Getting Social...With a Virtual Homo Sapien?

Getting Social...With a Virtual Homo Sapien?

By: Lindsey Elizabeth Horton

Usually autistic kids aren't very involved with the enviroment around them. They can be incredibly smart, and have talents that non-autistic people wouldn't have, but they don't socialize very much. Yet, psychologist Justine Cassell and her collegues found that there was a solution that could possibly make autistic kids more socialable.

There was an exmperiment that was done with 12 pairs of children, ranging from ages seven to eleven. In the experiment, six pairs of children were put together where there was one autistic child per pair, with another child with no developmental complications. The other six pairs were all made of children with no developmental complications also. The challenge presented to the youngsters was to use a toy castle to show a story. First, with their actual partner, then with a virtual partner. The virtual partner was a 3-D version of a child who was designed for typcial conversation and reactions for that age group. The virtual kids were also designed to be patient with their partners, pause for responses, and give feedback to their partners. 

The results? Amazing! Autistic kids actually participated in making the story, and they also took turns in conversations, as well as thought of new story ideas with their virtual partners. They did all of this much better with their virtual friends, rather than their here and now, real partners. 

Cassell suggests that further investigation should be taken into regular exposure of autistic kids to virtual friends. The centeral idea here is that the regular exsposure would build skills in the autistic children that would then transfer to real people, and real relationships with other humans. I think that the impact on society would be very influental. It is observed that autistic people often have very neat talents. If these talents were paired with socialization skills, perhaps autistic people in general, especially youth, that are fresh with new ideas on the world, could show the rest of us, who don't all have access to unique minds such as they do, new and better ways to be inventive and smart in our lives. The world could be a better place, perhaps led into a new era by a different type of thought, inspired by the social relationships with autistic people, young and old alike. This significant future would be made possible by new experiments and edge breaking technology such as the one described above. 

I choose this article because I have met autistic people, who as kind and smart as they are, usually don't socialize with me much. I would love to be able to have a very in depth conversation with them on their thoughts of the world, and on day to day things in general. Such as school, homework, and modern technology. I love the thought of using all of a brain's potential, I mean after all, I do parshily want to be a cognative scientist! I think that autistic people really have something on unlocking areas that normal people can't. Can you imagine being able to unlock that potential in yourself? I sure can! They say that we only use about a percent of our brain, and look we have accomplished! Why not got another percent?!

Penguins and Sea Lions Help Produce New Atlas

By Samuel Mann

Atlases are usually made and used by people for navigation in parts of the world. They provide accurate information on latitudes, longitudes, water features like lakes and shorelines and terrain features like mountains and valleys that are important for pilots, sailors, or even simple hikers. What you wouldn't expect from an atlas is that is was not made by humans (so-to-speak). The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and BirdLife International have released a new atlas of the Patagonian sea using data that was collected from 16 species of marine animals and produced 280,000 data entries! The Patagonian Sea is a huge body of water from southern Brazil to southern Chile.

The atlas contains the most accurate maps ever assembled for this ecosystem revealing key migratory corridors that span from coastlines to deep-sea feeding areas off the continental shelf hundreds of miles away. The project took 25 scientists 10 years to complete! The list of species tracked for the atlas includes five species of albatross, three species of petrel, four varieties of penguin, two fur seal species, the South American sea lion, and the southern elephant seal.

The significance of this new atlas is that not only was it written by the wildlife that inhabit the area, but it also records marine animal migrations and breeding patters that are important to take into consideration for conservation. This data will be important for managing fisheries and routes for oil tankers that protect important habitats for the marine animals. Conservation is an ever growing concern in life due to the degradation of the ecosystem. What better to preserve the ecosystem than to know just which habitats are the most crucial? This way mariners can plot courses through waters that aren't as vital or fragile.

I think that it is really creative to use the animals that live in an area to plot the land features such as deep water and shorelines. Various animal behaviors require that they travel to certain land features such as deep water feeding, coastal nesting, or perhaps breed grounds. Using GPS on marine animals not only shows their behavioral patterns but also maps out certain geographic features of previously unknown or unfamiliar locations. I think it is ingenious.

Geneticists Use DNA to Diagnose Patient

A team of researchers at Yale recently used DNA sequencing to diagnose a 5 month old patient.

He was suspected of having Bartter syndrome, a kidney problem that causes dehydration. The team sequenced the protein-coded portion of his dna, and found that he didn't have Bartter, but a mutation in his kidney that caused similar symptoms. The protein coded part of DNA is only 1% of all DNA, but it causes a large portion of genetic disorders and diseases.

