A team of MIT scientists have created false memories in mice, a telling example of just how unreliable memories can be.
By Elizabeth Barber,?Contributor / July 25, 2013
Researchers have created fake memories in mice indistinguishable from the mice's true recollections, an accomplishment that has bearings on much confidence we should have in our own memories.
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Here's how the mouse would tell it: I padded into a room and was shocked. Then I tiptoed into a different room. I was shocked there, too.
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But only of those mouse memories is real. The other is the invention of MIT scientists. But to the mouse, both the memories are just as true.
A team of scientists under Susumu Tonegawa at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has created false memories in mice, a feat that puts renewed attention on the foibles of human memory, an unreliable resource often called upon as a final arbiter in critical, sometimes life-or-death, situations, including trials that hinge on eyewitness statements.
?Our data demonstrate that it is possible to generate an internally represented and behaviorally expressed fear memory via artificial means,? the authors write in the paper, published in Nature.
Memories of experiences are associations of several elements ? objects, space and time, among others ? that are encoded in biochemical changes in the brain?s neurons. The total package that entails a memory is called an engram.
But where those engrams are in the brain has been unclear: are those engrams spread across the brain, forming a brain-wide network of memory creation, or are engrams stored in just one region?
That region, researchers have proposed, could be the hippocampus, a small area shaped like a ram?s horn and tucked snugly at the brain?s bottom-middle. To prove that engrams are localized to the hippocampus would require showing that it was possible to generate memories from just the activation of specifically targeted hippocampal cells.
In a previous paper, published last year in Nature, the MIT team had begun to prove that point, showing that mice would freeze in fear if scientists artificially reactivated the brain cells associated with a previous experience with electric shocking.
This latest paper, published in Science, builds on that previous work. First, the researchers placed mice in a chamber unfamiliar to the rodents, which were left to explore the space un-shocked. While there, the team labeled neurons in the CA1 region of the mice?s hippocampus with channelrhodopsin-2, a protein that activates neurons when stimulated with light.
The next day, the mice were introduced to a new room. There, the mice were shocked in their feet ? and at the same time, the team activated the neurons that had been activated in making the memory of the previous space.
On the third day, the mice were returned to the original room, where the animals froze in terror: the mice had associated the second room?s shock with the visit to the first room, in effect creating an apocryphal memory of a shock delivered in the first room. And the team had been able to identify the specific cells that make up part of an engram for a particular memory and then target those cells to reactive it.
When placed back into the second room, the mice froze similarly. That showed that the two memories were equally real to the mice, though inly one was true.
?Whether it?s a false or genuine memory, the brain?s neural mechanism underlying the recall of the memory is the same,? says Susumu Tonegawa, a professor of biology and neuroscience and co-author on the paper, published in Science, in a release.
Since human memories are more complex than mice memories, the authors said the technology is a long way from the sci-fi applications of memory inducement as imagined in the movies Total Recall or Inception. Still, the research does have bearing on how much confidence should be placed in human memory, which is notoriously often little more than fiction-making, in high stakes situations. And it also opens the floodgates to further research on memory-making that tackles the nuances of how memories, wily-little things, are made, and re-made, and made again.
?Now that we can reactivate and change the contents of memories in the brain, we can begin asking questions that were once the realm of philosophy,? said Steve Ramirez, a graduate student at MIT and a co-author on the paper, in a release. ?Are there multiple conditions that lead to the formation of false memories? Can false memories for both pleasurable and aversive events be artificially created?
?These are the once seemingly sci-fi questions that can now be experimentally tackled in the lab,? he said.
Syracuse preseason camp begins in a little over a week -- Aug. 4 to be exact -- so it's time to take a peek in the mailbox. Beat writers Michael Cohen and Nate Mink are taking a page out of Mike Waters' book and introducing the mailbag segment to the football page. They will answer readers' questions about the Orange, the Atlantic Coast Conference and college football in general.
To submit a question, email Mike at mcohen@syracuse.com or Nate at nmink@syracuse.com. You can also reach them on Twitter: @Michael_Cohen13 and @MinkNate.
How do you think the move to the ACC will affect Dome attendance?
