Smart Economy

Monkeys that eat omega-3 rich diet show more developed brain networks

 

02/05/14  Portland, Ore.

Study gives new insight into similarity of complex brain networks in monkeys, humans

Monkeys that ate a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids had brains with highly connected and well organized neural networks — in some ways akin to the neural networks in healthy humans — while monkeys that ate a diet deficient in the fatty acids had much more limited brain networking, according to an Oregon Health & Science University study.

The study, published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, provides further evidence for the importance of omega-3 fatty acids in healthy brain development. It also represents the first time scientists have been able to use functional brain imaging in live animals to see the large-scale interaction of multiple brain networks in a monkey. These patterns are remarkably similar to the networks found in humans using the same imaging techniques.

"The data shows the benefits in how the monkeys' brains organize over their lifetime if in the setting of a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids," said Damien Fair, PA-C, Ph.D., assistant professor of behavioral neuroscience and assistant professor of psychiatry in the OHSU School of Medicine and senior author on the paper. "The data also shows in detail how similar the networks in a monkey brain are to networks in a human brain, but only in the context of a diet rich in omega-3-fatty acids."

Omega-3 fatty acids are considered essential fatty acids for the human body. But while they are needed for human health, the body can't make them — it has to get them through food.

The study measured a kind of omega-3 fatty acid called docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, which is a primary component of the human brain and important in development of the brain and vision. DHA is especially found in fatty fish and oils from those fish — including salmon, mackerel and tuna. Research by a co-author on the paper, Martha Neuringer, Ph.D., an associate scientist in the Division of Neuroscience at OHSU’s Oregon National Primate Research Center, previously showed the importance of DHA for infants’ visual development — a finding that led to the addition of DHA to infant formulas.

The scientists studied a group of older rhesus macaque monkeys — 17 to 19 years of age — from ONPRC that had been fed all of their lives either a diet low or high in omega-3 fatty acids, including DHA. The study found that the monkeys that had the high-DHA diet had strong connectivity of early visual pathways in their brains. It also found that monkeys with the high-DHA diet showed greater connections within various brain networks similar to the human brain — including networks for higher-level processing and cognition, said David Grayson, a former research assistant in Fair's lab and first author on the paper. Grayson is now studying at the Center for Neuroscience, University of California-Davis.

"For example, we could see activity and connections within areas of the macaque brain that are important in the human brain for attention," said Fair.

Now that those measurements and monitoring are possible, Fair said, the next step will be to analyze whether the monkeys with deficits in certain networks have behavioral patterns that are similar to behavioral patterns in humans with certain neurological or psychiatric conditions — including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and autism.

Fair, who was among the 102 people given the 2013 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers by President Barack Obama, is a leader in using the same kind of brain imaging to explore brain networks in children with ADHD and autism. He said he hopes to use these non-invasive brain imaging techniques to provide an important link between research in humans and animals in order to better characterize, treat, and prevent these types of developmental mental health issues.

Fair added that another longer-term goal would be to study brain development in the monkeys fed various diets from birth into maturity.

"It would be important to see how a diet high in omega-3s might affect brain development early on in their lives, and across their lifespan," Fair said.

The study was funded by the Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute (through National Institutes of Health grant UL1TR000128), several other NIH grants (grants UL1 RR024140, P510D011092, K99/R00 MH091238, R01 MH096773, EY13199, and DK29930) and the Foundation Fighting Blindness.

About OHSU Brain Institute

The Oregon Health & Science University Brain Institute is a national neuroscience leader in patient care, research and education. With more than 1,000 brain scientists and specialists, OHSU is home to one of the largest communities of brain and central nervous system experts in the nation. OHSU Brain Institute scientists have won national recognition for breaking new ground in understanding Alzheimer’s disease and for discoveries that have led to new treatments for Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke and other brain disorders and diseases.

About OHSU

Oregon Health & Science University is a nationally prominent research university and Oregon’s only public academic health center. It serves patients throughout the region with a Level 1 trauma center and nationally recognized Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. OHSU operates dental, medical, nursing and pharmacy schools that rank high both in research funding and in meeting the university’s social mission. OHSU’s Knight Cancer Institute helped pioneer personalized medicine through a discovery that identified how to shut down cells that enable cancer to grow without harming healthy ones. OHSU Brain Institute scientists are nationally recognized for discoveries that have led to a better understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and new treatments for Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and stroke. OHSU’s Casey Eye Institute is a global leader in ophthalmic imaging, and in clinical trials related to eye disease.

