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NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY OF DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2009
RESEARCH
Memory fades in late 20s
BY MICOLE ARONOWITZ
maronowitz@kansan.com
Wait, what?
We've all been there. We've forgotten someone's name or come up blank trying to remember ...
Turns out there's a reason for those mental slipups. There is evidence to support that age-related cognitive decline in healthy adults begins in their late 20s after peaking in their early 20s, according to a study by the University of Virginia in the April 2009 issue of "Neurobiology of Aging."
Susan Kemper, professor of psychology, said every form of cognitive ability peaks in our early to mid 20s and then shows an age-related decline. These cognitive abilities include: memory, problem solving, attention and language. She said some people's cognitive abilities peaked earlier than others and some declined more rapidly.
Working memory, often referred to as short-term memory, peaks in the early 20s and then declines rapidly, Kemper said. This type of memory, she said, is how we remember information in terms of seconds and minutes versus
long term memory's days, weeks and years.
Graham Lakey, Kansas City, Kan., senior; said he noticed his short-term memory was beginning to slowly fade during his time at the University of Kansas. He said when a teacher asked him to recall information in class, he had a difficult time doing so.
"Now, I have to actually work at it, whereas before it would just click," Lakey said.
"We want to build better brains through training, education and experience so people may be able to have a longer window before those age-related declines start to handicap them and impair their everyday performance." Kemper said.
Sara Troll, Overland Park junior, said she rarely forgot day-to-day details. She attributes her keen memory to not watching television and not having the Internet at her apartment.
Kemper said there was evidence that conscious efforts could slow down the normal deterioration of age-related cognitive abilities.
"That helps with memory because if I'm watching TV all the time or on the Internet, I tend to
space out," Troll said.
To enhance her memory, Troll plays a game called Geo Challenge once every couple days. She said it was an interactive geography game which required memorization to match a country with its flag and locate countries on a map.
Kemper said there was interest in discovering other ways that memory could be improved. Antioxidants, which can be found in items such as blueberries and green tea, have the potential to slow the rate of cognitive decline as well, she said.
Along with mental stimulation, diet and exercise also build better minds and help slow down the rate of decline. Kemper said.
"Anything that's good for the heart is also good for the mind." she said.
Developing training programs for people with memory problems is a future endeavor that Kemper hopes can be beneficial in restoring memory. She said there was work being done to develop pharmaceuticals that could build stronger brains and make brains more resistant to age-related decline.
Edited by Andrew Wiebe
CRIME
Victims' belongings found in BU student's home
BY DENISE LAVOIE Associated Press
BOSTON—A Boston University medical student accused of robbing women who advertised erotic services on Craigslist, killing one of them, had items belonging to both victims in his apartment, a law enforcement official said Wednesday.
Philip Markoff is charged with killing a masseuse at the Boston Marriott Copley Place hotel, in the historic Back Bay district, on April 14. He also is charged in the
robbery of a woman at another Boston hotel four days earlier.
A law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said police found items belonging to both women in Markoff's apartment in Quincy, south of Boston. The official wasn't authorized to speak about evidence in the investigation.
The official would not confirm a report by ABC News that the items seized by police included the victims' underwear. ABC News said two unidentified law enforcement sources said Markoff appeared to be collecting underwear as "souvenirs" from the victims
ABC News did not say how Markoff took the underwear, and he has not been accused of sexually assaulting either woman. Prosecutors have said he went through the purse of the first woman he's accused of robbing. Investigators are looking into gambling as the possible motivation.
Markoff, 23, is accused in the death of Julissa Brisman, a massseuse who was found dead in the doorway of her hotel room after being bashed in the head and shot three times.
NASA
Shuttles may be replaced
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
Associated Press
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — NASA is facing a critical deadline to make its biggest decision in a generation: whether to go forward with plans to retire the space shuttle fleet and replace it with a new mode of space travel. But the agency still has no chief to make the $230 billion call.
Tracks from the crawler transporter leave an imprint leading up to pad 398A after delivering space shuttle Endeavour to its destination from the Vehicle Assembly building at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Friday. NASA is facing a big deadline for a decision on whether to go forward with replacing its old shuttle fleet with a new mode of space travel. But it will not has no chance to make this $230 billion once in-a-generation call.
NASA seems so far off the White House radar, said one presidential expert, that it might as well be on Pluto.
And that's not all. A Congressional Budget Office report concluded that NASA cannot carry out its current plans on its existing budget.
The report outlined options that include delaying the flight of the new spacecraft, spending more money to meet the current
"As each day goes by, the need for these decisions becomes greater and greater, and the absence of an administrator becomes more and more an issue," said John Logsdon, a member of the NASA Advisory Council who also advised President Barack Obama's campaign.
Obama's science adviser has said that crucial decisions on the shuttle and a new spacecraft to carry astronauts back to the moon will not be made until NASA gets a new administrator. In an interview two weeks ago, John Holdren did not know when that would be.
But some in Congress want the shuttle to fly longer because retiring the fleet would force the U.S. to rely on Russia for trips to space for nearly five years. Obama has said he wants at least one more shuttle flight beyond those already planned.
A key deadline is April 30, when a congressional rule governing the shuttle's infrastructure expires. After that date, NASA will be free to start taking apart the shuttle program if it chooses.
NASA also has an extra $1 billion in stimulus money, but little direction in how to spend it.
schedule or drastically cutting back on science.
In past new administrations, the lack of a permanent boss might not have been such a big concern. The space program has typically focused on shuttle flights needed to complete construction of the international space station.
But NASA today is in the early stages of a once-in-a-generation transition that will affect how Americans get into space and where they go. No other federal agency has faced such a large financial decision without a permanent chief.
A report last month by the Government Accountability Office, the auditing arm of Congress, said the program that would replace the shuttle, return humans to the moon and perhaps send them to Mars is expected to cost more than $230 billion.
So far, the Obama administration has nominated nearly 200 officials, including an undersecretary of agriculture for rural development, an assistant labor secretary for veterans employment and training and actor Kal Penn as a White House liaison. But at NASA, Obama has not nominated a single manager who requires Senate confirmation.
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