Ep 126: Science of Superheroes - Doc Ock

Continuing with our recurring segment The Science of Superheroes, this week we're tackling the mechanically-blessed supervillain Doc Ock, from Marvel Comics. And joining me once again for a journey through superhero scholarship is Dr Boob. To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):

Dr. Otto Gunther Octavius is a scientist who designed a set of advanced mechanical arms to assist him with his nuclear physics research. He controlled the arms via a brain-computer interface. In the movie Spiderman 2, Octavius created the mechanical arms to help him conduct nuclear fusion experiments. The arms had their own artificial intelligence, with an inhibitor chip used such that Octavius could maintain control over them.

The arms attached to a harness that was strapped around his body. In great comic book tradition, a freak experimental accident caused the limbs to fuse to his body, and the inhibitor chip was destroyed. The arms themselves took control as Octavius could no longer control them, and mad-scientist Octavius became evil Doc Ock. Interestingly, the limbs were able to defend themselves whilst Doc Ock was unconscious, implying not only self-awareness, but a capability to sense their surroundings.

In this episode, we come closer than we have come before in our series to figuring out a way to recreate a superhero (or supervillain in this case) in the laboratory. The topics discussed in this podcast include:

• Robotics,
• The history of artificial limbs,
• The history of aritifical intelligence, and how to design limbs that could possibly have self-awareness and a desire (and capability) to defend themselves,
• What is nuclear fusion? Is it possible to develop a controlled energy source using nuclear fusion, and if so, could this be the way forward for powering enormous artificial limbs?
• What would the limbs be made from? Is it time to turn once again to Adamantium? See our show on Wolverine for more information.
• Assuming the AI is difficult to accomplish, how could the limbs be controlled? Two methods include:

1. Myoelectric prostheses - a myoelectric prosthesis uses EMG signals from muscles on the surface of the skin to control the movements of an attached prosthesis. These prostheses have been used where arms and legs have been amputated, with the prosthesis attaching to the residual limb. The concept of neuroplasticity is also very important here. Neuro- (or brain-) plasticity is the ability of the brain to change throughout life, to reorganise itself and form new connections between neurons. Artificial limbs have recently been controlled by chest muscles - this is an example of the brain learning how to control muscles in a completely new way.
2. Remote control - recent work has shown that objects can be remotely controlled by brain waves (EEG). Naturally, this does not mean one can levitate a chair on the opposite side of the room - the brain needs to be hooked up to a computer which reads the brain signals, interprets them and then controls the connected object in an appropriate way. We discussed this a few years ago in our article Space Invaders Mind Control, Small Testes and Facial Expressions. 

To listen to this show, tune in here (or press play below):



And on the topic of superheroes, you may enjoy this poster from Russell Walks Illustration. It is a Periodic Table of 122 fictitious elements from sci-fi movies, comics, TV series etc. Adamantium is in there, as naturally is the most famous of them all, Kryptonite. Click on the image below for a closer look and to buy the image as a poster.



Thanks to @markfromhouston for the tip on the Periodic Table poster.

Science survival guide for The Ashes

Ashes backyard cricket
Originally uploaded by westius.

The sporting highlight of 2009 is only hours away. The Ashes cricket series between Australia and England will mean little sleep for cricket-obsessed Aussies, and little work done by the English.

Here is our science survival guide to the Ashes:

• Ashes success and El Nino

Is the winner of The Ashes already pre-determined? Manoj Joshi has shown that the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon has a significant effect on the results of The Ashes cricket series when the series is held in Australia. The Australian Cricket team is more likely to succeed after El Nino years, while the English cricket team does better following La Nina years (the opposite phase). Their study, Could El Niño Southern Oscillation affect the results of the Ashes series in Australia? was published in the journal Weather.


• How to rank cricketers
  
Cricket is one of the world's most statistical sports, and mathematicians in cricket-loving nations love nothing more than delving into the minutiae of the numbers and diving into averages, strike-rates and custom-made measures of batting and bowling effectiveness.

For many people, including me, cricket isn't just a sport, it is a way of life.

These words could easily have come from me, but are actually the words of Rob Eastaway, a cricket-loving mathematician from the UK, and originator of the official International Cricket Council cricket-ratings which rank not only teams, but players within each team. In this podcast, I chat to Rob about how you mathematically rank cricketers.