Mindful individuals less affected by immediate rewards

Posted on November 1, 2013   

TORONTO, ON – A new study from the University of Toronto Scarborough shows that people who are aware of and their own thoughts and emotions are less affected by positive feedback from others.

The study, authored by UTSC PhD candidate Rimma Teper, finds that individuals high in trait mindfulness show less neural response to positive feedback than their less mindful peers.

”These findings suggest that mindful individuals may be less affected by immediate rewards and fits well with the idea that mindful individuals are typically less impulsive” says Teper.

Trait mindfulness is characterized by an ability to recognize and accept one’s thoughts and emotions without judgment. Mindful individuals are much better at letting their feelings and thoughts go rather than getting carried away.

Using electroencephalography (EEG) the brain activity of participants was recorded while they completed a reaction time task on a computer. The authors were interested in participants’ brain activity in response to receiving performance feedback that was rewarding, neutral or negative in nature. Not only were mindful individuals less responsive to rewarding feedback compared to others, they also showed less difference in their neural response to neutral versus rewarding feedback.

The findings also reflect further clinical research that supports the notion of accepting one’s emotions is an important indicator of mental well-being.

“Individuals who are problem gamblers for instance show more brain reactivity to immediate rewards, because they are typically more impulsive,” says Teper.

“Many studies, including our own past work, have shown that people who meditate, and mindful individuals exhibit improved self-control. If mindful individuals are also less affected by immediate rewards, as our study suggests, this may help explain why,” says Teper’s PhD supervisor and UTSC psychology professor Michael Inzlicht.

The research was published this week in the journal Emotion.

-30-

For more information contact:

Rimma Teper
University of Toronto Scarborough
Department of Psychology
416-648-3843
[email protected]

Can’t buy me love: Study shows materialistic couples have more money and more problems

Can’t buy me love: Study shows materialistic couples have more money and more problems

New research confirms The Beatles’ lyrical hypothesis and finds that “the kind of thing that money just can’t buy” is a happy and stable marriage.

Scholars at Brigham Young University studied 1,734 married couples across the country. Each couple completed a relationship evaluation, part of which asked how much they value “having money and lots of things.”

The researchers’ statistical analysis showed that couples who say money is not important to them score about 10 to 15 percent better on marriage stability and other measures of relationship quality than couples where one or both are materialistic.

“Couples where both spouses are materialistic were worse off on nearly every measure we looked at,” said Jason Carroll, a BYU professor of family life and lead author of the study.  “There is a pervasive pattern in the data of eroding communication, poor conflict resolution and low responsiveness to each other.”

The findings will be published Oct. 13 in the Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy.

For one in five couples in the study, both partners admitted a strong love of money. Though these couples were better off financially, money was often a bigger source of conflict for them.

“How these couples perceive their finances seems to be more important to their marital health than their actual financial situation,” Carroll said.

And despite their shared materialism, materialistic couples’ relationships were in poorer shape than couples who were mismatched and had just one materialist in the marriage.

The study’s overall findings were somewhat surprising to Carroll because materialism was only measured by self-evaluations.

“Sometimes people can deceive themselves about how important their relationships are to them,” Carroll said. “It’s helpful to step back and look at where you focus your time.”

Wedded bliss or blues? Scientists link DNA to marital satisfaction

By Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations | October 7, 2013

BERKELEY —  What makes some people more prone to wedded bliss or sorrow than others? Researchers at UC Berkeley and Northwestern University have found a major clue in our DNA. A gene involved in the regulation of serotonin can predict how much our emotions affect our relationships, according to a new study that may be the first to link genetics, emotions, and marital satisfaction. The study was conducted at UC Berkeley.

New study links gene variant to our level of marital satisfaction (IStockphoto)

“An enduring mystery is, what makes one spouse so attuned to the emotional climate in a marriage, and another so oblivious?” said UC Berkeley psychologist Robert W. Levenson, senior author of the study published online today (Oct. 7)  in the journal Emotion. “With these new genetic findings, we now understand much more about what determines just how important emotions are for different people.”

