Stress alters children's genomes

Poverty and unstable family environments shorten chromosome-protecting telomeres in nine-year-olds.

Pasieka/Science Photo Library Telomeres (shown in red) protect the ends of chromosomes from fraying over time.

Growing up in a stressful social environment leaves lasting marks on young chromosomes, a study of African American boys has revealed. Telomeres, repetitive DNA sequences that protect the ends of chromosomes from fraying over time, are shorter in children from poor and unstable homes than in children from more nurturing families.

When researchers examined the DNA of 40 boys from major US cities at age 9, they found that the telomeres of children from harsh home environments were 19% shorter than those of children from advantaged backgrounds. The length of telomeres is often considered to be a biomarker of chronic stress.

The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, brings researchers closer to understanding how social conditions in childhood can influence long-term health, says Elissa Epel, a health psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the research.

Participants’ DNA samples and socio-economic data were collected as part of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, an effort funded by the US National Institutes of Health to track nearly 5,000 children, the majority of whom were born to unmarried parents in large US cities in 1998–2000. Children's environments were rated on the basis of their mother's level of education; the ratio of a family’s income to needs; harsh parenting; and whether family structure was stable, says lead author Daniel Notterman, a molecular biologist at Pennsylvania State University in Hershey.

The telomeres of boys whose mothers had a high-school diploma were 32% longer compared with those of boys whose mothers had not finished high school. Children who came from stable families had telomeres that were 40% longer than those of children who had experienced many changes in family structure, such as a parent with multiple partners.

Genetic links

The link between stressful home environments and telomere length is moderated by genetic variants in pathways that process two chemical transmitters in the brain, serotonin and dopamine, the study found. Previous studies have correlated variants in some of the genes studied, such as TPH2, with depression, bipolar disorder and other mental-health issues. Variants of another gene, 5-HTT, reduce the amount of the protein that recycles serotonin in nerve synapses. Some alleles of these genes are thought to increase the sensitivity of carriers to external risks.

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In the latest study, the researchers found that the 'sensitizing' variants of these genes protected telomeres in children from nurturing environments, and caused greater telomere damage in children from disadvantaged homes. Those who lacked these alleles had little difference in their telomeres, regardless of living conditions.

But boys with more than two sensitizing alleles were strongly influenced by their home environments. They had the shortest telomeres in stressful homes, and the longest telomeres in advantaged environments. Although these variants were known to influence chemical responses to stress in the brain, they were not previously linked to telomere length, says Notterman.

The team plans to expand its analysis to approximately 2,500 children and their mothers to see if these preliminary findings hold. However, because the effects of stress are tangible by the age of 9, Notterman suggests that early intervention practices may help to moderate the effects of adversity on children’s health.

“This was a small study testing a big theory,” says Epel. “It is a first but important step in understanding how social disparities get under the skin to affect lifelong health.”Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2014.14997

References

Mitchell, C. et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1404293111 (2014).

Show context

Related stories and links

From nature.com

• Stress can shorten telomeres in childhood 17 May 2011
• Telomerase reverses ageing process 28 November 2010
• Chromosome protection scoops Nobel 05 October 2009
• Minimum telomere length defined for healthy cells 03 October 2007
• Web Focus: Telomere Biology 
• Childhood stress and neurocognitive function 

From elsewhere

• Fragile Families and Childhood Wellbeing Study

ORIGINAL: Nature

Jyoti Madhusoodanan

07 April 2014

Andy Lomas Lets Digital Systems Bloom In "Morphogenetic Creations" Exhibit

Andy Lomas, a digital artist and mathematician, likes to let the virtual world spin out of control. Using software code to creates very basic rules, Lomas then sits back and watches his digital “growth systems” bloom, fractalize, shape-shift, and otherwise behave in organic and emergent ways.

Yesterday, at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts (LACDA), Lomas’s Morphogenetic Creations opened, giving digital art enthusiasts the opportunity to see his dynamic virtual systems up close. The exhibit includes work from the Aggregation, Flow, and Cellular Forms series. To coincide with the exhibit, Lomas uploaded a view of these digital growth videos to Vimeo. Startlingly beautiful to behold, they’re a bit like Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms of Nature animated with a cyberpunk edge.

I recently rang up Lomas, who lives in the United Kingdom, to talk about Morphogenetic Creations. We talked about his background in mathematics, his early fascination with D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s On Growth and Form, and how his work as a computer-generated effects artist for film (The Matrix sequels and Avatar), where highly-predictable outcomes and stability predominate, served as a springboard for the more random digital forms he now creates.

