How stress influences disease: Research reveals inflammation as the culprit

Stress wreaks havoc on the mind and body. For example, psychological stress is associated with greater risk for depression, heart disease and infectious diseases. But, until now, it has not been clear exactly how stress influences disease and health.

A research team led by Carnegie Mellon University's Sheldon Cohen has found that chronic psychological stress is associated with the body losing its ability to regulate the inflammatory response. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research shows for the first time that the effects of psychological stress on the body's ability to regulate inflammation can promote the development and progression of disease.

"Inflammation is partly regulated by the hormone cortisol and when cortisol is not allowed to serve this function, inflammation can get out of control," said Cohen, the Robert E. Doherty Professor of Psychology within CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Cohen argued that prolonged stress alters the effectiveness of cortisol to regulate the inflammatory response because it decreases tissue sensitivity to the hormone. Specifically, immune cells become insensitive to cortisol's regulatory effect. In turn, runaway inflammation is thought to promote the development and progression of many diseases.

Cohen, whose groundbreaking early work showed that people suffering from psychological stress are more susceptible to developing common colds, used the common cold as the model for testing his theory. With the common cold, symptoms are not caused by the virus — they are instead a "side effect" of the inflammatory response that is triggered as part of the body's effort to fight infection. The greater the body's inflammatory response to the virus, the greater is the likelihood of experiencing the symptoms of a cold.

In Cohen's first study, after completing an intensive stress interview, 276 healthy adults were exposed to a virus that causes the common cold and monitored in quarantine for five days for signs of infection and illness. Here, Cohen found that experiencing a prolonged stressful event was associated with the inability of immune cells to respond to hormonal signals that normally regulate inflammation. In turn, those with the inability to regulate the inflammatory response were more likely to develop colds when exposed to the virus.

In the second study, 79 healthy participants were assessed for their ability to regulate the inflammatory response and then exposed to a cold virus and monitored for the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, the chemical messengers that trigger inflammation. He found that those who were less able to regulate the inflammatory response as assessed before being exposed to the virus produced more of these inflammation-inducing chemical messengers when they were infected.

"The immune system's ability to regulate inflammation predicts who will develop a cold, but more importantly it provides an explanation of how stress can promote disease," Cohen said. "When under stress, cells of the immune system are unable to respond to hormonal control, and consequently, produce levels of inflammation that promote disease. Because inflammation plays a role in many diseases such as cardiovascular, asthma and autoimmune disorders, this model suggests why stress impacts them as well."

He added, "Knowing this is important for identifying which diseases may be influenced by stress and for preventing disease in chronically stressed people."

More information: “Chronic stress, glucocorticoid receptor resistance, inflammation, and disease risk,” by Sheldon Cohen et al. PNAS, 2012.

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Researchers link neural variability to short-term memory and decision making

A team of University of Pittsburgh mathematicians is using computational models to better understand how the structure of neural variability relates to such functions as short-term memory and decision making. In a paper published online April 2 inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the Pitt team examines how fluctuations in brain activity can impact the dynamics of cognitive tasks.

Previous recordings of neural activity during simple cognitive tasks show a tremendous amount of trial-to-trial variability. For example, when a person was instructed to hold the same stimulus in working, or short-term, memory during two separate trials, the brain cells involved in the task showed very different activity during the two trials.

"A big challenge in neuroscience is translating variability expressed at the cellular and brain-circuit level with that in cognitive behaviors," said Brent Doiron, assistant professor of mathematics in Pitt's Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and the project's principal investigator. "It's a fact that short-term memory degrades over time. If you try to recall a stored memory, there likely will be errors, and these cognitive imperfections increase the longer that short-term memory is engaged."

Doiron explains that brain cells increase activity during short-term memory functions. But this activity randomly drifts over time as a result of stochastic (or chance) forces in the brain. This drifting is what Doiron's team is trying to better understand.

"As mathematicians, what we're really trying to do is relate the structure and dynamics of this stochastic variability of brain activity to the variability in cognitive performance," said Doiron. "Linking the variability at these two levels will give important clues about the neural mechanisms that support cognition."