Specifically, researchers found a link between relationship fulfillment and a gene variant, or “allele,” known as 5-HTTLPR. All humans inherit a copy of this gene variant from each parent. Study participants with two short 5-HTTLPR alleles were found to be most unhappy in their marriages when there was a lot of negative emotion, such as anger and contempt, and most happy when there was positive emotion, such as humor and affection. By contrast, those with one or two long alleles were far less bothered by the emotional tenor of their marriages.

“We are always trying to understand the recipe for a good relationship, and emotion keeps coming up as an important ingredient,” said Levenson, who heads up a longitudinal study that has tracked over 150 married couples for more than 20 years.

The new findings don’t mean that couples with different variations of 5-HTTLPR are incompatible, the researchers note. Instead, it suggests that those with two short alleles are likelier to thrive in a good relationship and suffer in a bad one. The results of the study, which looked at the genotypes of more than 100 spouses and observed how they interacted with their partners over time, bore this out, they said.

“Individuals with two short alleles of the gene variant may be like hothouse flowers, blossoming in a marriage when the emotional climate is good and withering when it is bad,” said Claudia M. Haase, assistant professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University and lead author of the study, which she conducted as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley. “Conversely, people with one or two long alleles are less sensitive to the emotional climate.”

“Neither of these genetic variants is inherently good or bad,” Haase added. “Each has its advantages and disadvantages.”

Researchers found that those with one type of gene variant were more vulnerable to the emotional tenor of their marriage (iStockphoto)

Participants in the study belong to a group of 156 middle-aged and older couples whose relationships Levenson and fellow researchers have followed since 1989. Every five years, the couples have come to UC Berkeley to report on their marital satisfaction and interact with one another in a lab setting while researchers code their conversations based on facial expressions, body language, tone of voice and topic of discussion.

More recently, 125 of the study participants provided DNA samples, and researchers matched their genotypes with their levels of marital satisfaction and the emotional tenor of their interactions in the lab setting.

For spouses with two short 5-HTTLPR alleles, who made up 17 percent of the spouses studied, researchers found a strong correlation between the emotional tone of their conversations and how they felt about their marriage. For the 83 percent of spouses with one or two long alleles, on the other hand, the emotional quality of their discussions bore little or no relation to their marital satisfaction over the next decade.

The link between genes, emotion and marital satisfaction was particularly pronounced for older adults. “One explanation for this latter finding is that in late life – just as in early childhood – we are maximally susceptible to the influences of our genes,” Levenson said.

Categories: Health & medicine, News, Press Release, Science, Social science
Tags: genes, marriage, psychology, relationships

Mathematicians aim to take publishers out of publishing

Episciences Project to launch series of community-run, open-access journals.

17 January 2013

Jean-Pierre Demailly is a leader in an effort to create a researcher-run publishing system.

Mathematicians plan to launch a series of free open-access journals that will host their peer-reviewed
articles on the preprint server arXiv. The project was publicly revealed yesterday in a blog post by Tim Gowers, a Fields Medal winner and mathematician at the University of Cambridge, UK.

 

The initiative, called the Episciences Project, hopes to show that researchers can organize the peer
review and publication of their work at minimal cost, without involving commercial publishers.

“It’s a global vision of how the research community should work: we want to offer an alternative to traditional mathematics journals,” says Jean-Pierre Demailly, a mathematician at the University of Grenoble, France, who is a leader in the effort. Backed by funding from the French government, the initiative may launch as early as April, he says.

Many mathematicians — and researchers in other fields — claim that they already do most of the work
involved in publishing their research. At no cost, they type up and format
their own papers, post them to online servers, join journal editorial boards
and review the work of their peers. By creating journals that publish links to
peer-reviewed work on servers such as arXiv, Demailly says, the community could
run its own publishing system. The extra expense involved would be the cost of
maintaining websites and computer equipment, he says.

That cost is not small, but it
could eventually be provided in part by the journals' users. The arXiv server,
for example, costs about US$826,000 a year to run, and is funded by the Cornell
University Library in Ithaca, New
York; the Simons Foundation in New York and institutional members.

