I found this as I was doing laundry. Before I went to university, I wanted to bulk up. So I asked for weights. I got a set of weights, but there was something wrong with them, and they were returned and never replaced. Then a few days later I was given, this. It is chest expander. It was in my bedroom, and used occasionally for years. Than forgotten. A forgotten replacement, for a lost gift
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Friday, April 27, 2012
A gift from my brother
The Euro 2012 official sticker book, a gift from my brother.
I have collected many stickers. Transformers. Thundercats, someone nicked the thundercats one, I left it in the cloak room at school. I had the premier league 1996-1997. My brother and I used, to look at the football teams, and compare them to muggers
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Saskasian
further to my posting the most secret things in the world. The first computer I had use of was a Research machine by Nimbus.
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1011&st=1
It was a laptop, it was my brothers and I wrecked it. That is another story. It was accidental
I wrote out a story, or rather background for a story. It was after an apocalypse. A seaside town, was trying to draw civilisation back together. It was fielding armies of Calvary, the story was written at the time of the first gulf, war hence the camouflage trousers, however there was not enough uniforms to go round, so the rugby shirts and there were helmets. By the Horseman's side, is one of the towns militia. Here doing labour service. (Imagine if I could draw, this is supposed to be similar in look to an Osprey colour plate) However for the militia, things were harder, they had only pink trousers. Whatever destroyed Saskasia’s world left some strange tailoring. Or its a seaside town, and they had a warehouse full of the clothes. I was pleased though when I saw, on Sharpe British soldiers wearing pinkish trousers, (White trousers, that been stained by the more famous red jackets)
I think I wrote 7000 words on the subject. I must have drawn nearly a 100 pictures, on my little lost world
By the way Saskasia, is the city of the crab.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Fire!
There was a fire across from the train station. There was one fire appliance attacking the flames. My thoughts go to the brave fire officers attending the scene.
A few months ago, Robyn asked for a picture from the station. Quite a contrast to that day. Alas it did not rain today!
Monday, April 23, 2012
Anniversaries
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17776666
Further to yesterday's post. Today is the 30th anniversary of the ZX spectrum
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0423/1224315048171.html
The anniversary of the death of Bram Stoker
( I have Dracula on my book shelf, and I have to get round to fixing it one day)
My 1700th post!
A big thank you, to all my readers, my friend Nessa, in particular
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Spiky Harold.
In the 2nd year of High school, my parents got me a ZX spectrum.
It would have been 1990. The Spectrum would have been several years old. It was a 1982, or 1984 model. In fact it was clearly second hand. I was teased about this in High school. I had suspected as much, I guess it taught me a valuable lesson, from then on I kept myself to myself and I did not ask for too much. I asked for a Sega Master system, rather than Mega drive. The year after I asked for the Risk Board Game.
One game, I remember playing, and I got quite a few. Someone had collected several over the years. ( Looking back, I hope my mother picked up the games and computer for free)
The game was spiky Harold. You were a Hedgehog, trying to get about the world. Eating apples, while the flight of the bumblebee played.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_of_the_Bumblebee
This is a much cleaner shot, than it was on my spectrum. Where Harold was a dark red, and the water drops, were not visible at all, in fact I got Harold killed because I mistook one for a prize
Anyway, I found a playable version online. A moment of brief nostalgia.
It would have been 1990. The Spectrum would have been several years old. It was a 1982, or 1984 model. In fact it was clearly second hand. I was teased about this in High school. I had suspected as much, I guess it taught me a valuable lesson, from then on I kept myself to myself and I did not ask for too much. I asked for a Sega Master system, rather than Mega drive. The year after I asked for the Risk Board Game.