Using a combination of statistical mechanics and nonlinear system theory, the Pitt team examined the responses of a model of a simplified memory network proposed to be operative in the prefrontal cortex. When sources of neural variability were distributed over the entire network, as opposed to only over subsections, the performance of the memory network was enhanced. This helped the Pitt team make the prediction published in PNAS, that brain wiring affects how neural networks contend with—and ultimately express—variability in memory and decision making.

Recently, experimental neurosciencists are getting a better understanding of how the brain is wired, and theories like those published in PNAS by Doiron's group give a context for their findings within a cognitive framework. The Doiron group plans to apply the general principle of linking brain circuitry to neural variability in a variety of sensory, motor, and memory/decision-making frameworks.

More information: For more information on Doiron's lab, visit http://www.math.pi … Welcome.html

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Death anxiety increases atheists' unconscious belief in God

New research suggests that when non-religious people think about their own death they become more consciously skeptical about religion, but unconsciously grow more receptive to religious belief.

The research, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago in New Zealand, also found that when religious people think about death, their religious beliefs appear to strengthen at both conscious and unconscious levels. The researchers believe the findings help explain why religion is such a durable feature of human society.

In three studies, which involved 265 university students in total, religious and non-religious participants were randomly assigned to "death priming" and control groups. Priming involved asking participants to write about their own death or, in the control condition, about watching TV.

In the first study, researchers found that death-primed religious participants consciously reported greater belief in religious entities than similar participants who had not been death-primed. Non-religious participants who had been primed showed the opposite effect: they reported greater disbelief than their fellow non-religious participants in the control condition.

Study co-author Associate Professor Jamin Halberstadt says these results fit with the theory that fear of death prompts people to defend their own worldview, regardless of whether it is a religious or non-religious one.

"However, when we studied people's unconscious beliefs in the two later experiments, a different picture emerged. While death-priming made religious participants more certain about the reality of religious entities, non-religious participants showed less confidence in their disbelief," Associate Professor Halberstadt says.

The techniques used to study unconscious beliefs include measuring the speed with which participants can affirm or deny the existence of God and other religious entities. After being primed by thoughts of death, religious participants were faster to press a button to affirm God's existence, but non-religious participants were slower to press a button denying God's existence.

"These findings may help solve part of the puzzle of why religion is such a persistent and pervasive feature of society. Fear of death is a near-universal human experience and religious beliefs are suspected to play an important psychological role in warding off this anxiety. As we now show, these beliefs operate at both a conscious and unconscious level, allowing even avowed atheists to unconsciously take advantage of them."

The paper co-authors also included Jonathan Jong, currently at the University of Oxford, who undertook the experiments as part of his PhD thesis, and Matthias Bluemke, currently at the University of Heidelberg. Associate Professor Halberstadt was Jong's supervisor.

The findings from the three experiments will be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

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Molecular imaging links systemic inflammation with depression

New research published in the April issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine reveals that systemic inflammation causes an increase in depressive symptoms and metabolic changes in the parts of the brain responsible for mood and motivation. With this finding, researchers can begin to test potential treatments for depression for patients that experience symptoms that are related to inflammation in the body or within the brain.

Multiple studies in rodents have shown that inflammation in the body has effects on the brain. This has also been shown in a few human studies—both through measurements of behavioral changes and brain imaging—when subjects were engaged in various computer tasks. The study "Glucose Metabolism in the Insula and Cingulate Is Affected by Systemic Inflammation in Humans," however, for the first time measured brain activity when subjects were at rest.

"In the study we used F-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET), which can accurately measure glucose metabolism in the brain, to determine which brain regions responded to systemic inflammation. Since the subjects were at rest, the changes we observed in the brain can only attributed to systemic inflammation," noted Jonas Hannestad, MD, PhD, lead author of the article.

In the study, nine healthy individuals received a double-blind endotoxin (which elicits systemic inflammation and mild depressive symptoms such as fatigue and reduced social interest) and placebo on different days. After administration, F-18 FDG PET was used to measure the differences in the cerebral metabolic rate of glucose in the insula, cingulate and amygdala regions of the brain. Behavior changes were also primarily assessed on the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS).