Demailly says that he first thought of open-access electronic journals that overlay arXiv eight years ago, but the concept became a reality only last June, when he was contacted by the
Centre for Direct Scientific Communication (CCSD), based in Villeurbanne,
France. The CCSD, a unit of the French National Centre for Scientific Research,
develops open-access repositories such as the multidisciplinary archive HAL,
which mirrors the arXiv site.

For the Episciences Project, the CCSD plans to create a publishing platform that will support online
peer-reviewed journals. Each journal, or ‘epijournal’, would have its own
editor and editorial board, and authors could submit their arXiv-posted papers
to their journal of choice. The journal would then organize peer review,
perhaps using workflow software provided by the CCSD. Peer-reviewed papers
would be posted on arXiv alongside their un-reviewed versions. A central
committee (led by Demailly) would manage new journal candidates and make
recommendations on paper formatting, but each journal would be free to set its
own policies (including whether to charge for publication).

Gowers plans to start a journal in the interdisciplinary field of additive combinatorics; Demailly would not
say what other early epijournals might be. Gowers has strong views on shaking
up research publishing — last year, he kick-started
a boycott of the Dutch publishing giant Elsevier (see also Nature’s
profile of Gowers).

The idea of overlaying arXiv is
not new: some mathematics journals tried it in the early 2000s but scrapped the
idea because libraries began dropping print subscriptions, says Demailly.
Meanwhile, there are already some free, community-organized mathematics
journals, such as Documenta Mathematica, funded by the German Mathematical Society. “They are doing things on their own with a small website; we will have a global platform
capable of drastically reducing an individual journal’s administration costs,”
Demailly says.

Demailly says that he expects to adjust the concept with feedback from the mathematics community. “If people want larger reviews linked to papers, or the possibility of online comments and
blogs, we can offer this with only minor changes to the platform,” he says. At
the moment, the model's success or failure hinges on buy-in from mathematicians
— but the involvement of Gowers and other prominent mathematicians, such as
Terence Tao of the University of California, Los
  Angeles, may help to build support.

Journal name: Nature

DOI:doi:10.1038/nature.2013.12243

 

 

TED launches TED Conversations- in-depth group conversations

Social media platform fosters meaningful, in-depth group conversations; introduces time limit on conversations

NEW YORK, Feb. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- TED, the nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, announces today the launch of TED Conversations, a new social media platform on TED.com that connects people for conversation, collaboration and debate.  The platform gives people access to engage notable TED speakers, and the broader TED community, in conversations that – for the first time on a social network – have a time limit.

TED Conversations was designed and built from the ground up to foster meaningful conversation among the global community – more than 15M monthly users – who visit TED.com and watch TEDTalks online.

The highlight features of TED Conversations include:

• Conversation categories – Questions, Debates and Ideas. By asking a question, you can tap into the expertise of the TED community. By proposing an idea, you can elicit constructive feedback. And by initiating a debate, you can lay out a key issue for spirited discussion.
• Conversations with TED notables – At launch, TED Conversations includes discussions with TED speakers such as behavioral economist Dan Ariely (Author, "Predictably Irrational"), entrepreneur and marketer Seth Godin (Author, "Permission Marketing", "Tribes"), game designer Jane McGonigal (author "Reality Is Broken"), Rhode Island School of Design President John Maeda (author, "The Laws of Simplicity") and many more.
• Time limits on conversations – Whether it's one day or one month, TED Conversations are assigned an expiration date to keep the discussion sharp and on-topic.  Designed to promote participation among time-pressed users, including TED speakers and conference attendees, the conversations will end on a pre-set date, at which time the user who initiated it can summarize the discussion with a closing statement.
• Link conversations to one of the 800+ TED Talks on TED.com – Users can ask a question, debate an issue or propose an idea that was sparked by watching one or more TED Talks. This allows a thoughtful exchange among a global community with a shared experience and knowledge base.
• Tagging by subject – To ease navigation, users can search for specific topics such as "architecture," "alternative medicine" or "clean energy."

 

The launch of TED Conversations marks a major step in TED.com's evolution as a social platform. Through the popularity of TEDTalk videos – which have surpassed 400 million views – TED.com has amassed a vast global audience of engaged, intellectually curious members who are eager to participate in meaningful conversation and action. TED Conversations aims to capture the passion of these visitors and get the entire community – speakers, fellows, translators and global audience members – talking, brainstorming and collaborating in real time.

