Big Bird Helps Scientists Study Brain Development

Children are not the only ones who can learn from Big Bird — brain scans of children and adults watching "Sesame Street" reveal how brains change as they learn reading and math, researchers say.

One goal of brain imaging is discovering more about how children learn. Such an understanding of the building blocks of learning might help diagnose and treat learning difficulties.

For instance, "when children fail to learn mathematics well, there could be a number of different reasons for that — it could be that they have weak concepts of numbers, that they have poor memory, that they have limited attention," researcher Jessica Cantlon, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Rochester in New York, told LiveScience. Brain tests could help determine the precise cause of a kid's math impairments, "because different patterns of brain activity likely accompany each of those different cognitive impairments."

Although scientists currently cannot see what goes on in the brains of children when they are learning in the classroom, Cantlon and her colleagues instead focused on analyzing what happens when kids watched educational television programs.

For the investigation, 27 children between the ages of 4 and 11 joined 20 adults in watching the same 20-minute "Sesame Street" recording as they had their brains scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The video featured a variety of short clips with Big Bird, the Count, Elmo and other stars of the show, and focused on numbers, words, shapes and other subjects. The children then took standardized IQ tests for math and verbal ability. [See Elmo Video]

"This took three years," Cantlon said. "Working with children can be challenging ... It also took time for us to get the analyses right."

Using statistical algorithms, the researchers created "neural maps" of the thought processes for the children and the adults and compared the groups. Children whose neural maps more closely resembled those of adults scored better on standardized math and verbal tests, showing that the brain's neural structure, like other parts of the body, apparently develops along predictable pathways as people mature. [Inside the Brain: A Photo Journey Through Time]

This research also confirmed where these developing abilities are located in the brain. For math, adultlike neural patterns in the intraparietal sulcus, a region of the brain involved with the processing of numbers, were linked to higher scores. For verbal tasks, more mature patterns in Broca's area, which is linked to speech and language, predicted better verbal test scores in children.

Normal activities such as TV watching may be a better way of learning about "neural maturity" than the short and simple tasks typical of fMRI studies. For instance, when the children matched simple pictures of faces, numbers, words or shapes, the neural responses of the children did not predict their test scores like watching "Sesame Street" did, the researchers said.

The researchers stress "that these results do not mean that there is anything special about 'Sesame Street' in particular," Cantlon said. "We chose 'Sesame Street' because it is mainstream. There are likely lots of stimuli that could yield the same result."

Still, while this research does not advocate watching television, it does show that "neural patterns during an everyday activity like watching television are related to a person's intellectual maturity," Cantlon said. "It's not the case that if you put a child in front of an educational TV program that nothing is happening — that the brain just sort of zones out. Instead, what we see is that the patterns of neural activity that children are showing are meaningful and related to their intellectual abilities."

Future studies can help pinpoint what areas might be linked with difficulties with learning math or verbal tasks. Research could also see if educational television shows are better than noneducational shows at eliciting math- and verbal-related brain activity, Cantlon said.

Cantlon and her colleague Rosa Li detailed their findings online Jan. 3 in the journal PLOS Biology.

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Satellite study helps thirsty Sahel (AFP)

PARIS (AFP) – Embattled farmers in the Sahel countries of West Africa can take heart from a new study that should boost the accuracy of rainfall prediction in one of the world's most fragile regions.

Sharp differences in moisture in small patches of land can trigger precious rain, says the paper, published online on Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Researchers from Britain, France and Australia looked at satellite data that located nearly 4,000 rainstorms which occurred in the Sahel between 2006-2010.

Between 80 and 90 percent of rainfall in the Sahel comes from this kind of storm, which can brew suddenly when moisture-laden air lifts from heated earth.

The scientists then overlaid this data with satellite information on soil moisture.

They found that an area where there are large differences in soil moisture plays a big role in making rain.

A moist area just 10 to 40 kilometres (six to 25 miles) across can trigger rain provided it is next to a far drier patch.

This small-is-beautiful finding contrasts with conventional weather models.

These tend to calculate the probability of rainfall on the basis of huge swathes of moist land and on the presence of rain-making features like mountain ranges.

"Rainfall is difficult to predict, particularly in regions such as the Sahel where huge storms can grow from nothing in a matter of hours," said lead author Chris Taylor of Britain's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

"We found that areas with contrasting soil moisture can play an important role in the creation of new storms, a factor not accounted for in current climate models.

