chemist Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz of the United States, and Ada E. Yonath of Israel "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome", the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Wednesday.

Found within cells, ribosomes use the information found in DNA molecules to produce proteins which play vital roles in the chemistry of living organisms.

Any of the thousands of different proteins created by ribosomes, from haemoglobin to insulin, affect and control the chemical processes which create and sustain life.

This years three Nobel chemistry prize winners have all created 3D models showing how various antibiotics bind to the ribosome.

Through their models, each winner has shown what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level, using a method called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.

The enhanced understanding of the ribosome's inner-workings achieved through the winners models has shown scientists how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome, thus aiding in the development of new antibiotics.

Ramakrishnan, a US citizen, was born in India in 1952 and earned a PhD in physics from Ohio University in the United States. He is currently a senior scientist at Cambridge University's MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

Steitz was born in Wisconsin in 1940, earning a PhD in molecular biology and biochemistry from Harvard University. He now works as a professor at Yale University.

Yonath was born in Jerusalem in 1939 and received a PhD in X-ray Crystallography from the Weizmann Institute of Science, where she is now a professor of structural biology.

PM congratulates Indian-American Ramakrishnan on Nobel honour - New Kerala

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 10:37 AM PDT

New Delhi, Oct 8 : The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has congratulated Dr. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan for jointly winning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the year 2009.

In his congratulatory message to Dr. Ramakrishnan, Dr. Singh said his work in extending the frontiers of molecular biology would be serve as an inspiration to thousands of Indian scientists and researchers.

"This high honour is just and due recognition of your exceptional scientific achievements in your chosen field of study. The work done by you and the other prize winners in furthering the scientific understanding of one of life's core processes has major applications in the field of medical science and drug development," he said.

"It is a matter of great pride for India that a brilliant scientist, who has gained the highest international recognition, should have done most of his education in India. It is a tribute to the educational system in our country and the dedication of the teaching community that we are able to nurture such international excellence in the sciences," he added.

He further said: "The work that you have done to extend the frontiers of Molecular Biology will be an inspiration to thousands of Indian scientists, researchers and technologists, who strive to follow in your footsteps."

"I wish you all the very best in your future endeavours and hope that you will continue to make outstanding contributions to the scientific progress of humankind," the Prime Minister added.

An Indian origin senior scientist at the MRC Laborartory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, Ramakrishnan, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2009 along with two others.

The Nobel Committee announced on Wednesday that the Tamil Nadu born Ramakrishnan would share the Nobel Prize with Thomas E Steitz (US) and Ada E Yonath (Israel) for their "studies of the structure and function of the ribosome".

Ramakrishnan graduated in B.Sc. in Physics from Baroda University in 1971 and did Ph.D. in Physics in 1976 from Ohio University.

--ANI

A Neuron's Obsession Hints at Biology of Thought - Wall Street Journal

Posted: 09 Oct 2009 06:54 AM PDT

Researchers have discovered that in the vast neural network of the brain, some cells are, to use a technical term, celebrity groupies.

Probing deep into human brains, a team of scientists discovered a neuron roused only by Ronald Reagan, another cell smitten by the actress Halle Berry and a third devoted solely to Mother Teresa. Testing other single human neurons, they located a brain cell that would rather watch an episode of "The Simpsons" than Madonna.

In one sense, these findings are merely noise. They arise from rare recordings of electrical activity in brain cells, collected by neuroscientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, during a decade of experiments with patients awaiting brain surgery for severe epilepsy. These tingles of electricity, however, gave the researchers the opportunity to locate neurons that help link our perceptions, memories and self-awareness.

In their most recent work this year, the research team reported that a single human neuron could recognize a personality through pictures, text or the sound of a name -- no matter how that person was presented. In tests, one brain cell reacted only to Oprah Winfrey; another just to Luke Skywalker; a third singled out Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona.

Each neuron appeared to join together pieces of sensory information into a single mental impression. The researchers believe these cells are evidence that it only takes a simple circuit of neurons to encode an idea, perception or memory.

"These neurons will fire to the person no matter how you present them," says bioengineer Rodrigo Quian Quiroga at the U.K.'s University of Leicester who studied the neurons with colleagues at UCLA and the California Institute of Technology. "All that we do, all that we think, all that we see is encoded by neurons. How do the neurons in our brain create all our perceptions of the world, all our emotions, all our thinking?"

At its simplest, a neuron is a nerve cell, one of the myriads that make up our central nervous system. Each cell can send and receive the electro-chemical signals that charge our thoughts and emotions.

On average, there are more neurons in the human brain than there are galaxies in the known universe -- about 100 billion in all, arranged on a scaffold of one trillion or so supporting, thread-like glial cells. Our inspirations race through thousands of miles of nerve fibers and axons so compacted that our entire neural network is no larger than a coconut. No two brains are alike, not even those of identical twins.

