The magnitude 6.6 earthquake that shook China's Sichuan province on 20 April, killing over 180 people, was small compared to the magnitude 7.9 quake that struck the region in May 2008, claiming some 69,000 lives. But it provided a sobering reminder that many of China's engineering projects are vulnerable because they sit along fault lines ? and raises questions about whether they could, in part, be to blame.
In unstable regions like Sichuan, it is critical to look at how building reservoirs, for example, might affect the local seismology, says Shemin Ge of the University of Colorado in Boulder. Ge and her colleagues have suggested that the 2008 quake may have been partially triggered by the creation a few years earlier of the giant Zipingpu Reservoir 20 kilometres from what would be the epicentre. The reservoir would have ratcheted up the pressure on the rocks beneath.
It's too early to know whether reservoir-building contributed to last week's quake. Of more immediate concern is the damage to dams and reservoirs, says Mian Liu of the University of Missouri in Columbia. According to the Ministry of Water Resources, two medium-sized and 52 small dams were damaged, with residents evacuated downstream of five of them.
Determining the factors behind the recent quake could help inform where future projects are sited, says Ge. China has already planned to build 60 hydropower dams between 2011 and 2015, many of which will lie along fault lines as these form natural sites for river courses. In theory, dams can be designed to withstand any amount of shaking.
The 2008 quake, whose epicentre was 85 kilometres away, may also have contributed to the latest event, by redistributing pressure along the Longmen Shan fault line, says Liu. In the aftermath, he calculated that it had increased the risk of another magnitude-7 quake within the next 50 years by a few per cent. "Seems nature was in a hurry," he says of last week's quake.
Although it's impossible to predict any quake with certainty, the area now most at risk, Liu says, is the Aninghe fault line further south ? the two recent quakes may have slightly increased the stresses there.
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AMSTERDAM (AP) ? Royal Philips NV, the maker of lights, home appliances and health-care equipment, says first quarter earnings fell on the back of soft sales and unfavorable annual comparisons.
Even so, the company says Monday its underlying margins have improved due to cutting costs.
In the first quarter, Philips made a net profit of 162 million euros ($212 million), down from 183 million euros in the first quarter of 2012 when it enjoyed 119 million euros worth of one-time gains, notably from the sale of its Senseo coffee maker brand. Sales fell 1 percent to 5.26 billion euros.
Chief executive Frans van Houten says the company is reiterating its view of a slow first half to 2013 due to "adverse" market trends, especially in Europe and the U.S.
Apr. 22, 2013 ? Understanding exactly how stem cells form into specific organs and tissues is the holy grail of regenerative medicine. Now a UC Santa Barbara researcher has added to that body of knowledge by determining how stem cells produce different types of "daughter" cells in Drosophila (fruit flies). T
he findings appear today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Denise Montell, Duggan Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at UCSB, and colleagues studied the ovaries of fruit flies in order to see stem cells in their natural environment. Because these organisms are excellent models for understanding stem cell biology, researchers were able to shed light on the earliest stages of follicle cell differentiation, a previously poorly understood area of developmental biology. "It is clear that the fundamental principles that control cell behavior in simple animals are conserved and control the behavior of our cells as well," she said. "There is so much we can learn by studying simple organisms."
Using a nuclear protein expressed in follicle stem cells (FSCs), the researchers found that castor, which plays an important role in specifying which types of brain cells are produced during embryonic development, also helps maintain FSCs throughout the life of the animal. "Having identified this important protein molecule in fruit flies, we can test whether the human version of the protein is important for stem cells and their daughters as well," said Montell. "The more we know about the molecules that govern stem cell behavior, the closer we will get to controlling these cells."
Her research team placed the evolutionarily conserved castor (Cas) gene, which encodes a zinc finger protein, in a genetic circuit with two other evolutionarily conserved genes, hedgehog (Hh) and eyes absent (Eya), to determine the fates of specific cell progeny (daughters). What's more, they identified Cas as a critical, tissue-specific target of Hh signaling, which not only plays a key role in maintaining follicle stem cells but also assists in the diversification of their progeny.
The study also shows that complementary patterns of Cas and Eya reveal the gradual differentiation of polar and stalk precursor cells at the earliest stages of their development. In addition, it provides a marker for cell fates and insight into the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which FSC progeny diverge into distinct fates.
Follicle cells undergo a binary choice during early differentiation. Those that turn into specialized cells found at the poles of egg chambers go on to make two cell types: polar and stalk. The three genes, Cas, Eya and Hh, work in various combinations, sometimes repressively, to determine which types of cells are formed. Cas is required for polar and stalk cell fate specification, while Eya is a negative regulator of these cells' fate. Hh is necessary for Cas to be expressed, and Hh signaling is essential to repress Eya.