The Creators Project: What can people expect to see at the Morphogenetic Creations exhibit at LACDA?

Andy Lomas: There will be four animation pieces from the Cellular Forms series in the windows, but also then some 44x44-inch big prints of new and old work. They’re ridiculously high-resolution at 12,000x12,000 pixels.

Another thing I have at LACDA for the Aggregation series are picture frames with these old, Victorian-style stereo viewers to create a 3D effect. The frame only contains two pictures, but through the stereo viewer it really looks like this three-dimensional thing. I believe they’re going to pull those out for this exhibit as well.

Is Cellular Forms the most recent series?

The two Cellular Forms videos are the most recent. They’re almost exactly the same date because they’re basically differently rendered versions of the same thing. That would be Cellular Forms and Cellular Forms (X-Ray version).

What I quite like is the idea that there are two things: the creation of these three-dimensional data structures, where the goal is to create the most organic things possible with very simple rules; and that there is no one correct way of doing that. One shows you everything solid, while the other gives you an x-ray that reveals what’s actually going on inside. Neither is the original, if you like. They’re just different views into the data.

And you wrote the software code for this series?
Yeah, I wrote the software for Cellular Forms. I’m a code junky. I write it for my own pleasure. There are two main parts to the code. 

• One is what I call the simulation engine, which is the thing that is actually almost like running a growth process. It starts with a sphere or ball of cells, with rules for how they divide and have forces between them, how it moves, changes shape, and grows over time.  
• Then there is the rendering stage, which takes the data produced by that simulation and turns it into something you can see. It produces pixel data out of cell data, if you like.

Did you use this code in your film work, or did you build it on the side for this specific purpose?
It’s completely built on the side. It’s very much a labor of love. When I worked on The Matrix sequels for this company I was working with then, another person there used a much simpler version of what’s called Diffusion Limited Aggregation for some of the effects work. It was used for when Agent Smith was turning other people into other Smith’s with these tendril things. DLA inspired the code I wrote.

When you’re doing things for films, you have to construct things in a very different way—you have to make things very controllable and directable. Whatever you do, when the director or visual effects supervisor looks at it and says, “That’s great, but can you change this and modify that,” that is what you spend most of your time doing. One of the things I like about my own work is that it is trying to be almost exactly the opposite. You’re hoping for the things which are unexpected.

It’s almost like growing plants; you don’t know exactly how a plant is going to grow. But, you start to learn that if you cross-breed that with that, then it might do something interesting. Maybe nine of the plants end up really uninteresting, but one does something really interesting and maybe different than what you thought it would. People talk about emergence, where things emerge that you didn’t expect, which you almost can’t use in professional production.

Do you prefer the lack of control that your solo work affords you?
I’ve got to say that I prefer the lack of control. As soon as things become digital, people think that they can control everything. When you get to a certain level of complexity, you can explore it more than control it. I prefer the things where 99% of the time it doesn’t produce anything interesting, but that 1% of the time is like, “Wow, that’s really cool.” I’m not a control freak director. I actually want the work to surprise me instead of do exactly what I thought it was going to do.

What specifically might have influenced Cellular Forms and your other series?
I’ve always been fascinated by sculpture and form. I also used to scuba dive and look at coral. To my mind, organic things go from really hideous to incredibly beautiful, whereas most engineered things go from ugly to something quite interesting. In organic forms, there is a very visceral reaction. Trees look beautiful and mold looks ugly, and things like that.

My original background is in mathematics, which I studied as an undergraduate. One of the main areas I got interested in is what’s called Dynamical Systems, which is sort of the math behind Chaos Theory and Complexity Theory—the math of how things change over time when you almost reapply the same rule again and again and again. So, the combination of those two, it’s almost like how simple could the rules be to make something that is as beautiful as a tree or coral or something like that. So, those two have always been like two germs working together. And, to my mind, computers are the things that allow you to actually try that out.

Any other critical influences in your work?
There was a Scottish mathematician named D’Arcy Wenthworth Thompson, who wrote a book about a hundred years ago now called On Growth and Form, which is basically him talking about the constraints of the real world. When you think about how things grow, are the sorts of forms that you see in the real world just the results of almost the only things that can grow? With a computer we can actually test that. Often, it doesn’t work quite how you expected.

