via ft.com
fascinating
good site for layouts, some quality producing designers, try and filter some of the crap. laid back place for lite convo too.
In the Groove
by Richard SaltusWhen people feel as if a favorite song has worn grooves into their brain, they’re not far off. Repeated stimulation of the synapse, the site of communication between two neurons, induces chemical and structural changes that strengthen connections between those cells.
As a result, nerve signals flow more easily across the synapses, connecting neurons involved in learning and memory, so that hearing the first notes of “A Hard Day’s Night” instantly recalls the entire Beatles song.
Alteration of synaptic signal strength underlies “neural plasticity,” the brain’s ability to be changed by a person’s experience—in other words, learning and memory—without manufacturing new brain cells.
Recent discoveries led by HHMI investigators Michael Ehlers at Duke University Medical Center and Pietro De Camilli at Yale School of Medicine have clarified some of the mechanisms that dial signal strength up and down. Their findings may also expand understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and suggest new avenues for prevention or treatment.
The discoveries, reported separately in the fall of 2008, involve the “postsynaptic” side of the junction, where signals that have jumped the gap stimulate antenna-like receptors in the dendrites—the branching projections of the receiving nerve terminal. Much more is known about the transmitting, or “presynaptic,” mechanisms: “We’re at very early days in the postsynapse,” says Ehlers. Both teams’ experiments were designed to explore trafficking of neurotransmitters and receptors to and from neuronal membranes on either side of the synapse.
Most neurons involved in learning and memory secrete glutamate neurotransmitters into the synaptic gap, where they stimulate specific receptors (termed AMPA and NMDA receptors) anchored in the postsynaptic membrane. The number of these receptors determines the neuron’s sensitivity—and as a result, the power of the signal. The receptors are located in nub-like “spines” that protrude from dendrites—neuronal branches that carry the signal from the synapse to the main nerve cell body. explains Eisenberg.
Tiny sac-like vesicles deliver neurotransmitters and their receptors to the synaptic space by fusing with the surface membranes of the pre- and postsynaptic cells, respectively, through a process called exocytosis. After offloading their cargo, the empty vesicles merge with the cell surface membrane and new carrier vesicles form by recycling and pinching off part of this surface membrane, a process called endocytosis.
De Camilli has spent nearly three decades investigating vesicle recycling. In 1996, he discovered an enzyme, synaptojanin1, or SJ1, that degrades a lipid compound called PIP2 in cell membranes, including vesicle membranes. In the absence of SJ1, PIP2 prevents vesicles from shedding their cage-like coating, which they need to do to recycle the membrane for another shipment. The result: a logjam of accumulated vesicles and a shortage of membrane to create new ones.
Until recently, “we thought that SJ1 affected endocytosis just on the presynaptic side,” De Camilli says. “But then we began to realize that there is a little synaptojanin everywhere in the neuron, and that it could be involved in postsynaptic vesicle recycling as well.”
Illustration: Emmanuel Polanco, colagene.com
Michael Ehlers, left; Pietro De Camilli, right.To measure the effect of knocking out SJ1 on synaptic signaling, De Camilli focused on the hippocampal region of the brain, a major memory center that is rich in glutamate synapses. In the November 11, 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he reported that cultured postsynaptic hippocampal nerve cells lacking SJ1 responded more strongly to stimulation than unmodified neurons. The absence of SJ1 on the postsynaptic side hampered the endocytosis and recycling of receptor-carrying vesicles, so receptors accumulated in the membrane, increasing its sensitivity to nerve signaling. In other words, SJ1’s normal task in postsynaptic structures is to dampen signal strength.
“A major point is that while pre- and postsynaptic compartments play different and complementary functions, they adapt for those functions some of the same fundamental molecular mechanisms,” says De Camilli. “SJ1, a protein thought to be only presynaptic is also postsynaptic.”
De Camilli is also investigating a possible link between SJ1 and Alzheimer’s disease. The same PIP2 lipid degraded by SJ1 has recently been found by his former postdoctoral fellow, Gilbert DiPaolo, now an independent scientist at Columbia University, to protect brain cells from the toxicity of amyloid-beta, a peptide implicated in Alzheimer’s disease. Thus, lowering SJ1 levels could increase the amount of PIP2 in brain neurons, potentially slowing amyloid-beta poisoning.
Ehlers’ discovery also involved the exocytosis and endocytosis of receptors in the postsynaptic neuron—specifically, within dendritic spines.