"If you just had one of these markers, it was hard to tell what's going on," explained Montell. "All the cells looked the same and you had no idea when or how the process occurred. But now we can actually see how the cells acquire different identities."
Hh also plays many roles in embryonic development, adult homeostasis, birth defects, and cancer. Hh antagonists are currently in clinical trials for the treatment of several types of cancer. However, Hh signaling is important in so many different cell types and tissues that systemic delivery of such inhibitors may cause serious side effects. Therefore identifying the essential, tissue-specific effectors of Hh has the potential to lead to the identification of more specific therapeutic targets.
Someday, targeted inhibition of Hh signaling may be effective in the treatment and prevention of many types of human cancers.
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Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Yu-Chiuan Chang, Anna C.-C. Jang, Cheng-Han Lin, and Denise J. Montell. Castor is required for Hedgehog-dependent cell-fate specification and follicle stem cell maintenance in Drosophila oogenesis. PNAS, April 22, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1300725110
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Coffee has such a beneficial effect on creative activity that it should be no surprise that many artists have turned to stronger stimulants in search of bigger and more prolonged boosts. Indeed, amphetamines have their own semidistinguished artistic heritage, particularly among a swath of 20th-century writers.
The poet W.H. Auden is probably the most famous example. He took a dose of Benzedrine (a brand name of amphetamine introduced in the United States in 1933) each morning the way many people take a daily multivitamin. At night, he used Seconal or another sedative to get to sleep. He continued this routine??the chemical life,? he called it?for 20 years, until the efficacy of the pills finally wore off. Auden regarded amphetamines as one of the ?labor-saving devices? in the ?mental kitchen,? alongside alcohol, coffee, and tobacco?although he was well aware that ?these mechanisms are very crude, liable to injure the cook, and constantly breaking down.?
Graham Greene had a similarly pragmatic approach to amphetamines. In 1939, while laboring on what he was certain would be his greatest novel, The Power and the Glory, Greene decided to also write one of his ?entertainments??melodramatic thrillers that lacked artistry but that he knew would make money. He worked on both books simultaneously, devoting his mornings to the thriller The Confidential Agent and his afternoons to The Power and the Glory. To keep it up, he took Benzedrine tablets twice daily, one upon waking and the other at midday. As a result he was able to write 2,000 words in the mornings alone, as opposed to his usual 500. After only six weeks, The Confidential Agent was completed and on its way to being published. (The Power and the Glory took four more months.)
Greene soon stopped taking the drug; not all writers had such self-control. In 1942 Ayn Rand took up Benzedrine to help her finish her debut novel, The Fountainhead. She had spent years planning and composing the first third of the novel; over the next 12 months, thanks to the new pills, she averaged a chapter a week. But the drug quickly became a crutch. Rand would continue to use amphetamines for the next three decades, even as her overuse led to mood swings, irritability, emotional outbursts, and paranoia?traits Rand was susceptible to even without drugs.
Jean-Paul Sartre was similarly dependent. In the 1950s, already exhausted from too much work on too little sleep?plus too much wine and cigarettes?the philosopher turned to Corydrane, a mix of amphetamine and aspirin then fashionable among Parisian students, intellectuals, and artists. The prescribed dose was one or two tablets in the morning and at noon. Sartre took 20 a day, beginning with his morning coffee, and slowly chewed one pill after another as he worked. For each tablet, he could produce a page or two of his second major philosophical work, The Critique of Dialectical Reason.
But perhaps the most notable case of amphetamine-fueled intellectual activity is Paul Erd?s, one of the most brilliant and prolific mathematicians of the 20th century. As Paul Hoffman documents in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, Erd?s was a fanatic workaholic who routinely put in 19-hour days, sleeping only a few hours a night. He owed his phenomenal stamina to espresso shots, caffeine tablets, and amphetamines?he took 10 to 20 milligrams of Benzedrine or Ritalin daily. Worried about his drug use, a friend once bet Erd?s that he wouldn?t be able to give up amphetamines for a month. Erd?s took the bet, and succeeded in going cold turkey for 30 days. When he came to collect his money, he told his friend, ?You?ve showed me I?m not an addict. But I didn?t get any work done. I?d get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I?d have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You?ve set mathematics back a month.? After the bet, Erd?s promptly resumed his amphetamine habit.
You know you ?should? meditate, bypass the elevator for the stairs, and order a salad instead of a sandwich?they?re the ?healthy? things to do, after all. But when you can?t relax, ran that morning, and are craving bread, it?s easy to think one tiny choice doesn?t mean anything. However, recent research shows that some seemingly insignificant acts may have significant payoff when it comes to your physical and mental wellness, waistline, and work performance. Make these seven picks and never again worry that you did the wrong thing.