For more of Lomas' work, head over to his website here.

@djpangburn

ORIGINAL: The Creators Project

By DJ Pangburn
Jan 10 2014

World Map Installation uses E. Coli and Jellyfish Proteins to illuminate our population in 2100

A Buckminster Fuller-style Dymaxion Map

Terreform’s Bio City Map in full, one side

If you think about it, Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Map is a perfect example of how reductive approaches to science may be necessary to resolve some of the world’s more pressing complications. To best understand the Earth as a total entity, Fuller suggested we go pre-Magellan, back to the days when the earth’s shape was physically unproven, by unravelling our beloved sphere to a flat, non-symmetrical surface. Like peeling an orange while keeping the peel intact.

Close up of Dymaxion Map

This is why it fits so well as a model for Terreform’s Bio City Lab – in ethos and in structure. Putting Fuller’s concept to practice, the New York-based design firm constructed a vertical plane of two-sided triangular pieces that model Earth’s surface, as if it were peeled directly off the mantle. Each side of the installation houses physical representations of data that snapshot a coming reality: by 2100, an anticipated 11 billion human bodies will be hustlin’ in all corners of the globe.

Instead of relying solely on computer algorithms or census trends, Terreform employs what it refers to as “bacteriography” to drive Bio City Lab’s glowing body. Strains of E. Coli and protein structures from sea anemones and jellyfish combine to bio-illuminate population fluctuations from now until 2100, ultimately mimicking the natural ebb-and-flow of urban densities with purely biological means.

Terreform’s website details why: “Bacteria in this constrained form and under the right conditions, behave almost identically to urban population patterns […] In many cases, they are as good as computational versions because they are the source which algorithms are derived from. In time, the mapping installation may illustrate patterns yet unobserved in typical digital models.”

The protein structures are injected into the DNA of genetically modified E. Coli strains, which are then gathered in petri dishes and subjected to UV rays. These rays effectively flip a switch in the bacteria, resulting in a neon mesh of blues, greens, reds and yellows. Green glowing blotches indicate where we are now; red ones indicate what our numbers will look like in the coming century.

Opposite the petri dishes are mountainous 3D graphs detailing population peaks across 2100’s world.

As a result, the structure becomes both static and mutative: the rigid and plastic population graphs depict future projections, while the ongoing biological reactions depict the fluid, amorphous quality of population changes.

It also takes into account contemporary phenomena like megacities (urban areas with populations of more than 10 million) and instant cities (urban areas with an infrastructure erected in anticipation of a population, usually at the cusp of economic booms).

But instead of specifying which petri dishes or 3D graphs correlate with which cities, the Bio City Map is geographically indiscriminate. Current urban areas, countries, continents or even bodies of water remain unreferenced, so that the populationstatistics and data of each city come together to form a single, transcontinental urbanity. In turn, it becomes a city of cities.

Through this, the installation suggests that if we’re to tackle problems of saturated population density and their potential corollaries (water, energy, food, housing, etc. crises), we need to stop worrying about national or regional interest and look at the bigger global picture. Literally.

Bio City Map for Terreform’s Biological Urbanism at OCAD University, Toronto, Canada

Detail of population spike graph Terreform is an international contender when it comes to these things.

They’re one in a series of contemporary design firms looking to explore the romantic tendencies of futurism through experimental approaches to society building. Along with recent curations like Liam Young’s Future Perfect exhibition at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale (which we partially covered here) and the writings of William Meyers, they’re giving breath to the argument that creativity, technology, and biology must unite if we’re to effectively solve societal dilemmas down the road.

Each of these groups and creators recognize the need for cross-collaboration. It’s no longer just architects, just urbanists, or just engineers hashing out blueprints – it’s all of the above, plus a cadre of fiction authors, artists, futurists, mathematicians, and more. Which makes more than enough sense: how can you guide the growth of a society without soliciting the thoughts of those who grow its culture?

All photos courtesy of Terreform

ORIGINAL: Creators Project
By Johnny Magdaleno

Oct 22 2013

StartUp Europe Leaders Club: "A manifesto for entrepreneurship & innovation to power growth in the EU."

ORIGINAL: StartUpManifesto.eu

StartUp Europe Leaders Club
The Startup Europe Leaders Club is a independent group of founders in the field of tech entrepreneurship, who act as role models for European web entrepreneurs and provide guidance to the Commission on what needs to be done to strengthen the environment for web entrepreneurs to start in Europe and stay in Europe. 


