Friday, November 21, 2003
Low self-esteem 'shrinks brain'
By Pallab Ghosh
BBC Science Correspondent
People with a low sense of self worth are more likely to suffer from memory loss as they get older, say researchers.
The study, presented at a conference at the Royal Society in London, also found that the brains of these people were more likely to shrink compared with those who have a high sense of self esteem.
Dr Sonia Lupien, of McGill University in Montreal surveyed 92 senior citizens over 15 years and studied their brain scans.
She found that the brains of those with low self-worth were up to a fifth smaller than those who felt good about themselves.
These people also performed worse in memory and learning tests.
Retraining
Dr Lupien believes that if those with a negative mind set were taught to change the way they think they could reverse their mental decline.
He said: "This atrophy of the brain that we thought was irreversible is reversible - some data on animals and some data on humans shows that that if you enrich the environment if you change some factors this brain structure can come back to normal levels"
Researchers are studying which psychological treatments work best.
According to Dr Felicia Huppert of Cambridge University - the early signs are that fairly simple techniques can have an enormous impact:
"There are interventions which talk about focusing on positive things in everyday life and savouring good moments even at times when life is difficult little tiny things may give you pleasure so there are skills involved in how to derive pleasure from the ordinary things in life".
'Reversed'
According to Dr Lupien, the fear of memory loss may be a self fulfilling prophesy as anxiety leads to negative thinking which leads to mental impairment.
"If you always think it's normal to lose something, then you will never work to increase it because doctors have always told you that. I'm saying that it is not normal.
"So this might impact positvely on the public by saying that its possible to impact on increasing your memory performance and by saying that it is normal to have a fulfilling life, we may be able to increase self esteem among the general public - and prevent a lot of these deficits related to age".
By Pallab Ghosh
BBC Science Correspondent
People with a low sense of self worth are more likely to suffer from memory loss as they get older, say researchers.
The study, presented at a conference at the Royal Society in London, also found that the brains of these people were more likely to shrink compared with those who have a high sense of self esteem.
Dr Sonia Lupien, of McGill University in Montreal surveyed 92 senior citizens over 15 years and studied their brain scans.
She found that the brains of those with low self-worth were up to a fifth smaller than those who felt good about themselves.
These people also performed worse in memory and learning tests.
Retraining
Dr Lupien believes that if those with a negative mind set were taught to change the way they think they could reverse their mental decline.
He said: "This atrophy of the brain that we thought was irreversible is reversible - some data on animals and some data on humans shows that that if you enrich the environment if you change some factors this brain structure can come back to normal levels"
Researchers are studying which psychological treatments work best.
According to Dr Felicia Huppert of Cambridge University - the early signs are that fairly simple techniques can have an enormous impact:
"There are interventions which talk about focusing on positive things in everyday life and savouring good moments even at times when life is difficult little tiny things may give you pleasure so there are skills involved in how to derive pleasure from the ordinary things in life".
'Reversed'
According to Dr Lupien, the fear of memory loss may be a self fulfilling prophesy as anxiety leads to negative thinking which leads to mental impairment.
"If you always think it's normal to lose something, then you will never work to increase it because doctors have always told you that. I'm saying that it is not normal.
"So this might impact positvely on the public by saying that its possible to impact on increasing your memory performance and by saying that it is normal to have a fulfilling life, we may be able to increase self esteem among the general public - and prevent a lot of these deficits related to age".
ADHD is linked to brain abnormalities (BBC)
Last Updated: Friday, 21 November, 2003, 01:31 GMT
Scientists have found differences in the brains of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
University of California Los Angeles researchers found some areas of the brains of the children were smaller, and but others had more grey matter.
Other studies have suggested that ADHD is linked to abnormalities in areas of the brain which control attention.
But the latest study suggests there are also structural changes in areas which control impulsive behaviour.
This should give food for thought to those who view ADHD as a 21st century construct
Dr Mark Berelowitz
The researchers say they were able to combine the latest scanning technology with computer analysis to provide more detailed information about the differences in the brains of ADHD children.
ADHD is a serious behavioural disorder which experts estimate may affect up to 6% of children.
People with the condition have a poor attention span and tend to be impulsive and restless.
However, the underlying cause is still poorly understood.
Precise differences
The US researchers carried out scans on the brains of 27 children with ADHD, and 46 children with no signs of the disorder.
The ADHD children showed evidence of a reduction in the size two areas of the brain - one of each side - called the dorsal prefrontal cortices.
Similarly, there was evidence of a size reduction in the anterior temporal areas - also found on each side of the brain.
However, the scans also showed substantial increases in grey matter in large portions of the posterior temporal and inferior parietal cortices in children with ADHD.
Professor Bradley Peterson, of Columbia University, New York, who worked on the study, said the findings showed that abnormalities occurred not just in areas of the brain known to control attention, but also in regions which control impulsive behaviour.
"These findings may help us understand the sites of action of the medications used to treat ADHD, particularly stimulant medications.
"In conjunction with other imaging techniques, the findings may help us to develop new therapeutic agents given our knowledge of the cellular and neurochemical make-up of brain regions where we detected the greatest abnormalities."
Fuller picture
Dr Mark Berelowitz, a child and adolescent consultant psychiatrist at the Royal London Hospital, told BBC News Online the research helped give scientists a fuller picture of the physical causes of ADHD.
"This tells us more than we knew already about the parts of the brain that are affected by ADHD," he said.
"Children with ADHD have symptoms of over-activity, impulsivity and poor concentration, but previous scans have only highlighted differences in part of the brain related to one of these problem areas - attention.
"This suggested that we were either missing something in the brain, or we did not understanding the clinical problems sufficiently.
"Now the clinical condition and the brain imaging are beginning to join up and can explain one another."
Dr Berelowitz said that the study should also convince people who doubted that ADHD was a real clinical disorder.
"This should give food for thought to those who view ADHD as a 21st century construct."
However, he stressed that further studies were required to confirm the findings, and stressed that giving children with symptoms of ADHD brain scans would not be helpful at this stage.
Last Updated: Friday, 21 November, 2003, 01:31 GMT
Scientists have found differences in the brains of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
University of California Los Angeles researchers found some areas of the brains of the children were smaller, and but others had more grey matter.
Other studies have suggested that ADHD is linked to abnormalities in areas of the brain which control attention.
But the latest study suggests there are also structural changes in areas which control impulsive behaviour.
This should give food for thought to those who view ADHD as a 21st century construct
Dr Mark Berelowitz
The researchers say they were able to combine the latest scanning technology with computer analysis to provide more detailed information about the differences in the brains of ADHD children.
ADHD is a serious behavioural disorder which experts estimate may affect up to 6% of children.
People with the condition have a poor attention span and tend to be impulsive and restless.
However, the underlying cause is still poorly understood.
Precise differences
The US researchers carried out scans on the brains of 27 children with ADHD, and 46 children with no signs of the disorder.
The ADHD children showed evidence of a reduction in the size two areas of the brain - one of each side - called the dorsal prefrontal cortices.
Similarly, there was evidence of a size reduction in the anterior temporal areas - also found on each side of the brain.
However, the scans also showed substantial increases in grey matter in large portions of the posterior temporal and inferior parietal cortices in children with ADHD.
Professor Bradley Peterson, of Columbia University, New York, who worked on the study, said the findings showed that abnormalities occurred not just in areas of the brain known to control attention, but also in regions which control impulsive behaviour.
"These findings may help us understand the sites of action of the medications used to treat ADHD, particularly stimulant medications.
"In conjunction with other imaging techniques, the findings may help us to develop new therapeutic agents given our knowledge of the cellular and neurochemical make-up of brain regions where we detected the greatest abnormalities."
Fuller picture
Dr Mark Berelowitz, a child and adolescent consultant psychiatrist at the Royal London Hospital, told BBC News Online the research helped give scientists a fuller picture of the physical causes of ADHD.
"This tells us more than we knew already about the parts of the brain that are affected by ADHD," he said.
"Children with ADHD have symptoms of over-activity, impulsivity and poor concentration, but previous scans have only highlighted differences in part of the brain related to one of these problem areas - attention.
"This suggested that we were either missing something in the brain, or we did not understanding the clinical problems sufficiently.
"Now the clinical condition and the brain imaging are beginning to join up and can explain one another."
Dr Berelowitz said that the study should also convince people who doubted that ADHD was a real clinical disorder.
"This should give food for thought to those who view ADHD as a 21st century construct."
However, he stressed that further studies were required to confirm the findings, and stressed that giving children with symptoms of ADHD brain scans would not be helpful at this stage.
Thursday, November 20, 2003
Boost Your Brain Power (The Royal Society)
13 August 2003
Research undertaken by scientists at the University of Sydney and Macquarie University in Australia has shown that taking creatine, a compound found in muscle tissue, as a dietary supplement can give a significant boost to both working memory and general intelligence. The work, to be published in a forthcoming Proceedings B, a learned journal published by the Royal Society, monitored the effect of creatine supplementation on 45 young adult vegetarian subjects in a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment.
“The level of creatine supplementation chosen was 5g per day as this is a level that has previously been shown to increase brain creatine levels. This level is comparable to that taken to boost sports fitness,” explains Dr. Caroline Rae who led the research. ”Vegetarians or vegans were chosen for the study as carnivores and omnivores obtain a variable level of creatine depending on the amount and type of meat they eat - although to reach the level of supplementation in this experiment would involve eating around 2 kg of meat a day!”
Creatine power
Athletes and fitness fanatics have known that creatine supplementation can increase sports performance and the compound - a close relative of the amino acids - has also been trialed successfully in the treatment of neurological, neuromuscular and atherosclerotic disease. “We know that creatine plays a pivotal role in maintaining energy levels in the brain,” says Dr. Rae. “So it was a reasonable hypothesis that supplementing a diet with creatine could assist brain function.”
The experiment tested this hypothesis by giving the one group of subjects a creatine supplement and a second group a placebo for six weeks, followed by a six week period with no intake and a final six week period when the control and placebo group were swapped. Intelligence and memory were tested at four points: the start of the trial; the end of the first six week period; and the start and endpoint of the final six week period.
Testing tasks
The effect on working memory was tested using a backward digit span test in which the subject has to repeat in reverse order progressively longer verbal random number sequences. Intelligence was tested using Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices - a methodology commonly used for IQ assessment involving completion of pattern sequences. The test is a well validated measure of general ability with minimal dependence on cultural factors. “Both of these tests require fast brain power and the Raven’s task was conducted under time pressure,” says Dr. Rae. “The results were clear with both our experimental groups and in both test scenarios: creatine supplementation gave a significant measurable boost to brain power. For example in the digit span test subjects ability to remember long numbers, like telephone numbers, improved from a number length of about 7 to an average of 8.5 digits.”
The study shows that increased creatine intake results in improved brain function, similar to effects shown previously in muscle and heart. The results agree with previous observations showing that brain creatine levels correlate with improved recognition memory and reduce mental fatigue. “These findings underline a dynamic and significant role of brain energy capacity in influencing brain performance,” says Dr. Rae. “Increasing the energy available for computation increases the power of the brain and this is reflected directly in improved general ability.”
A short term boost?
Long term supplementation with creatine has yet to be declared truly safe as there have been reported effects on glucose homeostasis (the regulation of blood sugar levels) and potential subjects with a medical history of diabetes were excluded from the experiment. In addition taking the supplement can have some antisocial effects. “To be frank taking the supplement can make you a considerably less ‘fragrant’ person,” says Dr. Rae. “However creatine supplementation may be of use to those requiring boosted mental performance in the short term - for example university students.”
Editorial Notes
1. The paper: Oral creatine monohydrate supplementation improves brain performance: a double-blind, placebo controlled, cross-over trial by Caroline Rae, Alison Digney, Sally McEwan and Timothy Bates will be published on FirstCite on Wednesday 13 August 2003 and then as part of Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences – Vol. 270, No. 1529 on 22 October 2003.
2. Please acknowledge The Royal Society Proceedings B as the source for any item used.
3. Proceedings B is published by the Royal Society and publishes peer-reviewed research in all aspects of biology. Papers featured in this publication do not reflect the Society's views or policies.
4. The Royal Society is an independent academy promoting the natural and applied sciences. Founded in 1660, the Society has three roles, as the UK academy of science, as a learned Society and as a funding agency. It responds to individual demand with selection by merit not by field. The Society's aims are to:
· strengthen UK science by providing support to excellent individuals
· fund excellent research to push back the frontiers of knowledge
· attract and retain the best scientists
· ensure the UK engages with the best science around the world
· support science communication and education; and communicate and encourage dialogue with the public
· provide the best independent advice nationally and internationally
· promote scholarship and encourage research into the history of science
For further information contact:
Tim Reynolds
tel: or +44 (0) 7711 942974 or +32 (0)2640 3226,
email: tim.reynolds@absw.org.uk or timjreynolds@email.msn.com.
13 August 2003
Research undertaken by scientists at the University of Sydney and Macquarie University in Australia has shown that taking creatine, a compound found in muscle tissue, as a dietary supplement can give a significant boost to both working memory and general intelligence. The work, to be published in a forthcoming Proceedings B, a learned journal published by the Royal Society, monitored the effect of creatine supplementation on 45 young adult vegetarian subjects in a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment.
“The level of creatine supplementation chosen was 5g per day as this is a level that has previously been shown to increase brain creatine levels. This level is comparable to that taken to boost sports fitness,” explains Dr. Caroline Rae who led the research. ”Vegetarians or vegans were chosen for the study as carnivores and omnivores obtain a variable level of creatine depending on the amount and type of meat they eat - although to reach the level of supplementation in this experiment would involve eating around 2 kg of meat a day!”
Creatine power
Athletes and fitness fanatics have known that creatine supplementation can increase sports performance and the compound - a close relative of the amino acids - has also been trialed successfully in the treatment of neurological, neuromuscular and atherosclerotic disease. “We know that creatine plays a pivotal role in maintaining energy levels in the brain,” says Dr. Rae. “So it was a reasonable hypothesis that supplementing a diet with creatine could assist brain function.”
The experiment tested this hypothesis by giving the one group of subjects a creatine supplement and a second group a placebo for six weeks, followed by a six week period with no intake and a final six week period when the control and placebo group were swapped. Intelligence and memory were tested at four points: the start of the trial; the end of the first six week period; and the start and endpoint of the final six week period.
Testing tasks
The effect on working memory was tested using a backward digit span test in which the subject has to repeat in reverse order progressively longer verbal random number sequences. Intelligence was tested using Ravens Advanced Progressive Matrices - a methodology commonly used for IQ assessment involving completion of pattern sequences. The test is a well validated measure of general ability with minimal dependence on cultural factors. “Both of these tests require fast brain power and the Raven’s task was conducted under time pressure,” says Dr. Rae. “The results were clear with both our experimental groups and in both test scenarios: creatine supplementation gave a significant measurable boost to brain power. For example in the digit span test subjects ability to remember long numbers, like telephone numbers, improved from a number length of about 7 to an average of 8.5 digits.”
The study shows that increased creatine intake results in improved brain function, similar to effects shown previously in muscle and heart. The results agree with previous observations showing that brain creatine levels correlate with improved recognition memory and reduce mental fatigue. “These findings underline a dynamic and significant role of brain energy capacity in influencing brain performance,” says Dr. Rae. “Increasing the energy available for computation increases the power of the brain and this is reflected directly in improved general ability.”
A short term boost?
Long term supplementation with creatine has yet to be declared truly safe as there have been reported effects on glucose homeostasis (the regulation of blood sugar levels) and potential subjects with a medical history of diabetes were excluded from the experiment. In addition taking the supplement can have some antisocial effects. “To be frank taking the supplement can make you a considerably less ‘fragrant’ person,” says Dr. Rae. “However creatine supplementation may be of use to those requiring boosted mental performance in the short term - for example university students.”
Editorial Notes
1. The paper: Oral creatine monohydrate supplementation improves brain performance: a double-blind, placebo controlled, cross-over trial by Caroline Rae, Alison Digney, Sally McEwan and Timothy Bates will be published on FirstCite on Wednesday 13 August 2003 and then as part of Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences – Vol. 270, No. 1529 on 22 October 2003.
2. Please acknowledge The Royal Society Proceedings B as the source for any item used.
3. Proceedings B is published by the Royal Society and publishes peer-reviewed research in all aspects of biology. Papers featured in this publication do not reflect the Society's views or policies.
4. The Royal Society is an independent academy promoting the natural and applied sciences. Founded in 1660, the Society has three roles, as the UK academy of science, as a learned Society and as a funding agency. It responds to individual demand with selection by merit not by field. The Society's aims are to:
· strengthen UK science by providing support to excellent individuals
· fund excellent research to push back the frontiers of knowledge
· attract and retain the best scientists
· ensure the UK engages with the best science around the world
· support science communication and education; and communicate and encourage dialogue with the public
· provide the best independent advice nationally and internationally
· promote scholarship and encourage research into the history of science
For further information contact:
Tim Reynolds
tel: or +44 (0) 7711 942974 or +32 (0)2640 3226,
email: tim.reynolds@absw.org.uk or timjreynolds@email.msn.com.
Nanotechnology and Nanoscience
A Nanotube
©Alfred Pasieka / Science Photo Library In June 2003 the UK Government commissioned the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering to carry out an independent study of likely developments and whether nanotechnology raises or is likely to raise new ethical, health and safety or social issues which are not covered by current regulation. For more infomatiom please visit: www.nanotec.org.uk, a second progress report, was produced on 30 September 2003.
Nanoscience and nanotechnology involve studying and working with matter on an ultra-small scale. One nanometre is one-millionth of a millimetre and a single human hair is around 80,000 nanometres in width. Nanoscience and Nanotechnology encompass a range of techniques rather than a single discipline. The technology stretches across the whole spectrum of science, touching medicine, physics, engineering and chemistry.
Some believe that nanotechnology is the next big thing to emerge from science and engineering and that it could offer us tremendous benefits. Scientists, for example, are investigating whether nanotechnology could be used to improve the delivery of cancer fighting drugs and are investigating whether nanoscale carbon could be used to increase the speed and power of computer circuits.Others though have raised concerns about possible risks from the development of this small-scale science and whether regulators can control them properly with such rapid advances in understanding. Issues raised include concerns about the toxicity of nanoparticles and potential military applications of nanotechnology.
In June 2003, the UK government commissioned the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering to carry out an independent study to investigate the potential benefits and possible problems associated with nanotechnology.
Our study aims to identify the environmental, health and safety, ethical and societal implications, and uncertainties that may arise from the use of the technology both at present and in the future, and will assess how this emerging area of science should be regulated as it develops.
As part of the Nanotechnology and Nanoscience study the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering have produced a website which explains more about the study and how the it is being carried out.
For more information please visit: www.nanotec.org.uk
Press releases and Media Coverage
Press releases
Investigation launched into benefits and problems of nanotechnology - 11 June 2003
An artistic impression of what a nanobot might look like.
©Nanotechnology Coneyl Jay
Media coverage of study
Science inquiry asks if small is beautiful, Guardian, June 12 2003
Nanotech under the microscope, BBC Online June 12 2003
Links to other reports on nanotechnology
A number of other reports have been produced on nanotechnology recently. The Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineers are not responsible for the content of other websites and by offering links is not endorsing the content of these reports, but they may be useful for further information and research. Our study is ongoing and our position on the possible risks and potential benefits of nanotechnology will be expressed in our final report, which is due to be published in spring 2004.
UK Advisory Group on Nanotechnology
New Dimensions for Manufacturing – A UK Strategy for Nanotechnology
This report was compiled by the Government’s advisory group on naotechnology and was published in June 2002.
Joint Centre for Bioethics
‘Mind the gap’ – science and ethics in nanotechnology
This paper was published in February 2003 and explores ethical issues surrounding nanotechnology.
ETC Group
The Big Down: Atomtech – Technologies Converging at the Nanoscale
ETC is an NGO campaigning on nanotechnology issues and this report outlines their position.
A Nanotube
©Alfred Pasieka / Science Photo Library In June 2003 the UK Government commissioned the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering to carry out an independent study of likely developments and whether nanotechnology raises or is likely to raise new ethical, health and safety or social issues which are not covered by current regulation. For more infomatiom please visit: www.nanotec.org.uk, a second progress report, was produced on 30 September 2003.
Nanoscience and nanotechnology involve studying and working with matter on an ultra-small scale. One nanometre is one-millionth of a millimetre and a single human hair is around 80,000 nanometres in width. Nanoscience and Nanotechnology encompass a range of techniques rather than a single discipline. The technology stretches across the whole spectrum of science, touching medicine, physics, engineering and chemistry.
Some believe that nanotechnology is the next big thing to emerge from science and engineering and that it could offer us tremendous benefits. Scientists, for example, are investigating whether nanotechnology could be used to improve the delivery of cancer fighting drugs and are investigating whether nanoscale carbon could be used to increase the speed and power of computer circuits.Others though have raised concerns about possible risks from the development of this small-scale science and whether regulators can control them properly with such rapid advances in understanding. Issues raised include concerns about the toxicity of nanoparticles and potential military applications of nanotechnology.
In June 2003, the UK government commissioned the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering to carry out an independent study to investigate the potential benefits and possible problems associated with nanotechnology.
Our study aims to identify the environmental, health and safety, ethical and societal implications, and uncertainties that may arise from the use of the technology both at present and in the future, and will assess how this emerging area of science should be regulated as it develops.
As part of the Nanotechnology and Nanoscience study the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering have produced a website which explains more about the study and how the it is being carried out.
For more information please visit: www.nanotec.org.uk
Press releases and Media Coverage
Press releases
Investigation launched into benefits and problems of nanotechnology - 11 June 2003
An artistic impression of what a nanobot might look like.
©Nanotechnology Coneyl Jay
Media coverage of study
Science inquiry asks if small is beautiful, Guardian, June 12 2003
Nanotech under the microscope, BBC Online June 12 2003
Links to other reports on nanotechnology
A number of other reports have been produced on nanotechnology recently. The Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineers are not responsible for the content of other websites and by offering links is not endorsing the content of these reports, but they may be useful for further information and research. Our study is ongoing and our position on the possible risks and potential benefits of nanotechnology will be expressed in our final report, which is due to be published in spring 2004.
UK Advisory Group on Nanotechnology
New Dimensions for Manufacturing – A UK Strategy for Nanotechnology
This report was compiled by the Government’s advisory group on naotechnology and was published in June 2002.
Joint Centre for Bioethics
‘Mind the gap’ – science and ethics in nanotechnology
This paper was published in February 2003 and explores ethical issues surrounding nanotechnology.
ETC Group
The Big Down: Atomtech – Technologies Converging at the Nanoscale
ETC is an NGO campaigning on nanotechnology issues and this report outlines their position.
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
'The brain can't lie'
Brain scans can reveal how you think and feel, and even how you might behave. No wonder the CIA and big business are interested. By Ian Sample and David Adam
Thursday November 20, 2003
The Guardian
Earlier this year, a group of American students volunteered their brains for a cutting edge neuroscience project at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. The research used a technique that could watch their brains at work as they made decisions. At first glance, this seems nothing extraordinary: brain-imaging tools have been used routinely for years to assess damage caused by stroke, to hunt for brain tumours, and even identify the grey matter associated with language, love and memories. But this study was different. As each volunteer took their turn to slide into the coffin-like cylinder of the scanner, sticky fluids were squirted into their mouths. As unlikely as it sounds, the students were using multimillion pound medical equipment to take the Pepsi challenge.
Read Montague, the neuroscientist behind the Baylor experiment, is not alone in pushing the boundaries of neuroscience beyond the clinical. In recent years, a growing number of researchers have used brain-imaging equipment to try to reveal our innermost thoughts and feelings in less conventional "social neuroscience" experiments. As well as brand loyalty and consumer choice, neuroscientists are probing violent tendencies, moral reasoning, feelings of love and trust, and notions of justice. Just this week, researchers claimed to have used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify brain activity associated with racial prejudice.
While standard MRI machines like those still found in many hospitals take a snapshot of the brain, functional MRI is newer and more powerful because it takes lots of these snapshots one after the other, revealing how thoughts unfold over time. But the trend for using fMRI to probe social and behavioural issues is prompting some scientists to ask big questions about where this may all lead. Could it only be a matter of time before neuroscientists have techniques that can reveal secrets we would rather keep tucked under our skulls? According to some leading scientists, this isn't a paranoid over-reaction. "The CIA has been interested in fMRI for years as a means of doing lie-detection tests," says Bob Turner, an fMRI expert at University College London. After all, he says: "The brain can't lie."
As scientists unravel the links between how the brain looks and how it functions, some believe we will also be able to use images of the brain to see how people will behave. "There's no scientific distinction between prediction and understanding how the brain works," says Stephen Smith, associate director of the Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain at Oxford University.
The suggestion that brain scans could reveal not just our future health, but the intricacies of our personalities and how we might behave in a given situation, is unsettling enough to some scientists that they want legislation to stop brain-scan records falling into the wrong hands. "We're starting to get detailed information from these brain-scan experiments and soon people are going to be able to use it to predict an individual's behaviour," says Paul Glimcher at the Centre for Neuroscience at New York University. "That information has got to be proprietary to the individual."
The explosion in social neuroscience has been driven by the tumbling cost of scanning equipment. Brain scans used to be the preserve of medical and clinical experiments, because they relied on complex, expensive technology such as positron emission tomography (PET), which was only available in a handful of places. PET scanners, which rely on radioactive tracer materials, cost about £3m to buy and a single scan can cost as much as £2,000. In contrast, a new fMRI machine costs about £1.5m, and each scan works out at about £400.
The fMRI machines are essentially giant, powerful magnets that are used to detect the tiny magnetic fields carried by the hydrogen atoms in water (or blood). They allow a very detailed 3D map of blood flow to be built up, and in the head, blood flow means busy neurons. Studying which regions of the brain need the most blood tells scientists where the most thinking is going on. (The original MRI technique is identical to that used by chemists called nuclear magnetic resonance but the name was changed as it was thought nobody would want to be scanned by a machine with "nuclear" in its title).
As the scanners shifted from being an expensive piece of kit for specialist neuroscientists to a practical tool for anyone with the will to work it, the scientific questions the technique was used to investigate snowballed.
Three years ago, scientists at University College London used fMRI to investigate the essence of love. They recruited people who confessed to being hopelessly in love with their partners and showed them a series of photographs of people they knew, one of which was their partner. Although brain activity was different in each individual, the researchers found that in every case, four specific regions of the brain lit up each time they saw the one they loved. The researchers announced that they had discovered the brain's common denominator of romantic love.
A year later, Joshua Greene and colleagues at Princeton University in New Jersey studied how people solved moral dilemmas. In one test, volunteers were scanned while they were asked whether they would push a person in front of a speeding train if it meant saving the lives of five others. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the question caused a flurry of activity in parts of the brain linked with emotion, leading the researchers to conclude that such moral quandaries may not be solved purely by logical reasoning, but also by emotional reactions.
The technique has also been used to delve into the murky question of how we judge people. Last year, Ray Dolan's team at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in London used fMRI to see how people judged the trustworthiness of strangers. Volunteers were shown a series of faces and asked to judge whether the person was trustworthy. The researchers found that a region of the brain called the amygdala and two other parts of the brain flickered more intensely when people were shown the faces of people they thought would not be trustworthy.
But according to some scientists, such studies are the tip of the iceberg. The better fMRI systems become, and the more adept scientists get at extracting information from them, the more they will be able to piece together the neural circuits that make us who we are.
One emerging field is that of "neuro-economics". At the Center for Neuro-economics at Claremont Graduate University in California, Paul Zak is using fMRI to study how people assign value to certain products and make choices about what they buy. "If I ask you why you made a certain decision, you might not really be sure," he says. "But what if I can look directly into your brain and see how you reached that decision? That's what we want to be able to do."
Slowly, he says, researchers are homing in on the neural circuits that are activated when we make decisions - our likes and dislikes or, for example, how much different people value cigarettes over other items. Know that, and you can start feeding the data into policies such as how you tax products, says Zak. "If you know how much people value something, you can work out at what point a price hike will stop people buying it," he says.
Zak says fMRI stands to make a big impact in what has been dubbed "neuro-marketing". As an example of how fMRI might be used, Zak proposes a company that wants to increase its sales of milk. One way it might is to gather a group of people who like milk and scan them as they drink a glass. Some of the regions of the brain that buzz with activity might be triggered by any drink, but others may be triggered only by milk. Find other stimuli that trigger these regions of the brain and it could help you work out what it is that makes milk enjoyable, says Zak. Suppose objects from your childhood made those regions of your brain flicker. It might be that milk was evoking a sense of nostalgia, reminding you of when you got milk at school.
"If it turned out that milk was pleasurable to drink because it evokes memories of your childhood, you could market it as 'good when you were a kid, great when you're an adult'," he says. It's just an idea, and we're not there yet, but Zak says this is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. "A couple of years ago there was a lot of hostility to this kind of research, but now people are realising there's potential in it. Of course there will be a lot of crappy studies, but done properly, it allows us to get answers to questions we could never get before."
At Glimcher's lab in New York, progress is being made into understanding how the brain allow us to make certain decisions. Using fMRI scans and another technique that measures the activity of single neurons, Glimcher has recreated in a computer the neural programs that monkeys use to make decisions in a simple financial game. "Their behaviour is quite erratic and very similar to that of humans, but the program predicts what they will do to about 95% accuracy. It's spooky," he says. Ultimately, says Glimcher, neuroscientists should be able to use techniques like this to work out what a person will do in a specific situation, such as what he or she might buy when they walk into a shop.
At least one company, the BrightHouse Institute for Thought Sciences, in Atlanta, has been set up to exploit brain scans to inform marketing strategies. Instead of using focus groups, it is trying to use scans to tell companies what people think of their products and commercials.
Not everyone is convinced of the approach though. Donald Kennedy, the Stanford University-based editor of the journal Science and one of America's most eminent scientists, says: "You could just ask people what they think."
While Glimcher concedes that using brain scans to predict behaviour is a long way off, the progress is such that we should think about the implications, he says. "It raises serious philosophical questions, because it reduces us to a machine, but there's also a huge moral issue." Who should be allowed access to our brain scans, if they can reveal so much about us, he asks. "Within 10 years, we will need legislation that protects brain-scan information in the same way genetic information is protected," he says.
If using brain scans to predict specific behaviour is not on the cards, using them to judge if we will suffer from mental disease later in life is. Studies have shown that fMRI scans can be used to reveal early signs of multiple sclerosis and even go some way to predicting who might be most susceptible to dementias such as Alzheimer's. "For severe mental illness and dementias it is a serious proposition," says Sean Spence, a psychiatry researcher at Sheffield University. "There are changes in their brain before they begin to lose their memory. It's quite conceivable people could use that."
Stanford's Kennedy says it is the potential to use scans to predict people's health that is a concern. "I'm worried about fMRI scans being preserved after they have been taken," he says. "There's a push to prevent genetic information being used by companies for adverse selection, and at least equal protection should be given to brain scan data."
Glimcher says legislation banning access to people's brain scans should be drawn up to keep the data private before it's too late. "It's only a matter of time before the insurance companies come calling," he says. "It is going to happen and it's a big issue. It has to be dealt with soon."
'I feel as if I've been entombed'
It's easier to get your brain scanned than you might realise. Recent growth in research using fMRI machines means that there aren't enough willing brains to go around. That's why neuroscientist Andrea Mechelli, who works with fMRI at University College London, has had his own brain screened more than 30 times in the past five years. And that's how I found myself in Mechelli's lab on Monday morning, stripped of belt and metal jewellery, wearing earplugs and gigantic headphones, and about to be slid headfirst into the bowels of a gigantic magnet.
"This is for emergencies," Mechelli tells me, thrusting a squeezy plastic ball connected to a long tube into my hands. "Squeeze it if you have a panic attack or anything like that and I'll come in and get you out. Though I hope you don't." I hope so too, I tell him, through the metal cage that he swung down to cover my face.
Mechelli and his colleagues at UCL's Institute of Neurology are delighted to give me my scan, even at short notice, but there is a catch. With scanner time a valuable resource, tightly allocated to research projects, I first have to agree to be a bona-fide volunteer on one of their projects.
The project in question doesn't sound too bad, though. Mechelli is interested in the parts of the brain that hold and process information related to words and language. Specifically, he is seeking to understand why people who suffer brain injuries such as a stroke often find themselves unable to pronounce words they still know the meaning of, or vice versa, able to read words out loud with no idea of what they mean. To neuroscientists and linguists these separate functions are also important in understanding dyslexia. "I want to see what happens in the brain when people see objects and name them," Mechelli explains.
He is also seeking to confirm previous findings that thought processes relating to animals and man-made objects such as tools take place in two distinct places. Bizarrely, stroke and accident victims often find they can recall the names of animals such as rabbits and rhinos but not, say, a rolling pin.
After a final check that I don't suffer from claustrophobia (I don't) and that I'm not fitted with a pacemaker (I'm not), Mechelli searches me for metal objects that would interfere with the magnetic field - the photographer is not even allowed to carry her metal equipment into the room containing the scanner - and I lie down. It's important that I move my head as little as possible during the scan, so Mechelli wedges it between two vertical metal struts using small cushions. After fitting the headphones he will use to communicate with me inside the machine, he brings down the metal mask to cover my face. It's a tight fit - my nose pokes through two of the bars - and it's fitted with a rear-view mirror that Mechelli angles until I can see the screen fitted inside the machine behind me. And then he pushes the button that slides me head-first into the scanner.
I discover later that this is an older version of these machines, which means there is very little room between where my head ends and the giant magnet begins. It also means that my head, shoulders, chest and some of my lower abdomen must be placed inside the machine. The test itself takes 30 minutes, divided into two equal slots. In all I see 1,200 images or words, presented in rapid pairs, both of which I must name out loud (or rather whisper quietly, as this triggers less head movement).
With my head fixed in its upward position, the lights off in the room outside and just the flickering screen running through a series of black and white images for company, I feel as if I am entombed in my own personal silent movie theatre. Except it's noisy inside the machine. Very noisy. After the tests finish, Mechelli tells me through the headphones to close my eyes and sleep if I wish while the machine takes a few minutes to record a high-resolution structural scan. I don't think he's joking, but as I close my eyes an unholy clatter like a combination of the old Grandstand teleprinter and an air horn blowing every two seconds begins. It lasts for 11 minutes.
I'm a little disorientated when I emerge. "Do you want to see your brain?" Mechelli asks, pointing to a familiar looking image on a computer screen. This is a good sign - a sign that he thinks my brain is (probably) healthy - because very occasionally, the structural scans of volunteers in research projects do reveal tumours. And as a researcher, rather than a clinician, Mechelli is not allowed to break the bad news. "I tell them the scan hasn't worked properly and I can't show them it," he says. "And then I contact their GP and tell them to arrange a medical scan."
Of course Mechelli is not giving me an absolute all clear (the scan is not as detailed as a clinical one), but he does give me a mug and a £10 thank you for helping out, as well as a CD with rolling 3D electronic images of my brain on it. "Have another scan in 20 years and compare your brains," he suggests. "It's quite depressing." DA
To take part in the UCL neuroscience research call the imaging laboratory on 020-7833 7472, or go to www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk
Brain scans can reveal how you think and feel, and even how you might behave. No wonder the CIA and big business are interested. By Ian Sample and David Adam
Thursday November 20, 2003
The Guardian
Earlier this year, a group of American students volunteered their brains for a cutting edge neuroscience project at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. The research used a technique that could watch their brains at work as they made decisions. At first glance, this seems nothing extraordinary: brain-imaging tools have been used routinely for years to assess damage caused by stroke, to hunt for brain tumours, and even identify the grey matter associated with language, love and memories. But this study was different. As each volunteer took their turn to slide into the coffin-like cylinder of the scanner, sticky fluids were squirted into their mouths. As unlikely as it sounds, the students were using multimillion pound medical equipment to take the Pepsi challenge.
Read Montague, the neuroscientist behind the Baylor experiment, is not alone in pushing the boundaries of neuroscience beyond the clinical. In recent years, a growing number of researchers have used brain-imaging equipment to try to reveal our innermost thoughts and feelings in less conventional "social neuroscience" experiments. As well as brand loyalty and consumer choice, neuroscientists are probing violent tendencies, moral reasoning, feelings of love and trust, and notions of justice. Just this week, researchers claimed to have used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify brain activity associated with racial prejudice.
While standard MRI machines like those still found in many hospitals take a snapshot of the brain, functional MRI is newer and more powerful because it takes lots of these snapshots one after the other, revealing how thoughts unfold over time. But the trend for using fMRI to probe social and behavioural issues is prompting some scientists to ask big questions about where this may all lead. Could it only be a matter of time before neuroscientists have techniques that can reveal secrets we would rather keep tucked under our skulls? According to some leading scientists, this isn't a paranoid over-reaction. "The CIA has been interested in fMRI for years as a means of doing lie-detection tests," says Bob Turner, an fMRI expert at University College London. After all, he says: "The brain can't lie."
As scientists unravel the links between how the brain looks and how it functions, some believe we will also be able to use images of the brain to see how people will behave. "There's no scientific distinction between prediction and understanding how the brain works," says Stephen Smith, associate director of the Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain at Oxford University.
The suggestion that brain scans could reveal not just our future health, but the intricacies of our personalities and how we might behave in a given situation, is unsettling enough to some scientists that they want legislation to stop brain-scan records falling into the wrong hands. "We're starting to get detailed information from these brain-scan experiments and soon people are going to be able to use it to predict an individual's behaviour," says Paul Glimcher at the Centre for Neuroscience at New York University. "That information has got to be proprietary to the individual."
The explosion in social neuroscience has been driven by the tumbling cost of scanning equipment. Brain scans used to be the preserve of medical and clinical experiments, because they relied on complex, expensive technology such as positron emission tomography (PET), which was only available in a handful of places. PET scanners, which rely on radioactive tracer materials, cost about £3m to buy and a single scan can cost as much as £2,000. In contrast, a new fMRI machine costs about £1.5m, and each scan works out at about £400.
The fMRI machines are essentially giant, powerful magnets that are used to detect the tiny magnetic fields carried by the hydrogen atoms in water (or blood). They allow a very detailed 3D map of blood flow to be built up, and in the head, blood flow means busy neurons. Studying which regions of the brain need the most blood tells scientists where the most thinking is going on. (The original MRI technique is identical to that used by chemists called nuclear magnetic resonance but the name was changed as it was thought nobody would want to be scanned by a machine with "nuclear" in its title).
As the scanners shifted from being an expensive piece of kit for specialist neuroscientists to a practical tool for anyone with the will to work it, the scientific questions the technique was used to investigate snowballed.
Three years ago, scientists at University College London used fMRI to investigate the essence of love. They recruited people who confessed to being hopelessly in love with their partners and showed them a series of photographs of people they knew, one of which was their partner. Although brain activity was different in each individual, the researchers found that in every case, four specific regions of the brain lit up each time they saw the one they loved. The researchers announced that they had discovered the brain's common denominator of romantic love.
A year later, Joshua Greene and colleagues at Princeton University in New Jersey studied how people solved moral dilemmas. In one test, volunteers were scanned while they were asked whether they would push a person in front of a speeding train if it meant saving the lives of five others. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the question caused a flurry of activity in parts of the brain linked with emotion, leading the researchers to conclude that such moral quandaries may not be solved purely by logical reasoning, but also by emotional reactions.
The technique has also been used to delve into the murky question of how we judge people. Last year, Ray Dolan's team at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in London used fMRI to see how people judged the trustworthiness of strangers. Volunteers were shown a series of faces and asked to judge whether the person was trustworthy. The researchers found that a region of the brain called the amygdala and two other parts of the brain flickered more intensely when people were shown the faces of people they thought would not be trustworthy.
But according to some scientists, such studies are the tip of the iceberg. The better fMRI systems become, and the more adept scientists get at extracting information from them, the more they will be able to piece together the neural circuits that make us who we are.
One emerging field is that of "neuro-economics". At the Center for Neuro-economics at Claremont Graduate University in California, Paul Zak is using fMRI to study how people assign value to certain products and make choices about what they buy. "If I ask you why you made a certain decision, you might not really be sure," he says. "But what if I can look directly into your brain and see how you reached that decision? That's what we want to be able to do."
Slowly, he says, researchers are homing in on the neural circuits that are activated when we make decisions - our likes and dislikes or, for example, how much different people value cigarettes over other items. Know that, and you can start feeding the data into policies such as how you tax products, says Zak. "If you know how much people value something, you can work out at what point a price hike will stop people buying it," he says.
Zak says fMRI stands to make a big impact in what has been dubbed "neuro-marketing". As an example of how fMRI might be used, Zak proposes a company that wants to increase its sales of milk. One way it might is to gather a group of people who like milk and scan them as they drink a glass. Some of the regions of the brain that buzz with activity might be triggered by any drink, but others may be triggered only by milk. Find other stimuli that trigger these regions of the brain and it could help you work out what it is that makes milk enjoyable, says Zak. Suppose objects from your childhood made those regions of your brain flicker. It might be that milk was evoking a sense of nostalgia, reminding you of when you got milk at school.
"If it turned out that milk was pleasurable to drink because it evokes memories of your childhood, you could market it as 'good when you were a kid, great when you're an adult'," he says. It's just an idea, and we're not there yet, but Zak says this is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. "A couple of years ago there was a lot of hostility to this kind of research, but now people are realising there's potential in it. Of course there will be a lot of crappy studies, but done properly, it allows us to get answers to questions we could never get before."
At Glimcher's lab in New York, progress is being made into understanding how the brain allow us to make certain decisions. Using fMRI scans and another technique that measures the activity of single neurons, Glimcher has recreated in a computer the neural programs that monkeys use to make decisions in a simple financial game. "Their behaviour is quite erratic and very similar to that of humans, but the program predicts what they will do to about 95% accuracy. It's spooky," he says. Ultimately, says Glimcher, neuroscientists should be able to use techniques like this to work out what a person will do in a specific situation, such as what he or she might buy when they walk into a shop.
At least one company, the BrightHouse Institute for Thought Sciences, in Atlanta, has been set up to exploit brain scans to inform marketing strategies. Instead of using focus groups, it is trying to use scans to tell companies what people think of their products and commercials.
Not everyone is convinced of the approach though. Donald Kennedy, the Stanford University-based editor of the journal Science and one of America's most eminent scientists, says: "You could just ask people what they think."
While Glimcher concedes that using brain scans to predict behaviour is a long way off, the progress is such that we should think about the implications, he says. "It raises serious philosophical questions, because it reduces us to a machine, but there's also a huge moral issue." Who should be allowed access to our brain scans, if they can reveal so much about us, he asks. "Within 10 years, we will need legislation that protects brain-scan information in the same way genetic information is protected," he says.
