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IEEE/WIC/ACM Intelligent Agent Technology 2011

IEEE/WIC/ACM Intelligent Agent Technology 2011

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IEEE/WIC/ACM Intelligent Agent Technology 2011
CALL FOR PAPERS
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2011 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on
Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT-11)

August 22 - 27, 2011, Lyon, France

http://wi-iat-2011.org

Sponsored By
IEEE Computer Society
Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC)
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

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Workshop proposals submission: December 17, 2010 (Notification of acceptance: January 7, 2011)
Electronic submission of full papers (WI and IAT): March 11, 2011
Notification of paper acceptance (WI and IAT): May 23, 2011
Workshop paper submissions: March 21, 2011
Notification of Workshop paper acceptance: June 1, 2011
Camera-ready copies of accepted papers: June 10, 2011
Workshops and Industry track: August 22, 2011
Conference: August 23-25, 2011
Summer School: August 26-27, 2011
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IAT 2011 provides a leading international forum to bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields, such as computer science, information technology, business, education, systems engineering, and robotics, to (1) examine the design principles and performance characteristics of various approaches in intelligent agent technology, and (2) increase the cross-fertilization of ideas on the development of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems among different domains. By encouraging idea-sharing and discussions on the underlying logical, cognitive, physical, and sociological foundations as well as the enabling technologies of intelligent agents, IAT 2011 will foster the development of novel paradigms and advanced solutions in agent and multi-agent based computing.

IAT 2011 will be jointly held with the 2011 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI 2011).

The two conferences will have a joint opening, keynotes, reception, and banquet.

WI-IAT 2011 will include a summer school providing in-depth background on subjects that are of broad interest to Web intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology communities. It will also include workshops and an industry day. The workshop and the industry day programs will focus on new research challenges, initiatives and applications.

All papers accepted for workshops and industry day will be included in the Workshop and industry day Proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Society Press and will be available on site.

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Topics of Interest
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We invite submissions in all IAT related areas. Papers exploring new directions or areas will receive a careful and supportive review. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Autonomy-Oriented Computing (AOC)
- Autonomy-Oriented Modeling and Computing Methods
- Complex Behavior Characterization
- Complex Systems Modeling and Simulation
- Emergent Behavior
- Hard Computational Problem Solving
- Large-Scale Systems Applications (e.g., Social, Policy, Sustainability, Brain Informatics (BI), and Web Intelligence (WI) Applications)
- Nature-Inspired Computing
- Regularities and Models of AOC
- Self-Organization in Multi-Agent Systems
- Self-Organized Complex Networks
- Swarm or Collective Intelligence
- Unconventional, Self-Organized Computing Paradigms

* Agent and Multi-Agent Systems Modeling
- Cognitive Architectures
- Cognitive Modeling of Agents
- Emotional Modeling
- Neuroeconomics
- Peer-to-Peer Models for Multi-Agent Systems

* Agent and Multi-Agent Systems Engineering
- Agent Oriented Sofware Engineering
- Multi-Agent Oriented Software Engineering
- Multi-Agent Programming Languages
- Formal Framework for Multi-Agent Systems
- Testing, Debugging of Multi-Agent Systems
- Evaluation of Multi-Agent Systems
- Efficiency and Complexity Issues
- Scalability
- Tools and Standards
- Fault-Tolerance in Multi-Agent Systems
- Mobile Agent Languages and Protocols
- Multi-Agent Autonomic Architectures

* Coordination
- Multi-Agent Planning
- Social Interactions in Multi-Agent Systems
- Information Exchanges in Multi-Agent Systems
- Learning and Self-Adaptation in Multi-Agent Systems
- Agent Interaction Protocols
- Social and organisational structures, institutions
- Norms and normative behaviour
- Trust, reputation
- Privacy, safety, security

* Autonomous Auctions and Negotiation
- Agent-Based Marketplaces
- Auction Markets
- Combinatorial Auctions
- Hybrid Negotiation
- Integrative Negotiation
- Mediating Agents
- Pricing Agents

* Autonomous Knowledge and Information Agents
- Agent-Based Knowledge Discovery and Sharing
- Autonomous Information Services
- Distributed Data Mining
- Distributed Knowledge Systems
- Evolution of Topics, Trends, Knowledge Networks and Communities
- Human-Agent Interaction
- Information Filtering Agents
- Agent-Based Knowledge Aggregation
- Ontology-Based Services
- Recommender Agent-Based Systems

