When Does Your Baby Become Conscious

Summary:

New research shows that babies display glimmers of consciousness and memory as early as 5 months old. For decades, neuroscientists have been searching for an unmistakable signal of consciousness in electrical brain activity. Such a sign could determine whether minimally conscious or anesthetized adults are aware—and when consciousness begins in babies. Studies on adults show a particular pattern of brain activity: When your senses detect something, such as a moving object, the vision center of your brain activates, even if the object goes by too fast for you to notice. But if the object remains in your visual field for long enough, the signal travels from the back of the brain to the prefrontal cortex, which holds the image in your mind long enough for you to notice. Scientists see a spike in brain activity when the senses pick something up, and another signal, the "late slow wave," when the prefrontal cortex gets the message. The whole process takes less than one-third of a second. Researchers in France wondered if such a two-step pattern might be present in infants. The team monitored infants' brain activity through caps fitted with electrodes. More than 240 babies participated, but two-thirds were too squirmy for the movement-sensitive caps. The remaining 80 (ages 5 months, 12 months, or 15 months) were shown a picture of a face on a screen for a fraction of a second. Cognitive neuroscientist Sid Kouider of CNRS, the French national research agency, in Paris watched for swings in electrical activity, called event-related potentials (ERPs), in the babies' brains. In babies who were at least 1 year old, Kouider saw an ERP pattern similar to an adult's, but it was about three times slower. The team was surprised to see that the 5-month-olds also showed a late slow wave, although it was weaker and more drawn out than in the older babies. Kouider speculates that the late slow wave may be present in babies as young as 2 months. This late slow wave may indicate conscious thought, Kouider and colleagues report online today in Science. The wave, feedback from the prefrontal cortex, suggests that the image is stored briefly in the baby's temporary "working memory." And consciousness, Kouider says, is composed of working memory. Comparing infant brain waves to adult patterns is tricky, says Charles Nelson, a neuropsychologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "ERP components change dramatically over the first few years of life," he writes in an e-mail. "I would be reluctant to attribute the same mental operation (i.e., consciousness) in infants as in adults simply because of similar patterns of brain activity." Kouider next hopes to explore how these signals of consciousness connect to learning, especially language development. "We make the assumption that babies are learning very quickly and that they're fully unconscious of what they learn," Kouider says. "Maybe that's not true."

Personal Reaction:

It would be amazing if infants were conscious and developing memories at five months. This would open doors for psychologist too in the development of children. If infants are indeed conscious and developing memories this early then it will help parents to understand that what they are doing with their infants affects them for the rest of their lives.

Connection:

We looked at the human brain, but we never really talked about infant brains and I believe this is incredible. I always thought infants were never really conscious until a year old or so but this research is saying five months. This will do so much in helping understand the brain.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/04/when-does-your-baby-become-consc.html?ref=hp

 

Color-Changing Hare Can't Keep Up With Climate Change

Summary:

For hares, fashion is a life or death proposition. Whereas Peter Rabbit could always jump down his hole to escape a fox, his cousin, the hare, has to rely on blending in with his environment to avoid detection. But as the climate warms, hares may no longer be able to stay in sync with their environment. The animals will be switching from earthy brown to snowy white or vice versa at the wrong time and becoming targets for hungry predators. After more than a decade of studying snowshoe hares in the Rocky Mountains, L. Scott Mills, a wildlife biologist at the University of Montana, Missoula, noticed that the animals were beginning to stick out more than usual. In winter their coats turn white; in summer they are a mottled brown. But Mills was beginning to see white hares on brown backgrounds. To figure out what was going on, he and his colleagues put radio tags on about 50 hares in each of three winters, two of which represented extremes in weather. The year 2010 was quite warm, with snow cover lasting 160 days. The next year was the opposite, one of the coldest on record, and snow persisted on the ground for 190 days. Each week, the researchers tracked down all the animals they could find and noted how well their coat color matched the local background by determining the percentage of white fur and of snow cover. They considered the hares mismatched if the coat color was 60% or more different from the surrounding 10 meters. The hares couldn’t figure out the date they started to change color. Each year, the animals started to molt around the same time—10 October in fall and 10 April in spring. "That happened regardless of whether there was a ton of snow on the ground or not," Mills says. In the fall, switching to white took 40 days. In the spring, the changeover to brown took between 30 and 50 days and lasted longer in the colder years, Mills says. "They do have some ability to speed up or put on the brakes [on color change]." Mills is now trying to quantify the effects of a mismatch to determine just how much easier a wrong-color hare is to catch. He suspects that they will be very easy prey, which is good and bad news. The bad news is that a lot of hares will die. The good news is that there will be a lot of pressure on the hares to evolve a new calendar for molting. Already, some hares in different parts of the country change color at different times of the year, and a few living on the Pacific coast don't change at all. "It makes me optimistic that they can adapt by evolutionary change," Mills says.

