Scanning technique reveals order to information flow
Web edition : 2:05 pm
The impossibly complicated brain just got a little simpler. Instead of looking like a tangled mess of noodle soup, pathways in the brain are arranged more like a package of neatly interwoven ramen noodles, a new brain scanning study reveals. The results offer more clues to how the human brain gets built and how it has evolved.
Scientists led by Van Wedeen of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston used a scanning technique called diffusion magnetic resonance imaging that detects the direction of traffic flow along white matter tracts, the brain?s information superhighways. The scans revealed that these brain signals form a grid, made up of parallel and perpendicular tracts woven together into curved sheets.?
This grid is a general feature of primate brains, Wedeen and colleagues report in the March 30 Science. Brains of rhesus monkeys, owl monkeys, marmosets and prosimian galagos contained similar geometric patterns to those found in human volunteers, suggesting the grid?s deep evolutionary roots.
One day, doctors may be able to diagnose brain disorders by identifying variations in this regular brain pattern.?
Beyonce, a Dachshund puppy vying for the title of World's Smallest Dog, is fed in a coffee cup, during an interview on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 in New York. Animal rescuers in Northern California say Beyonce was so small at birth that she could fit into a spoon. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Beyonce, a Dachshund puppy vying for the title of World's Smallest Dog, is fed in a coffee cup, during an interview on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 in New York. Animal rescuers in Northern California say Beyonce was so small at birth that she could fit into a spoon. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Beyonce, a Dachsund puppy vying for the title of World's Smallest Dog, is held during an interview on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 in New York. Animal rescuers in Northern California say Beyonce was so small at birth that she could fit into a spoon. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Beth DeCaprio, executive director of the Grace Foundation, holds Beyonce, left, a Dachsund puppy vying for the title of World's Smallest Dog, and her mom Casey, a mixed Dachsund and Chihuahua, during an interview on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 in New York. Animal rescuers in Northern California say Beyonce was so small at birth that she could fit into a spoon. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Beyonce, left, a Dachsund puppy vying for the title of World's Smallest Dog, is held with her mom Casey, a mixed Dachshund and Chihuahua, during an interview on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 in New York. Animal rescuers in Northern California say Beyonce was so small at birth that she could fit into a spoon. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
NEW YORK (AP) ? A very tiny puppy is sitting inside a coffee mug, trying without success to escape by scratching its little paws against the slippery surface. In recent days, this famous dog has been placed alongside a variety of small objects ? an iPhone, a business card and a tape measure, among other things ? to demonstrate just how tiny she really is.
This is Beyonce, a female dachshund mix who was born March 8 to a rescue dog that was found abandoned, wandering the streets of San Bernardino, Calif. At birth, she weighed just 1 ounce and could fit into a teaspoon. Her caretakers say she's one of the smallest puppies ever born full-term ? and her story of unlikely survival has captured the attention of people all over the world.
"We had an ultrasound done, and they actually saw that there were five puppies, but one was probably going to be stillborn," says Beth Decaprio, executive director of the Grace Foundation of Northern California, which rehabilitates abused and neglected animals. "It didn't look like a viable baby."
Beyonce wasn't breathing when she was born at the foundation's farm in El Dorado Hills, Calif. A veterinarian tried to revive her by performing chest compressions. Then he passed her over to Decaprio.
"I blew a couple little breaths in her mouth," Decaprio says. "And she started to breathe on her own."
At 3 weeks old, Beyonce is now about the size of an iPhone, but she isn't cowed by her much bigger brothers and sisters. She crawled on top of the wriggling puppies as they nursed, trying to push them out of the way.
"They just consider her another sibling," Decaprio says. "But she is a survivor, and she's a tough little one."
Beyonce, whose caretakers wanted to give her a "big" name, is not yet up for adoption, though the foundation has received hundreds of requests from people who want to take her home. When she's stronger ? and a bit bigger ? the foundation will decide whether to give her away.
The shelter has taken the puppy on a media tour, including big media stages in New York.
Decaprio hopes the little puppy will inspire people to adopt shelter dogs and save them from being destroyed. Many shelters keep rescue dogs for only 12 hours before they must be put down, she says.
