Bird's playlist could signal mental strengths and weaknesses

May 21, 2013 ? Having the biggest playlist doesn't make a male songbird the brainiest of the bunch, a new study shows.

"For songbirds, singing a lot of songs indicates a bird is smart, but that signal is not necessarily indicative of intelligence for everything," said Duke biologist Steve Nowicki.

In a series of problem-solving tests with the birds, he and his colleagues found that the male song sparrows that sang the most songs learned to solve food-finding puzzles more slowly than the birds singing fewer songs. The results are the first to show that a larger song repertoire links to cognitive deficits in other mental processes.

The researchers think that female song sparrows may use potential mates' songs to gauge both mental strengths and weaknesses.

Since birdsong is a good model for studying speech development, the findings, published May 22 in Biology Letters, could also help neuroscientists better understand the trade-offs taking place as the human brain matures.

Nowicki and collaborators first measured the number of songs 14 male song sparrows sang. They then taught the birds to identify where a mealworm was hidden in one of 12 shallow wells on a wooden rectangle. The scientists put plastic caps over six wells so that the birds had to learn and remember spatially where the worm was on the wooden block.

The birds that learned to solve the food puzzle more quickly sang fewer songs -- an observation opposite of what the scientists expected.

"This study is very exciting," said University of Nevada-Reno biologist Vladimir Pravosudov, who was not involved in the study. "It is the first of its kind to show a negative correlation between song repertoire size and spatial memory in songbirds, and it goes against the grain of what many scientists had thought about the relationship between song and other cognitive abilities in birds."

Earlier studies with starlings had shown that the birds with larger playlists learned to solve spatial tasks more quickly. Other studies had also shown that a bird that sang more songs performed better on other cognitive tasks.

This newly discovered negative relationship between the number of songs a bird sings and speed of solving a spatial task suggests there is a trade-off between song learning and other cognitive abilities, Nowicki said.

He noted one caveat with the experiment -- the fact that song sparrows don't cache their food or migrate long distances. Both require advanced spatial learning and memory, but the ability isn???t as important for sparrows as it is for blue jays and other species.

Still, the negative correlation suggests birds' brains may develop differently depending on how much effort is put toward learning songs or doing other mental tasks. Song learning happens in the HVC, the area of the bird's brain that controls song. Spatial learning happens in the hippocampus. During development, more resources may go to one area or the other, giving an individual bird a strength in one cognitive ability and a weakness in the other, Nowicki said.

The study supports the idea of trade-offs in the development of the birds' brains. But, "this behavioral data is only tip of iceberg," Pravosudov said. Scientists will need to look at the structures, circuits and chemicals in the birds' brains to better understand mechanistically what the new results mean for brain development.

Nowicki agrees and said his team may perform those experiments next. If the work pans out, he added, scientists could one day use songbirds and birdsong to better understand how trade-offs in brain development influence behavior and cognition in humans too.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/hJ-wEqNzabA/130521194141.htm

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From a Neanderthal Molar, Scientists Infer Early Weaning

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Patterns of barium in the fossil tooth of a child indicate that breast-feeding ended after 1.2 years, researchers say ? much sooner than in modern nonindustrial populations.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/science/from-neanderthal-molar-scientists-infer-early-weaning.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Immigration reform bill largely untouched going into fifth day of debate

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks on May 9. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A bipartisan group of senators begins a fifth full day of debating changes to the immigration reform bill Tuesday. So far, the so-called mark-up process has left the sweeping overhaul of the nation's immigration laws?which would legalize most of the country's 11 million undocumented immigrants?largely untouched.

On Tuesday, the senators will address some of the final controversial changes to the bill, including increasing the number of visas for the high tech industry and whether to allow people in same-sex marriages to apply for green cards for their spouses. A final vote is expected by the end of the week.

Republicans are outnumbered on the 18-member Senate Judiciary Committee, and two of them?Sens. Jeff Flake and Lindsey Graham?helped draft the original bipartisan bill in the first place. Nonetheless, Republican senators have been able to push through a few amendments that they say will strengthen the enforcement portion of the bill.

