SRI PANCHAMI(Vasantha Panchami)

Sri Panchami is a Hindu festival dedicated to Goddess Saraswathi. It is celebrated on the fifth day (Panchami) of Sukla Paksha in the Lunar Month of Magha Masam that generally occurs during the months of January-February. In our Hindu religion and culture, child going to a school generally begins with a ritual called Aksharabhyasa (learning of alphabets), the foundation for education. Akshara means the one that will not perish. Abhyasa means practice. Anything that we acquire in this life may perish but, the knowledge acquired through Akshara Gnana will never perish and will be an eternal asset. Goddess Saraswathi, the presiding deity of such Akshara Gyana, the female Divine energy of Learning, Knowledge and Wisdom is said to have born on this auspicious day known as Sri Panchami. Inducting a child into Aksharabhyasa on this day is said to be highly auspicious for good progression in education.

Reference to Goddess Saraswathi, the divine consort of Lord Brahma one of the Trinity Lords we find in many Pouranic scripts like Padma Purana, Brahma Vaivartha Purana etc... It is said that many pouranic great Sages like Sri Veda Vyasa, Brihaspathi, Yajnavalkya, Vasista, Parasara, and Bharadwaja had worshipped Goddess Saraswathi in their spiritual pursuits. Saraswathi worship is essential for spiritual enlightenment. In the life history of Mantralaya Seer Sri Raghavendra Swamy, we find Goddess Saraswathi referred to as the Goddess responsible for giving direction for his Sanyasa Sweekara.

She is referred to as Vaakk Devi, the Goddess of Speech. For any student, poet, writer, analyst, journalist, astrologer, musician, singer, preacher, philosopher, etc… to become proficient and to excel in their field, Divine blessings and Grace of Vaakk Devi is very much essential. She is also known by other names like Vaani, Sarada, Bharathi, and Braahmi to name a few. A river by her name is also very famous, holy and spiritual in Hindu religion and philosophy that forms a part of the famous river trio Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswathi popularly known as Triveni.

Seated on a fully blossomed white Lotus, Goddess Saraswathi is generally depicted as Chaturbhuja (four hands) with Veena as her instrument which she will be holding in her two hands while in other two hands holding Vedas (Sacred scriptures) and a mala of Divine Rosary beads. White coloured Hamsa (Swan) is depicted as her vehicle (chariot) that symbolizes sattvik nature, purity, high intellectual capability and discrimination.

This day is also known as Vasantha Panchami that marks the beginning of a new season called Vasantha Ruthu the onset of Spring Season. Lord Sri Krishna mentioned in his Bhagavat Geeta that He is the Vasantha Ruthu among the seasons. Though this festival Sri Panchami is not very popular in South India, it is a very important festival that is widely celebrated with great fervor in the North, West Bengal and Maharastra. In North Eastern States of our country it is celebrated as the beginning of a New Year.

While Goddess Saraswathi worship is done round the year, certain special occasions are prescribed for an exclusive worship. One such occasion is on this auspicious day of Vasantha Panchami (Sri Panchami) and the other is during the Navarathri (Dussera) festival in the Lunar month of Aaswayuja on the 7th day (Sapthami) coinciding with Moola constellation. It is highly meritorious to worship Goddess Saraswathi on these days and to seek Her Grace to become learned, knowledgeable and wise.

In our country we find very few temples of Goddess Saraswathi. Out of two such famous temples dedicated to Goddess Saraswathi we find, one is in Kashmir. Ashtaadasa Shakthi Peeta Sthothram refers to this temple as Kaashmirethu Saraswathi, one of the 18 most revered places for worship of Goddess Shakthi. The other famous temple of Goddess Saraswathi is in Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh in a place called Basar where, special celebrations and prayers are held on this day. We also find on this day of Sri Panchami many people inducting their children into Aksharabhyasa at this famous temple known as Gnana Saraswathi temple. We also find a temple of Goddess Saraswathi known as Sharada Devi at Sringeri in Karnataka state where the idol is said to have been consecrated by Adi Sankaracharya.

Let us pray and worship on this auspicious day Goddess Saraswathi who is respected and adored even by Devathas, to get rid of our sluggishness, lethargy and ignorance.

