Credit score can also describe health status

It appears the same behaviors that ruin credit ruin health too. Credit: © Ivelin Radkov / Fotolia

A credit score doesn't just reduce a person's entire financial history down to a single number and somehow predict their credit-worthiness.

It might also be saying something about a person's health status, too, according to a new analysis from a long-term study of the physical and mental health of more than 1,000 New Zealanders who have been monitored continuously from birth to age 38.

The latest paper from the study, appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found a strong relationship between low credit scores and poor cardiovascular health.

This doesn't mean that poor financial management hurts your health, post-doctoral researcher Salomon Israel of Duke University is quick to point out. It's that the sort of personal attributes that can lead to a poor credit score can also contribute to poor health.

This and other studies from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study in New Zealand have found that self-control, planning ahead and perseverance are attributes that predict both better financial status and better health.

"What it comes down to is that people who don't take care of their money don't take care of their health," said study leader Terrie Moffitt, who is the Nannerl O. Keohane university professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke. She said this study confirms what the insurance and financial industries may already understand.

Backtracking into the data on these study participants, the researchers found that about 20% of the relationship between credit scores and heart health was accounted for by the attitudes, behaviors and competencies displayed by the study members when they were younger than age 10.

"We're showing that these things take root early in life," Israel said.

Harvard economist David Laibson, who was not involved in the research, said the study "fundamentally transforms our understanding of the psychological factors that connect our health and wealth."

Lamar Pierce, an associate professor of organization & strategy at Washington University in St. Louis, agreed. "This study is important because it identifies common cognitive foundations long before financial and physical health problems emerge," said Pierce, who was not involved in this study. "It provides hope that early life intervention can impede the development of life-long patterns of illness and financial struggle."

Using a standard measure called the Framingham cardiovascular risk score, the Duke researchers estimated the "heart age" of their participants, based on blood pressure, cholesterol levels, blood sugar and smoking habits. At age 38, the participants' Framingham "heart ages" ranged from 22 to 85 years. Participants with higher credit scores had younger "heart ages." The components of the Dunedin study's human capital measure -- educational attainment, cognitive ability and self-control -- each predicted higher credit scores and younger heart age.

The idea of checking credit scores against the detailed personal data in the Dunedin study came from a conversation Moffitt had with her seatmate on a plane about a decade ago. When she told her travelling companion from the life insurance industry that she studied self-control and life outcomes, he said, "We do that too, but we use credit scores."

"The thing that's so compelling about credit scores is that they're both predictive and retrospective," said co-author Avshalom Caspi, the Edward M. Arnett professor of psychology and neuroscience, psychiatry & behavioral sciences at Duke. "They offer a window on the future, but also a window on the past."

In recent years, credit scores have been used for pre-employment screening and many other functions beyond their original intent, Israel said. This study seems to bear out their usefulness as a proxy for a person's reliability and steadfastness, and in turn how healthy they may be.

"Our findings suggest that life insurance companies that acquire an applicant's credit score are also indirectly acquiring information about that applicant's educational attainment, intelligence and personality, right back to childhood," the authors wrote.

The link might work the other way as well. In less developed countries where credit scores aren't available, a Harvard team has been experimenting with using a 40-minute personality quiz to assess candidates' credit-worthiness for microloans.

This research was supported by the New Zealand Health Research Council, US National Institute on Aging (AG032282, T32-AG000029), the UK Medical Research Council (MR/K00381X) the Jacobs Foundation and the Yad Hanadiv Rothschild Foundation.

Source: Duke University

Up to 80 million bacteria sealed with a kiss

Couple about to kiss (stock image). As many as 80 million bacteria are transferred during a 10 second kiss, according to research published in the open access journal Microbiome.

As many as 80 million bacteria are transferred during a 10 second kiss, according to research published in the open access journal Microbiome. The study also found that partners who kiss each other at least nine times a day share similar communities of oral bacteria.

The ecosystem of more than 100 trillion microorganisms that live in our bodies -- the microbiome -- is essential for the digestion of food, synthesizing nutrients, and preventing disease. It is shaped by genetics, diet, and age, but also the individuals with whom we interact. With the mouth playing host to more than 700 varieties of bacteria, the oral microbiota also appear to be influenced by those closest to us.