Personal Reaction:

It’s hard to grasp that things we are doing every day such as driving a car, running the air conditioning, and transporting food is causing our climate to change and in turn causing the hares to not be able to change color at the right time. It’s amazing that a later winter could mean life or death for many hares. This is definitely evolution at its finest.

Connection:

We heard a presentation about the effects of global warming on the planet. The presentation only looked at what global warming was doing to the earth, but it’s important to look at what is happening to animals too. It’s their planet too.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/04/color-changing-hare-cant-keep-up.html?ref=hp&utm_source=buffer&buffer_share=3e96f

Could Wood Feed the World?

Summary:

The main ingredient of wood, cellulose, is one of the most abundant organic compounds on Earth and a dream source of renewable fuel. Now, bioengineers suggest that it could feed the hungry as well. In a new study, researchers have found a way to turn cellulose into starch, the most common carbohydrate in the human diet. Now, for the first time, it appears there may be a practical way that cellulose could also feed people, says bioprocess engineer Y.-H. Percival Zhang of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. Zhang and his colleagues focused on starch, which makes up as much as 40% of people's diets. The idea of turning cellulose into starch is one rooted in the similarities between the compounds: Cellulose is composed of hundreds to thousands of molecules of the sugar glucose, and starch compounds are made of glucose as well, although the sugar is bonded together in different ways. To make the conversion, the researchers took genes from certain species of bacteria, soil fungi, and potatoes and then genetically modified Escherichia coli, a different bacterium and a common lab model, to produce the needed enzymes. One set of these enzymes break cellulose down into smaller molecules, while the other set builds these components into starch. Then they mixed this cocktail of enzymes with cellulose in a glass vessel. So far, the process converts up to nearly a third of the cellulose into amylose, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That compound, which is a white powder when dried, can not only be added to food but can also be made into transparent, flexible, biodegradable plastics and store hydrogen for energy applications. Zhang and his colleagues even tried some of the final product: "No taste in the beginning," Zhang says. "After chewing for a while, it tasted slightly sweet." The rest of the cellulose is turned into glucose, which can be fermented into biofuel. "No glucose released from the cellulose was wasted," Zhang says.

Personal Reaction:

I think this is incredible. It would be amazing if we could feed the world on wood! The process is still expensive, but if they learn how to do it in a less expensive way then the cost will go down. It just takes some time. This is definitely a step in the right direction to feeding a hungry world. I just worry about the loss of trees. If that’s even a concern.

Connection:

We had several presentations about trying to feed a hungry world and this process wasn’t mentioned and I thought it was very interesting. I’m surprised no one mentioned it in their presentations but this would be a great way to feed the world!  