"What's missing from social media today is a forum for in-depth conversation, particularly among a diverse, international audience," said June Cohen, Executive Producer of TED Media. "We've built technology from scratch that fosters collaboration, sparks spirited discussion and allows the global TED community to more easily share ideas. A TED Conversation is like a dinner party  – with a great group of diverse participants, provocative topics, and – importantly – a limited amount of time."

TED Conversations was made possible by support from TED partner GE, who provided underwriting as well as product inspiration. One new feature of TED Conversations is that it allows a partner to engage in a conversation directly with the TED community. At launch, GE will hold a conversation soliciting the TED community for insight on sustainable energy solutions, which will inform GE's Ecomagination Challenge.

"GE has been increasingly engaged in open platforms that drive conversations around big issues such as clean energy and affordable health. TED Conversations represents a place for authentic dialogue that engages multiple voices around innovation and the future," said Beth Comstock, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of GE. "As a company committed to innovation and technology, our mission aligns closely with TED's. Together, we're creating the kind of technologies that help further spread great ideas."

Later this spring, TED Conversations users will have the ability to start or participate in conversations in any language, track them over time with email notifications, and see what conversations their friends are participating in.

About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 26 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. At TED, the world's leading thinkers and doers are asked to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Benoit Mandelbrot, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Two major TED events are held each year: The TED Conference takes place every spring in Long Beach, California (along with a parallel conference, TEDActive, in Palm Springs), and TEDGlobal is held each summer in Edinburgh, Scotland.

TED's media initiatives include TED.com, where new TEDTalks are posted daily; the new TED Conversations, enabling broad conversations among TED fans; and the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as the ability for any TEDTalk to be translated by volunteers worldwide.

TED has established the annual TED Prize, where exceptional individuals with a wish to change the world are given the opportunity to put their wishes into action; TEDx, which offers individuals or groups a way to host local, self-organized events around the world; and the TED Fellows program, helping world-changing innovators from around the globe to become part of the TED community and, with its help, amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

TED2011, "The Rediscovery of Wonder," will be held February 28-March 4, 2011, in Long Beach, California, along with the TEDActive simulcast in Palm Springs, California. TEDGlobal 2011, "The Stuff of Life," will be held July 11-15, 2011, in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Follow TED on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TEDTalks, or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TED

Contact: Taryn Langer, Group SJR, [email protected], (646) 495-9721

 

SOURCE TED

Novel Qualitative/Quanitative Scenario Interviewing methodology for complex systems & risk illumination / mitigation developed by grad students at OCAD. Toronto

With all the attention on Goldman Sachs, greed, risk-shifting and deception, any new methods for risk illumination would benefit business, government and the consumer. 

A team of graduate students at OCAD MA Design program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation (SFI) in Toronto have developed a unique semi quantitative and qualitative scenario and interviewing methodology-which they trialed on the topic of Carbon Capture.  

But it can be applied equally well to other wicked, complex, risk-embedded issues and problems. It addresses stakeholder perceptions, real and perceived risks, liabilities and decision paradoxes and contradictions, better then any other method I’ve seen.

It seems that it might be useful as a decision-making aid and policy development tool in complex. multifactor scenarios where cross impact analysis is needed, and where the need to surface often dynamic and ever changing /evolving stakeholder situational mental models, emerging unintended consequences, conflicts, paradoxes, contradictions and anomalies that may be critical or significant  (ie Critical success factor) in the overall process.

Individual foresight methods don’t capture all this richness

 As they cite in their research report: “We’ve spent a fair amount of thought in separating out factors of biases towards and against other stakeholders in order to elicit the actual objective and subjective perceptions of each, and how those will come into game theoretic conflict…[…]… We used neuro-dynamic programming, also known as reinforcement learning.  This works by treating the domain as a partially-observable Markov decision process (POMDP).

 As a next step, they  are now looking at incorporating the sense-making methodology and my database of social, behavioral and cognitive biases from the Opportunity Clinic into the process.

To date this is proprietary and unpublished work 

I think it’s ready to take public.

The students are trying to identify a private corporation or government agency or Ministry who would be interested in this as a pilot project to use this method in addressing some of their wicked problems.

Any leads, contacts or suggestions appreciated.

