genetic information transfer promotes cooperation in bacteria

pnas |  Many bacterial species are social, producing costly secreted “public good” molecules that enhance the growth of neighboring cells. The genes coding for these cooperative traits are often propagated via mobile genetic elements and can be virulence factors from a biomedical perspective. Here, we present an experimental framework that links genetic information exchange and the selection of cooperative traits. Using simulations and experiments based on a synthetic bacterial system to control public good secretion and plasmid conjugation, we demonstrate that horizontal gene transfer can favor cooperation. In a well-mixed environment, horizontal transfer brings a direct infectious advantage to any gene, regardless of its cooperation properties. However, in a structured population transfer selects specifically for cooperation by increasing the assortment among cooperative alleles. Conjugation allows cooperative alleles to overcome rarity thresholds and invade bacterial populations structured purely by stochastic dilution effects. Our results provide an explanation for the prevalence of cooperative genes on mobile elements, and suggest a previously unidentified benefit of horizontal gene transfer for bacteria. 

Bacteria often cooperate through the production of public goods that change their environment. These processes can affect human health by increasing virulence or antibiotic resistance. Public good production is costly, making cooperation susceptible to invasion by nonproducing “cheater” individuals. Bacteria also readily share genes, even among distinct species. Our experiments and models converge to show that when both cheating and cooperative genes are transferred, cooperators win against cheaters because transfer increases assortment among alleles, favoring cooperation. This can explain why genes for cooperation are often mobile, and suggests that, in addition to reducing antibiotic resistance spread, preventing gene mobility could reduce cooperative virulence.

in a consumer society, there are two kinds of slaves:the prisoners of addiction, and the prisoners of envy...,

monbiot |  To be at peace with a troubled world: this is not a reasonable aim. It can be achieved only through a disavowal of what surrounds you. To be at peace with yourself within a troubled world: that, by contrast, is an honourable aspiration. This column is for those who feel at odds with life. It calls on you not to be ashamed.

I was prompted to write it by a remarkable book, just published in English, by a Belgian professor of psychoanalysis, Paul Verhaeghe(1). What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society is one of those books that, by making connections between apparently distinct phenomena, permits sudden new insights into what is happening to us and why.

We are social animals, Verhaeghe argues, and our identity is shaped by the norms and values we absorb from other people. Every society defines and shapes its own normality – and its own abnormality – according to dominant narratives, and seeks either to make people comply or to exclude them if they don’t.

Today the dominant narrative is that of market fundamentalism, widely known in Europe as neoliberalism. The story it tells is that the market can resolve almost all social, economic and political problems. The less the state regulates and taxes us, the better off we will be. Public services should be privatised, public spending should be cut and business should be freed from social control. In countries such as the UK and the US, this story has shaped our norms and values for around 35 years: since Thatcher and Reagan came to power(2). It’s rapidly colonising the rest of the world.

Verhaeghe points out that neoliberalism draws on the ancient Greek idea that our ethics are innate (and governed by a state of nature it calls the market) and on the Christian idea that humankind is inherently selfish and acquisitive. Rather than seeking to suppress these characteristics, neoliberalism celebrates them: it claims that unrestricted competition, driven by self-interest, leads to innovation and economic growth, enhancing the welfare of all.

At the heart of this story is the notion of merit. Untrammelled competition rewards people who have talent, who work hard and who innovate. It breaks down hierarchies and creates a world of opportunity and mobility. The reality is rather different. Even at the beginning of the process, when markets are first deregulated, we do not start with equal opportunities. Some people are a long way down the track before the starting gun is fired. This is how the Russian oligarchs managed to acquire such wealth when the Soviet Union broke up. They weren’t, on the whole, the most talented, hard-working or innovative people, but those with the fewest scruples, the most thugs and the best contacts, often in the KGB.

Even when outcomes are based on talent and hard work, they don’t stay that way for long. Once the first generation of liberated entrepreneurs has made its money, the initial meritocracy is replaced by a new elite, which insulates its children from competition by inheritance and the best education money can buy. Where market fundamentalism has been most fiercely applied – in countries like the US and UK – social mobility has greatly declined(3).

If neoliberalism were anything other than a self-serving con, whose gurus and think tanks were financed from the beginning by some of the richest people on earth (the American tycoons Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others)(4), its apostles would have demanded, as a precondition for a society based on merit, that no one should start life with the unfair advantage of inherited wealth or economically-determined education. But they never believed in their own doctrine. Enterprise, as a result, quickly gave way to rent.

All this is ignored, and success or failure in the market economy are ascribed solely to the efforts of the individual. The rich are the new righteous, the poor are the new deviants, who have failed both economically and morally, and are now classified as social parasites.

california experiencing most severe drought ever recorded and californians still can't change their habits...,

resilience |   One of the worst North American droughts in history could be getting a whole lot worse. According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor Map released on Tuesday, more than 58 percent of California is in an “exceptional drought” stage. That’s up a staggering 22 percent from last week’s report. And, in its latest drought report released earlier today, the National Drought Mitigation Center warned that “bone-dry” conditions are overtaking much of the Golden State, and noted that, overall, California is “short more than one year’s worth of reservoir water, or 11.6 million acre-feet, for this time of year.”

All across California, streams are drying up, crops are dying off and local communities are struggling to maintain access to water, thanks to 3 years of persistent drought conditions. The situation is so dire that on Tuesday, California implemented state-wide emergency water-conservation measures, in an effort preserved what remaining water there is. Under the new measures, Californians can face fines of up to $500 per day for using hoses to clean sidewalks, run decorative fountains, and other water-guzzling activities.