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/04/could-wood-feed-the-world.html?ref=hp

How to Feed a Hungry World

Summary:

With the world's population expected to grow from 6.8 billion today to 9.1 billion by 2050, a certain Malthusian alarmism has set in: how will all these extra mouths be fed? The world's population more than doubled from 3 billion between 1961 and 2007, yet agricultural output kept pace — and current projections suggest it will continue to do so. Admittedly, climate change adds a large degree of uncertainty to projections of agricultural output, but that just underlines the importance of monitoring and research to refine those predictions. That aside, in the words of one official at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the task of feeding the world's population in 2050 in itself seems “easily possible”. What is needed is a second green revolution — an approach that Britain's Royal Society aptly describes as the “sustainable intensification of global agriculture”. Such a revolution will require a wholesale realignment of priorities in agricultural research. There is an urgent need for new crop varieties that offer higher yields but use less water, fertilizers or other inputs — created, for example, through long-neglected research on modifying roots— and for crops that are more resistant to drought, heat, submersion and pests. Equally crucial is lower-tech research into basics such as crop rotation, mixed farming of animals and plants on smallholder farms, soil management and curbing waste. (Between one-quarter and one-third of the food produced worldwide is lost or spoiled.) Developing nations could score substantial gains in productivity by making better use of modern technologies and practices. But that requires money: the FAO estimates that to meet the 2050 challenge, investment throughout the agricultural chain in the developing world must double to US$83 billion a year. Most of that money needs to go towards improving agricultural infrastructure, from production to storage and processing. In Africa, the lack of roads also hampers agricultural productivity, making it expensive and difficult for farmers to get synthetic fertilizers. And research agendas need to be focused on the needs of the poorest and most resource-limited countries, where the majority of the world's population lives and where population growth over the next decades will be greatest. Above all, reinventing farming requires a multidisciplinary approach that involves not just biologists, agronomists and farmers, but also ecologists, policy-makers and social scientists. Genetically modified (GM) crops are an important part of the sustainable agriculture toolkit, alongside traditional breeding techniques. But they are not a panacea for world hunger, despite many assertions to the contrary by their proponents. In practice, the first generation of GM crops has been largely irrelevant to poor countries. Overstating these benefits can only increase public distrust of GM organisms, as it plays to concerns about the perceived privatization and monopolization of agriculture, and a focus on profits. Nor are science and technology by themselves a panacea for world hunger. Poverty, not lack of food production, is the root cause. The world currently has more than enough food, but some 1 billion people still go hungry because they cannot afford to pay for it. The 2008 food crisis, which pushed around 100 million people into hunger, was not so much a result of a food shortage as of a market volatility — with causes going far beyond supply and demand — that sent prices through the roof and sparked riots in several countries. Economics can hit food supply in other ways. The countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development pay subsidies to their farmers that total some US$1 billion a day. This makes it very difficult for farmers in developing nations to gain a foothold in world markets. Nonetheless, research can have a decisive impact by enabling sustainable and productive agriculture — a proven recipe (as is treating neglected diseases) for creating a virtuous circle that lifts communities out of poverty.

Personal Reaction:

I agree with this article. As a nation we need to put more money into finding better ways to produce food. And as the article said there is enough food for everyone they just can’t afford it. I think this will be the case in the future; there will be enough food, they won’t be able to afford it. We should be working on fixing that or working on a way to make food less expensive.

Connection:

There were several presentations about trying to feed a hungry world. They spoke about fixing the way we farm. I agree so much with this. It needs to happen!

See-through brains offer scientists a clearer view of disease

Summary:

The brain is now transparent! Scientists at Stanford University have reported that they have made a whole mouse brain, and part of a human brain, transparent, so that networks of neurons that receive and send information can be highlighted in stunning color and viewed in all their three-dimensional complexity without having to slice up the brain. That can be very dangerous for patients. This new research tool will help to accelerate investigations of Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and a variety of other brain maladies. This has also led to a significant insight into the peculiar characteristics of neurons associated with Down syndrome and Autism. There have been other methods of making the brain transparent, however, this new method is unlike these other methods because it preserves the biochemistry of the brain so well that researchers can test it over and over again with chemicals that highlight specific structures within a brain and provide clues to its past activity. There is also the possibility of studying long-saved human brains. There are several ways to make tissue transparent. This new method is a substance called a hydrogel, a material that is mostly water held together by larger molecules to give it some solidity. Chung, one of the researchers, said the hydrogel formed a kind of mesh that permeates the brain and connects to most of the molecules, but not to the lipids, which include fats and some other substances. The brain is then put into a soapy solution and an electric current is applied. This drives the solution through the brain which washes out the lipids. Once these lipids are out the brain is transparent but it’s biochemistry remains intact. This will give doctors and scientist a much clearer view of what is happening to the brains of people infected with those horrible diseases.

