Learned helplessness

Recently I have moved to Pune, India. And at our very new, baby insitute, we have been having some wonderful, quirky and insightful lectures. Every week atleast one!
Last week was the turn of a neurobiologist who works on conciousness, free will and genetics. He uses the fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster, and demonstrated in a heat box experiment the process of "learned helplessness". Conceptually easy- the fly is in a box, which can be heated. And a computer monitors the activity of the fly. The moment is stands still, the temperature is raised to uncomfortable levels till the fly moves again.
The fly can and does learn that its better for it to keep moving if it doesn't want to be punished.

At the same time another fly is in a separate heat box, which however is controlled by the same pulses of heating as the first. However the behaviour of the first fly determines when the heat pulse is given to both. As a consequence the second fly learns over time, that no matter how it changes its behaviour, it will not improve its own lot. And it gives up trying- Learned Helplessness!

So elegant. And Prozac can reverse it! Something to think about!

REFERENCE:


Memories in Drosophila Heat-box Learning

Gabriele Putz and Martin Heisenberg
Lehrstuhl für Genetik und Neurobiologie, Biozentrum, Am Hubland, D97074, Wuerzburg, Germany

Learning and memory processes of operant conditioning in the heat-box are analyzed. In a search for
conditioning parameters leading to high retention scores, intermittent training is shown to give better results
than those of continuous training. Immediate retention tests contain two memory components, a spatial
preference for one side of the chamber and a “stay-where-you-are-effect.” Intermittent training strengthens the
latter. In the second part, memory dynamics is investigated. Flies are trained in one chamber and tested in a
second one after a brief reminder training. With this direct transfer, memory scores reflect an associative
learning process in the first chamber. To investigate memory retention after extended time periods, indirect
transfer experiments are performed. The fly is transferred to a different environment between training and
test phases. With this procedure, an aftereffect of the training can still be observed 2 h later. Surprisingly,
exposure to the chamber without conditioning also leads to a memory effect in the indirect transfer
experiment. This exposure effect reveals a dispositional change that facilitates operant learning during the
reminder training. The various memory effects are independent of the mushroom bodies.

Home Cooking in Pune- sometimes marathi, sometimes german, sometimes...

Since an old friend asked I thought I'd put this out there for those of you who want to use/tweak or simply remember a simple and yet tasty dish- palak raita.

Palak cha raita
Ingredients
~10 leaves of palak washed

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 green chilly

~ 300 ml home-made (natural/bio) dahi (yoghurt)

salt to taste

Method (or protocol?)

1) Pressure cook the spinach leaves (2-3 whistles)

2) Allow to cool and add dahi and stir

3) Hand grind the mustard seeds and whip with some dahi

4) Add the mustard-dahi mix and length sliced chilly made into 4-5 pieces

Enjoy this as an accompaniment with meat or vegetable dishes and rice/chappatis.

Things to do in Zurich

1. Lenin's house: Spiegelgasse 17.

In Zurich's Spiegelgasse is a house (No. 17) in which Lenin lived in 1917. In this street, too, was the cabaret in which Hans Arp and Tristan Tzara launched the Dadaist movement in 1916.

2. aha- geschenke, objekte, phaenomaene
A toy shop recommended by physicists for holding educational and fun things- all forms of spinning, oscillating and levitating devices. some of the physics is still esoteric enough to merit new work!! (REF: http://www.aha-zurich.ch/)

Oeffnungszeiten/Opening hours:
Tue - Fr 13.00 - 18.30
Sa 11.00 - 16.00

Levitron: the device that balances earths gravitational force with magnetism, and uses centrifugal forces to keep the levitation act on- for a few minutes. HERE is a paper on the theory. Based on the original theory developed by Prof. Sir M.V. Berry as an amusement!! Stumbled upon these nuggets in the library reading this book:

