China's new aircraft carrier! Wow!

These aircraft carriers look formidable and of ultra modern design. There are reports the 1st Chinese aircraft carrier is under construction and could enter service around 2015 or earlier. 
It won't be long before we see the real thing. 
Defense analysts are waiting; watching anxiously.
    

THIS IS QUANTUM LEAP ABOVE ANYTHING WE HAVE ON THE DRAWING BOARD. THEY HAVE THOUGHT " OUTSIDE THE BOX " ON THIS ONE. BETTER SPEED, LARGER CAPACITY,  MUCH MORE STABLE, ETC. DEFINITELY A " BLUE-WATER " LONG REACH VESSEL.

PLUS THEY CAN SERVICE THEIR NUKE SUB FLEET IN-BETWEEN THE TWIN HULLS ( SIGHT UNSEEN ) OR EVEN LAUNCH AMPHIBIOUS OPPS FROM SAME. IT WILL BE LAUNCHED IN HALF THE TIME IT TAKES THE USA AT JUST ONE-THIRD THE COST.ADD THE NEW CHINESE STEALTH FIGHTER BOMBER ( NAVAL VERSION ALREADY FLIGHT TESTING ) IN THE MIX AND YOU HAVE THE MAKINGS OF A FORMIDABLE WEAPONS SYSTEM INDEED.

ALSO LOOK AT THAT EXTRA ''PARKING AND READINESS'' STATION BETWEEN BOTH HULL  STRUCTURES.. AND OF COURSE THE LAUNCHING AND LANDING CAPABILITIES FROM THE UTILISATION OF TWIN FLIGHT DECKS AT ONCE

P.S.   SOME THOUGHT SHOULD BE GIVEN TO ADVISING YOUR GRANDCHILDREN TO LEARNTOSPEAK MANDARIN ( FORGET SPANISH ) MY " VERY, VERY BRIGHT " 15-YEAR OLD 3^rd COUSIN HAS ALREADY BEEN ADVISED TO DO SO BY PEOPLE WHO KNOW ABOUT SUCH THINGS.

P.P.S   SIX OF THESE VESSELS ( TWO PACIFIC, TWO ATLANTIC, ONE INDIAN OCEAN
AND ONE MED SEA ) WOULD BE A PRETTY GOOD DIPLOMATIC " BIG STICK ". NOTE :
THE CHINESE ARE ALREADY DRILLING FOR OIL OFF CUBA . BRAZIL AND VENEZUELA ..
CAN THEY BUILD A FLEET OF THESE THINGS ???

A FEW FACTS: THE CHINESE HAVE COMPLETED THE WORLD'S BIGGEST DAM ( THREE GORGES ),
THE WORLD'S LONGEST OVER-WATER BRIDGE ( 65 TIMES AS MUCH STEEL AS IN THE EIFFEL TOWER ).
CONSTRUCTED A 15.000 ' HIGH RAILROAD INTO TIBET  (ALL CONSIDERED MAJOR ENGINEERING FEATS).

THEY ARE THE ONLY NATION OTHER THAN RUSSIA THAT CAN LAUNCH MEN INTO OUTERSPACE ( OUR CAPABILITY ENDS WITH THE LAST SPACE SHUTTLE LAUNCH THIS MONTH )
.. THEY HAVE ALSO SHOT DOWN A SURVEILLANCE SATELLITE ( ONE OF THEIR OWN )
FROM THE GROUND. PLUS THEY " OWN OUR ASS " IN THE INTERNATIONAL DEBT GAME.

CHINA'S NEW A/C CARRIER COULD BE TWICE AS FAST AS ANYTHING WE HAVE, PLUS THE STABILITY OF A CATAMARAN TYPE HULL WILL GREATLY REDUCE THE PITCHING, YAWING AND SWAYING COMMON TO OUR PRESENT DESIGNS.

Earlier Projects

Everyday clairvoyance: How your brain makes near-future predictions

 Neuroscience 

Every day we make thousands of tiny predictions — when the bus will arrive, who is knocking on the door, whether the dropped glass will break. Now, in one of the first studies of its kind, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are beginning to unravel the process by which the brain makes these everyday prognostications.

