quarta-feira, 28 de maio de 2014
Brain health
From Elizabeth Scott, M.S., your About.com Health Editor
When we think of things we can do to improve our health, we often turn the focus on our bodies more than our brains. However, brain health and mental sharpness are perhaps more important than any other type of fitness, and definitely deserve our focus. This newsletter brings resources to aid mental fitness, cognitive sharpness, and overall brain health. Enjoy!
--Elizabeth Scott
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Spontaneous thoughts are perceived to reveal meaningful self-insight
May 27 / 2014
Carnegie Mellon University
Scientists set out to determine how people perceive their own spontaneous thoughts and if those thoughts or intuitions have any influence over judgment. They found that spontaneous thoughts are perceived to provide potent self-insight and can influence judgment and decisions more than similar, more deliberate kinds of thinking -- even on important topics such as commitment to current romantic partners.
Spontaneous thoughts, intuitions, dreams and quick impressions. We all have these seemingly random thoughts popping into our minds on a daily basis. The question is what do we make of these unplanned, spur-of-the-moment thoughts? Do we view them as coincidental wanderings of a restless mind, or as revealing meaningful insight into ourselves?
A research team from Carnegie Mellon University and Harvard Business School set out to determine how people perceive their own spontaneous thoughts and if those thoughts or intuitions have any influence over judgment. Published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, their research found that spontaneous thoughts are perceived to provide potent self-insight and can influence judgment and decisions more than similar, more deliberate kinds of thinking -- even on important topics such as commitment to current romantic partners.
"We are aware of the output of spontaneous thoughts, but lack insight into the reasons why and processes by which they occurred. Rather than dismiss these seemingly random thoughts as meaningless, our research found that people believe, precisely because they are not controlled, that spontaneous thoughts reveal more meaningful insight into their own mind -- their beliefs, attitudes and preferences -- than similar, deliberate thoughts. As a consequence, spontaneous thoughts can have a more potent influence on judgment," said Carey K. Morewedge, lead author and associate professor of marketing in the Tepper School of Business with an additional appointment in the Dietrich College's Department of Social and Decision Sciences. "People often believe their intuitions, dreams and or random thoughts reveal more insight than the result of more effortful thinking and reasoning. This research helps to explain these curious beliefs."
For the study, Morewedge, CMU's Colleen E. Giblin and Harvard University's Michael I. Norton ran five studies. The first three were designed to test the hypothesis that the more spontaneous a thought is, the more it is believed to provide meaningful self-insight. Participants rated the extent to which different thought categories are spontaneous or controlled and the extent to which each provides self-insight; they recalled either a pleasant or unpleasant childhood event and evaluated the degree that the recollection would provide meaningful self-insight if it happened spontaneously or deliberately; and they generated thoughts about four strangers through a deliberative or spontaneous process and rated how much those thoughts provided them with valuable self-insight.
The results suggest that when people evaluate a particular thought, they not only consider its content, they are also influenced by their more general beliefs about different thought processes. Thoughts with the same content are judged to be more meaningful if they occurred through a spontaneous, uncontrolled process rather than a deliberate, controlled process. The effect was found across various kinds of thought and thought content, including thoughts about other people. This means that the content of spontaneous thought need not be entirely about the self in order for people to feel like they've gleaned meaningful self-insight.
The last two experiments extended the investigation to determine if the greater insight attributed to spontaneous thoughts leads them to have a greater impact on judgment. The researchers tested this first by having participants think about a love interest other than their present or most recent significant other spontaneously or deliberately, report the self-insight that the thought provided and then indicate their attraction toward that person. They found that those who spontaneously generated a thought of a love interest believed that thought revealed more self-insight and perceived their attraction to be stronger than the participants who identified a love interest with deliberate thinking.
Finally, to determine whether this greater influence would extend to both positive and negative spontaneous thoughts, participants recalled a positive or negative experience related to their current or most recent romantic relationship. Participants reported the extent to which the spontaneous and deliberate recollection of that memory would provide them with meaningful self-insight and increase or decrease the likelihood that they would end the relationship. The results showed that participants believed the recollection of a positive or negative experience with their current romantic partner would reveal more self-insight and have a greater influence on their commitment to that relationship if it was recalled spontaneously rather than deliberately.
