精神痛苦折磨着我！我该怎么办？
我该做，还是不该做？

如果你曾为放弃一份安逸工作而选另一份更有刺激性的工作而苦恼过，或者曾思虑过婚外的风流韵事，那你一定经历过冲突和焦虑——这是我们要在互为冲突的动机中不得不做出抉择时产生的神经过敏。现在，通过对老鼠的研究，研究人员认为，他们已发现大脑中负责这一精神痛苦的区域。这一发现可能有助于寻找更好地治疗焦虑和其它情绪失调的药物。

（图）呀!
研究者识别出鼠脑中冲突产生时引起焦虑的部分。

1980年代人们首次搞清了焦虑的神经基础，当时研究者就发现可用一种治疗焦虑的药物刺激受体，一种名叫复合胺（serotonin）的神经传递素。最近的研究也证实了这一点(ScienceNOW,27March2002)，但科学家对于复合胺所起的作用以及它在大脑何处起作用仍然知之甚少。

为进一步探讨这一作用，一支由哥伦比亚大学的神经生物学家金里奇（Jay Gingrich）带领的小组破解了老鼠的一个基因，此基因对一名为5HT2A的复合胺感受器（受体）进行编码，这是迄今为止识别出的这类感受器之一。（已识别出的超过十二个）。在大脑的几个区域富有5HT2A，它们与冲突性焦虑有关。……

这一发现也支持了最近其他研究者的大脑成像研究，表明大脑皮层是焦虑的主要调整器。

英国剑桥大学的Angela Roberts 认为，这项研究是有关复合胺介入行为的一个非常有趣的例子。她认为，由于治疗药物通常针对复合胺受体，所以这一发现显然对于各种神经心理失调的治疗具有重要的意义。

潘发勤编译自ScienceNow,Should I, Or Shouldn‘t I? By Michael Balter，ScienceNOW Daily News，27 July 2006,http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/

Should I, Or Shouldn't I?

By Michael Balter
ScienceNOW Daily News
27 July 2006

If you‘ve ever worried about leaving the safety of one job for the excitement of another, or contemplated an extramarital affair, chances are you experienced conflict anxiety--the nervousness that occurs when we have to choose between competing impulses. Now, researchers working with mice believe they have identified the part of the brain responsible for this mental anguish. The discovery may aid the search for better drugs for anxiety and other emotional disorders.

The neural basis of anxiety first began to become clear in the 1980s, when researchers discovered that a drug used to treat anxiety stimulates receptors for a neurotransmitter called serotonin. More recent research has confirmed this connection (ScienceNOW, 27 March 2002), but scientists still know very little about the role that serotonin plays and where in the brain it acts.

To explore this role further, a team led by neurobiologist Jay Gingrich of Columbia University knocked out a gene in mice that encodes a serotonin receptor called 5HT2A, one of more than a dozen such receptors identified to date. 5HT2A is abundant in several areas of the brain and is thought to be involved in conflict anxiety. The researchers put the mice through a battery of tests designed to induce a conflict between safety and novelty-seeking behavior. In one experiment, the team recorded how much time the mice spent in dark versus brightly lit spaces. In another, the researchers placed the mice in an elevated maze, where some sections were completely open and others had walls. Compared to control mice, the knockout animals spent significantly more time engaged in novelty-seeking behavior. For example, they spent twice as much time in the brightly lit part of the cage, which mice usually avoid, Gingrich and his colleagues report in tomorrow‘s Science.

Next, the researchers gave the mice their serotonin receptors back, but only in the cerebral cortex. When the mice were put through the tests, they acted just as anxious as normal animals did. The finding bolsters recent brain imaging studies by other researchers suggesting that the cortex is the master regulator of anxiety.

The study is a "very interesting example" of serotonin‘s involvement in behavior, says Angela Roberts, a neuroscientist at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. She adds that because serotonin receptors are frequent targets of therapeutic drugs, the findings "clearly have important implications for the treatment of a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders."

