“Citizen science” apps, happiness, and monogamy

ORIGINAL: OBR Review
by: Roundtable Review News

Friday, 2nd August 2013

BAY AREA
New app puts smartphones to work for science If you have ever wondered what it might be like to walk on an asteroid or wished you could improve the lives of people around the world, you can now get a little closer to these dreams by simply charging your smartphone. A new Android app developed at Berkeley through the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) aims to use your smartphone to advance computationally intensive research. The app, also called BOINC, allows users to donate idle computing power to projects that would otherwise require cost-prohibitive supercomputers. BOINC was available as of July 22 from the Google Play Store for Android versions 2.3 and later and by default only runs when the phone is plugged in, has greater than 95% charge, and is connected to WiFi. The projects currently available through BOINC include  

• Asteroids@Home, which aims to better define the physical properties of asteroids;  
• FightAIDS@Home, which searches for more effective AIDS treatments;  
• Einstein@Home, which searches radio telescope data to identify pulsars; and 
• other math and natural science projects that deal with the analysis of complex algorithms surrounding large quantities of data. 

Though not yet available for iPhones, two-thirds of all smartphones are Android based and that means a lot of potential power for science.

SAN DIEGO
UC San Diego receives grant to promote science at the intersection of biology and physics A professor of biology and physics at UCSD, Suckjoon Jun, has received a $1.15 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create “boot camps” designed to introduce local high school and college students to quantitative biology. Jun describes quantitative biology as the application of “quantitative rigor” traditionally found in the physical sciences to biological questions. For example, this approach can be used to model complex processes such as drug interactions in human patients before the drugs are actually tested in clinical trials. In Jun’s lab, he utilizes a device he developed to analyze cell growth at the single cell level. Dubbed the “mother machine”, the instrument allows Jun’s lab to probe how cells sense their size and when to divide, and has potential to shed light on a variety of basic biological problems, such as the aberrant cell division that occurs in cancer. The NSF grant pairs Jun with a biology professor at San Diego State University, Anca Segall, who will help establish and run the boot camps. The goal of the boot camps, Jun says, is to first “spread the culture of quantitative biology” among young scientists in the San Diego area, and then to implement quantitative biology curriculum and undergraduate research opportunities at local universities.

LOS ANGELES
New amyloid-targeting compound for Alzheimer’s discovered Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have identified compounds that target amyloid beta fibrils, the protein aggregates found in abundance in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. The research team, led by UCLA professor David Eisenberg, employed a structure-based approach to identify promising compounds – a technique that has been used for drug design in infectious and metabolic diseases, but had not yet been applied to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. To identify their candidate compounds,

• the team used their detailed knowledge of the atomic structure of the amyloid beta protein to find compounds that would interact with that structure. They first computationally screened 18,000 compounds, and 
• then tested those with a strong potential for binding amyloid beta in a cell culture model. Of the tested compounds, they identified 8 compounds and 3 compound derivatives that significantly protected cells from amyloid beta’s toxic effects. Interestingly, these compounds did not reduce protein aggregation in culture, but they did increase amyloid fibril stability and reduce cell toxicity. 

These results support the idea, which has been gaining traction in recent years, that smaller oligomers of amyloid beta, and not the larger fibrils, are actually the main culprit for cellular toxicity and Alzheimer’s symptoms. The researchers speculate that their compounds may prevent toxic effects by tightly binding to amyloid beta fibrils and preventing oligomers from breaking free. The results are a promising step in the right direction for developing therapies for Alzheimer’s disease, and also demonstrate that the structure-based approach is an effective, viable option for drug design that could be applied to many other neurodegenerative conditions.
Happiness may aid proper gene expression in immune cells If you’re happy and you know it, your genes will surely show it according to a new study from UCLA and the University of North Carolina. What you may not know is that what type of happiness yours is will also affect your genes. Previous research has established that during periods of stress, threat, or uncertainty, the genes related to the inflammatory immune response are turned on, whereas the activity of those related to antiviral responses significantly decreases. The question is then does happiness and well-being have a similar effect? Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina and Steven Cole of UCLA’s Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology sought to answer this by assessing the happiness of 80 healthy adults while accounting for potentially problematic psychological and behavioral factors. The study, published in the current online edition of PNAS, further divides the happiness measurements into two different categories:

• eudaimonic well-being and 
• hedonic well-being. 

