Ron Leuty at The San Francisco Business Times interviewed me last week and the result was the following pithy article: Neuroscience organization bets big in capital: Industry group seeks $200M to research brain abnormalities

A young, San Francisco-based trade organization representing neuroscience companies has lined up companies nationally and heavy hitters in the nation's capital to lobby for a $200 million superfund to help bring products to market for brain and nervous system diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to insomnia.

The 17-month-old Neurotechnology Industry Organization is working with Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP -- the New York law firm also known as K&L Gates, as in William Gates Sr., the father of Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates -- to push its plan in Washington, D.C.

The NIO's five-part plan, dubbed a "Human Genome Project for the brain" by Executive Director Zack Lynch, would earmark:

* $80 million for the National Institutes of Health's "Blueprint for Neuroscience Research," developed by 16 institutes that offer grants for neuroscience issues ranging from depression and Parkinson's Disease to spinal cord research and traumatic brain injury;
* $75 million to the NIH's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs for neuroscience startups and research;
* $30 million to increase staffing and training at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reduce a regulatory bottleneck that has delayed approval of some therapies;
* $10 million a year for studying the societal implications -- including ethical and legal questions -- of advancing neurotechnologies; and
* $5 million annually for a national neurotechnology coordination office to aggregate what federal agencies as diverse as the NIH and the Department of Defense are doing in neurotech.

The plan would accelerate bringing neuroscience innovations to patient bedsides, Lynch said. Parts of the program, like SBIR and STTR, also would help create new companies in neurotech centers like the Bay Area, Lynch said.

We all know body painting is not a new art. Rather it is an art form, which has been in existence since a long time in history. However this is a growing trend these days. Even the youngsters also want to paint their body. For some artists human body is the canvas on which they express their artistic talent by dots, lines, and swirls of paint. They create a plethora of images on the human body. Generally the patterns drawn are the products of their imagination, some of them from tribal art, natural forms, some of them are abstract forms. The materials used for body painting are of various types and using them the painters can express their art.

Most people do not want to do any permanent painting like tattoos; they just want body painting, which is a temporary art form and normally last for a few hours or days. Those who love body painting can do it themselves at their home using several materials. While choosing materials used for body painting you have to be very careful. Because all body-painting materials are not good, some materials can damage your skin.

You can see there are various types of body painting such as traditional body painting, modern body painting, fine art of body painting and more. For various types of paintings there are also several materials used for body painting. Traditional body painting has been widespread in many ancient cultures. In this type of body painting people use dust or sand to create their magic paint in the body, they are also known to use natural dyes, pigments, ash and clay.

Mehndi is also a traditional body painting material. Generally in India it is used for any traditional occasion like wedding ceremony. For mehndi people use leaves from particular mehndi tree and make a paste to paint in their hands or legs. Modern body painting is the liberalization of thought and expression of cultural freedom, especially in nudity. This is becoming a popular art in the United States and in Europe. Materials used for body painting have become costly now and are in high demand in the US and Europe. In these places a lot of people regularly attend body-painting festivals.

In fine art of body painting, a wide range of ideas are taken from various sources like alternative art, fine arts, rune, mythologies, and even current affairs. People can use these paintings in any occasions or events like sports events such as soccer or cricket, or in any political protest movements. There are several materials used for body painting for this as well. You can use multi-hued colors or single color depending on your paints. Normally the paints are applied by using paintbrushes, natural sea sponges, airbrushes, or just by the fingers and hands.

You should be very careful on materials used for body painting. Always use natural eco-friendly colors, and make sure that the instruments of painting are properly cleaned. But these days the paints that are used are non-allergic, non toxic and easily removable. Always check colors before you apply on your body.

Body Piercing has become very stylish, fashionable and trendy these days. It refers to the piercing of different body parts for the purpose of wearing jewelry. Body piercing can be done on different body parts like around and inside the ear, eyebrow, nostril, lips, tongue, nipple, and on the navel point. Body Piercing is a very ancient body art. Nose piercing is very popular among women. But with the growing craze for piercing, people are piercing almost anywhere in their body. Piercing the unusual body parts has become the obsession. They do this just to express their attitude, passion, craziness and some times their sexual preferences.