• Science, Psychology and Cricket

Every cricket season, the TV coverage of cricket becomes more spectacular and technological, with the introduction of microphones to detect the finest of edges through to the keeper, improved abilities to determine the trajectory of a ball once it has left the bowler’s hand, and now even heat sensors to see how the batsman sweats.

But the scientific aspects of cricket are not limited to TV companies, with science playing an increasing role in shaping the performance of players, from their general fitness to specific training techniques for both their physical, and possibly more importantly mental, well-being. It is with science that countries are aiming to find the competitive edge.


• The curse of the duck

The recent news of the great Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar surpassing West Indian Brian Lara's record number of test runs has given maths-loving cricket geeks another opportunity to pull out their calculators and Excel spreadsheets. At the time of writing, Tendulkar had scored 12,027 runs across 247 innings, to overtake Lara's 11,953 from 232 innings. After a little investigation, I found that despite his outstanding average of over 54 runs per innings, Tendulkar's most common score in test cricket is ... zero! Even the great Don Bradman scored a duck more times than any other score. And their next most common? One! We look at how are cricket scores are distributed.

• Science, Cricket, Fitness and Psychology

Do you need to be fit to play cricket? Do the best batsmen in the world really have the ability to predict the type of ball they will receive before it even arrives? And is cricket really more of a mental game than a physical one?

In this podcast episode, we talk to Dr Rob Duffield from the School of Human Movement at Charles Sturt University who has found that indeed you really do not need to be as physically fit to play cricket as you do other sports such as football. We also chat to Dr Allistair McRobert from Liverpool John Moores University whose work has shown that the best batsmen can predict to some extent where a bowler will bowl. This work encompasses a look into the subconscious mental game of cricket and how the most successful players are more mentally prepared for the top level than lesser players. More on this topic can also be found in our article The Science of Cricket.


• Sex before Sport?

It is the virile sports-person's eternal question - should one abstain from a little bit of nookie before a big sporting event? If I was Michael Clarke and engaged to Lara Bingle, I wouldn't be...


• Economists, oil, cricket and correlation

Can we predict cricket results using the price of oil? Or is this just bad stats. Also see our article Poor correlations, or why it's not the fault of Aussie cricketers.

Good luck to all and come on you Aussies!

Awesome Illusion

This illusion has been doing the rounds this week (see Bad Astronomy and Richard Wiseman for a couple of science blogs I like that picked it up), but it's so good I thought it needed to be posted here also.

Look carefully at the image below. Do you see a couple of spirals, one blue and one green? Well, take a closer look - in actual fact, the blue and green are actually the same colour!


Don't believe me? Copy the image and open it up in PhotoShop or Paint and take a closer look....

You will notice that the orange curves move through the "green" spirals, but not the blue. And the purple curves don't move through the green.

If we blow this picture up even more, we can see that the colours are becoming more and more similar.

The blue and green appear to be different colours because our brain works out colours by comparing them to other surrounding colours and it does a bit of mixing. When we look at the "blue" spiral, we also take in the purple curves moving through it. This makes it look more blue. When we look at the "green" spiral, we take in the orange curves, which makes it look more green.

I know that's not a great explanation, so I'd be happy to hear a better one!

Edit by westius 2/7/09: If you doubt this illusion, check out this image - I've replaced some of the colours - you can clearly see now that the 'blue' and 'green' are the same:

Science, Psychology and Cricket

To listen to the experts consulted for this story - Dr Rob Duffield from the School of Human Movement at Charles Sturt University, and Dr Alistair McRobert from Liverpool John Moores University - check out the story and podcast I put out in 2007.


Every cricket season, the TV coverage of cricket becomes more spectacular and technological, with the introduction of microphones to detect the finest of edges through to the keeper, improved abilities to determine the trajectory of a ball once it has left the bowler’s hand, and now even heat sensors to see how the batsman sweats.

But the scientific aspects of cricket are not limited to TV companies, with science playing an increasing role in shaping the performance of players, from their general fitness to specific training techniques for both their physical, and possibly more importantly mental, well-being.

It is with science that countries are aiming to find the competitive edge.

Are cricketers fit?

If you’ve watched the likes of Ian Botham, David Boon and Darren Lehmann strut the international cricket stage, you might believe that you really do not need to be that fit to play cricket.

Studies conducted by Dr Rob Duffield at the School of Human Movement at Charles Sturt University, and Dr Marc Portus, the Sports Science Manager of Cricket Australia, have found that indeed you really do not need to be as physically fit to play cricket as you do other sports such as football.

However, you do need to be psychologically strong, have a level of endurance and recovery, and plenty of natural talent.

