Problem Solving

“If one adopts the principles enunciated in Bhagavad-gita, he can make his life perfect and make a perfect solution to all the problems of life which arise out of the transient nature of material existence.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Bhagavad-gita, Introduction)

As soon as you introduce the property of transience, you get problems. For starters, since the objects in question are temporary in their manifestation, once this property is known fear will follow. Take a house for example. You purchase the house and then live comfortably within it, but you know that it can deteriorate. If you don’t keep up with the mortgage payments or if you don’t take care of the needed repairs on time, the comfortable dwelling can quickly become a thing of the past. The greatest fear of all is death, which is spared for no one. Since life is full of problems, the tendency towards looking for solutions is as natural as eating when you’re hungry. If you’re already looking for answers, why not head straight for the guidebook that in the beginning addresses life’s most difficult questions. From there find not only the solution to birth and death but also the tools necessary for dealing with any derived problem that should arise.

“Just as the ripened fruit has no other fear than falling, the man who has taken birth has no other fear than death.” (Lord Rama, Valmiki Ramayana, Ayodhya Kand, 105.17)

As the famous prince of the Raghu dynasty and divine incarnation of Godhead once said, for a mature human being there is no other fear than death. That fact puts everything into the right perspective. The fear over losing health insurance relates to death. The fear over becoming destitute, of having no money to provide for basic necessities, also is tied to death. This fear is prevalent in the mature human being and not so much in the child because of the difference in intelligence. The child has yet to be disappointed by life, and they haven’t learned that everything within it is temporary. The adult may have achieved all of their childhood dreams and still had to deal with so many problems thereafter. Therefore once there is maturity, the human being knows that they have nowhere left to go but down.
The fear of death is not just personal either. Often times it extends to family members. This is actually a very nice sentiment, revealing some of the properties of the essence of identity that are mentioned in the conversation documented in that famous guidebook. During economic downturns polling companies will try to get a pulse on the nation’s thoughts of the economy. A common answer given to questions about one’s personal financial situation is: “I’m doing okay, but I’m worried about my neighbor. I’m worried about the country. It seems like there are no jobs anywhere.” Though the human being knows that their destiny is death, somehow they tend to pity others, even those who are in better off positions.
Emotions like these consumed a hesitant warrior on the eve of a giant battle. Fortunately for him, his problems were solved by the one person who can remove all distresses. The warrior Arjuna was more than capable of doing away with his enemy; what he lacked was the desire to fight. He knew that he was in the right with respect to raising hostilities, but if following the righteous path meant killing so many well-wishers and family members on the opposing side, Arjuna would rather be wrong.
Lord Krishna, Arjuna’s chariot driver at the time, stepped in and dealt with this all-encompassing problem. Arjuna was worried about death, and not even his own. He was worried about what would happen to the opposing members should they perish in battle. In this way the talk that followed between Krishna and Arjuna became the most applicable guidebook, as its starting premise is something missed through mental speculation.
In any problem, the solution is found through proper knowledge of the relevant parties. Proper knowledge addresses the inner properties of the situation, knowing how the different entities operate. If there is a misidentification, how can a proper solution be found? Sure, we can consult a guidebook on how to fix our wireless internet connection or properly bake a cake, but these are small problems. The fact that everything around us is temporary ensures that little problems will never go away. Having to fill up gasoline is a tiny nuisance. Drive enough back and forth to work and eventually you’ll have to break your routine and head to the gas station for a fill up. Many of the problems occur at regular intervals. They are deemed problems because they are unwanted inconveniences of life.
Krishna did not start off dealing with smaller problems. He did not wish to dwell on Arjuna’s hesitancy or his misdirected affection for his family members right away. These were indeed the external causes to his decision to refrain from fighting, which introduced a new problem, but at the root of the issue was a misidentification. Arjuna was seeing something that is temporary and taking it to be permanent. The body is not our identity; the soul is. We know that the body is temporary because it changes all the time. We even know that it goes away at the end of life, like the fruit that falls off the tree. If death is already destined to happen, why should one lament it when following religious principles?
Let’s say that I have an iPad filled with movies and books. I know that if I watch a few movies, one after another, pretty soon the device will lose battery strength. A low battery indicates a problem, which is solved by a recharge. Should I be travelling on a trip where power outlets are not readily available, once the recharge is required, I can no longer use the device. Does this mean that I shouldn’t watch a single movie? If that is the case, why have the device? The battery will be drained regardless, so utilizing the device for its intended purpose is the much better course of action. We don’t despise the car because it will run out of gasoline if we drive it enough.
In a similar manner, the body is already destined for death, so lamenting over this fact was not wise for Arjuna. Whether he fought or didn’t fight, those family members would have to perish. By abiding by Krishna’s orders, which were not made up on the spot and which had been followed for thousands of years even at this time, Arjuna would not be doing anything wrong. He was a fighter by occupation, so it was his duty to protect the innocent. If he wasn’t up for the job, who would protect the property of the helpless citizens relying on the stronger government forces?
The route of solving smaller problems first is unfortunately taken by governments as well. Famous politicians often believe that the government’s duty is to solve problems, when in fact its primary role is to defend property and life. Yet what are the distressed citizens to do? In a society where the information of the proper identification of the individual is absent, the real problems of life, namely birth, death, old age and disease, will never be solved. Without a solution to the death problem, there will be constant fear and hesitation. The poor person worries about food and clothing and the rich man is concerned with maintaining his standard of living up until the time of death. In either case there is fearing, which indicates that there are problems no matter where you are in life.
Krishna rightly revealed to Arjuna that the soul never dies, nor does it take birth. It is eternal. The consciousness of the living entity at the time of death determines the next destination. Therefore following the original guidebook that is the Vedas - which are explained nicely by the saints and by Krishna Himself in works like the Bhagavad-gita - leads to a proper consciousness at the time of death. Something temporary is the cause of distress, while something permanent is in line with the properties of the soul. Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and His internal energy are permanent, while the external energy of material nature is temporary. Identify with nature and you’ll be in constant trouble. Identify with spirit and you’ll have the tools to solve even trivial problems.
How does this work exactly? How does connecting with Krishna solve the problem of finding a job or putting food on the table? The Lord’s ultimate advice to Arjuna was to always think of Him and follow the duties prescribed for his order with detachment. “Don’t worry about the outcome; just follow God, thinking of Him in a loving mood.” This advice would serve Arjuna well, for he was firmly convinced of it by the teachings presented by Krishna, which would later on be known as the Bhagavad-gita, a work to be studied by scholars, inquisitive minds, and sincere spiritualists alike.
By knowing that I am spirit and that Krishna is Supreme Spirit, if I regularly chant His names, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare”, I stand a good chance of thinking about Him at the time of death. Krishna is eternal and lives in a permanent abode. A consciousness fixed on Him leads the individual to a residence in that imperishable home, where the only problem is: “How can I serve Krishna more?”
Through regular chanting in the discipline known as bhakti-yoga, or devotional service, the foremost desire of the individual is to stay connected with Krishna. The Lord bears the burden for success in this endeavor, and since He is Achyuta [one who never falls down], He never denies any sincere soul the success they deserve. The problems in life are automatically solved because from within as the chaitya guru and from without as the spiritual master Krishna gives hints on how to find the conditions ideal for continuing in devotion. With a purified consciousness, a commonly employed solution to problems is to just abandon the activity. Another method is to look for situations which bring as little distractions as possible. In Arjuna’s case, he took on the great burden of fighting in a war, but he was unattached to the result. As the supreme director standing right in front of him, Krishna made sure that Arjuna would emerge victorious, keeping his consciousness pure the whole time.
Find a solution to the root of all problems and you will have a way of dealing with the many issues that arise in a temporary existence. Birth and death are unavoidable for aspects of life that are temporary, but with a mind focused on the proper aim, detachment becomes rather easy to invoke. Association with the body is life’s biggest problem and connecting with Shri Krishna in a bond of love is the only solution.
In Closing:

Anger, sadness, depression and strife.