One game, I remember playing, and I got quite a few. Someone had collected several over the years. ( Looking back, I hope my mother picked up the games and computer for free)
The game was spiky Harold. You were a Hedgehog, trying to get about the world. Eating apples, while the flight of the bumblebee played.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_of_the_Bumblebee
This is a much cleaner shot, than it was on my spectrum. Where Harold was a dark red, and the water drops, were not visible at all, in fact I got Harold killed because I mistook one for a prize
Anyway, I found a playable version online. A moment of brief nostalgia.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Friday, April 13, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Battleship
Battleship
``It does exactly what it says on the tin'' There was an advert for wood stain, which was based on those words. This is a film based on a toy line. Its credited to Hasbro, not a famous director or producer. Its a product to shift another product. Its not bad.
Liam Neeson, again proves that he will be this generations. Orson Welles/Charlton Heston. He plays the admiral of the fleet. Rhianna does no harm, in her big screen début. Fun to hear her accent get thicker from time to time. Neeson references Homer, which is perhaps a h/t to his role as Zeus in the Clash of the Titans remakes.
I think Venezuela flag is depicted in the multi national force. Which is interesting.
The American Navy plays the Japanese Self defence forces at Soccer. A British commentator could be heard. That's globalisation for you. Americans have to play soccer in movies, even if they ignore it at home.
ITN, rather than BBC provide the News Talking head. President Obama, gives a statement which is broadcast across the world.
One techno nit. If we can broadcast a signal to another planet around a star, that signal must travel faster than light, for it to get a response in 5 years
John Cage from Ally McBeal, plays a US secretary of Defence. One of the Mad Men, plays the lt's more sensible brother. The Hero is actually press ganged into the navy somewhat. He was drifting in Hawaii at 26.
Its a pretty straightforward movie. The plot could have been lifted from Star Trek, or Hornblower. A young arrogant Naval Officer learns responsibility, and leadership, while guiding his crew to victory. A secondary plot, has a soldier recover his sense of self and purpose after the loss of his legs. This is the first film I can remember in ages that featured an amputee as a hero. A sight which will become more common alas.
Its the film, that the later Transformers movies should be. A straight forward piece of popcorn
I thought the script could have done perhaps with a little humor but no great loss. One for small boys of all ages!
``It does exactly what it says on the tin'' There was an advert for wood stain, which was based on those words. This is a film based on a toy line. Its credited to Hasbro, not a famous director or producer. Its a product to shift another product. Its not bad.
Liam Neeson, again proves that he will be this generations. Orson Welles/Charlton Heston. He plays the admiral of the fleet. Rhianna does no harm, in her big screen début. Fun to hear her accent get thicker from time to time. Neeson references Homer, which is perhaps a h/t to his role as Zeus in the Clash of the Titans remakes.
I think Venezuela flag is depicted in the multi national force. Which is interesting.
The American Navy plays the Japanese Self defence forces at Soccer. A British commentator could be heard. That's globalisation for you. Americans have to play soccer in movies, even if they ignore it at home.
ITN, rather than BBC provide the News Talking head. President Obama, gives a statement which is broadcast across the world.
One techno nit. If we can broadcast a signal to another planet around a star, that signal must travel faster than light, for it to get a response in 5 years
John Cage from Ally McBeal, plays a US secretary of Defence. One of the Mad Men, plays the lt's more sensible brother. The Hero is actually press ganged into the navy somewhat. He was drifting in Hawaii at 26.
Its a pretty straightforward movie. The plot could have been lifted from Star Trek, or Hornblower. A young arrogant Naval Officer learns responsibility, and leadership, while guiding his crew to victory. A secondary plot, has a soldier recover his sense of self and purpose after the loss of his legs. This is the first film I can remember in ages that featured an amputee as a hero. A sight which will become more common alas.
Its the film, that the later Transformers movies should be. A straight forward piece of popcorn
I thought the script could have done perhaps with a little humor but no great loss. One for small boys of all ages!
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
ESSEC
Is é seo mo leabharlann graniog
h/t The Irish times
(http://www.irishtimes.com)
One town, two colleges, two philosophies
ESSEC LOOKS the part. The main building on its gleaming campus in the Paris suburb of Cergy has the calm, well-ordered feel of a corporate head office.