Unfortunately, while the situation in California is already pretty bleak, it looks like things are only going to get worse. In fact, it’s possible that all of the American southwest could soon be seeing the devastating drought conditions that Californians are facing. That’s because the largest surge of heat ever recorded moving west to east in the Pacific Ocean, often referred to as a Kelvin Wave, which was supposed to start an El Nino and bring tropical-like rains to the West Coast and southwest, just dissipated, after it was absorbed by abnormally warm ocean waters.

An El Nino is marked by the prolonged warming of Pacific Ocean surface temperatures, when compared to the average temperature. El Ninos usually happen every two to seven years, and can last anywhere between nine months and two years. As warm water spreads from the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean to the eastern Pacific, it brings rain and moisture with it, bringing rain to California and the American Southwest.

So, during an El Nino period, winters are often a lot wetter than usual in the southwest U.S., including in central and southern California, where drought conditions are currently the worst. That’s why Californians were hoping for a strong El Nino period, to bring the rains and moisture that’s needed to help ease the drought.

Unfortunately, while some weather models are still predicting that an El Nino is possible, the chances of an El Nino strong enough to break the devastating drought that California is seeing are now very, very slim. As a result, there’s probably no end in sight to the current drought conditions in California. And, since warm ocean waters that bring rain are moving farther north up the Pacific, while Oregon and Washington and Alaska will get rain, the jet stream is set to extend drought-like conditions to much of the southwest.

normotic consumption vs. environmental adaptation...,

Average water use per person per day

inhabit | One week ago, 36% of California was in a state of exceptional drought. Just seven days later, that number has jumped to 58%. Lynn Wilson, academic chair at Kaplan University, warns that the situation is reaching a point where we may have to put migration out of California on the table. He says that it wouldn’t be the first time in history that people have left an area because of drought, and if current water-saving measures don’t work, it may be the best option to help alleviate water shortages.

Related: The Latest Drilling Boom in California is All About Water

The drought has cost the state billions of dollars and at least 17,000 jobs and with some scientists expecting the drought to last 100 years, it could be just the tip of the melting iceberg. Obviously other options like importing water and desalinization should be exhausted before moving some people out of the area, but as surface water quickly vanishes from the state, sometimes the best option is to just admit that some places aren’t meant to hold a lot of people.

ebolas of our own...,

dailyimpact |  The world is transfixed right now by the awful spectacle of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. It’s like a horror movie — it has inspired several — this monster that lurks for years in some remote African cave, then lashes out to condemn with its touch hundreds of people to a quick and ghastly death. Like a horror movie, the revulsion it inspires in us Americans is short-lived, a quick thrill of faux fear (it is, after all, in West Africa) somewhat like a child’s anxiety about a monster under the bed. But in our real-life movie, the Americans who hyperventilate briefly about the Ebola under the bed are ignorant of the fact that there are chain-saw mass murderers at the door and window.

Infectious diseases fully as horrible as Ebola are spreading across America like wildfires, ignited in many cases by industrial agriculture (whose overuse of antibiotics for profit maximization has created a raft of infections that antibiotics can no longer treat) and industrial medicine (ditto). Among the worst:

Brain Eating Amoeba. Naegleria Fowleri thrive in warm fresh water, and used to be found everywhere in the South. Now they are found just about everywhere (they reached Minnesota in 2010). When ingested, gastric juices destroy them and they give us no problem.  But if they get into a nose, they drill their way into the brain, attack it and kill it — the fatality rate is 99 percent. Mercifully, cases are few. So far this year a 12-year old boy in Florida and a nine-year-old girl in Kansas have died from it. But pollution — the kind that causes the climate to heat up and the kind that loads rivers and lakes with nutrients — is helping the spread of this deadly critter, who may soon create a horror movie of its own. Last fall it showed up in the public water supply of St. Bernard’s Parish, Louisiana.

Flesh Eating Bacteria.Vibrio vulnificus bacteria thrive in warm salt water (are hosted by shellfish) and when they get into a human body (via a wound, or being ingested) cause an aggressive infection that often requires amputation of a limb and is frequently fatal. According to the Centers for Disease Control there are about 95 cases and 35 deaths every summer, most occurring in Florida, Texas and Maryland. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation this week warned that vibrio infections in its environs are increasing. Maryland alone had 57 cases last year.

Nightmare Bacteria. (As if the others aren’t.) Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae  (CRE) live in our gut, just doing their job, until they get out, usually in a hospital situation, and then they go on a rampage. What sets them apart, even from other drug-resistant superbugs, is that they are resistant to the antibiotic that is the treatment of last resort when the others fail.  CREs were found in one hospital in the United States in 2001. By 2013 they were in 46 states. A new study has found that CRE cases increased fivefold in community hospitals in the southeastern United States between 2008 and 2012. Now, 9,300 people are infected in America every year, and 600 of them die. (Ebola in West Africa so far — 900 fatalities.)

And then there’s MRSA, or methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, also used to refer to staph bacteria resistant to other drugs, which was setting the doctors’ hair on fire five years ago. MRSA infection rates and mortality are down significantly in the past five years, but other superbugs have arisen in that time (see CRE, above) and in all, the CDC estimates that drug-resistant bacteria infect 2 million people a year and kill 23,000 of them.

