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By Gary Stix Popular neuroscience books have made much in recent years of the possibility that the adult brain is capable of restoring lost function or even enhancing cognition through sustained mental or physical activities. One piece of evidence often cited is a 14-year-old study that that shows that London taxi drivers have enlarged hippocampi, brain areas that store a mental map of one's surroundings. Taxi drivers, it is assumed, have better spatial memory because they must constantly distinguish the streets and landmarks of Shepherd's Bush from those of Brixton. A mini-industry now peddles books with titles like The Brain that Changes Itself or Rewire Your Brain: Think Your Way to a Better Life. Along with self-help guides, the value of games intended to enhance what is known as neuroplasticity are still a topic of heated debate because no one knows for sure whether or not they improve intelligence, memory, reaction times or any other facet of cognition. Beyond the controversy, however, scientists have taken a number of steps in recent years to start to answer the basic biological questions that may ultimately lead to a deeper understanding of neuroplasticity. This type of research does not look at whether psychological tests used to assess cognitive deficits can be refashioned with cartoonlike graphics and marketed as games intended to improve mental skills. Rather, these studies attempt to provide a simple definition of how mutable the brain really is at all life stages, from infancy onward into adulthood. One ongoing question that preoccupies the basic scientists pursuing this line of research is how routine everyday activities—sleep, wakefulness, even any sort of movement—may affect the ability to perceive things in the surrounding environment. One of the leaders in these efforts is Michael Stryker, who researches neuroplasticity at the University of California San Francisco. Stryker headed a group that in 2010 published a study on what happened when mice run on top of a Styrofoam ball floating on air. They found that neurons in a brain region that processes visual signals—the visual cortex—nearly doubled their firing rate when the mice ran on the ball. © 2014 Scientific American
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19834 - Posted: 07.15.2014
By BENEDICT CAREY PHILADELPHIA — The man in the hospital bed was playing video games on a laptop, absorbed and relaxed despite the bustle of scientists on all sides and the electrodes threaded through his skull and deep into his brain. "O.K., that's enough," he told doctors after more than an hour. "All those memory tests, it's exhausting." The man, Ralph, a health care worker who asked that his last name be omitted for privacy, has severe epilepsy; and the operation to find the source of his seizures had provided researchers an exquisite opportunity to study the biology of memory. The Department of Defense on Tuesday announced a $40 million investment in what has become the fastest-moving branch of neuroscience: direct brain recording. Two centers, one at the University of Pennsylvania and the other at the University of California, Los Angeles, won contracts to develop brain implants for memory deficits. Their aim is to develop new treatments for traumatic brain injury, the signature wound of the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Its most devastating symptom is the blunting of memory and reasoning. Scientists have found in preliminary studies that they can sharpen some kinds of memory by directly recording, and stimulating, circuits deep in the brain. Unlike brain imaging, direct brain recording allows scientists to conduct experiments while listening to the brain's internal dialogue in real time, using epilepsy patients like Ralph or people with Parkinson's disease as active collaborators. The technique has provided the clearest picture yet of how neural circuits function, and raised hopes of new therapies for depression and anxiety as well as cognitive problems. But experts also worry about the possible side effects of directly tampering with memory. © 2014 The New York Times Company
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 19: Language and Hemispheric Asymmetry
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 15: Language and Our Divided Brain
Link ID: 19810 - Posted: 07.09.2014
by Bethany Brookshire One day when I came in to the office, my air conditioning unit was making a weird rattling sound. At first, I was slightly annoyed, but then I chose to ignore it and get to work. In another 30 minutes, I was completely oblivious to the noise. It wasn't until my cubicle neighbor Meghan Rosen came in and asked about the racket that I realized the rattle was still there. My brain had habituated to the sound. Habituation, the ability to stop noticing or responding to an irrelevant signal, is one of the simplest forms of learning. But it turns out that at the level of a brain cell, it's a far more complex process than scientists previously thought. In the June 18 Neuron, Mani Ramaswami of Trinity College Dublin proposes a new framework to describe how habituation might occur in our brains. The paper not only offers a new mechanism to help us understand one of our most basic behaviors, it also demonstrates how taking the time to integrate new findings into a novel framework can help push a field forward. Our ability to ignore the irrelevant and familiar has been a long-known feature of human learning. It's so simple, even a sea slug can do it. Because the ability to habituate is so simple, scientists hypothesized that the mechanism behind it must also be simple. The previous framework for habituation has been synaptic depression, a decrease in chemical release. When one brain cell sends a signal to another, it releases chemical messengers into a synapse, the small gap between neurons. Receptors on the other side pick up this excitatory signal and send the message onward. But in habituation, neurons would release fewer chemicals, making the signal less likely to hit the other side. Fewer chemicals, fewer signals, and you've habituated. Simple. But, as David Glanzman, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles points out, there are problems with this idea. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19772 - Posted: 06.25.2014
By DOUGLAS QUENQUA When it comes to forming memories that involve recalling a personal experience, neuroscientists are of two minds. Some say that each memory is stored in a single neuron in a region of the brain called the hippocampus. But a new study is lending weight to the theory of neuroscientists who believe that every memory is spread out, or distributed, across many neurons in that part of the brain. By watching patients with electrodes in their brains play a memory game, researchers found that each such memory is committed to cells distributed across the hippocampus. Though the proportion of cells responsible for each memory is small (about 2 percent of the hippocampus), the absolute number is in the millions. So the loss of any one cell should not have a noticeable effect on memory or mental acuity, said Peter N. Steinmetz, a research neurologist at the Dignity Health Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix and senior author of the study. "The significance of losing one cell is substantially reduced because you've got this whole population that's turning on" when you access a memory, he said. The findings also suggest that memory researchers "need to use techniques that allow us to look at the whole population of neurons" rather than focus on individual cells. The patients in the study, which is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, first memorized a list of words on a computer screen, then viewed a second list that included those words and others. When asked to identify words they had seen earlier, the patients displayed cell-firing activity consistent with the distributed model of memory. © 2014 The New York Times Company
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19763 - Posted: 06.24.2014
by Lauren Hitchings Our brain's ability to rapidly interpret and analyse new information may lie in the musical hum of our brainwaves. We continuously take in information about the world but establishing new neural connections and pathways – the process thought to underlie memory formation – is too slow to account for our ability to learn rapidly. Evan Antzoulatos and Earl Miller at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology decided to see if brainwaves – the surges of electricity produced by individual neurons firing en masse – play a role. They used EEG to observe patterns of electrical activity in the brains of monkeys as they taught the animals to categorise patterns of dots into two distinct groups. At first, they memorised which dots went where, but as the task became harder, they shifted to learning the rules that defined the categories. Humming brainwaves The researchers found that, initially, brainwaves of different frequencies were being produced independently by the prefrontal cortex and the striatum – two brain regions involved in learning. But as the monkeys made sense of the game, the waves began to synchronise and "hum" at the same frequency – with each category of dots having its own frequency. Miller says the synchronised brainwaves indicate the formation of a communication circuit between the two brain regions. He believes this happens before anatomical changes in brain connections take place, giving our minds time to think through various options when presented with new information before the right one gets laid down as a memory. Otherwise, the process is too time-consuming to account for the flexibility and speed of the human mind, says Miller. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19746 - Posted: 06.19.2014