* Distributed Problem Solving
- Agent Networks in Distributed Problem Solving
- Collective Group Behavior
- Coordination and Cooperation
- Distributed Intelligence
- Distributed Search
- Dynamics of Agent Groups and Populations
- Market-Based Computing
- Problem-Solving in Dynamic Environments

* Applications
- Agent-Based Cloud Computing
- Agent-Based Assistants
- Agent-Based Virtual Enterprise
- Software and Pervasive Agents
- Perceptive Animated Interfaces
- Embodied Agents
- Interface Agents
- Virtual Humans
- Games
- Knowledge and Data Intensive Systems
- Social Simulation (e.g., Social Behavior, Social Inference, Social Networks, and Social Norms)
- Ubiquitous Systems and e-Technology Agents

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On-Line Submissions and Publication
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High-quality papers in all IAT related areas are solicited.
Paper submissions should be limited to a maximum of 8 pages in the IEEE 2-column format.
The same format will be used for final camera-ready papers (see the Author Guidelines at http://www.computer.org/portal/web/cscps/formatting)

All submitted papers will be reviewed by the Program Committee on the basis of technical quality, relevance, significance, and clarity.

Note that IAT 2011 will accept ONLY on-line submissions in PDF format. Please use the Submission Form on the WI-IAT 2011 website to submit your paper. Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings by the IEEE Computer Society Press that is indexed by EI.

Submissions accepted as regular papers will be allocated 8 pages in the proceedings and accorded oral presentation times in the main conference.
Submissions accepted as short papers will be allocated 4 pages in the proceedings and will have a shorter presentation time at
the conference than regular papers.

All co-authors will be notified at all time, for the submission, notification, and confirmation on the attendance. Submitting a paper to the conference and workshops means that, if the paper is accepted, at least one author should attend the conference to present the paper. The acceptance list and no-show list will be openly published on-line. For no-show authors, their affiliations will receive a notification.

Authors of a selected number of IAT 2011 accepted papers will be invited to submit extended and revised versions of their papers for condideration for inclusion in Web Intelligence and Agent Systems: An International Journal (http://wi-consortium.org/journal.html) and other related journals.

The best paper awards will be conferred at the conference on the authors of (1) the best research paper and (2) the best application paper. Application-oriented submissions will be considered for the best application paper award.

More detailed instructions and the On-Line Submission Form will be found on the IAT 2011 homepage:

http://wi-iat-2011.org

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Workshops
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An important part of the conference is the workshop program which will focus on new research challenges and initiatives. All papers accepted for workshops will be included in the Workshop Proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Society Press that are indexed by EI, and will be available at the workshops.
Detailed information is available at the conference homepage.

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Summer school
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IAT 2011 also welcomes Tutorial proposals for the summer school taking place after the main conference. IAT 2011 will include tutorials providing in-depth background on subjects that are of broad interest to the Web intelligence and Intelligent agent technology community. Both short (2 hours) and long (half day) tutorials will be considered.
Detailed information is available at the conference homepage.

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Demo-Track
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We solicit Demo-Track papers. More detailed instructions available at the conference homepage.

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Important Dates
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Workshop proposals submission: December 17, 2010 (Notification of acceptance: January 7, 2011)
Electronic submission of full papers (WI and IAT): March 11, 2011
Notification of paper acceptance (WI and IAT): May 23, 2011
Workshop paper submissions: March 21, 2011
Notification of Workshop paper acceptance: June 1, 2011
Camera-ready copies of accepted papers: June 10, 2011
Workshops and Industry track: August 22, 2011
Conference: August 23-25, 2011
Summer School: August 26-27, 2011

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Conference Organization
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Conference General Chair:
* Mohand-Saïd Hacid, University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France

Program Chair:
* Olivier Boissier, ENS Mines Saint-Etienne, France

IAT Program Co-Chairs:
* Jeffrey Bradshaw, UWF/Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, USA
* Longbin Cao,, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
* Klaus Fischer, DFKI GmBH, Saarbruecken, Germany

WI Program Co-Chairs:
* Boualem Benatallah, University New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
* Mike Papazoglou, University of Tilburg, Netherlands
* Zbigniew Ras, University North Carolina at Charlotte, USA

Organizing Co-Chairs:
* Jérôme Gensel, University Mendès-France, Grenoble, France
* Robert Laurini, INSA Lyon, France
* Pierre Maret, University Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne, France

Workshop Co-Chairs:
* Jomi F. Hubner, UFRSC, Florianopolis, Brazil
* Jean Marc Petit, INSA Lyon, France
* Einoshin Suzuki, Kyushu University, Japan

