By Agata Blaszczak-Boxe We tend to be worse at telling apart faces of other races than those of our own race, studies have found. Now research shows some people are completely blind to features that make other-race faces distinct. Such an impairment could have important implications for eyewitness testimony in situations involving other-race suspects. The ability to distinguish among members of one's own race varies wildly: some people can tell strangers apart effortlessly, whereas others cannot even recognize the faces of their own family and friends (a condition known as prosopagnosia). Psychologist Lulu Wan of the Australian National University and her colleagues wanted to quantify the distribution of abilities for recognizing other-race faces. They asked 268 Caucasians born and raised in Australia to memorize a series of six Asian faces and conducted the same experiment, involving Caucasian faces, with a group of 176 Asians born and raised in Asia who moved to Australia to attend university. In 72 trials, every participant was then shown sets of three faces and had to point to the one he or she had learned in the memorization task. The authors found that 26 Caucasian and 10 Asian participants—8 percent of the collective study population—did so badly on the test that they met the criteria for clinical-level impairment. “We know that we are poor at recognizing other-race faces,” says Jim Tanaka, a professor of psychology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, who was not involved in the research. “This study shows just how poor some people are.” Those individuals “would be completely useless in terms of their legal value as an eyewitness,” says study co-author Elinor McKone, a professor of psychology at the Australian National University. The world's legal systems do not, however, take into account individual differences in other-race face recognition, she notes. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 23602 - Posted: 05.11.2017

Have you ever found yourself craving a steak or a burger? The brain controls our feelings of hunger and also determines the types of nutrients we should be seeking out. Not much is understood about the brain’s regulation of nutrient-specific hunger, but in a new study published in Science, researchers identified the brain cells in fruit flies that regulate protein hunger and were able to control those cells, affecting what the animals ate. The study, was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health. To study protein hunger, a team of researchers led by Mark Wu, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, starved flies of yeast (the animal’s protein source) for one week. Afterwards, they discovered that the flies ate more yeast and less sugar than flies that ate a control diet. “Flies have been a great model system for brain research so we can learn a lot about how our own brain circuits work by peeking inside the heads of flies,” said Janet He, Ph.D., program director at the NINDS. “A better understanding of the basic mechanisms that regulate the consumption of different nutrients may help to provide clues to addressing the obesity epidemic.” Using novel genetic tools, Dr. Wu’s team identified a specific circuit, a set of brain cells that communicate with one another, which controls protein-seeking behavior. When the circuit was stimulated, flies ate more yeast than normal. In contrast, when the researchers turned off the circuit, the flies ate less yeast. The cells in the circuit were more active, which was demonstrated by increased firing activity, when the flies were starved of yeast. Turning the circuit on or off did not affect the animals’ general hunger or thirst.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 23601 - Posted: 05.11.2017

By Sandra Lamb Each night before “Greg” goes to bed he brushes and flosses his teeth. Then he double-checks the instructions on the dark brown bottle his nurse gave him before he unscrews the cap and tips five drops of a light-amber, oily liquid onto a spoon. The brew, glistening from the light of the bathroom fixture, is tasteless and has no odor he can detect. But it’s chock-full of bacteria. He sloshes the substance around in his mouth and swallows. Greg hopes that while he sleeps the foreign microbes will wage war with other organisms in his gut, changing that environment to ultimately help him manage some of the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms that cloud his mind and riddle his days and nights with nightmares, flashbacks, thoughts of suicide and irrational responses to stressful events. The bacteria he is swallowing, his doctors tell him, “may help reduce symptoms of stress.” Each drop of Greg's brew is filled with millions of Lactobacillus reuteri, a bacterium isolated and derived from human breast milk. The Denver VA Hospital orders the substance and prescribes it as part of a PTSD clinical trial involving 40 veterans who either receive the bacteria or a placebo mix of sunflower oil and other inactive substances. (The bacterium is also currently used to treat a dental condition called chronic periodontitis because it has been shown to help fight inflammation.) © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Stress; Obesity
Link ID: 23600 - Posted: 05.10.2017

