How does the brain measure time?

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Researchers at the University of Minnesota's Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR) have found a small population of neurons that is involved in measuring time, which is a process that has traditionally been difficult to study in the lab.

In the study, which is published October 30 in the open access journal PLOS Biology, the researchers developed a task in which monkeys could only rely on their internal sense of the passage of time. Their task design eliminated all external cues which could have served as "clocks".

The monkeys were trained to move their eyes consistently at regular time intervals without any external cues or immediate expectation of reward. Researchers found that despite the lack of sensory information, the monkeys were remarkably precise and consistent in their timed behaviors. This consistency could be explained by activity in a specific region of the brain called the lateral intraparietal area (LIP). Interestingly, the researchers found that LIP activity during their task was different from activity in previous studies that had failed to eliminate external cues or expectation of reward.

"In contrast to previous studies that observed a build-up of activity associated with the passage of time, we found that LIP activity decreased at a constant rate between timed movements," said lead researcher Geoffrey Ghose, Ph.D., associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Minnesota. "Importantly, the animals' timing varied after these neurons were more, or less, active. It's as if the activity of these neurons was serving as an internal hourglass."

By developing a model to help explain the differences in timing signals they see relative to previous studies, their study also suggests that there is no "central clock" in the brain that is relied upon for all tasks involving timing. Instead, it appears as though each of the brain's circuits responsible for different actions are capable of independently producing an accurate timing signal.

One important direction for future research is to explore how such precise timing signals arise as a consequence of practice and learning, and whether, when the signals are altered, there are clear effects on behavior.

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Citation: Schneider BA, Ghose GM (2012) Temporal Production Signals in Parietal Cortex. PLoS Biol 10(10): e1001413. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001413

Public Library of Science: http://www.plos.org

Thanks to Public Library of Science for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/124935/How_does_the_brain_measure_time_

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Boomers warned using home sale to fund retirement - Financial Post

About a third of Baby Boomers plan to sell their home to fund their retirement, according to a study that questions whether buyers will dry up as that massive segment of the population downsizes.

Bank of Montreal is warning Boomers not to count on that nest egg, while other observers suggest that even if prices don?t plunge, big increases in property values are a thing of the past.

?They shouldn?t be relying on their homes because there are risks,? says Marlena Pospiech, a retirement strategist at the BMO Retirement Institute.

The bank suggests the following risky scenario: As Canada?s population ages, more Boomers will be retiring and selling their homes, putting downward pressure on prices.

[Boomers] could be in serious financial trouble if they are relying on their home, especially if they are highly leveraged

BMO also says tighter lending standards and higher interest rates could reduce the number of eligible homebuyers and push people into smaller and less expensive homes.

The bank?s survey suggests 34% of homeowners are unsure if they will sell their home before retirement. The concern seems to be that 40% of respondents say they are not confident in their ability to save for retirement and 41% say they might just end up using their homes to shore up any shortfall in their golden years.

?You want to have options when you retire, you don?t want to feel you are forced to sell to tap into any equity,? says Ms. Pospiech, adding the problem is compounded if prices fall. ?[Boomers] could be in serious financial trouble if they are relying on their home, especially if they are highly leveraged.?

Don Lawby, chief executive of Century 21 Canada, has heard warnings about a lack of buyers for Boomer homes before. ?I don?t buy it; I think it?s just talk,? he says.

For starters, he says, there is little indication immigration is going to slow and, increasingly in places like the Vancouver area, where he resides, immigrants have more money to buy the single-family homes of the Boomers.

?I think single-family detached are becoming a bit of a luxury,? says Mr. Lawby. But he says even townhouses and condos will continue to rise in price because of rising land costs. ?They are not making any more land.?

He says prices in big cities, in particular, will continue to rise and increase equity that could some day fund a retirement.

?If I had wonderful single-family home in [a small town], I can?t retire on the increased value, but in major cities I think they are just wrong.?

That might sound like the usual realtor?s optimism, but demographers say a collapse in prices based on Boomer homes flooding the market isn?t reality either.

?There is going to be continuing demand for housing as long as we bring in 250,000 immigrants a year,? says Doug Norris, chief demographer at Environics Analytics.

Given the creation of about 175,000 households each year (based on the latest census data), that?s plenty of demand.

Boomers are also living longer and may not downsize as quickly as they have in the past.

?There is just no strong evidence of what will happen,? says Mr. Norris.

Demographer David Foot, author of Boom, Bust and Echo, believes there are enough children of Boomers to soak up the housing supply.

?The Boomers have been averaging about two kids per family [in the U.S.] and replacing themselves,? says Mr. Foot. ?It?s a bigger issue in Canada because the Boomers only had about 1.6 or 1.7 kids per family. The echo isn?t quite as big.?

He predicts the twentysomethings today that have been driving the condo market will at some point buy into single-family detached homes.

?There are enough of them to buy the Boomers? houses.?

His more pressing worry is for the condominium segment.

?It is question of whether they will move out to the suburbs to raise their kids like every other generation has,? says Mr. Foot. ?My concern is who will buy all the condos when the twentysomethings vacant them.?

Source: http://business.financialpost.com/2012/10/31/boomers-warned-using-home-sale-to-fund-retirement-could-backfire/

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Dragon readies for operational delivery flight

ScienceDaily (Oct. 5, 2012) ? SpaceX is set to launch the first of a dozen operational missions for NASA to deliver more than 1,000 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station on Oct. 7. Launch time is 8:35 p.m. from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, just a few miles south of the space shuttle launch pads. The spacecraft will be joined to the station three days later.

The flight, known as CRS-1, will launch and perform the same rendezvous with the station as a previous SpaceX craft.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule will ride into space on the strength of the company's Falcon 9 rocket and the booster's nine first stage kerosene- and oxygen-powered Merlin engines. The Falcon 9's second stage uses a single Merlin engine to boost the Dragon into its final orbit.