-- Patrick Kelly
Syracuse played five games in the Carrier Dome last season, winning four. After falling to Northwestern in the season opener, the Orange knocked off Stony Brook, Connecticut, Pittsburgh and Louisville.
But despite the successful record, attendance fell by more than 2,000 fans per game on average. In 2011, an average of 40,504 fans attended each game. Last year that number dipped to 38,212.
The move to the ACC, though, should provide a nice boost. Syracuse opens conference play on Oct. 5 against Clemson, a team picked to win the conference and a quarterback picked to win the league's preseason Player of the Year award. That combination -- first ACC game, big-time national opponent -- should have the place filled.
The remaining three ACC games are dates with Wake Forest, Pittsburgh and Boston College -- all teams that SU fans have seen in the Carrier Dome recently. Boston College came to Syracuse in 2010, Wake Forest in 2011 and Pittsburgh is the other Big East school that moved to the ACC along with the Orange.
Pittsburgh and Boston College should draw nice crowds due to the ongoing and renewal of rivalries between those schools and the Orange. And Wake Forest, the next home game after Clemson, could draw a nice crowd if SU pulls another upset at home, just as it has done in each of the last two seasons (Louisville in 2012, West Virginia in 2011).
What's the football team's schedule while at Fort Drum?
-- @RonWhitingH2O via Twitter
Syracuse will return to Fort Drum for a week in August, just as the team did last year under head coach Doug Marrone. The Orange will head north from Aug. 13-16, taking part in both football and military activities. The goal will be to improve both on the football field and off of it, with an emphasis on team bonding and cohesion.
Tuesday, Aug. 13
11:15 a.m. to noon -- Activity with Syracuse football student-athletes and military personnel
4:15-6:25 p.m. -- Practice
Wednesday, Aug. 14
11:15 a.m. to noon -- Activity with Syracuse football student-athletes and military personnel
4:15-6:25 p.m. -- Practice
Thursday, Aug. 15
5-5:30 p.m. -- Syracuse football instructional clinic for children of military personnel
5:30-7:20 p.m. -- Practice
Friday, Aug. 16
8:45-10:45 a.m. -- Activity with Syracuse football student-athletes and military personnel
Do you know if head coach Scott Shafer is going to have open practices like Doug Marrone did his first couple of years?
-- @richsufan via Twitter
The annual Orange Fan Fest is scheduled for Friday, Aug. 9, on the practice fields adjacent to Manley Field House. The event runs from 4-7 p.m., during which time fans can watch the football team practice and partake in a number of other activities. (In years past there have been inflatable bounce houses, among other things.)
Practice is scheduled to run from 4:30-6:40 p.m., and afterwards fans can get autographs from players and coaches.
We will be sure to let you know if any more open practices are announced.
Follow Michael Cohen on Twitter at @Michael_Cohen13.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc sent its head of emerging markets to China to oversee the drugmaker?s response to a government probe of suspected economic crimes, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Abbas Hussain, the London-based company?s president of Europe, Japan, emerging markets and Asia Pacific, was dispatched by Chief Executive Officer Andrew Witty, said the person, who asked not to be named because he wasn?t authorized to speak about the matter. The global head of internal audit and deputy chief counsel for China are with Hussain, the person said.
Sending a senior executive such as Hussain shows Glaxo wants to be seen as a company that?s doing what?s expected of them, said Fabian Wenner, a health-care analyst with Kepler Capital Markets in Zurich. Four senior executives have been detained in the investigation involving 3 billion yuan (US$489 million) of spurious travel and meeting expenses, and trade in sexual favours, China?s Public Security Ministry said July 15.
?Investors are increasingly asking questions about this,? Wenner said today in a phone interview. ?They want more visibility.?
Hussain, 48, joined Glaxo in 2008 after 20 years at Eli Lilly & Co. The Indian-born manager is one of the 15 people on the Glaxo Corporate Executive Team that, along with Witty, manages the business.
Shares Decline
Glaxo fell 1.3% to 1,704.50 pence at 3:47 p.m. in London. Witty, who hasn?t spoken publicly about the allegations, will hold briefings on July 24 with reporters and analysts after the company announces second-quarter earnings.
