Interesting movie that brings an unlikely premise to contrive an artificial situation - why do the parents have to make a decision right away just because John has a New York flight in a few hours? The parents also don’t seem to address the couple’s 10 day acquaintance. Nevertheless, the movie is very dramatic with compelling dialogue, greatly timed comedic/awkward moments, and a “musical chairs” scenario where the various characters rotate to have heart-to-hearts with each other.

The race/miscegenation issue doesn’t seem to be treated very well - rather stilted, in fact - but was probably daring when the movie premiered in 1967. Extremely sentimental, can get tiring with lots of slow/boring/contemplative scenes, but wonderful moment when Catherine fires her obnoxious art director! 3.5/5 stars but with little repeat-viewing value.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, made with Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, and Sydney Poitier in 1967, addresses the at-the-time taboo topic of interracial marriage. Poitier plays a black doctor that has fallen in love with a white woman, and is now seeking her (and his own) parents’ approval. At the time the film was made, interracial marriage was still illegal in over a dozen states. The film masterfully addressed the importance of ‘walking the talk’ - of sticking to your principles when you’re hit hard on a personal level. Matt Drayton, who started the Guardian, was a staunch liberalist and advocate for desegregation, yet his principles are challenged when his daughter brings home a black man.

And Katharine Hepburn certainly deserved the Oscar she received for her role, if only for the memorable scene when she fired the manager of her art gallery, Heather, for spiteful comments on the interracial couple. This movie is a classic - watch it and you won’t forget it.

I was never exactly sure what exactly happened to the USSR after it broke up, and started wondering again after Georgia and Russia started warring over South Ossetia. So here’s the skinny:

Other than Russia, of course, we have…

THE BALTICS:
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania

EASTERN EUROPE:
Belarus
Ukraine
Moldova

THE CAUCASUS:
Georgia
Armenia
Azerbaijan

CENTRAL ASIA:
Kazakhstan
Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikstan

Now we can get a better handle on the Soviet bloc’s various territorial disputes and perhaps insight into the Ottoman Empire/Byzantines.

Jamaica swept the Olympic’s track & field sprinting events, with the inimitable Usain Bolt taking back-to-back golds in the 100m and 200m dashes (not to mention the 4×100 relay). The women went 1-2-2 for the 100m. It’s curious how a small island in the Caribbean can churn out so many world-class runners, with a population of 2.8 million and a land mass of roughly 4000 square miles.

Taiwan, on the other hand, has 23 million people and a land mass of 13,8000 sq mi - about 3.25 times the size of Jamaica.

A team of neuroscientists from Stanford University has discovered an interesting “financial risk” asymmetry between younger and older people. While both young (age 19-27) and old (age 65-81) people have more or less the same brain region activation for anticipating monetary gain, older adults don’t have as much activation while anticipating monetary loss. This group from Professor Brian Knutson’s lab tested adults with a simple task in which they respond to a cue and either gain or lose money. The test is accompanied by a subjective rating where the subject can tell how they feel about their gain or loss.

This leads to some interesting implications for financial planning and decision making in older adults. It might also help explain why older people are more susceptible to fraud - because they can’t anticipate and react to the possibility of financial loss in the same way that adults can.

Reference:

Samanez-Larkin et al. Nature Neurosci 10(6), 787-791 (2007).

Brain Day is a tradition of the Stanford Neurosciences Program, started about a decade ago by a professor who was asked to fill one of those ever-present parent volunteer positions in his son’s middle school. It has since expanded to an exciting event that covers ever single middle school in Palo Alto

Today, I went to a 7th grade science class in Jordan Middle School, Palo Alto with a couple other students to teach the kids there about the brain. The 7th graders have been having classes on the brain for the last several weeks, and they’ve been looking forward to Brain Day for months! This be their first experience of handling an actual human brain.

I was in charge of the animal brain station, where we had sheep brains, dog brains, monkey brains, etc that the kids would look through and marvel at. There seemed to be a recurring misconception that brain size correlates with intelligence - but that’s obviously not true. Whales have larger brains than humans but humans are still smarter. Of course, saving the best for last, I would pull out the baboon fetus head with 1 minute remaining. It was the bodyless head of a baboon fetus that had its scalp and part of its skull removed to expose the brain - the various types of squeamish looks I got never ceased to entertain me.

It was a terrifically fun event that I hope will motivate some of the students to perhaps go into neuroscience!

All of us know that songbirds sing - you most likely hear bird songs every day. Songbirds learn their songs by mimicking their parents and trying to sing it themselves - at first their song is quite garbled but after a while their memory crystallizes and they can reproduce the song perfectly! Songbirds can even learn from taped song recordings when raised in isolation.