Talking Science

By Adam Hart-Davis

Adam Hart Davis has interviewed some of the most influential scientists and thinkers of our time. In this fascinating insight into modern science he presents the stories behind the science, the difficulties behind the discoveries and the future of the findings, as explained by the people themselves. Adam Hart Davis talks with:- Jocelyn Bell Burnell (Bath, UK) Sir Michael Berry (Bristol, UK) Colleen Cavanaugh (Harvard, US) Richard Dawkins (Oxford, UK) . Loren Graham (MIT, US) Richard Gregory (Bristol, UK) Eric Lander (MIT, US) Lord May of Oxford (UK) John Maynard Smith (Sussex, UK) Rosalind Picard (MIT, US) Peter Raven (St Louis, US) Sir Martin Rees (Cambridge, UK) Eugenie Scott (Oakland, US) Lewis Wolpert (UCL, UK)

(transcript of TV interviews with some of the worlds most renowned scientists, who also do a great job explaining their work- notable Michael Berry, Richard Gregory)

3. Museums
A collective site for all Zurich museums (http://www.museen-zuerich.ch/).
      a) Focus Terra at the ETHZ (Fed. Institute of Tech. Zurich)- geology and physics of the earth (earth science)
      b) Uhrenmuseum Bayer (watch museum Bayer)- for anybody interested (who isn't) in mechanical machines, watches are the superlative. And the Swiss have made themselves a reputation.
     c) Kunsthaus Zurich- art collection from Switzerland from 15-century to modern (from their own website)

E. coli Lives and How

The epidemic of german enterohemmorhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) caused by a sudden spurt in E. coli O157:H7 is bringing an old and venerable model organism back into the spotlight. In my lab, due to serendipty and a thinking project students persistence, we have begun to look at variability in E. coli. And indeed a population level fluctuation in a cell might indeed confer bacteria in general an ability better adapt to their environment, in a shorter time than genetic modifications might.
Why is the german EHEC all of a sudden back in the news. Coming on the back of NDM and the publicity associated with the Metalloprotease resistant E. coli found in patients from India, Pak-i-stan, China, Egypt and many countries apparently caused by sporadic usage of antibiotics, this is quite shocking.
As a basic biologist we are told, E. coli is "done". We can move onto more complex cell types. But I guess its still not "done" as a problem. Not after the initial bacteriological work, not after the genome, proteome and all the other fancy stuff. New insights are beginning (atleast at a semantic level) to question if bacteria can even be treated as single celled organisms. The elaborate chemical communication between cells, appears to be more akin, atleast superficially, to a multi-cellular organism.

Clearly the jury is still out. And more exciting discoveries await those brave enough to go back to the old frontiers. Discovered officially by Theordor Escherisch (in Germany) in 1885. The strains were classified on some features such that:
O: ohne Haut (without a skin/film)
H: Hauch (with a skin/film)
K: Kapsel (with a capsule)


The common lab strain K12 is a capsular bacterium. How EHEC causes its damage we will discuss in the next post, but in a generally hygenic country like germany, the causes of the new epidemic might be interesting to delve into. Summer or no summer, Germany is still interesting.

Sub-contintental summer- the heat is on

The heat is on, burning burning burning! Pune is between 12 and 40 degrees Celsius. What next. This is the former "no fan station" (nfs) of old. I suppose its time to go looking for an nfs anew.

For instance Poona Palms in Queensland, Australia.

Bribing the Killer

News in Times of India "(interpol chief) Noble (in a joint press conference with Sherry Rehman, cabinet minister in Pakistan) lauded Pakistan for collecting data on terrorists and announced aid worth two million Euros." This was an attempt to attack the World Cup cricket tournament of 2011 in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Terrorist-plotting-World-Cup-attack-nabbed-Rehman-Malik/articleshow/7781076.cms

Strange as it is, everybody wants to give money to the country (no questions asked, no deliverables that we know of) that produces strings of terrorists destabilizing the 2nd most populous country in the world. One that could be a global engine of growth, and give Noble and his tribe more jobs, and a chance to outrun recession.

State of the map

Interesting updates on OpenMap resources - state of the map -
and some of the people leading the open source map commununity.

Picohydroelectric Power

Very interesting for generating power to charge cell phones etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_hydro