Panel Co-Chairs:
* Valentina Tamma, University of Liverpool, UK
* Laurent Vercouter, ENS Mines Saint-Etienne, France

Demos Co-Chairs:
* Daniel Florian, University of Trento, Italy
* Gauthier Picard, ENS Mines Saint-Etienne, France

Industry Day Co-Chairs:
* Catherine Garbay, LIG-CNRS, Grenoble, France
* Hamid Motahari, HP Labs, Palo Alto, USA
* Michel Occello, University Pierre Mendès France, Grenoble, France

Summer School Co-Chairs:
* Cécile Favre, ERIC, University Lyon 2, France
* Jose-Norberto Mazon, University of Alicante, Spain

Ten Years Most Influencial Paper Award
* Gabriella Pasi, Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca, Milano, Italy

Publicity Co-Chairs:
* Adnene Guabtni, UNSW, Sydney, Australia
* Christine Largeron, University Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne, France
* Ansaf Salleb-Aouissi, Columbia University, New York, USA

IEEE-CS-TCII Chair:
* Jiming Liu, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

ACM-SIGART Chair
* Maria Gini, University of Minnesota, USA

WIC Co-Chairs/Directors:
* Ning Zhong, Maebashi Institute of Technology, Japan
* Jiming Liu, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

WIC Advisory Board:
* Edward A. Feigenbaum, Stanford University, USA
* Setsuo Ohsuga, University of Tokyo, Japan
* Benjamin Wah, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA
* Philip Yu, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA
* L.A. Zadeh, University of California, Berkeley, USA

WIC Tech. Committee & WI/IAT Steering Committee:
* Jeffrey Bradshaw, UWF/Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, USA
* Nick Cercone, York University, Canada
* Dieter Fensel, University of Innsbruck, Austria
* Georg Gottlob, Oxford University, UK
* Lakhmi Jain, University of South Australia, Australia
* Jianchang Mao, Yahoo! Inc., USA
* Pierre Morizet-Mahoudeaux, Compiegne University of Technology, France
* Hiroshi Motoda, Osaka University, Japan
* Toyoaki Nishida, Kyoto University, Japan
* Andrzej Skowron, Warsaw University, Poland
* Jinglong Wu, Okayama University, Japan
* Xindong Wu, University of Vermont, USA
* Yiyu Yao, University of Regina, Canada

Webmaster:
* Jean-Paul Jamont, Pierre Mendès France University, Valence, France

Walter Derzko

Robots teach English in South Korean public schools

 

S.Korea schools get robot English teachers

 
SEOUL (AFP) – Almost 30 robots have started teaching English to youngsters in a South Korean city, education officials said Tuesday, in a pilot project designed to nurture the nascent robot industry.

Engkey, a white, egg-shaped robot developed by the Korea Institute of Science of Technology (KIST), began taking classes Monday at 21 elementary schools in the southeastern city of Daegu.

The 29 robots, about one metre (3.3 feet) high with a TV display panel for a face, wheeled around the classroom while speaking to the students, reading books to them and dancing to music by moving their head and arms.

 

The robots, which display an avatar face of a Caucasian woman, are controlled remotely by teachers of English in the Philippines -- who can see and hear the children via a remote control system.

Cameras detect the Filipino teachers' facial expressions and instantly reflect them on the avatar's face, said Sagong Seong-Dae, a senior scientist at KIST.

"Well-educated, experienced Filipino teachers are far cheaper than their counterparts elsewhere, including South Korea," he told AFP.

Apart from reading books, the robots use pre-programmed software to sing songs and play alphabet games with the children.

"The kids seemed to love it since the robots look, well, cute and interesting. But some adults also expressed interest, saying they may feel less nervous talking to robots than a real person," said Kim Mi-Young, an official at Daegu city education office.

 

Kim said some may be sent to remote rural areas of South Korea shunned by foreign English teachers.

She said the robots are still being tested. But officials might consider hiring them full time if scientists upgrade them and make them easier to handle and more affordable.

"Having robots in the classroom makes the students more active in participating, especially shy ones afraid of speaking out to human teachers," Kim said.

She stressed the experiment was not about replacing human teachers with robots. "We are helping upgrade a key, strategic industry and all the while giving children more interest in what they learn."

The four-month pilot programme was sponsored by the government, which invested 1.58 billion won (1.37 million dollars).

Scientists have held pilot programmes in schools since 2009 to develop robots to teach English, maths, science and other subjects at different levels with a desired price tag of five to eight million won.

Sagong stressed that the robots, which currently cost 10 million won each, largely back up human teachers but would eventually have a bigger role.

