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BMC Systems Biology Biomed Central
BMC Systems Biology BioMed Central Commentary Open Access The long journey to a Systems Biology of neuronal function Nicolas Le Novère* Address: EMBL-EBI, Wellcome-Trust Genome Campus, CB10 1SD Hinxton, UK Email: Nicolas Le Novère* - [email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 13 June 2007 Received: 13 April 2007 Accepted: 13 June 2007 BMC Systems Biology 2007, 1:28 doi:10.1186/1752-0509-1-28 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1752-0509/1/28 © 2007 Le Novère; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Computational neurobiology was born over half a century ago, and has since been consistently at the forefront of modelling in biology. The recent progress of computing power and distributed computing allows the building of models spanning several scales, from the synapse to the brain. Initially focused on electrical processes, the simulation of neuronal function now encompasses signalling pathways and ion diffusion. The flow of quantitative data generated by the "omics" approaches, alongside the progress of live imaging, allows the development of models that will also include gene regulatory networks, protein movements and cellular remodelling. A systems biology of brain functions and disorders can now be envisioned. As it did for the last half century, neuroscience can drive forward the field of systems biology. 1 Modelling nervous function, an ancient quest To accurately model neuronal function presents many Neurosciences have a long and successful tradition of challenges, and stretches the techniques and resources of quantitative modelling, where theory and experiment computational biology to their limits. -
The Creation of Neuroscience
The Creation of Neuroscience The Society for Neuroscience and the Quest for Disciplinary Unity 1969-1995 Introduction rom the molecular biology of a single neuron to the breathtakingly complex circuitry of the entire human nervous system, our understanding of the brain and how it works has undergone radical F changes over the past century. These advances have brought us tantalizingly closer to genu- inely mechanistic and scientifically rigorous explanations of how the brain’s roughly 100 billion neurons, interacting through trillions of synaptic connections, function both as single units and as larger ensem- bles. The professional field of neuroscience, in keeping pace with these important scientific develop- ments, has dramatically reshaped the organization of biological sciences across the globe over the last 50 years. Much like physics during its dominant era in the 1950s and 1960s, neuroscience has become the leading scientific discipline with regard to funding, numbers of scientists, and numbers of trainees. Furthermore, neuroscience as fact, explanation, and myth has just as dramatically redrawn our cultural landscape and redefined how Western popular culture understands who we are as individuals. In the 1950s, especially in the United States, Freud and his successors stood at the center of all cultural expla- nations for psychological suffering. In the new millennium, we perceive such suffering as erupting no longer from a repressed unconscious but, instead, from a pathophysiology rooted in and caused by brain abnormalities and dysfunctions. Indeed, the normal as well as the pathological have become thoroughly neurobiological in the last several decades. In the process, entirely new vistas have opened up in fields ranging from neuroeconomics and neurophilosophy to consumer products, as exemplified by an entire line of soft drinks advertised as offering “neuro” benefits. -
Enthusing Children About Chemistry Climate Change and Biogenic Emissions Predicting Properties Using Informatics the Oil Industr
Summer 2008 Enthusing children about chemistry Predicting properties using informatics Climate change and biogenic emissions The oil industry’s chemical challenges As I see it... So are you finding it increasingly diffi - Oil exploration doesn’t just offer a career for engineers – cult to attract good chemists? chemists are vital, too. Sarah Houlton spoke to Schlumberger’s It can be a challenge, yes. Many of the com - pany’s chemists are recruited here, and they Tim Jones about the crucial role of chemistry in the industry often move on to other sites such as Houston or Paris, but finding them in the first place can be a challenge. Maybe one reason is that the oil People don’t think of Schlumberger as We can’t rely on being able to find suitable industry doesn’t have the greatest profile in a chemistry-using company, but an chemistries in other industries, either, mainly chemistry, and people think it employs engi - engineering one. How important is because of the high temperatures and pressures neers, not chemists. But it’s something the chemistry in oil exploration? that we have to be able to work at. Typically, the upstream oil industry cannot manage without, It’s essential! There are many challenges for upper temperature norm is now 175°C, but even if they don’t realise it! For me, maintaining chemistry in helping to maintain or increase oil we’re increasingly looking to go over 200°C. – if not enhancing – our recruitment is perhaps production. It’s going to become increasingly For heavy oil, where we heat the oil up with one of the biggest issues we face. -
Richard Llewelyn-Davies and the Architect's Dilemma."