Researchers from Micropia and TNO in the Netherlands studied 21 couples, asking them to fill out questionnaires on their kissing behaviour including their average intimate kiss frequency. They then took swab samples to investigate the composition of their oral microbiota on the tongue and in their saliva.

The results showed that when couples intimately kiss at relatively high frequencies their salivary microbiota become similar. On average it was found that at least nine intimate kisses per day led to couples having significantly shared salivary microbiota.

Lead author Remco Kort, from TNO's Microbiology and Systems Biology department and adviser to the Micropia museum of microbes, said: "Intimate kissing involving full tongue contact and saliva exchange appears to be a courtship behavior unique to humans and is common in over 90% of known cultures. Interestingly, the current explanations for the function of intimate kissing in humans include an important role for the microbiota present in the oral cavity, although to our knowledge, the exact effects of intimate kissing on the oral microbiota have never been studied. We wanted to find out the extent to which partners share their oral microbiota, and it turns out, the more a couple kiss, the more similar they are."

In a controlled kissing experiment to quantify the transfer of bacteria, a member of each of the couples had a probiotic drink containing specific varieties of bacteria including Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria. After an intimate kiss, the researchers found that the quantity of probiotic bacteria in the receiver's saliva rose threefold, and calculated that in total 80 million bacteria would have been transferred during a 10 second kiss.

The study also suggests an important role for other mechanisms that select oral microbiota, resulting from a shared lifestyle, dietary and personal care habits, and this is especially the case for microbiota on the tongue. The researchers found that while tongue microbiota were more similar among partners than unrelated individuals, their similarity did not change with more frequent kissing, in contrast to the findings on the saliva microbiota.

Commenting on the kissing questionnaire results, the researchers say that an interesting but separate finding was that 74% of the men reported higher intimate kiss frequencies than the women of the same couple. This resulted in a reported average of ten kisses per day from the males, twice that of the female reported average of five per day.

To calculate the number of bacteria transferred in a kiss, the authors relied on average transfer values and a number of assumptions related to bacterial transfer, the kiss contact surface, and the value for average saliva volume.

Source: BioMed Central

Why 'I'm so happy I could cry' makes sense

Individuals who express negative reactions to positive news were able to moderate intense emotions more quickly, scientists found. They also found people who are most likely to cry at their child's graduation are most likely to want to pinch a cute baby's cheeks. Credit: © michaeljung / Fotolia

The phrase "tears of joy" never made much sense to Yale psychologist Oriana Aragon. But after conducting a series of studies of such seemingly incongruous expressions, she now understands better why people cry when they are happy.

"People may be restoring emotional equilibrium with these expressions," said Aragon, lead author of work to be published in the journal Psychological Science. "They seem to take place when people are overwhelmed with strong positive emotions, and people who do this seem to recover better from those strong emotions."

There are many examples of responding to a positive experience with a negative emotion. A crying spouse is reunited with a soldier returning from war. Teen girls scream at a Justin Bieber concert and so do soccer players as they score a winning goal. The baseball player who hits a winning home run is pounded at home plate by teammates. And when introduced to babies "too cute for words," some can't resist pinching their cheeks.

"I was surprised no one ever asked why that is," she said.

Aragon and her colleagues at Yale ran subjects through some of these scenarios and measured their responses to cute babies or happy reunions. They found that individuals who express negative reactions to positive news were able to moderate intense emotions more quickly. They also found people who are most likely to cry at their child's graduation are most likely to want to pinch a cute baby's cheeks.

There is also some evidence that strong negative feelings may provoke positive expressions; for example nervous laughter appears when people are confronted with a difficult or frightening situations, and smiles have been found by other psychologists to occur during extreme sadness.

These new discoveries begin to explain common things that many people do but don't even understand themselves, Aragon said.

"These insights advance our understanding of how people express and control their emotions, which is importantly related to mental and physical health, the quality of relationships with others, and even how well people work together," she said.

Source: Yale University

Playing action video games can boost learning, study finds

A new study shows for the first time that playing action video games improves not just the skills taught in the game, but learning capabilities more generally.

A new study shows for the first time that playing action video games improves not just the skills taught in the game, but learning capabilities more generally.