Glaxo said in June it had found ?no evidence of corruption or bribery in our China business? after a four-month investigation. The internal probe came in response to a whistle- blower?s allegation that sales people in China were involved in widespread bribery of doctors to prescribe medication.
Chinese police said June 28 that senior Glaxo executives in the country were suspected of economic crimes, and on July 11 China?s Ministry of Public Security said some managers had admitted to corruption. ?These allegations are shameful and we regret this has occurred,? Glaxo said in a July 15 statement.
Other Drugmakers
Other foreign companies may also be involved, Gao Feng, head of the economic crimes investigations unit of China?s Public Security Ministry, told reporters at a July 15 briefing.
While authorities haven?t named any other companies, UCB SA said yesterday its Chinese operations were visited by local authorities.
All drugmakers are receiving visits, and UCB has ?nothing to report,? France Nivelle, a spokeswoman for the Brussels- based company, said in an interview. ?It?s business as usual,? Nivelle said. UCB fell 2.3% to 42.16 euros.
Novartis AG, Europe?s biggest drugmaker by sales, Germany?s Bayer AG and Sanofi, France?s largest drugmaker, said they haven?t been contacted by authorities in China in connection with any misconduct.
Merck & Co., the second-biggest U.S. drugmaker, also said it hasn?t been contacted by the Ministry of Public Security. Roche Holding AG said it?s not aware of any anti-corruption probes in China against the Basel, Switzerland-based company.
No Contact
Novo Nordisk A/S hasn?t been contacted by Chinese authorities and ?is, to our knowledge, not included in the investigation,? a spokesman for the Bagsvaerd, Denmark-based company said today.
AstraZeneca Plc, the biggest U.K. drugmaker after Glaxo, said in its 2012 annual report that it is investigating indications of inappropriate conduct in countries that include China. The company has no update yet, Esra Erkal-Paler, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
Mark Reilly, who has led Glaxo?s business in China since 2009, left the country June 27 after his colleagues were detained. Glaxo?s finance chief in China, Steve Nechelput, has been unable to leave the country since the end of June.
Reilly returned to the U.K. on a routine, planned business trip and has been working from Glaxo?s headquarters on the response to the probe, a person with knowledge of the matter said July 15.
Efforts to clean up the nation?s US$350 billion health-care industry have gained prominence since police said last month they were investigating Glaxo. On July 17, the China Food and Drug Administration said it will ?severely crack down? on fake medications, forged documents and bribery.
Friday, July 19 2013 8:25 AM EDT2013-07-19 12:25:47 GMT
A man who police said was beaten in the middle of the street overnight, has died.More >>A man who police said was beaten in the middle of the street overnight, has died.More >>
Police arrest Huntsville man accused of raping baby
Police arrest Huntsville man accused of raping baby
Friday, July 19 2013 7:58 AM EDT2013-07-19 11:58:02 GMT
A Huntsville man has been put on Tennessee's Top Ten Most Wanted list after he was charged with raping a 4-month-old baby.More >>Huntsville police arrested a man accused of raping a 4-month-old baby. More >>
Man leads police on chase, arrested for DUI
Man leads police on chase, arrested for DUI
Friday, July 19 2013 7:22 AM EDT2013-07-19 11:22:22 GMT
Decatur Police arrested a man who led them on a chase early Friday morning.More >>Decatur Police arrested a man who led them on a chase early Friday morning.More >>
Huntsville Police: 1 person shot in neck
Huntsville Police: 1 person shot in neck
Thursday, July 18 2013 11:13 PM EDT2013-07-19 03:13:24 GMT
Police responded to a shooting on Mason Court in Huntsville, Thursday afternoon. More >>Police responded to a shooting on Mason Court in Huntsville, Thursday afternoon.More >>
2 injured in multiple-vehicle wreck in the Shoals
2 injured in multiple-vehicle wreck in the Shoals
Thursday, July 18 2013 11:08 PM EDT2013-07-19 03:08:27 GMT
State Troopers said two people were injured in a three-vehicle wreck on Highway 72 just before 11:30 a.m. Thursday. More >>State Troopers said two people were injured in a three-vehicle wreck on Highway 72 just before 11:30 a.m. Thursday. More >>
PHIL CAMPBELL, AL (WAFF) -
A north Alabama church finally moved into its new home nearly two years after a deadly tornado outbreak.
