FILE - In this March 15, 2009, file photo, South Korea starter Ryu Hyun-jin pitches in the first inning against Mexico during a World Baseball Classic game in San Diego. The Los Angeles Dodgers have bid nearly $26 million for a chance to sign Ryu, the Hanwha Eagles of the Korea Baseball Organization said Saturday, Nov. 10, 2012. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
FILE - In this March 15, 2009, file photo, South Korea starter Ryu Hyun-jin pitches in the first inning against Mexico during a World Baseball Classic game in San Diego. The Los Angeles Dodgers have bid nearly $26 million for a chance to sign Ryu, the Hanwha Eagles of the Korea Baseball Organization said Saturday, Nov. 10, 2012. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
FILE - In this March 6, 2009, file photo, South Korea starter Ryu Hyun-jin pitches against Taiwan during the first inning of a World Baseball Classic game at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo. The Los Angeles Dodgers have bid nearly $26 million for a chance to sign Ryu, the Hanwha Eagles of the Korea Baseball Organization said Saturday, Nov. 10, 2012. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? The Los Angeles Dodgers have bid nearly $26 million for a chance to sign pitcher Ryu Hyun-jin.
The Hanwha Eagles of the Korea Baseball Organization said Saturday they have accepted a posting fee of $25.7 million for the 25-year-old left-hander. Major League Baseball later announced that the team was the Dodgers.
"We are thrilled to have this exciting opportunity," Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti said. "We have watched Ryu pitch for a long time and he is another option to consider as we look to improve our team in 2013 and beyond."
The Chicago Cubs and Texas Rangers were also among the clubs thought to be interested in Ryu.
Los Angeles now has 30 days to negotiate a minor league or major league contract with Ryu and his agent, Scott Boras.
Ryu was 98-52 with a 2.80 career ERA during seven seasons in South Korea. He pitched for his country on teams that won a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and reached the championship game of the 2009 World Baseball Classic.
The $25.7 million fee will be paid to the Eagles only if Ryu signs with the major league team.
The posting system brought Japanese stars Yu Darvish, Ichiro Suzuki and Daisuke Matsuzaka to the majors. Last winter, the Rangers gave Darvish a six-year contract guaranteeing him $56 million after submitting a record $51,703,411 posting bid to his former team, the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters.
The Aspen Institute hosted a discussion on safety and the future of youth football. A roundtable of experts talked about the state of football?at the youth level, as well as possible reforms and how they might affect?the game all the way up to the professional level.
Participants included members of the media, college professors and representatives from the Brain Injury Research Institute, National Athletic Trainers' Association,?Children's National Medical Center, the NFL,?American Youth Football and the President?s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition, among others.
NFL Players Association Executive Director?DeMaurice Smith,?"Concussions and Our Kids? Author?Robert Cantu and?Aspen Institute?Sports and Society Program Director?Tom Farrey moderated.
ADHD medicine affects the brain's reward systemPublic release date: 9-Nov-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Postdoc Jakob Kisbye Dreyer jakobdr@sund.ku.dk 45-60-80-95-51 University of Copenhagen
A group of scientists from the University of Copenhagen has created a model that shows how some types of ADHD medicine influence the brain's reward system
A group of scientists from the University of Copenhagen has created a model that shows how some types of ADHD medicine influence the brain's reward system. The model makes it possible to understand the effect of the medicine and perhaps in the longer term to improve the development of medicine and dose determination. The new research results have been published in the Journal of Neurophysiology.
In Denmark approximately 2-3 per cent of school-age children satisfy diagnostic criteria for ADHD, and therefore it is crucial to know how the medicine works. With a new mathematical reconstruction of a tiny part of the brain region that registers reward and punishment, scientists from the University of Copenhagen are acquiring new knowledge about the effect of ADHD medicine. When reward and punishment signals run through the brain, the chemical dopamine is always involved.
