Here is an interesting interview with a professional linguist who also happens to have autism. Her research is about language deficits in autistic individuals.

Medscape’s John Laurence Miller, PhD, interviewed Dr. Stillings about her theories on the cause of autism, the implications of these theories for treatment, and her own experience as a person with autism. At Dr. Stillings’ request, questions were submitted in writing and she replied in kind

After my avian magnetoreception post, I remembered a story I read about a year ago. A body modification enthusiast (you know, the crazy guys that hack themselves to bits and pierce any available body part) implanted a magnet into his finger. The original intent was just for fun, so he could pick paperclips and such up with his finger. As it turns out, he got a sixth sense - magnetoreception.

It’s hard to exactly describe what it feels like — it’s definitely not as simple as “I can feel the implant vibrating under my skin”, which is true, but I am completely unaware of the presence of the magnets… It’s more like being able to “touch” the EM field. It’s very tangible, and the best way I can describe it is a combination of vibrating air and a strong sense of static electricity.

Later on I started being able to sense other fields as well. Sometimes I can feel store security gates as I pass through them, although usually I can’t feel them at all unless my hand happens to pass very close. Only once (at an art gallery in Paris) did I experience a very obvious gate — it was turned up so high that it was almost painful at a distance of two or three feet, feeling very much like dipping my fingers into an ultrasonic cleaner; an extremely fast and aggressive vibration! My theory is that the system was malfunctioning, but of course no one else could possibly have been aware of that.

How wonderful is that?! Don’t you just wish you had the same? I know I do. Unfortunately, the technology is not nearly safe yet.

More information, links, a video and some other cool novel sensory inputs after the jump.
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Advisor: Is this going to give us good news today Zach?
Zach: I hope so, or else it would have been a waste of a day.
Advisor: *laugh* Welcome to science, you waste lots of days.

Made me laugh =)

Anyone who says evolution isn’t real should take pause at this new study (they won’t, but that is neither her nor there). A study published today in Science demonstrates that a common orchard pest, codling moths, has evolved extremely rapidly to be resistant to current methods of eradication. The resistant gene is sex-linked and grants the moths almost 100,000 fold resistance.

More details after the jump.
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Imagine having a new sense - the ability to sense ambient magnetic fields. Imagine not just sensing it but actually seeing magnetic fields, especially in the dark when there are fewer visual cues. This may sound alien but it exists right here on earth. Research in the field of avian magnetoreception suggests that birds not only sense magnetic fields to help them migrate but actively see the fields.

Everyone knows that certain varieties of birds migrate vast distances. Unlike you or I, birds can’t hop on Google Maps or pull out a GPS. They can’t read maps yet somehow manage to align themselves for the long flight. Several mechanisms, such as using the sun as a guide or mountains as landmarks, have been proposed that allow birds to orient themselves and successfully complete such long journeys.

Migratory birds and homing pigeons can also orient themselves with magnetic fields and it is theorized this magnetic sensory ability plays a key role in migration. Two magnetoreceptor mechanisms have been proposed. One theory uses magnetite crystals while the other involves photoreceptor based chemistry.

More details after the jump.
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Anyone else think this sounds like a bad idea?

On September 26-27, scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will host an international, interdisciplinary conference on the proposed “iron fertilization” of the ocean as a means to combat rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Several times over the past century, scientists and environmental engineers have proposed spreading slurries of dissolved iron into the oceans in order to “fertilize” the waters and promote vast blooms of marine plants (phytoplankton). Phytoplankton consume carbon dioxide as they grow, and this growth can be stimulated in certain ocean basins by the addition of iron, a necessary micronutrient.

Of course, thats the point of the symposium, to look into the idea and see if its a bad idea. Still, I can’t get out of my head the image of uncontrolled algae growth strangling all life in the ocean. More information can be found here

A few posts ago I mentioned the new Zeiss scope my advisor aquired. Today I got to play with this sexy, $120,000 scope. And it was awesome.

