Cell Biology

Plumbing 101: Building the body’s tubes and branches – Knowable Magazine

At first glance, our bodies seem impossibly complex, with dozens of organs built to precise specifications in exactly the right places. It seems almost miraculous that all this could develop automatically from a single fertilized egg.

But look a little closer and youll see that evolution, the master architect, has been economical with that complexity, relying on the same components again and again in different contexts. Take tubes, for example. Were basically a bag of tubes, says Celeste Nelson, a developmental bioengineer at Princeton University. We have a tube that goes from our mouth to our rear end. Our heart is a tube. Our kidneys are tubes. So, too, are lungs, pancreas, blood vessels and more most of them intricate systems of tubes with many branches.

Branching tubes appear so often because they are the best solution to a key problem that organisms face as they get bigger: As an animal grows, its volume goes up faster than its surface area. That simple physical relationship means that the logistical challenges of supplying oxygen and nutrients, and removing waste products all of which ultimately depend on diffusion through the surfaces of cells get more daunting with size.

But a dense forest of branching tubes increases the available surface area enormously. They allow us to be big, says Jamie Davies, a developmental biologist at the University of Edinburgh.

In recent years, Davies, Nelson and a few other developmental biologists have made great progress in understanding how the body makes tubes and branches in a variety of organs. Though the details usually vary from one organ to the next, some basic principles are beginning to emerge, as outlined in an article coauthored by Nelson in the Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering. So far, it looks like there are only a few ways to make a tube, only a few ways to control how it branches, and only a few ways to regulate when branching should stop.

At the most general level, its not surprising that development is based on a few simple processes. Every tissue is made of cells, and those cells have only limited options to choose among, such as moving (individually or en masse), changing shape, dividing or undergoing self-destruction. I normally tell my students that about 90 percent of what we make we can account for with only about a dozen actions, Davies says.

And once evolution forged a few ways to create tubes and branches (the two go together, more often than not), it makes parsimonious sense that bodies would fall back on that same handful of methods again and again.

Start with a dimple, then extend: Many tubes start from a flat sheet of tissue that develops dimples, or pits. Its likely that these pits originate when a ring of contractile protein molecules scrunches up on one face of the sheet, causing that face to cup as the opposite face bulges outward.

In organs like lungs, mammary glands and kidneys, this initial pit can then get deeper, like dough as a finger pushes into it, until the pit deepens so much it becomes more like an extending tube. In one well-studied example, the ducts of the mammary glands, each growing duct has an unruly mob of cells at its tip. The cells in this mob respond to the hormones of puberty by dividing rapidly. As they pioneer the advance into new territory, some cells insert themselves into the lining of the tube, pushing the mob forward as the tube lengthens. Continued cell division keeps generating new cells that will in turn go on to line the tube.

The cool thing about this mechanism is that puberty says Go, and as long as hormones are still available, youre going to keep making cells, and theyre going to keep inserting, says Andrew Ewald, a developmental cell biologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who led the work. In a mouse, this might be an inch of elongation. In a blue whale, youre talking about yards. You just leave the motor running longer.

Tubes form within the body in a variety of ways: by rolling up a single cell (used in tiny blood vessels called capillaries); by rolling up a sheet of cells (in making the spinal cord); by forming a dimple in a sheet of cells that deepens into a tube; or by cells in the center of a rod dying or migrating to leave a hollow inside the rod. The latter two processes are most common in building bodies.

Hollow out a rod: Cells in the interior of a solid rod die or release their contacts with one another to allow a space to form between them. The mammalian vagina forms by this sort of hollowing, as do the ducts of the pancreas, and probably the salivary glands.

Roll up, roll up: Still other tubes especially the tiniest capillaries of the circulatory system form when a single elongated cell rolls up to enclose a space. And the tube that will go on to form the nervous system arises from a much larger roll-up, in which two ridges of tissue atop the early embryo bend toward each other, like two breaking waves, until they meet in the middle and fuse, leaving a tube the barrel of the waves, in essence enclosed beneath a cover of cells.

Almost all the bodys tubes form in one of these ways. And theres another level where developing organs rely repeatedly on a small set of tricks and techniques: the construction of elaborate networks of branches from all those tubes.

Branches generally form either when a single growing tip encounters two different zones of attraction and sends a tip in each direction, or when something physically restricts the tips progression. In the lung, for example, branching occurs when a band of smooth muscle fibers forms across the tip of the growing tube, creating a barrier and forcing growth to both sides.

The developing embryo must also manage the spatial growth of branching tubes so that, for example, the lung fills with just the right amount of tiny, branched airways or the circulatory system delivers capillaries to every part of the body, all without overcrowding or gaps. Researchers are only beginning to understand this control process, although a few key points are emerging.

One simple management strategy is for tubes to branch if space is available and stop when they get crowded. That straightforward system seems to apply for the mammary glands, which are little more than masses of branching milk ducts embedded in a fatty matrix.

To better understand the process, Ben Simons, a developmental biologist at the University of Cambridge, and his colleagues examined preserved mouse mammaries in meticulous detail and mapped out where, and in what context, each individual branching event must have taken place to give rise to the final structure they saw.

They found that each tube continued to grow and branch only if it was not surrounded by other tubes. Actively growing tips formed a front at the edges of the mammary, advancing into new territory, but any new tips that turned inward, to territory already colonized, would shut down. These rules, played out over time, led the ducts to fill in the available space.

This animation illustrates the random branching that occurs in the developing mammary gland as its ducts are formed. The red dots are the tips of actively growing tubes that shut down their growth when they bump into another tube (or in this case, the boundary of the animation space).

CREDIT: E. HANNEZO & B. SIMONS / CELL 2017

The molecular signals that govern this behavior have not been fully worked out, though presumably some sort of inhibition is involved. Simons suspects that the same signaling system may go awry in breast cancer, since the early stages of that disease are characterized by extra branching. Its interesting to ask how tumors reactivate that branching program, and how come it doesnt terminate, he says and hes actively working to understand this.