"It has been discussed for years whether treating ADHD with Ritalin and similar drugs affects the reward system to any significant degree, simply because the dosage given to patients is so low. We are the first to show that some components of the dopamine signalling pathways are extremely sensitive to drugs like Ritalin. We have also developed a unified theory to describe the effect of such drugs on the dopamine signal," says Jakob Kisbye Dreyer, postdoctoral candidate at the Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen, where the model was developed.
He emphasises the importance of knowing exactly what happens during treatment with drugs like Ritalin. This is in order to develop better and more targeted medicine, as well as to understand the psychology underlying ADHD. The actions of human beings are motivated by an unconscious calculation of cost relative to expected gain. The scientists' results show that ADHD medicine specifically reduces signals about anticipated punishment.
Reward and punishment
In the brain, dopamine contributes to series of processes that control our behaviour. Actions such as eating, winning a competition, having sex or taking a narcotic drug increase dopamine release. Scientists think that dopamine helps motivate us to repeat actions that have previously been associated with reward.
"Control mechanisms in the brain help keep the dopamine signal in balance so we can register the tiny deviations that signal reward and punishment. We discovered while trying to describe these control mechanisms that our model can be used to examine the influence of Ritalin, for example, on the signal. Suddenly we could see that different pathways of the reward system are affected to different degrees by the medicine, and we could calculate at what dosage different parts of the signal would be changed or destroyed," says Jakob Kisbye Dreyer.
Different dosage, different effect
Drugs such as Ritalin can have paradoxical effects: high dosage increases the patient's activity while low dosage reduces it. Therefore it can be a laborious process to find the right dosage for a patient.
"We can explain this double effect using our theory. The dopamine signal in the part of the brain that controls our motor behaviour is only affected at a higher dose that the dose usually prescribed for treatment. Also, our model shows that the threshold between a clinically effective dose and too high a dose is very low. That may explain why the small individual differences between patients have a big impact on treatment," says Jakob Kisbye Dreyer.
In the long term, the scientists hope that their new insight will help doctors determine the correct dose for each patient. The model can also help us understand what signals in the brain affect not only ADHD, but schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease and drug abuse as well.
###
Read the article in the Journal of Neurophysiology.
Contact
Postdoc Jakob Kisbye Dreyer
Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology
Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences
Phone: +45 6080 9551
E-mail: jakobdr@sund.ku.dk
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
ADHD medicine affects the brain's reward systemPublic release date: 9-Nov-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Postdoc Jakob Kisbye Dreyer jakobdr@sund.ku.dk 45-60-80-95-51 University of Copenhagen
A group of scientists from the University of Copenhagen has created a model that shows how some types of ADHD medicine influence the brain's reward system
A group of scientists from the University of Copenhagen has created a model that shows how some types of ADHD medicine influence the brain's reward system. The model makes it possible to understand the effect of the medicine and perhaps in the longer term to improve the development of medicine and dose determination. The new research results have been published in the Journal of Neurophysiology.
In Denmark approximately 2-3 per cent of school-age children satisfy diagnostic criteria for ADHD, and therefore it is crucial to know how the medicine works. With a new mathematical reconstruction of a tiny part of the brain region that registers reward and punishment, scientists from the University of Copenhagen are acquiring new knowledge about the effect of ADHD medicine. When reward and punishment signals run through the brain, the chemical dopamine is always involved.
"It has been discussed for years whether treating ADHD with Ritalin and similar drugs affects the reward system to any significant degree, simply because the dosage given to patients is so low. We are the first to show that some components of the dopamine signalling pathways are extremely sensitive to drugs like Ritalin. We have also developed a unified theory to describe the effect of such drugs on the dopamine signal," says Jakob Kisbye Dreyer, postdoctoral candidate at the Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen, where the model was developed.
He emphasises the importance of knowing exactly what happens during treatment with drugs like Ritalin. This is in order to develop better and more targeted medicine, as well as to understand the psychology underlying ADHD. The actions of human beings are motivated by an unconscious calculation of cost relative to expected gain. The scientists' results show that ADHD medicine specifically reduces signals about anticipated punishment.