While this might sound like a boon to day traders, coaches and gypsy fortune tellers, people with early stages of neurological diseases such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases could someday benefit from this research. In these maladies, sufferers have difficulty segmenting events in their environment from the normal stream of consciousness that constantly surrounds them.

The researchers focused on the mid-brain dopamine system (MDS), an evolutionarily ancient system that provides signals to the rest of the brain when unexpected events occur. Using functional MRI (fMRI), they found that this system encodes prediction error when viewers are forced to choose what will happen next in a video of an everyday event.

Predicting the near future is vital in guiding behavior and is a key component of theories of perception, language processing and learning, says Jeffrey M. Zacks, PhD, WUSTL associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences and lead author of a paper on the study in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

"It's valuable to be able to run away when the lion lunges at you, but it's super-valuable to be able to hop out of the way before the lion jumps," Zacks says. "It's a big adaptive advantage to look just a little bit over the horizon."

Zacks and his colleagues are building a theory of how predictive perception works. At the core of the theory is the belief that a good part of predicting the future is the maintenance of a mental model of what is happening now. Now and then, this model needs updating, especially when the environment changes unpredictably.

"When we watch everyday activity unfold around us, we make predictions about what will happen a few seconds out," Zacks says. "Most of the time, our predictions are right.

"Successfull predictions are associated with the subjective experience of a smooth stream of consciousness. But a few times a minute, our predictions come out wrong and then we perceive a break in the stream of consciousness, accompanied by an uptick in activity of primitive parts of the brain involved with the MDS that regulate attention and adaptation to unpredicted changes."

Zacks tested healthy young volunteers who were shown movies of everyday events such as washing a car, building a LEGO model or washing clothes. The movie would be watched for a while, and then it was stopped.

Participants then were asked to predict what would happen five seconds later when the movie was re-started by selecting a picture that showed what would happen, and avoiding similar pictures that did not correspond to what would happen.

Half of the time, the movie was stopped just before an event boundary, when a new event was just about to start. The other half of the time, the movie was stopped in the middle of an event. The researchers found that participants were more than 90 percent correct in predicting activity within the event, but less than 80 percent correct in predicting across the event boundary. They were also less confident in their predictions.

"This is the point where they are trying hardest to predict the future," Zacks says. "It's harder across the event boundary, and they know that they are having trouble. When the film is stopped, the participants are heading into the time when prediction error is starting to surge. That is, they are noting that a possible error is starting to happen. And that shakes their confidence. They're thinking, 'Do I really know what's going to happen next?' "

Zacks and his group were keenly interested in what the participants' brains were doing as they tried to predict into a new event.

In the functional MRI experiment, Zacks and his colleagues saw significant activity in several midbrain regions, among them the substantia nigra — "ground zero for the dopamine signaling system" — and in a set of nuclei called the striatum.

The substantia nigra, Zacks says, is the part of the brain hit hardest by Parkinson's disease, and is important for controlling movement and making adaptive decisions.

Brain activity in this experiment was revealed by fMRI at two critical points: when subjects tried to make their choice, and immediately after feedback on the correctness or incorrectness of their answers.

Mid-brain responses "really light up at hard times, like crossing the event boundary and when the subjects were told that they had made the wrong choice," Zacks says.

Zacks says the experiments provide a "crisp test" of his laboratory's prediction theory. They also offer hope of targeting these prediction-based updating mechanisms to better diagnose early stage neurological diseases and provide tools to help patients.