"The perception that a thought popped into mind out of nowhere can lead people to overvalue their own insights. When considering a thought that came to mind spontaneously, it may be useful to ask yourself the following question: had the same thought come to mind after careful deliberation, would it seem just as meaningful? If you realize that your interpretation of a particular thought depends on whether it came to mind spontaneously, that's an indication that your beliefs about these different kinds of thoughts might be affecting your judgment," said Giblin, a doctoral student in CMU's Tepper School of Business.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Carnegie Mellon University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
- Carey K. Morewedge, Colleen E. Giblin, Michael I. Norton. The (perceived) meaning of spontaneous thoughts.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2014; DOI: 10.1037/a0036775
Explorer Moment of the Week
Solar Camel
Photograph by Paul Salopek
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Salopek is retracing on foot our ancestors’ migration out of Africa and across the globe. His 21,000-mile odyssey begins in Ethiopia and ends seven years later at the tip of South America.
Paul Salopek’s Out of Eden world walk is an exercise in slow journalism. Moving at the slow beat of his footsteps, Paul is engaging with the major stories of our time—from climate change to technological innovation, from mass migration to cultural survival—by walking alongside the people who inhabit them every day. As he traverses the globe from Africa to South America, he is revealing the texture of the lives of people he encounters: the nomads, villagers, traders, farmers, and fishermen who never make the news.
"Winter in the desert of Djibouti. The sun does not shine equally for all.
"By 9 a.m., the thermometer pegs 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius). I begin to stew in my sweat. The Afar guides, meanwhile, shiver under shirts, sweaters, scarves. Mohamed Youssef, a cameleer, zips himself inside a Tom Tailor brand parka from China. The only uncomplaining one is Madoita, the lead camel. He is both warmed and shaded by a $600 blanket of photovoltaic silicon cells. He is a belching, furry, ambulatory wall plug for my satellite phone. We take turns cleaning the dust from these cells with a cloth. A new chore on an ancient caravan trail: Wiping down your solar camel."
—Paul Salopek, National Geographic Fellow
Internet glossary of statistical terms
Persons unfamiliar with statistical analysis may find the entries easier to grasp if they are examined in the suggested learning order.
Physical activity helps maintain mobility in older adults
Older adults complete walking exercises at the University of Florida as part of the UF-led LIFE study. The study, released May 27, examined how physical activity affects the mobility of adults aged 70-89.
It's something we've all heard for years: Exercise can help keep older adults healthy. But now a study, the first of its kind to look at frail, older adults, proves that physical activity can help these people maintain their mobility and dodge physical disability.
A new University of Florida study shows daily moderate physical activity may mean the difference between seniors being able to keep up everyday activities or becoming housebound. In fact, moderate physical activity helped aging adults maintain their ability to walk at a rate 18 percent higher than older adults who did not exercise. "The very purpose of the study is to provide definitive evidence that physical activity can truly improve the independence of older adults," said principal investigator Marco Pahor, Ph.D., director of the UF's Institute on Aging.
What's more, moderate physical activity not only helped older adults maintain mobility but also helped prevent the occurrence of long-term mobility loss. Co-principal investigator Jack Guralnik, Ph.D., a professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said there was a 28 percent reduction in people permanently losing the ability to walk easily.
"The fact that we had an even bigger impact on persistent disability is very good," said Guralnik, who also holds a faculty position at UF. "It implies that a greater percentage of the adults who had physical activity intervention recovered when they did develop mobility disability."
The results will be published in the May issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association and will be presented on May 27 at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine in Orlando.
Researchers showed that prescribed daily physical activity can prevent older adults' loss of mobility, defined in the study as the ability to walk 400 meters, or about a quarter of a mile. Although 400 meters might sound like an arbitrary number, it's an important figure for older adults, researchers said.
"Four hundred meters is once around the track, or from the parking lot to the store, or two or three blocks around your neighborhood," Guralnik said. "It's an important distance in maintaining an independent life."
Called the Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders, or LIFE, study, the study took place across eight field centers. There were two Florida field center recruitment sites at the University of Florida and Jacksonville Brooks Rehabilitation as well as field centers at Northwestern University, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, the University of Pittsburgh, Stanford University, Tufts University, Wake Forest School of Medicine and Yale University.
The researchers recruited 1,635 sedentary men and women ages 70 to 89 for the study. The participants could walk a quarter mile within 15 minutes but were at risk of losing that ability. Low physical performance can be a predictor of early death and higher hospitalization and institutionalization rates, and patients with low physical performance are not often recruited to large studies, Pahor said.
"These are people who are patients we see every day. This is why this study is so important: It includes a population that is typically understudied," Pahor said.
The participants were randomly separated into two groups and followed for an average of 2.6 years. The first group of 818 walked 150 minutes per week and did strength, flexibility and balance training. They were monitored by two visits to field centers per week. The second group of 817 attended health education classes and performed stretching exercises. This phase of the study occurred between February 2010 and December 2013.