Reward and punishment
In the brain, dopamine contributes to series of processes that control our behaviour. Actions such as eating, winning a competition, having sex or taking a narcotic drug increase dopamine release. Scientists think that dopamine helps motivate us to repeat actions that have previously been associated with reward.
"Control mechanisms in the brain help keep the dopamine signal in balance so we can register the tiny deviations that signal reward and punishment. We discovered while trying to describe these control mechanisms that our model can be used to examine the influence of Ritalin, for example, on the signal. Suddenly we could see that different pathways of the reward system are affected to different degrees by the medicine, and we could calculate at what dosage different parts of the signal would be changed or destroyed," says Jakob Kisbye Dreyer.
Different dosage, different effect
Drugs such as Ritalin can have paradoxical effects: high dosage increases the patient's activity while low dosage reduces it. Therefore it can be a laborious process to find the right dosage for a patient.
"We can explain this double effect using our theory. The dopamine signal in the part of the brain that controls our motor behaviour is only affected at a higher dose that the dose usually prescribed for treatment. Also, our model shows that the threshold between a clinically effective dose and too high a dose is very low. That may explain why the small individual differences between patients have a big impact on treatment," says Jakob Kisbye Dreyer.
In the long term, the scientists hope that their new insight will help doctors determine the correct dose for each patient. The model can also help us understand what signals in the brain affect not only ADHD, but schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease and drug abuse as well.
###
Read the article in the Journal of Neurophysiology.
Contact
Postdoc Jakob Kisbye Dreyer
Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology
Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences
Phone: +45 6080 9551
E-mail: jakobdr@sund.ku.dk
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
A specialized parasite fungus can control ants' behavior. But that fungus also faces its own deadly, specialized parasites
By Katherine Harmon
Zombie-ant fungus feast: New research is uncovering how zombie-ant fungus might control its hosts. But this parasite also has its own fungal threats.Image: Wikimedia Commons/David Hughes/Maj-Britt Pontoppidan/PLoS ONE
An unsuspecting worker ant in Brazil's rainforest leaves its nest one morning. But instead of following the well-worn treetop paths of its nest mates, this ant stumbles along clumsily, walking in aimless circles, convulsing from time to time.
At high noon, as if programmed, the ant plunges its mandibles into the juicy main vein of a leaf and soon dies. Within days the stem of a fungus sprouts from the dead ant's head. After growing a stalk, the fungus casts spores to the ground below, where they can be picked up by other passing ants.
This strange cycle of undead life and death has been well documented and has earned the culprit the moniker: "zombie-ant" fungus?even in the scientific literature. But scientists are just learning the intricacies of this interplay between the Ophiocordyceps parasitic fungus and the Camponotini carpenter ants that it infects. Fossil evidence implies that this zombifying infection might have been happening for at least 48 million years. Recent research also suggests that different species of the fungus might specialize to infect different groups of ants across the globe. And close examination of the infected ant corpses has revealed an even newer level of spooky savagery?other fungi often parasitize the zombie-ant fungus parasite itself.
"We have advanced a great deal in understanding how the fungus controls ant behavior," David Hughes, an assistant professor of entomology and biology at The Pennsylvania State University, says. Every few months scientists are discovering yet another peculiar trait that, added together, make this parasite one of the most insidious infections?or perhaps that honor goes to the parasite that ultimately kills the killer parasite.
Deadly infection This clever Ophiocordyceps fungus depends on ants to reproduce and spread, but it has found an abundant host animal. As Hughes notes, ants have been incredibly successful, currently comprising an estimated half of all insect biomass worldwide.
One of the first clues that a tropical carpenter ant has become infected with Ophiocordyceps is that it will leave the dry tree canopy and descend to the humid forest floor, staggering over debris and plants. "Infected ants behave as zombies," Hughes and his colleagues wrote in a 2011 BMC Ecology paper describing some of the latest findings. The ant will walk randomly, displaying "convulsions that make them fall down and thus preclude them from returning to the canopy," they noted, comparing the stumbling gait with a "drunkard's walk."