Provided by Washington University in St. Louis

"Everyday clairvoyance: How your brain makes near-future predictions." August 17th, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-everyday-clairvoyance-brain-near-future.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Partnering Technology and Social Entrepreneurship

Social Entrepreneurs are now equal partners with the private and public sectors in engendering "Inclusive Growth" that engages, enables and empowers the poor. They combine the conscience of social activists, the public service delivery mission of the public sector, and the efficiency of the private sector. The Development Marketplace works with social entrepreneurs and funders of social entrepreneurs to surface and invest in a range of scalable and financially-viable business models.  In addition to the Jaipur Foot example below, the Development Marketplace is preparing similar case studies on other types of business models, such as fee for service models, cross-subsidy models, for-profit models, and debt & equity funded models.
“The minute you start instituting a charge for your service, the most vulnerable populations are the first sector of society to be marginalized, and it’s precisely this sector of society you wish to serve the most,” explained Devendra Raj Mehta of Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS), the world’s largest limb fitting organization based in India.

Under this umbrella organization, Mehta, a graduate of the Sloan School of Management at MIT in the United States, heads the Jaipur Foot team, which provides world-class artificial limbs, rehabilitation aids and other appliances to physically-challenged individuals below the poverty line, and at no cost to the beneficiary. Not even one Rupee, ever.

Affordable and Comfortable

Their $45 ultramodern prosthetic is unmatched when compared to a similar $12,000 limb produced in the United States. The beauty of the Jaipur Foot is its lightness and mobility, as those who wear it can run, climb trees and pedal bicycles. Their knee replacement developed in cooperation with Stanford University costs a mere $20, and was named one of the 50 best inventions in the world by Time Magazine.

“That’s quite an achievement for an NGO,” reflected Mehta. “Too often the NGO sector relies solely on sentiment. We need to marry sentiment with science.” The Jaipur Knee is made of self-lubricating, oil-filled nylon and is both flexible and stable, even on irregular terrain. Comparable devices include a titanium replacement, which can cost US$10,000 or more.

As a non-profit social enterprise staffing 20 centers across India and servicing 65,000 patients each year, 20,000 of whom require new feet and leg replacements while the remaining 45,000 require crutches, wheelchairs, hand-peddled tricycles and other aids, Jaipur Foot is not only a global leader in prosthetic science, production and manufacturing, but also surgical in its fiscal discipline.

Founded in 1975 with less than US$10,000, Jaipur Foot is now operating with an annual budget of US$3.5M, and about 60% funded by donations, 30% is government support and the remaining 10% is earned income on the corpus built over time. With overhead costs hovering at 4%, an extraordinary low percentage considering the non-profit industry at large hovers at 20%, Mehta has proven that his organization spends each and every dollar mindful of its source. “From the beginning, I instituted a culture that did not allow the use of funds for any other purpose than our core objective. I did not even serve tea during our meetings, and tea costs two cents in India,” stated Mehta. “I believe that if I divert even one penny to an activity other than serving the poorest of the poor, I am committing a moral sin and a legal wrong.”

From Public Service to Serving the Public
As an Indian civil servant for nearly 40 years, Mehta has held such positions as the Deputy Governor of the Indian Reserve Bank and Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI among several other high-profile posts. Mehta explained that his tenure in public service conditioned him to be accountable. “For government grants to Jaipur Foot, we detail an Excel spreadsheet that spans 17 columns of information about our patients, including their signature and thumbprint. This is not our money, and therefore it is our duty to be absolutely accountable for these funds, or we might not receive them again,” continued Mehta.

Therefore, the backbone of the organization’s steady growth is clearly rooted in rigid expenditure policies and cent-by-cent accounting, coupled with a suite of incredibly cheap, world-renown prosthetics, aids and appliances. The two go hand in hand, or in this case, foot in foot.

In 1975, during their first year of operation, the Jaipur Foot team fitted 59 limbs. Today,nearly 400,000 people have such limbs fitted. In addition, there are mobile clinics setup in 26 countries around the world, including the war torn regions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan. “You will find the Jaipur footprint in the most difficult places on earth,” asserted Mehta. Setting up a mobile clinic in Libya is currently being considered.

Dow Chemicals, one of Jaipur Foot’s largest corporate donors, contributes $250,000 per year, or 5,000 limbs, as Mehta likes to analogize, but despite such success, funding still remains the organization’s largest challenge. “At the current setup in Jaipur, we have the capacity to fit 10,000 more limbs each year, but we lack the funding to fulfill that capacity,” said Mehta. “Because of this challenge, I’m the biggest beggar in India.”