On Monday, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, introduced an amendment that would require officials at 30 major airports to take the fingerprints of departing foreign visitors as a way to better keep track of which people on temporary visas had left the country when they were supposed to. Graham, meanwhile, passed an amendment that would prevent people applying for asylum from returning to their home countries to visit unless they showed there was good cause to do so. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, also passed an amendment that would bar unauthorized immigrants with three drunken driving convictions from legalizing.

Attempts by Republican senators to levy tougher criminal penalties on people who illegally enter the country or to prevent unauthorized immigrants from ever becoming citizens have failed, to the disappointment of groups that oppose the reform bill.

"We don't think the changes are very meaningful," said Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that promotes lower levels of immigration.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the center, said the group wants the greater enforcement of the border and employment verification portions of the bill to take place before any undocumented immigrant is eligible to legalize his or her status. Efforts to change the bill to do so in the committee have failed.

Meanwhile, immigrant rights groups are cautiously optimistic. "So far, so good," said Lynn Tramonte, deputy director of America's Voice, an immigrant advocacy group. "It's clear that the opponents of immigration reform are just trying to find every little way to pick apart the bill in hopes of destabilizing the coalition," but haven't been successful, she added.

Democrats successfully passed amendments that would allow unauthorized immigrants to pay their legalization fees in installments and would restrict the circumstances when immigration detainees could be put in solitary confinement.

Advocates expect the mark-up process to end this week, with the full bill introduced on the Senate floor sometime after the Senate's Memorial Day recess in early June. The House, which is working on its own version of a bill, is expected to release its draft version in early June, as well.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/immigration-reform-bill-largely-untouched-going-fifth-day-140819202.html

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The common thread in the Obama adminstration scandals (Powerlineblog)

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Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/307362710?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Single-cell transfection tool enables added control for biological studies

May 21, 2013 ? Northwestern University researchers have developed a new method for delivering molecules into single, targeted cells through temporary holes in the cell surface. The technique could find applications in drug delivery, cell therapy, and related biological fields.

Bulk electroporation -- a technique used to deliver molecules into cells through reversible nanopores in the cell membrane that are caused by exposing them to electric pulses -- is an increasingly popular method of cell transfection. (Cell transfection is the introduction of molecules, such as nucleic acids or proteins, into a cell to change its properties.)

However, because bulk electroporation applies electric pulses to a bulk cell solution, it results in heterogeneous cell populations and often low cell viability. To solve these problems, Northwestern University researchers have developed a novel tool for single-cell transfection.

The new method, called nanofountain probe electroporation (NFP-E), allows researchers to deliver molecules into targeted cells through temporary nanopores in the cell membrane created by a localized electric field applied to a small portion of the cell. The method enables researchers to control dosage by varying the duration of the electric pulses, which provides unprecedented control of cell transfection.

"This is really exciting," said Horacio Espinosa, James and Nancy Farley Professor of Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and one of the paper's authors. "The ability to precisely deliver molecules into single cells is needed for biotechnology researchers to advance the state-of-the-art in therapeutics, diagnostics, and drug delivery toward the promise of personalized medicine."

A paper describing the research, "Nanofountain Probe Electroporation (NFP-E) of Single Cells," was published May 7 in the journal Nano Letters.

NFP-E is based on nanofountain probe (NFP) technology developed in Espinosa's lab. The NFP-E chip consists of an array of microfabricated cantilever probes with integrated microfluidic channels. The probe has previously been used for high-speed nanopatterning of proteins and nanoparticles for drug delivery studies.

The new single-cell transfection application couples the probe with an electrode and fluid control system that can be easily connected to a micromanipulator or atomic force microscope for position control. This integrated system allows the entire transfection process and post-transfection cell response to be monitored by an optical microscope.

The NFP-E system is being developed for commercialization by iNfinitesimal LLC, a Northwestern spin-off company founded by Espinosa, and is expected to be available in late 2013.

The technique is proving to be extremely robust and multi-functional. Researchers have used the NFP-E chip to transfect HeLa cells with polysaccharides, proteins, DNA hairpins, and plasmid DNA with single-cell selectivity, high transfection efficiency (up to 95%), qualitative dosage control, and very high viability (up to 92%).

