Communicating Science 13w213

Sharing a bed is always risky for infants

Posted on March 3, 2014 by hyunbinbpark | 3 comments

Sharing beds with infants is one of the leading causes of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). SIDS is an infant unexpected death, which cannot be predicted by scientific history. The syndrome is known to have a higher risk during an infant’s sleep. SIDS was the third primary cause of infant mortality in the United States in 2011. Even though the cause of SIDS is unidentified, some factors such as bottle feeding and the mother’s intake of illegal drugs and alcohol have been known to increase the risk of the fatal syndrome. When sharing a bed with parents, the risk of SIDS increases by five fold, especially babies younger than three months.

Co-sleeping increases the risk of SIDS

photo credit:CBC

Sleeping with parents for infants is a significant risk source during the first 15 weeks even without any other danger factors such as being exposed to second hand smoking. But this risk is increased to a great extent if either parent is a smoker. Other possible suggested risks may occur when the adult accidentally roll over onto a sleeping infant and the parents’ body heat may not be the suitable temperature for the baby. On the other hand, there is a benefit of an infant sleeping with their parents. It promotes breathing control and enhances mutual awareness between parents and infants. Nonetheless, when infants are put to sleep in the same bed as their parents, there is a great amount of risk and there should be a high level of precaution. Parents or parents to be should possess a sufficient amount of knowledge regarding this syndrome.

Some researchers recommend sleeping in a crib for an infant. Photo Credit:CBC

References

Hoyert DL, Xu JQ (2012). “Deaths: Preliminary data for 2011”.National vital statistics reports. (National Center for Health Statistics) 61(6): 8.

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Posted in Biological sciences, Issues in science, Science in the news

Tagged natural mothering, parenting, SIDS, sudden infant death syndrom

Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite….

Posted on March 3, 2014 by clung706 | 5 comments

What if you were told that there were thousands of bed bugs crawling in your mattress at night? The common bed bug, Cimex lectularius, is one of the most widely recognized insects in the world.

“Size of bed bug compared to dime “by Medill DC on Flickr

Bedbugs are tiny wingless insects that feed on the blood of people and animals , reproduce at a terrifying rate and are hard to get rid of. Bed bugs are attracted by the carbon dioxide (usually when we sleep) that are exhaled by us (and our pets too), they are typically found in areas really small such as: in mattress pads, backpacks, night tables, electrical outlets, behind wallpaper… etc.

The bed bug reproduction cycle is pretty horrifying. Bed bugs mate in a process called traumatic insemination. This basically means that the male injects its genitalia into the female’s abdomen, and the sperm is inserted through the wound, travels through the female’s abdominal fluid till it reaches her ovaries. The process of traumatic insemination causes a risk of infection and diseases in females, so she tends to isolate herself to avoid mating again, this also means… your backpack clothes, or even your pets, make a perfect home for a pregnant female.

The female bed bug can store sperm to fertilize her eggs for up to six weeks, and typically they can lay up to 12 eggs per day, and a female can lay anywhere from between 200-500 eggs in her lifespan, so long as both female and male have a blood meal every 14 days. With a little math, a single pregnant female can raise up to 5,000 bed bugs in six months.

Once the eggs are laid, it takes 6-17 days to be able to feed. The need for blood is apparent immediately for young ones to molt. Baby bedbugs are born they can live up to a year and a half without feeding. After 5 molting periods the baby becomes an adult, this process if affected by temperature, from around 21 days to 120 days. Adult bed bugs, can typically live around 10 months to up to a year or more, if the environment for these critters are good for reproduction (approximately 21°C and 28°C)

“Bed bug eggs mattress corner” photo taken by Bulwark Exterminating on Flickr

If you start getting rashes or little bumps on your skin after a nights rest, start making the assumption that there might be bed bugs. Start looking for signs of bed bug: dried blood or feces, carcasses or white spots (eggs – very hard to see), or live bedbugs, in small tight areas around the house, once signs mentioned are spotted, start inspecting your pets and call pest control immediately. Bed bugs die at 50°C, and it is recommended that everything be washed or steamed, or thrown out to prevent spread and further invasion of the species.

Written by Cynthia Lung

P.s. Good night, don’t let the bed bugs bite.

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Tagged bed bugs

Open Access Labs?