Ian Sample Science editor A landmark project to map the wiring of the human brain from womb to birth has released thousands of images that will help scientists unravel how conditions such as autism, cerebral palsy and attention deficit disorders arise in the brain. The first tranche of images come from 40 newborn babies who were scanned in their sleep to produce stunning high-resolution pictures of early brain anatomy and the intricate neural wiring that ferries some of the earliest signals around the organ. The initial batch of brain scans are intended to give researchers a first chance to analyse the data and provide feedback to the senior scientists at King’s College London, Oxford University and Imperial College London who are leading the Developing Human Connectome Project, which is funded by €15m (£12.5m) from the EU. The images show the intricate neural wiring that ferries some of the earliest signals around the brain. Hundreds of thousands more images will be released in the coming months and years. Most will come from a thousand sleeping babies, but another 500 have had their brains scanned while still in the womb. “The challenge is that you are imaging one person inside another person and both of them move,” said Jo Hajnal, professor of imaging science at King’s College London, who developed new MRI technology for the project. Taking brain scans of sleeping babies is hard enough. At the start of the project in 2013, more than 10% of the scans failed when babies woke up in the middle of the two to three hour procedure. Now the babies are fed and prepared for their scans at their mother’s side before they are carried to the scanner. To cut the odds of the babies waking, scientists tweaked the scanner software to stop it making sudden noises.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Brain imaging
Link ID: 23599 - Posted: 05.10.2017

By Jane C. Hu New evidence suggests that the earliest traces of a language can stay with us into adulthood, even if we no longer speak or understand the language itself. And early exposure also seems to speed the process of relearning it later in life. In the new study, recently published in Royal Society Open Science, Dutch adults were trained to listen for sound contrasts in Korean. Some participants reported no prior exposure to the language; others were born in Korea and adopted by Dutch families before the age of six. All participants said they could not speak Korean, but the adoptees from Korea were better at distinguishing between the contrasts and more accurate in pronouncing Korean sounds. “Language learning can be retained subconsciously, even if conscious memories of the language do not exist,” says Jiyoun Choi, postdoctoral fellow at Hanyang University in Seoul and lead author of the study. And it appears that just a brief period of early exposure benefits learning efforts later; when Choi and her collaborators compared the results of people adopted before they were six months old with results of others adopted after 17 months, there were no differences in their hearing or speaking abilities. “It's exciting that these effects are seen even among adults who were exposed to Korean only up to six months of age—an age before which babbling emerges,” says Janet Werker, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, who was not involved with the research. Remarkably, what we learn before we can even speak stays with us for decades. © 2017 Scientific American,

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23598 - Posted: 05.10.2017

Sara Reardon Tom Insel, former director of the US National Institute of Mental Health, is searching for new ways of addressing mental illness. Sixteen months after leaving the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for Google’s health sciences division, psychiatrist Tom Insel is on the move again. The former NIMH director, who left Google on 5 May, is starting his own company. Insel’s group, called Mindstrong, will try to infer a person’s mental-health status by analysing the way they use smartphones. Insel stepped down as NIMH director in December 2015 in order to start a mental-health program called Verily within Google’s Life Sciences group. One of the division’s goals overlaps with that of Mindstrong's: Verily intends to build tools, which could include smartphone apps or computer programs, that can recognize characteristics of mental illness using a method known as “digital phenotyping”. The method analyses factors such as a user’s word choice in communication, voice patterns when talking to digital assistants, their physical movements and location data to determine their state of mind. If a smartphone could recognize when its owner was feeling suicidal, for instance, it could potentially intervene by providing resources or alerting others. © 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 23597 - Posted: 05.10.2017

By Michael Price Unless you’re colorblind, you probably have a pretty good idea of what red, green, and blue are. Yet those labels are arbitrary divisions of the color spectrum; there’s no definitive point where the wavelengths of light we call orange turn into red. So cognitive scientists have long wondered whether we learn our labels from our culture or inherit them from our biology. Now, a study finds that infants see red, yellow, green, blue, and purple as different color categories, suggesting that at least some distinctions may be hardwired. “I find it really compelling,” says Michael Webster, a psychologist who studies visual perception at the University of Nevada in Reno, who wasn’t involved in the study. “This isn’t going to immediately change anyone’s mind. But it’s another piece in the puzzle, and it’s a very nice piece.” Scientists can’t just ask a newborn what it knows, so they use a trick known as “infant looking time” to figure out what’s in babies’ brains. The idea is that an infant’s gaze will linger on something unfamiliar for longer than something familiar, giving researchers a window into what babies expect—and what surprises them. Applying this to color research, scientists led by Anna Franklin, a perception and cognition researcher at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, showed 179 infants aged 46 months 14 different swaths of color, each from a different part of the color wheel. Researchers showed one swath several times before displaying a hue from the next range over. If the infants looked at the new hue longer than the previous one, experimenters concluded that the babies considered it a different color. © 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23596 - Posted: 05.09.2017