by Bethany Brookshire When a cartoon character gets an idea, you know it. A lightbulb goes on over Wile E. Coyote's head, or a ding sounds as Goofy puts two and two together. While the lightbulb and sound effects are the stuff of cartoons, scientists can, in a way, watch learning in action. In a new study, a learning task in rats was linked to increases in activity patterns in groups of brain cells. The results might help scientists pin down what learning looks like at the nerve cell level, and give us a clue about how memories are made. Different areas of the brain communicate with each other, transferring information from one area to another for processing and interpretation. Brain cell meets brain cell at connections called synapses. But to transfer information between areas often takes more than one neuron firing a lonely signal. It takes cortical oscillations — networks of brain cells sending electrical signals in concert — over and over again for a message to transmit from one brain area to another. Changes in electrical fields increase the probability that neurons in a population will fire. These cortical oscillations are like a large crowd chanting. Not all voices may be yelling at once, some people may be ahead or behind, some may even be whispering, but you still hear an overwhelming "USA! USA!" Cortical oscillations can occur within a single brain area, or they can extend from one area to another. "The oscillation tells you what the other brain area is likely to 'see' when it gets that input," explains Leslie Kay, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago. Once the receiving area 'sees' the incoming oscillation, it may synchronize its own population firing, joining in the chant. "A synchronized pattern of oscillations in two separate brain regions serves to communicate between the two regions," says Kei Igarashi, a neuroscientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19742 - Posted: 06.17.2014
Virginia Morell Teaching isn't often seen in animals other than humans—and it's even more difficult to demonstrate in animals living in the wild rather than in a laboratory setting. But researchers studying the Australian superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) in the wild think the small songbirds (a male is shown in the photo above) practice the behavior. They regard a female fairy-wren sitting on her nest and incubating her eggs as the teacher, and her embryonic chicks as her pupils. She must teach her unhatched chicks a password—a call they will use after emerging to solicit food from their parents; the better they learn the password, the more they will be fed. Since 1992, there's been a well-accepted definition of teaching that consists of three criteria. First, the teacher must modify his or her behavior in the presence of a naive individual—which the birds do; the mothers increase their teaching (that is, the rate at which they make the call) when their chicks are in a late stage of incubation. Second, there must be a benefit to the pupil, which there clearly is. Scientists reported online yesterday in Behavioral Ecology that the fairy-wrens also pass the third criteria: There must be a cost to the teacher. And for the small birds, there can be a hefty price to pay. The more often a female repeats the password, the more likely she is to attract a parasitical cuckoo, which will sneak in and lay its eggs in her nest. From careful field observations, the scientists discovered that at nests that were parasitized, the females had recited their password 20 times an hour. But at nests that were not parasitized, the females had called only 10 times per hour. Superb fairy-wrens thus join a short but growing list of animal-teachers, such as rock ants, meerkats, and pied babblers. © 2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 6: Evolution of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19721 - Posted: 06.12.2014
by Ashley Yeager Being put under anesthesia as an infant may make it harder for a person to recall details or events when they grow older. Previous studies on animals had shown that anesthesia impairs parts of the brain that help with recollection. But it was not clear how this type of temporary loss of consciousness affected humans. Comparing the memory of 28 children ages 6 to 11 who had undergone anesthesia as infants to 28 children similar in age who had not been put under suggests that the early treatment impairs recollection later in life, researchers report June 9 in Neuropsychopharmacology. The team reported similar results for a small study on rats and notes that early anesthesia did not appear to affect the children's familiarity with objects and events or their IQ. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013.
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19714 - Posted: 06.10.2014
By Sadie Dingfelder Want to become famous in the field of neuroscience? You could go the usual route, spending decades collecting advanced degrees, slaving away in science labs and publishing your results. Or you could simply fall victim to a freak accident. The stars of local science writer Sam Kean's new book, "The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons," (which he'll discuss Saturday at Politics and Prose) took the latter route. Be it challenging the wrong guy to a joust, spinning out on a motorcycle, or suffering from a stroke, these folks sustained brain injuries with bizarre and fascinating results. One man, for instance, lost the ability to identify different kinds of animals but had no trouble naming plants and objects. Another man lost his short-term memory. The result? A diary filled with entries like: "I am awake for the very first time." "Now, I'm really awake." "Now, I'm really, completely awake." Unfortunate mishaps like these have advanced our understanding of how the gelatinous gray mass that (usually) stays hidden inside our skulls gives rise to thoughts, feelings and ideas, Kean says. "Traditionally, every major discovery in the history of neuroscience came about this way," he says. "We had no other way of looking at the brain for centuries and centuries, because we didn't have things like MRI machines." Rather than covering the case studies textbook-style, Kean provides all the gory details. Consider Phineas Gage. You may remember from Psych 101 that Gage, a railroad worker, survived having a metal rod launched through his skull. You might not know, however, that one doctor "shaved Gage's scalp and peeled off the dried blood and gelatinous brains. He then extracted skull fragments from the wound by sticking his fingers in from both ends, Chinese-finger-trap-style," as Kean writes in his new book. © 1996-2014 The Washington Post
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 14: Attention and Consciousness
Link ID: 19701 - Posted: 06.06.2014
Ewen Callaway By controlling rats' brain cells they had genetically engineered to respond to light, researchers were able to create fearful memories of events that never happened — and then to erase those memories again. Neuroscientists can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Experiments have confirmed a long-standing theory for how memories are made and stored in the brain. Researchers have created and erased frightening associations in rats' brains using light, providing the most direct demonstration yet that the strengthening and weakening of connections between neurons is the basis for memory. "This is the best evidence so far available, period," says Eric Kandel, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York. Kandel, who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work unravelling the molecular basis of memory, was not involved in the latest study, which was published online in Nature1 on 1 June. In the 1960s and 1970s, researchers in Norway noticed a peculiar property of brain cells. Repeatedly delivering a burst of electricity to a neuron in an area of the brain known as the hippocampus seemed to boost the cell's ability to talk to a neighbouring neuron. These communiqués occur across tiny gaps called synapses, which neurons can form with thousands of other nerve cells. The process was called long-term potentiation (LTP), and neuroscientists suspected that it was the physical basis of memory. The hippocampus, they realized, was important for forming long-term memories, and the long-lasting nature of LTP hinted that information might be stored in a neural circuit for later recall. © 2014 Nature Publishing Group,
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 19688 - Posted: 06.03.2014
