Alzheimer's Risk Gene

In the year of 1993 scientist discovered the cause of Alzheimer's disease but the scary part is that the gene starts to do damage not when you're old but when you are young. Scientist know the genetic component to develop the late-onset of Alzheimer's is the gene known as ApoE4 that is carried in about a quarter of us that triples the risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. In 2009 however, three more risky genes were found, and one of the three, called clusterin, or CLU, was found to give a 16 percent more chance of the having disease. The CLU gene was a gene nobody could explain what it did but experts on the gene or UCLA researchers know this risk gene begins to damage your brain a full 50 years before people usually get Alzheimer's. A UCLA professor of neurology, named Paul Thompson and his colleagues say the C-allele of the CLU gene possesses 88 percent of Caucasians which impairs the development of myelin also known as the protective covering around the neuron's axons in the brain making it weaker and makes it easier for it to get the onset of Alzheimer's much later in life. Researchers experimented on 398 healthy adult brains between ages 20 to 30 by scanning their brains with a high-magnetic-fields diffusion scan called a 4-Tesla DTI. This devise maps the brain's connections. They compared the brains with the C-allele with those with the CLU T-allele. They discovered that C-allele carriers or CLU-C carriers had "fractional anisotropy" a large mass of white-matter integrity in many parts of the brain including parts that cause Alzheimer's. so, young, healthy carries of the C-allele may increase the vulnerability of the disease later in life.
"For example, Alzheimer's has traditionally been considered a key disease component and another possible pathway to the disease, and this discovery supports that," Thompson said. He also says that "four things are surprising with the discovery of this gene's function:
1- This risk gene damages your brain a full 50 years before people normally get Alzheimer's. The damage can be seen on a MRI scan, but there are no sypmtoms yet.
2-It's now known what this mysterious gene does--namely, make your brain wiring vulnarable to attack by impairing the wiring before any senile plaques or tangle develop.
3-Rather than being a gene that few people have, a whopping 88 percent of Caucasians have it. ' So i guess you could say the other 12 percent have an Alzheimer's resistance gene that protects their brain wiring'
4- finnaly knowing the role of this gene is useful in predicting a person's risk of the disease and in seeing if you can step in and protect the brain in the 50-year time window you have before the disease begins to develope."
Yes, the easy question is if most of us have the gene, why isn't Alzheimer's rampant in young people? Less myelination in CLU-C carriers may not translate into a worse cognition in youth because the brain can deal with it or compensate. "The brain has a lot of built in redundancy-- miles and miles of brain connections," Thompson exclaimed. still, he continued, with the passage of time-- and when exacerbated by other factors, such as normal neuron death as we age and plaque and tangle development in the early stages of Alzeihmer's-- deuce myelin integrity could facilitate cognition impairement. With this discovery the science discovery of diseases can help them understand and control the amount of death in the world.

If you want to know more about this article or learn more news in the science world visit this URL.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110513091638.htm

Other authors included Meredith N. Braskie, Neda Jahanshad, Jason L. Stein, Marina Barysheva, John M. Ringman and Arthur W. Toga from UCLA; Katie L. McMahon and Greig I. de Zubicaray from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia; and Nicholas G. Martin and Margaret J. Wright from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane.

This study was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia; the National Institutes of Health; the UCLA Easton Center for Alzheimer's Disease Research; the NIH/National Library of Medicine; the ARCS Foundation; and the National Institute of Mental Health.

Soaring Straws Lab

My partner and I tested our rocket and collected data that is supported by reason of this project. I noticed that the measurement that relates to the Elastic Potential Energy is the amount of stretch in centimeters. I also noticed the data for the rocket is varied. The relationship between the rubber band, in this case it is the Elastic Potential energy, and the Gravitational Potential energy is the more the rubber band is stretched out the higher the rocket goes up. The rocket has kinetic energy when it releases but has Gravitational Potential Energy when it rises. There is however no Elastic Potential Energy at this point. I noticed the manipulated variables is the stretch added to the rocket. I know this because the stretch added kinetic energy and when released the height was the response of this action, as I stated before. Our data helps us understand but our data was hard to get.

My partner and I had many problems during our data collecting process. The first problem was that the rocket launchers base began ripping when we would pull the straws down to launch. Another problem was the rubber band kept breaking when tension was applied. The next problem was the weight of the straws and having to change the data to that specific weight for launching. All these problems effect our data because if different rockets were used the data becomes unreliable. I suggest the next time we do this lab we each need to make our own rocket launcher's for better lab results. If this rocket breaks, all data should be "re-done." I think this would help because we could get more accurate numbers. The condition of the rocket and it's base is a direct influence on the data being collected. If everything was in good condition the outcome should prove the relationship between the Gravitational Potential Energy and the Elastic Potential Energy.

SCIENCE IS EVERYTHING

Science is everything just like the heart that pumps blood.
Science is everything like a fish in the stream.
Science is everything like the test tube about to overflow.
Science is everything from up high and down low.
Why science is so important is because it helps us understand how the world goes round.
Science is everything from far beyond what we know, and what we already do.
To understand why things are like a breath of fresh air, because it feels so good to know.
And what we do not know yet doesn't hurt because we will know soon...
Just like Science...