If using brain scans to predict specific behaviour is not on the cards, using them to judge if we will suffer from mental disease later in life is. Studies have shown that fMRI scans can be used to reveal early signs of multiple sclerosis and even go some way to predicting who might be most susceptible to dementias such as Alzheimer's. "For severe mental illness and dementias it is a serious proposition," says Sean Spence, a psychiatry researcher at Sheffield University. "There are changes in their brain before they begin to lose their memory. It's quite conceivable people could use that."
Stanford's Kennedy says it is the potential to use scans to predict people's health that is a concern. "I'm worried about fMRI scans being preserved after they have been taken," he says. "There's a push to prevent genetic information being used by companies for adverse selection, and at least equal protection should be given to brain scan data."
Glimcher says legislation banning access to people's brain scans should be drawn up to keep the data private before it's too late. "It's only a matter of time before the insurance companies come calling," he says. "It is going to happen and it's a big issue. It has to be dealt with soon."
'I feel as if I've been entombed'
It's easier to get your brain scanned than you might realise. Recent growth in research using fMRI machines means that there aren't enough willing brains to go around. That's why neuroscientist Andrea Mechelli, who works with fMRI at University College London, has had his own brain screened more than 30 times in the past five years. And that's how I found myself in Mechelli's lab on Monday morning, stripped of belt and metal jewellery, wearing earplugs and gigantic headphones, and about to be slid headfirst into the bowels of a gigantic magnet.
"This is for emergencies," Mechelli tells me, thrusting a squeezy plastic ball connected to a long tube into my hands. "Squeeze it if you have a panic attack or anything like that and I'll come in and get you out. Though I hope you don't." I hope so too, I tell him, through the metal cage that he swung down to cover my face.
Mechelli and his colleagues at UCL's Institute of Neurology are delighted to give me my scan, even at short notice, but there is a catch. With scanner time a valuable resource, tightly allocated to research projects, I first have to agree to be a bona-fide volunteer on one of their projects.
The project in question doesn't sound too bad, though. Mechelli is interested in the parts of the brain that hold and process information related to words and language. Specifically, he is seeking to understand why people who suffer brain injuries such as a stroke often find themselves unable to pronounce words they still know the meaning of, or vice versa, able to read words out loud with no idea of what they mean. To neuroscientists and linguists these separate functions are also important in understanding dyslexia. "I want to see what happens in the brain when people see objects and name them," Mechelli explains.
He is also seeking to confirm previous findings that thought processes relating to animals and man-made objects such as tools take place in two distinct places. Bizarrely, stroke and accident victims often find they can recall the names of animals such as rabbits and rhinos but not, say, a rolling pin.
After a final check that I don't suffer from claustrophobia (I don't) and that I'm not fitted with a pacemaker (I'm not), Mechelli searches me for metal objects that would interfere with the magnetic field - the photographer is not even allowed to carry her metal equipment into the room containing the scanner - and I lie down. It's important that I move my head as little as possible during the scan, so Mechelli wedges it between two vertical metal struts using small cushions. After fitting the headphones he will use to communicate with me inside the machine, he brings down the metal mask to cover my face. It's a tight fit - my nose pokes through two of the bars - and it's fitted with a rear-view mirror that Mechelli angles until I can see the screen fitted inside the machine behind me. And then he pushes the button that slides me head-first into the scanner.
I discover later that this is an older version of these machines, which means there is very little room between where my head ends and the giant magnet begins. It also means that my head, shoulders, chest and some of my lower abdomen must be placed inside the machine. The test itself takes 30 minutes, divided into two equal slots. In all I see 1,200 images or words, presented in rapid pairs, both of which I must name out loud (or rather whisper quietly, as this triggers less head movement).
With my head fixed in its upward position, the lights off in the room outside and just the flickering screen running through a series of black and white images for company, I feel as if I am entombed in my own personal silent movie theatre. Except it's noisy inside the machine. Very noisy. After the tests finish, Mechelli tells me through the headphones to close my eyes and sleep if I wish while the machine takes a few minutes to record a high-resolution structural scan. I don't think he's joking, but as I close my eyes an unholy clatter like a combination of the old Grandstand teleprinter and an air horn blowing every two seconds begins. It lasts for 11 minutes.
I'm a little disorientated when I emerge. "Do you want to see your brain?" Mechelli asks, pointing to a familiar looking image on a computer screen. This is a good sign - a sign that he thinks my brain is (probably) healthy - because very occasionally, the structural scans of volunteers in research projects do reveal tumours. And as a researcher, rather than a clinician, Mechelli is not allowed to break the bad news. "I tell them the scan hasn't worked properly and I can't show them it," he says. "And then I contact their GP and tell them to arrange a medical scan."
Of course Mechelli is not giving me an absolute all clear (the scan is not as detailed as a clinical one), but he does give me a mug and a £10 thank you for helping out, as well as a CD with rolling 3D electronic images of my brain on it. "Have another scan in 20 years and compare your brains," he suggests. "It's quite depressing." DA
To take part in the UCL neuroscience research call the imaging laboratory on 020-7833 7472, or go to www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Rare Infection Threatens to Spread in Blood Supply
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. (N.Y.T)
Published: November 18, 2003
Aparasitic infection common in Latin America is threatening the United States blood supply, public health experts say. They are especially concerned because there will be no test for it in donated blood until next year at the earliest.
The infection, Chagas disease, is still rare in this country. Only nine cases are known to have been transmitted by transfusion or transplant in the United States and Canada in the last 20 years.
But hundreds of blood recipients may be silently infected, experts say, and there is no effective treatment for them. After a decade or more, 10 to 30 percent of them will die when their hearts or intestines, weakened by the disease, explode.
Chagas is still little known in the United States, but in Mexico, Central America and South America, 18 million people are infected, and 50,000 a year die of it.
Experts expect it to become better known as new tests are developed.
"I wouldn't say that it's as rare as hen's teeth, but it's rare," said Dr. Ravi V. Durvasula, a Chagas expert at the Yale School of Public Health. "It's one of the top threats to the blood supply, but it's an emerging threat."
Because the disease is most common in rural areas from southern Mexico to northern Chile, the threat is greatest in American cities with many immigrants from those areas.
Across the United States, said Dr. David A. Leiby, a Chagas expert at the American Red Cross, the risk of getting a transfusion of infected blood is only about 1 in 25,000.
But in 1998 in Miami it was found to be 1 in 9,000, he said, and in Los Angeles the same year, he measured it at 1 in 5,400, up from 1 in 9,850 only two years earlier.
No more recent study of the blood supply has been done.
The only routine screening for Chagas now is in the standard set of questions asked of donors — whether they come from or have visited a country where Chagas is endemic and whether they ever slept in a thatched hut.
But that often isn't reliable, said Dr. Louis V. Kirchhoff, a professor at the University of Iowa's medical school who researches Chagas in Guadalajara, Mexico, where the chance of getting infected blood is 1 in 126. Potential donors "are kind of leery of those questions," he said, and may not answer honestly.
Since 1989, several advisory panels to the United States Food and Drug Administration have recommended that all donated blood be screened for Chagas. But no test has been approved yet.
Last year, the F.D.A. invited diagnostics companies to create one, and the two largest, Abbott Laboratories and Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, are trying. But representatives of the companies said they were under little deadline pressure. Abbott's test may be ready next year.
Little sense of urgency exists because "there are always new things that come up," Dr. Leiby said. Hepatitis and AIDS were followed by mad cow disease, West Nile virus and bacterial contamination of platelets, so "Chagas gets pushed to the side," he said.
Mary Richardson, a spokeswoman for Ortho, which hopes to have a test by 2005, added: "Clinical trials take time. There's only so much speeding up you can do."
Nonetheless, she added, "the F.D.A. feels it's the next biggest threat."
An F.D.A. spokeswoman said her agency did not like to rank all the threats to the blood supply — including hepatitis, AIDS and West Nile virus — but reiterated that "we would certainly recommend a Chagas test if one is developed."
Prevalence rates in Latin America vary widely, from 25 percent in Bolivia to 1 percent in Mexico.
It is not found on Caribbean islands like Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic or Cuba.
In some countries, it is a serious threat to the blood supplies; in one Bolivian city, half of the blood was infected.
About 30 tests are used in different countries, but none meet F.D.A. accuracy standards. Some Latin American blood banks disinfect with gentian violet, but it is unpopular because it gives recipients a purplish tinge.
The disease is named for Carlos Chagas, the Brazilian doctor who described it in 1909. It is caused by a protozoan, Trypanosoma cruzi, which infects humans in a particularly disgusting way. Reduviids, also called kissing or assassin bugs, drop down from the thatch, follow the trail of carbon dioxide to the mouths of sleeping humans and suck their blood. They leave behind a protozoan-laden drop of feces, which the sleeper often inadvertently rubs into the itching wound.
Charles Darwin may have been infected on his travels; he suffered with Chagas symptoms for many years in England.
There is no vaccine and no effective treatment. The first phase, which starts within weeks of infection, may include fever and swollen glands, liver or spleen, but is rarely fatal except in infants and in adults with compromised immune systems. It is often misdiagnosed.
The disease can then lie dormant for 10 to 30 years, then kill suddenly as weakened organs rupture.
The failure of the blood industry and its regulators to develop a test since it was endorsed by a Blood Products Advisory Committee in 1989 seems to be a combination of bureaucratic inertia and divided responsibility for such a decision. Blood banks cannot use a test that the F.D.A. has not approved. The agency usually defers to its advisory committees, which have many experts from blood banks as members.
"It's a political process that is not always fully engaged," said Dr. Stuart J. Kahn of the Infectious Disease Research Institute, a Seattle group hunting cures for tropical diseases.
Dr. Hira Nakhasi, director of transfusion-transmitted diseases at the F.D.A., agreed that neither the blood banks nor his agency had been very aggressive. Things tended to move when "the public and media put pressure on," he said.
Cost concerns made blood banks hesitant, Dr. Kirchhoff said. It may cost $50 million to $100 million a year to screen the whole United States blood supply, he estimated, and "people will reasonably say, `Why should we do this if we're not seeing a lot of sick people?' "
Although perhaps 120 Americans a year get infected blood, he said, between 70 and 90 percent will not become seriously ill, and few of those who do will live long enough to die of Chagas.
Most transfusion recipients are fairly sick, and half die of other causes within two years anyway.
But he pointed out that the risk was growing rapidly. Census figures show that net immigration from Mexico is about 1,000 people a day, he said. Of those, 5 to 10 are probably infected.
Meanwhile, blood banks increased their appeals to Hispanics in the 1990's, under extra pressure when mad cow disease eliminated donors who had made long visits to Europe and AIDS eliminated gay men and other risk groups.
Interest in Chagas seems to be growing, Dr. Kahn said, because breakthroughs in biogenetics make it easier to attack diseases and because the interest of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in third world health "put a lot of diseases up on the radar screen."
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. (N.Y.T)
Published: November 18, 2003
Aparasitic infection common in Latin America is threatening the United States blood supply, public health experts say. They are especially concerned because there will be no test for it in donated blood until next year at the earliest.
The infection, Chagas disease, is still rare in this country. Only nine cases are known to have been transmitted by transfusion or transplant in the United States and Canada in the last 20 years.
But hundreds of blood recipients may be silently infected, experts say, and there is no effective treatment for them. After a decade or more, 10 to 30 percent of them will die when their hearts or intestines, weakened by the disease, explode.
Chagas is still little known in the United States, but in Mexico, Central America and South America, 18 million people are infected, and 50,000 a year die of it.
Experts expect it to become better known as new tests are developed.
"I wouldn't say that it's as rare as hen's teeth, but it's rare," said Dr. Ravi V. Durvasula, a Chagas expert at the Yale School of Public Health. "It's one of the top threats to the blood supply, but it's an emerging threat."
Because the disease is most common in rural areas from southern Mexico to northern Chile, the threat is greatest in American cities with many immigrants from those areas.
Across the United States, said Dr. David A. Leiby, a Chagas expert at the American Red Cross, the risk of getting a transfusion of infected blood is only about 1 in 25,000.
But in 1998 in Miami it was found to be 1 in 9,000, he said, and in Los Angeles the same year, he measured it at 1 in 5,400, up from 1 in 9,850 only two years earlier.
No more recent study of the blood supply has been done.
The only routine screening for Chagas now is in the standard set of questions asked of donors — whether they come from or have visited a country where Chagas is endemic and whether they ever slept in a thatched hut.
But that often isn't reliable, said Dr. Louis V. Kirchhoff, a professor at the University of Iowa's medical school who researches Chagas in Guadalajara, Mexico, where the chance of getting infected blood is 1 in 126. Potential donors "are kind of leery of those questions," he said, and may not answer honestly.
Since 1989, several advisory panels to the United States Food and Drug Administration have recommended that all donated blood be screened for Chagas. But no test has been approved yet.
Last year, the F.D.A. invited diagnostics companies to create one, and the two largest, Abbott Laboratories and Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, are trying. But representatives of the companies said they were under little deadline pressure. Abbott's test may be ready next year.
Little sense of urgency exists because "there are always new things that come up," Dr. Leiby said. Hepatitis and AIDS were followed by mad cow disease, West Nile virus and bacterial contamination of platelets, so "Chagas gets pushed to the side," he said.
Mary Richardson, a spokeswoman for Ortho, which hopes to have a test by 2005, added: "Clinical trials take time. There's only so much speeding up you can do."
Nonetheless, she added, "the F.D.A. feels it's the next biggest threat."
An F.D.A. spokeswoman said her agency did not like to rank all the threats to the blood supply — including hepatitis, AIDS and West Nile virus — but reiterated that "we would certainly recommend a Chagas test if one is developed."
Prevalence rates in Latin America vary widely, from 25 percent in Bolivia to 1 percent in Mexico.
It is not found on Caribbean islands like Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic or Cuba.
In some countries, it is a serious threat to the blood supplies; in one Bolivian city, half of the blood was infected.
About 30 tests are used in different countries, but none meet F.D.A. accuracy standards. Some Latin American blood banks disinfect with gentian violet, but it is unpopular because it gives recipients a purplish tinge.
The disease is named for Carlos Chagas, the Brazilian doctor who described it in 1909. It is caused by a protozoan, Trypanosoma cruzi, which infects humans in a particularly disgusting way. Reduviids, also called kissing or assassin bugs, drop down from the thatch, follow the trail of carbon dioxide to the mouths of sleeping humans and suck their blood. They leave behind a protozoan-laden drop of feces, which the sleeper often inadvertently rubs into the itching wound.
Charles Darwin may have been infected on his travels; he suffered with Chagas symptoms for many years in England.
There is no vaccine and no effective treatment. The first phase, which starts within weeks of infection, may include fever and swollen glands, liver or spleen, but is rarely fatal except in infants and in adults with compromised immune systems. It is often misdiagnosed.
The disease can then lie dormant for 10 to 30 years, then kill suddenly as weakened organs rupture.
The failure of the blood industry and its regulators to develop a test since it was endorsed by a Blood Products Advisory Committee in 1989 seems to be a combination of bureaucratic inertia and divided responsibility for such a decision. Blood banks cannot use a test that the F.D.A. has not approved. The agency usually defers to its advisory committees, which have many experts from blood banks as members.
"It's a political process that is not always fully engaged," said Dr. Stuart J. Kahn of the Infectious Disease Research Institute, a Seattle group hunting cures for tropical diseases.
Dr. Hira Nakhasi, director of transfusion-transmitted diseases at the F.D.A., agreed that neither the blood banks nor his agency had been very aggressive. Things tended to move when "the public and media put pressure on," he said.
Cost concerns made blood banks hesitant, Dr. Kirchhoff said. It may cost $50 million to $100 million a year to screen the whole United States blood supply, he estimated, and "people will reasonably say, `Why should we do this if we're not seeing a lot of sick people?' "
Although perhaps 120 Americans a year get infected blood, he said, between 70 and 90 percent will not become seriously ill, and few of those who do will live long enough to die of Chagas.
Most transfusion recipients are fairly sick, and half die of other causes within two years anyway.
But he pointed out that the risk was growing rapidly. Census figures show that net immigration from Mexico is about 1,000 people a day, he said. Of those, 5 to 10 are probably infected.
Meanwhile, blood banks increased their appeals to Hispanics in the 1990's, under extra pressure when mad cow disease eliminated donors who had made long visits to Europe and AIDS eliminated gay men and other risk groups.
Interest in Chagas seems to be growing, Dr. Kahn said, because breakthroughs in biogenetics make it easier to attack diseases and because the interest of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in third world health "put a lot of diseases up on the radar screen."
Thursday, November 13, 2003
Study of Two Cholesterol Drugs Finds One Halts Heart Disease (N.Y.T)
By GINA KOLATA
Published: November 13, 2003
The first study to compare two powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs head-to-head in coronary artery disease finds that one appears to be superior.
In patients taking pravastatin, or Pravachol, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, atherosclerosis worsened slowly over 18 months. But the disease was halted in those who took the highest dose of atorvastatin, or Lipitor, the drug made by Pfizer.
"We saw something extraordinary," said Dr. Steven Nissen, the cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who directed the study of 502 patients.
"All statins are not alike," Dr. Nissen said, adding that with pravastatin, heart atherosclerosis will worsen, but with the highest dose of atorvastatin, that is unlikely.
At the study's start, the middle-aged, mostly male heart disease patients in the study had levels of low density lipoproteins, or L.D.L., of 150, on average. L.D.L. carries cholesterol to arteries. Atorvastatin lowered participants' L.D.L. levels to 79, while those taking pravastatin had an average level of 110.
After 18 months, the atorvastatin patients had no change in the plaque in their arteries. But plaque increased by 2.7 percent in pravastatin patients. The study did not assess patient outcomes like heart attacks and deaths, which would have required 8,000 patients and taken five or more years.
Pfizer sponsored the study, but Dr. Nissen, who prides himself on his independence from financial conflicts of interest, insisted that he control the study and its data analysis, and had the right by contract to publish the results whether positive or negative for Pfizer. He described the results yesterday at the American Heart Association meeting in Orlando, Fla., and submitted a paper for publication.
"A lot of people thought all statins were the same," he said in a telephone interview.
If the two statins had turned out to be about equal, Pfizer might have lost in the multibillion-dollar statin market because pravastatin is nearing the end of its patent life and generic versions should be cheaper.
"Pfizer could have lost big time," Dr. Nissen said. When the results were in, and the company was waiting to hear what they were, "I never saw such nervousness," he said.
Dr. Gary Palmer, the vice president of Pfizer's cardiovascular medicine group in the United States, said the company was very excited. "For the first time, we've actually shown that you can impact the progress of this disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States," Dr. Palmer said.
But Julie Keenan, a spokeswoman for Bristol-Myers Squibb, noted that the study just looked at plaque, not at heart attacks or deaths.
"While these results are informative," Ms. Keenan said, "additional studies will be needed to assess whether different statins would cause disparate reductions in clinical outcomes."
Pravastatin has been shown to prevent heart attacks in people with high cholesterol levels, she added.
Shares of Pfizer rose 60 cents to $32.40 yesterday, and Bristol-Myers Squibb rose 52 cents to $25.50.
Cardiologists say the study addresses a question that plagues them: How low should cholesterol go? National guidelines call for lowering L.D.L. levels in heart disease patients to less than 100 milligrams per deciliter of blood. But, said Dr. Daniel Rader, a lipid researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, "one of the big issues is, `Is that enough?' " And, he added, "Where do you stop?"
And what about people with high cholesterol levels who have not had a heart attack or other manifestation of heart disease? Should they, too, go for maximum L.D.L. lowering? What if the only risk factor is a high level of L.D.L.? Current guidelines suggest less aggressive L.D.L. lowering for people at lower risk.
"There's a certain inconsistency," Dr. Rader said. "If you are trying to reduce risk, once you make decision to put someone on a drug, why not target the same level for everyone?"
Medical experts said national guidelines were unlikely to be changed until additional studies found that more aggressive cholesterol lowering resulted in a reduced risk of heart attacks and death.
The study assessed the progression of atherosclerosis using a tiny ultrasound camera that was threaded into coronary arteries, allowing researchers to look directly at the growth of plaque. Large studies are under way seeking to determine if more growth, as detected by the ultrasound camera, means more heart attacks and deaths, but many cardiologists predict that it does. "The probability is very high," said Dr. Bryan Brewer, chief of the molecular diseases branch at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
Researchers say they only recently came to understand how plaque in artery walls can kill. They used to think that the danger period was when the tumorlike plaque narrowed arteries. Now, said Dr. Peter Libby, the chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, they realize that the danger occurs long before that.
At first, plaque grows from the inner wall of the artery out, Dr. Libby said, making the artery thicker but not narrower. Only at the very end of this process does the plaque start to grow inward, narrowing the artery. But most fatal heart attacks, Dr. Libby said, occur when one of the earlier-stage plaques pops open. Blood pours out, clots, obstructs the artery, and a heart attack ensues.
"The blood clot forms where the plaque opens," Dr. Libby said. "It's revolutionized the way we look at the disease." The idea of looking at heart disease by looking at the diameter of an artery, he added, "is like trying to learn about a doughnut by looking at the hole."
Dr. Brewer said, "You can get enormous changes in vessel wall pathology and little change in the lumen, the vessel diameter." That is why measuring the volume of plaque in artery walls can be so important to observing the progress of heart disease, he added.
But if the new study is correct, cardiologists and patients will be faced with difficult questions.
Pravastatin patients in the study whose L.D.L. levels fell below 100 still had plaque growth while atorvastatin patients with those L.D.L. levels did not.
Asked whether doctors should switch patients from pravastatin to atorvastatin on the basis of the findings, Dr. Nissen replied: "I am going to choose to not answer that question. I will let my colleagues look at our findings and make their own minds up. I have already interpreted the findings and changed some of my practices."
If atorvastatin is good, might more powerful drugs be even better?
A new drug, rosuvastatin, or Crestor, made by Astra Zeneca, can lower L.D.L. levels more than atorvastatin. When statins are combined with another type of drug, ezetimibe, or Zetia, made by Merck, the combination lowers L.D.L. even more. Why not go for the greatest lowering, if a person is at high risk?
"In fact, there's an opportunity to get very, very low," said Dr. Christie M. Ballantyne, a cardiologist at Baylor College of Medicine. "Can we be reducing L.D.L. by 50 percent routinely? The answer is yes. What we still don't know is, is it O.K.? What will that mean in terms of costs of drugs, side effects of drugs, prevention of heart attacks?"
"This study is a proof of concept," Dr. Ballantyne said. "As compared to cancer, we can stop this disease process in a fairly predictable way and prevent most heart attacks from ever happening."
By GINA KOLATA
Published: November 13, 2003
The first study to compare two powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs head-to-head in coronary artery disease finds that one appears to be superior.
In patients taking pravastatin, or Pravachol, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, atherosclerosis worsened slowly over 18 months. But the disease was halted in those who took the highest dose of atorvastatin, or Lipitor, the drug made by Pfizer.
"We saw something extraordinary," said Dr. Steven Nissen, the cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who directed the study of 502 patients.
"All statins are not alike," Dr. Nissen said, adding that with pravastatin, heart atherosclerosis will worsen, but with the highest dose of atorvastatin, that is unlikely.
At the study's start, the middle-aged, mostly male heart disease patients in the study had levels of low density lipoproteins, or L.D.L., of 150, on average. L.D.L. carries cholesterol to arteries. Atorvastatin lowered participants' L.D.L. levels to 79, while those taking pravastatin had an average level of 110.
After 18 months, the atorvastatin patients had no change in the plaque in their arteries. But plaque increased by 2.7 percent in pravastatin patients. The study did not assess patient outcomes like heart attacks and deaths, which would have required 8,000 patients and taken five or more years.
Pfizer sponsored the study, but Dr. Nissen, who prides himself on his independence from financial conflicts of interest, insisted that he control the study and its data analysis, and had the right by contract to publish the results whether positive or negative for Pfizer. He described the results yesterday at the American Heart Association meeting in Orlando, Fla., and submitted a paper for publication.
"A lot of people thought all statins were the same," he said in a telephone interview.
If the two statins had turned out to be about equal, Pfizer might have lost in the multibillion-dollar statin market because pravastatin is nearing the end of its patent life and generic versions should be cheaper.
"Pfizer could have lost big time," Dr. Nissen said. When the results were in, and the company was waiting to hear what they were, "I never saw such nervousness," he said.
Dr. Gary Palmer, the vice president of Pfizer's cardiovascular medicine group in the United States, said the company was very excited. "For the first time, we've actually shown that you can impact the progress of this disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States," Dr. Palmer said.
But Julie Keenan, a spokeswoman for Bristol-Myers Squibb, noted that the study just looked at plaque, not at heart attacks or deaths.
"While these results are informative," Ms. Keenan said, "additional studies will be needed to assess whether different statins would cause disparate reductions in clinical outcomes."
Pravastatin has been shown to prevent heart attacks in people with high cholesterol levels, she added.
Shares of Pfizer rose 60 cents to $32.40 yesterday, and Bristol-Myers Squibb rose 52 cents to $25.50.
Cardiologists say the study addresses a question that plagues them: How low should cholesterol go? National guidelines call for lowering L.D.L. levels in heart disease patients to less than 100 milligrams per deciliter of blood. But, said Dr. Daniel Rader, a lipid researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, "one of the big issues is, `Is that enough?' " And, he added, "Where do you stop?"
And what about people with high cholesterol levels who have not had a heart attack or other manifestation of heart disease? Should they, too, go for maximum L.D.L. lowering? What if the only risk factor is a high level of L.D.L.? Current guidelines suggest less aggressive L.D.L. lowering for people at lower risk.
"There's a certain inconsistency," Dr. Rader said. "If you are trying to reduce risk, once you make decision to put someone on a drug, why not target the same level for everyone?"
Medical experts said national guidelines were unlikely to be changed until additional studies found that more aggressive cholesterol lowering resulted in a reduced risk of heart attacks and death.
The study assessed the progression of atherosclerosis using a tiny ultrasound camera that was threaded into coronary arteries, allowing researchers to look directly at the growth of plaque. Large studies are under way seeking to determine if more growth, as detected by the ultrasound camera, means more heart attacks and deaths, but many cardiologists predict that it does. "The probability is very high," said Dr. Bryan Brewer, chief of the molecular diseases branch at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
Researchers say they only recently came to understand how plaque in artery walls can kill. They used to think that the danger period was when the tumorlike plaque narrowed arteries. Now, said Dr. Peter Libby, the chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, they realize that the danger occurs long before that.
At first, plaque grows from the inner wall of the artery out, Dr. Libby said, making the artery thicker but not narrower. Only at the very end of this process does the plaque start to grow inward, narrowing the artery. But most fatal heart attacks, Dr. Libby said, occur when one of the earlier-stage plaques pops open. Blood pours out, clots, obstructs the artery, and a heart attack ensues.
"The blood clot forms where the plaque opens," Dr. Libby said. "It's revolutionized the way we look at the disease." The idea of looking at heart disease by looking at the diameter of an artery, he added, "is like trying to learn about a doughnut by looking at the hole."
Dr. Brewer said, "You can get enormous changes in vessel wall pathology and little change in the lumen, the vessel diameter." That is why measuring the volume of plaque in artery walls can be so important to observing the progress of heart disease, he added.
But if the new study is correct, cardiologists and patients will be faced with difficult questions.
Pravastatin patients in the study whose L.D.L. levels fell below 100 still had plaque growth while atorvastatin patients with those L.D.L. levels did not.
Asked whether doctors should switch patients from pravastatin to atorvastatin on the basis of the findings, Dr. Nissen replied: "I am going to choose to not answer that question. I will let my colleagues look at our findings and make their own minds up. I have already interpreted the findings and changed some of my practices."
If atorvastatin is good, might more powerful drugs be even better?
A new drug, rosuvastatin, or Crestor, made by Astra Zeneca, can lower L.D.L. levels more than atorvastatin. When statins are combined with another type of drug, ezetimibe, or Zetia, made by Merck, the combination lowers L.D.L. even more. Why not go for the greatest lowering, if a person is at high risk?
"In fact, there's an opportunity to get very, very low," said Dr. Christie M. Ballantyne, a cardiologist at Baylor College of Medicine. "Can we be reducing L.D.L. by 50 percent routinely? The answer is yes. What we still don't know is, is it O.K.? What will that mean in terms of costs of drugs, side effects of drugs, prevention of heart attacks?"
"This study is a proof of concept," Dr. Ballantyne said. "As compared to cancer, we can stop this disease process in a fairly predictable way and prevent most heart attacks from ever happening."
There's a Sucker Born in Every Medial Prefrontal Cortex
By CLIVE THOMPSON
Published: October 26, 2003
When he isn't pondering the inner workings of the mind, Read Montague, a 43-year-old neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, has been known to contemplate the other mysteries of life: for instance, the Pepsi Challenge. In the series of TV commercials from the 70's and 80's that pitted Coke against Pepsi in a blind taste test, Pepsi was usually the winner. So why, Montague asked himself not long ago, did Coke appeal so strongly to so many people if it didn't taste any better?
Over several months this past summer, Montague set to work looking for a scientifically convincing answer. He assembled a group of test subjects and, while monitoring their brain activity with an M.R.I. machine, recreated the Pepsi Challenge. His results confirmed those of the TV campaign: Pepsi tended to produce a stronger response than Coke in the brain's ventral putamen, a region thought to process feelings of reward. (Monkeys, for instance, exhibit activity in the ventral putamen when they receive food for completing a task.) Indeed, in people who preferred Pepsi, the ventral putamen was five times as active when drinking Pepsi than that of Coke fans when drinking Coke.
In the real world, of course, taste is not everything. So Montague tried to gauge the appeal of Coke's image, its ''brand influence,'' by repeating the experiment with a small variation: this time, he announced which of the sample tastes were Coke. The outcome was remarkable: almost all the subjects said they preferred Coke. What's more, the brain activity of the subjects was now different. There was also activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that scientists say governs high-level cognitive powers. Apparently, the subjects were meditating in a more sophisticated way on the taste of Coke, allowing memories and other impressions of the drink -- in a word, its brand -- to shape their preference.
Pepsi, crucially, couldn't achieve the same effect. When Montague reversed the situation, announcing which tastes were of Pepsi, far fewer of the subjects said they preferred Pepsi. Montague was impressed: he had demonstrated, with a fair degree of neuroscientific precision, the special power of Coke's brand to override our taste buds.
Measuring brand influence might seem like an unusual activity for a neuroscientist, but Montague is just one of a growing breed of researchers who are applying the methods of the neurology lab to the questions of the advertising world. Some of these researchers, like Montague, are purely academic in focus, studying the consumer mind out of intellectual curiosity, with no corporate support. Increasingly, though, there are others -- like several of the researchers at the Mind of the Market Laboratory at Harvard Business School -- who work as full-fledged ''neuromarketers,'' conducting brain research with the help of corporate financing and sharing their results with their sponsors. This summer, when it opened its doors for business, the BrightHouse Institute for Thought Sciences in Atlanta became the first neuromarketing firm to boast a Fortune 500 consumer-products company as a client. (The client's identity is currently a secret.) The institute will scan the brains of a representative sample of its client's prospective customers, assess their reactions to the company's products and advertising and tweak the corporate image accordingly.
Not long ago, M.R.I. machines were used solely for medical purposes, like diagnosing strokes or discovering tumors. But neuroscience has reached a sort of cocky adolescence; it has become routine to read about researchers tackling every subject under the sun, placing test subjects in M.R.I. machines and analyzing their brain activity as they do everything from making moral choices to praying to appreciating beauty. Paul C. Lauterbur, a chemist who shared this year's Nobel Prize in medicine for his contribution in the early 70's to the invention of the M.R.I. machine, notes how novel the uses of his invention have become. ''Things are getting a lot more subtle than we'd ever thought,'' he says. It seems only natural that the commercial world has finally caught on. ''You don't have to be a genius to say, 'My God, if you combine making the can red with making it less sweet, you can measure this in a scanner and see the result,''' Montague says. ''If I were Pepsi, I'd go in there and I'd start scanning people.''
The neuroscience wing at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta is the epicenter of the neuromarketing world. Like most medical wards, it is filled with an air of quiet, antiseptic tension. On a recent visit, in the hallway outside an M.R.I. room, a patient milled around in a light blue paper gown. A doctor on a bench flipped through a clipboard and talked in soothing tones to a man in glasses, a young woman anxiously clutching his arm.
It was not a place where you would expect to encounter slick marketing research. And when Justine Meaux, a research scientist for the BrightHouse Institute, came out to greet me, she did seem strangely out of place. Clicking along in strappy sandals, with a tight sleeveless top and purple toenail polish, she looked more like a chic TV producer than a neuroscientist, which she is. Her specialty, as she explained, is ''the neural dynamics of the perception and production of rhythmic sensorimotor patterns'' -- though these days she spends her professional life thinking about shopping. ''I'm really getting into reading all this business stuff now, learning about campaigns, branding,'' she said, leading me down the hallway to the M.R.I. chamber that the Institute uses. Three years ago, after earning her Ph.D., she decided she wanted to apply brain scanning to everyday problems and was intrigued by marketing as a ''practical application of psychology,'' as she put it. She told me that she admired the ''Intel Inside'' advertising campaign, with its TV spots showing dancing men in body suits. ''Intel actually branded the inside of a computer,'' she marveled. ''They took the most abstract thing you can imagine and figured out a way to make people identify with it.''
When we reached the M.R.I. control room, Clint Kilts, the scientific director of the BrightHouse Institute, was fiddling away at a computer keyboard. A professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory, Kilts began working with Meaux in 2001. Meaux had learned that Kilts and a group of marketers were founding the BrightHouse Institute, and she joined their team, becoming perhaps the world's first full-time neuromarketer. Kilts is confident that there will soon be room for other full-time careers in neuromarketing. ''You will actually see this being part of the decision-making process, up and down the company,'' he predicted. ''You are going to see more large companies that will have neuroscience divisions.''
The BrightHouse Institute's techniques are based, in part, on an experiment that Kilts conducted earlier this year. He gathered a group of test subjects and asked them to look at a series of commercial products, rating how strongly they liked or disliked them. Then, while scanning their brains in an M.R.I. machine, he showed them pictures of the products again. When Kilts looked at the images of their brains, he was struck by one particular result: whenever a subject saw a product he had identified as one he truly loved -- something that might prompt him to say, ''That's just so me!'' -- his brain would show increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex.
Kilts was excited, for he knew that this region of the brain is commonly associated with our sense of self. Patients with damage in this area of the brain, for instance, often undergo drastic changes in personality; in one famous case, a mild-mannered 19th-century railworker named Phineas Gage abruptly became belligerent after an accident that destroyed his medial prefrontal cortex. More recently, M.R.I. studies have found increased activity in this region when people are asked if adjectives like ''trustworthy'' or ''courageous'' apply to them. When the medial prefrontal cortex fires, your brain seems to be engaging, in some manner, with what sort of person you are. If it fires when you see a particular product, Kilts argues, it's most likely to be because the product clicks with your self-image.
This result provided the BrightHouse Institute with an elegant tool for testing marketing campaigns and brands. An immediate, intuitive bond between consumer and product is one that every company dreams of making. ''If you like Chevy trucks, it's because that has become the larger gestalt of who you self-attribute as,'' Kilts said, using psychology-speak. ''You're a Chevy guy.'' With the help of neuromarketers, he claims, companies can now know with certainty whether their products are making that special connection.
To demonstrate their technique, Kilts and Meaux offered to stick my head in the M.R.I. machine. They laid me down headfirst in the coffinlike cylinder and scurried out to the observation room. ''Here's what I want you to do,'' Meaux said, her voice crackling over an intercom. ''I'm going to show you a bunch of images of products and activities -- and I want you to picture yourself using them. Don't think about whether you like them or not. Just put yourself in the scene.''
I peered up into a mirror positioned over my head, and she began flashing pictures. There were images of a Hummer, a mountain bike, a can of Pepsi. Then a Lincoln Navigator, Martha Stewart, a game of basketball and dozens more snapshots of everyday consumption. I imagined piloting the Hummer off-road, playing a game of pickup basketball, swigging the Pepsi. (I was less sure what to do with Martha Stewart.)
After about 15 minutes, Kilts pulled me out, and I joined him at a bank of computers. ''Look here,'' he said, pointing to a screen that showed an image of a brain in cross sections. He pointed to a bright yellow spot on the right side, in the somatosensory cortex, an area that shows activity when you emulate sensory experience -- as when I imagined what it would be like to drive a Hummer. If a marketer finds that his product is producing a response in this region of the brain, he can conclude that he has not made the immediate, instinctive sell: even if a consumer has a positive attitude toward the product, if he has to mentally ''try it out,'' he isn't instantly identifying with it.
Kilts stabbed his finger at another glowing yellow dot near the top of the brain. It was the magic spot -- the medial prefrontal cortex. If that area is firing, a consumer isn't deliberating, he said: he's itching to buy. ''At that point, it's intuitive. You say: 'I'm going to do it. I want it.' ''
The consuming public has long had an uneasy feeling about scientists who dabble in marketing. In 1957, Vance Packard wrote ''The Hidden Persuaders,'' a book about marketing that featured harsh criticism of ''psychology professors turned merchandisers.'' Marketers, Packard worried, were using the resources of the social sciences to understand consumers' irrational and emotional urges -- the better to trick them into increased product consumption. In rabble-rousing prose, Packard warned about subliminal advertising and cited a famous (though, it turned out, bogus) study about a movie theater that inserted into a film several split-second frames urging patrons to drink Coke.
In truth, marketers only wish they had that much control. If anything, corporations tend to look slightly askance at their admen, because there's not much convincing evidence that advertising works as well as promised. John Wanamaker, a department-store magnate in the late 19th century, famously quipped that half the money he spent on advertising was wasted, but that he didn't know which half. In their quest for a more respectable methodology -- or perhaps more important, the appearance of one -- admen have plundered one scientific technique after another. Demographic studies have profiled customers by analyzing their age, race or neighborhood; telephone surveys have queried semi-randomly selected strangers to see how the public at large viewed a company's product.
Advertising's main tool, of course, has been the focus group, a classic technique of social science. Marketers in the United States spent more than $1 billion last year on focus groups, the results of which guided about $120 billion in advertising. But focus groups are plagued by a basic flaw of human psychology: people often do not know their own minds. Joey Reiman is the C.E.O. of BrightHouse, an Atlanta marketing firm, and a founding partner in the BrightHouse Institute; over years of producing marketing concepts for companies like Coca-Cola and Red Lobster, he has come to the conclusion that focus groups are ultimately less about gathering hard data and more about pretending to have concrete justifications for a hugely expensive ad campaign. ''The sad fact is, people tell you what you want to hear, not what they really think,'' he says. ''Sometimes there's a focus-group bully, a loudmouth who's so insistent about his opinion that it influences everyone else. This is not a science; it's a circus.''
In contrast, M.R.I. scanning offers the promise of concrete facts -- an unbiased glimpse at a consumer's mind in action. To an M.R.I. machine, you cannot misrepresent your responses. Your medial prefrontal cortex will start firing when you see something you adore, even if you claim not to like it. ''Let's say I show you Playboy,'' Kilts says, ''and you go, 'Oh, no, no, no!' Really? We could tell you actually like it.''
Other neuromarketers have demonstrated that we react to products in ways that we may not be entirely conscious of. This year, for instance, scientists working with DaimlerChrysler scanned the brains of a number of men as they looked at pictures of cars and rated them for attractiveness. The scientists found that the most popular vehicles -- the Porsche- and Ferrari-style sports cars -- triggered activity in a section of the brain called the fusiform face area, which governs facial recognition. ''They were reminded of faces when they looked at the cars,'' says Henrik Walter, a psychiatrist at the University of Ulm in Germany who ran the study. ''The lights of the cars look a little like eyes.''
Neuromarketing may also be able to suss out the distinction between advertisements that people merely like and those that are actually effective -- a difference that can be hard to detect from a focus group. A neuromarketing study in Australia, for instance, demonstrated that supershort, MTV-style jump cuts -- indeed, any scenes shorter than two seconds -- aren't as likely to enter the long-term memory of viewers, however bracing or aesthetically pleasing they may be.
Still, many scientists are skeptical of neuromarketing. The brain, critics point out, is still mostly an enigma; just because we can see neurons firing doesn't mean we always know what the mind is doing. For all their admirable successes, neuroscientists do not yet have an agreed-upon map of the brain. ''I keep joking that I could do this Gucci shoes study, where I'd show people shoes I think are beautiful, and see whether women like them,'' says Elizabeth Phelps, a professor of psychology at New York University. ''And I'll see activity in the brain. I definitely will. But it's not like I've found 'the shoe center of the brain.''' James Twitchell, a professor of advertising at the University of Florida, wonders whether neuromarketing isn't just the next stage of scientific pretense on the part of the advertising industry. ''Remember, you have to ask the client for millions, millions of dollars,'' he says. ''So you have to say: 'Trust me. We have data. We've done these neurotests. Go with us, we know what we're doing.''' Twitchell recently attended an advertising conference where a marketer discussed neuromarketing. The entire room sat in awe as the speaker suggested that neuroscience will finally crack open the mind of the shopper. ''A lot of it is just garbage,'' he says, ''but the garbage is so powerful.''
In response to his critics, Kilts plans to publish the BrightHouse research in an accredited academic journal. He insisted to me that his primary allegiance is to science; BrightHouse's techniques are ''business done in the science method,'' he said, ''not science done in the business method.'' And as he sat at his computer, calling up a 3-D picture of a brain, it was hard not to be struck, at the very least, by the seriousness of his passion. There, on the screen, was the medial prefrontal cortex, juggling our conscious thinking. There was the amygdala, governing our fears, buried deep in the brain. These are sights that he said still inspire in him feelings of wonder. ''When you sit down and you're watching -- for the first time in the history of mankind -- how we process complex primary emotions like anger, it's amazing,'' he said. ''You're like, there, look at that: that's anger, that's pleasure. When you see that roll off the workstation, you never look back.'' You just keep going, it seems, until you hit Madison Avenue.
By CLIVE THOMPSON
Published: October 26, 2003
When he isn't pondering the inner workings of the mind, Read Montague, a 43-year-old neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, has been known to contemplate the other mysteries of life: for instance, the Pepsi Challenge. In the series of TV commercials from the 70's and 80's that pitted Coke against Pepsi in a blind taste test, Pepsi was usually the winner. So why, Montague asked himself not long ago, did Coke appeal so strongly to so many people if it didn't taste any better?
