"Scientists Measure Dream Content for the First Time: Dreams Activate the Brain in a Similar Way to Real Actions" - Science Daily, October 28, 2011.

Top: Patient in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine. Bottom: Activity in the motor cortex during the movement of the hands while awake (left) and during a dreamed movement (right). Blue areas indicate the activity during a movement of the right hand, which is clearly demonstrated in the left brain hemisphere, while red regions indicate the corresponding left-hand movements in the opposite brain hemisphere. (Credit: © MPI of Psychiatry)

The content of the dreams and how the images form in our minds when we are asleep are still a mystery, but a group of scientists from the Max Planck Institute working with colleagues from the Charite hospital in Berlin have been working on this issue. They have been able to analyze the activity of the brain during dreaming.

The scientists did experiments where lucid dreamers, people who are able to recognize the content of the dreams clearly and alter it, were introduced into a magnetic resonance imaging machine to measure the brain activity during the dream. They found that this activity matched the activity of the brain when the person is awake. The person did a movement in the dream and the image from the machine showed the brain activity matched the image of when the person executed the same movement, but in a "real state of wakefulness".

When a person is asleep, they are the only ones who can actually report whether or not they are dreaming. Scientists cannot analyze brain activity related to the content of the dream, however, with the help of the magnetic resonance imaging they can tell where the activity is specifically located during the dreaming.

The scientists from the MPI of Psychiatry in Munich, the Charite hospital in Berlin, and the MPI of Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig used the ability of lucid dreamers to dream consciously for their research. The dreamers had to be aware of what they were dreaming in the magnetic resonance imaging machine and report that they were in that "lucid" state by moving their eyes. Then, they were asked to dream that they were clenching their left fist and then their right one for ten seconds.

The fist clenching enabled the scientists to know when the person reached the REM state, when the dream is perceived clearly, with the help of the person's electroencephalogram (EEG). During the dream, a region of the sensorimotor cortex of the brain, area responsible for movement, was activated. They noticed that as the dreamer imagined the clenching of their fist, the sensorimotor cortex reacted in a similar way to when the person actually clenched their fist in real life.

The fact that the brain's reaction during dreaming is similar to those in real life shows that measuring the content of dreams is possible.

"With this combination of sleep EEGs, imaging methods and lucid dreamers, we can measure not only simple movements during sleep but also the activity patterns in the brain during visual dream perceptions," says Martin Dresler, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry.

The researchers were able to confirm the data obtained using MR imaging in another subject using a different technology. With the help of near-infrared spectroscopy, they also observed increased activity in a region of the brain that plays an important role in the planning of movements. "Our dreams are therefore not a 'sleep cinema' in which we merely observe an event passively, but involve activity in the regions of the brain that are relevant to the dream content," explains Michael Czisch, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry.

What interested me about this article was that it is about an enigmatic issue scientists have researched and researched and have yet to solve. Dreams are such a mystery to everybody that it makes us crave for knowledge to be able to understand them. With this experiment from the MPI of Psychiatry, scientists know that the brain reacts to the action that is occurring in the dream in the mind of the individual. I can draw connections to my life from this article because, even though I don't always remember what I dream, I know that my brain reacts to the activities I do in my dreams, for example clenching my fists. This article is related to the area of interaction Health and Social Education because it talks about how scientists are getting closer to understanding how dreams work and how the brain works when you are dreaming certain things.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111028113626.htm

"Resistance to Antibiotics Is Ancient" - Science Daily, September 16, 2011.

Picture: "Antibiotic resistance is a natural phenomenon that predates modern clinical antibiotic use, new research shows. Principal investigators for the study are Hendrik Poinar, left, a McMaster evolutionary geneticist and associate professor of anthropology, and Gerry Wright, scientific director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research. (Credit: Image courtesy of McMaster University)"

Scientists from the McMaster University have recently found that bacteria have developed resistance to antibiotics, not just since the last century, but since 30,000 years ago. Antibiotic resistance is a phenomenon where bacteria are not affected by antibiotics, which are supposed to serve as a defense mechanism against these bacteria, and this has existed before antibiotics were created.

"Antibiotic resistance is seen as a current problem and the fact that antibiotics are becoming less effective because of resistance spreading in hospitals is a known fact," said Wright. "The big question is where does all of this resistance come from?"

