Shopping for a robot army: A day at the don’t-call-it-a-drone show | Ars Technica

Shopping for a robot army: A day at the don’t-call-it-a-drone show | Ars Technica: This week, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) took over Washington, DC's convention center for its annual Unmanned Systems show. Once mostly a government- and defense-focused event, the conference has ramped up in size and scope in anticipation of the Federal Aviation Administration's decision on how to "integrate" unmanned aircraft into civil airspace.

Among the thousands of companies hawking their wares at the event, there were representatives from some 25 teams of state and local authorities, each vying to make its region one of the coveted designated test locations that will be announced by the FAA in December. Some, like Oklahoma, had their own booths set up to draw support from unmanned system manufacturers.

Effects of Parkinson's-disease mutation reversed in cells

Effects of Parkinson's-disease mutation reversed in cells: Mutations that cause malfunction of the targeted enzyme, PINK1, are directly responsible for some cases of early-onset Parkinson’s disease. Loss of PINK1 activity is harmful to the cell’s power plants, called mitochondria, best known for converting food energy into another form of chemical energy used by cells, the molecule ATP.

In Parkinson’s disease, poorly performing mitochondria have been associated with the death of dopamine-producing nerve cells in a region of the brain called the substantia nigra, which plays a major role in control of movement. Loss of these cells is a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease and the cause of prominent symptoms including rigidity and tremor.

A UCSF team led by Shokat, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, used the chemical, called kinetin, to increase mutant PINK1 enzyme activity in nerve cells to near normal levels.

“In light of the fact that mutations in PINK1 produce Parkinson’s disease in humans, the finding that kinetin can speed mutated PINK1 activity to near normal levels raises the possibility that kinetin may be used to treat these patients,” Shokat said.

Mapping the Brain Circuitry That Spots Movement, in Flies - NYTimes.com

Mapping the Brain Circuitry That Spots Movement, in Flies - NYTimes.com: ost sighted animals perceive motion automatically, but the exact brain mechanism underlying this ability has proven difficult to pin down. Even in the fruit fly’s relatively simple visual lobe, tens of thousands of nerve cells interweave and connect to each other at several points each.. Tracing the connections between individual neurons using traditional brain imaging techniques is therefore “prohibitively time consuming,” said Dmitri Chklovskii, a neuroscientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who coauthored the paper. Using a computer algorithm to speed up the process, Dr. Chklovskii and his team were able to construct a comprehensive 3D map of a piece of fruit fly brain, which subsequently allowed them to home in on the neural circuit responsible for processing movement.

Age-related myelin breakdown: a develop - PubMed Mobile

Age-related myelin breakdown: a develop - PubMed Mobile: A hypothetical model of Alzheimer's disease (AD) as a uniquely human brain disorder rooted in its exceptional process of myelination is presented. Cortical regions with the most protracted development are most vulnerable to AD pathology, and this protracted development is driven by oligodendrocytes, which continue to differentiate into myelin producing cells late into the fifth decade of life. The unique metabolic demands of producing and maintaining their vast myelin sheaths and synthesizing the brain's cholesterol supply make oligodendrocytes especially susceptible to a variety of insults.