Walter Derzko, The Opportunity Clinic.Smart Economy,Toronto

Sr. Fellow S-Lab, OCAD, MA Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation (OCAD) 

How to predict the future with over 90% accuracy? use Bayesian Game Theory

I've been compiling a list of qualitative and quantitative foresight (prediction) methods and the total has passed over 50.

New Scientist magazine this week reviews one quantitative method called Bayesian Game Theory, in surprisingly quite an understandable fashion, that even a lay person like me can understand...well maybe not all the math details but the overall workings are quite clear.

Ever wonder what methods the CIA uses to predict complex geopolitical events?

They turn to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a professor of politics at New York University, who back in 1979 developed a game theory based prediction model, which he calls predictioneering. He says" I can predict events and decisions that involve negotiations, coercion (lies, bluffing, reneging on promises), cooperation or bullying." The model predicts what people will do in "strategic  situations" where the outcome also depends on other people's decisions ie domestic politics, foreign policy, geopolitical conflicts, business decisions and social interactions.  

New Scientist writes: "

"Over the past 30 years, Bueno de Mesquita has made thousands of predictions about hundreds of issues from geopolitics to personal problems. Overall, he claims, his hit rate is about 90 per cent. So how does he do it?

Examples: Terrorism & Climate Change

Terrorism:

"Bueno de Mesquita recently used it to make a prediction on the political situation in Pakistan. Working with a group of students, he asked how willing the Pakistani government would be to pursue Al-Qaida and Taliban militants in its territory, and how the US government could exert influence on their decision."

In January 2008 the students fed in data on all the players, including the US, Pakistan's then president Pervez Musharraf and other leading Pakistani politicans. Their assumption was that the US would offer foreign aid to persuade Pakistan's leaders to target the terrorists, and Pakistan would try to extract the maximum amount of aid possible from the US.

The model predicted that to get maximum cooperation from Pakistan, the US would need to donate at least $1.5 billion in 2009, double the projected 2008 figure. In return for this Pakistan would pursue the terrorists on a scale of 80 out of 100, but no more. In other words, the leadership would make considerable effort to reduce the terrorist threat but not to completely eliminate it. "The Pakistani government are no fools," explains Bueno de Mesquita. "They know that the money will dry up if Al-Qaida and the Taliban are destroyed. So they will rein the threat in and reduce it, but not utterly destroy it."

The outcome? According to Bueno de Mesquita, the US government authorised $1.5 billion in foreign aid to Pakistan in 2009, and the Pakistani leadership sustained pursuit of the militants at that level. "We have done very well," says Bueno de Mesquita.

Climate Change:

So what of the future? Another of Bueno de Mesquita's recent predictions addresses the future of climate change negotiations up to 2050. Depressingly, he predicts that although the world will negotiate tougher greenhouse gas reductions than in the Kyoto protocol, in practise these are likely to be abandoned as Brazil, India and China rise in power in relation to the European Union and the US."

See: The Man who sees the Future, New Scientist Volume 250 No 2752 March 20,2010,  pg 42 

