Tag Archives: University of Glasgow

Neuronal dance and garage neuroscience experiments

I found two items about neuroscience in one day that tickled my fancy. The Watching Dance Project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council recently announced a study that found experienced dance spectators mirrored the movement they were watching. From the March 21, 2012 news release on EurekAlert,

Experienced ballet spectators with no physical expertise in ballet showed enhanced muscle-specific motor responses when watching live ballet, according to a Mar. 21 report in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

This result when watching such a formal dance as ballet is striking in comparison to the similar enhanced response the authors found in empathic observers when watching an Indian dance rich in hand gestures. This is important because it shows that motor expertise in the movements observed is not required to have enhanced neural motor responses when just watching dance performances.

The authors suggest that spectators covertly simulate the dance movements for styles that they regularly watch, causing the increased corticospinal excitability.

The article ‘Motor Simulation without Motor Expertise: Enhanced Corticospinal Excitability in Visually Experienced Dance Spectators‘ by Jola C, Abedian-Amiri A, Kuppuswamy A, Pollick FE, Grosbras M-H in PLoS ONE 7(3): e33343. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0033343 is freely available for reading (open access).

I went searching for the Watching Dance Project website and found these images of dancers and a neuron, respectively,

From the Wtachng Dance Project website.

 

From the Watching Dance Project website.

According to the project’s About Us page,

‘Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy’ uses audience research and neuroscience to explore how dance spectators respond to and identify with dance. It is a multidisciplinary project, involving collaboration across four institutions (University of Manchester, University of Glasgow, York St John University and Imperial College London).

The second neuroscience item for this posting is about listening to neurons. From the March 21, 2012 news release on EurekAlert,

Amateurs have a new tool for conducting simple neuroscience experiments in their own garage: the SpikerBox. As reported in the Mar. 21 issue of the open access journal PLoS ONE, the SpikerBox lets users amplify and listen to neurons’ electrical activity – like those in a cockroach leg or cricket torso – and is appropriate for use in middle or high school educational programs, or by amateurs.

The work was a project from Backyard Brains, a start-up company focused on developing neuroscience educational resources. In the paper, the authors, Timothy Marzullo and Gregory Gage, describe a sample experiment using a cockroach leg stuck with two needles and monitoring the electrical signals. They also provide instructions for using the SpikerBox to answer specific experimental questions, like how neurons carry information about touch, how the brain tells muscles to move, and how drugs affect neurons, and an online portal provides further instructional materials. These are just a few examples of the many ways this tool can be used.

“Our mission is to lower the barrier-to-entry for students interested in learning about the brain. We hope our manuscript finds its way into the hands of high school teachers around the world”, says Dr. Marzullo.

The article, The SpikerBox: A Low Cost, Open-Source BioAmplifier for Increasing Public Participation in Neuroscience Inquiry, by Timothy C. Marzullo and Gregory J. Gage can be found in PLoS ONE 7(3): e30837. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0030837 and is freely available for reading (open access).

Backyard Brains can be found here along with the SpikerBox kit and other kits for sale and for use in your garage and backyard neuroscience experiments.

Gung haggis fat choy and Scottish/Chinese nanotechnology

I was reminded of a local (Vancouver, Canada) tradition when I read about a nanotechnology Chinese New Year’s card produced by a nanofabrication centre  in Scotland.

Before I get started on the Scottish researchers and their efforts, here’s a little bit about  the Vancouver tradition, which combines Scottish and Chinese celebrations for this time of year (Robbie Burns Day and the Lunar New Year). Started in 1997 by Todd Wong, Gung Haggis Fay Choy is a dinner integrating both traditions. Here’s more from the Miss604 website about this year’s (2012) event (I have removed the links that were included in this excerpt of a longer, more entertaining post that you might want to read in its entirety),

Gung Haggis Fat Choy is one unique event where you can catch poetry and Kung Fu, highland dancers performing with sheng players, and delicious deep-fried haggis dumplings. It’s an annual Vancouver tradition that combines Chinese New Year with Robbie Burns Day in a single event.

Gung Haggis Fat Choy Dinner

  • Date: January 22, 2012 (Chinese New Year’s Eve)
  • Time: 5:00pm (doors) 6:00pm (dinner)
  • Where: Floata Restaurant at #400 – 180 Keefer St, Vancouver
  • What: An 8-course Scottish/Chinese banquet dinner complete with entertainment

  • Hosts: TV and radio host Tetsuro Shigematsu, Parliamentary Poet Laureate Fred Wah, and scholar Dr. Jan Walls.
  • What to Wear: Kilts and tartans, as well as Chinese jackets and cheong-sam dresses are preferred. But our guests are dressed both formal and casual – be comfortable, be outrageous, be yourself.
  • The Dinner: Appetizers will arrive at the tables by 6:00pm and soon after, the dinner formalities begin. From then on a new dish will appear somewhere around 15 minutes, quickly followed by a co-host introducing a poet or musical performer.
  • Finale: The evening will wrap up somewhere between 9:00pm and 9:30pm, with the singing of Auld Lang Syne. They start with a verse in Mandarin Chinese, then sing in English or Scottish [Gaelic?]. Participants can socialize further until 10:00pm.