Members

• Daniel Ek / Martin Lorentzon – Spotify
• Kaj Hed - Rovio (Angry Birds)
• Lars Hinrichs - HackFwd
• Joanna Shields - Tech City Investment Organisation (TCIO)
• Reshma Sohoni - Seedcamp
• Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten – The Next Web
• Zaryn Dentzel - Tuenti
• Niklas Zennström - Atomico

Goals

• Inspire others by sharing views on what needs to be done for web entrepreneurs
• Act as role models for those thinking of following a similar path
• Support the implementation of the Commission's web entrepreneur initiatives
• Share experience & best practices to improve Europe's entrepreneurial spirit and startup culture

Startup Manifesto
The members of the Leaders Club have launched the Startup Manifesto campaign for entrepreneurial excellence. Sign the Manifesto before 30 September.

Economic conditions in Europe remain hugely challenging with the European Commission forecasting that euro-zone GDP is set to shrink by 0.4% this year. Yet the growing importance of internet-driven economic growth could transform this picture by helping improve the lives of millions of people providing them with new jobs, new skills and renewed hopes for a better future.

According to research from the Boston Consulting Group(1) the Internet Economy in the developed markets of the G-20 is forecast to grow at an annual rate of Buggyland. In developing markets, annual growth is expected to be 18 percent. These rates far outpace traditional economic sectors. No longer confined to high-tech businesses, digital technologies are resulting in the re-imagination of every single industry, holding the promise of creating new jobs and new wealth.

This rising tide can help Europe secure its prospects for the future, helping it emerge stronger, more agile and prosperous. But further action is required to overcome a number of roadblocks that threaten to hamper progress and undermine the potential of this vibrant and thriving sector. We must ensure we have the policies, modes of operation and the ambition to succeed. We need to address the fact that continental Europe currently doesn’t create new businesses destined for growth as well as other parts of the World(2) or produce entrepreneurs as confident about the environment their own country provides for startups(3).

The days of relying on large businesses or the government for job creation are over. Many of the millions of jobs lost over the past five years will never return in their old form. Entrepreneurship, which has been the engine for growth in the United States, has not been cultivated in an effective or systematic way in Europe. To create more businesses and more startups requires more than a change in policy. It requires a change in mentality.

Vice-President of the European Commission Neelie Kroes has created The Startup Europe Leaders Club — an independent group of founders in the field of tech entrepreneurship who provide guidance on strengthening the business environment for web entrepreneurs in Europe. In March 2013, she invited them to develop a manifesto for economic growth. Since June 2013, the initial recommendations based on the grass roots perspective of these successful web entrepreneurs have been further strengthened with the support and collaboration of the Founders Forum in London, a community of the best global entrepreneurs, select inspiring CEOs and key investors in media and technology.


The Plan

Drawn from the combined experience of dozens of Europeans who were lucky enough to imagine, build and grow successful businesses — businesses that created thousands of jobs — we have distilled 22 actions (Grouped in 5 main topics) which, taken together, can give European businesses the best chance of future success. We now call on entrepreneurs, investors, advisors and other stakeholders across the continent to engage in this dialogue and share their views on the manifesto to help move us towards the adoption of this singular digital growth plan for the EU. Our recommendations are: 

01.Education & Skills

The European Commission has said more needs to be done to give all children access to proper ICT training. A recent study made up of 190,000 responses from 27 European countries(4) highlighted that 20 per cent of secondary-level students have never (or almost never) used a computer in their school lessons and IT training for teachers is inadequate. Accordingly, we recommend to:

