ON THIS DAY IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY (20th February 1866)
Edwin Diller Starbuck was born.
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19 fevereiro 2015
Palomar 12
Palomar 12 was not born here. The stars of the globular cluster, first identified in the Palomar Sky Survey, are younger than those in other globular star clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy. Palomar 12's position in our galaxy and measured motion suggest its home was once the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy, a small satellite of the Milky Way. Disrupted by gravitational tides during close encounters the satellite galaxy has lost its stars to the larger Milky Way. Now part of the Milky Way's halo, the tidal capture of Palomar 12 likely took place some 1.7 billion years ago. Seen behind spiky foreground stars in the sharp Hubble image, Palomar 12 spans nearly 60 light-years. Still much closer than the faint, fuzzy, background galaxies scattered throughout the field of view, it lies about 60,000 light-years away, toward the constellation Capricornus.
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In 1942, what did the British Government do to boost troop morale? Hint: it’s the most British...
In 1942, what did the British Government do to boost troop morale? Hint: it’s the most British thing you could think of.
Part of a Torah manuscript, from 30 - 1 BCE. It contains two...
Part of a Torah manuscript, from 30 - 1 BCE. It contains two passages from the Book of Deuteronomy, or Devarim, including a very old copy of the Ten Commandments. This fragment of a scroll was found in 1952, in one of the caves of Qumran. The writing is unusually small, and scholars believe that the complete scroll contained excerpts from Deuteronomy which were easy to use during religious services, as opposed to taking out the whole book. Although it mostly matches today’s version, some parts are slightly different. For instance the ten commandments have been altered to match more closely the ten commandments given in Exodus, or Bereshit. (Click on the image to see a larger version.)
Epigenomics of Alzheimer’s disease progression Our...
Epigenomics of Alzheimer’s disease progression
Our susceptibility to disease depends both on the genes that we inherit from our parents and on our lifetime experiences. These two components — nature and nurture — seem to affect very different processes in the context of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study published today in the journal Nature.
The study was carried out by an interdisciplinary team at MIT and the Broad Institute, and was co-led by Li-Huei Tsai, the Picower Professor at MIT and director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, and Manolis Kellis, a professor in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
The researchers analyzed changes that occur in genes and in regions that regulate genes as Alzheimer’s disease progresses, using a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease that Tsai’s lab originally developed several years ago. The mice were engineered so that the gene for a protein called p25 can be overstimulated in the brain, which prompts the mice to develop symptoms very similar to Alzheimer’s disease in humans.
“These programmable mice allowed us to study, for the first time, the changes occurring during early stages of the disease, before symptoms even begin to appear,” Tsai says. “We could then compare them to changes in later stages of the disease, when neurodegeneration and cognitive impairment are evident.”
Opposing changes
The researchers profiled multiple chemical modifications, known as epigenetic marks, in the hippocampus of mice expressing too much p25 and compared them with control mice. These epigenetic marks reveal the activity of diverse genomic regions — in particular, the regulatory control regions that control the expression of nearby genes. The researchers also directly profiled the levels of all genes.
“We found two opposing signatures associated with disease progression that are consistent with the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease,” says Elizabeta Gjoneska, joint first author of the paper and a postdoc at the Picower Institute. “Neuronal plasticity processes that are involved in learning and memory were dampened, and immune and inflammatory pathways were activated.”
The active regions specifically matched regions active in a type of immune cells known as microglia, which are responsible for clearing away infected or damaged cells. They also secrete chemicals that produce inflammation.
“Our data suggest that microglia are heavily activated during Alzheimer’s disease progression, although it is unknown exactly how they contribute to the disease,” Tsai says. “These cells are important for normal brain function and share their key cell-surface markers, CD14, with macrophages that infiltrate the brain from elsewhere in the body during disease progression.”
Conserved epigenomic signatures
The researchers then compared the results in mice with what is known about Alzheimer’s disease in humans. They found that differences in gene levels in the Alzheimer’s-like mouse brain matched differences previously seen in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, which prompted them to ask if the epigenetic signatures might also be conserved.
The researchers found that this was the case — specifically, the same regulatory regions that were active or repressed in mice showed the same patterns in humans. They also found that the regions with increased activity in the mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease had immune functions in humans, and the regions that showed decreased activity had neural functions in humans.
“Our results show that functional conservation between human and mouse is not restricted to protein-coding genes,” says Andreas Pfenning, joint first author of the study and a postdoc at MIT. “This opens up the use of epigenomics methods in model organisms to study an inaccessible organ like the brain, and how it changes in response to activity or disease.”
Genetic variants cluster in immune pathways
Previous studies of the genomes of Alzheimer’s patients had identified common genetic variants associated with the disease, but scientists did not know how these DNA variants could contribute to the disease, since the majority of them are found outside of protein-coding regions.
“Our conserved epigenomic maps allowed us to now place these noncoding genetic variants in the context of disease-relevant regulatory regions and interpret their contribution to the disease predisposition,” Kellis says. “As inherited common genetic variants always precede disease onset, they are always indicative of causal roles, and thus can shed additional light on the epigenomic alterations.”
The researchers found that genetic variants associated with Alzheimer’s disease were only associated with immune processes, and not with neural processes, indicating that genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease primarily affects the circuitry of immune processes, rather than neuronal processes.
