HEAD COUNT
When speaking of the magnitude and complexity of the human brain's interconnectedness, comparisons to grains of sand on the beach or stars in the sky aren't much of a stretch. Each of the roughly 200 billion neurons in a healthy adult brain may make tens of thousands of contacts with other neurons. And each of these junctions, called a synapse, is like a tiny computer chip with perhaps 1,000 different proteins acting as molecular switches.
Now, thanks to an imaging method invented by Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology, and Kristina Micheva, a senior staff scientist in his lab, it is possible not only to count individual synapses, but also to categorize them based on their unique complement of proteins.
The technique, array tomography, combines fluorescent molecules designed to bind to particular proteins and glow in different colors with extremely high-resolution photography. Software designed by Brad Busse, a graduate student in Smith's lab, virtually stitches all the photographs together to create a three-dimensional image that can be "flown through."
This level of detailed visualization has never been achieved before, Smith noted in Inside Stanford Medicine. "The entire anatomical context of the synapses is preserved. You know right where each one is, and what kind it is."
With support from the National Institutes of Health, Smith's lab is using array tomography to examine brain tissue samples in an effort to pinpoint the subtypes of connections that are lost in Alzheimer's disease.
STANFORD'S RHODES TRIO
One student, Varun Sivaram, sprinted from his 2011 Rhodes Scholarship interview—suit and all—to a San Francisco sports bar to cheer the Cardinal to its Big Game triumph. But that wasn't the day's only reason to celebrate: Sivaram found out the same evening that he had won the scholarship, which provides all expenses for two or three years of study at Oxford.
A senior majoring in engineering physics and international relations, Sivaram is one of three newly minted Rhodes Scholars with ties to the Farm. Fatima Sabar, a senior majoring in biology, and Fagan Harris, '09, with a degree in political science and American studies, were also among the 32 Americans selected.
At Oxford, Sabar, who coordinated World AIDS Week at Stanford and is organizing a health education project for migrant farm workers in the Salinas Valley, plans to pursue a master's in global health. Harris, a Mitchell Scholar completing a master's in human rights and criminal justice at the University of Limerick, plans to pursue a doctoral degree in education. And Sivaram, who was named a Truman Scholar in November, intends to pursue a doctorate in solar energy materials.
Reflecting on the honor, Sivaram expressed gratitude to his recommenders and the Bechtel Center. "I think getting a Rhodes is less a personal achievement than a reflection of Stanford's commitment to realizing its students' potential. I'm really going to miss campus."
