Recent tests have shown that a brain-eating amoeba is in Tucson's water supply, but experts say the microscopic bug doesn't pose any health risks.
Tucson Water chlorinates its well water before distribution, killing the amoeba known as Naegleria fowleri before the water hits taps. But the amoeba's presence in our underground water source _ probably as a result of biodegradable oil used in pumps _ is a surprise to some researchers. The amoeba is usually found in surface water such as rivers and lakes.
"The organism is everywhere," said Charles Gerba, a microbiology professor with the University of Arizona's Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science. "It feeds on bacteria."
Naegleria fowleri made headlines recently when it killed a 14-year-old boy who had gone swimming in Lake Havasu last month.
The amoebas enter the body through the nose and travel to the brain, where they feed until the person dies. The only way to get infected is to snort water. A person can drink water that has Naegleria fowleri and never be infected.
The amoeba lives in soil and is often present in warm bodies of water, particularly hot springs and lakes. Pools, if not chlorinated properly, can become homes to the microbes Tucson Water joined Maricopa County cities in a study of well water in 2005 to determine the amoeba's presence in drinking water and develop treatment to eliminate any potential health risks.
The study, which is being led by Gerba, was sparked, in part, by the deaths of two Peoria boys in 2002 from the organism.
Gerba and others sampled 35 Tucson Water wells and initially found some presence of the bug in 12 of the wells. Those 12 wells were resampled and five were confirmed to have the bug.
A year passed, and the 12 wells were sampled again. Eleven came out clean, and one well needs to be resampled because of an error, Gerba said, adding that the inconsistency in testing is common with Naegleria.
While Tucson Water chlorinates its groundwater before distribution, Gerba said he was concerned about private wells that aren't necessarily chlorinated.
There were roughly 250 private wells in the greater Tucson area in 2004, state records show. Researchers also sampled 20 private wells, but they found no presence of Naegleria.
The discrepancy has led Gerba to think Naegleria fowleri is showing up in the Tucson Water wells because of biodegradable oil that's used as a lubricant for pumps.
Pumping capacity in private wells is much smaller, and, as such, the pumps don't rely on engines, he said.
Naegleria was discovered in the 1960s and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have tracked only several hundred cases worldwide.
Between 1995 and 2004, 23 people in the United States were infected by Naegleria fowleri, according to the CDC.
Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
" The Puzzle of Hidden Ability"
By Sharon Begley / Newsweek
Even their parents struggle to draw the tiniest hint of emotion or social connection from autistic children, so imagine what happens when a stranger sits with the child for hours to get through the standard IQ test. For 10 of the test's 12 sections, the child must listen and respond to spoken questions. Since for many autistics it is torture to try to engage with someone even on this impersonal level, it's no wonder so many wind up with IQ scores just above a carrot's (I wish I were exaggerating; 20s are not unknown). More precisely, fully three quarters of autistics are classified as having below-normal intelligence, with many deemed mentally retarded.
It's finally dawning on scientists that there's a problem here. Testing autistic kids' intelligence in a way that requires them to engage with a stranger "is like giving a blind person an intelligence test that requires him to process visual information," says Michelle Dawson of Rivière-des-Prairies Hospital in Montreal. She and colleagues therefore tried a different IQ test, one that requires no social interaction. As they report in the journal Psychological Science, autistic children's scores came out starkly different than on the oral, interactive IQ test—suggesting a burning intelligence inside these kids that educators are failing to uncover.
That failure has lifelong implications. "If we label these children as below-normal in intelligence, that is how they're treated," says Laurent Mottron, who led the study. The disparity between scores on the two IQ tests also makes you wonder who else the tests, which are used for everything from screening military recruits to filling "gifted" classes, are mislabeling.
For the study, children took two IQ tests. In the more widely used Wechsler, they tried to arrange and complete pictures, do simple arithmetic, demonstrate vocabulary comprehension and answer questions such as what to do if you find a wallet on the street—almost all in response to a stranger's questions. In the Raven's Progressive Matrices test, they got brief instructions, then went off on their own to analyze three-by-three arrays of geometric designs, with one missing, and choose (from six or eight possibilities) the design that belonged in the empty place. The disparity in scores was striking. One autistic child's Wechsler result meant he was mentally retarded (an IQ below 70); his Raven's put him in the 94th percentile. Overall, the autistics (all had full-blown autism, not Asperger's) scored around the 30th percentile on the Wechsler, which corresponds to "low average" IQ. But they averaged in the 56th percentile on the Raven's. Not a single autistic child scored in the "high intelligence" range on the Wechsler; on the Raven's, one third did. Healthy children showed no such disparity.