Those individuals with high eudaimonic well-being, which is happiness that stems from a sense of purpose and meaning in life, exhibited reduced expression of inflammatory genes and increased expression of antiviral and antibody genes, the opposite of the stress response. However, those individuals with high hedonic well-being, or happiness from self-gratification, showed high expression of inflammatory genes and low expression of antiviral and antibody genes. Despite the differences in immune factor expression, the hedonics did not report feeling any worse than the eudaimonics. The moral appears to be that even if we can’t feel the difference, our systems still benefit more from doing good for others instead of ourselves.
LONDON
Aggressive form of leukemia puts stem cells to sleep Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London have found that malignant cells comprising Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), an aggressive blood cancer, actually put their stem cell counterparts in the bone marrow to sleep, rather than outcompeting them as originally believed. Conducted with support from the London Research Institute, this discovery could open the door to new treatment strategies where these ‘sleeping’ stem cells are reawakened. While healthy bone marrow generates the hematopoietic stem cells that become our various blood cell types, including red blood cells and platelets, the bone marrow of AML patients is instead colonized by leukemic myeloid cells incapable of any further development. Dr. David Taussig, who led the research project, said, “The widely accepted explanation has held that AML causes bone marrow failure by depleting the bone marrow of normal hematopoietic stem cells by killing or displacing them. However, we have found that samples of bone marrow in both mice models and patients with AML contain the same, or more, of these normal stem cells than usual. So the cancer isn’t getting rid of them, instead it appears to be turning them off so they aren’t going on to form healthy blood cells. If we can find out how the cancer cells are doing this, we can look at exploiting it to find ways to wake these stem cells up.”

Monogamy as a mating strategy evolved due to infanticide Social monogamy arose relatively late in primate evolution – only about 16 million years ago. The scientific community have proposed three major hypotheses:

• Monogamy provides more effective parental care for infants; 
• it prevents females from mating with rival males; or 
• it protects against the risk of infanticide, which is very high among some primate species, including chimpanzees and gorillas, and is often explained by the desire of a rival male to quickly return a mother to a fertile state. 

A team of researchers from UCL, University of Manchester, University of Oxford and University of Auckland have now confirmed an evolutionary pathway for the development of social monogamy in humans and other primates. The findings, published in the Journal PNAS, collected data from 230 primate species and indicate that only the presence of infanticide reliably increases the probability of a shift to monogamy. The team also found that following the emergence of social monogamy males were more likely to care for their offspring. Dr Kit Opie of the UCL anthropology department and lead author of the study said: “This is the first time that the theories for the evolution of monogamy have been systematically tested, conclusively showing that infanticide is the driver of monogamy. This brings to a close the long running debate about the origin of monogamy in primates.” These findings are in contrast with those reported recently by a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and further described in the Cambridge news section. These conflicting studies have rekindled the monogamy debate. Phyllis Lee, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Stirling, UK, said: “Both papers have been carefully researched and will be discussed for some time to come.”
CAMBRIDGE
Second study finds an alternative explanation for the evolution of monogamy A comparative study carried out by researchers at the University of Cambridge has revealed that social monogamy, where one female and one breeding male are closely associated with each other over several breeding seasons, appears to have evolved as a mating strategy. This contrasts with previous theories that explained monogamy as a means to elicit extra parental care from the father. Instead, it has been suggested that paternal involvement evolved after the onset of monogamy. The research, published in Science, shows that monogamy in mammals evolved where males were unable to monopolise and defend multiple females. This generally corresponds to habitats with low densities of females. Furthermore, it was found that species with diets that rely on high quality but patchily distributed food sources are more likely to become monogamous. Although these findings were based on investigation of 2500 mammalian species, the human species was not included in the analysis, and the researchers are sceptical that the results tell us much about human breeding systems.

