The first evidence of empathy-driven helping behavior in rodents has been observed in laboratory rats that repeatedly free companions from a restraint, according to a new study by University of Chicago neuroscientists.

The observation, published today in Science, places the origin of pro-social helping behavior earlier in the evolutionary tree than previously thought. Though empathetic behavior has been observed anecdotally in non-human primates and other wild species, the concept had not previously been observed in rodents in a laboratory setting.

"This is the first evidence of helping behavior triggered by empathy in rats," said Jean Decety, PhD, Irving B. Harris Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago. "There are a lot of ideas in the literature showing that empathy is not unique to humans, and it has been well demonstrated in apes, but in rodents it was not very clear. We put together in one series of experiments evidence of helping behavior based on empathy in rodents, and that's really the first time it's been seen."

The study demonstrates the deep evolutionary roots of empathy-driven behavior, said Jeffrey Mogil, the E.P. Taylor Professor in Pain Studies at McGill University, who has studied emotional contagion of pain in mice.

"On its face, this is more than empathy, this is pro-social behavior," said Mogil, who was not involved in the study. "It's more than has been shown before by a long shot, and that's very impressive, especially since there's no advanced technology here."

The experiments, designed by psychology graduate student and first author Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal with co-authors Decety and Peggy Mason, placed two rats that normally share a cage into a special test arena. One rat was held in a restrainer device — a closed tube with a door that can be nudged open from the outside. The second rat roamed free in the cage around the restrainer, able to see and hear the trapped cagemate but not required to take action.

The researchers observed that the free rat acted more agitated when its cagemate was restrained, compared to its activity when the rat was placed in a cage with an empty restrainer. This response offered evidence of an "emotional contagion," a frequently observed phenomenon in humans and animals in which a subject shares in the fear, distress or even pain suffered by another subject.

While emotional contagion is the simplest form of empathy, the rats' subsequent actions clearly comprised active helping behavior, a far more complex expression of empathy. After several daily restraint sessions, the free rat learned how to open the restrainer door and free its cagemate. Though slow to act at first, once the rat discovered the ability to free its companion, it would take action almost immediately upon placement in the test arena.

"We are not training these rats in any way," Bartal said. "These rats are learning because they are motivated by something internal. We're not showing them how to open the door, they don't get any previous exposure on opening the door, and it's hard to open the door. But they keep trying and trying, and it eventually works."

To control for motivations other than empathy that would lead the rat to free its companion, the researchers conducted further experiments. When a stuffed toy rat was placed in the restrainer, the free rat did not open the door. When opening the restrainer door released his companion into a separate compartment, the free rat continued to nudge open the door, ruling out the reward of social interaction as motivation. The experiments left behavior motivated by empathy as the simplest explanation for the rats' behavior.

"There was no other reason to take this action, except to terminate the distress of the trapped rats," Bartal said. "In the rat model world, seeing the same behavior repeated over and over basically means that this action is rewarding to the rat."

As a test of the power of this reward, another experiment was designed to give the free rats a choice: free their companion or feast on chocolate. Two restrainers were placed in the cage with the rat, one containing the cagemate, another containing a pile of chocolate chips. Though the free rat had the option of eating all the chocolate before freeing its companion, the rat was equally likely to open the restrainer containing the cagemate before opening the chocolate container.

"That was very compelling," said Mason, PhD, Professor of Neurobiology. "It said to us that essentially helping their cagemate is on a par with chocolate. He can hog the entire chocolate stash if he wanted to, and he does not. We were shocked."

Now that this model of empathic behavior has been established, the researchers are carrying out additional experiments. Because not every rat learned to open the door and free its companion, studies can compare these individuals to look for the biological source of these behavioral differences. Early results suggested that females were more likely to become door openers than males, perhaps reflecting the important role of empathy in motherhood and providing another avenue for study.

"This model of empathy and helping behavior opens the path for elucidating aspects of the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms that were not accessible until now." Bartal said.

The experiments also provide further evidence that empathy-driven helping behavior is not unique to humans – and suggest that Homo sapiens could learn a lesson from its rat cousins.

"When we act without empathy we are acting against our biological inheritance," Mason said. "If humans would listen and act on their biological inheritance more often, we'd be better off."