害羞所得的回报
Michael Hochman 科学杂志 2006-6-13 潘发勤编译
（图） 红色区域表明害羞的青少年脑中活动的增强。

热点


害羞的人可能表面显得平静，但他们的头脑却不宁静。当遭遇恐惧或不熟悉的情况，例如遇见陌生人的时候，大脑中负责负面情绪的区域就会过度运转。但新的研究表明，害羞的人可能对所有各种刺激都比较敏感，而不仅限于可怕的场景。

……

研究有利于我们理解为什么羞怯的孩子在后来的生活中更易出现心理问题。由于害羞的孩子似乎对成败得失更为敏感，他们可能比他人有更为强烈的情绪体验，这会使他们冒诸如焦虑、沮丧等情绪紊乱之险。当然，在另一方面，害羞的儿童也会体验到非常强烈的积极的情感，例如对成功的经验，这将帮助他们获得成功。

The Rewards of Being Shy
By Michael Hochman
ScienceNOW Daily News
13 June 2006

Shy people may be quiet, but there‘s a lot going on in their heads. When they encounter a frightening or unfamiliar situation--meeting someone new, for example--a brain region responsible for negative emotions goes into overdrive. But new research indicates that shy people may be more sensitive to all sorts of stimuli, not just frightening ones.


The findings come courtesy of brain scans of 13 extremely shy adolescents and 19 outgoing ones. Researchers, led by Amanda Guyer, a development psychologist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, placed each child in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine and had them play games in which they could win or lose money. The study subjects--who were classified as either shy or outgoing based on psychological testing--were instructed to press a button as quickly as possible after being shown a signal. If they pressed the button in time, they won money, or at least prevented themselves from losing it.


Both groups performed similarly, and there was no difference in the activity of their amygdalas--the brain region that governs fear. Shy children, however, showed two to three times more activity in their striatum, which is associated with reward, than outgoing children, the team reports in the 14 June issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. "Up until now, people thought that [shyness] was mostly related to avoidance of social situations," says co-author and child psychiatrist Monique Ernst. "Here we showed that shy children have increased activity in the reward system of the brain as well."


Why this would be the case is still not clear. "One interpretation is that extremely shy children have an increased sensitivity to many types of stimuli--both frightening and rewarding," says Guyer. There are other possibilities as well, says Mauricio Delgado, a psychologist at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. For example, increased activity in the striatum may help shy children cope with the anxiety of stressful situations, although not enough so to help them overcome their shyness.


These findings are also significant because they may help researchers understand why shy children develop psychiatric problems at an increased rate later in life, says Brian Knutson, a psychologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Because shy children appear to be more sensitive to winning and losing, they may experience emotions more strongly than others, putting them at risk for emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression. On the flip side, shy children may experience positive emotions such as success very strongly, helping them succeed, Knutson says.

候鸟不再早起
气候变化改变了食物供应，威胁到生存。

花斑鹟（pied flycatchers,），是略小于麻雀的普通候鸟，以昆虫为食的欧亚大陆鹟科鸟类，通常捕捉飞虫。但是，由于气候变化，它们正面临春天缺食而行将死亡的危险，这是本周一组科学家的研究报告。本发现表明了季节变化的复杂的多米诺骨牌效应。季节变化影响到食肉动物、捕食动物。

此种候鸟每年春天从非洲的寒冷地带飞行数千公里到欧洲觅食繁衍。 2001年,科学家与荷兰生态研究所发现鹟鸟因抵达欧洲的时间太晚而没有太多的时间繁殖。现在,赫罗纳大学（University of Groningen）进化生态学者Christiaan Both同来自该研究所的科学家合作，通过称量昆虫的粪便来衡量有多少可供鹟鸟可吃的毛毛虫。……


对于气候的变化如何改变生态互动的时间进程,科学家的了解还在初始阶段。很多人猜想跨物种的影响将会是很大的。


编译自Science Now,Friday, 5 May 2006

简评
气候的“多米诺骨牌效应”影响到候鸟生存

图解：迟到了.
由于气候变化，花斑鹟不能及时到达为其后代捕捉食物。

人类：俗语说，早起的鸟儿能捉到虫子（Early bird can catch worms ），你们干吗不早到呢？
候鸟：都是由于气候变化的缘故

Migrating Birds Not Early Enough

Climate change has shifted food supplies, threatening survival


Some pied flycatchers, a common migratory bird slightly smaller than a sparrow, are missing their spring meals and dying as a result of climate change, a team of scientists reported this week. The discovery is one of the most sophisticated showing the domino effect of shifting seasons and their impact on predators and prey.