This could change medicine forever. Doctors don't have to fit together a puzzle of symptoms and tests to guess at a disease. Instead, they can almost literally take a picture of the patient's DNA and know for sure what's wrong with them. Unfortunately, not all diseases can be found in DNA, only some of the genetic ones. Although limited, this has a lot of potential as well.

This article impressed me, I didn't know it was practical or eve possible to use DNA to diagnose patients. I'm interested to see how this will be implemented into medicine, and how far it could go. They also saved a lot of money by just analyzing the protein parts, which could help a lot of people.

Weather Effects Walruses?

Anna Dye
October 12, 2009
Physics
Science in the News: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/on-walruses-and-warming/

Weather Effects Walruses?
As the whole world freaks out about global warming and what it is doing to the penguins and Indian tribes of the arctic, no one lends a thought to the Pacific Walrus. As the ice caps melt on the water, the walruses, along with polar bears and other arctic creatures, crowd together on the small pieces of land. While, it is obviously not good for the walruses to be on the land to start with, the huge crowds make the land a tight squeeze. When all the walruses are packed into such a small space, entering the water to hunt can be extremely hard for them. What commonly happens is that once one walrus makes its way to the water, another follows, then another, then another, and next thing you know there is a huge stampede of walruses rolling down the side of a hill.
The ice caps melting has been a huge debate ever since Al Gore released “An Inconvient Truth.” Some people blame it on people and work to reduce their carbon footprint, while others claim it is just a flux in the weather and the earth will figure it out on its own. One of the biggest problems with the walrus stampedes is the death toll. Too many walruses cannot make it into the water fast enough on the land and are crushed under the weight of the other walruses. The Pacific Walrus was just recently relieved from major hunting pressures and there are not as many of them alive as there should be. The extinction or endangerment of the Pacific Walrus would be horrible for the world’s ecosystem, as is the extinction of any other species.

At first I was quite amused by this article. It seemed like a slightly ridiculous article until I read it. It is actually a very important issue relating to climate change that I had never thought of before. It made me realize that more than just the polar bears are affected by this issue and that many other species could be affected.

The Shell Super Ship

By: Jamie Campbell

Although a final decision has not been reached, the oil company Shell is considering purchasing the largest ship ever built. At 600,000 metric tons and 480 meters long, it is nearly 3 times the mass of the world’s largest passenger ship. The reason for building this will be to reach oil fields that used to be too far out to sea to access. It size will also allow it to pass through extreme weather, such as typhoons unaffected. As of now, oil platforms are not mobile, and as such, become obsolete when their oil fields run dry. This ship however, could simply move to another site.

This could have an impact on peoples’ lives in an indirect way. While most would never see it, they could unknowingly pump their car full of gas that was reached using this ship. If we were able to reach new oil fields, it could also reduce the price of gasoline, which everyone would notice.

I have mixed feelings about this news. On one hand, I am always excited about new engineering marvels and new ways of doing things. On the other, would rather see the money being spent on this go to alternative fuels so we wouldn’t be using up a limited resource and polluting our atmosphere.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-10/shells-megaships-will-dwarf-everything-high-seas

New Strategy For Mending Broken Hearts?

By Samuel Mann

Bioengineers have just discovered how to grow heart tissue made of heart muscle cells called cardiomyocytes. The biomedical engineers at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering have created a "patch" of heart tissue that exhibits the two most important attributes of heart muscle cells; the ability to contract and to conduct electrical impulses. Mouse embryonic stem cells were used in the bioengineering project and this is an important first step to growing living, working heart tissues.

The researches grew cells in an environment much like that found in natural tissues. They used a gel composed of blood-clotting proteins to strengthen the cells and allow them to form a three dimensional structure. Additionally, the researches also found that the cardiomyocytes grew best only when "helper" cells, known as cardiac fibroblasts, were also present. The cardiac fibroblasts are present in 60% of all cells in the human heart and thus allow the heart cells to grow correctly. When tested, the cardiomyocytes were oriented properly by the cardiac fibroblasts and were thus able to contract like normal heart muscles. While this is a step in the right direction, progress still needs to be made to create blood vessels that can sustain the tissue. Hopefully these patches of heart muscles can be produced in large amounts quickly enough to be used for therapeutic restoration of damaged heart tissues due to disease and heart attacks.