The machines can be an efficient tool to hone language skills for many people who feel nervous about conversing with flesh-and-blood foreigners, he said.

"Plus, they won't complain about health insurance, sick leave and severance package, or leave in three months for a better-paying job in Japan... all you need is a repair and upgrade every once in a while."

Walter DerzKO

IBM's five smart innovations that will change our lives in the next five years

ARMONK, NY - 27 Dec 2010: Today IBM (NYSE: IBM) formally unveiled the fifth annual "Next Five in Five" – a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years:

• You'll beam up your friends in 3-D

• Batteries will breathe air to power our devices

• You won’t need to be a scientist to save the planet

• Your commute will be personalized

• Computers will help energize your city

see YouTube clip: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/33304.wss

The Next Five in Five is based on market and societal trends expected to transform our lives, as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s Labs around the world that can make these innovations possible. 

In the next five years, technology innovations will change people’s lives in the following ways: 

You'll beam up your friends in 3-D with holography chat

In the next five years, 3-D interfaces – like those in the movies – will let you interact with 3-D holograms of your friends in real time. Movies and TVs are already moving to 3-D, and as 3-D and holographic cameras get more sophisticated and miniaturized to fit into cell phones, you will be able to interact with photos, browse the Web and chat with your friends in entirely new ways. 

Scientists are working to improve video chat to become holography chat - or "3-D telepresence." The technique uses light beams scattered from objects and reconstructs them a picture of that object, a similar technique to the one human eyes use to visualize our surroundings. 

You'll be able to see more than your friends in 3-D too. Just as a flat map of the earth has distortion at the poles that makes flight patterns look indirect, there is also distortion of data – which is becoming greater as digital information becomes “smarter” – like your digital photo album. Photos are now geo-tagged, the Web is capable of synching information across devices and computer interfaces are becoming more natural. 

Scientists at IBM Research are working on new ways to visualize 3-D data, working on technology that would allow engineers to step inside of a designs of everything from buildings to software programs, running simulations of how diseases spread across an interactive 3-D globes, and visualizing trends happening around the world on Twitter – all in real time and with little to no distortion. 

Batteries will breathe air to power our devices

Ever wish you could make your lap top battery last all day without needing a charge? Or what about a cell phone that powers up by being carried in your pocket? 

In the next five years, scientific advances in transistors and battery technology will allow your devices last about 10 times longer than they do today. And better yet, in some cases, batteries may disappear altogether in smaller devices. 

Instead of the heavy lithium-ion batteries used today, scientists are working on batteries that use the air we breath to react with energy-dense metal, eliminating a key inhibitor to longer lasting batteries. If successful, the result will be a lightweight, powerful and rechargeable battery capable of powering for everything from electric cars to consumer devices. 

But what if we could eliminate batteries all together?  

By rethinking the basic building block of electronic devices, the transistor, IBM is aiming to reduce the amount of energy per transistor to less than 0.5 volts. With energy demands this low, we might be able to lose the battery altogether in some devices like mobile phones or e-readers. 

The result would be battery-free electronic devices that can be charged using a technique called energy scavenging.  Some wrist watches use this today – they require no winding and charge based on the movement of your arm.  The same concept could be used to charge mobile phones for example – just shake and dial. 

You won’t need to be a scientist to save the planet

While you may not be a physicist, you are a walking sensor. In five years, sensors in your phone, your car, your wallet and even your tweets will collect data that will give scientists a real-time picture of your environment. You'll be able to contribute this data to fight global warming, save endangered species or track invasive plants or animals that threaten ecosystems around the world. In the next five years, a whole class of "citizen scientists" will emerge, using simple sensors that already exist to create massive data sets for research. 

Simple observations such as when the first thaw occurs in your town, when the mosquitoes first appear, if there’s no water running where a stream should be - all this is valuable data that scientists don’t have in large sets today. Even your laptop can be used as a sensor to detect seismic activity. If properly employed and connected to a network of other computers, your laptop can help map out the aftermath of earthquake quickly, speeding up the work of emergency responders and potentially saving lives. 

IBM recently patented a technique that enables a system to accurately and precisely conduct post-event analysis of seismic events, such as earthquakes, as well as provide early warnings for tsunamis, which can follow earthquakes. The invention also provides the ability to rapidly measure and analyze the damage zone of an earthquake to help prioritize emergency response needed following an earthquake. 