The migratory birds fly thousands of kilometers each spring from wintering grounds in Africa to Europe, where they breed. In 2001, scientists with the Netherlands Institute of Ecology found that the flycatchers‘ reproduction suffered because they arrived in Europe too late to have much time to breed. Now, University of Groningen evolutionary ecologist Christiaan Both worked with scientists from the institute and measured how many caterpillars were available for the birds to eat by weighing the insects‘ droppings. Caterpillars, they learned, have responded to an earlier spring by moving up their peak emergence by 16 days.


But some of the birds are only breeding a week earlier than they used to--and their young are consequently missing out on many meals. "It‘s impossible for them to predict when the spring starts in Europe," says Both. That‘s had a profound impact, the team reported in the 4 May Nature. Among nine flycatcher populations they studied over 2 decades, the researchers found that those that mistimed their arrival declined in number by a stunning 90%, compared to better-synchronized groups that suffered only a 10% drop. Both hopes that genetics will help explain why some pied flycatchers are leaving Africa sooner. Both is also hoping to begin tracking birds to see if they are adapting by migrating to European areas further north.


"It‘s a really important piece of the puzzle," says Cornell University ornithologist David Winkler, who reviewed the paper for Nature. "He‘s adding detail to the avian response to climate change that we don‘t have elsewhere." Scientists are only beginning to learn how climate change alters the timing of ecological interactions, but many suspect the cross-species impacts are going to be great. Both‘s work, Winkler says, suggests that other studies may be missing the fact that even when the birds migrate sooner, they might still be missing food or other ecological needs.

学科与工作
就业机会因学科不同而有很大的差异。此处对一些主要的欧洲化学公司的研究工作的类型加以概述，听听各公司人力资源主管对人才需求的看法。
1. 有机化学家

据荷兰精化公司DSM的一位技术副总所说，在DSM公司，2300名研发人员中三分之二是化学家，有很多专业专事于有机化学，对制药行业所需的新的活性成分、食品业所需的添加剂以及一系列制造业应用中所需的原材料的研究与开发。在德国大公司拜耳（Bayer）化学公司，有机化学工作者是该公司8600名科学工作者中的主要部分，这些有机化学工作者正在为药物、除草剂、高性能材料寻找新的有效成分。瑞士的汽巴精化公司（Ciba Specialty Chemicals ）1600多名人员中30%是化学家，这是一支强大的研发队伍，他们为汽车、纺织、造纸业提供相关化合物。

2．医药化学家

在过去的几年，许多化学公司已遭遇困难，但制药公司及其员工继续保持良好的态势。例如，在英国的AstraZeneca公司，研发人员稳步增长，从2001年的1万人增长到目前的1.2万，其中大部分是具有化学背景。具有有机化学背景的药物化学工作者也在诸如Bayer这样的公司找到工作，不仅开发个人护理产品，而且为人类和动物的保健开发有效成分。

3. 高分子化学家


德国巴斯夫（BASF）公司，主要生产塑料、聚合物，在高分子研究方面有很强的基础。据该公司负责招聘科学家和工程师业务的Rainer Bürstinghaus称，该公司的7000名研发人员中的大多数是有机和高分子化学工作者。他们的工作是为汽车、建筑和电信业设计材料，同时生产由化妆品、药品、营养等行业定制的产品。


4．无机化学家


无机化学工作者开发了一系列应用产品，其人数也在不断增加。巴斯夫公司雇用无机化学家合成催化剂和开发新颜料。在一家法国精化公司——Rhodia公司，有近1500名研发人员，其中无机化学家正开发各种应用品，例如矽型加浓牙膏。对于专攻纳米技术的无机化学工作者来说，就业机会也正在增长。