RELATED: Doing something good for your body and mind doesn't take a lot of time. Try these 22 ways to improve your life in 2 minutes or less.
1. Your Go-To Lunch Is a Salad
Studies show: A significantly reduced risk of dying from chronic disease
If your noon order default is a bunch of leafy greens buried under other fresh veggies?and you rarely get ham and cheese on rye?you are drastically decreasing your chances of meeting your fate from non-communicable chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. In fact, a recent study from the World Health Organization found that 63 percent of deaths in 2008 worldwide were due to these diseases?and poor diet was a significant factor. By comparison, people who live in cultures who primarily consume plant-based diets rarely fall victim to these conditions.
Naturally occurring substance proves effective against deadly skin cancer in laboratory testsPublic release date: 10-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Joseph Carey jcarey@txbiomed.org 210-258-9437 Texas Biomedical Research Institute
For the first time, scientists have demonstrated the mechanism of action of gossypin, a naturally-occurring substance found in fruits and vegetables, as a treatment for melanoma, which causes the majority of deaths from skin cancer.
"We identified gossypin as a novel agent with dual inhibitory activity towards two common mutations that are the ideal targets for melanoma treatment," said Texas Biomed's Hareesh Nair, Ph.D.
At the moment, there is no single therapeutic agent or combination regimen available to treat all melanomas, of which about 76,000 new cases are diagnosed annually, according to the American Cancer Society.
"Our results indicate that gossypin may have great therapeutic potential as a dual inhibitor of mutations called BRAFV600E kinase and CDK4, which occur in the vast majority of melanoma patients. They open a new avenue for the generation of a novel class of compounds for the treatment of melanoma," Nair added.
His report, appearing in the March 29, 2013 issue of the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, was funded by the Texas Biomedical Forum and the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation.
Nair and his colleagues found that gossypin inhibited human melanoma cell proliferation, in vitro, in melanoma cell lines that harbor the two mutations. Gossypin stunted activities of the mutated genes, possibly through direct binding with them. It also inhibited the growth of various human melanoma cells. In addition, gossypin treatment for 10 days of human melanoma cell tumors with the mutations transplanted into mice reduced tumor volume and increased survival rate.
Further studies are planned by Nair's team to understand how the body absorbs gossypin and how it is metabolized. This idea has been discussed with the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio's Deva Mahalingam, M.D, Ph.D., who is interested in testing gossypin in melanoma patients.
###
Co-authors on the paper include John L. VandeBerg, Ph.D., and Shylesh Bhaskaran, Ph.D., of Texas Biomed; Kalarikkal V. Dileep, M.Sc., and Chittalakkottu Sadasivan, Ph.D., of Kannur University, in Palayad, India; Deepa S. Sathyaseelan, Ph.D., of the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio; Mitch Klausner, Ph.D., of the MatTek Corporation; and Naveen K. Krishnegowda, M.D., and Rajeshwar R. Tekmal, Ph.D., of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio.
Texas Biomed, formerly the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, is one of the world's leading independent biomedical research institutions dedicated to advancing health worldwide through innovative biomedical research. Located on a 200-acre campus on the northwest side of San Antonio, Texas Biomed partners with hundreds of researchers and institutions around the world, targeting advances in the fight against AIDS, hepatitis, malaria, parasitic infections and a host of other infectious diseases, as well as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, psychiatric disorders, and problems of pregnancy. For more information on Texas Biomed, go to http://www.TxBiomed.org, or call Joe Carey, Texas Biomed's Vice President for Public Affairs, at 210-258-9437.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Naturally occurring substance proves effective against deadly skin cancer in laboratory testsPublic release date: 10-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Joseph Carey jcarey@txbiomed.org 210-258-9437 Texas Biomedical Research Institute
For the first time, scientists have demonstrated the mechanism of action of gossypin, a naturally-occurring substance found in fruits and vegetables, as a treatment for melanoma, which causes the majority of deaths from skin cancer.
"We identified gossypin as a novel agent with dual inhibitory activity towards two common mutations that are the ideal targets for melanoma treatment," said Texas Biomed's Hareesh Nair, Ph.D.
At the moment, there is no single therapeutic agent or combination regimen available to treat all melanomas, of which about 76,000 new cases are diagnosed annually, according to the American Cancer Society.
"Our results indicate that gossypin may have great therapeutic potential as a dual inhibitor of mutations called BRAFV600E kinase and CDK4, which occur in the vast majority of melanoma patients. They open a new avenue for the generation of a novel class of compounds for the treatment of melanoma," Nair added.