The Richard Llewciy11-Davies Memorial Lectures in ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY March 3, 1985-at the Institute for Advanced Study The J/ictoria11 City: Images and Realities Asa Briggs Provost of Worcester College University of Oxford November 17, 1986--at the University of London The Nuffield Planning Inquiry Brian Flo\vers Vice-Chancellor University of London October 27, 1987-at the Institute for Advanced Study Richard Llewcly11-Davics and the Architect's Dilemma N ocl Annan Vice-Chancellor Erncritus University of London PREFACE The Richard Llewelyn-Davies Memorial Lectures in "Environ ment and Society" were established to honor the memory of an architect distinguished in the fields of contemporary architectural, urban and environmental planning. Born in Wales in 1912, Richard Llewelyn-Davies was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, !'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and the Architectural Association in London. In 1960 he began a fif teen-year association with University College of the University of London as Professor of Architecture, Professor of Town Planning, Head of the Bartlett School of Architecture and Dean of the School of Environmental Studies. He became, in 1967, the initial chair man of Britain's Centre for Environmental Studies, one of the world's leading research organizations on urbanism, and held that post for the rest of his life. He combined his academic career with professional practice in England, the Middle East, Africa, Paki stan, North and South America. In the fall of 1980, the year before he died, Richard Llewelyn Davies came to the Institute for Advanced Study. He influenced us in many ways, from a reorientation of the seating arrangement in the seminar room improving discussion and exchange, to the per manent implantation of an environmental sensibility. -
Cambridge's 92 Nobel Prize Winners Part 2 - 1951 to 1974: from Crick and Watson to Dorothy Hodgkin
Cambridge's 92 Nobel Prize winners part 2 - 1951 to 1974: from Crick and Watson to Dorothy Hodgkin By Cambridge News | Posted: January 18, 2016 By Adam Care The News has been rounding up all of Cambridge's 92 Nobel Laureates, celebrating over 100 years of scientific and social innovation. ADVERTISING In this installment we move from 1951 to 1974, a period which saw a host of dramatic breakthroughs, in biology, atomic science, the discovery of pulsars and theories of global trade. It's also a period which saw The Eagle pub come to national prominence and the appearance of the first female name in Cambridge University's long Nobel history. The Gender Pay Gap Sale! Shop Online to get 13.9% off From 8 - 11 March, get 13.9% off 1,000s of items, it highlights the pay gap between men & women in the UK. Shop the Gender Pay Gap Sale – now. Promoted by Oxfam 1. 1951 Ernest Walton, Trinity College: Nobel Prize in Physics, for using accelerated particles to study atomic nuclei 2. 1951 John Cockcroft, St John's / Churchill Colleges: Nobel Prize in Physics, for using accelerated particles to study atomic nuclei Walton and Cockcroft shared the 1951 physics prize after they famously 'split the atom' in Cambridge 1932, ushering in the nuclear age with their particle accelerator, the Cockcroft-Walton generator. In later years Walton returned to his native Ireland, as a fellow of Trinity College Dublin, while in 1951 Cockcroft became the first master of Churchill College, where he died 16 years later. 3. 1952 Archer Martin, Peterhouse: Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for developing partition chromatography 4. -
Dynamics September 6-4 1708.07400.Pdf
Dynamics of Current, Charge and Mass Bob Eisenberg Department of Applied Mathematics Illinois Institute of Technology USA Department of Physiology and Biophysics Rush University USA [email protected] Xavier Oriols Departament d’Enginyeria Electrònica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, SPAIN [email protected] David Ferry School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering Arizona State University USA [email protected] Available on arXivhttps://arxiv.org/abs/1708.07400 at September 6, 2017 ABSTRACT Electricity plays a special role in our lives and life. The dynamics of electrons allow light to flow through a vacuum. The equations of electron dynamics are nearly exact and apply from nuclear particles to stars. These Maxwell equations include a special term, the displacement current (of a vacuum). The displacement current allows electrical signals to propagate through space. Displacement current guarantees that current is exactly conserved from inside atoms to between stars, as long as current is defined as the entire source of the curl of the magnetic field, as Maxwell did. We show that the Bohm formulation of quantum mechanics allows the easy definition of current without the mysteries of the theory of quantum measurements. We show how conservation of current can be derived without mention of the polarization or dielectric properties of matter. We point out that displacement current is handled correctly in electrical engineering by ‘stray capacitances’, although it is rarely discussed explicitly. Matter does not behave as physicists of the 1800's thought it did. They could only measure on a time scale of seconds and tried to explain dielectric properties and polarization with a single dielectric constant, a real positive number independent of everything. -