Source: University of Chicago Medical Center - via ZeitNews.org

In September 2002, one hundred million cubic metres of rock and ice separated from the northern slope of the Kazbek massif in North Ossetia, Russia. The resulting avalanche killed 125 people and caused widespread damage. Ice avalanches can travel great distances at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour, but it is not fully understood how they travel so far or so fast. The difficulty lies in observing the processes within avalanches closely. But by creating a laboratory avalanche one researcher at The University of Nottingham has helped us to understand how melting effects flows of ice — even at temperatures below freezing.

Dr Barbara Turnbull, a member of the Fluid and Particle Processes Group in the University’s Faculty of Engineering, has found that the same layer of liquid water at an ice particle’s surface that helps skaters to skate across an ice rink also enhances ice avalanche speeds. The water lubricates particle contacts, resulting in more collisions and melting, which in turn leads to a snowball effect of ever-faster speeds.

To measure this effect Dr Turnbull half filled a narrow Perspex drum with flash-frozen water droplets, rotating it so that the droplets formed a slope down which the ice granules bounced and slipped — simulating ice avalanches.

“Ice avalanches from collapsing glaciers are not common in populated areas, but that may change as global temperatures rise. The Ossetia avalanche alerted researchers to the urgency of gaining a better understanding of the processes that control such flows,” Dr Turnbull said.

“This is a simple experiment, but it tests the theory that surface melting in ice particles as they collide plays a role in the speed at which avalanches travel — and therefore the amount of damage they can potentially inflict on the local environment and populations.”

Source: University of Nottingham - via ZeitNews.org

Admittedly, it sounds like the most foolhardy of criminal capers, and one of the cheekiest, too.  Outside the police station in the small Victorian mill town of Todmorden, West Yorkshire, there are three large raised flower beds. If you’d visited a few months ago, you’d have found them overflowing with curly kale, carrot plants, lettuces, spring onions — all manner of vegetables and salad leaves.

Today the beds are bare. Why? Because people have been wandering up to the police station forecourt in broad daylight and digging up the vegetables. And what are the cops doing about this brazen theft from right under their noses? Nothing Well, that’s not quite correct.

‘I watch ’em on camera as they come up and pick them,’ says desk officer Janet Scott, with a huge grin. It’s the smile that explains everything.

For the vegetable-swipers are not thieves. The police station carrots — and thousands of vegetables in 70 large beds around the town — are there for the taking. Locals are encouraged to help themselves. A few tomatoes here, a handful of broccoli there. If they’re in season, they’re yours. Free.

So there are (or were) raspberries, apricots and apples on the canal towpath; blackcurrants, redcurrants and strawberries beside the doctor’s surgery; beans and peas outside the college; cherries in the supermarket car park; and mint, rosemary, thyme and fennel by the health centre.

The vegetable plots are the most visible sign of an amazing plan: to make Todmorden the first town in the country that is self-sufficient in food.

‘And we want to do it by 2018,’ says Mary Clear, 56, a grandmother of ten and co-founder of Incredible Edible, as the scheme is called.

‘It’s a very ambitious aim. But if you don’t aim high, you might as well stay in bed, mightn’t you?’

So what’s to stop me turning up with a huge carrier bag and grabbing all the rosemary in the town?

‘Nothing,’ says Mary.

What’s to stop me nabbing all the apples?

‘Nothing.’

All your raspberries?

‘Nothing.’

It just doesn’t happen like that, she says. ‘We trust people. We truly believe — we are witness to it — that people are decent.’

When she sees the Big Issue seller gathering fruit for his lunch, she feels only pleasure. What does it matter, argues Mary, if once in a while she turns up with her margarine tub to find that all the strawberries are gone?

‘This is a revolution,’ she says. ‘But we are gentle revolutionaries. Everything we do is underpinned by kindness.’

The idea came about after she and co-founder Pam Warhurst, the former owner of the town’s Bear Cafe, began fretting about the state of the world and wondered what they could do.

They reasoned that all they could do is start locally, so they got a group of people, mostly women, together in the cafe.

‘Wars come about by men having drinks in bars, good things come about when women drink coffee together,’ says Mary.  ‘Our thinking was: there’s so much blame in the world — blame local government, blame politicians, blame bankers, blame technology — we thought, let’s just do something positive instead.’ We’re standing by a car park in the town centre. Mary points to a housing estate up the hill. Her face lights up.