Form the many problems of life.

Try to initially tackle just the smaller,

In hopes that will address the larger.

But there is a better, more direct route,

Tackle issues of birth and death at their root.

Hesitant warrior Arjuna’s mind in a stir.

Went to his friend Shri Krishna for answers.

What followed was the most sacred talk,

Became Bhagavad-gita, path to success chalked.

The History of the Indian Rupee

In 1935, under the Paper Currency Act of 1861, the Raj was granted the monopoly of issuing notes, ending the practice of private and presidency banks. But these currencies continued to be in use till the RBI issued its own coins and notes. Interestingly, till about 50 years ago, other currencies besides the RBI’s existed in, for instance, Portuguese Goa and Hyderabad. The central bank’s first currency, issued in 1938, was a five-rupee note bearing the portrait of King George VI. This was followed by notes of 10, 100, 1,000 and, yes, 10,000 rupees.
In the subsequent years, global developments, security concerns and the high cost of minting money led to many changes in the motif and the material of the currency. In 1940, the one-rupee note was reintroduced as a wartime measure. The watermark was made more difficult to copy and the security thread was introduced in 1944 to counter high-quality forgeries of rupees by the Japanese during their assault on Burma in WW II.

There is no uniformity or regularity in the change of colour, security features or pattern. “It isn’t wise to change the design and features frequently as it inconveniences people. At the same time, to prevent forgeries, we can’t keep it constant,” says Alpana Killawala, the RBI’s chief general manager. The George VI series continued till 1947. After Independence, a new design one-rupee coin was released in 1949. After careful consideration, King George VI’s portrait was replaced by Asoka’s Lion Capital, though a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi was initially considered but rejected. In 1960, the Hirakud dam, a symbol of India’s industrialisation, replaced the elephant motif on the Rs 100 note.

During the first decade of Independence, the rupee was divided into 16 annas. Each anna was subdivided into either four pices or 12 pies. The Anna Series, introduced on January 26, 1950, was the first coinage of the Republic of India. It was continued for seven years, and then replaced with the decimal system, which divided the rupee into 100 naya paise. High inflation led to change in the metal for coins—from silver to nickel to aluminium to steel. Similarly, the paper currency has undergone a sea change—the economic crisis of the late 1960s led to a reduction in the size of notes and fears of black money in circulation led to the cancellation of high denomination notes like the Rs 1,000, the Rs 5,000 and the Rs 10,000 in 1978. But in 2000, the Rs 1,000 series were reintroduced with optically variable ink that changes colour on tilting. Given that the lifespan of a currency note is generally only two years, many of the paper currencies, such as the Rs 1 and Rs 2 notes, have now been phased out. The five-rupee note is due to be phased out too.

The coins and notes of today are all part of the Mahatma Gandhi series that came into use in 1996. The currency notes have complex watermarks, windowed security thread, a latent image of Gandhi and intaglio features for the visually handicapped. Further enhancements in 2005-06 raised intaglio printing and widened the security thread.

The lure of this must-see history of the rupee will be difficult to resist.

Schizophrenia patients’ ability to monitor reality may be helped by computerized training

People with schizophrenia who completed 80 hours of intensive, computerized cognitive training exercises were better able to perform complex tasks that required them to distinguish their internal thoughts from reality.
As described in the journal Neuron (2/22/12), a small clinical study conducted at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), tested the digital exercises as a new therapy for schizophrenia.
“We predicted that in order to improve complex cognitive functions in neuropsychiatric illness, we must target impairments in lower-level perceptual processes, as well as higher-order working-memory and social cognitive processes,” said Srikantan Nagarajan, PhD, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at UCSF and a senior author of the study.
When compared with their assessments before the training, schizophrenia patients who received 80 hours of computerized training over the course of 16 weeks became better at monitoring reality. This improvement coincided with increased activation in a key part of the brain: the medial prefrontal cortex.
“The medial prefrontal cortex is a critical higher-order brain region that supports successful reality-monitoring processes,” said Karuna Subramaniam, the study's first author, who worked directly with the patients in the study and analyzed their data.
How the Study Works
Schizophrenia strikes about 1 percent of all Americans and about 51 million people worldwide. It is one of the most intractable and difficult to treat psychiatric illnesses, with prognosis becoming progressively poorer the longer a patient has the disease, according to the study's senior author, Sophia Vinogradov, MD, professor and interim associate chief of staff for mental Health at SFVAMC and interim vice chair of psychiatry at UCSF.
One of the core impairments of the disease is losing a grip on what is real, she said. “Reality-monitoring is the ability to separate the inner world from outer reality," she explained. "It is a complex cognitive function that is impaired in schizophrenia."
In the study, the brains of 31 patients with schizophrenia and 15 healthy people used for comparison were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they performed a reality-monitoring task.
Then, 16 of the 31 patients with schizophrenia were randomly assigned to complete 80 hours of computerized training composed of auditory, visual and social cognitive exercises that included programs designed by the Posit Science Corporation. The other 15 patients with schizophrenia were assigned to play computer games for the same amount of time.
After 80 hours, all of the subjects repeated the original reality-monitoring task in the MRI scanner, to monitor brain activity associated with their ability to discern words they made up in their head (internally-generated information) from words the experimenter showed them (externally-presented information).
The reality-monitoring test consisted of a study phase and a retrieval phase. During the study phase, subjects read sentences with noun-verb-noun structures outside the scanner. These were simple sentences like: "The chicken crossed the road." During this study phase, the final word of each sentence was either presented by the scientists or it was left blank for subjects to make up and fill in themselves (e.g., "The rabbit ate the ___" to which the subject might write down, "carrot").
Then, 45 minutes later, the subjects performed the retrieval phase in the MRI scanner where their brain activity was monitored while they were shown pairs of nouns from the sentence list. They had to identify whether the second word in the noun pair was a word that they had previously generated themselves during the study phase ("rabbit-carrot") or was one that the experimenter had presented to them ("chicken-road").
Compared to their pre-training assessments, people who had received the computerized cognitive training were better able to distinguish between the words they had made up themselves and those that had been presented to them. Furthermore, analyses of the MRI data revealed they also had increased activity in the part of the brain (the medial prefrontal cortex) that governs these decisions.
“Interestingly, greater activation within the medial prefrontal cortex was also linked with better social functioning six months after training,” Subramaniam said. "In contrast, patients in the computer games control condition did not show any improvements, demonstrating that the behavioral and neural changes were specific to the computerized training patient group.”
What this suggests, said Vinogradov, is that “the neural impairments in schizophrenia are not immutably fixed but may be amenable to well-designed interventions that target restoration of neural system functioning.”
The study “sets the groundwork for what could be a new treatment approach in psychiatric illness – a new tool we could use in addition to medication, psychotherapeutic approaches or cognitive behavioral approaches,” she said.
The article, "Computerized Cognitive Training Restores Neural Activity within the Reality Monitoring Network in Schizophrenia" by Karuna Subramaniam, Tracy L. Luks, Melissa Fisher, Gregory V. Simpson, Srikantan Nagarajan, and Sophia Vinogradov appears in the Feb. 23 issue of Neuron.
This work was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Gregory Simpson, an author of the study, is a senior scientist at Brain Plasticity Institute, Inc. Sophia Vinogradov, also a study author, is a consultant to Brain Plasticity Institute, Inc., which has a financial interest in computerized cognitive training programs.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
Provided by University of California, San Francisco