The company is also contributing mobile phone "apps" that allow typical citizens to contribute invaluable data to causes, like improving the quality of drinking water or reporting noise pollution. Already, an app called Creek Watch allows citizens to take a snapshot of a creek or stream, answer three simple questions about it and the data is automatically accessible by the local water authority. 

Your commute will be personalized

Imagine your commute with no jam-packed highways, no crowded subways, no construction delays and not having to worry about late for work. In the next five years, advanced analytics technologies will provide personalized recommendations that get commuters where they need to go in the fastest time. Adaptive traffic systems will intuitively learn traveler patterns and behavior to provide more dynamic travel safety and route information to travelers than is available today. 

IBM researchers are developing new models that will predict the outcomes of varying transportation routes to provide information that goes well beyond traditional traffic reports, after-the fact devices that only indicate where you are already located in a traffic jam, and web-based applications that give estimated travel time in traffic. 

Using new mathematical models and IBM’s predictive analytics technologies, the researchers will analyze and combine multiple possible scenarios that can affect commuters to deliver the best routes for daily travel, including many factors, such as traffic accidents, commuter's location, current and planned road construction, most traveled days of the week, expected work start times, local events that may impact traffic, alternate options of transportation such as rail or ferries, parking availability and weather. 

For example, combining predictive analytics with real-time information about current travel congestion from sensors and other data, the system could recommend better ways to get to a destination, such as how to get to a nearby mass transit hub, whether the train is predicted to be on time, and whether parking is predicted to be available at the train station. New systems can learn from regular travel patterns where you are likely to go and then integrate all available data and prediction models to pinpoint the best route. 

Computers will help energize your city

Innovations in computers and data centers are enabling the excessive heat and energy that they give off to do things like heat buildings in the winter and power air conditioning in the summer. Can you imagine if the energy poured into the world's data centers could in turn be recycled for a city's use. 

Up to 50 percent of the energy consumed by a modern data center goes toward air cooling. Most of the heat is then wasted because it is just dumped into the atmosphere. New technologies, such as novel on-chip water-cooling systems developed by IBM, the thermal energy from a cluster of computer processors can be efficiently recycled to provide hot water for an office or houses. 

A pilot project in Switzerland involving a computer system fitted with the technology is expected to save up to 30 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year the equivalent of an 85 percent carbon footprint reduction. A novel network of microfluidic capillaries inside a heat sink is attached to the surface of each chip in the computer cluster, which allows water to be piped to within microns of the semiconductor material itself. By having water flow so close to each chip, heat can be removed more efficiently. Water heated to 60 °C is then passed through a heat exchanger to provide heat that is delivered elsewhere.

For more information, please visit www.ibm.com/press/5in52010

Note: Registered journalists and bloggers can download broadcast-quality b-roll and other "Next 5 in 5" video from http://www.thenewsmarket.com/ibm [registration available online] 

 

 

Top science stories of 2010 on CBC

Top science stories of 2010: Pt 1 and II

December 26, 2010 News > TV Shows > The National > Technology & Science

CBC commentator Bob McDonald ranks the year's science stories

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/The_National/Technology_&_Science/1244507466/ID=1711357459

10 Census of marine life

9.  The pill turns 50

8.  Iceland volcano

7   In vitro fertilization wins Nobel prize in medicine

6  Laser turns 50

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/The_National/Technology_&_Science/1244507466/ID=1711358566

5  LCROSS mission -Water on the moon

4  Project Neptune at the University of Victoria-underwater observatory

3  Large Hadron Collider

2  Anti-matter created

1  Gulf Oil spill

Best of Science from 2010 from Nature magazine

Nature magazine, a top tier academic  science publication published its annual year end best of science list for 2010

 

So here is the year in review  http://www.nature.com/news/specials/2010/index.html

 

Top Science Stories  http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101222/full/4681014a.html

This year the readers had a chance to cast their votes too http://www.nature.com/news/specials/2010/reader_topten.html

 

Slide show 2010 Images of the Year http://www.nature.com/news/2010/012345/full/4681018a/slideshow/1.html?identifier=1

This image Is cool

 

GRAPHENE QUILT Ribbons of graphene swarm over a gold surface. Tens of nanometres long, the ribbons were grown in situ by chemical synthesis from smaller molecules.

Epigenetics -You are what your father ate

Research suggests paternal diet affects lipid metabolizing genes in offspring

Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the University of Texas at Austin in the USA have uncovered evidence that environmental influences experienced by a father can be passed down to the next generation, "reprogramming" how genes function in offspring.