‘The children walk past here on the way to school. We’ve filled the flower beds with fennel and they’ve all been taught that if you bite fennel, it tastes like a liquorice gobstopper. When I see the children popping little bits of herb into their mouths, I just think it’s brilliant.’

She takes me over to the front garden of her own house, a few yards away.  Three years ago, when Incredible Edible was launched, she did a very unusual thing: she lowered her front wall, in order to encourage passers-by to walk into her garden and help themselves to whatever vegetables took their fancy.

There were signs asking people to take something but it took six months for folk to ‘get it’, she says. They get it now. Obviously a few town-centre vegetable plants — even thousands of them — are not going to feed a community of 15,000 by themselves.

But the police station potatoes act as a recruiting sergeant — to encourage residents to grow their own food at home. Today, hundreds of townspeople who began by helping themselves to the communal veg are now well on the way to self-sufficiency. But out on the street, what gets planted where? There’s kindness even in that.

‘The ticket man at the railway station, who was very much loved, was unwell. Before he died, we asked him: “What’s your favourite vegetable, Reg?” It was broccoli. So we planted memorial beds with broccoli at the station. One stop up the line, at Hebden Bridge, they loved Reg, too — and they’ve also planted broccoli in his memory.’ Not that all the plots are — how does one put this delicately? — ‘official’.

Take the herb bushes by the canal. Owners British Waterways had no idea locals had been sowing plants there until an official inspected the area ahead of a visit by the Prince of Wales last year (Charles is a huge Incredible Edible fan).

Estelle Brown, a 67-year-old former interior designer who tended the plot, received an email from British Waterways.

‘I was a bit worried to open it,’ she says. ‘But it said: “How do you build a raised bed? Because my boss wants one outside his office window.”’

Incredible Edible is also about much more than plots of veg. It’s about educating people about food, and stimulating the local economy.

There are lessons in pickling and preserving fruits, courses on bread-making, and the local college is to offer a BTEC in horticulture. The thinking is that young people who have grown up among the street veg may make a career in food.

Crucially, the scheme is also about helping local businesses. The Bear, a wonderful shop and cafe with a magnificent original Victorian frontage, sources all its ingredients from farmers within a 30-mile radius. There’s a brilliant daily market. People here can eat well on local produce, and thousands now do.

Meanwhile, the local school was recently awarded a Ł500,000 Lottery grant to set up a fish farm in order to provide food for the locals and to teach useful skills to young people.

Jenny Coleman, 62, who retired here from London, explains: ‘We need something for our young people to do. If you’re an 18-year-old, there’s got to be a good answer to the question: why would I want to stay in Todmorden?’

The day I visit, the town is battered by a bitterly-cold rain storm.  Yet the place radiates warmth. People speak to each other in the street, wave as neighbours drive past, smile.  If the phrase hadn’t been hijacked, the words ‘we’re all in this together’ would spring to mind.

So what sort of place is Todmorden (known locally, without exception, as ‘Tod’)? If you’re assuming it’s largely peopled by middle-class grandmothers, think again. Nor is this place a mecca for the gin-and-Jag golf club set.

Set in a Pennine valley — once, the road through the town served as the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire — it is a vibrant mix of age, class and ethnicity. A third of households do not own a car; a fifth do not have central heating.  You can snap up a terrace house for Ł50,000 — or spend close to Ł1?million on a handsome stone villa with seven bedrooms.  And the scheme has brought this varied community closer together, according to Pam Warhurst.  Take one example. ‘The police have told us that, year on year, there has been a reduction in vandalism since we started,’ she says. ‘We weren’t expecting this.’

So why has it happened?

Pam says: ‘If you take a grass verge that was used as a litter bin and a dog toilet and turn it into a place full of herbs and fruit trees, people won’t vandalise it. I think we are hard-wired not to damage food.’

Pam reckons a project like Incredible Edible could thrive in all sorts of places. ‘If the population is very transient, it’s difficult. But if you’ve got schools, shops, back gardens and verges, you can do it.’ Similar schemes are being piloted in 21 other towns in the UK, and there’s been interest shown from as far afield as Spain, Germany, Hong Kong and Canada. And, this week, Mary Clear gave a talk to an all-party group of MPs at Westminster.