By DAAN HEERMA VAN VOSS I was 25 when I lost my memory. It happened on Jan. 16, 2012. I woke up, not knowing where I was. I was lying in bed, sure, but whose bed was it? There was no one in the room, no sound that I recognized: I was alone with my body. Of course, my relationship to my body was radically different than before. My body parts seemed to belong to someone else or, rather, to something else. The vague sense of identity that I possessed was confined to the knowledge of my name, but even that felt arbitrary — a collection of random letters, crumbling. No words can accurately describe the feeling of losing your memory, your life. Sammy Harkham Underlying the loss of facts is a deeper problem: the loss of logic and causality. A person can function, ask questions, only when he recognizes a fundamental link between circumstances and time, past and present. The links between something happening to you, leading you to do or say something, which leads to someone else responding. No act is without an act leading up to it, no word is without a word that came before. Without the sense of causality provided by memory, there is chaos. When I woke up, I had no grip on logic, and logic none on me. It was a profound not-knowing, and it was terrifying. I started hyperventilating. What struck me has a name: Transient Global Amnesia. T.G.A., as it's referred to, is a neurological disorder. The name sounds definitive, but in fact, it's just a fancy way of saying: We don't know the cause, we know only what the symptoms are. Its most defining symptom is a near total disruption of short-term memory. In many cases, there is a temporary loss of long-term memory as well. But there is a bright side. T.G.A. lasts for approximately two to 20 hours, so it's a one-day thing. At the time, though, I didn't know this. Two names popped into my mind: Daniel and Sophie. I didn't know where the names came from, or to whom they belonged. I stumbled across the room, opened a door, and discovered that I was alone in the apartment. (It was, in fact, my apartment.) I found an iPhone and, quite magically, I thought, knew how to work it. As it turns out, there was nothing magical about this: A characteristic of T.G.A. is that those afflicted with it can perform familiar tasks, even ones as difficult as driving a car. (But I wouldn't recommend that.) Occurrence of T.G.A. is rare, with at most 10 cases per 100,000 people. It is most likely to happen when you're between 40 and 80; the average age of a T.G.A. patient is 62 years old. But I have always been in the fast lane. © 2014 The New York Times Company
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19681 - Posted: 06.02.2014
By BENEDICT CAREY SAN DIEGO – The last match of the tournament had all the elements of a classic showdown, pitting style versus stealth, quickness versus deliberation, and the world's foremost card virtuoso against its premier numbers wizard. If not quite Ali-Frazier or Williams-Sharapova, the duel was all the audience of about 100 could ask for. They had come to the first Extreme Memory Tournament, or XMT, to see a fast-paced, digitally enhanced memory contest, and that's what they got. The contest, an unusual collaboration between industry and academic scientists, featured one-minute matches between 16 world-class "memory athletes" from all over the world as they met in a World Cup-like elimination format. The grand prize was $20,000; the potential scientific payoff was large, too. One of the tournament's sponsors, the company Dart NeuroScience, is working to develop drugs for improved cognition. The other, Washington University in St. Louis, sent a research team with a battery of cognitive tests to determine what, if anything, sets memory athletes apart. Previous research was sparse and inconclusive. Yet as the two finalists, both Germans, prepared to face off — Simon Reinhard, 35, a lawyer who holds the world record in card memorization (a deck in 21.19 seconds), and Johannes Mallow, 32, a teacher with the record for memorizing digits (501 in five minutes) — the Washington group had one preliminary finding that wasn't obvious. "We found that one of the biggest differences between memory athletes and the rest of us," said Henry L. Roediger III, the psychologist who led the research team, "is in a cognitive ability that's not a direct measure of memory at all but of attention." People have been performing feats of memory for ages, scrolling out pi to hundreds of digits, or phenomenally long verses, or word pairs. Most store the studied material in a so-called memory palace, associating the numbers, words or cards with specific images they have already memorized; then they mentally place the associated pairs in a familiar location, like the rooms of a childhood home or the stops on a subway line. The Greek poet Simonides of Ceos is credited with first describing the method, in the fifth century B.C., and it has been vividly described in popular books, most recently "Moonwalking With Einstein," by Joshua Foer. © 2014 The New York Times Company
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 14: Attention and Consciousness
Link ID: 19634 - Posted: 05.19.2014
Helen Shen For anyone fighting to save old memories, a fresh crop of brain cells may be the last thing they need. Research published today in Science suggests that newly formed neurons in the hippocampus — an area of the brain involved in memory formation — could dislodge previously learned information1. The work may provide clues as to why childhood memories are so difficult to recall. "The finding was very surprising to us initially. Most people think new neurons mean better memory," says Sheena Josselyn, a neuroscientist who led the study together with her husband Paul Frankland at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. Humans, mice and several other mammals grow new neurons in the hippocampus throughout their lives — rapidly at first, but more and more slowly with age. Researchers have previously shown that boosting neural proliferation before learning can enhance memory formation in adult mice2, 3. But the latest study shows that after information is learned, neuron growth can degrade those memories. Although seemingly counterintuitive, the disruptive role of these neurons makes some sense, says Josselyn. She notes that some theoretical models have predicted such an effect4. "More neurons increase the capacity to learn new memories in the future," she says. "But memory is based on a circuit, so if you add to this circuit, it makes sense that it would disrupt it." Newly added neurons could have a useful role in clearing old memories and making way for new ones, says Josselyn. Forgetting curve The researchers tested newborn and adult mice on a conditioning task, training the animals to fear an environment in which they received repeated electric shocks. All the mice learned the task quickly, but whereas infant mice remembered the negative experience for only one day after training, adult mice retained the negative memory for several weeks. © 2014 Nature Publishing Group
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19597 - Posted: 05.10.2014
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS The more physically active you are at age 25, the better your thinking tends to be when you reach middle age, according to a large-scale new study. Encouragingly, the findings also suggest that if you negligently neglected to exercise when young, you can start now and still improve the health of your brain. Those of us past age 40 are generally familiar with those first glimmerings of forgetfulness and muddled thinking. We can't easily recall people's names, certain words, or where we left the car keys. "It's what we scientists call having a C.R.S. problem," said David R. Jacobs, a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and a co-author of the new study. "You can't remember stuff." But these slight, midlife declines in thinking skills strike some people later or less severely than others, and scientists have not known why. Genetics almost certainly play a role, most researchers agree. Yet the contribution of lifestyle, and in particular of exercise habits, has been unclear. So recently, Dr. Jacobs and colleagues from universities in the United States and overseas turned to a large trove of data collected over several decades for the Cardia study. The study, whose name is short for Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults, began in the mid-1980s with the recruitment of thousands of men and women then ages 18 to 30 who underwent health testing to determine their cholesterol levels, blood pressure and other measures. Many of the volunteers also completed a treadmill run to exhaustion, during which they strode at an increasingly brisk pace until they could go no farther. The average time to exhaustion among these young adults was 10 minutes, meaning that most were moderately but not tremendously fit. © 2014 The New York Times Company
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19584 - Posted: 05.07.2014
Erin Allday The game seems pretty simple. An alien-looking creature stands on a block of ice that's flowing down a river. The goal is to maneuver the ice around whales and other hurdles and periodically cause the alien to "jump" to grab green fish as they leap out of the water. The game is played on a tablet, and it looks a lot like any of hundreds of apps that can be downloaded for some mindless entertainment during an afternoon commute on BART. Here's what sets the game apart: It was designed by scientists at UCSF looking for a new way to treat serious symptoms of depression. "We're trying to see whether we can get the same effects with the game as with therapy," said Patricia Arean, a clinical psychologist at UCSF who is studying the potential mental health benefits of video game play in older adults. Arean is joining the burgeoning field of research into the use of video games as tools for promoting brain health. Video games undoubtedly have some kind of effect on our brains, but harnessing the technology and forcing a lasting - and positive - change is the challenge. So far, what little evidence does exist that video games can have a measurable impact on brain activity has been gathered almost entirely on healthy subjects. But in small clinical trials - like Arean's study of depression in older adults - the effects of games on both healthy and unhealthy people are being studied to find out whether they're useful in treating mental illness, such as autism, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Some neuroscientists say video games may also strengthen neural networks, potentially preventing or slowing down the brain deterioration associated with old age or diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. "We're in the infancy of this idea that entertaining and gaming stuff can be useful for you," said Joaquin Anguera, a UCSF neuroscientist who designs cognitive training games, including the one Arean is testing with patients. © 2014 Hearst Communications, Inc.