The library is spartan and bright, the attractive cafe filled with multinational students, and the glass footbridges that link each building give a fine view over the sports grounds outside.
Over coffee between classes, Anwesha Ghosh, a confident 25-year-old from Mumbai, explains that she chose to study business here because of the college’s good reputation and the doors it would open for her in Europe.
She wasn’t disappointed: through it she found an apprenticeship in a Paris company, and she plans to stay on in Europe for at least a few years after graduating. “My experience here has been very positive,” she says.
To some, this is the apex of French higher education; an intellectually demanding, diverse and wealthy institution that attracts strong students from around the world. To others, by the very fact of that success, it’s a stark reminder of what is wrong with France’s third-level system.
Essec, one of the most prestigious business schools in France, is a grande école, meaning that it can select its students through a competitive entrance exam and set its own tuition fees, currently about €10,000 a year. Although there are more than 200 grandes écoles, a handful of famous institutions at the top of the pyramid are de facto feeder schools for the country’s political, bureaucratic and business elite.
The great majority of French students attend universities, which are open to anyone who has the baccalauréat (equivalent to the Leaving Cert) and charge only nominal fees. The best universities are recognised for their excellence and are in heavy demand, but the sector in general is underfunded, functioning beyond capacity and beset by high drop-out rates.
France’s debate over third-level goes to the heart of some of its most fraught self-examination, whether it’s over the ruling elite, the equality principle or the country’s place in the world.
Critics portray the grandes écoles as inegalitarian incubators for the self-perpetuation of the white, middle class elite that has ruled France for decades. Their defenders believe they offer a model that should be copied, not repudiated.
“A grande école is just an elite university,” says Pierre Tapie, Essec’s director general and president of the conference of grandes écoles.
What is unusual about France, he says, is not that it has elite institutions but that universities take in students who are not suited to their courses, and then charge them no fees.
With France’s spending on third level under huge pressure – it spends less per student than the OECD average – the conference of university presidents recently broke a taboo by suggesting that fees would have to be increased and family incomes taken into account.
“It’s very difficult to change, because there are 1.5 million people in university – that’s five per cent of the electoral roll,” says Tapie. “All politicians are prisoners of this.”
Less than a five-minute walk from Essec stands the University of Cergy-Pontoise, built on a large campus catering to more than 11,000 students.
Cergy-Pontoise has a strong reputation, but its drop-out rates in some courses are up to 60 per cent and it plainly doesn’t have the resources it needs.
However, university president Françoise Moulin Civil remains a firm advocate of the principle that universities should be open to every student. “Personally, I’m quite proud that our higher education system is open to all the country’s young people,” she says.
“I’m strongly attached to the idea of a university system that is open to the greatest number of people, whether rich or poor.”
Significant changes have been made to the third-level system in recent years.
In one of the major reforms of his term, President Nicolas Sarkozy signed a law in 2007 that gave universities autonomy to decide how their budgets were spent – a small revolution in a system that had previously been micro-managed by central government.
Efforts have been made to bridge the gap between universities and grandes écoles through joint degrees and co-operation in research, while universities have introduced certain selective courses – mainly at masters level – modelled on the grande école method.
Individual institutions have been taking their own initiatives to stem the drop-out rates.
At Cergy-Pontoise, Moulin Civil says all new students now attend an integration week and are offered personal tutoring – efforts that are beginning to have an effect.
But it’s the vexed questions of access and diversity, tightly bound up as they are with France’s wider social debates, that remain the most sensitive.
One person who knows the system well is 24-year-old Essec student Alexis Bonal, the son of a customs official and a teacher from Corsica. After school he spent two years in a classe prépa – an intensive course that prepares students for grande école entrance exams – before securing a place at Insa, an elite engineering school in Lyon. Hoping for a career in industry, he came to Essec to widen his skills and gain a business qualification.