Todmorden was visited by a planner from New Zealand, working on the rebuilding of his country after February’s earthquake.

Mary says: ‘He went back saying: “Why wouldn’t we rebuild the railway station with pick-your-own herbs? Why wouldn’t we rebuild the health centre with apple trees?” ‘What we’ve done is not clever. It just wasn’t being done.’

The final word goes to an outsider. Joe Strachan is a wealthy U.S. former sales director who decided to settle in Tod with his Scottish wife, after many years in California.  He is 61 but looks 41. He became active with Incredible Edible six months ago, and couldn’t be happier digging, sowing and juicing fruit. I find myself next to him, sheltering from the driving rain. Why, I ask, would someone forsake the sunshine of California for all this?

His answer sums up what the people around here have achieved.

‘There’s a nobility to growing food and allowing people to share it. There’s a feeling we’re doing something significant rather than just moaning that the state can’t take care of us.  ‘Maybe we all need to learn to take care of ourselves.’

Source: DailyMail via ZeitNews.org

You might not end up with the same sense of achievement, but it sure would be a lot quicker and easier than years of lessons and practicing. Well, we're not there yet (and perhaps we never should be), but that sort of scenario is now a little closer to reality, thanks to research conducted at Boston University and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan.

The basic idea is this: using a technique known as decoded neurofeedback, or DecNef, people could be trained to alter their brain activity, so that it matched that of someone already possessing a certain skill.

Scientists at the two institutions used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe the visual cortex activity pattern of test subjects as they viewed striped circles placed in various orientations. The researchers then used DecNef to train the subjects to change their brain pattern, so that it more closely resembled a predetermined target pattern. This was done by presenting them with an image of a green circle, which got larger the closer they got to achieving the target pattern.

It was found that once subjects had matched that pattern repeatedly, their performance at a given visual task (discriminating between different orientations of the striped circles) improved, and stayed that way for some time. This approach even worked when the subjects weren't aware of what the visual task was that they were being trained for.

While the instant acquisition of complex skills, such as flying a helicopter as seen in The Matrix, might not be possible any time soon, the researchers believe that DecNef might also have therapeutic value, as people with mental disorders could be trained to match the brain activity patterns of healthy individuals.

Source: GizMag via ZeitNews.org

Yabi simplifies supercomputing tasks through a simple web-based workflow environment, essentially replacing the need for complex software programming with a neat, accessible interface.

The web-based application is designed, developed and maintained by the WA Centre of Excellence in Comparative Genomics (CCG), home of the iVEC@Murdoch supercomputer pod.

According to CCG Director Professor Matthew Bellgard, Yabi has the potential to change the way researchers approach scientific endeavours which typically require access to large scale computing and data storage resources.

“Typically, a PhD student in areas such as life science, marine science, atmospheric research and so forth has to learn how to program; they have to know how to install the analysis tools so they can then conduct their detailed data analysis on a supercomputer,” Professor Bellgard said.

“The Yabi system takes away that need for writing scripts and tools and turns the analytic procedures into a simpler drag and drop activity, where scientists can log in, drag tools in and chain them together to create workflows.

“Each of those tools can be running on supercomputers without the need for scientists to have to worry about any of the technical details. In this way scientists can access potentially multiple supercomputing resources in a seamless and transparent fashion via a simple web-based interface.”

Simplifying supercomputing is no small task, and the technologies required to create this kind of interface are fairly young.

“The idea of Yabi has been around for about 12 years,” Professor Bellgard said.

“We’ve been thinking about it for quite some time, but it’s only in the last five years that internet technologies have matured in such a way that we can then leverage them in order to implement a really robust system.

“The system is currently being accessed by scientists around the world and there are now deployments of the Yabi system around the country.”

The CCG works with researchers both to help them improve their Yabi uptake as well as to assist them analyse the massive amounts of results generated.

“They drive their own scientific questions but we can help them with experimental design and data analysis,” Professor Bellgard said.

“We are also working on a number of other open source software projects such as laboratory information management systems and rare disease registries.”

Researchers who use any kind of supercomputing in their work are encouraged to try Yabi – visit http://ccg.murdoch.edu.au/yabi .