"(...) This effect is important for typically one in eight storms, in a region particularly prone to droughts and associated crop failures."

In areas where there are these sharp differences in soil moisture, rainstorms are twice as likely compared to regions where the moisture level is uniform.

The rain often falls around 10 kilometres (six miles) upwind of the moist patch, not downwind, Taylor explained to AFP.

This occurs when the moist air is driven against weak prevailing winds by a strong local breeze coming from the opposite direction.

The study could help fine-tune knowledge about how climate change could affect the Sahel, he said.

Semi-arid, tropical west Africa is one of the most demanding regions in the world for agriculture, given its fragile soils and a short growing season that is crucially dependent on when and where rain will land.

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China helps unravel new E.coli for embattled Europe

By Tan Ee Lyn

HONG KONG, Jun | Fri Jun 3, 2011 9:23am EDT

HONG KONG, Jun (Reuters) - For three long weeks Europe was gripped with fear battling a mysterious E. coli epidemic, and it wasn't until late this week that China's genomics institute nearly 7,000 km away finally put its finger on the culprit.

Chinese scientists at the Beijing Genomics Institute, the world's largest DNA sequencing center, announced late on Thursday that the E. coli spreading through Europe was "a new strain of bacteria that is highly infectious and toxic."

The researchers, who obtained DNA samples of the bacteria from collaborating scientists in Germany, managed to fully sequence its genome in three days -- becoming the first in the world to do so and lodge its full sequence on the Internet.

They also identified genes in the bacteria that gave it resistance to at least three major classes of antibiotics, which helped explain why doctors in Europe have had such a hard time fighting the bug, that has killed 17 people and made more than 1,500 others ill.

Work continues at BGI's main research arm in Shenzhen city, which lies just north of Hong Kong, to fully characterize the bacteria.

"We have done further analysis and see even more antibiotic-resistant and toxic genes. Our work is still ongoing," said Qin Junjie, a member of the team that sequenced the bacterium and is now analyzing it.

The three classes of antibiotics the Chinese scientists identified as ineffective in fighting the bacterium are first-line drugs commonly used to fight gastro-intestinal infections and as surgical prophylaxis.

"It means doctors have a more limited arsenal among first line drugs (to fight this bacteria)," said William Chui, vice president of the Society of Hospital Pharmacists in Hong Kong. Chui was not involved in the sequencing study.

In Europe, authorities are still hunting for the source of the epidemic, which is believed to have contaminated raw vegetables. Without nailing the source, experts fear they may not be able to contain the crisis.

BIGGEST DNA ANALYSER IN THE WORLD

This new strain bears the hallmarks of other E. coli strains that are known to cause symptoms such as bloody diarrhea, or hemorrhagic colitis, and hemolytic-uremic syndrome, which damages the kidneys.

"This bacteria is a strange creature. Many of its genes seem to have been transferred from (distant) E.coli strains, which provide this strain with the ability to cause hemolytic uremic syndrome and/or bloody diarrhea," said Qin, vice president of BGI's Microbiology Transomics Center.

To most people, China's involvement in unraveling this bacterium terrorizing Europe comes as a surprise, particularly as it is still remembered for trying to cover up SARS in 2003.

But to the industry observer, China has come a long way between then and now.

BGI's research arm in Shenzhen city is strongly backed by the local government, one of China's wealthiest.

BGI in Shenzhen also provides DNA sequencing and other research services for industry and private individuals and income earned is pumped back into research and development.

It has over 180 sequencing machines, giving it the biggest DNA sequencing capacity in the world, and a total workforce of over 4,000, said Yang Bicheng, BGI's marketing director.

"For sequencing alone, we have about 300 researchers," she told Reuters by telephone on Friday.

"We are now trying to understand the toxic genes (of the new E. coli). We are still doing analysis to further identify the functions of these genes," said Yang, a scientist by training.

"We are developing a diagnostic kit. We are testing it now and hope to get approval for it soon. It will be used to detect the bacteria in food and also in people."

Asides from sequencing DNA, BGI has pumped in plenty of resources in recent years into animal cloning and improving its rice breeds and other agricultural products to increase yields, which China hopes would eventually help in feeding its growing population.

BGI scientists, some of whom have been trained in leading universities in the United States and Europe, have even modified its in-house cloning techniques, enabling each researcher to clone up to 200 pig embryos in a single day.

It recently set up a unit to commercialize cloning and meat from the offspring of cloned pigs is expected to be available on the Chinese market in a few years.

(Editing by Alex Richardson)

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