Scientists create the sensation of invisibility

 

The power of invisibility has long fascinated man and inspired the works of many great authors and philosophers. In a study from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, a team of neuroscientists now reports a perceptual illusion of having an invisible body, and show that the feeling of invisibility changes our physical stress response in challenging social situations.

The history of literature features many well-known narrations of invisibility and its effect on the human mind, such as the myth of Gyges' ring in Plato's dialogue The Republic and the science fiction novel The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. Recent advances in materials science have shown that invisibility cloaking of large-scale objects, such as a human body, might be possible in the not-so-distant future; however, it remains unknown how invisibility would affect our brain and body perception.

In an article in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers describe a perceptual illusion of having an invisible body. The experiment involves the participant standing up and wearing a set of head-mounted displays. The participant is then asked to look down at her body, but instead of her real body she sees empty space. To evoke the feeling of having an invisible body, the scientist touches the participant's body in various locations with a large paintbrush while, with another paintbrush held in the other hand, exactly imitating the movements in mid-air in full view of the participant.

"Within less than a minute, the majority of the participants started to transfer the sensation of touch to the portion of empty space where they saw the paintbrush move and experienced an invisible body in that position," says Arvid Guterstam, lead author of the present study. "We showed in a previous study that the same illusion can be created for a single hand. The present study demonstrates that the 'invisible hand illusion' can, surprisingly, be extended to an entire invisible body."

The study examined the illusion experience in 125 participants. To demonstrate that the illusion actually worked, the researchers would make a stabbing motion with a knife toward the empty space that represented the belly of the invisible body. The participants' sweat response to seeing the knife was elevated while experiencing the illusion but absent when the illusion was broken, which suggests that the brain interprets the threat in empty space as a threat directed toward one's own body.

In another part of the study, the researchers examined whether the feeling of invisibility affects social anxiety by placing the participants in front of an audience of strangers.

"We found that their heart rate and self-reported stress level during the 'performance' was lower when they immediately prior had experienced the invisible body illusion compared to when they experienced having a physical body," says Arvid Guterstam. "These results are interesting because they show that the perceived physical quality of the body can change the way our brain processes social cues."

The researches hope that the results of the study will be of value to future clinical research, for example in the development of new therapies for social anxiety disorder.

"Follow-up studies should also investigate whether the feeling of invisibility affects moral decision-making, to ensure that future invisibility cloaking does not make us lose our sense of right and wrong, which Plato asserted over two millennia ago," says principal investigator Dr. Henrik Ehrsson, professor at the Department of Neuroscience.

This research was funded by the Swedish Research Council, and the Söderberg Foundation.

Story Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com

 

Google launches Project Fi, US wireless service designed to curb data use

New service switches between Wi-Fi and cellular networks to keep phone bills low, and will only work on Google’s Nexus 6 phones through Sprint and T-Mobile

Google on Wednesday launched a new US wireless service that switches between Wi-Fi and cellular networks to curb data use and keep phone bills low.

The service, Google’s first entry into the wireless industry, will work only on the company’s Nexus 6 phones and be hosted through Sprint Corp and T-Mobile’s networks, Google said in a statement.

Called Project Fi, the service will automatically switch between the two networks and more than 1m open, free Wi-Fi spots, depending on which signal is strongest.

The service will cost $20 a month plus $10 per gigabyte of data used. Customers will get money back for unused data.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice-president of products, said at a Barcelona conference last month the company was preparing to experiment with a mobile network, but that it did not intend to disrupt the wireless industry.

The service will be available on only one device and has limited carrier coverage, so it will not make Google a major wireless industry player, said Brian Blau, research director at Gartner.

If successful, however, Google’s service could pressure wireless providers to further lower prices and better adapt to the rise of tablets and wearable devices, Blau added. Though some carriers, such as T-Mobile and AT&T Inc, allow unused data to roll over, most mobile plans require customers to pay for a set amount of data each month.

But Google first has to “test out features they think are going to differentiate themselves,” Blau said, such as being able to transition from network connectivity to Wi-Fi.

If Google is able to provide those features, “it’s very possible they could become a major wireless player in the future,” Blau said.

Phone numbers will live in the cloud so that consumers can talk and text on any connected tablet, Google said.

The company already has a strong presence in the mobile market through its Android operating system, which hosts some of the most popular apps, such as Gmail and Google Maps.

The Source   

http://www.theguardian.com/ 

Chinese paper on embryo engineering splits scientific community

The announcement that a Chinese team had altered the genetics of a human embryo for the first time has ignited a firestorm of controversy around the world and renewed recent calls for a moratorium on any attempt to establish a pregnancy with such an engineered embryo. But it has also underscored that although scientists are united in their opposition to any clinical application of such embryo manipulation, they are split on the value of basic research that involves genetically modifying human embryos.

In China itself, where the precedent-setting research is big news and some in the public have expressed concern on the Internet about the embryo experiments, "most scientists are more positive," says Guo-Qiang Chen, a microbiologist at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "My personal opinion is that as long as they can control the consequences they should continue this work.”

That viewed is echoed by many outside of China as well. “I personally would defend the fundamental scientific value of research into gene editing” in human embryos, in part to explore the risks of any potential clinical use, George Daley, a stem cell biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, tells Science.

The paper at the heart of the debate, published online on 18 April in Protein & Cell, an obscure Chinese online journal published by an affiliate of China’s Ministry of Education, drew widespread attention only after Nature News reported it online on 22 April. Junjiu Huang and colleagues at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou described how they attempted to use the CRISPR/Cas-9 system, a new technology that makes it easy to modify genes in cells, to edit the hemoglobin-B gene (HBB) in 86 human embryos donated for research by couples at an in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinic. In theory, this could be a way to prevent beta thalassemia, a blood disorder that results when that gene is mutated, but the embryos experimented on were selected because they were not viable; they had an extra set of chromosomes as a result of being fertilized by two sperm.

Two days after being injected with gene-editing molecules, only four of 54 surviving embryos that were tested carried the desired genetic changes; these embryos were mosaic, meaning only some cells had the intended changes. The edited embryos also had a large number of off-target effects, or mutations in genes other than HBB, that could be potentially harmful.

