Purkinje Neurons
Of the 100 billion neurons in your brain. Purkinje (pronounced purr-kin-jee) neurons are some of the largest. Among other things, these cells are the masters of motor coordination in the cerebellar cortex. Toxic exposure such as alcohol and lithium, autoimmune diseases, genetic mutations including autism and neurodegenerative diseases can negatively affect human Purkinje cells.

Naives” with minimal prior Internet search experience (top), and “Savvies” with a lot of Web search experience (bottom). Images show patterns of activity for first brain scans (left) and second brain scans (right). Note during the second brain scans, which is after Internet training, both Naives and Savvies have similar brain patterns.

First-time Internet Users Find Boost In Brain Function After Just One Week
ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2009) ­ You can teach an old dog new tricks, say UCLA scientists who found that middle-aged and older adults with little Internet experience were able to trigger key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning after just one week of surfing the Web.

The findings, presented Oct. 19 at the 2009 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, suggest that Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults.

As the brain ages, a number of structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, reductions in cell activity and increases in deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which can impact cognitive function.

Research has shown that mental stimulation similar to that which occurs in individuals who frequently use the Internet may affect the efficiency of cognitive processing and alter the way the brain encodes new information.

“We found that for older people with minimal experience, performing Internet searches for even a relatively short period of time can change brain activity patterns and enhance function,” said study author Dr. Gary Small, a professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the author of “iBrain,” a book that describes the impact of new technology on the brain and behavior.

The UCLA team worked with 24 neurologically normal volunteers between the ages of 55 and 78. Prior to the study, half the participants used the Internet daily, while the other half had very little experience. Age, educational level and gender were similar between the two groups.

Study participants performed Web searches while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which recorded the subtle brain-circuitry changes experienced during this activity. This type of scan tracks brain activity by measuring the level of cerebral blood flow during cognitive tasks.

After the initial brain scan, participants went home and conducted Internet searches for one hour a day for a total of seven days over a two-week period. These practice searches involved using the Internet to answer questions about various topics by exploring different websites and reading information. Participants then received a second brain scan using the same Internet simulation task but with different topics.

The first scan of participants with little Internet experience demonstrated brain activity in regions controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities, which are located in the frontal, temporal, parietal, visual and posterior cingulate regions, researchers said. The second brain scan of these participants, conducted after the practice Internet searches at home, demonstrated activation of these same regions, as well as triggering of the middle frontal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus – areas of the brain known to be important in working memory and decision-making.

Thus, after Internet training at home, participants with minimal online experience displayed brain activation patterns very similar to those seen in the group of savvy Internet users – after just a brief period of time.

“The results suggest that searching online may be a simple form of brain exercise that might be employed to enhance cognition in older adults,” said Teena D. Moody, the study’s first author and a senior research associate at the Semel Institute at UCLA.

When performing an Internet search, the ability to hold important information in working memory and to extract the important points from competing graphics and words is essential, Moody noted.

Previous research by the UCLA team found that searching online resulted in a more than twofold increase in brain activation in older adults with prior experience, compared with those with little Internet experience. According to Small, the new findings suggest that it may take only days for those with minimal experience to match the activity levels of those with years of experience.

Additional studies may address the impact of the Internet on younger individuals and help identify aspects of online searching that generate the greatest levels of brain activation.

The study was funded by the Parvin Foundation.

Susan Y. Bookheimer, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Semel Institute at UCLA, was also an author of this study. Himaja Gaddipati, a UCLA neuroscience student, and Jennifer Brace, a UCLA doctoral student in neuroscience, contributed to the work.

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Adapted from materials provided by University of California – Los Angeles.

http://www.neok12.com/

Giant rats, tiny parrots found in ‘lost world’

08/09/2009 3:05:49 PM

CBC News
An expedition to what’s being called a lost world inside an extinct volcano in Papua New Guinea has discovered more than 40 new species, including giant rats, frogs with fangs and a new species of bat.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 12, 2009) ­ Water is familiar to everyone­it shapes our bodies and our planet. But despite this abundance, the molecular structure of water has remained a mystery, with the substance exhibiting many strange properties that are still poorly understood. Recent work at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and several universities in Sweden and Japan , however, is shedding new light on water’s molecular idiosyncrasies, offering insight into its strange bulk properties.

In all, water exhibits 66 known anomalies, including a strangely varying density, large heat capacity and high surface tension. Contrary to other “normal” liquids, which become denser as they get colder, water reaches its maximum density at about 4 degrees Celsius. Above and below this temperature, water is less dense; this is why, for example, lakes freeze from the surface down. Water also has an unusually large capacity to store heat, which stabilizes the temperature of the oceans, and a high surface tension, which allows insects to walk on water, droplets to form and trees to transport water to great heights.