“I think the social mix is a real question,” Bonal says. “I think scientific courses tend to have more diversity, and you get more of a mix outside Paris. I had the impression in engineering school that I was meeting more children of working class families.”
A major problem, he feels, is that the classe prépa – source of one third of grande école students – has come to be seen as a high-pressured, intolerably gruelling experience. “The more we put out this myth that the classe prépa is extremely difficult and hellish, the more we discourage people from less privileged backgrounds. “They might not have parents who can tell them, ‘no, it’s not true, I did a classe prépa myself, and you’ll be fine’.”
To widen access, Essec offers generous scholarships – about 50 per cent of its students are given some form of financial aid, with average support coming to 30 per cent of a student’s fees. But Pierre Tapie is adamant that quotas would be counter- productive. “If we create privileged routes through social quotas, then ultimately employers will say, ‘are you from the quota stream or the normal stream?’ It’s the opposite of social promotion.”
The most pressing question for the sector, Tapie argues, is how French higher level education – and by extension France itself – can remain competitive and innovative if it continues to invest so little in the sector. On this, Moulin-Civil agrees. Universities receive 80-90 per cent of their funding from the state, leaving them acutely vulnerable.
“The ultimate question is, what share of public money do we devote to today’s comforts compared to investing in the jobs and the competitiveness of France for tomorrow,” says Tapie. “That’s the big question.”
IRISH VOICES ENJOYING STRASBOURG, THE BORDER CITY
Emma Gormley, from Clontarf in Dublin, lives in Strasbourg. She works as an assistant editor at the Council of Europe and a freelance translator.
“I did an Erasmus year at the University of Strasbourg, then came back after my European Studies degree for a masters in translation in a private school here.
“They were such different experiences. At university, I felt completely lost. We couldn’t find anyone to help us, and the year I was there, there were strikes on and we missed out on two months of classes.
“The masters was a completely different experience – the school was tiny, there was a lot of interaction between teachers and students. They knew our names, for a start.
“I spent a year as an English-language assistant at university in Lille, and I remember giving tests where two or three of the students got all the answers correct. So I obviously gave them 20 out of 20. They were absolutely shocked – they couldn’t believe they’d got such high marks. I overheard teachers in the staffroom saying that if someone gets all the answers correct, they can’t give 20 so they take marks off if the writing is not that neat or they’ve used Tipp-Ex on the page. It was so discouraging.
“Years ago I used to idolise the French. I thought we should do things like the French do. Living here, I see different sides to it, obviously, and as I get older I’d hate to think that I’d never live in Ireland again.
“But I love Strasbourg, because I know it so well and it’s a beautiful city. I love the fact that I’ve met people from all over the world here – I’ve friends from Africa and South America. I live two minutes from the city centre, I can cycle to Germany, I can go to Paris or Brussels for the weekend. Life is quite cheap as well. I’m very happy here for the moment.”
h/t The Irish times
(http://www.irishtimes.com)
One town, two colleges, two philosophies
ESSEC LOOKS the part. The main building on its gleaming campus in the Paris suburb of Cergy has the calm, well-ordered feel of a corporate head office.
The library is spartan and bright, the attractive cafe filled with multinational students, and the glass footbridges that link each building give a fine view over the sports grounds outside.
Over coffee between classes, Anwesha Ghosh, a confident 25-year-old from Mumbai, explains that she chose to study business here because of the college’s good reputation and the doors it would open for her in Europe.
She wasn’t disappointed: through it she found an apprenticeship in a Paris company, and she plans to stay on in Europe for at least a few years after graduating. “My experience here has been very positive,” she says.
To some, this is the apex of French higher education; an intellectually demanding, diverse and wealthy institution that attracts strong students from around the world. To others, by the very fact of that success, it’s a stark reminder of what is wrong with France’s third-level system.
