Category: Science

“Insects Can Solve Problems, They Can Learn”

(p. D6) Never underestimate the power of the bee brain.
In the latest triumph for one of humanity’s favorite insects, bumblebees learned how to push a ball to the center of a platform for a sugary treat.
That may not make them a threat on the chess board, but soccer or even Skee-Ball might be within their intellectual grasp — if it were scaled down in size, of course.
The new research finding is one more reason that scientists who study insects, of all sorts, would like to point out that just because a brain is small, doesn’t mean it is simple.
Clint Perry, one of the bumblebee trainers at Queen Mary University of London, and a confirmed small brain partisan, said, “I’ve actually been asked if bees have brains.”
In fact, a number of recent experiments have shown that “insects can solve problems, they can learn,” he said. And scientists have yet to define the limits of insects’ mental abilities.
. . .
The task of pushing a little ball to the center of a platform was completely arbitrary. Bees don’t do anything like this in nature, where they seek out flowers for nectar and pollen. So it was a brand new behavior demanding some kind of general ability to learn.
The way the bees learned was important, too. They were pre-trained to expect a treat in the center of a platform. But having to push a ball to the center to get the treat was something they hadn’t seen.
Then the researchers tried several ways of teaching the bees what to do. The bees learned best by watching a fellow bee perform the feat. After that kind of observation, 10 of 10 bees solved the problem on the first try. On later tries, they continued to improve, taking less time.

For the full story, see:
Gorman, James. “SCIENCETAKE; The Power of the Bumblebee Brain.” The New York Times (Weds., FEB. 28, 2017): D6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 23 [sic], 2017, and has the title “SCIENCETAKE; Bumblebees Demonstrate the Power of Insect Brains.”)

Amateur Inventors Are Crowdsourced to Solve Scientific Problems

(p. A3) At his laboratory console, Rhiju Das is making a game of a pressing public-health problem. He is recruiting thousands of videogamers to develop a better test for tuberculosis, which infects about one-third of the world’s population.
All they have to do is design a single molecule that can diagnose the disease in a patient’s bloodstream quickly, easily and cheaply–a task that so far has eluded public-health experts. To muster a crowd of amateurs to attempt it, Dr. Das, a biochemist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and his colleagues this week launched the OpenTB challenge on a Web-based videogame called Eterna.
“The players themselves are going to be the inventors,” said Dr. Das. “Any molecule that a top player can make in the game, we will test it in the laboratory.”
. . .
In a game called Phylo, developed at McGill University, 300,000 players have been cross-indexing disease-related DNA sequences from dozens of species. And in Quantum Moves, conceived at Aarhus University in Denmark, 10,000 players are applying the bizarre laws of quantum mechanics to improve computer design.
“The number of projects has exploded,” said McGill computer scientist Jerome Waldispuhl, who co-founded the Phylo project.
Despite initial misgivings about the accuracy of crowdsourced research, players have produced reliable results and a dozen or so peer-reviewed research papers.
Typically, the players drawn to the science games have no special scientific expertise. They usually are intrigued by the chance to make a useful contribution to research in their spare time.
. . .
By harnessing human intuition and visual perception, these crowdsourcing games highlight differences between human and machine intelligence, several game designers said. “All of these citizen-science projects are like a snapshot of what is uniquely human at the moment,” said physicist Jacob Sherson at Aarhus University who helped to design Quantum Moves.

For the full story, see:
Robert Lee Hotz. “Videogamers Wanted: to Fight TB.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., May 4, 2016): A3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 3, 2016, and has the title “Videogamers Are Recruited to Fight Tuberculosis and Other Ills.” The sentence quoting Jerome Waldispuhl, appeared in the online, but not the print, version of the article.)