“Understanding these anomalies is very important because water is the ultimate basis for our existence: no water, no life,” said SLAC scientist Anders Nilsson, who is leading the experimental efforts. “Our work helps explain these anomalies on the molecular level at temperatures which are relevant to life.”

How the molecules arrange themselves in water’s solid form, ice, was long ago established: the molecules form a tight “tetrahedral” lattice, with each molecule binding to four others. Discovering the molecular arrangement in liquid water, however, is proving to be much more complex. For over 100 years, this structure has been the subject of intense debate. The current textbook model holds that, since ice is made up of tetrahedral structures, liquid water should be similar, but less structured since heat creates disorder and breaks bonds. As ice melts, the story goes, the tetrahedral structures loosen their grip, breaking apart as the temperature rises, but all still striving to remain as tetrahedral as possible, resulting in a smooth distribution around distorted, partially broken tetrahedral structures.

Recently, Nilsson and colleagues directed powerful X-rays generated by the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource at SLAC and the SPring-8 synchrotron facility in Japan at samples of liquid water. These experiments suggested that the textbook model of water at ambient conditions was incorrect and that, unexpectedly, two distinct structures, either very disordered or very tetrahedral, exist no matter the temperature.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the researchers revealed the additional discovery that the two types of structure are spatially separated, with the tetrahedral structures existing in “clumps” made of up to about 100 molecules surrounded by disordered regions; the liquid is a fluctuating mix of the two structures at temperatures ranging from ambient to all the way up near the boiling point. As the temperature of water increases, fewer and fewer of these clumps exist; but they are always there to some degree, in clumps of a similar size. The researchers also discovered that the disordered regions themselves become more disordered as the temperature rises.

“One can visualize this as a crowded dance restaurant, with some people sitting at large tables, taking up quite a bit of room­like the tetrahedral component in water­and other people on the dance floor, standing close together and moving slower or faster depending on the mood or ‘temperature’ of the restaurant­like the molecules in the disordered regions can be excited by heat, the dancers can be excited and move faster with the music,” Nilsson said. “There’s an exchange when people sitting decide to get up to dance and other dancers sit down to rest. When the dance floor really gets busy, tables can also be moved out of the way to allow for more dancers, and when things cool back off, more tables can be brought in.”

This more detailed understanding of the molecular structure and dynamics of liquid water at ambient temperatures mirrors theoretical work on “supercooled” water: an unusual state in which water has not turned into ice even though it is far below the freezing point. In this state, theorists postulate, the liquid is made up of a continuously fluctuating mix of tetrahedral and more disordered structures, with the ratio of the two depending on temperature­just as Nilsson and his colleagues have found to be the case with water at the ambient temperatures important for life.

“Previously, hardly anyone thought that such fluctuations leading to distinct local structures existed at ambient temperatures,” Nilsson said. “But that’s precisely what we found.”

This new work explains, in part, the liquid’s strange properties. Water’s density maximum at 4 degrees Celsius can be explained by the fact that the tetrahedral structures are of lower density, which does not vary significantly with temperature, while the more disordered regions­which are of higher density­become more disordered and so less dense with increasing temperature. Likewise, as water heats, the percentage of molecules in the more disordered state increases, allowing this excitable structure to absorb significant amounts of heat, which leads to water’s high heat capacity. Water’s tendency to form strong hydrogen bonds explains the high surface tension that insects take advantage of when walking across water.

Connecting the molecular structure of water with its bulk properties in this way is tremendously important for fields ranging from medicine and biology to climate and energy research.

“If we don’t understand this basic life material, how can we study the more complex life materials­like proteins­that are immersed in water?” asked Postdoctoral Researcher Congcong Huang, who conducted the X-ray scattering experiments. “We must understand the simple before we can understand the complex.”

Destination Reading Meeting #2

Evaluation of Software

Thursday February 26, 2009

Anna Ingham Meeting Room

1:30 pm

1.         Review of Survey #1 Results

2.         Review and Discussion of Survey #2 (Online) Results

3.         Application of Destination Reading in the Classroom

§         How was the software applied in your classroom?

§         Disadvantages / Advantages

o       What improvements are needed for the software?

4.         Recommendations

§         How do we deploy this software?

o       Do we license all Middle Years ELA classes?

o       What PD is required?

§         Should the software be purchased?

Click on the Jing page link at the top of the Blog.

Put away those flashcards and

captivate students with SMART

Board interactive whiteboard and

PowerPoint activities!

French Vocabulary Program

Do you have students who would be interested ?

2009 VSF Registration
Opens Nov. 1

link:    http://www.virtualsciencefair.com/