Eleven minutes after launch, when the Dragon capsule is safely in orbit, a pair of solar arrays will deploy from the sides of the Dragon and controllers on Earth will begin testing rendezvous sensors.

The mission is similar to the demonstration flight in May when a Dragon was grappled by the station's robotic arm to complete the first rendezvous and berthing by a private spacecraft at the space station.

The SpaceX craft will spend about three weeks connected to the station then it will be released to return to Earth.

A major difference for this mission is that the Dragon will be filled with an amount of cargo suitable for an operational mission. The prior flight carried just enough items to prove the capsule would do its job as a cargo hauler. This time, the manifest will include a freezer for the station's scientific samples, a powered middeck locker with an experiment inside along with a variety of materials for the astronauts living and working on the space station.

The supply flight is part of NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract, which is paying SpaceX for 12 cargo runs to the orbiting laboratory. The station also is serviced by Russian Progress cargo capsules, European-made and launched Automated Transfer Vehicles, or ATVs, and Japanese-produced H-II Transfer Vehicles, or HTVs. All the cargo ships operate without astronauts or crew members aboard.

Once the spacecraft arrive at the station, the astronauts and cosmonauts onboard unload them and fill them with used materials or unneeded equipment before releasing them.

Here, SpaceX again does something unique. The Dragons are built with heat shields to survive a plunge through the atmosphere and splashdown safely in the ocean under billowing parachutes. The other cargo craft do not carry heat shields, so they just burn up in the atmosphere.

On its return trip, the Dragon capsule will carry more than a ton of scientific samples collected during space station research, along with the freezer the samples have been stored in. Astronauts also will load used station hardware into the capsule for return to Earth where engineers can get a firsthand look at it.

A second kind of American cargo craft is also being developed. The Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft and Antares rocket are due to make a demonstration flight later this year.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/astronomy/~3/JlaC8rEnUDM/121005082419.htm

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Dog in car's grill survives ride from Mass. to RI

TAUNTON, Mass. (AP) ? Animal welfare authorities say a dog survived an 11-mile ride from Massachusetts to Rhode Island ? at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour ? after it was hit by a car and became wedged under the front grill.

East Providence Animal Control supervisor William Muggle says the female poodle mix ran in front of the car in Taunton on Sept. 20. The driver slammed on the brakes, but didn't see the dog, so continued driving.

Muggle tells the Taunton Daily Gazette (http://bit.ly/SvUTEE ) that it wasn't until the driver reached East Providence, R.I., that another motorist pointed out the dog.

The driver went to the police station, where animal control officials freed the fluffy white pooch. The dog suffered a concussion and possibly a minor bladder rupture.

Authorities are now trying to find its owner.

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Information from: Taunton (Mass.) Daily Gazette, http://www.tauntongazette.com

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2012-10-02-Pooch's%20Wild%20Ride/id-26902cbc7a5941188d682e38002dd572

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Obama's Support Among Latino Voters: 73% (Little green footballs)

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US and Afghan forces clash, leaving 5 dead

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? A firefight broke out between U.S. forces and their Afghan army allies in eastern Afghanistan Sunday, killing two Americans and three Afghan soldiers and pushing the number of U.S. troops killed in the long-running war 2,000.

The fighting started Saturday when what is believed to have been a mortar fired by insurgents struck a checkpoint set up by U.S. forces in Wardak province, said Shahidullah Shahid, a provincial government spokesman. He said the Americans thought they were under attack from a nearby Afghan army checkpoint and fired on it, prompting the Afghan soldiers to return fire.

The Afghan Defense Ministry said the gunbattle was the result of a "misunderstanding" between international forces and Afghan soldiers manning a checkpoint in the Sayd Abad district.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force, commonly referred to as ISAF, provided a different account.

"After a short conversation took place between (Afghan army) and ISAF personnel firing occurred which resulted in the fatal wounding of an ISAF soldier and the death of his civilian colleague," the coalition said in a statement. It said the three Afghan soldiers died "in an ensuing exchange of fire."

NATO did not say whether it considered this an "insider" attack on foreign forces by Afghan allies.

There has been rising tide of such attacks in which Afghan soldiers or police assault their international allies. The killings pose one of the greatest threats to NATO's mission in the country, endangering a partnership key to training up Afghan security forces and withdrawing international troops.

While it may be days before it becomes clear who fired on whom first, the incident illustrates how tense relations have become between international troops and their Afghan allies.

Officials on both sides went into damage control mode, arguing that Saturday's violence did not mark a new low in Afghan-U.S. relations and urging patience while investigators tried to figure out exactly what had happened.

The deputy commander of NATO's military force in Afghanistan, British Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, called a last-minute news conference in Kabul to address the incident, even though he had few details to give.

He said the initial report of an insider attack should be amended to note that the incident "is now understood possibly to have involved insurgent fire," and tried to stress that relations between international troops and their Afghan allies "are very strong and very effective."

A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, Gen. Zahir Azimi, also sought to downplay the incident.

"In a misunderstanding shooting broke out between Afghan army and ISAF forces. As a result of the shooting, three army soldiers were killed, three other soldiers were wounded and number of ISAF forces were killed and wounded," Azimi said in a statement.

One U.S. official confirmed that the service member killed was American, while another confirmed that the civilian was also American. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the nationality of the dead had not yet been formally announced.

The number of American military dead reflects an Associated Press count of those members of the armed services killed inside Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion on Oct. 7, 2001.

In the south meanwhile, three Afghan police officers were killed when insurgents attacked a checkpoint in Helmand province Sunday morning, provincial police spokesman Fareed Ahmad said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-afghan-forces-clash-leaving-5-dead-154456247.html

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