This system of branching to fill space has the virtue of simplicity, Simons adds. Everything is local. The cells only have to sense whats happening in their neighborhood, and it doesnt require any memory. Cells dont have to remember what decision they made way back when.

But the downside is that the gland doesnt always fill the space perfectly. Occasionally, it leaves gaps in the interior ones that can no longer be filled because the growing tips are now all out at the periphery.

The pancreas also uses local rules to build a branched structure, but by a totally different route. The organ starts its life as a mass of cells that buds from the tube that forms the gut. Gradually, holes begin to appear in the mass, and these holes eventually fuse to create an interconnected meshwork of passages. It doesnt look like branches initially it looks like a net, or a road network in a city, says Anne Grapin-Botton, a developmental biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. But the process isnt done yet.

CREDIT: PROF. R. BELLAIRS

One of the most crucial tube-forming moments in embryo development is the rolling up, then fusion, of the long neural tube that will go on to form our brains and spinal cords. Yet as a mechanism, its also notoriously sloppy. Why execute a process that's so important in such a loosey-goosey manner?

No one knows why the neural tube forms in this unusual way, but it is known that the method is shared by at least one other tube in the body the urethra in the penis of male mammals. Both those tubes sometimes fail to close properly, leading to conditions known as spina bifida for the neural tube and hypospadias when the urethra opens on the underside of the penis instead of at the tip.

The error-prone nature of both may hold a clue, says developmental biologist Jamie Davies of the University of Edinburgh. Davies speculates that those two tubes would grow too slowly if they formed in other ways, and might not navigate through the body accurately enough. The risk of poor closure, he suggests, is preferable to the risk of a tube routing itself to the wrong spot.

Bob Holmes

The passages initially are tiny. As the cells that line them begin to secrete their fluids into the open spaces, though, Grapin-Botton hypothesizes that the channels with higher flow rates begin to widen, and those with low flow rates narrow. When she simulates this process using the same mathematical equations that describe how rivers shift from braided rivulets to channels with branching tributaries, she gets a pattern matching that of a real pancreas. But she has not yet observed this flow-related adjustment in a living pancreas.

Such a process has an element of randomness, and that is exactly what anatomists see: Every pancreas has its own branching pattern even to the extent that some people have two ducts draining the pancreas, while others have just one. There is no primary design in the pancreas, as far as we know, says Grapin-Botton. What guarantees the reproducibility is the feedback from the flow. The salivary glands and perhaps the tear glands of the eyes may develop their branching networks in the same way, she says.

But not every organ can tolerate the little imperfections that come with this sort of random space-filling. Its easy to imagine, for example, that an animal might need every bit of its potential lung capacity when fleeing a predator, so unfilled spaces could prove lethal. Not surprisingly, then, evolution has shaped a more precise developmental program for the lungs.

Like the pancreas, the mammalian lung begins as a tube-shaped outpocketing again, off the embryonic gut. It then branches into two tubes, and each of those goes on to branch again and again, many times, until the lung is filled with millions of tiny airways. Detailed analyses of mouse lungs suggest that the first 15 of these cycles of branching occur in the same location in every lung, so these branchings must be following a preset plan, Nelson says. After that, the lung switches to a space-filling strategy, so that the final lung conforms to the space available in the chest cavity even if other organs take more or less space than usual.

Even more strikingly, researchers can put embryonic lungs into artificial chambers, and the lungs grow to conform to the space of those, too. You can make cubic lungs or cylindrical lungs, Nelson says.

This two-stage branching strategy might deliver the best of both worlds, Nelson adds. The early hardwired branches ensure a basic structure that fills the whole chest cavity, and the later space-filling branches finish the detailing. From a design perspective, it makes a lot of sense, she says. As an engineer, I love that. But we dont really know how that happens.

Our bodies are full of tubes, most of them branched. Here are some of the main ones.

Some hints are starting to emerge, however. Those early, pre-programmed branches depend on a molecule called FGF10, a growth factor that helps orchestrate development by carrying signals from one cell to another. In mouse embryos genetically engineered to lack FGF10, lung passages lengthen but dont branch. No one knows exactly how FGF10 determines the location of branch points, but many researchers lean toward an explanation first proposed by the mathematician Alan Turing more than half a century ago. Turing showed that under certain conditions, signaling molecules that diffuse freely among cells can spontaneously form regular spatial patterns, even in the absence of any external cue.

Mathematical simulations by Dagmar Iber, a computational biologist at ETH Zurich, and her colleagues have shown that such Turing patterns could indeed cause the regular branching patterns seen in the lung. Ibers team has also shown that the signaling pathways used by real lung cells meet the conditions necessary for Turing patterns to form, though they have not yet demonstrated that this mechanism does indeed direct the branching of a living embryonic lung.

A similar Turing-like organizing principle seems to be at work in another branched organ, the urine-collecting ducts of the kidney. There, too, researchers have found a highly predictable pattern governing early branches, also directed by a key signaling molecule but the kidneys use a different one, called GDNF.

Much remains unknown about branching in these organs. In the case of the lungs, for example, researchers have known since the 1990s that the size of each successive branch within the organ fits a fractal pattern in which the volume of each length of tube is equal to the volume of the two daughter tubes that it gives rise to. This allows air pressure to remain constant as air is drawn in and out of the airways but air pressure itself cannot help shape this pattern, which arises long before the lung is actually used. When the baby takes its first breath, it needs to have a perfect lung, Iber says. How does nature manage to arrive at that architecture?

This video shows the growing tip of a tube (milk duct) in the mammary gland of a mouse, growing toward the upper left. One single cell of the tip is labeled green. Initially, the green cell is migrating forward. It uses dynamic protrusions to push past neighboring cells and move in the direction the tube is growing. Then, at the 6-second point in the movie, the green cell stops migrating and inserts itself stably into the wall of the growing tube.