The performance of the technique proved so poor that the researchers emphasized that any clinical use of CRISPR/Cas9 for embryo editing is “premature at this stage." The project was reviewed by Huang’s university’s ethics board and complied with international and national ethical standards, according to the paper. The researchers used abnormal zygotes that would otherwise be discarded, “because ethical concerns preclude studies of gene editing in normal embryos,” they write.

Still, the paper drew anger from some quarters. The Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley, California, called for a halt to such experiments. Huang told Nature News that the paper was rejected by Science and Nature in part because of ethical concerns. (In an e-mail, Huang initially welcomed an inquiry from Science and asked for a list of questions by e-mail, but then he did not reply.)

Rumors that such a paper was in the works sparked several published opinion pieces a month ago. In a commentary in Science, molecular biologist David Baltimore, president emeritus of California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and 17 co-authors called for scientists and others to “strongly discourage … attempts at germline genome modification for clinical application in humans.”  (Many countries already ban germline gene modification.)

Several scientists led by Edward Lanphier, CEO of Sangamo BioSciences in Richmond, California, went further in a Nature commentary, calling for a voluntary moratorium on all experiments involving germline gene modification. Although the two groups were “90% in agreement,” they differed on this one point, Lanphier told Science: “We said let’s not perfect these technologies ahead of a conversation whether we should allow this technology.”

In contrast, two co-authors of the Science commentary say that they are comfortable with the Huang experiment. Daley points out that international guidelines developed by the stem cell researchers allow for experiments with human embryos as long as the cells are not allowed to grow for more than 14 days. “To further to inform any debate on whether this technology could be useful for eradicating disease, one has to understand the range of efficacy and off-target mutagenesis,” Daley says.

Harvard molecular geneticist George Church agrees that the consensus has long been that experiments on discarded IVF embryos are acceptable; the only new thing is that the Huang group “used CRISPR, which makes it noteworthy,” he says. Although he does not object to the the reported experiment, Church adds that the results “were fairly predictable.” He says one reason the researchers got so many off-target effects is because they did not use the latest version of the gene-editing technology.

But University of California, Berkeley, molecular biologist Jennifer Doudna, who organized a workshop that led to the Science commentary, says her personal opinion is that the Huang experiment was not necessary because scientists are still a long way from perfecting the CRISPR gene-editing method. “I don't see the value in working with human embryos right now. There’s a lot to be learned by working in other systems,” she says. In her view, the Huang paper provided little new scientific insight and seemed intended to “attract attention.” She is also troubled that, according to the dates noted in the paper, Protein & Cell apparently published the study 1 day after it was submitted. “I have to conclude this was not peer reviewed,” she says.

Neither Science nor Nature’s editorial staff would confirm that the journals reviewed the paper and rejected it in part because of of ethical concerns. In a statement, a Nature representative said the journal sometimes has papers reviewed by a bioethicist. Science issued a statement saying it supports recommendations in its earlier commentary and that while a consensus about germline genome editing is being developed, the journal “will carefully scrutinize all submissions for both technical and societal concerns and consult broadly.”

Chen, who uses CRISPR/Cas9 in his own research on microorganisms, and other scientists in China defend their country's ethical oversight of the new embryo research. Ethical review procedures in the United States and in China are very similar and based on the same principles, says Kehkooi Kee, a stem cell scientist also at Tsinghua, who earned his advanced degrees in the United States. Kee says that at Tsinghua a proposal for such work would have to be vetted by the university hospital's own institutional review board (IRB) as well as by the IRB of the collaborating hospital that supplies the donated embryos. At the national level, he says China's funding agencies do check on whether a grant applicant has the proper ethical approvals. Chen adds that in light of the current controversy, review boards "will probably be more strict," he says.

But he’s adamant the newly published research has value even if some consider its results a failure. Determining if these embryo engineering techniques can be useful in curing disease can be achieved "only by doing this kind of research; we might possibly see some positive outcome resulting from many failures," he says. Kee also defends the work. "The conclusion is valid, they are not hiding anything, and they are not saying this technique is ready for use in the clinic," he says.

The China work was funded by national grants and rumors continue to circulate that several other China teams have done similar embryo work. In the United States, such experiments could only take place with nonfederal funding because of a long-standing congressional prohibition on using federal funding for any research that destroys or puts at risk human embryos.

Regardless of where scientists stand on this new research, it has highlighted their shared desire to discuss whether, if ever, gene editing should be used in human embryos to prevent disease. Doudna is now helping to organize an international meeting later this year to come up with guidelines. “I think the goal of that meeting is to come together and identify a broader consensus about the appropriate way to proceed with these experiments,” she says. Now that the first human embryo gene-editing paper has been published, she adds, “we feel some urgency.”

The source

http://news.sciencemag.org 

 

Oil and gas operations could trigger large earthquakes

 

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has taken its first stab at quantifying the hazard from earthquakes associated with oil and gas development. The assessment, released in a preliminary report today, identifies 17 areas in eight states with elevated seismic hazard. And geologists now say that such induced earthquakes could potentially be large, up to magnitude 7, which is big enough to cause buildings to collapse and widespread damage.

The new bull’s-eyes on the map, regions such as central Oklahoma, have short-term hazards that are comparable to the those in traditional earthquake states, like California, says Mark Petersen, chief of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project in Golden, Colorado. “These earthquakes are occurring at a higher rate than ever before and pose a much greater threat to people living nearby,” he says. “This report represents our first step in identifying and quantifying the ground shaking from induced earthquakes.”

Geoscientists have known for decades that the injection of fluid can increase pressures within the pores of deep rock formations, pushing faults that are already critically stressed by forces in Earth’s crust past the snapping point. But the phenomenon has been brought to the fore by an extraordinary rise in small earthquakes across parts of the central United States. That surge has coincided in time and place with the boom in unconventional oil and gas extraction such as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," in which high-pressure fluid is injected into the ground to break up the underlying rock and release trapped gas or oil. In most cases, the earthquakes are not due to fracking itself, which is usually completed in hours or days. Rather, the culprit is typically wastewater disposal, where high volumes of water extracted in oil and gas operations is reinjected into deep basement rocks, where the bigger and more dangerous faults lie.