Mehta recalled a telephone call he received from an individual abroad who wished to donate US$10,000. Refusing the donation, Mehta explained that he did not accept such large gifts from individuals who have not yet witnessed the operation in action, and he invited the donor to view their facility in India. After witnessing firsthand individuals limping in one day and walking out the next for a meager $45, a check was written for US$20,000—double the original intention. “Seeing is believing,” said Mehta. “Lives are instantly changed, and to witness such transformation is an experience like none other.”

While a pioneer in prosthetics, and having served more than 1.2M individuals to date, Jaipur Foot is much more than an organization that fits high-quality limbs at zero cost to those living in poverty. “We wish to restore and advance the human dignity and self-respect of those we serve,” stated Mehta. “And simply put, doing good to others is my religion.”
 

Improved method for capturing proteins holds promise for biomedical research

Posted by Biomechanism 

(Biomechanism.com) — Antibodies are the backbone of the immune system—capable of targeting proteins associated with infection and disease. They are also vital tools for biomedical research, the development of diagnostic tests and for new therapeutic remedies.

Caption: Two peptide chains are attached to a segment of double-stranded DNA, displaced by a distance which can be modified to improve binding affinity with a target protein (seen in blue). Credit: The Biodesign Institute Arizona State University

Producing antibodies suitable for research however, has often been a difficult, costly and laborious undertaking.

Now, John Chaput and his colleagues at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University have developed a new way of producing antibody-like binding agents and rapidly optimizing their affinity for their target proteins. Such capture reagents are vital for revealing the subtleties of protein function, and may pave the way for improved methods of detecting and treating a broad range of diseases.

The team’s results appear in today’s issue of the journal ChemBioChem.

Antibodies are Y-shaped structures, capable of binding in two or more places with specific target proteins. Synthetic antibodies are much simpler forms that attempt to mimic this behavior. As Chaput explains, creating affinity reagents with strong binding properties can be accomplished by combining two weak affinity segments on a synthetic scaffold. The resulting affinity reagent, if properly constructed, can amplify the binding properties of the individual segments by two or three orders of magnitude.

“This dramatic change in affinity has the ability to transform ordinary molecules into a high affinity synthetic antibody,” Chaput says. “Unfortunately, the chemistry used to make these reagents can be quite challenging and often requires a lot of trial-and-error. With NIH funding, my group has reduced the complexity of this problem to simple chemistry that is user friendly and easily amenable to high throughput automation. Such technology is absolutely necessary if we want to compete with traditional monoclonal antibody technology. ”

Traditionally, antibodies for research have been extracted from animals induced to produce them in response to various protein antigens. While the technique has been invaluable to medical science, obtaining antibodies in this way is a cumbersome and costly endeavor. Instead, Chaput and his team produce synthetic antibodies that do not require cell culture, in vitro selection or the application of complex chemistry. They call their reagents DNA synbodies.

The new strategy—referred to as LINC (for Ligand Interaction by Nucleotide Conjugates) uses DNA as a programmable scaffold to determine the optimal distance needed to transform two weak affinity binding segments or ligands into a single high affinity protein capture reagent. The result is an artificial antibody, capable of binding to its antigen target with both high affinity and high specificity. The process is rapid and inexpensive. It also offers considerable flexibility, as the distance between the two ligand components bonded to the short, double-stranded DNA scaffold can be fine-tuned for optimum affinity.

In earlier work, the group identified ligand candidates by producing thousands of random sequence peptide chains—strings of amino acids, connected like pearls on a necklace. The peptide sequences were affixed to a glass microarray slide and screened against a target protein to pinpoint those that were capable of recognizing distinct protein binding sites. Two promising ligand candidates could then be combined to form a DNA synbody.

In the current study, the group instead makes use of pre-existing ligands with documented affinity for various disease-related proteins. The method involves the use of well-characterized ligands as building components for high quality DNA synbodies, eliminating the initial screening procedure and expanding the potential to tinker with the two-piece synbody in order to optimize affinity.