The Birth of Information in the Brain: Edgar Adrian and the Vacuum Tube,” Science in Context 28: 31-52
Garson, J. (2015) “The Birth of Information in the Brain: Edgar Adrian and the Vacuum Tube,” Science in Context 28: 31-52. Preprint (not copyedited or formatted) Please use DOI when citing or quoting: https://doi- org.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/10.1017/S0269889714000313 The Birth of Information in the Brain: Edgar Adrian and the Vacuum Tube Word Count: 10, 418 Abstract: As historian Henning Schmidgen notes, the scientific study of the nervous system would have been ‘unthinkable’ without the industrialization of communication in the 1830s. Historians have investigated extensively the way nerve physiologists have borrowed concepts and tools from the field of communications, particularly regarding the nineteenth-century work of figures like Helmholtz and in the American Cold War Era. The following focuses specifically on the interwar research of the Cambridge physiologist Edgar Douglas Adrian, and on the technology that led to his Nobel-Prize- winning research, the thermionic vacuum tube. Many countries used the vacuum tube during the war for the purpose of amplifying and intercepting coded messages. These events provided a context for Adrian’s evolving understanding of the nerve fiber in the 1920s. In particular, they provide the background for Adrian’s transition around 1926 to describing the nerve impulse in terms of “information,” “messages,” “signals,” or even “codes,” and for translating the basic principles of the nerve, such as the all-or-none principle and adaptation, into such an “informational” context. The following also places Adrian’s research in the broader context of the changing relationship between science and technology, and between physics and physiology, in the first few decades of the twentieth century. -
Thephysiologist
Published by the American Physiological Society – Integrating the Life Sciences from Molecule to Organism THEPHYSIOLOGIST March 2016 • Vol. 59/No. 2 89th President of APS Jane F. Reckelhoff A Matter of Opinion I am very honored and humbled to have Warning: Watch been chosen by the members of the American Out for Predatory Physiological Society to represent them as the 89th President beginning in April 2016. I would Publishers like to thank the membership for their support. I would also like to thank the mentors I have had Because of the publication schedule for along the way who have shaped my career as a The Physiologist, I am writing this piece physiologist. I have been a member of APS for the shortly after the New Year! Hopefully, past 25 years, and the Society has not only shaped each of you had an opportunity to relax, Jane F. Reckelhoff my scientific career but given me opportunities to enjoy family and friends, and, most be of service to fellow physiologists by allowing importantly, begin considering how to me to serve on various APS committees. I consider take advantage of the 6.6% increase in the role of President as another opportunity to serve the Society and am the NIH budget. While I too am looking excited to begin the task. forward to 2016, I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that even predatory As I read the editorials by my predecessors, I believe the Society faces Open Access (OA) publishers took some old challenges and also some new ones. I just listened to Ben time off over the Holidays. -
06 Greenwood Press Proof
Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 57 (1), 85–105 (2003) doi 10.1098/rsnr.2003.0197 AN ANTIPODEAN LABORATORY OF REMARKABLE DISTINCTION by NORMAN N. GREENWOOD1 FRS AND JOHN A. SPINK2 1Department of Chemistry, The University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK 2Department of History and Philosophy of Science, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia SUMMARY In an astonishingly short period in September 1939, while on a brief visit from England, F.P. Bowden (FRS 1948) conceived the need, and obtained the approval of the Australian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), to establish a wartime friction and bearings research laboratory within the University of Melbourne. He recruited a galaxy of young talent, which during the following six years made major contributions to four very diverse defence-related problems. The infant laboratory survived the peace and eventually evolved into the internationally admired Division of Tribophysics. Many of the original members of the group went on to distinguished careers in Australia, the UK and elsewhere. The story of the exciting early days of the laboratory and the subsequent achievements of its staff are briefly described. INTRODUCTION The year 2003 marks the centenary of the birth of F.P. Bowden FRS (figure 1). In September 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, Philip Bowden was on a brief family visit to Australia. He had been born in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1903 and obtained his BSc and MSc from the University of Tasmania.1 He then went to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, as an Exhibition of 1851 Overseas Research Scholar to study for his PhD under Dr Eric Rideal (later Sir Eric Rideal FRS). -