 

MARRIED OR NOT, YOU SHOULD READ THIS

“When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I’ve got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes. Suddenly I didn’t know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly. She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why? I avoided her question. This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, you are not a man! That night, we didn’t talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; she had lost my heart to Jane. I didn’t love her anymore. I just pitied her! With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% stake of my company. She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces. The woman who had spent ten years of her life with me had become a stranger. I felt sorry for her wasted time, resources and energy but I could not take back what I had said for I loved Jane so dearly. Finally she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me her cry was actually a kind of release. The idea of divorce which had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer now. The next day, I came back home very late and found her writing something at the table. I didn’t have supper but went straight to sleep and fell asleep very fast because I was tired after an eventful day with Jane. When I woke up, she was still there at the table writing. I just did not care so I turned over and was asleep again. In the morning she presented her divorce conditions: she didn’t want anything from me, but needed a month’s notice before the divorce. She requested that in that one month we both struggle to live as normal a life as possible. Her reasons were simple: our son had his exams in a month’s time and she didn’t want to disrupt him with our broken marriage. This was agreeable to me. But she had something more, she asked me to recall how I had carried her into out bridal room on our wedding day. She requested that every day for the month’s duration I carry her out of our bedroom to the front door ever morning. I thought she was going crazy. Just to make our last days together bearable I accepted her odd request. I told Jane about my wife’s divorce conditions. . She laughed loudly and thought it was absurd. No matter what tricks she applies, she has to face the divorce, she said scornfully. My wife and I hadn’t had any body contact since my divorce intention was explicitly expressed. So when I carried her out on the first day, we both appeared clumsy. Our son clapped behind us, daddy is holding mommy in his arms. His words brought me a sense of pain. From the bedroom to the sitting room, then to the door, I walked over ten meters with her in my arms. She closed her eyes and said softly; don’t tell our son about the divorce. I nodded, feeling somewhat upset. I put her down outside the door. She went to wait for the bus to work. I drove alone to the office. On the second day, both of us acted much more easily. She leaned on my chest. I could smell the fragrance of her blouse. I realized that I hadn’t looked at this woman carefully for a long time. I realized she was not young any more. There were fine wrinkles on her face, her hair was graying! Our marriage had taken its toll on her. For a minute I wondered what I had done to her. On the fourth day, when I lifted her up, I felt a sense of intimacy returning. This was the woman who had given ten years of her life to me. On the fifth and sixth day, I realized that our sense of intimacy was growing again. I didn’t tell Jane about this. It became easier to carry her as the month slipped by. Perhaps the everyday workout made me stronger. She was choosing what to wear one morning. She tried on quite a few dresses but could not find a suitable one. Then she sighed, all my dresses have grown bigger. I suddenly realized that she had grown so thin, that was the reason why I could carry her more easily. Suddenly it hit me… she had buried so much pain and bitterness in her heart. Subconsciously I reached out and touched her head. Our son came in at the moment and said, Dad, it’s time to carry mom out. To him, seeing his father carrying his mother out had become an essential part of his life. My wife gestured to our son to come closer and hugged him tightly. I turned my face away because I was afraid I might change my mind at this last minute. I then held her in my arms, walking from the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the hallway. Her hand surrounded my neck softly and naturally. I held her body tightly; it was just like our wedding day. But her much lighter weight made me sad. On the last day, when I held her in my arms I could hardly move a step. Our son had gone to school. I held her tightly and said, I hadn’t noticed that our life lacked intimacy. I drove to office…. jumped out of the car swiftly without locking the door. I was afraid any delay would make me change my mind…I walked upstairs. Jane opened the door and I said to her, Sorry, Jane, I do not want the divorce anymore. She looked at me, astonished, and then touched my forehead. Do you have a fever? She said. I moved her hand off my head. Sorry, Jane, I said, I won’t divorce. My marriage life was boring probably because she and I didn’t value the details of our lives, not because we didn’t love each other anymore. Now I realize that since I carried her into my home on our wedding day I am supposed to hold her until death do us apart. Jane seemed to suddenly wake up. She gave me a loud slap and then slammed the door and burst into tears. I walked downstairs and drove away. At the floral shop on the way, I ordered a bouquet of flowers for my wife. The salesgirl asked me what to write on the card. I smiled and wrote, I’ll carry you out every morning until death do us apart. That evening I arrived home, flowers in my hands, a smile on my face, I run up stairs, only to find my wife in the bed -dead. My wife had been fighting CANCER for months and I was so busy with Jane to even notice. She knew that she would die soon and she wanted to save me from the whatever negative reaction from our son, in case we push through with the divorce.— At least, in the eyes of our son—- I’m a loving husband…. The small details of your lives are what really matter in a relationship. It is not the mansion, the car, property, the money in the bank. These create an environment conducive for happiness but cannot give happiness in themselves. So find time to be your spouse’s friend and do those little things for each other that build intimacy. Do have a real happy marriage! If you don’t share this, nothing will happen to you. If you do, you just might save a marriage. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. ♥ Remember love is the richest of all treasures. Without it there is nothing; and with it there is everything. Love never perishes , even if the bones of a lover are ground fine like powder. Just as the perfume of sandalwood does not leave it, even if it is completely ground up, similarly the basis of love is the soul, and it is indestructible and therefore eternal. Beauty can be destroyed , but not love. ♥