This Sunday, the congregation at the Mountain View Baptist Church in Phil Campbell will hold their first worship service in the new sanctuary.
With the help of more than 1,500 volunteers over the course of the last year, the church is now completed. Built on the same property as the one destroyed in April 2011, Pastor Sammy Taylor said this one is better than ever.
Taylor said the rebuild was made possible through the Builders for Christ group, and that construction had been non-stop since they began last summer.
The first worship service will be held at 11 a.m. Sunday morning. The following Sunday, July 28, there will be a service at 11 a.m. followed by an open house at 2 p.m. and a building dedication ceremony at 3 p.m.
Copyright 2013 WAFF. All rights reserved.
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Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Center for Immigration Studies fellow Jerry Kammer wrote a piece after Monday?s march that focused on the civil right?s aspect of illegal immigration. He wrote, ?young blacks have been especially affected by job displacement as employers have hired millions of illegal immigrants.? This theme was invoked in the speeches of four Black Leaders on Monday as Kammer recounts.
Read Jerry Kammer?s full article?here.
Charles Butler, radio host and member of the Black American Leadership Alliance, noted that next month will mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was there that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his ?I Have a Dream? speech. The 1963 march, taking place on the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, was a powerful appeal to the nation?s conscience that helped produce landmark civil rights legislation the following year.
Said Butler, ?I find it so ironic 50 years later that I?m standing here, speaking at this event, a march for jobs again. ? The statistics are that by 2040 foreign-born workers will outnumber native-born workers. ? Native-born workers have been demolished ? in terms of getting jobs ? by foreign workers ? . Whose country is this at the end of the day? So when we say we want to take our country back, people say we?re racist, we?re this, we?re that. But we?re really not.?
Frank Morris, former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and member of the Center for Immigration Studies Board, decried the ?devaluation of American citizenship and the racism of American immigration policy?. Morris refuted the claim that the fight for comprehensive immigration reform is a civil rights struggle. ?As an African American and a veteran of civil rights, this really gets my dander up, because this analogy is false for the most obvious reasons,? said Morris. He said the civil rights struggle in the United States involved American citizens fighting against unconstitutional laws ?often at personal risk of life.? Then he asked, ?This is considered as equivalent to non-citizens going into another country, demanding rights they do not have, and demanding that laws that were supposed to protect American citizens not be enforced? You say that?s equal?? Morris said the racism of U.S. immigration policy lies in the fact that ?non-citizens, who have violated and benefited from the violation of our laws, are having a new bill that Congress is proposing for them, that gives them more benefits, while our own citizens are tragically suffering more.?
Wayne Dupree, a conservative activist, noted the frequent calls for compassion toward illegal immigrants. Said Dupree, ?We?re not asking for a mass deportation. We?re asking for our respect. Respect our citizens. ? Where is the compassion for American citizens? ? I ask the House of Representatives to use common sense on this problem and respect us first. Do not repeat the mistakes of 1986. Be smart this time. Protect us first, and vote down this bill. Protect us first! Protect jobs for all American citizens!
Stephen Broden, Senior Pastor of Fair Park Bible Fellowship in Dallas, said, ?In an attempt to fix a real problem with immigration in America, our leaders have neglected their first obligation: to protect the interests of all Americans. Our leadership has an obligation, a duty, to secure our liberties as citizens of this great land. And our liberties are inextricably tied to our ability to provide for ourselves and for our families. This amnesty bill does not consider the cold, hard reality of unemployment among blacks and low-skilled Americans in today?s economy.?
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Rice University lab grows 'bottom-up' nanoribbons for the first time
Concentric hexagons of graphene grown in a furnace at Rice University represent the first time anyone has synthesized graphene nanoribbons on metal from the bottom up -- atom by atom.
As seen under a microscope, the layers brought onions to mind, said Rice chemist James Tour, until a colleague suggested flat graphene could never be like an onion.
"So I said, 'OK, these are onion rings,'" Tour quipped.