“Our results suggest that repression of neural pathways does not represent genetic predisposition, even though it is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s,” Tsai says. “Instead, it may occur as a consequence of environmental factors and aging, and result from interactions with the altered immune pathways.”
The researchers identified a small number of master regulators that target many of the regulatory regions that overlap Alzheimer’s-associated genetic variants in humans. Among these, PU.1 targets a large number of altered regulatory regions, and the genetic region encoding PU.1 is associated with Alzheimer’s disease, suggesting PU.1 as a potential therapeutic target.
“The new focus on immune-cell types, and the specific regulators uncovered, provide new therapeutic avenues,” Kellis says. “Moreover, the conservation of epigenomic signatures between mouse and human provides a platform upon which we can test such therapeutics and their effect on cognition, pathology, and the epigenomic signatures of Alzheimer’s.”
“In an elegant series of experiments, the paper adds to a growing body of evidence, which began with genomewide association studies, implicating immune function in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. This potentially paves the way for exploiting peripheral myeloid cells to develop biomarkers and therapeutics to target the disease,” says David Bennett, a professor of neurological sciences at Rush University Medical Center, who was not part of the research team.
February 19th 1913: Pedro Lascuráin’s presidencyOn this day in...
Victoriano Huerta (1850 - 1916)
Pedro Lascuráin (1856 - 1952)
February 19th 1913: Pedro Lascuráin’s presidency
On this day in 1913, Pedro Lascuráin became President of Mexico, but he was only in office for around forty-five minutes, making his presidency the shortest in history. He became President after the incumbent leader Francisco Madero was overthrown in a military coup. The coup also ousted the next in line to the presidency - the Vice-President and Attorney General - and therefore Foreign Minister Lascuráin succeeded to the presidency. The instigator of the coup, General Victoriano Huerta, had Lascuráin appoint him Interior Minister - who is next in line after the Foreign Minister. In an effort to give the coup an air of legitimacy, the General then had the new President resign only forty-five minutes into his term, making Huerta President of Mexico. Huerta’s presidency was also relatively short-lived, as he was forced to resign in July 1914. Pedro Lascuráin retired from politics and died in 1952 aged ninety-six.
unicef: 2.1 million adolescents worldwide are living with HIV -...
2.1 million adolescents worldwide are living with HIV - and they’re the the only age group where AIDS-related deaths are not declining.
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I have anorexia. Smoking marijuana was a major component in the success of my recovery and my ability to gain 45 pounds to once again be at a healthy weight. I had self-starved for a couple years to the point that I no longer felt appetite or cravings at all, and marijuana, over time, re-instilled both those things. Now I don't need the aid of marijuana to be able to eat a proper portion or to feel hunger. (: So, interesting article. I hope others like me could get designated help from this.
Thank you for sharing your story with us!
Magnetospheric Multiscale Observatories Processed for Launch
NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) observatories are processed for launch in a clean room at the Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Florida. MMS is an unprecedented NASA mission to study the mystery of how magnetic fields around Earth connect and disconnect, explosively releasing energy via a process known as magnetic reconnection. MMS consists of four identical spacecraft that work together to provide the first three-dimensional view of this fundamental process, which occurs throughout the universe. The mission observes reconnection directly in Earth's protective magnetic space environment, the magnetosphere. By studying reconnection in this local, natural laboratory, MMS helps us understand reconnection elsewhere as well, such as in the atmosphere of the sun and other stars, in the vicinity of black holes and neutron stars, and at the boundary between our solar system's heliosphere and interstellar space. MMS is a NASA mission led by the Goddard Space Flight Center. The instrument payload science team consists of researchers from a number of institutions and is led by the Southwest Research Institute. Launch of the four identical observatories aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is managed by Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Services Program. Liftoff is currently targeted for 10:44 p.m. EDT on March 12. Image Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
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Happy Birthday Nicolaus Copernicus. Born on this day...
Happy Birthday Nicolaus Copernicus. Born on this day 1473.
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Russia Suffered The Highest Losses During WWI
Russia mobilized 12 million troops during WWI, making it the largest army in the war. More than 3/4 were killed, wounded, or went missing in action.
From January 1 to February 13, 2015, 141 people from 17 states...
From January 1 to February 13, 2015, 141 people from 17 states and Washington DC were reported to have measles [AZ (7), CA (98), CO (1), DC (1), DE (1), IL (11), MI (1), MN (1), NE (2), NJ (1), NY (2), NV (4), OR (1), PA (1), SD (2) TX (1), UT (2), WA (4)]†. Most of these cases [113 cases (80%)] are part of a large, ongoing multi-state outbreak linked to an amusement park in California.
The United States experienced a record number of measles cases during 2014, with 644 cases from 27 states reported to CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). This is the greatest number of cases sincemeasles elimination was documented in the U.S. in 2000.
- The majority of the people who got measles were unvaccinated.
- Measles is still common in many parts of the world including some countries in Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa.
- Travelers with measles continue to bring the disease into the U.S.
- Measles can spread when it reaches a community in the U.S. where groups of people are unvaccinated.
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GO HERE —> http://ift.tt/1AKuzyV for a great interview with clinical psychologist, Dr. Guy Winch; an expert in the causes and reduction of emotional distress.
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