Bringing up daughters: The new battlefield for parents

Boys were the problem children a decade ago, and dozens of books sought to help. Now, girls are at risk, with drinking and self-harming on the rise, and a new industry is just beginning

Joanna Moorhead

It's a freezing night in Bristol, and snow is forecast – but every seat at Colston Hall in the city centre was sold out weeks ago, and not only for Ronan Keating who's playing in the main auditorium. Also packing them in is a 59-year-old, softly spoken Australian psychotherapist, who will take to the stage for 90 minutes with just a whiteboard and some ideas that will keep his audience on the edge of their seats.

The psychotherapist is Steve Biddulph, and most of the people queuing up to hear him are the mothers of teenage girls. A few years ago Biddulph toured Britain warning of a crisis facing boyhood: now he is back with a similar message about girlhood. And if the audience here is anything to go by, he's definitely touched a nerve. "Parents of girls are seriously worried about their daughters," says Saffia Farr, editor of Juno magazine and the organiser of the Bristol part of Biddulph's country-wide tour. "They feel there's this overwhelming tide of advertising that's targeting their daughters, of inappropriate clothing being sold in the shops, of media messages that encourage their girls to grow up way, way before their time. And they want to know what they can do about it."

Telling them what they can do about it is Biddulph's mission. "A few years ago, boys were a disaster area – there was an epidemic of ADHD, they were underperforming in exams, they were drinking too much and getting involved in wild behaviour," he says. "Back then, girls seemed to be doing just fine. But, about five years ago, that all changed – suddenly, girls' mental health started to plummet. Everyone knew a girl, or had a girl themselves, who had an eating disorder or who was depressed or was self-harming. It was a huge change in a very short period; I started to investigate why this was happening."

Biddulph lives and works in Australia, but the crisis he sees brewing for young girls seems to be echoed across the Western world – and, in Britain, the figures suggest it's worse than in other countries. A few weeks ago, the charity Childline announced a 68 per cent increase in youngsters contacting them about self-harming, and said most of the increase was among girls. The problem also seemed to be affecting teenagers at a younger age, with 14-year-olds now likely to be among callers.

Anxiety and depression in teenage girls is also on the rise: research from the Nuffield Foundation last year found that the proportion of 15- and 16-year-olds reporting feeling frequently anxious or depressed has doubled in the last 30 years, and is more common in girls: it has jumped from one in 30 to two in 30 for boys, and from one in 10 to two in 10 for girls. Meanwhile, a report from the Department of Health found teenage girls in Britain are more likely to binge drink than teenage girls anywhere else in Europe; more than half of 15- and 16-year-olds admit they drink to excess at least once a month. A separate report in 2011 found that one in five girls in this age bracket who drink at least once a week have drunken sex and later regret it.

Anorexia and bulimia are also dramatically on the increase: official figures for hospital admissions released last October pinpointed a 16 per cent rise in hospital admissions for eating disorders, and showed that one in every 10 of these admissions was a 15-year-old girl.

"There's plenty to be concerned about," Biddulph says. "Everyone who has a teenage daughter right now sees this, in their child and among their child's friends." The people they blame, he says, are the advertising industry and the media. "They are driving girls' sensibilities and making them miserable. The corporate world has identified them as a new market for products, and is preying on them." During his talk, Biddulph describes teenage girls as being out in the wilderness, surrounded by hyenas: it's starting to get dark, he tells his audience, but they are all alone out there.

His message, though, is one of empowerment: he encourages parents to get together, to challenge the advertising industry and to lobby the Government to impose more restrictions on advertisers.

"Take the drinks industry – about 30 per cent of the market is sales to underage drinkers," he says. "Alcohol companies are extremely powerful – but parents are powerful, too, and they have to stand against this and stop the marketing of alcopops and push for a higher drinking age."

But the battle needs to be fought on a domestic as well as a policy front. "What we need to do is re-evaluate how we think of teenage girls: the current philosophy is that they're growing older, so they need us less. But I believe that teenage girls go through a kind of second babyhood, and they in fact need their parents more than ever. We have to spend time with our daughters at this age: talk to them, listen to them, keep in touch with them. Staying connected to their parents makes all the difference to how they cope with the pressures they're up against."

