Sci-Ed Update 321

Big rooms mean low exam scores, examining exams, word meanings in specific neurons, breastfeeding and bones, fingernails as sensors, DNA's role in memories, death science, laughing gas, and more!

Jul 12, 2024

Our fingernails know us so well that they can sometimes even tell us about our health. But there's a surprising amount we don't know about them, such as their unexpectedly precise sensitivity to the slightest touch.
A study has found humans can identify where touch is applied to their fingernails almost as accurately as they can identify touches on their fingertip.
"It is not just that people can perceive touch applied to the distal extremity of the fingernail," writes University of London neuroscientist Matthew Longo in a new paper.
"People can tell precisely where on the fingernail a stimulus was applied."

Standing Up Straight Might Not Be As Beneficial As We Thought

Credit: Christian Montenegro for Huffpost

From a young age we’re told to stand up straight. Many people probably even have memories of walking around the house with a book on their head to help improve their posture (I know I do).
But why is it even important to do this? What exactly does “good posture” mean for you health-wise anyway?
It may be a little aesthetic — we’re taught that models with perfect posture are what we should aim to resemble — and it has some science-backed perks. But, based on the years of posture reminders and even at-school posture checks, there are probably fewer benefits than you thought.
Here, experts weigh in on posture and whether having good posture is truly beneficial for your health or total B.S.

Revolution in the air: how laughing gas changed the world

Method of administering nitrous oxide used by Samuel lee Rymer in London, 1863. CC 4.0 This file comes from Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom.

Since its discovery in the 18th century, nitrous oxide has gone from vaudeville gimmick to pioneering anaesthetic to modern party drug.

Kevin Patton comment→ this is a rather long article about anesthesia by gas and is an edited extract from It’s a Gas: The Magnificent and Elusive Elements That Expand our World by Mark Miodownik.

Examining the Anatomy & Physiology Exam: Chatting with Greg Crowther and Ben Wiggins

In episode 149 of The A&P Professor podcast, host Kevin Patton chats with Greg Crowther and Ben Wiggins about their work with exams in the anatomy and physiology (A&P) course. They discuss the importance of exams in assessing student learning and the need for exams to be more connected to course objectives. They also mention the challenges of designing exams that are fair and inclusive for all students. Crowther and Wiggins are conducting a survey on A&P exams and encourage listeners to participate to contribute to the understanding of exam practices in the A&P community. The survey can be accessed at tinyurl.com/stemexamsurvey.
0:00:00 | Introduction
0:00:48 | Introducing Ben & Greg
0:04:17 | The Most Important Thing
0:22:32 | Murray Jensen, HAPS Hero
0:23:46 | Our Motto: Be Prepared
0:41:18 | What’s on TAPP at The Corner Pub
0:42:45 | The Next Big Leap: What Is It?
1:00:50 | Staying Connected

To listen to this episode, click on the play button above ⏵ (if present) or this link→ theAPprofessor.org/podcast-episode-149.html

The new science of death: ‘There’s something happening in the brain that makes no sense’

Borjigin believes that understanding the dying brain is one of the “holy grails” of neuroscience. “The brain is so resilient, the heart is so resilient, that it takes years of abuse to kill them,” she pointed out. “Why then, without oxygen, can a perfectly healthy person die within 30 minutes, irreversibly?” Although most people would take that result for granted, Borjigin thinks that, on a physical level, it actually makes little sense.
Borjigin hopes that understanding the neurophysiology of death can help us to reverse it. She already has brain activity data from dozens of deceased patients that she is waiting to analyse. But because of the paranormal stigma associated with near-death studies, she says, few research agencies want to grant her funding. “Consciousness is almost a dirty word amongst funders,” she added. “Hardcore scientists think research into it should belong to maybe theology, philosophy, but not in hardcore science. Other people ask, ‘What’s the use? The patients are gonna die anyway, so why study that process? There’s nothing you can do about it.’”
Evidence is already emerging that even total brain death may someday be reversible. In 2019, scientists at Yale University harvested the brains of pigs that had been decapitated in a commercial slaughterhouse four hours earlier. Then they perfused the brains for six hours with a special cocktail of drugs and synthetic blood. Astoundingly, some of the cells in the brains began to show metabolic activity again, and some of the synapses even began firing. The pigs’ brain scans didn’t show the widespread electrical activity that we typically associate with sentience or consciousness. But the fact that there was any activity at all suggests the frontiers of life may one day extend much, much farther into the realms of death than most scientists currently imagine.

Memories are made by breaking DNA — and fixing it

When a long-term memory forms, some brain cells experience a rush of electrical activity so strong that it snaps their DNA. Then, an inflammatory response kicks in, repairing this damage and helping to cement the memory, a study in mice shows.
The findings, published on 27 March in Nature¹, are “extremely exciting”, says Li-Huei Tsai, a neurobiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who was not involved in the work. They contribute to the picture that forming memories is a “risky business”, she says. Normally, breaks in both strands of the double helix DNA molecule are associated with diseases including cancer. But in this case, the DNA damage-and-repair cycle offers one explanation for how memories might form and last.
It also suggests a tantalizing possibility: this cycle might be faulty in people with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, causing a build-up of errors in a neuron’s DNA, says study co-author Jelena Radulovic, a neuroscientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.

Breastfeeding should take a toll on bones. A brain hormone may protect them

Birthing and caring for a newborn can be hard on a mother’s bones. Estrogen, which helps regulate bone growth, drops precipitously after birth, and lactation saps the skeleton of calcium. Yet nursing moms somehow maintain strong, dense bones. A hormone released from the brain may be the reason why, a study in mice suggests.
When estrogen levels drop after birth, the hormone CCN3 may take the role of boosting bone stem cell activity, leading to increased tissue production, researchers report July 10 in Nature. This molecule originates in the hypothalamus, a brain structure that helps regulate appetite and body temperature. Besides possibly solving the mystery of nursing mothers’ strong bones, the finding could also point to a way to better heal fractures and fight bone loss in old age.

Meanings of Words Have Been Detected in The Flicker of Individual Brain Cells

Harvard University neuroscientists Mohsen Jamali and Benjamin Grannan and their colleagues used tungsten 'lab-on-a-chip' microelectrode arrays and neuropixels to record brain activity on a cellular level in the prefrontal cortex of 13 participants while they listened to individual sentences and stories.
It took recording surprisingly few neurons in this part of the brain – one involved in speech formation and working memory – for the researchers to be able to loosely 'mind read' general meanings in the patterns of cellular activity.
The recordings revealed words that share similar meanings like noodles and pizza create similar patterns of activity within participants' brains and that these patterns differ substantially when hearing words that have disparate meanings such as duck and coffee.

Kevin Patton comment→ It won’t be long now. Soon, we’ll know precisely where to find the word carbaminohemoglobin in our brains.

High Ceilings in Buildings Linked to Poorer Exam Results For Students

New research has found a link between the height of ceilings in exam halls and the performance of students, which might sound a bit crazy, but makes more and more sense as you think about it.
While the shape of a room can't compensate for your lack of revision or make you any smarter than you were before, we do know that the environments we're in have an effect on us. That includes our ability to concentrate and work on mental tasks.
The authors of the study, from the University of South Australia and Deakin University in Australia, suggest that big and open rooms, with high ceilings, are making it harder for students to focus on what's in front of them.

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