U-M Ann Arbor mathematicians research on biological clock. According to the mathematicians, the clock that determines and controls our biological rhythms that tell whether we are a day or night person is not ticking the way that scientists have long believed.

Our biological clockis located in the central brain region called suprachiasmatic nuclei. For so many years, scientists have believed the clock time is determined by the speed at which the cells fire their electrical pulses — fast during the day, slow at night.

The clock plays a role in cell division, heartbeat rates and many other biological functions. For those who have experienced jet lag or a sleep disorder, you just know how bad it feels when you are not in sync with your surroundings. If you are going to treat diseases such as cancer, it is very important that you understand your clock. Chemotherapy drugs are injected at a certain time when doctors thought that they are dividing most rapidly.

According to the new research which was published in the current issue of the journal Science, researchers developed a mathematical model showing that the suprachiasmatic nuclei cells don’t fire faster during the day and slower during the night, as had been assumed. Instead, the model shows that the cells would only fire in brief bursts a couple of times in a 24-hour cycle.

The Michigan mathematicians together with scientists from the University of Manchester in the U.K., examined mice and found that the suprachiasmatic nuclei cells remained in an electrically excited state during the day, but did not fire. Around dusk, the cells would fire for a brief period and then they go quiet again. There is another burst when dawn comes.

The findings “force us to completely reassess what we thought we knew about electrical activity in the brain’s circadian clock,” according to Manchester’s Hugh Piggins. Although this research raises the question whether the biological clock works in an analog or digital manner, it does not provide an answer.

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Ann Arbor charter schools may be the answer for those who cannot afford the tuition fee of a provate school and yet looking for something beyond the local public school. They are also called the Public School Academies.

Here are helpful information from where you can obtain information about charter schools in Washtenaw County as well as in Ann Arbor.

1. The Washtenaw Intermediate School District. Their Web site has a list of all charter schools that you can find in the county and they have links to the home pages of each school. In Ann Arbor, the charter schools that you can find their are the Ann Arbor Learning Community, Central Academy, Eastern Washtenaw Multicultural Academy, Honey Creek Community School and Washtenaw Technical Middle College. Fortis Academy, New Beginnings Academy, South Arbor Charter Academy and Victory Academy are the ones that you can find in Ypsilanti.

2. You can find helpful information in the National Heritage Academies Web site. Fortis Academy and South Arbor Charter Academy in Ypsilanti are overseen by the National Heritage Academies. If you are looking for additional information regarding these schools, you can find then on the Web site of National Heritage Academies.

3. Public School Review Web sites will also provide you information about charter schools in different locations. It even includes the average monthly income in a school district and the ratio of teacher-student. The information can be broken down by elementary schools, middle schools and high schools.

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Tuesday – University of Michigan is going to team up with Amazon.com Inc. to offer reprints from its library 400,000 rare, out-of-print and out-of-copyright books. Amazon’s BookSurege unit will print the books in soft cover editions with prices ranging from $10 to $45.

According to the University of Michigan, the books are in more than 200 languages from Acoli to Zulu. There is even a book from 1898 book from Florence Michigan on nursing, “Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is not.”

This is made possible because the university is going to digitize tis collection in partnership with Google Inc. according to Rick Fitzgerald. He said that it is basically an outgrowth of the digitization process. He further said that some of the books scanned by Mountain View are offered for sale. Mountain View is California-based Google. Other reprints being sold were scanned by the University.

The Michigan-Google partnership dates back to 2004 as part of a program that includes Harvard and Stanford as well as the University of California system. A federal court lawsuit was filed by the authors and publishers against Google for copyright laws. This was settled last year.

Books in the Google-Amazon deal do not have copyrights so there will be no royalty payments to the author or publisher. This is going to be a big addition to the inventory of BookSurge.

According to BookSurge spokeswoman Amanda Wilson in an e-mail, “Many publishers and university libraries work with BookSurge … to make content available on-demand.”

