July 2010
2 posts
9 tags
9 tags
June 2010
2 posts
“And for the first time in my life, the following afternoon, I went to the West.”
– “On the Road,” by Jack Kerouac
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http://www.youdrive.org →
April 2010
1 post
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I.R.R.M. LeBlog
I.R.R.M., ou les “Introspections Radiophoniques d’un Rat en quête de Mégaphone”.
C’est une série radiophonique et scientifique dans laquelle le personnage principal, un rat de laboratoire, veut apprendre et comprendre le fonctionnement du cerveau humain.
Issu d’une lignée de 123 générations de rat albinos, Jean-Luc, vit au centre intergalactique de la recherche sur le cerveau....
January 2010
2 posts
2 tags
WatchIntroducing Dennis, Empire Chrome Shope - West Memphis, AR.
April 2009
1 post
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“Pour vivre centenaire, il faut un bon cerveau”
– Ce sont les propos de Françoise Forette, professeur de gériatrie à l’université Paris-V et directrice de la Fondation nationale de gérontologie, relevés par Anne Jouan, journaliste au Figaro. Dans un article publié en ligne le 16 Avril 2009, la journaliste explore de nouvelles recettes pour...
March 2009
4 posts
3 tags
brain on a chip ?
How does the human brain run itself without any software? Find that out, say European researchers, and a whole new field of neural computing will open up. A prototype “brain on a chip” is already working. “We know that the brain has amazing computational capabilities,” remarks Karlheinz Meier, a physicist at Heidelberg University. “Clearly there is something to...
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Illusion d'optique... mais pas pour les patients... →
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L'outil d'analyse de votre consommation électrique
L’incontournable moteur de recherche Google a présenté il y a 15 jours PowerMeter une nouveauté issue de ses “laboratoires”. Son objectif : lutter contre le réchauffement de la planète en aidant les gens à réduire leur consommation d’électricité.
Sous la forme d’un widget, un tableau de bord permet de visualiser en temps réel sur un ordinateur la quantité d’électricité consommée dans la...
September 2008
1 post
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May 2008
2 posts
1 tag
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April 2008
1 post
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March 2008
1 post
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December 2007
19 posts
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SuperCool World
Imagine a world where you could defy any laws of physics, from gravitation to electromagnetism. Not a world of superheroes in comic books, but a world where liquids and solids would become super-cool matter.
In this world you would plug magnets under your feet and levitate to go to work. Electrical wires would never get hot and any liquid would squeeze through impossibly small holes. Spinning...
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Erasing Memory
In October of 2006, I interviewed Jonathan Whitlock, a post-doctorate associate at the Picower Institute at that time. On that day, he lighted up my fascination for memory, and its mechanisms in the human brain. At the end of the interview, he launched that he was erasing rats’ memory. And the whole story began.
Whitlock explained me he had trained a rat to avoid the dark side of a ...
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Scientists at Work
In a small and dark laboratory at the Picower Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a rat sits comfortably in a shine black plastic box. His long white and massive tail impress the visitors. He looks like a hybrid animal coming out of a Star Trek picture. A small metal chip implanted into his minuscule brain delicately deforms his scalp. Through that implant, scientists can record his neurons...
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If you had the power to erase memory, would you...
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Where do you think your memories get stored ?...
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What specific memory would you first erase ?
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Your Say
To understand how memory works, how it is formed and gets stored in our brains, neuroscientists are developing new techniques to erase rats’ memories. At first glance, their work can look scary because it seems that for better or worse, our memories build our identity. As a consequence, we can’t help thinking about the implications of such research. Are we assisting in the birth of...
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How do you feel if I tell you that scientists in...
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Video Games at School ?
In NeuroMatrix, the most recent videogame developed by Morphonix LLC, a software company based in California, you play a secret agent infiltrating a neuroscience research facility. Your mission: understand why scientists can’t communicate anymore. You track down the Nanobots that have invaded their brains. If you fail, the Nanobots and the secret entity that spawned them will take over the Earth,...
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The Discovery of LTP
The plasticity of the brain is its lifelong ability to reorganize neural pathways based on new experience. Imagine making an impression of a coin in a lump of clay. In order for the impression of the coin to appear in the clay, the shape of the clay changes as the coin is pressed into it. Similarly, the neural circuitry in the brain must reorganize in response to experience or sensory ...
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Scientists know from experiments made in the...
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Todd Sacktor explaining his experiment
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The molecules of memory
In the 1990’s, Todd Sacktor, neurologist and molecular biologist at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, discovered that PKmZeta, persistently expressed and found only in the brain, was the enzyme implicated in the formation of memory. “Basically, I guessed! But it was an educated guest,” he says. Inspired by one of his professors from Columbia University,...
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Todd Sacktor talking about the potential...
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An electrical stimulation to erase memory...
Two main questions drive scientists’ quest in understanding how memory get formed and stored in the brain: how does learning occur ? And how does memory last for several years or even a life-time?