Case study

Lindsay Julian, 51, lives in Salisbury. She has three daughters: Emily is 24, Olivia is 14, and Amelia is 11. She also has a son, Alexander, 28

"Emily got into drinking when she was about 15, and she started taking drugs fairly soon after that. It was a real roller-coaster time for all of us: sometimes she'd drink a lot and run off, and we'd have no idea where she was. One time, she didn't come back all night, and we ended up calling the police. They were difficult times.

"There are so many pressures on young girls today – you're very aware of that as a mother of daughters. So when my younger girls got close to the age where things got difficult with Emily, I thought: we're going to do things differently this time round. I sent them to a Steiner school, where I think the pressures are lessened: the philosophy is holistic, it's not all about exam results, which I think can be very stressful for young girls.

"Some of my daughters' friends spend a lot of time on social media, texting and on Facebook – but I'm careful to limit those things for my girls, and it does make a difference. They watch TV but I monitor it – in some homes, TV seems like a third parent, and I don't want it to be like that in our house. A lot of teenage girls never switch off, they're constantly connected, and that puts them under pressure from one another as well as from advertisers.

"We've got friends where you can see that their 14-year-olds are more like adults; the wanting to drink, to go to parties all the time.

"Emily is fine now: things turned around for her eventually, and she now works as a researcher and has written a book. She's a rock for her younger sisters and I'm very proud of her. I know you could say that she was OK in the end, but I don't think it's an experience I'd want to go through with my younger daughters. I think their adolescence could be happier, and less fraught, than Emily's was."

Source: The Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/bringing-up-daughters-the-new-battlefield-for-parents-8458767.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Retinal Metric: A Stimulus Distance Measure Derived from Population Neural Responses

Gašper Tkačik, Einat Granot-Atedgi, Ronen Segev, and Elad Schneidman

 Two different stimuli, labeled and , were presented to a salamander retina. This is schematically shown here as grey patches on light and dark backgrounds, but Tkačik et al. used sequences of flickering light. They triggered two different sets of neural responses σ to repeats of the same stimuli. Out of these repeats, a distance between and was computed as the difference between and . The bottom right panel shows the matrix of distance for different pairs of stimuli indexed by. The upper diagonal shows the Euclidian distance between the stimuli, the lower diagonal the Dret distance estimated from the retinal acitivity.

Anyone who has experienced change blindness (in which a large difference between two images goes unnoticed [1]) knows that while our brain is supposed to efficiently process the sensory inputs from our natural environment, it can be tricked by well-designed stimuli. In the visual system, this is best reflected by optical illusions in which two physically different stimuli appear identical. For example, the perceived brightness of an area can be greatly influenced by the luminance of the surrounding areas: a gray patch on a dark background can appear as bright as a darker patch on a bright background [2]. These illusions suggest that physically different stimuli will trigger identical responses in a part of the visual system. Searching for the neural basis of such illusions is a major challenge in sensory neuroscience. Some researchers have found that perceived illusions can be reflected in the firing rate of single neurons [3] or populations of neurons [4].

However, a conceptual barrier remains. How do we know if the responses of a population of neurons to two different stimuli are the same? For instance, by comparing the firing rates of the recorded neurons, we assume they contain all the information about the stimulus, an assumption that might be wrong—or insufficient. If we were able to define an objective measure of difference between neuronal patterns, we could determine which stimuli evoke similar responses. A physical stimulus and its illusory percept should be very close in this neural metric. In a paper in Physical Review Letters, Gašper Tkačik at the Institute of Science and Technology, Austria, and colleagues report their theoretical development and experimental study of a new kind of neural metric for characterizing how different two stimuli are in terms of the response of a population of neurons in the retina [5].

To achieve this, they used data simultaneously recorded from neurons in the retina of a salamander (a classical model to study neural coding in the retina), while presenting different sequences of flickering light (Fig. 1). Since the relation between a stimulus and the neural response is stochastic, their first step was to obtain an estimate of the conditional probability distribution , which quantifies the probability that the neural pattern σ is emitted if stimulus s is presented. σ is represented by a binary word with a 1 for each neuron that emitted a spike, and 0 for the ones staying silent. This distribution cannot be sampled empirically, so they used a maximum-entropy procedure (stimulus-dependent maximun entropy, or SDME model), developed in detail previously [6], which constructs ) distributions based on the experimental data. This model predicts the probability of a spike pattern from a weighted sum of the stimulus, the activity of each cell, and the joint activity of pairs of neurons. Using the probability distributions obtained from the model, they defined the retinal distance between the stimuli as the distance between the distributions of responses elicited. This latter is quantified using a symmetrized version of the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, a classical measure to compare two distributions: measures how much information is lost when approximatingwith .