Essec, one of the most prestigious business schools in France, is a grande école, meaning that it can select its students through a competitive entrance exam and set its own tuition fees, currently about €10,000 a year. Although there are more than 200 grandes écoles, a handful of famous institutions at the top of the pyramid are de facto feeder schools for the country’s political, bureaucratic and business elite.
The great majority of French students attend universities, which are open to anyone who has the baccalauréat (equivalent to the Leaving Cert) and charge only nominal fees. The best universities are recognised for their excellence and are in heavy demand, but the sector in general is underfunded, functioning beyond capacity and beset by high drop-out rates.
France’s debate over third-level goes to the heart of some of its most fraught self-examination, whether it’s over the ruling elite, the equality principle or the country’s place in the world.
Critics portray the grandes écoles as inegalitarian incubators for the self-perpetuation of the white, middle class elite that has ruled France for decades. Their defenders believe they offer a model that should be copied, not repudiated.
“A grande école is just an elite university,” says Pierre Tapie, Essec’s director general and president of the conference of grandes écoles.
What is unusual about France, he says, is not that it has elite institutions but that universities take in students who are not suited to their courses, and then charge them no fees.
With France’s spending on third level under huge pressure – it spends less per student than the OECD average – the conference of university presidents recently broke a taboo by suggesting that fees would have to be increased and family incomes taken into account.
“It’s very difficult to change, because there are 1.5 million people in university – that’s five per cent of the electoral roll,” says Tapie. “All politicians are prisoners of this.”
Less than a five-minute walk from Essec stands the University of Cergy-Pontoise, built on a large campus catering to more than 11,000 students.
Cergy-Pontoise has a strong reputation, but its drop-out rates in some courses are up to 60 per cent and it plainly doesn’t have the resources it needs.
However, university president Françoise Moulin Civil remains a firm advocate of the principle that universities should be open to every student. “Personally, I’m quite proud that our higher education system is open to all the country’s young people,” she says.
“I’m strongly attached to the idea of a university system that is open to the greatest number of people, whether rich or poor.”
Significant changes have been made to the third-level system in recent years.
In one of the major reforms of his term, President Nicolas Sarkozy signed a law in 2007 that gave universities autonomy to decide how their budgets were spent – a small revolution in a system that had previously been micro-managed by central government.
Efforts have been made to bridge the gap between universities and grandes écoles through joint degrees and co-operation in research, while universities have introduced certain selective courses – mainly at masters level – modelled on the grande école method.
Individual institutions have been taking their own initiatives to stem the drop-out rates.
At Cergy-Pontoise, Moulin Civil says all new students now attend an integration week and are offered personal tutoring – efforts that are beginning to have an effect.
But it’s the vexed questions of access and diversity, tightly bound up as they are with France’s wider social debates, that remain the most sensitive.
One person who knows the system well is 24-year-old Essec student Alexis Bonal, the son of a customs official and a teacher from Corsica. After school he spent two years in a classe prépa – an intensive course that prepares students for grande école entrance exams – before securing a place at Insa, an elite engineering school in Lyon. Hoping for a career in industry, he came to Essec to widen his skills and gain a business qualification.
“I think the social mix is a real question,” Bonal says. “I think scientific courses tend to have more diversity, and you get more of a mix outside Paris. I had the impression in engineering school that I was meeting more children of working class families.”
A major problem, he feels, is that the classe prépa – source of one third of grande école students – has come to be seen as a high-pressured, intolerably gruelling experience. “The more we put out this myth that the classe prépa is extremely difficult and hellish, the more we discourage people from less privileged backgrounds. “They might not have parents who can tell them, ‘no, it’s not true, I did a classe prépa myself, and you’ll be fine’.”
To widen access, Essec offers generous scholarships – about 50 per cent of its students are given some form of financial aid, with average support coming to 30 per cent of a student’s fees. But Pierre Tapie is adamant that quotas would be counter- productive. “If we create privileged routes through social quotas, then ultimately employers will say, ‘are you from the quota stream or the normal stream?’ It’s the opposite of social promotion.”