So by all means shudder at the stories about Ebola, but don’t wait for it to get here before you buy that hazmat suit.

gurdjieff and hypnosis: a hermeneutic study

gurdjieffandhypnosis |  Gurdjieff ’s ontological universe is sacred and monotheistic. The mythological panorama in the First Series—where Beelzebub the “devil,” despite his youthful sins and archangelic powers still seeks, and is overjoyed by, his eventual pardon by our “COMMON FATHER OMNI-BEING ENDLESSNESS,” “MAKER CREATOR”—leaves no doubt that in Gurdjieff ’s universe only one god rules. Gurdjieff ’s “devil” is subordinate to God. But the “devil” of Gurdjieff is not what humans have portrayed him to be—at least no longer. It is true that Beelzebub, like other members of his “tribe” has hoofs and a tail, and regains (eventually upon his pardon) his horns; however, he is a passionate, kind, and benevolent angel, telling fairy tales to his grandson Hassein, and is deeply concerned about the affairs of his God’s universe and the fate of those poor creatures on that remote planet, the Earth.1 Perhaps it was out of “revolutionary” concerns, in fact, that he had rebelled in his youth against what he considered to be “illogical” in the government of the universe (B:52), and because of this had been banished with his “comrades” by His “All-lovingness and All-forgiveness … to one of the remote corners of the Universe, namely to the solar system ‘Ors’ whose inhabitants call it simply the ‘Solar System’” (B:52; capitals here and hereafter in quotes are in the original). But now, having earned pardon and reconciliation and already received them from God, Beelzebub is on a journey back to his home planet.

The most significant conclusion to draw from the cosmic picture painted by Gurdjieff in the First Series commonly titled Beelzebub’s Tales his Grandson is that the dualism of “good” and “evil” does not exist as an objective fact in his universe. This is a shock Gurdjieff imparts to his reader’s mind from the very outset. Evil does not objectively exist, and what evil may exist, it is a human construct. This dualism (as in the case of heaven and hell, as we shall see later) is simply a product of human mind and behavior, made up once by a certain learned human being whom, for the purpose of historical tangibility, Gurdjieff imaginatively calls “a certain Makary Kronbernkzoin” (B:1127). Although Kronbernkzoin’s “evil” human act of making up this dualism is later discovered and condemned in the planet Purgatory where his higher-being-body resides, his invention has already infected humans across generations as a belief system: 

“… after long and complicated researches, it became clear to them that the fundamental cause of the whole abnormality of the psyche of the threebrained beings arising on this planet was that a very definite notion arose and began to exist, that outside the essence of beings, as it were, there are two diametrically opposite factors—the sources of ‘Good’ and the sources of ‘Evil’—which are just the instigators for all their good and bad manifestations.

“It was then established by them that this universally disseminated maleficent idea, the data for which gradually became crystallized in each of them during their formation into preparatory age, already dominates their common psyche at their responsible existence and becomes on the one hand a tranquillizer and justifier of all their manifestations and on the other hand the fundamental impeding factor for the possibility which arises in certain of them for the self-perfecting of their higher being-parts.” (B:1125–26)

Gurdjieff ’s God, thus, represents all goodness. “Everything, without exception, all sound logic as well as historical data, reveal and affirm that God represents absolute goodness; He is all-loving and all-forgiving” (L:24: italics in the original). If there was a so-called “Devil” (i.e., Beelzebub)—with a power somewhat equal to God at one time—who in his youth rebelled against God “by way of pride” proper to any “young and still incompletely formed individual” (L:24), the act itself of relegating such a force to a “beloved son” was still an act of an absolutely all-powerful God. This interpretation can be derived from the following passage in the Third Series where Gurdjieff, in search of a technique for uninterrupted remembering of his higher self or “I,” arrives at the universal analogy of God and the Devil:

At the same time why should He, being as He is, send away from Himself one of His nearest, by Him animated, beloved sons, only for the “way of pride” proper to any young and still incomplete individual, and bestow upon him a force equal but opposite to His own? … I refer to the “Devil.” (L:24:italics in the original)

For Gurdjieff, therefore, the universe has one Creator and a unitary source of origin, while Beelzebub, or the so-called “Devil,” who is a beloved son of God and who in youth became rebellious but later repented and was forgiven, is not an objective source of evil in this world. The association, by humans, of their own evil acts to Beelzebub as an angel and “beloved son of God” is thereby not justified. The human evil is really of their own making. The question still remains, however: Why is there (human) evil in a universe created by a God of all-goodness?
___________________________________________________________________________________
1. According to J. Walter Driscoll, “Gurdjieff claimed that his ideas are rooted in tradition now lost or largely unavailable in modern societies. The figure of a pardoned Beelzebub provides a striking example of an authentic but little known mythopoetic tradition that Gurdjieff exploits. His Beelzebub is alien to conventional Judeo-Christian traditions where ‘fallen angels’ are condemned for eternity—never pardoned, let alone elevated to a quasi-redemptive status. A unique scriptual and mythological tradition that was familiar to Gurdjieff and which contains a clear echo of the pardoned fallen angel, can be found among the Yezidi (pronounced Ya-she-dees and sometimes spelled Yazidis), a unique Kurdish tribe” (2004a:6–8). As cited by Driscoll from The Encyclopedia of the Orient, “The Yezidi creed has elements from Zoroastrianism, Manicheism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” (Ibid.:7; also found at http://www.i-cias.com/e.o/index.htm). Driscoll also draws on the work of Giuseppe Furlani (1940) to substantiate his observation that for Yezidis indeed Malek Ta’us, or Angel Peacock, corresponding to the Devil in Christianity and Islam, “is supreme among the angels, who, after his fall and repentance, has been re-installed by God in his original and pre-eminent position” (Driscoll, 2004a:6–8). Of significance for Gurdjieff was the strange ritual he observed among Yezidis when he was a child (M:65–66), when he saw a Yezidi child could not get out of a circle drawn around him. Echoing this theme, Driscoll cites the following from Philip Kreyenbroek (1995) in Yezidism: Its Background: “… oaths are administered by drawing a circle on the ground. The inside of the circle is declared to be ‘the property of Melek Tawus,’ an observance which is paralleled in Zoroastrianism” (161). For another authoritative study of the Yezidis see John S. Guest’s Survival Among the Kurds: A History of the Yezidis (1993).