Best Sleep When Temperature Is 64-68 Degrees Fahrenheit

(p. 2) A poor night’s sleep is an all too common problem when you’re staying at a hotel, says Alistair Hughes, the managing director of Savoir Beds, a London-based company that sells beds and handmade mattresses to more than 50 hotels globally.
. . .
A quiet, dark, cool room is the ideal environment for sleeping well, Mr. Hughes said. Create this ambience by having ear plugs to block noise, using the blackout blinds your room likely has and setting the temperature to between 64 and 66 degrees Fahrenheit.

For the full commentary, see:
SHIVANI VORA. “Travel Tips; How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep at a Hotel.” The New York Times, Travel Section (Sun., Sept. 3, 2017): 2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date AUG. 25 [sic], 2017. The first sentence quoted above is the slightly longer version that is online; not the slightly shorter version in the print edition.)

“Many of Our Worst Behaviors Are in Retreat”

(p. A19) Mr. Sapolsky is one of those very few eminent scientists who are also eminent–or even coherent–when writing for the general public.
. . .
The author’s comprehensive approach integrates controlled laboratory investigation with naturalistic observations and study. To his immense credit, he doesn’t omit cultural norms, social learning, the role of peer pressure or historical tradition. He also has a delightfully self-deprecating sense of humor. Introducing a chapter titled “War and Peace,” he summarizes the chapter’s goals as: (a) to demonstrate that “many of our worst behaviors are in retreat, our best ones ascendant”; (b) to examine “ways to improve this further”; (c) to derive “emotional support for this venture” (d) and, “finally, to see if I can actually get away with calling this chapter ‘War and Peace.’ ” Earlier, after an especially abstruse sentence, he adds a footnote: “I have no idea what it is that I just wrote.”
. . .
It’s no exaggeration to say that “Behave” is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read. .

For the full review, see:
David P. Barash. “BOOKSHELF; How the Brain Makes Us Do It; Biology can explain but not excuse our worst behavior; Testosterone may drive a vicious warlord, but social triggers shape his actions.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., May 2, 2017): A19.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 1, 2017.)

The book under review, is:
Sapolsky, Robert M. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. New York: Penguin Press 2017.

Gene Editing of Embryos Promises to Cure Inherited Diseases

(p. A13) For the first time in the United States, scientists have edited the genes of human embryos, a controversial step toward someday helping babies avoid inherited diseases.
. . .
The Oregon scientists reportedly used a technique called CRISPR, which allows specific sections of DNA to be altered or replaced. It’s like using a molecular scissors to cut and paste DNA, and is much more precise than some types of gene therapy that cannot ensure that desired changes will take place exactly where and as intended. With gene editing, these so-called “germline” changes are permanent and would be passed down to any offspring.
The approach holds great potential to avoid many genetic diseases, . . .
. . .
One prominent genetics expert, Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, California, said gene editing of embryos is “an unstoppable, inevitable science, and this is more proof it can be done.”
Experiments are in the works now in the U.S. using gene-edited cells to try to treat people with various diseases, but “in order to really have a cure, you want to get this at the embryo stage,” he said.

For the full story, see:
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. “U.S. Scientists Edit Genes in Human Embryo.” The New York Times (Fri., JULY 28, 2017): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 27, 2017, and has the title “In U.S. First, Scientists Edit Genes of Human Embryos.”)