The Wechsler measures "crystallized intelligence"—what you've learned. The Raven's measures "fluid intelligence"—the ability to learn, process information, ignore distractions, solve problems and reason—and so is arguably a truer measure of intelligence, says psychologist Steven Stemler of Wesleyan University.
That presents a puzzle. If many autistics are more intelligent than an IQ test shows, why haven't their parents noticed? Partly because many parents welcome a low score, which brings their child more special services from schools and public agencies, says one scientist who has an autistic son (and who fears that being named would antagonize the close-knit autism community). But another force is at work. "We often think of intelligence as what you can show, such as by speaking fluently," says psychologist Morton Ann Gernsbacher of the University of Wisconsin. "Parents as well as professionals might be biased to look at that" rather than dig for the hidden intellectual spark.
The challenge is to coax that spark into the kind of intelligence that manifests itself in practice. That is something autism researchers are far from doing. Worse, much of the expert advice might be counterproductive. Many experts dismiss autistics' exceptional reading, artistic or other abilities as side effects of abnormal brain function, "not a reflection of genuine human intelligence, which it is likely to be," says Mottron. They advise parents to steer their child away from what he excels at and obsesses over, such as letters and words and details, and toward what he struggles with, such as faces and the big picture. Dawson, who is autistic, thinks that's a prescription for intellectual failure; autistics should be encouraged to build on their strengths, as everyone else is. The problem of a lurking intelligence that won't be coaxed out by the usual education and parenting methods is not necessarily unique to autistics. It makes you wonder how many other children, whose intellectual potential we're too blind to see, we've also given up on.
Even their parents struggle to draw the tiniest hint of emotion or social connection from autistic children, so imagine what happens when a stranger sits with the child for hours to get through the standard IQ test. For 10 of the test's 12 sections, the child must listen and respond to spoken questions. Since for many autistics it is torture to try to engage with someone even on this impersonal level, it's no wonder so many wind up with IQ scores just above a carrot's (I wish I were exaggerating; 20s are not unknown). More precisely, fully three quarters of autistics are classified as having below-normal intelligence, with many deemed mentally retarded.
It's finally dawning on scientists that there's a problem here. Testing autistic kids' intelligence in a way that requires them to engage with a stranger "is like giving a blind person an intelligence test that requires him to process visual information," says Michelle Dawson of Rivière-des-Prairies Hospital in Montreal. She and colleagues therefore tried a different IQ test, one that requires no social interaction. As they report in the journal Psychological Science, autistic children's scores came out starkly different than on the oral, interactive IQ test—suggesting a burning intelligence inside these kids that educators are failing to uncover.
That failure has lifelong implications. "If we label these children as below-normal in intelligence, that is how they're treated," says Laurent Mottron, who led the study. The disparity between scores on the two IQ tests also makes you wonder who else the tests, which are used for everything from screening military recruits to filling "gifted" classes, are mislabeling.
For the study, children took two IQ tests. In the more widely used Wechsler, they tried to arrange and complete pictures, do simple arithmetic, demonstrate vocabulary comprehension and answer questions such as what to do if you find a wallet on the street—almost all in response to a stranger's questions. In the Raven's Progressive Matrices test, they got brief instructions, then went off on their own to analyze three-by-three arrays of geometric designs, with one missing, and choose (from six or eight possibilities) the design that belonged in the empty place. The disparity in scores was striking. One autistic child's Wechsler result meant he was mentally retarded (an IQ below 70); his Raven's put him in the 94th percentile. Overall, the autistics (all had full-blown autism, not Asperger's) scored around the 30th percentile on the Wechsler, which corresponds to "low average" IQ. But they averaged in the 56th percentile on the Raven's. Not a single autistic child scored in the "high intelligence" range on the Wechsler; on the Raven's, one third did. Healthy children showed no such disparity.