CREDIT:A.J. EWALDET AL / JOURNAL OF CELL SCIENCE2012, REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION. DOI: 10.1242/JCS.096875

Yet another variation on the programmed-then-local-control theme plays out in the blood vessels of the body. Here, too, the developing embryo needs to ensure that a basic framework of major blood vessels is reliably in place. The first and most important thing is to get a vessel to every important part of the body. There, you have to hardwire it, says Markus Affolter, a developmental biologist at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, Switzerland.

But once that basic scaffold is in place, the embryo switches to a supply-and-demand system. Tissues that find themselves short of oxygen send out a signal, a molecule known as VEGF, which prompts existing blood vessels to sprout new branches that grow toward the oxygen-starved area. Once the new blood vessels begin delivering oxygen, VEGF secretion drops off, and no further vessels sprout. Eventually, the newly created vessels with high blood flow stabilize, while those with minimal blood flow are pruned away, and the network of blood vessels settles into a stable, efficient configuration.

Developmental biologists are encouraged by these common themes in the genesis of tubes and branches. We wouldnt want to claim that all branching processes are the same that would be much too strong, Simons says. But we think there is a conservation of principles. That doesnt mean that the molecular underpinnings are the same, but the rules are.

Where possible, it seems, evolution has usually chosen relatively local controls to determine where and when branches are made as when mammary ducts keep branching until they bump into a boundary, or when blood vessels grow toward cells starved of oxygen. Its neater in terms of evolvability to have these simple programs that you run over and over, Davies says.

But when the system needs to meet more stringent specifications as when the early embryo needs to guarantee that blood vessels serve every organ it looks as though evolution opted to pay the higher costs for a more precise, preordained script.

And even when different organs implement the same strategy, the particular molecular tools they use in each case can differ. The devil is in the details, and the details are different from organ to organ, says Nelson. I think thats beautiful.

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Plumbing 101: Building the body's tubes and branches - Knowable Magazine

Cell Biology

The second most popular oil in the world is a health disaster, study suggests – The New Daily

Soybean oil, the second most important oil in the world and by far the most widely produced and consumed edible oil in the US is probably not healthy for human consumption.

A 2015 study found a diet high in soybean oil causes more obesity and diabetes than a diet high in fructose, a sugar commonly found in soft drinks and processed foods.

New research shows soybean oil causes genetic changes in the brain, leading scientists to suspect it may be associated with neurological conditions like autism, Alzheimers disease, anxiety and depression.

Both studies came from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) and involved experiments on mice, and the results cant be meaningfully asserted as evidence of human vulnerability.

The authors acknowledge this limitation, but theyre urging consumers to limit their amount of soy oil intake anyway.

Male mice were fed a series of four diets that contained 40 per cent fat, similar to what Americans consume.

Diet one: Coconut oil, which consists primarily of saturated fat.

Diet two: About half of the coconut oil was replaced with soybean oil, which contains primarily polyunsaturated fats and is a main ingredient in vegetable oil.

The researchers note that the second diet corresponded with roughly the amount of soybean oil Americans currently consume.

Diet three: Coconut oil with added fructose.

Diet four: Coconut and soybean oils, with added fructose.

All four diets contained the same number of calories and there was no significant difference in the amount of food eaten by the mice on the diets.

This allowed the researchers to study the effects of the different oils and fructose in the context of a constant caloric intake.

According to a prepared statement from the university, compared to mice on the high coconut oil diet, mice on the high soybean oil diet showed increased weight gain, larger fat deposits, a fatty liver with signs of injury, diabetes and insulin resistance, all of which are part of the Metabolic Syndrome.

Fructose in the diet had less severe metabolic effects than soybean oil although it did cause more negative effects in the kidney and a marked increase in prolapsed rectums, a symptom of inflammatory bowel disease that like obesity is on the rise.

The mice on the soybean oil-enriched diet gained almost 25 per cent more weight than the mice on the coconut oil diet and 9 per cent more weight than those on the fructose-enriched diet.

Male mice were fed three diets: Coconut oil, soybean oil and genetically modified soybean oil, engineered to be low in linoleic acid (a 2017 study found it induced less obesity and insulin resistance, but was harmful to liver function).

The scientists found that the soybeans, modified and naturally grown, had pronounced effects on the hypothalamus, which regulates body weight via your metabolism, maintains body temperature, is critical for reproduction and physical growth as well as a bodys response to stress.

The researchers determined a number of genes in mice fed soybean oil were not functioning correctly.

One such gene produces the love hormone, oxytocin. In soybean oil-fed mice, levels of oxytocin in the hypothalamus went down.

(Coconut oil, which contains saturated fats, produced very few changes in the hypothalamic genes.)

The research team discovered roughly 100 other genes also affected by the soybean oil diet.

They believe this discovery could have ramifications not just for energy metabolism, but also for proper brain function and diseases such as autism or Parkinsons disease.

They were careful to make the point that there is no proof the oil causes these diseases.

They also advised that their findings only apply to soybean oil and not to other soy products or to other vegetable oils.

Do not throw out your tofu, soy milk, edamame or soy sauce, said Dr Frances Sladek, a UCR toxicologist, professor of cell biology and corresponding author.

Many soy products only contain small amounts of the oil, and large amounts of healthful compounds such as essential fatty acids and proteins.

The research team has not yet isolated which chemicals in the oil are responsible for the changes they found in the hypothalamus a problem they intend to address in future research.

This could help design healthier dietary oils in the future, said Dr Poonam Jot Deol, an assistant project scientist in Sladeks laboratory and first author on the study.

The take away: If theres one message I want people to take away, its this: Reduce consumption of soybean oil In all likelihood its not healthy for humans.

But according to a market report, the low cost, easy availability and eco-friendly nature of soybean oil has further facilitated its use in various sectors such as food, industrial and feed.

