{"id":6456,"date":"2012-10-19T11:00:13","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T10:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ofschemesandmemes\/?p=6456"},"modified":"2015-05-14T15:00:39","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T14:00:39","slug":"best-of-nature-com-blogs-scilogs-com-and-scitable-13-19-october","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ofschemesandmemes\/2012\/10\/19\/best-of-nature-com-blogs-scilogs-com-and-scitable-13-19-october","title":{"rendered":"Best of nature.com blogs, SciLogs.com and Scitable: 13 \u2013 19 October"},"content":{"rendered":"

To sleep, perchance to forget fears<\/strong><\/p>\n

Traumatic memories can be manipulated in sleeping mice to reduce their fearful responses during waking hours reveals\u00a0Helen Shen<\/a>\u00a0in the News Blog:<\/a><\/p>\n

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{credit}A Eunuch's Dream by Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nou\u00ff, via Wikimedia Commons{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

Traumatic memories can be manipulated in sleeping mice to reduce their fearful responses during waking hours.\u00a0 The finding, announced by\u00a0 Stanford University researchers at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, suggests that sleep-based therapies could provide new options for treating conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have an ethical obligation to study this because PTSD is so hard to treat,\u201d says Daniela Schiller of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, who studies the human neurobiology of fear and was not involved in the study. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely promising,\u201d she says.<\/em><\/p>\n

Learn more about this research in Helen’s report.<\/a><\/p>\n

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{credit}NASA\/JPL{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Could a moon of Uranus harbour an underground ocean?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ron Cowen reveals in the News Blog,<\/a>\u00a0planetary scientists Elizabeth Turtle of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and Julie Castillo-Rogez of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are turning their eyes to a distant Solar System locale: Ariel, a moon of Uranus that they think could also\u00a0harbour an underground ocean<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In a presentation at a meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences in Reno, Nevada, Turtle and Castillo-Rogez calculate that tidal heating \u2014 the flexing of Ariel owing to the gravitational tug of other moons \u2014 is five times greater on Ariel than Enceladus. In addition, both moons contain a relatively large amount of rock, which generates heat through the decay of radioactive elements within it. Heat from the rock would increase the internal temperature of Ariel to the point where ice would be soft enough to respond to tidal flexing, Castillo-Rogez says. Although the Uranian system is colder than of Saturn system, the Uranian moons are more likely to have captured impurities that would decrease the melting temperature of ice, Castillo-Rogez notes.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More about this research in Ron’s post.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Finding Ada<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tuesday was Ada Lovelace Day, and if you don\u2019t know who Ada is, you can check out\u00a0Suzi Gage’s<\/a>\u00a0post <\/a>over at SciLogs:<\/p>\n

\u00a0…if you don\u2019t know who Ada is, now\u2019s the day to do some digging and find out (I\u2019d recommend starting\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>). A website called \u2018Finding Ada<\/a>\u2019 is asking people to share their stories of the women who inspired them, after psychologist Penelope Lockwood\u2019s research suggested that role models can be gender specific. Ada Lovelace Day is an attempt to collect together stories of inspiring unsung women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM subjects) and share them.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Continue to Suzi’s post <\/a>to hear about the women who have inspired her.<\/p>\n

A tool to quantify consciousness?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"

A Young Woman Asleep In A Chair by Louise-Catherine Breslau (1856-1927)<\/p><\/div>\n

Helen Shen<\/a>\u00a0explains in the News Blog<\/a>, assessing consciousness may seem like the ultimate exercise in subjectivity, but some researchers are moving closer to what they call an objective measure:<\/p>\n

To derive a numerical measure of consciousness, Boly and her colleagues pulsed subjects\u2019 heads with a brief electromagnetic wave, then measured neural responses using electrodes stuck to the scalp.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 32 healthy, awake people, the electromagnetic impulse sent complex patterns of electrical activity reverberating throughout the brain. In healthy sleeping people, or people under general anaesthesia, the brain displayed shorter, simpler responses that stayed closer to the site of the initial stimulation. The researchers quantified these differences in a measure of response complexity.<\/em><\/p>\n