The Wechsler measures "crystallized intelligence"—what you've learned. The Raven's measures "fluid intelligence"—the ability to learn, process information, ignore distractions, solve problems and reason—and so is arguably a truer measure of intelligence, says psychologist Steven Stemler of Wesleyan University.
That presents a puzzle. If many autistics are more intelligent than an IQ test shows, why haven't their parents noticed? Partly because many parents welcome a low score, which brings their child more special services from schools and public agencies, says one scientist who has an autistic son (and who fears that being named would antagonize the close-knit autism community). But another force is at work. "We often think of intelligence as what you can show, such as by speaking fluently," says psychologist Morton Ann Gernsbacher of the University of Wisconsin. "Parents as well as professionals might be biased to look at that" rather than dig for the hidden intellectual spark.
The challenge is to coax that spark into the kind of intelligence that manifests itself in practice. That is something autism researchers are far from doing. Worse, much of the expert advice might be counterproductive. Many experts dismiss autistics' exceptional reading, artistic or other abilities as side effects of abnormal brain function, "not a reflection of genuine human intelligence, which it is likely to be," says Mottron. They advise parents to steer their child away from what he excels at and obsesses over, such as letters and words and details, and toward what he struggles with, such as faces and the big picture. Dawson, who is autistic, thinks that's a prescription for intellectual failure; autistics should be encouraged to build on their strengths, as everyone else is. The problem of a lurking intelligence that won't be coaxed out by the usual education and parenting methods is not necessarily unique to autistics. It makes you wonder how many other children, whose intellectual potential we're too blind to see, we've also given up on.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
"The brain scan that can read people's intentions"
A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act.
The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.
The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way.
"Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there's no way you could possibly tell is in there. It's like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall," said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, who led the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University.
The research builds on a series of recent studies in which brain imaging has been used to identify tell-tale activity linked to lying, violent behaviour and racial prejudice.
The latest work reveals the dramatic pace at which neuroscience is progressing, prompting the researchers to call for an urgent debate into the ethical issues surrounding future uses for the technology. If brain-reading can be refined, it could quickly be adopted to assist interrogations of criminals and terrorists, and even usher in a "Minority Report" era (as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg science fiction film of that name), where judgments are handed down before the law is broken on the strength of an incriminating brain scan.
"These techniques are emerging and we need an ethical debate about the implications, so that one day we're not surprised and overwhelmed and caught on the wrong foot by what they can do. These things are going to come to us in the next few years and we should really be prepared," Professor Haynes told the Guardian.
The use of brain scanners to judge whether people are likely to commit crimes is a contentious issue that society should tackle now, according to Prof Haynes. "We see the danger that this might become compulsory one day, but we have to be aware that if we prohibit it, we are also denying people who aren't going to commit any crime the possibility of proving their innocence."...
The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.
The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way.
"Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there's no way you could possibly tell is in there. It's like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall," said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, who led the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University.
The research builds on a series of recent studies in which brain imaging has been used to identify tell-tale activity linked to lying, violent behaviour and racial prejudice.
The latest work reveals the dramatic pace at which neuroscience is progressing, prompting the researchers to call for an urgent debate into the ethical issues surrounding future uses for the technology. If brain-reading can be refined, it could quickly be adopted to assist interrogations of criminals and terrorists, and even usher in a "Minority Report" era (as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg science fiction film of that name), where judgments are handed down before the law is broken on the strength of an incriminating brain scan.
"These techniques are emerging and we need an ethical debate about the implications, so that one day we're not surprised and overwhelmed and caught on the wrong foot by what they can do. These things are going to come to us in the next few years and we should really be prepared," Professor Haynes told the Guardian.
The use of brain scanners to judge whether people are likely to commit crimes is a contentious issue that society should tackle now, according to Prof Haynes. "We see the danger that this might become compulsory one day, but we have to be aware that if we prohibit it, we are also denying people who aren't going to commit any crime the possibility of proving their innocence."...
Monday, February 05, 2007
"Throw a Bucket of Ice Water on Your Brain"
Theater Review from the New York Times:
WAKE UP MR. SLEEPY! YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND IS DEAD!
