Scientists Call Foul On Brain Games Pseudo-Science

Forbes - Wanting to be smarter is kind of a no-brainer, as is wanting to slow or stop cognitive decline with age. The thorny issue is how to do it. The $1.3 billion a year Americans spend on “brain training” games suggests lots of people are turning to screens to buy a jolt of what they hope is scientifically-verified cognitive juice. Unfortunately for those paying to play, and for those collecting the fees, these games are not scientifically verified methods for cognitive enhancement. And what makes this truly unfortunate is not the wasted money. Rather, it is the lost time and effort that could have been directed to what cognitive science has shown can actually enhance cognitive performance.

For a voluminous, complex research literature like brains and games it pays to pay attention to the experts. On October 20th a large group of leading cognitive and brain scientists released a statement provocatively titled “A Consensus on the Brain Training Industry from the Scientific Community.” It concluded in part:

“The strong consensus of this group is that the scientific literature does not support claims that the use of software-based “brain games” alters neural functioning in ways that improve general cognitive performance in everyday life, or prevent cognitive slowing and brain disease.”    Read More

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Scientists outsmart dangerous bacteria using infrared light

CNET - Researchers in Vienna have developed a technique to quickly distinguish between strains of staph infection bacteria that can cause chronic infections and those that cannot.

The pesky bacterium Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), best known for causing staph infections such as MRSA, ranges dramatically in form. In fact, recent studies indicate that S. aureus performs an efficient little microevolution to adapt to its host, so that it can evade the immune system and even survive antibiotics.

Not to be outdone by the seeming intelligence of the bacterium, scientists at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna say they have devised a technique using infrared light to distinguish between strains of S. aureus that can cause chronic infections and those that cannot. They report their findings in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.   More

Scientists start hacking minds - Are the deepest secrets of your mind safe?

Inexpensive brain-computer interfaces could be used maliciously to obtain private information such as PINs stored in one's memory, according to researchers. Are you ready for brain spyware?

The Emotiv EPOC headset sells for $299.

(Credit: Emotiv Systems)

 

CNET - Are the deepest secrets of your mind safe? Could thieves trick you into revealing your bank card PIN or computer passwords just by thinking about them?

Theoretically, it could happen.

Ivan Martinovic of the University of Oxford and colleagues at the University of Geneva and University of California at Berkeley describe research into that question in a paper entitled "On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks With Brain-Computer Interfaces" presented earlier this month at the 21st USENIX Security Symposium.

The research was inspired by the growing number of games and other mind apps available for low-cost consumer EEG devices such as Emotiv's EPOC headset, which lets users interact with computers using their thoughts alone.

Malicious developers could create a "brain spyware" app designed to trick users into thinking about sensitive information, which it would then steal.

The research focused on the P300 brain signal, often emitted when something meaningful is recognized. It has been considered in the design of recent lie detectors.

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Quantum Teleportation - Scientists teleport info 90 miles across islands

Scientists teleport info 90 miles across islands

Quantum teleportation is reaching greater distances, and hopes are high that satellites will be able to use the technology.

The European Space Agency's Optical Ground Station in the Canary Islands.

(Credit: ESA)

 

CNET - If only we were quantum states, we'd be playing Kirk and Scotty, popping around the universe until the inevitable failure in the transporter circuits.

European and Canadian scientists are pushing the envelope on quantum teleportation after having succeeded in beaming quantum states across some 90 miles in the Canary Islands.

The laser-locked telescopes on the islands of La Palma and Tenerife served as transporter rooms, teleporting information about the state of a pair of "entangled" particles.

The entanglement links the particles such that a change in one is registered in the other despite great distances between them.

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Should Scientists Be Held Legally Responsible for Their Results?

PopSci - On March 31, 2009, a panel of scientists and civil servants met to assess the risk presented by a recent series of tremors in the Abruzzo region of Italy. They concluded that a major seismic event was unlikely. Soon thereafter, Bernardo De Bernardinis, the vice-director of Italy’s Department of Civil Protection, the organization that put together the panel, told reporters that citizens should not worry, and even agreed with a journalist who suggested that people should relax with a glass of wine.