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19583 - Posted: 05.07.2014
by Helen Thomson A 22-year-old man has been instantaneously transported to his family's pizzeria and his local railway station – by having his brain zapped. These fleeting visual hallucinations have helped researchers pinpoint places where the brain stores visual location information. Pierre Mégevand at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, New York, and his colleagues wanted to discover just where in the brain we store and retrieve information about locations and places. They sought the help of a 22-year-old man being treated for epilepsy, because the treatment involved implanting electrodes into his brain that would record his neural activity. Mégevand and his colleagues scanned the volunteer's brain using functional MRI while he looked at pictures of different objects and scenes. They then recorded activity from the implanted electrodes as he looked at a similar set of pictures. In both situations, a specific area of the cortex around the hippocampus responded to images of places, but not to images of other kinds of objects, such as body parts or tools. "There are these little spots of tissues that seem to care about houses and places more than any other class of object," says research team member Ashesh Mehta, also at the Feinstein Institute. Next, the team used the implanted electrodes to stimulate the brain in this area – a move that the volunteer said triggered a series complex visual hallucinations. First he described seeing a railway station in the neighbourhood where he lives. Stimulation of a nearby area elicited another hallucination, this time of a staircase and a blue closet in his home. When stimulation of these areas was repeated, the same scenes arose. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 10: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 7: Vision: From Eye to Brain
Link ID: 19540 - Posted: 04.26.2014
By Emily Chung, CBC News If you're in your late 20s or older, you're not as sharp as you used to be, suggests a study of gamers playing the popular video game Starcraft 2. The study analyzed the way 3,305 people, aged 16 to 44, played the game against a single random opponent of similar skill, in order to measure the gamers' cognitive motor performance. Cognitive motor performance is how quickly your brain reacts to things happening around you, allowing you to act during tasks such as driving. The analysis revealed exactly when advancing age starts to take its toll on brain performance – at the tender age of 24 years. The results were published late last week in the journal PLOS ONE. Joe Thompson, lead author of the study, said he was surprised by how early the decline started and how big the age effect was, even among those in their 30s. "If you're 39, competing against a 24-year-old and you're both in the otherwise same level of skill," Thompson said, "the effect of age is expected to offset a great deal of your learning." Starcraft 2 is a popular strategy game, similar in concept to Risk, where players compete to build armies and conquer a science fictional world. Unlike Risk, however, players don't take turns. "Starcraft is like high-speed chess," said Thompson, a PhD student who plays the game himself. "You simply can make as many moves as you want, as fast as you can go." Players can't see the whole "world" at once, as they mine resources needed to build up their armies, as they attack their opponents, and as they defend against opponents' attacks, they need to quickly move their screen around from one part of the world to another. © CBC 2014
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19495 - Posted: 04.16.2014
|By Janali Gustafson Cravings—we all have them. These intense desires can be triggered by a place, a smell, even a picture. For recovering drug addicts, such memory associations can increase vulnerability to relapse. Now researchers at the Florida campus of the Scripps Research Institute have found a chemical that prevents rats from recalling their drug-associated memories. The study, published online in Biological Psychiatry last fall, is also the first of its kind to disrupt memories without requiring active recollection. Over the course of six days the rats in this study alternated between one of two chambers. On days one, three and five, the animals were injected with methamphetamine hydrochloride—the street drug known as meth—and placed in one room. On the even-numbered days they received a saline placebo and entered a different chamber. After two more days, half the rodents were given a choice between the rooms. As expected, they showed a clear preference for the place they visited after receiving meth. The other half of the animals were injected with a solution containing Latrunculin A (LatA). This chemical interferes with actin, a protein known to be involved in memory formation. These animals showed no preference between rooms, even up to a day later: their choices seemed not to be driven by a memory of meth. Previous research has suggested that drugs of abuse alter the way actin functions, causing it to constantly refresh memories associated with these drugs rather than tucking them away into typical memory storage, which is more inert. As a result of their active status, drug memories might remain susceptible to disruption long after their initial formation. © 2014 Scientific American
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 19492 - Posted: 04.16.2014
By Sam Kean Kent Cochrane, the amnesiac known throughout the world of neuroscience and psychology as K.C., died last week at age 62 in his nursing home in Toronto, probably of a stroke or heart attack. Although not as celebrated as the late American amnesiac H.M., for my money K.C. taught us more important and poignant things about how memory works. He showed how we make memories personal and personally meaningful. He also had a heck of a life story. During a wild and extended adolescence, K.C. jammed in rock bands, partied at Mardi Gras, played cards till all hours, and got into fights in bars; he was also knocked unconscious twice, once in a dune-buggy accident, once when a bale of hay conked him on the head. In October 1981, at age 30, he skidded off an exit ramp on his motorcycle. He spent a month in intensive care and lost, among other brain structures, both his hippocampuses. As H.M.'s case demonstrated in the early 1950s, the hippocampus—you have one in each hemisphere of your brain—helps form and store new memories and retrieve old ones. Without a functioning hippocampus, names, dates, and other information falls straight through the mind like a sieve. At least that's what supposed to happen. K.C. proved that that's not quite true—memories can sometimes bypass the hippocampus. After the motorcycle accident, K.C. lost most of his past memories and could make almost no new memories. But a neuroscientist named Endel Tulving began studying K.C., and he determined that K.C. could remember certain things from his past life just fine. Oddly, though, everything K.C. remembered fell within one restricted category: It was all stuff you could look up in reference books, like the difference between stalactites and stalagmites or between spares and strikes in bowling. Tulving called these bare facts "semantic memories," memories devoid of all context and emotion. © 2014 The Slate Group LLC
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19455 - Posted: 04.08.2014
He was known in his many appearances in the scientific literature as simply K.C., an amnesiac who was unable to form new memories. But to the people who knew him, and the scientists who studied him for decades, he was Kent Cochrane, or just Kent. Cochrane, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a motorcycle accident when he was 30 years old, helped to rewrite the understanding of how the brain forms new memories and whether learning can occur without that capacity. "From a scientific point of view, we've really learned a lot [from him], not just about memory itself but how memory contributes to other abilities," said Shayna Rosenbaum, a cognitive neuropsychologist at York University who started working with Cochrane in 1998 when she was a graduate student. Cochrane was 62 when he died late last week. The exact cause of death is unknown, but his sister, Karen Casswell, said it is believed he had a heart attack or stroke. He died in his room at an assisted living facility where he lived and the family opted not to authorize an autopsy. Few in the general public would know about Cochrane, though some may have seen or read media reports on the man whose life was like that of the lead character of the 2000 movie Memento. But anyone who works on the science of human memory would know K.C. Casswell and her mother, Ruth Cochrane, said the family was proud of the contribution Kent Cochrane made to science. Casswell noted her eldest daughter was in a psychology class at university when the professor started to lecture about the man the scientific literature knows as K.C. © CBC 2014
Related chapters from BP7e: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 19442 - Posted: 04.03.2014


text:
Protesters press DOJ on Leonard Co slay
More News from Christine Avendaño
Justice Secretary Leila de Lima on Thursday said she would order the prosecutor general of the Department of Justice (DOJ) to expedite the release of the result of the preliminary investigation into the killing of renowned botanist Leonard Co on Nov. 15, 2010.
"I will ask PG (Prosecutor General Claro Arellano) to check, to verify the exact status and direct his office to expedite the resolution [of the preliminary investigation]," De Lima told reporters on the second anniversary of Co's death.
De Lima was asked the status of the DOJ investigation of the Co case after a group of environmentalists and human rights advocates staged a protest outside the DOJ building in Manila yesterday demanding the release of the resolution of the preliminary investigation two years to the day Co died at the hands allegedly of military troops who may have mistaken him and his group for communist rebels.
The protesters also delivered postcards to De Lima's office that demanded "Justice for Leonard Co, Release DOJ Resolution Now!"
Co's wife, Glenda, and his parents had filed a murder complaint against members of the military who had reportedly fired on Co and his team of botanists while they were gathering plant specimens within the Lopez-owned Energy Development Corp. property in Kananga.
The military insisted its troops were shooting at New People's Army rebels, and Co and his team were caught in the crossfire.
The DOJ panel, led by Prosecutor George Yarte, completed its preliminary investigation in July 2011 and was supposed to issue a resolution in 60 days.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
http://t.co/oMtL5o6 - Super Deal Review - Weber 751001 22.5-Inch One-Touch Gold Charcoal Grill The Weber One-Touch Gold charcoal grill has a heavy-gauge porcelain enamel that prevents rust The One-Touch cleaning and venting system allows you to empty the ash in seconds without getting your hands dirty The grill is made of black heavy-gauge porcelain-enameled steel lid and bowl The hinged cooking grate allows for easy re-fueling 10-year limited warranty
http://t.co/EW3Rk5Eq - Super Deal Review - Olympus Stylus Tough 8010 14MP Digital Camera 14.0 megapixel CCD Attention adventure-seekers: this is the go-anywhere, do-anything camera you've been waiting for A simple, one-touch button allows you to record movies with amazing clarity in high-definition, right from your camera Life can be tough, this camera is tougher. Rugged metal body and innovative shock-absorbing construction A revolutionary system of waterproof seals and gaskets keeps water out so you can take pictures as deep as 33 feet underwater 14 megapixels (effective), 1/2.3 in. image sensor; 5x optical zoom plus 5x digital zoom 2.7 inch HyperCrystal TM III LCD display; One touch HD movie (720p); HDMI movie mode Waterproof; Shockproof; Freeze proof; Crushproof Sensor Shift and Dual Image Stabilization; AF Tracking; Creative Art Filters; Face Detection; Beauty Mode; Perfect Shot Preview 2GB internal memory; USB 2.0 high-speed; SD compatible (card not included)
http://t.co/baSWv6m - Super Deal Review Sony A77 24.3 MP Digital SLR Camera 2nd Generation Translucent Mirror Technology camera 24.3 MP for superb detail and amazing enlargements World?s fastest up to 12 fps continuous shooting World's first OLED viewfinder; big and bright World's first HD Movie mode with AVCHD 60p/60i/24p
http://t.co/qkWZW3IH - Super Deal Review - Panasonic DMC-FH25K 16.1MP Digital Camera The high-speed, high-performance Venus Engine VI is incorporated to enable the recording of beautiful images. The Sonic Speed AF system includes numerous re-engineering enhancements. Battery included. When you don't know which mode will give you the best shooting results. Just choose the iA Mode, aim at your subject and shoot. The MEGA O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer) compensates for the blurring caused by hand-shake.