[Written, directed and designed by Richard Foreman. Presented by the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, Mr. Foreman, artistic director; Shannon Sindelar, managing director. At the Ontological Theater at St. Mark’s Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village; (212) 352-3101. Through April 1.]
Those among you who presume you are still alive might be interested to know that Richard Foreman is throwing a funeral for you at the Ontological Theater at St. Mark’s Church....
“Wake Up” is Mr. Foreman’s second film-theater hybrid. Even more than his first, “Zomboid!,” presented last year, it shows how this priest of the theater has embraced his old adversary only to disarm it. Mr. Foreman creates beautiful filmic pictures for his audience’s consumption. But he refuses to let us wallow in them.
The theory at work would seem to be that we have come to trust too much in the surfaces of artfully arranged pictures and information. Hooking the mind to such surfaces, Mr. Foreman says, is fatal to the unconscious. (“When the world sees itself, it doesn’t,” says a line from the script.) While “Wake Up” is clearly a bid to resurrect theatergoers’ deeper imaginations, the elegiac undercurrent that courses through the show suggests its creator worries that he may be too late.
As usual Mr. Foreman has converted the pocket stage at St. Mark’s into a three-dimensional version of the puzzle drawings in children’s magazines in which objects are hidden in dense mazes of images. The not-so-still-life of the set (everything seems to keep moving, even when it’s not) includes a boxing ring, veiled mannequin heads, books that appear to be climbing the walls, funereal vases of flowers and a propeller airplane with a cargo of plastic baby dolls.
Though the five live performers onstage (four clad in sinister regulation black, one dressed as an aviator) would seem to have plenty to occupy them in this attic of the mind, they are inextricably drawn to the outsized filmed images that hover behind them. And why shouldn’t they be? The people in the film, which was shot in Lisbon, are elegant, cryptic, depressive souls who speak in riddles, bringing to mind the chic denizens of European art-house films from the early 1960s.
As anyone knows who has spent time amid the animated billboards of Times Square, most people — given a choice between looking at life on a screen or at the real thing — will choose to watch the screen. So with “Wake Up,” one’s (shameful) instinct is just to sink into the movie.
No chance of that, though. Mr. Foreman periodically brightens the stage lights to the point that the filmed images bleach into nothingness. Sometimes question marks or X’s cover the faces of the speakers. The live performers open panels in the movie screen, revealing electric candles within.
This constant shifting of attention between two artistic worlds keeps you in a state of perceptual anxiety. Every time you are forced to refocus, whatever you see appears to be freshly reconceived. Despite the fuguelike repetition of images, sounds and words on and off screen, nothing feels fixed.
“Zip between this,” says a voice, “always double procedure.” I can’t remember who said that, whether it was a live performer or a film actor or one of those deep, disembodied voices. The line is typical, though, of the hortatory text, which seems to be trying to rally its audience into rebellion against complacency.
“Here is a world trying to run faster than the unconscious mind,” says the voice (Mr. Foreman’s, as it happens). The actors in the film, whose heads are often covered in newspaper shrouds, keep repeating the words “Maybe it will happen in my lifetime.” Is this the voice of hope or despair? It’s worth noting that they are also given to intoning, “Tick tock, tick tock; it’s broken and it can’t be fixed.”
Both sets of actors have a tendency to fall down, which is always true in Mr. Foreman’s productions. They also all brandish cards, plates, pointers and knives, which they hold suspensefully above their wrists, as if on the brink of suicide. The most haunting filmed images show women, stretched out on tables, who appear to be dead.
You’ll be happy to hear that these women’s eyes eventually flutter open. An optimist could say that Mr. Foreman is portraying a rebirth of unconsciousness — a dying that is actually, as the title promises, a reawakening.
Maybe. But as exhilarating as “Wake Up” is, it is also steeped in melancholy. Usually with Mr. Foreman, snatches of music summon the comic frenzy of silent movies. This time the aural backdrop is darker: a mixture of ringing cellphones, a wandering plaintive soprano and a hushed percussive beat that suggests an advancing army. “It can’t be fixed” is the mantra that stuck in my head.
But that’s probably just my unconscious mind talking. (Yours may have a different opinion.) Hey, that means it’s not dead after all. Mr. Foreman appears to have done his job.
WAKE UP MR. SLEEPY! YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND IS DEAD!