"Schizophrenia patients’ ability to monitor reality may be helped by computerized training." February 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-schizophrenia-patients-ability-reality-computerized.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Almost half of depression in adults starts in adolesence

(Medical Xpress) -- A new study by research psychologists at Bangor and Oxford Universities show that half of adults who experience clinical depression had their first episode start in adolescence. In fact, the most common age to see the start of depression is between 13-15 years-old.
‘Depression used to be a problem that first surfaced in middle-aged people’ says Professor Mark Williams of Oxford University who led the study with Professor Ian Russell and Rebecca Crane of Bangor University. ‘In recent decades, however, researchers began to find that patients were first becoming depressed at an increasingly young age, a trend that has contributed to depression becoming one of the most pressing health issues across the world’.
As part of the study, they assessed the age at which people first became depressed and its links to later mental health problems and suicidal feelings. The study involved 275 people who had suffered repeated bouts of depression. All were carefully assessed to determine at what age they had first experienced the combination of symptoms that would indicate clinical depression. In the article published this month in the Journal of Affective Disorders the researchers showed that 48 percent of these patients had first suffered the illness before the age of 18 years. In fact, the most common age of their first episode of depression was 13-15 years.
‘These results are important because depression is a problem that tends to return. If you’ve been depressed once, then you have a roughly 50:50 chance of becoming depressed again. If you have become depressed twice or more, then this risk rises to 70-80 percent.
Yet the good news is that there are things we can do to prevent it happening. Talking therapies such as Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) can have a major impact on the type of recurrent depression that starts early in life, and researchers are starting to examine how best to prevent depression before it becomes a life-long problem.
Rebecca Crane of the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice at Bangor University adds: 'The Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy course offers people who are vulnerable to recurrent depression the opportunity to engage in a raining process which builds skills in recognising and responding wisely to the first signs of depression.'
'Over repeated episodes of depression unhelpful habitual patterns of thinking and feeling are established. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy teaches participants to recognise and respond to these patterns in new ways’. 'Here at Bangor University we offer mindfulness classes to the general public. These courses are open to everyone and so are not specifically aimed at people with recurrent depression - they do however develop the skills which research has demonstrated is relevant to people who are vulnerable to depression.'
Provided by Bangor University

"Almost half of depression in adults starts in adolesence." February 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-depression-adults-adolesence.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Study challenges guidelines on art therapy for people with schizophrenia

Referring people with schizophrenia to group art therapy does not improve their mental health or social functioning, finds a study published in the British Medical Journal today.
The findings challenge national treatment guidelines which recommend that doctors consider referring all people with schizophrenia for arts therapies.
Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder which affects as many as one in 100 people at some point in their lives. While antipsychotic medication can reduce symptoms, many people continue to experience poor mental health and social functioning.
Art therapy has been used as an additional treatment for people with schizophrenia, and is recommended in national treatment guidelines, but few studies have examined its clinical effects.
So a team of UK researchers set out to examine the impact of group art therapy for people with schizophrenia compared with an active control treatment and standard care alone.
The study involved 417 people aged 18 or over with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Participants were split into three groups: 12 months of weekly group art therapy plus standard care; 12 months of weekly activity groups plus standard care; or standard care alone.
Art therapy patients were given access to a range of art materials and encouraged to use these to express themselves freely. Activity group patients were encouraged to take part in activities such as playing board games, watching and discussing DVDs, and visiting local cafes. The use of art materials was prohibited.
Outcome measures included global functioning (ability to carry out usual daily activities), mental health symptoms, social functioning and satisfaction with care. Levels of attendance at both art therapy and activity groups were low.
No differences in global functioning and mental health symptoms were found between the three groups, and no differences in social functioning and satisfaction with care were found between art therapy and standard care groups.
The authors conclude: "While we cannot rule out the possibility that group art therapy benefits a minority of people who are highly motivated to use this treatment, we did not find evidence that it leads to improved patient outcomes when offered to most people with schizophrenia."
However, they add that studies of other creative therapies for people with schizophrenia, such as music therapy and body movement therapy, are more promising, and that it may be only when such activities are combined with other interventions that benefits are seen.
In an accompanying editorial, Tim Kendall, Director at the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, suggests that art therapy is unlikely to be of clinical benefit for people suffering from schizophrenia, but it still has great potential for success in the treatment of negative symptoms.
Provided by British Medical Journal

"Study challenges guidelines on art therapy for people with schizophrenia." February 28th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-guidelines-art-therapy-people-schizophrenia.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Do women with bulimia have both an eating disorder and a weight disorder?

Researchers at Drexel University have found that a majority of women with bulimia nervosa reach their highest-ever body weight after developing their eating disorder, despite the fact that the development of the illness is characterized by significant weight loss. Their new study, published online last month in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, adds to a body of recent work that casts new light on the importance of weight history in understanding and treating bulimia.
"Most patients lose a lot of weight as part of developing this disorder, and all dedicate significant effort, including the use of extreme behaviors, to prevent weight gain," said Jena Shaw, a clinical psychology doctoral student in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences who was lead author of the new study. "In spite of this, we found that most women also regain a lot of weight while they have bulimia. We want to find out why that is."
Working with Dr. Michael Lowe, a professor of psychology at Drexel, and other collaborators, Shaw examined data from two study populations of women with bulimia, including a group of 78 women who were patients at the Renfrew Center in Philadelphia studied over two years, and a group of 110 women from a Harvard study who were interviewed at six-month intervals for eight years.
"Most of the women we studied reached their highest weight ever after developing bulimia and before remission," Shaw said. A total of 59 percent of women in the two-year study population, and 71.6 percent of women in the eight-year study population, showed this weight history pattern. These weights were even higher than their weights before developing bulimia, despite the fact that their pre-bulimia weights were overall already higher than average.
The researchers also explored group differences between women who reached their highest weight after onset of bulimia, and those whose highest weight preceded the eating disorder. The women who reached a new highest weight during bulimia had generally developed the disorder at an earlier age, and struggled with it for a longer period of time.
These findings add to a body of work led by Lowe that emphasizes the importance of weight and weight history in the outcomes and treatment of bulimia. Lowe's research has quantified relationships between personal weight history and the symptoms and outcomes of eating disorders.
"Bulimia nervosa was first medically described in 1979 among patients whose body weight generally appeared 'normal,' but who, in most cases, had weighed substantially more in the past," said Lowe. "Yet relatively few studies have considered weight history or the fear of becoming overweight again as a possible perpetuating factor for the disorder."
In his eating disorder studies, Lowe has examined a variable called "weight suppression," which is the difference between a person's past highest weight and her current weight. Most people with bulimia have higher weight suppression values than their peers without bulimia. His studies have shown correlations between higher weight suppression in bulimic women and undesired outcomes including greater likelihood of dropping out of treatment, less likelihood of abstaining from binge/purge behaviors, greater weight gain and longer time to remission. Recently, other researchers have found a relationship between weight suppression and metabolism in healthy women, suggesting that people with higher weight suppression must eat fewer calories to maintain their weight than women of similar weight who have always been close to their current weight.
By clarifying the connections between women's weight history and the course of their eating disorder, researchers may identify ways to use productive discussion of weight and weight history to improve treatments, Lowe said.