In addition to Espinosa, authors of the research paper include Wonmo Kang, Fazel Yavari, Majid Minary-Jolandan, Juan P. Giraldo-Vela, Asmahan Safi, Rebecca McNaughton, and Victor Parpoil. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/fvRiDBGoeR4/130521132223.htm

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Twitter's Innovator's Patent Agreement Goes Into Action For ?Pull To Refresh,' Jelly And Lift Will Adopt The Framework

Last year, Twitter announced something it called the Innovator's Patent Agreement (IPA), which would keep patents in the hands of the designers and engineers that came up with the technology behind them. What this agreement serves as is a promise to only act on a patent for "defensive purposes." Anything outside of that scope would need to be signed off on the creator of the patent itself.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/FUUk4DNg7Bg/

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Jenn Horton: Every Mom Deserves Your Nod

When I had my first child five years ago, I got what I like to call "mom nods" by the dozens. You know, those simple little gestures of encouragement based on pure recognition of a similar human experience. In those first few harried months with a newborn, the supportive looks and smiles came a plenty, and, I'm convinced, were critical to my survival as a newbie.

The early months have grown a bit fuzzy, but I do especially recall a few moms with older kids nodding with sincere empathy. They weren't still trying to carry 50 pounds of baby equipment in and out of the trunk of the car along with the groceries, and oh yeah, the baby. But those moms knew. They remembered, and made a compassionate effort, to show me solidarity. There was nothing better than walking down the airplane aisle with our car seat, fearful of the unwelcoming passenger stares as we approached our seats and seeing just one perfectly-timed nod and smile. Those two flight legs to visit the in-laws in Trinidad were intimidating enough. That extra You Got This, Mama made a huge impact on my sanity and faith in my own survival skills.

Something happens as we build up our parenting sea legs, though. We've hit our stride, we're busier than we ever deemed humanly possible, and who has time to look up? Then, when we do stop and assess, we don't always like what we see. We shudder at the chaos and wonder why we haven't mastered it yet. We look up for that one free second, but often, the nodder and the noddee have become two passing minivans in the daylight that miss their bonding moment because oh-crap-Johnny-just-dropped-applesauce-all-over-the-booster-seat and shoot-my-iPhone-lost-charge-in-the-middle-of-a-call-with-the-principal.

One lesson rings loudest to me in my short, five years of parenthood: Just when we think we have it all down, we're thrown out of whack, off track, our bearings all across the road. Going back to work after a baby. Epic toddler tantrums. Mean girls in middle school. Puberty. An empty nest. And that's just every-parent stuff, before life's darker challenges even enter the drama. It's those days, weeks or longer where we haven't quite mastered the nuances of the new, when sisterly sympathy might just help us hold on and hold up. I want to up those numbers of simple gestures of support well beyond the stroller years. Who's with me?

There's one rule: It does not matter if we don't share the same mom genetic makeup; we can all share supporting nods. The Still-Breastfeeding a Toddler, All-Organic-All-The-Time Feeding, Free-Ranging, Crunchy-Granola Mom and the Helicoptering, Leaning-Into That Corporate Ladder, Tiger-Parenting, Mom-on-a-Mish-to-Have-it-All, Wonder Woman all get the same level of attention. Whether you are one of these moms, all of these moms or like me, you take bits and pieces from the gazillion parenting philosophies to find what fits on any given Sunday, let's nod our heads to all of our warrior mom beats. Whatever hats we wear, similar or different in size, shade and material, they all hold similar parenting challenges. I know it's when I don't carry the same mom label as the next and have never been there/done that, that I must remember most: Behind it all, whatever our lifestyles, there is love. We lean in, we lean back, we hang on for the sake of a happy family. We are the same, because we are moms. And some days, that is freaking hard. Nod, nod, nod.

So, Moms of the World: Look up. Hey, girl! There we are again, looking back at you, nodding, smiling. You're in the thick of it, or it's just a thick day, and we get it.

And we got you.

?

Follow Jenn Horton on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jennhorton

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenn-horton/every-mom-deserves-your-nod_b_3239555.html

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