Ants More Rational Than Humans?

In a study released online on July 22 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, researchers at Arizona State University and Princeton University show that ants can accomplish a task more rationally than our – multimodal, egg-headed, tool-using, bipedal, opposing-thumbed – selves. … The authors’ insights arose from an examination of the process of nest selection in the ant, Temnothorax curvispinosus. These ant colonies live in small cavities, as small as an acorn, and are skillful in finding new places to roost. The challenge before the colony was to “choose” a nest, when offered two options with very similar advantages.

What the authors found is that in collective decision-making in ants, the lack of individual options translated into more accurate outcomes by minimizing the chances for individuals to make mistakes. A “wisdom of crowds” approach emerges, Pratt believes.

“Rationality in this case should be thought of as meaning that a decision-maker, who is trying to maximize something, should simply be consistent in its preferences.” Pratt says. “For animals trying to maximize their fitness, for example, they should always rank options, whether these are food sources, mates, or nest sites, according to their fitness contribution.”

“Which means that it would be irrational to prefer choice ‘A’ to ‘B’ on Tuesday and then to prefer ‘B’ to ‘A’ on Wednesday, if the fitness returns of the two options have not changed.”

“Typically we think having many individual options, strategies and approaches are beneficial,” Pratt adds, “but irrational errors are more likely to arise when individuals make direct comparisons among options.”

Studies of how or why irrationality arises can give insight into cognitive mechanisms and constraints, as well as how collective decision making occurs. Insights such as Pratt’s and Edward’s could also translate into new approaches in the development of artificial intelligence.

“A key idea in collective robotics is that the individual robots can be relatively simple and unsophisticated, but you can still get a complex, intelligent result out of the whole group,” says Pratt. “The ability to function without complex central control is really desirable in an artificial system and the idea that limitations at the individual level can actually help at the group level is potentially very useful.” Pratt is a member of Heterogeneous Unmanned Networked Team (HUNT), a project funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to enable to development of bio-inspired solutions to engineering problems.

via Ants More Rational Than Humans?.

Conjoined twins born with one body

An Indonesian mother has given birth to conjoined twins who share the same body and all their vital parts — except their heart and their heads.

The boys were delivered in the Riau province via cesarean section Thursday. They were taken to another hospital, where they were in critical condition over the weekend.

“This is final. They can’t be separated,” said Tubagus Odih, a child surgeon at Arifin Achmad Hospital where the boys are recovering.

The boys, who have not yet been named, have two heads, a pair of lungs, two arms and two hearts. They weighed 7 pounds (3.2 kilograms).

via Conjoined twins born with one body – CNN.com.

Director Peter Jackson on “District 9″ -The Next Big SciFi Hit?

District 9, filmed in a quasi-documentary style, the $30-million special-effects-heavy film from newcomer Neill Blomkamp, produced by genre-master Peter Jackson, follows the social and geo-political repercussions of aliens crash-landing in Johannesburg where they are sequestered in an apartheid-style homeland, treated like refugees and forced to work for humans. They soon find a kindred spirit in a government agent that is exposed to their biotechnology.

After 48 seconds of documentary-style interviews with people expressing concerns about recent immigrants, District 9 zooms into high gear with a spaceship crash landing impact. An alien interrogation ensues, but by then an intriguing framework sells the idea that this won’t be your ordinary special-effects-crazed thriller. The concept for this movie is unique. In a world where aliens existed the first thing a government would need to do to manage their existence, with regulations and restrictions, curfews, news of where you can and can’t go.

“District 9″ producer Peter Jackson took pains to explain to the LA Times that “It’s a unique take on the science-fiction genre,” he said. “It has dramatized sequences and uses home movie clips. But it’s not like ‘Cloverfield.’ It doesn’t remind you of anyone else’s movie.”

The movie’s off-line promotions employ signage that deliberately echoes “Whites only” placards once seen in the South as well as cultural touchstones from Blomkamp’s upbringing in apartheid-era South Africa. “Warning: Restricted area for humans only,” reads an ad painted on a New York City wall.

via Director Peter Jackson on “District 9″ -The Next Big SciFi Hit? (VIDEO Interview).