Provided by Drexel University

"Do women with bulimia have both an eating disorder and a weight disorder?." February 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-women-bulimia-disorder-weight.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek

'World searches' - most popular searches on Cambridge Dictionaries and the reasons behind them

Cambridge Dictionaries Online has published a list of the top words and phrases that got the world searching in 2011, with some surprising insights into their popularity.
Words and phrases people search for are frequently affected by major global events: searches for 'tsunami', 'meltdown', 'riot', 'looting', and 'turmoil' all increased dramatically around corresponding events last year, but the words people search for in response to current events are not always as predictable.
When the phone-hacking story erupted in mid-July 2011, there was only a moderate increase in searches for 'hack', but a far more conspicuous spike in searches for 'humble'. Rupert Murdoch used this when he had to face a Commons Select Committee on July 19th, saying: "this is the most humble day of my life".
The phrase 'eat your heart out', already a surprisingly popular search, had a huge increase on May 11th - can this all be due to an episode of Glee in which a character says the line "Eat your heart out, Kate Middleton"?
Dominic Glennon, Reference Systems Manager for Cambridge Dictionaries Online, said: "It may surprise many people, as it does us, that by far the most common search on Cambridge Dictionaries Online for the whole year is actually the word dictionary itself!"
The top ten searches in 2011 were:
1. dictionary 

2. bear 

3. eat your heart out
4. lead 

5. concern 

6. lie 

7. issue 

8. despite 

9. appreciate 

10. schedule
Paul Heacock, Publishing Manager for Cambridge Dictionaries Online, said: "We are delighted that Cambridge Dictionaries Online, a free global resource, is assisting learners in their understanding of the events and language used around them. Cambridge Dictionaries Online was set up in 1999 as a free ELT resource, for learners of English as a foreign language, but has quickly become widely used by both native and non-native English speakers and learners."
In 2011 Cambridge Dictionaries Online had 20 million unique visitors, making over 63 million visits and viewing almost 300 million pages.
More information: To view and search Cambridge Dictionaries Online (free of charge), go to: dictionary.cambridge.org
Provided by Cambridge University Press

"'World searches' - most popular searches on Cambridge Dictionaries and the reasons behind them." February 29th, 2012. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-world-popular-cambridge-dictionaries.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Professor proposes challenge to prove whether people can see entangled images

a) Spontaneous parametric down conversion: A photon from a laser beam excites a nonlinear medium (usually a crystal) to a virtual level that decays spontaneously into two possible paths. Either an identical laser photon is created or a pair of photons appear. Their energy adds up to the energy of the laser photon. Photons from all colors (wavelengths) can be obtained. b) The photon pairs follow directions given by linear momentum conservation. F designate an optical interference fi lter. Image: Geraldo A. Barbosa, arXiv:1202.5434v1 [q-bio.NC]
(PhysOrg.com) -- Geraldo Barbosa, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University has posed an interesting challenge. He wonders if the human eye and brain together are capable of actually seeing entangled images. This is not a philosophical question, as he has phrased the query as part of a practical experiment that someone with the proper lab could actually carry out. To that end, he’s posted a paper on the preprint server arXiv with the hope that a physics team will take up the challenge.
The whole idea is based on entanglement and the means by which researchers make it come about. What they do is shoot a laser at a non-linear crystal causing the photons in the beam to be converted into lower frequency entangled pairs. Those pairs are then directed to sensors which individually are able to measure a fuzzy or blurred “image”. But when both of the entangled photons are taken together as a single measurement, the image sharpens. These images are of course far too small for the human eye to see, plus they don’t last long enough for them to be seen anyway. To address these issues, researchers have taken to firing lasers that are formed into patterns such as a doughnut shape in a continuous sequence. The result is a steady stream of entangled pairs being created in the shape of a doughnut.
Barbosa wants to know what would happen if instead of forming a doughnut shape, the lasers were made to look like a letter in the alphabet, such as the letter A, and then of course if it were made large enough to be seen by the human eye. Two entangled letter As should be created and seeable albeit in a lower frequency. If that happened, would the human eye when paired with the brain’s abilities, be able to merge the two into a sharp readable image, or would we see just the individual blurred images captured by just one sensor?
Barbosa doesn’t know, and neither does anyone else, thus he suggests someone or some group build an experiment to find out.
The ability to see things differently than we are accustomed to seeing isn’t anything new of course. Some animals can see things in the infrared spectrum for example and evidence has been slowly emerging as described here, here and here, suggesting that some migrating birds are able to “see” the Earth’s magnetic field. So maybe it’s possible that we see entangled images every day, and just don’t know it.
Hopefully someone will take Barbosa up on his challenge, and then we’ll all find out if it’s possible or not.
More information: Can humans see beyond intensity images? by Geraldo A. Barbosa, arXiv:1202.5434v1 [q-bio.NC] http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.5434

Abstract
The human's visual system detect intensity images. Quite interesting, detector systems have shown the existence of different kind of images. Among them, images obtained by two detectors (detector array or spatially scanning detector) capturing signals within short window times may reveal a "hidden" image not contained in either isolated detector: Information on this image depend on the two detectors simultaneously. In general, they are called "high-order" images because they may depend on more than two electric fields. Intensity images depend on the square of magnitude of the light's electric field. Can the human visual sensory system perceive high-order images as well? This paper proposes a way to test this idea. A positive answer could give new insights on the "visual-conscience" machinery, opening a new sensory channel for humans. Applications could be devised, e.g., head position sensing, privacy in communications at visual ranges and many others.

via ArXiv blog
© 2011 PhysOrg.com
"Professor proposes challenge to prove whether people can see entangled images." February 29th, 2012. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-professor-people-entangled-images.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek

Worrying rise in number of medical students in prostitution over last 10 years

One in ten students now claim to know someone who is using prostitution to pay for university fees, a medical student writing for the Student BMJ claims.
Although the numbers are still small, this figure as a percentage, is two and a half times larger than 10 years ago when just 4% of students claimed to know a peer placing themselves in the sex trade. This figure rose to 6% in 2006 and now stands at just under 10%.
The author, a final year medical student at the University of Birmingham, writes about the obvious correlation between rising tuition fees and the prevalence of prostitution among students. She argues that it is due to the rising costs of both tuition and living that students are finding themselves in huge amounts of debt.
The English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) has noticed an increase in the number of calls from students considering sex work. A spokesperson for the ECP says that many medical students think "prostitution is the only means of financial survival. […] Jobs in shops and pubs that students usually take up are increasingly scarce and low paid".
Medical schools do not believe that prostitution among students is widespread. They have no specific rule on this matter but do suggest that medical students act within the General Medical Council's guidance for medical practice, "Duties of a doctor". However, this does not necessarily state that a doctor cannot be a prostitute. Furthermore, no case has been recorded in which a patient's health has suffered because a doctor also worked in this trade.
The author concludes that because there is no official guidance on the issue, there is no clear answer for students. What is worrying, she writes, is when students think "they have no choice but to resort to prostitution" and questions whether the "hike in fees" will lead to an increase in students entering the sex trade.
An accompanying editorial looks at the case of a medical student who faced either prostitution or "dropping out of medical school". The author, who wishes to remain anonymous, argues that "if studies are not grossly affected by how they are funded […] then it doesn't matter how we make a living". His opinions have, however, been met by some criticism from older students who had feelings of "condemnation" and "disgust" towards a medical student using prostitution to pay off his debts.
Provided by British Medical Journal

"Worrying rise in number of medical students in prostitution over last 10 years." February 28th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-medical-students-prostitution-years.html
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Eight Cars Which Will Save You Tons

Looking to save some money daily? When you purchase your next car, make it a fuel efficient one! Here are the most fuel efficient ones on the market today!