"Prior research by our group and others has shown that action gamers excel at many tasks. In this new study, we show they excel because they are better learners," explained Daphne Bavelier, a research professor in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. "And they become better learners," she said, "by playing the fast-paced action games."

According to Bavelier, who also holds a joint appointment at the University of Geneva, our brains keep predicting what will come next -- whether when listening to a conversation, driving, or even preforming surgery. "In order to sharpen its prediction skills, our brains constantly build models, or 'templates,' of the world," she explained. "The better the template, the better the performance. And now we know playing action video game actually fosters better templates."

Action Players vs. Non-Action Players

In the current study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bavelier and her team first used a pattern discrimination task to compare action video game players' visual performance with that of individuals who do not play action video games.
The action-gamers outperformed the non-action gamers. The key to the action-gamers success, the researchers found, was that their brains used a better template for the task at 
hand.

Video Training

Then, the team conducted another experiment to determine if habitual players of fast-paced, action-rich video games may be endowed with better templates independently of their game play, or if the action game play lead them to have better templates.

Individuals with little video game experience were recruited, and as part of the experiment, they were asked to play video games for 50 hours over the course of nine weeks. One group played action video games, e.g., Call of Duty. The second group played 50 hours of non-action video games, such as The Sims.

The trainees were tested on a pattern discrimination task before and after the video game "training." The test showed that the action video games players improved their templates, compared to the control group who played the non-action video games. The authors then turned to neural modeling to investigate how action video games may foster better templates.

Measuring Learning

When the researchers gave action gamers a perceptual learning task, the team found that the action video game players were able to build and fine tune templates quicker than non-action game control participants. And they did so on the fly as they engaged in the task.
Being a better learner means developing the right templates faster and thus better performance. And playing action video games, the research team found boosts that process.
"When they began the perceptual learning task, action video gamers were indistinguishable from non-action gamers; they didn't come to the task with a better template," said Bavelier. "Instead, they developed better templates for the task, much, much faster showing an accelerated learning curve."

The researchers also found that the action gamers' improved performance is a lasting effect. When tested several months to a year later, the action-trained participants still outperformed the other participants, suggesting that they retained their ability to build better templates.

Bavelier's team is currently investigating which characteristics in action video games are key to boost players' learning. "Games other than action video games may be able to have the same effect," she said. "They may need to be fast paced, and require the player to divide his or her attention, and make predictions at different time scales."

Vikranth R. Bejjanki of the University of Rochester and Princeton University, and Ruyuan Zhang of the University of Rochester are co-lead authors of the study. In addition to Bavelier and the lead authors, researchers from the University of Geneva, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Ohio State University also contributed to the study.

The Office of Naval Research, the Swiss National Foundation, The Human Frontier Science Program, and the National Eye Institute supported the research.

Source: University of Rochester

Body weight heavily influenced by gut microbes: Genes shape body weight by affecting gut microbes

Body sizes (stock image). New research shows that our genetic makeup influences whether we are fat or thin by shaping which types of microbes thrive in our body. Credit: © olly / Fotolia

Our genetic makeup influences whether we are fat or thin by shaping which types of microbes thrive in our body, according to a study by researchers at King's College London and Cornell University.

By studying pairs of twins at King's Department of Twin Research, researchers identified a specific, little known bacterial family that is highly heritable and more common in individuals with low body weight. This microbe also protected against weight gain when transplanted into mice.

The results, published today in the journal Cell, could pave the way for personalised probiotic therapies that are optimised to reduce the risk of obesity-related diseases based on an individual's genetic make-up.

Previous research has linked both genetic variation and the composition of gut microbes to metabolic disease and obesity. Despite these shared effects, the relationship between human genetic variation and the diversity of gut microbes was presumed to be negligible.

In the study, funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers sequenced the genes of microbes found in more than 1,000 fecal samples from 416 pairs of twins. The abundances of specific types of microbes were found to be more similar in identical twins, who share 100 per cent of their genes, than in non-identical twins, who share on average only half of the genes that vary between people. These findings demonstrate that genes influence the composition of gut microbes.

The type of bacteria whose abundance was most heavily influenced by host genetics was a recently identified family called 'Christensenellaceae'. Members of this health-promoting bacterial family were more abundant in individuals with a low body weight than in obese individuals. Moreover, mice that were treated with this microbe gained less weight than untreated mice, suggesting that increasing the amounts of this microbe may help to prevent or reduce obesity.