By Daniel Shalev Maddie* couldn't stop crying. The first few days after her stroke, it had made sense. She had led a charmed retirement, with annual trips across the country, time with family and an active life. Now everything was in flux. A week before, Maddie, who was in her late 70s, had woken up unable to use half of her body. Her husband called an ambulance, and a diagnosis was reached within hours. Maddie had suffered a blockage in the blood vessels supplying her brain stem, affecting the pons, a region that conducts messages from higher centers of control and consciousness down to her body. At the hospital, she began to undergo a rush of frightening tests to evaluate the cause of her stroke and the risk of having another. She figured it made sense to cry. A few days later, when Maddie was transferred from the stroke unit to the rehabilitation service, she was feeling more hopeful. Her risk of further strokes had been minimized with drugs to regulate her blood pressure, cholesterol and clotting. She could hear that her speech, initially slurred, returning to clarity. On the stroke unit, the emphasis had been on stabilization, but in rehabilitation, the goal was improvement. Maddie felt ready to work on her recovery. Even with the hope of rehabilitation, though, the tears continued. Maddie cried when her husband came in and when he left. She cried during therapy meetings and medical updates. She cried through eating and bathing. The only time she did not weep was while she slept. Most oddly, Maddie cried even when she did not feel sad. On the stroke unit, the crying had been annoying. In rehabilitation, it was downright disruptive. Maddie's therapy sessions were impeded by bouts of sobbing that invariably led the befuddled therapists to cut short their work with her. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 23595 - Posted: 05.09.2017

Shelby Putt How did humans get to be so smart, and when did this happen? To untangle this question, we need to know more about the intelligence of our human ancestors who lived 1.8 million years ago. It was at this point in time that a new type of stone tool hit the scene and the human brain nearly doubled in size. Some researchers have suggested that this more advanced technology, coupled with a bigger brain, implies a higher degree of intelligence and perhaps even the first signs of language. But all that remains from these ancient humans are fossils and stone tools. Without access to a time machine, it’s difficult to know just what cognitive features these early humans possessed, or if they were capable of language. Difficult – but not impossible. Now, thanks to cutting-edge brain imaging technology, my interdisciplinary research team is learning just how intelligent our early tool-making ancestors were. By scanning the brains of modern humans today as they make the same kinds of tools that our very distant ancestors did, we are zeroing in on what kind of brainpower is necessary to complete these tool-making tasks. The stone tools that have survived in the archaeological record can tell us something about the intelligence of the people who made them. Even our earliest human ancestors were no dummies; there is evidence for stone tools as early as 3.3 million years ago, though they were probably making tools from perishable items even earlier. © 2010–2017, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Evolution; Brain imaging
Link ID: 23594 - Posted: 05.09.2017

By Michael Le Page In some cultures, it’s traditional for elders to smoke grass, a practice said to help them pass on tribal knowledge. It turns out that they might just be onto something. Teenagers who toke perform less well on memory and attention tasks while under the influence. But low doses of the active ingredient in cannabis, THC, might have the opposite effect on the elderly, reversing brain ageing and restoring learning and memory – at least according to studies of mice. “We repeated these experiments many times,” says team leader Andreas Zimmer at the University of Bonn, Germany. “It’s a very robust and profound effect.” Zimmer’s team has been studying the mammalian endocannabinoid system, which is involved in balancing out our bodies’ response to stress. THC affects us by mimicking similar molecules in this system, calming us down. The researchers discovered that mice with genetic mutations that stop this endocannabinoid system from working properly age faster than normal mice, and show more cognitive decline. This made Zimmer wonder if stimulating the endocannabinoid system in elderly mice might have the opposite effect. To find out, the team gave young (2-month-old), middle-aged (12-month-old) and elderly (18-month-old) mice a steady dose of THC. The amount they received was too small to give them psychoactive effects. After a month, the team tested the mice’s ability to perform cognitive tasks, such as finding their way around mazes, or recognising other individuals. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23593 - Posted: 05.09.2017