Personal Reaction:

This article made me extremely hopeful for the future of brain research. I feel the brain is the most precious organ we have and when it is affected with things out of our control it breaks my heart. My grandmother had Alzheimers and it hurt my mom a great deal to go through that, but if we had the technology to understand what was happening then maybe families won’t have to suffer anymore. My old babysitter also has a daughter who is autistic and if scientist knew what was happening in the brain of her daughter maybe we as a society could better help and teach this kids with special needs. Maybe their lives don’t have to be so grim. This is incredible.

Connection:

In class we have had presentations on schizophrenia, Alzheimers, concussions, and maybe other brain related maladies. When first hearing about all the things that can happen to a brain I was worried that it wasn’t something we were going to be able to fix. I even worried that my child could be born with any of these diseases, but with this new research it sparks hope back into me because we are getting closer and closer to understanding the brain. Which means we are getting closer to being able to cure diseases affecting the brain. This would give the lives back to so many people! It’s just amazing to think about.

http://www.nwpf.org/News.aspx?Item=4256

Russian Team Reports New Life in Antarctica's Lake Vostok

Summary:

Lake Vostok in Antarctica contains life – this includes at least one form of life not found elsewhere on Earth, Russian scientists announced today. Analyses of water samples that were collected from the lake earlier this year have revealed a species of bacteria not belonging to any known subkingdoms. "We call it unidentified and 'unclassified' life," the team's leader, Sergei Bulat of the St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, told Russian news agency RIA Novosti. The bacteria's DNA was less than 86% similar to known bacterial DNA, indicating that it was a new species, Bulat said. The Russian team retrieved the samples in January, one year after successfully completing the 4000-meter drilling through ice to reach the lake's surface. To confirm the preliminary finding, the team plans to collect new samples of water from the lake during a return expedition, reportedly in May, although that's the middle of the Antarctic winter.

Correlation:

                Well later in the semester we will be talking about life on this planet and Lake Vostok has been thought to be barren for decades. If we are finding new species that are existing in extremely cold places then maybe there is hope that there is life on another planet!

Personal Reaction:

I love anything that the Russians do because they are always finding interesting things. I think it would be cool if they found a new species because that will lead to more excursions in the future. It might also help identify things found on other planets.  

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/03/russian-team-reports-new-life-in.html?ref=hp

Growing New Teeth With the help of Mice

Summary:

                How would you feel if you lost an adult tooth? You would probably be angry because you would have to get dentures to replace the tooth because adults can’t grow new ones – unless you have a mouse kidney handy! In new research studies, researchers are injecting human gum tissue that was extracted during oral surgery into the molars of fetal mice. After giving the cells a week to get used to each other, the scientists then implant the chimeric conoction into the protective tissue surrounding the kidneys of living mice. 20% of the cells developed into objects recognizable as teeth. They are complete with the root structures missing from artificial tooth implants. The next step is to transplant these so-called “bioteeth” back into human mouths and see if they grow into something that we can chew on! The research is still underway and results will be published soon.

Correlation:

                Last week we talked about stem cells being in our teeth and if we lose an adult tooth that has valuable stem cells it is nice to know there is a way to get them back. It is also nice not to have to be toothless.

Personal Reaction:

                I would definitely use mouse kidneys to get a tooth back. Stem cells are important. I would if this means they can grow more teeth if they could use the stem cells from these teeth too. That would be helpful. Either way I am just glad to know that if I lose an adult tooth dentures don’t have to be my first option.   