[Written, directed and designed by Richard Foreman. Presented by the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, Mr. Foreman, artistic director; Shannon Sindelar, managing director. At the Ontological Theater at St. Mark’s Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village; (212) 352-3101. Through April 1.]
Those among you who presume you are still alive might be interested to know that Richard Foreman is throwing a funeral for you at the Ontological Theater at St. Mark’s Church....
“Wake Up” is Mr. Foreman’s second film-theater hybrid. Even more than his first, “Zomboid!,” presented last year, it shows how this priest of the theater has embraced his old adversary only to disarm it. Mr. Foreman creates beautiful filmic pictures for his audience’s consumption. But he refuses to let us wallow in them.
The theory at work would seem to be that we have come to trust too much in the surfaces of artfully arranged pictures and information. Hooking the mind to such surfaces, Mr. Foreman says, is fatal to the unconscious. (“When the world sees itself, it doesn’t,” says a line from the script.) While “Wake Up” is clearly a bid to resurrect theatergoers’ deeper imaginations, the elegiac undercurrent that courses through the show suggests its creator worries that he may be too late.
As usual Mr. Foreman has converted the pocket stage at St. Mark’s into a three-dimensional version of the puzzle drawings in children’s magazines in which objects are hidden in dense mazes of images. The not-so-still-life of the set (everything seems to keep moving, even when it’s not) includes a boxing ring, veiled mannequin heads, books that appear to be climbing the walls, funereal vases of flowers and a propeller airplane with a cargo of plastic baby dolls.
Though the five live performers onstage (four clad in sinister regulation black, one dressed as an aviator) would seem to have plenty to occupy them in this attic of the mind, they are inextricably drawn to the outsized filmed images that hover behind them. And why shouldn’t they be? The people in the film, which was shot in Lisbon, are elegant, cryptic, depressive souls who speak in riddles, bringing to mind the chic denizens of European art-house films from the early 1960s.
As anyone knows who has spent time amid the animated billboards of Times Square, most people — given a choice between looking at life on a screen or at the real thing — will choose to watch the screen. So with “Wake Up,” one’s (shameful) instinct is just to sink into the movie.
No chance of that, though. Mr. Foreman periodically brightens the stage lights to the point that the filmed images bleach into nothingness. Sometimes question marks or X’s cover the faces of the speakers. The live performers open panels in the movie screen, revealing electric candles within.
This constant shifting of attention between two artistic worlds keeps you in a state of perceptual anxiety. Every time you are forced to refocus, whatever you see appears to be freshly reconceived. Despite the fuguelike repetition of images, sounds and words on and off screen, nothing feels fixed.
“Zip between this,” says a voice, “always double procedure.” I can’t remember who said that, whether it was a live performer or a film actor or one of those deep, disembodied voices. The line is typical, though, of the hortatory text, which seems to be trying to rally its audience into rebellion against complacency.
“Here is a world trying to run faster than the unconscious mind,” says the voice (Mr. Foreman’s, as it happens). The actors in the film, whose heads are often covered in newspaper shrouds, keep repeating the words “Maybe it will happen in my lifetime.” Is this the voice of hope or despair? It’s worth noting that they are also given to intoning, “Tick tock, tick tock; it’s broken and it can’t be fixed.”
Both sets of actors have a tendency to fall down, which is always true in Mr. Foreman’s productions. They also all brandish cards, plates, pointers and knives, which they hold suspensefully above their wrists, as if on the brink of suicide. The most haunting filmed images show women, stretched out on tables, who appear to be dead.
You’ll be happy to hear that these women’s eyes eventually flutter open. An optimist could say that Mr. Foreman is portraying a rebirth of unconsciousness — a dying that is actually, as the title promises, a reawakening.
Maybe. But as exhilarating as “Wake Up” is, it is also steeped in melancholy. Usually with Mr. Foreman, snatches of music summon the comic frenzy of silent movies. This time the aural backdrop is darker: a mixture of ringing cellphones, a wandering plaintive soprano and a hushed percussive beat that suggests an advancing army. “It can’t be fixed” is the mantra that stuck in my head.
But that’s probably just my unconscious mind talking. (Yours may have a different opinion.) Hey, that means it’s not dead after all. Mr. Foreman appears to have done his job.
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