http://t.co/0IwfpPg6 - Super Deal Review - Garmin Oregon 550 Waterproof Hiking GPS Capture locations and memories with a 3.2 megapixel autofocus digital camera with 4x digital zoom Tough, 3-inch diagonal, sunlight-readable, color touchscreen display Built-in 3-axis tilt-compensated electronic compass shows your heading even when you're standing still, without holding it level Barometric altimeter tracks changes in pressure to pinpoint your precise altitude, and can help you keep an eye on changing weather conditions Comes preloaded with a worldwide built-in basemap with shaded relief; add more detailed maps with a MapSource microSD card
http://t.co/iWxozvD6 - Super Deal Review - Garmin Forerunner 910XT GPS-Enabled Device with Heart Rate Monitor GPS-enabled training device for multisport athletes. Tracks time, distance, pace (or speed), elevation (via barometric altimeter) and heart rate. Can be used for swimming, running and cycling. Battery life up to 20 hours. Water resistant to 50m.
http://t.co/IPgNraH8 - Super Deal Review - ASUS Zenbook UX31E-DH72 13.3-Inch Thin and Light Ultrabook Intel Core™ i7 2677M Processor 4 GB DDR3 256 GB SATAIII SSD 13.3-Inch Screen, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit


text:
Typhoon floods rice fields in northern Philippines
MANILA, Philippines—A typhoon flooded villages and farms in the northern Philippine's major rice-growing region early Saturday, but officials said no casualties were immediately reported.
Typhoon Nari slammed into Aurora province northeast of Manila late Friday with 150 kilometers (94 miles) per hour winds and gusts of up to 185 kph (116 mph). U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had called off his trip to the Philippines on Friday due to the weather.
More than 2,500 people were evacuated from several coastal villages of Aurora before the typhoon made landfall, said provincial disaster officer Amado Elson Egargue. Authorities shut off electricity for the entire province before the storm, and power restoration will depend upon the extent of the damage, he said.
In nearby Nueva Ecija province, Gov. Aurelio Umali told DZMM radio that fallen trees and electric pylons blocked all the major roads in the province. He said the initial estimate was that 15,000 hectares (37,050 acres) of rice may have been damaged or destroyed.
Bulacan provincial Gov. Wilhelmino M. Sy-Alvarado said more than 20 villages in two towns remained flooded Saturday, with some areas under about 2 meters (6 feet) of water. He said about 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres) of rice and vegetable farms were damaged.
Weather forecaster Meno Mendoza said Nari weakened after hitting the mountains in Aurora then quickly blew across the rice-growing central plains of Luzon. It was centered about 80 kilometers (50 miles) off Zambales province over the South China Sea by midday Saturday and moving west.
The typhoon drenched Manila overnight but caused no widespread flooding. The sprawling capital of 12 million has been hit hard by floods because of poor infrastructure and clogged drainage and water canals — most of them blocked by densely populated slums — that are supposed to channel excess water into the sea.
The Philippines gets lashed by about 20 to 22 tropical storms a year, plus monsoon rains from July to December.
About 30 people died last month in monsoon flooding. Another 20 died this past week, mostly in the southern Philippines.
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text:
Anna Westerståhl Stenport
(217) 300-2681
Anna Westerståhl Stenport is Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and a Conrad Humanities Professorial Scholar. A native of Sweden's Göteborg, she holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from Uppsala University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Anna is an Affiliate Associate Professor [Docent] at Gothenburg University, Sweden, and was a Visiting Associate Professor and Anna Lindh Fellow in the Europe Center at Stanford University during the 2011-12 academic year. She has also taught at UC Berkeley and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
Her teaching and scholarship focuses on modern European film, literature, theater, media, and culture, with a particular focus on Nordic and Arctic studies. Anna has served as one of the Faculty Liaisons for the INSPIRE strategic partnership between the University of Illinois and three partner institutions in Sweden, as well as an Dean's Fellow in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences focusing on international issues for the college. She also holds faculty appointments in the College of Media and the College of Fine and Applied Arts.
Matthew Rosenstein
Senior Associate Director, Director of Graduate Studies
(217) 244-5085
|Matthew A. Rosenstein is Senior Associate Director of the European Union Center (EUC) at the University of Illinois, a position he has held since August 2010. He is responsible for managing the Center's day-to-day affairs. His duties include administration of institutional grants from the U.S. Department of Education (Title VI) and European Commission; program development; oversight of EUC's publications and web presence; supervision of staff; and interaction with the Center's external constituents and other units on campus. Rosenstein also serves as EUC's Director of Graduate Studies, coordinating the Master of Arts degree program and graduate minor in EU Studies. Prior to joining the EUC staff, he was the Associate Director of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security (ACDIS) from 2001-2010. At ACDIS, he managed grants from the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, and National Security Education Program (Department of Defense), and edited and authored numerous publications on South Asian and transatlantic security issues. Rosenstein holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Slavic languages and literatures from the University of Illinois, and a B.A. degree in Russian, history, and French from Duke University.
Sebnem Ozkan
Outreach Coordinator, FLAS Coordinator
(217) 244-0570
|Sebnem Ozkan works as Outreach Coordinator at the European Union Center (EUC) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She coordinates Center's programs and events, is actively engaged in outreach with the consular corps in Chicago, civic organizations, secondary schools, regional universities, and the general public. She also serves as the coordinator of the EUC's Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships program. Prior to joining the EUC staff, Sebnem worked at the Center for European Studies and the European Union Center of Excellence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as project assistant and student advisor from 1999-2008. She holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in industrial relations from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a B.A. degree in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations from Ankara University/Faculty of Political Science (SBF). She is a specialist on EU-Turkey relations, EU social policy, industrial relations and labor issues.
Kim Rice
Office Manager
(217) 265-7515
|Kim Rice has worked for the European Union Center since 2004. As Office Manager, Kim provides administrative, budgetary, and organizational support for EUC staff, affiliated faculty, and students. She assists with event planning, budget and grant reporting, reimbursements, and hiring student employees. In addition, she provides support for the Master of Arts degree program by processing student applications, course information, and student petitions and overseeing the graduation certification process.