Walter Derzko

Small countries lead R&D international collaboration

Source:  http://www.info.scopus.com/researchtrends/cou_tre_14.html?utm_source=ESC001&utm_campaign=&utm_content=&utm_medium=email&bid=SDNR61F:32HN9O1 Recent research has shown that international research collaboration is growing rapidly (1). This is unsurprising given the fact that many of the most pressing challenges in science are global in nature (2). Think about climate change or the H1N1 flu virus: these clearly cross borders and demand a global response. Analyzing data on international collaborative article output by country reveals that smaller countries (Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium) proportionally carry out more international research than those in larger countries  (ie China, USA,  Japan, India, Korea)  etc. Canada is in the middle of the pack tied with Ukraine, Mexico, Czech Republic and the UK. (see Table below).   It may be coincidence but the current Economist magazine unemployent rates (low to high) mirror this list from top to bottom.--Walter Derzko Rank Country Collaboration   % 2007 1 Switzerland 55.9% 2 Chile 53.8% 3 Denmark 51.6% 4 Belgium 51.6% 5 Bulgaria 50.9% 6 Hong Kong 50.7% 7 Austria 50.0% 8 Sweden 48.0% 9 Norway 48.0% 10 Portugal 47.0% 11 Romania 46.7% 12 Slovakia 46.5% 13 New Zealand 46.2% 14 Ireland 45.9% 15 Hungary 45.7% 16 Netherlands 45.5% 17 Thailand 45.3% 18 France 43.8% 19 South Africa 43.6% 20 Finland 43.2% 21 Argentina 42.4% 22 Germany 41.9% 23 Canada 39.8% 24 Mexico 39.5% 25 Ukraine 39.5% 26 Czech Republic 39.3% 27 United Kingdom 39.0% 28 Australia 38.7% 29 Israel 38.4% 30 Singapore 38.4% 31 Slovenia 37.6% 32 Italy 36.4% 33 Malaysia 35.9% 34 Egypt 35.3% 35 Spain 34.9% 36 Greece 33.7% 37 Russian Federation 33.1% 38 Poland 31.3% 39 Pakistan 27.7% 40 Brazil 27.2% 41 Croatia 27.0% 42 USA 26.4% 43 Korea, Republic of 23.8% 44 Japan 21.0% 45 Iran, Islamic Republic of 20.3% 46 India 17.8% 47 Taiwan, Province of China 15.7% 48 Turkey 15.3% 49 China 13.4% Table 1 – Countries with an output of more than 5,000 articles in 2007 are ranked on their collaboration percentage. This percentage is calculated by counting the number of articles on which authors from more than one country have collaborated, divided by the total number of articles. Source: Scopus Useful links In Issue 11, Jamo Saarti at Kuopio University, Finland, also underlined the importance of international collaboration in research, especially with regard to improving institutional rankings.

Reference: (1) Leydesdorff, L. and Wagner, C.S. (2008) ‘International collaboration in science and the formation of a core group’, Informetrics, 2, pp. 317–325. (2) Rees, M. (October 30, 2008) ‘International collaboration is part of science’s DNA’, Nature, 456, p. 31. Walter Derzko       Author of the soon-to-be published book- Opportunity 45 Scenarios to Drive Your Business in Challenging Times, published by J. Wiley and Sons ISBN13: 978-0-470-73761-3 ISBN10: 0-470-73761-1

Bacterial decisions offer insights into human decision making

If only humans had as good threat sensing and "game theory decision making" mechanisms as bacteria--Walter Derzko 

Colonies of billions of Bacillus subtilis bacteria exhibit the complex structures that sometimes form under environmental stress.

Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society. Their study, published this week in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was accomplished when the scientists applied the mathematical techniques used in physics to describe the complex interplay of genes and proteins that colonies of bacteria rely upon to initiate different survival strategies during times of environmental stress. Using the mathematical tools of theoretical physics and chemistry to describe complex biological systems is becoming more commonplace in the emerging field of theoretical biological physics.

The authors of the new study are theoretical physicists and chemists at the University of California, San Diego's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics,and Tel Aviv University in Israel. They say that how genes are turned on and off in bacteria living under conditions of stress not only shed light on how complex biological systems interact, but provide insights for economists and political scientists applying mathematical models to describe complex human decision making.

"Everyone knows the need to try to postpone important decisions until the last moment but apparently there are simple creatures that do it well and therefore can really teach us — the bacteria," said Eshel Ben Jacob, a physics professor at Tel Aviv University and a fellow of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics. He co-authored the study with three other scientists at the center: José Onuchic, a professor of physics at UC San Diego and a co-director of the center, Peter Wolynes, a professor of physics and chemistry at UC San Diego and Daniel Schultz, a postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego.

BACKGROUND

In nature, bacteria live in large colonies whose numbers may reach up to 100 times the number of people on earth. Many bacteria respond to extreme stress — such as starvation, poisoning and irradiation — by creating spores, dormant states that are highly resistant to the outside environment and that can germinate into fully functioning bacteria once the environment improves. The response involves more than 500 genes and takes about 10 hours in Bacillus subtilis, the bacterium used by the scientists in their study.

Each bacterium in the colony communicates via chemical messages and performs a sophisticated decision making process using a specialized network of genes and proteins. Modeling this complex interplay of genes and proteins by the bacteria enabled the scientists to assess the pros and cons of different choices in game theory, a branch of mathematics that attempts to model decision making by humans, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others.