Some people do piercing for some religious or other cultural reasons, but these days body piercing has become one of the most favorite styling accessories and fashion statements for the teens. Piercing of the body parts have reached this height of popularity because of the western rappers, hard rock band and heavy metal band members who adopted this form of style. Before this it was also famous with the hippie community.

The whole procedure of piercing body part is very painful but the youngsters are least bothered about the pain and can compromise anything for style. There are mainly three basic points for piercing. They are as follows:

Soft Tissues: These are the most common tissues where the body piercing is mainly done. The part like ear lobe has soft tissues. This type of area is quite easy to pierce.

Cartilage: This includes the body parts like nose and the ear above the lobe. Septum piercing is not exactly located on the cartilage, but it happens through the small area of the skin between the front and the back cartilage part. You cannot get longer cartilage piercing.

Surface-to-Surface: This type of body piercing is generally placed on the same plane, like on the throat, navel point etc. You can use a ring or bar in this type of piercing. This type of piercing requires extra care, especially the throat.

While piercing your body, you should follow a few certain guidelines. Like always pierce your body with the help of a trained professional. Always use metals like gold and silver to pierce your skin, a low quality metal could affect your skin and may cause infection on the pierced part of your body. After piercing, always keep those parts away from alcohol and petroleum products as this could also cause infection in the pierced part. You should not try to change the ring at least for the first month, as this could hurt your pierced part.

Clean your pierced body part regularly, at least for 3 times a day. Never ever use mouthwash for oral piercing, as it could turn very dangerous if the mouthwash reacts with the metal. Do not use soap or other antibacterial agents immediately after body piercing. A normal healthy person should not need antiseptics to care for their piercing. The body’s immune system is perfectly capable of preventing infection for a body piercing.

Diet and lifestyle may play a much more significant role in a persons ability to respond favourably to certain drugs, including some cancer therapies, than previously understood, say scientists.

Writing in Nature Genetics, University of Manchester scientists have shown how the nutrients in the environment are critical to the fitness of cells that carry genetic mutations caused by diseases.

The findings for the first time provide a scientific insight into why some people might respond better to certain medications than others and form the foundations for more individualised drug treatment in the future.

The team used bakers yeast a model organism studied by biologists to reveal molecular processes in higher organisms to explore the relationship between environment and genetic background.

The large-scale study involved removing one of the two copies of all yeast genes similar to removing one parents set of genes in a human and analysing the resulting fitness under different dietary restrictions.

If the gene targeted is quantitatively important, you would normally expect the yeast to show a reduction in fitness, said Dr Daniela Delneri, who carried out the research in the Universitys Faculty of Life Sciences.

But what we found was that in certain environmental conditions, removing one copy of certain genes actually produced the opposite effect and surprisingly the yeast cells grew more quickly and were healthier.

The team further established that this effect was mainly occurring in genes involved in the proteasome the quality-control system within the cell that degrades unwanted proteins.

The proteasome is important as it maintains the equilibrium of the cell, said Dr Delneri. When this equilibrium is lost it can result in many diseases, including cancer, diabetes, Huntingdons, Alzheimers and Parkinsons.

For example, in rapidly-growing malignant cells the high proteasome activity renders the tumour cells immortal, so drugs that block or inhibit the proteasomes actions are currently used as therapeutic compounds.

Our study shows that reduced proteasome activity could be either advantageous or damaging to the cell depending on the nutrients available to it in the surrounding environment.

The findings suggest that, ideally, when therapeutic drugs are administered to alter the proteasome activity, the environment governed by the type of tissue or a persons diet and lifestyle should be taken into consideration to assure the correct beneficial effect.


Posted by: Evelyn    Source

This Saturday at UC Berkeley the Seventh International Conference on Neuroesthetics will feature renowned scientists discuss the brains responses to identity of faces, social perception, neural basis of facial expression processing and aesthetics of human faces. Talks have the following titles: "Perceiving the Actions, Goals and Intentions of Others: Brain Mechanisms for Social Perception", "Face blindness: the perceptual and neural bases of prosopagnosia", "The Gender, Ethnicity and Individual Identity of Faces", "In the Eye of the Beholder: How Personality Affects the Neural Basis of Facial Expression Processing", "Colour and Aesthetics of Human Faces", "Normal and abnormal face processing in human observers", "Neural basis of face perception in humans", "Make Faces: Automatically Transfer Expressions Between Characters." See you there.