Guides to the Royal Institution of Great Britain: 1 HISTORY
Guides to the Royal Institution of Great Britain: 1 HISTORY Theo James presenting a bouquet to HM The Queen on the occasion of her bicentenary visit, 7 December 1999. by Frank A.J.L. James The Director, Susan Greenfield, looks on Front page: Façade of the Royal Institution added in 1837. Watercolour by T.H. Shepherd or more than two hundred years the Royal Institution of Great The Royal Institution was founded at a meeting on 7 March 1799 at FBritain has been at the centre of scientific research and the the Soho Square house of the President of the Royal Society, Joseph popularisation of science in this country. Within its walls some of the Banks (1743-1820). A list of fifty-eight names was read of gentlemen major scientific discoveries of the last two centuries have been made. who had agreed to contribute fifty guineas each to be a Proprietor of Chemists and physicists - such as Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday, a new John Tyndall, James Dewar, Lord Rayleigh, William Henry Bragg, INSTITUTION FOR DIFFUSING THE KNOWLEDGE, AND FACILITATING Henry Dale, Eric Rideal, William Lawrence Bragg and George Porter THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION, OF USEFUL MECHANICAL - carried out much of their major research here. The technological INVENTIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS; AND FOR TEACHING, BY COURSES applications of some of this research has transformed the way we OF PHILOSOPHICAL LECTURES AND EXPERIMENTS, THE APPLICATION live. Furthermore, most of these scientists were first rate OF SCIENCE TO THE COMMON PURPOSES OF LIFE. communicators who were able to inspire their audiences with an appreciation of science. -
Cells of the Nervous System
3/23/2015 Nervous Systems | Principles of Biology from Nature Education contents Principles of Biology 126 Nervous Systems A flock of Canada geese use auditory and visual cues to maintain a V formation in flight. How are these animals able to respond so quickly to environmental cues? All animals possess neurons, cells that form a complex network capable of transmitting and receiving signals. This neural network forms the nervous system. The nervous system coordinates the movement and internal physiology of an organism, as well as its decisionmaking and behavior. In all but the simplest animals, neurons are bundled into nerves that facilitate signal transmission. More complex animals have a central nervous system (CNS) that includes the brain and nerve cords. Vertebrates also have a peripheral nervous system (PNS) that transmits signals between the body and the CNS. Cells of the Nervous System Structure of the neuron. Figure 1 shows the general structure of a neuron. The organelles and nucleus of a neuron are contained in a large central structure called the cell body, or soma. Most nerve cells also have multiple dendrites in addition to the cell body. Dendrites are short, branched extensions that receive signals from other neurons. Each neuron also has a single axon, a long extension that transmits signals to other cells. The point of attachment of the axon to the cell body is called the axon hillock. The other end of the axon is usually branched, and each branch ends in a synaptic terminal. The synaptic terminal forms a synapse, or junction, with another cell. -
The Rockefeller University Story
CASPARY AUDITORIUM AND FOUNTAINS THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY STORY THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY STORY JOHN KOBLER THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY PRESS· 1970 COPYRIGHT© 1970 BY THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY PRESS LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUE CARD NO. 76-123050 STANDARD BOOK NO. 8740-015-9 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA INTRODUCTION The first fifty years of The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research have been recorded in depth and with keen insight by the medical his torian, George W. Corner. His story ends in 1953-a major turning point. That year, the Institute, which from its inception had been deeply in volved in post-doctoral education and research, became a graduate uni versity, offering the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to a small number of exceptional pre-doctoral students. Since 1953, The Rockefeller University's research and education pro grams have widened. Its achievements would fill a volume at least equal in size to Dr. Corner's history. Pending such a sequel, John Kobler, a journalist and biographer, has written a brief account intended to acquaint the general public with the recent history of The Rockefeller University. Today, as in the beginning, it is an Institution committed to excellence in research, education, and service to human kind. FREDERICK SEITZ President of The Rockefeller University CONTENTS INTRODUCTION V . the experimental method can meet human needs 1 You, here, explore and dream 13 There's no use doing anything for anybody until they're healthy 2 5 ... to become scholarly scientists of distinction 39 ... greater involvement in the practical affairs of society 63 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 71 INDEX 73 .