Jumbo Squid Scare Californians But Aren’t Man-Eaters

Carnivorous jumbo squid have been washing up on San Diego beaches and swarming in Southern California’s coastal waters, freaking out scuba divers and bathers this month, but a biologist now says these beasts are not man-eaters, despite concerns expressed in the media.

Reports started coming in earlier in July that dozens of the squid, also known as Humboldt squid, were washing ashore and interacting with divers. Jumbo squid can grow up to 7 feet long and usually prefer to live in deeper waters. Lately, off-shore divers have reported seeing large groups of the squid, which can swim as fast as 15 mph.

University of Rhode Island biologist Brad Seibel, who has dived with jumbo squid several times, called the reports “alarmist.”

For years, Seibel has heard stories claiming that Humboldt squid will devour a dog in minutes and could kill or maim unsuspecting divers.

“However, I want to spread the word that [Humboldt squid] aren’t the aggressive man-eaters as they have been portrayed,” Seibel said.

“Private dive companies in Mexico play up this myth by insisting that their customers wear body armor or dive in cages while diving in waters where the squid are found,” Seibel said. “Many also encourage the squid’s aggressive behavior by chumming the waters.

via Jumbo Squid Scare Californians But Aren’t Man-Eaters | LiveScience.

Ion engine could one day power 39-day trips to Mars

Traditional rockets burn chemical fuel to produce thrust. Most of that fuel is used up in the initial push off the Earth’s surface, so the rockets tend to coast most of the time they’re in space.

Ion engines, on the other hand, accelerate electrically charged atoms, or ions, through an electric field, thereby pushing the spacecraft in the opposite direction. They provide much less thrust at a given moment than do chemical rockets, which means they can’t break free of the Earth’s gravity on their own.

But once in space, they can give a continuous push for years, like a steady breeze at the back of a sailboat, accelerating gradually until they’re moving faster than chemical rockets.

Several space missions have already used ion engines, including NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, which is en route to the asteroids Vesta and CeresMovie Camera, and Japan’s spacecraft Hayabusa, which rendezvoused with the asteroid Itokawa in 2005.

But a new engine, called VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket), will have much more “oomph” than previous ones. That’s because it uses a radio frequency generator, similar to transmitters used to broadcast radio shows, to heat the charged particles, or plasma.

The engine is being developed by the Ad Astra Rocket Company, which was founded in 2005 by plasma physicist and former space shuttle astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz.

As hot as the sun

VASIMR works something like a steam engine, with the first stage performing a duty analogous to boiling water to create steam. The radio frequency generator heats a gas of argon atoms until electrons “boil” off, creating plasma. This stage was tested for the first time on 2 July at Ad Astra’s headquarters in Webster, Texas.

via Ion engine could one day power 39-day trips to Mars – space – 22 July 2009 – New Scientist.

Strange paranormal photos, light beings, orb with a face

These are probably just someone goofing around with some image/video editing software, but interesting anyway:

Paul shot this video on July 24th. In slow motion there is a depiction of a face shaped orb. Paul has maintained this apparition occurs….this is the first time he was able to capture it on video. … – naturalpl

Looks like someone  blended a face photo into a cloud photo. The associated video shows stills, zooms and a cursor within the video all indicating image manipulation.

Ana Luisa Cid

Ongamira is a valley located 25 kilometers distant from Capilla del Monte, Argentina. It is renowned for its caves and abundant vegetation.

It is also a place of interest to scholars of the paranormal, who claim that “dimensional doorways” exist in the area and that UFOs and luminous beings have been seen there on repeated occasions. And it was precisely here in Ongamira that this photo was taken, sent to me by Pablo Dessy, who says it was given to him by a friend who lives in the region.

In fact, we know very little about this photo. We do not know the date on which it was taken, or the name of the photographer who — supposedly — pointed his camera toward the cave and was not aware of the phenomenon at the time.

According to Pablo, a male and female entity are visible.

Technical data: According to the EXIF file, the photo was modified on 23 August 2008 with Photoshop. We do not know if this modification is a sign of digital trickery or if the software in question was employed for other purposes (clipping, enlarging, enhancing, etc.)

For this reason, the question remains open: are there beings of light in Ongamira?

Interesting effect.

Hubble Snaps Sharpest Image Yet of Jupiter Impact

Jupiter’s new scar has been photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. The huge mark was left when a comet or asteroid plowed into the planet.