The advantage of using is that this measure is relatively agnostic about the exact nature of the neural code: it does not assume that all the information about the stimulus is contained in the average firing rate, or in the timing of the spikes, but takes into account the full distribution of the neural response.

This definition allows the authors to calculate a distance between each pair of stimuli. In a second step, they computed the “distance matrix” between all stimuli, . Such a distance is hard to visualize, so they used a method called multidimensional scaling (MDS) that makes each stimulus correspond to a point in a low-dimensional space, such that the Euclidian distance between the points approximates .

This procedure tells them whether this complex neural metric can be projected in a low-dimensional space, where it is more easily interpretable. In the retina dataset, they found that the two first modes (where the first mode is essentially the firing rate of the neurons) already capture most of the metric in stimulus space. They even build a model that predicts the distance between stimuli from their projections onto two vectors.

These findings show that this large population of neurons, although initially high dimensional, extracts only a few components from the stimulus. This dimensionality reduction was found before for single neurons, using techniques such as spike-triggered covariance analysis, for example [7], showing that each neuron can divide the space of possible stimuli into the ones that evoke the spike and the ones that don’t. The novelty of the approach of Tkačik et al.is to take into account the whole interacting population, rather than single neurons. One might have thought that the different neurons would each separate the stimulus space into distinct subspaces, so that reading the different neurons would increase the information about the stimulus exponentially. However, here it is shown that this population of neurons is very redundant, since its sensitivity can be reduced to two components.

These two components provide an important insight into the changes in the stimulus that the neural population can detect, as well as the ones it cannot. Over the time course of the stimulus, the method of Tkačik et al. predicts that some fluctuations added to the stimulus should not change the retinal response, while others, sometimes smaller, would.

The implications of this work are potentially important. First, it provides methods to investigate how populations code for neural stimuli by taking into account the whole population, not just single neurons. Second, it allows quantifying what aspects of stimulus space are encoded and gives a metric for such quantification. Of course, there are some limitations in this approach. The entire definition of the metric relies on a model connecting the stimulus to the response, and it gives relevant results only as long as this model is a good one. In the present case, the model has been tested and gives a faithful prediction of the retinal response [6]. But for more complex stimuli, or other structures, it is not yet clear how well the same model would perform, and significant extensions might be needed. Nevertheless, this approach is an important step in defining a metric on stimulus space based on a neural network response. It becomes possible to look for the most singular points of this metric, where small deviations will trigger large changes in the neural response. Designing stimuli to probe these singular points would, in fact, be a good way to test the validity of the model.

This neural metric will also have interesting applications in other modalities, especially when there is no natural distance between stimuli, like in olfaction. Finally, it can also have applications to the motor system, and in particular, to neuroprotheses (artificial legs or arms controlled by neural activity), where the key is precisely to define a neural-based distance between motor actions.

References

1. D. J. Simons and C. F. Chabris, “Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events,” Perception 28, 1059 (1999).
2. D. Purves, S. M. Williams, S. Nundy, and R. B. Lotto, “Perceiving the Intensity of Light,” Psychol. Rev. 111, 142 (2004).
3. A. F. Rossi, C. D. Rittenhouse, and M. A. Paradiso, “The Representation of Brightness in Primary Visual Cortex,” Science 273, 1104 (1996).
4. D. Jancke, F. Chavane, S. Naaman, and A. Grinvald, “Imaging Cortical Correlates of Illusion in Early Visual Cortex,” Nature 428, 423 (2004).
5. G. Tkačik, E. Granot-Atedgi, R. Segev, and E. Schneidman, “Retinal Metric: A Stimulus Distance Measure Derived from Population Neural Responses,”Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 058104 (2013).
6. E. Granot-Atedgi, G. Tkačik, R. Segev, and E. Schneidman, “Stimulus-Dependent Maximum Entropy Models of Neural Population Codes,”arXiv:1205.6438 (2012).
7. A. L. Fairhall, C. A. Burlingame, R. Narasimhan, R. A. Harris, J. L. Puchalla, and M. J. Berry 2nd, “Selectivity for Multiple Stimulus Features in Retinal Ganglion Cells,” J. Neurophysiol. 96, 2724 (2006).

Source:  American Physical Society
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/11

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

'Quantum smell' idea gains ground

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

 

Smell remains the least-understood of our senses but pleasing it supports a billion-dollar industry 

A controversial theory that the way we smell involves a quantum physics effect has received a boost, following experiments with human subjects.