Êzidî

wikipedia |  The Yazidi (also Yezidi, Êzidî, Yazdani, ایزدیان, Եզդիներ, Езиды) are a Kurdish- and Arabic-speaking ethno-religious community who practice an ancient syncretic religion linked to Zoroastrianism and early Mesopotamian religions.^[12][13][14] They live primarily in the Nineveh Province of northern Iraq, a region once part of ancient Assyria. Additional communities in Armenia, Georgia and Syria have been in decline since the 1990s, their members having migrated to Europe, especially to Germany.^[15] The Yazidi believe in God as creator of the world, which he has placed under the care of seven "holy beings" or angels, the "chief" (archangel) of whom is Melek Taus, the "Peacock Angel." In Zoroastrian-like tradition, the Peacock Angel embodied humanity's potential for both good (light) and bad (dark) acts, and due to pride temporarily fell from God's favor, before his remorseful tears extinguished the fires of his hellish prison and he reconciled with God. Some followers of other monotheistic religion jokingly or mistakenly re-cast the Peacock Angel as the unredeemed evil deity Satan^[16][17], which has incited centuries of persecution of the Yazidi as "devil worshippers" by some followers of these religions. Persecution of Yazidis has continued in their home communities within the borders of modern Iraq, under both Saddam Hussein and fundamentalist Sunni Muslim revolutionaries.^[18]

Tawûsê Melek

What is the Peacock Angel?

wikipedia |  The Yazidi consider Tawûsê Melek an emanation of God and a benevolent angel who has redeemed himself from his fall and has become a demiurge who created the cosmos from the Cosmic egg. After he repented, he wept for 7,000 years, his tears filling seven jars, which then quenched the fires of hell.

Tawûsê Melek is sometimes transliterated Malak Ta'us, Malak Tawus, Malak Tawwus or Malik Taws. Melek was borrowed from the Arabic term "king" or "angel". Tawûs is uncontroversially translated "peacock"; in art and sculpture, Tawûsê Melek is depicted as peacock. However, peacocks are not native to the lands where Tawûsê Melek is worshipped. Among early Christians, the peacock represented immortality on account of the folk belief that its flesh does not decay after death, and this symbolism has passed into Yazidi beliefs.^[6] Consequently, peacock imagery adorns Yazidi shrines, gateways, graves, and houses of worship.

The Kitêba Cilwe "Book of Illumination", which claims to be the words of Tawûsê Melek, and which presumably represents Yazidi belief, states that he allocates responsibilities, blessings and misfortunes as he sees fit and that it is not for the race of Adam to question him. Sheikh Adî believed that the spirit of Tawûsê Melek is the same as his own, perhaps as a reincarnation. He is believed to have said:

I was present when Adam was living in Paradise, and also when Nemrud threw Abraham in fire. I was present when God said to me: 'You are the ruler and Lord on the Earth'. God, the compassionate, gave me seven earths and throne of the heaven.

Yazidi accounts of creation differ from that of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They believe that God first created Tawûsê Melek from his own illumination (Ronahî) and the other six archangels were created later. God ordered Tawûsê Melek not to bow to other beings. Then God created the other archangels and ordered them to bring him dust (Ax) from the Earth (Erd) and build the body of Adam. Then God gave life to Adam from his own breath and instructed all archangels to bow to Adam. The archangels obeyed except for Tawûsê Melek. In answer to God, Tawûsê Melek replied, "How can I submit to another being! I am from your illumination while Adam is made of dust." Then God praised him and made him the leader of all angels and his deputy on the Earth. (This likely furthers what some see as a connection to the Islamic Shaytan, as according to the Quran he too refused to bow to Adam at God's command, though in this case it is seen as being a sign of Shaytan's sinful pride.) Hence the Yazidis believe that Tawûsê Melek is the representative of God on the face of the Earth, and comes down to the Earth on the first Wednesday of Nisan (April). Yazidis hold that God created Tawûsê Melek on this day, and celebrate it as New Year's Day. Yazidis argue that the order to bow to Adam was only a test for Tawûsê Melek, since if God commands anything then it must happen. (Bibe, dibe). In other words, God could have made him submit to Adam, but gave Tawûsê Melek the choice as a test. They believe that their respect and praise for Tawûsê Melek is a way to acknowledge his majestic and sublime nature. This idea is called "Knowledge of the Sublime" 

(Zanista Ciwaniyê). Sheikh Adî has observed the story of Tawûsê Melek and believed in him.^[7]

Yazidis believe that good and evil both exist in the mind and spirit of human beings. It depends on the humans, themselves, as to which they choose. In this process, their devotion to Tawûsê Melek is essential, since it was he who was given the same choice between good and evil by God, and chose the good.

The Yazidi believe that the founder of their religion, Sheikh Adi Ibn Musafir, was an incarnation of Tawûsê Melek.

a mere forty five years ago, we didn't need an infectious diseases cover story for our holocausts....,

oocities |  Western anthropology pretty much equates animism with spirit belief. I think this is mistaken. Spirit belief is not necessary to, and, when present, is only a superficial expression of, animism, which is more accurately viewed, I believe, as an expression of “identity transparency”. I prefer this term to “participation mystique” which has a connotation of primitivism not at all justified -- given that subject-subject and subject-object empathic fusion requires access to elaborate simultaneous awareness states of consciousness not easily experienced by the uncultivated awareness.