The image above is the sharpest yet of the Pacific Ocean–sized impact site, which was first observed by world’s luckiest amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley. The new shot was taken by Hubble’s newest toy, the Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed during the most-recent servicing mission to the telescope in May.

The collision is believed to be the largest since Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 busted into 21 pieces and slammed into the solar system’s largest planet 15 years ago.

If whatever hit Jupiter — and astronomers might never know what it was — had instead struck Earth, it would have caused catastrophic damage to human civilization.

via Hubble Snaps Sharpest Image Yet of Jupiter Impact | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Russian Navy declassifies its UFO encounter records

The Russian Navy reports that UFOs are technologically surpass anything humanity ever built, reports the Svobodnaya Pressa news website.The records dating back to soviet times were compiled by a special navy group collecting reports of unexplained incidents delivered by submarines and military ships. The group was headed by deputy Navy commander Admiral Nikolay Smirnov, and the documents reveal numerous cases of possible UFO encounters, the website says.Vladimir Azhazha, former navy officer and a famous Russian UFO researcher, says the materials are of great value.“Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more – with lakes. So UFOs tend to stick to the water,” he said.On one occasion a nuclear submarine, which was on a combat mission in the Pacific Ocean, detected six unknown objects. After the crew failed to leave behind their pursuers by maneuvering, the captain ordered to surface. The objects followed suit, took to the air, and flew away.“On several occasions the instruments gave reading of material objects moving at incredible speed. Calculations showed speeds of about 230 knots, of 400 kph. Speeding so fast is a challenge even on the surface. But water resistance is much higher. It was like the objects defied the laws of physics. There’s only one explanation: the creatures who built them far surpass us in development,” Beketov said.

- via paranormaldailynews

Cured of the Rings

Some 20 million people in the United States have tinnitus, a chronic ringing or whooshing in the ears, and about 4 million of them experience such severe symptoms that “they wonder if they’re going insane,” says Martin Lenhardt, a biomedical engineer at Virginia Commonwealth University. The cause of the ailment is, in essence, a biological computer error. So Lenhardt has found a way to reprogram the brain and make the maddening sounds go away, temporarily at least.

When people lose the ability to hear very high frequencies— whether due to aging, disease, or exposure to loud noise— the neurons in the brain that used to process those sounds start to respond to a lower frequency instead. At the same time, those neurons may also increase how often they fire without any input, leading to phantom ringing. Lenhardt and his colleagues at the Martha Entenmann Tinnitus Research Center in New York City are reprogramming the neurons to proper functioning by exposing them to high-frequency vibrations.

This audio spectrum shows, in yellow, the frequency range of the vibrations used to treat tinnitus. Courtesy of Martin Lenhardt.

The researchers place a quarter-sized piezoelectric disk behind the patients’ ears, which sends the vibrations through the skin and into the temporal bone of the skull. Although these motions bypass the middle ear, they stimulate the neurons, which respond if they were once again being exposed to high-pitch sounds coming from the ear itself. Lenhardt uses music that has been modulated to high frequencies to guide the action of the disk, so that its vibrations have a pattern. “We wanted a rhythmic source, that wasn’t too boring,” says Lenhardt. Pulsed sound is also a better neural stimulator than steady sound, he says: “We think it has to pulse a little bit to be effective, or you’re not paying attention to it.” After receiving two months of half-hour-long vibration sessions, conducted twice a week, most of the patients in a small pilot study said their tinnitus had vanished. Symptoms returned within two weeks, however, so Lenhardt expects that repeated sonic treatments will be needed to keep the neurons properly programmed. “But if you can do it in a non-invasive way and only need a little bit of time, this could be a real breakthrough for people who just go crazy with tinnitus,” he says. His group has just received FDA approval for the device, called UltraQuiet.

Lenhardt and his colleagues are also working on Tactaid, a complimentary treatment that could relieve tinnitus symptoms immediately but that wouldn’t provide long-term relief. Tactaid uses a very low-frequency vibrating disk to stimulate the muscles around the ear. In about a third of tinnitus cases, the symptoms seem to be influenced by a link between the brain’s auditory system and the somatosensory system, which is involved in movement and automatic reactions. This connection makes a certain amount of sense: The phantom ringing of tinnitus is much like a type of phantom limb phenomenon, whereby a person can feel that his arm is moving, even when it is not, if the correct part of the brain is stimulated. Hearing is connected to the somatosensory system because some muscular movement occurs when we hear — something that is more obvious in animals such as cats and dogs that can swivel their ears as they listen.

