NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS NEWSLETTER
Volume 14, Issue 9 (September, 2010)

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Welcome to the Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter.

Here is what you will find in this issue:

1. What's New at Neuroscience for Kids
2. Neuroscience for Kids Site of the Month
3. Back to School Neuroscience Postcards
4. Smelly Gas Bill
5. Drawing Contest Ideas
6. Help Needed From Neuroscience for Kids Readers in India 7. Media Alert
8. Treasure Trove of Brain Trivia
9. Email Changes
10. Support Neuroscience for Kids
11. How to Stop Your Subscription
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1. WHAT'S NEW AT NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS

Neuroscience for Kids had several new additions in August including:

A. August Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter was archived
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/news148.html
B. Bug Off! Natural Chemicals Identified to Repel Mosquitoes
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/nomos.html
C. Brain Awareness Week 2011
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/baw.html

In August, 6 new figures were added and 32 pages were modified.
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2. NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS "SITE OF THE MONTH"

The Neuroscience for Kids "Site of the Month" for September is the "The Zoomable Human Brain Atlas" :

http://zoomablebrain.bio.uci.edu/

The Zoomable Human Brain Atlas is a fun way to learn your way around the brain. To create the atlas, Dr. Georg Striedter, a professor at the University of California (Irvine), used images from the Yakovlev-Haleem Collection, a group of brain specimens housed at the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

The brains were cut ("sectioned") in the coronal, horizontal and sagittal planes and stained using either a cresyl violet stain to see neuronal cell bodies or a Loyez stain to see myelinated axons. In "menu driven mode" of the web site, click on a brain section to open a new window with that brain image. Play with the controls to zoom in on the brain to see more detail. A few brain structures are also labeled. To see a new section in this mode, click on Display Options, Image, Open, and then select a new brain section. In "slide show mode," you can scroll through an entire brain in one plane. However, there are no labels when you use slide show mode.

You can explore the Zoomable Human Brain Atlas for a long time, but don't get lost!
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3. BACK TO SCHOOL NEUROSCIENCE POSTCARDS

It's time to get back to school! Send an electronic "Back to School" postcard to get your brain in gear for a new school year:

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/jpuz.html
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4. SMELLY GAS BILL

Natural gas customers in my neighborhood might think that someone put a rotten egg in their next bill! That's because the Puget Sound Energy company will include a scratch and sniff pamphlet in billing envelopes to remind people of the smell of a gas leak. The energy company adds an odorant called mercaptan to the natural gas they sell. Mercaptan smells like rotten eggs and helps people detect gas leaks.

My house does not use natural gas, so I will not get a bill with a blast to my olfactory system.
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5. DRAWING CONTEST IDEAS

It is almost time to start a new Neuroscience for Kids Drawing Contest. In past years, students drew pictures based on four different themes:

A. "My brain helps me ________." (Kindergarten to grade 2)

B. "Brain Fitness: I keep my brain healthy by ______." (Grades 3-5)

C. "My brain is like a _______ because _________. (Grades 6-8)

D. "Brain research is important because________." (Grades 9-12)

The 2010-2011 Neuroscience for Kids drawing contest could keep these same themes or they could change. If you have an idea to use as a new theme for the contest, please let me know (email: chudler@u.washington.edu).
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6. HELP NEEDED FROM NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS READERS IN INDIA

I recently discovered a Indian language translation of a portion of the Neuroscience for Kids web site.

The translation was made in 2008 and used the Baraha Telugu font that supports several Indian languages including Kannada, Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati, Gurumukhi, Bengali, and Oriya. Although I have visited India several times and my parents lived in India for five years, I do not speak or read any of these languages and do not know if this Neuroscience for Kids translation is accurate.