By Kerry Grens In June of 2014, Pablo Meyer went to Rockefeller University in New York City to give a talk about open data. He leads the Translational Systems Biology and Nanobiotechnology group at IBM Research and also guides so-called DREAM challenges, or Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods. These projects crowdsource the development of algorithms from open data to make predictions for all manner of medical and biological problems—for example, prostate cancer survival or how quickly ALS patients’ symptoms will progress. Andreas Keller, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller, was in the audience that day, and afterward he emailed Meyer with an offer and a request. “He said, ‘We have this data set, and we don’t model,’” recalls Meyer. “‘Do you think you could organize a competition?’” The data set Keller had been building was far from ordinary. It was the largest collection of odor perceptions of its kind—dozens of volunteers, each having made 10 visits to the lab, described 476 different smells using 19 descriptive words (including sweet, urinous, sweaty, and warm), along with the pleasantness and intensity of the scent. Before Keller’s database, the go-to catalog at researchers’ disposal was a list of 10 odor compounds, described by 150 participants using 146 words, which had been developed by pioneering olfaction scientist Andrew Dravnieks more than three decades earlier. Meyer was intrigued, so he asked Keller for the data. Before launching a DREAM challenge, Meyer has to ensure that the raw data provided to competitors do indeed reflect some biological phenomenon. In this case, he needed to be sure that algorithms could determine what a molecule might smell like when only its chemical characteristics were fed in. There were more than 4,800 molecular features for each compound, including structural properties, functional groups, chemical compositions, and the like. “We developed a simple linear model just to see if there’s a signal there,” Meyer says. “We were very, very surprised we got a result. We thought there was a bug.” © 1986-2017 The Scientist

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Robotics
Link ID: 23592 - Posted: 05.09.2017

Bruce Bower Fossils of a humanlike species with some puzzlingly ancient skeletal quirks are surprisingly young, its discoverers say. It now appears that this hominid, dubbed Homo naledi, inhabited southern Africa close to 300,000 years ago, around the dawn of Homo sapiens. H. naledi achieved worldwide acclaim in 2015 as a possibly pivotal player in the evolution of the human genus, Homo. Retrieved from an underground chamber in South Africa, fossils of this species were thought to be anywhere from 900,000 to at least 1.8 million years old (SN: 8/6/16, p. 12). A younger age for H. naledi resolves one mystery about these cave fossils. It doesn’t, however, answer questions about how long ago the species first appeared and when it died out. What is now known is that H. naledi bodies somehow ended up in Dinaledi Chamber, part of South Africa’s Rising Star cave system, between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago, an international team reports in one of three papers published May 9 in eLife. Paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg headed the team. Geoscientist Paul Dirks of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, directed the dating effort. In the first paper, two methods of measuring the concentration of natural uranium and other radioactive elements, and damage caused by those elements over time, provided key age estimates for three H. naledi teeth. A thin sheet of rock deposited by flowing water just above the fossils was also dated. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 201

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 23591 - Posted: 05.09.2017

By C. CLAIBORNE RAY Q. What are cataracts made of and what causes them to form in the eyes? A. Cataracts are made of the same soluble proteins and water that are found in the normal lenses of the eyes, but arranged differently so that they interfere with the path of light, clouding vision and scattering light. The lens forms in the uterus and its protein strands are not equipped with cellular mechanisms for cleanup and repair. With age, the proteins may become misfolded and clump together, according to a 2012 review article in the journal Trends in Molecular Medicine. Chaperone proteins that keep the strands in order may fail, and the strands are also subject to chemical processes, including oxidation, that can change their color. Researchers have found several possible causes for the deterioration and jumbling of the proteins, with much recent work focusing on the effects of both ultraviolet A and B radiation. A 2014 study in The Journal of Biological Chemistry outlined the chemical changes suspected to take place upon prolonged exposure to such rays. Other risk factors for cataracts include some diseases, like diabetes; smoking; and excessive use of alcohol.question@nytimes.com © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 23590 - Posted: 05.09.2017