His report, appearing in the March 29, 2013 issue of the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, was funded by the Texas Biomedical Forum and the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation.
Nair and his colleagues found that gossypin inhibited human melanoma cell proliferation, in vitro, in melanoma cell lines that harbor the two mutations. Gossypin stunted activities of the mutated genes, possibly through direct binding with them. It also inhibited the growth of various human melanoma cells. In addition, gossypin treatment for 10 days of human melanoma cell tumors with the mutations transplanted into mice reduced tumor volume and increased survival rate.
Further studies are planned by Nair's team to understand how the body absorbs gossypin and how it is metabolized. This idea has been discussed with the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio's Deva Mahalingam, M.D, Ph.D., who is interested in testing gossypin in melanoma patients.
###
Co-authors on the paper include John L. VandeBerg, Ph.D., and Shylesh Bhaskaran, Ph.D., of Texas Biomed; Kalarikkal V. Dileep, M.Sc., and Chittalakkottu Sadasivan, Ph.D., of Kannur University, in Palayad, India; Deepa S. Sathyaseelan, Ph.D., of the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio; Mitch Klausner, Ph.D., of the MatTek Corporation; and Naveen K. Krishnegowda, M.D., and Rajeshwar R. Tekmal, Ph.D., of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio.
Texas Biomed, formerly the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, is one of the world's leading independent biomedical research institutions dedicated to advancing health worldwide through innovative biomedical research. Located on a 200-acre campus on the northwest side of San Antonio, Texas Biomed partners with hundreds of researchers and institutions around the world, targeting advances in the fight against AIDS, hepatitis, malaria, parasitic infections and a host of other infectious diseases, as well as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, psychiatric disorders, and problems of pregnancy. For more information on Texas Biomed, go to http://www.TxBiomed.org, or call Joe Carey, Texas Biomed's Vice President for Public Affairs, at 210-258-9437.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- Nebraska's winter wheat crop has started to turn green with the warm weather, but the soil remains exceptionally dry because of the drought.
The U.S. Agriculture Department said Monday that the state's pastures haven't started growing much this spring because of the dry conditions.
About 64 percent of the state's hay and forage supplies rated short or very short.
Roughly 77 percent of the state's topsoil moisture rated short or very short. And 95 percent of the subsoil rates short or very short.
About 11 percent of Nebraska's wheat crop rated in good or excellent condition.
MAYFLOWER, Ark. (KTHV) -- Despite fears over the oil and Lake Conway, Friday's nice weather brought lots of fisherman out on the water, even a few boaters here and there. Everyone THV 11 talked to seemed just fine taking advantage of a nice day and going fishing in Lake Conway.
James Gibson made a catch Friday afternoon at the Lake Conway Dam. He's planning to use "these guys" for bait for an afternoon of fishing on Lake Conway.
"Crappie fish has been excellent the last few days, and I heard that catfish is getting pretty good, so I thought I'd come out and give my hand at it today," he said.
He came out one week after the nearby Mayflower oil spill, and he seems reassured that it's safe, especially by Arkansas Game and Fish.
"Game and fish biologists have been out here all week, and I talked to some of them a couple of days ago, and I trust that the fish out here are safe and the water is safe," he explained.
Other fisherman around the lake seemed OK, too. Some came out with boats, and catching wasn't so bad.
"I've caught a few fish today... One crappie and one small cat fish," he said.
THV 11 also checked in with Arkansas Game and Fish, and they've given the all-clear for Lake Conway fishing. They do monitor it and will update us if there are any changes.
When setting up your home theater, it's tempting to mount the TV above your fireplace. This arrangement seems like a great use of space, but it's actually one of the worst things you can do for both the TV itself, and for your own viewing experience.
It's Bad for the TV
First and foremost, the heat and soot generated by a fireplace can raise the operating temperature of the set, and reduce its usable life span. If the damage to the internals is noticeable, the manufacturer could even refuse warranty service. This won't really matter if you rarely use the fireplace, but it's a non-starter if you do.
It's a Pain in the Neck
Even if you aren't concerned about damaging the TV, you'll still strain your neck watching it it if it's mounted too high. Geoff Morrison at CNET likens it to sitting in the front row of a movie theater every time you watch TV, and suggests placing the center of the screen at eye level from your standard sitting position, or even slightly below. Apartment Therapy offers similar advice, recommending that the top of the screen should only be about 15 degrees above your horizontal plane of vision. By either measure, hanging your screen above a fireplace isn't remotely close to an optimal position. In fact, you'd be better off mounting it inside the fireplace.