A statistical analysis of the results showed that endotoxin administration was associated with a higher normalized glucose metabolism (NMG) in the insula and lower NMG in the cingulate compared to the placebo; there was no significant difference in the NMG in the amygdala. Seven of nine subjects had an increase in NMG in the insula and a decrease in NMG in the cingulate, and all nine subjects had a decrease in NMG in the right anterior cingulate, suggesting that systemic inflammation induces fundamental physiologic changes in regional brain glucose metabolism. In addition, the MADRS increased for each subject after endotoxin administration, whereas no significant change was noted with the placebo.

Most researchers agree that depression is not a homogeneous disease, but rather that there are multiple mechanisms that can lead to similar symptoms. "If we can show that a subtype of depression is caused in part by inflammation," said Hannestad, "we can test the ability of treatments that reduce inflammation in only patients in whom we believe inflammation plays a role. In the future, I expect that researchers in this field will be able to develop more precise PET measures that can be used to distinguish between, for instance, a person with 'inflammatory depression' and a person with another kind of depression. PET could then be used as diagnostic biomarker to separate subtypes of depression and as a therapeutic biomarker to detect the response to treatment."

Nearly 17 percent of adults experience depression at some point over their lifetime, with 30.4 percent of cases classified as severe, according to the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health. Fifty-seven percent of adults with depression report receiving treatment in the past 12 months, although 37.8 percent receive minimally adequate treatment.

More information: "Glucose Metabolism in the Insula and Cingulate Is Affected by Systemic Inflammation in Humans" Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

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Scientists shed light on age-related memory loss and possible treatments

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have shown in animal models that the loss of memory that comes with aging is not necessarily a permanent thing.

In a new study published this week in an advance, online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ron Davis, chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Scripps Florida, and Ayako Tonoki-Yamaguchi, a research associate in Davis's lab, took a close look at memory and memory traces in the brains of both young and old fruit flies.

What they found is that like other organisms—from mice to humans—there is a defect that occurs in memory with aging. In the case of the fruit fly, the ability to form memories lasting a few hours (intermediate-term memory) is lost due to age-related impairment of the function of certain neurons. Intriguingly, the scientists found that stimulating those same neurons can reverse these age-related memory defects.

"This study shows that once the appropriate neurons are identified in people, in principle at least one could potentially develop drugs to hit those neurons and rescue those memories affected by the aging process," Davis said. "In addition, the biochemistry underlying memory formation in fruit flies is remarkably conserved with that in humans so that everything we learn about memory formation in flies is likely applicable to human memory and the disorders of human memory."

While no one really understands what is altered in the brain during the aging process, in the current study the scientists were able to use functional cellular imaging to monitor the changes in the fly's neuron activity before and after learning to view those changes.

"We are able to peer down into the fly brain and see changes in the brain," Davis said. "We found changes that appear to reflect how intermediate-term memory is encoded in these neurons."

Olfactory memory, which was used by the scientists, is the most widely studied form of memory in fruit flies—basically pairing an odor with a mild electric shock. These tactics produce short-term memories that persist for around half an hour, intermediate-term memory that lasts a few hours, and long-term memory that persists for days.

The team found that in aged animals, the signs of encoded memory were absent after a few hours. In that way, the scientists also learned exactly which neurons in the fly are altered by aging to produce intermediate-term memory impairment. This advance, Davis notes, should greatly help scientists understand how aging alters neuronal function.

Intriguingly, the scientists took the work a step further and stimulated these neurons to see if the memory could be rescued. To do this, the scientists placed either cold-activated or heat-activated ion channels in the neurons known to become defective with aging and then used cold, or heat, to stimulate them. In both cases, the intermediate-term memory was successfully rescued.