Now for the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre”s (at the University of Glasgow) nod to the Chinese New Year, from the Jan. 19, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

It is so small that it cannot be seen by the naked eye – but a tiny Chinese New Year greetings card created by the University of Glasgow represents the huge potential for China to profit from Scottish innovation.

The card was produced by experts from the University’s James Watt Nanofabrication Centre to showcase their world-leading expertise in nanotechnology ahead of Chinese New Year celebrations, which begins on Monday 23 January [2012].

Here’s the card,

University of Glasgow's James Watt Nanofabrication Centre's 2012 Chinese New Year of the Dragon card

I was expecting to read nanoscale measurements but after reading the details, I’d say this card is not so much a nanoscale-sized card but a microscale-sized card. Still, there is a reference to the ‘nano’,  (from the University of Glasgow Jan. 19, 2012 news release,

The card is 300 micro-metres wide by 200 micro-metres tall (a micro-metre is one-millionth of a metre). It is so small that 21,600 of them could fit on an area the size of the China Post’s 36mm-by-36mm 2012 Chinese New Year commemorative stamp. The Chinese characters are just 45 micro-metres tall, and the dragon is just 116 micro-metres long. By comparison, the width of a human hair is about 100 micro-metres.

Professor David Cumming and Dr Qin Chen from the University’s School of Engineering etched the Chinese characters and dragon image onto a very small piece of glass. The manufacturing process took just 30 minutes.

“The colours were produced by plasmon resonance in a patterned aluminium film made in our James Watt Nanofabrication Centre. The underlying technology has some very important real world applications in bio-technology sensing, optical filtering and light control components, and advances in micro and nanofabrication for the electronics industry. [emphasis mine] …”

The most interesting (to me) part of this communication, after seeing the card, is this bit about Scotland-China relations,

 The card was developed in conjunction with Scottish Development International (SDI), Scotland’s international trade and investment body.

SDI Chief Executive Anne MacColl said: “Nanotechnology is just one area in which Scotland is considered a world leader. From renewable energy to life sciences, digital media to ICT and education to financial services, Scotland has a wealth of expertise, skilled people and knowledge.

“Chinese firms can gain a competitive edge by partnering with Scottish universities and companies across these critical high growth sectors. Innovation is key to China’s economic development and SDI’s offices in Beijing and Shanghai are on hand to help Chinese universities and firms learn more about the benefits of international partnership.”

Many examples of collaboration between Scotland and China exist today, particularly in the field of innovation-based research and development. Four mainland Chinese companies are investors in Scotland and a number of Scotland’s world-leading universities have research partnerships and joint ventures in place with Chinese academic institutions and corporations. Scotland’s First Minister recently made his third visit to China in two years, underpinning Scotland’s commitment to growing business and academic links with China even further.

To all of us, Happy New Year of the Dragon (Gung Hay Fat Choy)!

Responsible science communication and magic bullets; lego and pasta analogies; sing about physics

Cancer’s ‘magic bullet],  a term which has been around for decades, is falling into disuse and deservedly. So it’s disturbing to see it used by someone in McGill University’s (Montreal, Canada) communications department for a recent breakthrough by their researchers.

The reason ‘magic bullet for cancer’ has been falling into is disuse because it does not function well as a metaphor with what we now know about biology. (The term itself dates from the 19th century and chemist, Paul Erlich.) It continues to exist because it’s an easy (and lazy) way to get attention and headlines. Unfortunately, hyperbolic writing of this type obscures the extraordinary and exciting work that researchers are accomplishing. From the news release on the McGill website (also available on Nanowerk here),

A team of McGill Chemistry Department researchers led by Dr. Hanadi Sleiman has achieved a major breakthrough in the development of nanotubes – tiny “magic bullets” that could one day deliver drugs to specific diseased cells.

The lead researcher seems less inclined to irresponsible hyperbole,

One of the possible future applications for this discovery is cancer treatment. However, Sleiman cautions, “we are still far from being able to treat diseases using this technology; this is only a step in that direction. Researchers need to learn how to take these DNA nanostructures, such as the nanotubes here, and bring them back to biology to solve problems in nanomedicine, from drug delivery, to tissue engineering to sensors,” she said.

You’ll notice that the researcher says these ‘DNA nanotubes’ have to be brought “back to biology.” This comment brought to mind a recent post on 2020 Science (Andrew Maynard’s blog) about noted chemist and nanoscientist’s, George Whitesides, concerns/doubts about the direction for cancer and nanotechnology research. From Andrew’s post,

Cancer treatment has been a poster-child for nanotechnology for almost as long as I’ve been involved with the field. As far back as in 1999, a brochure on nanotechnology published by the US government described future “synthetic anti-body-like nanoscale drugs or devices that might seek out and destroy malignant cells wherever they might be in the body.”