Over several months this past summer, Montague set to work looking for a scientifically convincing answer. He assembled a group of test subjects and, while monitoring their brain activity with an M.R.I. machine, recreated the Pepsi Challenge. His results confirmed those of the TV campaign: Pepsi tended to produce a stronger response than Coke in the brain's ventral putamen, a region thought to process feelings of reward. (Monkeys, for instance, exhibit activity in the ventral putamen when they receive food for completing a task.) Indeed, in people who preferred Pepsi, the ventral putamen was five times as active when drinking Pepsi than that of Coke fans when drinking Coke.
In the real world, of course, taste is not everything. So Montague tried to gauge the appeal of Coke's image, its ''brand influence,'' by repeating the experiment with a small variation: this time, he announced which of the sample tastes were Coke. The outcome was remarkable: almost all the subjects said they preferred Coke. What's more, the brain activity of the subjects was now different. There was also activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that scientists say governs high-level cognitive powers. Apparently, the subjects were meditating in a more sophisticated way on the taste of Coke, allowing memories and other impressions of the drink -- in a word, its brand -- to shape their preference.
Pepsi, crucially, couldn't achieve the same effect. When Montague reversed the situation, announcing which tastes were of Pepsi, far fewer of the subjects said they preferred Pepsi. Montague was impressed: he had demonstrated, with a fair degree of neuroscientific precision, the special power of Coke's brand to override our taste buds.
Measuring brand influence might seem like an unusual activity for a neuroscientist, but Montague is just one of a growing breed of researchers who are applying the methods of the neurology lab to the questions of the advertising world. Some of these researchers, like Montague, are purely academic in focus, studying the consumer mind out of intellectual curiosity, with no corporate support. Increasingly, though, there are others -- like several of the researchers at the Mind of the Market Laboratory at Harvard Business School -- who work as full-fledged ''neuromarketers,'' conducting brain research with the help of corporate financing and sharing their results with their sponsors. This summer, when it opened its doors for business, the BrightHouse Institute for Thought Sciences in Atlanta became the first neuromarketing firm to boast a Fortune 500 consumer-products company as a client. (The client's identity is currently a secret.) The institute will scan the brains of a representative sample of its client's prospective customers, assess their reactions to the company's products and advertising and tweak the corporate image accordingly.
Not long ago, M.R.I. machines were used solely for medical purposes, like diagnosing strokes or discovering tumors. But neuroscience has reached a sort of cocky adolescence; it has become routine to read about researchers tackling every subject under the sun, placing test subjects in M.R.I. machines and analyzing their brain activity as they do everything from making moral choices to praying to appreciating beauty. Paul C. Lauterbur, a chemist who shared this year's Nobel Prize in medicine for his contribution in the early 70's to the invention of the M.R.I. machine, notes how novel the uses of his invention have become. ''Things are getting a lot more subtle than we'd ever thought,'' he says. It seems only natural that the commercial world has finally caught on. ''You don't have to be a genius to say, 'My God, if you combine making the can red with making it less sweet, you can measure this in a scanner and see the result,''' Montague says. ''If I were Pepsi, I'd go in there and I'd start scanning people.''
The neuroscience wing at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta is the epicenter of the neuromarketing world. Like most medical wards, it is filled with an air of quiet, antiseptic tension. On a recent visit, in the hallway outside an M.R.I. room, a patient milled around in a light blue paper gown. A doctor on a bench flipped through a clipboard and talked in soothing tones to a man in glasses, a young woman anxiously clutching his arm.
It was not a place where you would expect to encounter slick marketing research. And when Justine Meaux, a research scientist for the BrightHouse Institute, came out to greet me, she did seem strangely out of place. Clicking along in strappy sandals, with a tight sleeveless top and purple toenail polish, she looked more like a chic TV producer than a neuroscientist, which she is. Her specialty, as she explained, is ''the neural dynamics of the perception and production of rhythmic sensorimotor patterns'' -- though these days she spends her professional life thinking about shopping. ''I'm really getting into reading all this business stuff now, learning about campaigns, branding,'' she said, leading me down the hallway to the M.R.I. chamber that the Institute uses. Three years ago, after earning her Ph.D., she decided she wanted to apply brain scanning to everyday problems and was intrigued by marketing as a ''practical application of psychology,'' as she put it. She told me that she admired the ''Intel Inside'' advertising campaign, with its TV spots showing dancing men in body suits. ''Intel actually branded the inside of a computer,'' she marveled. ''They took the most abstract thing you can imagine and figured out a way to make people identify with it.''
When we reached the M.R.I. control room, Clint Kilts, the scientific director of the BrightHouse Institute, was fiddling away at a computer keyboard. A professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory, Kilts began working with Meaux in 2001. Meaux had learned that Kilts and a group of marketers were founding the BrightHouse Institute, and she joined their team, becoming perhaps the world's first full-time neuromarketer. Kilts is confident that there will soon be room for other full-time careers in neuromarketing. ''You will actually see this being part of the decision-making process, up and down the company,'' he predicted. ''You are going to see more large companies that will have neuroscience divisions.''
The BrightHouse Institute's techniques are based, in part, on an experiment that Kilts conducted earlier this year. He gathered a group of test subjects and asked them to look at a series of commercial products, rating how strongly they liked or disliked them. Then, while scanning their brains in an M.R.I. machine, he showed them pictures of the products again. When Kilts looked at the images of their brains, he was struck by one particular result: whenever a subject saw a product he had identified as one he truly loved -- something that might prompt him to say, ''That's just so me!'' -- his brain would show increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex.
Kilts was excited, for he knew that this region of the brain is commonly associated with our sense of self. Patients with damage in this area of the brain, for instance, often undergo drastic changes in personality; in one famous case, a mild-mannered 19th-century railworker named Phineas Gage abruptly became belligerent after an accident that destroyed his medial prefrontal cortex. More recently, M.R.I. studies have found increased activity in this region when people are asked if adjectives like ''trustworthy'' or ''courageous'' apply to them. When the medial prefrontal cortex fires, your brain seems to be engaging, in some manner, with what sort of person you are. If it fires when you see a particular product, Kilts argues, it's most likely to be because the product clicks with your self-image.
This result provided the BrightHouse Institute with an elegant tool for testing marketing campaigns and brands. An immediate, intuitive bond between consumer and product is one that every company dreams of making. ''If you like Chevy trucks, it's because that has become the larger gestalt of who you self-attribute as,'' Kilts said, using psychology-speak. ''You're a Chevy guy.'' With the help of neuromarketers, he claims, companies can now know with certainty whether their products are making that special connection.
To demonstrate their technique, Kilts and Meaux offered to stick my head in the M.R.I. machine. They laid me down headfirst in the coffinlike cylinder and scurried out to the observation room. ''Here's what I want you to do,'' Meaux said, her voice crackling over an intercom. ''I'm going to show you a bunch of images of products and activities -- and I want you to picture yourself using them. Don't think about whether you like them or not. Just put yourself in the scene.''
I peered up into a mirror positioned over my head, and she began flashing pictures. There were images of a Hummer, a mountain bike, a can of Pepsi. Then a Lincoln Navigator, Martha Stewart, a game of basketball and dozens more snapshots of everyday consumption. I imagined piloting the Hummer off-road, playing a game of pickup basketball, swigging the Pepsi. (I was less sure what to do with Martha Stewart.)
After about 15 minutes, Kilts pulled me out, and I joined him at a bank of computers. ''Look here,'' he said, pointing to a screen that showed an image of a brain in cross sections. He pointed to a bright yellow spot on the right side, in the somatosensory cortex, an area that shows activity when you emulate sensory experience -- as when I imagined what it would be like to drive a Hummer. If a marketer finds that his product is producing a response in this region of the brain, he can conclude that he has not made the immediate, instinctive sell: even if a consumer has a positive attitude toward the product, if he has to mentally ''try it out,'' he isn't instantly identifying with it.
Kilts stabbed his finger at another glowing yellow dot near the top of the brain. It was the magic spot -- the medial prefrontal cortex. If that area is firing, a consumer isn't deliberating, he said: he's itching to buy. ''At that point, it's intuitive. You say: 'I'm going to do it. I want it.' ''
The consuming public has long had an uneasy feeling about scientists who dabble in marketing. In 1957, Vance Packard wrote ''The Hidden Persuaders,'' a book about marketing that featured harsh criticism of ''psychology professors turned merchandisers.'' Marketers, Packard worried, were using the resources of the social sciences to understand consumers' irrational and emotional urges -- the better to trick them into increased product consumption. In rabble-rousing prose, Packard warned about subliminal advertising and cited a famous (though, it turned out, bogus) study about a movie theater that inserted into a film several split-second frames urging patrons to drink Coke.
In truth, marketers only wish they had that much control. If anything, corporations tend to look slightly askance at their admen, because there's not much convincing evidence that advertising works as well as promised. John Wanamaker, a department-store magnate in the late 19th century, famously quipped that half the money he spent on advertising was wasted, but that he didn't know which half. In their quest for a more respectable methodology -- or perhaps more important, the appearance of one -- admen have plundered one scientific technique after another. Demographic studies have profiled customers by analyzing their age, race or neighborhood; telephone surveys have queried semi-randomly selected strangers to see how the public at large viewed a company's product.
Advertising's main tool, of course, has been the focus group, a classic technique of social science. Marketers in the United States spent more than $1 billion last year on focus groups, the results of which guided about $120 billion in advertising. But focus groups are plagued by a basic flaw of human psychology: people often do not know their own minds. Joey Reiman is the C.E.O. of BrightHouse, an Atlanta marketing firm, and a founding partner in the BrightHouse Institute; over years of producing marketing concepts for companies like Coca-Cola and Red Lobster, he has come to the conclusion that focus groups are ultimately less about gathering hard data and more about pretending to have concrete justifications for a hugely expensive ad campaign. ''The sad fact is, people tell you what you want to hear, not what they really think,'' he says. ''Sometimes there's a focus-group bully, a loudmouth who's so insistent about his opinion that it influences everyone else. This is not a science; it's a circus.''
In contrast, M.R.I. scanning offers the promise of concrete facts -- an unbiased glimpse at a consumer's mind in action. To an M.R.I. machine, you cannot misrepresent your responses. Your medial prefrontal cortex will start firing when you see something you adore, even if you claim not to like it. ''Let's say I show you Playboy,'' Kilts says, ''and you go, 'Oh, no, no, no!' Really? We could tell you actually like it.''
Other neuromarketers have demonstrated that we react to products in ways that we may not be entirely conscious of. This year, for instance, scientists working with DaimlerChrysler scanned the brains of a number of men as they looked at pictures of cars and rated them for attractiveness. The scientists found that the most popular vehicles -- the Porsche- and Ferrari-style sports cars -- triggered activity in a section of the brain called the fusiform face area, which governs facial recognition. ''They were reminded of faces when they looked at the cars,'' says Henrik Walter, a psychiatrist at the University of Ulm in Germany who ran the study. ''The lights of the cars look a little like eyes.''
Neuromarketing may also be able to suss out the distinction between advertisements that people merely like and those that are actually effective -- a difference that can be hard to detect from a focus group. A neuromarketing study in Australia, for instance, demonstrated that supershort, MTV-style jump cuts -- indeed, any scenes shorter than two seconds -- aren't as likely to enter the long-term memory of viewers, however bracing or aesthetically pleasing they may be.
Still, many scientists are skeptical of neuromarketing. The brain, critics point out, is still mostly an enigma; just because we can see neurons firing doesn't mean we always know what the mind is doing. For all their admirable successes, neuroscientists do not yet have an agreed-upon map of the brain. ''I keep joking that I could do this Gucci shoes study, where I'd show people shoes I think are beautiful, and see whether women like them,'' says Elizabeth Phelps, a professor of psychology at New York University. ''And I'll see activity in the brain. I definitely will. But it's not like I've found 'the shoe center of the brain.''' James Twitchell, a professor of advertising at the University of Florida, wonders whether neuromarketing isn't just the next stage of scientific pretense on the part of the advertising industry. ''Remember, you have to ask the client for millions, millions of dollars,'' he says. ''So you have to say: 'Trust me. We have data. We've done these neurotests. Go with us, we know what we're doing.''' Twitchell recently attended an advertising conference where a marketer discussed neuromarketing. The entire room sat in awe as the speaker suggested that neuroscience will finally crack open the mind of the shopper. ''A lot of it is just garbage,'' he says, ''but the garbage is so powerful.''
In response to his critics, Kilts plans to publish the BrightHouse research in an accredited academic journal. He insisted to me that his primary allegiance is to science; BrightHouse's techniques are ''business done in the science method,'' he said, ''not science done in the business method.'' And as he sat at his computer, calling up a 3-D picture of a brain, it was hard not to be struck, at the very least, by the seriousness of his passion. There, on the screen, was the medial prefrontal cortex, juggling our conscious thinking. There was the amygdala, governing our fears, buried deep in the brain. These are sights that he said still inspire in him feelings of wonder. ''When you sit down and you're watching -- for the first time in the history of mankind -- how we process complex primary emotions like anger, it's amazing,'' he said. ''You're like, there, look at that: that's anger, that's pleasure. When you see that roll off the workstation, you never look back.'' You just keep going, it seems, until you hit Madison Avenue.
In Feeding-Tube Case, Many Neurologists Back Courts
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: October 26, 2003
At the center of the court battle over the immobile body of Terri Schiavo, the 39-year-old Florida woman kept alive by a feeding tube, is a videotape made by her parents. It lasts only minutes but has been played so many times on television and the Internet that it all but defines her.
On the tape, Mrs. Schiavo, propped up in bed, is greeted and kissed by her mother. She is not in the deep, unresponsive sleep of a coma. Her eyes are open, and she blinks rapidly but fairly normally. She seems to follow her mother's movements, but her mother's face is too close for that to be clear. Her jaw is slack and her mouth hangs open, but at moments its corners appear to turn up in a faint smile.
To many supporters of Mrs. Schiavo's parents, who say she should be kept alive on a feeding tube, the tape demonstrates that she can still think and react. But many leading neurologists say that it means no such thing, that the appearances of brain-damaged patients can be very misleading.
Florida courts have ruled, after hearing from several experts who examined her, that Mrs. Schiavo has been in a "persistent vegetative state" — an official diagnosis of the American Academy of Neurology — since her brain was deprived of oxygen when she suffered a heart attack 13 years ago. Her feeding tube was removed on Oct. 15, but it was reinserted six days later after the Florida Legislature gave Gov. Jeb Bush the authority to override the courts.
Patients in vegetative states may have open eyes, periods of waking and sleeping and some reflexes, like gagging, jerking a limb away from pain or reacting to light or noise. They may make noises or faces and even say words.
But they do not, according to academy criteria, show self-awareness, comprehend language or expressions, or interact with others.
A vegetative state "is the ironic combination of wakefulness without awareness," said Dr. James L. Bernat, a Dartmouth Medical School neurologist and past chairman of the academy's ethics committee.
Mrs. Schiavo's parents and the conservative Christian groups working to keep her on the feeding tube insist that she is in a "minimally conscious state" — another official diagnosis. They note that on the videotape, her eyes appear to follow a silver balloon waved before them.
Her father, Bob Schindler, visited her on Thursday night and said later that she had made the sound "unh-unh," as if to say no, when he kissed her, and "unh-unh" again when he asked her if she wanted him to kiss her. He described that as a sign that she could hear and answer questions.
In 2001, Dr. Richard Neubauer, director of the Ocean Hyperbaric Neurologic Center in Florida, said in an affidavit that said he found Mrs. Schiavo "not in a vegetative state" and "at least semi-responsive to her environment." He was seeking to treat her by putting her in an oxygen-rich pressure chamber.
A famous case of "minimally conscious," said Dr. Michael P. McQuillen, a professor of neurology at the University of Rochester, was that of a woman who appeared vegetative but, on overhearing her sister on the phone making funeral arrangements for a favorite uncle, began to cry.
Mrs. Schiavo is fed by tube and incapable of making decisions for herself. She cannot swallow, though her parents argue that with help she might be able to relearn swallowing so she could be spoon-fed.
Early in Mrs. Schiavo's illness, her husband, Michael, sent her to California to have a nerve stimulator implanted, one neurologist said, but he later came to believe she would never recover.
Vegetative states become persistent, according to the neurology academy's criteria, after about three months, after which it is highly unlikely that they will end. Patients like Mrs. Schiavo whose brains have been starved of oxygen do worse than patients who suffer head trauma, neurologists say.
"Thirteen years is plenty long enough to tell," said Dr. Bernat, who said he had not examined Mrs. Schiavo or seen any videotapes. "Assuming she is in a vegetative state, I can say with medical certainty that there is no realistic hope that she'll recover."
Dr. Bernat was part of a large medical panel that in 1994 assessed thousands of patients' records and found that up to 35,000 Americans were in persistent vegetative states.
Mrs. Schiavo's parents and a Web site, terrisfight.org, have cited "miracle recoveries" by people who supposedly woke up, speaking and moving, after years in comas.
Dr. Bernat said his 1994 panel looked into more than 70 "alleged late recoverers" and found that "there wasn't a single one that was verified, so I'm very skeptical."
Dr. Ron Cranford, a Minneapolis neurologist who was Dr. Bernat's predecessor on the academy ethics committee, examined Mrs. Schiavo as part of the original trial and testified in favor of her husband's request to discontinue feeding.
He was adamant that she would never get better, and he says he is furious about the popular videotape.
"She's vegetative, she's flat-out vegetative, there's never been a shred of doubt that she's vegetative, and nothing's going to change that," Dr. Cranford said in a telephone interview. "This has been a massive propaganda campaign, which has been very successful because it deludes the public into thinking she's really there."
Her eyes do not steadily track objects, he said, and when she appears to look at her mother or a camera for a moment, it is merely rapid eye movement.
More important, he said, "the CAT scans indicate a massive shrinkage of her brain, with its higher centers completely destroyed, which indicates irreversibility."
The Schiavo case is the kind of family fight that doctors treating brain-damaged patients say they dread. "In a case like this, you're between a rock and a hard place," said Dr. McQuillen of the University of Rochester.
He added that keeping Mrs. Schiavo alive artificially could be a burden on her.
For many terminally ill patients, he pointed out, "food is an absolute burden — it increases secretions and makes them uncomfortable."
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: October 26, 2003
At the center of the court battle over the immobile body of Terri Schiavo, the 39-year-old Florida woman kept alive by a feeding tube, is a videotape made by her parents. It lasts only minutes but has been played so many times on television and the Internet that it all but defines her.
On the tape, Mrs. Schiavo, propped up in bed, is greeted and kissed by her mother. She is not in the deep, unresponsive sleep of a coma. Her eyes are open, and she blinks rapidly but fairly normally. She seems to follow her mother's movements, but her mother's face is too close for that to be clear. Her jaw is slack and her mouth hangs open, but at moments its corners appear to turn up in a faint smile.
To many supporters of Mrs. Schiavo's parents, who say she should be kept alive on a feeding tube, the tape demonstrates that she can still think and react. But many leading neurologists say that it means no such thing, that the appearances of brain-damaged patients can be very misleading.
Florida courts have ruled, after hearing from several experts who examined her, that Mrs. Schiavo has been in a "persistent vegetative state" — an official diagnosis of the American Academy of Neurology — since her brain was deprived of oxygen when she suffered a heart attack 13 years ago. Her feeding tube was removed on Oct. 15, but it was reinserted six days later after the Florida Legislature gave Gov. Jeb Bush the authority to override the courts.
Patients in vegetative states may have open eyes, periods of waking and sleeping and some reflexes, like gagging, jerking a limb away from pain or reacting to light or noise. They may make noises or faces and even say words.
But they do not, according to academy criteria, show self-awareness, comprehend language or expressions, or interact with others.
A vegetative state "is the ironic combination of wakefulness without awareness," said Dr. James L. Bernat, a Dartmouth Medical School neurologist and past chairman of the academy's ethics committee.
Mrs. Schiavo's parents and the conservative Christian groups working to keep her on the feeding tube insist that she is in a "minimally conscious state" — another official diagnosis. They note that on the videotape, her eyes appear to follow a silver balloon waved before them.
Her father, Bob Schindler, visited her on Thursday night and said later that she had made the sound "unh-unh," as if to say no, when he kissed her, and "unh-unh" again when he asked her if she wanted him to kiss her. He described that as a sign that she could hear and answer questions.
In 2001, Dr. Richard Neubauer, director of the Ocean Hyperbaric Neurologic Center in Florida, said in an affidavit that said he found Mrs. Schiavo "not in a vegetative state" and "at least semi-responsive to her environment." He was seeking to treat her by putting her in an oxygen-rich pressure chamber.
A famous case of "minimally conscious," said Dr. Michael P. McQuillen, a professor of neurology at the University of Rochester, was that of a woman who appeared vegetative but, on overhearing her sister on the phone making funeral arrangements for a favorite uncle, began to cry.
Mrs. Schiavo is fed by tube and incapable of making decisions for herself. She cannot swallow, though her parents argue that with help she might be able to relearn swallowing so she could be spoon-fed.
Early in Mrs. Schiavo's illness, her husband, Michael, sent her to California to have a nerve stimulator implanted, one neurologist said, but he later came to believe she would never recover.
Vegetative states become persistent, according to the neurology academy's criteria, after about three months, after which it is highly unlikely that they will end. Patients like Mrs. Schiavo whose brains have been starved of oxygen do worse than patients who suffer head trauma, neurologists say.
"Thirteen years is plenty long enough to tell," said Dr. Bernat, who said he had not examined Mrs. Schiavo or seen any videotapes. "Assuming she is in a vegetative state, I can say with medical certainty that there is no realistic hope that she'll recover."
Dr. Bernat was part of a large medical panel that in 1994 assessed thousands of patients' records and found that up to 35,000 Americans were in persistent vegetative states.
Mrs. Schiavo's parents and a Web site, terrisfight.org, have cited "miracle recoveries" by people who supposedly woke up, speaking and moving, after years in comas.
Dr. Bernat said his 1994 panel looked into more than 70 "alleged late recoverers" and found that "there wasn't a single one that was verified, so I'm very skeptical."
Dr. Ron Cranford, a Minneapolis neurologist who was Dr. Bernat's predecessor on the academy ethics committee, examined Mrs. Schiavo as part of the original trial and testified in favor of her husband's request to discontinue feeding.
He was adamant that she would never get better, and he says he is furious about the popular videotape.
"She's vegetative, she's flat-out vegetative, there's never been a shred of doubt that she's vegetative, and nothing's going to change that," Dr. Cranford said in a telephone interview. "This has been a massive propaganda campaign, which has been very successful because it deludes the public into thinking she's really there."
Her eyes do not steadily track objects, he said, and when she appears to look at her mother or a camera for a moment, it is merely rapid eye movement.
More important, he said, "the CAT scans indicate a massive shrinkage of her brain, with its higher centers completely destroyed, which indicates irreversibility."
The Schiavo case is the kind of family fight that doctors treating brain-damaged patients say they dread. "In a case like this, you're between a rock and a hard place," said Dr. McQuillen of the University of Rochester.
He added that keeping Mrs. Schiavo alive artificially could be a burden on her.
For many terminally ill patients, he pointed out, "food is an absolute burden — it increases secretions and makes them uncomfortable."
Extra Copies of Gene May Cause Parkinson's - Study
Thu October 30, 2003 05:43 PM ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Certain patients with Parkinson's disease carry extra copies of a gene that may clog their brains with excess proteins -- a finding that may lead to better treatments and perhaps a way to stop the disease, scientists said on Thursday.
They found members of a family plagued by Parkinson's carried additional copies of a gene called alpha synuclein. A buildup of the protein the gene controls is believed to cause the Parkinson's symptoms.
The findings, reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science, might shed light on all cases of Parkinson's and perhaps other brain diseases, the researchers said.
The four patients each have not only an extra copy of the gene, but also of an entire region of the chromosome that carries it, said Andrew Singleton of the National Institute on Aging's Laboratory of Neurogenetics, who led the study.
"It's amazingly rare," Singelton said in a telephone interview. "It includes 16 other genes that flank synuclein."
His team is now checking whether these patients have extra high levels of the protein synuclein, controlled by the gene, as suggested by other studies of Parkinson's patients.
"This study is an exciting step forward in our understanding of this disease," Singelton said.
"It contributes to the growing body of evidence suggesting that genetic variations in alpha-synuclein contribute to Parkinson's disease. It suggests that in Parkinson's disease, both mutated and normal alpha-synuclein behave in a way that is quantitatively different from the way the protein functions in people without Parkinson's disease."
Parkinson's is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's. Incurable and always fatal, Parkinson's affects an estimated 500,000 Americans.
It is caused by the death of brain cells that produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter or message-carrying chemical important to muscle movement. Patients develop tremors and gradually become paralyzed.
Singleton and colleagues were studying the "Iowa kindred," a family in which many relatives developed Parkinson's or related neurological diseases at an average age of 34. They found four family members had two extra versions of the gene.
"We hope that this type of basic research will yield new understandings that will ultimately allow us to go beyond just treating the symptoms of Parkinson's disease to one day halting the disease's progression," said Matthew Farrer of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who worked on the study.
The symptoms in this family are similar to those in other Parkinson's patients, the researchers noted. Insights into many diseases have been provided by families carrying a rare genetic mutation that points doctors in the right direction for finding broader causes of illness.
They could also help in other diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease in Down syndrome patients. Down syndrome is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21, which in turn causes overproduction of certain proteins.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals said it had signed an agreement with the Mayo Clinic to try to develop a drug that will work against the synuclein gene.
Alnylam was founded by biotechnology researchers seeking to start a new field of drug research called RNA interference.
The idea is to interfere with the output of faulty genes.
Thu October 30, 2003 05:43 PM ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Certain patients with Parkinson's disease carry extra copies of a gene that may clog their brains with excess proteins -- a finding that may lead to better treatments and perhaps a way to stop the disease, scientists said on Thursday.
They found members of a family plagued by Parkinson's carried additional copies of a gene called alpha synuclein. A buildup of the protein the gene controls is believed to cause the Parkinson's symptoms.
The findings, reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science, might shed light on all cases of Parkinson's and perhaps other brain diseases, the researchers said.
The four patients each have not only an extra copy of the gene, but also of an entire region of the chromosome that carries it, said Andrew Singleton of the National Institute on Aging's Laboratory of Neurogenetics, who led the study.
"It's amazingly rare," Singelton said in a telephone interview. "It includes 16 other genes that flank synuclein."
His team is now checking whether these patients have extra high levels of the protein synuclein, controlled by the gene, as suggested by other studies of Parkinson's patients.
"This study is an exciting step forward in our understanding of this disease," Singelton said.
"It contributes to the growing body of evidence suggesting that genetic variations in alpha-synuclein contribute to Parkinson's disease. It suggests that in Parkinson's disease, both mutated and normal alpha-synuclein behave in a way that is quantitatively different from the way the protein functions in people without Parkinson's disease."
Parkinson's is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's. Incurable and always fatal, Parkinson's affects an estimated 500,000 Americans.
It is caused by the death of brain cells that produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter or message-carrying chemical important to muscle movement. Patients develop tremors and gradually become paralyzed.
Singleton and colleagues were studying the "Iowa kindred," a family in which many relatives developed Parkinson's or related neurological diseases at an average age of 34. They found four family members had two extra versions of the gene.
"We hope that this type of basic research will yield new understandings that will ultimately allow us to go beyond just treating the symptoms of Parkinson's disease to one day halting the disease's progression," said Matthew Farrer of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who worked on the study.
The symptoms in this family are similar to those in other Parkinson's patients, the researchers noted. Insights into many diseases have been provided by families carrying a rare genetic mutation that points doctors in the right direction for finding broader causes of illness.
They could also help in other diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease in Down syndrome patients. Down syndrome is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21, which in turn causes overproduction of certain proteins.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals said it had signed an agreement with the Mayo Clinic to try to develop a drug that will work against the synuclein gene.
Alnylam was founded by biotechnology researchers seeking to start a new field of drug research called RNA interference.
The idea is to interfere with the output of faulty genes.
Brain Stimulation Benefit for Parkinson's Lasts
Wed November 12, 2003 07:11 PM ET
By Karla Gale
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The technique of deep brain stimulation has benefited some people with Parkinson's disease, but how long the effect lasts has not been known since it is a relatively new procedure.
Now, a French research team reports in this week's New England Journal of Medicine that improved muscle control is maintained for at least 5 years in patients with advanced Parkinson's disease treated with bilateral stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus.
However, another group reported this week at a medical meeting that relatively minor cognitive impairment can occur during stimulation.
In the French study, Dr. Paul Krack and associates at Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble followed 49 patients, ages 34 to 68 years, who had the brain stimulator implanted between 1993 and 1997.
At 5 years, tremor had improved by 75 percent and muscle rigidity by 71 percent when the patients were not taking their medication. The average dose of levodopa medications they needed to take decreased by more than half.
Most subjects were independent in their activities of daily living, the report indicates, even though they had all required the services of a caregiver prior to the surgery.
However, the disease continued to progress: three patients became demented, five developed drug-resistant apathy, and three died.
Those most likely to benefit from deep brain stimulation are "younger patients who are very disabled by features of Parkinson's disease and who respond to drugs, but in an unpredictable manner," Dr. Anthony E. Lang told Reuters Health. Lang, at the University of Toronto, is the author of an accompanying editorial.
Meanwhile, Dr. Tamara Hershey at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans presented research results for her team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Hershey noted that mental processes of patients with brain implants are better when stimulators are turned off than when they are on. For example, a test administered to 24 patients showed decreased working memory performance under a high memory load condition.
"There's no denying that deep brain stimulation has a huge impact on quality of life," Dr. Hershey told Reuters Health. The cognitive changes they observed are "relatively minor," so it is likely that "no patient would want to return to the impaired motor state" in exchange for better cognitive function.
But "perhaps the frequency or rate of stimulation could be tweaked a little bit for those who seem to not be thinking as clearly," she added.
Commenting on these findings, Lang said: "Patients should definitely not try to alter their stimulators, but if this type of research can be confirmed, and we do find there are certain cognitive effects of having the stimulator turned on, then trying to manipulate the stimulator parameters does make sense."
SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine, November 13, 2003.
Wed November 12, 2003 07:11 PM ET
By Karla Gale
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The technique of deep brain stimulation has benefited some people with Parkinson's disease, but how long the effect lasts has not been known since it is a relatively new procedure.
Now, a French research team reports in this week's New England Journal of Medicine that improved muscle control is maintained for at least 5 years in patients with advanced Parkinson's disease treated with bilateral stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus.
However, another group reported this week at a medical meeting that relatively minor cognitive impairment can occur during stimulation.
In the French study, Dr. Paul Krack and associates at Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble followed 49 patients, ages 34 to 68 years, who had the brain stimulator implanted between 1993 and 1997.
At 5 years, tremor had improved by 75 percent and muscle rigidity by 71 percent when the patients were not taking their medication. The average dose of levodopa medications they needed to take decreased by more than half.
Most subjects were independent in their activities of daily living, the report indicates, even though they had all required the services of a caregiver prior to the surgery.
However, the disease continued to progress: three patients became demented, five developed drug-resistant apathy, and three died.
Those most likely to benefit from deep brain stimulation are "younger patients who are very disabled by features of Parkinson's disease and who respond to drugs, but in an unpredictable manner," Dr. Anthony E. Lang told Reuters Health. Lang, at the University of Toronto, is the author of an accompanying editorial.
Meanwhile, Dr. Tamara Hershey at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans presented research results for her team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Hershey noted that mental processes of patients with brain implants are better when stimulators are turned off than when they are on. For example, a test administered to 24 patients showed decreased working memory performance under a high memory load condition.
"There's no denying that deep brain stimulation has a huge impact on quality of life," Dr. Hershey told Reuters Health. The cognitive changes they observed are "relatively minor," so it is likely that "no patient would want to return to the impaired motor state" in exchange for better cognitive function.
But "perhaps the frequency or rate of stimulation could be tweaked a little bit for those who seem to not be thinking as clearly," she added.
Commenting on these findings, Lang said: "Patients should definitely not try to alter their stimulators, but if this type of research can be confirmed, and we do find there are certain cognitive effects of having the stimulator turned on, then trying to manipulate the stimulator parameters does make sense."
SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine, November 13, 2003.
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Japanese Technology May Help Islands Reap Pacific's Waters (N.Y.T)
March 23, 2003
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
KYOTO, Japan, March 22 - A number of Pacific island nations
are discussing using new Japanese technology that can both
desalinate seawater for drinking and produce electricity by
exploiting the difference in temperatures between the
surface of the sea and the depths of the ocean.
The Republic of Palau in the western Pacific is working
with Saga University in southern Japan to build a system
that can produce enough drinking water to meet the needs of
its 20,000 residents, while producing electricity, said the
country's president, Tommy Remengesau Jr.
The concept was highlighted this week at one of the 350
sessions at the Third World Water Forum, which is under way
here. It has attracted 10,000 participants from around the
world, along with ministers and some heads of state from
more than 150 countries.
The university is preparing to build an experimental power
plant off the coast of Palau that brings up cold seawater
from the depths of the sea to an evaporator chamber near
the ocean surface.
As the water is heated by the surrounding warm surface
water, it releases ammonia gas, which then drives the
system's power generator, said Yasuyuki Ikegami, deputy
director of the Institute of Ocean Energy at Saga
University.
Meanwhile, the heated water would be transferred to a
separate low-pressure chamber where it boils at a lower
temperature, producing steam, which would be condensed and
collected as fresh water for human consumption, leaving
salt crystals behind.
One experimental system, which produces power but no usable
water, is scheduled to be put into use off the coast of
India this month, Mr. Ikegami added.
"It works well especially in the western Pacific, where the
temperature difference between the ocean's surface and deep
seawater is" as much as 43 degrees Fahrenheit, he said. "It
is environmentally sound."
With some financial assistance from the Japanese
government, the university was hoping to build the
experimental plant in Palau for $7.5 million, said Haruo
Uehara, president of Saga University, although he declined
to disclose details of the financing because it was still
being negotiated.
Palau was hoping the plant could be built next year, Mr.
Remengesau said.
"It is a big help for us," he said. "When there is rain, we
have no problem. But we are hit by the drying effects of El
Niño. When there is no rain, where can we get drinking
water?"
The fresh water produced by the system will cost less than
$1 for more than 250 gallons, Mr. Uehara said. "It is no
more costly than regular tap water in other countries,
including Japan," he said.
The system, while more expensive than ordinary generators,
has raised hopes among leaders of other Pacific islands,
which are too small to build many dams to catch water and
are trying to cut back on their consumption of oil to run
power generators.
Allan Marat, deputy prime minister of Papua New Guinea,
said Pacific island nations had fallen victim to global
warming, adding that he too was interested in the
university's system.
"We are in the middle of the largest body of water" on
earth, said Robert Woonton, prime minister of the Cook
Islands. "Yet, we are faced with lack of safe potable
water." He said he wanted to consider setting up Saga
University's system in his country.
Other countries in arid zones have also shown interest,
including Saudi Arabia, which was sending a delegation to
the university, Mr. Uehara said.
March 23, 2003
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
KYOTO, Japan, March 22 - A number of Pacific island nations
are discussing using new Japanese technology that can both
desalinate seawater for drinking and produce electricity by
exploiting the difference in temperatures between the
surface of the sea and the depths of the ocean.
The Republic of Palau in the western Pacific is working
with Saga University in southern Japan to build a system
that can produce enough drinking water to meet the needs of
its 20,000 residents, while producing electricity, said the
country's president, Tommy Remengesau Jr.
The concept was highlighted this week at one of the 350
sessions at the Third World Water Forum, which is under way
here. It has attracted 10,000 participants from around the
world, along with ministers and some heads of state from
more than 150 countries.
The university is preparing to build an experimental power
plant off the coast of Palau that brings up cold seawater
from the depths of the sea to an evaporator chamber near
the ocean surface.
As the water is heated by the surrounding warm surface
water, it releases ammonia gas, which then drives the
system's power generator, said Yasuyuki Ikegami, deputy
director of the Institute of Ocean Energy at Saga
University.
Meanwhile, the heated water would be transferred to a
separate low-pressure chamber where it boils at a lower
temperature, producing steam, which would be condensed and
collected as fresh water for human consumption, leaving
salt crystals behind.
One experimental system, which produces power but no usable
water, is scheduled to be put into use off the coast of
India this month, Mr. Ikegami added.
"It works well especially in the western Pacific, where the
temperature difference between the ocean's surface and deep
seawater is" as much as 43 degrees Fahrenheit, he said. "It
is environmentally sound."
With some financial assistance from the Japanese
government, the university was hoping to build the
experimental plant in Palau for $7.5 million, said Haruo
Uehara, president of Saga University, although he declined
to disclose details of the financing because it was still
being negotiated.
Palau was hoping the plant could be built next year, Mr.
Remengesau said.
"It is a big help for us," he said. "When there is rain, we
have no problem. But we are hit by the drying effects of El
Niño. When there is no rain, where can we get drinking
water?"
The fresh water produced by the system will cost less than
$1 for more than 250 gallons, Mr. Uehara said. "It is no
more costly than regular tap water in other countries,
including Japan," he said.
The system, while more expensive than ordinary generators,
has raised hopes among leaders of other Pacific islands,
which are too small to build many dams to catch water and
are trying to cut back on their consumption of oil to run
power generators.
Allan Marat, deputy prime minister of Papua New Guinea,
said Pacific island nations had fallen victim to global
warming, adding that he too was interested in the
university's system.
"We are in the middle of the largest body of water" on
earth, said Robert Woonton, prime minister of the Cook
Islands. "Yet, we are faced with lack of safe potable
water." He said he wanted to consider setting up Saga
University's system in his country.
Other countries in arid zones have also shown interest,
including Saudi Arabia, which was sending a delegation to
the university, Mr. Uehara said.
Behold, the Invisible Man, if Not Seeing Is Believing (N.Y.T.)
March 27, 2003
By JAMES BROOKE
TOKYO, March 23 - Enveloped in a green plastic raincoat,
Kazutoshi Obana slowly raised his arms. Then, with a click
of a button, Mr. Obana, a graduate student at Tokyo
University, faded away.
In his place, a ghostly image of the cityscape directly
behind him came into view.
Graduate students may be resigned to some invisibility,
particularly in the eyes of their advisers, but this was
something else entirely: an "invisible" raincoat, under
development at the university.
It is the brainchild of Susumu Tachi, a professor of
computer science and information physics.
While invisibility has long been a plot element in films
like "The Invisible Man" and the Harry Potter series, Dr.
Tachi said his device was far removed from movie magic.
In his office at the university, he scoffed at Hollywood's
special-effects type of invisibility, represented most
recently by the vanishing sports car in the latest James
Bond movie.
"That is science fiction," Dr. Tachi said. "But this," he
added, "is true scientific development."
As with many true scientific developments, however, Dr.
Tachi's raincoat is clunky and cumbersome. And it is
something of a special effect of its own.
Basically, a camera films a scene behind the raincoat, and
a projector projects it on the garment's front, which is
covered with tiny reflective beads called retroreflectors.
The process creates an illusion of invisibility.
While a raincoat may not be the most useful application of
the technology - it is more for demonstration purposes -
there are many potential practical uses, Dr. Tachi said. A
plane could be turned into a high-tech glass-bottomed boat,
for instance, with the floor a projection screen displaying
images of the ground below. Or images from within the body
could be projected on the skin, to aid surgeons.
"This would allow minimally invasive surgery," Dr. Tachi
said. "Now, brain surgeons often have to cut off the top of
a head. This could allow a very small hole, which would be
nice for the patient."
"We are working with several surgeons, also a company that
makes cockpits," he said.
Dr. Tachi suggested another application: home builders
could embed microchips containing blueprints of wiring and
piping in the walls of buildings. When a repair was needed,
a worker could flip a switch and see the blueprint
superimposed on the wall.
Asked if this invisible technology could have military
applications, say in a desert war, the 57-year-old
professor flinched, quite visibly. Reflecting Japan's
deeply held pacifist ethic, universities generally shun
military research.
Sukeyasu S. Yamamoto, a retired Tokyo University physics
professor, explained, "There is a real allergy to anything
to do with military research."
But in the United States, where such allergies are not as
widespread, the technology is called "adaptive camouflage,"
and research has progressed in fits and starts, according
to flows of military financing.
"We dreamed that up in 1998," Maurice L. Langevin, a
military researcher in Maryland, said of a projection
concept that he said he developed with Philip I. Moynihan
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Before the military financing ran out, Mr. Langevin said,
he had developed a camera projection system that "at a
distance of 50 yards would make something unrecognizable
and in certain conditions invisible."
The key is a series of small cameras and the cloaking of
the object in a material suitable for projection of images.
"On a tank, there were places where you would see things,
like the treads," he said from Maryland, where he runs a
small military research company, Tracer Round Associates.
"So we put skirts on the treads."
In an e-mail, Dr. Moynihan, now a principal engineer at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that this kind of cloaking
would work best with "stationary vehicles, positions, or
equipment that troops wish to hide."
Dr. Moynihan said the use of "small and inexpensive
cameras" to project a background image was accurately
described by "Q," the gadget buff, in the latest James Bond
movie, "Die Another Day." But, the real life scientist
added, studio special effects created the vanishing Aston
Martin that left tire tracks magically crunching through
the snow.
Japanese and American scientists admit that their
invisibility devices, whether cloaks or shields of walls,
are really just optical illusions.
"People like to fool people," said Steven K. Feiner, a
Columbia University computer science professor who
experiments in the field. Then, lowering his voice as if
giving away a big secret, he added: "Magicians do this all
the time. A lot of the vanishing women and the sawing of
people in half - that's done with mirrors."
March 27, 2003
By JAMES BROOKE
TOKYO, March 23 - Enveloped in a green plastic raincoat,
Kazutoshi Obana slowly raised his arms. Then, with a click
of a button, Mr. Obana, a graduate student at Tokyo
University, faded away.
In his place, a ghostly image of the cityscape directly
behind him came into view.
Graduate students may be resigned to some invisibility,
particularly in the eyes of their advisers, but this was
something else entirely: an "invisible" raincoat, under
development at the university.
It is the brainchild of Susumu Tachi, a professor of
computer science and information physics.
While invisibility has long been a plot element in films
like "The Invisible Man" and the Harry Potter series, Dr.
Tachi said his device was far removed from movie magic.
In his office at the university, he scoffed at Hollywood's
special-effects type of invisibility, represented most
recently by the vanishing sports car in the latest James
Bond movie.
"That is science fiction," Dr. Tachi said. "But this," he
added, "is true scientific development."