Are there any newsletter readers who understand any of these languages? Can you tell me what language was used in the translation? Is the translation accurate? Please let me know (chudler@u.washington.edu) and I will report my findings to other newsletter readers next month.
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7. MEDIA ALERT

A. "What Animals Think" by Jeffrey Kluger is the cover story in TIME magazine (August 16, 2010). This issue of TIME magazine also has the article titled "An Rx for the Army's Wounded Minds" by Mark Thompson.

B. "Robot Pills" by Paolo Dario and Arianna Menciassi (Scientific American, August, 2010).

C. "A Bigger, Better Brain" by Maddalena Bearzi and Craig Stanford (American Scientist, September-October, 2010) discusses chimpanzee and dolphin intelligence.

D. A new issue of Scientific American MIND (September, 2010) is on newsstands with the articles "Inside the Mind of a Psychopath" by Kent A. Kiehl and Joshua W. Buckholtz, "Cubicle, Sweet Cubicle" by S. Alexander Haslam and Craig Knight, "Mapping the Mind" by Allan R. Jones and Caroline C. Overly, "Smart Jocks" by Steve Ayan, "The World at Our Fingertips" by Derek Cabrera and Laura Colosi and "Hands in the Air" by Susan Goldin-Meadow.

E. "Thinking Like A Chimpanzee" by Jon Cohen (Smithsonian magazine, September, 2010).

F. GRANTS for K-12 teachers! Target will award 5,000 grants of $700 each to schools to use for field trips. Perhaps teachers can think of a neuroscience related field trip or a visit to a Brain Awareness Week event. Applications are due by September 30, 2010. For more information about these grants, see:

http://sites.target.com/site/en/company/page.jsp?contentId=WCMP04-031880
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8. THE TREASURE TROVE OF BRAIN TRIVIA

A. In 2008, there were 954,224 physicians in the United States. Of these doctors, 5,508 were neurosurgeons, 15,212 were neurologists, and 40,904 were psychiatrists. (Source: Smart, D.R. Physician Characteristics and Distribution in the US. 2010 edition, Chicago: AMA Press, 2010.)

B. As a treatment for headache, the 10th century astronomer and physician Ali ibn Isa recommended binding a dead mole to the head of the patient. (Source: Koehler, P.J. and Boes, C.J., A history of non-drug treatment in headache, particularly migraine, Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awq170, 2010.)

C. In the United States, 4,700 people sustain a traumatic brain injury every day. This is equal to 3 people each minute! (Source: Scudellari, M., Brain, interrupted, The Scientist, July 2010, p. 37-41.)

D. Members of the Gosuite, a Native American tribe, ground black widow spider eggs onto the tips of their arrows to make them more dangerous when they hunted. (Source: Grice, G., The Red Hourglass. Lives of the Predators, New York: Dell Publishing, 1998.)

E. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that helmets saved the lives of 1,829 motorcyclists in 2008. (Source: NHTSA, http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pubs/811159.pdf)
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9. EMAIL CHANGES

Did your email address change recently? Do you still want to receive the Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter? If you will be changing your email address, make sure that you let me know (email: chudler@u.washington.edu) where to send the newsletter. If my e-mail to you bounces back to me because it could not be delivered, your email address will be removed from the mailing list. If this happens to you, just send me an email to resubscribe.
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10. SUPPORT NEUROSCIENCE FOR KIDS

To ensure that Neuroscience for Kids stays available, we need your help. If you would like to contribute to the funding of Neuroscience for Kids, please visit:

Help Neuroscience for Kids
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11. HOW TO STOP RECEIVING THIS NEWSLETTER

To remove yourself from this mailing list and stop your subscription to the Neuroscience for Kids Newsletter, send e-mail to Dr. Eric H. Chudler at: chudler@u.washington.edu
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Your comments and suggestions about this newsletter and the "Neuroscience for Kids" web site are always welcome. If there are any special topics that you would like to see on the web site, just let me know.

Eric

Eric H. Chudler, Ph.D.
(e-mail: chudler@u.washington.edu)
(URL: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/neurok.html)