 

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/03/scienceshot-growing-new-teeth-wi.html?ref=hp

Facebook Preferences Predict Traits

Summary:

Everyone knows about the “Like” button on Facebook. Well what most people don’t know is that this simple button can tell a lot about your personality traits. They can reveal things such as sexual orientation, drug use, and religious affiliation, according to a study that analyzed the online behavior of thousands of volunteers. What you like defines you and researchers have known for decades that the people’s person attributes – gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, and personality type – correlate with their choice of products, concepts, and activities. You know there is a difference of people who go to the Opera as opposed to a NASCAR race. Michal Kosinski, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge, and Microsoft Research led a team to discover just how much the like button on Facebook predicts our personality traits. To get the data on intelligence so that Kosinski would have something to compare with the likes on Facebook he came up with a myPersonality app on Facebook. The volunteers of the myPersonality app answer survey questions and take a series of psychological tests that measure things such as intelligence, competitiveness, extraversion versus introversion, and general satisfaction with life. Kosinski and his team will not only get this data but also data from the user’s profile and friends network. Facebook likes are an amazingly good predictor of personal attributes. The most accurate predictions were for gender (93%) and race (95%). However, it was still able to predict more sensitive personal attributes such as homosexuality (88% men, 75% women), religion (82%), political party (85%), and even use of cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs (73%, 70%, and 65%). When Facebook’s in-house social scientist were contacted about this discovery they were hardly surprised. Facebook allows you to share things you fine interesting and it also allows you to login on to third party sites so you can take your likes with you everywhere.

Correlation:

We have been speaking about the brain and how it works. This correlates directly with that topic because we are unknowingly “liking” things on a social media site that defines us. This really brings to new light how things we find interesting online plays in our personalities.

Personal Reaction:

I find this a bit scary because this is public information and employers can look at this data and can judge how you will work based on things you like on Facebook. We might not need to come in for interviews or meet people in person for them to know what we are like. And I’m not sure just how accurate this research is because sometimes I like something on Facebook to acknowledge what a person has said not that I necessarily agree with it. It’ll be interesting to see this research in more depth.     

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/03/facebook-preferences-predict-per.html?ref=hp

Coal Plants Are Victims of Their Own Economics

Summary:

In the last presidential election it was debated that Obama’s administration and his Environmental Protection Agency would put a grid lock on the growth of coal companies. However, due to recent research it turns out the case for the lack of growth in the coal companies is due to the companies themselves. Due to a detailed analysis of coal plant finances and economics, coal is losing its battle with other power sources mostly on its merits. Even though coal has been the leading source for electricity in the United States it has dropped from 50% to 38% in the last 6 years. Plans for more than 150 new coal-fired power plants have been canceled since the mid-2000s, plants that already exist are being shut down, and only one new coal-fired power plant went online in the United Stated in 2012. David Schlissel, an energy economist and founder of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, decided to investigate the reasons for the decline. He took a look at the economics of the industry and the detailed finances of individual power plants. Schlissel and his team found several reasons for coal’s decline. He says that construction costs have risen sharply in the past decade. The cost of natural gas has plummeted since the mid-2000s and if coal-power fired power has to compete with natural gas on its economic merits then it struggles. In 2006 there was an electric generating plant in Mississippi that had two coal-fired generators and two natural-gas-powered generators. The coal-fired generators produced 80% of the power which is where the plant got most of its power. While the two natural-gas-fired generators produced just 30% of the power they were capable of. By 2012, those percentages were reversed: the coal generators produced just 25%, while the natural-gas generators produced 84%. These trends indicate that the company profited by burning natural gas more and coal less. Another reason coal is struggling is because many power plants that burn it are aging to the point that more parts break and it is becoming very expensive to maintain says Schlissel. Sixty percent of the nation’s coal plants are more than 40 years old and the retiring age of coal plants is 53 years. It’s hard to justify installing expensive scrubbers to plants that aren’t going to produce electricity for long. The cost for shipping coal by train, barge and truck are large and rising, which adds significantly to the fuel’s cost. Lastly utilities have incentives to move to natural gas if they can.

Correlation:

In class we have been speaking about other alternative fuels and coming up with new ways to get power. This really emphasizes the need for new forms of energy. It also shows that coal is on the up and out which means working towards a new form of energy is going to become a big project here in the near future.

Personal Reaction:

This article made me a little happy because it puts the pressure on scientists to come up with new forms of energy and quickly. Coal is no longer a viable source because it is becoming too expensive to keep it around.        