"What's most important about the story is that people are aware of the tiny, little, wonderful miracles that come out of the shelter that sadly are euthanized each and every day," she says. "Beyonce and her family are lucky, but we know that most of these don't get that kind of chance."
Is it potential that green tea for dieting and weight loss reasons is often a sound selection? When you?ll find tons of wellness benefits in green tea, it surprisingly has the capability to increase metabolism and burn fat. Let?s now possess a discussion of just various approaches that green tea might help you to shed weight inside a protected and healthy manner.
It truly is considerably easier to buy green tea, and substantially less high-priced, when when compared with several other supplements and diets. You?ll be able to choose to get green tea by the pound, as a supplement to get a relatively low cost from a wellness food retailer or an online vendor, or basically as a box of tea bags.
You may have your tea cold or hot, and you could order it at virtually any venue. You don?t must drink only a single form of green tea. You?ll be able to have a hot cup of tea when you rise, some decaf tea before you retire for bed along with a bottle of ice cold tea ahead of your afternoon workout. All these items will aid speed up your metabolism which will bring about protected, convenient and inexpensive fat loss.
Green tea, amongst its quite a few advantages, aids you to keep alertness and concentrate. What importance does this need to fat loss?
You?ll discover it a lot easier to reach your fat loss goals by sticking to your diet program and physical exercise routine. You may obtain a considerable power increase which will make you much more inclined to go to the gym for the reason that it is a natural stimulant. Whenever you are thinking a lot more clearly, you also come across it significantly less difficult to focus on all of your objectives, such as weight loss. This could even affect your option of groceries or dinner when going out.
The greatest benefit to Gourmet tea, although, is that unlike other supplements, it assists help your immune method. Green tea may be deemed much more of a food than a diet program supplement simply because it?s loaded with potent antioxidants that aid fight diseases and detoxify the physique. Beyond the apparent health benefits of these antioxidants, this aids you lose weight by boosting your power level at the same time. The health benefits in a cup of tea, which can be inexpensive when compared with other supplements, is usually pretty surprising. You do not even need to drink tea to get the benefits for the reason that green tea is offered in a supplement type. Working with green tea consistently in conjunction having a wholesome lifestyle will make it even less difficult to burn calories.
Learn more about Gourmet tea. Stop by Danial Davis?s recommended site where you can find out all about buy loose leaf tea and what it can do for you.
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Electronics makers love a spec they can get behind and make the center point of their marketing efforts -- no matter how useless it is as a comparison. The undisputed be all arms race HDTV metric for the past few years, LCD refresh rates, has recently become even muddier according to HD Guru. Terms like Clear Motion Rate (Samsung) and Scenes Per Second (Vizio) are meant to confuse the customer while resembling the somewhat useful (and, as of late, unmentioned on the box) refresh rate. Our advice? Ignore this spec completely and instead find a TV that can accurately display your favorite content at its native frame rate (24, 30 or 60) -- leave all that soap-opera looking frame interpolation technology to the modern day twelve o'clock flasher.
Scientists suggest new age for East African Rift Public release date: 27-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andrea Gibson gibsona@ohio.edu 740-597-2166 Ohio University
Fossil-rich region may be 25-30 million years old, geology study finds
ATHENS, Ohio -- The Great Rift Valley of East Africathe birthplace of the human speciesmay have taken much longer to develop than previously believed, according to a new study published this week in Nature Geoscience that was led by scientists from James Cook University and Ohio University.
The team's findings suggest that a major tectonic event occurred in East Africa as far back as 25-30 million years ago, rearranging the flow of large rivers such as the Congo and the Nile to create the unique landscapes and climates that mark Africa today.
"The findings have important implications for understanding climate change models, faunal evolution and the development of Africa's unique landscape," said lead author and geologist Eric Roberts of the James Cook University in Australia.
The Rift is an example of a divergent plate boundary, where the Earth's tectonic forces are pulling plates apart and creating new continental crust.
The East African Rift system is composed of two main segments, the eastern branch that passes through Ethiopia and Kenya, and a western branch that forms a giant arc from Uganda to Malawi, interconnecting the famous rift lakes of eastern Africa.
Scientists such as Roberts and his Ohio University study co-authors Nancy Stevens and Patrick O'Connor have found the area to be a rich source of fossils, including of some of the earliest anthropoid primates.