The peptides of choice for the study were those with high affinity for something called growth factor receptor bound protein 2 (Grb2). Grb2 has many cell-signaling functions and is an important focus of research due to its association with cellular pathways involved in tumor growth and metastasis.

By scouring the scientific literature, the group identified two peptides that recognize distinct sites on the surface of Grb2. Chaput points out, “this is a nice example where a few hours in the library can save you weeks in the lab.”

The next step was to create an assortment of synbody constructs based on these peptides. To do this, one peptide was attached to the end of a short DNA strand, while the other peptide was attached to the complementary DNA strand further along its length (see figure 1).

The two peptide strands could be attached to the scaffold in either a forward or reverse direction and could be interchanged, with either occupying the terminal end of the first DNA strand. Further, the distance between peptide segments along the DNA strands could be adjusted to yield the best target affinity.

Experiments examined binding affinity for peptide chains separated by 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18 base pairs along the DNA strand, (a distance range of 1.0-6.1 nm). Inspection revealed the best results for a synbody constructed of peptides separated by 12 base pairs at a distance of 4.1 nm, compared with the other 5 constructs.

The results for the best synbody in the study were impressive, demonstrating a binding affinity five- to ten-fold stronger than commercially available antibodies for Grb2, despite the synbody’s comparatively primitive architecture. In further tests, the synbody was shown to exhibit high specificity—isolating Grb2 from other proteins in a complex biological mixture and selectively binding with its target.

The technique offers a new approach to producing high qualityaffinity reagents for disease research, diagnostic testing and the development of effective therapeutics.

Study identifies fish oil's impact on cognition and brain structure

 Health 

Researchers at Rhode Island Hospital's Alzheimer's Disease and Memory Disorders Center have found positive associations between fish oil supplements and cognitive functioning as well as differences in brain structure between users and non-users of fish oil supplements. The findings suggest possible benefits of fish oil supplements on brain health and aging. The results were reported at the recent International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, in Paris, France.

The study was led by Lori Daiello, PharmD, a research scientist at the Rhode Island Hospital Alzheimer's Disease and Memory Disorders Center. Data for the analyses was obtained from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), a large multi-center, NIH-funded study that followed older adults with normal cognition, mild cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer's Disease for over three years with periodic memory testing and brain MRIs.

The study included 819 individuals, 117 of whom reported regular use of fish oil supplements before entry and during study follow-up. The researchers compared cognitive functioning and brain atrophy for patients who reported routinely using these supplements to those who were not using fish oil supplements.

Daiello reports that compared to non-users, use of fish oil supplements was associated with better cognitive functioning during the study. However, this association was significant only in those individuals who had a normal baseline cognitive function and in individuals who tested negative for a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's Disease known as APOE4. This is consistent with previous research.

The unique finding, however, is that there was a clear association between fish oil supplements and brain volume. Consistent with the cognitive outcomes, these observations were significant only for those who were APOE4 negative.

Daiello says, "In the imaging analyses for the entire study population, we found a significant positive association between fish oil supplement use and average brain volumes in two critical areas utilized in memory and thinking (cerebral cortex and hippocampus), as well as smaller brain ventricular volumes compared to non-users at any given time in the study. In other words, fish oil use was associated with less brain shrinkage in patients taking these supplements during the ADNI study compared to those who didn't report using them."

Daiello continues, "These observations should motivate further study of the possible effects of long-term fish oil supplementation on important markers of cognitive decline and the potential influence of genetics on these outcomes."

The research team included Brian Ott M.D., director of the Rhode Island Hospital and Memory Disorders Center, Assawin Gongvatana Ph.D., Shira Dunsiger Ph.D. and Ronald Cohen Ph.D. from The Miriam Hospital and the Brown University Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior (Gonvatana and Cohen), and Department of Behavior and Social Sciences (Dunsiger).