During a test century, which takes on average three and a half hours, a batsman will stand still for two hours, walk for an hour, jog for ten minutes, spend only five minutes running hard, and about a minute and a half sprinting.

“Physical conditioning and muscle training is not going to necessarily improve your performance in cricket,” Dr Duffield said. “Having a high oxygen consumption or a faster twenty metre sprint time doesn’t mean you are going to be able to bowl better, or get more wickets, or score a century.”

This does not mean, however, that you can be completely unfit and compete at the highest level. The fitter you are, the less likely you are to succumb to injury, and the quicker you recover from fatigue.

Dr Portus said that this work would feed into the coaching regime for Cricket Australia,

“We need to understand the requirements of elite international cricket a whole lot better, particularly with our fitness training program.”

It seems the key to being a good cricketer is lots of net practice to keep the skill base high, natural talent – something perhaps with which you are born – and the ability to tackle the psychological aspects of the game.

How do world-class cricket batsmen anticipate a bowler's intention?

According to folklore, cricket is 90% a mental game.

Independent studies by Alistair McRobert from Liverpool John Moores University in the UK, and Dr Sean Müller from RMIT University in Australia, have both concluded that the very best batsmen can predict the sort of ball they will receive even before the ball leaves the bowler’s hand.

The research programs were conducted in parallel without feeding into each other, suggesting that it is with such scientific studies that countries are looking to find the edge.

The programs, conducted for the ECB by McRobert and published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology by Müller, state that mediocre batsmen do not pick up on the subtle clues given off by a bowler, showing that perhaps the importance of psychology in cricket is even deeper than we might have first thought.

Whilst a lesser batsman will only make his decision about where the ball will land once it is in flight, or will perhaps make an early faulty call, an experienced player can start this decision-making process earlier, giving him more time for shot selection – very important if you’re facing Steve Harmison or Brett Lee.

McRobert’s study found that skilled batsmen pick up information from the bowlers “central body features (head-shoulders, trunk-hip)” and less skilled batsmen rely on clues in the bowler’s hand and ball position. The Australian study found that “highly skilled players demonstrated the …unique capability to pick up advance information from some specific early cues to which the less skilled players were not attuned.”

Both experiments were conducted on elite players – in Müller’s case, the Australian cricket team – and then repeated on intermediate and novice cricketers.

One test involved showing the participants a video of a bowler running in from the batsman’s perspective, and stopped the video at various points so that the batsman could make a prediction about what might happen next. McRobert’s tests also focused on the eye-movements of the batsmen using head mounted optics and high speed cameras to try and understand the subconscious decision making of the batsman.

The research has the potential to allow coaches to understand how body language is communicated. McRobert’s study suggests that experience against all types of bowlers is also important.

“Our research revealed that a batsman uses different search strategies when facing fast and spin bowlers… It is important that information relating to potential visual cues is specific to the type of bowler.”

The work also suggests that match context determines how a batsman makes his decisions, and so coaching sessions could be designed to focus on the aspects of the game that play with the mind, rather than aspects of a batsman’s technique.


Psychology on the field

According to Justin Langer’s blog, sports psychology is “the least studied of all cricket skills, even if it is widely accepted as being the most important ingredient of success.”

But this is starting to change, with most teams having associated psychologists. The ECB is currently in the process of appointing a National Lead Psychologist, and have used psychologists Dr Wil James and Dr Steve Bull on a part time basis.

Dr James, who provides psychological services for the ECB up to the Academy and England-A levels, as well as for overseas touring age sides, says that his role is to help players develop their mental game so to deal with setbacks, and also to help players raise their mental games.

The aim is to work with coaches to “foster development of a strong mental game by consulting upon, rather than taking over, player development.”

“The aim is to develop the coaching environment.”

This developing coaching environment is gradually starting to take effect, not just at the elite level, but also at lower levels, with each county academy having an associated part-time sports psychologist. Dr James says that eventually the aim is to have sports psychologists associated with teams on a more full-time basis with a strategic outlook on player development.

“Psychology is not a quick fix.”

Dr James thinks psychology has a strong role to play in allowing the coach to “coach in a way that asks questions of players, not just answers them. We want to challenge players, and take them out of their comfort zones.”

This is important when viewing the way that many junior players find their way to the top, with many unprepared for the mental game.

“Sports psychology helps coaches select players, not just on technical ability, but also mental characteristics. It helps the coach nurture natural talent. Some players may have tonnes of natural talent but never have been challenged, whilst others might have shown that they can bounce back from a setback.”