Lauren Hoerr
Web Developer
|Lauren Hoerr is a Graduate Assistant at the European Union Center, supporting the EUC website. She is a second year Master's student at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois with an interest in reference & instruction and public libraries. She received her Bachelor's degree in English with a concentration in Film Studies from Saint Louis University in 2010. She enjoys reading, film, baking, and running.
|Lindsay Ozburn
Graduate Assistant
|Lindsay Ozburn is a first year MAEUS student. She received her Bachelor's degree in Music History with a minor in African Studies from the University of Illinois in 2012. While at U of I, she specialized in ethnomusicology, studying Guinean Mande drumming, Ghanaian Ewe drumming, Arab and Balkan music. Combining her love of history and middle Eastern/ Mediterranean music, her undergraduate thesis focused on the musical iconography of Ancient Egyptian wall painting, looking at their similarities to instruments and musical practices found in the modern age. Lindsay is an avid performer, playing with several world music groups at various festivals and conferences around the Midwest, including the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, Waterloo Bosnian Arts Festival, and the Urbana Sweet Corn festival. After graduating, Lindsay continued performing with U of I's premiere Balkan ensemble, Balkanalia, cultivating her love for Balkan music and Greek culture. Her research interests include Greece, international educational policies, musical identities, EU-Mediterranean relations, and the importance of transatlantic relations. Lindsay is currently a Graduate Assistant for the European Union Center. In her spare time, Lindsay enjoys cooking, watching Jane Austen movies, traveling, her cats, jam sessions, and playing a good video game.
|Kristin Marron
Graduate Hourly
Ilias Boralis
|Ilias Bolaris is a first year MAEUS student. He has studied Political Science and Public Administration at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, and Law at the Faculty of Law at the European University of Cyprus in Nicosia. He is a trainee lawyer of the Athens Bar Association in Athens. His main academic interests are the relations between the European Union and the Middle East, the relations between Muslims and Christians, and dynamics between Islam and democracy. Αs a lawyer he is interested in International Business Law. He wants to conduct research on international and business law as relating to Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean basin. He speaks Greek and German.
|Andrew Schwenk
Graduate Assistant
|Andrew Schwenk is in his first year of the MAEUS program. Before graduate school, he also attended the University of Illinois for his BA, which he earned in the Fall of 2014 in German and Anthropology. He combined these two topics in his Anthropology Capstone project, which focused on the history of the history of the far-right in Germany and Austria since the end of WWII. During his undergraduate studies, Andrew also enjoyed a semester abroad in Vienna, Austria. His research interests include European institutions, EU foreign policy, the far-right, and the relationship between Northern and Southern Europe. In his spare time, Andrew likes to practice foreign languages, read about the history of Europe and the Western Hemisphere, and play various musical instruments.
Barbara Myers
|Barbara Myers is a first year MAEUS student. Before graduate school, she completed her BA at the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, and went on to earn a post-baccalaureate certificate in Creative Writing (Fiction) from NU. Barbara is a published fiction and freelance writer, and her love of reading and languages have guided her to a career in literary translation. Her research interests include post-colonial discourses in the EU and how they have affected immigration policy; how works of literature by current early- and mid-career Scandinavian, Netherlands, and Flemish writers of immigrant descent reflect understandings of gender and cultural identity; works of speculative fiction from Scandinavia and BeNeLux; and contemporary Spanish-language writers. In her spare time, Barbara likes to read, practice languages, sing, travel, play Bananagrams, and enjoy a good cup of coffee, Hefeweizen, or Belgian ale.


text:
Vipareethangal: Malayaliyude Madhyama Jeevitham by Shaji Jacob is a difficult book to categorise because at different levels it deals with both media politics and cultural dynamics. The majority of people in Kerala are politically conscious with more than 70 percentage of the population having television access and over 60 percentage claiming access to at least one newspaper. It is also an extremely complex and mediated public sphere where the interests of caste, class, party affiliations and even religion can determine or undermine media habits.
Vipareethangal…, as the title suggests, points towards the paradoxes inherent in the average Malayali's media-centred, media-controlled life where ironically enough all tall claims of a society based on literacy, political will and egalitarian values dissipate in the face of voracious media consumption patterns. Thus the Malayali consumes and is in turn consumed by the media, argues the author.
Vipareethangal: Malayaliyude Madhyama Jeevitham explores the paradoxical process whereby media consumers might themselves end up becoming products. How the media manufactures consent, the ideologies of a booming culture industry, the agendas of media imperialism, the rise of popular culture in the context of globalisation and post-modern conditions of existence – are all taken up for detailed analysis by the author.
From the advent of modernity in Kerala and the arrival of print to the rise in popularity of newspapers, magazines, cinema, music, and the radio till the age of the new media, the book attempts a chronological analysis of the circuits of culture and power within which the discourses of media are so embedded.
The introductory chapter places media studies in the methodological framework of inter-disciplinary cultural studies. On the surface it might look as though this chapter sometimes falls into an uncritical acceptance of Western communication and cultural theories. However Shaji Jacob does provide survey reports and analyses from the Indian context to substantiate his arguments.
The ensuing chapters span topics from the Kerala Renaissance and its media lessons to popular television and a political reading of the Mahabharatha serial. From the Malayali's cyber worlds to the priming and framing of the Gulf Wars, the book goes on to make an intriguing study of the representations of the body in media as a site where power writes itself.
The uniqueness of this book probably derives from the fact that not many attempts have been made in the specific context of Kerala to conceptualise and formulate critical theorising on media, society and commodification.
However, this is a book that the Malayali reader might constantly quarrel with, very vigorously at certain points, which could have been the intention of the author too. In a language that is sometimes jargon happy, which seems to have become a necessary calamity in books of this kind, yet mostly witty and provocative to say the least, Vipareethangal… will make Malayali readers think aloud and ponder over many of the issues taken up in its pages.
This book brings out a key aspect of contemporary life in Kerala – its media 'saturatedness'. Through this it explores the truisms and subtle idiosyncrasies that are so much a part of our culture today. Shaji Jacob writes with studied balance, bringing both a sharp wit and impressive analytical skills to his critique.
One can see an intellectual rigour that is usually reserved for research papers and dissertations within the academia, which could both be this book's strength and its weakness depending on who reads it and how.


text:
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AM Schedule 87 7:33a 7:36a 7:38a 7:41a 7:44a 7:50a 7:55a 87 8:03a 8:06a 8:08a 8:11a 8:14a 8:20a 8:25a 87 8:33a 8:36a 8:38a 8:41a 8:44a 8:50a 8:55a 87 9:03a 9:06a 9:08a 9:11a 9:14a 9:20a 9:25a 87 9:33a 9:36a 9:38a 9:41a 9:44a 9:50a 9:55a 87 10:03a 10:06a 10:08a 10:11a 10:14a 10:20a 10:25a 87 10:33a 10:36a 10:38a 10:41a 10:44a 10:50a 10:55a 87 11:03a 11:06a 11:08a 11:11a 11:14a 11:20a 11:25a 87 11:33a 11:36a 11:38a 11:41a 11:44a 11:50a 11:55a PM Schedule 87 12:03p 12:06p 12:08p 12:11p 12:14p 12:20p 12:25p 87 12:33p 12:36p 12:38p 12:41p 12:44p 12:50p 12:55p 87 1:03p 1:06p 1:08p 1:11p 1:14p 1:20p 1:25p 87 1:33p 1:36p 1:38p 1:41p 1:44p 1:50p 1:55p 87 2:03p 2:06p 2:08p 2:11p 2:14p 2:20p 2:25p 87 2:33p 2:36p 2:38p 2:41p 2:44p 2:50p 2:55p 87 3:03p 3:06p 3:08p 3:11p 3:14p 3:20p 3:25p 87 3:33p 3:36p 3:38p 3:41p 3:44p 3:50p 3:55p 87 4:03p 4:06p 4:08p 4:11p 4:14p 4:20p 4:25p 87 4:33p 4:36p 4:38p 4:41p 4:44p 4:50p 4:55p 87 5:03p 5:06p 5:08p 5:11p 5:14p 5:20p 5:25p 87 5:33p 5:36p 5:38p 5:41p 5:44p 5:50p 5:55p 87 6:03p 6:06p 6:08p 6:11p 6:14p 6:20p 6:25p 87 6:33p 6:36p 6:38p 6:41p 6:44p 6:50p 6:55p 87 7:03p 7:06p 7:08p 7:11p 7:14p 7:20p 7:25p 87 7:33p 7:36p 7:38p 7:41p 7:44p 7:50p 7:55p 87 8:03p 8:06p 8:08p 8:11p 8:14p 8:20p 8:25p 87 8:33p 8:36p 8:38p 8:41p 8:44p 8:50p 8:55p 87 9:03p 9:06p 9:08p 9:11p 9:14p 9:20p 9:25p
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Pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain on Tuesday clashed with police as they attempted to reach a central square in the capital Manama.