It Hurts Your Image Quality
If this weren't enough, most LCD and LED-backlit sets still suffer from poor viewing angles, so looking at them from below can spoil your experience. An exhaustive 2008 DisplayMate study found that every LCD TV they tested suffered from noticeable color shifts at less than 15 degrees, far less than the angle from your couch to the top of a fireplace-mounted screen. LCD technology has improved somewhat in recent years, but unless you have a plasma screen or an expensive IPS display, you'll never get as vibrant a picture from a mantle-mounted TV as you would from one at eye level.
If you spent good money on a new flat panel, you want to put it in a position to shine. So avoid the fireplace and find another wall to mount it lower, or set it on an entertainment center. Your TV, neck, and eyes will thank you for it.
The Home Theater Mistake We Keep Seeing Over and Over Again | Apartment Therapy
BEIJING (AP) ? Shanghai has reported two more cases of human infection of a new strain of bird flu, raising the number of cases in eastern China to 18. Six of the people who contracted the virus have died.
Health officials believe people are contracting the H7N9 virus through direct contact with infected fowl and say there's no evidence the virus is spreading easily between people.
Shanghai's government said Saturday the latest victims are a 74-year-old peasant and a 66-year-old retiree. The city has been ordered by the agriculture ministry to halt its live poultry trade and slaughter all fowl in markets where the virus has been found.
The capital cities of the neighboring provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu also have suspended sales of live poultry. Both provinces have reported H7N9 cases.
Web advertising, for better or worse, is a volume game. Sometimes, it can appear as a race to the bottom. As a result, many employ sketchy tactics to help boost impressions and click-throughs Here are some of the most popular tricks out there:
Slideshows Rarely is Web content best presented through the medium of slideshow, but that doesn?t stop some publishers from using them at every given opportunity to help boost pageviews and ad impressions. Why present users with a single, easily scrollable page of content when you can force them to click nine times and bombard them with banner ads in the process? Notice a publisher like BuzzFeed, which doesn?t sell display ads, doesn?t use slideshows.
Autoplay video Another example of a practice that users hate and publishers love. Advertisers like video ads, and publishers can still charge a premium for them, almost regardless of the context they?re served in. The easiest way to boost your video inventory? Don?t wait to see if a user clicks play; just start streaming anyway.
?Pop-ups and pop-unders? ?Browser-based pop-up blockers thankfully managed to eradicate most of them, but some pop-ups still seem to slip through the net. Netflix is a big fan of the pop-up format, or at least its affiliates are. And anyone who frequents torrent sites or the more dimly lit corners of the internet will be all too familiar with MacKeeper ads, too.
Pagination A 700-word article could easily be published on one page or two. Some publishers would rather opt for two because that would double the ad impressions. Most users, on the other hand, would probably rather just scroll than click.
Auto page refreshes This one?s pretty simple: Instead of loading a Webpage and the ads placed on it just once while a user reads it, why not refresh it every 30 or 60 seconds instead? Think of all those extra impressions! It?s like printing money. Sort of.
?Aggregation? Some online publishers take another site?s content, add some value or further the discussion around it, and republish it on their own site to the benefit of their audience. Others will simply publish a headline and a summary sentence before linking to the source, and serving three or four ads in the process. It?s a cheap, quick, and easy way to boost pageviews and impressions.
?Sex sells ?Sex sells, that?s a given, and ads featuring scantily clad torsos can be found all over the net. But even major ad sellers lean on it heavily to help them sell ads, often by turning a blind eye to a good old-fashioned bait-and-switch. Facebook, for example, does little to police the imagery used by marketers in its units. Often the raunchy artwork depicted in its ads has nothing at all to do with the products or services being sold, but Facebook gets its clicks, and the marketer gets its traffic. It?s the user that loses out. ?
Apr. 4, 2013 ? The number of online educational offerings has exploded in recent years, but their rapid rise has spawned a critical question: Can such "virtual" classes cut through the maze of distractions -- such as email, the Internet, and television -- that face students sitting at their computers?
The solution, Harvard researchers say, is to test students early and often.
By interspersing online lectures with short tests, student mind-wandering decreased by half, note-taking tripled, and overall retention of the material improved, according to Daniel Schacter, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology, and Karl Szpunar, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology. Their findings are described in a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"What we hope this research does is show that we can use very strong, experimentally sound techniques to describe what works in online education and what doesn't," said Szpunar. "The question, basically, is how do we optimize students' time when they're at home, trying to learn from online lectures? How do we help them most efficiently extract the information they need?
"Some students I've talked to say that it takes them as long as four hours to get through an hour-long, online lecture because they're trying to combat all the distractions around them," he continued. "If we give students an incentive to pay attention to what they're doing, it's going to save them time. This is one way to do that."