Research is being conducted within the ECB to develop an assessment tool to categorise different types of “mental toughness”. This research looks at factors such as emotional intelligence, and again helps coaches identify players that have the mental edge. Some players have the ability to maintain their confidence throughout a period of misfortune, and being able to identify this helps coaches work with those that may not have this ability.

“The aim is to make players focus on what they can do, not what is affecting them.”

Warren Frost, Sports Science and Medical Coordinator for New Zealand Cricket (NZC) said that NZC has psychological programs in place, although he admits that “there has not been a lot of publication on the psychological demands of cricket.” New players go through psychological “programmes of development in the same way that skills or fitness are developed.”

“(Psychological coaching) is individualised and run by our sport psychologist in one on one situations as required”

When asked if New Zealand had come up with a way tackling performance momentum – for instance, getting a team “up” for a dead rubber in a series – he commented:

“One of the eternal questions of any sport!”

It may take some time before science answers that one.

Psychology off the field

Promoting the visualisation of positive scenes, such as run-scoring or wicket-taking moments, has become part of the coaching manual thanks in part to scientific research. Notably, Langer’s long-time batting partner Matthew Hayden sits on the pitch before each innings visualising how he will bat.

The understanding of positive visualisation has arisen from scientific work into depression, and apart from on the field, wear and tear on the mind can have an effect off the field. English opening batsman Marcus Trescothick is the most recent example of a high profile cricketer struck down with a stress-related illness. The frenetic and grinding itinerary and lifestyle of an international cricketer is often incompatible with their personal make-up or home life.

There is a growing realisation within society that depression and mental illness are serious problems that cannot be glossed over. It poses the question then, how do coaching staff and team management best nurture players who may be vulnerable to this type of illness?

One promising acknowledgement of the problem is from the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA), which offers free counselling sessions to all current cricketing professionals from any phone in the world. The hotline is manned 24-hours by experienced, professional counsellors. They have also set up the Benevolent Fund, to help cricketers adjust to life beyond cricket.

This is a positive development by the ECB, as it is often difficult for players to adjust to life after cricket having had their identity tied to it for many years. Silence of the Heart, by David Frith, details over 150 professional cricketers who committed suicide, mostly after their retirement.

The ECB has also set up the “Performance Lifestyle Service” to help players throughout their careers, and prepares them for life after cricket. A network of clinical psychologists is maintained for cricketers who face problems such as addiction or depression.

Science and Medicine in Cricket Conferences

The psychological aspects of the game are now making up part of various sports science conferences. The increasing role of science in cricket has been highlighted in the last decade through the four-yearly World Congress of Science and Medicine in Cricket, held in conjunction with each World Cup. The first congress in 1999 had 50 attendees, with representatives from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the West Indies and the UK. In 2003, the congress reflected the growing stature of science in the game with 119 attendees, including representatives from Canada, India and Pakistan. Barbados played host to the 2007 version, with the majority of presentations coming from Australia, the UK and South Africa.

Craig Ranson, England Cricket Board Lead Physiotherapist at the National Cricket Academy, said that the programme was wide ranging, including fields such as Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation, Injury Surveillance and Prevention, Sports Biomechanics, Exercise Physiology, Nutrition and Hydration, Thermoregulation and Motor Learning.

“It was clear that although there was some good science presented the overall goal was to produce research that resulted in a performance advantage.”

Recently, the 2007 Cricket Australia Sport Medicine Conference was held, with presentations from the then Australian coach and noted cricket analyser John Buchanan, and papers ranging from the effects of alcohol, heat and humidity on athletic performance, to evidence from baseball that umpiring decisions are influenced by game context, kinematic analysis of the doosra and off-break, and why fast bowlers bowl no-balls.
National Programs

A number of countries now have dedicated centres for scientific input into cricket. The ECB has set up the Science and Medicine Management Group to “continually review the best strategic approach for the delivery of all science and medicine support for cricket,” whilst Cricket Australia has set up the Sports Science Program to leverage off the expertise of the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS).

Carl Petersen works with the AIS to track the workload of cricketers using GPS technology, and says that Cricket Australia has recently offered two PhD scholarships in Physiology and Performance Analysis:

“The first scholarship focuses on utilising in-house developed GPS devices combined with micro-sensors to accurately define workload in cricketers. With a better understanding of cricket workload and demands, our strength and conditioning coaches will be able to design more effective training programmes, and monitor recovery more precisely to have the cricket athletes peaking on game day(s),” said Petersen

“The second PhD is focusing on the developmental training pathways of fast bowlers.”