1. Make teachers digitally confident and competent to rise to the challenge.
   No longer confined to computers or telecommunications, digital technologies now underline every aspect of our lives, from history research to art education to advanced mathematics, geography studies and more. Our children are born into a digital world in a way their teachers weren’t. If we want the next generation to use digital technologies to build a better world, we need to ensure the individuals responsible for guiding and instructing them are as comfortable and capable using such digital technologies themselves. 
2. Teach our children the principles, processes and the passion for entrepreneurship from a young age.
   If we want our younger generation to start their own business we need to teach them how to do so. We need to excite them and instil in them the passion (and pride) to do so. We can’t expect every 12 year old to start their own company. But every 12 year old should know what it means to take an idea, validate it and make something they can offer to other people as a product or a service. The tools and the knowledge are all out there. We just need to make sure the passion is present. 
3. Encourage university students to start a business before they graduate. In the US many students start their business before they even graduate — 20% of the students at CalTech, Stanford and Berkeley. This gives students a taste of what it’s like to start and operate a business while remaining in a structured, supportive environment that acts as a ‘safety net’ in case their plans fail. By the time most students leave university their willingness to take risks drops dramatically, and with it the likelihood that they’ll start or join a startup. Universities should create more entrepreneurship courses and set up a network of Student Entrepreneurship Centres / Incubators (through partnerships if needed) that can provide students with support and funding to translate their ideas into reality.
4. Prepare graduates for a radically different marketplace. The skills required for thriving in today’s job market are very different from what they were even a decade ago, yet most universities have done little to change their curriculum or provide graduates with new tools and skills. In the short term (12-24 months), EU countries should offer a 'digital certificate course' that will help graduates acquire the basic digital skills to make them more valuable to prospective employers. In the medium term (2-3 years) EU countries should ensure their universities add digital components to most of the subjects they teach. Greater consideration and structured support should also be provided to university students in finding part-time work experience, summer jobs and internships to supplement their academic qualifications. This will provide valuable experience of the workplace, enabling them to develop transferable skills and enhance their employability.
5. Encourage large companies to provide training for the general public.
   While the skills shortage spotlight is focused on computer science and technology, companies aren’t built by programmers alone. There is an equal, if not greater shortage of management and communications skills across the EU. To build and grow a business, entrepreneurs need experienced managers, salespeople, HR managers, and other professionals who can help them to scale their businesses. Large corporations have become extremely adept at providing these skills and should be encouraged to open their training programs and facilities to greater numbers of people. Those who benefit from such training should then be encouraged to join rather than found startups (which the corporates might even fund). Companies can help much more effectively than the government can, because they own the environment in which people can learn how to manage by doing.

(4) A survey of schools, ICT in Education, February 2013 http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-341_en.htm

02.Access to Talent
McKinsey(5) has identified a growing gap between the needs of employers and skills of employees – 26 per cent of employers in Europe have difficulty filling jobs for lack of talent. Many aspiring entrepreneurs simply leave Europe to seek their fortunes elsewhere. There are an estimated 50,000 Germans in Silicon Valley, and an estimated 500 startups in the San Francisco Bay area with French founders6. Accordingly, we recommend to:

1. Turn Europe into the easiest place for highly-skilled talent to start a company and get a job by rolling out a pan-European Startup Visa.
   This visa will make it easier for non-EU entrepreneurs to start a business in Europe and make it easier for EU companies to hire non-EU talent to join their startup.
2. Make it easy for companies to hire outside their home countries.
   Europe has done much to make the labour market fluid – any European can now work in any other European country. But the hiring market — a company’s ability to hire and employ in an EU country outside their own – remains complex and expensive. This form of remote employment, where a company hires one or more people outside of their home market is set to increase. We need to make it simpler to hire people without setting up a local subsidiary.
3. Make it easier for companies to let employees go.
   Businesses' needs change. Market demand ebbs and flows. Employees don’t always fulfil their potential or deliver what is required of them. For European businesses to become truly competitive, we need to make it easier for them to let employees go and manage out and fire under- performers. For many businesses around the world considering starting a new office in the EU, a key constraint will be their hesitation of being left with a workforce that cannot be adapted to the realities of today’s and tomorrow’s markets.
4. Bring the best brains back home.
   Virtually every country in the EU has watched helplessly as some of its best and brightest minds leave for the US. This 'brain drain' has made a negative impact on all aspects of our economies, creating a vacuum in thought leadership, advanced research and basic academia, to name a few. EU countries must launch targeted campaigns aimed at bringing their talent back home, through research grants, logistical support and public recognition.

