A little bit of good news...

Normally, every front page that you see is covered with some tragedy, scandal, or other horrible event, because newspapers have learnt that disaster sells. However, this has produced a very distorted view of the world and good news stories are often overlooked as irrelevant, but I think that they are necessary to allow people to believe in human kindness because if everyone believes that nobody would help them, they are unlikely to help other people and that cannot be a road that anyone can want society to travel down.

It is true though, that some people do seem devoid of the kindness that we expect that everyone has somewhere inside of them, such as the bus driver in Nottingham who would not let a 20 year old girl on the bus at 3 o'clock in the morning when she was only 20p short of the £5 bus fare. Even more shocking to me was that even after eight minutes of pleading nobody else on the bus offered to give her 20p. That girl was then attacked and raped while waiting to be picked up by her mother. Indirectly, all of the people on that bus were responsible for what happened to her because they all knew how dangerous it can be for young women when nobody else is around. It was not unreasonable to think that someone might have helped her, anybody could mistake £4.80 worth of change for £5 and they could all see what was going on.

I hope that this story can make people see how even a small act of kindness can have enormous consequences and how little it can take to change a life. It's not all doom and gloom though, there is good news out there, such as the news that 75% of the 1,200 tonnes of whale meat being autioned in Japan this year was not bought. This is amazing animal welfare news as it may indicate the beginning of the decline in the trade in whale meat and whale hunting.

Also in good news, steps have been made for more effective treatment of one of the world's most deadly virus, the ebola virus. It carries a 90% death rate because previously it could only be cured within 1 hour after infection, but as symptoms can take three weeks to appear, for most it is too late. However, a new treatment has been found that cured monkeys 24 hours after infection, a huge leap in the journey towards having effective treatment.

Lastly, and a piece of news that will affect most of us, is the decision by Walt Disney to ban junk food adverts from its television and radio stations. With the predictions that by 2050 half of the children in Britain will be obese, this news could not have come at a more crucial time and hopefully more organisations will follow suit.

Edgar Mueller - 3D Street Artist

I recently saw some of Edgar Mueller's work and I was really amazed by how real his illusions seemed. There is so much attention to detail which makes them even more convincing and I couldn't believe that his work will wash away when it rains because he works with chalk.

Enjoy!

The Cellular Mechanism of Learning

Long Term Potentiation

The brain is made up of cells called neurons and the brain sends messages to the rest of the body by sending electrical impulses along a series of neurons. For an electrical impulse to cross from one neuron to another it has to cross a gap between cells called a synapse.

When the impulse reaches the end of the axon, neurotransmitters are released into the synaptic cleft. The neurotransmitter crosses the gap and attaches to receptor cells on the dendrite. When the dendrite detects these chemicals on its receptors, the electrical impulse is stimulated and the message continues along its pathway.

A specific thought or action follows the same neuron pathway in the brain and these pathways can be strengthened or weakened by certain actions. The strenthening of the pathways can lead to learning as the impulses can travel faster so it is easier for us to complete a certain task, as the electrical impulses have an easier journey and we therefore find it easier.

To strengthen these pathways the synapses between the cells have to be strengthened by making them release more neurotransmitter more often and to make more and more sensitive receptors. LTP, or long term potentiation has been shown to be able to do this by stimulating specific synapses with high  frequency stimulation at certian intervals. The synaptic activity was then measured and showed that once an initial 'barrier' was overcome, the levels of activity increased significantly each time. This effect produced long lasting improvements and could be topped up by more stimulation.

These effects are thought to have been produced because receptors become 'tethered' to the neurotransmitters so it takes less new neurotransmitter to be realeased to stimulate the receptors enough to produce an impulse. It also produces better effects than learning by repetition becasue it stimulates the NMDA receptors which are harder to stimulate because they are normally blocked by magnesium. The high frequency stimulation gives the neurotransmitter enough energy to replace the magnesium and stimulate the receptors which are essential for LTP.