As with many true scientific developments, however, Dr.
Tachi's raincoat is clunky and cumbersome. And it is
something of a special effect of its own.
Basically, a camera films a scene behind the raincoat, and
a projector projects it on the garment's front, which is
covered with tiny reflective beads called retroreflectors.
The process creates an illusion of invisibility.
While a raincoat may not be the most useful application of
the technology - it is more for demonstration purposes -
there are many potential practical uses, Dr. Tachi said. A
plane could be turned into a high-tech glass-bottomed boat,
for instance, with the floor a projection screen displaying
images of the ground below. Or images from within the body
could be projected on the skin, to aid surgeons.
"This would allow minimally invasive surgery," Dr. Tachi
said. "Now, brain surgeons often have to cut off the top of
a head. This could allow a very small hole, which would be
nice for the patient."
"We are working with several surgeons, also a company that
makes cockpits," he said.
Dr. Tachi suggested another application: home builders
could embed microchips containing blueprints of wiring and
piping in the walls of buildings. When a repair was needed,
a worker could flip a switch and see the blueprint
superimposed on the wall.
Asked if this invisible technology could have military
applications, say in a desert war, the 57-year-old
professor flinched, quite visibly. Reflecting Japan's
deeply held pacifist ethic, universities generally shun
military research.
Sukeyasu S. Yamamoto, a retired Tokyo University physics
professor, explained, "There is a real allergy to anything
to do with military research."
But in the United States, where such allergies are not as
widespread, the technology is called "adaptive camouflage,"
and research has progressed in fits and starts, according
to flows of military financing.
"We dreamed that up in 1998," Maurice L. Langevin, a
military researcher in Maryland, said of a projection
concept that he said he developed with Philip I. Moynihan
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Before the military financing ran out, Mr. Langevin said,
he had developed a camera projection system that "at a
distance of 50 yards would make something unrecognizable
and in certain conditions invisible."
The key is a series of small cameras and the cloaking of
the object in a material suitable for projection of images.
"On a tank, there were places where you would see things,
like the treads," he said from Maryland, where he runs a
small military research company, Tracer Round Associates.
"So we put skirts on the treads."
In an e-mail, Dr. Moynihan, now a principal engineer at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that this kind of cloaking
would work best with "stationary vehicles, positions, or
equipment that troops wish to hide."
Dr. Moynihan said the use of "small and inexpensive
cameras" to project a background image was accurately
described by "Q," the gadget buff, in the latest James Bond
movie, "Die Another Day." But, the real life scientist
added, studio special effects created the vanishing Aston
Martin that left tire tracks magically crunching through
the snow.
Japanese and American scientists admit that their
invisibility devices, whether cloaks or shields of walls,
are really just optical illusions.
"People like to fool people," said Steven K. Feiner, a
Columbia University computer science professor who
experiments in the field. Then, lowering his voice as if
giving away a big secret, he added: "Magicians do this all
the time. A lot of the vanishing women and the sawing of
people in half - that's done with mirrors."
Bionic Eye Can Restore Some Sight to the Blind (Reuters)
Fri May 09, 2003 05:36 PM ET
By Deena Beasley
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A bionic retina can restore some eyesight in people blinded by degenerative eye diseases, and may some day bring vision to children born blind, according to new research.
Three patients have so far been implanted with the device, a sliver of silicone and platinum studded with 16 electrodes -- one-third the size of a contact lens -- that sits atop the retina.
It works by electrically stimulating remaining healthy retinal cells, which pass on the visual information to the brain through the optic nerve.
The device "can be used by the patients to detect light or even to distinguish between objects such as a cup or plate," Dr. Mark Humayun, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, said on Friday.
The trial results were announced at a meeting on Thursday of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The bionic implant is designed to stand in for damaged retinal cells in people suffering from blinding diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the elderly.
The first trial patient was implanted with the microelectronic device in February 2002, another received the implant in July of last year and the third eye surgery was conducted in March.
The implanted retina, made by Sylmar, California-based Second Sight LLC, does not process light directly. Patients are fitted with a pair of glasses mounted with a video camera, which transmits images to a wireless receiver. The receiver relays the signal to the bionic chip, where the pattern of the original image is recreated by lighting up appropriate electrodes.
"The camera is very tiny. There are a lot of advantages to using it -- there are zoom features, you can adjust colors," Humayun said.
With just 16 electrodes, the chip cannot achieve the sharpness of normal vision. Eventually, a version with up to 1,000 electrodes will be used to produce sharper images and a wider field of vision, he said.
"The eye has millions of light-sensing cells. Our results are a testament to the brain's ability to use crude information and make sense of it," he said.
Eventually, the bionic retina might be used the way the cochlear implant is now used to restore hearing in children who are born deaf, Humayun said. These implants contain electrodes positioned in the inner ear, or cochlea..
The devices have to be implanted in early childhood, before the brain is hard-wired for nonhearing, Humayun noted. "I envision the same kind of thing with this condition."
Fri May 09, 2003 05:36 PM ET
By Deena Beasley
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A bionic retina can restore some eyesight in people blinded by degenerative eye diseases, and may some day bring vision to children born blind, according to new research.
Three patients have so far been implanted with the device, a sliver of silicone and platinum studded with 16 electrodes -- one-third the size of a contact lens -- that sits atop the retina.
It works by electrically stimulating remaining healthy retinal cells, which pass on the visual information to the brain through the optic nerve.
The device "can be used by the patients to detect light or even to distinguish between objects such as a cup or plate," Dr. Mark Humayun, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, said on Friday.
The trial results were announced at a meeting on Thursday of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The bionic implant is designed to stand in for damaged retinal cells in people suffering from blinding diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the elderly.
The first trial patient was implanted with the microelectronic device in February 2002, another received the implant in July of last year and the third eye surgery was conducted in March.
The implanted retina, made by Sylmar, California-based Second Sight LLC, does not process light directly. Patients are fitted with a pair of glasses mounted with a video camera, which transmits images to a wireless receiver. The receiver relays the signal to the bionic chip, where the pattern of the original image is recreated by lighting up appropriate electrodes.
"The camera is very tiny. There are a lot of advantages to using it -- there are zoom features, you can adjust colors," Humayun said.
With just 16 electrodes, the chip cannot achieve the sharpness of normal vision. Eventually, a version with up to 1,000 electrodes will be used to produce sharper images and a wider field of vision, he said.
"The eye has millions of light-sensing cells. Our results are a testament to the brain's ability to use crude information and make sense of it," he said.
Eventually, the bionic retina might be used the way the cochlear implant is now used to restore hearing in children who are born deaf, Humayun said. These implants contain electrodes positioned in the inner ear, or cochlea..
The devices have to be implanted in early childhood, before the brain is hard-wired for nonhearing, Humayun noted. "I envision the same kind of thing with this condition."
PATTERNING CELL TYPES IN THE DORSAL SPINAL CORD: WHAT THE MOUSE MUTANTS SAY
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 4, 289 -297 (2003); doi:10.1038/nrn1073
Tamara Caspary & Kathryn V. Anderson
Preface
The organized arrangement of neurons in the mature spinal cord arises from a pattern of cell types that is established in the embryonic neural tube. Initial research on the molecular mechanisms that underlie this cellular diversity focused on the specification of ventral cell types, but recently more has been learned about cell-type specification in the dorsal neural tube. Genetic loss-of-function analysis in the mouse has provided important insights into the functions of several genes that direct neural cell fate, and we are beginning to define how the organization and connectivity of these neurons is established.
Summary
Neural activity in the spinal cord enables an animal to sense and respond to stimuli from internal organs and external sensory structures. Broadly speaking, neurons in the ventral half of the spinal cord regulate motor output, whereas neurons in the dorsal half mediate and integrate sensory input. The organization of the mature spinal cord derives from a dorsoventral pattern of cell types that is specified early in neural tube development.
Five parallel layers (laminae) have been defined in the dorsal horn of the mature spinal cord, and specific laminae receive input from different sensory modalities through the dorsal root ganglia. Generating the proper connections between the sensory neurons and the neurons of the spinal cord depends on the prior specification of the distinct laminae as target fields for the incoming axons.
Four non-overlapping proneural gene expression domains define progenitor cell types in the dorsal neural tube, which generate six types of dorsal interneuron (dI1–dI6). Interneurons derived from Mash1-expressing progenitors contribute to both deep and superficial laminae, whereas Math1-expressing cells migrate exclusively to the deep laminae. Homeodomain transcription factors define region-specific neural identity in the neural tube.
The surface ectoderm and notochord specify two secondary signalling centres at the ventral and dorsal midlines of the early neural tube — the floor plate and the roof plate — that produce signals that pattern the neural tube. Sonic hedgehog (Shh) signals from the notochord induce formation of the floor plate, and subsequent Shh expression in the floor plate generates a Shh gradient that promotes the specification of a series of ventral cell types.
The roof plate could provide the signals to specify the dorsal cell types of the neural tube — for example, in mice where the roof plate is ablated, dI1–dI3 are not specified. The classic mouse mutant dreher also lacks a roof plate, and the number of early-born dI1 cells is diminished in these mice.
Experiments in the chick indicate that bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) 6 and Bmp7 from the roof plate are probably important for specifying dorsal neural fates. Testing the roles of the BMPs in dorsal spinal-cord patterning in the mouse will require the generation of conditional mutants, in which the Bmp genes are inactivated only in the roof plate. Wnt signalling has also been implicated in the patterning of the dorsal neural tube, as have Shh antagonists, such as Gli3 and the Zic family of transcription factors.
Ablation experiments indicate that dI1–dI3 are specified by signals from the roof plate, but it is not known what signals direct the development of the dI4–dI6 cells, which arise from more ventral regions. However, experiments in mouse and chick indicate that expression of the Lbx1 homeobox gene normally prevents dI4–dI6 cells from acquiring a dI2–dI4 fate.
The mouse mutants do not support a simple morphogen model — such as the Shh model that has been proposed for the ventral neural tube — for dorsal neural tube patterning. However, recent genetic analysis has indicated that factors other than Shh participate in ventral patterning, so similar strategies, albeit different from those that were initially proposed, might be used for ventral and dorsal patterning.
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 4, 289 -297 (2003); doi:10.1038/nrn1073
Tamara Caspary & Kathryn V. Anderson
Preface
The organized arrangement of neurons in the mature spinal cord arises from a pattern of cell types that is established in the embryonic neural tube. Initial research on the molecular mechanisms that underlie this cellular diversity focused on the specification of ventral cell types, but recently more has been learned about cell-type specification in the dorsal neural tube. Genetic loss-of-function analysis in the mouse has provided important insights into the functions of several genes that direct neural cell fate, and we are beginning to define how the organization and connectivity of these neurons is established.
Summary
Neural activity in the spinal cord enables an animal to sense and respond to stimuli from internal organs and external sensory structures. Broadly speaking, neurons in the ventral half of the spinal cord regulate motor output, whereas neurons in the dorsal half mediate and integrate sensory input. The organization of the mature spinal cord derives from a dorsoventral pattern of cell types that is specified early in neural tube development.
Five parallel layers (laminae) have been defined in the dorsal horn of the mature spinal cord, and specific laminae receive input from different sensory modalities through the dorsal root ganglia. Generating the proper connections between the sensory neurons and the neurons of the spinal cord depends on the prior specification of the distinct laminae as target fields for the incoming axons.
Four non-overlapping proneural gene expression domains define progenitor cell types in the dorsal neural tube, which generate six types of dorsal interneuron (dI1–dI6). Interneurons derived from Mash1-expressing progenitors contribute to both deep and superficial laminae, whereas Math1-expressing cells migrate exclusively to the deep laminae. Homeodomain transcription factors define region-specific neural identity in the neural tube.
The surface ectoderm and notochord specify two secondary signalling centres at the ventral and dorsal midlines of the early neural tube — the floor plate and the roof plate — that produce signals that pattern the neural tube. Sonic hedgehog (Shh) signals from the notochord induce formation of the floor plate, and subsequent Shh expression in the floor plate generates a Shh gradient that promotes the specification of a series of ventral cell types.
The roof plate could provide the signals to specify the dorsal cell types of the neural tube — for example, in mice where the roof plate is ablated, dI1–dI3 are not specified. The classic mouse mutant dreher also lacks a roof plate, and the number of early-born dI1 cells is diminished in these mice.
Experiments in the chick indicate that bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) 6 and Bmp7 from the roof plate are probably important for specifying dorsal neural fates. Testing the roles of the BMPs in dorsal spinal-cord patterning in the mouse will require the generation of conditional mutants, in which the Bmp genes are inactivated only in the roof plate. Wnt signalling has also been implicated in the patterning of the dorsal neural tube, as have Shh antagonists, such as Gli3 and the Zic family of transcription factors.
Ablation experiments indicate that dI1–dI3 are specified by signals from the roof plate, but it is not known what signals direct the development of the dI4–dI6 cells, which arise from more ventral regions. However, experiments in mouse and chick indicate that expression of the Lbx1 homeobox gene normally prevents dI4–dI6 cells from acquiring a dI2–dI4 fate.
The mouse mutants do not support a simple morphogen model — such as the Shh model that has been proposed for the ventral neural tube — for dorsal neural tube patterning. However, recent genetic analysis has indicated that factors other than Shh participate in ventral patterning, so similar strategies, albeit different from those that were initially proposed, might be used for ventral and dorsal patterning.
Scientists of Very Small Draw Disciplines Together
February 10, 2003
By BARNABY J. FEDER (N.Y.T)
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 7 - Nanotechnology, biotechnology,
electronics and brain research are converging into a new
field of science vital to the nation's security and
economic clout.
Or so say influential research agenda-setters like the
National Science Foundation, along with a loose-knit group
of government, academic and industry researchers who are
trying to accelerate the convergence process.
"Leading scientists are stepping forward and saying, `We
don't have departments organized for this, but this is
what's hot,' " said Philip J. Keukes, chief architect for
quantum science research at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories.
Mr. Keukes was speaking at the closing session of a
three-day meeting here that attracted a wide range of
researchers interested in the convergence, as well as a
smattering of investors, analysts and representatives of
groups primarily concerned about possible negative
consequences.
The organizers believe that there are potentially large
benefits to nanotechnology, which focuses on materials and
processes with dimensions so small they are affected by the
behavior of individual atoms and molecules. But they say
the greatest opportunities lie in bridging the gaps between
the rapidly growing ranks of nanoengineers and researchers
in other fields - professionals who often use such
different terms to describe their work that their common
interests go unnoticed.
For instance, nanotechnology researchers suspect that the
natural world's ability to assemble atoms into complex
tissues with very exact specifications may hold the key to
making vast quantities of minute, inexpensive pollution
sensors or solar cells. Bioengineers, on the other hand,
are looking to artificial nanostructures as possible drug
delivery systems or as scaffolds to help injured organs
repair themselves.
Such convergence was given a name late in 2001: NBIC, for
nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and
cognitive science. The concept is new enough that
researchers have not yet agreed on a pronunciation for the
acronym. Some say "EN-bick"; some say "NIB-bick."
But convergence advocates are already laying plans to ask
the Bush administration to invest hundreds of millions of
dollars a year in a new program to encourage collaborative
work in NBIC technologies, according to James Canton, a
technology consultant involved in the effort through the
National Science Foundation.
"NBIC are the power tools of the 21st century," said Mr.
Canton, who is president of the Institute for Global
Futures, a technology trends research firm in San
Francisco.
Putting the tools together, not just for researchers but in
the curriculums of the nation's schools, has become a top
priority for Dr. Mihail C. Roco, who heads the National
Nanotechnology Initiative, a program created by President
Bill Clinton and expanded by President Bush that this year
will oversee $780 million in nanotechnology research grants
by numerous federal agencies.
"We have an obligation not to get sidetracked," Dr. Roco
said in Los Angeles.
The NBIC concept grew from a meeting Dr. Roco convened in
2000 to explore the social implications of nanotechnology
research. The field derives its name from the nanometer,
which is a billionth of a meter, roughly the length of a
line of five hydrogen atoms.
Nanoscale innovations include novelties like tubes of
carbon that are far stronger and lighter than steel and
tiny light-emitting structures, called quantum dots, that
are being used as identification tags in biological
research. But because all the activities of living cells
are governed by nanoscale interactions of atoms and small
molecules, nanotechnology researchers looking for new ways
to make and use nanomaterials are increasingly finding
their interests overlapping with experts in biotechnology.
Similarly, electronics experts are looking to
biotechnology and nanotechnology as they seek innovations
that will allow them to construct far smaller and faster
computers than today's silicon processors, and to create
equally tiny data storage systems and communications
devices.
Experts in cognition - which includes the way the brain
processes the sensory data it receives from the nervous
system and from proteins or other compounds in the blood -
have also been invited into the fold. Their inclusion has
focused the NBIC on technology applications that could
improve human health or even advance human performance in
areas like memory, mood control or the ability to
communicate with machines.
A number of speakers emphasized the educational and
organizational changes needed for success.
"Convergence is about setting up the right social system so
that advances in one area rapidly move into others," said
James C. Spohrer, an executive at I.B.M.'s research center
in Almaden, Calif., who recently became head of a new group
there focused on innovations to support the 170,000
consultants and technicians in I.B.M.'s Global Services
unit. "The nano is hard, the biology is hard, the cognitive
stuff is hard," he said, "but a new science of putting it
together is really hard."
The group also wrestled with how to broaden discussion to
include input from potential critics. Dr. Roco said that
another meeting focused on social implications would be
held next year and that I.B.M. would probably join with the
National Science Foundation to hold a meeting on the
business implications next fall.
February 10, 2003
By BARNABY J. FEDER (N.Y.T)
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 7 - Nanotechnology, biotechnology,
electronics and brain research are converging into a new
field of science vital to the nation's security and
economic clout.
Or so say influential research agenda-setters like the
National Science Foundation, along with a loose-knit group
of government, academic and industry researchers who are
trying to accelerate the convergence process.
"Leading scientists are stepping forward and saying, `We
don't have departments organized for this, but this is
what's hot,' " said Philip J. Keukes, chief architect for
quantum science research at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories.
Mr. Keukes was speaking at the closing session of a
three-day meeting here that attracted a wide range of
researchers interested in the convergence, as well as a
smattering of investors, analysts and representatives of
groups primarily concerned about possible negative
consequences.
The organizers believe that there are potentially large
benefits to nanotechnology, which focuses on materials and
processes with dimensions so small they are affected by the
behavior of individual atoms and molecules. But they say
the greatest opportunities lie in bridging the gaps between
the rapidly growing ranks of nanoengineers and researchers
in other fields - professionals who often use such
different terms to describe their work that their common
interests go unnoticed.
For instance, nanotechnology researchers suspect that the
natural world's ability to assemble atoms into complex
tissues with very exact specifications may hold the key to
making vast quantities of minute, inexpensive pollution
sensors or solar cells. Bioengineers, on the other hand,
are looking to artificial nanostructures as possible drug
delivery systems or as scaffolds to help injured organs
repair themselves.
Such convergence was given a name late in 2001: NBIC, for
nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and
cognitive science. The concept is new enough that
researchers have not yet agreed on a pronunciation for the
acronym. Some say "EN-bick"; some say "NIB-bick."
But convergence advocates are already laying plans to ask
the Bush administration to invest hundreds of millions of
dollars a year in a new program to encourage collaborative
work in NBIC technologies, according to James Canton, a
technology consultant involved in the effort through the
National Science Foundation.
"NBIC are the power tools of the 21st century," said Mr.
Canton, who is president of the Institute for Global
Futures, a technology trends research firm in San
Francisco.
Putting the tools together, not just for researchers but in
the curriculums of the nation's schools, has become a top
priority for Dr. Mihail C. Roco, who heads the National
Nanotechnology Initiative, a program created by President
Bill Clinton and expanded by President Bush that this year
will oversee $780 million in nanotechnology research grants
by numerous federal agencies.
"We have an obligation not to get sidetracked," Dr. Roco
said in Los Angeles.
The NBIC concept grew from a meeting Dr. Roco convened in
2000 to explore the social implications of nanotechnology
research. The field derives its name from the nanometer,
which is a billionth of a meter, roughly the length of a
line of five hydrogen atoms.
Nanoscale innovations include novelties like tubes of
carbon that are far stronger and lighter than steel and
tiny light-emitting structures, called quantum dots, that
are being used as identification tags in biological
research. But because all the activities of living cells
are governed by nanoscale interactions of atoms and small
molecules, nanotechnology researchers looking for new ways
to make and use nanomaterials are increasingly finding
their interests overlapping with experts in biotechnology.
Similarly, electronics experts are looking to
biotechnology and nanotechnology as they seek innovations
that will allow them to construct far smaller and faster
computers than today's silicon processors, and to create
equally tiny data storage systems and communications
devices.
Experts in cognition - which includes the way the brain
processes the sensory data it receives from the nervous
system and from proteins or other compounds in the blood -
have also been invited into the fold. Their inclusion has
focused the NBIC on technology applications that could
improve human health or even advance human performance in
areas like memory, mood control or the ability to
communicate with machines.
A number of speakers emphasized the educational and
organizational changes needed for success.
"Convergence is about setting up the right social system so
that advances in one area rapidly move into others," said
James C. Spohrer, an executive at I.B.M.'s research center
in Almaden, Calif., who recently became head of a new group
there focused on innovations to support the 170,000
consultants and technicians in I.B.M.'s Global Services
unit. "The nano is hard, the biology is hard, the cognitive
stuff is hard," he said, "but a new science of putting it
together is really hard."
The group also wrestled with how to broaden discussion to
include input from potential critics. Dr. Roco said that
another meeting focused on social implications would be
held next year and that I.B.M. would probably join with the
National Science Foundation to hold a meeting on the
business implications next fall.
Brain scan shows how to spot a bright spark
By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent
World News
March 17, 2003
INTELLIGENCE tests of the future could involve a brain scan rather than endless questions after the discovery that clever people really are “brighter” than the rest of us.
Scientists have identified “bright spots” in the brain, which clever people use more efficiently to solve problems. And there is a chance that we could all improve our intellect simply by learning to concentrate more, since the bright spots are generally in areas controlling attention.
The discovery by researchers from Washington University in St Louis and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, goes some way to explaining why some people are more intelligent than others — although they acknowledge other factors such as heredity, diet and education.
Forty-eight volunteers who took part in the study took tests measuring general fluid intelligence (gF) — a reasoning and problem-solving ability similar to IQ.
The volunteers’ brains were then scanned while they tackled a complex problem, looking at cards bearing a series of faces and being asked to spot a face that had appeared three places back in the sequence. Other cards featuring faces two or four places back were added to confuse them.
The research team, led by Jeremy Gray of Washington University, report in Nature Neuroscience that they found a remarkable correlation between high gF scores, good test results and a distinctive pattern of brain stimulation. Certain structures, particularly in the pre-frontal cortex, showed much greater activity in those who performed well.
Dr Gray said: “Behavioural interventions such as schooling and other factors can have markedly positive influences on gF. A mechanistic understanding could lead to more specific approaches to enhancing it.”
By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent
World News
March 17, 2003
INTELLIGENCE tests of the future could involve a brain scan rather than endless questions after the discovery that clever people really are “brighter” than the rest of us.
Scientists have identified “bright spots” in the brain, which clever people use more efficiently to solve problems. And there is a chance that we could all improve our intellect simply by learning to concentrate more, since the bright spots are generally in areas controlling attention.
The discovery by researchers from Washington University in St Louis and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, goes some way to explaining why some people are more intelligent than others — although they acknowledge other factors such as heredity, diet and education.
Forty-eight volunteers who took part in the study took tests measuring general fluid intelligence (gF) — a reasoning and problem-solving ability similar to IQ.
The volunteers’ brains were then scanned while they tackled a complex problem, looking at cards bearing a series of faces and being asked to spot a face that had appeared three places back in the sequence. Other cards featuring faces two or four places back were added to confuse them.
The research team, led by Jeremy Gray of Washington University, report in Nature Neuroscience that they found a remarkable correlation between high gF scores, good test results and a distinctive pattern of brain stimulation. Certain structures, particularly in the pre-frontal cortex, showed much greater activity in those who performed well.
Dr Gray said: “Behavioural interventions such as schooling and other factors can have markedly positive influences on gF. A mechanistic understanding could lead to more specific approaches to enhancing it.”
(25) Do Paranormal Phenomena Exist?
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: November 11, 2003
Mention mind reading, ghosts, premonitions, the bending of spoons through thought or other supposed mysteries of the paranormal, and most scientists will say there are no such things.
Polls show that about half of Americans believe in paranormal phenomena. "For some reason, a lot of people want it to be so," said Dr. Robert L. Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland and the author of "Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud." "If you can do things with your mind, then the universe is paying attention to you, and that's important to a lot of people."
What then to make of researchers at an institute set up by the Iowa-based Maharishi meditation movement who claim meditation reduces violence in Israel and murders in Washington — and publish scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals?
Or published peer-reviewed studies indicating that prayer lengthens lives, even when patients don't know that someone is praying for them?
The few scientists working on paranormal research, often on their own dime, feel they are following the rules of science yet being excluded from the playing field.
"There's really strong pressure not to allow these things to be talked about in a positive way," said Dr. Brian D. Josephson, a professor of physics at Cambridge University who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics for a fundamental discovery in superconductivity, and now heads the Mind-Matter Unification Project at Cambridge.
One experiment Dr. Josephson finds intriguing is the Global Consciousness Project, which records the output from devices that generate random numbers based on electrical noise. Dr. Roger D. Nelson, the project's director, said that for unknown reasons the distribution of random numbers changes noticeably during crises, with a noticeable shift on Sept. 11, 2001.
The skeptics, however, say the data do not sway them. Dr. Terence M. Hines, a professor of psychology at Pace University in Pleasantville, N.Y., said, for example, that the prayer studies he had seen were poorly designed — a criticism that is often made of mainstream research as well. (A new, larger study reported last month that prayer by strangers provided no benefits to patients undergoing heart surgery.)
More generally, Dr. Hines said, the data claiming to demonstrate paranormal events "always stay at the very edge of perceptibility." As scientists learn more about a phenomenon, they can often refine their experiments to highlight the new effects. Despite years of work, that has not occurred with the paranormal research, Dr. Hines said.
Perhaps the biggest reason most scientists dismiss paranormal research is that no one has a good suggestion for how the mind could interact with the physical world.
And even Dr. Josephson concedes: "It would have to be something we haven't identified in physical experiments. I think if we can get some sort of model, then people may start to look at it."
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: November 11, 2003
Mention mind reading, ghosts, premonitions, the bending of spoons through thought or other supposed mysteries of the paranormal, and most scientists will say there are no such things.
Polls show that about half of Americans believe in paranormal phenomena. "For some reason, a lot of people want it to be so," said Dr. Robert L. Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland and the author of "Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud." "If you can do things with your mind, then the universe is paying attention to you, and that's important to a lot of people."
What then to make of researchers at an institute set up by the Iowa-based Maharishi meditation movement who claim meditation reduces violence in Israel and murders in Washington — and publish scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals?
Or published peer-reviewed studies indicating that prayer lengthens lives, even when patients don't know that someone is praying for them?
The few scientists working on paranormal research, often on their own dime, feel they are following the rules of science yet being excluded from the playing field.
"There's really strong pressure not to allow these things to be talked about in a positive way," said Dr. Brian D. Josephson, a professor of physics at Cambridge University who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics for a fundamental discovery in superconductivity, and now heads the Mind-Matter Unification Project at Cambridge.
One experiment Dr. Josephson finds intriguing is the Global Consciousness Project, which records the output from devices that generate random numbers based on electrical noise. Dr. Roger D. Nelson, the project's director, said that for unknown reasons the distribution of random numbers changes noticeably during crises, with a noticeable shift on Sept. 11, 2001.
The skeptics, however, say the data do not sway them. Dr. Terence M. Hines, a professor of psychology at Pace University in Pleasantville, N.Y., said, for example, that the prayer studies he had seen were poorly designed — a criticism that is often made of mainstream research as well. (A new, larger study reported last month that prayer by strangers provided no benefits to patients undergoing heart surgery.)
More generally, Dr. Hines said, the data claiming to demonstrate paranormal events "always stay at the very edge of perceptibility." As scientists learn more about a phenomenon, they can often refine their experiments to highlight the new effects. Despite years of work, that has not occurred with the paranormal research, Dr. Hines said.
Perhaps the biggest reason most scientists dismiss paranormal research is that no one has a good suggestion for how the mind could interact with the physical world.
And even Dr. Josephson concedes: "It would have to be something we haven't identified in physical experiments. I think if we can get some sort of model, then people may start to look at it."
(24) Where Are Those Aliens?
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: November 11, 2003
It was at lunch in Los Alamos, N.M., in 1950 that Enrico Fermi, best known for building the first atomic reactor, asked the question that has haunted those who like to wonder about other life in the universe ever since.
Where is everybody?
In the half-century since Fermi posed the question, spacecraft have visited or inspected every planet but Pluto and all the major moons in the solar system, but have yet to find a sign of life. At the other end of the evolutionary scale, astronomers have examined thousands of stars for radio signals from extraterrestrials. So far, the silence is deafening.
Admittedly, those few thousand stars and one solar system represent only the barest trace of the potential riches of the galaxy, which holds some 200 billion stars. Depending on how plentiful Earth-like planets are and how likely the evolution of life and intelligence is, astronomers have argued that there could be millions of civilizations in the galaxy, or only one.
But if alien civilizations are plentiful and interstellar space travel is even vaguely attractive to them, Fermi's question has to be answered.
The argument behind it goes like this: Aliens could spread throughout the Milky Way in far less than the 10 billion years that the galaxy has been around, even if they travel at far less than the speed of light, Einstein's cosmic speed limit.
Suppose, for example, that the first alien starship that sets out for another star takes a million years to arrive there and become established. Then the new colony and the original civilization each send a spaceship on a similar voyage, and so forth, so that a wave of new colonies is formed, doubling the total number every million years.
After 10 million years, there will be 1,023 alien settlements, plus the original. After 20 million years, there will be a million. After 40 million years, if they keep it up, there would be a trillion — more than there are stars in the galaxy.
By now, after 10 billion years, if there were more than one spacefaring civilization in the galaxy, they would be tripping over one another or one another's artifacts. But in fact there seems to be nothing.
If the logic of Fermi's argument is right, it will spell doom and frustration for astronomers' efforts to detect radio transmissions from distant societies, the project known as SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, because the presumed fact that they are not here means they are not there.
SETI enthusiasts concede that the paradox is not easy to get around. Perhaps interstellar travel is just too daunting and expensive, some say. But as Dr. Frank J. Tipler, a physicist at Tulane University, has pointed out, the aliens do not have to send themselves; they could send self-reproducing robots.
Moreover, California, and the islands of the Pacific before it, were settled by people who were willing to pack up their families, turn their backs on the known world and never look back. The scattering of humans over the whole Earth from our origins in Africa is testimony to the ability of our own race at least, to keep on moving for a long time.
So where are they?
One answer is the imaginative and humbling-sounding "zoo hypothesis." It says that aliens are in fact here, or at least watching us, but are pledged to not interfere. It would mean that we are being treated more ethically than we have traditionally treated animals and indigenous cultures here on Earth.
Of course, "they" could be here, and we might not recognize them, any more than ants would recognize the Mona Lisa or, say, the Internet as artifacts of superior beings.
The discovery of even a lowly fungus in the shade of some foreign sun would rank as a landmark in the history not only of science, but also of humanity. NASA has lately made the search for signs of extraterrestrial life, or of likely abodes for it, a centerpiece mission. But that mission, as astrobiologists concede, is hostage to our concepts of life and intelligence. We are good at looking for things like ourselves.
Another answer is that even robot proxies are more expensive than electromagnetic waves and that we simply have not yet tapped into the galactic library, the cosmic Internet.
"Absence of evidence," as SETI astronomers like to say, "is not evidence of absence." The search has barely begun, and the scientific thing to do, they say, is to keep searching, expecting answers, trusting that we know the questions.
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: November 11, 2003
It was at lunch in Los Alamos, N.M., in 1950 that Enrico Fermi, best known for building the first atomic reactor, asked the question that has haunted those who like to wonder about other life in the universe ever since.
Where is everybody?
In the half-century since Fermi posed the question, spacecraft have visited or inspected every planet but Pluto and all the major moons in the solar system, but have yet to find a sign of life. At the other end of the evolutionary scale, astronomers have examined thousands of stars for radio signals from extraterrestrials. So far, the silence is deafening.
Admittedly, those few thousand stars and one solar system represent only the barest trace of the potential riches of the galaxy, which holds some 200 billion stars. Depending on how plentiful Earth-like planets are and how likely the evolution of life and intelligence is, astronomers have argued that there could be millions of civilizations in the galaxy, or only one.
But if alien civilizations are plentiful and interstellar space travel is even vaguely attractive to them, Fermi's question has to be answered.
The argument behind it goes like this: Aliens could spread throughout the Milky Way in far less than the 10 billion years that the galaxy has been around, even if they travel at far less than the speed of light, Einstein's cosmic speed limit.
Suppose, for example, that the first alien starship that sets out for another star takes a million years to arrive there and become established. Then the new colony and the original civilization each send a spaceship on a similar voyage, and so forth, so that a wave of new colonies is formed, doubling the total number every million years.
After 10 million years, there will be 1,023 alien settlements, plus the original. After 20 million years, there will be a million. After 40 million years, if they keep it up, there would be a trillion — more than there are stars in the galaxy.
By now, after 10 billion years, if there were more than one spacefaring civilization in the galaxy, they would be tripping over one another or one another's artifacts. But in fact there seems to be nothing.
If the logic of Fermi's argument is right, it will spell doom and frustration for astronomers' efforts to detect radio transmissions from distant societies, the project known as SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, because the presumed fact that they are not here means they are not there.
SETI enthusiasts concede that the paradox is not easy to get around. Perhaps interstellar travel is just too daunting and expensive, some say. But as Dr. Frank J. Tipler, a physicist at Tulane University, has pointed out, the aliens do not have to send themselves; they could send self-reproducing robots.
Moreover, California, and the islands of the Pacific before it, were settled by people who were willing to pack up their families, turn their backs on the known world and never look back. The scattering of humans over the whole Earth from our origins in Africa is testimony to the ability of our own race at least, to keep on moving for a long time.
So where are they?
One answer is the imaginative and humbling-sounding "zoo hypothesis." It says that aliens are in fact here, or at least watching us, but are pledged to not interfere. It would mean that we are being treated more ethically than we have traditionally treated animals and indigenous cultures here on Earth.
Of course, "they" could be here, and we might not recognize them, any more than ants would recognize the Mona Lisa or, say, the Internet as artifacts of superior beings.
The discovery of even a lowly fungus in the shade of some foreign sun would rank as a landmark in the history not only of science, but also of humanity. NASA has lately made the search for signs of extraterrestrial life, or of likely abodes for it, a centerpiece mission. But that mission, as astrobiologists concede, is hostage to our concepts of life and intelligence. We are good at looking for things like ourselves.
Another answer is that even robot proxies are more expensive than electromagnetic waves and that we simply have not yet tapped into the galactic library, the cosmic Internet.
"Absence of evidence," as SETI astronomers like to say, "is not evidence of absence." The search has barely begun, and the scientific thing to do, they say, is to keep searching, expecting answers, trusting that we know the questions.
(23) What Is the Most Important Problem in Math Today?
By GINA KOLATA
Published: November 11, 2003
Many mathematicians would say it's the problem they're working on, but of all the famous unsolved problems, one stands out — the Riemann hypothesis. Posed in 1859 by the German mathematician Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, it has tantalized mathematicians ever since. Recently, efforts to prove it have taken on a new intensity, with mathematicians turning to physics for insight.
The conjecture is Riemann's only venture into number theory, a branch of mathematics that investigates whole numbers. And it says something truly profound about prime numbers. Such numbers, like 2, 3, 5 and 7, have no divisors other than themselves and 1 and seem to appear unpredictably on the number line. Euclid proved that there were infinitely many primes, but the question is, Where are they? Is there a pattern or rule that can tell where to find them?
In his conjecture, Riemann suggested a formula to describe where the primes are. It involves a certain set of points on a plane that correspond to solutions that make an equation, the zeta function, equal zero. His hypothesis said that all of those points, the zeros of the zeta function, are on a single line. The only exceptions are points that mathematicians call trivial zeros because, they say, everything they care to know about those points is already known.
Riemann, however, gave not a hint of how to prove he was right.
One approach is to prove the conjecture wrong. Over the years, mathematicians have used vast computer calculations to climb further up the line, examining point after point in the infinite collection of points, and so far every point has been on the line. The record is the 10 to the 23rd zero, which, as Dr. Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota discovered, falls on the line, just as 20 billion of its neighbors do.
The physics connection involves the boundary between ordinary Newtonian physics, in which you can know at every moment an object's position and its speed, and quantum physics, the subatomic level where if you know an object's position, you cannot know its velocity, and vice versa.
What happens, physicists asked, in the zone between the worlds of Newtonian and quantum physics? It turns out to involve the zeta function of the Riemann hypothesis. The distribution of energy levels in highly excited atomic nuclei looks similar to the distribution of the zeros of the zeta function.
This confluence has given mathematicians a promising avenue to explore. But given the history of the conjecture, few express strong optimism.
By GINA KOLATA
Published: November 11, 2003
Many mathematicians would say it's the problem they're working on, but of all the famous unsolved problems, one stands out — the Riemann hypothesis. Posed in 1859 by the German mathematician Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, it has tantalized mathematicians ever since. Recently, efforts to prove it have taken on a new intensity, with mathematicians turning to physics for insight.
The conjecture is Riemann's only venture into number theory, a branch of mathematics that investigates whole numbers. And it says something truly profound about prime numbers. Such numbers, like 2, 3, 5 and 7, have no divisors other than themselves and 1 and seem to appear unpredictably on the number line. Euclid proved that there were infinitely many primes, but the question is, Where are they? Is there a pattern or rule that can tell where to find them?
In his conjecture, Riemann suggested a formula to describe where the primes are. It involves a certain set of points on a plane that correspond to solutions that make an equation, the zeta function, equal zero. His hypothesis said that all of those points, the zeros of the zeta function, are on a single line. The only exceptions are points that mathematicians call trivial zeros because, they say, everything they care to know about those points is already known.
Riemann, however, gave not a hint of how to prove he was right.
One approach is to prove the conjecture wrong. Over the years, mathematicians have used vast computer calculations to climb further up the line, examining point after point in the infinite collection of points, and so far every point has been on the line. The record is the 10 to the 23rd zero, which, as Dr. Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota discovered, falls on the line, just as 20 billion of its neighbors do.
The physics connection involves the boundary between ordinary Newtonian physics, in which you can know at every moment an object's position and its speed, and quantum physics, the subatomic level where if you know an object's position, you cannot know its velocity, and vice versa.
What happens, physicists asked, in the zone between the worlds of Newtonian and quantum physics? It turns out to involve the zeta function of the Riemann hypothesis. The distribution of energy levels in highly excited atomic nuclei looks similar to the distribution of the zeros of the zeta function.
This confluence has given mathematicians a promising avenue to explore. But given the history of the conjecture, few express strong optimism.
(22) How Much Nature Is Enough?
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: November 11, 2003
Even some ardent conservationists acknowledge that the diversity of life on Earth cannot be fully sustained as human populations expand, use more resources, nudge the climate and move weedlike pests and predators from place to place.
Given that some losses are inevitable, the debate among many experts has shifted to an uncomfortable subject: what level of loss is acceptable.
The discussion is taking place at both the local and global levels:
How small can a fragment of an ecosystem be and still function in all its richness, and thus be considered preserved? And as global biodiversity diminishes, is it a valid fallback strategy to bank organisms and genes in zoos, DNA banks or the like, or does this simply justify more habitat destruction? Is nature on ice a sufficient substitute for the real thing?
Some conservation groups have strenuously avoided or even attacked such calculations and strategies. They say there is no safe diminution of habitat as long as human understanding of ecology is as sketchy as it is; a fallback strategy is unthinkable.
Furthermore, banking nature in a deep freeze or database of gene sequences cannot capture context. For instance, even if a vanished bird was someday reconstituted from its genes, would it warble with the same fluency as its ancestors?
On the other side of the debate, those considering what the smallest viable habitats are or how to expand archives as an insurance policy say that recent trends have proved that old conservation strategies are no longer sufficient.
A few decades ago, the issue seemed fairly uncomplicated: identify biological "hot spots" or species of concern and establish as many reserves as possible. But the picture has grown murky.
Twenty-four years ago, Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy and other biologists began a remarkable experiment on the fast-eroding fringe of rain forest near the Brazilian city of Manaus. They established 11 forest tracts, ranging from 2.5 to 250 acres, each surrounded by an isolating sea of pasture similar to what is advancing around most other tropical forests. Among the many findings, an analysis published last week on birds in the lower layers of greenery found that it would take a fragment measuring at least 2,500 acres — 10 times as large as the biggest one in the experiment — to prevent a decline of 50 percent in those bird varieties in just 15 years or so.
In the understated language of science, the new study, in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes: "This is unfortunate when one considers that for some species-rich areas of the planet, a large proportion of remaining forest is in fragments" smaller than 2,500 acres.
In the face of this and other evidence, a growing group of conservation biologists say: try everything, at the same time. "Clearly, the most effective way to protect biodiversity is to protect natural areas," said Dr. Peter H. Raven, the director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, "and to find those organisms most endangered in nature and somehow protect them in type-culture collections, botanical gardens, zoos, seed banks or whatever."
But most important, he said, is to find ways to limit human pressures on the world's last wild places by slowing population growth and using resources more efficiently. One pioneer of genetic deconstruction, Dr. J. Craig Venter, agrees with Dr. Raven. Dr. Venter has moved from sequencing the DNA of humans and other species to assaying genes in entire ecosystems, most recently the waters of the Sargasso Sea.
In five 50-gallon samples gathered in February, he said, his team had found 1 million distinct genes, quite a haul compared with the 26,000 or so of a human being. And that is the tiniest scratch in the surface, he added.
His is one effort among many. Britain has a Millennium Seed Bank, a growing archive of all the country's plants. The San Diego Zoo has its parallel Frozen Zoo, an archive of thousands of DNA samples and cell lines from a host of species.
Nonetheless, given the overwhelming complexity of nature, Dr. Venter added, "we're better off trying to preserve the diversity of what we have rather than trying to regenerate it in the future."
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: November 11, 2003
Even some ardent conservationists acknowledge that the diversity of life on Earth cannot be fully sustained as human populations expand, use more resources, nudge the climate and move weedlike pests and predators from place to place.