(5) McKinsey Global Institute – Help wanted: The future of work in advanced economies, March 2012 byJames Manyika, Susan Lund, Byron Auguste and Sreenivas Ramaswamy
(6) The Economist, July 28th 2012

03.Access to Capital.
The scale of decline in VC investment is staggering — it has approximately halved in both the Euro area and the European Union as a whole since 2008. The aggregate decline in later stage investment is even steeper, for both the Euro area and the EU as a whole. Accordingly, we recommend to:

1. Increase private and institutional investment in startups.
   Offer a range of tax reliefs to investors who purchase new shares in high-risk companies, such as those introduced by the UK's Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS). At the moment, many European startups need to pursue funding outside of their own country (and often outside of Europe). When funding is raised successfully the team is in most cases required to move to the country where the funds come from. This means a talent drain in the short period and also capital loss in the mid-long term. In addition, steps should be taken to encourage business builders to recycle the wealth they have generated in growing successful companies into investments in the entrepreneurial success stories of tomorrow. Multiple options exist, ranging from following the Israeli example of allowing angel investors to recognise their startup investments as losses in the year of the investment effectively providing a tax break for those who have capital gains in other businesses/startups; through to allowing investors to offset wealth tax if they invest in a small EU company.
2. Make it easier for high-growth companies to raise capital through public markets.
   Make such markets a more accessible and attractive source of capital for these businesses, similar to the London Stock Exchange's High Growth Segment. In addition, given their relative contribution to the economy, we recommend the creation of a fully-fledged Internet and Mobile category in EU stock markets, reducing the incentive for successful European companies to go public in the US, throwing the spotlight on the sector's profitability and helping counteract any investor reticence.
3. Buy more from smaller businesses.
   Government subsidies are one way to help SMEs flourish. The other is ensuring the government itself procures more from these companies. Across the EU, the vast majority of government procurement contracts are filled by large, often multinational businesses. For many entrepreneurs, selling to the government is all but impossible — navigating the procurement process is complex and existing suppliers have become so entrenched that unseating them discourages many entrepreneurs from even trying. If EU governments want to kick start the engines of growth in their countries, they must commit to shifting a certain percentage of their procurement contracts to smaller firms.
4. Institute an E-Corp: a new type of cross- European corporation. Setting up a company in each country in the EU presents its own set of barriers. Requirements that once made sense, from the minimum amount of money required to launch a business to not having access to shares to complex legal requirements for even the smallest business now simply impede on our ability to build new businesses. We recommend the creation of a new type of corporation — the E-Corp that has unified requirements across the EU and can be done by anyone in under 24 hours. This would simplify not only the creation of new businesses but make it easy for cross-border investments to flow from investors in one country to companies in another. 
5. Tax share options as capital gains, not income. In Europe, individuals who receive share options in a company often have to pay ordinary income tax on these options, reducing their attractiveness as a mechanism for both attracting talent and rewarding risk-taking. We recommend that share options offered by companies in Europe be taxed as capital gains, not ordinary income.

(7) EVCA http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/finance/data/enterprise-finance-index/access-to-finance-indicators/venture- capital/index_en.htm

04.Data Policy, Protection & Privac.
Data regulations in Europe are outdated, making it easy for companies to fall prey to privacy breaches (and thus deterring them from entering the EU to begin with). While more needs to be done to consistently and effectively protect consumers, most EU governments lag in providing access to their own data — a cornerstone of improving their services and lowering their operating expenses. Accordingly, we recommend to:

1. Revise and normalise data protection laws.
   The lack of a unified data protection law in Europe erects unnecessary obstacles for companies wanting to transact with and across the region. This is partially why only 12 per cent of all internet transactions made by European consumers are transnational. As a whole, Europe’s laws are far more restrictive than the US, putting US companies and the US in general at an advantage on what otherwise should be a level playing field. We call for the adoption of a new EU data protection law by all EU countries.
2. Remove the requirement for data providers to store information in any given country.
   With so much information and so many systems moving from local server facilities to the Cloud, requiring companies doing business in an EU country to also keep their servers in the same country is an antiquated approach that heightens costs, increases barriers to free trade and reduces resilience.
3. Make government data public. The irony of public data in the EU is that so little of it is actually public. From transportation to treasury to tender information, opening up government data can increase transparency and trust, while increasing citizen engagement, empowerment and equality. In addition, unlocking public data from its shackles allows innovative companies to introduce new products and services that can further reduce the dependence on central government and create new businesses at the same time.
4. Make governments think digitally.
   To stay relevant and effective at a time of decreasing budgets and public support, governments must use 'digital thinking' to reduce costs while improving the services provided to citizens. Governmental departments should operate on a single technology platform, following the same technology principles that are as good, if not better than the other platforms its citizens now interact with on a daily basis. 
   