"This formation is the only late Oligocene terrestrial fossil-bearing deposit known from continental Africa below the equator," noted Stevens, who leads the paleontological team focused on the Oligocene, a geological period 23 to 34 million years ago.
"It has already produced several species new to science, and is particularly significant because it provides a last snapshot of the endemic African forms prior to large-scale faunal exchange with Eurasia later in the Cenozoic," continued Stevens, an associate professor of vertebrate paleontology in Ohio University's Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.
The traditional view holds that the eastern branch of this region is much older, having developed 15-25 million years earlier than the western branch.
Using an approach that included the dating of multiple minerals, such as zircons, contained within sandstones exposed in the western branch of the rift, the research team was first able to constrain the age of formation of the individual minerals and then use this information to estimate potential igneous source rocks that must have eroded at different points in the past to generate the sedimentary rocks.
The team's work provides new evidence that the two rift segments developed synchronously, nearly doubling the initiation age of the western branch and the timing of uplift in this region of East Africa.
"A key piece of evidence in this study is the discovery of an approximately 25 million year old lake and river deposits in the Rukwa Rift (a segment of the western branch) that preserve abundant volcanic ash and vertebrate fossils. 'Fingerprinting' of these sediments reveals important information about when rifting and volcanism began in the western rift and how the landscape developed," Roberts said.
The team's research, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Louis B. Leakey Foundation and the National Geographic Society, underscores an integration of biological and geological approaches essential for addressing complex issues in Earth history.
"Although this work was initiated to help constrain the age of rocks in the Rukwa Rift Basin of southwestern Tanzania, it has provided novel data that address a number of other, large-scale phenomena that have shaped the surface of the region and the continent," said O'Connor, associate professor of anatomy in Ohio University's Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.
###
Note to editors: High-resolution images of a map of the region under study and photos of the region are available for media use.
Ohio University Contacts:
Nancy Stevens, stevensn@ohio.edu, 740-590-4499
Patrick O'Connor, oconnorp@ohio.edu, 740-707-5008
Andrea Gibson, director of research communications, 740-597-2166, gibsona@ohio.edu.
James Cook University Contacts:
Eric Roberts, eric.roberts@jcu.edu.au, 61-7-4781-6947
Jim O'Brien, media relations, 61-7-4781-4822 or 0418-892449.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Scientists suggest new age for East African Rift Public release date: 27-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andrea Gibson gibsona@ohio.edu 740-597-2166 Ohio University
Fossil-rich region may be 25-30 million years old, geology study finds
ATHENS, Ohio -- The Great Rift Valley of East Africathe birthplace of the human speciesmay have taken much longer to develop than previously believed, according to a new study published this week in Nature Geoscience that was led by scientists from James Cook University and Ohio University.
The team's findings suggest that a major tectonic event occurred in East Africa as far back as 25-30 million years ago, rearranging the flow of large rivers such as the Congo and the Nile to create the unique landscapes and climates that mark Africa today.
"The findings have important implications for understanding climate change models, faunal evolution and the development of Africa's unique landscape," said lead author and geologist Eric Roberts of the James Cook University in Australia.
The Rift is an example of a divergent plate boundary, where the Earth's tectonic forces are pulling plates apart and creating new continental crust.
The East African Rift system is composed of two main segments, the eastern branch that passes through Ethiopia and Kenya, and a western branch that forms a giant arc from Uganda to Malawi, interconnecting the famous rift lakes of eastern Africa.
Scientists such as Roberts and his Ohio University study co-authors Nancy Stevens and Patrick O'Connor have found the area to be a rich source of fossils, including of some of the earliest anthropoid primates.
"This formation is the only late Oligocene terrestrial fossil-bearing deposit known from continental Africa below the equator," noted Stevens, who leads the paleontological team focused on the Oligocene, a geological period 23 to 34 million years ago.
"It has already produced several species new to science, and is particularly significant because it provides a last snapshot of the endemic African forms prior to large-scale faunal exchange with Eurasia later in the Cenozoic," continued Stevens, an associate professor of vertebrate paleontology in Ohio University's Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.
The traditional view holds that the eastern branch of this region is much older, having developed 15-25 million years earlier than the western branch.