Equal Opportunity Gene Innovation

(p. R4) Kian Sadeghi has postponed homework assignments, sports practice and all the other demands of being a 17-year-old high-school junior for today. On a Saturday afternoon, he is in a lab learning how to use Crispr-Cas9, a gene-editing technique that has electrified scientists around the world–. . .
. . .
Crispr-Cas9 is easier, faster and cheaper than previous gene-editing techniques.
. . .
A do-it-yourself Crispr kit with enough material to perform five experiments gene-editing the bacteria included in the package is available online for $150. Genspace, the Brooklyn, N.Y., community lab where Mr. Sadeghi is learning how to use Crispr to edit a gene in brewer’s yeast, charges $400 for four intensive sessions. More than 80 people have taken the classes since the lab started offering them last year.
. . .
In the workshop, if the participants correctly edit the gene in brewer’s yeast, the cells will turn red. In between the prep work, the classmates swap stories on why they are there. Many have personal Crispr projects in mind and want to learn the technique.
Kevin Wallenstein, a chemical engineer, takes a two-hour train ride to the lab from his home in Princeton, N.J. Crispr is a hobby for him, he says. He wants to eventually use it to edit a gene in an edible fruit that he prefers not to name, to restore it to its historical color. “I always wondered what it would look like,” he says.
At the workshop, Mr. Wallenstein shares his Crispr goal with Will Shindel, Genspace’s lab director. Mr. Shindel is enthusiastic; he has started his own Crispr project, a longtime dream to make a spicy tomato. Both men say they aren’t looking to commercialize their ideas–but they would like to eat what they create someday, if they get permission from the lab. “I’m doing it for fun,” Mr. Shindel says.
When Mr. Sadeghi first wanted to try Crispr, the teenager emailed 20 scientists asking if they would be willing to let him learn Crispr in their labs. Most didn’t respond; those that did turned him down. So he did a Google search and stumbled upon Genspace. When he shared the lead with his science teacher at the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, Essy Levy Sefchovich, she agreed to take the course with him.
When Mr. Shindel describes the steps of the experiment, Ms. Sefchovich takes notes. She is hoping to create a modified version of the yeast experiment so all her students can try Crispr in class.
Later, Mr. Sadeghi recounts that the hardest part of the day was handling the micropipette, the lab tool he used to mix small amounts of liquid. He says he still feels clumsy. Ms. Sefchovich reassures him he’ll get the hang of it; he just needs to practice.
“It’s like driving,” she tells him. “You learn the right feel.” Mr. Sadeghi doesn’t have his driver’s license yet. He figures he’ll do Crispr first.

For the full story, see:
Marcus, Amy Dockser. “JOURNAL REPORTS: HEALTH CARE; DIY Gene Editing: Fast, Cheap–and Worrisome; The Crispr technique lets amateurs enter a world that has been the exclusive domain of scientists.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Feb. 27, 2017): R4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 26, 2017.)

“Unfettered Science, If We Have the Courage to Let It Unfold”

(p. 26) “How to Tame a Fox” sets out to answer a simple-seeming question: What makes a dog a dog? Put another way, how did an animal that started out as a bloodthirsty predator become one that now wants nothing more than a nice belly rub and the chance to gaze adoringly at a member of another species? In the late 1950s, a Russian scientist named Dmitri Belyaev decided to address this puzzle by taking the unheard-of tack of replicating the domestication process in real time. He and his colleagues took silver foxes, widely bred in vast Siberian farms for their luxurious pelts, and made them into friendly house pets. It was a deceptively simple process: Take the puppies from only the friendliest foxes, breed them and repeat. Lyudmila Trut, the current lead researcher of the silver fox experiment, who began work as Belyaev’s intern, along with Lee Alan Dugatkin, an American scientist and writer at the University of Louisville, documents their monumental effort in this sparkling new book.
Belyaev died in 1985, but the experiment is still ongoing, with 56 generations of foxes bred to date — a far cry from the snarling creatures that used to snap at the hands of their caretakers when the research began. The new foxes run toward people, jump on the bed and nuzzle one another as well as their human caretakers. Such a behavioral transformation was to some degree expected, since they were bred from the tamest members of their groups. Perhaps more intriguing, they also look more doglike, with floppy ears, wagging tails and piebald fur.
. . .
The book, . . . , is not only about dogs, or foxes, or even science under siege from political interests. . . . It may serve — particularly now — as a parable of the lessons that can emerge from unfettered science, if we have the courage to let it unfold.

For the full review, see:
MARLENE ZUK. “Fox and Friends.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., MAY 7, 2017): 26.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date MAY 5, 2017, and has the title “How Do You Make a Fox Your Friend? Fast-Forward Evolution.”)

The book under review, is:
Dugatkin, Lee Alan, and Lyudmila Trut. How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.