The clashes came a day after the main opposition groups said that they would take part in the second session of a new national dialogue process with the monarchy.
The session is on Wednesday.
Keywords: Pro-democracy protest, Bahrain clashes
Bahrain crisis talks to begin amid mistrust
More In: International | News | World


text:
Razer has developed gaming mice for a while, but all have been ambidextrous. The DeathAdder breaks that habit to become the first Razer right-handed mouse. Aside from that, we quickly found out that the DeathAdder is one of the best looking and most comfortable mice on the market today.
As gamers, we tend to look for any little advantage that can give us an edge on our opponents. For the talented, this can be the difference between a kill and defeat. For everyone else, myself included, upgrading peripherals in the hopes of becoming a better gamer instantly is basically throwing money at a problem that there isn't a quick fix for. Over the past 2 years at Techgage, we have taken looks at more mice than we care to admit. Of the mice that have made their way across our cluttered desks, only a few have remained after the review has been posted.
In the world of gaming mice, for years only one company has been consistently brought up in discussions. Logitech. It's only been recently that a company with passion enough to step up has attempted to rock the boat and reinvent the wheel so to speak. This company is Razer.
Dating back to the late 90s, Razer launched their Boomslang gaming mouse upon the collective gaming community so from the start, it was a hit. Since then, Razer has continued to build off that momentum and is now, unquestionable, a heavy hitter in the world of PC gaming hardware.
As stated earlier, we have taken looks at many mice in our short 2 year existence and many of those have been from Razer. Starting with the Copperhead, our overall reaction to the mice that Razer has produced has been a mixed bag. The performance of the goods has never been in question. Providing us with high DPI, complete and adjustable software and an overall sturdy build, the quality of the mice has never been the products shortcomings.
Our primary complaint has been the shape and feel of the mouse in our hands. The ambidextrous design has never really worked for us when for years, we have used right hand oriented mice. Now this could be that we were just used to the feel of the right handed design but for whatever the reason, we just couldn't get past the feel of the ambidextrous design. This past January, Rob and I sat down with Robert Krakoff, President and driving force behind Razer at CES. While we were talking, he kept playing around with their soon to be released DeathAdder gaming mouse. What set this apart from the rest of the Razer lineup was that this was design and manufactured for right handed gamers only.
With a great deal of their criticism coming from gamers pining for a non-ambidextrous gaming mouse, it had appeared that Razer was listening. At the time, we were excited about the mouse but the overall mood of the meeting was eclipsed by their THX certified Mako 2.1 speakers. Once we returned home from CES and began to get back into the daily rigors that is online journalism and we had forgotten all about the incredible mouse we had seen just a few days earlier.
On the bench today, we have the Razer DeathAdder, the same mouse that Robert was so impressed with at CES. Now I know he had a product to showcase, but as impressed he was with the mouse, Rob and I were as well. Will the initial excitement carry over to real world usage? We intend to find out.
The DeathAdder, following the naming scheme of deadly, or at least mostly deadly, animals, comes packaged in what we have come to expect from Razer. A well labeled black box, with the Razer logo and a picture of the DeathAdder itself provide all of the information one might need to make a well educated purchase.
The front of the box opens up, revealing the mouse itself. Packaged in a plastic clamshell, we see the all black DeathAdder with it's blue scroll wheel.
Packaged with the DeathAdder is a typical round Razer manual, a driver disk, a certificate of authenticity with a small letter from Robert "Razer Guy" Krakoff and a baseball card type card for the mouse.
The DeathAdder, as stated earlier, is a right handed mouse designed completely outside the realm of all other Razer mice. With a standard 7 foot cable the mouse connects to your PC through a gold plated USB connector. The top of the DeathAdder is covered in a non stick material that not only ensures a good grip on the mouse during use, but also adds to the overall comfort and feel of it as well. Another thing to point out is the buttons themselves. On the mouse, there are 5 programmable buttons. The left and right buttons extend more than half way back on the mouse, giving the overall feel of the buttons one of ease. It takes little effort to depress the buttons and the quick response should help in not only games, but in everyday use as well.
On the bottom of the DeathAdder, there are three large Teflon feet to reduce friction and allow the mouse to glide smoothly over virtually any surface. In the center of the mouse is the third generation infrared optical sensor that operates at an adjustable 1800 DPI and operates over a quite ride 16-bit data channel.
When connected to the PC, the DeathAdder really comes to life. Unlike other Razer mice, the sides of the mouse do not light up but rather, Razer has chosen to only light the scroll wheel and the Razer logo. When the PC is on, the scroll wheel lets off a pleasant blue glow and the logo pulses at a steady pace.
On to testing!


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Airport Shuttle Bus Transfer
Carlton Hotel Dublin Airport
Hotel Exterior
Hotel Exterior
Hotel Lobby
Junior Suite
Kittyhawks Bar & Bistro
Clouds Restaurant
Wedding Reception
Boeing Suite
Cornell Suite
Collinstown Suite
Dublin Airport Shuttle Bus TransferOld Airport Road, Cloghran, Dublin Airport, Co. Dublin, Ireland.
Tel: 00353 (0) 1 8667500 Email: email@example.com
The Carlton Hotel Dublin Airport's Shuttle Service is available from Dublin Airport to the hotel at quarter to and quarter past the hour from 6am right through to 12 midnight. The Shuttle Service is available from the hotel to Dublin Airport on the hour and half hour, 24 hours a day.
The pick-up area is in the Coach Park, Zone 14. This area is signposted in the arrivals hall of both Terminal 1 and Terminal 2. From Terminal 1, walk through the covered car park opposite arrivals main door, through the exit doors and across the street, there is a covered walkway to the Coach Park. From Terminal 2, walk out the main doors and cross the road to the covered walkway. Our shuttle stops for 5 minutes every half hour at quarter past and quarter to the hour. Journey time is approximately 5 minutes each way.
If you have difficulty please call the hotel from the self service hotel board in the arrivals hall. Between the hours of 1am - 4am, please call the hotel from the self service hotels board free phone 106 and we will send the shuttle to Zone 14. Please call the hotel directly if you have any queries on (01) 8667500. We look forward to welcoming you to The Carlton Hotel Dublin Airport.
Please view details of our exclusive shuttle bus service PDF here.


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Prop. 14 would create 'top-two' primary system
• Eliminate closed party primaries that choose party nominees for each partisan office, such as members of Congress and the Legislature.
• Establish "top two" primary elections in which the two top vote-getters for each office, regardless of party, advance to the general election.
• Allow all voters to vote for any candidate on the ballot, regardless of party, in primary elections.
• Exempt the presidential primaries, which would still be partisan contests, to determine how California delegates will vote at their parties' national nominating conventions.
• Allow candidates to state on the ballot which party they "prefer" or to state no party preference.
• Prohibit write-in candidates from running in the general election; write-in candidates could run in the primary and, if they place in the top two, have their names placed on the general election ballot.
In Berkeley's ultra-liberal 14th Assembly District two years ago, Nancy Skinner, an environmental activist who had written a book called "50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth," prevailed in a four-way contest by winning 46 percent of the Democrats who voted in the low-turnout primary.
Four months later, Skinner was elected to the Assembly, running unopposed in a district in which Republican voters are so rare (13 percent of the electorate) the GOP didn't bother to field a candidate.
The same thing happened in Orange County's 71st Assembly District, where Jeff Miller won a strongly contested Republican primary in June, then ran unopposed in the fall in a district in which only 28 percent of voters are Democrats.