It challenges the notion that our sense of smell depends only on the shapes of molecules we sniff in the air.

Instead, it suggests that the molecules' vibrations are responsible.

A way to test it is with two molecules of the same shape, but with different vibrations. A report in PLOS ONE shows that humans can distinguish the two.

Tantalisingly, the idea hints at quantum effects occurring in biological systems - an idea that is itself driving a new field of science, as the article Are birds hijacking quantum physics? points out.

But the theory - first put forward by Luca Turin, now of the Fleming Biomedical Research Sciences Centre in Greece - remains contested and divisive.

The idea that molecules' shapes are the only link to their smell is well entrenched, but Dr Turin said there were holes in the idea.

He gave the example of molecules that include sulphur and hydrogen atoms bonded together - they may take a wide range of shapes, but all of them smell of rotten eggs.

"If you look from the [traditional] standpoint... it's really hard to explain," Dr Turin told BBC News.

"If you look from the standpoint of an alternative theory - that what determines the smell of a molecule is the vibrations - the sulphur-hydrogen mystery becomes absolutely clear."

Molecules can be viewed as a collection of atoms on springs, so the atoms can move relative to one another. Energy of just the right frequency - a quantum - can cause the "springs" to vibrate, and in a 1996 paper in Chemical Senses Dr Turin said it was these vibrations that explained smell.

The mechanism, he added, was "inelastic electron tunnelling": in the presence of a specific "smelly" molecule, an electron within a smell receptor in your nose can "jump" - or tunnel - across it and dump a quantum of energy into one of the molecule's bonds - setting the "spring" vibrating.

But the established smell science community has from the start argued that there is little proof of this.

Of horses and unicorns

One way to test the idea was to prepare two molecules of identical shape but with different vibrations - done by replacing a molecule's hydrogen atoms with their heavier cousins called deuterium.

Leslie Vosshall of The Rockefeller University set out in 2004 to disprove Dr Turin's idea with a molecule called acetophenone and its "deuterated" twin.

The work in Nature Neuroscience suggested that human participants could not distinguish between the two, and thus that vibrations played no role in what we smell.

But in 2011, Dr Turin and colleagues published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showing that fruit flies can distinguish between the heavier and lighter versions of the same molecule.

A repeat of the test with humans in the new paper finds that, as in Prof Vosshall's work, the subjects could not tell the two apart. But the team then developed a brand new, far larger pair of molecules - cyclopentadecanone - with more hydrogen or deuterium bonds to amplify the purported effect.

In double-blind tests, in which neither the experimenter nor the participant knew which sample was which, subjects were able to distinguish between the two versions.

Still, Prof Vosshall believes the vibrational theory to be no more than fanciful.

The new experiments hinged on making a brand-new molecule - in "heavy" and "light" versions

"I like to think of the vibration theory of olfaction and its proponents as unicorns. The rest of us studying olfaction are horses," she told BBC News.

"The problem is that proving that a unicorn exists or does not exist is impossible. This debate on the vibration theory or the existence of unicorns will never end, but the very important underlying question of why things smell the way they do will continue to be answered by the horses among us."

Tim Jacob, a smell researcher at the University of Cardiff, said the work was "supportive but not conclusive".

"But the fact is that nobody has been able to unequivocally contradict [Dr Turin]," he told BBC News.

"There are many, many problems with the shape theory of smell - many things it doesn't explain that the vibrational theory does."

And although many more scientists are taking the vibrational theory seriously than back in 1996, it remains an extraordinarily polarised debate.

"He's had some peripheral support, but... people don't want to line up behind Luca," Prof Jacob said. "It's scientific suicide."

Columbia University's Richard Axel, whose work on mapping the genes and receptors of our sense of smell garnered the 2004 Nobel prize for physiology, said the kinds of experiments revealed this week would not resolve the debate - only a microscopic look at the receptors in the nose would finally show what is at work.

"Until somebody really sits down and seriously addresses the mechanism and not inferences from the mechanism... it doesn't seem a useful endeavour to use behavioural responses as an argument," he told BBC News.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not writing off this theory, but I need data and it hasn't been presented."

Source: BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21150046

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Focus on memory

Nature Neuroscience 16, 111 (2013)

doi:10.1038/nn0213-111

Published online 28 January 2013

Nature Neuroscience presents a special focus issue highlighting recent advances and discussing future directions in memory research.