The fish in the stream

I analyzed the many fish in the stream and have studied the first, second, third, and fourth generation of alleles and noticed that there are more chances to get green alleles than the red, yellow, and orange ones because it can camouflage well in the algae. There is a very slim chance to get a red and yellow allele combination. Orange is more possible to find because it has red and yellow alleles combined. This is because the red and yellow were incomplete dominant, incomplete dominance-noun, the appearance in a heterozygous trait that is intermediate between either of the trait's homozygous phenotypes. The yellow fish is slim to pick as well because it is easily found in the stream and is eaten, making it rare to find. When the environmental disaster occurred, out of the fish that were left in the third generation, six died leaving four in the stream. I have also found that two red fish can't reproduce a green fish because the red fish is recessive and can't make a dominant green fish. Yet the two orange fish can make a red fish because there would be a 25% chance of a red recessive fish, also, when two green fish mate they can't make orange offspring because there are no red or yellow alleles involved in a green fishes alleles. During the third generation not all the yellow alleles were gone, yet the fish population decreased because the fish would be found in the stream and be eaten or found dead, this would effect the fish, this can happen in real life and in the wild. Therefore there was only two fish that died up to the third generation. The population in the fourth generation, after the disaster, made the population decrease tremendasly by six fish because the green fish weren't able to camouflage in the algae anymore. So there is 8 dead fish through the four generations of alleles. The group that dissapeared by the fourth generation were the green fish alleles because after the disaster they didn't match the backround in the water and were killed.

After I noticed that the population decreased, I also noticed it would slow down reproduction with less fish to mate. This means the population wouldn't increase over a short period of time, it would take a long period of time. So this would mean lack of food for the organisms that ate the fish. When a lack of food happens to the other organism that ate the fish, they would begin to starve, then die. Their population soon decreases as well as the fish and could become extinct. But when population reproduction increases there is more food. When there is more food population for the other organisms that would eat the fish their population would increase. The food chain would, with reproduction, go back to normal and may get better over the years. This can happen with all animals and is a serious risk in the food chain.

A New Sense of Touch

When people lose a limb off of their body from a traumatic event, the missing is limb is referred to as amputated. Amputated means-[am-pyoo-teyt]verb to cut off (all or part of a limb or digit of the body), as by surgery. And when this part of the body is gone they can put a prosthetic limb in its'place. This prosthetic limb is an object shaped as close as possible to the old limb. They re-routed their sense of touch right above the amputation. Scientist believe that it has made the person feel as if they were actually touching something. To create the embodiment of a missing limb, researchers in Chicago, made a pressure sensing system for prosthetic limbs. This happens by a signal which would be sent to a robot to poke a designated skin area. In a series of experiments, where the owner of the prosthetic didn't feel a touch from the researcher, the amputee didn't feel a sense of ownership of the fake limb. When one of the subjects felt and saw the researcher touching on her prosthetic arm, the temperature of the arm above the prosthetic rose and a sense of function was felt by the owner. This experiment proved a relationship in the ability of the body to adopt a prosthetic. When senses are blocked from the limb the limb's temperature drops a little.

Michael Goldfarb, a bio-engineer from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, believes this experiment was a baby step (towards the future) and “What makes you feel something is a part of you is not just being able to move it. People feel like these are tools attached to their body. Even though they are very sophisticated, they are still tools. So the idea of trying to get sensory information back in would help integrate this limb as part of the body, help [people] control it and, one would argue, help them feel more whole.” And thoughts like this will help people have some what a disability feel more like they use to and just forget what had happened.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/69296/title/Prosthetics_that_feel

A new dinosaur found

I have read an article that says scientist have found a new meat-eating dinosaur in 230 million year old rocks in Argentina. They say this dinosaur would have been as tall as a seven year old (4ft high) and weigh as much as a house hold cat(10 to 15 pounds). At first they thought this dinosaur may have been a dinosaur named Eoraptor, but it is not. They can tell because of only one fact... one ate plants and one ate meat. The one they found recently was a meat-eating dinosaur named Eodromaeus. They also call it "dawn runner." The fossils in Argentina show how the dinosaurs first evolved and what they lived in and how they lived, not just Eodromaeus.
The lead author and a paleontologist named Ricardo Martinez from National university of San Juan in Argentina who believes " the new dinosaur is special for sure, but we also have the first step of the radiation of the dinosaur story."

Finding information about a dinosaur or telling them a part is not easy. "Eodromaeus was known as a theropod-a group of dinosaurs that mainly ate meat. They can tell because it has sharp teeth to chew meat, long finger bones for a firm grip and interlocking mechanisms in it's bones that stiffen the tail to help while hunting." says Martinez in 2009. Sauropod-the other main group of dinosaurs, which mainly ate meat is what the Eoraptor was known as. All the dinosaurs found in Argentina are from a valley called "Valley of the Moon" in the north of argentina. They and their fossils are buried in the mother lode called Ischigualasto. If you would like to know the whole story please see the website below for more information, and to see a picture of this newly found creature feel free to visit.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/68744/title/Early Meat-eating Dinosaur Unearthed - Science news

Citations are
S.L. Brusatte et al. the origin and early radiation of dinosaurs. Earth-
Science Reviews, Vol. 101, 2010, pg. 68

R.N. Martinez and O.A. Alcober. A basal sauropodomorph (Dinosauria:
saurischia) from the Ischigualasto formation(Triassic, Carnian) and the
early evolution of Sauropodomorpha. PLoS One, Vol. $, february 16,
2009, e4397. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0004397.

R.N. Martinez et al. A basal dinosaur from the dawn of the dinosaur era
in southwestern Pangaea. Sciece, Vol.331, January 14, 2011, pg. 206.

S.J. Nesbitt et al. A complete skeleton of a late Triassic saurischian and the early evolution of dinosaurs. Science, Vol. 326, December 11, 2009, pg. 1530


All the citation above are all the information gotten for the article from ScienceNews Artical By:
Alexander Witze web edition: 1:59 pm

Mutualism

This is an example of mutalism where the relationship of the butterfly and the bee have benefited from the flower and the flower benefited from the insects. The insects took the pollen from the flower and then pollinated other flowers while moving from a different flower each time.