The most pressing question for the sector, Tapie argues, is how French higher level education – and by extension France itself – can remain competitive and innovative if it continues to invest so little in the sector. On this, Moulin-Civil agrees. Universities receive 80-90 per cent of their funding from the state, leaving them acutely vulnerable.
“The ultimate question is, what share of public money do we devote to today’s comforts compared to investing in the jobs and the competitiveness of France for tomorrow,” says Tapie. “That’s the big question.”
IRISH VOICES ENJOYING STRASBOURG, THE BORDER CITY
Emma Gormley, from Clontarf in Dublin, lives in Strasbourg. She works as an assistant editor at the Council of Europe and a freelance translator.
“I did an Erasmus year at the University of Strasbourg, then came back after my European Studies degree for a masters in translation in a private school here.
“They were such different experiences. At university, I felt completely lost. We couldn’t find anyone to help us, and the year I was there, there were strikes on and we missed out on two months of classes.
“The masters was a completely different experience – the school was tiny, there was a lot of interaction between teachers and students. They knew our names, for a start.
“I spent a year as an English-language assistant at university in Lille, and I remember giving tests where two or three of the students got all the answers correct. So I obviously gave them 20 out of 20. They were absolutely shocked – they couldn’t believe they’d got such high marks. I overheard teachers in the staffroom saying that if someone gets all the answers correct, they can’t give 20 so they take marks off if the writing is not that neat or they’ve used Tipp-Ex on the page. It was so discouraging.
“Years ago I used to idolise the French. I thought we should do things like the French do. Living here, I see different sides to it, obviously, and as I get older I’d hate to think that I’d never live in Ireland again.
“But I love Strasbourg, because I know it so well and it’s a beautiful city. I love the fact that I’ve met people from all over the world here – I’ve friends from Africa and South America. I live two minutes from the city centre, I can cycle to Germany, I can go to Paris or Brussels for the weekend. Life is quite cheap as well. I’m very happy here for the moment.”
Monday, April 09, 2012
Sunday, April 08, 2012
Invested in the bank
As its Easter, Mary Poppins is on. I remember this scene. Michael Banks, has been taken by his father to the Bank. He has been given tuppence. Which is about the price of two pints of beer, or two loaves. However Young Master Banks, insists on feeding the birds . Remembering the price of beer, and bread. Feeding the birds for tuppence a bag, is actually quite extravagant.
For those of you that remember Life on Mars. Which is set in the 1970s. 27p, is a sum worth taking
I always felt sorry for Michael Banks, father. Banks senior is actually, being a decent dad. He takes his son, to his work. Mr Bank tries to introduce, him to idea of prudence. But no the kid wants to feed the birds! Rather than be part of fleets of ocean greyhounds, and damns across the Nile. Quite frankly he deserves a clip
When I was six, I thought the kid, deserved a slap. I remember being fired by the idea, of Steam Ships in Africa. Its actually a good description of the Victorian Boom, slipped into a Children's program.
Anyway, a happy Easter to all my readers. Be they below the Andes, in the Deserts of Arizona, or the fertile fields of Iowa. Bonnie Scotland, or Canada.
Happy Easter!
I always felt sorry for Michael Banks, father. Banks senior is actually, being a decent dad. He takes his son, to his work. Mr Bank tries to introduce, him to idea of prudence. But no the kid wants to feed the birds! Rather than be part of fleets of ocean greyhounds, and damns across the Nile. Quite frankly he deserves a clip
When I was six, I thought the kid, deserved a slap. I remember being fired by the idea, of Steam Ships in Africa. Its actually a good description of the Victorian Boom, slipped into a Children's program.
Anyway, a happy Easter to all my readers. Be they below the Andes, in the Deserts of Arizona, or the fertile fields of Iowa. Bonnie Scotland, or Canada.
Happy Easter!