Given that some losses are inevitable, the debate among many experts has shifted to an uncomfortable subject: what level of loss is acceptable.
The discussion is taking place at both the local and global levels:
How small can a fragment of an ecosystem be and still function in all its richness, and thus be considered preserved? And as global biodiversity diminishes, is it a valid fallback strategy to bank organisms and genes in zoos, DNA banks or the like, or does this simply justify more habitat destruction? Is nature on ice a sufficient substitute for the real thing?
Some conservation groups have strenuously avoided or even attacked such calculations and strategies. They say there is no safe diminution of habitat as long as human understanding of ecology is as sketchy as it is; a fallback strategy is unthinkable.
Furthermore, banking nature in a deep freeze or database of gene sequences cannot capture context. For instance, even if a vanished bird was someday reconstituted from its genes, would it warble with the same fluency as its ancestors?
On the other side of the debate, those considering what the smallest viable habitats are or how to expand archives as an insurance policy say that recent trends have proved that old conservation strategies are no longer sufficient.
A few decades ago, the issue seemed fairly uncomplicated: identify biological "hot spots" or species of concern and establish as many reserves as possible. But the picture has grown murky.
Twenty-four years ago, Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy and other biologists began a remarkable experiment on the fast-eroding fringe of rain forest near the Brazilian city of Manaus. They established 11 forest tracts, ranging from 2.5 to 250 acres, each surrounded by an isolating sea of pasture similar to what is advancing around most other tropical forests. Among the many findings, an analysis published last week on birds in the lower layers of greenery found that it would take a fragment measuring at least 2,500 acres — 10 times as large as the biggest one in the experiment — to prevent a decline of 50 percent in those bird varieties in just 15 years or so.
In the understated language of science, the new study, in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes: "This is unfortunate when one considers that for some species-rich areas of the planet, a large proportion of remaining forest is in fragments" smaller than 2,500 acres.
In the face of this and other evidence, a growing group of conservation biologists say: try everything, at the same time. "Clearly, the most effective way to protect biodiversity is to protect natural areas," said Dr. Peter H. Raven, the director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, "and to find those organisms most endangered in nature and somehow protect them in type-culture collections, botanical gardens, zoos, seed banks or whatever."
But most important, he said, is to find ways to limit human pressures on the world's last wild places by slowing population growth and using resources more efficiently. One pioneer of genetic deconstruction, Dr. J. Craig Venter, agrees with Dr. Raven. Dr. Venter has moved from sequencing the DNA of humans and other species to assaying genes in entire ecosystems, most recently the waters of the Sargasso Sea.
In five 50-gallon samples gathered in February, he said, his team had found 1 million distinct genes, quite a haul compared with the 26,000 or so of a human being. And that is the tiniest scratch in the surface, he added.
His is one effort among many. Britain has a Millennium Seed Bank, a growing archive of all the country's plants. The San Diego Zoo has its parallel Frozen Zoo, an archive of thousands of DNA samples and cell lines from a host of species.
Nonetheless, given the overwhelming complexity of nature, Dr. Venter added, "we're better off trying to preserve the diversity of what we have rather than trying to regenerate it in the future."
(21) Should We Improve Our Genome?
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: November 11, 2003
Now that we have decoded the human genome, why don't we improve it?
The question is at present theoretical but could well emerge as the hardest of all bioethical issues. Biologists routinely alter the genes of mice, with methods that are not yet acceptable for making inheritable changes in people, but one day genetic engineers may figure out how to apply safe patches to the human biological software.
Everyone would like to have children who are healthy, beautiful and gifted. But people vary widely in all these qualities, depending on their parents' genes, and the pure luck of the draw at conception when each child gets allotted a random selection of half the parental gene pool.
Most human genes exist in several different versions in the population: some of them are great to have, some so-so and some downright deleterious.
This month the Icelandic company Decode Genetics found three quite common versions of a gene called BMP-2, each of which considerably increases its owner's risk of osteoporosis and bone fracture.
Suppose it were possible to delete any bad version of BMP-2, and of all other human genes, in a human embryo, and to replace them with good versions, without any risk to health. Would that be the right thing to do?
Parents who made such a choice would know they had given their child the best possible start in life. However expensive the procedure, it would be cheap in the long run if it saved a lifetime of medical bills, and therefore could be made available to all. Life's most serious unfairness, the difference in genetic endowment, would be erased from birth.
"One day, people may view sex as essentially recreational, and conception as something best done in the laboratory," Dr. Gregory Stock wrote recently in "Redesigning Humans. " Parents may start to believe it is "reckless and primitive to conceive a child without prior genetic testing."
Yet there are weighty arguments for not making inheritable changes to the human genome.
On the practical side, many genes have more than one effect, and swapping out the bad version of a gene can have unpredictable complications. The new gene, for example, may interact badly with the person's other genes.
But if the elimination of disease-causing variants of genes should prove successful, there might be no holding the line against parents who wanted to enhance strength or intelligence as well.
Upgrading the imperfect human material is all very well, but handling the transition between the superpeople and the ordinary variety promises to be awkward. Social stresses may emerge, especially if the technology does not trickle down quickly and smoothly.
Soup up those genes for I.Q.? Altering the genes that shape human behavior is not to be undertaken lightly. Human nature is a subtle blend of contrary qualities, the only survivor of evolution's many disastrous experiments. What could justify the risk of messing with such a delicate brew? Can't we be happy as we are, just as nature has shaped us?
"The human body and mind, highly complex and delicately balanced as a result of eons of gradual and exacting evolution, are almost certainly at risk from any ill-considered attempt at `improvement,' " the President's Council on Bioethics wrote in a report last month on the dangers of enhancing the body's natural abilities.
As the products of evolution, people may seem churlish if they challenge evolution's wisdom. But of course, evolution has none. It is a blind process that depends on constant error to create occasional lucky accidents.
By culling the unfortunate owners of bad genes, evolution keeps animals healthy and vigorous until the age of reproduction, and a bit beyond for species that provide parental care.
But evolution's rigor at favoring good genes that act early in life is mirrored by a weakness in screening out bad genes that act after the age of reproduction. Because of this weakness, evolution has failed to eliminate the bone-fracturing variants of BMP-2, and the bad, late-acting versions of many other genes in the human genome. This is the very reason that we age and die.
If evolution cannot help us after a certain age, why should we not help ourselves? Should not everyone have a right to the best versions of the genes in our collective genetic heritage, or at least to be born free of the worse ones?
And yet, if we reduce genetic differences, we risk turning the human population into one giant clone, tedious to meet with and bereft of the variation needed to respond to changing environments. The pursuit of perfection, if carried to extremes, is a sure recipe for extinction.
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: November 11, 2003
Now that we have decoded the human genome, why don't we improve it?
The question is at present theoretical but could well emerge as the hardest of all bioethical issues. Biologists routinely alter the genes of mice, with methods that are not yet acceptable for making inheritable changes in people, but one day genetic engineers may figure out how to apply safe patches to the human biological software.
Everyone would like to have children who are healthy, beautiful and gifted. But people vary widely in all these qualities, depending on their parents' genes, and the pure luck of the draw at conception when each child gets allotted a random selection of half the parental gene pool.
Most human genes exist in several different versions in the population: some of them are great to have, some so-so and some downright deleterious.
This month the Icelandic company Decode Genetics found three quite common versions of a gene called BMP-2, each of which considerably increases its owner's risk of osteoporosis and bone fracture.
Suppose it were possible to delete any bad version of BMP-2, and of all other human genes, in a human embryo, and to replace them with good versions, without any risk to health. Would that be the right thing to do?
Parents who made such a choice would know they had given their child the best possible start in life. However expensive the procedure, it would be cheap in the long run if it saved a lifetime of medical bills, and therefore could be made available to all. Life's most serious unfairness, the difference in genetic endowment, would be erased from birth.
"One day, people may view sex as essentially recreational, and conception as something best done in the laboratory," Dr. Gregory Stock wrote recently in "Redesigning Humans. " Parents may start to believe it is "reckless and primitive to conceive a child without prior genetic testing."
Yet there are weighty arguments for not making inheritable changes to the human genome.
On the practical side, many genes have more than one effect, and swapping out the bad version of a gene can have unpredictable complications. The new gene, for example, may interact badly with the person's other genes.
But if the elimination of disease-causing variants of genes should prove successful, there might be no holding the line against parents who wanted to enhance strength or intelligence as well.
Upgrading the imperfect human material is all very well, but handling the transition between the superpeople and the ordinary variety promises to be awkward. Social stresses may emerge, especially if the technology does not trickle down quickly and smoothly.
Soup up those genes for I.Q.? Altering the genes that shape human behavior is not to be undertaken lightly. Human nature is a subtle blend of contrary qualities, the only survivor of evolution's many disastrous experiments. What could justify the risk of messing with such a delicate brew? Can't we be happy as we are, just as nature has shaped us?
"The human body and mind, highly complex and delicately balanced as a result of eons of gradual and exacting evolution, are almost certainly at risk from any ill-considered attempt at `improvement,' " the President's Council on Bioethics wrote in a report last month on the dangers of enhancing the body's natural abilities.
As the products of evolution, people may seem churlish if they challenge evolution's wisdom. But of course, evolution has none. It is a blind process that depends on constant error to create occasional lucky accidents.
By culling the unfortunate owners of bad genes, evolution keeps animals healthy and vigorous until the age of reproduction, and a bit beyond for species that provide parental care.
But evolution's rigor at favoring good genes that act early in life is mirrored by a weakness in screening out bad genes that act after the age of reproduction. Because of this weakness, evolution has failed to eliminate the bone-fracturing variants of BMP-2, and the bad, late-acting versions of many other genes in the human genome. This is the very reason that we age and die.
If evolution cannot help us after a certain age, why should we not help ourselves? Should not everyone have a right to the best versions of the genes in our collective genetic heritage, or at least to be born free of the worse ones?
And yet, if we reduce genetic differences, we risk turning the human population into one giant clone, tedious to meet with and bereft of the variation needed to respond to changing environments. The pursuit of perfection, if carried to extremes, is a sure recipe for extinction.
(20) Can Drugs Make Us Happier? Smarter?
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: November 11, 2003
It depends on what is meant by "happy" and "smart."
There are already drugs that brighten moods, like Prozac, and other antidepressants that control levels of a brain chemical called serotonin. While originally meant to treat depression, these drugs have been used for other psychological conditions like shyness and anxiety and even by otherwise healthy people to feel better about themselves.
But is putting people in a better mood really making them happy? People can also drown their sorrows in alcohol or get a euphoric feeling using narcotics, but few people who do would be called truly happy.
The President's Council on Bioethics said in a recent report that while antidepressants might make some people happier, they can also substitute for what can truly bring happiness: a sense of satisfaction with one's identity, accomplishments and relationships.
"In the pursuit of happiness human beings have always worried about falling for the appearance of happiness and missing its reality," the council wrote. It added, "Yet a fraudulent happiness is just what the pharmacological management of our mental lives threatens to confer upon us."
Now the race is on to develop pills to make people smarter, at least in one sense. These drugs, several of them already in clinical trials, aim at memory loss that occurs in people with Alzheimer's disease or a precursor called mild cognitive impairment.
But it is lost on no one that if a memory drug works and is safe, it may one day be used by healthy people to learn faster and remember longer.
Studies have already shown that animals can be made to do both when the activity of certain genes is increased or decreased. Dr. Tom Tully, a professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, created genetically engineered fruit flies that he said had "photographic memory." In one session, he said, they could learn something that took normal flies 10 sessions.
"It immediately convinced everyone that memory was going to be just another biological process," Dr. Tully said. "There's nothing special about it. That meant that it was gong to be treatable and manipulable."
But experts say that improving memory will not necessarily make one smarter, in the sense of I.Q., let alone in wisdom. "It would be a mistake to think that drugs that have an impact on memory necessarily will have an effect on intelligence," said Dr. Daniel L. Schachter, chairman of psychology at Harvard.
Dr. Tully, who is also acting chief scientific officer of Helicon Therapeutics, which is developing memory pills, agreed. "You don't think better than you did before," he said. "You just get the facts in with less practice." Still, he said, that would be significant help to students at exam time.
Any pill used widely by healthy people to improve memory would have to be extremely safe, so that the risks would not outweigh the benefit. Psychological side effects also remain a possibility.
"Is it a good thing to remember everything?" Dr. Tully asked. Could a brain too crammed with information suffer some sort of overload?
Dr. Joe Z. Tsien, a professor of molecular biology at Princeton who genetically engineered smarter mice a few years ago, says he is skeptical that the results can be transferred to people.
"If you look at how people improve their brain power, it's through education," he said. "That has proven to have 100 percent efficiency with minimal side effects."
By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: November 11, 2003
It depends on what is meant by "happy" and "smart."
There are already drugs that brighten moods, like Prozac, and other antidepressants that control levels of a brain chemical called serotonin. While originally meant to treat depression, these drugs have been used for other psychological conditions like shyness and anxiety and even by otherwise healthy people to feel better about themselves.
But is putting people in a better mood really making them happy? People can also drown their sorrows in alcohol or get a euphoric feeling using narcotics, but few people who do would be called truly happy.
The President's Council on Bioethics said in a recent report that while antidepressants might make some people happier, they can also substitute for what can truly bring happiness: a sense of satisfaction with one's identity, accomplishments and relationships.
"In the pursuit of happiness human beings have always worried about falling for the appearance of happiness and missing its reality," the council wrote. It added, "Yet a fraudulent happiness is just what the pharmacological management of our mental lives threatens to confer upon us."
Now the race is on to develop pills to make people smarter, at least in one sense. These drugs, several of them already in clinical trials, aim at memory loss that occurs in people with Alzheimer's disease or a precursor called mild cognitive impairment.
But it is lost on no one that if a memory drug works and is safe, it may one day be used by healthy people to learn faster and remember longer.
Studies have already shown that animals can be made to do both when the activity of certain genes is increased or decreased. Dr. Tom Tully, a professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, created genetically engineered fruit flies that he said had "photographic memory." In one session, he said, they could learn something that took normal flies 10 sessions.
"It immediately convinced everyone that memory was going to be just another biological process," Dr. Tully said. "There's nothing special about it. That meant that it was gong to be treatable and manipulable."
But experts say that improving memory will not necessarily make one smarter, in the sense of I.Q., let alone in wisdom. "It would be a mistake to think that drugs that have an impact on memory necessarily will have an effect on intelligence," said Dr. Daniel L. Schachter, chairman of psychology at Harvard.
Dr. Tully, who is also acting chief scientific officer of Helicon Therapeutics, which is developing memory pills, agreed. "You don't think better than you did before," he said. "You just get the facts in with less practice." Still, he said, that would be significant help to students at exam time.
Any pill used widely by healthy people to improve memory would have to be extremely safe, so that the risks would not outweigh the benefit. Psychological side effects also remain a possibility.
"Is it a good thing to remember everything?" Dr. Tully asked. Could a brain too crammed with information suffer some sort of overload?
Dr. Joe Z. Tsien, a professor of molecular biology at Princeton who genetically engineered smarter mice a few years ago, says he is skeptical that the results can be transferred to people.
"If you look at how people improve their brain power, it's through education," he said. "That has proven to have 100 percent efficiency with minimal side effects."
(19) How Did Life Begin?
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: November 11, 2003
The origin of life is biology's most daunting problem. Scientists are good at understanding processes that they can study. But the emergence of life was a single event that occurred 3.5 billion to 4 billion years ago. Even the rocks of that era have mostly vanished.
Some progress is being made at reconstructing the process that led to the first living cells. But it consists of conjectures of varying plausibility, not proof.
Modern cells are such complex devices that it is hard to conceive how they could have assembled spontaneously from the chemicals available on the primitive earth. A recent approach to the problem, developed by Günter Wächtershaüser, a Munich chemist and patent lawyer, goes as follows. Forget, he says, the sophisticated molecules that run today's cells — the DNA that stores information, the RNA that runs operations, the proteins that serve as structural material and controllers of chemical metabolism. All those must have come later. Forget about the cell membrane — ways to get things in and out of it must also have developed later.
Life must have started in the simplest possible way, as a cycle, a natural chemical reaction that repeated itself, spinning off byproducts, some of which stayed around to maintain and develop the cycle.
Where did this cycle start? Dr. Wächtershaüser favors some mineral surface like iron pyrites, also known as fool's gold. A natural catalyst, the iron pyrites could have assembled chemicals like carbon monoxide into biological building blocks.
At some stage, the little cycle acquired a cover of protective chemicals, to separate its own reactions from the general milieu. When the cover eventually enveloped the cycle and broke free of the mineral surface, the first cell was born.
Dr. Wächtershaüser and others have shown that important components of today's biochemistry can be formed on iron pyrite surfaces, notably pyruvate, the fuel for a basic energy-producing reaction known as the citric acid cycle.
A different entry point to the origin of life concerns RNA, the close chemical cousin of DNA. Though DNA gets the attention, it is RNA that performs all of the trickiest operations in the cell, whether retrieving information from the DNA or turning this information into proteins.
Biologists have long supposed that RNA was the pivotal actor in the earliest cells and later delegated most of its information-storage duties to DNA, a less versatile but stabler chemical. The concept gained credence when Dr. Thomas R. Cech and Dr. Sidney Altman discovered independently that RNA could act as an enzyme, a catalyst of chemical activities, as well as store genetic information.
This dual property of RNA seems in principle to resolve one of life's thornier paradoxes, that DNA requires a protein catalyst for its replication, and the protein requires DNA to make it, implying neither could exist without the other's being there first. RNA could have performed both functions.
Chemists have not yet devised an RNA molecule that can replicate itself. But they have shown that RNA molecules can copy short pieces of RNA. That bolsters the idea that before DNA there was an RNA world in which RNA, or some similar precursor polymer, ran the show.
The subunits of RNA molecules are themselves quite complex chemicals. It is not too easy to see how the first RNA molecules could have come into existence. But a clay called montmorillonite, formed from weathered volcanic ash and familiar in many households as cat litter, has the interesting property of catalyzing the formation of RNA from its subunits.
In an article in Science magazine last month, researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital reported that the montmorillonite clay had another property of possible relevance to the origin of life. It makes droplets of fat molecules rearrange themselves into small bubbles, similar to the membranes that make up the walls of living cells.
Often the clay particles are incorporated into the bubbles, the research team found, with any attached RNA molecules. "Mineral particles may have greatly facilitated the emergence of the first cells," they said.
In a second experiment, the researchers found that they could make their protocells divide by forcing them through fine holes in a filter. A natural counterpart to this process, they suggest, would be water currents' forcing bubbles through rock pores.
Volcanoes, whether on land or in the vents of the mid-sea floors, have exotic chemistries and processes that make them attractive candidates venues for the origin of life. But Jack W. Szostak, an one of the Massachusetts researchers, warned that it would be of it would be "overinterpreting" the experiments to say they pointed to vents as the spot where life emerged.
Researchers are a long way from reconstructing any plausible path for the origin of life. But they have not given up. And they always conclude, no matter how fragmentary their evidence, that life is possible.
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: November 11, 2003
The origin of life is biology's most daunting problem. Scientists are good at understanding processes that they can study. But the emergence of life was a single event that occurred 3.5 billion to 4 billion years ago. Even the rocks of that era have mostly vanished.
Some progress is being made at reconstructing the process that led to the first living cells. But it consists of conjectures of varying plausibility, not proof.
Modern cells are such complex devices that it is hard to conceive how they could have assembled spontaneously from the chemicals available on the primitive earth. A recent approach to the problem, developed by Günter Wächtershaüser, a Munich chemist and patent lawyer, goes as follows. Forget, he says, the sophisticated molecules that run today's cells — the DNA that stores information, the RNA that runs operations, the proteins that serve as structural material and controllers of chemical metabolism. All those must have come later. Forget about the cell membrane — ways to get things in and out of it must also have developed later.
Life must have started in the simplest possible way, as a cycle, a natural chemical reaction that repeated itself, spinning off byproducts, some of which stayed around to maintain and develop the cycle.
Where did this cycle start? Dr. Wächtershaüser favors some mineral surface like iron pyrites, also known as fool's gold. A natural catalyst, the iron pyrites could have assembled chemicals like carbon monoxide into biological building blocks.
At some stage, the little cycle acquired a cover of protective chemicals, to separate its own reactions from the general milieu. When the cover eventually enveloped the cycle and broke free of the mineral surface, the first cell was born.
Dr. Wächtershaüser and others have shown that important components of today's biochemistry can be formed on iron pyrite surfaces, notably pyruvate, the fuel for a basic energy-producing reaction known as the citric acid cycle.
A different entry point to the origin of life concerns RNA, the close chemical cousin of DNA. Though DNA gets the attention, it is RNA that performs all of the trickiest operations in the cell, whether retrieving information from the DNA or turning this information into proteins.
Biologists have long supposed that RNA was the pivotal actor in the earliest cells and later delegated most of its information-storage duties to DNA, a less versatile but stabler chemical. The concept gained credence when Dr. Thomas R. Cech and Dr. Sidney Altman discovered independently that RNA could act as an enzyme, a catalyst of chemical activities, as well as store genetic information.
This dual property of RNA seems in principle to resolve one of life's thornier paradoxes, that DNA requires a protein catalyst for its replication, and the protein requires DNA to make it, implying neither could exist without the other's being there first. RNA could have performed both functions.
Chemists have not yet devised an RNA molecule that can replicate itself. But they have shown that RNA molecules can copy short pieces of RNA. That bolsters the idea that before DNA there was an RNA world in which RNA, or some similar precursor polymer, ran the show.
The subunits of RNA molecules are themselves quite complex chemicals. It is not too easy to see how the first RNA molecules could have come into existence. But a clay called montmorillonite, formed from weathered volcanic ash and familiar in many households as cat litter, has the interesting property of catalyzing the formation of RNA from its subunits.
In an article in Science magazine last month, researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital reported that the montmorillonite clay had another property of possible relevance to the origin of life. It makes droplets of fat molecules rearrange themselves into small bubbles, similar to the membranes that make up the walls of living cells.
Often the clay particles are incorporated into the bubbles, the research team found, with any attached RNA molecules. "Mineral particles may have greatly facilitated the emergence of the first cells," they said.
In a second experiment, the researchers found that they could make their protocells divide by forcing them through fine holes in a filter. A natural counterpart to this process, they suggest, would be water currents' forcing bubbles through rock pores.
Volcanoes, whether on land or in the vents of the mid-sea floors, have exotic chemistries and processes that make them attractive candidates venues for the origin of life. But Jack W. Szostak, an one of the Massachusetts researchers, warned that it would be of it would be "overinterpreting" the experiments to say they pointed to vents as the spot where life emerged.
Researchers are a long way from reconstructing any plausible path for the origin of life. But they have not given up. And they always conclude, no matter how fragmentary their evidence, that life is possible.
(18) Is Evolution Truly Random?
By CAROL KAESUK YOON
Published: November 11, 2003
In nearly every life, there is a moment when a person realizes, with a shudder, how easily she might never have come to be: how her parents nearly missed meeting, or how some other critical genealogical event almost didn't happen.
In the same way, evolutionary biologists have pondered one of their most intractable questions: how much of the living world is here by chance, and might not evolve, if time were turned back and evolutionary history played out again?
A few scientists have begun finding ingenious ways to test the repeatability of evolution. And they are finding that what they thought were the random vagaries of evolution are not so random at all.
"There's a lot of phenomenal data coming out," said Dr. Loren H. Rieseberg, an evolutionary biologist at Indiana University. "There's clearly more to repeatability than we'd suspected a decade ago."
Dr. Richard E. Lenski, an evolutionary biologist at Michigan State, said, "A lot of studies are finding quite a lot of surprising replicability of evolutionary outcomes."
Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, the late Harvard paleontologist, crystallized the question in his book "Wonderful Life." What would happen, he asked, if the tape of the history of life were rewound and replayed? For many, including Dr. Gould, the answer was clear. He wrote that "any replay of the tape would lead evolution down a pathway radically different from the road actually taken."
In fact, to many scientists, it would seem impossible to re-evolve anything like life on earth today, given how life has been shaped by accidents large and small.
But 12 flasks of bacteria in East Lansing, Mich., are beginning to challenge such notions. In 1988, Dr. Lenski and his colleagues set up a dozen genetically identical populations of E. coli bacteria in bottles of broth and have followed their evolutionary fates.
Now, more than 30,000 bacterial generations later, Dr. Lenski and colleagues have what is becoming one of the most striking examples of repeatability yet. All 12 populations show the same patterns of improvement in their ability to compete in a bottle and increases in cell size. All 12 have also lost their ability to break down and use a sugar, called ribose.
More surprising, many genetic changes underlying these adaptations are very similar. Every population, for example, lost its ability to break down ribose by losing a long stretch of DNA from the same gene.
Other scientists studying cichlid fish have observed how the same varieties of cichlids evolve anew every time they invade a new lake. And Dr. Rieseberg and colleagues have found evidence that evolution can repeatedly produce the same species.
These scientists found that one sunflower species on sand dunes has evolved independently three separate times. And each time one of the species newly evolves, genetically it appears to turn out much the same. "With these species, there seems to be only one way to do it," Dr. Rieseberg said.
Some scientists, like Dr. Simon Conway Morris, a paleobiologist at the University of Cambridge and ardent critic of Dr. Gould's view, say the evidence for repeatability is rampant. He argues in his new book, "Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe," that some features are so adaptive that they are essentially inevitable — like the ability to see and, as his title suggests, the intelligence and self-awareness that are the hallmarks of humanity.
Still, scientists say that experimental populations evolving in parallel are not identical. For example, the genetic changes underlying identical adaptations in different populations can differ, even if in minute detail. Are these the subtle differences that could send evolution down a different path?
Only the definitive experiment which remains beyond the scope of the National Science Foundation budget can say.
"What we need are about 1,000 worlds to play evolution back correctly," Dr. Rieseberg said. "Then we can really find out what would happen."
By CAROL KAESUK YOON
Published: November 11, 2003
In nearly every life, there is a moment when a person realizes, with a shudder, how easily she might never have come to be: how her parents nearly missed meeting, or how some other critical genealogical event almost didn't happen.
In the same way, evolutionary biologists have pondered one of their most intractable questions: how much of the living world is here by chance, and might not evolve, if time were turned back and evolutionary history played out again?
A few scientists have begun finding ingenious ways to test the repeatability of evolution. And they are finding that what they thought were the random vagaries of evolution are not so random at all.
"There's a lot of phenomenal data coming out," said Dr. Loren H. Rieseberg, an evolutionary biologist at Indiana University. "There's clearly more to repeatability than we'd suspected a decade ago."
Dr. Richard E. Lenski, an evolutionary biologist at Michigan State, said, "A lot of studies are finding quite a lot of surprising replicability of evolutionary outcomes."
Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, the late Harvard paleontologist, crystallized the question in his book "Wonderful Life." What would happen, he asked, if the tape of the history of life were rewound and replayed? For many, including Dr. Gould, the answer was clear. He wrote that "any replay of the tape would lead evolution down a pathway radically different from the road actually taken."
In fact, to many scientists, it would seem impossible to re-evolve anything like life on earth today, given how life has been shaped by accidents large and small.
But 12 flasks of bacteria in East Lansing, Mich., are beginning to challenge such notions. In 1988, Dr. Lenski and his colleagues set up a dozen genetically identical populations of E. coli bacteria in bottles of broth and have followed their evolutionary fates.
Now, more than 30,000 bacterial generations later, Dr. Lenski and colleagues have what is becoming one of the most striking examples of repeatability yet. All 12 populations show the same patterns of improvement in their ability to compete in a bottle and increases in cell size. All 12 have also lost their ability to break down and use a sugar, called ribose.
More surprising, many genetic changes underlying these adaptations are very similar. Every population, for example, lost its ability to break down ribose by losing a long stretch of DNA from the same gene.
Other scientists studying cichlid fish have observed how the same varieties of cichlids evolve anew every time they invade a new lake. And Dr. Rieseberg and colleagues have found evidence that evolution can repeatedly produce the same species.
These scientists found that one sunflower species on sand dunes has evolved independently three separate times. And each time one of the species newly evolves, genetically it appears to turn out much the same. "With these species, there seems to be only one way to do it," Dr. Rieseberg said.
Some scientists, like Dr. Simon Conway Morris, a paleobiologist at the University of Cambridge and ardent critic of Dr. Gould's view, say the evidence for repeatability is rampant. He argues in his new book, "Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe," that some features are so adaptive that they are essentially inevitable — like the ability to see and, as his title suggests, the intelligence and self-awareness that are the hallmarks of humanity.
Still, scientists say that experimental populations evolving in parallel are not identical. For example, the genetic changes underlying identical adaptations in different populations can differ, even if in minute detail. Are these the subtle differences that could send evolution down a different path?
Only the definitive experiment which remains beyond the scope of the National Science Foundation budget can say.
"What we need are about 1,000 worlds to play evolution back correctly," Dr. Rieseberg said. "Then we can really find out what would happen."
(17) Can Science Prove the Existence of God?
By GEORGE JOHNSON
Published: November 11, 2003
"I have no need for that hypothesis," Pierre-Simon Laplace famously responded when asked where God fit into his new astronomical theory. Using calculus and Newton's laws of gravity, he explained the forces that kept the planets from gradually drifting out of orbit, imparting some stability to the solar system. Newton had thought the Great Engineer must step in now and then to readjust the machine.
The theory didn't explain where the solar system came from. But Laplace also had an answer. The planets, he proposed, had congealed from a swirling cloud of gas and dust surrounding the sun.
O.K., so where did the sun and the mother cloud come from? And what set the whole thing revolving?
By now, scientists think they have even those answers, and they do not involve the intervention of any Great Engineer. The whole point of science for the last few hundred years has been to explain everything in terms of a physical process, something that can be described by equations.
The quest, however, is far from done. God, for those who want to use that term, can be invoked to account for phenomena that have not yet yielded to the scientific method. What is for some the ultimate question — Does God exist? — has become a matter of how much further the domain of the unknown will continue to contract, and if it will ultimately evaporate.
The momentum has been in that direction. The whirlpool of cosmic stuff that spawned the solar system spins because it is one small part of the great rotating galaxy, the Milky Way. When a random fluctuation causes enough gas and dust to bunch together, gravity takes over and celestial bodies begin to form. If you want to know where the galaxies came from, there are answers as well. Ultimately, it all comes down to the Big Bang.
That is where the chain of reasoning bottoms out. What caused the primordial explosion? At this point all but a few scientists go with Wittgenstein ("of what we cannot speak we must pass over in silence") or with Kierkegaard, blindly taking the leap of faith into the abyss of the unknown, choosing what to believe.
Why there is something instead of nothing is not an issue that science is well equipped to address. As cosmologists understand it, the primordial eruption did not take place at a certain instant in a certain place. The Big Bang created absolutely everything, including space-time itself. How can anyone ask what set the whole thing going if there was no space or time for a creator to be in, much less any matter or energy for Him or Her or It to work with?
This rather formidable obstacle doesn't prevent a few people, some of them scientists, from trying to prove, or disprove, the existence of a deity. Almost any book or conference on science and religion inevitably includes what has become a metaphysical set piece:
The various parameters of the universe — the charge of the electron, the strength of gravity, and so forth — appear to be finely tuned to support the existence of stars and atoms and molecules and life. If the conditions at the instant of the Big Bang had been slightly different, the argument goes, then the universe (at least from an earthling's point of view) would have been a colossal waste of space-time. So we are the lucky benefactors of blind chance, or life was planned all along — either by a Great Intender or by some physical or mathematical or logical law or process. Ignore the great Wittgensteinian whisper and you feel the queasy discomfort of a human mind pushed to the edge of what it is possible to know.
One theory is that the Big Bang actually spawned a plenitude of universes each randomly endowed with different physical conditions. People, of course, find themselves in one that is capable of supporting life.
"Universe" used to mean everything that exists. To even think about this new scheme of things, the definition must be weakened to "everything that we can get information about." We are required to believe in — take on faith — that there is something outside the universe. Might as well just call it God.
Whether the multiverse theory is more comforting than believing that human existence results from a senseless crapshoot or a holy decree is a matter of taste, not science. For many theorists it is also a betrayal of the great effort to explain the laws of physics. Some still hope to find "a theory of the initial conditions of the universe," a supreme mathematical law, hidden perhaps in superstring theory, showing that the parameters of creation could have been set only in a certain way.
But then they would have to find a law to explain where the law came from . . . and ultimately an explanation of why the universe is mathematical and of where mathematics came from and what numbers are.
Like a petulant 8-year-old, we keep asking why, why, why, why. In the end, the answer is either "just because" or "for God made it so." Take your pick.
By GEORGE JOHNSON
Published: November 11, 2003
"I have no need for that hypothesis," Pierre-Simon Laplace famously responded when asked where God fit into his new astronomical theory. Using calculus and Newton's laws of gravity, he explained the forces that kept the planets from gradually drifting out of orbit, imparting some stability to the solar system. Newton had thought the Great Engineer must step in now and then to readjust the machine.
The theory didn't explain where the solar system came from. But Laplace also had an answer. The planets, he proposed, had congealed from a swirling cloud of gas and dust surrounding the sun.
O.K., so where did the sun and the mother cloud come from? And what set the whole thing revolving?
By now, scientists think they have even those answers, and they do not involve the intervention of any Great Engineer. The whole point of science for the last few hundred years has been to explain everything in terms of a physical process, something that can be described by equations.
The quest, however, is far from done. God, for those who want to use that term, can be invoked to account for phenomena that have not yet yielded to the scientific method. What is for some the ultimate question — Does God exist? — has become a matter of how much further the domain of the unknown will continue to contract, and if it will ultimately evaporate.
The momentum has been in that direction. The whirlpool of cosmic stuff that spawned the solar system spins because it is one small part of the great rotating galaxy, the Milky Way. When a random fluctuation causes enough gas and dust to bunch together, gravity takes over and celestial bodies begin to form. If you want to know where the galaxies came from, there are answers as well. Ultimately, it all comes down to the Big Bang.
That is where the chain of reasoning bottoms out. What caused the primordial explosion? At this point all but a few scientists go with Wittgenstein ("of what we cannot speak we must pass over in silence") or with Kierkegaard, blindly taking the leap of faith into the abyss of the unknown, choosing what to believe.
Why there is something instead of nothing is not an issue that science is well equipped to address. As cosmologists understand it, the primordial eruption did not take place at a certain instant in a certain place. The Big Bang created absolutely everything, including space-time itself. How can anyone ask what set the whole thing going if there was no space or time for a creator to be in, much less any matter or energy for Him or Her or It to work with?
This rather formidable obstacle doesn't prevent a few people, some of them scientists, from trying to prove, or disprove, the existence of a deity. Almost any book or conference on science and religion inevitably includes what has become a metaphysical set piece:
The various parameters of the universe — the charge of the electron, the strength of gravity, and so forth — appear to be finely tuned to support the existence of stars and atoms and molecules and life. If the conditions at the instant of the Big Bang had been slightly different, the argument goes, then the universe (at least from an earthling's point of view) would have been a colossal waste of space-time. So we are the lucky benefactors of blind chance, or life was planned all along — either by a Great Intender or by some physical or mathematical or logical law or process. Ignore the great Wittgensteinian whisper and you feel the queasy discomfort of a human mind pushed to the edge of what it is possible to know.
One theory is that the Big Bang actually spawned a plenitude of universes each randomly endowed with different physical conditions. People, of course, find themselves in one that is capable of supporting life.
"Universe" used to mean everything that exists. To even think about this new scheme of things, the definition must be weakened to "everything that we can get information about." We are required to believe in — take on faith — that there is something outside the universe. Might as well just call it God.
Whether the multiverse theory is more comforting than believing that human existence results from a senseless crapshoot or a holy decree is a matter of taste, not science. For many theorists it is also a betrayal of the great effort to explain the laws of physics. Some still hope to find "a theory of the initial conditions of the universe," a supreme mathematical law, hidden perhaps in superstring theory, showing that the parameters of creation could have been set only in a certain way.
But then they would have to find a law to explain where the law came from . . . and ultimately an explanation of why the universe is mathematical and of where mathematics came from and what numbers are.
Like a petulant 8-year-old, we keep asking why, why, why, why. In the end, the answer is either "just because" or "for God made it so." Take your pick.
(16) Are Animals Smarter Than We Think?
By JAMES GORMAN
Published: November 11, 2003
Debating the intelligence of animals can be as unsatisfying as arguing over free will. Which animals? What do you mean by intelligence?
Dr. Bernd Heinrich, a biologist at the University of Vermont who has written extensively on animals that certainly seem smart, particularly ravens, said of the general subject of animal intelligence: "There has been an incredible amount written about it, books and books. I haven't read any of them. And I don't think I will."
The animals that are studied the most, are the ones most like us. Over the past few decades it has become clear that the great apes can learn some aspects of language and syntax. Parrots and dolphins can do the same. Those animals are certainly smarter than most people thought they were. They learn.
But, Dr. Heinrich said, in terms of complex and sophisticated behavior, "I'm not very impressed by learning, as such." In its simplest form, he said, it is a "common property of all nervous systems."
Preprogramming behavior can be more of an evolutionary achievement. Dr. Michael Dickinson, a neurobiologist at Caltech who studies how fruit flies fly, said that a fruit fly "takes off like the Red Baron" in its first flight.
And the engineering of a brain and body that can do this is extraordinary. He is impressed, he said, with "how sophisticated a system can be that is basically working on a hard-wired structure."
Brains and bodies have evolved in concert, he says, and the foundation of complex behavior can be found both in neurons and, for example, in the structure of limbs.
When it comes to behavior like searching or flying, these activities are not simply the result of the brain's issuing instructions. Mechanics, reflexes, the way limbs respond to various forces, that "all goes into what we observe as behavior."
And yet, Dr. Dickinson said, small insects are the sort of creature that, "sadly many people think of as simple organisms."
"I've always been a card-carrying enthusiast of perverse and disgusting animals," he said, because if we concentrate too heavily on animals that, like us, use learning to get through life, "we miss an enormous amount."
We may, for instance, misinterpret what we see in organisms that are primarily hard-wired. The wiring is so good it can deceive an intelligent species that looks for intelligence everywhere.
"A lot of people would argue that animals are a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for. A lot of time they're less intelligent than we give them credit for." But more complicated.
By JAMES GORMAN
Published: November 11, 2003
Debating the intelligence of animals can be as unsatisfying as arguing over free will. Which animals? What do you mean by intelligence?
Dr. Bernd Heinrich, a biologist at the University of Vermont who has written extensively on animals that certainly seem smart, particularly ravens, said of the general subject of animal intelligence: "There has been an incredible amount written about it, books and books. I haven't read any of them. And I don't think I will."
The animals that are studied the most, are the ones most like us. Over the past few decades it has become clear that the great apes can learn some aspects of language and syntax. Parrots and dolphins can do the same. Those animals are certainly smarter than most people thought they were. They learn.
But, Dr. Heinrich said, in terms of complex and sophisticated behavior, "I'm not very impressed by learning, as such." In its simplest form, he said, it is a "common property of all nervous systems."
Preprogramming behavior can be more of an evolutionary achievement. Dr. Michael Dickinson, a neurobiologist at Caltech who studies how fruit flies fly, said that a fruit fly "takes off like the Red Baron" in its first flight.
And the engineering of a brain and body that can do this is extraordinary. He is impressed, he said, with "how sophisticated a system can be that is basically working on a hard-wired structure."
Brains and bodies have evolved in concert, he says, and the foundation of complex behavior can be found both in neurons and, for example, in the structure of limbs.
When it comes to behavior like searching or flying, these activities are not simply the result of the brain's issuing instructions. Mechanics, reflexes, the way limbs respond to various forces, that "all goes into what we observe as behavior."
And yet, Dr. Dickinson said, small insects are the sort of creature that, "sadly many people think of as simple organisms."
"I've always been a card-carrying enthusiast of perverse and disgusting animals," he said, because if we concentrate too heavily on animals that, like us, use learning to get through life, "we miss an enormous amount."
We may, for instance, misinterpret what we see in organisms that are primarily hard-wired. The wiring is so good it can deceive an intelligent species that looks for intelligence everywhere.
"A lot of people would argue that animals are a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for. A lot of time they're less intelligent than we give them credit for." But more complicated.
(15) Why Do We Sleep?
By ERICA GOODE
Published: November 11, 2003
Any second grader knows why humans need food and water. The logic behind sex becomes obvious with a quick lesson on birds and bees.
But even the most gifted scientist on the planet cannot explain why people sleep.
"It may be the biggest open question in biology," said Dr. Allan Rechtschaffen, a sleep expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.
Scientists' ignorance about one of life's most basic activities is not for lack of trying.
Fifty years of sleep research have ruled out some possibilities and yielded a variety of intriguing leads.
But the researchers who bragged, at a conference in the early 1970's, that the secret of sleep would be theirs by the millennium have had to revise their estimates.
"We were too optimistic," said Dr. Michel Jouvet, a professor emeritus at Claude Bernard University in Lyon, France, and a member of the French Academy of Sciences who attended that long-ago meeting. "The brain is more complicated than we thought."
Still, scientists know far more than they once did.
The discovery of rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep in 1953 awakened scientists to the realization that sleep was not "a simple turning off of the brain," but an active, organized physiological process, said Dr. Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Five decades later, few researchers would dispute that sleep serves some critical — if unknown — biological purpose.
All mammals, birds and reptiles engage in some form of sleep, Dr. Rechtschaffen noted in a 1998 paper, even if they do it perched on a tree branch or, like the dolphin, while swimming, with one half of the brain at a time. Sleep has also endured through the eons, despite the fact that it interferes with other survival-enhancing activities.
"While we sleep, we do not procreate, protect or nurture the young, gather food, earn money, write papers, et cetera," Dr. Rechtschaffen wrote.
Equally telling is the finding that when humans and other animals lose sleep, they proceed to make it up, paying off the "debt" by sleeping longer or more intensely.
Sleep deprivation over long periods appears to have serious consequences, though what they are is still debated, because it is difficult to separate the effects of lost sleep from those of stress or other factors.
"One can't remove sleep and change nothing else," Dr. Siegel said.
Researchers once thought that a prolonged lack of sleep produced mental illness. They now know that this is not the case, though waking subjects up every few minutes, early studies showed, made them cranky. Nor is there proof that humans have expired from a lack of sleep. But rats deprived of sleep die in two to three weeks, or in five to six weeks if they are deprived only of REM, a sleep stage in which brain activity is similar to that in waking. Whether the rats die from massive heat loss, infection or other cause is unclear.
What is it about sleep that makes it essential to life? Experts say that, despite widespread belief, it is not simply the fact that humans and other animals need rest.