Additionally, Cricket Australia has a research programme investigating the biomechanics of cricketing skills. Wayne Spratford runs a number of tests for Cricket Australia:

“Over the last two years we have developed skill based tests for batsmen, bowlers and fielders which we have implemented on all levels of cricketers in Australia from the Test team to State Under 17 level.”

Both commented that much of their work is kept in-house to maintain a “competitive advantage”.

The competitive edge comes not from what is done on the field, but what research is done off it.

Future

So where to now for science and cricket? Whilst some countries are embracing the concept, developing cricketing countries do not have the resources for scientific cricket analysis.

One recent development has been the Nike Air Zoom Yorker shoe, developed for New Zealand cricketers by the University of Auckland alongside clothing company Nike.

And it has been suggested by Shri. V. Srivata, former Chief Sports Editor for The Times of India, that courses in the science of cricket become mandatory for all cricket coaches.

Whoever said cricket was a simple game?

Science Year 2007

I'm a bit late in compiling this annual list (its two years old now, so its annual), but here it is, my Top 10 Science Stories of 2007. They are not necessarily the most important science stories from the previous year, more the stories that moved me. Follow the links within the stories for more information. Listen to the show on the podcast here (including some snippets from my favourite songs of 2007).

10. A Strange year for Nobel Scientists

James Watson (pictured) was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for being part of the team that discovered the structure of DNA. However, on October 14, 2007, Watson was quoted as saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" as "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."

This is obviously not the type of rhetoric one expects from a Nobel laureate. He went on to say that whilst he hoped everyone was equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true." He also said that "there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Watson issued an apology a few days later saying that he was "mortified" and "cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said ... To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."

Whilst one Nobel Laureate was saying unscientific things, a scientific body - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - and a complete non-scientist in Al Gore won the Nobel peace prize for their "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change". This is just another sign that Climate Change is gradually becoming a very important issue in the eyes of the world, even if the awarding of a peace prize to me seems a little strange.

..........................

9. Global Warming

And whilst global warming really is the number one story of the year, I'm putting it here at number nine, just to be different to every other list that's out there - including last year's top 10 on Mr Science. The IPCC, made up of 3,000 delegates from 113 countries, released its final report in Febuary 2007 and stated, rather definitively, that climate change was man made and here to stay. The report, the first since 2001, was based on much improved data which has led the IPCC to predict that if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise to double what they were in the pre-industrial world (280 parts per million), temperatures will rise by 3 degrees. In 2005 we had 379 ppm carbon dioxide.

"There can be no question that the increases in these greenhouse gases are dominated by human activity," says Susan Solomon, co-chair of the working group. "Warming of the climate system is now unequivocal. That is evident in observations of air and ocean temperature as well as rising global mean sea level."

"The 2nd of February in Paris will be remembered as the day that the question mark was removed from the idea that humans had anything to do with climate change," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environmental Programme. "The focus of attention will now shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity and whether the science is sufficient to what on earth are we going to do about it."

..........................

8. The extinction of the Yangste Dolphin

One of the great tragedies in modern memory is the extinction of the Yangtze Dolphin. The Yangtze Dolphin is the first large animal in 50 years to be driven from the planet, and only the fourth entire mammal family in 500 years to be destroyed. Having lived on the planet for 20 million years, time of death was called on Wednesday 8th August with the dolphin officially declared extinct by a report in the journal of the Royal Society, Biology Letters. It is the first species of cetacean (whale, dolphin or porpoise) to be killed off by human activity.

The Yangtze Dolphin was no ordinary dolphin, and the extinction was not of the kind that occurs throughout the natural course of evolution. The Yangtze Dolphin is a freshwater dolphin that separated from other species millions of years ago, and had evolved so distinctly that it qualified as a mammal family in its own right.

The extinction is a dangerous warning. An astounding 10 percent of the world’s population – 600 million people – live in the Yangtze basin. Human activity in the region, including shipping and fishing, is to blame for the dolphin's demise. Container ships and the nets of fishermen have killed off the dolphin, otherwise known as baiji or white-fin. The dangerous fact is that the Yangtze has lost its top predator and the ecosystem is in a state of collapse. The collapse of the Yangtze ecosystem could effect the welfare and livelihoods of these 600 million people.

..........................