The name stuck, and the remarkable rings that chemists marveled were even possible are described in a new paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The challenge was to figure out how such a thing could grow, Tour said. Usually, graphene grown in a hot furnace by chemical vapor deposition starts on a seed -- a speck of dust or a bump on a copper or other metallic surface. One carbon atom latches onto the seed in a process called nucleation and others follow to form the familiar chicken-wire grid.
Experiments in Tour's lab to see how graphene grows under high pressure and in a hydrogen-rich environment produced the first rings. Under those conditions, Tour, Rice theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and their teams found that the entire edge of a fast-growing sheet of graphene becomes a nucleation site when hydrogenated. The edge lets carbon atoms get under the graphene skin, where they start a new sheet.
But because the top graphene grows so fast, it eventually halts the flow of carbon atoms to the new sheet underneath. The bottom stops growing, leaving a graphene ring. Then the process repeats.
"The mechanism relies on that top layer to stop carbon from reaching the bottom so easily," Tour said. "What we get are a multiple of single crystals growing one on top of the other."
The Tour lab pioneered the bulk manufacture of single-atom-thick graphene nanoribbons in 2009 with the discovery that carbon nanotubes could be chemically "unzipped" into long, thin sheets. Nanoribbons are being studied for use in batteries and advanced electronics and as heat sinks.
"Usually you make a ribbon by taking a large thing and cutting it down," Tour said. "But if you can grow a ribbon from the bottom up, you could have control of the edges." The atomic configuration at the edge helps determine graphene's electrical properties. The edges of hexagonal graphene onion rings are zigzags, which make the rings metallic.
"The big news here," he said, "is that we can change relative pressures of the growth environment of hydrogen versus carbon and get entirely new structures. This is dramatically different from regular graphene."
Graduate student Zheng Yan, a member of Tour's lab and lead author of the paper, discovered the new route to nanoribbons while experimenting with graphene growth under hydrogen pressurized to varying degrees. The sweet spot for rings was at 500 Torr, he said.
Further testing found the microscopic rings formed underneath and not on top of the sheet, and Yakobson's lab confirmed the growth mechanism through first-principle calculations. Yan also determined the top sheet of graphene could be stripped away with argon plasma, leaving stand-alone rings.
The width of the rings, which ranged from 10 to 450 nanometers, also affects their electronic properties, so finding a way to control it will be one focus of continued research, Tour said. "If we can consistently make 10-nanometer ribbons, we can begin to gate them and turn them into low-voltage transistors," he said. They may also be suitable for lithium storage for advanced lithium ion batteries, he said.
###
Co-authors of the paper are Rice graduate students Yuanyue Liu, Zhiwei Peng, Changsheng Xiang, Abdul-Rahman Raji and Errol Samuel; postdoctoral researchers Jian Lin, Gunuk Wang and Haiqing Zhou; Rice alumna Elvira Pembroke; and Professor Ting Yu of Nanyang Technological University. Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science at Rice. Yakobson is the Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and professor of chemistry.
The Singapore National Research Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the Lockheed Martin LANCER IV program and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research supported the work. Calculations were performed on the National Science Foundation-supported DaVinCI supercomputer at Rice, the National Institute for Computational Sciences' Kraken and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center's Hopper.
Read the abstract at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja403915m
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews
Related Materials:
Tour Group at Rice: http://www.jmtour.com
Yakobson Group at Rice: http://biygroup.blogs.rice.edu
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Rice University lab grows 'bottom-up' nanoribbons for the first time
Concentric hexagons of graphene grown in a furnace at Rice University represent the first time anyone has synthesized graphene nanoribbons on metal from the bottom up -- atom by atom.
As seen under a microscope, the layers brought onions to mind, said Rice chemist James Tour, until a colleague suggested flat graphene could never be like an onion.
"So I said, 'OK, these are onion rings,'" Tour quipped.
The name stuck, and the remarkable rings that chemists marveled were even possible are described in a new paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The challenge was to figure out how such a thing could grow, Tour said. Usually, graphene grown in a hot furnace by chemical vapor deposition starts on a seed -- a speck of dust or a bump on a copper or other metallic surface. One carbon atom latches onto the seed in a process called nucleation and others follow to form the familiar chicken-wire grid.