Demand is expected to continue to grow.

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The second most popular oil in the world is a health disaster, study suggests - The New Daily

Human Behavior

What is quantum cognition? Physics theory could predict human behavior. – Livescience.com

The same fundamental platform that allows Schrdinger's cat to be both alive and dead, and also means two particles can "speak to each other" even across a galaxy's distance, could help to explain perhaps the most mysterious phenomena: human behavior.

Quantum physics and human psychology may seem completely unrelated, but some scientists think the two fields overlap in interesting ways. Both disciplines attempt to predict how unruly systems might behave in the future. The difference is that one field aims to understand the fundamental nature of physical particles, while the other attempts to explain human nature along with its inherent fallacies.

"Cognitive scientists found that there are many 'irrational' human behaviors," Xiaochu Zhang, a biophysicist and neuroscientist at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, told Live Science in an email. Classical theories of decision-making attempt to predict what choice a person will make given certain parameters, but fallible humans don't always behave as expected. Recent research suggests that these lapses in logic "can be well explained by quantum probability theory," Zhang said.

Related: Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings

Zhang stands among the proponents of so-called quantum cognition. In a new study published Jan. 20 in the journal Nature Human Behavior, he and his colleagues investigated how concepts borrowed from quantum mechanics can help psychologists better predict human decision-making. While recording what decisions people made on a well-known psychology task, the team also monitored the participants' brain activity. The scans highlighted specific brain regions that may be involved in quantum-like thought processes.

The study is "the first to support the idea of quantum cognition at the neural level," Zhang said.

Cool now what does that really mean?

Quantum mechanics describes the behavior of the tiny particles that make up all matter in the universe, namely atoms and their subatomic components. One central tenet of the theory suggests a great deal of uncertainty in this world of the very small, something not seen at larger scales. For instance, in the big world, one can know where a train is on its route and how fast it's traveling, and given this data, one could predict when that train should arrive at the next station.

Now, swap out the train for an electron, and your predictive power disappears you can't know the exact location and momentum of a given electron, but you could calculate the probability that the particle may appear in a certain spot, traveling at a particular rate. In this way, you could gain a hazy idea of what the electron might be up to.

Just as uncertainty pervades the subatomic world, it also seeps into our decision-making process, whether we're debating which new series to binge-watch or casting our vote in a presidential election. Here's where quantum mechanics comes in. Unlike classical theories of decision-making, the quantum world makes room for a certain degree of uncertainty.

Related: The Funniest Theories in Physics

Classical psychology theories rest on the idea that people make decisions in order to maximize "rewards" and minimize "punishments" in other words, to ensure their actions result in more positive outcomes than negative consequences. This logic, known as "reinforcement learning," falls in line with Pavlonian conditioning, wherein people learn to predict the consequences of their actions based on past experiences, according to a 2009 report in the Journal of Mathematical Psychology.

If truly constrained by this framework, humans would consistently weigh the objective values of two options before choosing between them. But in reality, people don't always work that way; their subjective feelings about a situation undermine their ability to make objective decisions.

Consider an example:

Imagine you're placing bets on whether a tossed coin will land on heads or tails. Heads gets you $200, tails costs you $100, and you can choose to toss the coin twice. When placed in this scenario, most people choose to take the bet twice regardless of whether the initial throw results in a win or a loss, according to a study published in 1992 in the journal Cognitive Psychology. Presumably, winners bet a second time because they stand to gain money no matter what, while losers bet in attempt to recover their losses, and then some. However, if players aren't allowed to know the result of the first coin flip, they rarely make the second gamble.

When known, the first flip does not sway the choice that follows, but when unknown, it makes all the difference. This paradox does not fit within the framework of classical reinforcement learning, which predicts that the objective choice should always be the same. In contrast, quantum mechanics takes uncertainty into account and actually predicts this odd outcome.

"One could say that the 'quantum-based' model of decision-making refers essentially to the use of quantum probability in the area of cognition," Emmanuel Haven and Andrei Khrennikov, co-authors of the textbook "Quantum Social Science" (Cambridge University Press, 2013), told Live Science in an email.

Related: The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics

Just as a particular electron might be here or there at a given moment, quantum mechanics assumes that the first coin toss resulted in both a win and a loss, simultaneously. (In other words, in the famous thought experiment, Schrdinger's cat is both alive and dead.) While caught in this ambiguous state, known as "superposition," an individual's final choice is unknown and unpredictable. Quantum mechanics also acknowledges that people's beliefs about the outcome of a given decision whether it will be good or bad often reflect what their final choice ends up being. In this way, people's beliefs interact, or become "entangled," with their eventual action.

Subatomic particles can likewise become entangled and influence each other's behavior even when separated by great distances. For instance, measuring the behavior of a particle located in Japan would alter the behavior of its entangled partner in the United States. In psychology, a similar analogy can be drawn between beliefs and behaviors. "It is precisely this interaction," or state of entanglement, "which influences the measurement outcome," Haven and Khrennikov said. The measurement outcome, in this case, refers to the final choice an individual makes. "This can be precisely formulated with the aid of quantum probability."

Scientists can mathematically model this entangled state of superposition in which two particles affect each other even if theyre separated by a large distance as demonstrated in a 2007 report published by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. And remarkably, the final formula accurately predicts the paradoxical outcome of the coin toss paradigm. "The lapse in logic can be better explained by using the quantum-based approach," Haven and Khrennikov noted.

In their new study, Zhang and his colleagues pitted two quantum-based models of decision-making against 12 classical psychology models to see which best predicted human behavior during a psychological task. The experiment, known as the Iowa Gambling Task, is designed to evaluate people's ability to learn from mistakes and adjust their decision-making strategy over time.