Professor Tim Spector, Head of the Department of Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology at King's College London, said: 'Our findings show that specific groups of microbes living in our gut could be protective against obesity -- and that their abundance is influenced by our genes. The human microbiome represents an exciting new target for dietary changes and treatments aimed at combating obesity.

'Twins have been incredibly valuable in uncovering these links -- but we now want to promote the use of microbiome testing more widely in the UK through the British Gut Project. This is a crowd-sourcing experiment that allows anyone with an interest in their diet and health to have their personal microbes tested genetically using a simple postal kit and a small donation via our website (www.britishgut.org). We want thousands to join up so we can continue to make major discoveries about the links between our gut and our health.'

Ruth Ley, Associate Professor at Cornell University in the United States, said: 'Up until now, variation in the abundances of gut microbes has been explained by diet, the environment, lifestyle, and health. This is the first study to firmly establish that certain types of gut microbes are heritable -- that their variation across a population is in part due to host genotype variation, not just environmental influences. These results will also help us find new predictors of disease and aid prevention.'

Source: King's College London

Dance choreography improves girls' computational skills

Report lead author Shaundra Daily performs alongside her virtual character. Daily designs innovative new technologies that bring together sensors and machine learning with theories of human learning. Credit: Clemson University

Clemson researchers find that blending movement and computer programming supports girls in building computational thinking skills, according to an ongoing study funded by the National Science Foundation and emerging technology report published in journal Technology, Knowledge and Learning.

Even with increasing demands for computationally savvy workers, there is a lack of representation among women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields (STEM), the researchers say.

"We want more diverse faces around the table, helping to come up with technological solutions to societal issues," said Shaundra Daily, lead author on the report and assistant professor of computing at Clemson. "So we're working with girls to create more pathways to support their participation."

Virtual Environment Interactions (VEnvI) is software and curriculum for blending movement and programming, which offers a novel and embodied strategy of engaging fifth- and sixth-grade girls in computational thinking.

"We want to understand how body syntonicity might enable young learners to bootstrap their intuitive knowledge in order to program a three-dimensional character to perform movements," said Alison Leonard, report co-author and assistant professor of education at Clemson.

In the process of developing this emerging technology, the researchers conduct user-centered design research for creating choreography and the social context for a virtual character through which girls can be introduced to alternative applications in computing.

"We adopt the view that computational thinking is a set of concepts, practices and perspectives that draw upon the world of computing and applicable in many STEM fields," Daily said.

Students met with instructors and learned basic curriculum involving the elements of dance, choreography and Alice, an existing educational software that teaches students computer programming in a three-dimensional environment.

The researchers utilize movement choreography as both an engaging and a parallel context for introducing computational thinking. Compositional strategies in the choreographic process of ordering and reordering movement sequences also mirror computational practices of reusing and remixing.

"Executing one bit of code or movement one after the other exists in both programming and choreography. Likewise, loops or repeating a set of steps, also occur in both contexts," Leonard said.

The students moved and created pieces for their virtual characters to perform, bringing about connections between computational thinking and what their bodies are doing.

The findings indicate the active presentation of concepts and future scalability of their virtual environment VEnvI that will add to the rich landscape of emerging technologies geared toward more inclusive strategies to engage girls in computational thinking.

The researchers are designing the first control algorithm that links concepts from computational thinking to animation algorithms, thus creating and evaluating new animation algorithms working to ensure the quality of the resulting choreography.

This emerging technology has the potential to widen the scope of current technologies that seek to cultivate computational thinking for diverse designers, users and audiences, according to the researchers.

Source: Clemson University

Lost memories might be able to be restored, suggests research into marine snail

New UCLA research indicates that lost memories can be restored. The findings offer some hope for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

New UCLA research indicates that lost memories can be restored. The findings offer some hope for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

For decades, most neuroscientists have believed that memories are stored at the synapses -- the connections between brain cells, or neurons -- which are destroyed by Alzheimer's disease. The new study provides evidence contradicting the idea that long-term memory is stored at synapses.

"Long-term memory is not stored at the synapse," said David Glanzman, a senior author of the study, and a UCLA professor of integrative biology and physiology and of neurobiology. 