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Friday, April 06, 2012
Round up April 2012
Sthefany looks very pretty with her purple pretty lenses. She must wear them, and not be silly like I was today, and did not wear my glasses, when I woke up. I fear I shall have heartburn later.
The wave of redundancies and retiring at work has passed. My boss, will not be back before labor day. I worry that the summer, will be very long.
I am watching Dexter season 4. Years after it was broadcast.
Speaking of Dvds. I have finished watching the second season of Justified.
My congratulations to my friend Ruki who is expecting her first child,
I not, said hi to my friend Nessa, for a while. So here it is. Sorry Nessa, best wishes over Easter.
The wave of redundancies and retiring at work has passed. My boss, will not be back before labor day. I worry that the summer, will be very long.
I am watching Dexter season 4. Years after it was broadcast.
Speaking of Dvds. I have finished watching the second season of Justified.
My congratulations to my friend Ruki who is expecting her first child,
I not, said hi to my friend Nessa, for a while. So here it is. Sorry Nessa, best wishes over Easter.
Monday, April 02, 2012
http://www.unc.edu/spotlight/fragile-X-autism
( Glad to see, work, on this done in the Old North state, and my old Alumn)
Well done Tar Heels, and even Dookies!
Signal to noise
In the quest to solve the autism puzzle, we know more about fragile X syndrome than any other piece. How close are we to a cure?
In recognition of World Autism Awareness Day, UNC-Chapel Hill presents this Endeavors article about Adam Strom and how some UNC researchers are searching for a cure for fragile X.
Imagine you’re listening to the radio. You hear music. But there’s a lot of static, too—noise that butts in from all over the place and muddies the signal. The static is distracting and frustrating and no matter how you mess with the dial, it won’t go away. Now imagine you can’t turn the radio off. That’s sort of what it’s like inside Adam Strom’s brain.
Adam has fragile X syndrome, a genetic condition that can be synonymous with a lot of things: learning disabilities, intellectual disability, seizure disorders. A third of children diagnosed with fragile X, including Adam, also have autism.
One of Adam’s symptoms is the static—the unending zap of stimulation from the sights and sounds around him, each of which demands the same attention from his brain regardless of importance. A typical human brain can tune out unimportant things in favor of more immediate concerns—an ongoing conversation, for example, rather than a squeaky door in the other room or a fly buzzing at the window.
Each of those things is a stimulus, a signal to the brain that sets off a flurry of synaptic activity and forges connections between nerve cells. When the brain recognizes a signal as something it doesn’t need to pay attention to, the nerve cells calm down and stop producing the pay-attention protein they had begun to pump out. This synaptic activity is how we learn throughout our lives, and it’s especially crucial for young, developing brains. But for children with fragile X syndrome, the cells don’t calm down. The result is overstimulation, under-connectivity between nerve cells, and incessant static.
The autism link
The “fragile X gene” that scientists talk about wasn’t discovered until 1991, just a few years before Adam was born. “For many years in this business, we just sort of lumped children and people together as having developmental delay or intellectual disability,” says Joe Piven, who studies the neural mechanisms involved in autism. “Being able to identify a gene that’s responsible for this whole set of behavioral, cognitive, and medical problems really catapulted the whole field forward. Fragile X is a huge window of opportunity for understanding not only intellectual disability but also autism.”
Researchers all over the world think a fragile X cure—or the nearest thing to it—could be as little as ten years away. And researchers at UNC are getting closer to it.No one really knows all the various causes of autism. But the discovery of the fragile X gene in 1991 changed everything for researchers all over the world. Suddenly they had an indisputable culprit for up to 6 percent of autism cases. Fragile X is now the most common known cause of autism.
“The issue with autism is that it’s not one thing,” Piven says. “We call it autism, but some people in the field are starting to call it ‘the autisms.’ Say somebody shows up at your doorstep and they’re short of breath. You don’t know if they’ve just run a race, or they just smoked a carton of cigarettes, or they have pneumonia, or they’re having a heart attack. That’s the situation with autism. We’re now discovering that they don’t all have the same thing.”