Ironically, Schacter said, while online classes have exploded in popularity in the past few years, there remains "shockingly little" hard scientific data about how students learn in the virtual classroom.
"A lot of people have ideas about what techniques are effective," he said. "There's a general folk wisdom that says lessons should be short and engaging, but there's an absence of rigorous testing to back that up."
To get at that question, he, Szpunar, and research assistant Novall Khan devised two experiments.
In the first, a group of students was asked to watch a lecture that had been broken up into four segments of about five minutes each. After each segment, students were asked to do several math problems. Some students were then tested on the material from the lecture, while a control group did more math problems.
In the second experiment, participants were separated into three groups. Similar to the first experiment, all began watching a lecture that had been broken up into four segments. The difference was that students were interrupted, and asked whether their minds were wandering.
"It was surprising how high the baseline tendency to mind-wander is," Schacter said. "In our experiments, when we asked students if they were mind-wandering, they said yes roughly 40 percent of the time. It's a significant problem."
Following each segment, all three groups again did a set of math problems. Some students were then tested on the lecture, some did more math problems, and some were given the chance to study material from the lecture a second time.
Surprisingly, Schacter said, in both experiments, students who were tested between each segment -- but not the others, even those who were allowed to study the material again -- showed a marked drop in mind-wandering and improved overall retention of material.
"It's not sufficient for a lecture to be short or to break up a lecture as we did in these experiments," Schacter said. "You need to have the testing. Just breaking it up and allowing them to do something else, even allowing them to re-study the material, does nothing to cut down on mind-wandering, and does nothing to improve final test performance. The testing is the critical component."
Those tests, Schacter and Szpunar believe, act as an incentive for students to pay closer attention to the lecture because they know they'll have to answer questions at the end of each segment.
"Whether it's in the classroom or online, students typically don't expect to have to summarize a lecture in a way that makes sense until much later on," Szpunar explained. "But if we give them an incentive to do that every now and then, students are actually much more likely to set everything else aside, and decide they can get to that text after class, or they can worry about their other class later, and they're able to absorb the material much better."
Another surprising effect of the testing, Szpunar said, was to reduce testing anxiety among students, and to ease their fears that the lecture material would be very challenging.
Going forward, Schacter said, he hopes to research whether the testing effect can also reduce mind-wandering in the classroom.
"We know that there is mind-wandering in classroom lectures," he said. "Testing intervention hasn't been tried yet, but I think both Karl and I expect it would have similar, and possibly even stronger, results, because these experiments were conducted in a very controlled setting."
As online courses are increasingly touted as a large part of the future of higher education, Szpunar said he hopes the findings help to lay out a blueprint that can ensure students get the most out of such studies.
"At the very least, what this says is that it's not enough to break up lectures into smaller segments, or to fill that break with some activity," he said. "What we really need to do is instill in students the expectation that they will need to express what they've learned at some later point. I think it's going to be a very sobering thought for a lot of people to think that students aren't paying attention almost half the time, but this is one way we can help them get more out of these online lectures."
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Harvard University.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
K. K. Szpunar, N. Y. Khan, D. L. Schacter. Interpolated memory tests reduce mind wandering and improve learning of online lectures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1221764110
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Map locates Rio de Janeiro where tourists were attacked and one was sexually assaulted aboard a public transport van
Map locates Rio de Janeiro where tourists were attacked and one was sexually assaulted aboard a public transport van
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) ? An American woman was gang raped and beaten aboard a public transport van while her French boyfriend was shackled, hit with a crowbar and forced to watch the attacks after the pair boarded the vehicle in Rio de Janeiro's showcase Copacabana beach neighborhood, police said.
A third man, aged 21, was arrested for the attacks, which took place over six hours starting shortly after midnight on Saturday, police said in a Tuesday statement. Two men aged 20 and 22 had already been taken into custody for the attacks, police said. and a young Brazilian woman has come forward to say that she, too, was raped by the same men in the van on March 23.
"The victims described everything in great detail, mostly the sexual violence," police officer Rodrigo Brant told the Globo TV network. "Just how they described the facts was shocking ? the violence and brutality. It surprised even us, who work in security and are used to hearing such things. Their report shocked us."
The incidents raise new questions about security in Rio, which has cracked down on once-endemic drug violence in preparation for hosting next year's football World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic games. The city will also be playing host to World Youth Day, a Roman Catholic pilgrimage that will be attended by Pope Francis and is expected to draw some 2 million people in late July.
Officials from the local Olympic and World Cup organizing committees didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
The attack also drew comparisons with the fatal December beating and gang rape of a young woman on a New Delhi bus. Six men beset a 23-year-old university student and male friend after they boarded a private bus, touching off a wave of protests across India demanding stronger protection for women. Officials there say tourism has dropped in the country following the attacks.