More information: "Aging Impairs Intermediate-Term Behavioral Memory by Disrupting the Neuron Memory Trace," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Study shows difficulty in ability to discern facial symmetry helps explain 'beer goggles' effect

(Medical Xpress) -- It's a part of modern lore that doesn’t reflect well on our species, the idea that as people consume alcoholic beverages, they see those around them as becoming more attractive. It’s known as the “beer goggles” effect and has been used by members of both genders to help explain sexual escapades with another person who under normal circumstances, would not be someone they would consider for such activities. Now, new research helps to explain how and why this happens. L.G Halsey, J.W Huber, and J.C Hardwick have published the results of their research on the topic in the journal Addiction and suggest that one reason people find others more attractive when drinking is because alcohol impairs a person’s ability to detect facial symmetry.

The team notes that prior research has shown that a part of what makes people attractive to other people is the degree to which both sides of their faces match. The more symmetry the thinking goes, the better the gene pool, hence the more desirable they are as a potential mate. This they say, is one of the major factors that cause someone to see another as someone they would consider bedding. But, the whole system begins to go off track when alcohol is introduced. The researchers found that the more a person consumes, the more trouble they have figuring out symmetry in the faces of those around them, causing them to see everyone as better looking than they were sober. This, they say, accounts for the “beer goggles” effect.

To come to these conclusions, the team enlisted over 100 male and female volunteers from Roehampton University who were tasked with looking at photographs and rating the degree of attractiveness of the person shown. They were also asked to rate the degree of symmetry. Some volunteers were given drinks containing alcohol, while others were given drinks with no alcohol in them at all. The faces in the photographs had been premeasured for degree of symmetry and indeed some of the photographs had been altered to force the faces to be perfectly symmetrical.

After compiling the results, the team found that those people who were consuming alcohol showed less ability to discern symmetry and that their abilities grew worse as more alcohol was consumed. They also found that women’s abilities were more strongly impacted than men.

While these results clearly show a correlation between alcohol consumption and an ability to discern facial symmetry, and perhaps degree of attractiveness, the team isn’t suggesting that their results fully explain the “beer goggles” effect, more that their research adds a piece to the overall puzzle that is the decision making process and ultimate behavior of people when consuming alcohol.

More information: Does alcohol consumption really affect asymmetry perception? A three-armed placebo-controlled experimental study,Addiction, Accepted Article, DOI:10.1111/j.1360-0443.2012.03807.x

Abstract 

Aims:  A possible explanation for increased levels of attractiveness of faces when under the influence of alcohol is reduced ability to perceive bilateral asymmetry. This study tested the degree of preference by alcohol-dosed and non-alcohol-dosed participants for symmetrical faces and their ability to detect facial symmetry while controlling for other explanations. 

Design:  Volunteers were recruited to a random allocation experiment with three conditions: alcoholic drink (alcohol dosed), non-alcoholic drink (placebo) and diluted orange cordial (control). Data on concentration, personality and demographics were collected. Dependent variables were symmetry preference and detection. 

Setting:  Laboratory, University of Roehampton. 

Participants:  101 participants, mainly students (41 alcohol-dosed, 40 placebo, 20 control). 

Measurements:  Participants provided verbal responses to images of faces which were presented on a computer screen for 5 seconds each; the first task required a preference judgement and the second task consisted of a forced-choice response of whether a face was symmetrical or not. Levels of concentration, weight and level of alcohol-dose were measured, and demographics plus additional psychological and health information were collected using a computer based questionnaire. 

Findings:  In contrast to a previous investigation, there was no difference in symmetry preference between conditions (p = 0.846). In agreement with previous findings, participants who had not drunk alcohol were better at detecting whether a face was symmetrical or asymmetrical (p = 0.043). Measures of concentration did not differ between conditions (p = 0.214 to 0.438). Gender did not affect ability to detect symmetry in placebo or alcohol-dosed participants (p = 0.984, 0.499); however alcohol-dosed females were shown to demonstrate greater symmetry preference than alcohol-dosed males (p = 0.004). 

Conclusion:  People who are alcohol-dosed are subtly less able to perceive vertical, bilateral asymmetry in faces, with gender being a possible moderating factor.

© 2012 PhysOrg.com

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Accentuating the positive memories for sleep

Sleep plays a powerful role in preserving our memories. But while recent research shows that wakefulness may cloud memories of negative or traumatic events, a new study has found that wakefulness also degrades positive memories. Sleep, it seems, protects positive memories just as it does negative ones, and that has important implications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"The study of how sleep helps us remember and process emotional information is still young," says Alexis Chambers of the University of Notre Dame. Past work has focused on the role of negative memories for sleep, in particular how insomnia is a healthy biological response for people to reduce negative memories and emotions associated with a traumatic event.