Urban versus rural may not be the real issue. Explicit animism in Japan has probably fallen into abeyance due mostly to the fact that the traditional arts, crafts, and inner disciplines are no longer being practiced as widely or as authentically as they were only one or two generations ago. The relative absence of analogical and metaphorical reference in contemporary Japanese architecture (compared to the traditional) may well be another factor promoting conscious abeyance of animism (which abeyance, I believe, has unconsciously been psychologically compensated for by the flood of highly fetishized pornography which came on the scene beginning in the early-1970s).

Regarding the second question you raise: I think Schrödinger must certainly have had quite elaborate experience of “identity transparency” (and thus of animism) and that this played a significant role in the production of his famous wave equation. I also think it played a role in his refusal to embrace the probability interpretation of his equation. Indeed, I view much of the problematics associated with quantum theory as being the result of an absence of animistic experience on the part of those doing the interpreting.

At the beginning of this 21st century, the monoculture use to which the evolving techno-base is being put is imposing a uniformization and subjective-intersubjective cognitive and neurologic deficit omniculturally on such an unprecedented scale, that, given the history of holocausts associated with this millennia-long cognitive implosion, one would have to be oblivious to human history to believe THE NEW WORLD ORDER will be imposed absent holocausts of unprecedented scale. It's a ridiculous notion entertained only by those with huge neurologic lacunae.

Being uninformed is not only a mark of distinction in America, it is a matter of national pride.

Cell phones will be to the present generation what cigarettes were to the WWII generation.

It has been a long time since there were students in American universities; now, there are only trainees.

Intergenerational memory of inner states is far poorer than the famed limitations of institutional memory: collective amnesia is endemic to the human species.

Anyone with a voice at this juncture is not doing any good. If the person were doing good, knee-jerk nesting instinct protecting the current institutionalization would not allow him or her a voice.

When U.S. officials responsible for causing the Cambodian holocaust were not held legally culpable for their acts -- indeed, one even received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts -- who could possibly imagine U.S. officials being held responsible for their acts in the Waco deaths? They were not held responsible for the Hansford irradiation; the production of Agent Orange at a location on the waterfront in Alexandria, Virginia, at the time surrounded by a densely populated ghetto community, which, when gentrified to upper-middle class, the City Public Works Department required 12 feet of dirt removed, a plastic shield placed, 12 feet of new dirt installed before building could proceed; the testing of electromagnetic pulse weapons for well over a decade in upper-middle class suburban Virginia and Maryland, which, in all likelihood, was involved in triggering or inducing fulminations of SLE and other radiation-sensitive degenerative autoimmune and demyelinating diseases; and so on; and so on.

Nothing significant will be done until the wave moving from the periphery to the power centers begins to break. All sorts of interest will arise at that point, but only the most meager of undertakings will then be possible.

ebola and applied cultural "evolution"...,

socialevolutionforum |  A colleague of mine named Beate Ebert started a Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) called Commit and Act in Sierra Leone. They run a psychosocial center in Bo, a city in the south of Sierra Leone, led by a local counselor, Hannah Bockarie. Bo is a high risk area of the Ebola epidemic, where some of the first cases showed up. One reason that the disease is so deadly is that it creates a perfect storm of cultural confusion. Here is how Beate described it to me in a recent email message.

Ebola mostly spreads because of local habits like washing and kissing dead bodies. People don’t get the information needed. They avoid hospitals as most people with Ebola die there. Doctors and nurses look like monsters in their prevention suits when they come to villages. The inhabitants are scared and think the health workers bring the disease. People circulate text messages that stimulate fear and also lead to avoiding treatment, like not contacting strangers.

The public health practices that can limit the spread of the Ebola virus are known, but getting people to adopt new practices—even when it is a matter of life and death—is not easy. Can evolutionary science help? Beate thinks that it can and her local team is bravely working to use a method of cultural change being developed at the Evolution Institute to help stem the Ebola epidemic where previous efforts have failed.

The method is called PROSOCIAL and is designed to improve the efficacy of any group whose members must work together to achieve common goals. It helps to create a strong sense of group identity and clarifies both core values and obstacles that prevent a group from moving in its valued direction. It also helps to create a social environment that is maximally favorable for cooperation and guards against behaviors that undermine the goals of the group.

PROSOCIAL is a new method, still under development, and the Commit and Act team in Sierra Leone is starting to use it in their regular work, which is to bring psychotherapeutic support to traumatized people in areas of conflict. This means that they have a network of facilitators working in communities already in place that can be used to address the Ebola epidemic. Here is a progress report from Commit and Act’s facebook page:

We can hardly post as quickly as Hannah is training people how to prevent Ebola. She went through the PROSOCIAL process … again today, with another 300 people in Bo, close to our center. Our wonderful, courageous Commit and Act women’s group and the families of the desert flower project we are supporting to prevent female gender circumcision of the girls were present too. Due to Hannah´s successful efforts, Commit and Act has been identified as the leading agency in the district by the District Health Management Team to give psychosocial support to the families affected by Ebola and to support medical teams etc. As there is hardly any additional funding available for this, please donate every amount possible to Commit and Act and mark it with the purpose “Ebola”, then we will use it for that. Thank you so much!