In the task, participants draw from four decks of cards. Each card either earns the player money or costs them money, and the object of the game is to earn as much money as possible. The catch lies in how each deck of cards is stacked. Drawing from one deck may earn a player large sums of money in the short term, but it will cost them far more cash by the end of the game. Other decks deliver smaller sums of money in the short-term, but fewer penalties overall. Through game play, winners learn to mostly draw from the "slow and steady" decks, while losers draw from the decks that earn them quick cash and steep penalties.

Historically, those with drug addictions or brain damage perform worse on the Iowa Gambling Task than healthy participants, which suggests that their condition somehow impairs decision-making abilities, as highlighted in a study published in 2014 in the journal Applied Neuropsychology: Child. This pattern held true in Zhang's experiment, which included about 60 healthy participants and 40 who were addicted to nicotine.

The two quantum models made similar predictions to the most accurate among the classical models, the authors noted. "Although the [quantum] models did not overwhelmingly outperform the [classical] ... one should be aware that the [quantum reinforcement learning] framework is still in its infancy and undoubtedly deserves additional studies," they added.

Related: 10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain.

To bolster the value of their study, the team took brain scans of each participant as they completed the Iowa Gambling Task. In doing so, the authors attempted to peek at what was happening inside the brain as participants learned and adjusted their game-play strategy over time. Outputs generated by the quantum model predicted how this learning process would unfold, and thus, the authors theorized that hotspots of brain activity might somehow correlate with the models' predictions.

The scans did reveal a number of active brain areas in the healthy participants during game play, including activation of several large folds within the frontal lobe known to be involved in decision-making. In the smoking group, however, no hotspots of brain activity seemed tied to predictions made by the quantum model. As the model reflects participants' ability to learn from mistakes, the results may illustrate decision-making impairments in the smoking group, the authors noted.

However, "further research is warranted" to determine what these brain activity differences truly reflect in smokers and non-smokers, they added. "The coupling of the quantum-like models with neurophysiological processes in the brain ... is a very complex problem," Haven and Khrennikov said. "This study is of great importance as the first step towards its solution."

Models of classical reinforcement learning have shown "great success" in studies of emotion, psychiatric disorders, social behavior, free will and many other cognitive functions, Zhang said. "We hope that quantum reinforcement learning will also shed light on [these fields], providing unique insights."

In time, perhaps quantum mechanics will help explain pervasive flaws in human logic, as well as how that fallibility manifests at the level of individual neurons.

Originally published on Live Science.

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What is quantum cognition? Physics theory could predict human behavior. - Livescience.com

Human Behavior

Rev. Jim Watkins and Roxie column: Preaching to the chickens – South Strand news

Roxie was hard at work on her Human Watchers Guide. She has finally taught herself to use her nose to type on the computer, but it still takes concentration and time.

Hi Roxie. You sure are pounding away. Some human behavior must have set off this flurry of activity.

Yep. Im glad that its almost time for happy hour. I need a break. Well get to the curious part of human behavior later. Right now Im describing humanity at its best. There are some good things that humans do. Dr. King is an example of that. He has often been quoted. Im including one of his quotes in my guide. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Canines, as well as humans, understand that. We are all connected, whether we know it or not. When you think of Dr. King, what first comes to mind?

Thanks for asking Roxie. The first thing? Dr. Kings impact on those who followed him. As you know, Dr. Kings life was cut short by an assassins bullet. During his last sermon, he said that he might not get to the promised land, but the people would get there. His influence lives on and on through others, I had the honor of getting to know one of Dr. Kings recruits, Congressman John Lewis. The Congressional district where I was staff director was next tp Johns district. John is the most courageous and most humble person Ive ever known. He will let you rub his head and you can feel the bumps that are still there from the horrific beating he received as he tried to cross the Pettus bridge in Selma. Called the Conscience of Congress, he is highly regarded by both sides of the aisle. A Baptist minister, he grew up on his familys farm in Alabama. As a youngster, he would practice sermons by preaching to the chickens. Whenever I saw John I would ask him if he was still preaching to the chickens. His reply would be, Now more than ever.

Roxie, John reminds us that the celebration of Dr. Kings life begins the day after the holiday. Will we live out his call to empower the marginalized? Will we welcome the stranger? Will we elect folks to public office who understand that the most religious thing they do is pass budgets that reflect a concern for the poor.? Will we strive to live by love rather than hate?

Well said Jim. As we break for happy hour lets toast John.

Great idea Roxie and as we do, lets say a prayer for him. John is in a different kind of fight. Hes fighting cancer.

Amen, Jim.

The Rev. Dr. Jim Watkins and Roxie live in Pawleys Island.

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Rev. Jim Watkins and Roxie column: Preaching to the chickens - South Strand news

Human Behavior

Body-on-Chip system mimics the behavior of 10 connected organs – New Atlas

The development and eventual approval of modern drugs is hugely reliant on animal models and human clinical trials, but for some time now scientists have been working on an alternative and more expedient approach. By recreating the functions of various organs on small devices known as Organ Chips or Organs-on-a-chip, researchers hope to greatly reduce the time and cost of testing new drugs for safety and efficacy. Now, scientists at Harvards Wyss Institute have pieced together 10 of them to create a functioning Body-on-Chips platform that can offer new and comprehensive insights into how prospective drugs will behave throughout the human body.

The aim of the research project was to not just recreate the complicated functions of 10 different human organs, but to connect them up via fluidic pathways to observe how the flow of simulated blood impacts the entire system. A drug may appear safe when screened in the kidneys, for example, but could create side effects in other organs. The idea with these Body-on-Chips systems is to sniff out such dangers earlier on in the testing process.

Back in 2017, we looked at a Body-on-a-Chip" system from scientists at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which combined several organ models into the one system. The Wyss Institutes builds on this by offering a more complete picture, with the scientists focusing on two aspects of drug behavior in particular.

The first is known as pharmacokinetics (PK), which revers to how a drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized and excreted by the human body, which ultimately determines the drug levels left in the blood. The other is known as pharmacodynamics (PD), which refers to the way a drug impacts its target organs, including both the mechanics of how it works and any potential side effects.