In the Brazil case, a police statement said the suspects forced other passengers to get out of the van and then raped the female tourist inside the vehicle, which was one of a fleet of vans that serve bus routes and seat about a dozen people.
Such van services are often linked to organized crime in Rio, particularly the militias largely comprised of former police and firemen that control large swaths of the city's slums and run clandestine services such as transportation and sell cooking fuel and illegal cable TV hookups. In general, tourists avoid the vans and opt for regular buses or taxis.
Sexual assaults on tourists are not common in Rio, with muggings and petty crime reported more frequently.
During the assault, the two foreigners were driven to the poor neighborhood of Sao Goncalo, where the two suspects were apprehended, a police statement said.
Reports said the two foreigners had been studying Portuguese in Rio for about a month and both left Brazil following the attack.
The police statement said that one victim's cellphone was found in the suspects' possession. The suspects had also used a debit card belonging to one of the victims at two gas stations, it said.
The Globo television network broadcast surveillance camera images of two men filling up the white van and showed police images of a crowbar the suspects used to beat and intimidate the victims. The victims positively identified the two suspects.
In an interview with Globo television, commanding officer Alexandre Braga, who heads the Rio police unit specializing in crimes against tourists, said the suspects had gone on a sex crime spree.
"The characteristics of both crimes, both the Brazilian case and the one with the foreigners, lead us to believe that they (the suspects) wanted to have a 'party of evil,' in quotes," Braga said. "The principal motive appears to have been the satisfaction of their lust."
He added that the robbery and other crimes appear to have been "secondary."
Multiple calls to police seeking further details on Tuesday were not immediately returned.
In Brazil, more than 5,300 cases of sexual assault were reported between January and June 2012, according to the country's Health Ministry.
___
AP Television producer Ana Pereira contributed to this report.
Apr. 2, 2013 ? Non-musicians who speak tonal languages may have a better ear for learning musical notes, according to Canadian researchers.
Tonal languages, found mainly in Asia, Africa and South America, have an abundance of high and low pitch patterns as part of speech. In these languages, differences in pitch can alter the meaning of a word. Vietnamese, for example, has eleven different vowel sounds and six different tones. Cantonese also has an intricate six-tone system, while English has no tones.
Researchers at Baycrest Health Sciences' Rotman Research Institute (RRI) in Toronto have found the strongest evidence yet that speaking a tonal language may improve how the brain hears music. While the findings may boost the egos of tonal language speakers who excel in musicianship, they are exciting neuroscientists for another reason: they represent the first strong evidence that music and language -- which share overlapping brain structures -- have bi-directional benefits!
The findings are published today in PLOS ONE.
The benefits of music training for speech and language are already well documented (showing positive influences on speech perception and recognition, auditory working memory, aspects of verbal intelligence, and awareness of the sound structure of spoken words). The reverse -- the benefits of language experience for learning music -- has largely been unexplored until now.
"For those who speak tonal languages, we believe their brain's auditory system is already enhanced to allow them to hear musical notes better and detect minute changes in pitch," said lead investigator Gavin Bidelman, who conducted the research as a post-doctoral fellow at Baycrest's RRI, supported by a GRAMMY Foundation? grant.
"If you pick up an instrument, you may be able to acquire the skills faster to play that instrument because your brain has already built up these auditory perceptual advantages through speaking your native tonal language."
But Bidelman, now assistant professor with the Institute for Intelligent Systems and School of Communication Science & Disorders at the University of Memphis, was quick to dispel the notion that people who speak tonal languages make better musicians. Musicianship requires much more than the sense of hearing and plenty of English-speaking musical icons will put that quick assumption to rest.
That music and language -- two key domains of human cognition -- can influence each other offers exciting possibilities for devising new approaches to rehabilitation for people with speech and language deficits, said Bidelman.
"If music and language are so intimately coupled, we may be able to design rehabilitation treatments that use musical training to help individuals improve speech-related functions that have been impaired due to age, aphasia or stroke," he suggested. Bidelman added that similar benefits might also work in the opposite direction. Musical listening skills could be improved by designing well-crafted speech and language training programs.
The study
Fifty-four healthy adults in their mid-20s were recruited for the study from the University of Toronto and Greater Toronto Area. They were divided into three groups: English-speaking trained musicians (instrumentalists) and Cantonese-speaking and English-speaking non-musicians. Wearing headphones in a sound-proof lab, participants were tested on their ability to discriminate complex musical notes. They were assessed on measures of auditory pitch acuity and music perception as well as general cognitive ability such as working memory and fluid intelligence (abstract reasoning, thinking quickly).