So far, the largest induced earthquake in the United States has been the 2011 magnitude-5.6 earthquake in Prague, Oklahoma, which damaged dozens of buildings. But geoscientists now say there is no reason why oil and gas operations couldn’t end up triggering something much larger. “There are certainly faults large enough to produce a magnitude 7,” says Justin Rubinstein, a geophysicist at USGS in Menlo Park, California, and a co-author of the new report. “We can’t rule this out.”

In July 2014, USGS published its most recent update to its national seismic hazard map, which is incorporated into engineering codes for buildings and bridges. The hazard is expressed in terms of the probability of exceeding a certain level of shaking in 50 years—not only because the hazard in places like California is not expected to change much over that time period, but also because 50 years—the typical life span of a building—is a useful period of time for engineers.

But that map ignored the threat of induced earthquakes, precisely because the frequency of these earthquakes was likely to change over the course of 50 years. Economic or policy conditions could affect the frequency of induced earthquakes, Petersen says. In short order, wastewater wells could be drilled in new locations, the falling price of oil could shut down certain operations, or regulators could change their policies in certain regions. To account for that uncertainty, the new map describes probabilities over an extremely short, 1-year interval.

The report is a preliminary study that is going to be revised later this year, Petersen says. But William Ellsworth, a geophysicist at USGS in Menlo Park, suggests that it could still be useful—for instance, for state transportation departments trying to prioritize which bridges should be singled out for repairs or retrofits first.

Science agencies and regulators finally seem to be taking induced earthquakes seriously. For a long time, the Oklahoma Geological Survey was reluctant to link the earthquakes to oil and gas operations. But in a statement released on 21 April, the agency now says that it is “very unlikely” that the surge in earthquakes represents a natural process. At a teleconference the following day, held in conjunction with unveiling the new USGS report, Austin Holland, the state seismologist at the Oklahoma Geological Survey in Norman, went even further, saying, “The vast majority of these [earthquakes], we suspect, are from waste water disposal.”

The source

http://news.sciencemag.org 

Huge Magma Chamber Spied Under Yellowstone Supervolcano

 

Scientists have spied a vast reservoir of hot, partly molten rock beneath the supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park that's big enough to fill the Grand Canyon 11 times over.

The newly discovered magma chamber — located 12 to 28 miles underground — is four times bigger than the previously known chamber above it, according to imaging by researchers at the University of Utah.

The discovery fills a missing link in Yellowstone's volcanic plumbing system. But scientists said it doesn't increase the risk of an eruption, which is estimated to happen every 700,000 years.

Researchers now think hot and semi-molten rock is carried upward from 40 miles beneath the surface to the newly found reservoir and the chamber above it.

Yellowstone, which spans parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, is among the world's largest supervolcanoes, with frequent earthquakes. The park attracts millions of tourists with its geysers, hot springs and bubbling mud pots. The upper magma chamber powers Yellowstone's geysers and was responsible for three ancient volcanic eruptions that coated much of North America in ash.

Scientists mapped the new reservoir by doing the geological equivalent of a CT scan — studying how seismic waves pass through different types of rocks.

Their findings were published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

The source

http://abcnews.go.com 

Can Creativity Exist with Mental Disorders?

 

With every hour passing, medicine and human sciences make fascinating steps that build up to extend the bridge between us and the secrets of the absolute wonder created by God which is our human brain.

Today, research in the field of mental illnesses is nonstop. People who suffer from mental sicknesses including Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Schizophrenia, Autism, Bipolar Disorder and many others have been subject to neurologists’ and psychologists’ zealous studies.

Let’s take a moment to ask ourselves, are people who suffer from such diseases really underprivileged? Is it a completely dark state with no way out or a glimmer of hope? The answer is a definite negative.

Why, you ask? It’s because as much as these illnesses hold of pain and turmoil for the patients; it also holds a great, unmistakable deal of positive traits that can lead the patient to discover the genius within him/her.

In every culture, there exists a widespread stereotype known as “The Tortured Artist”. This kind of intellect, according to the stereotype, often feels alienated and misunderstood by the society which doesn’t appreciate him/her or what he/she does. The tortured artist is always ridden by inner conflicts and feelings of frustration and insufficiency.

However; the notion of a link between "madness" and "genius" goes way back as ancient as the time of Aristotle. During the Romantic era in Europe, toward the end of the 18^th century, this idea of art and psychotic patients was reinforced. Individuals with mental issues were believed to have the capacity to see the world in a new, unusual and original way, in other words, to see things that normal humans cannot.

Geniuses with Neurological Disorders

Examples of intellects responsible for historic creative achievements, famous or not, are all around us. Ludwig van Beethoven, the famous German musician suffered from bipolar disorder, yet he possessed such creative power that allowed him to compose pieces that changed classical music forever. He was a child prodigy, although he had “manic” episodes that seemed to fuel his creativity.

During times of psychological torment and extreme suffering, he wrote fantastic pieces. It took him 12 years to finish his last 9^th Symphony while he suffered from deafness!

Another example is John Forbes Nash, American Nobel Prize Winner in mathematics, who suffered from Schizophrenia. His life story and life-long battle was documented in the book "A Beautiful Mind," by Sylvia Nasar, which was later made into a movie of the same name.

British Autistic architectural artist, Stephen Wiltshire, was able to draw the Manhattan skyline only from his photographic memory after a helicopter flight over the city. He was diagnosed with autism at the age of three, and has an unusually powerful photographic memory that he has applied to rendering cityscapes, like London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Rome, Madrid, Frankfurt, Dubai, and Jerusalem.

There are many other examples, like Isaac Newton, the English physicist who is considered to be one of the most influential scientists, suffered from Bipolar Disorder, Vincent Van Gogh, the famous Dutch painter had clinical depression, and Sylvia Plath, the great American writer, who also suffered from clinical depression and suicidal tendencies. And the list goes on.

Such numerous illustrations of the undeniable link between genius and madness lead us to think that there must be a biological connection between these tormented yet brilliant minds.

A study by Arnold Ludwig, a professor of Psychiatry at the University of Kentucky, explored how mental illness is linked with an individual’s influence on society.

Ludwig examined the lives of 1,004 well-known individuals through history, which confirmed that there was a noticeably higher existence of mental illness in individuals who were poets, fiction writers, visual artists, musicians and composers, and those involved in theatre, than in other professions, such as business, exploration, or the military. Many studies like this were conducted, however; they lacked evidence as to how creativity and mental illness are connected.