Wilson did not provide the number of titles on the their list or the number or libraries that are joining. But the 2007 launch of print-on-demand began with books from the collections of Emory University, the University of Maine and the Toronto and Cincinnati public libraries. Cornell University recently joined as well, according to Wilson.

“Public and university libraries are seeing the benefits of print-on-demand as an economic and environmentally conscious way to support their missions of preserving and making rare or out-of-copyright material broadly available to the public,” Wilson stated.

This arrangement will mean that “books unavailable for a century or more will be able to go back into print, one copy at a time,” in a statement by University of Michigan libraries Dean Paul Courant.

The revenues will be shared by both the university and BookSurge. The university will set the prices of each book. However, they did not disclose their financial agreement.

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Rebekah Warren, an Ann Arbor Democrat and Gilda Jacobs, a Huntington Woods Democrat said that they are going to address the rising cases of STDs and unplanned pregnancies. The Michigan Lawmakers said that they are going to introduce a series of bills to address the crisis.

Warren said in an interview that the statistics are something to be worried about and instead of the funds spent on STDs and unintended pregnancies, the money that you will be able to save can be used on other aspects of the state.

There will be 15 bills that will be addressing the said issues all about sex education, prescriptions, pregnancy center regulation. access for emergency contraception for those sexually abused victims.

H.B. 2472 will regulate the crisis pregnancy centers that they shall provide accurate information and be medically accurate about all the options that a woman has with regard to contraception, abortion, and provide appropriate information about specific education literature given by the Michigan Department of Community Health. When this legislation is passed, the clients would be allowed to sue the pregnancy centers if they violate the act.

Warren has worked in women’s reproductive health beofre being elected into the Michigan House. She said that those organizations have been giving flase information in the past. She said that she just want these women to get unbiased information.

Another bill in the package would amend the current education on abstinece plus education. As of this time, the state mandates an abstinence only education. Abstinence only education may increases the youth to infections because they do not have the “tools” to address the issue. It is necessary that the youth also know how to protect themselves.

Jacobs said that they want the youth to get a good sex education.

In another legislation, the lawmakers want to make available emergency contraceptives to rape victims. Both lawmakers agreed that it would also be better to add antiretroviral medications to prevent infection and HIV.

This might trigger a controversy since this means that pharmacists must issue drugs that are prescribed by doctors. Current rules dictate that the pharmacists may not release medicines if it is against their beliefs.

However, Warren said that the medical treatment is between the doctor and the patient.

Policy director for Right to Life, Ed Rivet, and Dave Maluchnik, spokesman for the Michigan Catholic Conference both said that they are reviewing the legislation before commenting.

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(photo taken from http://www.c-spanclassroom.org/Fellowship_About.aspx)

Ann Arbor Teacher Tracey Van Dusen is given the opportunity to improve her teaching skills when she was awarded the fellowship with C-SPAN. She is one of the three teachers who were selected for the fellowship which will be held this summer from June 18 to July 18. When she goes back to teaching her government students next fall, she will be able to give a more personal description of how things work, thanks to this fellowship.Van Dusen said that since she will be seeing things up-close, she will be able to describe to the students how the Congress works because it is quite hard for students to understand.

The curriculum that C-SPAN produced for teachers will be the one that Van Dusen will be working on. This came from a press release that was posted on the website of C-SPAN. Teacher Tracy is already using those materials in her government classes. She said that she is excited to be able to help work on those resources.

Van Dusen wrote some essays and videotaped herself teaching a class in order to apply for the fellowship. She will also have the chance to go behind the scenes in Washington as an addition to her working on the curriculum. Van Dusen says that she would want to attend a White House briefing if possible.

Tracey teaches AP U.S. Government, U.S. Government, and American Studies at Pioneer High School. These things should be pretty much exciting for Teacher Tracey as she goes to the C-SPAN fellowship. Her students will surely gain more insight from her.

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