phcordner
If you have a dog and have been to the aquarium you're likely to already intuit that octopuses do something that looks a lot like sleeping and that animals all the way down the family tree have periods of quiet and active sleep as well. The researchers here use a combination of observational techniques to suggest that the octopus sleep states observed are analogous to sleep in the vertebrate.
The research paper as published does not explicitly mention dreaming, rather it is one of a host of processes implied when the researchers analogize the 'active sleep' behavior observed in the octopus to animal REM sleep patterns. The conclusion spells out the possible connection to the 'metabolic detoxification' and 'cognitive processing' functions of vertebrate REM sleep but does not state them definitively.
The general media news article and the research paper have some slight differences because of their different intended audiences, but litigating that divide is best left to those already doing it: the esteemed scholars of the Dunning-Krueger Institute at Wikipedia University.
Edit: the title’s not even misleading; “Parkinson’s” modifies “gene,” not “neurons” so it’s not even saying anything about the location of these neurons or when they are being created!
"Zebrafish are a particularly valuable tool to study neurogenesis in vertebrates. Basal levels of neurogenesis occur at higher levels than in mammals, and additional proliferative zones are found throughout the brain"
In the zebrafish model, which yes, is different from the human brain, the researchers specifically demonstrate that neurogenesis is occurring in dopaminergic regions throughout life:
"... we demonstrate that ascending TPp DA neurons and local-projecting PVO neurons, but not magnocellular ascending DA neurons, are each generated into adulthood in wild type animals at a rate that decreases with age."
PINK1 deficiency slows the rate of the generation of DA neurons in zebrafish. Following this result, they then turned to the question of applicability to human systems by testing PINK1 deficiency on a culture of human midbrain organoids and successfully showed that this gene downregulated the size these organoids reached, demonstrating that this gene has an effect on neurogenesis of human dopaminergic neurons from the substantia nigra.
"Isolated observations in animal models of PD always raise concerns about the applicability of any results to human patients with this condition. However, the observation of impairment of DA neurogenesis in a PINK1-deficient, human tissue derived organoid model confirmed the initial observations."
>Recent evidence suggests neurogenesis is on-going throughout life but the relevance of these findings for neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) is poorly understood.
> We are committed to ensuring this capacity will support commercial customers, as well as address unique government and security requirements in the U.S.
Geographic distribution makes a certain amount of business sense and getting those nice DoD contracts makes even more.
What doesn't make sense is China having Wing Attack Plan R ready to go against TSMC and Samsung.
All a single neuron does is pass a signal to the synaptic cleft in response to a chemical or electrical signal at the other end. It's a simple subunit of a larger system.
Saying a single neuron is more complex than a worm is like saying a cat6 ethernet cable is more complex than a blast furnace.
Are processor fabs analagous to auto factories and shipyards in World War II? Is the United States military's plan for a nuclear exchange with China dependent on a steady supply of cutting edge semiconductors? Even if it is, is that strategy really going to help?
This article is mostly concerened with Intel's stock price. Why bring this into it? Let's say Intel gets its mojo back and is producing cutting edge silicon at a level to compete with TSMC and supplying the Pentagon with all sorts of goodies... and then China nukes Taiwan? And now we cash in our Intel options just in time to see the flash and be projected as ash particles on a brick wall?
"The U.S. needs cutting edge fabs on U.S. soil" is true only if you believe the falied assumptions of the blue team during the Millenium Challenge, that electronic superiority is directly related to battlefield superiority. If semiconductors are the key to winning a war, why hasn't the U.S. won one lately?
And what does any of this have to do with Intel? Why are we dreaming up Dr. Strangelove scenarios? Is it just that some people are only comfortable with Keynesian stimulus if it's in the context of war procurement?
Some readers implicitly understood why when the author presented the pricipal disaster of 2020 as the death of '1/4 of all small businesses' and bailed before 20k words of statue-avi rationalist faux-erudition gave them aneuryisms.
od sort.$$ | sort -n + 1 > od.$$For a discussion on how SQL speficially falls short of the relational ideal, see this link: http://www.nocoug.org/Journal/NoCOUG_Journal_201308.pdf