05.Thought Leadership Europe has many entrepreneurial success stories, some incredible talent and some amazingly innovative ideas. In many countries, there are dozens of IPO-ready tech companies today poised to capitalise on the global internet economy but we need more and we need those we have nurtured to thrive and grow in the EU rather than seeking their fortunes in America. Accordingly, we recommend to:

1. Initiate a mentality shift across Europe in terms of how we define success.
   Our cultures celebrate celebrities and athletes, musicians and actors. Entrepreneurs who make a real impact on peoples' livelihoods need to be celebrated too. We need everyone to get excited about innovation and entrepreneurship, not just techies. This means promoting the path of entrepreneurship as a credible career alternative and celebrating successful business builders as heroes. It also means democratising the tools and processes of starting new businesses and offering them to anyone with the courage and willingness to start one.
2. Appoint a Chief Digital Officer for every country in the EU. The impact of appointing a Digital Champion by each Member State to help them promote the benefits of an inclusive digital society is already being felt — but we need to do more. Permanent, full-time CDOs will help to ensure digital innovation makes an impact on every industry and opens up the government to more transparency and more collaboration with its constituents.
3. Create a 'best practices' repository.
   Provide a resource where local and national governments can share the best 'hacks' they found to achieve immediate impact. 
4. Establish a Digital European Forum. Bring together leading entrepreneurs, politicians and policy makers for the purposes of establishing a common understanding and common set of goals in translating this manifesto into action.

Contributors

U Joanna Shields CEO, Tech City UK

Zaryn Dentzel Founder & CEO, Tuenti U

U
Daniel Ek Founder & CEO, Spotify

U
Lars Hinrichs Founder & CEO, HackFwd

Kaj Hed Chairman, Rovio Entertainment

U
Martin Lorentzon Founder & Chairman, Spotify

U  Boris Veldhuijzen van Zarten Co-Founder, The Next Web

U Reshma Sohoni Co-Founder & Partner, Seedcamp

Niklas Zennström CEO, Atomico

Sign the manifesto
Our hope is to reflect the views and perspectives of as many entrepreneurs, investors, advisors and other key figures within the digital and tech ecosystem across Europe. This will ensure the proposals are as robust and actionable as possible. We are encouraging as many registrations of engagement and expressions of support as possible by 30 September 2013.

Biólogos logran replicar un paso evolutivo clave

ORIGINAL: ScienceDaily

Levadura.
(Crédito: © Dmitry Knorre / Fotolia)

ScienceDaily (17 de enero de 2012) - Hace más de 500 millones de años, los organismos unicelulares en la superficie de la Tierra comenzaron a formar grupos multicelulares que finalmente se convirtieron en plantas y animales. Sólo que la forma en que ésto ocurrió es una pregunta que ha eludido a los biólogos evolutivos.

Pero los científicos de la Universidad de Minnesota - Escuela de Ciencias Biológicas  han replicado este paso clave en el laboratorio mediante la selección natural y la levadura de cerveza común, que son organismos unicelulares. 

La levadura ha "evolucionado" en grupos multicelulares que colaborar entre sí, se reproducen y se adaptan a su medio ambiente - en esencia, precursores de la vida en la Tierra como lo es hoy.

Su logro se publica en el número de enero edición del 16 de Actas de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias.

Todo comenzó hace unos dos años con un comentario casual tomando café sobre que para cerrar la brecha de la famosa multi-celularidad sería "casi mejor que la pudiésemos hacer", recuerda el investigador postdoctoral Ratcliff y profesor asociado Michael Travisano, ambos del Departamento de Ecología, Evolución y Comportamiento.

Por lo que decidieron darle una oportunidad. Luego vino la gran sorpresa. No era en realidad tan difícil. Usando células de levadura, medios de cultivo y una centrífuga, sólo fué necesario un experimento llevado a cabo durante aproximadamente 60 días, dice Travisano, quien es el autor principal del artículo de PNAS.

"Yo no creo que nadie nunca lo había intentado antes", dice Ratcliff autor principal. "No hay muchos científicos haciendo una evolución experimental, y que están tratando de responder a las preguntas acerca de la evolución, no crearla."

A pesar de su modestia, el logro se ha ganado elogios y la admiración de los biólogos evolutivos en todo el mundo.

"Para entender por qué el mundo está lleno de plantas y animales, incluyendo seres humanos, tenemos que saber cómo organismos unicelulares hecho el cambio a la vida en grupo, como los organismos multicelulares", dijo Sam Scheiner, director del programa  de la División de Biología Ambiental de la Fundación Nacional de Ciencias (NSF). "Este estudio es el primero en observar experimentalmente que la transición, que ofrece una mirada a un evento que tuvo lugar cientos de millones de años atrás".

