Meloni and his team’s findings were first published in the article “Xenon Impairs Reconsolidation of Fear Memories in a Rat Model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)” in the journal PLOS ONE<\/em>.<\/p>\n Xenon gas fills a discharge tube shaped like the element\u2019s atomic symbol. (Photograph by Pslawinski [CC BY-SA 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>The researchers found that in lab rats, xenon gas interrupts the way the brain retrieves memories of past events.<\/p>\n It turns out that “every time you reactivate a memory\u00a0\u2014 that is, recall it\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s susceptible to modification,” explains Meloni.<\/p>\n Meloni tells Newsweek <\/em><\/a>reporter Douglas Main that once retrieved, “the memory can also be changed or added to, in a process called reconsolidation.” Meloni says that the gas “prevents a memory from being re-encoded, which may allow it \u2014 or its emotional significance \u2014 to begin to fade.”<\/p>\n He tells Newsweek<\/em> that “we really think we blocked this process of reconsolidation.”<\/p>\n Meloni, who earned a doctorate in neuroscience at Yale in 2000, is an assistant psychologist at Harvard’s McLean Hospital and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.<\/p>\n At McLean, he does his research in the Behavioral Genetics Lab program, headed up by Professor of Psychiatry Bill Carlezon ’86. (And, as Meloni reports with pride, he and Carlezon “were both students of John Kelsey,” professor emeritus of psychology.)<\/p>\n Bates’ head lacrosse coach Peter Lasagna writes a column for Inside Lacrosse<\/em>, and his February piece addresses his sport’s progress toward greater diversity and inclusion<\/a>.<\/p>\n While two of the best NCAA players are students of color (and are on the magazine’s cover), “featuring [Lyle] Thompson and [Myles] Jones does not mean lacrosse has achieved racial nirvana,” Lasagna writes.<\/p>\n Lasagna recalled what happened when, in 2012, professional player Jovan Miller, who is black, boycotted the equipment manufacturer Warrior for using the hashtag “ninjaplease,” the word “ninja” being a proxy for the N-word, according to some definitions.<\/p>\n “The backlash [against Miller] exposed the most ignorant intersection of lacrosse and American culture,” Lasagna writes. “Let\u2019s be properly proud of progress made without falling prey to the disease of short historical memory. Measurable improvement does not mean we\u2019re finished working on increased access and opportunity for all.”<\/p>\n Men’s lacrosse coach Peter Lasagna speaks to the team during a game in March 2014. (Sarah Crosby\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n Scientists have long known that they can infer an animal’s diet by looking at its teeth. For example, the heavily pitted surfaces of a squirrel’s teeth tell us that it has been chomping nuts.<\/p>\n But can the pattern of scratches and pits on one species’ teeth, like the squirrel’s, indicate the diet of a very different animal, even a fossil mammal with no living relatives?<\/p>\n The pattern of “microwear” on one species’ teeth can be used to infer the diet of another species, even an extinct animal like the cave bear, Ursus spelaeus, whose jaw is shown here. (Photograph by Didier Descouens [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>Thanks to Hilary Christensen, visiting assistant professor of geology, the answer is yes.<\/p>\n Her paper, “Similar Associations of Tooth Microwear and Morphology Indicate Similar Diet across Marsupial and Placental Mammals,” in the journal PLOS ONE<\/em>, offers a way of “assigning a general dietary category to an animal with a truly unknown ecology.”<\/p>\n After comparing and contrasting the “microwear” \u2014 tiny scratches and pits\u00a0\u2014 on the teeth of various animals, Christensen developed a flow chart that can reveal the diet of almost any type of animal, whether mammal or marsupial.<\/p>\n Christensen\u2019s flow chart shows how a scientist could infer an animal\u2019s \u201cfeeding guild\u201d by knowing its body size, tooth morphology and microwear.<\/p>\n Let’s say that a scientist only had access to a museum specimen of an extinct species.<\/p>\n By knowing the general size of the specimen, and having access to at least one molar, albeit fossilized, the scientist could infer whether the animal browsed on trees and shrubs, grazed on grass, fed on fruits, ate insects or devoured meat.<\/p>\n “It’s a very powerful tool,” Christensen says.<\/p>\n In its coverage of the college’s MLK Day observance, the Portland Press Herald<\/em> made connections<\/a> between Bates’ founding ideals, alumnus Benjamin Mays ’20, and King.<\/p>\n Reporter Kelley Bouchard interviewed Associate Dean of Students James Reese, a key figure in the college’s MLK Day history, who noted that Mays’ relationship with King didn’t end when King graduate from Morehouse, where Mays was president.<\/p>\n \u201cKing would call on Mays for advice and to discuss approaches to protests, so [their] bond was even stronger than the mentor role he had during King\u2019s college years,\u201d Reese said.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a column by Rick Cohen in Nonprofit Quarterly<\/em> cited the college’s MLK Day programming <\/a>as an example of the “different kind of MLK Day commemoration” that is needed today.<\/p>\n The Bates MLK Day theme was “From Selma to Ferguson: 50 Years of Nonviolent Dissent<\/a>.”<\/p>\n Cohen wrote: “In 2015, we should all be showing courage to analyze, address and attack overt, structural, institutional and implicit racism” on MLK Day and guard against “making his holiday one that doesn\u2019t forthrightly address issues of race.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Alumni were on both sides of a Boston Globe<\/em> story about how Allagash<\/a> came up with its Interlude beer.<\/p>\n Gary Dzen ’05 writes the Globe<\/em>‘s 99 Bottles beer column, and he interviewed Jason Perkins ’97, Allagash brewmaster, about how a “rogue yeast” is part of the beer’s story.<\/p>\n![\"Xenon](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2015\/01\/web-XeTube.jpg\")
<\/a>
\nPeter Lasagna<\/h3>\n
Diversity, inclusion and lacrosse<\/h5>\n
<\/a>
\nHilary Christensen<\/h3>\n
Truth from the tooth<\/h4>\n
<\/a>
\n\u00a0MLK Day at Bates<\/h3>\n
A different kind of commemoration<\/h5>\n
\nJason Perkins ’97 and Gary Dzen ’05<\/h3>\n
A brewmaster’s interlude<\/h4>\n