I have donated and urge everyone who reads this post to contribute what they can. Here is the link to Commit and Act’s donation page. It would be hard to imagine a more noble and worthy cause to support, especially by those who are trying to develop a science of intentional change.

do resource surpluses give rise to human despotism?

royalsociety |  The Neolithic was marked by a transition from small and relatively egalitarian groups to much larger groups with increased stratification. But, the dynamics of this remain poorly understood. It is hard to see how despotism can arise without coercion, yet coercion could not easily have occurred in an egalitarian setting. Using a quantitative model of evolution in a patch-structured population, we demonstrate that the interaction between demographic and ecological factors can overcome this conundrum. We model the coevolution of individual preferences for hierarchy alongside the degree of despotism of leaders, and the dispersal preferences of followers. We show that voluntary leadership without coercion can evolve in small groups, when leaders help to solve coordination problems related to resource production. An example is coordinating construction of an irrigation system. Our model predicts that the transition to larger despotic groups will then occur when: (i) surplus resources lead to demographic expansion of groups, removing the viability of an acephalous niche in the same area and so locking individuals into hierarchy; (ii) high dispersal costs limit followers' ability to escape a despot. Empirical evidence suggests that these conditions were probably met, for the first time, during the subsistence intensification of the Neolithic.

how the web became our external brain and what it means for these chirrens...,

wired |  Recently, my two-year-old nephew Benjamin came across a copy of Vanity Fair abandoned on the floor. His eyes scanned the glossy cover, which shone less fiercely than the iPad he is used to but had a faint luster of its own. I watched his pudgy thumb and index finger pinch together and spread apart on Bradley Cooper’s smiling mug. At last, Benjamin looked over at me, flummoxed and frustrated, as though to say, “This thing’s broken.”

Search YouTube for “baby” and “iPad” and you’ll find clips featuring one-year-olds attempting to manipulate magazine pages and television screens as though they were touch-sensitive displays. These children are one step away from assuming that such technology is a natural, spontaneous part of the material world. They’ll grow up thinking about the internet with the same nonchalance that I hold toward my toaster and teakettle. I can resist all I like, but for Benjamin’s generation resistance is moot. The revolution is already complete.

Technology Is Evolving Just Like Our DNA Does

With its theory of evolution, Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species may have outlined, back in 1859, an idea that explains our children’s relationship with iPhones and Facebook. We are now witness to a new kind of evolution, one played out by our technologies. 

The “meme,” a term coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976, is an extension of Darwin’s Big Idea past the boundaries of genetics. A meme, put simply, is a cultural product that is copied. We humans are enamored of imitation and so become the ultimate “meme machines.” Memes—pieces of culture—copy themselves through history and enjoy a kind of evolution of their own, and they do so riding on the backs of successful genes: ours. 

According to the memeticist Susan Blackmore, just as Darwinism submits that genes good at replicating will naturally become the most prevalent, technologies with a knack for replication rise to dominance. These “temes,” as she’s called these new replicators, could be copied, varied, and selected as digital information—thus establishing a new evolutionary process (and one far speedier than our genetic model). Blackmore’s work offers a fascinating explanation for why each generation seems less capable of managing solitude, and less likely to opt for technological disengagement. 

why do some controversies persist - despite evidence?

physorg |  If you believe in evolution, then everything can be explained in evolutionary terms, whereas if you believe in creation, then everything is understood using different assumptions about how the world works.

In many controversies, the two sides operate from different assumptions and worldviews that are analogous to scientific paradigms. Any fact that doesn't fit into the standard picture is dismissed as an anomaly.

For example, pro-fluoridationists dismiss studies suggesting a link between water fluoridation and the crippling disease skeletal fluorosis.

Group dynamics

Campaigning groups can develop a sense of solidarity and community. They are advocating for a worthy cause, after all, and it feels good to be among like-minded people.

Most campaigners interact mainly with others on the same side, and seldom have dinner with bitter opponents.

Many years ago, when I interviewed leading scientists, doctors and dentists who were active and prominent in the fluoridation debate, it was obvious they identified with those on the same side and interacted with their opponents only in antagonistic forums such as debates.

Public scientific controversies are not just about the science. They invariably involve differences in values concerning ethics and social choices. Partisans will come at the issue with differing assessments of fairness, care, authority and sacredness.

In the fluoridation debate, the morality of caring for others is present on both sides. Proponents say fluoridation potentially benefits everyone, especially those who are too poor to afford good dental care.

Opponents care more about those who might be damaged by fluoridation, arguing against putting a medication in the water supply to treat the population, using an uncontrolled dose.

If
In many controversies, the two sides operate from different assumptions and worldviews that are analogous to scientific paradigms. Any fact that doesn't fit into the standard picture is dismissed as an anomaly.
For example, pro-fluoridationists dismiss studies suggesting a link between water fluoridation and the crippling disease skeletal fluorosis.
Group dynamics
Campaigning groups can develop a sense of solidarity and community. They are advocating for a worthy cause, after all, and it feels good to be among like-minded people.
Most campaigners interact mainly with others on the same side, and seldom have dinner with bitter opponents.
Many years ago, when I interviewed leading scientists, doctors and dentists who were active and prominent in the fluoridation debate, it was obvious they identified with those on the same side and interacted with their opponents only in antagonistic forums such as debates.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-08-controversies-persist-evidence.html#jCp

when exciting trumps honest - bad science is the result...,

physorg |  Imagine you're a scientist. You're interested in testing the hypothesis that playing violent video games makes people more likely to be violent in real life. This is a straightforward theory, but there are still many, many different ways you could test it. First you have to decide which games count as "violent". Does Super Mario Brothers count because you kill Goombas? Or do you only count "realistic" games like Call of Duty? Next you have to decide how to measure violent behaviour. Real violence is rare and difficult to measure, so you'll probably need to look at lower-level "aggressive" acts – but which ones?