Two new studies presented this week at a meeting of cognitive neuroscientists in Chicago are exploring the flip side: how sleep treats the positive. "Only if we investigate all the possibilities within this field will we ever fully understand the processes underlying our sleep, memory, and emotions," Chambers says.

Protecting the positive

To test how sleep affects positive memories, Rebecca Spencer of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her colleagues split 70 young adults into two groups, one that got to sleep overnight and one that had to stay awake. Both groups viewed images of positive items, such as puppies and flowers, and neutral items, such as furniture or dinner plates. The researchers then tested the participants' memories of and emotional reactions to the images 12 hours later, after either the period of sleep or wake.

They found that "sleep enhances our emotionally positive memories while these memories decay over wake," Spencer says. "Positive memories may even be prioritized for processing during sleep." But while people remembered the positive images more than the neutral ones, their emotional response to the positive images did not change over sleep versus wake. "It doesn't matter if you went to sleep or stayed awake – what you thought was a '9' – really great – you still think is a '9'," she says.

The results, she says, could have significant implications for treating post-traumatic stress disorder, as using wakefulness could have the unintended effect of degrading of positive memories in addition to negative memories. "It suggests that insomnia should be treated at some point after a traumatic event – perhaps a few days/weeks depending on the level of trauma – so that these positive memories can be strengthened and eventually outweigh the negative," Spencer says.

The study also reinforces the idea that with the standard ups and downs of our days, we should sleep to enhance our memories. "For mildly negative memories, we can learn something from them and we should remember them,"she says. "Moreover, sleep enhances memories for the positive events that we are exposed to and want to remember."

From an evolutionary perspective, sleep's role in protecting both positive and negative memories helps us to analyze and predict future events, Spencer says. People need to remember both the people and events that gave them bad experiences, as well as those that helped them and gave them good experiences.

Make Them Laugh

In another study, Chambers of the University of Notre Dame and colleagues, working under her adviser Jessica Payne, wanted to test if they could enhance positive memories over sleep by adding the element of humor. Chambers' team took Farside cartoons and showed both the originals and altered non-humorous versions to 66 participants before and after a period of wake or sleep. While participants more easily recalled the humorous versions of the cartoons, sleep had no effect on the type of cartoon recalled.

The fact that sleep did not impact such memories suggests something important about humor as a memory aid, Chambers says. "Sleep may be thought of as a way of aiding most memories since a period of sleep after learning is typically better for subsequent memory than a period of wake," she says "Similarly, humor may serve as a different, but possibly equal, aid for subsequent memory. Both methods help us remember things better in the future, but it appears that they work in independent ways."

Because there was an overall enhancement of memory for humorous over non-humorous cartoons, Chambers says, "it does appear that there is something about positive experiences that is worth remembering." Echoing Spencer's comments: "It could be that preserving such memories is adaptive to us, similar to the suggested survival value of preserving memories of negative experiences, such as a deadly snake to be avoided in the future."

Both studies – "Effects of Sleep on Memory and Reactivity for Positive Emotional Pictures," by Rebecca Spencer et al., and "Laugh Yourself to Sleep: The Role of Humor in the Investigation of Sleep's effects on Positive Memory" by Alexis Chambers et al. – will be presented in posters at the 19th annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS). More than 1400 scientists are in attendance at the meeting in Chicago, IL, from March 31 to April 4, 2012.

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Scientists achieve breakthrough in understanding sense of touch

The journal Cell's cover story features research findings by University of Wyoming neurobiologist Jeff Woodbury. He was part of a research team that is providing a new understanding of the sense of touch.

(Medical Xpress) -- A research team including University of Wyoming neurobiologist Jeff Woodbury has discovered a new technique to determine how the touch sensory system is organized in hairy skin, providing a new understanding of the sense of touch.

Their findings were selected to appear as the feature and cover article in Cell, one of the pre-eminent international journals in the biological sciences.

