Human Speech Traced to Talking Fish

From Don Knotts' portrayle of "Mr. Limpet" to the children's favorite "Nemo" and the tuna-pitching character in the "Sorry, Charlie" commercials, we all have seen fish that can talk. But that's just fiction, right?

Well ...

Researchers say real fish can communicate with sound, too. And they say (the researchers, that is) that your speech skills and, in fact, all sound production in vertebrates can be traced back to this ability in fish. (You got your ears from fish, too.)

The new study was led by Andrew Bass (we did not make this up) of Cornell University.

The scientists mapped developing brain cells in newly hatched midshipman fish larvae and compared them to those of other species. They found that the chirp of a bird, the bark of a dog and all the other sounds that come out of animals' mouths are the products of the neural circuitry likely laid down hundreds of millions of years ago with the hums and grunts of fish.

"Fish have all the same parts of the brain that you do," Bass explained.

His team traced the development of the connection from the midshipman fish's vocal muscles to a cluster of neurons located in a compartment between the back of its brain and the front of its spinal cord. The same part of the brain in more complex vertebrates, such as humans, has a similar function, indicating that it was highly selected for during the course of evolution.

The finding is published in the July 18 issue of the journal Science.

The fish that Bass studied are interesting in their own right.

After building a nest for his potential partner, the male midshipman fish calls to nearby females by contracting his swim bladder, the air-filled sac fish use to maintain buoyancy. The sound is a hum, something like a long-winded foghorn. Female midshipman dig it, and they only approach a male's nest if he makes this call.

During midsipman mating season, houseboat owners in San Francisco Bay have complained that their homes vibrate from the humming, which sound like a high-speed motor running underwater.

By better understanding how these fish hear, the study offers new avenues to explore the causes of human deafness, the researchers say.

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Cern lab goes 'colder than space'

Superconducting magnets are cooled down using liquid helium

A vast physics experiment built in a tunnel below the French-Swiss border is fast becoming one of the coolest places in the Universe.

The Large Hadron Collider is entering the final stages of being lowered to a temperature of 1.9 Kelvin (-271C; -456F) - colder than deep space.

The LHC has thousands of magnets which will be maintained in this frigid condition using liquid helium.

The magnets are arranged in a ring that runs for 27km through the giant tunnel.

Once the LHC is operational, two particle beams - usually consisting of protons accelerated to high energies - will be fired down pipes running through the magnets.

These beams will then travel in opposite directions around the main ring at close to the speed of light.

At allotted points along the tunnel, the beams will cross paths, smashing into one another with cataclysmic force. Scientists hope to see new particles in the debris of these collisions, revealing fundamental new insights into the nature of the cosmos and how it came into being.

The most powerful physics experiment ever built, the LHC will re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang.

Currently, six out of the LHC's eight sectors are between 4.5 and 1.9 Kelvin, though all sectors of the machine have been down to 1.9 Kelvin at some stage over the last few months.

By comparison, the temperature in remote regions of outer space is about 2.7 Kelvin (-270C; -454F).

The CMS detector will search for the Higgs boson - the so-called "God particle"

Roberto Saban, the LHC's head of hardware commissioning, said that in order to obtain high magnetic fields without consuming too much power, the magnets were required to be "superconducting".

This is the property, exhibited by some materials at very low temperatures, to channel electrical current with zero resistance and very little power loss.

Helium exhibits spectacular properties at 2.2 Kelvin - becoming "superfluid". This allows it to conduct heat very rapidly, making it an extremely efficient refrigerant.

No particle physics facility on this scale has ever operated at such low temperatures. But, so far, the hardware was performing as predicted, Roberto Saban explained.

"We have a very systematic process for the commissioning of this machine, based on very carefully designed procedures prepared with experience we have gathered on prototypes."

He added: "Our motto is: no short cuts? exchanging a single component which today is cold, is like bringing it back from the Moon. It takes about three to four weeks to warm it up. Then it takes one or two weeks to exchange. Then it needs three to six weeks to cool down again.

"So, you see, it is three months if we make a mistake."