Provided by Murdoch University

Source: PhysOrg via ZeitNews.org

Described as a “knowledge collider,” and now with a pledge of one billion euros from the European Union, the Living Earth Simulator is a new big data and supercomputing project that will attempt to uncover the underlying sociological and psychological laws that underpin human civilization. In the same way that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider smashes together protons to see what happens, the Living Earth Simulator (LES) will gather knowledge from a Planetary Nervous System (PNS — yes, really) to try to predict societal fluctuations such as political unrest, economic bubbles, disease epidemics, and so on.

Orchestrated by ICT, which is basically a consortium of preeminent scientists, computer science centers around the world, and high-power computing (HPC) installations, the Living Earth Simulator hopes to correlate huge amounts of data — including real-time sources such as Twitter and web news — and extant, but separate approaches currently being used by other institutions, into a big melting pot of information. To put it into scientific terms, the LES will analyze techno-socio-economic-environmental (!) systems. From this, FuturICT hopes to reveal the tacit agreements and hidden laws that actually govern society, rather than the explicit, far-removed-from-reality bills and acts that lawmakers inexorably enact.

The scale of the LES, when it’s complete, will be huge. It is hoped that supercomputing centers all over the world will chip in with CPU time, and data will be corralled from existing projects and a new Global Participatory Platform, which is basically open data on a worldwide scale. The project also has commercial backing from Microsoft Research, IBM, Yahoo Research, and others. All told, the system will create useful knowledge in the fields of energy, networks and communication, economics, crime and corruption, migration, health, and crisis management.

The timing of EU’s billion-euro grant is telling, too. As you probably know, the European Union is struggling to keep the plates spinning, and the LES, rather handily, will probably be the most accurate predictor of economic stability in the world. Beyond money, though, it is hoped that the LES and PNS can finally tell us why humans do things, like watch a specific TV show, buy a useless gadget, or start a revolution.

Looking at the larger picture, the Living Earth Simulator is really an admission that we know more about the physical universe than the social. We can predict with startling accuracy whether an asteroid will hit Earth, but we know scant little about how society might actually react to an extinction-level event. We plough billions of dollars into studying the effects and extent of climate change, but what if understood enough of the psychology and sociology behind human nature to actually change our behavior?

Source: FutureICT Homepage & FutureICT Documentary on Vimeo - via ExtremeTech

Dubbed "Sliding Hub," these prefabricated cubes join together to create a temporary housing solution for multiple situations.

In the event that emergency shelters are required, the modules can be packed and transported to any destination. On arrival, the modules are easily joined together, with the flexibility to house individuals, small groups or large numbers without limitation. Each module incorporates an insulation system suitable for all kinds of weather conditions. In addition, the temporary accommodation units provide a comfortable standard of living, important to natural disaster victims.

Constructed with steel reinforcements, numerous modules can be assembled together to create various sizes and shapes, whilst sliding them open creates large internal spaces. According to Aramu, the system can be configured 64 different ways, whilst clever interior furnishing units transform rooms into a bathroom, kitchen or living room within minutes.

Aramu envisioned the Sliding Hub project for rural conditions and nomadic communities, however the sleek design would also be suitable for an urban setting. It's not hard to imagine these pods being used for temporary offices, film set trailers, festival events, portable holiday accommodation or simply as a cost-effective housing solution.

Source: Inhabitat - via GizMag

"Israel was born out of Jewish Terrorism" Tzipi Livnis Father was a Terrorist" Astonishing claims in the House of Parliament. SIR Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, yesterday compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland.

During a Commons debate on the fighting in Gaza, he urged the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.

Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

He accused the Israeli government of seeking "conquest" and added: "

They are not simply war criminals, they are fools."

A video that sort of highlights a persons opinion on how the US Government is treating it's voters. Thoughts?

 Ron Paul is America's leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, sound money, and a pro-America foreign policy.

Anonymous is NOT your personal army.

Anonymous has no face, no race, and no origin. Anonymous is a force and as such, simply is.

Anonymous is not I, you, or we. Anonymous is all without name, blame, and restraint.

Anonymous cannot be hurt, damaged, or stopped. Anonymous grows at a rate that only itself can comprehend.

Anonymous has no leader, no organization. Anonymous is a wandering mass of both order and chaos.

Anonymous is here, Anonymous is now, Anonymous will always be.

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare is a novel by G. K. Chesterton, first published in 1908. The book is sometimes referred to as a metaphysical thriller.