It is important to point out that while a connection exists between these two traits, it is not always present. Creativity can exist without mental illness, and vice versa.

Biological Story Behind it

 

To be able to legitimately prove their findings, researchers started to identify the neurological similarities between mental illnesses and the creative thought process.

The frontal lobe of the brain, which is the main connection between the temporal and parietal lobes, is where knowledge and concepts are kept. Unnatural occurrences in the frontal lobe, the prefrontal cortex in particular, are characteristics of schizophrenia and depression.

Hyperactivity in this part causes the patient to initiate unusual connections between normally unrelated things or ideas, in turn simulating the delusions of the paranoid schizophrenic or maniac behavior. Schizophrenia is linked to high levels of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex, causing delusions, hallucinations, and chaotic thought processes.

Similarly, manic depression may involve varying levels of norepinephrine in the frontal lobe; high levels of which are responsible for depression symptoms, while low levels result in novel connectivity in the frontal lobe, and creative or unusual ideas.

According to numerous medical studies, creative thinking, like manic depression and schizophrenia, also involves unusual frontal lobe behavior. Frontal lobe deficiency may decrease idea production.

Similarly, another study supports the ones mentioned above and further proves that unusual activity in the frontal lobe could be responsible for interference of the information stored in the parietal and temporal lobes in innovative ways.

Mentally-disordered Minds Benefit their Societies

Even though, it’s philosophically and medically proven that a lot of individuals with psychological problems can develop or already have astonishing talents, the culture of trying to help those patients by uncovering their talents is scarcely spread in our world, and they’re automatically believed to be destined to be underprivileged – without a positive output of their illness.

There are many ways through which we can help lessen the amount of suffering these patients go through and help them find a bright side to their illness. Doctors need to focus more on developing the hidden talents inside those patients' brains instead of just relying on pills and medication that might hinder the creative thought process that could hold potential of lots of special things those patients can do.

The research in the field of neuropsychology never stops, in hopes that in the soon future, we will be 

able to give and receive more from the mentally-ill.

:The source

http://www.onislam.net

Breath test 'could give clues to stomach cancer risk'

 

A simple breath test could help predict whether people with gut problems are at high risk of developing stomach cancer, an early study shows.

It detects tiny chemical compounds in people's breath, in an attempt to distinguish unique "breath prints" in those with risky pre-cancerous changes.

Experts say if proven in large trials, it could spot patients on the brink of cancer so they can be treated earlier.

But more work is needed to validate the test, which appears in the journal Gut.
'Sniffing signals'

Stomach cancers affect about 7,300 people each year in the UK.

But in most Western countries it is diagnosed late when the chance of survival is poor. This is partly because symptoms - such as indigestion and pain - can be mistaken for other diseases.

Scientists believe earlier detection may help improve the prognosis.

The new "nanoarray" breath test builds on earlier work from researchers in Israel, Latvia and China.

It relies on the idea that people with cancer may have unique breath signatures - containing minute chemical compounds that are not found in the breath of people free from the illness.

Researchers studied breath samples from 145 patients. Around 30 of these were already known to have stomach cancer.

The rest had been referred for investigations because of concerning symptoms. They did not have full-blown cancer - but some had worrying changes that doctors call "pre-cancerous" that could develop into malignancies.

Scientists tried out the test on a number of different scenarios.

It was fairly good at spotting cancerous samples from non-cancerous ones.

And it showed some promise at identifying worrying pre-cancerous changes that were at high risk of developing into the disease.

But it was not accurate in every case - some patients were misdiagnosed as being at high risk.

Scientists say more work is needed before it is ready to use in clinics.

Dr Emma Smith of Cancer Research UK, said: "Diagnosing cancer in its early stages offers patients the best chance of successful treatment, so research like this has potential to help save lives.

"But we would need to be sure the test is sensitive and accurate enough to be used more widely."

Research involving thousands of European patients is now under way.

The source : http://www.bbc.co.uk 

India's IT plans suffer from power cuts, congestion - and monkeys

 

As India launches an $18 billion plan to spread the information revolution to its provinces, the problems it faces are a holdover from the past - electricity shortages, badly planned, jam-packed cities, and monkeys.

The clash between the old world and the new is sharply in focus in the crowded 3,000-year-old holy city of Varanasi, where many devout Hindus come to die in the belief that doing so will give them salvation. Varanasi is also home to hundreds of macaque monkeys that live in its temples and are fed and venerated by devotees.

But the monkeys also feast on the fiber-optic cables that are strung along the banks of the Ganges river.

"We cannot move the temples from here. We cannot modify anything here, everything is built up. The monkeys, they destroy all the wires and eat all the wires," said communications engineer A.P. Srivastava.

Srivastava, who oversees the expansion of new connections in the local district, said his team had to replace the riverside cables when the monkeys chewed them up less than two months after they were installed.

He said his team is now looking for alternatives, but there are few to be found. The city of over 2 million people is impossibly crowded and laying underground cable is out of the question. Chasing away or trapping the monkeys will outrage residents and temple-goers.

Varanasi is part of the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist leader who came to power last May.

A shortage of electricity is further complicating efforts to set up stable Wi-Fi in public places - daily power cuts can last for hours during the sweltering summer in Varanasi and across much of India.

Modi's government has pledged to lay 700,000 kms (434,960 miles) of broadband cable to connect India's 250,000 village clusters within three years, build 100 new "Smart Cities" by 2020 and shift more public services like education and health to electronic platforms to improve access and accountability.

Varanasi was the first of an eventual 2,500 locations singled out for street-level Wi-Fi.

Industry experts predict that the broadband initiative, along with a surge in smartphone ownership, will mean about a third of Indians will have access to the internet by 2017, from about 20 percent, or 250 million people, now.

Expanding internet connectivity and making access cheaper could add up to 1.6 percentage points, or about $70 billion, to India's GDP over a four-year period, consultants at McKinsey have estimated.

GLOBAL INTEREST

Global technology companies see opportunity in Modi's commitment to a digital future and are adapting their products to India's varied climates and external threats.

IBM is in discussions to provide software to help several cities make the leap into the digital age.