To these researchers, neurons are the Lego bricks of the brain -- a construction kit that can self-assemble into a cathedral of thought. "The idea of justice is probably generated by a small set of neurons firing," says Caltech biophysicist Christof Koch, who studies the biological basis of consciousness. "It must be true of all the things that we think about ... the number pi ...God."

In some ways, each neuron does act as if it has a mind of its own. Some fire only when they perceive a straight line; others just when they detect a right angle. New neurons form every day. No one knows how the cells can encode a complex thought or how so many neurons can make a mind.

Recommended Reading

In the August edition of Current Biology, researchers at UCLA, Caltech and the University of Leicester reported on celebrity watching among human neurons in "Explicit Encoding of Multimodal Percepts by Single Neurons in the Human Brain."

Researchers at Weizmann Institute of Science reported that these neurons were crucial to our recollections of people, places and things in "Internally Generated Reactivation of Single Neurons in Human Hippocampus During Free Recall," published in Science.

In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers showed how neurons reflect our conscious recognition of familiar people, places and things in "Human single-neuron responses at the threshold of conscious recognition."

Reporting in Nature, the researchers identified neurons responding to celebrities and landmarks in "Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain."

In Psychological Review, researchers recently explored the role of single cells in memory in "On the Biological Plausibility of Grandmother Cells: Implications for Neural Network Theories in Psychology and Neuroscience."

Caltech neuroscientist Christof Koch explores the research challenge posed by the biology of conscious thought in "The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach."

Nobel laureate Gerald M. Edelman and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi ponder biology and awareness in "A Universe Of Consciousness How Matter Becomes Imagination."

Most of what we have learned about their neurobiology comes through imaging studies, post-mortem analysis or animal experiments. Under normal circumstances, researchers can't directly probe the cells of an awake, living human brain for ethical reasons.

In 1997, though, UCLA neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried and his colleagues started studying epilepsy patients who, as part of normal preparation for surgery, have electrodes implanted deep in their brain tissue. These electrodes are used to record neural activity that could identify the source of the patients' intractable seizures. They also detect the activity of healthy cells around the electrodes, which gives the scientists an opportunity to study the biology of perception and memory. "This really offers us a glimpse into the human mind," says Dr. Fried.

In five provocative experiments since 2005, the researchers used pictures of famous faces and places to screen neurons in brain areas that gather information from all our senses about a person or place we know and blend them into a long-term memory.

To start, Dr. Fried and his colleagues showed eight epilepsy patients 80 images of celebrities, animals, common objects and landmarks while recording the electrical activity of neurons wired to electrodes. They flashed each image for a second, shuffled the sequence into random order and then repeated it. They did that six times.

"You would present hundreds of stimuli -- faces or celebrities or famous landmarks -- and the neuron would respond to only one or two," Dr. Fried says. "The incredible specificity was striking."

In the magazine rack of the mind, some cover girls have a neuron all their own. Testing one patient, the researchers found a neuron that reacted instantly when shown almost any picture of Jennifer Aniston. This cell ignored other celebrities. It gave the cold shoulder to pictures of the actress with her former husband Brad Pitt. "The cells seemed to respond to the idea of Jennifer Aniston," says Dr. Koch.

Testing a second patient, the researchers found a neuron that responded only to Halle Berry. The cell's electrical activity jumped no matter how the actress was posed or how she was dressed. Again, this neuron showed no interest in other celebrities or to any other images of common objects or places.

Subsequent tests turned up single neurons in patients that fired selectively to pictures of former President Bill Clinton, The Beatles, or basketball player Michael Jordan. Each of these individual neurons behaved in a way that made the researchers believe that the cell was responding to a distillation of experience. "The neuron is responding to a concept, not a picture," says Dr. Quian Quiroga. Moreover, each neuron acted as a trigger for recalling the concept they helped encode.

During a follow-up study at UCLA last year, the researchers showed 13 new volunteers wired to neural electrodes a set of 48 short video segments. In part, they wanted to see if neurons attuned any differently to moving pictures and changing scenery.

In fact, some cells did respond strongly to one video clip but not to others. In one patient, the researchers found a neuron that acted up only to The Simpsons cartoon series. "The neuron would spring to life when you showed the video of The Simpsons," says Dr. Fried.

To be sure, few of us likely have a special brain cell devoted to Jennifer Aniston or Homer Simpson. Our cells are sensitive to more than brand names. They can attune themselves quickly to new people or places, often within a day. While monitoring one new patient's brain, Dr. Quian Quiroga was surprised to encounter a neuron that already had him in mind.

"Suddenly," he says, "I find a neuron firing in response to me."

Write to Robert Lee Hotz at sciencejournal@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A14
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