5．计算化学家


为生物活性、选择性和安全，制药公司需要计算化学家的帮助，通过电脑虚拟筛选化合物来发明药品，这是目前一个正在增长的领域。

6．分析化学家

在所有的化学家中，分析化学家可能就业的公司范围最为广泛。Bayer公司在每一个研究或生产单位（通常作为一个中心实验室）都雇用分析化学家。当DSM公司从石化生产者转向精化公司时，分析化学家评估了工业加工过程，开发了专门的分析方法。DSM公司也需要更多的分析化学家。

Disciplines and Jobs
Elisabeth Pain

Opportunities and job descriptions can differ markedly by discipline. Here‘s a snapshot of the types of research jobs at some major European chemical companies:

Organic chemists. At the Dutch specialty chemicals company DSM, two-thirds of 2300 R&D workers are chemists, many with a specialization in organic chemistry, according to Ellen de Brabander, DSM‘s vice-president of corporate technology. Organic chemists at DSM work on new active ingredients for the pharmaceutical industry, additives for the food industry, and raw materials for a range of manufacturing applications. At the German chemical giant Bayer, organic chemists, who make up a substantial fraction of the company‘s 8600 scientists, are seeking new active ingredients for pharmaceuticals, herbicides, and high-performance materials. Switzerland-based Ciba Specialty Chemicals employs chemists--30% of its 1600-strong R&D workforce--to synthesize compounds intended to confer protection, color, or strength to automotive, textile, and paper-industry products.


Medicinal chemists. Many chemical companies have found the past years difficult, but pharmaceutical companies have continued to fare well, and so have their employees. At AstraZeneca in the U.K., for example, R&D employment has grown steadily from about 10,000 people in 2001 to the current figure of 12,000, of which "the majority are from a chemistry background," says human resources spokesperson Jez Chance. Medicinal chemists with backgrounds in organic chemistry also find work at companies such as Bayer, developing active ingredients for human and animal health, as well as personal-care products.


Polymer chemists. BASF, a leading producer of plastics, has a strong base in polymer research. The majority of the company‘s 7000 R&D staff are organic and polymer chemists, says Rainer Bürstinghaus, head of BASF‘s scientist and engineer recruiting services. Their job is to design materials for the automobile, construction, and telecommunications industries, along with custom components with functionality specified by the cosmetics, pharmaceutical, and nutrition industries.


Inorganic chemists. Inorganic chemists develop a range of applications, and their numbers are growing. BASF employs synthetic inorganic chemists to develop new catalysts and pigments. At Rhodia, a French specialty chemical company with nearly 1500 R&D employees, inorganic chemists develop silica-based products for thickening toothpaste, among other applications. Employment opportunities are also growing for inorganic chemists who specialize in nanotechnology.


Computational chemists. Pharmaceutical companies need computational chemists to help with drug discovery by screening compounds in silico for biological activity, selectivity, and safety. "We think it is going to be a growth area for a while," says Jez Chance of AstraZeneca.


Analytical chemists. Of all chemists, analytical chemists probably work in the widest range of companies. Bayer employs analytical chemists in every research or production unit, often as a central lab, according to Dirk Pfenning of Bayer‘s Human Resources Services, who adds that Bayer sometimes doesn‘t get enough applications for special analytical areas. As DSM transformed itself from a petrochemical producer to a specialty chemicals company, analytical chemists assessed industrial processes and developed specialized analytical methods. DSM needs more analytical chemists, too.

*（Science 19 May 2006）http://www.sciencemag.org/

如果我有一天真的离去了
如果我有一天真的离去了。你还会不会记得我，记得曾经为你鞠躬尽萃的我。曾经当你年少之时，当你狂妄之际，你想到了什么，你想过以后会怎么样吗？何时来的，何时会离开。

If I really leave away one day
If I really leave away one day. You will also remember me, remember once bowing for you, I assembling to the limit.
Once when you are young, when being wildly arrogant for you, what you had thought of, how are you after thinking? When to come, when will leave.