7. Buried Alive

This is almost my ultimate fear, to be trapped inside in my body without any means of communication. In 2007, a woman was found to have near-normal brain activity, even though she had been diagnosed as vegetative for five months because she didn't respond to stimuli. Whilst the active core of her brain had lost its connections to her body, she was still very much alive inside her own head. The technique used to uncover this is called Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which tracks blood flow to different parts of the brain. When the doctors asked her to imagine playing tennis and walking through her home, the scan showed blood flow in the brain, which in healthy people, is associated with language, movement and navigation. Indeed, her patterns were exactly the same as the those from healthy people.

Using this technique, electrode stimulation was able to restore consciousness to another man who had been diagnosed as in a vegetative state. Another regained consciousness after 19 years in a coma, and says that he was conscious the whole time. Talk about a nightmare.

..........................

6. A Very Cold War

Russia has claimed one of the most inaccessible areas on Earth with a feat of magnificent science and engineering that tests international law, explores hitherto unexplored geography and territory, and asserts the Kremlin’s power in an old-fashioned land grab.

Two minisubmarines planted a titanium alloy Russian flag on the ocean floor, 4261 m under the Arctic Ocean surface at the North Pole. It is the first time the technical feat of reaching the North Pole sea floor in a manned craft has been achieved and is not only a sign of Russian strength, but a clear indication of the fact that Russia wants to claim the possibly resource rich area. The submersibles were named Mir-1 and Mir-2 – clearly Russia has a penchant for calling their scientific explorer craft Mir.

Although politically charged, the trip had a number of scientific aims. Soil and water samples of the seabed were taken during the mission. The mission could also help sort out whether or not the Lomonosov Ridge, which runs between Russia and Greenland and on which the disputed region lies, is actually part of, or connected to, the Russian continental shelf.

..........................

5. Planets Planets Planets

2007 saw the discovery of a spate of new extrasolar planets - planets orbiting other stars. Astronomers identified a small rocky world called "Gliese 581c" which had initially held hopes that it might be like the Earth - astronomers now believe it is more like Venus and has a run-away greenhouse effect. Astronomers also generated the first weather map of an extrasolar planet - HD 189733b - and also found evidence for the presence of water on the planet.

..........................

4. Erasing a Single Memory

Hollywood has long been comfortable with the idea of being able to erase a single memory in your head. It seems now that science may have caught up. Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux from New York University has erased specific memories from the brains of rats. To conduct this experiement, LeDoux traumatised rats by playing a siren and a beep in association with an electric shock. In this way, they associated the sounds with the shock and "planted" this memory in their brains. When the team administered the enzyme inhibitor U0126 directly into the rats’ amygdala, a section of the brain associated with emotion, rats not given the drug were scared of the sounds, but those who were were no longer fearful of the beep. This suggests that the beep/shock memory had been erased - or perhaps blocked.

It is difficult to find conclusive proof here, as well, rats can't talk.

..........................

3. Robots Robots Robots

2007 was a big year for robots. The First Robot That Walks Like a Human was developed, the first robotic ankle was made, and robots learnt to help and deceive each other.

• Until 2007, walking robots relied on heavy-duty computational power, calculating the angle of the knees and ankles every moment for each step. RunBot, developed by Florentin Wörgötter of the University of Göttingen, takes a simpler, more human approach by, rather than exerting continuous control over each step, it just falls forward and then reacts - like a human.
• Conventional prosthetic ankle-foot combinations are just not as good as a natural step - until now. Researchers reported the first robotic ankle that adjusts to the user to the terrain.
• Dario Floreano of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has found that robots can evolve to communicate - both truthfully and with deception. Floreano designed robots with light sensors, rings of blue light, and wheels. He then put them in ecosystems with “food sources” and “poison” that recharged or drained their batteries. Each of their "brains" had 30 software elements (genes) that determined how much they sensed light and what they did when they did. Initially, the robots just moved randomly when they sensed light, but in the next generation, Floreano recombined the genes of those that proved fittest (those that found the most food), and added some random changes - mutations. This was robot reproduction. Four different families ate, reproduced, and died, and by the 50th generation, the robots had learned to communicate. In 3 families, they lit up to alert the others when they’d found food or poison. In the 4th family, some robots however had evolved to light up to tell others that poison was food, while they took all the actual food for themselves. Other robots were heroes - signalling danger and sometimes dying to save others.

..........................