24/7 Wall Street shares…

8. 2012 Honda Insight

>MPG: 42

>Engine type: hybrid

>Car type: Front wheel drive, compact

>Fuel cost per year: $1,329

>Sticker price/base model: $18,350

Two Honda (NYSE: HMC) Insights made the list of fuel-efficient cars — the base Insight and the AV-S7 model. Unlike some of the other cars that get very high gas mileage, the Insight has full seating capacity for five people, which Honda’s smaller hybrid, the CR-Z, does not. The base price of the Honda Insight is well below that of most of the cars on this list, which probably reflects Honda’s attempt to lure hybrid buyers away from the mass market. Honda has added a number of interactive features meant to “engage” the driver in the fuel-monitoring experience. This includes an “ECON Button” that modifies various vehicle systems to help minimize its overall energy use — and maximize fuel efficiency.

7. 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid LE

>MPG: 41

>Engine type: hybrid

>Car type: Front wheel drive, mid-sized

>Fuel cost per year: $1,361

>Sticker price/base model: $29,500

The Camry Hybrid is a good example of a car manufacturer adding a hybrid version to a well-known, established brand of gas-driven models. The Camry is Toyota’s base 4-door sedan that sells for $21,955. This base model gets average gas mileage of only 25 MPG in city driving and fuel costs up to $1,993 per year. The hybrid version costs $8,000 more than the base model, so consumers have to trade upfront costs against future savings on fuel costs over time. Toyota (NYSE: TM) has placed the Camry Hybrid just above the Prius in both size and price.

6. 2012 Lexus CT 200h

>MPG: 42

>Engine type: hybrid

>Car type: Front wheel drive, luxury compact

>Fuel cost per year: $1,329

>Sticker price/base model: $29,120

Toyota’s luxury nameplate, Lexus, is one of a growing number of luxury car lines that have begun to offer hybrids. The fuel efficiency trend has progressed enough that even some full-sized SUVs now come with hybrid engines. The full-sized flagship Lexus S comes in a hybrid version, selling for $129,750. The CT, a five door hatchback, is the brand’s entry level vehicle. It comes in a base and an “F” series sport model. The base price for the “F” is $37,995. The car goes from zero to 60 in 9.8 seconds. That qualifies as slow for a sports car, but not one that gets 42 MPG.

5. 2012 Honda Civic Hybrid

>MPG: 44

>Engine type: hybrid

>Car type: Front wheel, four-door sedan

>Fuel cost per year: $1,268

>Sticker price/base model: $24,050

Honda took the highly successful Civic, already known for its fuel efficiency and quality ratings, and added a hybrid engine option to its lineup. The Civic now comes in seven models that range from a $15,805 sedan to the high-end “Si” coupe. Honda will push further into the alternative engine space with a new Civic Natural Gas model. This model has a base price of $26,155. Satellite links and luxury packages can push the price of the Civic Hybrid well over $27,000. Honda has begun to offer attractive financing packages to quicken Civic Hybrid sales. This includes a 0.9% financing option over a period as long as 60 months. This could mean that Honda either cannot sell many of the cars, or that it is willing to invest to take market share from its rivals.

4. 2012 Toyota Prius

>MPG: 50

>Engine type: hybrid

>Car type: Front wheel drive mid-sized

>Fuel cost per year: $1,116

>Sticker price/base model: $23,015

The Toyota Prius has three models among the top 11 most fuel-efficient cars sold in America. The Prius now comes in a base model, a smaller “c” model designed for urban driving, and the Prius V four-door wagon. The Prius is the undisputed king of the alternative energy car market. The car went through three generations of development since it was first sold in Japan in 1997. Toyota also produced an all-electric version last year, when Prius sales passed the three-million mark worldwide. The Prius and the Honda Fit hybrid exchange the spot as the top-selling car per month in Japan. For the entire year 2011, Prius took the top spot with 252,528 units sold.

3. 2012 Azure Dynamics Transit Connect Electric Van

>MPG-equivalent: 62

>Engine type: Electric

>Car type: Front wheel drive van

>Fuel cost per year: $972

>Sticker price/base model: $22,035

Unlike the other vehicles on this list, the Azure Transit Connect is a commercial truck. It was launched by Ford (NYSE: F) and Canadian car component company Azure in mid-2010. It comes in both a basic and wagon size. The initial sales goal for the light truck were extremely modest. Reuters reports that sales are expected to be less than 2,000 this year. Like most commercial vans, the Transit Connect has a full rear door, two floor-to-ceiling side doors, and a wheel base longer than most passenger cars.

2. 2012 Nissan Leaf

>MPG-equivalent: 99

>Engine type: Electric

>Car type: Front wheel drive, mid-sized

>Fuel cost per year: $612

>Sticker price/base model: $35,200 (editor’s note: does not include tax credit)

The Leaf was a major model launch for Nissan and its partner Renault. Reuters reported at the time the Leaf was first released that “Nissan and Renault are counting on an aggressive push into the nascent electric car market to boost their brand image — much as the Prius hybrid did for Toyota Motor Corp.” The Leaf was originally available in only seven states — Arizona, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington. By July 2011, as more capacity came online, Nissan marketed the Leaf in a number of states. Unlike Mitsubishi, Nissan already has a large presence in the U.S. The company sold 79,313 cars and light trucks in January, up 10% from the same month in 2011. With a nearly 9% share of the American market, Nissan has the dealer network and marketing tools to push the Leaf as a major alternative engine car.

1. 2012 Mitsubishi i-MiEV

>MPG-equivalent: 112

>Engine type: Electric

>Car type: Rear wheel drive subcompact

>Fuel cost per year: $540

>Sticker price/base model: $29,125

Mitsubishi is one of the least successful major car companies that offers a fleet of cars and light trucks in the U.S. During the month of January, Mitsubishi sold only 4,711 cars in the North America, down 18% from January of last year. The Japanese company has, however, decided to offer the i-MiEV early this year to compete with more well-known electric cars like the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf. The federal government is so anxious to drive the market for fuel-efficient cars that it offers a $7,500 tax credit for people who buy the car. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy recently named it the Greenest Car — the first time an electric vehicle has taken the number one spot.

Get the entire article at 24/7 Wall Street!

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Epigenetic culprit in Alzheimer's memory decline