To move receptors from the interior of the dendritic spine to the synaptic membrane, the cell deploys endosomes, containers akin to vesicles but larger. Exactly how endosomes move was a puzzle until Ehlers identified a “molecular motor” that tows them toward the membrane when the synapse is active. The motor is a specific form of myosin—a contractile protein found in muscle—called myosin Vb. He reported the finding October 31, 2008, in Cell.
Because this transport mechanism can be triggered in a single dendritic spine of a brain neuron, Ehlers says, it helps explain the fine-tuning that enables a nerve signal to stimulate a single synapse without exciting nearby synapses—a prerequisite for neuronal plasticity.
As much as scientists are discovering about synaptic transmission and plasticity, Ehlers says, the “fundamental mystery” remains to be solved—how the changes that occur in the synaptic membrane within “tens of seconds” are maintained in the much longer term, and why we can call up those Beatles classics years after the songs became hits.
Photos: Ehlers: Duke Photography: De Camilli: Paul Fetters
good article. i liked the illustration too =^)
The plan for simplifying and improving our alphabet, entitled “Alphabet 26,” was first presented in Westvaco Inspirations 180 in 1950. It recommended the use of only one symbol for each of the 26 letters.
Our conventional alphabet contains 19 letters having dissimilar upper and lower case symbols (such as ‘A’ and ‘a’) and 7 letters (c-o-s-v-w-x-z) having symbols that are identical.
It is misleading for a letter, or for any graphic symbol, to have two different designs. Confusion might set in when school children are taught to recognize words even before they have learned to recognize different symbols for the same letter.
To remedy this, Alphabet 26, a plan based upon the logic of consistency, proposed that of the 19 letters that have dissimilar symbols 15 letters should use the uppercase designs [black letters below] and 4 letters should use the lowercase designs [green letters]. The other 7 letters already have identical symbols [blue letters].
Alphabet 26 provides the necessary large letters for emphasis at the beginning of the sentence and for denoting proper nouns, an advantage over the exclusive use of an all lowercase alphabet, as recommended at the Bauhaus.The Alphabet 26 plan is applicable to all type families. The choice of Baskerville to introduce Alphabet 26 in Inspirations 180 was made for tactical, historical, and practical reasons. To appeal to as broad a segment of readers as possible, it seemed prudent to present this radical change in our time-honored alphabet with a traditional typeface rather than an extreme one, such as Futura, or even a modern one such as Bodoni. An old style typeface such as Garamond would likewise be inappropriate.
Baskerville, a transitional typeface from our own contemporary point of view, seemed to be the right choice, especially when accompanied by the mid-eighteenth century engravings of the Diderot Encyclopédie, which date from the same period. It seemed appropriate, too, to honor John Baskerville himself, whose type design was considered innovative in his time. A purely practical reason for the choice was the fact that Baskerville type possessed a lowercase main body and a small-cap body that aligned with each other, a strong point not found in Bodoni and some other faces.
Alphabet 26 provided an impetus in the fifties and sixties for lettering artists to enliven the typographic scene with the design of biform alphabets. These were unusual combinations of capital and lowercase letters within a single word or font, valued more for their visual interest and attention-getting qualities than for contributing to a simplified alphabet. Alphabet 26 also provided designers with an immediate means to produce many useful trademarks.
Implicit in the republication of Alphabet 26 is the hope that it might prompt typeface designers and manufacturers to produce it for general use and trial. An equally important hope is that it might suggest a solution for another simplified alphabet in the future. Such a challenge could do no less than provide an enjoyable project for some young designer, as it did for the author thirty-eight years ago in Westvaco Inspirations 180.
[video]
just bought this book, from the previews, it souds like a good read!
Subtitled ʻA concise yet rich discussion of all the small things that enhance the legibility of textsʼ, Jost Hochuliʼs guide to micro-typography considers everything that can happen within a column of text. The book was published first in German in the 1980s. This is the first English edition, completely revised and adapted for todayʼs conditions.
Hochuli discusses all the factors that affect legibility: letters, letterspacing, words, wordspacing, lines, linespacing, columns, development of script and type, composition of text and punctuation
Detail in typography, designed by its author, is printed and bound in Switzerland to the best standards. It provides, in its own form and manufacture, a demonstration of how books can be made.
typographic humour
ATM stolen from grocery store
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - Albertson’s workers say a white pickup truck drove into the store on Semoron Boulevard in Apopka then drove out. It happened around 3:30 a.m. Thursday.
the dumbass that stole this is gonna get caught. the truck is probably in just as much damage as the wall. and i dont know if this guy watches many movies, but they cant ever get an atm open..
if you see me, i do this alot