2. Dark Matter

Early 2007 saw the first map of the Dark Matter in the Universe produced. Dark Matter is a theoretical form of matter that can not be observed directly, but whose presence can be inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists compiled a dark matter map of a tiny part of the sky - about two square degrees.

The map was published in the journal Nature and confirmed that galaxies form within enormous clouds of dark matter. In the early universe, it is thought that dark matter provided the gravitational scaffolding on which ordinary matter coalesced and grew into galaxies. Mapping it through its gravitation effects - as it does not emit or reflect electromagnetic waves you can't actually see it - is an enormous achievement.

..........................

1. Stem Cell Breakthroughs

And the top story.... 2007 saw two teams of scientists independently discover a method to turn ordinary human skin cells into stem cells with the same characteristics as those derived from human embryos. This could have truly revolutionary implications as it bi-passes nearly all the ethical issues that have prevented research on human embryonic stem cells. It may also allow scientists to make stem cells from someone's personal genetic make-up - in this way, they will not be rejected by their body if implanted or used to grow new organs. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and James Thomson from the University of Wisconsin have taken out this year's number one spot due to this marvellous discovery.

"Embryonic stem cells can divide forever, and there has never been good evidence for such cells in adults, but this new paper shows a method to make cells essentially identical to embryonic stem cells," said James Thomson. "This will change the ethical debate."

"We are now in a position to be able to generate patient- and disease-specific stem cells, without using human eggs or embryos," added Dr Yamanaka. "These cells should be useful in understanding disease mechanisms, searching for effective and safe drugs, and treating patients with cell therapy."

Research in this area opens up the possibility of curing degenerative and genetic disorders and such discoveries can not be understated.

............

Well, that's it for another year. Let me know if you agree or disagree.
You can listen to this show on the podcast here.

Science, Cricket, Fitness and Psychology

Do you need to be fit to play cricket? Do the best batsmen in the world really have the ability to predict the type of ball they will receive before it even arrives? And is cricket really more of a mental game than a physical one?

These are the questions that we are tackling this week on Mr Science. We have discussed them in previous issues, but this week we are talking to the experts.

In this rather longer episode, we talk to Dr Rob Duffield from the School of Human Movement at Charles Sturt University who has found that indeed you really do not need to be as physically fit to play cricket as you do other sports such as football. We also have a chat about the direction of research with regards to sport and cricket in particular, and how scientific endeavour is reforming the way cricketers train and prepare for games.

We chat to Dr Allistair McRobert from Liverpool John Moores University who's work has shown that the best batsmen can predict to some extent where a bowler will bowl. This work also encompasses a look into the subconscious mental game of cricket and how the most successful players are more mentally prepared for the top level than lesser players.

Finally, I discuss the role of psychology in cricket and the various measures that are being put in place to look after the cricketer's brain.

I also wrote this up and some of it appeared in the Canberra Times - click here for a pdf of the article. I also wrote something for All Out Cricket but that article is not online, so you'll just have to go to the UK and buy it!

Listen to this show here

Diffusion Science Radio - UP LATE

I was very lucky to host the Diffusion Science Show "Up late" edition last Saturday night. Myself, Matt Clarke, Jacqui Hayes and Vanessa Gardos wandered into 2SER at 11pm, and broadcast across Sydney live until 1am.

This gave us a chance to talk about the topics about which we always wanted to chat, without worrying too much about offending anyone.

This recording actually has quite a lot of static on it, and whilst I have tried to clean it up, it was impossible to clean up with the tools I have, so you may find this a little hard to listen to in some places. It sounds like listening to a badly tuned radio, so it might be OK to listen to in the car, on the train or on a plane. We still thought it important to get this episode out there, at least so we can all hear it again!

Grab the file from the podcast here.

The topics we chat about include (all in a science context):

1. Cricket
2. The future of humanity
3. Neanderthals
4. Elephants
5. What if human disappeared over night
6. Nudist beaches
7. Consciousness

By the end, we're all a little over caffeinated and tired! If you can get through the static, its actually quite a fun show. I promise to get next week's episode out quickly in case this static is all too much for you! I have also left in all the music to give it that radio feel. Listen to this on your next drive in the country when you can't get the radio anyway!

Listen to this show here

Space Invaders Mind Control, Small Testes and Facial Expressions

Mind control over Space Invaders
A 14-year-old who suffers from epilepsy, is the first teenager to play a two-dimensional video game using only the signals from his brain, a unique experiment conducted by a team of neurosurgeons, neurologists, and engineers at Washington University in St. Louis has found.