In the 1970s’, scientists proposed an artificial model, the Long Term Potentiation, that would mimic the brain plasticity, its capacity to reorganize after new experiences. They...
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Which animal to choose ?
Why do scientists...
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A Human Brain Bank
If you leave a piece of human brain at room temperature, and wait to see what happens…it will simply melt and disappear. Indeed, 80% of our brain is just made out of fat and water. That’s what Katerina Mancevska, the Assistant Director of Tissue Processing at the New-York Brain Bank explains
On the second basement floor of the Babies and Children’s Hospital of New York-...
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Listen to Katerina Mancevska, explaining how they...
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Ethical Issues
While researchers are on their way to perhaps one day erase one specific memory, they are clearly aware that they’re working on a tool that can be used for good or evil. They would certainly hope that in the case of memory impairment, it would be used to help ease suffering, not to generate problems. When asked about any of their ethical concerns, some state that the purpose of Science...
September 2007
1 post
3 tags
Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninoff… You dream...
July 2007
3 posts
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Fenway Campus Get "GREEN" Buildings
Between the Boston Mayor’s commitment to sustainability in the city, and the “inconvenient truth” revealed in Al Gore’s movie, campuses in the Fenway have little choice other than to take more actions to reduce their “carbon footprint.”
Yvonne Cancino, Physical Plan Manager at Berklee College of Music, explains that “we realize that we have lagged behind other campuses like MIT or Harvard...
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De l'électricité sans fil
Etats-Unis, le 7 Juin 2007. Une équipe de scientifiques du Massachusetts Institute of Technology à Cambridge, a réussi à faire briller une ampoule de 60 Watts à partir d’une source de courant éloignée de plus de deux mètres de celle-ci, et sans aucun câble pour les relier.
Mais l’ampoule ne s’est pas allumée par magie. Les chercheurs ont appliqué une technique basée sur des...
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Nos cellules tueuses ne sont pas si idiotes que...
Nos cellules tueuses ne seraient finalement pas si idiotes que ça! Les granulocytes neutrophiles (de la famille des globules blancs) ont toujours eu la réputation de dévorer tous corps étrangers qu’ils trouvaient sur leur passage, sans en faire aucune distinction. Mais Ifat Rubin-Bejerano, chercheur à l’Institut Whitehead du MIT à Cambridge (Etats-Unis), vient de prouver le contraire....
June 2007
5 posts
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Renewable Energy in Boston
With Congress seeking to address energy security and global warming this summer, the city of Boston is taking action to sensitize on renewable energy and environmental protection.
On Friday June 15, campaign staff from Environment Massachusetts, the new home of MASSPIRG environmental work, highlighted the potential and support for renewable energy in Massachusetts. 252 pinwheels were displayed on...
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NPR Showcase for Young Talent Makes a Home at...
From kids to old people, all sit in silence on wooden chairs in an auditorium, among majestic walls with gold-leaf molding. The lights dim at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall for the May 23 recording of National Public Radio’s From the Top. The show spotlights highly talented young classical musicians from across the country; and in the process, promotes the idea that these...
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Fenway Theater has new options for Blind,...
In the darkness of a movie theater, yellow letters written in reverse shine on a light-emitted diode (LED) display hung next to the projector at the rear of the auditorium. On a Plexiglas rear window I have plugged on my glass holder, I can read the following message: “Welcome to Rear Window. Please adjust your reflector.”
Minutes later, a voice starts talking in the infrared...
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A Social Desk Lamp
Your desk lamp doesn’t understand you. You wish it could be more sensitive to your needs. You wish it could move freely like an animated lamp from the PIXAR cartoon company. Well, perhaps one of these days you will put your old lamp in the trash and replace it with one that communicates with you.
Crazy? Maybe not.
Imagine a lamp that would “feel” when you want more light. Sensing your needs, it...
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Israel vs Lebanon: Do I really need to choose?
...
May 2007
9 posts
2 tags
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For my generation of people, personal computers...
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Douglas Starr's Book Project
When you ask Douglas Starr, co-director of the Knight Center for Science Journalism, what difficulties he faces in writing his new non-fiction book about the early days of criminal forensics, he answers his main sources are all dead. “I wish I could pick up the phone and talk to them,” he says.
As far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t bring all of them back to life!
As Professor Starr’s...
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Joanne Butler, MBTA Driver
In a two-room shanty on the railroads behind the Riverside T station, a television on the wall shouts out the latest Fox News announcements. While T-drivers take their break around two boxes filled with doughnuts, Joanne Butler prefers to pick on her new colleague.
“Did they allow you to shave your head and wear those shinny silver crosses?” she asks, pointing at the young man’s Michael Jordan...
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One Day in Court
Charles Wilson was born in Boston in 1985. When he turned six, Kory Darby entered his life. “We met in our neighborhood in Dorchester,” Wilson explains, rolling his goatee hair between his thumb and forefinger. They both went to West Roxbury High School. Darby, who is 24 today, started his undergrad at Roxbury Community College but dropped out of his business degree program two years ago. “He was...