Like others weve looked at in the past, the Organ Chips making up the Body-on-Chips system are microfluidic devices around the size of a memory stick. A pair of parallel channels are separated by a porous membrane, with cells specific to the organ populating one side and vascular cells mimicking a blood vessel on the other.

These organs-on-chips are connected by vascular channels that transfer fluid between them to mimic blood flow through the human body. In this way, scientists are able to observe how drugs impact PK and PD, with the team using computational modeling to predict how they might impact the entire human body.

In this study, we serially linked the vascular channels of eight different Organ Chips, including intestine, liver, kidney, heart, lung, skin, bloodbrain barrier and brain, using a highly optimized common blood substitute, while independently perfusing the individual channels lined by organ-specific cells, says co-first author Richard Novak. The instrument maintained the viability of all tissues and their organ-specific functions for over three weeks and, importantly, it allowed us to quantitatively predict the tissue-specific distribution of a chemical across the entire system.

In one experiment, the scientists used the modular platform to connect Organ Chips simulating the gut, the liver and a kidney. Nicotine was added to gut chip to mimic oral administration of the drug, from where it was passed through the intestinal wall, through the vascular system to the liver to be metabolized, and onward to the kidney where it was excreted. An analysis using mass spectrometry followed, with the team confirming the drugs journey and its effects closely resembled that seen in actual humans.

Wyss Institute at Harvard University

The resulting calculated maximum nicotine concentrations, the time needed for nicotine to reach the different tissue compartments, and the clearance rates in the Liver Chips in our in vitro-based in silico model mirrored closely what had been measured previously in patients, says Ben Maoz, a co-first author.

In another experiment, the team observed the effects of a common chemotherapy drug called cisplatin that can cause toxicity in kidney and bone marrow. The Body-on-Chips platform again proved to be an accurate model.

Our analysis recapitulates the pharmacodynamic effects of cisplatin in patients, including a decrease in numbers of different blood cell types and an increase in markers of kidney injury, says co-first author Anna Herland.

The research was published across two studies in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering (1, 2), and the video below offers a look at the Body-on-Chips platform in action, with an instrument called the Interrogator linking together the various Organ Chips making up the system.

Interrogator: Human Organ-on-Chips

Source: Wyss Institue

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Body-on-Chip system mimics the behavior of 10 connected organs - New Atlas

Human Behavior

Study shows lower speed limits don’t save wildlife – Wyoming Business Report

POWELL Efforts to reduce the number of wildlife vehicle collisions by dropping speed limits arent paying off as expected, according to a new study. The problem? People arent obeying the law.

The Wyoming Department of Transportation recently started lowering speed limits in six active zones across the state. Locally, North Fork speed limits between Cody and the Shoshone National Forest were lowered from 65 mph limits during the day to 55 mph at night to protect wildlife.

But a study of similar speed limit reductions in southwest Wyoming conducted by The Nature Conservancy and sponsored by WYDOT concluded that, on average, drivers slowed down by only 3-5 mph rather than the required 15 mph. They also found no evidence that the reduced speed limit led to fewer wildlife collisions.

We recommend that reduced posted speed limit is not an effective measure to reduce wildlife vehicle collisions on high speed rural two-lane highways, concluded The Nature Conservancy scientist Corinna Riginos.

Researchers compared the number of collisions at six test sites before and after the speed limit change. They also tested for differences in vehicle speed in the reduced speed limit zones and in adjacent locations where the speed limit was not reduced.

The Nature Conservancy concluded that lowering speed limits doesnt work and the organization is now calling for expanded construction of wildlife crossing structures.

The only sure way to significantly reduce these accidents is to build over- or underpasses that allow animals to cross roads without touching the pavement, said Riginos. Changing human behavior is challenging.

The structures are pricey, but so is the cost of no action, the conservancy said in a news release.

In Wyoming, wildlife-vehicle collisions cost more than $50 million in human injury, property damage and wildlife loss every year. About 85% of wildlifevehicle collisions in the state involve mule deer, and at an average cost of $10,500 per accident (twice that if you hit an elk) the cost of this problem adds up quickly, the organization wrote.

This year, the State of Wyoming and the federal government have committed about $18 million toward building crossing structures. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission has contributed $2.5 million, WYDOT $1 million and a U.S. Department of Transportation Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant kicked in $14.5 million. No structures are planned for Park County at this point.

WYDOT spokesman Cody Beers said the new speed limits have to be given time to work.

These speed limits work if you incorporate education and enforcement, he said.

As for what WYDOT has planned for the Wapiti Valley, with the known hurdles that nighttime speed limits bring, we are trying a new technology that has not been used in the mitigation of wildlife-vehicle collisions, Beers said. The animals are in the valley in high numbers from late fall through late spring, and the animals generally move out of the valley in the summer. The dead-end nature of the North Fork Highway in the winter [when Yellowstone is closed] gives us a unique opportunity to do this nighttime speed limit work [including education and enforcement] with mostly local drivers.

Beers pointed out that The Nature Conservancy didnt study the North Fork and that the area has its own unique wildlife issues.

Each wildlife collision has an impact on the animal and presents a safety issue for the motorist, he said. We are invested in finding solutions to reduce crashes to limit these impacts.

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Study shows lower speed limits don't save wildlife - Wyoming Business Report

Human Behavior

You can recover from the New Year’s slip – Florida Weekly

HODGES UNIVERSITY

By Florida Weekly Staff | on January 29, 2020

Florida Weekly Audio Stories brought to you by Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre. Visit broadwaypalm.com to book show tickets today!

Youre celebrating and pumped to carry out your New Years resolution.

However, did you know there is a day called Quitters Day? Each year Strava predicts the day when most people will quit New Years resolutions. For 2020 it was predicted for Jan. 19. The 19th has come and gone, and perhaps your resolution has passed with it.