Staff members assessed study participants every six months, checking their ability to walk, their body weight, blood pressure and pulse rate, among other measurements. The staff was not told which participants were assigned to physical activity or to the education classes.
The study did turn up one unanticipated result: The number of people reporting hospitalizations in the physical activity group was slightly higher than in the education group, though the number was not statistically significant. The researchers think this is in part because the physical activity group had more frequent contact with research staff, possibly resulting in a higher reporting of hospitalizations. The physical activity could also have triggered underlying heart trouble and other health problems. Researchers plan to study this occurrence more closely, Pahor said.
"It's quite a vulnerable and high-risk population," Pahor said. "Both age and poor health were factors. We selected people who had low physical performance, which is a strong predictor for future morbidity, hospitalization, institutionalization and mortality."
Wendy Kohrt, Ph.D., professor of medicine in the division of geriatric medicine at the University of Colorado, helped review the scientific merit of the study before the launch of the main LIFE trial. She said the information produced by this study fills gaps in researchers' knowledge of the types of people enrolled in the study.
"As an exercise scientist, I believe this type of research is absolutely critical to establish scientific evidence on which to make recommendations for how lifestyle can beneficially influence health status," Kohrt said. "There is a general belief among the public and the scientific and medical communities that we know exercise is good for you, so why do we need to do more research in this area? However, we still do not know whether certain types or doses of exercise are better than others, particularly for specific health conditions or diseases. The LIFE trial demonstrated that a modest increase in physical activity has the potential to help older adults maintain functional independence."
Pahor and Guralnik said there is still a vast amount of data to unpack from the study, including looking at the effects of physical activity on the participants' emotional well-being. The research team also plans to determine how physical activity impacted the participants' physiological, social and biological factors.
Google Glass adaptation opens the universe to deaf students
Google Glass adaptation opens the universe to deaf students.
Ordinarily, deaf students are left in the dark when they visit a planetarium.
With the lights off, they can't see the ASL interpreter who narrates their tour of outer space. With the lights on, they can't see the constellations of stars projected overhead.
That's why a group at Brigham Young University launched the "Signglasses" project. Professor Mike Jones and his students have developed a system to project the sign language narration onto several types of glasses -- including Google Glass.
The project is personal for Tyler Foulger and a few other student researchers because they were born deaf.
"My favorite part of the project is conducting experiments with deaf children in the planetarium," Tyler wrote. "They get to try on the glasses and watch a movie with an interpreter on the screen of the glasses. They're always thrilled and intrigued with what they've experienced. It makes me feel like what we are doing is worthwhile."
By sheer coincidence, the only two deaf students to ever take Professor Jones' computer science class -- Kei Ikeda and David Hampton -- signed up just as the National Science Foundation funded Jones' signglasses research.
"Having a group of students who are fluent in sign language here at the university has been huge," Jones said. "We got connected into that community of fluent sign language students and that opened a lot of doors for us."
The BYU team tests the system during field trip visits by high school students at Jean Messieu School for the Deaf. One finding from the tests is that the signer should be displayed in the center of one lens. That surprised the researchers, who assumed there would be a preference to have video displayed at the top, like the way Google Glass normally does it. Deaf participants preferred to look straight through the signer when they returned their focus to the planetarium show.
The potential for this technology goes beyond planetarium shows. The team is also working with researchers at Georgia Tech to explore signglasses as a literacy tool.
"One idea is when you're reading a book and come across a word that you don't understand, you point at it, push a button to take a picture, some software figures out what word you're pointing at and then sends the word to a dictionary and the dictionary sends a video definition back," Jones said.
Jones will publish the full results of their research in June at Interaction Design and Children. But his favorite part of the project happens after the test shows end and the high school students just get to talk with his BYU students.
"They see deaf university students succeeding and doing cool stuff," Jones said. "It's really rewarding."
The "cool stuff" the BYU students do comes from a variety of fields. Tyler is certified to use the university's MRI lab and plans to attend medical school. Kei is from Japan, knows four languages and belongs to BYU's nationally-acclaimed animation program.
And though Amber Hatch can hear, this project has furthered her ambitions to become a psychiatrist serving deaf clients.
"This project has also allowed me to utilize my ASL knowledge and to communicate with the deaf community in a way I never really thought possible for me," Hatch said. "It's an amazing project and I am excited to see where it will go in the next year."
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Brigham Young University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Google Using Machine Learning to Boost Data Center Efficiency
by Rich Miller on May 28, 2014
Google is using machine learning and artificial intelligence to wring even more efficiency out of its mighty data centers.