Provided by Lifespan

"Study identifies fish oil's impact on cognition and brain structure." August 17th, 2011. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-fish-oil-impact-cognition-brain.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Deconstructing the Mosaic Brain

Sequencing the DNA of individual neurons is a way to dissect the genes underlying major neurological and psychological disorders.

By Tom Curran | August 1, 2011

THE MOSAIC BRAIN
During development neural stem cells generate committed precursor cells that differentiate into the many specialized neural populations that comprise the adult brain. Mutations can arise at any step in the series of >100 billion cell divisions required to generate the number of neurons found in the fully developed brain, resulting in variably sized populations of neurons that share a unique somatogenetic inheritance. Chances are high that an individual who inherits a recessive mutation in a critical gene will have some subset of neurons in which the same gene is also mutated. This may represent an entire brain structure (e.g., cerebellum), smaller regional structures, or even scattered populations of neurons that migrate throughout the brain after neurogenesis. Lucy Reading-Ikkanda

Cell division is a risky business. DNA damage unavoidably accompanies the enormous number of cell divisions required to generate the human body from a single fertilized egg. In most tissues, cell turnover and regeneration ameliorate the deleterious effects of somatic mutation. The nervous system, however, has a unique vulnerability—neurons generally don’t turn over. As a result, we are all cursed to live our entire lives with somatic mutations acquired during the embryonic development and differentiation of neural progenitor cells.

A conservative mutation rate of 5 x 10^-7 mutations/cell/generation would mean that every adult human brain harbors around 5 x 10⁴ somatic mutations in its neurons. Of course, the number of cells carrying each of these mutations depends on when the mutations arise during development, with early-arising mutations populating much larger portions of the brain than later-arising mutations. Based on this rough calculation, the potential exists for every gene in the genome to be mutated in at least some neurons in each of our brains—we are all walking repositories of neuronal genomic diversity.

What are the consequences of sporting a mosaic brain? The somatic patchwork of alterations scattered throughout our neural networks would certainly contribute to human diversity and might account for some of the differences in personality and behavior that often distinguish otherwise identical twins. Most of these mutations will not affect genes that influence the phenotype of a neuron, and some may precipitate cell death before the host cell is integrated into a functional circuit. In rare cases, however, some genetic changes could significantly impact the behavior of a cluster of neurons, or a neuronal circuit, or even an entire neuro­architectonic structure.

How somatic mutations affect neuronal function

Unraveling the genetic underpinnings of major neurological and psychological disorders has defied traditional approaches. While rare cases of genomic lesions have been documented in familial epilepsy, schizophrenia, autism, and some other disorders, genetic and even newer, more powerful genomic technologies have failed to account for the majority of disease. Some argue that the genetics is complex, with no single gene contributing in a readily detectable manner to disease occurrence. Others contend that disease arises as a consequence of a single rare gene variant that is undetectable because many different single gene mutations could cause the same disease, and earlier studies have been woefully underpowered for detecting this genetic treasure trove. An examination of somatic mutations in neural precursor cells could provide an alternative explanation of the genetics underlying neurological and psychiatric diseases, opening a window on this genetic “dark matter.”

What kinds of neuronal mutations would impart profound changes to the function of the nervous system? Dominant mutations exhibit their consequences directly, whereas the more common recessive lesions must be complemented by a second genetic change in the remaining normal allele for their effects to be expressed. The probability that two independent somatic changes would be acquired in both alleles of a critical gene in a neuronal precursor cell is vanishingly low. However, based on the calculations outlined above, an individual who inherits a recessive allele of a critical gene would be almost certain to lose the second allele by somatic mutation in some subset of his or her neurons. The severity of the phenotype caused by this unfortunate two-hit genetic accident would depend on the type of neurons that acquire the second lesion as well as the number of neurons spawned by the affected precursor cell. For example, loss of the second allele in a majority of cerebellar granule neurons might manifest as an ataxic phenotype, whereas loss of function of the same gene in neurons confined to a single hypothalamic nucleus would have entirely different consequences. Thus, a neurogenetic syndrome associated with inheritance of a recessive allele would be characterized by variable penetrance and a range of phenotypic expression, because of the unpredictable nature and timing of the acquired somatic mutation required to unveil its presence. In this model, there would be relatively little phenotypic concordance between consanguineous twins, making genetic studies of such disorders difficult, if not impossible, to interpret.