When bacteria form spores, the mother cell dies, but not before it stores a copy of its DNA in a special capsule called the spore. The mother cell then breaks open and its DNA and remaining proteins are released to the environment. The bacteria on the road to spore formation don’t always form spores. They can change their fate and escape into a different state called "competence."

In this state, the bacteria change their membranes to allow the easy absorption of material from the dying cells. This allows for the creation of a "competence intermediate state," in which the bacteria hope to survive even under these unfriendly conditions. When normal conditions are restored, bacteria return to normal life without having to make a spore. The advantage of this situation is the ability of quickly returning to normality, but there is also a disadvantage: likely death if the conditions get even worse. As a result, each bacterium has a dilemma.

"It pays for the individual cell to take the risk and escape into competence only if it notices that the majority of the cells decide to sporulate," explained Onuchic. "But if this is the case, it should not take this chance because most of the other cells might reach the same conclusion and escape from sporulation. Observations have shown that indeed only about 10 percent of the bacteria enter into competence. But how they make this decision and which cells take this chance have been a mystery."

The researchers discovered in their study that the bacteria’s game theory decision making process is far more advanced than the well-known game theory problem known as the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Classic Prisoner's Dilemma, when applied to two prisoners, gives them the following offer: If only one prisoner pleads guilty, the one that cooperates gets two years in jail while the other one gets six years. If both of them admit guilt, then they will be imprisoned for four years. However, if none of them pleads guilty, they go free with no punishment. The temptation is not to admit anything, but the prisoners never know whether or not the other prisoner cooperated and pled guilty.

Because the number of participants in a bacterial colony can be up to 100 times the number of people on earth, the bacteria need to construct a more complex form of game theory. The rapidly changing environmental conditions they face means also bacteria have limited time to decide.

"Prisoner's Dilemma for bacteria is more complex," said Ben Jacob. "Each bacterium must decide whether to become a spore; that is, to cooperate, or escape into competence, or take advantage of the others, while it has a limited time to decide while a clock is ticking. We discovered that each cell has an internal timer whose pace changes according to the stress it experiences — the pace goes up for higher stress decisions such as in humans. Our internal clock speeds up under danger because of the secretion of adrenaline and therefore we have the sensation of time slowing down. In addition to internal stress, each bacterium adjusts the pace of its timer accordingly to the stress of its peers and their intention to sporulate or to go into competence."

According to Onuchic, bacteria usually do not cheat their friends and inform them by sending chemical messages about their true intensions.

"We have developed for the first time a system level model of a large gene network to decipher the underlying principles of the bacteria game theory and how an internal network of genes and proteins is used to calculate risks in this complicated situation," he said.

This has applications to human society because many people encounter similar dilemmas during their own lives. For example, should people ignore side effects and vaccinate against a new potentially lethal virus or should they not vaccinate and take the risk of being infected with the possible consequences? If the majority of the population is going to get vaccinated, then it is better for each individual not to get vaccinated. However, if most people will not be vaccinated then it is better to be vaccinated.

"What each bacterium is doing is the equivalent if each individual on earth was able receive the exact information about the rate of spread of this new virus, the exact information about the intensions, to be vaccinated or not, by each person on the planet, and in addition the exact information about the health risks of side effects or being infected,” said researchers. “A decision is then made in the context of this vast amount of information."

"We have shown how the bacteria do this complex calculation according to well-defined principles," added scientists "We learned a simple rule: Anyone who needs to make a decision under pressure in life, especially if it is a possible death decision, will take its time. She or he will review the trends of change, will render all possible chances and risks, and only then react."

"Another interesting fact is that the same cells in the same environment, in this case, bacteria in the colony, can actually in a statistical matter choose two different outcomes: sporulation or competence. This leads us to speculate whether similar ideas can be extrapolated to explain the decisions of cells to develop cancer: Can a similar cell in a tissue make the decision to duplicate normally or to modify into a cancer cell? How does this stochastic process affect life, biology, evolution and disease is an interesting challenge that will be at the center of questions answered at the interface of the physical and life sciences."

Source:  University of California press release

Walter Derzko

 

 

 

Author of the soon-to-be published book- Opportunity 45 Scenarios to Drive Your Business in Challenging Times,

published by J. Wiley and Sons

ISBN13: 978-0-470-73761-3

ISBN10: 0-470-73761-1