[分享]高中小孩作贡献了...

zmcalan · 发表于 2007-5-7 20:49:00

The attempts of brain damage victims to imagine falter thanks to an inability to marshal the places of the past

By David Biello

Brain disease robbed five British men of their ability to remember by inflicting permanent damage on their hippocampus--a pair of brain regions in the limbic system associated with memory and navigation. But it also robbed them of the ability to imagine the future, according to a new study published online January 15 in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire from University College London and her colleagues compared the imaginations of the aforementioned amnesiac five and 10 control subjects with healthy hippocampi. They asked each of them to imagine and describe a range of commonplace scenarios, such as a visit to a museum. The healthy men were able to describe everything from the exhibits hanging on the walls to the dusty smell of the old building. The amnesiacs told a different story:

"Theres big doors," one said. "The openings would be high, so the doors would be very big with brass handles, the ceilings would be made of glass, so there's plenty of light coming through. Huge room, exit on either side of the room, there's a pathway and map through the center and on either side there'd be exhibits." He paused. "I don't know what they are& There'd be people." He paused again. "To be honest, there's not a lot coming."

"Do you hear or smell anything?" the researcher asked.

"No, it's not very real," he replied. "It's just not happening. My imagination isn't& well, I'm not imagining it, let's put it that way. Normally you can picture it, can't you? I'm not picturing anything at the moment."

Backyard weather network set to expand By Ed Stoddard

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - Satellites have not yet replaced the humble rain gauge when it comes to collecting weather data in the United States, and scientists on Monday said they intend to expand the network over the next few years.

Under the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS program, volunteers measure the amount of rain in their backyard gauges on a daily basis and add the information to an online database.

The monitoring network, overseen by Colorado State University, plans to beef up its army of volunteers to 20,000 nationwide by 2010 from the current 2,500 in 14 states.

"With all the advances we've had in the science of weather observations over the past several decades, there is still nothing that can compare to the human observer," said Bruce Sullivan, a coordinator of the program and a scientist with the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.

Meteorologist Henry Reges, the program's national coordinator, said, "It gives us a finer mesh of what is happening. It brings the data down to a micro level."

The program was launched in 1997 and organizers say it has provided vital information on drought and rain patterns.

A more accurate portrait of rainfall patterns emerges because showers can be very scattered and vary greatly over small areas of land.

In Indiana, timely reports of hail from network volunteers have regularly helped forecasters in issuing and verifying warnings for severe thunderstorms.

Plans to expand the network with the help of a NOAA grant were announced at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in San Antonio, Texas.