Network provider Cisco Systems is working with the government in the eastern city of Visakhapatnam to bring more education and healthcare services online, and has developed a "ruggedised" Wi-Fi box to survive India's varied climates and cut down on the need for cables that will be at the mercy of the elements - or monkeys.

"We've built outdoor Wi-Fi-access routers specifically keeping in mind Indian environmental conditions," Dinesh Malkani, Cisco's India country head, said in an interview.

"You cannot predict what challenges you are going to come up against."

Bringing some order to India's chaotic cities with technology is a daunting task.

India's urban population is forecast to swell by an additional 220 million to 600 million by 2031, potentially overwhelming already inadequate infrastructure.

Many of the new digital projects are simply aimed at improving existing civic amenities: time traffic information to help people better plan their journey, or systems that allow individuals to monitor water leakages or waste management and then inform local authorities.

Vinod Kumar Tripathi, an urban planning expert in Varanasi, said Modi's initiatives needed to be coupled with huge investments in improving basic services like housing, roads and waste management.

"Everything here is old, outdated and the population pressure just makes it worse. This place was a small temple town and is now a commercial center," Tripathi said in his office overlooking the Banaras Hindu University.

The free Wi-Fi service that started in February is certainly stimulating the consumer economy. Boatman Sandeep Majhi makes a living ferrying pilgrims and bereaved families who scatter ashes in the river after performing cremations.

He recently purchased his first smartphone to download music and exchange videos with friends, and promote his boat business to tourists on Facebook.

But he said the government needed to pay equal attention to the municipal services in a city where cars, rickshaws and carts fight for space through narrow, potholed roads lined with litter. Varanasi remains dependent on a 500-year-old, leaky drainage system for its sewage.

"Free Wi-Fi is a good facility for tourists but I think the officials should think about cleaning the ghats," said the 20-year-old, referring to the steps down to the river, which are often caked with cow dung.

http://www.ahad-ahad.com

Poorer children 'have smaller brains', researchers say

 

Children with richer parents have bigger brains than their poorer counterparts, new research suggests.
Differences in regions of the brain that deal with language, reading, decision-making and memory were most marked, the study found.
But the scientists from California also found that community help and teaching can remedy the disparities.
The team concludes that factors such as better school lunches and motivated teachers can have a significant impact.
In what is claimed to be the biggest study of its kind, scientists from the University of Southern California tested 1,099 typically developing people - male and female - aged between three and 20.
They measured brain surface area by scans and conducted cognitive tests, and then compared the results with the income levels of the parents.
They corrected for other potential influences on brain structure, such as inherited characteristics.
Their research is published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Marked variations
The researchers found that in addition to differences between the brains of the richest and the poorest, there were also marked variations at the lower end of the scale.
There was a bigger difference, for example, between the results in children from families earning $30,000 and $50,000 per year than there was between those earning $90,000 and $110,000.
Report co-author Elizabeth Sowell said: "The most important point we want to convey is not, 'If you are poor, your brain will be smaller, and there is nothing that can be done about it' - that is absolutely not the message.
"It seems reasonable to speculate that resources afforded by the more affluent, such as nutrition, childcare, schools, help 'wire' the brain through development," she said.
"It is not too late to think about how to impact resources that enrich the developmental environment that in turn help the brain wire itself together

."

from:

http://www.ahad-ahad.com

Ebola whole virus vaccine shown effective, safe in primates

 

An Ebola whole virus vaccine, constructed using a novel experimental platform, has been shown to effectively protect monkeys exposed to the often fatal virus.

The vaccine, described today (March 26, 2015) in the journal Science, was developed by a group led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a University of Wisconsin-Madison expert on avian influenza, Ebola and other viruses of medical importance. It differs from other Ebola vaccines because as an inactivated whole virus vaccine, it primes the host immune system with the full complement of Ebola viral proteins and genes, potentially conferring greater protection.
"In terms of efficacy, this affords excellent protection," explains Kawaoka, a professor of pathobiological sciences in the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine and who also holds a faculty appointment at the University of Tokyo. "It is also a very safe vaccine."
The vaccine was constructed on an experimental platform first devised in 2008 by Peter Halfmann, a research scientist in Kawaoka's lab. The system allows researchers to safely work with the virus thanks to the deletion of a key gene known as VP30, which the Ebola virus uses to make a protein required for it to reproduce in host cells. Ebola virus has only eight genes and, like most viruses, depends on the molecular machinery of host cells to grow and become infectious.
By engineering monkey kidney cells to express the VP30 protein, the virus can be safely studied in the lab and be used as a basis for devising countermeasures like a whole virus vaccine. The vaccine reported by Kawaoka and his colleagues was additionally chemically inactivated using hydrogen peroxide, according to the new Science report.
Ebola first emerged in 1976 in Sudan and Zaire. The current outbreak in West Africa has so far claimed more than 10,000 lives. There are no proven treatments or vaccines, although several vaccine platforms have been devised in recent years, four of which recently advanced to the clinical trial stage in humans.
The new vaccine reported by Kawaoka has not been tested in people. However, the successful tests in nonhuman primates conducted at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a biosafety level 4 facility in Hamilton, Montana, may prompt further tests and possibly clinical trials of the new vaccine. The work at Rocky Mountain Laboratories was conducted in collaboration with a group led by Heinz Feldmann of NIH.
Those studies were conducted with cynomolgus macaques, which are very susceptible to Ebola. "It's the best model," Kawaoka says. "If you get protection with this model, it's working."
Ebola vaccines currently in trials include:
-- A DNA-based plasmid vaccine that primes host cells with some of the Ebola proteins.
-- A vaccine based on a replication incompetent chimpanzee respiratory virus engineered to express a key Ebola protein.
-- A live attenuated virus from the same family of viruses that causes rabies, also engineered to express a critical Ebola protein.
-- A vaccine based on a vaccinia virus and engineered to express a critical Ebola protein.
Each of those strategies, Kawaoka notes, has drawbacks in terms of safety and delivery.
Whole virus vaccines have long been used to successfully prevent serious human diseases, including polio, influenza, hepatitis and human papillomavirus-mediated cervical cancer.
The advantage conferred by inactivated whole virus vaccines such as the one devised by Halfmann, Kawaoka and their colleagues is that they present the complete range of proteins and genetic material to the host immune system, which is then more likely to trigger a broader and more robust immune response.
Early attempts to devise an inactivated whole virus Ebola vaccine through irradiation and the preservative formalin failed to protect monkeys exposed to the Ebola virus and were abandoned.
Although the new vaccine has surpassed that hurdle, human trials are expensive and complex, costing millions of dollars.
The Ebola vaccine study conducted by Kawaoka was supported by the National Institutes of Health and by the Japanese Health and Labour Sciences Research Grants.

:The Source

http://www.sciencedaily.com 

Two degree Celsius climate change target 'utterly inadequate', expert argues

 

The official global target of a 2°C temperature rise is 'utterly inadequate' for protecting those at most risk from climate change, says a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), writing a commentary in the open access journal Climate Change Responses.

The commentary presents a rare inside-view of a two-day discussion at the Lima Conference of the Parties (COP) on the likely consequences of accepting an average global warming target of 2°C versus 1.5°C (measured from pre-industrial times until 2100).
The discussions were part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 'structured expert dialogue' in December 2014. They reveal unevenly distributed risks and political power differentials between high-income countries insisting on a 2°C target and low- and many middle-income countries pushing for 1.5°C or lower.
The 2°C target has been said to carry an increased risk of sea level rise, shifting rainfall patters and extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and heat waves, particularly targeting the Polar Regions, high mountain areas, and the Tropics.
The author Petra Tschakert from The Pennsylvania State University and a coordinating lead author of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report says: "The consensus that transpired during this session was that a 2°C danger level seemed utterly inadequate given the already observed impacts on ecosystems, food, livelihoods, and sustainable development.
"A low temperature target is the best bet to prevent severe, pervasive, and potentially irreversible impacts while allowing ecosystems to adapt naturally, ensuring food production and security, and enabling economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner."
In her commentary, Tschakert explains that the target of keeping the global average temperature rise to below 2°C originates from early studies in the 1970s. This target became anchored in policy debates over the decades, and was officially sanctioned as the long-term global goal for greenhouse gas emission reductions at the COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009.
Despite support from high and upper middle-income countries with high emissions, the 2°C target has been subject to repeated criticism from climate scientists, economists, and political and social scientists.
Alliances representing over 70% of the parties around the table, including over 100 low- and middle-income countries and small island states, have repeatedly said that a 2°C rise is unsafe for their communities, and insist on a long-term goal to keep global average temperatures below 1.5°C. These states include the Pacific nation of Tuvalu that was recently hit by Cyclone Pam.
While the 2°C target is now being re-evaluated, no reference to an explicit 1.5°C target is included in the 2014 Lima Call for Climate Action, despite specific remarks on the lower temperature limit being made throughout the negotiations.
Having taken part in the latest structured expert dialogue in Lima, Peru, with country delegates to the COP, fellow IPCC authors and representatives from UN agencies and intergovernmental organizations, Tschakert now shares new insights into the ongoing debate on the adequacy of the long-term goal.
A representative of the World Health Organization at the session stressed that there was no 'safe limit' for health, as current impacts and risks from climate change were already unacceptable, impacting people's health significantly and inequitably. This includes a rise in undernutrition, food- and water-borne infections, and excess deaths during heat waves, of which 10,000 have already been attributed to the 2010 Russian heat wave.
In addition to heat waves, science participants in the dialogue said that extreme events such as floods and hurricanes were expected to cause high risk in a 2°C warmer world. These events would put at significant danger disadvantaged populations in megacities like Lagos, Mexico City or Shanghai, people whose livelihoods are dependent on natural resources, and those at risk from conflicts over scarce resources.
Tschakert says: "Using a figure for average global warming may indeed be the most convenient and compelling means to discuss the severity of climate change impacts, but not only does it inadequately capture the complexity of the climate system, it poorly reflects locally experienced temperature increases and the extreme and large variation across regions -- no single person or any species faces a global average."
Singapore highlighted that certain risks were already catastrophic for people and ecosystems in their region while only moderate in the aggregate. Along the same lines, Ethiopia re-emphasized the uneven distribution of risks for the African continent. Trinidad and St. Lucia stressed regional differences in risk from ice sheet loss and coral bleaching. Botswana raised the subject of costs for mitigation, adaptation, 'loss and damage' and technology transfer associated with both temperature targets.
In terms of ecosystems, it was said that limiting warming at 1.5°C could keep sea level rise below 1m, saving half of the world's corals, and leave some of the Arctic summer ice intact.
Tschakert says: "These implications emphasize what is truly at stake -- not a scientific bickering of what the most appropriate temperature target ought to be, but a commitment to protect the most vulnerable and at risk populations and ecosystems, as well as the willingness to pay for abatement and compensation. This should happen now, and not only when climate change hits the rich world."
The findings are timely as the long-term goal to stay below 2°C warming is currently undergoing a 2013-15 Review, the results of which are expected this June and could be adopted in Paris at COP21 in December 2015.
Tschakert concludes in her commentary: "The crux of the matter is no longer about the scientific validity of one temperature target over another... It is first and foremost about overcoming deeply entrenched divisions on value judgments, responsibility, and finance... It is about acknowledging that negative impacts of climate change under a 0.8°C temperature increase are already widespread, across the globe, and that danger, risk, and harm would be utterly unacceptable in a 2°C warmer world, largely for 'them' -- the mollusks, and coral reefs, and the poor and marginalized populations... even if this danger hasn't quite hit home yet for 'us'."

 :Story Source

http://www.sciencedaily.com

Sexual selection isn't the last word on bird plumage

 

In the world of bird fashion, the guys seem to have all the fun: brighter feathers, sharper accessories, more pizzazz.

Researchers going back to Charles Darwin have focused on the contrast between the sexes, attributing the males' brighter colors to their need to attract mates.
A group of researchers at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee took a different approach, testing a hypothesis that evolution has actually resulted in similarities among the sexes as much as differences.
Looking at nearly 1,000 species of birds, they found that while males often have brighter feathers than females, the two sexes have come closer together in color over time to blend into their surroundings and hide from predators. Natural selection -- during migration, breeding in subtropical locales and care of young -- is as powerful as sexual selection.
"Although most studies of bird plumage focus on dichromatism, evolutionary change has most often led to similar, rather than different, plumage in males and females," the authors write.
Peter Dunn and Linda Whittingham, professors of behavioral ecology at UW-Milwaukee, wrote the paper with Jessica Armenta, a former UW-Milwaukee graduate student who now teaches at Austin Community College in Texas.
"Our study shows that ecology and behavior are driving the color of both sexes, and it is not due to sexual selection," they write.
The paper, "Natural and sexual selection act on different axes of variation in avian plumage color," is being published in Science Advances.
Armenta spent four years collecting data from 977 species of birds from six museums in the U.S. and Australia. She looked at six birds of each species, three males and three females.
Dunn and Whittingham analyzed the data, assigning each bird a color score based on scales of brightness and hue. They examined plumage color in relation to 10 measures of natural and sexual selection.
"Researchers have called for separate analyses of each sex for over a decade, but this is the first large-scale study to examine the color of each sex in relation to indices of both natural and sexual selection," they write.
When the sexes became more similar in color, they did so for reasons of natural selection. When the color gap increased, it had more to do with sexual selection, they found.
Dunn hopes the findings will send future research in new directions.
"A lot of research has focused on how plumage color is related to mating success, especially in males," he says, "so this should hopefully get researchers to think more about how color affects survival, especially predation and foraging success, in both sexes."
Within the larger findings is another surprise: male birds with multiple mates actually tend to be duller in color than their female counterparts.
Male red-winged blackbirds, for example, can have up to a dozen mates but are less colorful than their consorts.
"The reason for this is that males in these species often have a lot of black plumage," Dunn says.
 

:Story Source

 http://www.sciencedaily.com

High-fat diet alters behavior and produces signs of brain inflammation

High-fat diets have long been known to increase the risk for medical problems, including heart disease and stroke, but there is growing concern that diets high in fat might also increase the risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders.

A new study published in the current issue ofBiological Psychiatry raises the possibility that a high-fat diet produces changes in health and behavior, in part, by changing the mix of bacteria in the gut, also known as the gut microbiome.

The human microbiome consists of trillions of microorganisms, many of which reside in the intestinal tract. These microbiota are essential for normal physiological functioning. However, research has suggested that alterations in the microbiome may underlie the host's susceptibility to illness, including neuropsychiatric impairment.

This led researchers at Louisiana State University to test whether an obesity-related microbiome alters behavior and cognition even in the absence of obesity.

Non-obese adult mice were conventionally housed and maintained on a normal diet, but received a transplant of gut microbiota from donor mice that had been fed either a high-fat diet or control diet. The recipient mice were then evaluated for changes in behavior and cognition.

The animals who received the microbiota shaped by a high-fat diet showed multiple disruptions in behavior, including increased anxiety, impaired memory, and repetitive behaviors. Further, they showed many detrimental effects in the body, including increased intestinal permeability and markers of inflammation. Signs of inflammation in the brain were also evident and may have contributed to the behavioral changes.

"This paper suggests that high-fat diets impair brain health, in part, by disrupting the symbiotic relationship between humans and the microorganisms that occupy our gastrointestinal tracks," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry.

Indeed, these findings provide evidence that diet-induced changes to the gut microbiome are sufficient to alter brain function even in the absence of obesity. This is consistent with prior research, which has established an association between numerous psychiatric conditions and gastrointestinal symptoms, but unfortunately, the mechanisms by which gut microbiota affect behavior are still not well understood.

Further research is necessary, but these findings suggest that the gut microbiome has the eventual potential to serve as a therapeutic target for neuropsychiatric disorders.

Story Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com

Dark matter even darker than once thought

Astronomers using observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have studied how dark matter in clusters of galaxies behaves when the clusters collide. The results, published in the journal Science on 27 March 2015, show that dark matter interacts with itself even less than previously thought, and narrows down the options for what this mysterious substance might be.

Dark matter is a giant question mark looming over our knowledge of the Universe. There is more dark matter in the Universe than visible matter, but it is extremely elusive; it does not reflect, absorb or emit light, making it invisible. Because of this, it is only known to exist via its gravitational effects on the visible Universe (see e.g. heic1215a).

To learn more about this mysterious substance, researchers can study it in a way similar to experiments on visible matter -- by watching what happens when it bumps into things [1]. For this reason, researchers look at vast collections of galaxies, called galaxy clusters, where collisions involving dark matter happen naturally and where it exists in vast enough quantities to see the effects of collisions [2].

Galaxies are made of three main ingredients: stars, clouds of gas and dark matter. During collisions, the clouds of gas spread throughout the galaxies crash into each other and slow down or stop. The stars are much less affected by the drag from the gas [3] and, because of the huge gaps between them, do not have a slowing effect on each other -- though if two stars did collide the frictional forces would be huge.

"We know how gas and stars react to these cosmic crashes and where they emerge from the wreckage. Comparing how dark matter behaves can help us to narrow down what it actually is," explains David Harvey of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, lead author of a new study.

Harvey and his team used data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to study 72 large cluster collisions. The collisions happened at different times, and are seen from different angles -- some from the side, and others head-on [4].

The team found that, like the stars, the dark matter continued straight through the violent collisions without slowing down. However, unlike in the case of the stars, this is not because the dark matter is far away from other dark matter during the collisions. The leading theory is that dark matter is spread evenly throughout the galaxy clusters so dark matter particles frequently get very close to each other. The reason the dark matter doesn't slow down is because not only does it not interact with visible particles, it also interacts even less with other dark matter than previously thought.

"A previous study had seen similar behaviour in the Bullet Cluster," says team member Richard Massey of Durham University, UK. "But it's difficult to interpret what you're seeing if you have just one example. Each collision takes hundreds of millions of years, so in a human lifetime we only get to see one freeze-frame from a single camera angle. Now that we have studied so many more collisions, we can start to piece together the full movie and better understand what is going on."

By finding that dark matter interacts with itself even less than previously thought, the team have successfully narrowed down the properties of dark matter. Particle physics theorists have to keep looking, but they now have a smaller set of unknowns to work with when building their models[5].

Dark matter could potentially have rich and complex properties, and there are still several other types of interaction to study. These latest results rule out interactions that create a strong frictional force, causing dark matter to slow down during collisions. Other possible interactions could make dark matter particles bounce off each other like billiard balls, causing dark matter to be thrown out of collisions or for dark matter blobs to change shape. The team will be studying these next.