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/02/coal-plants-are-victims-of-their.html?ref=hp

Yellowstone Wolves Need Help from Beaver

Summary:

The wolves of Yellowstone Nation Park had almost vanished completely over a century ago. Now, 18 years after their return, the wolves are often credited for restoring the ecological balance of one of America’s wildest landscapes. However, new studies might suggest that the wolves can’t turn the ecological clock back completely – at least not without help from the beaver. The research focuses on riparian, or streamside, habitats in Yellowstone’s northern range. About 25 to 30 wolves now live in the northern range, but the area is still largely lacking beavers that had once populated its small streams. This is because of an elk population boom – a consequence of the extermination of wolves. This left beavers deprived of the willow trees they need for food and construction material. The elks are eating the willows which leave the beavers to starve and die out. The willows also depend on the beavers because the dams that the beavers build create mud flats where new willows can sprouts; they also raise the water table, supplying more water to willow roots. When the wolves vanished, the willows of the northern range faced a double whammy: too many elk, too few beaver. The result was a scarcity of the willow patches needed for a healthy riparian zone. To determine if the wolves could rescue the willow trees, Kristin Marshall, a PH.D. student at Colorado State University, charted willow growth at four sites in the northern range. At the sites they fenced in some plots to provide total protections from browsing elk. They also built dams. After 10 years, the willows that were fenced in and suffered no browsing at all were far shorter than 2 meters, which is the threshold height that makes willows tall enough to reproduce. The willows along the dam didn’t make the threshold either. Other researchers claim that the system just needs more time to bounce back. Recovery of an ecosystem that is heavily damaged takes time.

Correlation:

                This type of research will enable us to determine if it’s possible to fix the damage we have done to ecosystems or if our damage is permanent. This could lead to big discoveries in the cause and effect of wild life on each other and humans on wild life. This will definitely make you think twice before doing something in nature because it seems one little change could affect more than just one thing.

Personal Reaction:

                I choose this article because I have complained many times about a certain bug or insect and wishing that it would just go extinct. I have never actually thought about the consequences that would have on other forms of life in nature. Even the most disgusting animals serve a purpose. It is just hard to imagine one small thing affecting so many other creatures, but if a wolf and a beaver need each other to survive I guess it’s not so hard to believe.  

Website:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/02/yellowstone-wolves-need-help-fro.html?ref=hp

Rumpelstiltskin Molecule Spins Toxic Ions into Gold Nuggets

Summary:     
          Mr. Fritz Haber won the 1918 Nobel Prize in chemistry for inventing the process for converting the ultra-stable form of nitrogen in the air to the more reactive chemical form required to make fertilizer. He then spent a good chuck of the rest of his career trying to do the opposite chemical trick: pulling reactive gold ions out of seawater and converting them to the more stable form found in gold nuggets, bars, and bullion. However, he was unsuccessful. But Delftia acidovorans has succeeded where Haber failed. The gold-loving microbe manufactures and secretes delftibactin, which forces gold ions to precipitate out of solution. As the bacterica carry out this job, they not only remove highly toxic gold ions from their surroundings, but they also create the neutrally charged gold nuggets on which it then makes a home. Delftibactin has been isolated for the first time and scientist are hopefully in trying to harvest gold from the ocean. However, there is a problem. Delftibactin also carries out the same trick with iron ions, so if the scientists try it on a large scale they might get lumps of iron instead.
Correlation:

                If scientist are able to do this then it could help bring more currency into the world. The more gold we have backing money than the more we can produce. This could really help out the United States and it would also help out the countries we support. If we have more currency than we will be able to send more support to the countries that need it from us. This would also help to pay off our debts to China so that our children aren’t the ones left with cleaning up the mess we made.

Personal Reaction:

I choose this article because not having enough money is a problem that everyone faces at some point in their lives. I recently just had an experience where having a gold nugget would have really benefited me greatly. So I found this article very interesting because I didn’t even know something like this was possible! Hopefully it works!  

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/02/scienceshot-rumpelstiltskin-mole.html