I felt very at home working with this machine today, especially compared to my first lab day. Old computer-science habits die hard and I picked up the software pretty quickly. The software package that comes with the beautiful machine is pretty shoddy, especially considering the price tag. It is unintuitive, frustrating and a bit buggy, occasionally crashing. The auto save function only works sometimes, meaning you could lose some interesting images if you aren’t careful. Despite that, it works well and gets the job done. Its like any other professional program (like a CAD package or a programming IDE), once you learn all the widgets and doodads imaging is pretty easy.

While the software may be less than optimal, the machine itself is glorious. Completely motorized stage (which is very nice for fine tuning), multiple objectives, including an awesome 60x oil objective, multiple fluorescent bulbs and regular transmitted light. Everything is automated and can be controlled via a touchpad on the machine itself or through the software on the computer. There is live capture, video, multi-fluorescent overlays, you name it. I think there is even a microwave and coffee maker attached to the back.

My favorite feature to play with was the Z-Stack. With this baby you define the top and bottom of the specimen being imaged. The software then automatically captures slices of the specimen at specific intervals from top to bottom, which is then reconstructed into a three-dimensional image. This is also, mind you, used in conjunction with fluorescence. At the end of the imaging, you have a fully 3D model of the cells showing the antibodies you fluoresced. Very, very cool.

It was a very fun day and I’m looking forward to using the scope a lot more this year. Now if only I could buy one for myself…

Physorg is carrying a report on the Huntington’s disease study I just wrote. I’m still quite new when it comes to writing articles on scientific reports so I find it interesting when a more mainstream, professionally trained journalist writes about the same thing I did.

The article is quite a bit simpler than my report. After reading the article from Physorg and then re-reading my own article, I think both of us missed the target. I feel theirs is a bit too simple, leaving out some important details (although it does accurately portray the main points of the study) while mine was a bit too technical, getting bogged down in little details along the way. Perhaps we just have different audiences, as I like to keep my articles tailored to people that have a decent level of knowledge on the subject of molecular and cellular neuroscience.

Either way, it was interesting to read another perspective of the same article. Writing concise, accurate and interesting reports on scientific material that appeals to a large audience is much more challenging than I originally thought. I’m constantly trying to improve how I write. I think I’ll try to simplify more difficult concepts and avoid smaller, technical details as I continue writing.

That said, this line just made me laugh:

Goldman’s team set up a one-two molecular punch as a recipe for generating new medium spiny neurons, to replace those that had become defective in mice with the disease.

Encephalon 32 is out, go read! GrrlScientist over at Living the Scientific Life has put out a wonderful edition. As always, Encephalon covers the whole gamut of neuroscience issues, articles and scientific reports from around the corners of the internet.

New research coming out of the University of Rochester suggests that inducing neurogenesis could be a possible treatment option for Huntington’s Disease.

Huntington’s Disease (HD) is a rare, autosomal dominant disease. The effects of HD are generally both physical and mental. Those afflicted with HD generally have erratic movements, slurring of speech, unsteady walking and uncoordinated facial expressions. As the disease progresses, patients typically lose the ability to feed themselves and require full-time care. Cognitively, patients lose their spatial skills, abstract thinking, planning and ability to learn new skills.

HD, unfortunately, has an extremely late onset which typically means the affected individual already has a family. Since HD is a dominant gene, only one parent must have the mutation to pass it on to their kids. The disease is caused by a number of repeats in the Interesting Transcript 15 gene, which encodes the huntington protein. Those with HD exhibit neurodegeneration throughout the brain, the neostratium in particular. The exact role of this protein in neurodegeneration, however, is still unknown.

Research headed by Sung-Rae Cho at the University of Rochester shows that inducing neurogenesis in striatal neurons slows the onset of HD, increasing life expectancy and reducing cognitive impairments in mice.

Details about the study after the jump
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