Any scientific study in any domain from astronomy to biology to social science contains countless decisions like this, large and small. On a given project a scientist will probably end up trying many different permutations, generating masses and masses of data.

The problem is that in the final published paper – the only thing you or I ever get to read – you are likely to see only one result: the one the researchers were looking for. This is because, in my experience, scientists often leave complicating information out of published papers, especially if it conflicts with the overall message they are trying to get across.

In a large recent study around a third of scientists (33.7%) admitted to things like dropping data points based on a "gut feeling" or selectively reporting results that "worked" (that showed what their theories predicted). About 70% said they had seen their colleagues doing this. If this is what they are prepared to admit to a stranger researching the issue, the real numbers are probably much, much higher.

It is almost impossible to overstate how big a problem this is for science. It means that, looking at a given paper, you have almost no idea of how much the results genuinely reflect reality (hint: probably not much).

Pressure to be interesting

At this point, scientists probably sound pretty untrustworthy. But the scientists aren't really the problem. The problem is the way science research is published. Specifically the pressure all scientists are under to be interesting.

This problem comes about because science, though mostly funded by taxpayers, is published in academic journals you have to pay to read. Like newspapers, these journals are run by private, for-profit companies. And, like newspapers, they want to publish the most interesting, attention-grabbing articles.

This is particularly true of the most prestigious journals like Science and Nature. What this means in practice is that journals don't like to publish negative or mixed results – studies where you predicted you would find something but actually didn't, or studies where you found a mix of conflicting results.

scientific morality: hard in the paint where the cathedral dares YOU to go

churchandstate | Are there kingdoms of emotion where logic is taboo, dare not show its face, zones where reason is too intimidated to speak?

Moral philosophers make full use of the technique of thought experiment. In a hospital there are four dying men. Each could be saved by a transplant of a different organ, but no donors are available. In the hospital waiting room is a healthy man who, if we killed him, could provide the requisite organ to each dying patient, thereby saving four lives for the price of one. Is it morally right to kill the healthy man and harvest his organs?

Everyone says no, but the moral philosopher wants to discuss the question further. Why is it wrong? Is it because of Kant’s Principle: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” How do we justify Kant’s principle? Are there ever exceptions? Could we imagine a hypothetical scenario in which . . .

What if the dying men were Beethoven, Shakespeare, Einstein and Martin Luther King? Would it be then right to sacrifice a man who is homeless and friendless, dragged in from a ditch? And so on.

Two miners are trapped underground by an explosion. They could be saved, but it would cost a million dollars. That million could be spent on saving the lives of thousands of starving people. Could it ever be morally right to abandon the miners to their fate and spend the money on saving the thousands? Most of us would say no. Would you? Or do you think it is wrong even to raise such questions?

These dilemmas are uncomfortable. It is the business of moral philosophers to face up to the discomfort and teach their students to do the same. A friend, a professor of moral philosophy, told me he received hate-mail when he raised the hypothetical case of the miners. He also told me there are certain thought experiments that divide his students down the middle. Some students are capable of temporarily accepting a noxious hypothetical, to explore where it might lead. Others are so blinded by emotion that they cannot even contemplate the hypothetical. They simply stop up their ears and refuse to join the discussion.

“We all agree it isn’t true that some human races are genetically superior to others in intelligence. But let’s for a moment suspend disbelief and consider the consequences if it were true. Would it ever be right to discriminate in job hiring? Etcetera.” My friend sometimes poses this very question, and he tells me that about half the students are willing to entertain the hypothetical counterfactual and rationally discuss the consequences. The other half respond emotionally to the hypothetical, are too revolted to proceed and simply opt out of the conversation.

Could eugenics ever be justified? Could torture? A clock triggering a gigantic nuclear weapon hidden in a suitcase is ticking. A spy has been captured who knows where it is and how to disable it, but he refuses to speak. Is it morally right to torture him, or even his innocent children, to make him reveal the secret? What if the weapon were a doomsday machine that would blow up the whole world?

There are those whose love of reason allows them to enter such disagreeable hypothetical worlds and see where the discussion might lead. And there are those whose emotions prevent them from going anywhere near the conversation. Some of these will vilify and hurl vicious insults at anybody who is prepared to discuss such matters. Some will pursue active witch-hunts against moral philosophers for daring to consider obnoxious hypothetical thought experiments.

battle for the earth

forbiddenknowledge | This is an episode in the series about of how Homo sapiens once shared the Earth with other species of hominids, and how, against all the odds, we survived.

In the not-too-distant past, humans shared this planet with other species of hominid: Homo Erectus, Homo floresiensis (which were kicking around until 12,000 years ago in modern-day Indonesia, as well as Homo neanderthalensis, which, it has been discovered, still lives on in 3-5% of the genetics of Europeans and Asians, and in some populations of the African Continent.

This episode begins 75,000 years ago in India, following a catastrophic super-volcanic eruption of Mount Toba. located in the archipelago which makes up the modern-day country of Indonesia. This volcanic blast was by far the largest volcanic event in the past 2 million years and the ensuing "nuclear winter" and dearth of food forced a showdown between the Homo sapiens who had strayed into India into and the Homo erectus, who up until that point had reigned supreme, in that area.

Homo sapiens populations are thought to have sharply decreased to 3,000–10,000 surviving individuals, which is supported by genetic evidence suggesting that today's humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago.

Evidence from pollen analysis has suggested prolonged deforestation in South Asia, and some researchers have suggested that the Toba eruption may have forced Homo sapiens to adopt new adaptive strategies, which may have permitted them to replace Neanderthals and Homo erectus - but it does not explain the mysterious survival of Homo floresiensis, a very small hominid, about 3 feet tall (I've seen a cast of a complete skeleton one of these cute little guys).