How can we deconstruct the somatic brain to uncover the genetic alterations that may underlie the majority of devastating neurological, psychiatric, and perhaps even psychological dysfunctions? Modern DNA-sequencing technologies provide an avenue. Next-generation sequencing technologies, and their soon-to-market offspring, allow entire genomes to be deduced from relatively small amounts of DNA. The cost of this technology is dropping rapidly, and may eventually reach the point where funding agencies would support analysis of the neuronal somatic genome.

Pinpointing critical mutations

In anticipation of reaching that point, what sort of approach would reveal the potential extent and contribution of neuronal somatic mutations to human suffering?
The human brain represents an enormously intricate puzzle, assembled from neurons derived from a series of committed progenitor cells. Lineage-tracing studies have shown that cohorts of neurons are often derived from the same ancestor, and that specific neuronal subtypes arise from common precursors. In certain brain regions, such as cortical columns, functional circuits are assembled from sibling cells that share a somatogenetic heritage. Thus, an entire neuronal circuit, or an anatomically defined structure, or the majority of cells with a specific neuronal phenotype, may exhibit the same gene alterations originating from a common precursor cell. Although the technology and skills exist today to dissect out such structures, and even to purify specific cell populations, from which DNA could be extracted, one would ultimately prefer to analyze the entire genome of individual neurons—but this is beyond current capability. Deep sequencing, which can generate many hundreds of reads through each gene, allows the application of statistical tools to assist in the identification of mutations that exist in only a relatively small number of neurons within a sampled brain structure.

All we need for this approach to work is a few good brains. While a normal brain would suffice, assuming it is no longer of use to its former owner, this would only allow detection of the general rate of somatic mutation in the nervous system without reference to disease. Ideally, it would be best to investigate both normal brain tissues and brain tissues from individuals with clearly documented diseases, akin to what is now being done with cancer genomes. Multiple samples from distinct brain regions, some representing specific cell lineages, would be best compared in parallel to constitutional DNAs from the same individuals, to document their personal neuronal somatic genome. In some disease states, certain neuroanatomic features have already been described that could serve as a focus for sequence analysis.

The information gleaned from deconstructing the somatic brain could be a “game changer” in our understanding of so many uniquely human, devastating conditions. All it takes is the will (and, of course, a substantial commitment of funding).

Tom Curran is deputy scientific director of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute and professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently, the Curran laboratory studies brain development and pediatric brain tumors.

Source: TheScientist
http://the-scientist.com/2011/08/01/deconstructing-the-mosaic-brain/

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

The ideal economy

The USA is heading for bankruptcy and China is growing at 10% per annum.  40% of every dollar that USA spends has to be borrowed.

 

In the world today, the exact opposite of what you say is actually occurring if we simply take different examples ie the USA today instead of Japan in the 70s and China instead of little Cuba that has suffered oppression by the USA in the form of embargos, threats, invasions and attempted assassinations of their leaders.

 

But it is neither socialism nor capitalism that wins the day, it is the ability of a system to adapt to changing times.  That is why China is thriving ~ they have their own form of democracy, no dictatorship (leaders rule for only a few years) and they have embraced a market economy with a gradual shift from centralised control.

 

On the other hand the USA tries to emulate the founding father right through to today, centuries later.  For instance the right to bear arms reflected the fact that the USA had no standing army and the threat of invasion seemed plausible.  It is this rigid attitude that has made the USA a brittle twig that is in danger of snapping when the winds change.

 

Take traditional Brittain, a monarchy with tradition running back more than a millennium.  But it is now a constitutional monarchy and change right at the core is happening with the House of Lords, members traditionally appointed by the Queen, changing over to an elected legislature.

 

Robert

Shiridi Sai baba

Gnana margam - KJ Yesudas - Carnatic Classical