In a presentation today at Data Centers Europe 2014, Google’s Joe Kava said the company has begun using a neural network to analyze the oceans of data it collects about its server farms and to recommend ways to improve them. Kava is the Internet giant’s vice president of data centers.
In effect, Google has built a computer that knows more about its data centers than even the company’s engineers. The humans remain in charge, but Kava said the use of neural networks will allow Google to reach new frontiers in efficiency in its server farms, moving beyond what its engineers can see and analyze.
Google already operates some of the most efficient data centers on earth. Using artificial intelligence will allow Google to peer into the future and model how its data centers will perform in thousands of scenarios.
In early usage, the neural network has been able to predict Google’s Power Usage Effectiveness with 99.96 percent accuracy. Its recommendations have led to efficiency gains that appear small, but can lead to major cost savings when applied across a data center housing tens of thousands of servers.
Why turn to machine learning and neural networks? The primary reason is the growing complexity of data centers, a challenge for Google, which uses sensors to collect hundreds of millions of data points about its infrastructure and its energy use.
“In a dynamic environment like a data center, it can be difficult for humans to see how all of the variables interact with each other,” said Kava. “We’ve been at this (data center optimization) for a long time. All of the obvious best practices have already been implemented, and you really have to look beyond that.”
Enter Google’s ‘Boy Genius’
Google’s neural network was created by Jim Gao, an engineer whose colleagues have given him the nickname “Boy Genius” for his prowess analyzing large datasets. Gao had been doing cooling analysis using computational fluid dynamics, which uses monitoring data to create a 3D model of airflow within a server room.
Gao thought it was possible to create a model that tracks a broader set of variables, including IT load, weather conditions, and the operations of the cooling towers, water pumps and heat exchangers that keep Google’s servers cool.
“One thing computers are good at is seeing the story in the data, so Jim took the information we gather in the course of our daily operations and ran it through a model to help us make sense of complex interactions that his team may not otherwise have noticed,” Kava said. “After some trial and error, Jim’s models are now 99.96% accurate in predicting PUE under a given set of conditions, which then helps him find new ways to optimize our operations. Those small tweaks add up to significant savings in both energy and money.”
A graph showing how the projections by Google’s neural network tool aligned with actual PUE readings. Click for larger image.
How it Works
Gao began working on the machine learning initiative as a “20 percent project,” a Google tradition of allowing employees to spend a chunk of their work time exploring innovations beyond their specific work duties. Gao wasn’t yet an expert in artificial intelligence. To learn the fine points of machine learning, he took a course from Stanford University Professor Andrew Ng.
Neural networks mimic how the human brain works, allowing computers to adapt and “learn” tasks without being explicitly programmed for them. Google’s search engine is often cited as an example of this type of machine learning, which is also a key research focus at the company.
“The model is nothing more than series of differential calculus equations,” Kava explained. “But you need to understand the math. The model begins to learn about the interactions between these variables.”
Gao’s first task was crunching the numbers to identify the factors that had the largest impact on energy efficiency of Google’s data centers, as measured by PUE. He narrowed the list down to 19 variables and then designed the neural network, a machine learning system that can analyze large datasets to recognize patterns.
“The sheer number of possible equipment combinations and their setpoint values makes it difficult to determine where the optimal efficiency lies,” Gao writes in the white paper on his initiative. “In a live DC, it is possible to meet the target setpoints through many possible combinations of hardware (mechanical and electrical equipment) and software (control strategies and setpoints). Testing each and every feature combination to maximize efficiency would be unfeasible given time constraints, frequent fluctuations in the IT load and weather conditions, as well as the need to maintain a stable DC environment.”
This diagram illustrates the complexity of analyzing the many variables that factor into a data center PUE calculation, which can be more closely analyzed using artifical intelligence.
Runs On a Single Server
As for hardware, the machine learning doesn’t require unusual computing horsepower, according to Kava, who says it runs on a single server and could even work on a high-end desktop.
The system was put to work inside several Google data centers. The machine learning tool was able to suggest several changes that yield incremental improvements in PUE, including refinements in data center load migrations during upgrades of power infrastructure, and small changes in the water temperature across several components of the chiller system.
“Actual testing on Google (data centers) indicates that machine learning is an effective method of using existing sensor data to model DC energy efficiency and can yield significant cost savings,” Gao writes.
The Machines Aren’t Taking Over
Kava said that the tool may help Google run simulations and refine future designs. But not to worry — Google’s data centers won’t become self-aware anytime soon. While the company is keen on automation, and has recently been acquiring robotics firms, the new machine learning tools won’t be taking over the management of any of its data centers.