Homo floresiensis were living relatively close to the Mount Toba eruption compare to India, they were located in Southeastern Asia - and yet they only went extinct around 12,000 years ago and the legends told by numerous locals to this day still speak of them and how they would kidnap the children (of Homo sapiens' storytellers).

pregnancy is a battleground between mother, father, and baby...,

aeon |  What sight could be more moving than a mother nursing her baby? What better icon could one find for love, intimacy and boundless giving? There’s a reason why the Madonna and Child became one of the world’s great religious symbols.

To see this spirit of maternal generosity carried to its logical extreme, consider Diaea ergandros, a species of Australian spider. All summer long, the mother fattens herself on insects so that when winter comes her little ones may suckle the blood from her leg joints. As they drink, she weakens, until the babies swarm over her, inject her with venom and devour her like any other prey.

You might suppose such ruthlessness to be unheard-of among mammalian children. You would be wrong. It isn’t that our babies are less ruthless than Diaea ergandros, but that our mothers are less generous. The mammal mother works hard to stop her children from taking more than she is willing to give. The children fight back with manipulation, blackmail and violence. Their ferocity is nowhere more evident than in the womb.

This fact sits uncomfortably with some enduring cultural ideas about motherhood. Even today, it is common to hear doctors talking about the uterine lining as the ‘optimal environment’ for nurturing the embryo. But physiology has long cast doubt on this romantic view.

sex in a scanner: imaging intercourse

thescientist |  When Pek van Andel of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands was a medical student, one of his professors showed a slide of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Copulation during a lecture, and the image became etched in van Andel’s memory. When he heard a talk years later, in 1991, about magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) pictures of an opera diva singing, it occurred to him that he could use the emerging technology to glimpse what da Vinci could not: an internal view of human intercourse.

In 1992, van Andel and his team began to recruit couples to copulate inside an MRI machine. Ida Sabelis, the first woman to have participated, described the odd situation: “Confined by the space, we make the best of it,” she wrote in 2000. She recalls being jarred by a voice emanating from speakers inside the scanner: “The erection is fully visible, including the root.” The experiment advanced in fits and starts as the team dealt with challenges, including squeamish hospital administrators. “It was a very interesting 10 years for me,” van Andel’s colleague, Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, says with a chuckle.  

The researchers published a paper in 1999 demonstrating that long-held beliefs, including those illustrated by da Vinci, about the anatomy of intercourse were wrong (Br Med J, 319:1596-600, 1999). For example, when inside the vagina, the penis does not stay straight; it forms a boomerang shape. More surprisingly, in the root of the penis, the portion that lies inside the man’s body cavity, “the erection is as long as [in] the pendulous part,” says Weijmar Schultz. The team also realized that the 1966 observation by William Masters and Virginia Johnson that the uterus enlarges during intercourse—based on manual palpation of women stimulated with an artificial penis—was mistaken: what Masters and Johnson felt was probably the bladder filling with urine.

In 2000, the MRI study won the dubious distinction of an Ig Nobel Prize. In his acceptance speech, van Andel said that the hardware and software had no problem accommodating the couples. As for “the wetware, we had more than enough volunteers,” he told a laughing crowd. “The problem was the red tape.”

transparent cadavers with see-through organs...,

theindependent |  Scientists have created see-through mice complete with transparent organs, in a new technique that could pave the way to a new generation of therapies for conditions ranging from autism to chronic pain.

Mice are frequently used in biomedical research because much of their basic biology is similar to humans, meaning they can be altered in ways that simulate human diseases.

The transparent mice are not alive however, and are currently being used for scientists researching fine details of anatomy.

Vivian Gradinaru, a senior author of the study at the California Institute of Technology, said the research could pave the way for a better understanding of brain-body interactions, more accurate clinical diagnoses and disease monitoring.

Before being treated with chemicals, the mice were euthanised and their skin removed. The team then pumped a series of chemicals through blood vessels, as well as other passages in the brain and spinal cord.

Some of the chemicals form a mesh to hold tissue in place, while others wash out fats that make tissue block light.

misinterpretation of spurious effects mixed with mathematical errors or species singularity?

register |  NASA has tested an "impossible" electric space drive that uses no propellant, and found it works even when it is designed not to – sparking immediate skepticism of the technology.

The system is designed to use microwave energy reflected along a specially designed chamber to produce thrust. The idea first appeared as the Emdrive by British inventor Roger Shawyer in 2001, who designed a motor that he showed could produce power in this way. But critics scoffed, saying it would violate the laws of momentum.

The EmDrive, we're told, generates thrust by using the properties of radiation pressure. An electromagnetic wave has a small amount of momentum which, when it hits a reflector, can translate that into thrust, Shawyer found, and this apparently can be used to power flight in the near-frictionless environment of space.

The idea languished, but a decade later the Chinese Academy of Sciences published a paper saying that it too had built an EmDrive-like which, when fed 2.5kW, generated 720mN of thrust – a tiny amount, admittedly.

But this got the attention of NASA boffins, who in 2013 commissioned a series of tests on the drive and got some surprising results.

In an eight-day trial held by US engineering firm Cannae, researchers found that by using a reflective chamber similar to that proposed by Shawyer, the team was able to use solely electrical input to generate 30 to 50 micro-Newtons of thrust. Again, incredibly tiny, enough to move a grain of sand, but apparently significant.

"Test results indicate that the RF resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma," the team reported in a paper to the 50th Joint Propulsion Conference in Cleveland, Ohio, at the end of July.