A new study published this week in Cell shows that environmental cues—in this case, diet—influence genes in mammals from one generation to the next, evidence that until now has been sparse. These insights, coupled with previous human epidemiological studies, suggest that paternal environmental effects may play a more important role in complex diseases such as diabetes and heart disease than previously believed.

"Knowing what your parents were doing before you were conceived is turning out to be important in determining what disease risk factors you may be carrying," said Oliver J. Rando, MD, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry & molecular pharmacology at UMMS and principal investigator for the study, which details how paternal diet can increase production of cholesterol synthesis genes in first-generation offspring.

The human genome is often described as the set of instructions that govern the development and functioning of life. It's not surprising, then, that most contemporary genetic research focuses on understanding and cataloging how mutations and changes to our DNA—the basis of those "instructions"—cause disease and impact health. A number of recent studies, however, have begun to draw attention to the role epigenetic inheritance – inherited changes in gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence – may play in a host of illnesses. "A major and underappreciated aspect of what is transmitted from parent to child is ancestral environment," said Dr. Rando. "Our findings suggest there are many ways that parents can 'tell' their children things."

To test their hypothesis that environmental influences experienced by the father can be passed down to the next generation in the form of changed epigenetic information, Rando and colleagues fed different diets to two groups of male mice. The first group received a standard diet, while the second received a low-protein diet. To control for maternal influences, all females were fed the same, standard diet. Rando and colleagues observed that offspring of the mice fed the low-protein diet exhibited a marked increase in the genes responsible for lipid and cholesterol synthesis in comparison to offspring of the control group fed the standard diet.

These observations are consistent with epidemiological data from two well-known human studies suggesting that parental diet has an effect on the health of offspring. One of these studies, called the Överkalix Cohort Study, conducted among residents of an isolated community in the far northeast of Sweden, found that poor diet during the paternal grandfather's adolescence increased the risk of diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease in second-generation offspring. However, because these studies are retrospective and involve dynamic populations, they are unable to completely account for all social and economic variables. "Our study begins to rule out the possibility that social and economic factors, or differences in the DNA sequence, may be contributing to what we're seeing," said Rando. "It strongly implicates epigenetic inheritance as a contributing factor to changes in gene function."

The results also have implications for our understanding of evolutionary processes, says Hans A. Hofmann, PhD, associate professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-author of the study. "It has increasingly become clear in recent years that mothers can endow their offspring with information about the environment, for instance via early experience and maternal factors, and thus make them possibly better adapted to environmental change. Our results show that offspring can inherit such acquired characters even from a parent they have never directly interacted with, which provides a novel mechanism through which natural selection could act in the course of evolution." Such a process was first proposed by the early evolutionist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, but then dismissed by 20th century biologists when genetic evidence seemed to provide a sufficient explanation.

Taken together, these studies suggest that a better understanding of the environment experienced by our parents, such as diet, may be a useful clinical tool for assessing disease risk for illnesses, such as diabetes or heart disease. "We often look at a patient's behavior and their genes to assess risk," said Rando. "If the patient smokes, they are going to be at an increased risk for cancer. If the family has a long history of heart disease, they might carry a gene that makes them more susceptible to heart disease. But we're more than just our genes and our behavior. Knowing what environmental factors your parents experienced is also important."

The next step for Rando and colleagues is to explore how and why this genetic reprogramming is being transmitted from generation to generation. "We don't know why these genes are being reprogrammed or how, precisely, that information is being passed down to the next generation," said Rando. "It's consistent with the idea that when parents go hungry, it's best for offspring to hoard calories, however, it's not clear if these changes are advantageous in the context of a low-protein diet."

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Walter Derzko

Study on effects of resveratrol and quercetin on inflammation and insulin resistance

A study was carried out to examine the extent to which quercetin and trans-resveratrol (RSV) prevented inflammation or insulin resistance in primary cultures of human adipocytes treated with tumor necrosis factor-a (TNF-a)—an inflammatory cytokine elevated in the plasma and adipose tissue of obese, diabetic individuals.

Cultures of human adipocytes were pretreated with quercetin and trans-RSV followed by treatment with TNF-a. Subsequently, gene and protein markers of inflammation and insulin resistance were measured. The authors report that quercetin, and to a lesser extent trans-RSV, attenuated the TNF-a–induced expression of inflammatory genes such as interleukin (IL)-6, IL-1b, IL-8, and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) and the secretion of IL-6, IL-8, and MCP-1.