“You still need humans to make good judgments about these things,” said Kava. “I still want our engineers to review the recommendations.”
The neural networks’ biggest benefits may be seen in the way Google builds its server farms in years to come. “I can envision using this during the data center design cycle,” said Kava. “You can use it as a forward-looking tool to test design changes and innovations. I know that we’re going to find more use cases.”
Google is sharing its approach to machine learning in Gao’s white paper, in the hopes that other hyperscale data center operators may be able to develop similar tools.
“This isn’t something that only Google or only Jim Gao can do,” said Kava. “I would love to see this type of analysis tool used more widely. I think the industry can benefit from it. It’s a great tool for being as efficient as possible.”
"Can humans regrow fingers?"
When a hobby-store owner in Cincinnati sliced off his fingertip in 2005 while showing a customer why the motor on his model plane was dangerous, he went to the emergency room without the missing tip. He couldn't find it anywhere. The doctor bandaged the wound and recommended a skin graft to cover the top of his right-middle stub for cosmetic purposes, since nothing could be done to rebuild the finger.
Months later, he had regrown it, tissue, nerves, skin, fingernail and all.
This particular hobbyist happened to have a brother in the tissue-regeneration business, who told him to forego the skin graft and instead apply a powdered extract taken from pig's bladder to the raw finger tip. The extract, called extracellular matrix, lays the framework that cells use to generate any given body part. It's like a cellular scaffolding, and all animals have it. It holds the signals that direct cells to divide, differentiate and build themselves into a specific form.
Extracellular matrix is a component of body tissue that functions outside of the body's cells (thus the "extracellular" designation). It's made up mostly of collagen, a type of protein. So extracellular matrix extracted from the bladder of a pig does not actually have any of the pig's cells in it.
In human fetuses, the substance works in concert with stem cells to grow and regrow everything from heart aortas to toes. Fetuses can regrow almost anything that gets damaged while in the womb. Scientists have long believed that when a fetus reaches full development, this extracellular matrix stops functioning. But with evidence that applying extracellular matrix from a pig can initiate certain types of regeneration in humans, they're wondering if they can trigger human extracellular matrix to start working again. After all, according to regeneration researcher Dr. Stephen Badylak of the University of Pittsburgh, children up to the age of two have been known to regrow fingertips with no outside help.
Pig-extracted extracellular matrix is already used by veterinarians to help horses repair torn ligaments. In people, it's used to treat ulcers, closing a hole in the tissue that lines the stomach. It employs an entirely different process than the typical mammalian healing mechanism. Let's take the case of a person who loses the tip of a finger. When the finger is severed, the cells die, and their contents seep into the surrounding tissue. This alerts the immune system to a problem. The immune system's response to cell death is inflammation and scar tissue. The formation of scar tissue prevents any future cellular development in the area. That's why scars last -- cells are prevented from doing a repair job on that skin.
But when extracellular matrix is applied to a wound, it doesn't trigger an immune response. Instead, when it begins to break down into surrounding tissue, it causes the cells in that tissue to start repairing the damage the way they would in a developing fetus (or a salamander that loses a limb) -- they divide and rebuild, creating new, normal tissue, not scar tissue.
Combined with developments in stem-cell research, this extracellular matrix may work miracles in the area of regeneration science. As of early 2007, testing of the effects of extracellular matrix is being carried out on a military base in Texas. Scientists are using the powdered pig extract on Iraq War veterans whose hands were damaged in the war. They're opening the wounds and applying the component to finger stubs in an attempt to regrow them. The researchers conducting the study say they don't expect to regrow the entire finger, but are hoping to regrow enough of a finger to allow for some utility. They don't believe it will regenerate bone, but nothing is for sure right now. That man in Cincinnati had only lost his finger tip, at the lower part of the nail; he hadn't lost the entire finger.
Help from pigs aside, many wonder if the extracellular matrix in humans is unable to function or is simply in a latent state, awaiting some sort of trigger. Do humans in fact have the same regenerative capacity as salamanders, which can regrow an entire limb, and researchers just haven't found a way to activate the mechanism? It's not just amphibians that can regrow body parts: Deer regularly regrow lost antlers, composed of bone, tissue, cartilage and skin -- the same things that make up human limbs. Could there possibly be an internal switch that would reactivate the regeneration capacity that humans possess in the womb? Regenerative medicine is actively pursuing answers to these questions. And in the meantime, if applying powdered pig extract to a snipped finger can in fact facilitate regrowth, the possibilities for medicine are startling. Spinal injuries, amputated limbs and damaged organs could all be coaxed back into a complete, healthy state if science finds the right combination of treatments.
source www.howstuffwork.com
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