In six patients diagnosed as vegetative, the electromagnetic pulse elicited responses with complexity indices similar to those in sleeping or anaesthetized healthy subjects. Twelve minimally conscious patients showed slightly more complex responses. And two \u2018locked-in\u2019 patients \u2014 people who are fully conscious but unable to move or communicate \u2014 showed complexity indices similar to healthy, awake subjects.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What does the future hold for this type of research? Find out more in Helen’s post.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Fukushima Dogs Had Symptoms Comparable To Post-traumatic Stress Disorder<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over at Scitable,\u00a0Khalil A. Cassimally<\/a>\u00a0talks about the after effects of the Fukushima meltdown on local dogs:<\/p>\n

\"\"On 11 March 2011, a major earthquake and the subsequent 15-m tsunami it spurred, caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan. The\u00a0trident of disasters<\/a>\u00a0resulted in the\u00a0evacuation<\/a>\u00a0of 160,000 people within a 50-km radius of the site, leaving the villages as apocalyptic deserts. While the cries and tears of men receded, the howls of\u00a0nearly 6000 abandonned pet dogs<\/a>\u00a0lingered on, unheard by their evacuated families.<\/em><\/p>\n

A\u00a0new study<\/a>\u00a0published in\u00a0Scientific Reports, now reveals, for the first time, the extent of suffering endured by those Fukushima dogs. Researchers at Azabu University in Japan compared the behavior of dogs rescued from disaster-hit Fukushima to dogs from the non-affected Kanagawa district. They showed that dogs rescued from Fukushima were seemingly repressed. They were less aggressive toward unfamiliar people and dogs, were more difficult to train and showed less attachment to people.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Challenging the integrity of research<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stories of scientific misconduct, from plagiarism to falsification and fabrication of results\u00a0are on the rise<\/a>, reports\u00a0Catherine de Lange<\/a>\u00a0in the Nature Jobs blog:\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

What leads scientists to make such poor judgements when it comes to their work? And how can you make sure you carry out your research with integrity? For instance, you might not make up your results \u2013 but what if you fail to record your data properly making your research hard to replicate? And how bad is it to plagiarise your own work, seeing as you wrote it in the first place?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
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{credit}ISTOCKPHOTO\/THINKSTOCK{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

These are questions tackled by a new report on responsible research conduct, published today by theInterAcademy Council<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0IAP<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 the global network of science academies. The\u00a0 report examines how scientists can uphold values vital for\u00a0 science in an increasingly pressurised research environment.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Continue to\u00a0Catherine’s report <\/a>to hear more on the subject.<\/p>\n

SpotOn NYC, Open Access and Cakes<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Thursday evening, we hosted the\u00a0fifteenth installment\u00a0<\/a>of the monthly SpotOn (formerly\u00a0Science Online) NYC\u00a0discussion series. This month\u2019s event was extra special as it was our first outing under our new name and there were cupcakes \u00a0on offer to celebrate!\u00a0(For more details on the renaming, check out the info\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0The hashtag for these events remains\u00a0#sonyc<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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{credit}Lou Woodley{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

This month\u2019s topic for discussion was, \u201cWhat\u2019s holding up open access?\u201d In\u00a0preparation,\u00a0we ran a series of guest posts on the\u00a0SpotOn blog<\/a>,\u00a0 hearing from scientists, publishers and communicators, about whether opening up the publishing process at an earlier stage could be good for science and how open access may be of benefit to those working in developing countries. The conversations were also shared online using the #OAontheway <\/a>hashtag.\u00a0You can now find the livestream archive on the event\u2019s page\u00a0here<\/a>. Make sure you check out the Storify <\/a>too, collating the online talk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To sleep, perchance to forget fears  … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-round-up"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ofschemesandmemes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ofschemesandmemes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ofschemesandmemes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ofschemesandmemes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ofschemesandmemes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ofschemesandmemes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ofschemesandmemes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ofschemesandmemes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/ofschemesandmemes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}