So I was somewhat surprised to see the eminent chemist and nano-scientist George Whitesides questioning how much progress we’ve made in developing nanotechnology-based cancer treatments, in an article published in the Columbia Chronicle.

Whitesides comments are quite illuminating (from the article, Microscopic particles have huge possibilites [sic], by Ivana Susic,

George Whitesides, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University, said that while the technology sounds impressive, he thinks the focus should be on using nanoparticles in imaging and diagnosing, not treatment.

The problem lies in being able to deliver the treatment to the right cells, and Whitesides said this has proven difficult.

“Cancer cells are abnormal cells, but they’re still us,” he said. [emphasis is mine]

The nanoparticles sent in to destroy the cancer cells may also destroy unaffected cells, because they can sometimes have cancer markers even if they’re healthy. Tumors have also been known to be “genetically flexible” and mutate around several different therapies, Whitesides explained. This keeps them from getting recognized by the therapeutic drugs.

The other problem with targeting cancer cells is the likelihood that only large tumors will be targeted, missing smaller clumps of developing tumors.

“We need something that finds isolated [cancer] clumps that’s somewhere else in the tissue … it’s not a tumor, it’s a whole bunch of tumors,” Whitesides said.

The upside to the treatment possibilities is that they buy the patient time, he said, which is very important to many cancer patients.

“It’s easy to say that one is going to have a particle that’s going to recognize the tumor once it gets there and will do something that triggers the death of the cell, it’s just that we don’t know how to do either one of these parts,” he said.

There is no simple solution. The more scientists learn about biology the more complicated it becomes, not less. [emphasis is mine] Whitesides said one effective way to deal with cancer is to reduce the risk of getting it by reducing the environmental factors that lead to cancer.

It’s a biology problem, not a particle problem,” he said. [emphasis is mine]

If you are interested , do read Andrew’s post and the comments that follow as well as the article that includes Whitesides’ comments and quotes from Andrew in his guise as Chief Science Advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies.

All of this discussion follows on yesterday’s (Mar.17.10) post about how confusing inaccurate science reporting can be.

Moving onwards to two analogies, lego and pasta. Researchers at the University of Glasgow have ‘built’ inorganic (not carbon-based) molecular structures which could potentionally be used as more energy efficient and environmentally friendly catalysts for industrial purposes. From the news item on Nanowerk,

Researchers within the Department of Chemistry created hollow cube-based frameworks from polyoxometalates (POMs) – complex compounds made from metal and oxygen atoms – which stick together like LEGO bricks meaning a whole range of well-defined architectures can be developed with great ease.

The molecular sensing aspects of this new material are related to the potassium and lithium ions, which sit loosely in cavities in the framework. These can be displaced by other positively charged ions such as transition metals or small organic molecules while at the same time leaving the framework intact.

These characteristics highlight some of the many potential uses and applications of POM frameworks, but their principle application is their use as catalysts – a molecule used to start or speed-up a chemical reaction making it more efficient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly.

Moving from lego to pasta with a short stop at the movies, we have MIT researchers describing how they and their team have found a way to ‘imprint’ computer chips by using a new electron-beam lithography process to encourage copolymers to self-assemble on the chip. (Currently, manufacturers use light lasers in a photolithographic process which is becoming less effective as chips grow ever smaller and light waves become too large to use.) From the news item on Nanowerk,

The new technique uses “copolymers” made of two different types of polymer. Berggren [Karl] compares a copolymer molecule to the characters played by Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin in the movie Midnight Run, a bounty hunter and a white-collar criminal who are handcuffed together but can’t stand each other. Ross [Caroline] prefers a homelier analogy: “You can think of it like a piece of spaghetti joined to a piece of tagliatelle,” she says. “These two chains don’t like to mix. So given the choice, all the spaghetti ends would go here, and all the tagliatelle ends would go there, but they can’t, because they’re joined together.” In their attempts to segregate themselves, the different types of polymer chain arrange themselves into predictable patterns. By varying the length of the chains, the proportions of the two polymers, and the shape and location of the silicon hitching posts, Ross, Berggren, and their colleagues were able to produce a wide range of patterns useful in circuit design.

ETA (March 18,2010): Dexter Johnson at Nanoclast continues with his his posts (maybe these will form a series?) about more accuracy in reporting, specifically the news item I’ve just highlighted. Check it out here.

To finish on a completely different note (pun intended), I have a link (courtesy of Dave Bruggeman of the Pasco Phronesis blog by way of the Science Cheerleader blog) to a website eponymously (not sure that’s the right term) named physicssongs.org. Do enjoy such titles as: I got Physics; Snel’s Law – Macarena Style!; and much, much more.

Tomorrow: I’m not sure if I’ll have time to do much more than link to it and point to some commentary but the UK’s Nanotechnologies Strategy has just been been released today.