Posted on March 3, 2014 by jfujio | 1 comment

Forget open access journals. What if you could access laboratory experiments, online and free of charge, rather than waiting for research to make it to print? This is exactly what Standford professor Lambertus Hasselink accomplished by making digital versions of real-world science experiments available to anyone using the Internet. This has coined the term “iLab“, which describes any online laboratory that enables students and educators to use real instruments to carry out experiments anywhere at any time. Unlike conventional facilities, iLabs can be shared and accessed by individuals across the world who may not otherwise have the resources to operate costly lab equipment.

(Professor Hasselink describing his iLab initiative at Standford University)

The concept of iLabs is in support of the open science movement, which seeks to integrate the online collaboration and social sharing of information to perpetuate scientific progress. Proponents of open science believe that the data of published research should be accessible to the public to promote the maximum dissemination of knowledge, and consequently, increase the efficiency of scientific development.

A great example of the success of open science initiatives is the Polymath Project, initiated by Cambridge mathematician Joseph Jackson. After hitting a roadblock in solving complex mathematical problems, Jackson decided to open all his research on a blog, The Polymath Project. Within days readers with diverse backgrounds from around the world were contributing to his work, eventually leading to several published papers under the collective pseudonym DHJ Polymath.

(A physicist turned writer, Michael Nielsen discusses the Polymath Project and how open science is revolutionizing the way we make scientific discoveries.)

The Polymath project is an example of how collective research has the potential to solve some of the most perplexing scientific conumdrums and iLabs provide the medium to allow this type of collaboration to occur. While the open science movement has made great strides in increasing the popularity of open access journals, which provide scientific articles free of charge to the public, iLabs are the next stage of knowledge sharing.

This has several advantages: for one, open labs enable students and researchers to connect to the best laboratories across the globe with the simple click of the mouse. Therefore, scientists with limited resources or funding can access the technology of well-equiped labs at little to no cost. Additionally, rather than just reading about experiments, web-based labs enable scientists to participate and/or witness the steps leading up to new discoveries. This increased transparency will improve the reproducibility of original experiments and provide more insight into the methodologies behind research findings.

Doing real science is a tough feat, which takes considerable time, energy and money to conduct. One of the greatest benefits of iLabs is the ability to spread resources and manpower globally. However, how can a scientist in Japan conduct an experiment taking place in Germany? The answer is simple: currently most research is controlled by computers to begin with, therefore digitalizing experiments is a common practice. However, most cross-cultural research is still limited to small communities of experts. Therefore, iLabs seek to expand accessibility to both amateur and professional scientists with the primary goal of increasing international collaboration projects to promote innovation and efficiency in research.

If you think about it, international collaboration has been the basis of many major scientific breakthroughs which have changed the way we view the world. For instance, global networks of scientists, with the use of online technology, have made discoveries such as the Human Genome Project, ozone layer depletion and the Large Hadron Collider (the world’s largest physics experiment) possible. Perhaps famous philosopher Aristotle was correct in saying that, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

By Jamie Fujioka

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Posted in Issues in science, Public engagement, Science communication, Science communicators, Science in the news, Uncategorized

Tagged ilab, international science collaboration, Joseph Jackson, Lambertus Hasselink, Michael Nielsen, open data, open laboratories, open science, the Polymath Project, transparency in science

The Chinese Nuclear Apocalypse

Posted on March 2, 2014 by hlaw | 2 comments

As far as Chinese farmers in regions neighboring Beijing are considered, the nuclear apocalypse has already begun. It is becoming common knowledge that smog in many of China’s major cities is growing rapidly out of control. However, the severity of the situation is so great that the effects on China’s agriculture is resembling that of a nuclear winter. Due to the thick smog cover, plant growth has started to become drastically hindered. When seeds of the same plant were grown in a lab under artificial lighting and in a greenhouse farm, the lab-grown seeds took 20 days to grow whilst the latter group of seeds took over two months. Such light-deprived is unsustainable for growth, and a further degradation of the conditions could lead to dire consequences for an agricultural industry constituting 10% of the GDP of a nation home to over 1.6 billion people.

Wheat farmer in fog-covered field. Photo Credit: Xinhua

China is one of the world’s largest export manufacturers; 65% of its energy is fueled by coal. It is not surprising, then, that a combination of massive energy use and lack of significant government action that the conditions have become so toxic. In fact, the smog has even begun drifting to other countries, most notably settling into Japan a week ago, as well as Korea and as far as Los Angeles. Although fairly weak relative to the smog levels experienced in Beijing, the smog that reached Japan still contained 50% more airborne particulate matter than is considered safe by the World Health Organization; levels in China have reached as much as 15 times the safe level. Whilst questionable policy enforcement on its own soil is already a major issue, spreading smog may add fuel to already-tense Sino-Japanese relations, worsening the situation further.