Two sectors of the LHC are currently not cold enough for testing to proceed. Electronics that control the cryogenic systems in these sectors are being moved to an area where they will be better shielded against particles that shoot out of the machine during collisions.

Closing the circle

One sector of the ring is being run as if the LHC was operational and carrying a beam. This is so that crews can de-bug software and hardware and gain experience of running operating cycles.

The LHC's magnets must also undergo electrical testing. Each sector of the machine contains about 200 electrical circuits. Each circuit may consist of as many as 154 magnets or as few as one.

They are being tested for their ability to handle very high currents - up to 12,000 Amps .

"We power each circuit, making sure it goes to its design current. But above all, we are verifying that all the protection systems around it - which are there to detect an eventual quench - are operating as expected," said Roberto Saban.

A quench occurs when some part of the magnet starts to heat up, becoming resistant to electrical current. Engineers have built in a recovery system to detect these quenches before they affect the magnetic field bending particles around the ring and shut off the circulating beams.

The machine's cool-down should take another two weeks to complete, provided no serious problems are found. Electrical testing of the magnets may take another couple of weeks.

Before the LHC is "switched on" for the first time, the proton beams have to be boosted to high energies in a chain of particle accelerators called the injectors.

Once the machine is cold, operators will inject beams into the main ring, threading them through each independent sector of the LHC until they close the circle.

A timing, or synchronisation, system is used to ensure each of these sectors behaves as if they were a single machine.

When the LHC is switched on it will operate at an energy of five trillion electron-volts. It will then be shut down for the winter, so that the magnets can be "trained" to handle a beam run at seven trillion electron-volts.

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Alzheimer's Drug Reverses Cognitive Decline Over 12 Month Period In Early Human Testing

ScienceDaily (July 18, 2008) — A drug once approved as an antihistamine in Russia improved thinking processes and ability to function in patients with Alzheimer's disease in a study conducted there, said an expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. The findings are published in the journal The Lancet.

"More research is needed, but we are encouraged by the effect the drug Dimebon had on Alzheimer's patients" said Dr. Rachelle Doody, professor of neurology at BCM and lead author of the study.

In the study, the authors noted that Dimebon is the first drug for Alzheimer's disease that demonstrated continued improvement in patients over a 12 month period. Other approved drugs do not have this effect.

Half of the 183 patients in the Russian study received Dimebon; the other half were given a placebo or an inactive pill. Clinicians at the study sites then monitored the patients' progress over the next year on five different outcomes. All of those in the study had mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease.

"What we saw in the clinical trial is that people on the medication continued to improve over time," Doody said. "Those on placebo continued to decline."

Researchers believe the medication works by stabilizing mitochondria, the cellular components that produce energy, and possibly by inhibiting brain cell death. Researchers evaluated patients' thinking and memory ability, overall function, psychiatric and behavioral symptoms, and ability to perform daily activities.

"Usually at this point in a drug's development, we are happy to see improvement in one of the outcome measures," Doody said. "We saw improvement in all five."

Some participants complained of occasional dry mouth, but no one opted out of the study because of the side effects.

"As we continue research, we hope to replicate these results," Doody said. "My belief is that this drug will turn out to be useful for Alzheimer's disease, regardless of the stage of the disease."

Doody said this is only the first study looking into the effects of Dimebon on Alzheimer's disease. She also noted that it involved only a relatively small population from one specific region of the world. The ongoing Phase 3 study will include several international locations including the United States.

Other researchers who contributed to this study include: Dr. Svetlana I. Gavrilova, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Dr. Mary Sano, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City, NY; Dr. Ronald G. Thomas, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA; Dr. Paul S. Aisen, formerly with Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC and now at the University of California, San Diego; ; Dr. Sergey O. Bachurin, Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Physiologically Active Compounds, Chernogolovka, Russia; Drs. Lynn Seely and David Hung, Medivation, Inc., San Francisco, CA.

Funding for this study came from Medivation, Inc., the company developing the drug worldwide. Doody is also a member of the Scientific and Clinical Advisory board for Medivation, Inc.

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