"You can rest all you like and you still need sleep," Dr. Rechtschaffen said.
Another theory holds that sleep may serve to protect animals, by taking them out of circulation during the dangerous hours when predators roam. Yet this theory, Dr. Rechtschaffen and others point out, cannot explain why the sleep winks lost one night are made up the next or why the impact of long-term sleep deprivation is so severe.
"It's clear," said Dr. J. Allan Hobson, a Harvard sleep researcher, that sleep is "not just to get you off the street and save you a few calories." Dr. Hobson; Dr. Robert Stickgold, also of Harvard; and other experts have argued that REM sleep helps consolidate memory and advance learning, and a number of studies have examined this premise, including two reports published in the journal Nature last month.
But other researchers, including Dr. Siegel, have challenged this theory. People who take antidepressants called monoamine oxidase inhibitors, which suppress REM sleep, do not show memory deficits, Dr. Siegel noted in a 2001 review.
Similarly, patients with brain injuries that do away with REM appear to suffer no problems in memory, Dr. Siegel said. One Israeli man, injured by shrapnel, went to law school and served as the puzzle editor for a local newspaper. Nor are the animals that spend the most time in REM — the platypus, for example, which averages eight hours of REM each day compared with the two hours typical of humans — known for their learning ability or powers of recall.
Dr. Hobson responded: "It's not to say that memory depends on REM sleep. It is to say that certain aspects of mnemonic function are enhanced during REM."
Dr. Siegel himself has waded into the mysteries of REM sleep. As in waking, most neurons in the brain fire actively during REM. The exception is nerve cells involved with the transmitter chemicals serotonin, norepinephrine and histamine, which remain inactive. It is possible, Dr. Siegel and others have suggested, that these neurons become overused, and that REM allows them to rest and regain their sensitivity.
Smaller animals, studies have found, sleep longer than large ones: a horse snoozes for 3 hours a day, a ferret close to 15. The fact that an animal's metabolic rate slows with size has led to yet another hypothesis about sleep's purpose: that it may act to repair cell damage caused by free radicals, chemicals released during the metabolic process.
The most promising theory so far, some experts believe, proposes that REM sleep plays a role in brain development. Newborns spend more time in REM than adults. Animals that spend long periods in REM are also more immature at birth.
In the meantime, the search continues. The answer, experts say, may turn out to be something obvious or something not yet dreamed of.
"There is something tremendous out there," Dr. Rechtschaffen said, "and we just haven't found it."
By ERICA GOODE
Published: November 11, 2003
Any second grader knows why humans need food and water. The logic behind sex becomes obvious with a quick lesson on birds and bees.
But even the most gifted scientist on the planet cannot explain why people sleep.
"It may be the biggest open question in biology," said Dr. Allan Rechtschaffen, a sleep expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.
Scientists' ignorance about one of life's most basic activities is not for lack of trying.
Fifty years of sleep research have ruled out some possibilities and yielded a variety of intriguing leads.
But the researchers who bragged, at a conference in the early 1970's, that the secret of sleep would be theirs by the millennium have had to revise their estimates.
"We were too optimistic," said Dr. Michel Jouvet, a professor emeritus at Claude Bernard University in Lyon, France, and a member of the French Academy of Sciences who attended that long-ago meeting. "The brain is more complicated than we thought."
Still, scientists know far more than they once did.
The discovery of rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep in 1953 awakened scientists to the realization that sleep was not "a simple turning off of the brain," but an active, organized physiological process, said Dr. Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Five decades later, few researchers would dispute that sleep serves some critical — if unknown — biological purpose.
All mammals, birds and reptiles engage in some form of sleep, Dr. Rechtschaffen noted in a 1998 paper, even if they do it perched on a tree branch or, like the dolphin, while swimming, with one half of the brain at a time. Sleep has also endured through the eons, despite the fact that it interferes with other survival-enhancing activities.
"While we sleep, we do not procreate, protect or nurture the young, gather food, earn money, write papers, et cetera," Dr. Rechtschaffen wrote.
Equally telling is the finding that when humans and other animals lose sleep, they proceed to make it up, paying off the "debt" by sleeping longer or more intensely.
Sleep deprivation over long periods appears to have serious consequences, though what they are is still debated, because it is difficult to separate the effects of lost sleep from those of stress or other factors.
"One can't remove sleep and change nothing else," Dr. Siegel said.
Researchers once thought that a prolonged lack of sleep produced mental illness. They now know that this is not the case, though waking subjects up every few minutes, early studies showed, made them cranky. Nor is there proof that humans have expired from a lack of sleep. But rats deprived of sleep die in two to three weeks, or in five to six weeks if they are deprived only of REM, a sleep stage in which brain activity is similar to that in waking. Whether the rats die from massive heat loss, infection or other cause is unclear.
What is it about sleep that makes it essential to life? Experts say that, despite widespread belief, it is not simply the fact that humans and other animals need rest.
"You can rest all you like and you still need sleep," Dr. Rechtschaffen said.
Another theory holds that sleep may serve to protect animals, by taking them out of circulation during the dangerous hours when predators roam. Yet this theory, Dr. Rechtschaffen and others point out, cannot explain why the sleep winks lost one night are made up the next or why the impact of long-term sleep deprivation is so severe.
"It's clear," said Dr. J. Allan Hobson, a Harvard sleep researcher, that sleep is "not just to get you off the street and save you a few calories." Dr. Hobson; Dr. Robert Stickgold, also of Harvard; and other experts have argued that REM sleep helps consolidate memory and advance learning, and a number of studies have examined this premise, including two reports published in the journal Nature last month.
But other researchers, including Dr. Siegel, have challenged this theory. People who take antidepressants called monoamine oxidase inhibitors, which suppress REM sleep, do not show memory deficits, Dr. Siegel noted in a 2001 review.
Similarly, patients with brain injuries that do away with REM appear to suffer no problems in memory, Dr. Siegel said. One Israeli man, injured by shrapnel, went to law school and served as the puzzle editor for a local newspaper. Nor are the animals that spend the most time in REM — the platypus, for example, which averages eight hours of REM each day compared with the two hours typical of humans — known for their learning ability or powers of recall.
Dr. Hobson responded: "It's not to say that memory depends on REM sleep. It is to say that certain aspects of mnemonic function are enhanced during REM."
Dr. Siegel himself has waded into the mysteries of REM sleep. As in waking, most neurons in the brain fire actively during REM. The exception is nerve cells involved with the transmitter chemicals serotonin, norepinephrine and histamine, which remain inactive. It is possible, Dr. Siegel and others have suggested, that these neurons become overused, and that REM allows them to rest and regain their sensitivity.
Smaller animals, studies have found, sleep longer than large ones: a horse snoozes for 3 hours a day, a ferret close to 15. The fact that an animal's metabolic rate slows with size has led to yet another hypothesis about sleep's purpose: that it may act to repair cell damage caused by free radicals, chemicals released during the metabolic process.
The most promising theory so far, some experts believe, proposes that REM sleep plays a role in brain development. Newborns spend more time in REM than adults. Animals that spend long periods in REM are also more immature at birth.
In the meantime, the search continues. The answer, experts say, may turn out to be something obvious or something not yet dreamed of.
"There is something tremendous out there," Dr. Rechtschaffen said, "and we just haven't found it."
(14) Can Robots Become Conscious?
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: November 11, 2003
It's a three-part question. What is consciousness? Can you put it in a machine? And if you did, how could you ever know for sure?
Unlike any other scientific topics, consciousness — the first-person awareness of the world around — is truly in the eye of the beholder. I know I am conscious. But how do I know that you are?
Could it be that my colleagues, my friends, my editors, my wife, my child, all the people I see on the streets of New York are actually just mindless automatons who merely act as if they were conscious human beings?
That would make this question moot.
Through logical analogy — I am a conscious human being, and therefore you as a human being are also likely to be conscious — I conclude I am probably not the only conscious being in a world of biological puppets. Extend the question of consciousness to other creatures, and uncertainty grows. Is a dog conscious? A turtle? A fly? An elm? A rock?
"We don't have the mythical consciousness meter," said Dr. David J. Chalmers, a professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. "All we have directly to go on is behavior."
So without even a rudimentary understanding of what consciousness is, the idea of instilling it into a machine — or understanding how a machine might evolve consciousness — becomes almost unfathomable.
The field of artificial intelligence started out with dreams of making thinking — and possibly conscious — machines, but to date, its achievements have been modest. No one has yet produced a computer program that can pass the Turing test.
In 1950, Alan Turing, a pioneer in computer science, imagined that a computer could be considered intelligent when its responses were indistinguishable from those of a person. The field has evolved to focus more on solving practical problems like complex scheduling tasks than on emulating human behavior.
But with the continuing gains in computing power, many believe that the original goals of artificial intelligence will be attainable within a few decades.
Some people, like Dr. Hans Moravec, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, believe a human being is nothing more than a fancy machine, and that as technology advances, it will be possible to build a machine with the same features, that there is nothing magical about the brain and biological flesh.
"I'm confident we can build robots with behavior that is just as rich as human being behavior," he said. "You could quiz it as much as you like about its internal mental life, and it would answer as any human being."
To Dr. Moravec, if it acts conscious, it is. To ask more is pointless.
Dr. Chalmers regards consciousness as an ineffable trait, and it may be useless to try to pin it down. "We've got to admit something here is irreducible," he said. "Some primitive precursor consciousness could go all the way down" to the smallest, most primitive organisms, even bacteria, he said.
Dr. Chalmers too sees nothing fundamentally different between a creature of flesh and blood and one of metal, plastics and electronic circuits. "I'm quite open to the idea that machines might eventually become conscious," he said, adding that it would be "equally weird."
And if a person gets into involved conversations with a robot about everything from Kant to baseball, "we'll be as practically certain they are conscious as other people," Dr. Chalmers said.
"Of course, that doesn't resolve the theoretical question," he said.
But others say machines, regardless of how complex, will never match people.
The arguments can become arcane. In his book "Shadows of the Mind," Dr. Roger Penrose, a mathematician at Oxford University in England, enlisted the incompleteness theorem in mathematics. He uses the theorem, which states that any system of theorems will invariably include statements that cannot be proven, to argue that any machine that uses computation — and hence all robots — will invariably fall short of the accomplishments of human mathematicians.
Instead, he argues that consciousness is an effect of quantum mechanics in tiny structures in the brain that exceeds the abilities of any computer.
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: November 11, 2003
It's a three-part question. What is consciousness? Can you put it in a machine? And if you did, how could you ever know for sure?
Unlike any other scientific topics, consciousness — the first-person awareness of the world around — is truly in the eye of the beholder. I know I am conscious. But how do I know that you are?
Could it be that my colleagues, my friends, my editors, my wife, my child, all the people I see on the streets of New York are actually just mindless automatons who merely act as if they were conscious human beings?
That would make this question moot.
Through logical analogy — I am a conscious human being, and therefore you as a human being are also likely to be conscious — I conclude I am probably not the only conscious being in a world of biological puppets. Extend the question of consciousness to other creatures, and uncertainty grows. Is a dog conscious? A turtle? A fly? An elm? A rock?
"We don't have the mythical consciousness meter," said Dr. David J. Chalmers, a professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. "All we have directly to go on is behavior."
So without even a rudimentary understanding of what consciousness is, the idea of instilling it into a machine — or understanding how a machine might evolve consciousness — becomes almost unfathomable.
The field of artificial intelligence started out with dreams of making thinking — and possibly conscious — machines, but to date, its achievements have been modest. No one has yet produced a computer program that can pass the Turing test.
In 1950, Alan Turing, a pioneer in computer science, imagined that a computer could be considered intelligent when its responses were indistinguishable from those of a person. The field has evolved to focus more on solving practical problems like complex scheduling tasks than on emulating human behavior.
But with the continuing gains in computing power, many believe that the original goals of artificial intelligence will be attainable within a few decades.
Some people, like Dr. Hans Moravec, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, believe a human being is nothing more than a fancy machine, and that as technology advances, it will be possible to build a machine with the same features, that there is nothing magical about the brain and biological flesh.
"I'm confident we can build robots with behavior that is just as rich as human being behavior," he said. "You could quiz it as much as you like about its internal mental life, and it would answer as any human being."
To Dr. Moravec, if it acts conscious, it is. To ask more is pointless.
Dr. Chalmers regards consciousness as an ineffable trait, and it may be useless to try to pin it down. "We've got to admit something here is irreducible," he said. "Some primitive precursor consciousness could go all the way down" to the smallest, most primitive organisms, even bacteria, he said.
Dr. Chalmers too sees nothing fundamentally different between a creature of flesh and blood and one of metal, plastics and electronic circuits. "I'm quite open to the idea that machines might eventually become conscious," he said, adding that it would be "equally weird."
And if a person gets into involved conversations with a robot about everything from Kant to baseball, "we'll be as practically certain they are conscious as other people," Dr. Chalmers said.
"Of course, that doesn't resolve the theoretical question," he said.
But others say machines, regardless of how complex, will never match people.
The arguments can become arcane. In his book "Shadows of the Mind," Dr. Roger Penrose, a mathematician at Oxford University in England, enlisted the incompleteness theorem in mathematics. He uses the theorem, which states that any system of theorems will invariably include statements that cannot be proven, to argue that any machine that uses computation — and hence all robots — will invariably fall short of the accomplishments of human mathematicians.
Instead, he argues that consciousness is an effect of quantum mechanics in tiny structures in the brain that exceeds the abilities of any computer.
(13) What Is the Next Plague?
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: November 11, 2003
No one knows when or where the next plague will occur, or whether it will be from a natural or bioterrorist attack.
But it is coming.
The next plague may be from a newly discovered infectious agent or a natural mutation that produces a new version of an old microbe. It may even escape from a laboratory. Or the next plague may be caused by a microbe that, having become resistant to standard antibiotics, spreads widely and rapidly.
Over the last 40 years or so, scientists have identified a steady parade of new infectious agents, mostly viral. That experience suggests a greater likelihood that the next plague will be caused by a virus rather than a bacterium, said Dr. William Schaffner, the chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University.
Microbes relentlessly change their genes to escape human immune defenses and infect people. And they emerge for other reasons, including increased travel to exotic places and population growth in sparsely inhabited areas harboring microbes that few people have encountered.
"We are certain that there will be a continuous evolution of various natural plagues," said Dr. Frederick Sparling, a member of a National Academy of Sciences panel that recently issued a report, "Microbial Threats to Health."
While the AIDS virus has caused the worst pandemic since the plague of the 14th century, most newly discovered microbes have turned out to be "little blips that don't get everybody's permanent attention," said Dr. Sparling, a professor of microbiology at the University of North Carolina.
But they could still cause epidemics. Among the newer ones: hantavirus pulmonary syndrome; Ebola, Lassa and Marburg viruses that cause hemorrhagic fever; Nipah encephalitis virus; Legionnaire's disease; and a strain of E. coli bacteria that can cause severe bloody diarrhea and kidney failure.
The greatest fear is that the next plague will be the equivalent of the meteorological perfect storm, possibly from an untreatable respiratory infection that spreads rapidly.
SARS, a respiratory infection with an overall death rate of 11 percent and one 50 percent or higher among people 60 and older, is of paramount concern.
The World Health Organization was uncharacteristically aggressive with SARS in recommending strong infection control measures, travel restrictions and quarantines. The measures stopped the virus after it caused 8,098 cases, including 774 deaths, this year.
There is no way to know whether SARS will become a plague this year, or influenza an epidemic, or whether something totally unexpected will surface.
For decades, experts have predicted an influenza pandemic similar to the one that killed up to 40 million people in 1918 and 1919. Since then, two much smaller pandemics — Asian flu in 1957 and Hong Kong flu in 1968 — have occurred. "A new influenza pandemic in humans is inevitable," said a report from the academy's panel.
Health officials are wary of the H5N1 strain of the influenza virus that led to the destruction of 1.4 million birds in Hong Kong in 1997 and that has caused a small number of deaths in humans in Asia since then.
The longstanding threat of bioterrorism turned real with the deliberate release of anthrax spores in 2001. When SARS suddenly appeared, there was speculation that it was bioterrorism. Experts dismissed that. No one was "smart enough to invent a SARS from scratch," said Dr. Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist. Now, he said, "SARS may end up being a biological weapon."
Recent preparations for bioterrorism have helped improve response to potential natural plagues. Still, health officials say the United States and many other countries are poorly prepared to deal with threats, like influenza, because of a lack of hospital beds and the health system's inability to handle a sudden surge in demand.
Despite significant advances in immunology and microbiology, the United States lags in developing new vaccines. But even when effective influenza and other vaccines are marketed, many people do not take them. The country needs to devise a more effective strategy to invent and administer vaccines, experts said. As AIDS shows, developing vaccines against new diseases can be a far greater challenge than leading American scientists and government officials appreciated 20 years ago when they promised an AIDS vaccine in two years.
If SARS does not return in the next few years, will companies have a continuing incentive to develop a vaccine that might never be needed? If industry lacks incentive, yet SARS returns, the consequences could be devastating.
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: November 11, 2003
No one knows when or where the next plague will occur, or whether it will be from a natural or bioterrorist attack.
But it is coming.
The next plague may be from a newly discovered infectious agent or a natural mutation that produces a new version of an old microbe. It may even escape from a laboratory. Or the next plague may be caused by a microbe that, having become resistant to standard antibiotics, spreads widely and rapidly.
Over the last 40 years or so, scientists have identified a steady parade of new infectious agents, mostly viral. That experience suggests a greater likelihood that the next plague will be caused by a virus rather than a bacterium, said Dr. William Schaffner, the chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University.
Microbes relentlessly change their genes to escape human immune defenses and infect people. And they emerge for other reasons, including increased travel to exotic places and population growth in sparsely inhabited areas harboring microbes that few people have encountered.
"We are certain that there will be a continuous evolution of various natural plagues," said Dr. Frederick Sparling, a member of a National Academy of Sciences panel that recently issued a report, "Microbial Threats to Health."
While the AIDS virus has caused the worst pandemic since the plague of the 14th century, most newly discovered microbes have turned out to be "little blips that don't get everybody's permanent attention," said Dr. Sparling, a professor of microbiology at the University of North Carolina.
But they could still cause epidemics. Among the newer ones: hantavirus pulmonary syndrome; Ebola, Lassa and Marburg viruses that cause hemorrhagic fever; Nipah encephalitis virus; Legionnaire's disease; and a strain of E. coli bacteria that can cause severe bloody diarrhea and kidney failure.
The greatest fear is that the next plague will be the equivalent of the meteorological perfect storm, possibly from an untreatable respiratory infection that spreads rapidly.
SARS, a respiratory infection with an overall death rate of 11 percent and one 50 percent or higher among people 60 and older, is of paramount concern.
The World Health Organization was uncharacteristically aggressive with SARS in recommending strong infection control measures, travel restrictions and quarantines. The measures stopped the virus after it caused 8,098 cases, including 774 deaths, this year.
There is no way to know whether SARS will become a plague this year, or influenza an epidemic, or whether something totally unexpected will surface.
For decades, experts have predicted an influenza pandemic similar to the one that killed up to 40 million people in 1918 and 1919. Since then, two much smaller pandemics — Asian flu in 1957 and Hong Kong flu in 1968 — have occurred. "A new influenza pandemic in humans is inevitable," said a report from the academy's panel.
Health officials are wary of the H5N1 strain of the influenza virus that led to the destruction of 1.4 million birds in Hong Kong in 1997 and that has caused a small number of deaths in humans in Asia since then.
The longstanding threat of bioterrorism turned real with the deliberate release of anthrax spores in 2001. When SARS suddenly appeared, there was speculation that it was bioterrorism. Experts dismissed that. No one was "smart enough to invent a SARS from scratch," said Dr. Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist. Now, he said, "SARS may end up being a biological weapon."
Recent preparations for bioterrorism have helped improve response to potential natural plagues. Still, health officials say the United States and many other countries are poorly prepared to deal with threats, like influenza, because of a lack of hospital beds and the health system's inability to handle a sudden surge in demand.
Despite significant advances in immunology and microbiology, the United States lags in developing new vaccines. But even when effective influenza and other vaccines are marketed, many people do not take them. The country needs to devise a more effective strategy to invent and administer vaccines, experts said. As AIDS shows, developing vaccines against new diseases can be a far greater challenge than leading American scientists and government officials appreciated 20 years ago when they promised an AIDS vaccine in two years.
If SARS does not return in the next few years, will companies have a continuing incentive to develop a vaccine that might never be needed? If industry lacks incentive, yet SARS returns, the consequences could be devastating.
(12)... Are Women Necessary?
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: November 11, 2003
Abundant evidence suggests that females are the first sex, the ancestral sex, the sex from which males are derived.
Boys owe their lives to their mothers in more ways than one. Yet recent experiments with stem cells hint that women, not men, may eventually prove obsolete.
Granted, a post-feminine future sounds far-fetched. In many species, including our own, the fundamental body plan is female, with maleness being a bit of window-dressing tacked on at the last minute.
Some groups of insects, fish and lizards consist entirely of females, which give birth only to daughters. By contrast, no self-sustaining, boys-only population has ever arisen in nature, the efforts of certain Southern golf tournaments notwithstanding.
Indeed, males are famous for their cheap, abbreviated gametes, and their poignant need for the warmth and wealth of the comparatively massive female sex cell to realize their dreams of immortality. You'd think they would be humble, grateful, even obsequious. But it seems that somewhere along the way those slippery flagella figured out a possible pathway to go it alone.
Here are the unnerving results that threaten the matriarchy: last spring, after years of effort, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere announced that they could grow working egg cells in the laboratory if they started with embryo tissue taken from either a female or a male mouse.
These hothouse eggs and their accompanying follicular matrix were so persuasive they even secreted and responded to estrogen, the archetypically "female" hormone.
In September, Japanese researchers said they could create robust little sperm cells in the lab, too — but only if they began with the embryonic stem cells of a male animal. It turns out that the program for making eggs is stored on the chromosomes that males and females share. To manufacture sperm, however, you need that truncated, genetically penurious Y chromosome that only a male can claim.
In theory, then, male starter cells could be used to make eggs and sperm, and those eggs and sperm could be mixed together to yield a new generation. This would not be parthenogenesis as seen in whiptail lizards or Nature's other little sororities, with the parent capable only of spawning more of its own sex and hence being limited in its power to genomically outfox parasites.
This would be like old-fashioned, shake-'em-up, male-female sexual reproduction, a meeting of eggs and sperm. You could mix and match your fabricated eggs and sperm to generate boys and girls alike.
Except why bother with girls, if you don't need mothers to lay those little egg cells in the first place? You could have robust diversity in the human gene pool without the need for pesky separate restrooms.
True, women at the moment remain useful for their possession of another baby-friendly device, the uterus. But how long will this anatomical detail be an impediment to complete female obsolescence?
Already, researchers can keep baby goats alive in an artificial uterus, a big fishbowl of bubbling fluid, for weeks at a stretch. A full-term, full-service exoamniotic cocoon cannot be far behind.
Given such recent and imminent developments, Rebecca West, journalist, novelist and companion of H. G. "Doomsday" Wells, was eerily prescient in her observation that motherhood is "like being one's own Trojan horse."
Yet as women contemplate their pending irrelevance, they can take heart in a more immediate lesson to be gleaned from the latest experimental results. If inside every man's genome is a little mother yearning to be free, well, then, no more excuses when it's time to change the diapers.
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: November 11, 2003
Abundant evidence suggests that females are the first sex, the ancestral sex, the sex from which males are derived.
Boys owe their lives to their mothers in more ways than one. Yet recent experiments with stem cells hint that women, not men, may eventually prove obsolete.
Granted, a post-feminine future sounds far-fetched. In many species, including our own, the fundamental body plan is female, with maleness being a bit of window-dressing tacked on at the last minute.
Some groups of insects, fish and lizards consist entirely of females, which give birth only to daughters. By contrast, no self-sustaining, boys-only population has ever arisen in nature, the efforts of certain Southern golf tournaments notwithstanding.
Indeed, males are famous for their cheap, abbreviated gametes, and their poignant need for the warmth and wealth of the comparatively massive female sex cell to realize their dreams of immortality. You'd think they would be humble, grateful, even obsequious. But it seems that somewhere along the way those slippery flagella figured out a possible pathway to go it alone.
Here are the unnerving results that threaten the matriarchy: last spring, after years of effort, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere announced that they could grow working egg cells in the laboratory if they started with embryo tissue taken from either a female or a male mouse.
These hothouse eggs and their accompanying follicular matrix were so persuasive they even secreted and responded to estrogen, the archetypically "female" hormone.
In September, Japanese researchers said they could create robust little sperm cells in the lab, too — but only if they began with the embryonic stem cells of a male animal. It turns out that the program for making eggs is stored on the chromosomes that males and females share. To manufacture sperm, however, you need that truncated, genetically penurious Y chromosome that only a male can claim.
In theory, then, male starter cells could be used to make eggs and sperm, and those eggs and sperm could be mixed together to yield a new generation. This would not be parthenogenesis as seen in whiptail lizards or Nature's other little sororities, with the parent capable only of spawning more of its own sex and hence being limited in its power to genomically outfox parasites.
This would be like old-fashioned, shake-'em-up, male-female sexual reproduction, a meeting of eggs and sperm. You could mix and match your fabricated eggs and sperm to generate boys and girls alike.
Except why bother with girls, if you don't need mothers to lay those little egg cells in the first place? You could have robust diversity in the human gene pool without the need for pesky separate restrooms.
True, women at the moment remain useful for their possession of another baby-friendly device, the uterus. But how long will this anatomical detail be an impediment to complete female obsolescence?
Already, researchers can keep baby goats alive in an artificial uterus, a big fishbowl of bubbling fluid, for weeks at a stretch. A full-term, full-service exoamniotic cocoon cannot be far behind.
Given such recent and imminent developments, Rebecca West, journalist, novelist and companion of H. G. "Doomsday" Wells, was eerily prescient in her observation that motherhood is "like being one's own Trojan horse."
Yet as women contemplate their pending irrelevance, they can take heart in a more immediate lesson to be gleaned from the latest experimental results. If inside every man's genome is a little mother yearning to be free, well, then, no more excuses when it's time to change the diapers.
(11) Are Men Necessary? ...
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: November 11, 2003
Well, are they?
A recently separated friend sniffed at the idea of a whole 600 words on the subject.
"Since the answer is `no,' " she said, "I don't quite see what you can do for the other 599." In fact, if men are on earth solely to preserve the species, there is already enough DNA in sperm banks to last for ages. Advances in cryogenics and turkey basting have rendered human males largely superfluous.
Other women interviewed defended their own irreplaceability — an artificial womb is still years off — but argued that men, though an anachronism, do have some impractical value.
"Geez, I'd miss sex," one said.
Another asked, "If there weren't gay men," who would help women check out the jeans-clad courtship displays of breeding males?
But the blunt fact is that human females rarely get to choose to eliminate males. The world is patriarchical because male aggression makes for a winning reproductive strategy, said Dr. Barbara B. Smuts, a feminist sociobiologist.
Male chimps, seeking many partners, dominate females who otherwise, Dr. Smuts argues, would accept sex only with the most qualified male.
In that regard, humans imitate chimps, not our other closest relatives, bonobos, whose females band together to fight off unwanted males.
Among lower animals and insects, as described by the evolutionary biologist Dr. Olivia Judson, the notion of "choosing" males is not so prevalent.
Insomniac male brown bats rape their way through hibernating roosts. Male honeybees explode upon climax, leaving their genitals behind in the queen as a chastity belt.
Male green spoon worms live inside a female's reproductive tract to fertilize passing eggs; they reach it by getting close enough to the females, who are 200,000 times their size, to be inhaled.
Male Australian redback spiders not only somersault into their mates' fangs to be eaten while copulating, they also fight for the privilege, pulling rivals from the females' jaws and hogtying them with silk.
The engine behind all this is the Y chromosome, which determines maleness. Scholars have recently mocked it as a genetic cul de sac.
Over the eons, more than 900 of its 1,000 genes have shifted to other chromosomes, and it could theoretically become extinct in 10 million years. "Man's defining structure is a haven for degenerates," Steve Jones, a geneticist at the University College London, writes in his recent book "Y: The Descent of Men."
But advancing chromosomal recombination is the point of sex, and advancing sex is the point of pheromones, courtship displays, the taking of female captives in war and romantic love. Consequently, said Dr. David C. Page, a specialist in Y chromosomes at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., without males there would not only be no war, but also "no poetry, literature, music, advertising or fashion." "A Thousand Clones" makes lousy drama.
That raises a question: sex, yes, but why separate sexes? Hermaphroditic California sea hares mate happily in chains — male end to female end to male end to female end — beneath the waves. Why can't we all?
The answer: no one knows. Above the fish-and-slug level, in reptiles, birds and mammals, hermaphroditism is almost unheard of, except for rare genetic accidents. Sexual dimorphism must convey some huge mysterious advantage. We are stuck with each other.
Party on.
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: November 11, 2003
Well, are they?
A recently separated friend sniffed at the idea of a whole 600 words on the subject.
"Since the answer is `no,' " she said, "I don't quite see what you can do for the other 599." In fact, if men are on earth solely to preserve the species, there is already enough DNA in sperm banks to last for ages. Advances in cryogenics and turkey basting have rendered human males largely superfluous.
Other women interviewed defended their own irreplaceability — an artificial womb is still years off — but argued that men, though an anachronism, do have some impractical value.
"Geez, I'd miss sex," one said.
Another asked, "If there weren't gay men," who would help women check out the jeans-clad courtship displays of breeding males?
But the blunt fact is that human females rarely get to choose to eliminate males. The world is patriarchical because male aggression makes for a winning reproductive strategy, said Dr. Barbara B. Smuts, a feminist sociobiologist.
Male chimps, seeking many partners, dominate females who otherwise, Dr. Smuts argues, would accept sex only with the most qualified male.
In that regard, humans imitate chimps, not our other closest relatives, bonobos, whose females band together to fight off unwanted males.
Among lower animals and insects, as described by the evolutionary biologist Dr. Olivia Judson, the notion of "choosing" males is not so prevalent.
Insomniac male brown bats rape their way through hibernating roosts. Male honeybees explode upon climax, leaving their genitals behind in the queen as a chastity belt.
Male green spoon worms live inside a female's reproductive tract to fertilize passing eggs; they reach it by getting close enough to the females, who are 200,000 times their size, to be inhaled.
Male Australian redback spiders not only somersault into their mates' fangs to be eaten while copulating, they also fight for the privilege, pulling rivals from the females' jaws and hogtying them with silk.
The engine behind all this is the Y chromosome, which determines maleness. Scholars have recently mocked it as a genetic cul de sac.
Over the eons, more than 900 of its 1,000 genes have shifted to other chromosomes, and it could theoretically become extinct in 10 million years. "Man's defining structure is a haven for degenerates," Steve Jones, a geneticist at the University College London, writes in his recent book "Y: The Descent of Men."
But advancing chromosomal recombination is the point of sex, and advancing sex is the point of pheromones, courtship displays, the taking of female captives in war and romantic love. Consequently, said Dr. David C. Page, a specialist in Y chromosomes at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., without males there would not only be no war, but also "no poetry, literature, music, advertising or fashion." "A Thousand Clones" makes lousy drama.
That raises a question: sex, yes, but why separate sexes? Hermaphroditic California sea hares mate happily in chains — male end to female end to male end to female end — beneath the waves. Why can't we all?
The answer: no one knows. Above the fish-and-slug level, in reptiles, birds and mammals, hermaphroditism is almost unheard of, except for rare genetic accidents. Sexual dimorphism must convey some huge mysterious advantage. We are stuck with each other.
Party on.
(10) Could We Live Forever?
By GINA KOLATA
Published: November 11, 2003
There is no fixed life span," says Dr. James Vaupel, no wall of death dictated by basic biology that we are edging toward. People are living longer and longer, he said, and he sees no reason to think the trend will slow or stop in the foreseeable future.
He should know.
Dr. Vaupel is the director of the laboratory of survival and longevity at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany.
He cites some statistics: "From 1840 until today, the life expectancy in the countries that are doing the best has increased two and a half years per decade. It's linear, absolutely linear, with no evidence of any decline or tapering off. Why can't it continue to go up?"
If there were a fixed limit to human life spans and we were approaching it, he says, then the countries whose populations live the longest should be having more and more trouble making progress.
"Not true at all," he says. "For the past 20 years, Japan has been the leader, and every year the Japanese life expectancy goes up by a quarter of a year. There is no evidence that it is slowing." Japanese women, he adds, now have a life expectancy of 85.23 years.
"And do we notice that death rates at age 80, 90, 100 are bottoming out? No, they're not," Dr. Vaupel says. "Death rates at those ages are coming down faster and faster. The death rates at age 80 are coming down about 2 percent a year in most countries."
But there has to be a limit, right?
"Why?" Dr. Vaupel replies. While small but consistent increases in the average life span are not going to lead to immortality, he says, there is no reason to assume that we know where progress will stop.
"There is no reason that life expectancy can't continue to go up two to three years per decade," Dr. Vaupel said. "Biomedical progress is really very impressive. We are beginning to understand cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease. In animal models, we are beginning to understand how to slow aging itself."
Dr. Vaupel predicts that by midcentury, some countries may have life expectancies approaching 100 and says other researchers who share his views predict that life expectancies might approach 130 by 2050.
"I'm not an optimist," Dr. Vaupel said. "I'm middle of the road."
By GINA KOLATA
Published: November 11, 2003
There is no fixed life span," says Dr. James Vaupel, no wall of death dictated by basic biology that we are edging toward. People are living longer and longer, he said, and he sees no reason to think the trend will slow or stop in the foreseeable future.
He should know.
Dr. Vaupel is the director of the laboratory of survival and longevity at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany.
He cites some statistics: "From 1840 until today, the life expectancy in the countries that are doing the best has increased two and a half years per decade. It's linear, absolutely linear, with no evidence of any decline or tapering off. Why can't it continue to go up?"
If there were a fixed limit to human life spans and we were approaching it, he says, then the countries whose populations live the longest should be having more and more trouble making progress.
"Not true at all," he says. "For the past 20 years, Japan has been the leader, and every year the Japanese life expectancy goes up by a quarter of a year. There is no evidence that it is slowing." Japanese women, he adds, now have a life expectancy of 85.23 years.
"And do we notice that death rates at age 80, 90, 100 are bottoming out? No, they're not," Dr. Vaupel says. "Death rates at those ages are coming down faster and faster. The death rates at age 80 are coming down about 2 percent a year in most countries."
But there has to be a limit, right?
"Why?" Dr. Vaupel replies. While small but consistent increases in the average life span are not going to lead to immortality, he says, there is no reason to assume that we know where progress will stop.
"There is no reason that life expectancy can't continue to go up two to three years per decade," Dr. Vaupel said. "Biomedical progress is really very impressive. We are beginning to understand cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease. In animal models, we are beginning to understand how to slow aging itself."
Dr. Vaupel predicts that by midcentury, some countries may have life expectancies approaching 100 and says other researchers who share his views predict that life expectancies might approach 130 by 2050.
"I'm not an optimist," Dr. Vaupel said. "I'm middle of the road."
(9) What Happened Before the Big Bang?
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: November 11, 2003
Like baseball, in which three strikes make an out, three outs on a side make an inning, nine innings make a regular game, the universe makes its own time. There is no outside timekeeper. Space and time are part of the universe, not the other way around, thinkers since Augustine have said, and that is one of the central and haunting lessons of Einstein's general theory of relativity.
In explaining gravity as the "bending" of space-time geometry, Einstein's theory predicted the expansion of the universe, the primal fact of 20th-century astronomy. By imagining the expansion going backward, like a film in reverse, cosmologists have traced the history of the universe credibly back to a millionth of a second after the Big Bang that began it all.
But to ask what happened before the Big Bang is a little bit like asking who was on base before the first pitch was thrown out in a game, say between the Yankees and the Red Sox. There was no "then" then.
Still, this has not stopped some theorists with infinity in their eyes from trying to imagine how the universe made its "quantum leap from eternity into time," as the physicist Dr. Sidney Coleman of Harvard once put it.
Some physicists speculate that on the other side of the looking glass of Time Zero is another universe going backward in time. Others suggest that creation as we know it is punctuated by an eternal dance of clashing island universes.
In their so-called quantum cosmology, Dr. Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and author, and his collaborators envision the universe as a kind of self-contained entity, a crystalline melt of all possibilities existing in "imaginary time."
All these will remain just fancy ideas until physicists have married Einstein's gravity to the paradoxical quantum laws that describe behavior of subatomic particles. Such a theory of quantum gravity, scientists agree, is needed to describe the universe when it was so small and dense that even space and time become fuzzy and discontinuous. "Our clocks and our rulers break," as Dr. Andrei Linde, a Stanford cosmologist likes to put it.
At the moment there are two pretenders to the throne of that ultimate theory. One is string theory, the putative "theory of everything," which posits that the ultimate constituents of nature are tiny vibrating strings rather than points. String theorists have scored some striking successes in the study of black holes, in which matter has been compressed to catastrophic densities similar to the Big Bang, but they have made little progress with the Big Bang itself.
String's lesser-known rival, called loop quantum gravity, is the result of applying quantum strictures directly to Einstein's equations. This theory makes no pretensions to explaining anything but gravity and space-time. But recently Dr. Martin Bojowald of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Golm, Germany, found that using the theory he could follow the evolution of the universe back past the alleged beginning point. Instead of having a "zero moment" of infinite density — a so-called singularity — the universe instead behaved as if it were contracting from an earlier phase, according to the theory, he said. As if the Big Bang were a big bounce.
In their dreams, theorists of both stripes hope that they will discover that they have been exploring the Janus faces of a single idea, yet unknown, but which might explain how time, space and everything else can be built out of nothing. A prescription for, as the physicist Dr. John Archibald Wheeler of Princeton puts it, "law without law."
Dr. Wheeler himself, the pre-eminent poet-adventurer in physics, has put forth his own proposal. According to quantum theory's famous uncertainty principle, the properties of a subatomic particle like its momentum or position remain in abeyance, in a sort of fog of possibility until something measures it or hits it.
Likewise he has wondered out loud if the universe bootstraps itself into being by the accumulation of billions upon billions of quantum interactions — the universe stepping on its own feet, microscopically, and bumbling itself awake. It's a notion he once called "genesis by observership," but now calls "it from bit" to emphasize a proposed connection between quantum mechanics and information theory.
One implication of quantum genesis, if it is correct, is that the notion of the creation of the universe as something far away and long ago must go. "The past is theory," Dr. Wheeler once wrote. "It has no existence except in the records of the present. We are all participators, at the microscopic level, in making that past as well as the present and the future."
If the creation of the universe happens outside time, then it must happen all the time. The Big Bang is here and now, the foundation of every moment.
And you are there.
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: November 11, 2003
Like baseball, in which three strikes make an out, three outs on a side make an inning, nine innings make a regular game, the universe makes its own time. There is no outside timekeeper. Space and time are part of the universe, not the other way around, thinkers since Augustine have said, and that is one of the central and haunting lessons of Einstein's general theory of relativity.
In explaining gravity as the "bending" of space-time geometry, Einstein's theory predicted the expansion of the universe, the primal fact of 20th-century astronomy. By imagining the expansion going backward, like a film in reverse, cosmologists have traced the history of the universe credibly back to a millionth of a second after the Big Bang that began it all.
But to ask what happened before the Big Bang is a little bit like asking who was on base before the first pitch was thrown out in a game, say between the Yankees and the Red Sox. There was no "then" then.
Still, this has not stopped some theorists with infinity in their eyes from trying to imagine how the universe made its "quantum leap from eternity into time," as the physicist Dr. Sidney Coleman of Harvard once put it.
Some physicists speculate that on the other side of the looking glass of Time Zero is another universe going backward in time. Others suggest that creation as we know it is punctuated by an eternal dance of clashing island universes.
In their so-called quantum cosmology, Dr. Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and author, and his collaborators envision the universe as a kind of self-contained entity, a crystalline melt of all possibilities existing in "imaginary time."
All these will remain just fancy ideas until physicists have married Einstein's gravity to the paradoxical quantum laws that describe behavior of subatomic particles. Such a theory of quantum gravity, scientists agree, is needed to describe the universe when it was so small and dense that even space and time become fuzzy and discontinuous. "Our clocks and our rulers break," as Dr. Andrei Linde, a Stanford cosmologist likes to put it.
At the moment there are two pretenders to the throne of that ultimate theory. One is string theory, the putative "theory of everything," which posits that the ultimate constituents of nature are tiny vibrating strings rather than points. String theorists have scored some striking successes in the study of black holes, in which matter has been compressed to catastrophic densities similar to the Big Bang, but they have made little progress with the Big Bang itself.
String's lesser-known rival, called loop quantum gravity, is the result of applying quantum strictures directly to Einstein's equations. This theory makes no pretensions to explaining anything but gravity and space-time. But recently Dr. Martin Bojowald of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Golm, Germany, found that using the theory he could follow the evolution of the universe back past the alleged beginning point. Instead of having a "zero moment" of infinite density — a so-called singularity — the universe instead behaved as if it were contracting from an earlier phase, according to the theory, he said. As if the Big Bang were a big bounce.
In their dreams, theorists of both stripes hope that they will discover that they have been exploring the Janus faces of a single idea, yet unknown, but which might explain how time, space and everything else can be built out of nothing. A prescription for, as the physicist Dr. John Archibald Wheeler of Princeton puts it, "law without law."
Dr. Wheeler himself, the pre-eminent poet-adventurer in physics, has put forth his own proposal. According to quantum theory's famous uncertainty principle, the properties of a subatomic particle like its momentum or position remain in abeyance, in a sort of fog of possibility until something measures it or hits it.
Likewise he has wondered out loud if the universe bootstraps itself into being by the accumulation of billions upon billions of quantum interactions — the universe stepping on its own feet, microscopically, and bumbling itself awake. It's a notion he once called "genesis by observership," but now calls "it from bit" to emphasize a proposed connection between quantum mechanics and information theory.
One implication of quantum genesis, if it is correct, is that the notion of the creation of the universe as something far away and long ago must go. "The past is theory," Dr. Wheeler once wrote. "It has no existence except in the records of the present. We are all participators, at the microscopic level, in making that past as well as the present and the future."
If the creation of the universe happens outside time, then it must happen all the time. The Big Bang is here and now, the foundation of every moment.
And you are there.
(8) When Will the Next Ice Age Begin?
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: November 11, 2003
The maxim "what goes around comes around" applies to few things more aptly than ice ages. In a rhythm attuned to regular wiggles in Earth's orbit and spin, 10 eras of spreading ice sheets and falling seas have come and gone over the last million years.