"That's a radical idea, but that's where the evidence leads. The nervous system appears to be able to regenerate lost synaptic connections. If you can restore the synaptic connections, the memory will come back. It won't be easy, but I believe it's possible."

The findings were published recently in eLife.

Glanzman's research team studies a type of marine snail called Aplysia to understand the animal's learning and memory. The Aplysia displays a defensive response to protect its gill from potential harm, and the researchers are especially interested in its withdrawal reflex and the sensory and motor neurons that produce it.

They enhanced the snail's withdrawal reflex by giving it several mild electrical shocks on its tail. The enhancement lasts for days after a series of electrical shocks, which indicates the snail's long-term memory. Glanzman explained that the shock causes the hormone serotonin to be released in the snail's central nervous system.

Long-term memory is a function of the growth of new synaptic connections caused by the serotonin, said Glanzman, a member of UCLA's Brain Research Institute. As long-term memories are formed, the brain creates new proteins that are involved in making new synapses. If that process is disrupted -- for example by a concussion or other injury -- the proteins may not be synthesized and long-term memories cannot form. (This is why people cannot remember what happened moments before a concussion.)

"If you train an animal on a task, inhibit its ability to produce proteins immediately after training, and then test it 24 hours later, the animal doesn't remember the training," 

Glanzman said. "However, if you train an animal, wait 24 hours, and then inject a protein synthesis inhibitor in its brain, the animal shows perfectly good memory 24 hours later. In other words, once memories are formed, if you temporarily disrupt protein synthesis, it doesn't affect long-term memory. That's true in the Aplysia and in human's brains." (This explains why people's older memories typically survive following a concussion.)

Glanzman's team found the same mechanism held true when studying the snail's neurons in a Petri dish. The researchers placed the sensory and motor neurons that mediate the snail's withdrawal reflex in a Petri dish, where the neurons re-formed the synaptic connections that existed when the neurons were inside the snail's body. When serotonin was added to the dish, new synaptic connections formed between the sensory and motor neurons. But if the addition of serotonin was immediately followed by the addition of a substance that inhibits protein synthesis, the new synaptic growth was blocked; long-term memory could not be formed.

The researchers also wanted to understand whether synapses disappeared when memories did. To find out, they counted the number of synapses in the dish and then, 24 hours later, added a protein synthesis inhibitor. One day later, they re-counted the synapses.

What they found was that new synapses had grown and the synaptic connections between the neurons had been strengthened; late treatment with the protein synthesis inhibitor did not disrupt the long-term memory. The phenomenon is extremely similar to what happens in the snail's nervous system during this type of simple learning, Glanzman said.

Next, the scientists added serotonin to a Petri dish containing a sensory neuron and motor neuron, waited 24 hours, and then added another brief pulse of serotonin -- which served to remind the neurons of the original training -- and immediately afterward add the protein synthesis inhibitor. This time, they found that synaptic growth and memory were erased. When they re-counted the synapses, they found that the number had reset to the number before the training, Glanzman said. This suggests that the "reminder" pulse of serotonin triggered a new round of memory consolidation, and that inhibiting protein synthesis during this "reconsolidation" erased the memory in the neurons.

If the prevailing wisdom were true -- that memories are stored in the synapses -- the researchers should have found that the lost synapses were the same ones that had grown in response to the serotonin. But that's not what happened: Instead, they found that some of the new synapses were still present and some were gone, and that some of the original ones were gone, too.

Glanzman said there was no obvious pattern to which synapses stayed and which disappeared, which implied that memory is not stored in synapses.

When the scientists repeated the experiment in the snail, and then gave the animal a modest number of tail shocks -- which do not produce long-term memory in a naive snail -- the memory they thought had been completely erased returned. This implies that synaptic connections that were lost were apparently restored.

"That suggests that the memory is not in the synapses but somewhere else," Glanzman said. 

"We think it's in the nucleus of the neurons. We haven't proved that, though."

Glanzman said the research could have significant implications for people with Alzheimer's disease. Specifically, just because the disease is known to destroy synapses in the brain doesn't mean that memories are destroyed.

"As long as the neurons are still alive, the memory will still be there, which means you may be able to recover some of the lost memories in the early stages of Alzheimer's," he said.

Glanzman added that in the later stages of the disease, neurons die, which likely means that the memories cannot be recovered.