In a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (right), HDAC2 levels in the hippocampus are higher than in the normal mouse hippocampus (left). Credit: Dr. Li-Huei Tsai, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
In a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease, memory problems stem from an overactive enzyme that shuts off genes related to neuron communication, a new study says.
When researchers genetically blocked the enzyme, called HDAC2, they 'reawakened' some of the neurons and restored the animals' cognitive function. The results, published February 29, 2012, in the journal Nature, suggest that drugs that inhibit this particular enzyme would make good treatments for some of the most devastating effects of the incurable neurodegenerative disease.
"It's going to be very important to develop selective chemical inhibitors against HDAC2," says Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Li-Huei Tsai, whose team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology performed the experiments. "If we could delay the cognitive decline by a certain period of time, even six months or a year, that would be very significant."
In every cell, DNA wraps itself around proteins called histones. Chemical groups such as methyl and acetyl can bind to histones and affect DNA expression. HDAC2 is a histone deacetylase, an enzyme that removes acetyl groups from the histone, effectively turning off nearby genes.
In 2007, Tsai's group reported in Nature that this so-called epigenetic change can contribute to cognitive decline. They used a strain of mutant mice developed in her lab called CK-p25, which shows a profound loss of neurons and synapses, the junctions between neurons. The animals also carry the amyloid-beta plaques thought to cause Alzheimer's disease and show impaired learning and memory. When Tsai's team gave the mice drugs that block all HDACs, the animals sprouted more synapses and showed better memory function.
There are 19 known HDACs. In 2009, the researchers found that one of these, HDAC2, can cause a loss of synapses and memory function in normal mice.
The new study pulls from both of these previous findings, investigating HDAC2's affect on CK-p25 mice.
The researchers showed that the mutant animals have an elevated level of HDAC2 in two regions known to be affected in neurodegenerative disease: the hippocampus, important for learning and memory, and part of the temporal lobe called the entorhinal cortex. In these regions, the researchers also found that HDAC2 binds to a host of memory genes and dampens their expression.
Tsai's team then used a technique called RNA interference to silence the expression of HDAC2 in neurons in the hippocampus. Four weeks later, they found a dramatic increase in synaptic density. What's more, when given two different memory tests, the treated animals were indistinguishable from normal controls.
Blocking HDAC2 expression did not change the number of dying neurons. Still, the findings suggest that memory can be improved even in later stages of the disease, Tsai says.
"The neurons that are still alive are essentially zombies: they're not really functioning properly because of the epigenetic blockade," Tsai says. "What we're showing is that, if we can get some of those neurons to wake up, we can get cognitive function to recover to a certain extent."
Using hippocampal neurons grown in culture, Tsai also uncovered a potential mechanism that raises the level of HDAC2 in the first place. She showed that amyloid beta and oxidative stress—both risk factors for Alzheimer's disease—can activate a protein called the glucocorticoid receptor 1. This receptor, in turn, can switch on the runaway expression of HDAC2.
"The striking thing is that amyloid beta has a very, very acute effect in elevating HDAC2 expression, but then the consequences can be very long term," Tsai says. This mechanism could explain why clinical trials of drugs that clear out amyloid beta in people with Alzheimer's haven't worked very well, she says.
Finally, Tsai's team looked at postmortem brain tissue from people who died of Alzheimer's disease. These samples, like those in mice, had elevated levels of HDAC2 in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex.

The clinical applications of this work are promising, Tsai says, but it's important not to oversell the findings. "While all the data look very promising in animal models, human studies are a completely different ball game," she says. "We need to do clinical trials to see whether this concept holds up."

More information: Graff J et al. "An epigenetic blockade of cognitive functions in the neurodegenerating brain." Nature, February 29, 2012.
Provided by Howard Hughes Medical Institute

"Epigenetic culprit in Alzheimer's memory decline." February 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-epigenetic-culprit-memory-decline.html
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

In what ways does lead damage the brain?

Exposure to lead wreaks havoc in the brain, with consequences that include lower IQ and reduced potential for learning. But the precise mechanism by which lead alters nerve cells in the brain has largely remained unknown.
New research led by Tomás R. Guilarte, PhD, Leon Hess Professor and Chair of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and post-doctoral research scientist Kirstie H. Stansfield, PhD, used high-powered fluorescent microscopy and other advanced techniques to painstakingly chart the varied ways lead inflicts its damage. They focused on signaling pathways involved in the production of brain-derived neurotropic factor, or BDNF, a chemical critical to the creation of new synapses in the hippocampus, the brain's center for memory and learning.
The study appears online in the journal Toxicological Sciences.
Once BDNF is produced in the nucleus, explains Dr. Stansfield, it is transported as cargo in a railroad-car-like vesicle along a track called a microtubule toward sites of release in the axon and dendritic spines. Vesicle navigation is controlled in part through activation (phosphorylation) of the huntingtin protein, which as its name suggests, was first identified through research into Huntington's disease. By looking at huntingtin expression, the researchers found that lead exposure, even in small amounts, is likely to impede or reverse the train by altering phosphorylation at a specific amino acid.
The BDNF vesicle transport slowdown is just one of a variety of ways that lead impedes BDNF's function. The researchers also explored how lead curbs production of BDNF in the cell nucleus. One factor, they say, may be a protein called methyl CpG binding protein 2, or MeCP2, which has been linked with RETT syndrome and autism spectrum disorders and acts to "silence" BDNF gene transcription.
The paper provides the first comprehensive working model of the ways by which lead exposure impairs synapse development and function. "Lead attacks the most fundamental aspect of the brain—the synapse. But by better understanding the numerous and complex ways this happens we will be better able to develop therapies that ameliorate the damage," says Dr. Guilarte.
Provided by Columbia University

"In what ways does lead damage the brain?." February 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-ways-brain.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Scientists develop world's most advanced drug to protect the brain after a stroke

Scientists at the Toronto Western Research Institute (TWRI), Krembil Neuroscience Center, have developed a drug that protects the brain against the damaging effects of a stroke in a lab setting. This drug has been in development for a few years. At this point, it has reached the most advanced stage of development among drugs created to reduce the brain's vulnerability to stroke damage (termed a "neuroprotectant"). Over 1000 attempts to develop such drugs by scientists worldwide have failed to be translated to a stage where they can be used in humans, leaving a major unmet need for stroke treatment. The drug developed by the TWRI team is the first to achieve a neuroprotective effect in the complex brain of primates, in settings that simulate those of human strokes. ischemic stroke.
The study, "Treatment of Stroke with a PSD95 inhibitor in the Gyrencephalic Primate Brain", published online today in Nature, shows how the drug, called a "PSD95 inhibitor" prevents brain cell death and preserves brain function when administered after a stroke has occurred.
"We are closer to having a treatment for stroke than we have ever been before," said Dr. Michael Tymianski, TWRI Senior Scientist and the study's lead author. "Stroke is the leading cause of death and disability worldwide and we believe that we now have a way to dramatically reduce its damaging effects."
During a stroke, regions of the brain are deprived of blood and oxygen. This causes a complex sequence of chemical reactions in the brain, which can result in neurological impairment or death. The PSD95 inhibitor published by the Toronto team acts to protect the brain by preventing the occurrence of these neurotoxic reactions.
The study used cynomolgus macaques, which bear genetic, anatomic and behaviour similarities to humans, as an ideal model to determine if this therapy would be beneficial in patients.
Animals that were treated with the PSD95 inhibitor after a stroke had greatly reduced brain damage and this translated to a preservation of neurological function. These improvements were observed in several scenarios that simulated human strokes. Specifically, when the treatment was given either early, or even at 3 hours, after the stroke onset, the animals exhibited remarkable recoveries. Benefits were also observed when the drug therapy was combined with conventional therapies (aimed at re-opening blocked arteries to the brain). Beneficial effects were observed even in a time window when conventional therapies on their own no longer have an effect.
"There is hope that this new drug could be used in conjunction with other treatments, such as thrombolytic agents or other means to restore blood flow to the brain, in order to further reduce the impact of stroke on patients," said Dr. Tymianski. "These findings are extremely exciting and our next step is to confirm these results in a clinical trial."
More information: DOI: 10.1038/nature10841
Provided by University Health Network

"Scientists develop world's most advanced drug to protect the brain after a stroke." February 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-scientists-world-advanced-drug-brain.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Study finds new genes that cause Baraitser-Winter syndrome, a brain malformation

