[005 mimic]What's right with the autistic mind?_Hailey

WHAT'S RIGHT WITH THE AUTISTIC MIND
-By focusing on the deficits, we overlook the strengths of brains built differently

By Temple Grandin and Richard Panek

CREATIVE THINKING

I recently read a definition of creativity that made an impression on me:" a sudden, unexpected recognition of concepts or facts in a new relation not previously seen." I don't know if being autistic makes you fundamentally more creative, but I do think that being autistic makes a certain kind of creativity more likely to arise.

See enough trees and you'll eventually make out the forest. But the forest that the autistic brain winds up seeing might not look the same as the forest that the neurotypical brain sees.
............
For me, autism is secondary. My primary identity is as an expert on livestock. Autism is part of who I am, but I won't allow it to define me. Some people's difficulties are simply too severe for them to ever have the same opportunities I have. But for so many people on the spectrum, identifying their strengths can change their lives. Instead of only accommodating their deficits, they can cultivate their dreams.

Below by Hailey

[Mimic#5&Booknotes]Falling in Love_Chelsea

Fall in Love Anne Worner by creative commmons from Flickr

Excerpts from Falling in Love by Ayala Malach Pines

• I cannot end the discussion of stage theories of love without mentioning my favorite theory proposed by one of Italy's great sociologists, Fancesco Alberoni. According to Alberoni, the significant stages of a romantic relationship are simply "falling in love" and "love". If falling in love is like taking off or flying, then love is like landing. Falling in love is being high above the clouds. Love is standing firmly on the ground. If falling in love is like a flower, then love is like a fruit. The fruit comes from the flower, but they are two different things. "And there is really no point in asking if the flower is better than the fruit or vice versa. By the same token, there is no flower is point in asking whether the nascent sate is better than the institution. One does not exist without the other. Life is made of both."

[Mimic#402_nonscientific]The Littleton Massacre_Chelsea

11th Grade - First Day of Schoolby Mitchell Joycelicensed by creative commmons from Flickr

U.S. COLUMBINE 15TH ANNIVERSARY

The Littleton Massacre: …In Sorrow And Disbelief

• Nancy Gibbs @nancygibbs
 

May 3, 1999

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The story of the slaughter at Columbine High School opened a sad national conversation about what turned two boys’ souls into poison. It promises to be a long, hard talk, in public and in private, about why smart, privileged kids rot inside. Do we blame the parents, blame the savage music they listened to, blame the ease of stockpiling an arsenal, blame the chemistry of cruelty and cliques that has always been a part of high school life but has never been so deadly? Among the many things that did not survive the week was the hymn all parents unconsciously sing as they send their children out in the morning, past the headlines, to their schools: It can’t happen here, Lord, no, it could never happen here.

[004 mimic#2 non scientific] Waiting for the Taliban_ Hailey

Waiting for the Taliban

By Krista Mahr, TIME

Despite the escalating violence, or perhaps because of it, a palpable streak of determination has been building in the run-up to the vote. In a recent survey by the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan, or FEFA, 92% of respondents said they supported the idea of elections; among those who didn’t plan to vote, most said it was because they weren’t registered, not because they feared the Taliban. Women, perhaps mindful of the consequences of the Taliban’s return, are especially invested in the vote: 81% said they would pick a candidate based on their qualities and programs, vs. 12% who said they would vote for the person suggested to them. During the candidate registration period, more than 300 women signed up to run in provincial-council elections. “We’ve always been ignored,” Habiba Sarabi, who is running for second vice president on Rassoul’s ticket, tells TIME. “This is the opportunity to show that women can be in a position of power.” Says Waliullah Rahmani, director of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies: “A month ago, no one even thought there would be elections. Now you can see the momentum.”

[003 mimic#2 non scientific] A Thousand Splendid Suns_Hailey

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini

........

Every street of Kabul is enthralling to the eye 
Through the bazaars, caravans of Egypt pass
One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs 
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls
........
The poem Kabul, by Saib-e Tabrizi

Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yarn onto her doll’s head. In a few years, this girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others, who will never let on that she too has had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl’s eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rsheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. Something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila’s salvation.

