JST Virtual Science Center

Some paradoxes - an anthology How to increase serotonin in the human brain without drugs Changes in brain activity related to eating chocolate Introduction Early cortical representations of visual, auditory and somatosensory information (e.g. `primary' and `secondary' areas) are in the unimodal neocortex. In contrast, the cortical representations of the chemical senses (taste and smell) are in the limbic and paralimbic cortex. This is true in primates (e.g. Tanabe et al., 1975a, b; Pritchard et al., 1986; Takagi, 1986; Price, 1990; Baylis et al., 1995; Rolls et al., 1996; Scott and Plata-Salaman, 1999) and in humans (Zatorre et al., 1992; Jones-Gotman and Zatorre, 1993; Petrides and Pandya, 1994; Faurion et al., 1999; Pritchard et al., 1999; Small et al., 1999). Many neuroimaging studies have investigated brain activity evoked by affective stimuli, including chemosensory stimuli. To investigate brain activity related to affective changes associated with feeding, we performed successive H215O-PET scans on volunteers as they ate chocolate to beyond satiety. Fig. 1 Rating scale. Methods Pilot study Subjects PET study Fig. 2 Results

Understanding Evolution The bacteria that changed the world - May, 2017 The make-up of Earth's atmosphere, once the domain of Earth science textbooks, has become an increasingly "hot" news topic in recent decades, as we struggle to curb global warming by limiting the carbon dioxide that human activity produces. While the changes that humanity has wrought on the planet are dramatic, this isn’t the first time that one species has changed Earth’s atmosphere. Three billion years ago, there was no free oxygen in the atmosphere at all. Life was anaerobic, meaning that it did not need oxygen to live and grow. That all changed due to the evolution of Cyanobacteria, a group of single-celled, blue-green bacteria. Read the rest of the story here | See the Evo in the News archive

Relativistic Baseball What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light? - Ellen McManis Let’s set aside the question of how we got the baseball moving that fast. We'll suppose it's a normal pitch, except in the instant the pitcher releases the ball, it magically accelerates to 0.9c. From that point onward, everything proceeds according to normal physics. The answer turns out to be “a lot of things”, and they all happen very quickly, and it doesn’t end well for the batter (or the pitcher). The ball is going so fast that everything else is practically stationary. The ideas of aerodynamics don’t apply here. These gamma rays and debris expand outward in a bubble centered on the pitcher’s mound. The constant fusion at the front of the ball pushes back on it, slowing it down, as if the ball were a rocket flying tail-first while firing its engines. After about 70 nanoseconds the ball arrives at home plate. Suppose you’re watching from a hilltop outside the city.

An Essay by Einstein -- The World As I See It "How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving... "I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. "My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities.

The Limits of Intelligence Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the Spanish Nobel-winning biologist who mapped the neural anatomy of insects in the decades before World War I, likened the minute circuitry of their vision-processing neurons to an exquisite pocket watch. He likened that of mammals, by comparison, to a hollow-chested grandfather clock. Indeed, it is humbling to think that a honeybee, with its milligram-size brain, can perform tasks such as navigating mazes and landscapes on a par with mammals. A honeybee may be limited by having comparatively few neurons, but it surely seems to squeeze everything it can out of them. At the other extreme, an elephant, with its five-million-fold larger brain, suffers the inefficiencies of a sprawling Mesopotamian empire. We humans may not occupy the dimensional extremes of elephants or honeybees, but what few people realize is that the laws of physics place tough constraints on our mental faculties as well. Sign up for Scientific American’s free newsletters.

To Map Or Not To Map The Brain? That's Tonight's Question : Krulwich Wonders... "Mind is such an odd predicament for matter to get into," says the poet Diane Ackerman. "If a mind is just a few pounds of blood, dream and electric, how does it manage to contemplate itself? Worry about its soul? Do time and motion studies? Admire the shy hooves of a goat? ...How can a neuron feel compassion?" Yes, how? All over the world, neuroscientists are beginning to address these questions, which are really the same question: How do gooey, stringy brain cells produce a mind? How would you do it? Thomas Deerinck and Mark Ellisman/Portraits of the Mind Do Experiences Re-Wire Our Brains? Well, we begin with a hypothesis: that when I have a significant experience, that experience literally changes me. So suppose I'm at a high school dance and I see a beautiful girl across the room, and I ask a friend, "Who is that?" Remember what happens to Tony in West Side Story? Mariaaaaaaaaa! Or, if you're not into Broadway musicals, let's say Tony's brain has created a neuronal pattern.

The Origin and Evolution of Cells - The Cell - NCBI Bookshelf RuSpace | Soyuz console Fighter jet and spaceship cockpits seem to fascinate me and that of the Soyuz is no exception; unfortunately there are no detailed diagrams or manuals publically-available on the Internet that I know of! The following diagrams are ones I have collected from various places, and are the best I can do at the moment. The Soyuz TM Information Display System is called the “Neptune”, «Нептун»; for the TMA it is the Neptune ME. Some of the buttons and controls on the console can’t be reached without a stick to poke at them! The stick is called Указател, Ukazatel, “Pointer”. The computer used on the Soyuz is called Argon, «Аргон». Some of the Russian translations below are uncertain or unclear (I couldn’t find exact definitions for them). Soyuz SOI “Sirius” for the Soyuz 7K and Soyuz A8 spaceships СОИ «Сириус» кораблей – Союз-7К», Союз-А8» Soyuz T Descent module console SOI “Neptune” for the Soyuz T spaceship Пульт спускаемого аппарата СОИ «Нептун» кораблей «Союз Т» Soyuz TM Soyuz TMA Configuration Links

29 Semi-Productive Things I Do Online When I’m Trying to Avoid Real Work You don’t always have to work hard to be productive. Productivity can simply be the side effect of doing the right things. So here’s a list of 29 semi-productive things I do online when my mind is set on avoiding ‘real work.’ Check delicious popular tags like ‘useful,’ ‘tutorials,’ ‘tips,’ ‘howto,’ ‘advice,’ ‘entrepreneurship,’ etc. for interesting, educational articles to read.Watch one of the thousands of educational videos streaming at TED.com, Academic Earth and Teacher Tube.Read an online book list and find a new book to grab next time I’m at the library. Here’s another list. Oh, and ever since I bought my new (super sexy) Apple iPad , I’ve been enjoying all of these sites on the go and catching looks from almost everyone who passes me while I browse. So what kind of semi-productive things do you do online in your off-time? Photo by: Colorblind Picaso Party Casino Related 30 Life-Enhancing Things You Can Do in 30 Minutes or Less April 19, 2012 In "Happiness" We're all way too busy.

RGS14 Regulator of G-protein signaling 14 (RGS14) is a protein that in humans is encoded by the RGS14 gene.[1] Function[edit] RGS14 is a member of the regulator of G protein signalling family. This protein contains one RGS domain, two Raf-like Ras-binding domains (RBDs), and one GoLoco motif. Increasing the expression of the RGS14 protein in the V2 secondary visual cortex of mice promotes the conversion of short-term to long-term object-recognition memory.[2] Conversely RGS14 is enriched in CA2 pyramidal neurons and suppresses synaptic plasticity of these synapses and hippocampal-based learning and memory.[3] Interactions[edit] RGS14 has been shown to interact with: References[edit] ^ Jump up to: a b "Entrez Gene: RGS14 regulator of G-protein signalling 14". Further reading[edit] Snow BE, Antonio L, Suggs S, et al. (1997).