The cellular and molecular processes seem to be very similar between the marine snail and humans, even though the snail has approximately 20,000 neurons and humans have about 1 trillion. Neurons each have several thousand synapses.

Glanzman used to believe that traumatic memories could be erased but he has changed his mind. He now believes that, because memories are stored in the nucleus, it may be much more difficult to modify them. He will continue to study how the marine snail's memories are restored and how synapses re-grow.

Co-authors of the study include Shanping Chen, Diancai Cai and Kaycey Pearce, research associates in Glanzman's laboratory.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation.

Almost all the processes that are involved in memory in the snail also have been shown to be involved in memory in the brains of mammals, Glanzman said.

In a 1997 study published in the journal Science, Glanzman and colleagues identified a cellular mechanism in the Aplysia that plays an important role in learning and memory. A protein called N-methyl D-aspartate, or NMDA, receptor enhances the strength of synaptic connections in the nervous system and plays a vital role in memory and in certain kinds of learning in the mammalian brain as well. Glanzman's demonstration that the NMDA receptor plays a critical role in learning in a simple animal like the marine snail was entirely unexpected at the time.

Source: University of California, Los Angeles

Weigh-in once a week or you'll gain weight

The researchers found that weight loss was related to how often individuals weighed themselves. Credit: Image courtesy of Cornell Food & Brand Lab

Stepping on the scale is common among dieters but how does the frequency of weigh-ins impact weight? A new study in PLOS ONE showed that the more frequently dieters weighed themselves the more weight they lost, and if participants went more than a week without weighing themselves, they gained weight.

The researchers analyzed 2,838 weight measurements (up to a years' worth of weigh-ins) from 40 overweight individuals (with a body mass index of 25 and over) who indicated that weight loss was a personal goal or concern. The researchers found that weight loss was related to how often individuals weighed themselves. "The more often you weigh yourself the more weight you lose," says to lead author Elina Helander from Tempere Univeristy of Technology in Finland. This observational study cannot prove causation -- it may be that less serious dieters weight themselves less or that dieters who stop losing weight stop weighting themselves. The average time that participants could go between weighting without gaining weight was 5.8 days or about a weekly weigh-in.

Previous Findings by the Research Team

Weigh yourself at least once a week if you wish to lose weight, and weighing yourself everyday may help you stay on track. A previous study by the same research team found that your weight naturally fluctuates throughout the week and that most people weigh the least on Wednesday. To summarize both studies Brian Wansink, PhD, Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and author of Slim by Design: Mind Eating Solutions for Everyday Life advises, "The bottom line is: If you want to lose weight, it's best to weigh yourself every day. But if you weigh yourself only once a week, do it on Wednesday because that will give you the most accurate reading."

Source: Cornell Food & Brand Lab

Bugs life: The nerve cells that make locusts ‘gang up’

Computer reconstruction of nerve cells in a desert locust that produce the neurochemical serotonin. The colors indicate each cell's response to the social stimuli that cause gregarious behavior. The green cells contain less serotonin after a life-time of crowding with other locusts. The blue cells contain more serotonin after a locust has seen and smelled other locusts for just one hour. The yellow cells increase their serotonin content within an hour of exposing a locust to any of the social stimuli that induce gregarious behavior. Credit: University of Leicester

A team of biologists has identified a set of nerve cells in desert locusts that bring about 'gang-like' gregarious behaviour when they are forced into a crowd.

Dr Swidbert Ott from the University of Leicester's Department of Biology, working with Dr Steve Rogers at the University of Sydney, Australia, has published a study that reveals how newly identified nerve cells in locusts produce the neurochemical serotonin to initiate changes in their behaviour and lifestyle.

The findings demonstrate the importance of individual history for understanding how brain chemicals control behaviour, which may apply more broadly to humans also.

Locusts are normally shy, solitary animals that actively avoid the company of other locusts. But when they are forced into contact with other locusts, they undergo a radical change in behaviour -- they enter a 'bolder' gregarious state where they are attracted to the company of other locusts. This is the critical first step towards the formation of the notorious locust swarms.

Dr Ott said: "Locusts only have a small number of nerve cells that can synthesise serotonin. Now we have found that of these, a very select few respond specifically when a locust is first forced to be with other locusts. Within an hour, they produce more serotonin.

