No drugs, swearing, or talk of Hong Kong independence in schools, says the city’s leader

No drugs, swearing, or talk of Hong Kong independence in schools, says the city’s leader Teachers should tackle any discussion of Hong Kong independence like they tackle drugs and swearing in school, said city leader Leung Chun-ying today (Aug. 23). As Hong Kong independence evolves from a pie-in-the-sky idea just two years ago to a regular topic of discussion, the city's government is now trying quash the idea by going after teenage students. The education bureau has said that teachers face disqualification if they encourage students to discuss the topic in classrooms, as the idea of Hong Kong independence gains traction among the younger population. Speaking to reporters, Leung, commonly known as CY, said that advocating Hong Kong independence in schools had nothing to do with freedom of speech. "School rules are stricter than societal laws. For example, if a student swears in school, this breaks school rules, but it doesn't break the law... a student can be kicked out for swearing if they fail to rectify their behavior," he said (link in Chinese). "Hong Kong is an inalienable part of China." Former education minister Fanny Law said that students advocating Hong Kong independence should have their family backgrounds looked at. Leung has been credited by some as the "father of Hong Kong independence," after hepinned blame on an obscure University of Hong Kong student magazine in a policy speech last year for advocating the idea of independence. Since then, the idea has been garnering more and more attention. That prompted the government to implement a new rule stating that candidates in legislative elections, including next month's, must pledge their support for China's sovereignty over Hong Kong as enshrined in the city's mini constitution, the Basic Law. A number of candidates were disqualified from running because of their pro-independence views. Last week, in response to a question about whether schools should allow students to set up groups discussing Hong Kong independence, Leung compared the need to combat talking about the issue to the fight against drugs. "Just as each summer I take part in large-scale anti-drugs campaigns, telling young people to stay away from drugs... anyone who is involved in education in some way should express clearly what their position is on matters of debate (like Hong Kong independence)," said Leung (link in Chinese). Scientists now know the brain chemistry behind Pavlov’s famous dog experiment From choosing coffee or tea to caffeinate yourself in the morning to how you plan to unwind after the day's end, we make decisions of varying degrees of importance every day. Yet for such a routine activity, scientists know little about what's going on at a chemical level as we make these choices. Teams from the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, San Diego, and the Icahn School of Medicine in New York have found a way to take a close look at the way neurotransmitters fire in mouse brains as they learn certain behaviors.  Their research presented today (August 22) in Philadelphia at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting. "We were able to measure the timing of dopamine surges during the learning process," Paul Slesinger, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine, said in a press release. Slesinger and his team developed tiny chemicals called cell-based neurotransmitter fluorescent engineered reporters, or CNiFERs (pronounced 'sniffers') and implanted them in mouse cortexes, the part of the brain that has been associated with learning and decision-making. These proteins became illuminated when they detected the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine. These signals have been known to play a part in how we make decisions: They're released when we feel pleasure as part of our neural reward system and when we feel prepared to take action, respectively. The researchers conditioned mice to teach them that when they heard a particular sound, they would be rewarded with sugar. They could see in real-time as the different neurotransmitters were produced, and how the timing of the release of these signals changed over time as the mice learned. "We could see the dopamine signal was measured initially right after the reward. Then after days of training, we started to detect dopamine after the tone but before the reward was presented," Slesinger said. Previous research at the way we make decisions has mostly come from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). These images of the brain show where blood is flowing, which indicates that oxygen is being transported to certain regions as they're being used. Looking at the chemical signaling itself, though, could give researchers a much clearer picture of the exact process. Ultimately, this could lead to treatments for people for whom these pathways are disrupted, said Anne Andrews, a neuroscientist at UCLA, said in a press conference. Andrews and her team are developing similar chemicals that detect neurotransmitters that use an electrical mechanism that could eventually be used in tandem with deep brain stimulation, a treatment for Parkinson's Disease. Although these neurotransmitter detection methods are only applicable in mouse models at the moment, they show how brain signaling may change as we learn, and make decisions based on what we know, over time. "We can now monitor these decision making cues—or thoughts, if you will—in real time, and then see the actions on the animal," Slesinger said.