Six days later, a major earthquake struck L’Aquila, a city in Abruzzo, killing more than 300 people. Soon after, citizens requested an investigation into the panelists’ findings, and the public prosecutor obliged. De Bernardinis and the panelists were charged with manslaughter and now face up to 15 years in prison. The L’Aquila judge who determined that the case could go to court said the defendants provided “imprecise, incomplete and contradictory information” and effectively “thwarted the activities designed to protect the public.”

Many seismologists around the world say that criminalizing the Italian panel’s assessments will have a chilling effect on science. Sheila Jasanoff, a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government who studies the role of science and expertise in politics and the law, told me that, though the Italian trial is an extreme example, public scrutiny of how scientists convey low-probability, high-danger situations is not in itself unreasonable.  
          
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Pig-to-Human Transplants Could Be Closer Than You Think

Hog head, the deadliest food at the banquet 

fiskfisk, via Flickr.com

PopSci - Two scientists at the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute at the University of Pittsburgh discussed the state of xenotransplantation–the use of cells, organs, or tissue from one animal in another–in a review in The Lancet. In that review, they touch on the history of one particular subject: pig-to-human transplants. Their conclusion? Clinical trials of pig-to-human transplants could begin in just a few years.

Pigs that are genetically modified with genes to protect their organs and other inside bits from attack by the human immune system are capable of all kinds of potentially life-saving effects.

Research has been conducted until now with non-human primates, and while these primates have not been able to survive for all that long with pig organs–at best, a pig heart-implanted primate survives for around eight months–that could be enough time to serve as temporary lifesavers. Cells and tissue could be used to counteract human diseases like diabetes (as in this example) and Parkinson’s, and have actually shown more success than complete organs.  

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Scientists Build Self-Replicating Molecule

Discovery News - Living things self-replicate,
but artificial materials generally don’t.
At least not until now.

New York University researchers led by Paul Chaikin have found a way to use synthetic DNA to make molecules that reproduce themselves. The technique gives scientists a tool to create different combinations on the DNA that aren’t necessarily available in nature. That opens up billions of possibilities for building completely new materials and even molecular machines. Chaikin and his colleaques reported their results in this week’s journal Nature.

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Inside a living cell, enzymes split DNA’s ladder-like double helix molecule down the middle, leaving two single strings of nucleotides. The enzymes then tack on new nucleotides to each half in order to create an identical copy. Where there was one double helix of DNA, there is two. The cell then uses the copied DNA to perform a biological function such as build a protein, for example. This replication is crucial to a lifeform’s ability to exist and survive.
In this case, the researchers created two slightly different molecular “tiles,” each one made of 10 strands of DNA.


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Scientists Unearth Oldest Woolly Rhino In Tibet

redOrbit - A 3.6-million-year-old woolly rhinoceros fossil discovered in Tibet in 2007 indicates that some giant mammals may have evolved in the Tibetan highlands before the beginning of the Ice Age, according to experts.

In a paper published on September 2 in the magazine Science, paleontologists from the Natural History Museum (NHM) of Los Angeles County and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who discovered the rhino’s complete skull and lower jaw, argue that the beast adapted to global cooling before it even happened.

The extinction of giants from the Ice Age such as woolly mammoths and giant sloths has been widely studied, but it has remained unclear about where these giant beasts came from, and how they acquired their adaptations for living in extreme cold environments.

The team, led by NHM’s Xiaoming Wang and CAS’s Qiang Li, said among the special adaptations was a flat horn useful for sweeping snow away to find vegetation. With special adaptations, the giant mammals were able to spread to northern Asia and Europe once the Ice Age started 2.6 million years ago.

The fossil is believed to be the oldest specimen of its kind yet to be found. It lived nearly 3.6 million years ago, long before similar animals that roamed northern Asia and Europe in the Ice Age.

“The Tibetan Plateau may have been another cradle of the Ice Age giants,” report the researchers.

The woolly rhino fossil was well preserved — “just a little crushed, so not quite in the original shape; but the complete skull and lower jaw are preserved,” Xiaoming told BBC News.              
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