New vaccine for Ebola seems safe and effective.

Here.

For training working memory, run an obstacle course?

Prior studies have shown the benefit of walking and other moderate aerobic exercise programs on verbal memory and other cognition in the elderly. Working memory is usually intact in such subjects, so that the effects on working memory of walking programs are less well documented.

According to this article, working memory benefited from exercise requiring both locomotion and proprioception. This brings up the intriguing possibility of specific exercise programs to retrain specific cognitive deficits. On the critical side, I'd note that the results would have been more robust as specific to activities like climbing if a control group of fast walking or other aerobic program had been done, rather than just classroom and yoga control groups.

ABSTRACT

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Ross G. Alloway and Tracy Packiam Alloway (2015) THE WORKING MEMORY BENEFITS OF PROPRIOCEPTIVELY DEMANDING TRAINING: A PILOT STUDY, . Perceptual and Motor Skills: Volume 120, Issue , pp. 766-775.

doi: 10.2466/22.PMS.120v18x1

THE WORKING MEMORY BENEFITS OF PROPRIOCEPTIVELY DEMANDING TRAINING: A PILOT STUDY1, 2

Ross G. Alloway1 and Tracy Packiam Alloway1 1University of North Florida

Summary.—The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of proprioception on working memory. It was also of interest whether an acute and highly intensive period of exercise would yield working memory gains. The training group completed a series of proprioceptively demanding exercises. There were also control classroom and yoga groups. Working memory was measured using a backward digit recall test. The data indicated that active, healthy adults who undertook acute, proprioceptively demanding training improved working memory scores compared to the classroom and yoga groups. One possible reason that the training yielded significant working memory gains could be that the training was proprioceptively dynamic, requiring proprioception and at least one other factor—such as locomotion or navigation—at the same time, which may have contributed to the improvements in working memory performance.

Hawaiian Reef Photos: 'Alakuma and Humuhumunukunukuapuaʻa

I went snorkeling yesterday with ohana at Two-Step (just beyond the rocks bordering Keone'ele Cove at the north of Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, the old City of Refuge in south Kona district). This spot has some of the best coral formations easily accessible from the shorelines of the Big Island.

The 'Alakuma (Carpilius maculatus) has many common names: spotted reef crab, or the seven-eleven crab from numberings of its spotted markings. From the Hawaiian just-so story of the crab wounding the grasping fingers of a sea-god, it's also been called the bloody finger crab, with its bloodred spots as the god's fingerprints. Some of the locals here claim it can be poisonous to eat, perhaps from its diet of occasionally poisonous cone snails?

The state fish of Hawaii is the Humuhumunukunukuapuaʻa (Rhinecanthus rectangulus), a reef triggerfish with a mouthful of a name.

Sexual Identification: Genotype, Phenotype, and Sociotype

An amazing cuttlefish trick: underwater cross-dressing in body coloration. Wow.

Sexual identity is a cognitive, intentional state about ourselves. Like all intentional states, it may need to be subjected to error correction. On the other hand, the sexual classification of living things is an aspect of biology. In biology, a given organism may be identified as to its gender by genotype (determined mostly by XX versus XY chromosomal analysis in humans, with the usual border cases), or by phenotype (primary and secondary mammalian sexual characteristics in the case of humans).

In humans, the postmodernist conceit that gender is different from the biology of genotype and phenotype suggests that what we need is a sociotype of sex. A sociotype would be male and female as self identified or identified by one's society (for example, the M or F on the driver's license or birth certificate, which is one's legally defined gender).

Denying that biology is destiny here is mere foolish conceit on the part of the postmodernist. It is like saying that the cuttlefish is changing its sex by altering its color patterning. No biologist would agree that it does that.

CSF-Carrying Meningeal Lymphatics Found Running Along Dural Sinuses

Here's another cause for textbook revision in the works. I wonder how far into the pia these lymphatics run in humans? Are they periventricular at all? Perhaps some forms of communicating hydrocephalus will turn out to be a lymphatic drainage disorder.