Through that span, in fact, the cold spells have so dominated that geophysicists regard warm periods like the present one, called the Holocene, as the oddities. Indeed, the scientific name for these periods — interglacials — reflects the exceptional nature of such times.
The next ice age almost certainly will reach its peak in about 80,000 years, but debate persists about how soon it will begin, with the latest theory being that the human influence on the atmosphere may substantially delay the transition.
This is no mere intellectual exercise. The equable conditions of the Holocene, which has lasted 10,000 years so far, have enabled the flowering of agriculture, technology, mobility and resulting explosive population growth that has made the human species a global force.
Any substantial climate shift is likely to pose enormous, though probably surmountable, challenges.
Just 30 years ago, after a prolonged global cool spell, many climate scientists, including some now focused on global warming, posited that Earth might already be seeing the onset of the next big chill.
Evidence from sea sediments and other sources had consistently put the duration of the previous warm spell at about 10,000 years, and it was presumed that this provided at least a rough hint of the longevity of the current interglacial.
The notion that cooling was imminent was challenged several years ago. Some scientists gleaned more details about the previous warm spell, which occurred 130,000 years ago, and concluded that it lasted twice as long as they had previously estimated — 20,000 years instead of 10,000.
Others have proposed that an earlier warm era that lasted even longer — 30,000 years — was a better model for the Holocene. But many experts still say they are convinced that the current warmth should, under the influence of orbital cycles alone, near an end "any millennium now," as Dr. Richard A. Muller, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley, puts it.
But the planet is feeling a new influence, that of people. Humans may delay the dawn of the next ice age by a millennium or two, or even longer, many climate experts say, as Earth's long-buried stores of coal, oil and other carbon-rich fossil fuels are burned, releasing billions of tons of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
That insulating blanket has a bigger climatic influence than the slight flux in incoming solar energy from changes in Earth's orientation relative to the Sun, said Dr. James A. Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
"We have taken over control of the mechanisms that determine the climate change," he said.
Other scientists, while agreeing with this thesis for the short term, say that eventually the buffering properties of the atmosphere, ocean and Earth will restore balance, returning most of the liberated carbon to long-term storage and allowing the orbital rhythm once again to dominate.
"Orbital changes are in a slow dance leading to a peak 80,000 years from now," said Dr. Eric J. Barron, the dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State. "I can hardly imagine that human influences won't have run their course by that time."
It may seem that human-driven global warming, although perhaps a disaster on the scale of centuries, may be a good thing in the long run if it fends off the next ice age awhile.
But many climatologists note that the complex interplay of greenhouse gases, orbital shifts and other influences on climate remain poorly understood. In fact, some experts say, there is a chance that human-induced warming could shut down heat-toting ocean currents that keep northern latitudes warmer than they otherwise would be. The result could be a faster descent into glacial times instead of a delay.
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: November 11, 2003
The maxim "what goes around comes around" applies to few things more aptly than ice ages. In a rhythm attuned to regular wiggles in Earth's orbit and spin, 10 eras of spreading ice sheets and falling seas have come and gone over the last million years.
Through that span, in fact, the cold spells have so dominated that geophysicists regard warm periods like the present one, called the Holocene, as the oddities. Indeed, the scientific name for these periods — interglacials — reflects the exceptional nature of such times.
The next ice age almost certainly will reach its peak in about 80,000 years, but debate persists about how soon it will begin, with the latest theory being that the human influence on the atmosphere may substantially delay the transition.
This is no mere intellectual exercise. The equable conditions of the Holocene, which has lasted 10,000 years so far, have enabled the flowering of agriculture, technology, mobility and resulting explosive population growth that has made the human species a global force.
Any substantial climate shift is likely to pose enormous, though probably surmountable, challenges.
Just 30 years ago, after a prolonged global cool spell, many climate scientists, including some now focused on global warming, posited that Earth might already be seeing the onset of the next big chill.
Evidence from sea sediments and other sources had consistently put the duration of the previous warm spell at about 10,000 years, and it was presumed that this provided at least a rough hint of the longevity of the current interglacial.
The notion that cooling was imminent was challenged several years ago. Some scientists gleaned more details about the previous warm spell, which occurred 130,000 years ago, and concluded that it lasted twice as long as they had previously estimated — 20,000 years instead of 10,000.
Others have proposed that an earlier warm era that lasted even longer — 30,000 years — was a better model for the Holocene. But many experts still say they are convinced that the current warmth should, under the influence of orbital cycles alone, near an end "any millennium now," as Dr. Richard A. Muller, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley, puts it.
But the planet is feeling a new influence, that of people. Humans may delay the dawn of the next ice age by a millennium or two, or even longer, many climate experts say, as Earth's long-buried stores of coal, oil and other carbon-rich fossil fuels are burned, releasing billions of tons of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
That insulating blanket has a bigger climatic influence than the slight flux in incoming solar energy from changes in Earth's orientation relative to the Sun, said Dr. James A. Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
"We have taken over control of the mechanisms that determine the climate change," he said.
Other scientists, while agreeing with this thesis for the short term, say that eventually the buffering properties of the atmosphere, ocean and Earth will restore balance, returning most of the liberated carbon to long-term storage and allowing the orbital rhythm once again to dominate.
"Orbital changes are in a slow dance leading to a peak 80,000 years from now," said Dr. Eric J. Barron, the dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State. "I can hardly imagine that human influences won't have run their course by that time."
It may seem that human-driven global warming, although perhaps a disaster on the scale of centuries, may be a good thing in the long run if it fends off the next ice age awhile.
But many climatologists note that the complex interplay of greenhouse gases, orbital shifts and other influences on climate remain poorly understood. In fact, some experts say, there is a chance that human-induced warming could shut down heat-toting ocean currents that keep northern latitudes warmer than they otherwise would be. The result could be a faster descent into glacial times instead of a delay.
(7) What Should We Eat?
By DENISE GRADY
Published: November 11, 2003
In a word — less.
More and more people, young and old, in countries rich and poor, are fat and growing ever fatter. If there are limits to obesity, our species seems not to know about them.
A few selected milestones:
¶In 2000, for the first time, the number of overweight people in the world rose to match the number who were underweight and starving: 1.2 billion.
¶A "new and striking" discovery, reported in 2001, was that nearly 25 percent of American women in their 50's had too much body fat to measure in the usual way, by grabbing a fold of skin with calipers that gauge the layer of fat underneath.
¶In the United States, 65 percent of adults and 15 percent of children ages 6 to 19 are overweight, and the fastest growing group of obese people are 100 pounds or more overweight: between 1986 and 2000, their numbers quadrupled, from 1 in 200 adults to 4 in 200. This year, more than 100,000 in that category are expected to undergo drastic surgery that shrinks their stomachs and shortens their intestines to help them lose weight.
¶An Indiana company that used to sell one "triple-wide" coffin a year now sells four or five a month; each can hold a 700-pound corpse.
¶A book published this year, "What Are You Looking At?" describes itself as "the first fat fiction anthology," and its introduction says, " `Fat' has earned its way into the realm of human conditions that concern literary artists."
All this would matter less if being fat was beneficial, or at least safe. But in most cases it is neither. Obesity kills 300,000 people a year in the United States, increases the risks of heart disease, diabetes, stroke and some cancers, and costs the nation $117 billion a year in medical bills and lost productivity. It is on the World Health Organization's list of major global health risks.
There is no denying it: if you eat more calories than your body needs, you will gain weight. But given the opportunity to indulge, few can resist. And many may not even realize that they are overeating.
Counting calories may seem like an old-fashioned approach, given the trendy diets that abound these days, but food is fuel, the body burns it and the laws of physics still apply. For adults, one way to estimate how many calories you need in a day just to maintain your current weight is to divide your weight in pounds by 2.2 (to convert it to kilograms) and then multiply the results by 30. Using that formula, a 150-pound person needs about 2,045 calories a day. Men usually need a bit more than women, and active people more than sedentary ones.
People who start paying attention are often surprised at how fast calories add up, and, unless they eat a lot of vegetables, how little food provides 2,000 calories. A corn muffin or a large serving of French fries can have more than 400 calories, for instance, a cheesesteak sandwich more than 800, two tablespoons of salad dressing close to 200, a chocolate sundae more than 1,000.
To lose one pound, it is necessary to cheat the body of 3,500 calories — say, 500 a day for a week, or 350 a day for 10 days. That means either eating less or burning off calories by exercising. But many people who try to diet fail sooner or later, regaining much or all of the weight they struggled to lose.
Discouraging as it all may seem, the good news is that people who are substantially overweight can benefit from reducing even a little — dropping just 10 percent of one's body weight and sometimes even less can lower blood pressure, cholesterol and the risk of diabetes. There is no universal formula: a diet that creates a calorie debt and that a person can stick with will take off pounds. Recent studies have suggested that even diets relatively high in fat, like the Atkins diet, help people lose weight and do not cause dangerous rises in blood fats, at least in the short term.
Just as obesity can shorten the life span, there is evidence that in rodents, at least, being very lean can lengthen life. Low calorie diets, in fact, are the only reliable means of extending a mammal's life. In rats and mice, carefully balanced diets with about 30 percent fewer calories than the animals would normally eat keep them looking young and healthy well past middle age, and can extend their lives from three years to four, an increase of 33 percent.
At the National Institute on Aging, researchers are studying such diets in rhesus monkeys. It is too soon to tell whether the monkeys will be unusually long-lived, though studies have suggested that they are aging more slowly than monkeys that eat more. In addition, a few, in their 30's, are the equivalent of human centenarians, said Dr. Donald K. Ingram, acting chief of the laboratory on experimental gerontology.
The monkeys look lean but not emaciated, and their skin and fur are healthy, Dr. Ingram said. But they do act a bit hungry. They know when it is time to eat and they wait for their food.
"If you give them more food, they'll certainly eat it," Dr. Ingram said, adding that unlike most rhesus monkeys, which often save food for later by stuffing it into pouches in their cheeks, the calorie-restricted animals eat right away.
The monkeys are being studied because they are close to humans, and researchers hope to learn something about calorie restriction that may enable them to develop medications that will help people fend off some of the ills of aging. The point of the research has never been to apply calorie restriction to people, Dr. Ingram said, noting that researchers generally assume that most people cannot tolerate such a diet.
But Dr. Ingram said that when he stated that assumption recently at a talk he gave, some skinny men in the audience objected, and said they were already living on sharply restricted diets like those described in scientific articles about the animal experiments.
"They said they're doing it, they have the discipline, and it's difficult but not impossible," Dr. Ingram said. "I was a little bit taken aback, but in talking with them, I said, `I'm going to soften how I say that.' When you think about it, 30 or 50 years ago, 60 percent of the population smoked. It's addictive, and people thought it would be impossible to change. But we have reduced it. It's difficult, but not impossible."
But, Dr. Ingram added, the group trying calorie restriction wished him quick success in developing drugs to mimic its effects. They are hungry.
By DENISE GRADY
Published: November 11, 2003
In a word — less.
More and more people, young and old, in countries rich and poor, are fat and growing ever fatter. If there are limits to obesity, our species seems not to know about them.
A few selected milestones:
¶In 2000, for the first time, the number of overweight people in the world rose to match the number who were underweight and starving: 1.2 billion.
¶A "new and striking" discovery, reported in 2001, was that nearly 25 percent of American women in their 50's had too much body fat to measure in the usual way, by grabbing a fold of skin with calipers that gauge the layer of fat underneath.
¶In the United States, 65 percent of adults and 15 percent of children ages 6 to 19 are overweight, and the fastest growing group of obese people are 100 pounds or more overweight: between 1986 and 2000, their numbers quadrupled, from 1 in 200 adults to 4 in 200. This year, more than 100,000 in that category are expected to undergo drastic surgery that shrinks their stomachs and shortens their intestines to help them lose weight.
¶An Indiana company that used to sell one "triple-wide" coffin a year now sells four or five a month; each can hold a 700-pound corpse.
¶A book published this year, "What Are You Looking At?" describes itself as "the first fat fiction anthology," and its introduction says, " `Fat' has earned its way into the realm of human conditions that concern literary artists."
All this would matter less if being fat was beneficial, or at least safe. But in most cases it is neither. Obesity kills 300,000 people a year in the United States, increases the risks of heart disease, diabetes, stroke and some cancers, and costs the nation $117 billion a year in medical bills and lost productivity. It is on the World Health Organization's list of major global health risks.
There is no denying it: if you eat more calories than your body needs, you will gain weight. But given the opportunity to indulge, few can resist. And many may not even realize that they are overeating.
Counting calories may seem like an old-fashioned approach, given the trendy diets that abound these days, but food is fuel, the body burns it and the laws of physics still apply. For adults, one way to estimate how many calories you need in a day just to maintain your current weight is to divide your weight in pounds by 2.2 (to convert it to kilograms) and then multiply the results by 30. Using that formula, a 150-pound person needs about 2,045 calories a day. Men usually need a bit more than women, and active people more than sedentary ones.
People who start paying attention are often surprised at how fast calories add up, and, unless they eat a lot of vegetables, how little food provides 2,000 calories. A corn muffin or a large serving of French fries can have more than 400 calories, for instance, a cheesesteak sandwich more than 800, two tablespoons of salad dressing close to 200, a chocolate sundae more than 1,000.
To lose one pound, it is necessary to cheat the body of 3,500 calories — say, 500 a day for a week, or 350 a day for 10 days. That means either eating less or burning off calories by exercising. But many people who try to diet fail sooner or later, regaining much or all of the weight they struggled to lose.
Discouraging as it all may seem, the good news is that people who are substantially overweight can benefit from reducing even a little — dropping just 10 percent of one's body weight and sometimes even less can lower blood pressure, cholesterol and the risk of diabetes. There is no universal formula: a diet that creates a calorie debt and that a person can stick with will take off pounds. Recent studies have suggested that even diets relatively high in fat, like the Atkins diet, help people lose weight and do not cause dangerous rises in blood fats, at least in the short term.
Just as obesity can shorten the life span, there is evidence that in rodents, at least, being very lean can lengthen life. Low calorie diets, in fact, are the only reliable means of extending a mammal's life. In rats and mice, carefully balanced diets with about 30 percent fewer calories than the animals would normally eat keep them looking young and healthy well past middle age, and can extend their lives from three years to four, an increase of 33 percent.
At the National Institute on Aging, researchers are studying such diets in rhesus monkeys. It is too soon to tell whether the monkeys will be unusually long-lived, though studies have suggested that they are aging more slowly than monkeys that eat more. In addition, a few, in their 30's, are the equivalent of human centenarians, said Dr. Donald K. Ingram, acting chief of the laboratory on experimental gerontology.
The monkeys look lean but not emaciated, and their skin and fur are healthy, Dr. Ingram said. But they do act a bit hungry. They know when it is time to eat and they wait for their food.
"If you give them more food, they'll certainly eat it," Dr. Ingram said, adding that unlike most rhesus monkeys, which often save food for later by stuffing it into pouches in their cheeks, the calorie-restricted animals eat right away.
The monkeys are being studied because they are close to humans, and researchers hope to learn something about calorie restriction that may enable them to develop medications that will help people fend off some of the ills of aging. The point of the research has never been to apply calorie restriction to people, Dr. Ingram said, noting that researchers generally assume that most people cannot tolerate such a diet.
But Dr. Ingram said that when he stated that assumption recently at a talk he gave, some skinny men in the audience objected, and said they were already living on sharply restricted diets like those described in scientific articles about the animal experiments.
"They said they're doing it, they have the discipline, and it's difficult but not impossible," Dr. Ingram said. "I was a little bit taken aback, but in talking with them, I said, `I'm going to soften how I say that.' When you think about it, 30 or 50 years ago, 60 percent of the population smoked. It's addictive, and people thought it would be impossible to change. But we have reduced it. It's difficult, but not impossible."
But, Dr. Ingram added, the group trying calorie restriction wished him quick success in developing drugs to mimic its effects. They are hungry.
(6) Will We Ever Find Atlantis?
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: November 11, 2003
Somewhere in the imagination, at an intersection of the idealized Golden Age and mankind's descent into manifest imperfection, existed the island civilization of Atlantis. This realm of divine origin was ruled from a splendid metropolis in the distant ocean. Its empire, described by a philosopher as "larger than Libya and Asia combined," enjoyed prosperity and great power.
In time, driven by overweening ambition, a common theme in antiquity and not unheard of today, Atlantis set out to conquer lands of the Mediterranean. But in a terrible day and night of floods and earthquakes, Atlantis was swallowed by the sea, sinking into legend.
The story endures as a classic in the genre of lost worlds long vanished, the ruins and treasures of which are surely somewhere out there yet to be found. Legends, though, are often mirages, forever shimmering out of reach, yet exerting an attractive power beyond reason.
Sometimes the pursuit of legends leads to unforeseen knowledge.
In the 12th century A.D., the legend of Prester John, a rich and powerful Christian monarch somewhere in Asia, drew intrepid seekers, eventually including Marco Polo, who opened Western eyes to the wonders of the East. When no one found Prester John in Asia, the legend did not go away; its locale shifted to Africa.
The golden city of El Dorado eluded hellbent adventurers, whose frustrated quest nonetheless put much of South America on the map.
The fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, castles in the air that proved to be nothing more than humble Indian pueblos, drew Europeans across tortured miles and years of discovery in what is now the Southwestern United States.
The tale of the lost continent has sent respected classical scholars to their texts for corroboration that Atlantis was more than fantasy. Archaeologists, geologists and divers have plumbed ocean depths where the island supposedly sank out of sight thousands of years ago. Not a scrap of compelling evidence supporting the legend has ever turned up.
Such a negative discovery might be conclusive enough for most legends to pass from rock-hard belief to literary artifacts of prescientific cultures living in a world of limited horizons and boundless mystery. But true believers, complaining that scientists have got it all wrong, continue the search.
Generations of adventurers, writers, mystics and cranks have satisfied themselves of the legend's reality. Their "solutions" fill more than 2,000 books and countless articles. The lost continent also inspired works by authors as diverse as Francis Bacon and Arthur Conan Doyle, and Hollywood has weighed in with any number of forgettable movies.
Richard Ellis, author of "Imagining Atlantis," thinks the legend is fantasy. "Atlantis lives on in people's minds largely because you cannot prove it doesn't exist," he said recently. "You can't search every inch of the ocean bottom, and so the hope remains alive and the promise of finding treasures in sunken palaces."
The sole source of the Atlantis story is by no means obscure. In two dialogues, the "Critias" and the "Timaeus," Plato in the fourth century B.C. described a resplendent island empire in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar). "This dynasty, gathering its whole power together," Plato wrote, "attempted to enslave, at a single stroke, your country and ours."
Even after disbelief in ancient gods undercut literal acceptance of the legend, medieval maps were sprinkled with imaginary islands in the Atlantic, including Antillia. Some experts suspect this preserves in garbled form the name of Atlantis and a lingering belief that its remnants may still exist. The maps encouraged navigators in their quests, among them Columbus.
The 20th century was hard on Atlantis dreams. Detailed mapping of the sea floor and the new theory of plate tectonics made it clear, geophysicists say, that land masses resembling Atlantis never existed in the Atlantic.
Undeterred, ardent believers went looking elsewhere: in Scandinavia, the Bahamas and the Aegean Sea. Huge blocks of stone submerged off Cuba were recently proclaimed possible ruins of the lost empire.
A more plausible hypothesis, some scholars think, places Atlantis at Crete. The accomplished Minoan civilization there collapsed in the middle of the second millennium B.C., presumably destroyed by a volcanic eruption on nearby Thera, modern Santorini.
Was this in Plato's mind? Or he might have been inspired by an event in his own time, the earthquake in 373 B.C. that brought the Greek city of Helike, as ancient writers said, crashing into the sea.
The unknown fires the imagination. Whether the starry night or extraterrestrial beings, the mystery of life itself or life after death or any of the uncertain boundaries between reality and resolute yearning, it is unknowns that populate history with gods and heroes, monsters of the deep and chimeric islands, lost paradises and the elusive El Dorado at the end of greed's rainbow, not to mention Martians.
Some mysteries will be solved, but never all of them. As for Atlantis, another Greek philosopher delivered the verdict that has yet to be contradicted.
As noted by the British classicist J. V. Luce, Aristotle considered Atlantis a poetic fiction invented by Plato as a warning of the fate that befalls the arrogant and decadent. Plato placed Atlantis beyond the then known world and sank it to the ocean floor to preserve the power of the mystery.
"The man who dreamed it up made it vanish" was Aristotle's solution to the mystery of Atlantis.
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: November 11, 2003
Somewhere in the imagination, at an intersection of the idealized Golden Age and mankind's descent into manifest imperfection, existed the island civilization of Atlantis. This realm of divine origin was ruled from a splendid metropolis in the distant ocean. Its empire, described by a philosopher as "larger than Libya and Asia combined," enjoyed prosperity and great power.
In time, driven by overweening ambition, a common theme in antiquity and not unheard of today, Atlantis set out to conquer lands of the Mediterranean. But in a terrible day and night of floods and earthquakes, Atlantis was swallowed by the sea, sinking into legend.
The story endures as a classic in the genre of lost worlds long vanished, the ruins and treasures of which are surely somewhere out there yet to be found. Legends, though, are often mirages, forever shimmering out of reach, yet exerting an attractive power beyond reason.
Sometimes the pursuit of legends leads to unforeseen knowledge.
In the 12th century A.D., the legend of Prester John, a rich and powerful Christian monarch somewhere in Asia, drew intrepid seekers, eventually including Marco Polo, who opened Western eyes to the wonders of the East. When no one found Prester John in Asia, the legend did not go away; its locale shifted to Africa.
The golden city of El Dorado eluded hellbent adventurers, whose frustrated quest nonetheless put much of South America on the map.
The fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, castles in the air that proved to be nothing more than humble Indian pueblos, drew Europeans across tortured miles and years of discovery in what is now the Southwestern United States.
The tale of the lost continent has sent respected classical scholars to their texts for corroboration that Atlantis was more than fantasy. Archaeologists, geologists and divers have plumbed ocean depths where the island supposedly sank out of sight thousands of years ago. Not a scrap of compelling evidence supporting the legend has ever turned up.
Such a negative discovery might be conclusive enough for most legends to pass from rock-hard belief to literary artifacts of prescientific cultures living in a world of limited horizons and boundless mystery. But true believers, complaining that scientists have got it all wrong, continue the search.
Generations of adventurers, writers, mystics and cranks have satisfied themselves of the legend's reality. Their "solutions" fill more than 2,000 books and countless articles. The lost continent also inspired works by authors as diverse as Francis Bacon and Arthur Conan Doyle, and Hollywood has weighed in with any number of forgettable movies.
Richard Ellis, author of "Imagining Atlantis," thinks the legend is fantasy. "Atlantis lives on in people's minds largely because you cannot prove it doesn't exist," he said recently. "You can't search every inch of the ocean bottom, and so the hope remains alive and the promise of finding treasures in sunken palaces."
The sole source of the Atlantis story is by no means obscure. In two dialogues, the "Critias" and the "Timaeus," Plato in the fourth century B.C. described a resplendent island empire in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar). "This dynasty, gathering its whole power together," Plato wrote, "attempted to enslave, at a single stroke, your country and ours."
Even after disbelief in ancient gods undercut literal acceptance of the legend, medieval maps were sprinkled with imaginary islands in the Atlantic, including Antillia. Some experts suspect this preserves in garbled form the name of Atlantis and a lingering belief that its remnants may still exist. The maps encouraged navigators in their quests, among them Columbus.
The 20th century was hard on Atlantis dreams. Detailed mapping of the sea floor and the new theory of plate tectonics made it clear, geophysicists say, that land masses resembling Atlantis never existed in the Atlantic.
Undeterred, ardent believers went looking elsewhere: in Scandinavia, the Bahamas and the Aegean Sea. Huge blocks of stone submerged off Cuba were recently proclaimed possible ruins of the lost empire.
A more plausible hypothesis, some scholars think, places Atlantis at Crete. The accomplished Minoan civilization there collapsed in the middle of the second millennium B.C., presumably destroyed by a volcanic eruption on nearby Thera, modern Santorini.
Was this in Plato's mind? Or he might have been inspired by an event in his own time, the earthquake in 373 B.C. that brought the Greek city of Helike, as ancient writers said, crashing into the sea.
The unknown fires the imagination. Whether the starry night or extraterrestrial beings, the mystery of life itself or life after death or any of the uncertain boundaries between reality and resolute yearning, it is unknowns that populate history with gods and heroes, monsters of the deep and chimeric islands, lost paradises and the elusive El Dorado at the end of greed's rainbow, not to mention Martians.
Some mysteries will be solved, but never all of them. As for Atlantis, another Greek philosopher delivered the verdict that has yet to be contradicted.
As noted by the British classicist J. V. Luce, Aristotle considered Atlantis a poetic fiction invented by Plato as a warning of the fate that befalls the arrogant and decadent. Plato placed Atlantis beyond the then known world and sank it to the ocean floor to preserve the power of the mystery.
"The man who dreamed it up made it vanish" was Aristotle's solution to the mystery of Atlantis.
(5) What Is Gravity, Really?
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: November 11, 2003
Gravity . . . it's not just a good idea. It's the Law," reads a popular bumper sticker.
Gravity is our oldest and most familiar enemy, the force we feel in our bones, the force that will eventually bury us, sagging our organs and pulling us down, but for all its intimacy, it is a mystery. What really is the law?
For most of us it's the one that Isaac Newton proclaimed in 1687 as the rule of the cosmos, describing how (but not why) two objects attract each other with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them. But it's been rewritten and physicists expect that it will be rewritten again.
Newton's gravity was replaced by Einstein's general theory of relativity early in the 20th century. Einstein suggested that matter and energy warp space-time the way a heavy sleeper sags a cheap mattress, causing planets, basketballs and light beams to move in curved paths instead of straight lines.
General relativity predicted the bending of light, the expansion of the universe and black holes, and has served as the foundation for modern cosmology, but theorists have never presumed that it would be the last word on gravity.
For one thing, it is mathematically incompatible with the quantum laws that govern subatomic particles. In order to describe what happens at very small distances or very high energies corresponding to the first moments after the Big Bang, where space and time become discontinuous, general relativity has to be merged with quantum theory, a project that has engrossed the present generation of physicists.
But recently some experts have been wondering out loud if it is time to rewrite Einstein's version of the law as it applies to the other end of the length scale, to very long distances. The motivation comes from the predominance of what is sometimes called "the dark sector" in the universe.
According to what has recently become a highly celebrated "standard model," ordinary atoms make up only 5 percent of the "stuff" of the cosmos. Some kind of mysterious dark matter, perhaps consisting of elementary particles left over from the Big Bang, makes up 25 percent, while the rest — a whopping 70 percent — consists of something even more mysterious, known as "dark energy."
Obviously a theory that leaves 95 percent of the universe unexplained is less than a complete triumph.
Neither dark energy nor dark matter has been observed or detected directly. Each has been inferred from its gravitational effects on the tiny fraction of stuff we can see. As a result, some scientists have suggested that what astronomers have discovered in the last 20 years is their own ignorance of gravity.
In particular, the discovery, five years ago, that the expansion of the universe is apparently accelerating, under the influence of that dark energy, has occasioned a re-evaluation of the old certainties.
The simplest explanation for dark energy is something called the cosmological constant, first invented by Einstein, a cosmic repulsion caused by the energy residing in empty space. But attempts to calculate this energy have resulted in numbers 1060 bigger than what astronomers have measured — so large that the universe would have blown apart before atoms or galaxies could have formed — causing theorists to throw up their hands.
"I think we are so confused that we should keep an open mind to tinkering with gravity," said Dr. Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago.
As a result of all this, physics literature has become peppered with suggestions of ways to change gravity. This fall, given a choice of explanations for dark energy during cosmology workshop at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif., 20 of the 44 participants voted for some variation of "Einstein was wrong."
Some of these proposals take their cue from the science-fiction-sounding string theory, the putative theory of everything, which holds out the possibility that our universe might be a 4-dimensional membrane (or "brane") in an 11-dimensional space.
Most of the vibrating strings that make up the particles and forces of nature in string theory would be stuck to the brane, like the nap on a rug. But the strings responsible for transmitting gravity would be able to drift away or "leak" into the meta-space surrounding the brane as they traveled along it from distant objects, according to a theory set forth in 2000 by Dr. Gia Dvali, Dr. Gregory Gabadadze and Dr. Massimo Porrati of New York University. The effect, they say, would be to make distant galaxies appear as if they were accelerating as they moved away from us.
Also in a stringy vein is Cardassian expansion, named after the villainous race on "Star Trek," and dreamed up by Dr. Katherine Freese and Dr. Matthew Lewis of the University of Michigan. According to their theory, the universe accelerates as a result of other branes tugging on our own. "One can get an accelerating universe without having any dark energy," Dr. Freese said.
Other theorists are going back and modifying general relativity directly, noting that when he wrote it down Einstein chose the simplest possible equations that would carry out his ideas. But more complicated equations might be necessary. That was the approach taken by Dr. Turner and his colleagues, Dr. Sean Carroll and Dr. Vikram Duvvuri of Chicago, and Dr. Mark Trodden of Syracuse. The result was a universe that would speed up as it got bigger and emptier.
That might sound crazy, Dr. Turner said, but not any crazier than the idea 80 years ago that the universe would be expanding.
The model raises as many questions as it answers, but it and others like it are still worth pursuing, Dr. Carroll said.
"Something funny is going on when the universe gets to be 10 billion years old," he said, "and none of our current ideas is standing up and declaring itself to be the right answer, so we have to be bold."
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: November 11, 2003
Gravity . . . it's not just a good idea. It's the Law," reads a popular bumper sticker.
Gravity is our oldest and most familiar enemy, the force we feel in our bones, the force that will eventually bury us, sagging our organs and pulling us down, but for all its intimacy, it is a mystery. What really is the law?
For most of us it's the one that Isaac Newton proclaimed in 1687 as the rule of the cosmos, describing how (but not why) two objects attract each other with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them. But it's been rewritten and physicists expect that it will be rewritten again.
Newton's gravity was replaced by Einstein's general theory of relativity early in the 20th century. Einstein suggested that matter and energy warp space-time the way a heavy sleeper sags a cheap mattress, causing planets, basketballs and light beams to move in curved paths instead of straight lines.
General relativity predicted the bending of light, the expansion of the universe and black holes, and has served as the foundation for modern cosmology, but theorists have never presumed that it would be the last word on gravity.
For one thing, it is mathematically incompatible with the quantum laws that govern subatomic particles. In order to describe what happens at very small distances or very high energies corresponding to the first moments after the Big Bang, where space and time become discontinuous, general relativity has to be merged with quantum theory, a project that has engrossed the present generation of physicists.
But recently some experts have been wondering out loud if it is time to rewrite Einstein's version of the law as it applies to the other end of the length scale, to very long distances. The motivation comes from the predominance of what is sometimes called "the dark sector" in the universe.
According to what has recently become a highly celebrated "standard model," ordinary atoms make up only 5 percent of the "stuff" of the cosmos. Some kind of mysterious dark matter, perhaps consisting of elementary particles left over from the Big Bang, makes up 25 percent, while the rest — a whopping 70 percent — consists of something even more mysterious, known as "dark energy."
Obviously a theory that leaves 95 percent of the universe unexplained is less than a complete triumph.
Neither dark energy nor dark matter has been observed or detected directly. Each has been inferred from its gravitational effects on the tiny fraction of stuff we can see. As a result, some scientists have suggested that what astronomers have discovered in the last 20 years is their own ignorance of gravity.
In particular, the discovery, five years ago, that the expansion of the universe is apparently accelerating, under the influence of that dark energy, has occasioned a re-evaluation of the old certainties.
The simplest explanation for dark energy is something called the cosmological constant, first invented by Einstein, a cosmic repulsion caused by the energy residing in empty space. But attempts to calculate this energy have resulted in numbers 1060 bigger than what astronomers have measured — so large that the universe would have blown apart before atoms or galaxies could have formed — causing theorists to throw up their hands.
"I think we are so confused that we should keep an open mind to tinkering with gravity," said Dr. Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago.
As a result of all this, physics literature has become peppered with suggestions of ways to change gravity. This fall, given a choice of explanations for dark energy during cosmology workshop at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif., 20 of the 44 participants voted for some variation of "Einstein was wrong."
Some of these proposals take their cue from the science-fiction-sounding string theory, the putative theory of everything, which holds out the possibility that our universe might be a 4-dimensional membrane (or "brane") in an 11-dimensional space.
Most of the vibrating strings that make up the particles and forces of nature in string theory would be stuck to the brane, like the nap on a rug. But the strings responsible for transmitting gravity would be able to drift away or "leak" into the meta-space surrounding the brane as they traveled along it from distant objects, according to a theory set forth in 2000 by Dr. Gia Dvali, Dr. Gregory Gabadadze and Dr. Massimo Porrati of New York University. The effect, they say, would be to make distant galaxies appear as if they were accelerating as they moved away from us.
Also in a stringy vein is Cardassian expansion, named after the villainous race on "Star Trek," and dreamed up by Dr. Katherine Freese and Dr. Matthew Lewis of the University of Michigan. According to their theory, the universe accelerates as a result of other branes tugging on our own. "One can get an accelerating universe without having any dark energy," Dr. Freese said.
Other theorists are going back and modifying general relativity directly, noting that when he wrote it down Einstein chose the simplest possible equations that would carry out his ideas. But more complicated equations might be necessary. That was the approach taken by Dr. Turner and his colleagues, Dr. Sean Carroll and Dr. Vikram Duvvuri of Chicago, and Dr. Mark Trodden of Syracuse. The result was a universe that would speed up as it got bigger and emptier.
That might sound crazy, Dr. Turner said, but not any crazier than the idea 80 years ago that the universe would be expanding.
The model raises as many questions as it answers, but it and others like it are still worth pursuing, Dr. Carroll said.
"Something funny is going on when the universe gets to be 10 billion years old," he said, "and none of our current ideas is standing up and declaring itself to be the right answer, so we have to be bold."
(4) How Does the Brain Work?
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Published: November 11, 2003
In the continuing effort to understand the human brain, the mysteries keep piling up. Consider what scientists are up against. Stretched flat, the human neocortex — the center of our higher mental functions — is about the size and thickness of a formal dinner napkin.
With 100 billion cells, each with 1,000 to 10,000 synapses, the neocortex makes roughly 100 trillion connections and contains 300 million feet of wiring packed with other tissue into a one-and-a-half-quart volume in the brain.
These cells are arranged in six very similar layers, inviting confusion. Within these layers, different regions carry out vision, hearing, touch, the sense of balance, movement, emotional responses and every other feat of cognition. More mysterious yet, there are 10 times as many feedback connections — from the neocortex to lower levels of the brain — as there are feed-forward or bottom-up connections.
Added to these mysteries is the lack of a good framework for understanding the brain's connectivity and electrochemistry. Researchers do not know how the six-layered cortical sheet gives rise to the sense of self. They have not been able to disentangle the role of genes and experience in shaping brains. They do not know how the firing of billions of loosely coupled neurons gives rise to coordinated, goal-directed behavior.
They can see trees but no forest.
They do think they have solved one longstanding mystery, though. Most neuroscientists are convinced the mind is in no way separate from the brain. In the brain they have found a physical basis for all our thoughts, aspirations, language, sense of consciousness, moral beliefs and everything else that makes us human. All of this arises from interactions among billions of ordinary cells. Neuroscience finds no duality, no finger of God animating the human mind.
So what have neuroscientists been doing? Like a child who takes apart his father's watch, they have dissected the brain and now have almost all the pieces laid out before them. There are thousands of clues about what makes the brain tick.
But how to put it back together? How to understand something so complex by examining it piecemeal? Even harder, how to integrate the different levels of analysis? Some brain events occur in fractions of milliseconds while others, like long-term memory formation, can take days or weeks. One can study molecules, ion channels, single neurons, functional areas, circuits, oscillations and chemistry. There are neural stem cells and mechanisms of plasticity, which involve how the brain changes with experience or recovers from injury.
New research tools continue to drive progress. In the late 1970's, researchers mostly placed sharp-tipped electrodes into single cells and measured firing patterns. By the 1990's, they had machines that could take images of brain activity while people spoke, read, gambled, solved moral dilemmas or, in a recent study, had orgasms.
Unfortunately, studies like these, while fascinating, tend to feed the fires of a huge disagreement within the brain sciences: is the brain made up of discrete modules that pass information among themselves? Or is it more loosely organized so that varied pockets of distant neurons fire together when called upon to perform a particular task? In mapping the brain, some researchers say that areas dedicated to aspects of language, arm movements or face recognition are hard-wired modules.
Other researchers say that such areas are surprisingly flexible. For example, the human face recognition area is where expert bird watchers distinguish features of closely related species or car experts decide if a 1958 or 1959 Plymouth had bigger fins.
While the two sides in this debate agree that the brain is prewired to some degree at birth, the nature of that prewiring is uncertain. What do genes expressed in the brain do? How do genes influence behavior? What is innate and what is flexible? What is the role of culture in shaping a brain?
While lacking a coherent framework, scientists are nevertheless making progress in mapping the correlations between brain activity and behavior. New imaging tools reveal circuits and overall patterns of activity as people solve problems or reflect on their feelings. Genes expressed in mouse brain cells are being mapped so that researchers can begin to find out if neurons that look alike have different proteins and functions. A magnetic device can knock out human brain regions, safely and temporarily, to learn what those regions do.
A lively debate continues over the nature of time in brain function. In the absence of stimulation from the outside world, neurons remain active; they are filled with electrical currents that give them a propensity to oscillate and, on interacting, create spiking patterns of activity. Do the spikes carry precise information? Or do such spikes average out over large areas? How is information carried in the brain?
One of the most exciting developments is the recent exploration of the frontal lobes. Located behind the forehead, the frontal lobes help create the social brain, melding emotions, cognition, error detection, the body, volition and an autobiographical sense of self. Special circuits containing spindle cells appear to broadcast messages — this feels right, this does not feel right — to the rest of the brain. Researchers are finding that emotions arise from body states as well as brain states, confirming that the supposed distinction between mind and body is illusory.
Others are delving into individual differences. What makes one person empathic, another mean or shy or articulate or musical? How do genes relate to temperament and how is a baby's brain constructed from early experience? Specialized cells called mirror neurons seem to help babies imitate the world to learn gestures, facial expressions, language and feelings.
Brain chemistry is no longer the study of neuromodulators as "juices" that make us feel good or awake. Substances like serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine play crucial roles in learning, updating memories and neuropsychiatric disease.
The question of free will is on the table. Some of our behavior is conscious, but most of it is notoriously unconscious. So although we make choices, is free will mostly an illusion? And what is consciousness? In seeking an explanation, a new mystery has emerged. Many scientists now believe that the brain basically works by simulating reality. The sights, sounds and touches that flow into the brain are put in the framework of what the brain expects on the basis of previous experience and memory.
In the words of many neuroscientists, all these mysteries are terrific job security.
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Published: November 11, 2003
In the continuing effort to understand the human brain, the mysteries keep piling up. Consider what scientists are up against. Stretched flat, the human neocortex — the center of our higher mental functions — is about the size and thickness of a formal dinner napkin.
With 100 billion cells, each with 1,000 to 10,000 synapses, the neocortex makes roughly 100 trillion connections and contains 300 million feet of wiring packed with other tissue into a one-and-a-half-quart volume in the brain.
These cells are arranged in six very similar layers, inviting confusion. Within these layers, different regions carry out vision, hearing, touch, the sense of balance, movement, emotional responses and every other feat of cognition. More mysterious yet, there are 10 times as many feedback connections — from the neocortex to lower levels of the brain — as there are feed-forward or bottom-up connections.
Added to these mysteries is the lack of a good framework for understanding the brain's connectivity and electrochemistry. Researchers do not know how the six-layered cortical sheet gives rise to the sense of self. They have not been able to disentangle the role of genes and experience in shaping brains. They do not know how the firing of billions of loosely coupled neurons gives rise to coordinated, goal-directed behavior.
They can see trees but no forest.
They do think they have solved one longstanding mystery, though. Most neuroscientists are convinced the mind is in no way separate from the brain. In the brain they have found a physical basis for all our thoughts, aspirations, language, sense of consciousness, moral beliefs and everything else that makes us human. All of this arises from interactions among billions of ordinary cells. Neuroscience finds no duality, no finger of God animating the human mind.
So what have neuroscientists been doing? Like a child who takes apart his father's watch, they have dissected the brain and now have almost all the pieces laid out before them. There are thousands of clues about what makes the brain tick.
But how to put it back together? How to understand something so complex by examining it piecemeal? Even harder, how to integrate the different levels of analysis? Some brain events occur in fractions of milliseconds while others, like long-term memory formation, can take days or weeks. One can study molecules, ion channels, single neurons, functional areas, circuits, oscillations and chemistry. There are neural stem cells and mechanisms of plasticity, which involve how the brain changes with experience or recovers from injury.
New research tools continue to drive progress. In the late 1970's, researchers mostly placed sharp-tipped electrodes into single cells and measured firing patterns. By the 1990's, they had machines that could take images of brain activity while people spoke, read, gambled, solved moral dilemmas or, in a recent study, had orgasms.
Unfortunately, studies like these, while fascinating, tend to feed the fires of a huge disagreement within the brain sciences: is the brain made up of discrete modules that pass information among themselves? Or is it more loosely organized so that varied pockets of distant neurons fire together when called upon to perform a particular task? In mapping the brain, some researchers say that areas dedicated to aspects of language, arm movements or face recognition are hard-wired modules.
Other researchers say that such areas are surprisingly flexible. For example, the human face recognition area is where expert bird watchers distinguish features of closely related species or car experts decide if a 1958 or 1959 Plymouth had bigger fins.
While the two sides in this debate agree that the brain is prewired to some degree at birth, the nature of that prewiring is uncertain. What do genes expressed in the brain do? How do genes influence behavior? What is innate and what is flexible? What is the role of culture in shaping a brain?
While lacking a coherent framework, scientists are nevertheless making progress in mapping the correlations between brain activity and behavior. New imaging tools reveal circuits and overall patterns of activity as people solve problems or reflect on their feelings. Genes expressed in mouse brain cells are being mapped so that researchers can begin to find out if neurons that look alike have different proteins and functions. A magnetic device can knock out human brain regions, safely and temporarily, to learn what those regions do.
A lively debate continues over the nature of time in brain function. In the absence of stimulation from the outside world, neurons remain active; they are filled with electrical currents that give them a propensity to oscillate and, on interacting, create spiking patterns of activity. Do the spikes carry precise information? Or do such spikes average out over large areas? How is information carried in the brain?