In order to get yourself back on track you need to understand how you are motivated.

Psychology is the study of human behavior and helps explain why we do the things we do, and what motivations trigger our behaviors. Motivations can be intrinsic or extrinsic. When your behavior is driven by an external reward, it is a motivation that arises from outside of yourself. The motivation that arises from within you is intrinsic. People who are intrinsically motivated perform for the sense of personal satisfaction. Which is more important when it comes to keeping those annual resolutions? The answer is intrinsic motivation. This is because intrinsic motivation is linked to changes that happen within us. Essentially, it involves the desire to focus our attention in a particular way that originates from our inner selves. Tapping into your intrinsic motivation is very powerful when it comes to fulfilling promises or completing goals. The reason it is so powerful is that is linked to personal efficacy and purpose. So in order to be more successful it would be helpful to know your purpose for completing your goals.

BUSHEY

Intrinsic motivation is also linked to self-determination, and involves focusing on the tasks that carry you toward your goal. Engaging in these tasks will carry you through your goals, and result in energized emotions and enjoyment. Intrinsic motivation also involves a high degree of autonomy. Ultimately, you are doing this for that feeling of personal satisfaction.

Extrinsic motivation relies on and is fueled by the praise of others and an external reward. That comes in the form of positive affirmation and support in your journey. So what happens if you dont receive that extrinsic motivation? You could lose heart. Even if your 2020 resolutions fell flat, it is not too late.

Instead, here are some questions to ask yourself in order to help you get back on track. After all, you have 11 months left in 2020.

What is your purpose?

What would be the most satisfying element of achieving your goal?

How can you boost your inner autonomy in order to stay on track?

When will you begin again?

Remember that your New Years resolution is something you can still achieve.

Dr. Kelly Bushey is the as sociate professor of applied psychology at Hodges University.

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You can recover from the New Year's slip - Florida Weekly

Human Behavior

UB Department of Theatre and Dance Presents Forbidden: Undocumented and Queer in Rural America – UB News Center

BUFFALO, N.Y. The University at Buffalo Department of Theatre and Dance presents a free film screening of, "Forbidden: Undocumented and Queer in Rural America," a feature length documentary about an inspiring young man whose story is exceptional, although not unique.

"Forbidden: Undocumented and Queer in Rural America" reflects the life of Moises Serrano. As a baby, his parents risked everything to flee Mexico in search of the American dream.Forbidden to live and love as an undocumented gay man in the country he calls home, Serrano saw only one option to fight for justice.

The screening will take place at the Center for the Arts Screening Room in Amherst, New York on Wednesday, Feb. 5 at 7 p.m. and will be followed by a Q-and-A with the director and subject of the film, Moises Serrano.

Forbidden was produced by Sisters Unite Productions and Pony Pictures. The small team of local and national filmmakers were inspired to produce the film after a chance encounter with Serrano. The award-winning documentary is directed by filmmaker and guest dance artist Tiffany Rhynard, who will be in residence with UB Theatre and Dance from Feb. 2-7, 2020.

Rhynard is an artist, dancer, and filmmaker compelled to make work that examines the complexity of human behavior and addresses social issues. Having created numerous works for stage and screen, Rhynards choreography, dance films, and documentaries have been presented nationwide and internationally.

Her recent dance documentary short, "Black Stains," about black male identity in the United States, is currently screening at film festivals. The film was created in collaboration with Trent D. Williams, Jr.

As a performer, Rhynard has danced for choreographers including Gerri Houlihan, Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians, and Chavasse Dance and Performance Group. She taught at colleges and universities throughout the country and currently is an assistant professor in the School of Dance at Florida State University.

Moises Serrano served as a producer and one of the cinematographers for the film. He is an openly queer and undocumented activist and storyteller. His mission is to de-criminalize and humanize the issue of migration while advocating for immediate relief to migrant communities. Serrano quickly became one of the most requested speakers in the state of North Carolina. Described as a"consummate orator,"his advocacy has led him to lead a TedX talk in Greensboro and to be named a notable Latino of the triad.

"Forbidden" is currently available on Amazon Prime, Kanopy, and Pragda, and has aired on LogoTV with sponsorship from the American Civil Liberties Union. The film earned the first ever Social Justice Film Award from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Freedom Award from Outfest Film Festival.

Date and Time: Wednesday, Feb. 5 at 7 p.m.

Location:UB Center for the ArtsScreening RoomUniversity at BuffaloNorth CampusDirections: ubcfa.org/directions-maps2019

Tickets:FreeAdvance reservations required by email: rachelol@buffalo.edu

General Information:716-645-6897

Media Inquiries:Jackie Hausler 716-645-6775 hauslerj@buffalo.edu

Group Sales: Mike Formato716-645-0611formato@buffalo.edu

theatredance.buffalo.edu

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UB Department of Theatre and Dance Presents Forbidden: Undocumented and Queer in Rural America - UB News Center

Human Behavior

Inside the Fight to Keep an Abuse Apologist Off the Church Stage – Sojourners

If you stand up to sexual abuse, you must remain standing, Susan Codone recently told me. Shed said the same thing on Twitterin response to news that Paige Patterson, former president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was slated to preach at the Great Commission Weekend at a church in Immokalee, Fla. Patterson was fired from SWBTS in 2018 after trustees learned that he planned to meet privately with a rape survivor because, I have to break her down and I may need no official types there.

Susan Codone, a professor at Mercer University, is a sexual abuse survivor and Southern Baptist. Despite being abused in a Southern Baptist church, she has remained steadfast in her commitment to the denomination and has become a much-needed voice calling for reform. She recently called on Timothy Pigg, the pastor of Fellowship Church Immokalee, to disinvite Patterson because of Pattersons history of allegedly covering up abuse. Pigg earned his bachelors degree, master of divinity degree, and is a current doctoral student, at SWBTS.