The research provides the first picture of how nerve cells that carry signals from hair on the skin are organized. Unlike all other senses, the skin is least amenable to study and has remained the most poorly understood.

"We have described the system that is in place to help explain how sensory information is processed to perceive the sense of touch," says Woodbury, an associate professor in the UW Department of Zoology and Physiology. He was part of a multidisciplinary research team led by David Ginty from Johns Hopkins University. Colleen Cassidy, a doctoral student in Woodbury's lab, was a co-author of the study, which also included colleagues from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Rockefeller University, University of Pennsylvania and University of Pittsburgh.

"We have also been able to identify how combinations of nerve cells respond to fine-tactile stimuli, so we can now really begin to tease apart the circuitry of touch sensation," Woodbury adds. "One of the real breakthroughs is that, for the first time in more than 200 years of study, we now know the specific functions of some of the many different kinds of nerve endings in the skin. This is truly exciting and a major advance."

Mice have several different types of hair follicles in their coat, each of which is linked to the central nervous system by low-threshold wire-like nerve cells that stretch all the way to the spinal cord. There, the myriad signals carried from the skin are integrated, processed and sent to the brain.

This network of nerve endings in the skin of most hairy mammals, including humans, allows them to perceive fine tactile sensations, such as a drop of rain or an insect landing on their skin. The researchers now have a better understanding of how this complex system is organized. Before this discovery, Woodbury says there was no way to see how all of these different nerve cells were arranged -- both in the skin and at the top of the spinal cord, where they end up.

The study, Woodbury says, opens doors to understanding not only touch, but skin senses such as temperature detection and pain.

"Touch is ultimately felt in the brain; it alerts us that something is going on," he says. "We have identified the logic of how this system is organized. We now know that each individual hair is a distinct sensory organ, and each one will detect different forces. A broad spectrum of frequencies within a given stimulus are ultimately recombined and analyzed until we become aware that something has happened, like a drop of rain or a light breeze."

Once the different sensory neurons are identified, researchers could test hypotheses about the role of these cells in the process of sensation.

"For example, researchers could study the animal, in the presence or absence of each of the different types of sensory cells, to determine differences in the animal's behavior," Woodbury says. "It will be possible to shut them off, take them out of the picture, to see how the animal responds to different types of stimulation. The key to understanding any system is first to gain a marker to identify all the different components, and we have made a major step in that direction."

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The Metro Station Kiev-Ring

"Kiev" - Circle Line station of the Moscow Metro. Opened March 14, 1954 in the section "Belarusian" - "Park of Culture." Located between the stations "Krasnopresnenskaya" and "Park of Culture." Go to Filyovskaya and Intercession Arbatsko-line. The only Metro Ring line is not located in the Central Administrative District of Moscow. Pilon deep-level station. Architects - EI Katonin, VK Skugarev, GE Golubev. Artists - AV Mizin, G. Opryshko, AG Ivanov.

From 1954 to return to the city is the half-pace escalator (the work of architects IG Taranov, GS Tosunov, design engineers Sachkova LV, MV Golovinova), which leads to the general lobby with the same name station Arbatsko Intercession-line.

On the site there is an intermediate transfer station submarines. In front of the escalator on the circle line is preserved, this rarity plate

In 1953, the post of General Secretary of the CPSU intrudes Nikita Khrushchev, and among his first acts is to perpetuate and the great destiny of the Ukrainian people in the Moscow subway. At that time, neither of the two existing "Kiev" did not satisfy him. According to the results announced by the contest were submitted 73 projects, which won a victory in Kiev. A group of construction workers headed member of the Academy of Architecture of the Ukrainian SSR EI Katonin.

Architectural innovations used Ukrainian group of architects. The main stylistic and engineering principles work for them are growing at the top of the pylons and a parabolic arch, borrowed from the LM Polyakov - Metro architect who designed "Arbat" Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line. Subtle forms of ornamental plant girdling design reminiscent of "Novoslobodskaya." The track walls and bottom of the marble pylons mark "Koelga" floor is gray granite slabs. The decoration station on the theme of friendship of Russian and Ukrainian peoples In 1972 he built additional transitions from the central hall in the eastern end of the station "Kiev" Intercession Arbatsko-line and in the anteroom of the eastern exit station "Kiev" Filevskaya line. The door to the cable channel on the track wall.