Forum members were concerned about certain aspects of the study, especially the extrapolation of in vitro results to in vivo situations. The in vitro conditions the authors describe are minimally representative of an in vivo condition. In vivo, after consumption of quercetin or resveratrol, these compounds undergo extensive metabolism, leading to glucuronidated, sulphated or methylated compounds. In a previous study, quercetin 3-glucoside was transformed to 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid, acetate and butyrate in cells from human gut; only 3'-methylquercetin has been detected in human plasma, present at a concentration of 0.1 to 0.2 µM after 3 h. The authors of the current paper are using concentrations up to 60 µM, concentrations which have not been found in vivo.

There were also concerns with the work on cell uptake of quercetin and resveratrol. Primary adipocytes were incubated with the polyphenols, but it is not clear whether or not the concentrations used were subtoxic. Our current knowledge is limited about local concentration of the molecules we are studying in subcellular compartments, their interaction with alternative targets, and eventually their transformation into products that could be more or less active on a given specific pathway. The real difficult and important issue is the identification of a reasonable convergence -- if not agreement -- between data originating from extremely distant approaches. In this case, the notion that metabolic diseases are related to a homeostatic imbalance in adipose tissue, linked to a different redox status, linked to activation of specific pathways, and that different redox sensitive polyphenols do have a protective effect, encompasses the evidence produced by extremely distant approaches.

From a clinical point of view, the role of phytochemicals acting as antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents could be extremely important in inflammation-associated chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer. Quercetin and resveratrol may indeed play an important role in this regard, and need to be investigated further to establish the clinical importance of natural dietary compounds in the prevention of chronic degenerative conditions.

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Walter Derzko

New Little Ice Age? How a freak diversion of the jet stream is paralysing the globe with freezing conditions

Wild Card? New Little Ice Age? How a freak diversion of the jet stream is paralysing the globe with freezing conditions (last year it was the Icelandic volcano)

The question on everyones mind is how long will it last? a week? a month? a year? a decade? (time will tell) and was it triggered by the BP oil spill (methane burp) in the Mexican Gulf last spring? --Walter Derzko

22nd December 2010

It's snowing in Australia and California yet 'warm' in Greenland

The freezing conditions that have blasted Britain are being blamed on a series of weather patterns that are bringing Arctic temperatures to much of western Europe, California and even Australia.

One of the main factors is a change in the position of the jet stream - the fast-moving current of air that moves from west to east, high in the atmosphere.

Changes in the jet stream's path can cause massive changes in weather conditions across the globe and may be why Australians are now shivering their way through summer and the current freezing conditions in California.

In a normal British winter - when conditions are mild and soggy - the jet stream lies over northern Europe, at an altitude of between 35,000 to 50,000 feet.

 

 

Read more: <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1340436/Why-cold-warm-Greenland-Diverted-jet-stream-letting-icy-blast-Arctic.html#ixzz18wvOZTbX>          

See Documentry online about Gulf Stream

<http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/gulf-stream-next-ice-age/>

Walter Derzko

When will the Recession End? Part 133 Why Russia doesn't fit into BRIC

According to PROSPECTS 2011: Global economy  by Oxford Analytica Daily Brief Service. Nov 01, 2010. pg. 1…A moderation in growth is on the cards, but emerging markets will continue to fuel international expansion...[..]  The acronym BRIC  which was coined by Goldman Sachs about 6 years ago,  stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China. Many people have taken this term for granted, assuming that these four potentially  prosperous "developing" nations  will equally contribute to and drive economic global growth in the next decade.

Unfortunately, some of the assumptions that we took for granted about Russia prior to 2008. no longer hold true.

Part 1 Russia is shrinking not  growing say demographers.

"Russia is another emerging-market country widely regarded as holding immense economic promise, not least by the leaders in the Kremlin. Despite the current economic downturn, official Russian plans envision economic growth of six percent a year through 2020 and continuing rapid growth thereafter. But these ambitious visions seem to ignore the fact that the country has been in the grip of a protracted demographic crisis since the end of communist rule. Since 1992, Russia's deaths have outnumbered births by roughly 50 percent, or about 13 million, and official figures suggest that the country's population has shrunk by about five percent--nearly seven million people--from 148.6 million in 1993 to 141.9 million today.

Immigration has helped slow the country's population decline but has not been able to prevent it.

The outlook is for further depopulation: medium variant projections by the Kremlin's official statistical service envision ten million more deaths than births over the next two decades.