Whether remote or recent, blurred or vivid, conscious or hidden, memories provide a link between the present and the past and allow us to project our thoughts into the future. But memories are not immutable; instead, they continually evolve throughout their lifetime. From the moment they are created, they embark on a dynamic journey, during which they are consolidated, often updated, but also sometimes distorted to the point that they falsify the past. As our brain is constantly bombarded with newer information, memories may also become suppressed by competing memories or experiences or seemingly disappear into oblivion. In this issue, we present a focus on memory, comprising Commentaries, Reviews and Perspectives discussing some of the most exciting recent developments and emerging ideas in our understanding of the neurobiology of learning and memory.

Are memories faithful snapshots of past experiences or can they become insidiously deceitful? During its ruling on the Henderson case in 2011, the New Jersey Supreme Court carefully considered the value of evidence based on eyewitness memory. The decision showed some appreciation of the complexity of memory processes and, in particular, the fact that memories can be tampered with by suggestive influence. As a result of this case, instructions provided to jurors on how to decide the fate of the accused in New Jersey now explicitly state that memories do not replay like video recordings. In their Commentary on page 119 of this issue, Daniel Schacter and Elizabeth Loftus carefully discuss what cognitive neuroscience can bring to the courtroom, focusing on the neural basis of true and false memories and misinformation effects. Their commentary also serves as a powerful case to illustrate how advances in understanding the neurobiology of memory have immediate and direct consequences on society.

How are memories transformed by experience? Past experiences can persistently modify gene expression by altering epigenetic marks on histones or DNA bases. The possibility that this form of molecular memory could contribute to the encoding, updating and persistence of long-term memories is very appealing, as memory formation depends on changes in patterns of gene expression. This has inspired memory researchers to investigate whether such mechanisms can participate in shaping learning and memory. In a Perspective on page 124, Matthew Lattal and Marcello Wood discuss recent progress on the epigenetics of learning and memory. They argue that epigenetics can help to distinguish the molecular mechanisms that mediate reconsolidation of memories and memory extinction, and that epigenetics can provide a plausible molecular mechanism that maintains the persistent change in behavior induced by extinction.

Of the many brain structures that are important for learning and memory, the hippocampus has been widely studied as a central hub of this cognitive process. The discovery in the early 1970s by O'Keefe and Dostrovsky that the position of an animal in its environment can dictate the firing of hippocampal neurons, the so-called place cells, prompted the burning question of whether memory and navigation are part of a common system or simply functionally stand side by side in the hippocampus. On page 130 of this issue, György Buzsáki and Edvard Moser revisit this notion by discussing recent evidence that the navigation and memory functions of the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex are supported by the same neuronal algorithms. In addition, they propose that the mechanisms fueling the memory and mental travel engines of the hippocampal-entorhinal system evolved from the mechanisms supporting navigation in the physical world.

There is now converging and unequivocal experimental evidence supporting the idea that memory consolidation takes place during sleep. Does sleep provide passive protection from forgetting or does it actively shape the future of memories? On page 139 of this issue, Robert Stickgold and Matthew Walker offer a fresh perspective on this question by introducing the concept of sleep-dependent memory triage. They discuss recent findings in sleep research that support their view that consolidation is not a monolithic process, but rather consists of a variety of operations. They propose that offline consolidation during sleep sanctions what information is ultimately retained or lost on the basis of salience tags and acts as the architect of the evolution of memories during their integration into existing implicit and explicit knowledge.

With a long and rich experimental history, learned fear is probably one of the best understood forms of memory. In recent years, it has become clear that aversive memories are shaped by distinct learning phases, and many of the underlying molecular and circuit mechanisms have now been elucidated. On page 146 of this issue, Ryan Parsons and Kerry Ressler review how the latest insights into the biological basis of learned fear have provided a new strategic platform for clinical approaches to fear and anxiety disorders. In particular, they discuss the potential therapeutic value of targeting behavioral and pharmacological interventions to different epochs of the fear learning process to treat disorders such as phobias, panic and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Learning and memory is a very broad field. The handful of pieces in this issue clearly cannot span the entire field; rather, we have simply highlighted some of the topics that have received substantial attention and that have been the focus of recent study. We express our gratitude to the authors, referees and advisors who helped us to curate this special issue. We hope that these reviews will inspire further research into unraveling the complex neuroscience of memory and that they give our readers a glimpse of some of the exciting recent research in this field.