So what circuits in the songbird brain might mediate these important sensory and motor skills? In the 17 January 2008 issue of Nature, Prather et al. identify a group of neurons in the HVC (high vocal center) that are active when a bird hears a song and when it imitates that same song. The HVC is a structure in the songbird forebrain crucial for singing and perceiving songs. Interestingly, in some adult songbirds, it has been shown that the size of HVC varies seasonally and may be tied to relearning of songs every season.

These neurons that Prather et al. discovered seem similar to mirror neurons in the monkey, which activate when it performs a task and sees somebody else perform the same task (but not when the task is performed without accomplishing the goal.)

Prather et al. also discovered that when the auditory feedback was distorted (so that the bird cannot hear its own song), the activity in these neurons are not altered, showing that when the neurons fire in response to a heard song, it is an auditory response, and when they are singing themselves, it is motor.

These findings are an exciting step toward understanding how a set of neurons can respond to both an action and experiencing the same action - something that underlies a mysterious form of learning, imitation.

Reference:
Prather, J. F., Peters, S., Nowicki, S. & Mooney, R. Nature 451, 305–310 (2008).

In late May, Ms. Haregewoin Teferra will travel from Ethiopia to Taiwan to accept the Fervent Global Love of Lives award from the Cho Ta-Kuan (CTK) Foundation. Patrick and I have written an article in the June issue of the Better Life magazine on Ms. Teferra and her story.

Here is Ms. Teferra’s message to the people of Taiwan and the Chinese translation:

Hi, my name is Haregewoin Teferra. I come from Ethiopia and I am excited to have the opportunity to meet and speak with the people of Taiwan.

My beautiful country of Ethiopia has been hurt very badly by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In the past, orphaned children were absorbed by their extended families. Today, so many generations and so many people have been hurt or killed by AIDS, that the traditional networks can no longer support the children. My wish is to help the orphaned and vulnerable children of my country. Wherever possible, I would like to help sustain the children where they live, by reaching out to their neighbors and grandparents and teachers, whoever is currently care for the children.

I would like to say to those people, “Do not abandon these children who need you. Do not place them in orphanages. Let them grow up with you, and let my foundation help you to keep the children.”

For those children who have no hope of remaining in their original neighborhood, village, or town, I would like to create a bigger home so that they can have shelter, food, medicine, schooling, and love.

嗨，我的名字是德菲拉。我來自非洲的衣索比亞。我很興奮能有機會到台灣和大家見面交談。

我美麗的國家，衣索比亞，遭到愛滋病的侵襲，傷得很重。在過去，孤兒通常由他們的親戚照養。今天，太多代、太多人在愛滋病的肆虐之下，不是死就是傷，傳統的方式已經沒有辦法繼續了。我的願望就是幫助這些無法照顧自己的孤兒。如果情況許可，我希望和原來就在照顧他們的人－不管是鄰居、祖父母、或老師－商量，在這些小孩原來住的地方幫助他們。

我要告訴他們：「不要放棄這些小孩，不要把他們送到孤兒院去。讓他們在你的顧養下長大，讓我的基金會幫你留住這些小孩。」

那些不可能留在他們生長的社區或村落的小孩，我希望給他們一個大家庭，讓他們有個庇蔭之所，有食物、醫療、有學校可上，還有愛。

Studies in mice by a Johns Hopkins-based group led by Stina Tucker show that it may be possible to test for excess amyloid-beta protein in blood as a predictor of Alzheimer’s disease. Amyloid-beta is the protein that makes up the characteristic amyloid brain plaques of Alzheimer’s disease.

The study by Tucker et al. uses amyloid-beta-binding antibodies to detect an increase in serum concentrations of amyloid beta that may indicate early, asymptomatic stages of Alzheimer’s. The test only worked in the diagnosis of mice in the beginnings of Alzheimer’s-like disease, not in the moderate to advanced stages. Thus, it would useful only for early detection, not diagnosis in the middle of the disease.

(Source: Tucker, SM et al. Biotinylated anti-Ab antibody as a tool to diagnose pre-clinical stages of Alzheimers Disease (AD) (Abstract 40.7). Experimental Biology 2007 meeting. April 28-May 3, 2007.)

The human body is constantly bombarded by ionizing radiation, harmful chemicals, oxidants, and foreign organisms which can lead to tissue damage and brain decline with age.

Shea et al. from the University of Massachusetss in Lowell showed that their “smart-pill,” which contains brain-boosting chemicals glutathione, acetyl-L-carnitine, and S-adenosyl methionine, increases the decision-processing and thinking speeds of subjects. Patients given placebos did not show any similar increase.

This brain-boosting pill could potentially be useful for aging people to become sharper and stay sharper.