Researchers have been studying bacterial DNA in an area in the Yukon Territory and the soil was frozen in the 30,000-year-old permafrost. They were able to isolate the DNA strands and separate them in order to study them in the McMaster's DNA Ancient DNA Centre.

Through this investigation, the researchers discovered that the genes for antibiotic resistance existed next to the genes that encoded DNA for ancient animals and specimens, such as horses, bison, mammoths, and plants that existed in that area during the Pleistocene era, at least 30,000 years ago.

"We identified that these genes were present in the permafrost at depths consistent with the age of the other DNAs, such as the mammoth. Brian Golding of McMaster's Department of Biology showed that these were not contemporary, but formed part of the same family tree. We then recreated the gene product in the lab, purified its protein and showed that it had the same activity and structure then as it does now."

This is the second lab that scientists are able to 'revive' an ancient protein in a laboratory. This could be a very important breakthrough for understanding the nature of antibiotic resistance.

"Antibiotics are part of the natural ecology of the planet so when we think that we have developed some drug that won't be susceptible to resistance or some new thing to use in medicine, we are completely kidding ourselves. These things are part of our natural world and therefore we need to be incredibly careful in how we use them. Microorganisms have figured out a way of how to get around them well before we even figured out how to use them," said Wright.

Now there are researchers exploring the issue of ancient antibiotic resistance due to this recent discovery.

What interested me about this article was that it talks about how antibiotics are not effective and have not been effective since decades ago and this is something that affects all humans in the world since we all get sick from bacteria and other microorganisms. Since I read the title of the article I decided to read more about it because it interested me to know about the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics. It is fascinating how medicine, in relation to the natural world, tries to understand it in order to make cures for diseases that could affect all humans. I can draw connections to my life from this article because I use antibiotics when I am sick to feel better. This article relates to the area of interaction Health and Social Education because it is an issue that affects the health of all the people in the world.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110831155334.htm

"Stature’s heightened risk of cancer" - Science Daily, August 16, 2011.

Short women usually wear high heels to seem taller, but they do not realize that being shorter has some advantages, one of them is a lower risk of having cancer.

Even though the reason is unknown, the study is real and has data to support it. Jane Green of the University of Oxford and her colleagues have been researching about this. They investigated a large group of middle-age women of about 1.3 million from England and Scotland and all participated in a "long-running study of women's health. Most of these women were followed about 9 years and through 2008, 97,000 of the women developed cancer.

"Being taller correlated with higher risk — roughly a 16 percent elevation for each 10 centimeter increase over 155 centimeters (aka 5’1”, the ceiling for women in the shortest group). Women whose heights fell outside the normal range — less than 120 cm (3’11”) or at least 200 cm (more than 6’5”) — were excluded."

Some traits were noticed in the group of taller women, they were less likely to smoke or be obese, tended to drink more alcohol, were financially better, tended to be more active, had fewer children, and had their first child at a later age. Although most of these traits are positive ones, there was another that was noticed, a negative one, that increasing height was related to increasing risk of colon, rectal, breast, endometrial, ovarian, kidney, skin, and central-nervous-systems cancers. Also, risk of leukemia, multiple myeloma, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma were higher in taller women than in shorter. During the investigation, the group of Jane Green investigated that smoking is not a related factor to height since 19% of the women had never smoked and only 11% were current smokers.

Other scientists, apart from Jane Green and her group have been researching about this topic, not only for women but for both, and have also found a correlation between increased risk of cancer and height. For every 10 centimeters, there is a 13% increase of the risk.

“The similarity of the height-associated relative risk for different cancers and in different populations suggests that a basic common mechanism, possibly acting in early life, might be involved,” Green and her colleagues conclude.

They can only suppose and create theories as to why this happens, but they still do not know. For example, one of the theories is that, since taller people have more cells than shorter people, the could have more chances of developing a "deleterious mutation".

What interested me about this article was the fact that I am a very tall person and it just got me kind of worried that I there is a higher possibility for me to have cancer. When I read the title of the article I decided to look more into it and found out one disadvantage of being tall that I had no idea existed and for once in my life I wish to be short. This article made me think about my future and I did not want to. It opened my eyes and made me think of that phrase "Knock on wood" so that it does not happen. I can draw connections to my life from this article because it is a concerning issue that affects all tall persons of the world and it should be something to raise awareness about. The area of interaction being used in this article is Health and Social Education because it talks about the well-being and health of women and men, short and tall.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/333411/title/Stature%E2%80%99s_heightened_risk_of_cancer