Chinese smog as seen from satellite. Photo Credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video

As I noted in my presentation in class several weeks ago, one of the proposed solutions in combating the smog issue was the implementation of super-sized sprinklers on top of all major skyscrapers and high-rises so as to physically wash the smog away; this is theorized to be able to reduce the amount of smog to safe levels in a matter of days or weeks. Another, more outlandish proposal involves the creation of massive, inflatable bubble-like structures to encompass parks and gardens and form a refuge for citizens seeking a reprieve from the increasingly toxic air. However, such a method would cost substantially more money, would not address the amount of smog, and, given the extreme rich/poor divide in China, potentially lead to an Elyisum-reminiscent situation.

The Eden Project in the UK, similar to the proposed structures in China. Photo Credit: Jack Two

Regardless of the path down which China decides to tackle its ever-increasing problem, it is imperative that they act swiftly. As their agriculture is more and more affected, other aspects of their economy will likely falter as well and, given the intertwined nature of the global economy, a relatively simply pollution problem may soon have worldwide consequences.

-Helon Law.

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Posted in Issues in science, Science in the news

Tagged agriculture, Asia, China, crops, environment, industry, pollution, smog

An infinite amount of monkeys

Posted on March 2, 2014 by flixt | 2 comments

Have you ever heard the phrase, “When you leave a monkey in a room with a typewriter for an infinite amount of time, the monkey can create Shakespeare”? This is a metaphor that is based on the theory that if you have a machine that generates random sequences of letters for an infinite amount of time, you will eventually end up with coherent words and eventually passages of texts.

Now, try to imagine this scenario. Instead of monkeys we replace them with a 100 thousand young adults, and instead of Shakespeare we replace it with the nostalgic 1990’s game of Pokemon Red. If we combine these two together what do we get? Twitch plays Pokemon.

Twitch plays Pokemon gameplay (graphics by Nintendo, captured by Twitch)

Twitch plays Pokemon is a real life example of the infinite monkey theorem. It is a social experiment that utilizes the massive viewership of the online streaming service Twitch to beat the game of Pokemon Red. Developed by an anonymous Australian developer, the program he developed uses a mixture of Javascript and Python coding to parse through the chat channel in which viewers, such as yourself type in the commands of a Gameboy such as: up, down, left, a, or start. The program changes these chat commands into actual button presses for the emulator that controls the actual game.

While it seems like a simple goal, imagine trying to get a 100 thousand stream viewers to cooperate. Within those 100 thousand, you will see various groups of people: a majority of those who want to complete the game, some who only watch, and those who mess around to impede progress. With all this interference, how is it that progress is still being made?

Strategies created by viewers (Source: TPPstrategy @Tumblr)

The process has to do with Chaos Theory, which describes that the most disorderly and chaotic system will still have some sort of order. Which in the case of Twitch plays Pokemon, the order created is the common goal of beating the game. For example, in the animated image above, you see the game character Red trying to get through a route in the game to advance further in the story. A simple action easily done by one person by continuously moving right. But with people pressing down, something so easy turned into an ordeal taking over 12 hours to overcome. This lead to many people congregating together, creating sites of discussion such as Reddit where strategies for beating certain spots in the game are discussed.

Above is a video of Twitch beating Pokemon Red (explicit language may be present)

As of March 1 2014, Twitch has defeated the game of Pokemon Red and refocused efforts towards the next generation of the series, Pokemon Crystal. Since the stream started on February 12 2014, the stream has gotten over 40 million total views with an average concurrent viewership of 70 thousand. The hopes of the viewers are that they can beat all generations of Pokemon by the end of the year.

-Felix Tang-

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Posted in Public engagement

Tagged Chaos Theory, Mathematics, Pokemon, Social Experiment

The memories you never had…

Posted on February 24, 2014 by adilcader | Comments Off

How do our memories change the very fabric of reality? Our memories, when drawn upon, show us our experiences in the past that we can remember. We feel, without the shadow of a doubt, that these memories happened exactly the way we remembered, if we remember them vividly. Scientists at Northwestern University claim that we may be wrong about how we think that our memories work. They propose that the part of our brain responsible for memory, the hippocampus, actually rewrites the past.