Scientists from Seattle Children's Research Institute and the University of Washington, in collaboration with the Genomic Disorders Group Nijmegen in the Netherlands, have identified two new genes that cause Baraitser-Winter syndrome, a rare brain malformation that is characterized by droopy eyelids and intellectual disabilities.
"This new discovery brings the total number of genes identified with this type of brain defect to eight," said William Dobyns, MD, a geneticist at Seattle Children's Research Institute. Identification of the additional genes associated with the syndrome make it possible for researchers to learn more about brain development. The study, "De novo mutations in the actin genes ACTB and ACTG1 cause Baraitser-Winter syndrome," was published online February 26 in Nature Genetics.
The brain defect found in Baraitser-Winter syndrome is a smooth brain malformation or "lissencephaly," as whole or parts of the surface of the brain appear smooth in scans of patients with the disorder. Previous studies by Dr. Dobyns and other scientists identified six genes that cause the smooth brain malformation, accounting for approximately 80% of affected children. Physicians and researchers worldwide have identified to date approximately 20 individuals with Baraitser-Winter syndrome.
While the condition is rare, Dr. Dobyns said the team's findings have broad scientific implications. "Actins, or the proteins encoded by the ACTB and ACTG1 genes, are among the most important proteins in the function of individual cells," he said. "Actins are critical for cell division, cell movement, internal movement of cellular components, cell-to-cell contact, signaling and cell shape," said Dr. Dobyns, who is also a University of Washington professor of pediatrics. "The defects we found occur in the only two actin genes that are expressed in most cells," he said. Gene expression is akin to a "menu" for conditions like embryo development or healing from an injury. The correct combination of genes must be expressed at the right time to allow proper development. Abnormal expression of genes can lead to a defect or malformation.
"Birth defects associated with these two genes also seem to be quite severe," said Dr. Dobyns. "Children and people with these genes have short stature, an atypical facial appearance, birth defects of the eye, and the smooth brain malformation along with moderate mental retardation and epilepsy. Hearing loss occurs and can be progressive," he said.
Dr. Dobyns is a renowned researcher whose life-long work has been to try to identify the causes of children's developmental brain disorders such as Baraitser-Winter syndrome. He discovered the first known chromosome abnormality associated with lissencephaly (Miller-Dieker syndrome) while still in training in child neurology at Texas Children's Hospital in 1983. That research led, 10 years later, to the discovery by Dobyns and others of the first lissencephaly gene known as LIS1.
More information:
"De novo mutations in the actin genes ACTB and ACTG1 cause Baraitser-Winter syndrome": http://www.nature. … ng.1091.html
"Baraitser-Winter syndrome" study slideshow: http://www.flickr. … 29446519959/
"Baraitser-Winter syndrome" studies: "Isolation of a Miller-Dieker lissencephaly gene containing G protein beta-subunit-like repeats" http://www.ncbi.nl … med/8355785; "doublecortin, a Brain-Specific Gene Mutated in Human X-Linked Lissencephaly and Double Cortex Syndrome, Encodes a Putative Signaling Protein" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9489700
Provided by Seattle Children's

"Study finds new genes that cause Baraitser-Winter syndrome, a brain malformation." February 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-genes-baraitser-winter-syndrome-brain-malformation.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Effects of a concussion may last longer than symptoms, study shows

Director of the UK Concussion Assessment Research Lab Scott Livingston (bottom left) shows the results of MEP testing to UK men's soccer player Marco Bordon. Credit: University of Kentucky Public Relations

A study recently published by the University of Kentucky's Scott Livingston shows that physiological problems stemming from a concussion may continue to present in the patient even after standard symptoms subside.
Currently, concussions are diagnosed and monitored through a patient's self-reported symptoms (including headache, confusion or disorientation, poor concentration, and memory loss) and through computerized neuropsychological testing programs, which measure cognitive abilities including attention and concentration, cognitive processing, learning and memory, and verbal fluency. Post-concussion abnormalities in either of these markers typically return to a normal level within five to 10 days following the injury.
Conducted while he was a graduate student at the University of Virginia, Livingston's study was just published in the February 2012 issue of the Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology. The study used motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) — an electrophysiological measurement that can provide hard evidence for changes in brain function — to determine if any physiological abnormalities followed a similar recovery pattern to self-reported symptoms and neuropsychological testing.
During an MEP test, subjects have electrodes placed on a limb – such as the hand or foot. A magnetic stimulating device is placed over the head, and they receive a brief pulse of magnetic stimulation to the brain. The "reaction time" — the amount of time it takes for the subject's limb to receive the response from the brain after the stimulation — is recorded.
Livingston's study enrolled 18 collegiate athletes — nine who had been concussed within the previous 24 hours, and nine who had not experienced a concussion. Each concussed subject was matched with a non-concussed subject using age, gender, sport, position played, prior concussion history, and history of learning disability or attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder as inclusion criteria.
Subjects were evaluated for evidence of concussion based on self-reported symptoms, computerized neurocognitive test performance, and MEPs for a period of 10 days. Post-concussion symptoms were more frequent and greater in severity in the immediate timeframe after the injury (24-72 hours) and decreased in the following days. Some subjects reported no symptoms by day 10, though others did not have complete symptoms resolution by that time. Neurocognitive deficits followed a similar pattern, proving greater just after the injury and returning to normal (or closer to normal) by day 10.
MEPs, however, showed delays in response time and smaller MEP size which continued up to day 10, with these physiological changes actually increasing as the concussed athletes' symptoms decreased and cognitive functioning improved.

This video is not supported by your browser at this time.

The University of Kentucky's Scott Livingston discusses preseason baseline testing for concussions in athletes. A recently published study performed by Livingston while he was at the University of Virginia used motor-evoked potential testing to show evidence that the physiological effects of a concussion may last longer than its symptoms. Livingston's research lab at UK recently began a new program to study motor-evoked potentials in athletes pre- and post-concussion. At UK, all athletes who participate in a contact sport — including football, soccer, volleyball, diving, gymnastics, and basketball — are assessed preseason using MEP and neurocognitive testing to estbalish a baseline measure for each athlete. If an athlete receives a concussion, he or she will come back to the lab as soon as possible after the injury for follow-up testing. This approach allows researchers to get a clearer idea of the extent of an athlete's injury. Credit: University of Kentucky Public Relations

Livingston, director of the UK Concussion Assessment Research Lab and assistant professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, says these findings are significant for both athletes and sports medicine clinicians.
"Further investigation of MEPs in concussed athletes is needed, especially to assess how long the disturbances in physiological functioning continue after those initial ten days post-injury," Livingston said. "But in the meantime, sports medicine personnel caring for concussed athletes should be cautious about relying solely on self-reported symptoms and neurocognitive test performances when making return-to-play decisions."
Livingston's research lab recently began a new program to further study MEPs in athletes pre- and post-concussion. At UK, all athletes who participate in a contact sport — including football, soccer, volleyball, diving, gymnastics, and basketball — are assessed preseason using MEP and neurocognitive testing to establish a baseline measure for each athlete.
If an athlete receives a concussion, he or she will come back to the lab as soon as possible after the injury for follow-up testing. This approach allows researchers to get a clearer idea of the extent of an athlete's injury, Livingston says.
Neurocognitive tests, such as the Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Testing (ImPACT)™, are a valuable component of concussion management. While major professional sports organizations like the NFL and NHL, as well as hundreds of colleges, universities, and high schools across the United States follow this standard, UK Athletics did not have a formal, standardized neurocognitive testing protocol in place until last year. The addition of the MEP assessment in the preseason testing and post-concussion management are unique — UK is the first and only collegiate athletics program to implement a baseline physiologic measure of brain function.
"No other college of university in the country is currently assessing physiologic brain responses and using this information to determine the extent of the functional brain injury," Livingston said. "This type of information enables us to closely track recovery, which may not correspond to the decrease in concussion symptoms or recovery of memory and other cognitive functions."
Provided by University of Kentucky

"Effects of a concussion may last longer than symptoms, study shows." February 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-effects-concussion-longer-symptoms.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Dutch launch mobile mercy killing teams

Six specialised teams, each with a doctor, will criss-cross the Netherlands as of Thursday to carry out euthanasia at the home of patients whose own doctors refuse to do so, a pro-mercy killing group said.
"From Thursday, the Levenseindekliniek (Life-end clinic) will have mobile teams where people who think they comply with the criteria for euthanasia can register," Right-to-die NL (NVVE) spokeswoman Walburg de Jong said.
"If they comply, the teams will carry out the euthanasia at patients' homes should their normal doctors refuse to help them," she said.
Made up of a specially-trained doctor and nurse who will work part time for the group, called the Life-end clinic, teams will be able to visit patients all over the Netherlands, De Jong said.

The Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia in April 2002 and strict criteria regulates how such mercy killings can be carried out. Patients must be mentally alert when making the request to die.

Patients also have to face a future of "unbearable, interminable suffering" and both the patient and the doctor -- who have to obtain a second opinion -- before euthanasia is carried out, must agree there is no cure.
Each euthanasia case is then reported to one of five special commissions, each made up of a doctor, a jurist and an ethical expert charged with verifying that all criteria had been observed.
But the plan, which received the thumbs-up from Dutch Health Minister Edith Schippers in the Dutch parliament, has met with scepticism from one of the Netherlands' largest medical lobbies.
The Royal Dutch Society of Doctors (KNMG) said it doubted whether the "euthanasia doctors" would be able to form a close-enough relationship with a patient to make a correct assessment.
Yearly, some 3,100 mercy killings are carried out in the Netherlands said De Jong, adding that the NVVE have already been phoned by 70 potential patients since the plan was announced in early February.
The NVVE said its teams were expected to receive around 1,000 assisted suicides requests per year.
(c) 2012 AFP

"Dutch launch mobile mercy killing teams." February 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-dutch-mobile-mercy-teams.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Dutch launch mobile mercy killing teams

Six specialised teams, each with a doctor, will criss-cross the Netherlands as of Thursday to carry out euthanasia at the home of patients whose own doctors refuse to do so, a pro-mercy killing group said.
"From Thursday, the Levenseindekliniek (Life-end clinic) will have mobile teams where people who think they comply with the criteria for euthanasia can register," Right-to-die NL (NVVE) spokeswoman Walburg de Jong said.
"If they comply, the teams will carry out the euthanasia at patients' homes should their normal doctors refuse to help them," she said.
Made up of a specially-trained doctor and nurse who will work part time for the group, called the Life-end clinic, teams will be able to visit patients all over the Netherlands, De Jong said.

The Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia in April 2002 and strict criteria regulates how such mercy killings can be carried out. Patients must be mentally alert when making the request to die.

Patients also have to face a future of "unbearable, interminable suffering" and both the patient and the doctor -- who have to obtain a second opinion -- before euthanasia is carried out, must agree there is no cure.
Each euthanasia case is then reported to one of five special commissions, each made up of a doctor, a jurist and an ethical expert charged with verifying that all criteria had been observed.
But the plan, which received the thumbs-up from Dutch Health Minister Edith Schippers in the Dutch parliament, has met with scepticism from one of the Netherlands' largest medical lobbies.
The Royal Dutch Society of Doctors (KNMG) said it doubted whether the "euthanasia doctors" would be able to form a close-enough relationship with a patient to make a correct assessment.
Yearly, some 3,100 mercy killings are carried out in the Netherlands said De Jong, adding that the NVVE have already been phoned by 70 potential patients since the plan was announced in early February.
The NVVE said its teams were expected to receive around 1,000 assisted suicides requests per year.
(c) 2012 AFP

"Dutch launch mobile mercy killing teams." February 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-dutch-mobile-mercy-teams.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Shirdi Sai Baba Aarti (with lyrics)

Battery to Take On Diesel and Natural Gas

Battery building: Aquion Energy recently announced plans to retrofit this factory—which used to make Sony televisions—to make large batteries for use with solar power plants.

RIDC Westmoreland

Energy

Aquion Energy says its batteries could make the power grid unnecessary in some countries.

• By Kevin Bullis

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Aquion Energy, a company that's making low-cost batteries for large-scale electricity storage, has selected a site for its first factory and says it's lined up the financing it needs to build it.

The company hopes its novel battery technology could allow some of the world's 1.4 billion people without electricity to get power without having to hook up to the grid.

The site for Aquion's factory is a sprawling former Sony television factory near Pittsburgh. The initial production capacity will be "hundreds" of megawatt-hours of batteries per year—the company doesn't want to be specific yet. It also isn't saying how much funding it's raised or where the money comes from, except to mention that some of it comes from the state of Pennsylvania and none from the federal government.

The first applications are expected to be in countries like India, where hundreds of millions of people in communities outside major cities don't have a connection to the electrical grid or any other reliable source of electricity. Most of these communities use diesel generators for power, but high prices for oil and low prices for solar panels are making it cheaper to install solar in some cases.

To store power generated during the day for use at night, these communities need battery systems that can handle anything from tens of kilowatt-hours to a few megawatt-hours, says Scott Pearson, Aquion's CEO. Such a system could make long-distance transmission lines unnecessary, in much the same way that cell-phone towers have allowed such communities access to cellular service before they had land lines.

Eventually Aquion plans to sell stacks of batteries in countries that have electrical grids. They could provide power during times of peak demand and make up for fluctuations in power that big wind farms and solar power plants contribute to the grid. Those applications require tens to hundreds of gigawatt-hours' worth of storage, so to supply them, Aquion needs to increase its manufacturing capacity. Competing with natural-gas power plants—especially in the United States, where natural gas is so cheap—will mean waiting until economies of scale bring costs down.

The company has said that it initially hopes to make batteries for under $300 per kilowatt-hour, far cheaper than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Lead-acid batteries can be cheaper than Aquion's, but they last only two or three years. Aquion's batteries, which can be recharged 5,000 times, could last for over a decade in situations in which they're charged once a day (the company has tested the batteries for a couple of years so far).

Jay Whitacre, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of materials science and engineering who developed Aquion's technology and founded the company, says the cost will need to drop to less than $200 per kilowatt-hour for grid-connected applications. Reaching this price, and production capacity on the scale of gigawatt-hours, "will take a long time," he says. "But you have to start somewhere."

Whitacre developed the batteries with low cost and durability in mind from the start. In searching for potential electrode materials, he limited himself to cheap, abundant elements, settling on sodium and manganese. He also picked a water-based electrolyte that's safer and cheaper than the organic ones used in lithium-ion batteries. In turn, this allowed him to use cheap manufacturing equipment to make them. To keep costs down, the company is making the batteries with equipment that's normally used to make food or aspirin. Construction on the factory in Pennsylvania will begin immediately, and the first stage is expected to be finished next year.

The current battery technology of choice for electric buses is lithium-ion, the price of which has dropped in nearly 40 percent since 2010, and is projected to drop another 50 percent by 2020 or 2025. A lithium-ion battery provides enough energy to operate a bus for about 150 miles (in most conditions) before needing to be recharged. For hilly cities or cities where air conditioning must be used a lot, that range is significantly reduced. Charging can be done in a few different ways: slowly overnight (which causes the least wear to the battery and other components), by using an overhead charging system, or by using a system that is embedded under the pavement. The latter two methods are much quicker than the first method, but tend to degrade the bus components more quickly.

"Some papers proposing new battery materials look great until you read the fine print about how they're made," Whitacre says. "We focused on manufacturing from the beginning."