"It is these few cells that we think are responsible for the transformation of a loner into a gang member. In the long run, however, many of the other serotonin-cells also change, albeit towards making less serotonin."

When a locust is first forced into contact with other locusts, a specific set of nerve cells that produce the neurochemical serotonin is responsible for reconfiguring its behaviour so that the previously solitary locust becomes a member of the gang, which is known as 'gregarious' behaviour.

An entirely different set of its serotonin-producing nerve cells is then affected by life in the group in the long run.

Dr Ott added: "The key to our success was to look in locusts that have just become gregarious and that had never met another locust until an hour earlier. If we had looked only in solitary locusts and in locusts that had a life-long history of living in crowds, we would have missed the nerve cells that are the key players in the transformation.

"There is an important lesson here for understanding the mechanisms that drive changes in social behaviour in general, both in locusts and in humans. We have shown how important it is to look at what happens when a new social behaviour is first set up, not just at the long-term outcome.

"Research in insects can give us deep insights into how brains work in general, including our own."

Studies have previously shown that the change from solitary to gregarious behaviour is caused by serotonin.

The new study, which was funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Royal Society, has identified the individual serotonin-producing nerve cells that are responsible for the switch from solitary to gregarious behaviour.

The scientists used a fluorescent stain that reveals the serotonin-producing nerve cells under the microscope. This allowed them to measure the amount of serotonin in individual nerve cells -- the brighter a nerve cell lights up, the more serotonin it contains. The newly identified cells were much brighter in locusts that had just been forcedly crowded with other locusts. Moreover, the same cells were also brighter in locusts that had their hind legs tickled by the researchers for an hour -- which is sufficient to make the locusts behave gregariously.

Serotonin has important roles in the brains of all animals that include the regulation of moods and social interactions.

In humans, there are strong links between changes in serotonin and mental disorders such as depression and anxiety.

Source: University of Leicester

Thumbs-up for mind-controlled robotic arm

This is an image showing one of four new hand movements from the 10D control of the robotic arm. Credit: Journal of Neural Engineering/IOP Publishing

A paralysed woman who controlled a robotic arm using just her thoughts has taken another step towards restoring her natural movements by controlling the arm with a range of complex hand movements.

Thanks to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, Jan Scheuermann, who has longstanding quadriplegia and has been taking part in the study for over two years, has gone from giving "high fives" to the "thumbs-up" after increasing the manoeuvrability of the robotic arm from seven dimensions (7D) to 10 dimensions (10D).

The extra dimensions come from four hand movements--finger abduction, a scoop, thumb extension and a pinch--and have enabled Jan to pick up, grasp and move a range of objects much more precisely than with the previous 7D control.

It is hoped that these latest results, which have been published today, 17 December, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Neural Engineering, can build on previous demonstrations and eventually allow robotic arms to restore natural arm and hand movements in people with upper limb paralysis.

Jan Scheuermann, 55, from Pittsburgh, PA had been paralysed from the neck down since 2003 due to a neurodegenerative condition. After her eligibility for a research study was confirmed in 2012, Jan underwent surgery to be fitted with two quarter-inch electrode grids, each fitted with 96 tiny contact points, in the regions of Jan's brain that were responsible for right arm and hand movements.

After the electrode grids in Jan's brain were connected to a computer, creating a brain-machine interface (BMI), the 96 individual contact points picked up pulses of electricity that were fired between the neurons in Jan's brain.

Computer algorithms were used to decode these firing signals and identify the patterns associated with a particular arm movement, such as raising the arm or turning the wrist.

By simply thinking of controlling her arm movements, Jan was then able to make the robotic arm reach out to objects, as well as move it in a number of directions and flex and rotate the wrist. It also enabled Jan to "high five" the researchers and feed herself dark chocolate.

Two years on from the initial results, the researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have now shown that Jan can successfully manoeuvre the robotic arm in a further four dimensions through a number of hand movements, allowing for more detailed interaction with objects.

The researchers used a virtual reality computer program to calibrate Jan's control over the robotic arm, and discovered that it is crucial to include virtual objects in this training period in order to allow reliable, real-time interaction with objects.