[004 mimic #1 scientific] Amino acid metabolism_Hailey

Immunological Review

Control of immune response by amino acid metabolism

Ursula Grohmann, Vincenzo Bronte

The interaction between pathogenic microorganisms and their hosts is regulated by reciprocal survival strategies, including competition for essential nutrients. Though paradoxical, mammalian hosts have learned to take advantage of amino acid catabolism for controlling pathogen invasion and, at the same time, regulating their own immune responses. In this way, ancient catabolic enzymes have acquired novel functions and evolved into new structures with highly specialized functions, which go beyond the struggle for survival. In this review, we analyze the evidence supporting a critical role for the metabolism of various amino acids in regulating different steps of both innate and adaptive immunity.

[Mimic#401_Scientific]Cancer in the brain_Chelsea

Cancer by Roosh Inf3ktion licensed by creative commmons from Flickr

Cancer: Disabling defences in the brain
Janine T. Erler

Nature 508, 46–47 (03 April 2014) doi:10.1038/508046aPublished online 02 April 2014

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Most deaths from cancer are not caused by the primary tumor. A cancer can spread from the primary tumor to other organs through a process known as metastasis, and it is the growth of metastatic tumors that ultimately compromises normal organ function and is responsible for more than 90% of deaths in cancer patients1. Brain metastases present one of the poorest prognoses for cancer patients, and their rate of incidence is increasing2. Fortunately, metastasis is a highly inefficient process: fewer than 0.01% of cells that leave a primary tumor are able to colonize and grow in other organs3. The underlying molecular mechanisms that govern initial metastatic cancer-cell survival and growth in secondary organs remain largely unknown and are an area of intensive research. Writing in Cell, Valiente et al.4 show how cancer cells that have metastasized to the brain overcome death signals from host tissue cells and use the pre-existing vasculature to enable their proliferative growth. 

[MISC] Career and/or Relationship_Chelsea

Interracial Marble Relationship 3by  William J Serson licensed by creative commmons from Flickr

While we are looking for potential labs to work for during postdoc fellow period, I can't help but thinking of the similarity between "career" and "personal relationship".

1. Key:

Both are very essential parts of any human beings;

2. Uncertainties:

When you are going to move on, say graduating from school, or break up with your ex, you are facing the uncertainties of the future. Hope is not a strategy, but to the person clinging to it, hope feels very real. Hope doesn't help. You gotta go and find out who are there in the pool. You gotta to take on the risks of possibly "not suitable" "miserable" next period of time. 

[Mimic#302_Scientific]Interneurons_Chelsea

Science 11 April 2014:
Vol. 344 no. 6180
DOI: 10.1126/science.1240622
REVIEW

Interneurons from Embryonic Development to Cell-Based Therapy

Derek G. Southwell1, etc

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Alterations in neural excitation and inhibition cause a number of neurologic and psychiatric disorders. In the cerebral cortex, excitation and inhibition are mediated by two cell types born in distinct areas of the embryo: excitatory projection neurons, which are generated in the developing cortex, and inhibitory interneurons, which are produced outside the cortex in the ventral forebrain. After migrating from their origins across the developing brain, young interneurons reach the cortex and differentiate into various inhibitory neuronal cell types. Roughly two-thirds of these young cells survive in the cortex to form the local inhibitory circuits that shape excitatory neuron activity. The embryologic programs that guide interneuron migration, survival, and circuit integration are also executed by these young neurons after their transplantation into the juvenile and adult nervous systems. These processes, realized in the developmentally and topographically distinct environment of the recipient, offer a unique opportunity for studying neurodevelopment and therapeutically modifying neural circuits.

[Mimic#301_non-scientific]Stumbling on Happiness_Chelsea

Young Happiness by Jeyheich, licensed by creative commmons from Flickr

Except from Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, page 15

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A permanent present- what a  haunting phrase. How bizarre and surreal it must be to serve a life sentence in the prison of the moment, trapped forever in the perpetual now, a world without end, a time without later. Such an existence is so difficult for most of us to imagine, so alien to our normal experience, that we are tempted to dismiss it as a fluke- an unfortunate, rare, and freakish aberration brought on by traumatic, head injury.
But in fact, this strange existence is the rule and we are the exception. For the first few hundred million years after their initial appearance on our planet, all brains were stuck in the permanent present, and most brains still are today. But not yours and not mine, because two or three million years ago our ancestors began a great escape from the here and now, and their getaway vehicle was a highly specialized mass of gray tissue, fragile, wrinkled, and appended. This frontal lobe- the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature, and the first to deteriorate in old age- is a time machine that allows each of us to vacate the present and experience the future before it happens. No other animal has a frontal lobe quite like ours, which is why we are the only animal that thinks about the future as we do.

[003 mimic #1 scientific] Metabolic quirks yield tumor hope_Hailey

Metabolic quirks yield tumour hope

Early clinical-trial results show promise for targeting cancer-related biochemical pathways.

Heidi Ledford

Cancer cells harness unusual metabolic pathways to obtain the energy and molecular building blocks that they need for their relentless proliferation. Many potential drugs have tried to take advantage of this hunger. Early results for a genetically targeted drug, unveiled this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in San Diego, California, suggest that the approach could pay off.

In some ways, the findings send cancer research back to its roots. For much of the twentieth century, the disease was considered a metabolic malady — an idea that arose in the 1920s, when the German biochemist Otto Warburg showed that cancer cells have an outsized appetite for glucose. The glucose is broken down, yielding energy in the form of ATP, produced in the cell’s mitochondria, as well as components of amino acids, lipids and other compounds needed to build new cells.

[002 mimic #2 nonscientific] Old World Order_Hailey

TIME

Old World Order

How geopolitics fuels endless chaos and old-school conflicts in the 21^st century

By Robert D. Kaplan, March 21, 2014

This isn’t what the 21^st century was supposed to look like. The visceral reaction of many pundits, academics and Obama Administration officials to Russian President Vlandimir Putin’s virtual annexation of Crimea has been disbelief bordering on disorientation. As Secretary of State John Kerry said, “It’s really 19^th century behavior in the 21^st century.” Well, the “19^th century”, as Kerry calls it, lives on and always will. Forget about the world being flat. Forget technology as the great democratizer. Forget the niceties of international law. Territory and the bonds of blood that go with it are central to what makes us human.

[Mimic#202_Scientific]Synapses and Human_Chelsea

Science 22 November 2013:
Vol. 342 no. 6161 pp. 944-945
DOI: 10.1126/science.1247515

PERSPECTIVENEUROSCIENCE

Synapses, Language, and Being Human

Philip Lieberman

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FOXP2 has become a “gene of interest” in the mystery that surrounds the evolution of the human brain. It first came to notice in a study of the behavioral deficits of the members of a large extended family who had only one copy of the gene. These individuals had profound difficulties in talking, comprehending, and forming sentences, and had depressed scores on intelligence tests (2). Anomalies in their basal ganglia, subcortical structures deep in the brain, were also noted (3). FOXP2 is one of the few human genes that differ from its chimpanzee version. A series of mutations in FOXP2 has occurred in the last 500,000 years; the most recent one took place about 200,000 years ago, when modern humans appeared in Africa (4). When a form of FOXP2 shared by humans, Neandertals, and Denisovans (another extinct hominin species) was introduced into mouse pups, synaptic plasticity and connections between basal ganglia neurons increased (5). But the mechanisms by which FOXP2 shapes the neural circuitry associated with language acquisition have not been clear. The CNTNAP2 gene, for example, also is targeted by FOXP2 and is linked to language disorders (6).

[Mimic#201_social]Sex at Dawn_Chelsea

Tintype of Unwoman and Joe Vorteque at Contemporal reading Sex at Dawn by Margaret Killjoy licensed by creative commmons from Flickr

Our point? That something feels natural or unnatural does't mean it is. Every one of the examples above, including saliva beer, is savored somewhere-by folks who would be disgusted by much of what you eat regularly. Especially when we're talking about intimate, personal, biological experiences like eating or having sex, we mustn't forget that the familiar fingers of culture reach deep into our minds. We can't feel them adjusting our dials and flicking our switches, but every culture leads its members to believe some things are naturally right and other's naturally wrong. These beliefs may feel right, but it's a feeling we trust at our own peril.[Excerpt from page 22]

[002 mimic#1 scientific] Into the wild_Hailey

Nature Immunology Commentary

Into the wild: digging at immunology’s evolutionary roots

Rick M Maizels & Daniel H Nussey

The two pillars of modern immunology have been man and mouse; in both settings, investigators seek to reduce complexity and control environmental conditions. However, the world outside the laboratory is immensely variable; this is not ‘noise’ but represents the genetic and environmental framework in which the immune system evolved and functions. Placing the ever-growing understanding of immunological mechanisms in wider real-world contexts is a massive but fundamentally important challenge.

[MISC]When you are old_Chelsea

Old lady by fsendel licensed by creative commmons from Flickr

Hola~

Just found this fine piece by William Butler Yeats. 1865. So beautiful. Savor it:)

When You are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;