Wednesday, May 20, 1998
Science Files
RESEARCH
Archaeology site offers virtual tours
Even though Easter Island scares Louise Krasniewicz, she goes
there all the time.
Combining a background in media production and anthropology, and
a general distaste for what she considers to be "garbage"
archaeology software, Krasniewicz created a new multimedia tool for
archaeologists and the general public.
"The point of all the technologies is to get people involved in
archaeology," said Louise Krasniewicz, director of the Digital
Archaeology Lab at UCLA.
Software users will be able to accompany an archaeologist to a
real site like Easter Island using virtual reality.
She plans on creating two types of multimedia systems: a
professional publication series and a version aimed at the K-12
curriculum.
The masses of data accumulated by archaeologists cannot all be
published, so a lot of records, mostly photographs and images,
remain unseen. Printing books filled with images is too
expensive.
"Once you digitize material, it’s cheap." she said.
Her job is to translate other people’s recorded research so that
it does not get lost. CD-ROMs allow for a plethora of images,
whether virtual reality models, maps, or photographs to be stuffed
onto a single disc.
Scientists study snails for memory
By studying memory from a cellular-biological perspective rather
than from psychological perspective, assistant professor David
Glanzman hopes to detail the complexities of a sea snail’s simple
nervous system in attempt to learn more about humans.
"First you try to understand (memory) in a simple organism and
then you take it to a more complex organism," said Glanzman,
assistant professor of physiological science.
The scientists start out with simple behavior and then try to
understand the processes that make the synapse stronger or
weaker.
"What we try to do is understand what changes take place in its
nervous system when it learns something in the pavlovian
conditioning paradigm," he said.
Glanzman studies how the connection between sensory neurons that
mediate reflexes change as a result of learning.
One of the goals of this research is to provide insight into
memory-related diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Compiled by Matt Grace, Daily Bruin Contributor.
Louise Krasniewicz
David Glanzman