Experiments in Tour's lab to see how graphene grows under high pressure and in a hydrogen-rich environment produced the first rings. Under those conditions, Tour, Rice theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and their teams found that the entire edge of a fast-growing sheet of graphene becomes a nucleation site when hydrogenated. The edge lets carbon atoms get under the graphene skin, where they start a new sheet.
But because the top graphene grows so fast, it eventually halts the flow of carbon atoms to the new sheet underneath. The bottom stops growing, leaving a graphene ring. Then the process repeats.
"The mechanism relies on that top layer to stop carbon from reaching the bottom so easily," Tour said. "What we get are a multiple of single crystals growing one on top of the other."
The Tour lab pioneered the bulk manufacture of single-atom-thick graphene nanoribbons in 2009 with the discovery that carbon nanotubes could be chemically "unzipped" into long, thin sheets. Nanoribbons are being studied for use in batteries and advanced electronics and as heat sinks.
"Usually you make a ribbon by taking a large thing and cutting it down," Tour said. "But if you can grow a ribbon from the bottom up, you could have control of the edges." The atomic configuration at the edge helps determine graphene's electrical properties. The edges of hexagonal graphene onion rings are zigzags, which make the rings metallic.
"The big news here," he said, "is that we can change relative pressures of the growth environment of hydrogen versus carbon and get entirely new structures. This is dramatically different from regular graphene."
Graduate student Zheng Yan, a member of Tour's lab and lead author of the paper, discovered the new route to nanoribbons while experimenting with graphene growth under hydrogen pressurized to varying degrees. The sweet spot for rings was at 500 Torr, he said.
Further testing found the microscopic rings formed underneath and not on top of the sheet, and Yakobson's lab confirmed the growth mechanism through first-principle calculations. Yan also determined the top sheet of graphene could be stripped away with argon plasma, leaving stand-alone rings.
The width of the rings, which ranged from 10 to 450 nanometers, also affects their electronic properties, so finding a way to control it will be one focus of continued research, Tour said. "If we can consistently make 10-nanometer ribbons, we can begin to gate them and turn them into low-voltage transistors," he said. They may also be suitable for lithium storage for advanced lithium ion batteries, he said.
###
Co-authors of the paper are Rice graduate students Yuanyue Liu, Zhiwei Peng, Changsheng Xiang, Abdul-Rahman Raji and Errol Samuel; postdoctoral researchers Jian Lin, Gunuk Wang and Haiqing Zhou; Rice alumna Elvira Pembroke; and Professor Ting Yu of Nanyang Technological University. Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science at Rice. Yakobson is the Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and professor of chemistry.
The Singapore National Research Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the Lockheed Martin LANCER IV program and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research supported the work. Calculations were performed on the National Science Foundation-supported DaVinCI supercomputer at Rice, the National Institute for Computational Sciences' Kraken and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center's Hopper.
Read the abstract at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja403915m
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews
Related Materials:
Tour Group at Rice: http://www.jmtour.com
Yakobson Group at Rice: http://biygroup.blogs.rice.edu
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
With temperatures in the 90s, D.C.-area homeless shelters are running out of space at a torrent pace, putting homeless women and children at a serious risk, according to a report by WTOP.
David Treadwell, the executive director of Central Union Mission, told WTOP that the shelter in Northwest Washington filled almost immediately after its doors opened Tuesday morning.
And the story of one mother and daughter highlights just how tough it is in this kind of weather.
WTOP:
Shakithia Truesdale and her 4-year-old daughter spent the entire day Tuesday in a cooling center set up at the Virginia Williams Family Resource Center in Northeast D.C. Her 8-year-old daughter spent the day at camp.
But this pregnant mother started worrying the moment she woke up, she says, about where they'll stay the night.
"I had to call Child Protective Services because I don't have nowhere for me and my kids to sleep for the night," Truesdale says.
The D.C. government has been tweeting out links to a map with the locations of homeless shelters and senior and cooling stations.
If you come across anyone who needs help or shelter, the city has a number to call to get that person to a cooling center: 1-800-535-7252.
But if you see a someone in immediate need of medical attention, the best number to call is always 911.
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Public release date: 18-Jul-2013
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