The Brain (Source: Google Images)

What do our memories really comprise of? For the most part our brains remember images, particular events, how we were feeling at the time quite well, however, time of day and the weather at the time are less easy to recall, or so we think.

Editing (Source: Google Images)

When we draw upon a memory we feel like we are watching a video reel of the past, as though our brain is merely a video recorder documenting our journey through time. But in reality the hippocampus of the brain is more like a film editor and special effects team. Yes your brain often edits that trip down memory lane. The hippocampus edits the way we remember details, from memories as far back as our childhood or even short-term memories created just a few minutes ago, every time they are remembered, If you recall it you remake it. This is somewhat disconcerting… Our most cherished memories, that we hold on to and think about very often are least likely to be what actually happened. Wait, why does the brain do this to us? The answer to that question is, the brain doesn’t just change our memories at random, it actually edits the past based on present experiences. Try looking back on a bad break-up when you’re in a good mood vs when you’re in a bad mood. If you are in a bad mood you will remember that it was her fault, whereas, in a good mood you may accept that it was your fault. What does this mean? From an evolutionary perspective, our brains are made to give us everything we need to survive in the present, therefore tailoring our memories based on present specifications.

Aside from our personal strife over this subject, memory alteration have a profound impact on our justice system. Several court cases rely on the memory of eyewitnesses to rule guilty or otherwise. A jury is more likely to side with a victim who was present at a crime even though they incorrectly remember the details of the time in question. In the past memory was a given, if you saw it, it happened. Now we need more scientific intervention into our justice systems to make certain real justice is served.

Elizabeth Loftus talks about reconstructive memory:

Scott Fraser talks about our faulty justice system from first hand experience:

~ Adil Cader.

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Posted in Issues in science, Public engagement, Science communication, Science in the news, Uncategorized

Tagged Brain, Memory, Neuroscience

Sleep During the Day Throws Genes Into Disarray

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Sophia Hu | 5 comments

Daytime sleeping proves to be more detrimental to health than not sleeping at all. That is whack! Well according to a new study, shifted sleep disrupts gene activity even more than not getting enough sleep. And whether you like to admit it or not, staying up late to write a research paper or to finish up a Science 300 project proposal can be a regular occurrence in a university student’s life. With such a common deprivation as sleep, we are all yearning for that opportune daytime nap. But after you learn how long periods of daytime sleeping can disrupt your gene function – you’ll think again before napping overtime.

Daytime sleeping is a necessity for night shift workers, travellers experiencing jet lag, and of course the average university student. This is the condition that scientists from the Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey wanted to recreate when they conducted their experiment. They purposefully altered 22 participants’ sleep cycles by using a light controlled sleep lab. Lead researcher Derk-Jan Dijk and his team were able to shift the participants’ biological clocks 12 hours out of sync and over three days, blood tests revealed decreased gene expression.

On a full night’s sleep, after the body’s rhythm is reset, 14,000 genes (6.4%) were in sync with the body. When sleep was shifted, the number of genes matching the body’s clock dropped drastically to only 228 (1%). That is an observed 6-fold drop! Compared to a previous study on sleep deprivation, the gene expression synchronicity only decreased from 9% to 7% from regular to deprived sleep.

Image: Mikael Häggström (Wikimedia Commons)

Genes carry instruction for coding proteins. The timing of when proteins are made is fundamental as their production greatly corresponds to our behaviours, claims neuroscientist at Harvard, Frank Scheer. Just about every chemical signal, hormone and tissue from the tips of your toes to the hair on your head is constructed of proteins. Therefore this disruption can have many negative impacts on everything from metabolism and immune response to stress levels and mood – is this starting to worry you or what? Longterm it can even increase risk of obesity, stroke, early death, and cancer.

Now we know that our overall health based on gene function can be hugely impacted by imbalanced sleep cycles. Although here is no direct link between daytime sleeping and these health problems, this study does begin to enhance our understanding on why sleep has such a powerful influence on our health. Now after hearing these worrisome implications, I think we will all strive a little harder to get some regular sleep at night, don’t you think?

Written by Sophia Hu

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Airplane Colds

Posted on February 24, 2014 by clairecurran | 3 comments

Airplane riding into the sunset. Source: Flickr Commons Kuster & Wildhaber Photography

If you were to walk into my room right now you would see cold medication, chicken noodle soup and a still unpacked suitcase from the trip I took over reading break. I rode an airplane twice in the past week and now I am getting a cold. Coincidence? I think not. And neither does science. According to a study done, a person’s chances of contracting a cold on an airplane are significantly higher than when on the ground (Hocking & Foster, 2004) .