While the musicians demonstrated superior performance on all auditory measures, the Cantonese non-musicians showed similar performance to musicians on music and cognitive behavioural tasks, testing 15 to 20 percent higher than that of the English-speaking non-musicians.
Bidelman added that not all tonal languages may offer the music listening benefits seen with the Cantonese speakers in his study. Mandarin, for example, has more "curved" tones and the pitch patterns vary with time -- which is different from how pitch occurs in music. Musical pitch resembles "stair step, level pitch patterns" which happen to share similarities with the Cantonese language, he explained.
Bidelman's research team included Sylvain Moreno, senior scientist with Baycrest's RRI and lead scientist with the Baycrest Centre for Brain Fitness; and Stefanie Hutka, an RRI graduate student and PhD student in the Department of Psychology, University of Toronto.
The GRAMMY Foundation, which supported the study, works in partnership with its founder The Recording Academy? to bring national attention to important issues such as the value and impact of music and arts education.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Gavin M. Bidelman, Stefanie Hutka, Sylvain Moreno. Tone Language Speakers and Musicians Share Enhanced Perceptual and Cognitive Abilities for Musical Pitch: Evidence for Bidirectionality between the Domains of Language and Music. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (4): e60676 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0060676
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All Critics (243) | Top Critics (45) | Fresh (228) | Rotten (17) | DVD (2)
What's striking is the absence of triumphalism -- Bigelow doesn't shy away from showing the victims shot down in cold blood in the compound -- and we come away with the overwhelming sense that this has been a grim, dark episode in our history.
This is an instant classic.
Chastain makes Maya as vivid as a bloodshot eye. Her porcelain skin, delicate features and feminine attire belie the steel within.
No doubt Zero Dark Thirty serves a function by airing America's dirty laundry about detainee and torture programs, but in its wake, there's a crying need for a compassionate Coming Home to counter its brutal Deer Hunter.
While "Zero Dark Thirty" may offer political and moral arguing points aplenty, as well as vicarious thrills,as a film it's simply too much of a passable thing.
From the very first scenes of Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow demonstrates why she is such a formidable filmmaker, as adept with human emotion as with visceral, pulse-quickening action.
Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty is a grueling masterpiece that captures the hunt for bin Laden with a daunting amount of realism and efficiency.
Slathered in controversy, Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty confidently and forcefully storms onto DVD with an admirable A/V transfer, only hindered by a paltry gathering of extras from Sony.
The direction by Kathryn Bigelow, who won Oscars for Best Film and Best Director in her previous film "The Hurt Locker," is fierce and focused...
Despite what those silly Oscars would have you believe, it was this movie, not Argo, that was the finest of 2012.
Indulges Cheneyian fantasies complete with the bad-movie scene of the prisoner's defiance: "You're just a garbage man in the corporation," shouts the Arab who needs a lesson in manners from the Ph.D. (in torture?) who is racking him.
Bigelow tells the story very well, very efficiently, but doesn't really say much about it, which is ironic given the response to the film in some quarters.
Kathryn Bigelow takes the procedural model and brushes away every unnecessary detail, leaving behind a heavy, blunt object of a film that is also hugely watchable, engrossing and, best of all... highly suspenseful.
Rotten Tomatoes notes that I agree with Tomatometer critics 80 percent of the time, but this is one of those times I have to part ways with them.
Bigelow has directed excellent movies before, but this deserves to be remembered as the film that established her as a master.
You can't deny that what Zero Dark Thirty sets out to do, it does excellently.
An exhilarating and compelling historical document worthy of praise.
Bigelow's latest proves a rewarding piece of filmmaking, one that, in its best moments at least, is as gripping and as troubling as anything the director's ever made.
Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal shape history -- those breaks, big and small, that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden -- into one of the finest fact-based thrillers since "All the President's Men."
Purely as cinematic exercise, Zero Dark Thirty is an exhilarating piece of work. But, beyond its for-the-times subject matter, the work does not linger whatsoever.
Zero Dark Thirty is interesting as opposed to enjoyable, intriguing as opposed to entertaining, and certainly less memorable than The Hurt Locker.
It's quite remarkable how Bigelow and Boal managed to take 12 years of information (including a conclusion that everyone knows) and packaged it into a coherent, intimate and intense movie.
We know the ending, yet remain mesmerized by familiar details, filmed with a harrowing sense of urgency. It's as close to being in the White House situation room that night, watching a closed-circuit broadcast, as anyone could expect.
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Public release date: 10-Apr-2013
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When setting up your home theater, it's tempting to mount the TV above your fireplace. This arrangement seems like a great use of space, but it's actually one of the worst things you can do for both the TV itself, and for your own viewing experience.