The clumsiness cannot, however, be blamed on the ant. "While the manipulated individual may look like an ant, it represents a fungal genome expressing fungal behavior through the body of an ant," the researchers noted in the paper. Hence the zombie designation.
Evans suggests that a nerve toxin spurred on by the fungus is at least partly to blame, "judging from the uncoordinated movements and hyperactivity of the ants infected," he says. Ants that have been dissected at this stage of infection reveal heads already full of fungal cells.
Eventually, an affected ant will stop on the underside of one leaf, roughly 25 centimeters from the forest floor, and clamp down on the leaf's main vein. (This position appears to be optimal for the fungus's later stage in which it ejects spores onto the soil directly below.) Biting leaves is not normal ant behavior. The zombies' bites are synchronized near noon (possibly cued by clock genes in the fungus) and usually occur in a north-northwestern orientation.
Yahoo?s short ?Just Explain It? video?on Social Security seriously misrepresented the financial situation of the program. The segment misled viewers on both the magnitude of the demographic? changes affecting? the programs finances and also the impact of the projected shortfall.
?The piece told viewers:
?Back in 1950, there were 7.11 workers per retiree. That number today is 4.5 and in 30 years, economists estimate that number will be 2.6 workers for every retiree.?
The Social Security trustees report actually puts the ratio of covered workers to retirees at 16.5 to 1 in 1950 and just 2.8 in 2012. It is projected to be 2.2 in 30 years.
The difference is important because most of the drop in the ratio of workers to retirees has already occurred. Astute readers will note that on average workers and retirees both enjoy considerably higher living standards today than in 1950 in spite of the sharp decline in the ratio of workers to retirees.
The reason this happened is that the impact of productivity growth swamps in raising living standards swamps any negative impact of demographic changes in lowering living standards. As the chart below shows, the gains from even modest rates of productivity growth vastly exceed the impact of the projected decline in the ratio of workers to retirees. ?
?????????????????????? Source: Social Security Administration and author's calculations.
?
It is true that most workers have seen little benefit from the gains in productivity growth over the last three decades. This has been due to the huge upward redistribution of income over this period. If this pattern continues then there will be grounds for worrying about the living standards of most of our children and grandchildren. However, this highlights the need to address the policies that have increased in equality and not to waste time worrying about demographic issues.
Finally the piece badly misrepresents the meaning of the shortfall in the Social Security trust fund projected for 2033. This projected shortfall does not mean that the program would pay zero benefits, it means that it could only pay about 75 percent of scheduled benefits (closer to 80 percent in the Congressional Budget Office projections).
Because benefits are projected to rise through time, this would still be a larger benefit than most retirees receive today. More importantly, it is almost inconceivable that in a country where beneficiaries comprise 25 percent more of the voting population than at present that Congress would sit back and do nothing when Social Security could no longer pay full benefits.
If we actually reached this point, most likely there? would be some emergency commission established to work out a solution as happened when the program faced a shortfall in 1982. No one ended up missing a check. Since the size of the projected shortfall is smaller relative ?to the size of the economy than the annual costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it should not be that difficult to figure out how to come up with the money.
In short, Yahoo has given a late Halloween scare story. It has not explained Social Security to its readers at all.
NASA (and the ESA) have long been working on a multi-planet internet that can link up spaceships, probes and rovers, but they've at last brought the experimentation from the broad scale to smaller dimensions. Lego bricks, to be exact. International Space Station expedition lead Sunita Williams recently steered a Lego Mindstorms robot at an ESA facility in Darmstadt while she orbited overhead, proving that future space explorers could directly control a vehicle on a planetary surface while staying out of harm's way. As in the past, the key to the latest dry run was a Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) system; the focus was more on reliably getting packets through to the brick-based vehicle than on pure speed. As tame as that Earth-bound test drive might sound relative to an in-the-field use on a less familiar world, it demonstrates that the DTN approach can work when it really counts. We just wouldn't hold our breath for any Martian RC car races.