“The Data Run Counter to Your Anecdotes”

(p. A13) “Shattered,” by campaign reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, narrates the petty bickering, foolish reasoning and sheer arrogance of a campaign that was never the sure thing that its leader and top staffers assumed. The authors, in a mostly successful attempt to get their sources to talk candidly, promised them that they wouldn’t be identified.
. . .
The juicy quotes would mean more if they were on the record, but mostly it works: You can’t pinpoint the identity of any one “top aide” or “close Hillary ally,” but the authors’ language leads you to believe they include the most senior Clinton advisers–Mr. Podesta, longtime Clinton confidante Huma Abedin, campaign manager Robby Mook, speechwriter Dan Schwerin, policy adviser Jake Sullivan –and probably the candidate herself.
. . .
Successful politicians must have a tacit sense of what voters want to hear and how they might be persuaded. Mrs. Clinton–in stark contrast to her husband–was never interested in that component of campaigning. You got the feeling she didn’t like people all that much.
Mr. Mook’s scientific “model” of how the campaign should run emphasized demographics, constituents’ voting histories, regional electoral patterns, and so on. When staffers objected to his directives, the authors record, the response was always the same: “The data,” as Mr. Mook at one point put it to former President Bill Clinton, “run counter to your anecdotes.”

For the full review, see:
Barton Swaim. “BOOKSHELF; Hillary the Unready.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., April 18, 2017): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date April 17, 2017, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; How Hillary Lost the White House.”)

The book under review, is:
Allen, Jonathan, and Amie Parnes. Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign. New York: Crown, 2017.

Since 1880 North America Is Warmer by One and a Half Degrees Fahrenheit

(p. A23) Anyone who has read the 2014 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change knows that, while the modest (0.85 degrees Celsius, or about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warming of the earth since 1880 is indisputable, as is the human influence on that warming, much else that passes as accepted fact is really a matter of probabilities. That’s especially true of the sophisticated but fallible models and simulations by which scientists attempt to peer into the climate future. To say this isn’t to deny science. It’s to acknowledge it honestly.

For the full commentary, see:
Stephens, Bret. “Climate of Complete Certainty.” The New York Times (Sat., APRIL 29, 2017): A23.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date APRIL 28, 2017.)

Justified Species Extinction

(p. A1) The death toll from diseases carried by mosquitoes is so huge that scientists are working on a radical idea. Why not eradicate them?
Mosquitoes kill more humans than any other animal and were linked to roughly 500,000 deaths in 2015, mostly from malaria. For more than a century, humans have used bed nets, screens and insecticides as weapons, but mosquitoes keep coming back. They are now carrying viruses like Zika and dengue to new parts of the world.
Powerful new gene-editing technologies could allow scientists to program mosquito populations to gradually shrink and die off. Some efforts have gained enough momentum that the possibility of mosquito-species eradication seems tantalizingly real.
“I think it is our moral duty to eliminate this mosquito,” entomologist Zach Adelman says about Aedes aegypti, a species carried afar over centuries by ships from sub-Saharan Africa.
. . .
(p. A8) Purposely engineering a species into extinction–or just diminishing it–is fraught with quandaries. Scientists must weigh the potential impact of removing a species on the environment and food chain. It will take years of more research, testing and regulatory scrutiny before most genetically altered mosquitoes can be released into the wild. And the strategy might not work.
Wiping a species off the face of the earth is “an unfortunate thing to have to do,” says Gregory Kaebnick, a research scholar at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute in Garrison, N.Y.
He says humans shouldn’t force a species into extinction to meet their own preferences. “We ought to try not to do it,” says Mr. Kaebnick. One justification, he says, would be to avert a serious public-health threat.

For the full story, see:
BETSY MCKAY. “A World with No Mosquitoes.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 3, 2016): A1 & A8.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 2, 2016, and has the title “Mosquitoes Are Deadly, So Why Not Kill Them All?”)