La financiación de la investigación se obtuvo en febrero de 2011, con los coautores R. Ford Denison y Borrello Marcos, profesores adjuntos y asociados, respectivamente, en el Departamento de Ecología, Evolución y Comportamiento.

Ratcliff y Travisano dieron a la comunidad científica una nuestra de su descubrimiento en una conferencia el pasado verano y posteriormente han sido invitados a hablar de ello en otras reuniones. El artículo de PNAS representa la primera vez detalles sobre la investigación han sido revelados. "El artículo nos proporciona la primera oportunidad para mostrar la amplitud de los cambios evolutivos que hemos observado", dice Travisano.

En esencia, así es como los experimentos funcionaron. 

• Los dos eligieron la levadura de cerveza o Saccharomyces cerevisiae, una especie de levadura que se usa desde la antigüedad para hacer pan y cerveza, ya que es abundante en la naturaleza y crece con facilidad. 
• Se agregó a un medio de cultivo rico en nutrientes y permite que las células crezcan de un día en tubos de ensayo. 
• Luego se utiliza una centrífuga para estratificar el contenido en peso. 
• A medida que en la mezcla se asentaban, algunos grupos de células se depositaron en la parte inferior de los tubos más rápido por ser más pesados. 
• Se quitaron los grupos de células, 
• los transfirieron a medio fresco, 
• los cultivaron nuevamente. 
• Sesenta ciclos más tarde, los grupos - ahora cientos de células - parecía más o menos como los copos de nieve esférica.

El análisis mostró que los grupos no eran sólo grupos de células al azar que se adhirieron a las otras, sino células relacionadas que parmanecían unidas luego de división celular. Eso fue importante, ya que significaba que eran genéticamente similares, que promueve la cooperación. Cuando los grupos llegaron a un tamaño crítico, algunas células esencialmente se suicidaron (apoptosis) para permitir que la descendencia se separase. Las crías reproducidas sólo después de alcanzado el tamaño de sus padres.

"Un grupo solo no es multiellular", dijo Ratcliff. "Pero cuando las células de un clúster cooperan, y hacer sacrificios por el bien común, y adaptarse al cambio, esto es una transición evolutiva a la multicelularidad".

Para que los organismos multicelulares adquieran forma, la mayoría de las células necesitan sacrificar su capacidad de reproducirse, una acción altruista que favorece el todo, pero no el individuo, dijo Ratcliff. Por ejemplo, todas las células del cuerpo humano son esencialmente un sistema de apoyo que permite a los espermatozoides y los óvulos pasar el ADN a la próxima generación. Por lo tanto, la multicelularidad es por su naturaleza extremadamente cooperativa. "Algunos de los mejores competidores en la naturaleza son los que se dedican a la cooperación, y en nuestra experiencia se muestra", dijo Travisano.

Los biólogos evolutivos han estimado que la multicelularidad ha evolucionado de forma independiente en unos 25 grupos. Travisano Ratcliff y se preguntan ¿por qué no se desarrolló con mayor frecuencia en la naturaleza, ya que no es tan difícil de recrear en un laboratorio?. Teniendo en cuenta que miles de millones de organismos unicelulares vivido en la Tierra durante millones de años, parece que debería haber sido posible, Ratcliff, dijo.

Tal vez esa es una pregunta que responderá en el futuro, utilizando el registro fósil durante miles de generaciones de sus grupos multicelulares, que se almacena en un congelador en el laboratorio de Travisano. Dado que las muestras congeladas contienen múltiples líneas que se convirtió en multicelulares independientes, que se pueden comparar para saber si mecanismos similares o diferentes y genes eran los responsables en cada caso, Travisano dijo.

Los próximos pasos del dúo de investigación consistirá en examinar el papel de la multicelularidad en el cáncer, el envejecimiento y otras áreas críticas de la biología.

"Nuestra levadura multicelulares son un recurso valioso para la investigación de una amplia variedad de temas médicos y biológicamente importantes", dijo Travisano. "El cáncer se ha descrito recientemente como un fósil del origen de la multicelularidad, que puede ser investigado directamente con el sistema de levadura. Del mismo modo los orígenes del envejecimiento, el desarrollo y la evolución de las morfologías complejas están abiertas para dirigir la investigación experimental que de otra manera sería difícil o imposible ".