 

The central part of the boarding hall, covered graceful white arch, which is connected to the lateral parts of parabolic arches, stucco bordered braid that is characteristic of Ukrainian architecture of the seventeenth century. In this description, there is a contradiction with the caption to the photo number 5 - on the same design, there are two different points of view: Wikipedia and the official website Metro.

18 pylons are decorated with mosaic panels of glazes, painted on the history of Ukraine and the friendship of Russian and Ukrainian people Together with two other stations and some of the objects that GO node is a complex engineering structure On the front wall of the central hall are a large station with stucco panels in the form of flags, and a mosaic portrait of Lenin in the center. Around - the anthem of the USSR-line.

The rarest automobile in the world...

This is the car that in 1954 might have 'killed' the Corvette.  So, Chevrolet, being GM's big sales and profit division, campaigned to GM to 'kill' this car.  Wh en Chevy was coming out with its 6-cylinder sports car with its 2-speed 'powerglide' transmission and side curtains, there was a sports car from Olds with a big old V-8 engine with power windows.  So, GM said, 'no' to Oldsmobile on building this car.  The world's rarest automobile: a 1954 Concept Old's Rocket F88 - the only one in existence.  John S. Hendricks (Discovery Communications founder), paid in excess of $3 million to acquire this 1954 Oldsmobile F-88 Convertible Concept Car.  After spending decades as a collection of parts stuffed into wooden crates, the F-88 was reassembled.  In 1954, the F-88 was a Motorama Dream Car, and was one of only two (or an unconfirmed possible three), ever created.  The F-88 seen here is literally the only car left of its kind and was sold to John and Maureen Hendricks at the prestigious Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction in Scottsdale, Arizona , for an unbelievable $3,240,000.  This acquisition made automotive history and is in the cornerstone of the Gateway Colorado Automobile Museum , in its own special room in a rotating display, worthy of the F-88.

Researchers questioning the link between violent computer games and aggressiveness

There is a long-lasting and at times intense debate about the possible link between violent computer games and aggressiveness. A group of researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, are now questioning the entire basis of the discussion. In a recently published article, they present a new study showing that, more than anything, a good ability to cooperate is a prerequisite for success in the violent gaming environment.

One camp in the debate believes that gamers not only learn to cooperate but also to understand complex contexts, how skills can be improved, and cause and effect relationships. The opposing camp, on the other hand, is convinced that the games may foster violent and aggressive behaviour outside the gaming environment.

Complex gaming situations

The study, authored by Ulrika Bennerstedt, Jonas Ivarsson and Jonas Linderoth and titled How gamers manage aggression: Situating skills in collaborative computer games, is presented in International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.

The Gothenburg-based research group spent hundreds of hours playing online games and observing other gamers, including on video recordings. They focused on complex games with portrayals of violence and aggressive action where the participants have to fight with and against each other. 'The situations gamers encounter in these games call for sophisticated and well-coordinated collaboration. We analysed what characteristics and knowledge the gamers need to have in order to be successful,' says Jonas Ivarsson, Docent (Reader) at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning.

Strategy and timing

It turns out that a successful gamer is strategic and technically knowledgeable, and has good timing. Inconsiderate gamers, as well as those who act aggressively or emotionally, generally do not do well.

'The suggested link between games and aggression is based on the notion of transfer, which means that knowledge gained in a certain situation can be used in an entirely different context. The whole idea of transfer has been central in education research for a very long time. The question of how a learning situation should be designed in order for learners to be able to use the learned material in real life is very difficult, and has no clear answers,' says Ivarsson.

'In a nutshell, we're questioning the whole gaming and violence debate, since it's not based on a real problem but rather on some hypothetical reasoning,' he says.

Provided by University of Gothenburg

"Researchers questioning the link between violent computer games and aggressiveness." April 2nd, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-link-violent-games-aggressiveness.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek