The prevailing assumption about dark matter is that has no interaction with light, but European physicists who investigated a possible signature of dark matter at the edges of theM101 Pinwheel galaxy now believe that light may be interacting with dark matter to produce “light halos” — detectable glows around the edges spiral galaxies.
“Dark Matter can be a lot more interactive than previously thought,” Dr. Jonathan Davis of the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, an author of the report, told The Speaker. “So people usually think of Dark Matter particles as neutral and so devoid of any interactions with light, but we show that this need not be the case. Also, that it is important to be creative with ways of looking for Dark Matter as no one really knows how it should behave, or where a signal will show up first.”
Dr. Jonathan Davis
“I think the idea of Dark Matter interacting with light is quite an exciting new field,” Davis told us. “Some people have looked on the effect of these interactions on the early universe. I think it would be interesting if there were future studies looking at other wavelengths of light with sensitive instruments, particularly the longer wavelengths where background light from stars should be less bright.”
The team observed the diffuse halos of light that are apparent at the outer edges of spiral galaxies — particularly the M101 Pinwheel galaxy, which they used as an example in the report.
The team theorized that light radiating from stars in that galaxy, if it was bouncing off dark matter on the outer periphery, would scatter around the galaxy in a particular way. An example used to convey the idea is that of a lamp glowing in fog.
“[The light] should be visible everywhere,” Davis stated. “The reason we focus on the edges of the galaxy is that this is where the light from stars should be dimmest. So although the DM glow is everywhere, it’s easiest to see at the edges as there is less competition with star light.
Scientists do not possess information by which the theory could be proven as of yet, and the observable patterns could also be explained as coming from other sources, Davis noted.
“At the moment there is no way of knowing if any glow is due to DM or stars. So we’re not claiming to have discovered anything yet. The galaxy we look at in our paper has a halo of older stars which make looking for a DM glow halo difficult. Indeed the glow in this case is probably due to those stars, but then you can’t rule out a DM contribution, which is what we show. However I think the emphasis should be on future dedicated searches for this light from DM scattering. If a dedicated search can separate the DM glow from other sources then they can really look for this signal, if indeed it’s there.”
Illustration of the basic principle of the team’s method. A light ray from the inner parts of the disc, where the luminosity is expected to be larger, can scatter with a Dark Matter particle in the halo, thereby altering its propagation vector. Hence, for example, the dashed blue light ray will appear to originate from the outer parts of the disc. This will compete with light which does not scatter on its way to Earth, as shown by the orange arrow. There will also be emission from a stellar halo and scattering from dust outside of the disc, which we do not show here, but whose morphology may be degenerate with our DM scattering signal.
There are several possible ways that the theory could be proven in the future, Davis explained.
“There are a few ways one could actually discovery DM-photon interactions for sure. Just through observations of galaxies if we saw a signal which had a very different dependence on the wavelength of light, compared to from stars or gas, then that would be interesting. Additionally if we discovered a signal of Dark Matter at the Large Hadron Collider or in Direct Detection experiments, that would be a big step forward.”
Jellyfish are able to detect the direction of ocean currents, according to recent research by a joint team of environmental scientists. The team studied the movements and of free-ranging barrel-jellyfish and found that the animals are “incredibly advanced in their orientation abilities.”
“Most people who have spent time on the coast will have seen jellyfish and probably assume they are simple animals that just drift with ocean currents,” Dr. Graeme Hays, professor at Deakin University’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences and an author of the study, told The Speaker.
Dr. Graeme Hays
“Our work shows this is not necessarily the case, and instead jellyfish can show remarkable abilities to sense currents, change their swimming behaviour accordingly, and hence maintain their position in preferred areas. These abilities contribute to the massive blooms of jellyfish that are widely being reported around the world.”
The team collected data using GPS loggers that were placed both on the jellyfish and on floats on the ocean’s surface. The researchers then created a model of jellyfish behavior that took into account ocean currents.
From the research, the team has formed a clearer picture of the lives of individual and groups of jellyfish.
“We now know that jellyfish are not simply passive drifters, but instead can make complex movements that help maintain massive blooms which have been seen in many places around the world.”
The research will help efforts to manage these blooms, which can involve hundreds to millions of jellyfish for months-long periods and which can be troublesome when they clog fishing nets or sting beachgoers.
Drs. Sylvie Vandenabeele and Sabrina Fossette
How jellyfish are detecting the currents remains unknown, but Hays provided us with an educated guess about what he believes is the most likely answer: that the jellyfish are able to sense the shear of the water.
“Most probably the jellyfish are using the fact that the currents change slightly with depth–current shear. So this means that different parts of the body of the jellyfish are experiencing slightly different currents. It is probably this difference in current flow across their body that the jellyfish can perceive, allowing them to detect the current flow and modify their swimming accordingly.”
Schizophrenia has been known to be associated with a dearth of neural connections in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The onset of the disease, which often takes place in a person’s early 20s, may be associated with something quite different, however. A joint research team analyzed MRI data from a group of individuals who had recently experienced their first psychotic episode and found that excessive communication within the PFC — rather than a lack of signals — seems to produce abnormal internal states in schizophrenics.
Dr. Alan Anticevic
“It is already appreciated by the research community that schizophrenia is likely a ‘dynamic’ neurodevelopmental illness. The reported effects suggest that perhaps following illness onset — which typically occurs in late teens and early 20s — there may be an abnormal elevation in neural activity in certain areas,” Dr. Alan Anticevic, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale and lead author on the paper, told The Speaker.
The PFC is the frontal lobe of the brain, responsible for higher-order thinking, and has been implicated as a major site of functional impairment in schizophrenia and other severe menal illnesses. Specifically, schizophrenia has been linked in numerous studies with deficits in PFC funcional connectivity, structure and activation.
However, PFC functional connectivity during early-course schizophrenia has not yet been characterized.
The joint Yale-Sichuan University team examined the MRI’s of 129 individuals who had recently undergone their first psychotic episode and who had not yet been medicated.
They found evidence of increased PFC connectivity in these patients.
They also tested for hypoconnectivity, and while not finding evidence for this in the PFC, they did detect evidence for hypoconnectivity at the whole-brain level. Generally, the team found, early-course schizophrenia was associated with more severe elevation in PFC connection strength.
“Typically schizophrenia, especially in its more chronic stages, is associated with abnormal reductions in neural activity and connections across the PFC,” Anticevic told us. “The reported effects in part call into question this view by showing that at certain illness stages there seems to be prevailing elevation in PFC connectivity. However, this elevation is likely to be abnormal as it predicted symptoms. This finding may map well onto some emerging theories suggesting that early illness stages may be associated with an abnormal spike in glutamate — a key excitatory neurotransmitter that is present throughout the brain.”
Dr. John Murray
This effect was also captured by a sophisticated mathematical model Anticevic’s group is developing in collaboration with Dr. John Murray at NYU. “This ‘computational psychiatry’ approach helps us to mathematically formalize hypothesized disease mechanisms at the cellular level” Anticevic added. In turn, the team can relate these neurobiologically plausible modeling predictions to their neuroimaging effects.
The team also found that PFC hyperconnectivity normalized for some patients over time, and that this predicted symptom improvement.
Anticevic noted the challenge of attempting to answer the question of what was is happening neurobiologically when PFC hyperactivity is normalized in some individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia in response to treatment, but provided an educated guess.
“We currently don’t have a deep mechanistic understanding of this problem. However, one possibility is that somehow medication is ‘normalizing’ the abnormal elevation in excitation and inhibition balance in local cortical circuits that may be responsible for the hyperactivity. One possible mechanism at the neural system level may involve the interplay of domaine and glutamate between the dorsal striatum and prefrontal cortex, which is the pathway where medication may expert its key effects.”
“We hope to demonstrate that alterations occurring in people who suffer from schizophrenia are likely ‘dynamic,'” concluded Anticevic. “In addition, we hope to demonstrate how the combination of leading neuroimaging approaches and our mathematical models can help us understand these dynamics to develop better therapies for the earliest stages of the illness when intervention is critical.”
A recent study has found that health messages–the kind that are posted on billboards to advise the public or decorate the walls of doctors’ offices–have different effects on two different classes of people. The research found that while experts respond better to negative, loss-framed messages that make sense within the context their strong knowledge of the subject, most people do not. The general public responds better to positive, gain-framed messages that make sense within a big picture-type understanding of health.
It is the difference between “preaching to the choir” and reaching “people who really need to hear it, but who really don’t care that much to think very deeply about it,” Dr. Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and lead author of the study, said of his findings.
Wansick explained this by referencing the different understandings of health possessed by experts and the general public.
Experts–dieters, dieticians, and people who work in medicine or the medical area–have a strong knowledge-base with which they can process a health message. These people are highly involved in the topic, Wansick explained, and they “piecmeal process” health information (process things in detail. They also feel a duty to maintain the achievements they have already made in health matters, and tend to be risk-averse.
The general public, Wansick said, have less firsthand knowledge of the consequences of their actions, and view healthy behaviors are a choice rather than a duty. They tend to focus on what is gained by a certain behavior rather than what is lost.
Because experts write health messages, the study should give them something new to consider, the researchers expect. Because message designers can now be aware that what makes sense to themselves and their peers will likely have a different effect on the general public, they may be able to correct for their negative-message bias and create more useful positive messages.
The report, “Negative Messages for Experts, Positive Messages for Novices,” was completed by Brian Wansick and Lizzy Pope, and was published by Cornell Food & Brand Lab in Nutrition Reviews.
An accidental discovery made by researchers testing the weight-bearing capacities of a small bird in the Tennessee mountains has shed light on how birds’ senses–notably their ability to hear very low infrasounds characteristic of large storms–allow the animals to avert meteorological catastrophes.
“I think this is just one newly discovered example of the many ways other animals perceive and interact with their environment that are different from how we humans work, Dr. Henry Streby of Beissinger Lab at UC Berkeley, the lead author of the study, told The Speaker.
Birds’ ability to hear weather demonstrated in storm-avoiding relocation
“We tend to assume other animals are hearing, seeing, and smelling things the same way we do, but we know many other animals sense things far outside of the range of our senses. It is difficult to imagine what goes on in a bird’s brain; they hear higher and lower frequency sounds that we do and they see in a much wider light spectrum and a more complicated color space than we do. Our study, and others tracking migratory birds, are starting to show some of the ways birds can use their impressive senses to get around and stay safe from weather and other dangers.”
The team was working in the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Tennessee, testing the weight-bearing capacity of a small bird.
“A golden-winged warbler weighs only 9 grams, which is less than the mass of 2 US nickles or one British Pound coin,” Streby described his subject. They wanted to know if the bird could carry geolocators on their backs.
Around 24 hours before a large storm blew into the area, spawning 84 tornadoes and killing at least 25 people, the warblers unexpectedly picked up and moved 1,500 kilometers in five days. The team was able to monitor their movements because of the devices they had saddled some of the birds with.
Streby qualified that he couldn’t say with certainty that the birds flew in large groups.
“Our sample of birds carrying tracking devices was quite small, but we suspect they were not the only ones that left,” Streby said. “Although these movements seem impressive, and they occurred outside of the birds’ normal migration period, they were well within the known capabilities of these birds. The birds in this population regularly make similar long distance movements during their spring and fall migration to and from Colombia.”
However, the timing and character of the birds’ movements led the researchers to conclude that a mass temporary relocation took place when the birds sensed that the massive storm was headed their way.
“People have been studying this species on the breeding grounds for decades, but we only just started tracking their migration during this study,” Streby told us.
“Movements like this have not been reported before, and we did not see anything like this during the previous year with this population or with another population we were tracking that was not in the storm’s path. So, basically, we have an extraordinary large-scale movement away from the breeding grounds and back again, that correlates perfectly with the timing of this enormous and powerful storm. Avoiding the storm is the most likely explanation.”
The warbler, like other birds, are particularly attuned to hearing weather, Streby explained. “We know birds are particularly attuned to these very low infrasounds, and we know that large tornado producing storms create infrasound in the exact same frequency range, but nobody had put the two together until this report.”
Next, the team will undertake a further phase of their research, which is expanding in unpredicted ways–they will be collecting data from hundreds of migrating birds, and the team is looking forward to new unexpected developments.
“In 2015, we will be marking more than 400 birds of this species and a closely related species at 16 sites across their entire breeding range. Our goal is to find out where all of these populations spend the winter and where the important resting and refueling places are along their migration routes. These species are of high conservation concern and we are hoping to better understand the challenges they face during all aspects of their annual cycle. We did not intend to study how these birds respond to extreme weather events, but if they encounter any storms like the one from 2014, or maybe have to fly around a hurricane during migration, or something else completely unexpected, I’m excited to see what they do.
“We shouldn’t assume animals perceive their environment the same way we do,” Streby said. “We are lucky to have all of our experts and technology monitoring the weather and warning us when tornadoes or other dangers are coming our way. It is amazing to discover the different tools wildlife have for knowing what is coming too. It is also important for readers to understand that these birds apparently sensed the storm at a great distance, and there is a logical scientific explanation for how they did it; they did not magically detect the storm long before it existed like many media outlets have suggested.”
The report, “Tornadic Storm Avoidance Behavior in Breeding Songbirds,” was completed by Henry M. Streby, Gunnar R. Kramer, Sean M. Peterson, Justin A. Lehman, David A. Buehler, and David E. Andersen, and was published in the online Current Biology.
Bacteria divide into two identical progeny cells, right? According to Professor Peter Young and his team at the University of York’s Department of Biology, this is only part of the picture. The team recently studied a community of rhizobia from a clod of earth dug up from the university campus, and found that bacterial cells are in fact unique, despite bearing identical core genomes, and that this is due to individual accessory packages carried by the cells.
We can picture the bacterial genome as having two parts, according to Dr. J. Peter W. Young, professor of Molecular Ecology at the University of York and lead author of the study. While all members of a bacterial species carry a very similar core genome, they also carry an accessory package of genes which are not essential to the cell’s operation, but which allow individuals to cope with the special demands of their environments.
Dr. Peter Young
“The best known accessory package in rhizobia is the set of genes that enable them to form their symbiosis with plants,” Young told The Speaker. “These ‘sym’ genes include ‘nod’ genes that produce signal molecules that induce the plant to make a nodule and let the bacteria in, and ‘nif’ and ‘fix’ genes that encode the nitrogen-fixation process. These genes usually occur as a cluster in the genome, commonly on a plasmid, which is a separate element that can often be transferred easily. We looked at rhizobia from two different wild plant species, a clover and a vetch, that the bacteria need very different nod genes to interact with. Hence, all the strains were either clover specialists or vetch specialists. However, bacteria that were very similar in their core genome could have either of these specialisms, because the sym genes have been transferred from strain to strain.
“Another set of accessory genes gave the bacteria the ability to grow on gamma-hydroxybutyrate. These genes were also scattered across the population, without regard to the host background and independently of the sym genes. We had a few difficulties with this part of the study because this substance has been used as a date-rape drug and is hard to get hold of legally.”
The team dug in the dirt for their research. They took a square meter of earth from the roadside of the University of York campus and isolated a particular bacterium called Rhizobium leguminosarum.
They then established 72 distinct strains of the bacteria they found in that clump–each had different genes that allowed it to grow on different sources of food. But, Young commented, the potential benefits of the work are not limited to an understanding of bacteria as individuals.
“We studied the complete genomes of 72 bacterial strains–that is a lot of information that can be used to address many questions. Besides the ‘bacteria are individual’ and ‘bacteria transfer functional gene modules’ messages, there are other issues that are important, at least to those who work with bacteria. One of my targets is to improve the way we describe new bacterial species. We have no real idea how many bacterial species there are. Many fewer bacteria have been named than insects, but this is unlikely to reflect reality–it is just a slow business to describe new bacteria. We could now describe bacterial species much more clearly using genome sequences, or at least the core genome sequences.
“The problem is that, for historical reasons, taxonomists insist that there must also be phenotypic differences, that is, observable differences in growth, etc. What we have shown is that this is illogical–almost all these phenotypes are due to accessory genes, and these move about so much that it is impossible to define stable species using them.”
New hope for a universal flu vaccine has come out of recent work by a join research team from McMaster University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. The team published a report Wednesday on a new class of broadly-neutralizing antibodies that are expected to increase the potency of our weapons against flu viruses.
“These broadly-neutralizing antibodies work very well in the context of natural human responses to vaccines or infections,” Dr. Matthew Miller, an assistant professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, McMaster University, told The Speaker. “This means that vaccines in development that are targeting these antibodies have a high chance of success.
Dr. Matthew Miller
“In addition, the types of antibodies present in the lung are especially good at providing ‘universal’ protection against flu, so if we can successfully increase their numbers by vaccination, they are likely to be very potent at protecting against infection.”
The research team’s work involves a previously unknown class of antibodies capable of neutralizing a wide range of influenza A viruses.
“These broadly-neutralizing antibodies bind to a region on the viral entry protein–the hemagglutinin stalk/stem domain–that are intolerant to change/mutation,” Miller told us.
“They were first discovered through the analysis of antibody repertoires isolated from mice–in the laboratory setting–and humans who had been exposed to influenza virus by either vaccination or infection.
“As a result, they are capable of neutralizing a much broader range of viruses than the type of exquisitely-strain specific antibodies that are predominantly elicited by current seasonal flu vaccines.”
The new antibodies have virus-fighting capabilities not possessed by the strain-specific antibodies currently in use.
“While flu is very good at mutating the region of the protein that strain-specific antibodies bind, it does not tolerate changes in the region bound by broadly-neutralizing antibodies. This seems to be because the structure of this region is very important for other viral functions.”
Miller explained how these new antibodies are different from isolated strain-specific antibodies.
“Strain-specific antibodies bind to the “head” domain of the viral hemagglutinin, which mutates readily and differs substantially among strains of flu. These broadly-neutralizing bind to a conserved region in the hemagglutinin stalk domain that is intolerant to mutation.”
The new antibodies hold wide promise, the researchers expect: mutations of the virus would also be protected against by the new vaccines, and flu pandemics could be eliminated.
Miller expects that a universal flu vaccine could become a reality within the next five to seven years.
Predispositions to prejudice can be manipulated, according to new research. By making social minorities appear to hold egalitarian beliefs, researchers demonstrated that those minority individuals would bear less prejudice–both implicit and explicit–from American and Chinese nationals. By manipulating the would-be judges so that they made their appraisals of minority individuals while in a collectivist mind-set, the researchers found this also could reduce prejudicial judgements.
Dr. Jeanine Skorinko
“Our attitudes, both positive and negative, can be shaped by subtle factors in our social environment—things that we may not even be aware of, such as the cultural values we are thinking about at the moment or the message on another person’s t shirt,” Dr. Jeanine Skorinko, Associate Professor of Psychology at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Department of Social Science and Policy Studies and lead researcher on the study, told The Speaker.
“By conducting research on these topics, we can start to better understand the effects these different factors have so we can better understand how our attitudes are shaped, how attitudes are transmitted, and how attitudes might change–whether short or long-term. When we learn about the effects these subtle factors have, we can hopefully become more mindful during our interactions with others and when thinking about our attitudes. It is also important to understand cultural similarities and differences as it is so much easier to communicate with others throughout the world, and we still, sadly, have ethnic and cultural discontent and violence.”
Skorinko explained how she and the team set on testing the effects of egalitarian views and collectivist mindsets on the formation of prejudicial judgements.
“This set of studies came about in several ways,” Skorinko told us. “As a group of folks interested in the phenomenon of social tuning, we chatted about cross-cultural differences and wondered how social tuning might work with collectivist mindsets versus the individualist mindsets we had been testing in the lab. Then I had the opportunity to collect some data while in Hong Kong. I was there as a faculty advisor for WPI’s global projects program and I took the initiative to collect some data to start testing this idea we had been thinking about. As for the views, we could have tested egalitarian or prejudiced views, and we opted to start with the more positive approach. This was also inspired by a t-shirt that I found while in Hong Kong.”
The researchers found that Hong Kong Chinese were less prejudiced toward homosexuals when the homosexual was perceived to be egalitarian.
“We manipulated the views based on the t-shirt the experimenter was wearing. We have found in past research that this is a subtle yet effective manipulation of perceived views because we assume people endorse something they are wearing. So, in this study, the experimenter either wore a plain white shirt–expressing no views, or what we call the neutral views condition–or they wore a t shirt that said, ‘People don’t discriminate, they learn it,’ and there were caricatures of individuals of all different ethnic backgrounds.
“I saw this shirt while visiting an NGO in Hong Kong called Hong Kong Unison. Their mission is to help racial and ethnic relations in Hong Kong. So, the shirt came from Hong Kong and from a group trying to improve relations in Hong Kong We made sure that people believed that the message and pictures on the shirt indicated egalitarian views by showing the t-shirt to individuals–in the US and Hong Kong–and asking them to tell us what the t-shirt meant to them. Participants overwhelming reported that it endorsed egalitarian views towards all groups of people.”
Skorinko noted that there was no manipulation of whether the experimenter was homosexual or not. The team merely manipulated whether the experimenter endorsed egalitarian views towards others or not.
Skorinko elaborated on how differences in prejudice were identified, and pointed out the important finding that mindset was more important than cultural affiliation when it came to prejudice.
“We conducted a meta-analysis across the three studies to see if there were any differences in prejudice that were expressed. We found that those in a collectivist mindset tended to express more prejudice when in the neutral–or plain t-shirt–condition than any other group. The important thing about this finding is it is across all three studies so the participants are both Hong Kongers and Americans, and the important variable is their mindset—collectivist or individualist, and not necessarily their cultural background. This is in line with some past research that shows that collectivists are more sensitive to distinctions between ingroup and outgroup [Erez & Eearley, 1993; Triandis, et al., 1988].”
The two types of mindset looked at were impressed on the participants through the use of individual and collectivist values in story narratives.
“In the first study, we looked at cultural background as an indicator of collectivist mindset. So, we had American (individualist) and Hong Kong (collectivist) participants. In the second study, we ran only American participants. We manipulated the mindset by having participants read a short story about a warrior. This warrior had to make a big decision. The decision was either motivated by personal interests or by family interests.
“Past research has shown the those who read about the decision made by the personal interests are primed to be in a more individualistic mindset; whereas, those who read about the decision made by family interests tend to be in a more collectivist mindset [Oyserman & lee, 2008; Trafimow, et al., 1991]. In the third study, we ran only Hong Kong participants. For this study we did not use the warrior prime instead we used a task that was used successfully in the past with Hong Kong participants [Hong, et al, 2000; Wong & Hong, 2009]. For this study, we manipulated the mindset by showing participants five icons. These icons either represented American culture (American flag, Statue of Liberty) or Chinese culture (Great Wall, Forbidden City). Participants identified each icon and wrote a few sentences about what each icon meant to them. Participants successfully identified the icons–regardless of the culture they depicted.”
The difference, practically, between implicit and explicit prejudice was found to be that some prejudices are expressed and other are not, but, Skorinko pointed out, these two prejudices may not reflect each other–and may not even be desired.
“Practically, explicit attitudes are those that we consciously know and can express; whereas, implicit attitudes are unconscious and ones we cannot express. Our implicit and explicit attitudes may not align–or maybe they will, it depends. So, we may consciously think and say that we are egalitarian, but we may also have some implicit prejudices towards some groups. For instance, I firmly believe that women should be scientists and I am a female scientist–my explicit attitude. But, when I take the gender-career implicit association task [IAT], I find that I have a slight association for women and arts, rather than women and science–my implicit attitude. So, my explicit attitude is, ‘Go women scientists!’ but my implicit attitude may not be as enthusiastic–and yes, this bothers me to no end, especially as a female scientist!”
Skorinko explained how culture can influence views, including prejudicial views, and offered some educated guesses on whether prejudice could be increased through the types of manipulation used in this study to decrease prejudice.
“There are a number of factors that influence how we think about the world around us, including how we think about other groups. From this set of studies we know that both our cultural mindset–or cultural values orientation–and what we think our interaction partner thinks are very important in the expression of egalitarian views. If we are in a mindset to value our social connections and maintain group harmony (a collectivist orientation) than this research suggests that we will be more likely to pay attention to and align our views with the views expressed by our interaction partner. If we are in a mindset that we are unique and are more self-focused (an individualist orientation) than we will be less likely to pay attention and align our views with our interaction partner’s views.
“In this set of studies, we only looked at what happens when our interaction partner expresses egalitarian views. We would need to conduct further research to see what happens when an interaction partner expresses prejudiced views. Based on the social tuning framework, it is possible that if an interaction partner expressed prejudiced beliefs that collectivists might express more prejudice towards that group. But, we need to conduct more research to see what happens!
“I also want to note that individualists are not immune to social tuning. Rather, our original work shows that individualists who have the right motivation will also align their views with their interaction partner. So, if an individualist has the desire to get along with their interaction partner (affiliative motivation) than they are more likely to social tune towards the perceived views of their partner (whether the views are egalitarian or prejudiced). Also, if an individual has the desire to gain knowledge (epistemic motivation) than they are more likely to social tune towards the perceived views of their partner.
“The bottom line—expressing egalitarian views and kindness towards others especially during social interactions can, at times, help others also express those egalitarian attitudes,” Skorinko concluded. “It is a good first step in making the world a more egalitarian and hopefully tolerant place.”
The report, “Reducing Prejudice Across Cultures via Social Tuning,” was completed by Jeanine L. M. Skorinko, Janetta Lun, Stacey Sinclair, Satia A. Marotta, Jimmy Calanchini, and Melissa H. Paris, and was published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Aging and longevity varies across the Earth’s species, and some scientists are seeking for an ability to improve health in humans by learning from the genes of other animals. The bowhead whale gene was recently mapped by UK researchers who believe various genetic “tricks” that allow the whale to live up to 200 years can be learned and potentially “performed” by human genes.
“I study aging and longevity to ultimately develop interventions that preserve health and combat disease by manipulating the aging process,” Dr. Joao Pedro de Magalhaes of the University of Liverpool and author of the study, told The Speaker.
Dr. Joao Pedro de Magalhaes
“Thus for several years I’ve been interested in the bowhead whale as the longest lived mammal. I think that having the genome sequence of the bowhead whale will allow researchers to study basic molecular processes and identify maintenance mechanisms that help preserve life, avoid entropy, and repair molecular damage. This is a different approach in biomedical research. Most research on human diseases is usually based on animal models that develop the disease under study at a higher incidence and rate than normal. The use of disease-resistant organisms to identify genes, mechanisms and processes that protect against–rather than cause–disease is an unexplored paradigm.”
Aging, Magalhaes points out, has a profound effect on human society as well as medicine, but is one of the major puzzles of biology. In his ongoing work at the Integrative Genomics of Aging Group, Magalhaes is seeking greater understanding of the mechanisms of aging–cellular, molecular and genetic–and he believes the field in which his research takes place holds more potential to improve health than any other biomedical field.
In the latest work, the Liverpool University team investigated the bowhead whale gene in order to find, as Magalhaes phrases it, genetic “tricks” that provide for longer and healthier life.
“In particular, we discovered changes in bowhead genes known to be related to cell cycle, DNA repair, cancer, and aging that suggest alterations that may be biologically-relevant. So my own view is that this points toward improved DNA repair and cell cycle regulation mechanisms to prevent DNA damage accumulation during the lifescourse which in turn promotes longevity and resistance to age-related diseases. But a lot more work is still necessary to prove this.”
It has long been common scientific knowledge that monkeys don’t realize that the reflection they see in the mirror is their own. But, according to new research by the Chinese Academy Sciences, monkeys can learn to recognize their reflections.
Dr. Neng Gong
“Mirror self-recognition is an indication of self-awareness, which is a hallmark of higher intelligence in humans, as an indication of self-awareness. This ability may be acquired through training in monkeys,” Dr. Neng Gong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, lead researcher of the study, told The Speaker. “Thus scientists can now study the neural circuit mechanisms underlying the emergence of self-awareness.”
Although humans and great apes have been found to recognize their reflections, rhesus monkeys had not. Over the course of decades of testing, rhesus monkeys failed to show any signs of self-recognition, such as touching and examining themselves while looking at the reflected image.
The monkeys could, however, use the mirrors as tools to observe other objects, previous studies showed.
The Chinese study tried a new approach and obtained new results. Rather than offering rhesus monkeys variously shaped and size mirrors as in past studies, Gong and his colleague taught the monkeys that a spot of irritating light shined on their faces was the same the monkeys saw in the mirror image.
The researchers spent 2 to 5 weeks training the monkeys by directing a laser light onto their faces while the monkeys sat in front of mirrors. The monkeys learned to touch the light spot on their faces that they could not feel–only see in the mirror.
The monkeys–or five out of seven, anyway–touched the light spots and also looked at and smelled their fingers after touching the light spot.
The monkeys also continued to explore using the mirror image to investigate parts of their bodies they didn’t normally see.
The researchers concluded that the monkeys had passed the test for mirror self-recognition.
“Our findings suggest that the monkey brain has the basic ‘hardware’ [for mirror self-recognition], but they need appropriate training to acquire the ‘software’ to achieve self-recognition,” the researchers stated of their work.
“In an evolutionary view, the ability of self-recognition seems not so important for monkeys, because they do not need this ability for living,” Gong told us. “However, for humans, self-awareness is the most important function for higher human-specific brain function for social behaviors, e.g., sympathy, empathy, perspective-taking (understand the situation by taking other’s perspective), and language communication. Understanding the neural basis of self-awareness and consciousness is the ultimate goal of understanding the human brain, and this has been a very difficult subject for experimental studies. By demonstrating that self-awareness-like behavior of mirror self-recognition can emerge in monkey after training, we now have an animal model to study what neural circuit changes that enable the emergence of self-awareness.”
The study is expected to shed new light on the neural basis of self-awareness among animals. It also is expected to hold hope for sufferers of diseases like Alzheiers, schizophrenia, autism and mental retardation, in which people are unable to recognize themselves in mirrors.
“Mirror neurons were first discovered in macaque monkeys and thought to be a mechanism for imitation behaviors,” Gong told us. “In human beings, it has been speculated that mirror neuron systems are the brain mechanism underlying self-awareness and empathy. It is possible that the ability of rhesus monkeys in acquiring mirror self-recognition depends on their possession of mirror neuron systems.
“Our study raises the possibility that monkeys can be used as an animal model to test this hypothesis. This calls for further brain imaging and neural circuit analysis of the changes in the monkey’s brain before and after training of visual-somatosensory association and in those monkeys that passed or failed the mark tests after training.
“Indeed, we have already started further mechanism studies.”
As part of a larger body of work to explore “the Science of Intellectual Humility,” a joint-research team has investigated the differences between two types of humility. The two types are each characterized by a cluster of traits: general humility by social traits, and intellectual humility by a composite of traits that add up to a love of learning.
“We were happy to discover that intellectual humility seems to be a concept that has its own place in the minds of the general population distinct from general humility,” Peter Samuelson, post-doctoral researcher in psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary and lead study author, told The Speaker about the work.
Peter L. Samuelson, Director of Research and Evaluation at Thrive Foundation
“By the same token, there are many shared characteristics between an generally humble person and an intellectually humble person in the folk conception (such as modesty) which we expected. What surprised us from the study was that intellectual humility is distinctly tied together with love of learning, curiosity, and a desire to seek the truth. These were not words used to describe a wise person and seem unique characteristics of an intellectually humble person in the folk mind.”
The research team undertook a bottom-up study of the meaning of humility, and found two clusters of traits associated with humility in the minds of participants. One type of humility, called “socially humble,” included traits like sincerity, honesty, unselfishness, thoughtfulness and maturity. The other type, called “intellectually humble,” had to do with a love of learning. Curious, bright, logical and aware were among the traits in this cluster.
Samuelson explained the distinction between general and intellectual humility, which can lead to a greater desire to learn new things from other people.
“While we did not test the difference between intellectual and general humility in the folk understanding (we compared ideas the general public had of an intellectually humble person, a wise person, and an intellectually arrogant person), the main distinction is that intellectual humility uniquely impacts how a person learns and acquires new knowledge.
“While characteristics of general humility may help a person be willing to learn from others and open to new knowledge, the unique characteristics of intellectual humility–such as an understanding of the limits of one’s knowledge, a search for the truth, a love of learning, among others–can motivate learning beyond what general humility can. It should be no surprise that the ‘intellectual’ aspects of intellectual humility are what make it distinct from general humility and that some of the social aspects (modesty, not bragging, being considerate, being friendly) are shared between the two forms of humility in the folk mind.”
Samuelson explained how a greater understanding of what constitutes intellectual humility could lead to improvements in people’s lives–in particular, he commented on a need to benefit from each others’ differences in a time when people have the option to tune out those who disagree.
“According to the understanding held by the broadly representative sample of the general population we surveyed–cultivating the virtue of intellectual humility could help enhance a lifelong love of learning and could bolster curiosity and truth seeking, as well as help people be open to engaging others in those endeavors and thereby promote a more collaborative and civil search for truth.
“These qualities are sorely needed in an era when in every sector of our society people seem quite sure they are right and those who disagree with them are wrong (intellectual arrogance), who seem to want to listen to people who will only confirm what they already know. Developing the virtue of intellectual humility will not only help us learn, but also help us collaborate and learn from each other, and could move the needle toward more civil discourse in our society and ultimately finding the best solutions to our intractable problems.”
The report, “Implicit theories of intellectual virtues and vices: A focus on intellectual humility,” was completed by Peter L. Samuelson, Matthew J. Jarvinen, Thomas B. Paulus, Ian M. Church, Sam A. Hardy, Justin L. Barrett, and was published in the Journal of Positive Psychology. The research is part of a larger grant from the John Templeton Foundation to study “the Science of Intellectual Humility,” and was housed at the Thrive Center for Human Development at Fuller School of Psychology in Pasadena, CA.
The complete genome for the bowhead whale has been mapped and the results have been presented by University of Liverpool researchers. The researchers expect that the research help build an understanding of “tricks of biology” that the species–which lives up to 200 years with low incidence of age-related diseases–have developed to increase their lifespans.
“My view is that species evolved different ‘tricks’ to have a longer lifespan, and by discovering the ‘tricks’ used by the bowhead we may be able to apply those findings to humans in order to fight age-related diseases,” Senior author Dr. João Pedro de Magalhães, of the University of Liverpool, in the UK, said of the research.
“Our understanding of species’ differences in longevity is very poor, and thus our findings provide novel candidate genes for future studies.”
The bowhead genome is the first to be sequenced among large whales. The researchers included in the presentation of their findings the identification of key genetic differences from other mammals, including genes related to cell division, DNA repair, cancer and aging.
The new genome map carries hope that physiological adaptations related to the whale’s massive size will become understood, such as the relatively low metabolic rate possessed by the large mammals. The team identified one particular gene–UCP1, which plays a role in thermoregulation–that they suspect may be important in this regard.
The researchers remarked that the bowhead not only lives long, but lives disease-free until an age much more advanced than that at which humans frequently begin to become burdened by illnesses.
Magalhaes also noted that large whales have over 1000 times the number of cells humans have, yet the large mammals do not seem to suffer from increased cancer risks associated with the massive amount of cells. Magalhaes suspects that this points to natural mechanisms possessed by the whales genes that more effectively suppress cancer.
Next for the team is a project to breed mice to express some of the standout bowhead genes. They hope to find genes for longevity and disease resistance.