Artificial muscle computer performs as a universal Turing machine

ORIGINAL: Physorg

by Lisa Zyga

March 28, 2013 

An illustration of Wolfram’s “2, 3” Turing machine, the simplest known universal Turing machine that can solve any computable problem. A machine head reads the tape, decides what to do based on the data it sees plus its internal state (1 or 0), and then write the data and moves a step left or right. The researchers here realized this Turing machine using artificial muscles to help perform logic functions and memory functions. Credit: O’Brien and Anderson. ©2013 American Institute of Physics

(Phys.org) —In 1936, Alan Turing showed that all computers are simply manifestations of an underlying logical architecture, no matter what materials they're made of. Although most of the computer's we're familiar with are made of silicon semiconductors, other computers have been made of DNA, light, legos, paper, and many other unconventional materials. 

Now in a new study, scientists have built a computer made of artificial muscles that are themselves made of electroactive polymers. The artificial muscle computer is an example of the simplest known universal Turing machine, and as such it is capable of solving any computable problem given sufficient time and memory. By showing that artificial muscles can "think," the study paves the way for the development of smart, lifelike prostheses and soft robots that can conform to changing environments.

The authors, Benjamin Marc O'Brien and Iain Alexander Anderson at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, have published their study on the artificial muscle computer in a recent issue of Applied Physics Letters.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a computer has been built out of artificial muscles," O'Brien told Phys.org. "What makes it exciting is that the technology can be directly and intimately embedded into artificial muscle devices, giving them lifelike reflexes. Even though our computer has hard bits, the technology is fundamentally soft and stretchy, something that traditional methods of computation struggle with."

Video of the artificial muscle computer at work. Credit: O’Brien and Anderson. ©2013 American Institute of Physics

The artificial muscle computer is modeled on Stephen Wolfram's "2, 3" Turing machine architecture, which is the simplest known universal Turing machine. It consists of a machine head that reads symbols stored on a tape, and then based on the symbols and its own state (0 or 1), it follows a set of instructions that tells it what to write and store. The 2, 3 Turing machine is ideal to build with artificial muscles because of its simplicity. The researchers could theoretically solve any computational problem using just 13 muscles.

By expanding and contracting, the artificial muscles performed a variety of mechanisms involved in the computing process. For example, the muscles pushed sliding elements into position, and the sliding elements were used to encode data. Artificial muscles were also used to make the instruction set that the machine head uses to make decisions. In this case, when a muscle expands, it compresses a switch, causing it to conduct charge. 

In its current version, the artificial muscle computer is very large (about 1 m3) and extremely slow (0.15 Hz). However, the researchers demonstrated that it could evolve the correct sequence of calculations in response to a test input, and they predict that the computer's performance could be significantly improved. In the future, the researchers also want to investigate whether this type of computer would perform better using an analog rather than digital architecture. 

(Left) The artificial muscle computer. (Right) Sample steps for a sequence of calculations performed by the computer. Credit: O’Brien and Anderson. ©2013 American Institute of Physics

Overall, the demonstration that artificial muscles can be made to compute and "think" has implications for future prosthetics and soft robots. By sensing, computing, and moving, artificial muscles could give these devices the ability to conform to complex and uncertain environments, as well as give them reflexes like the real muscles seen in nature.

"If you look at life you see these amazing capabilities and structures," O'Brien said. "The octopus, for example, has extremely dexterous infinite-degree-of-freedom manipulators. Such manipulators would be great for our own robots, but there is the huge challenge of how to control them—the degrees of freedom can overwhelm a central controller. Octopuses solve this by distributing neurons throughout their arms. With artificial muscle logic, we might one day be able to do the same."

The researchers plan to take several steps in order to reach these goals.

"In the future we would like to miniaturize the technology to make it go faster and become more portable; develop materials that last longer before failing; make the computer entirely soft; explore analogue architectures; and build a soft robotic manipulator with a built-in computer," O'Brien said.

The researchers have also recently formed a company called Stretch Sense that makes soft wireless stretch sensors using artificial muscle technology. In the future, they hope to commercialize their artificial muscle computing as well.

More information: Benjamin Marc O'Brien and Iain Alexander Anderson. "An artificial muscle computer." Applied Physics Letters 102, 104102 (2013). DOI: 10.1063/1.4793648

Journal reference: Applied Physics Letters

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