There are several reasons of why people are more susceptible to colds and respiratory diseases after flying. Surprisingly, studies have proven that lack of air circulation is not to blame (Zitter, Mazonson, Miller, Hulley, & Balmes, 2002) . A common misconception is that the air on a plane is stagnant and not fresh, therefore letting airborne bacteria sit there longer. In reality, air in an airplane is cycled through very sophisticated filters 15 to 20 times an hour. (Lang et al., 2007) This is much higher than the number of times air is cycled in homes and offices, 5 and 12 respectively. (Lang et al., 2007)

So if stagnant air isn’t the culprit, what is? Dry air is the main culprit according to one source (Hocking & Foster, 2004) . When you’re flying, the relative humidity drops to levels around 10%. This drop in relative humidity is a very big difference from on the ground levels, where for example, in Vancouver on February 24, 2014 is 96%. These low levels of humidity due to highflying elevations cause people’s first line of defense to not function properly. Mucous in the nose cannot form and bacteria can therefore pass.

Other culprits include the ratio of people to space. Since person-to-person interactions are very high (think of climbing over someone to get up to go to the bathroom), there is an even higher number of possible infectants in the air. Although airplanes are cleaned regularly, high-traffic areas that may not necessarily be cleaned thoroughly are thought to be possible bacteria rich areas. These areas include overhead bins, armrests, aisle seats and the seat-tray.

Here people can be seen touching the aisle seats. Source: Flick Commons Matt Hurst

One last reason that could contribute to getting sick after travelling is stress. A lot of people find travelling stressful and higher levels of stress can affect your immune system’s ability to ward off sickness (Glaser & Kiecolt-Glaser, 2005) .

So what can you do to ward off a cold when travelling by airplane? This article has several great suggestions. The most important being staying hydrated and keeping your hands clean. Next time I travel by plane, I will definitely be taking better advantage of the free beverages offered inflight.

~Claire Curran

References

Glaser, R., & Kiecolt-Glaser, J. (2005). Science and society – stress-induced immune dysfunction: Implications for health. NATURE REVIEWS IMMUNOLOGY, 5(3), 243-251.

Hocking, M. B., & Foster, H. D. (2004). Common cold transmission in commercial aircraft: Industry and passenger implications. Journal of Environmental Health Research, 3(1), 7-12.

Lang, M., Amit, M., Cummings, C., Feldman, M., Ponti, M., Grabowski, J., & Community Paediat Comm. (2007). Air travel and children’s health issues. PAEDIATRICS & CHILD HEALTH, 12(1), 45-50.

Zitter, J. N., Mazonson, P. D., Miller, D. P., Hulley, S. B., & Balmes, J. R. (2002). Aircraft cabin air recirculation and symptoms of the common cold. JAMA : The Journal of the American Medical Association, 288(4), 483-486.

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Posted in Science in the news, Uncategorized

Tagged air, Airplanes, bacteria, cold, flying, humidity, sickness

Move Your Hands – The Importance of Gesturing

Posted on February 24, 2014 by cindyliang | Comments Off

Over the past month, all of us in the Science 300 course have learned quite a lot about making an effective presentation. One of the most important questions we asked ourselves was whether or not to hold a script while we speak. Well, many research studies have suggested that it might be beneficial to ditch the script.

The reason behind not holding something in your hands during your speech is so that you can leave the hands free to make gestures. A research study by (Hubbard et al., 2009) suggests that there is a common neural substrate for processing speech and gesture, likely reflecting their joint communicative role in face-to-face interactions. What does that mean? To put it simply, using hand gestures when giving a presentation enhances the comprehension and perception of the spoken material by your audience.

This is also very important in the early development of speech and language as well. Before babies are able to speak multi-word phrases, they rely heavily on hand gesturing to help communicate their thoughts. Hand gesturing is observed between the babbling period at approximately 8 months to the one-word stage at approximately 12 months. At 8 months, most babies start to use proto-declarative pointing, which is pointing to draw attention to a certain object. Later on at 12 months, babies start to combine speech and hand gestures such as pointing to enhance their communication (Esteve-Gibert, and Pireto, 2014).