By CASEY SCHWARTZ OAKLAND, Calif. — In a packed, cavernous space one weekend late in April, a crowd of thousands was becoming increasingly amped up. Rainbow hair was commonplace, purple silk pants were sighted, and the smell of marijuana drifted in from a designated smoking area nearby. Audience members watched the stage with avid interest, leaping to occasionally shoeless feet to applaud and cheer. This wasn’t Coachella, taking place the same weekend some 500 miles south, or any other music festival, but a five-day convention of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), its first in four years. Rather than rock stars, scientists from schools like Johns Hopkins and N.Y.U. were the main attraction, bringing evidence to the medical case for psychedelics like psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) to assuage end-of-life anxiety, to help deepen meditation practices, to search for the shared underpinnings of spiritual life, and — in a new study — to explore a possible treatment for severe depression. Paul Austin, 26, of Grand Rapids, Mich., a so-called social entrepreneur who runs a website called The Third Wave devoted to getting out information on psychedelic substances, had come to meet other members of the pro-psychedelic community and share with them his vision for how the next generation must proceed. “A lot of the people who are leading the movement now are 60 or 70 years old, based in academia or research,” Mr. Austin said. “But to catalyze change, you have to speak to people, get to them on an emotional level.” The conference was taking place just over the Bay Bridge from the city that introduced psychedelics to the American imagination in the early 1960s, when LSD was relatively new, legal and regarded by those who used it as a portal to expanded consciousness, a deeper life and an enlightened, humane society. (Cary Grant and other Hollywood stars were among those who experimented with it as part of their psychotherapeutic process.) © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Depression
Link ID: 23589 - Posted: 05.08.2017

A law in France banning the use of unhealthily thin fashion models has come into effect. Models will need to provide a doctor's certificate attesting to their overall physical health, with special regard to their body mass index (BMI) - a measure of weight in relation to height. The health ministry says the aim is to fight eating disorders and inaccessible ideals of beauty. Digitally altered photos will also have to be labelled from 1 October. Images where a model's appearance has been manipulated will need to be marked photographie retouchée (English: retouched photograph). A previous version of the bill had suggested a minimum BMI for models, prompting protests from modelling agencies in France. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Models must now provide a doctor's note when applying for jobs But the final version, backed by MPs 2015, allows doctors to decide whether a model is too thin by taking into account their weight, age, and body shape. Employers breaking the law could face fines of up to 75,000 euros (£63,500; $82,000) and up to six months in jail. "Exposing young people to normative and unrealistic images of bodies leads to a sense of self-depreciation and poor self-esteem that can impact health-related behaviour," said France's Minister of Social Affairs and Health, Marisol Touraine, in a statement on Friday, French media report. France is not the first country to legislate on underweight models - Italy, Spain and Israel have all done so. Anorexia affects between 30,000 to 40,000 people in France, 90% of whom are women. © 2017 BBC

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 23588 - Posted: 05.08.2017

By Elizabeth Preston A common parasite that lives in fish eyeballs seems to be a driver behind the fish’s behaviour, pulling the strings from inside its eyes. When the parasite is young, it helps its host stay safe from predators. But once the parasite matures, it does everything it can to get that fish eaten by a bird and so continue its life cycle. The eye fluke Diplostomum pseudospathaceum has a life cycle that takes place in three different types of animal. First, parasites mate in a bird’s digestive tract, shedding their eggs in its faeces. The eggs hatch in the water into larvae that seek out freshwater snails to infect. They grow and multiply inside the snails before being released into the water, ready to track down their next host, fish. The parasites then penetrate the skin of fish, and travel to the lens of the eye to hide out and grow. The fish then get eaten by a bird – and the cycle starts again. Many parasites can change an animal’s behaviour to fit their own needs. Mice infected with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, for example, lose their fear of cats – the animal the parasite needs to reproduce inside. In a 2015 study, Mikhail Gopko at the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in Moscow and his colleagues showed that fish infected with immature fluke larvae swam less actively than usual – making themselves less visible to predators – and were harder to catch with a net than uninfected controls. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 23587 - Posted: 05.08.2017

By Ann Griswold, Much of what Stephen Shore knows about romance he learned in the self-help aisle of a bookstore near the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts. In college, Shore, who has autism, began to wonder if women spoke a language he didn’t understand. Maybe that would explain the perplexing behavior of a former massage student with whom he traded shiatsu sessions, who eventually told him she had been hoping for more than a back rub. Or the woman he met in class one summer, who had assumed she was his girlfriend because they spent most nights cooking, and often shared a bed. Looking back, other people’s signs of romantic interest seemed to almost always get lost in translation. Shore turned to the self-help shelves to learn the unspoken language of love: He pored over chapters on body language, facial expression and nonverbal communication. By the time he met Yi Liu, a woman in his graduate-level music theory class at Boston University, he was better prepared. On a summer day in 1989, as they sat side by side on the beach, Liu leaned over and kissed Shore on the lips. She embraced him, then held his hand as they looked out at the sea. “Based on my research,” he says, “I knew that if a woman hugs you, kisses you and holds your hand all at the same time, she wants to be your girlfriend; you better have an answer right away.” The couple married a year later, on a sunny afternoon in June 1990. Shore was diagnosed with autism around age 3, about a year after he lost his few words and began throwing tantrums. Doctors advised his parents to place him in an institution. Instead, they immersed him in music and movement activities, and imitated his sounds and behavior to help him become aware of himself and others. He began speaking again at 4 and eventually recovered some of the social skills he had lost. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 23586 - Posted: 05.06.2017