Even more troubling for Russia is the country's disastrous public health situation. In 2009, as hard as it may be to believe, Russia's overall life expectancy was a bit lower than it had been in 1961, almost half a century earlier. To make matters worse, at least from an economic standpoint, Russia's health crisis is concentrated in its working-age population. Over the 40 years between 1965 and 2005, for example, the death rates for men between their late 20s and their mid-50s virtually doubled. Death rates for women in that same age group generally rose by about 50 percent. Public health experts do not entirely understand the reasons for this death spiral--although poor diet, smoking, sedentary lifestyles, and, above all, Russia's deadly romance with vodka can explain much of the deterioration, the actual decline is worse than what these risk factors alone would suggest. In some respects, contemporary health levels for Russian adults are akin to those for adults in the world's most impoverished states. According to estimates by the World Health Organization, life expectancy for a 15-year-old man in 2008 would have been lower in Russia than in Cambodia, Eritrea, or Haiti. Between now and 2030, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that Russia's working-age population will fall by nearly 20 percent, and Russia's work force will almost surely suffer more ill health than its counterparts in the OECD and than the work forces of the other BRIC countries (Brazil, India, and China). In 2008, according to World Health Organization estimates, mortality levels for Russia's working-age population were 25 percent higher than those for India's.

Urban centers are typically the hubs of economic growth, but Russia's urban population is smaller today than it was at the end of the communist era, and the UN projects that there will be even fewer inhabitants in Russia's cities 20 years from now. In addition, Russia's old-age burden will be steadily increasing--whereas 13 percent of the Russian population today is 65 or older, the projected proportion for 2030 is 21 percent.

Taking all the above into account, it is difficult to see how Russia can hope to generate sustained and rapid economic growth on the basis of its human resources. Natural resources may offer the country economic opportunities in the years ahead, but these opportunities should not be exaggerated.

(Russia has increased its GDP forecasts for 2011-2020 to  +6% per annum, while the IMF and OECD conversely has lowered GDP forecasts for Russia)

Despite all of Russia's energy and mineral wealth, its annual export earnings have never exceeded those of Belgium, not even at the height of the pre-crisis oil boom."

Source: The Demographic Future. By: Eberstadt, Nicholas, Foreign Affairs, 00157120, Nov/Dec2010, Vol. 89, Issue 6.

Part 2 .....Could Russia default again or GAZPROM go bankrupt in 2011 or 2012? (next time) 

 Walter Derzko

When will the Recession End ? Part 132 Soros says Economics needs fixing

New Scientist 22 December 2010 by Jim Giles

Why has the billionaire financier donated $50 million to rethink economics?

You have provided $50 million to set up the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) in New York City. What prompted you to do this?

It was the crash of 2008, which brought home the fact that there is something broken in economic theory. Two ideas - rational expectations theory and the efficient market hypothesis - have a monopoly of thought. Neither prepared us for the crash, yet other ideas don't have enough support. I talked to friends about how to address this and the idea of an institute emerged. Now it's running away with itself. I have never been involved in any initiative with this kind of self-generating interest before.

What does the institute aim to achieve?

A radical reorientation of economic theory. Exactly what shape it will take is impossible to predict, but I hope it will recognise the fundamental uncertainties in our economic system. These uncertainties have been ignored for the past 25 years.

Wouldn't it be better to eliminate the uncertainties, so we can avoid a repeat of the financial crisis of 2008?

We will never be able to do that. There will always be a threat of instability - it's built into the market. You can't avoid it, but you can be aware of it. Perfection might be unattainable, but we can become less imperfect by recognising the imperfections.

Tell me about some of the projects that have been selected for funding by the institute.

I am encouraged by the fact that INET is embracing multiple disciplines. The first round of grants have been given to people with backgrounds in law, history, medicine and science, as well as economics and finance. Several projects are taking concepts directly from science, such as the mathematics behind the spread of contagious diseases, and applying the principles to financial markets. During the financial crisis we saw instances of contagion - how a relatively small number of infected institutions made others sick.

Is INET also funding research to examine whether investors make use of all the information available to them?

Yes. The research is looking into how well markets reflect useful and true information about asset prices, given the presence of real-world ambiguities. It is also trying to understand what happens to asset prices when true uncertainty is wrongly discarded.

You have been developing an alternative economic theory, known as reflexivity, for years. Will INET be a vehicle to explore your own ideas?

I won't impose my views on the institute. I provided the initial funds, but I don't want to provide more than a third of the funding. INET has to have its own identity. When the first round of grants were chosen earlier this year I didn't even see the applications. I'm not on INET's board or its advisory board.

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George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary. He studied at the London School of Economics before moving to the US in 1956. He is chair of Soros Fund Management and founding sponsor of The Institute for New Economic Thinking, led by former fund manager Robert Johnson