Tactaid’s low-frequency vibrations stimulate the muscles around the ear, creating a signal that travels through the somatosensory pathways. Some of these pathways, in turn, connect to the cochlear nucleus, the part of the brainstem that is first to process sounds. The vibratory signal inhibits the cochlear nucleus, causing a cascade of neural reactions further up in the brain, which ultimately blocks the nerve impulses that people hear as phantom ringing. But as soon as the muscle vibration stops, the tinnitus comes back. Thus Tactaid is a bit like an aspirin for tinnitus, giving spot relief when the ringing is severe but not addressing the cause of the pain. The hope, Lenhardt says, is that Tactaid and UltraQuiet will address both halves of the problem, removing the symptoms right away while reprogramming the neurons in a way that will permanently cancel the ringing.

- via freerepublic

Sounds like I could make my own and experiment with it. Cool.

UltraQuiet therapy provides patterned auditory stimulation in the high audio and ultrasonic ranges (10-20 kHz) using a bone conduction transducer. UltraQuiet therapy differs from conventional tinnitus masking in that none of the sound overlaps the tinnitus frequencies. UltraQuiet Therapy has been shown to be more effective than speech-range masking for tinnitus masking and producing RI.

In UltraQuiet therapy, the auditory stimulation is music that has been processed and shifted in pitch. The processed music is presented through a bone conduction transducer at a low level – approximately 6 dB above threshold – for periods of 30 minutes to 1 hour twice weekly. – link

What became of UltraQuiet? I found this tag line after much searching: “A novel tinnitus technology from Sound Technique Systems, LLC.”

Tinnitus is a byproduct of neural reprogramming. Pulsed, patterned, high frequency stimulation allows a reconversion of high frequency neurons “asleep” after peripheral loss. Reconversion occurs throughout the neural axis. The high frequency “awakening” is both pleasant and effective in treating the brain pathways that maintain tinnitus. Those with hearing loss can re-experience high fidelity, high pitched music and speech … Sound Technique Systems, LLC is a newly created company formed in 1998 to search for and develop intellectual properties and dedicated to the discovery of novel applications of products that involve the use of sound waves and their interaction with humans and animals …

Dr Martin L. Lenhardt
24 years Prof. Otolaryngology
6 years Prof. Biomedical Engineering
3 years V.P. Sound Technique Systems

Stem-Cell Breakthrough

It’s a chilling thought. In the coming year, 130,000 people worldwide will suffer spinal-cord injuries—in a car crash, perhaps, or a fall. More than 90 percent of them will endure at least partial paralysis. There is no cure. But after a decade of hype and controversy over research on embryonic stem cells—cells that could, among other things, potentially repair injured spinal cords—the world’s first clinical trial is about to begin. As early as this month, the first of 10 newly injured Americans, paralyzed from the waist down, will become participants in a study to assess the safety of a conservative, low-dose treatment. If all goes well, researchers will have taken a promising step toward a goal that once would have been considered a miracle—to help the lame walk. The trial signals a new energy permeating the field of stem-cell research. More than 3,000 scientists recently met in Barcelona for the annual conference of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, compared with just 600 researchers five years ago. Money from major pharmaceutical companies is following the advances. Former U.S. vice president Al Gore, now a partner in the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has thrown his weight behind the research. In April, the firm joined with Highland Capital Partners to invest $20 million in iZumi Bio (now iPierian), a startup firm working on stem-cell therapies. Despite the considerable hype surrounding stem cells in recent years, the possibilities now appear to be broader than most people realize. In addition to helping replace damaged cells in patients with diseases like diabetes or Parkinson’s, stem cells have the potential to change how we develop drugs and unravel the biology of disease. They may even be used one day to create replacement organs. “There’s been a massive injection of optimism into the field,” says stem-cell biologist Alan Trounson, president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. “It’s remarkable how fast it’s progressing.”

via – Newsweek

Exciting! It would be great if I could eventually re-grow my auditory nerve and stop hearing this constant loud high-pitched hiss.