Co-author of the study Dr Jennifer Collinger said: "10D control allowed Jan to interact with objects in different ways, just as people use their hands to pick up objects depending on their shapes and what they intend to do with them. We hope to repeat this level of control with additional participants and to make the system more robust, so that people who might benefit from it will one day be able to use brain-machine interfaces in daily life.

"We also plan to study whether the incorporation of sensory feedback, such as the touch and feel of an object, can improve neuroprosthetic control."

Commenting on the latest results, Jan Scheuermann said: ""This has been a fantastic, thrilling, wild ride, and I am so glad I've done this."

"This study has enriched my life, given me new friends and co-workers, helped me contribute to research and taken my breath away. For the rest of my life, I will thank God every day for getting to be part of this team."

Source: Institute of Physics

When you lose weight, where does the fat go? Most of the mass is breathed out as carbon dioxide, study shows

Despite a worldwide obsession with diets and fitness regimes, many health professionals cannot correctly answer the question of where body fat goes when people lose weight.
Credit: © Lovrencg / Fotolia

Despite a worldwide obsession with diets and fitness regimes, many health professionals cannot correctly answer the question of where body fat goes when people lose weight, a UNSW Australia study shows.

The most common misconception among doctors, dieticians and personal trainers is that the missing mass has been converted into energy or heat.

"There is surprising ignorance and confusion about the metabolic process of weight loss," says Professor Andrew Brown, head of the UNSW School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences.

"The correct answer is that most of the mass is breathed out as carbon dioxide. It goes into thin air," says the study's lead author, Ruben Meerman, a physicist and Australian TV science presenter.

In their paper, published in the British Medical Journal today, the authors show that losing 10 kilograms of fat requires 29 kilograms of oxygen to be inhaled and that this metabolic process produces 28 kilograms of carbon dioxide and 11 kilograms of water.

Mr Meerman became interested in the biochemistry of weight loss through personal experience.

"I lost 15 kilograms in 2013 and simply wanted to know where those kilograms were going. After a self-directed, crash course in biochemistry, I stumbled onto this amazing result," he says.

"With a worldwide obesity crisis occurring, we should all know the answer to the simple question of where the fat goes. The fact that almost nobody could answer it took me by surprise, but it was only when I showed Andrew my calculations that we both realised how poorly this topic is being taught."

The authors met when Mr Meerman interviewed Professor Brown in a story about the science of weight loss for the Catalyst science program on ABC TV in March this year.

"Ruben's novel approach to the biochemistry of weight loss was to trace every atom in the fat being lost and, as far as I am aware, his results are completely new to the field," says Professor Brown.

"He has also exposed a completely unexpected black hole in the understanding of weight loss amongst the general public and health professionals alike."

If you follow the atoms in 10 kilograms of fat as they are 'lost', 8.4 of those kilograms are exhaled as carbon dioxide through the lungs. The remaining 1.6 kilograms becomes water, which may be excreted in urine, faeces, sweat, breath, tears and other bodily fluids, the authors report.

"None of this is obvious to people because the carbon dioxide gas we exhale is invisible," says Mr Meerman.

More than 50 per cent of the 150 doctors, dieticians and personal trainers who were surveyed thought the fat was converted to energy or heat.

"This violates the Law of Conservation of Mass. We suspect this misconception is caused by the energy in/energy out mantra surrounding weight loss," says Mr Meerman.

Some respondents thought the metabolites of fat were excreted in faeces or converted to muscle.

"The misconceptions we have encountered reveal surprising unfamiliarity about basic aspects of how the human body works," the authors say.

One of the most frequently asked questions the authors have encountered is whether simply breathing more can cause weight loss. The answer is no. Breathing more than required by a person's metabolic rate leads to hyperventilation, which can result in dizziness, palpitations and loss of consciousness.

The second most frequently asked question is whether weight loss can cause global warming.

"This reveals troubling misconceptions about global warming which is caused by unlocking the ancient carbon atoms trapped underground in fossilised organisms. The carbon atoms human beings exhale are returning to the atmosphere after just a few months or years trapped in food that was made by a plant," says Mr Meerman, who also presents the science of climate change in high schools around Australia.

Mr Meerman and Professor Brown recommend that these basic concepts be included in secondary school curricula and university biochemistry courses to correct widespread misconceptions about weight loss among lay people and health professionals.

Source: University of New South Wales