To further increase the number of collisions that can be studied, the team are also looking to study collisions involving individual galaxies, which are much more common.

"There are still several viable candidates for dark matter, so the game is not over, but we are getting nearer to an answer," concludes Harvey. "These 'Astronomically Large' particle colliders are finally letting us glimpse the dark world all around us but just out of reach."

Notes

[1] On Earth scientists use particle accelerators to find out more about the properties of different particles. Physicists can investigate what substances are made of by accelerating particles into a collision, and examining the properties and trajectory of the resulting debris.

[2] Clusters of galaxies are a swarm of galaxies permeated by a sea of hot X-ray emitting ionised hydrogen gas that is all embedded in a massive cloud of dark matter. It is the interactions of these, the most massive structures in the Universe that are observed to test dark matter's properties.

[3] The gas-gas interaction in cluster collisions is very strong, while the gas-star drag is weak. In a similar way to a soap bubble and a bullet in the wind where the bubble would interact a great deal more with the wind than the bullet.

[4] To find out where the dark matter was located in the cluster the researchers studied the light from galaxies behind the cluster whose light had been magnified and distorted by the mass in the cluster. Because they have a good idea of the visible mass in the cluster, the amount the light is distorted tells them how much dark matter there is in a region.

[5] A favoured theory is that dark matter might be constituted of "supersymmetric" particles. Supersymmetry is a theory in which all particles in our Standard Model -- electrons, protons, neutrons, and so on -- have a more massive "supersymmetric" partner. While there has been no experimental confirmation for supersymmetry as yet, the theory would solve a few of the gaps in our current thinking. One of supersymmetry's proposed particles would be stable, electrically neutral, and only interact weakly with the common particles of the Standard Model -- all the properties required to explain dark matter.

Story Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/

Discovering your inner GPS

The ability of birds to navigate their way back to their nests, often more than thousands of miles each year, is fascinating. Arctic terns, which have the longest migration distance known, travel from their Arctic breeding grounds to overwinter on the Antarctic coast: an annual roundtrip of over 40,000 miles (>64,000 km).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

An Arctic tern protecting its nest near Markarfljot river in south Iceland. Photograph: OddurBen/Wikimedia

Homing pigeons are of course famous for their extraordinary navigation abilities. They can find their way home from new locations up to 1100 miles (1800 km) from their nests. There are several theories that attempt to explain the navigational and migratory skills of birds, and homing pigeons are a useful model to help us understand these extraordinary abilities.

The olfactory navigation hypothesis suggests that homing pigeons use an olfactory map to orient themselves. This is based on a study led by Silvano Benvenuti in 1972, which showed that pigeons who had their olfactory nerves sectioned could not find their way home when released from unfamiliar locations.

The magnetic map theory poses that birds get their sense of direction from the Earth’s magnetic field. The Earth’s magnetic field becomes stronger the further you get from the equator, and homing pigeons may be sensitive to these minute changes in the magnetic field strength.

The use of the sun as a compass, a bird’s circadian rhythm and the possession of an internal map are other theories that try to explain bird navigation. However, at the moment there is no clear evidence that supports any of these theories over the others, and how these internal cues might work together is also poorly understood. Sadly, the mapping skills of birds remain largely unexplained.

How do we find our way home?

Although we still don’t know the complete story, there are some very strong clues to how birds navigate. But how mammals (including humans) navigate is relatively unexplored. Recent research is however giving some very interesting insights.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Medial surface of cerebral cortex. Photograph: Patric Hagmann et al./Wikimedia

The hippocampus is a sea horse-shaped structure located in the centre of the brain. It is well known for its role in memory formation, but also is important to our sense of direction and navigation. In 1971, John O’Keefe discovered the first element of a mammalian “inner-GPS” when he observed a subtype of neurons in the hippocampus that became active whenever a rat moved to a particular area of a room. These neurons, now known as “place cells” are thought to help rats – and us – build a picture of where we are in our environment.

In 1984, James Ranck made another step in explaining spatial representation in our brains. He found that mammals have “head-direction cells”: cells that fire in response to the specific angle and direction of your head’s orientation in space.

Has our sense of direction been found?

These findings have been important for starting to uncover the neural basis of human navigation (O’Keefe won a Nobel Prize for his research), and a study published just after Christmas has continued to help unravel the mystery of how we navigate.

Martin Chadwick and his colleagues at UCL asked participants to navigate around a simple virtual environment on a computer and gave them target destinations to move towards.

It only looks like Minecraft. Photograph: Chadwick et al/10.1016/j.cub.2014.11.001

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers were able to pinpoint a population of neurons that signalled the direction in which participants needed to go to their target destinations – and, the varying strengths of brain signals from these cells were able to predict subjects’ navigational ability.

Does this explain why some people have a better sense of direction than others?

These specialised neurons were found in the enterohinal cortex, a region next to the hippocampus. But although the study shows that the enterohinal cortex has greater activity in those better at navigating, the results do not really explain why this may be.

In other words:

Are you a better navigator because you have higher activity in your enterohinal cortex?

OR

Is the activity in your enterohinal cortex higher because you are a better navigator?

What is really driving this relationship? When we misinterpret correlation, we can find ourselves, just for example, assuming that chocolate consumption might improve cognitive function in entire populations.

Use it or lose it: why iPhones may be disrupting your navigation skills

When people use GPS-like instructions to reach a destination rather than navigating on their own, their brains in general are found to be much less active. Perhaps the less you use your phone’s GPS to help you navigate, and the more often you learn to make it on your own, the stronger the activity in your hippocampal region – and so the better a navigator you become. In Chadwick’s study, the stronger neural activity amongst the better navigators may have been a result of them having better developed their navigation skills throughout their lives.

Chadwick explains that future research will be needed to support the case for a causal relationship between neural activity and our mapping skills. He would like to see similar studies carried out in real life environments to demonstrate that these neurons extend their functions beyond those described in the virtual environment simulated for his study.

If you feel lost after reading this post, perhaps eat some chocolate – it might improve your brain power. Or, if you will, take a stroll somewhere new and try to find your way back home – without your GPS app!

Chadwick MJ et al. A Goal Direction Signal in the Human Entorhinal/Subicular Region. Curr Biol 2015;25:87–92.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com