Codone said that Pigg, who could not be reached for this article, refused to speak with her privately about Pattersons presence at his event as did every other Southern Baptist in Florida that she contacted except for Tommy Green, the states executive directortreasurer, who withdrew from the event soon after talking with Codone.

I was reaching out the right way, Codone said, but they were not responding.

So, Codone took to social media, where she posted Piggs professional contact information (publicly available at the churchs website), and asked other Southern Baptists to urge Pigg to rescind Pattersons speaking invitation. Pigg, for his part, reported Codones activity to Twitter, which briefly suspended her account. It has since been reinstated.

I am standing on the platform of belief in local-church autonomy, along with cooperation, Codone said. Local-church autonomy is the idea that each church within the Southern Baptist Convention is accountable only to the members of that church, and not to any sort of ecclesiastical hierarchy. Local-church autonomy has often been cited in discussions of why the SBC has not taken action in the sexual abuse crisis it is facing.

Cooperation, though, is the other side of local-church autonomy, and Codone sees focusing on cooperation as a middle-of-the-road way that can also gain traction if enough people will stand together cooperate to make their voices heard.

Immokalee residents where Piggs church is located will likely be familiar with the middle way that Codone has modeled. Nearly 30 years ago, a group of farmworkers and activists founded the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a non-profit grassroots organization dedicated to improving wages and working conditions of migrant farmworkers. That group soon discovered that slavery was alive and well particularly in Immokalee and it became a leading anti-slavery group that helped the U.S. government prosecute nine cases of modern-day slavery in the United States. That small group cooperating together to make their voices loud enough so people had to listen led to significant, meaningful change for a large group of people.

Regarding Codones call on social media for others to contact Pigg, she said, There was a grassroots effort but I didnt expect it to go very far. There has been some movement, though. Two of the events sponsors, including the Florida Baptist Convention and Crossroads Church, have dropped out, as have two of the speakers Tommy Green and Wayne Briant, who, like Green, holds a position with the Florida Baptist Convention. The two speakers have been replaced by Scott Colter, a former employee under Patterson whose wife posted onlinethe private records of survivor Megan Lively, and Brad Jurkovich, a frequent speaker at Louisiana College, where last yearin a chapel sermon the dean of the school of human behavior compared women to crack houses and advised them to mow your lawn.

In addition to the withdrawal of sponsors and speakers, SBC president J.D. Greear spoke out against Patterson last week, telling Houston Chronicles religion writer RobertDownen, Trustees terminated Paige Patterson for cause, publicly disclosing that his conduct was antithetical to the core values of our faith, and adding, I advise any Southern Baptist church to consider this severe action before having Dr. Patterson preach or speak and to contact trustee officers if additional information is necessary.

In language that echoes what Codone has been saying, Greear highlighted the need for cooperation among Southern Baptists to protect church members against abusers and enablers of abuse: Southern Baptist churches must take our mutual accountability to each other more seriously than we have in the past If our system of governance means anything, it means exercising due diligence and heeding what those whom we put in positions of trustee oversight have reported about official misconduct.

While Greears condemnation has no disciplinary effect for churches that choose to host Patterson or otherwise embrace disgraced leaders, given church autonomy, his words do carry weight and people are paying attention.

This is perhaps not the monumental change abuse survivors and advocates hope for, but it is proof of Codones concept. Like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, perhaps grassroots organizing is just the effort needed to rid Southern Baptist churches of evils of abuse.

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Inside the Fight to Keep an Abuse Apologist Off the Church Stage - Sojourners

Human Behavior

Implement AI and Design Thinking Strategies to Grow With Technology – Northdallasgazette

Tech giants like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon are spending nearly $20 billion collective dollars on AI products and services annually. Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash

By Gilbert Salazar

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been around since the 1950s, but not until the last two decades has it impacted the daily lives of some consumers. Many industries such as healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and banking are now going through dramatic evolutions in how they incorporate AI. Many companies are still trying to figure out how this new frontier can potentially add value to their organizations. There is no doubt the list of uses for AI will continue to grow as data scientists and AI engineers discover new opportunities to incorporate it into the business structure. The first step towards understanding the benefits of AI in your industry is to evaluate its value and determine how implementing this technological innovator can lead to growth.

Like any other technology, AI requires thorough road mapping, planning, and a design-centric approach, especially if the intent of the AI solution itself is to interact with humans a common challenge that often arises with the execution of AI. Tech giants like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon are spending nearly $20 billion collective dollars on AI products and services annually, leading the way for mid-level technology companies to start considering how AI can benefit their products and services. Locally, in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, companies such as Softweb Solutions, SparkFish and Retrocube are using AI and design thinking strategies to develop innovative services that connect with consumers.

Considering your consumer is key when developing AI technologies for human use. While evaluating AIs benefits, it is important to understand how poor execution can hinder growth. A very basic example of poor AI execution is to imagine a chatbot that continues to ask the same question after youve already answered. A more complex example would be facial recognition AI that cant read your face because perhaps youve grown a beard or cut your hair. If at its core, the idea of AI is to mimic human behavior, then shouldnt humans be considered? In other words, dont forget humans when creating AI for humans.

The Interaction Design Foundation defines design thinking as an interactive process that challenges assumptions and redefines problems to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent. It is a way of thinking and working, including hands-on methods, that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems.

By adopting the principles of design thinking, AI Experience Engineers can tackle problems that are undefinable. They can also dissect potential challenges through the lens of the user, resulting in much more refined experimentation and exploration of concepts and ideas. Pairing design thinking with AI can add tremendous value by reframing problems and coming up with innovative solutions to determine the best way to enhance and perfect a users interactions and intents.

There is no doubt that AI is here to stay. That said, the key to giving your technology a competitive advantage is to apply a design thinking approach and considering the who and why behind your AI design.

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Implement AI and Design Thinking Strategies to Grow With Technology - Northdallasgazette