Using an approach that included the dating of multiple minerals, such as zircons, contained within sandstones exposed in the western branch of the rift, the research team was first able to constrain the age of formation of the individual minerals and then use this information to estimate potential igneous source rocks that must have eroded at different points in the past to generate the sedimentary rocks.
The team's work provides new evidence that the two rift segments developed synchronously, nearly doubling the initiation age of the western branch and the timing of uplift in this region of East Africa.
"A key piece of evidence in this study is the discovery of an approximately 25 million year old lake and river deposits in the Rukwa Rift (a segment of the western branch) that preserve abundant volcanic ash and vertebrate fossils. 'Fingerprinting' of these sediments reveals important information about when rifting and volcanism began in the western rift and how the landscape developed," Roberts said.
The team's research, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Louis B. Leakey Foundation and the National Geographic Society, underscores an integration of biological and geological approaches essential for addressing complex issues in Earth history.
"Although this work was initiated to help constrain the age of rocks in the Rukwa Rift Basin of southwestern Tanzania, it has provided novel data that address a number of other, large-scale phenomena that have shaped the surface of the region and the continent," said O'Connor, associate professor of anatomy in Ohio University's Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.
###
Note to editors: High-resolution images of a map of the region under study and photos of the region are available for media use.
Ohio University Contacts:
Nancy Stevens, stevensn@ohio.edu, 740-590-4499
Patrick O'Connor, oconnorp@ohio.edu, 740-707-5008
Andrea Gibson, director of research communications, 740-597-2166, gibsona@ohio.edu.
James Cook University Contacts:
Eric Roberts, eric.roberts@jcu.edu.au, 61-7-4781-6947
Jim O'Brien, media relations, 61-7-4781-4822 or 0418-892449.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
'Games' had third-highest opening ever, beating out all 'Twilight Saga' movie openings and every non-sequel ever made. By Ryan J. Downey
Josh Hutcherson in "The Hunger Games" Photo: Lionsgate
Much like Katniss Everdeen herself, "The Hunger Games"' aim was true. When it comes to box-office records, it's hard to keep a good book down.
"The Hunger Games" beat all of the "Twilight Saga" movies and every single non-sequel ever with the third-biggest opening weekend of all time. The big-screen adaptation of the first novel in the massively popular young adult trilogy collected $155 million domestically, a figure that was just $3.4 million less than "The Dark Knight" opening in 2008. ("Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2" is still #1 with $169.1 million). Audiences gave the movie a CinemaScore of "A."
"The Hunger Games" collected an estimated $19.7 million in midnight screenings alone. Librarians, academics and bookworms of all stripes should note that all of the movies in the top five "all-time" list are based on some sort of printed source material. "Potter," "Dark Knight," "Hunger Games," "Spider-Man 3" ($151 million) and "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" ($142 million) were, of course, all drawn from either novels or long-running comic book characters. "The Hunger Games" made another $59.3 million overseas, which is about on par with the debuts of the opening installments in both the "Twilight" and "Harry Potter" franchises.
The next installment in author Suzanne Collins' trilogy, "Catching Fire," will see its film adaptation arrive in November of next year. But "Hunger Games" star Jennifer Lawrence will be back in theaters well before that. The 21-year-old Oscar nominee's new horror flick, "House at the End of the Street," is due September 21.
MTV News will exclusively unveil the full trailer for the movie online this Thursday morning. The latest from "Hush" director Mark Tonderai will see Lawrence in a role much different than skilled archer Katniss Everdeen, as she'll play a high school student who gets tangled up with a guy who has very dark secrets.
"The Hunger Games" had an 85 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes at press time, which is exactly the same as last weekend's #1 film, "21 Jump Street." The comedically driven movie version of the earnest late '80s TV drama about cops who went undercover in high schools was #2 this week with $21.3 million, for a total of $71 million. "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax," which enjoyed the eighth-highest debut for an animated movie earlier this month, was #3 with $13.1 million and a $177.3 million total.
"John Carter" was #4 with $5 million for a $62.3 million total, and "Act of Valor" rounded out the top five with $2 million for a $66 million total. Although those totals are similar, "John Carter" carried a reported production budget of $250 million while "Valor" was made for $12 million.
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Public release date: 27-Mar-2012
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