Source: Nature Neuroscience
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n2/full/nn0213-111.html?WT.ec_id=NEURO-201302

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Fear of Failure

“Unable to get the desired result, some made an excuse and stayed where they were, while others went to see the bow. Like a monkey examining a coconut, they each sat back down with their heads hanging down.” (Janaki Mangala, Chand 11.1) nahiṃ saguna pāyau rahe misu kari eka dhanu dekhana gae | ṭakaṭori kapi jyoṃ nāriyalu sirū nāi saba baiṭhata bhae || This bow was so intimidating that some were afraid to even try to lift it. The bow was the reason they were there in the first place. The princes came to try to win the hand of the most beautiful princess in the world. And to do that required lifting a bow in front of so many other people. But some were intimidated by the bow to the point that they wouldn’t try to lift it. Their behavior set the table nicely for the ultimate triumph of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The famous fable relating to the fox and the grapes gave rise to the popular expression, “sour grapes.” The fox tries to reach for grapes that are up high on a vine. After a failed attempt, the fox changes his tune, saying that the grapes are probably sour anyway. The fox doesn’t know that for sure, but in order to massage its ego, to feel better about the failure, it dismisses the grapes as being poor in taste and thereby not worth attaining. Some of the princes assembled in Janakpur took a similar attitude, except they didn’t necessarily speak ill of the item in question. This bow originally belonged to Lord Shiva, a famous figure of the Vedic tradition. If the name Shiva is unknown to you, at least know that during this time period everyone knew who Shiva was. He was highly respected, even by those who didn’t worship him specifically. This bow originally came from him, and since it was the centerpiece of the event in Janakpur, people knew that it wasn’t ordinary. King Janaka didn’t call people to his kingdom to lift a grain of rice. Why would people even come for that? If they did, then they’d fight with each other to be the first in line. The lifting of the rice would be a given, as even an infant can pick up something as light as rice. This bow was not ordinary, and people knew that it wouldn’t be easy to lift. Many princes came to Janaka’s city because the winner would be a true gem, a tower of strength to be known throughout the world. Some were too afraid to try to lift the bow, though, knowing its strength and wanting to avoid public shame. If you fail on the grand stage, it is sometimes worse than not trying at all. If in sports you consistently lose in the final round of a big tournament, it’s worse than actually losing in the first round. No one remembers who played in the earlier rounds, but the finals are viewed by a larger audience. A perennial failure in the important moments then gets labeled a choker, which is worse than being known as incapable. “People will always speak of your infamy, and for one who has been honored, dishonor is worse than death.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 2.34) In the Bhagavad-gita, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna that for a celebrated warrior, dishonor is worse than death. This is because they were previously honored. They were known for some reason or another. Through dishonor, they tarnish their reputation. The eager journalists pay close attention to scandal for this very reason. If they can take down a celebrated figure through reporting their flaws, their story will be very popular. The dishonor will draw much attention because it is focused on someone who was previously honored. Dishonor to someone who was never honored isn’t as important. From the above referenced verse from the Janaki Mangala, we see that some of the princes made an excuse and stayed where they were. Think of it like the football player refusing to go into the game by faking an injury. “Oh my knee hurts. I don’t think I can play, coach.” Others got up and examined the bow, but they sat back down with their heads hanging low. Their behavior is compared to monkeys looking at coconuts. The inside of the coconut is what matters. It takes some effort to open the coconut too; it’s not an easy business, even for human beings. Unless you make the effort, however, you will never taste the fruit that is inside, namely the water and the coconut meat. Comparing these princes to monkeys is humorous and also harsh in a sense, but it is done to paint the right picture. This event is talked about to this day because Shri Rama would eventually lift the bow. He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead in an apparently human form. He performs superhuman acts witnessed by the parrot-like saints, who then document what they see and repeat the information to others, passing on the descriptions of the pastimes to future generations. Whether they tried or not, these princes did not have the ability to lift the bow. The bow was like a coconut that no monkey could crack. It was destined to be lifted by Rama, who is Sita’s husband for life. Janaka’s daughter, the beloved Sita Devi, was fit for the most powerful prince in the world, and since no one is more powerful than God, only He is worthy of Sita. In Closing: At a coconut monkey has a look, By its presence alone confidence shook. To open it won’t even try, Sour grapes, tell itself a lie. Many princes also not wanting to attempt, Looking at bow, back to their seats they went. Bow only for Rama’s hand meant, Lifted it without any effort spent.

‎"Pharmaceuticals from crab shells" Yapeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

The pharmaceutical NANA is 50 times more expensive than gold. Now it can be produced from chitin - a very cheap natural resource. The process was made possible by genetically modifying mold fungi.

Usually, mould fungi are nothing to cheer about – but now they can be used as "chemical factories". Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology have succeeded in introducing bacterial genes into the fungus Trichoderma, so that the fungus can now produce important chemicals for the pharmaceutical industry.The raw material used by the fungus is abundant - it is chitin, which makes up the shells of crustaceans.