Piven and his colleagues at UNC and Stanford just finished a study of brain images that show the differences between the developing brains of toddlers with autism caused by fragile X syndrome (like Adam) and toddlers who have autism with no known cause.
Read more from the Endeavors article.
( Glad to see, work, on this done in the Old North state, and my old Alumn)
Well done Tar Heels, and even Dookies!
Signal to noise
In the quest to solve the autism puzzle, we know more about fragile X syndrome than any other piece. How close are we to a cure?
In recognition of World Autism Awareness Day, UNC-Chapel Hill presents this Endeavors article about Adam Strom and how some UNC researchers are searching for a cure for fragile X.
Imagine you’re listening to the radio. You hear music. But there’s a lot of static, too—noise that butts in from all over the place and muddies the signal. The static is distracting and frustrating and no matter how you mess with the dial, it won’t go away. Now imagine you can’t turn the radio off. That’s sort of what it’s like inside Adam Strom’s brain.
Adam has fragile X syndrome, a genetic condition that can be synonymous with a lot of things: learning disabilities, intellectual disability, seizure disorders. A third of children diagnosed with fragile X, including Adam, also have autism.
One of Adam’s symptoms is the static—the unending zap of stimulation from the sights and sounds around him, each of which demands the same attention from his brain regardless of importance. A typical human brain can tune out unimportant things in favor of more immediate concerns—an ongoing conversation, for example, rather than a squeaky door in the other room or a fly buzzing at the window.
Each of those things is a stimulus, a signal to the brain that sets off a flurry of synaptic activity and forges connections between nerve cells. When the brain recognizes a signal as something it doesn’t need to pay attention to, the nerve cells calm down and stop producing the pay-attention protein they had begun to pump out. This synaptic activity is how we learn throughout our lives, and it’s especially crucial for young, developing brains. But for children with fragile X syndrome, the cells don’t calm down. The result is overstimulation, under-connectivity between nerve cells, and incessant static.
The autism link
The “fragile X gene” that scientists talk about wasn’t discovered until 1991, just a few years before Adam was born. “For many years in this business, we just sort of lumped children and people together as having developmental delay or intellectual disability,” says Joe Piven, who studies the neural mechanisms involved in autism. “Being able to identify a gene that’s responsible for this whole set of behavioral, cognitive, and medical problems really catapulted the whole field forward. Fragile X is a huge window of opportunity for understanding not only intellectual disability but also autism.”
Researchers all over the world think a fragile X cure—or the nearest thing to it—could be as little as ten years away. And researchers at UNC are getting closer to it.No one really knows all the various causes of autism. But the discovery of the fragile X gene in 1991 changed everything for researchers all over the world. Suddenly they had an indisputable culprit for up to 6 percent of autism cases. Fragile X is now the most common known cause of autism.
“The issue with autism is that it’s not one thing,” Piven says. “We call it autism, but some people in the field are starting to call it ‘the autisms.’ Say somebody shows up at your doorstep and they’re short of breath. You don’t know if they’ve just run a race, or they just smoked a carton of cigarettes, or they have pneumonia, or they’re having a heart attack. That’s the situation with autism. We’re now discovering that they don’t all have the same thing.”
Piven and his colleagues at UNC and Stanford just finished a study of brain images that show the differences between the developing brains of toddlers with autism caused by fragile X syndrome (like Adam) and toddlers who have autism with no known cause.
Read more from the Endeavors article.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
A short story inspired by an idea of a German victory in WW1 Washington 1940. (Somewhere past the horizon) He would let the man speak. A...
-
https://youtu.be/Y4FrnrD7jCA?si=qxHDaa76TgLPV6s_ Rondo Veneziano - La Serenissima 1981, I saw this on ITV years ago on a Sunday - never fo...