In effect, Skinner won her seat in the Assembly on the strength of support from just 11.3 percent of district voters, and Miller joined her as the result of decision made by 6.5 percent of district voters.
Under Proposition 14, which California voters will consider on June 8, that scenario would change.
It would create a "top-two" primary system in which the two top vote-getters in the primary, regardless of party, would advance to the general election. Had that been in place two years ago, Skinner and Miller would have had to run in the high-turnout general election against the runners-up in the primaries.
Presumably, in each case both candidates would have had to reach out in November to independent voters and those registered with the other party.
That's the way things worked out in Washington state, which conducted its first top-two primary in 2008. In eight of the state's 125 legislative elections that year, both candidates who advanced to the general election were from the same party.
"In a closed primary, the thing is over," said David Ammons, spokesman for Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed. "Whoever is nominated, the conversation is over and the minority party has nothing more to say. Now, the conversation continues into November."
Proponents of Proposition 14 envision just such scenarios in California. If the proposal is adopted, they say, Democrats and Republicans in every legislative and congressional district — even those is districts considered "safe" for one party or the other — would have to broaden their messages to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters. The reason, they argue, is that candidates could no longer coast into office after winning party primaries that are typically decided by the most committed partisans.
"More choices stimulate voter turnout and require candidates to appeal to a broad audience — not just the small, hyper-partisan fringe on the left or right," said Jeannine English, president of the California AARP and co-chair of the Yes on 14 campaign.
Echoes Leslie Cornejo of Oxnard, co-founder of a bipartisan, Ventura County-based group called the California Association of Political Centrists: "I believe it would give candidates who are not at the far ends of the political spectrum a chance."
Critics on the left and right argue that Proposition 14 would dilute the influence of political parties and blur the policy distinctions between candidates.
"If the idea is to homogenize California politics, yes, I think it will do that," said Jon Coupal, president of the conservative Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
The measure is opposed by both the state Democratic and Republican parties.
"It will allow Republicans to designate who the Democratic nominee is going to be," warned Democratic Party Chairman John Burton.
In a February study on the potential effects of a Proposition 14-like primary system, the Public Policy Institute of California concluded the measure's effects, at least initially, would be slight.
"The top two vote-getter primary would probably have a noticeable but modest effect on voting and representation in California," concluded researcher Eric McGhee. "We should not expect this reform to quickly or dramatically change the state's partisan climate."
Here's how the top-two system would work: Every candidate would be listed on a single ballot and can identify themselves as preferring one party or another or stating they have no party preference. All voters, regardless of party registration, could vote for a single candidate for each partisan office. They could vote for a Democrat in one office, a Republican in another, a Libertarian in another, and a no-party-preference candidate in another.
The proposal is backed by many of the same members of the coalition that successfully backed Proposition 11, the redistricting reform measure approved by voters two years ago. Among them are the AARP, the California Chamber of Commerce and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who recently contributed $500,000 to the campaign.
The system would be similar to the "blanket" primary that California voters established in the late 1990s, only to have it invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that it violated the political parties' constitutional rights of free association by allowing nonparty members to participate in a party's nomination process.
The top-two system avoids that constitutional defect because the primary becomes not a nominating process, but rather a process of winnowing a field of multiple candidates to just two. Washington voters established such a system in their state through a 2004 ballot initiative, and the Supreme Court upheld it in March 2008, noting that the system "does not, by its terms, choose the parties' nominees."
Under Proposition 14, the top-two system would be used in every partisan race, including statewide offices such as governor and attorney general, all congressional offices including U.S. senator and all state legislative offices. Partisan primaries would still be conducted for president. It would not effect nonpartisan elections, such as those for city and county offices.
Proposition 14 was placed on the ballot by the Legislature, and was the result of a controversial budget deal in February 2009 in which moderate Republican state Sen. Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria insisted that the measure be placed before voters as a condition for his support of the budget deal.
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School Administration Certification and Certificate Programs
This article addresses certificate programs for the school administration professional. Read on for educational prerequisites, program coursework and employment outlook statistics.
Essential Information
Existing teachers who have master's degrees and who would one day like to become school principals or superintendents might realize their career goals by earning a school administration certificate. A Certificate in School Administration can be earned through a post-master's degree program. The program outlines the specific knowledge and methods needed to run an educational facility.
Generally, the student will learn about administration at the central-office level, where most decisions are made regarding policy, operations and finances. In addition to learning about school law, principalship and school facility management, the student will participate in a school district internship program that is essential to gaining a full understanding of the work. Earning the certificate allows existing educators to prepare to advance to higher positions and to have greater authority over school operations.
Career and Education Prerequisites
Before a student can enroll in the certificate program, he or she must hold a master's degree and also show proof of having relevant experience in education or other related fields. Some programs require an assessment of the applicant's skills with oral presentations, conceptual work and composition. In addition, existing faculty who work with the student and know his or her potential must provide a recommendation.
Program Coursework
Students pursuing a Certificate in School Administration study topics such as the following; traditionally, they also have the opportunity to practice the application of educational leadership and management techniques during their internship.
- Instructional leadership
- Fundamentals of school administration
- School finance
- Legal aspects of school administration
- School relations
- School facility management
- School law
- Principalship
- Supervision of school faculty
- Leadership for school-community relations
Employment Outlook
In May 2012, the median annual salaries of elementary and secondary school administrators were $87,760, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov). Postsecondary administrators earned a median yearly wage of $86,490 in the same year.
The BLS predicted that middle, elementary and high school principals will have 10% job growth for the years 2010 through 2020. In the same period, postsecondary education administrators will have an estimated 19% employment growth.
Continuing Education
The type of school administration job desired determines the level of education needed. For instance, a preschool administrator is often only required to hold a bachelor's degree, while a superintendent often holds a Ph.D. Beyond the Certificate in School Administration, a school principal is encouraged to continue his or her education in order to keep up on the current trends and policies. Students who wish to pursue higher education can obtain a Doctor of Philosophy in Education Administration or a Doctor of Education in Education Administration.
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aook Aotes
Velma Linford's Wyoming: Frontier State is a very attractive
textbook, richly illustrated and arranged with concluding chap-
ter questions and supplementary readings. It will appeal to public
school students in Wyoming, and the general reader will find
much to interest him. Such chapters as "Red Man's Domain,"
"Fringe of Empires," "Fur Traders and Beaver 'Gold,'" "The
U. P. Trail," "Vigilantes to Law and Order," "Range to Ranch,"
"Coal for the World," "Oil-Black Liquid Gold," offer attractions
to the general reading public and those with special interests
in Western America.
The publisher is The Old West Publishing Co., Denver, Colo-
rado. The price is $3-75-
Texas College of Mines
The Lawd Sayin' the Same: Negro Folk Tales of the Creole
Country. By Hewitt Leonard Ballowe. Baton Rouge (Lou-
isiana State University Press), 1947. Pp. xvi+254.
Dr. Ballowe has brought together a series of twenty-five closely
connected folk tales which it would be a delight to hear him tell.
These stories, according to Donald Joseph's introduction, were
related from the doctor's own experience or "on authority that
no gentleman would question." Far be it from me to expose
myself as a knave, however incredible many of the tales are.
There is many a laugh and many a jolt and many a silent awe
to reward the reader who is patient enough to battle his path
through an array of apostrophes that taxed the galleys of the
Louisiana State University Press, and a galaxy of terms which
to the uninitiated requires a glossary nowhere to be found.
Through it all one inhales the flavor of traditional Negro
philosophy which is as close, perhaps, as one lacking his culture
can expect to sense it; not even a Negro can understand it. But
all folklore is beyond reason. A collection requires notice; it is
to be read and recommended, but not reviewed.
Santa Barbara, California
Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 52, July 1948 - April, 1949. Austin, Texas. The Portal to Texas History. http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101121/. Accessed May 30, 2015.