The Volcanica Central Talamanca Corridor in Costa Rica is one of several biological corridors in Central America created to ensure the movement of critically endangered species across the region. It was difficult to motivate struggling local farmers to support this effort based solely on conservation, but they depend on the land for many uses. Broadening the corridor effort beyond conservation to provide livelihood benefits and improved ecosystem services like clean water was the key to success.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that to feed the world?s growing population over the next 40 years we must find ways to increase food production by 60 percent. Most proposed solutions target demand alone by increasing crop yields. An alternative approach gaining increased attention recognizes the mutual dependency of agriculture and conservation. The results are promising ? putting more food on more tables while bringing additional benefits to the environment and rural communities.
Terraced agroforestry system in Konso, Ethiopia shows how conservation and agriculture can work together - The Christensen Fund
Integrating biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration in Costa Rica is providing healthier and cheaper ways to make vital crops more resilient ? for example, by controlling coffee pests. Market initiatives such as the Rainforest Alliance and Starbuck?s C.A.F.E. certification help ensure that landscapes are managed to protect wild biodiversity while providing income for local communities maintaining productive agroecosystems.
Another initiative ? Seeds for Needs, A Bioversity International project that won the World Bank?s 2009 Development Marketplace Award ? shows that access to agricultural biodiversity is critical in adapting food production to climate change. Sweet potato and taro are the most important staple crops in Papua New Guinea. Working with farmers, gene banks, and local partners, varieties of these plants were identified that can withstand the temperature, rainfall extremes, and predicted shifts in pest and disease outbreaks that are expected with a warming planet. Pre-selected varieties were then matched with locations where they should produce good yields under those circumstances.
Quinoa growing in wild areas of Peru - Bioversity International, Danny Hunter
These are just two examples that demonstrate how conservation and agriculture can complement each other. We know from our combined experience working for many years, and in many parts of the world, that there are numerous other cases in which conservation and use of agricultural biodiversity by farmers tending fewer than 2 hectares of land has proved successful.
Momentum is building for this approach. New collaborations like the Landscape for People Food and Nature Initiative, led by Ecoagriculture Partners, are informing new thinking on how to scale-up whole landscape approaches that meet conservation and agriculture goals. That work will play a critical role in engaging the attention of policymakers.
Funders are also playing their part. Both traditional conservation-focused groups and new multi-donor entities such as the International Fund for Amplifying Agro-Ecological Solutions are starting to recognize the interconnectivity between conservation and food production, biodiversity, nutrition, and livelihoods. They increasingly support projects that deliver on several levels rather than concentrating on one specific objective.
Farmers in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia grow vegetables with a rural development model linking agriculture and local markets to natural resource management. WCS's COMACO business model rewards farmers with increased commodity prices for adopting improved land management and farming practices that can sustain higher food crop yields while reducing potential conflicts with natural resources - Julie Larsen Maher, WCS
One of the outcomes of the recent 2012 IUCN World Conservation Congress was the ?Call to Action for Agriculture and Conservation to work together.? This call needs to be followed by a commitment to work with a broad range of partners to gather evidence about what works on the ground. It will be vital to analyze and draw lessons from these experiences and present them in a way that will compel decision-makers to rethink policies.
If we are to find long-term sustainable solutions to food and nutrition security and biodiversity conservation, the policies we need in the future require conservation and agriculture sectors to collaborate. It is not enough just to increase production. Agriculture and conservation have to come together to work with rural communities if we are to have a food secure future. ???????????????????? Emile Frison is Director General of Bioversity International, the world?s leading research-for-development organization on agricultural and tree biodiversity. Cristi?n Samper is President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society and an international authority on conservation biology and environmental policy. Ken Wilson is Executive Director and CEO of The Christensen Fund, a private foundation supporting the resilience of living diversity at landscape and community level around the world.
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Public release date: 9-Nov-2012
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