By DENISE GRADY A new drug for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, was approved on Friday by the Food and Drug Administration. The drug, called Radicava or edaravone, slowed the progression of the degenerative disease in a six-month study in Japan. It must be given by intravenous infusion and will cost $145,524 a year, according to its manufacturer, MT Pharma America, a subsidiary of the Japanese company Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation. Radicava is only the second drug ever approved to treat A.L.S. The first, riluzole, was approved by the F.D.A. more than 20 years ago. Riluzole can increase survival by two or three months. There is no information yet about whether Radicava has any effect on survival. In the study in Japan, 137 patients were picked at random to receive either Radicava or a placebo. At the end of six months, the condition of those taking the drug declined less than those receiving placebos. Dr. Neil A. Shneider, director of the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig ALS Center at Columbia University Medical Center, said, “The effect is modest but significant.” He added, “I’m very happy, frankly, that there is a second drug approved for A.L.S.” The disease kills nerve cells that control voluntary muscles, so patients gradually weaken and become paralyzed. Most die within three to five years, usually from respiratory failure. About 12,000 to 15,000 people in the United States have A.L.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Shneider predicted that patients would be eager to try the new drug. He said several of his patients were already receiving it because they had obtained it themselves from Japan. If more want it, he will prescribe it, he said. “It’s very safe,” he said. But he was uncertain about whether he would actually recommend it, because the method of administration is difficult. Patients have to have an intravenous line inserted and left in place indefinitely, which poses an infection risk. The first round of treatment requires a one-hour infusion every day for 14 days, followed by 14 days off. After that, the infusions are given daily for 10 out of 14 days, with 14 days off. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Trophic Factors
Link ID: 23585 - Posted: 05.06.2017

Hannah Devlin An “emotional chatting machine” has been developed by scientists, signalling the approach of an era in which human-robot interactions are seamless and go beyond the purely functional. The chatbot, developed by a Chinese team, is seen as a significant step towards the goal of developing emotionally sophisticated robots. The ECM, as it is known for short, was able to produce factually coherent answers whilst also imbuing its conversation with emotions such as happiness, sadness or disgust. Prof Björn Schuller, a computer scientist at Imperial College London who was not involved in the latest advance, described the work as “an important step” towards personal assistants that could read the emotional undercurrent of a conversation and respond with something akin to empathy. “This will be the next generation of intelligence to be met in daily experience, sooner rather than later,” he said. The paper found that 61% of humans who tested the machine favoured the emotional versions to the neutral chatbot. Similar results have been found in so-called “Wizard of Oz” studies in which a human typing responses masquerades as advanced AI. “It is not a question whether they are desirable – they clearly are – but in which applications they make sense and where they don’t,” said Schuller. Minlie Huang, a computer scientist at Tsinghua University, Beijing and co-author, said: “We’re still far away from a machine that can fully understand the user’s emotion. This is just the first attempt at this problem.” © 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Emotions; Robotics
Link ID: 23584 - Posted: 05.06.2017

By Alice Klein It is pest control without poison. A new type of bait that stops rats from having babies is helping to tackle infestations in several US cities. The bait – known as ContraPest – was approved by the US Environmental Protection Agency last August. It makes rats infertile by triggering early menopause in females and impairing sperm production in males. There are no side effects and the rats eventually die of natural causes. The technique is considered more benign than other control strategies being investigated, such as gene drive, which can be used to spread infertility genes through pest populations. A recent report by the US National Academies of Sciences warned that gene drive could have unforeseen consequences. The first field trial of ContraPest, conducted in the New York City Subway in 2013, halved the resident rat population in three months. Two more trials have now been completed in the US – one at a large-scale farm and one in an urban area – both in East Coast cities. Rat numbers at the farm fell by one-third over three months. In the urban area, population growth was suppressed during the peak breeding season so that the population expanded at only one-third the expected rate. “You’ll never wipe out rats completely – they’re too smart,” says Brandy Pyzyna from SenesTech, the biotechnology company in Arizona that developed the bait. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 23583 - Posted: 05.06.2017