One of the most exciting developments is the recent exploration of the frontal lobes. Located behind the forehead, the frontal lobes help create the social brain, melding emotions, cognition, error detection, the body, volition and an autobiographical sense of self. Special circuits containing spindle cells appear to broadcast messages — this feels right, this does not feel right — to the rest of the brain. Researchers are finding that emotions arise from body states as well as brain states, confirming that the supposed distinction between mind and body is illusory.
Others are delving into individual differences. What makes one person empathic, another mean or shy or articulate or musical? How do genes relate to temperament and how is a baby's brain constructed from early experience? Specialized cells called mirror neurons seem to help babies imitate the world to learn gestures, facial expressions, language and feelings.
Brain chemistry is no longer the study of neuromodulators as "juices" that make us feel good or awake. Substances like serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine play crucial roles in learning, updating memories and neuropsychiatric disease.
The question of free will is on the table. Some of our behavior is conscious, but most of it is notoriously unconscious. So although we make choices, is free will mostly an illusion? And what is consciousness? In seeking an explanation, a new mystery has emerged. Many scientists now believe that the brain basically works by simulating reality. The sights, sounds and touches that flow into the brain are put in the framework of what the brain expects on the basis of previous experience and memory.
In the words of many neuroscientists, all these mysteries are terrific job security.
(3) Will Humans Ever Visit Mars?
By WARREN E. LEARY
Published: November 11, 2003
People have been walking on the surface of Mars for more than a century, in tales of science fiction and fantasy. Now, however, the possibility is real enough that many people think the question is not whether humans will go to Mars, but when they will go, how they will get there and who will go first.
No one yet knows the best way to get to Mars. While a consensus is growing that it will be some kind of multinational effort, experts said, the feat is within the grasp of one prosperous nation like the United States, if getting to Mars has a very high priority.
The cost of such a venture has been estimated at $60 billion or more. But Dr. Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society, an advocacy group, estimates it could be done for about the price of the Apollo Moon project, $30 billion to $40 billion in today's dollars.
Dr. Zubrin, author of the book "The Case for Mars," a blueprint for humans' settling the planet, calls for an increasingly popular approach of sending unpiloted vehicles in stages to provide equipment and a way for the people who would land later to get home.
This approach would avoid the difficulty of developing one giant ship with equipment and supplies for a round trip. The first landing would be a spaceship that would be a return vehicle. It would land intact, so it could take off again, but it would have used up its fuel.
Supply and mining and processing vessels would follow. The humans would arrive last. They would dig for subsurface water and other materials they could convert into fuel for the trip home.
Mars is the obvious first choice for travel to other planets. Of all the other planets in the solar system, Mars — even with its present cold, hostile environment — is the most like Earth. About half Earth's diameter with one-third the gravity and only 1 percent of the atmosphere, spacecraft have found that Mars nonetheless harbors the important asset of water beneath its surface and in its frozen poles.
Every two years its orbit draws it closer to Earth, and its presence in the night sky is a constant reminder of what might be. This summer, it came within 34.6 million miles of Earth, its nearest approach in almost 60,000 years.
Only Venus is closer, and with an average temperature of about 850 degrees, it is not welcoming. In contrast, Mars is pleasantly cool, from about 200 degrees below zero right up to freezing.
From the presence of water and relatively temperate climate comes another powerful attraction. "The fascination with Mars centers around the issue of life," Dr. Zubrin said. "Mars is key to answering that critical question, Is there life somewhere other than Earth?"
Dr. Louis D. Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, said, "The fundamental question people want answered is `Where am I from and where am I going?' " He added, "Mars can tell us about the origin of life and the destiny of life." Finding evidence of past or present life, even if only primitive microbes, would mean that life as humans know it did not occur only on Earth, he said. And, he said, Mars is the only planet we know of that humans have a chance of colonizing to prove they will not be forever Earth-bound.
"Mars becomes the experiment," Dr. Friedman said. "If we can't make it on Mars, then Earth is our limit and we are going to have to re-examine our relationship to our home planet."
By WARREN E. LEARY
Published: November 11, 2003
People have been walking on the surface of Mars for more than a century, in tales of science fiction and fantasy. Now, however, the possibility is real enough that many people think the question is not whether humans will go to Mars, but when they will go, how they will get there and who will go first.
No one yet knows the best way to get to Mars. While a consensus is growing that it will be some kind of multinational effort, experts said, the feat is within the grasp of one prosperous nation like the United States, if getting to Mars has a very high priority.
The cost of such a venture has been estimated at $60 billion or more. But Dr. Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society, an advocacy group, estimates it could be done for about the price of the Apollo Moon project, $30 billion to $40 billion in today's dollars.
Dr. Zubrin, author of the book "The Case for Mars," a blueprint for humans' settling the planet, calls for an increasingly popular approach of sending unpiloted vehicles in stages to provide equipment and a way for the people who would land later to get home.
This approach would avoid the difficulty of developing one giant ship with equipment and supplies for a round trip. The first landing would be a spaceship that would be a return vehicle. It would land intact, so it could take off again, but it would have used up its fuel.
Supply and mining and processing vessels would follow. The humans would arrive last. They would dig for subsurface water and other materials they could convert into fuel for the trip home.
Mars is the obvious first choice for travel to other planets. Of all the other planets in the solar system, Mars — even with its present cold, hostile environment — is the most like Earth. About half Earth's diameter with one-third the gravity and only 1 percent of the atmosphere, spacecraft have found that Mars nonetheless harbors the important asset of water beneath its surface and in its frozen poles.
Every two years its orbit draws it closer to Earth, and its presence in the night sky is a constant reminder of what might be. This summer, it came within 34.6 million miles of Earth, its nearest approach in almost 60,000 years.
Only Venus is closer, and with an average temperature of about 850 degrees, it is not welcoming. In contrast, Mars is pleasantly cool, from about 200 degrees below zero right up to freezing.
From the presence of water and relatively temperate climate comes another powerful attraction. "The fascination with Mars centers around the issue of life," Dr. Zubrin said. "Mars is key to answering that critical question, Is there life somewhere other than Earth?"
Dr. Louis D. Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, said, "The fundamental question people want answered is `Where am I from and where am I going?' " He added, "Mars can tell us about the origin of life and the destiny of life." Finding evidence of past or present life, even if only primitive microbes, would mean that life as humans know it did not occur only on Earth, he said. And, he said, Mars is the only planet we know of that humans have a chance of colonizing to prove they will not be forever Earth-bound.
"Mars becomes the experiment," Dr. Friedman said. "If we can't make it on Mars, then Earth is our limit and we are going to have to re-examine our relationship to our home planet."
(2) Is War Our Biological Destiny?
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: November 11, 2003
In these days of hidebound militarism and round-robin carnage, when even that beloved ambassador of peace, the Dalai Lama, says it may be necessary to counter terrorism with violence, it's fair to ask: Is humanity doomed? Are we born for the battlefield — congenitally, hormonally incapable of putting war behind us? Is there no alternative to the bullet-riddled trapdoor, short of mass sedation or a Marshall Plan for our DNA?
Was Plato right that "Only the dead have seen the end of war"?
In the heartening if admittedly provisional opinion of a number of researchers who study warfare, aggression, and the evolutionary roots of conflict, the great philosopher was, for once, whistling in a cave. As they see it, blood lust and the desire to wage war are by no means innate. To the contrary, recent studies in the field of game theory show just how readily human beings establish cooperative networks with one another, and how quickly a cooperative strategy reaches a point of so-called fixation. Researchers argue that one need not be a Pollyanna, or even an aging hippie, to imagine a human future in which war is rare and universally condemned.
They point out that slavery was long an accepted fact of life; if your side lost the battle, tough break, the wife and kids were shipped off as slaves to the victors. Now, when cases of slavery arise in the news, they are considered perverse and unseemly.
The incentive to make war similarly anachronistic is enormous, say the researchers, though they worry that it may take the dropping of another nuclear bomb in the middle of a battlefield before everybody gets the message. "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought," Albert Einstein said, "but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
Admittedly, war making will be a hard habit to shake. "There have been very few times in the history of civilization when there hasn't been a war going on somewhere," said Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian and classicist at California State University in Fresno. He cites a brief period between A.D. 100 and A.D. 200 as perhaps the only time of world peace, the result of the Roman Empire's having everyone, fleetingly, in its thrall.
Archaeologists and anthropologists have found evidence of militarism in perhaps 95 percent of the cultures they have examined or unearthed. Time and again groups initially lauded as gentle and peace-loving — the Mayas, the !Kung of the Kalahari, Margaret Mead's Samoans, — eventually were outed as being no less bestial than the rest of us. A few isolated cultures have managed to avoid war for long stretches. The ancient Minoans, for example, who populated Crete and the surrounding Aegean Islands, went 1,500 years battle-free; it didn't hurt that they had a strong navy to deter would-be conquerors.
Warriors have often been the most esteemed of their group, the most coveted mates. And if they weren't loved for themselves, their spears were good courtship accessories. This year, geneticists found evidence that Genghis Khan, the 13th century Mongol emperor, fathered so many offspring as he slashed through Asia that 16 million men, or half a percent of the world's male population, could be his descendants.
Wars are romanticized, subjects of an endless, cross-temporal, transcultural spool of poems, songs, plays, paintings, novels, films. The battlefield is mythologized as the furnace in which character and nobility are forged; and, oh, what a thrill it can be. "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction," writes Chris Hedges, a reporter for The New York Times who has covered wars, in "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning." Even with its destruction and carnage, he adds, war "can give us what we long for in life."
"It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living," he continues.
Nor are humans the only great apes to indulge in the elixir. Common chimpanzees, which share about 98 percent of their genes with humans, also wage war: gangs of neighboring males meet at the borderline of their territories with the express purpose of exterminating their opponents. So many males are lost to battle that the sex ratio among adult chimpanzees is two females for every male.
And yet there are other drugs on the market, other behaviors to sate the savage beast. Dr. Frans de Waal, a primatologist and professor of psychology at Emory University, points out that a different species of chimpanzee, the bonobo, chooses love over war, using a tantric array of sexual acts to resolve any social problems that arise. Serious bonobo combat is rare, and the male-to-female ratio is, accordingly, 1:1. Bonobos are as closely related to humans as are common chimpanzees, so take your pick of which might offer deeper insight into the primal "roots" of human behavior.
Or how about hamadryas baboons? They're surly, but not silly. If you throw a peanut in front of a male, Dr. de Waal said, it will pick it up happily and eat it. Throw the same peanut in front of two male baboons, and they'll ignore it. "They'll act as if it doesn't exist," he said. "It's not worth a fight between two fully grown males."
Even the ubiquitousness of warfare in human history doesn't impress researchers. "When you consider it was only about 13,000 years ago that we discovered agriculture, and that most of what we're calling human history occurred since then," said Dr. David Sloan Wilson, a biology and anthropology professor at Binghamton University in New York, "you see what a short amount of time we've had to work toward global peace."
In that brief time span, the size of cooperative groups has grown steadily, and by many measures more pacific. Maybe 100 million people died in the world wars of the 20th century. Yet Dr. Lawrence H. Keeley, a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has estimated that if the proportion of casualties in the modern era were to equal that seen in many conflicts among preindustrial groups, then perhaps two billion people would have died.
Indeed, national temperaments seem capable of rapid, radical change. The Vikings slaughtered and plundered; their descendants in Sweden haven't fought a war in nearly 200 years, while the Danes reserve their fighting spirit for negotiating better vacation packages. The tribes of highland New Guinea were famous for small-scale warfare, said Dr. Peter J. Richerson, an expert in cultural evolution at the University of California at Davis. "But when, after World War II, the Australian police patrols went around and told people they couldn't fight anymore, the New Guineans thought that was wonderful," Dr. Richerson said. "They were glad to have an excuse."
Dr. Wilson cites the results of game theory experiments: participants can adopt a cheating strategy to try to earn more for themselves, but at the risk of everybody's losing, or a cooperative strategy with all earning a smaller but more reliable reward. In laboratories around the world, researchers have found that participants implement the mutually beneficial strategy, in which cooperators are rewarded and noncooperators are punished. "It shows in a very simple and powerful way that it's easy to get cooperation to evolve to fixation, for it to be the successful strategy," he said. There is no such quantifiable evidence or theoretical underpinning in favor of Man the Warrior, he added.
As Dr. de Waal and many others see it, the way to foment peace is to encourage interdependency among nations, as in the European Union. "Imagine if France were to invade Germany now," he said. "That would upset every aspect of their economic world," not the least one being France's reliance on the influx of German tourists. "It's not as if Europeans all love each other," Dr. de Waal said. "But you're not promoting love, you're promoting economic calculations."
It's not just the money. Who can put a price tag on the pleasures to be had from that wholesome, venerable sport — making fun of the tourists?
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: November 11, 2003
In these days of hidebound militarism and round-robin carnage, when even that beloved ambassador of peace, the Dalai Lama, says it may be necessary to counter terrorism with violence, it's fair to ask: Is humanity doomed? Are we born for the battlefield — congenitally, hormonally incapable of putting war behind us? Is there no alternative to the bullet-riddled trapdoor, short of mass sedation or a Marshall Plan for our DNA?
Was Plato right that "Only the dead have seen the end of war"?
In the heartening if admittedly provisional opinion of a number of researchers who study warfare, aggression, and the evolutionary roots of conflict, the great philosopher was, for once, whistling in a cave. As they see it, blood lust and the desire to wage war are by no means innate. To the contrary, recent studies in the field of game theory show just how readily human beings establish cooperative networks with one another, and how quickly a cooperative strategy reaches a point of so-called fixation. Researchers argue that one need not be a Pollyanna, or even an aging hippie, to imagine a human future in which war is rare and universally condemned.
They point out that slavery was long an accepted fact of life; if your side lost the battle, tough break, the wife and kids were shipped off as slaves to the victors. Now, when cases of slavery arise in the news, they are considered perverse and unseemly.
The incentive to make war similarly anachronistic is enormous, say the researchers, though they worry that it may take the dropping of another nuclear bomb in the middle of a battlefield before everybody gets the message. "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought," Albert Einstein said, "but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
Admittedly, war making will be a hard habit to shake. "There have been very few times in the history of civilization when there hasn't been a war going on somewhere," said Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian and classicist at California State University in Fresno. He cites a brief period between A.D. 100 and A.D. 200 as perhaps the only time of world peace, the result of the Roman Empire's having everyone, fleetingly, in its thrall.
Archaeologists and anthropologists have found evidence of militarism in perhaps 95 percent of the cultures they have examined or unearthed. Time and again groups initially lauded as gentle and peace-loving — the Mayas, the !Kung of the Kalahari, Margaret Mead's Samoans, — eventually were outed as being no less bestial than the rest of us. A few isolated cultures have managed to avoid war for long stretches. The ancient Minoans, for example, who populated Crete and the surrounding Aegean Islands, went 1,500 years battle-free; it didn't hurt that they had a strong navy to deter would-be conquerors.
Warriors have often been the most esteemed of their group, the most coveted mates. And if they weren't loved for themselves, their spears were good courtship accessories. This year, geneticists found evidence that Genghis Khan, the 13th century Mongol emperor, fathered so many offspring as he slashed through Asia that 16 million men, or half a percent of the world's male population, could be his descendants.
Wars are romanticized, subjects of an endless, cross-temporal, transcultural spool of poems, songs, plays, paintings, novels, films. The battlefield is mythologized as the furnace in which character and nobility are forged; and, oh, what a thrill it can be. "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction," writes Chris Hedges, a reporter for The New York Times who has covered wars, in "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning." Even with its destruction and carnage, he adds, war "can give us what we long for in life."
"It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living," he continues.
Nor are humans the only great apes to indulge in the elixir. Common chimpanzees, which share about 98 percent of their genes with humans, also wage war: gangs of neighboring males meet at the borderline of their territories with the express purpose of exterminating their opponents. So many males are lost to battle that the sex ratio among adult chimpanzees is two females for every male.
And yet there are other drugs on the market, other behaviors to sate the savage beast. Dr. Frans de Waal, a primatologist and professor of psychology at Emory University, points out that a different species of chimpanzee, the bonobo, chooses love over war, using a tantric array of sexual acts to resolve any social problems that arise. Serious bonobo combat is rare, and the male-to-female ratio is, accordingly, 1:1. Bonobos are as closely related to humans as are common chimpanzees, so take your pick of which might offer deeper insight into the primal "roots" of human behavior.
Or how about hamadryas baboons? They're surly, but not silly. If you throw a peanut in front of a male, Dr. de Waal said, it will pick it up happily and eat it. Throw the same peanut in front of two male baboons, and they'll ignore it. "They'll act as if it doesn't exist," he said. "It's not worth a fight between two fully grown males."
Even the ubiquitousness of warfare in human history doesn't impress researchers. "When you consider it was only about 13,000 years ago that we discovered agriculture, and that most of what we're calling human history occurred since then," said Dr. David Sloan Wilson, a biology and anthropology professor at Binghamton University in New York, "you see what a short amount of time we've had to work toward global peace."
In that brief time span, the size of cooperative groups has grown steadily, and by many measures more pacific. Maybe 100 million people died in the world wars of the 20th century. Yet Dr. Lawrence H. Keeley, a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has estimated that if the proportion of casualties in the modern era were to equal that seen in many conflicts among preindustrial groups, then perhaps two billion people would have died.
Indeed, national temperaments seem capable of rapid, radical change. The Vikings slaughtered and plundered; their descendants in Sweden haven't fought a war in nearly 200 years, while the Danes reserve their fighting spirit for negotiating better vacation packages. The tribes of highland New Guinea were famous for small-scale warfare, said Dr. Peter J. Richerson, an expert in cultural evolution at the University of California at Davis. "But when, after World War II, the Australian police patrols went around and told people they couldn't fight anymore, the New Guineans thought that was wonderful," Dr. Richerson said. "They were glad to have an excuse."
Dr. Wilson cites the results of game theory experiments: participants can adopt a cheating strategy to try to earn more for themselves, but at the risk of everybody's losing, or a cooperative strategy with all earning a smaller but more reliable reward. In laboratories around the world, researchers have found that participants implement the mutually beneficial strategy, in which cooperators are rewarded and noncooperators are punished. "It shows in a very simple and powerful way that it's easy to get cooperation to evolve to fixation, for it to be the successful strategy," he said. There is no such quantifiable evidence or theoretical underpinning in favor of Man the Warrior, he added.
As Dr. de Waal and many others see it, the way to foment peace is to encourage interdependency among nations, as in the European Union. "Imagine if France were to invade Germany now," he said. "That would upset every aspect of their economic world," not the least one being France's reliance on the influx of German tourists. "It's not as if Europeans all love each other," Dr. de Waal said. "But you're not promoting love, you're promoting economic calculations."
It's not just the money. Who can put a price tag on the pleasures to be had from that wholesome, venerable sport — making fun of the tourists?
(1) Does Science Matter?
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and JAMES GLANZ
Published: November 11, 2003
Through its rituals of discovery, science has extended life, conquered disease and offered new sexual and commercial freedoms. It has pushed aside demigods and demons and revealed a cosmos more intricate and awesome than anything produced by pure imagination.
But there are new troubles in the peculiar form of paradise that science has created, as well as new questions about whether it has the popular support to meet the future challenges of disease, pollution, security, energy, education, food, water and urban sprawl.
The public seems increasingly intolerant of grand, technical fixes, even while it hungers for new gadgets and drugs. It has also come to fear the potential consequences of unfettered science and technology in areas like genetic engineering, germ warfare, global warming, nuclear power and the proliferation of nuclear arms.
Tension between science and the public has thrown up new barriers to research involving deadly pathogens, stem cells and human cloning. Some of the doubts about science began with the environmental movement of the 1960's.
"The bloom has been coming off the rose since `Silent Spring,' " said Dr. John H. Gibbons, President Bill Clinton's science adviser, of Rachel Carson's 1962 book on the ravages of DDT. Until then, he said, "People thought of science as a cornucopia of goodies. Now they have to choose between good and bad."
"The urgency," he said, "is to re-establish the fundamental position that science plays in helping devise uses of knowledge to resolve social ills. I hope rationality will triumph. But you can't count on it. As President Chirac said, we've lost the primacy of reason."
Science has also provoked a deeper unease by disturbing traditional beliefs. Some scientists, stunned by the increasing vigor of fundamentalist religion worldwide, wonder if old certainties have rushed into a sort of vacuum left by the inconclusiveness of science on the big issues of everyday life.
"Isn't it incredible that you have so much fundamentalism, retreating back to so much ignorance?" remarked Dr. George A. Keyworth II, President Ronald Reagan's science adviser.
The disaffection can be gauged in recent opinion surveys. Last month, a Harris poll found that the percentage of Americans who saw scientists as having "very great prestige" had declined nine percentage points in the last quarter-century, down to 57 from 66 percent. Another recent Harris poll found that most Americans believe in miracles, while half believe in ghosts and a third in astrology — hardly an endorsement of scientific rationality.
"There's obviously a kind of national split personality about these things," said Dr. Owen Gingerich, a historian of astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who speaks often of his Christian faith.
"Science gives you very cold comfort at times of death or sickness or so on," Dr. Gingerich said.
In this atmosphere of ambivalence, research priorities have become increasingly politicized, some scientists say.
"Right now it's about as bad as I've known it," said Dr. Sidney Drell, a Stanford University physicist who has advised the federal government on national security issues for more than 40 years.
As the world marches into a century born amid fundamentalist strife in oil-producing nations, a divisive political climate in the United States and abroad and ever more sophisticated challenges to scientific credos like Darwin's theory of evolution, it seems warranted to ask a question that runs counter to centuries of Western thought: Does science matter? Do people care about it anymore?
The Context
Breakthroughs and Disenchantment
Clearly, science has mattered a lot, for a long time. Advances in food, public health and medicine helped raise life expectancy in the United States in the past century from roughly 50 to 80 years. So too, world population between 1950 and 1990 more than doubled, now exceeding six billion. Biology discovered the structure of DNA, made test-tube babies and cured diseases. And the decoding of the human genome is leading scientists toward a detailed understanding of how the body works, offering the hope of new treatments for cancer and other diseases.
"For a lot of people, life has gotten better," said Dr. James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix. "You don't know what it was like in 1950. It wasn't just the dreariness of Bing Crosby that made life tough."
In physics, breakthroughs produced digital electronics and subatomic discoveries. American rocket science won the space race, put men on the moon, probed distant planets and lofted hundreds of satellites, including the Hubble Space Telescope.
But major problems also arose: acid rain, environmental toxins, the Bhopal chemical disaster, nuclear waste, global warming, the ozone hole, fears over genetically modified food and the fiery destruction of two space shuttles, not to mention the curse of junk e-mail. Such troubles have helped feed social disenchantment with science.
When the cold war ended, the physical sciences began to lose luster and funding. After spending $2 billion, Congress killed physicists' pre-eminent endeavor, the Superconducting Super Collider, an enormous particle accelerator.
"Suddenly, Congress wasn't interested in science anymore," said Fred Jerome, a science policy analyst at the New School.
At the same time, industry spending on research soared to twice that of the federal government, about $180 billion last year, according to the National Science Foundation. One result is that Americans see more drugs, cellphones, advanced toys, innovative cars and engineered foods and less news about the fundamental building blocks and great shadowy vistas of the universe.
The main exceptions to the downward trend in the federal science budget are for health and weapons. This year, spending on military research hit $58 billion, higher in fixed dollars than during the cold war.
Meanwhile, other countries are spending more on research, taking some of the glory that America once monopolized. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea now account for more than a quarter of all American industrial patents, according to CHI Research. Europe is working on what will be the world's most powerful atom smasher. The British are now flying the first probe in a quarter century to look for evidence of life on Mars.
The Contradictions
New Challenges, but Also Threats
Despite the explosion in the life sciences, cancer still darkens many lives, and the flowering of biotechnology has fed worries about genetically modified foods and organisms as well as the pending reinvention of what it means to be human. Many people worry that the growing power of genetics will sully the sanctity of human life.
Last month, the President's Council on Bioethics issued a report warning that biotechnology in pursuit of human perfection could lead to unintended and destructive ends. Experts also worry about terrorists using advances in biology for intentional harm, perhaps on vast new scales.
"As this becomes ever easier and cheaper, it's only a matter of time before some misguided people decide to infect the world," said Dr. Philip Kitcher, a philosopher of science at Columbia University. Last month, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences recommended wide review of experiments that could lead to biological weapons.
The physical sciences seem to have lost what was once a good story line. Without the space race and the cold war, and perhaps facing intrinsic limits as well as declining budgets, they are slightly adrift. Some observers worry that physics has entered a phase of diminishing returns. That theme runs through "The End of Science," a 1997 book by John Horgan.
In an interview, Mr. Horgan noted that physicists no longer make nuclear arms and have lost momentum on taming fusion energy, which powers the sun, and on developing a theory of everything, a kind of mathematical glue that would unite the sciences. Abstract physics, he said, "has wandered off into the fantasy land of higher dimensions and superstring theory and has really lost touch with reality."
Other experts disagree, noting that scientific fields rise and fall in cycles and that physics may be poised for new strides. "You can smell discovery in the air," said Dr. Leon M. Lederman, a Nobel laureate in physics and an architect of the supercollider. "The sense of imminent revolution is very strong."
Despite the decline in prestige recorded in the recent Harris poll, scientists still top the list of 22 professions in terms of high status, ahead of doctors, teachers, lawyers and athletes.
"Science is one of the charismatic activities," said Dr. Gerald Holton, a professor of physics and the history of science at Harvard. "This keeps our interest in science at some level even if we are deeply troubled by some aspects of its technical misuse."
Polls by the National Science Foundation perennially identify contradictions. Its latest numbers show that 90 percent of adult Americans say they are very or moderately interested in science discoveries. Even so, only half the survey respondents knew that the Earth takes a year to go around the Sun.
"The easy answer is, `Oh, I'm interested,' " said Melissa Pollak, a senior analyst at the National Science Foundation. "I'm not quite sure I believe those responses."
The Competition
The Battles Increase Over Darwin's Theory
A simple number jars many scientists: about two-thirds of the public believe that alternatives to Darwin's theory of evolution should be taught in public schools alongside this bedrock concept of biology itself.
The organized opposition to the mainstream theory of evolution has become vastly more sophisticated and influential than it was, say, 25 years ago. The leading foes of Darwin espouse a theory called "intelligent design," which holds that purely random natural processes could never have produced humans. These foes are led by a relatively small group of people with various academic and professional credentials, including some with advanced degrees in science and even university professorships.
Backers of intelligent design say they are simply pointing up shortcomings in Darwin's theory. Scientists have publicly rallied in response, last week staving off an effort at the Texas State Board of Education to have intelligent design taught alongside evolution.
"It just absolutely boggles the mind," said Dr. James Langer, a physicist at the University of California at Santa Barbara who is vice president of the National Academy of Sciences. "I wouldn't want my doctor thinking that intelligent design was an equally plausible hypothesis to evolution any more than I would want my airplane pilot believing in the flat Earth."
Science has, in fact, sold itself from the start as something more than a utilitarian exercise in developing technologies and medicines. Einstein — who often used religious and philosophical language to explain his discoveries — seemed to tell humanity something fundamental about the fabric of existence. More recently, the cosmologist Stephen Hawking said that discovering a better theory of gravitation would be like seeing into "the mind of God."
Such rhetorical flourishes are as much derided as admired by the bulk of working scientists, who as a culture have drifted closer to the thinking of Steven Weinberg, another Nobel Prize winner in particle physics, who famously wrote that "the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."
That almost militantly atheistic view helps some observers explain how science has come into bitter conflict with particular religious groups, especially biblical literalists.
"What accentuates the fault line," said Dr. Ernan McMullin, a Roman Catholic priest who is a former director of the history and philosophy of science program at Notre Dame, is that "the scientists see their science being attacked and they immediately rush to the battlements."
"I think they rather enjoy seeing themselves as a persecuted minority instead of as the dominant force in the culture, which they really are," he said.
The Future
Urgent Goals for Governments
Industry looks to short-term goals and has proven highly adept at using science to take care of itself and consumers. A far more uncertain issue is whether the federal government can successfully address issues of human welfare that lie well beyond the industrial horizon — years, decades and even centuries ahead.
"Science is still the wellspring of new options," Dr. Gibbons said. "How else are we going to face the issues of the 21st century on things like the environment, health, security, food and energy?"
Some experts believe that despite the gnawing doubts today, the world will be ever more inclined to seek scientific answers to those questions in the decades to come. "It will probably accelerate," said Dr. John H. Marburger III, President Bush's science adviser, "because it will become increasingly obvious that we need this steady infusion of results to sustain our ability to cope with all these social problems."
An urgent goal, experts say, is to develop new sources of energy, which will become vitally important as oil becomes increasingly scarce. Another is to better understand the nuances of climate change, for instance, how the sun and ocean affect the atmosphere. Such work is in its infancy. Another is to develop ways of countering the spread of nuclear arms and germ weapons.
The world will also need a new science of cities, to help coordinate planning in areas like waste, water use, congestion, highways, hazard mitigation and pollution control.
"It's going to take a lot of work," said Dr. Grant Heiken, an editor of "Earth Science in the City," a collection of essays just published by the American Geophysical Union in Washington. The number of urban dwellers is expected to grow from three billion now to five billion by 2025.
"I don't know if we'll get a new science," Dr. Heiken said, "but we damn well better."
Dr. Richard E. Smalley, a Rice University professor and Nobel laureate in chemistry, argues that new technologies and conservation can probably solve the world's energy needs. But success, he said, requires a new army of scientists and engineers.
Like others, Dr. Smalley worries about a significant shift in the demographics of American graduate schools in science and engineering. By 1999, according to the latest figures from the National Science Foundation, the number of foreign students in full-time engineering programs had soared so high that it exceeded, for the first time, the steeply declining number of Americans.
"Where the bright kids and the big action are is in Asia," Dr. Smalley said. "That's great for them. It is not what I would hope for our country and our economic well-being or our national security."
Whether the complex challenges of today generate a new era of scientific greatness, several scientists said, may depend on how a deeply conflicted public answers the question of whether science still matters.
In many ways, it all boils down to "a schism between people who have accepted the modern scientific view of the world and the people who are fighting that," said Dr. David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist who is president of the California Institute of Technology.
"Scientists are presenting a much more complicated, much less ethically grounded view of the world, and it's hard for people to take that in," he added.
Some experts warn that if support for science falters and if the American public loses interest in it, such apathy may foster an age in which scientific elites ignore the public weal and global imperatives for their own narrow interests, producing something like a dictatorship of the lab coats.
"For any man to abdicate an interest in science," Jacob Bronowski, the science historian, wrote, "is to walk with open eyes towards slavery."
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and JAMES GLANZ
Published: November 11, 2003
Through its rituals of discovery, science has extended life, conquered disease and offered new sexual and commercial freedoms. It has pushed aside demigods and demons and revealed a cosmos more intricate and awesome than anything produced by pure imagination.
But there are new troubles in the peculiar form of paradise that science has created, as well as new questions about whether it has the popular support to meet the future challenges of disease, pollution, security, energy, education, food, water and urban sprawl.
The public seems increasingly intolerant of grand, technical fixes, even while it hungers for new gadgets and drugs. It has also come to fear the potential consequences of unfettered science and technology in areas like genetic engineering, germ warfare, global warming, nuclear power and the proliferation of nuclear arms.
Tension between science and the public has thrown up new barriers to research involving deadly pathogens, stem cells and human cloning. Some of the doubts about science began with the environmental movement of the 1960's.
"The bloom has been coming off the rose since `Silent Spring,' " said Dr. John H. Gibbons, President Bill Clinton's science adviser, of Rachel Carson's 1962 book on the ravages of DDT. Until then, he said, "People thought of science as a cornucopia of goodies. Now they have to choose between good and bad."
"The urgency," he said, "is to re-establish the fundamental position that science plays in helping devise uses of knowledge to resolve social ills. I hope rationality will triumph. But you can't count on it. As President Chirac said, we've lost the primacy of reason."
Science has also provoked a deeper unease by disturbing traditional beliefs. Some scientists, stunned by the increasing vigor of fundamentalist religion worldwide, wonder if old certainties have rushed into a sort of vacuum left by the inconclusiveness of science on the big issues of everyday life.
"Isn't it incredible that you have so much fundamentalism, retreating back to so much ignorance?" remarked Dr. George A. Keyworth II, President Ronald Reagan's science adviser.
The disaffection can be gauged in recent opinion surveys. Last month, a Harris poll found that the percentage of Americans who saw scientists as having "very great prestige" had declined nine percentage points in the last quarter-century, down to 57 from 66 percent. Another recent Harris poll found that most Americans believe in miracles, while half believe in ghosts and a third in astrology — hardly an endorsement of scientific rationality.
"There's obviously a kind of national split personality about these things," said Dr. Owen Gingerich, a historian of astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who speaks often of his Christian faith.
"Science gives you very cold comfort at times of death or sickness or so on," Dr. Gingerich said.
In this atmosphere of ambivalence, research priorities have become increasingly politicized, some scientists say.
"Right now it's about as bad as I've known it," said Dr. Sidney Drell, a Stanford University physicist who has advised the federal government on national security issues for more than 40 years.
As the world marches into a century born amid fundamentalist strife in oil-producing nations, a divisive political climate in the United States and abroad and ever more sophisticated challenges to scientific credos like Darwin's theory of evolution, it seems warranted to ask a question that runs counter to centuries of Western thought: Does science matter? Do people care about it anymore?
The Context
Breakthroughs and Disenchantment
Clearly, science has mattered a lot, for a long time. Advances in food, public health and medicine helped raise life expectancy in the United States in the past century from roughly 50 to 80 years. So too, world population between 1950 and 1990 more than doubled, now exceeding six billion. Biology discovered the structure of DNA, made test-tube babies and cured diseases. And the decoding of the human genome is leading scientists toward a detailed understanding of how the body works, offering the hope of new treatments for cancer and other diseases.
"For a lot of people, life has gotten better," said Dr. James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix. "You don't know what it was like in 1950. It wasn't just the dreariness of Bing Crosby that made life tough."
In physics, breakthroughs produced digital electronics and subatomic discoveries. American rocket science won the space race, put men on the moon, probed distant planets and lofted hundreds of satellites, including the Hubble Space Telescope.
But major problems also arose: acid rain, environmental toxins, the Bhopal chemical disaster, nuclear waste, global warming, the ozone hole, fears over genetically modified food and the fiery destruction of two space shuttles, not to mention the curse of junk e-mail. Such troubles have helped feed social disenchantment with science.
When the cold war ended, the physical sciences began to lose luster and funding. After spending $2 billion, Congress killed physicists' pre-eminent endeavor, the Superconducting Super Collider, an enormous particle accelerator.
"Suddenly, Congress wasn't interested in science anymore," said Fred Jerome, a science policy analyst at the New School.
At the same time, industry spending on research soared to twice that of the federal government, about $180 billion last year, according to the National Science Foundation. One result is that Americans see more drugs, cellphones, advanced toys, innovative cars and engineered foods and less news about the fundamental building blocks and great shadowy vistas of the universe.
The main exceptions to the downward trend in the federal science budget are for health and weapons. This year, spending on military research hit $58 billion, higher in fixed dollars than during the cold war.
Meanwhile, other countries are spending more on research, taking some of the glory that America once monopolized. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea now account for more than a quarter of all American industrial patents, according to CHI Research. Europe is working on what will be the world's most powerful atom smasher. The British are now flying the first probe in a quarter century to look for evidence of life on Mars.
The Contradictions
New Challenges, but Also Threats
Despite the explosion in the life sciences, cancer still darkens many lives, and the flowering of biotechnology has fed worries about genetically modified foods and organisms as well as the pending reinvention of what it means to be human. Many people worry that the growing power of genetics will sully the sanctity of human life.
Last month, the President's Council on Bioethics issued a report warning that biotechnology in pursuit of human perfection could lead to unintended and destructive ends. Experts also worry about terrorists using advances in biology for intentional harm, perhaps on vast new scales.
"As this becomes ever easier and cheaper, it's only a matter of time before some misguided people decide to infect the world," said Dr. Philip Kitcher, a philosopher of science at Columbia University. Last month, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences recommended wide review of experiments that could lead to biological weapons.
The physical sciences seem to have lost what was once a good story line. Without the space race and the cold war, and perhaps facing intrinsic limits as well as declining budgets, they are slightly adrift. Some observers worry that physics has entered a phase of diminishing returns. That theme runs through "The End of Science," a 1997 book by John Horgan.
In an interview, Mr. Horgan noted that physicists no longer make nuclear arms and have lost momentum on taming fusion energy, which powers the sun, and on developing a theory of everything, a kind of mathematical glue that would unite the sciences. Abstract physics, he said, "has wandered off into the fantasy land of higher dimensions and superstring theory and has really lost touch with reality."
Other experts disagree, noting that scientific fields rise and fall in cycles and that physics may be poised for new strides. "You can smell discovery in the air," said Dr. Leon M. Lederman, a Nobel laureate in physics and an architect of the supercollider. "The sense of imminent revolution is very strong."
Despite the decline in prestige recorded in the recent Harris poll, scientists still top the list of 22 professions in terms of high status, ahead of doctors, teachers, lawyers and athletes.
"Science is one of the charismatic activities," said Dr. Gerald Holton, a professor of physics and the history of science at Harvard. "This keeps our interest in science at some level even if we are deeply troubled by some aspects of its technical misuse."
Polls by the National Science Foundation perennially identify contradictions. Its latest numbers show that 90 percent of adult Americans say they are very or moderately interested in science discoveries. Even so, only half the survey respondents knew that the Earth takes a year to go around the Sun.
"The easy answer is, `Oh, I'm interested,' " said Melissa Pollak, a senior analyst at the National Science Foundation. "I'm not quite sure I believe those responses."
The Competition
The Battles Increase Over Darwin's Theory
A simple number jars many scientists: about two-thirds of the public believe that alternatives to Darwin's theory of evolution should be taught in public schools alongside this bedrock concept of biology itself.
The organized opposition to the mainstream theory of evolution has become vastly more sophisticated and influential than it was, say, 25 years ago. The leading foes of Darwin espouse a theory called "intelligent design," which holds that purely random natural processes could never have produced humans. These foes are led by a relatively small group of people with various academic and professional credentials, including some with advanced degrees in science and even university professorships.
Backers of intelligent design say they are simply pointing up shortcomings in Darwin's theory. Scientists have publicly rallied in response, last week staving off an effort at the Texas State Board of Education to have intelligent design taught alongside evolution.
"It just absolutely boggles the mind," said Dr. James Langer, a physicist at the University of California at Santa Barbara who is vice president of the National Academy of Sciences. "I wouldn't want my doctor thinking that intelligent design was an equally plausible hypothesis to evolution any more than I would want my airplane pilot believing in the flat Earth."
Science has, in fact, sold itself from the start as something more than a utilitarian exercise in developing technologies and medicines. Einstein — who often used religious and philosophical language to explain his discoveries — seemed to tell humanity something fundamental about the fabric of existence. More recently, the cosmologist Stephen Hawking said that discovering a better theory of gravitation would be like seeing into "the mind of God."
Such rhetorical flourishes are as much derided as admired by the bulk of working scientists, who as a culture have drifted closer to the thinking of Steven Weinberg, another Nobel Prize winner in particle physics, who famously wrote that "the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."
That almost militantly atheistic view helps some observers explain how science has come into bitter conflict with particular religious groups, especially biblical literalists.
"What accentuates the fault line," said Dr. Ernan McMullin, a Roman Catholic priest who is a former director of the history and philosophy of science program at Notre Dame, is that "the scientists see their science being attacked and they immediately rush to the battlements."
"I think they rather enjoy seeing themselves as a persecuted minority instead of as the dominant force in the culture, which they really are," he said.
The Future
Urgent Goals for Governments
Industry looks to short-term goals and has proven highly adept at using science to take care of itself and consumers. A far more uncertain issue is whether the federal government can successfully address issues of human welfare that lie well beyond the industrial horizon — years, decades and even centuries ahead.
"Science is still the wellspring of new options," Dr. Gibbons said. "How else are we going to face the issues of the 21st century on things like the environment, health, security, food and energy?"
Some experts believe that despite the gnawing doubts today, the world will be ever more inclined to seek scientific answers to those questions in the decades to come. "It will probably accelerate," said Dr. John H. Marburger III, President Bush's science adviser, "because it will become increasingly obvious that we need this steady infusion of results to sustain our ability to cope with all these social problems."
An urgent goal, experts say, is to develop new sources of energy, which will become vitally important as oil becomes increasingly scarce. Another is to better understand the nuances of climate change, for instance, how the sun and ocean affect the atmosphere. Such work is in its infancy. Another is to develop ways of countering the spread of nuclear arms and germ weapons.
The world will also need a new science of cities, to help coordinate planning in areas like waste, water use, congestion, highways, hazard mitigation and pollution control.
"It's going to take a lot of work," said Dr. Grant Heiken, an editor of "Earth Science in the City," a collection of essays just published by the American Geophysical Union in Washington. The number of urban dwellers is expected to grow from three billion now to five billion by 2025.
"I don't know if we'll get a new science," Dr. Heiken said, "but we damn well better."
Dr. Richard E. Smalley, a Rice University professor and Nobel laureate in chemistry, argues that new technologies and conservation can probably solve the world's energy needs. But success, he said, requires a new army of scientists and engineers.
Like others, Dr. Smalley worries about a significant shift in the demographics of American graduate schools in science and engineering. By 1999, according to the latest figures from the National Science Foundation, the number of foreign students in full-time engineering programs had soared so high that it exceeded, for the first time, the steeply declining number of Americans.
"Where the bright kids and the big action are is in Asia," Dr. Smalley said. "That's great for them. It is not what I would hope for our country and our economic well-being or our national security."
Whether the complex challenges of today generate a new era of scientific greatness, several scientists said, may depend on how a deeply conflicted public answers the question of whether science still matters.
In many ways, it all boils down to "a schism between people who have accepted the modern scientific view of the world and the people who are fighting that," said Dr. David Baltimore, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist who is president of the California Institute of Technology.
"Scientists are presenting a much more complicated, much less ethically grounded view of the world, and it's hard for people to take that in," he added.
Some experts warn that if support for science falters and if the American public loses interest in it, such apathy may foster an age in which scientific elites ignore the public weal and global imperatives for their own narrow interests, producing something like a dictatorship of the lab coats.
"For any man to abdicate an interest in science," Jacob Bronowski, the science historian, wrote, "is to walk with open eyes towards slavery."