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ABSTRACT

Structural and functional features of central nervous system lymphatic vessels

Antoine Louveau, Igor Smirnov, Timothy J. Keyes, Jacob D. Eccles, Sherin J. Rouhani, J. David Peske, Noel C. Derecki, David Castle, James W. Mandell, Kevin S. Lee, Tajie H. Harris & Jonathan Kipnis

Nature (2015) doi:10.1038/nature14432

Received 30 October 2014 Accepted 20 March 2015 Published online 01 June 2015

One of the characteristics of the central nervous system is the lack of a classical lymphatic drainage system. Although it is now accepted that the central nervous system undergoes constant immune surveillance that takes place within the meningeal compartment1, 2, 3, the mechanisms governing the entrance and exit of immune cells from the central nervous system remain poorly understood4, 5, 6. In searching for T-cell gateways into and out of the meninges, we discovered functional lymphatic vessels lining the dural sinuses. These structures express all of the molecular hallmarks of lymphatic endothelial cells, are able to carry both fluid and immune cells from the cerebrospinal fluid, and are connected to the deep cervical lymph nodes. The unique location of these vessels may have impeded their discovery to date, thereby contributing to the long-held concept of the absence of lymphatic vasculature in the central nervous system. The discovery of the central nervous system lymphatic system may call for a reassessment of basic assumptions in neuroimmunology and sheds new light on the aetiology of neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases associated with immune system dysfunction.

On the Context Dependence of Qualia

Disjunctive anthropocentric properties can correspond to real causal structures.
--Hilary Putnam (blog posting 2015)

Agreed, but note that variable internal anthopocentric states can determine the details of that genuine correspondence, as we see in The Dress.

Australian Study Shows Angiostrongylus cantonensis Shedding in the Slime of Infected Snails

If this also happens in the Big Island's slugs and snails in the wild, it means that just removing visible debris from garden vegetables is not enough--all such produce should be rinsed and/or peeled well before eating uncooked.

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ABSTRACT

The Prevalence of Angiostrongylus cantonensis/mackerrasae Complex in Molluscs from the Sydney Region

Douglas Chan, Joel Barratt, Tamalee Roberts, Rogan Lee, Michael Shea, Deborah Marriott, John Harkness, Richard Malik, Malcolm Jones, Mahdis Aghazadeh, John Ellis, Damien Stark

Published: May 22, 2015DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0128128

Angiostrongylus cantonensis and Angiostrongylus mackerrasae are metastrongyloid nematodes that infect various rat species. Terrestrial and aquatic molluscs are intermediate hosts of these worms while humans and dogs are accidental hosts. Angiostrongylus cantonensis is the major cause of angiostrongyliasis, a disease characterised by eosinophilic meningitis. Although both A. cantonensis and A. mackerrasae are found in Australia, A. cantonensis appears to account for most infections in humans and animals. Due to the occurrence of several severe clinical cases in Sydney and Brisbane, the need for epidemiological studies on angiostrongyliasis in this region has become apparent. In the present study, a conventional PCR and a TaqMan assay were compared for their ability to amplify Angiostrongylus DNA from DNA extracted from molluscs. The TaqMan assay was more sensitive, capable of detecting the DNA equivalent to one hundredth of a nematode larva. Therefore, the TaqMan assay was used to screen molluscs (n=500) of 14 species collected from the Sydney region. Angiostrongylus DNA was detected in 2 of the 14 mollusc species; Cornu aspersum [14/312 (4.5%)], and Bradybaenia similaris [1/10 (10%)], which are non-native terrestrial snails commonly found in urban habitats. The prevalence of Angiostrongylus spp. was 3.0% ± 0.8% (CI 95%). Additionally, experimentally infected Austropeplea lessoni snails shed A. cantonensis larvae in their mucus, implicating mucus as a source of infection. This is the first Australian study to survey molluscs using real-time PCR and confirms that the garden snail, C. aspersum, is a common intermediate host for Angiostrongylus spp. in Sydney.