Whether people love the ethics of it or not, stem cells are the future of medicine. Over the decades medicine has progressed to smaller and smaller levels within the human body. Inoculations were the first microscopic application of medicine into humans. Antibiotics, penicillin, and blood transfusions took science into the blood and tissues of our bodies. Now, stem cells can take us even deeper to combat diseases that affect us down to our very cell structures. I think the most amazing, and somewhat beautiful, part of stem cell research is that scientists actually use human-made cells. Stem cells aren't some sort of genetic product. Rather, stem cells occur naturally as a vital aspect of human development and growth. Stem cells are meant to be used to create all the cells in the human body and now scientists are beginning to harness these amazing cells to create tissues needed to fight disease. The possible benefits of stem cells and biomedical engineering seem endless and are opening new doors of science and medicine. A whole new era of medical technology is being born right now.

I am very excited about this article. For one, it is really cool. Scientists are actually growing working heart muscles! How cool is that?! I bet I will be alive to see the first fully functional human heart be made by scientists. Second, listen to the title, "Biomedical Engineering." Doesn't it just send shivers down your spine at the sound of its auspicious and high-tech name? Remember when heart transplants were the cool thing? Well now it's bioengineering. Not only am I taking AP Biology this year in high school, but I am also thinking of a career in the medical field. I was thinking about radiology, and still am, but this article has opened my mind and imagination to the possibilities of being a bioengineer.

P.S. I made that GIF. XD

Works Cited:
Duke University. "New Strategy For Mending Broken Hearts?." ScienceDaily 12 October 2009. 12 October 2009 .
Images:
http://www.immediart.com/catalog/images/big_images/SPL_6_P780110-Fibroblast_cells_showing_cytoskeleton.jpg
http://machineslikeus.com/files/imagecache/captioned_image/NLN/17273_rel.jpg
http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2009/10/091011184432-large.jpg

Riding on Through

Riding on Through History

By: Lindsey E. Horton

Almost everybody can enjoy watching a horse run. Then again, almost everybody also enjoys solving a good puzzle. Well, it just so happens that there's a mystery that ties in both of those. Where did horse domestication originate? Now that's something worth solving.

It's now being suggested by new archeological evidence that horses were domesticated up to 5500 years ago by the Botai Culture of Kazakhstan. In present day America, horses are more of a pet to have, for riding, and for giving little girls their first love. It turns out though that to the Botai Culture, horses were much, much more. Horses were used for riding, of course, but surprisingly they were also used for food and milk! There is evidence found that suggested that people would actually drink horse milk, like we drink cow milk today. The bone structures of the horses from 5500 years ago show that they were very similar to the horses that later showed up in Europe, and to wild horses. This tells archeologists that the early people selectivley bred their wild horses for physical attributes, and to emphasize the attributes through breeding.

Through new techniques, archeologists were able to find three individual lines for early horse domestication. It was around the fourth melenium that the Botai Culture started to domesticate them. The archeologists also used a very interesting technique called "bit damage" which is caused by horses having been harrnessed or bridled, and a bit would leave a mark. This technique also supports the fact that horses were ridden back then. This early culture used something called a "thong bridle", that is shown on the image to the right.

Even more interesting, using lipid residue analysis, archeologists took a look at Botai pottery, and found that to make the pottery, people used horse fat. Through this pottery they found that people also drank the mare's milk and would let it ferment to make an acholohic sort of drink called "koumiss". They still do this in Kazakhstan. Horse tradition runs through the viens of Kazakhstan's history, very far back. Well, as far back as 5500 years ago! The steppes of Kazakhstan were plentiful with wild horses back then, and hunting them was common. It was also a great oppurtunity for the culture to get to know the equines, and how they behaved. Horses were shown to have been prefenced for adapting to the Botai culture over cattle and sheep. Even more amazingly, horses were shown to have been able to graze year round, and adapted to the harsh winters so that they could eat the grass through snow.

This discovery has a great impact on our scientific community. Scientists thought that horses were only domesticated about 4000 years ago, and this shows that they were off by quite a bit. This will change how scientists think about earlier cultures, and what they were cabable of. An impact that I predict is now that one solid fact is to be questioned, that scientists will start questioning other "known" facts about earlier civilizations, or question closer the source in which the evidence came from.

I picked this article because I love horses, and history. This seemed like an article that combined both. I was in AP world history last year, so I got a new pair of glasses, as you might say, to see history through. It's amazing to me to see how an early culture so new could make use of such a powerful and majestic resource. I also like to see how the relationship that humans and horses have today has developed through history, including the origin. I have a mare named JJ, so understanding the where the relationship between horses and people came from, and seeing how useful horses are, can really help me to bond with her better.

MLA Citation:

University of Exeter. "Archaeologists Find Earliest Known Domestic Horses: Harnessed and Milked." ScienceDaily 8 March 2009. 10 October 2009 .