The researchers even found that the babies’ multi-modal coordination is much like ours when prominence is taken into account. I can’t agree with this finding more as I am often fascinated by the adult-like and sophisticated hand-gestures made by my 12 month-old nephew. For those of you who are not as well-acquainted with babies, here’s a video of two babies babbling and gesturing in an adult-like fashion. It really looks like the matters are pressing.

Speaking of pressing matters, let’s go back to the many important presentations that we will be making as science students. Many of you will still opt for the script because you are afraid of not being able to remember your speech. Don’t be afraid! We all have moments where we just can’t seem to find the right word or moments where we just can’t recall that one thing we had on our mind two seconds ago. Dr. Elena Nicoladis from the University of Alberta recommends that we start moving your hands around to help us remember. Her research done on bilingual children suggests that gesturing while you speak may improve your access to language area in the brain. In this study, bilingual children were asked to tell the same story in two different languages. Researchers first thought the children would be more inclined to use gestures to help them communicate in their weaker language. To their surprise, these children used gestures significantly more when telling the story in what they considered to be their stronger language. Based on their results, it is believed that gesturing plays an important role in accessing language in the process of speech production.

Whether in adults or infants, we know how important gesturing is in the communication process. Numerous research studies are under way to study its connection to speech and language. For example, an on-going study at Alberta Children’s Hospital is trying to observe gesture development as a way to detect language problems at an early age.

More and more evidence are being discovered to solidify the importance of gesturing. So next time you make a presentation, remember to trust yourself: practice your speech, lose the script, and make hand gestures with your now-free hands. If these chimpanzees can use hand gesture to communicate, you can definitely do it too.

Keep those hands in motion.

Cindy Liang

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A Speedbump on the Road to Singularity

Posted on February 10, 2014 by alenas | Comments Off

From the time of their humble origins as slow, hole-punching behemoths, few could have predicted that computers would completely transform our modern age so profoundly. In more recent times, as computing power keeps increasing year by year, many have begun to seriously consider the possibility that soon the computer may outperform the human mind in almost all tasks, not simply in playing chess or conducting assembly lines.

A prominent crusader of these ideas, Ray Kurzweil, goes so far as to claim that one day in the not-so-distant future, we may download the contents of our minds: memories, personality, emotions and preferences into a computer. In effect we would reach immortality by merging with a machine. This rather simplistic view is part of the concept of the technological singularity, the notion that computers will become increasingly more powerful and smarter until a point in time when they will radically change the way humans live and function in the world.

To predict that downloading yourself to a computer will be possible, we’d have to rely on many broad assumptions about the human mind. One such assumption we’d need to make is already used as the starting point of modern neuroscience; that our minds, our internal experience of the world, and the rest of the function of the brain is the total of all neural activity.

Scientists know that the brain uses its cells, specifically the connections between neurons, to conduct simple calculations. Basically, this explains consciousness as the output of a biological computer, which uses the principles similar to those in mathematics to create every thought, feeling, insight and perception that we have ever had. Sounds simple? Hardly. While the bare principles are easy to understand, the sheer immensity and complexity of the brain, is well, massive. The current estimate on the raw computing power is that it’s the equivalent of around 10 000 000 000 000 000 operations per second.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Here is where the unlikely duo of Stuart Hameroff, an anesthesiologist, and Sir Roger Penrose, a mathematical physicist, call singularians on their fault. They criticize their ultra-reductionist view based on their Orch OR theory of consciousness. In part, they have proposed that not only does the brain act as a classical computer (the kind that uses bits; ones and zeros), it also has a more fundamental, sub-cellular level found in the microtubule cytoskeleton, that uses quantum effects to do a completely different kind of computation, incompatible with today’s computing knowledge.

So not only does the brain compute with its 10 000 000 000 000 000 operations per second, each neuron’s microtubules may be able to compute at 100 trillion operations per second, giving the brain a grand total of 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 trillion operations per second. That’s twenty-seven zero’s! For comparison, the K computer, one of the world’s fastest, can only compute 10 000 trillion calculations per second.

If the Orch OR theory proves to be correct, then the singularity is still just a dim blip on our radar, not the impeding revolution that some of its proponents suggest. Of course that’s assuming that we can program these incredibly fast computers to be smart. After all, having enough processing power on its own will not spontaneously give us artificial intelligence. That will be a job for the neuroscientists and programmers of the distant future.

Written and published by Alena Safina

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Posted in Biological sciences, Science in the news

Tagged Computing, Consciousness, Orch OR theory, Singularity