And the game was one of my favourites from the 1980s, Space Invaders.

This type of work has implications towards someday building biomedical devices that can control artificial limbs, for instance, enabling the disabled to move prosthetic arms or legs by simply thinking about it.

The teenager had an electric grid placed upon his brain to record electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity - data taken invasively right from the brain surface.

Eric C. Leuthardt, an assistant professor of neurological surgery at the School of Medicine, and Daniel Moran, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, performed their research on the boy who had the grids implanted so that neurologists and neurosurgeons could find the area in the brain that causes epileptic seizures.

Leuthardt and Moran connected the patient to a sophisticated computer running a special program known as BCI2000 which connected Space Invaders to the ECoG grid. They then asked the boy to do various motor and speech tasks, moving his hands various ways, talking, and imagining. The team could see from the data which parts of the brain and what brain signals correlate to these movements. They then asked the boy to play Space Invaders by actually moving his tongue and his hand. He was then asked to imagine the same movements, but not to actually perform them with his hands or tongue.

"He cleared out the whole level one basically on brain control," said Leuthardt. "He learned almost instantaneously... He mastered two levels playing only with his imagination. This really was a symphony of expertise ranging from neurosurgery, neurology, neuroscience, engineering, and computer science which was years in the making. The end result is something we can really be proud of."

You might be horny, but you have small testes
Some interesting news now for the tough cocky muscle men among us. Professor Leigh Simmons of the University of Western Australia and US researcher Professor Douglas Emlen of the University of Montana have shown that there is an evolutionary trade-off between the ability to fight off sexual competitors - ie be really tough - and reproductive potency.

They found that beetles with the biggest horns have the smallest testes. There is a trade off between the ability to find a mate and the ability to fertilise her.

The researchers looked at beetles of the genus Onthophagus, dung beetles known for the size and variety of their horns.

"What we did was test a fundamental assumption underlying evolution ... that males face a trade-off between competing for access to lots of females and investment in gaining fertilisation with those females," Simmons says.

"They need to have big horns to win fights and get females and they need to have big testes in order to win in sperm competition.

"But they can't do both, so species which invest very heavily in their horns tend to invest less in their testes."

There are other examples in nature also. Bats trade the size of their testes for brain power. Stalk-eyed flies, in which eye span width is a measure of sexual desirability, trade testes size for the width of their eyes.

And clearly is known in humans - those with the most expensive cars with the loudest sound system, clearly have the smaller penises.

Inherited Facial Expressions
Do you look like your father when you're angry? Probably more than you'd imagined. Facial expressions may be inherited.

According to Israeli scientists, every person has a set of facial expressions that is unique to them, a signature of their identity that remains stable over time. Stable patterns of facial expressions arise before a baby is six months old, but until now, scientists were unsure whether these patterns were learned or innate.

"We were interested to examine whether there is a unique family facial expression signature," said lead author Gili Peleg from the University of Hafa in Israel. "We assumed that we would find similarities between the facial expressions of relatives."

The study, published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved 21 participants who had been blind from birth, each with either one or two relatives who had normal vision. According to the researchers, blind individuals have no way of learning the facial expressions of their relatives by mimicry. The common perception that blind people touch other's faces to sense their expressions was revealed to be, in fact, very impolite behaviour.

The scientists induced six emotional states in each individual - sadness, anger, joy, think-concentrate, disgust and surprise - and then documented all the facial movements the person made while experiencing a particular emotion.

Forty-three different facial movements were recorded, including movements such as: biting the lower lip on the left-hand side; moving the lips while pressed together, as though chewing; rolling the upper lip inside the mouth; sticking out the tongue slightly while touching both lips; and pulling down the corners of the mouth while pushing the chin forward.

A computer program was used to allocate the blind individual to a family according to the types of movements observed and their frequencies. The blind individual was allocated to the correct family 80 per cent of the time when using information from all six emotional states.

"These findings indicate the existence of a hereditary basis for facial expressions," Peleg explained.

Listen to this show

Music and Science on the Brain

Music has an indisputable ability to trigger powerful emotions. It is frequently associated with memories of the past, and hearing just a short clip of a song can often trigger feelings from deep within the subconscious. It is also used in various therapies, can add considerable depth to a movie or film clip, and can have a substantial effect on your mood, even the first time you hear a song. What is it about music that conjures up such feelings?

It is undeniable, yet largely inexplicable, that music can evoke emotions from your past, whether it conjures up memories from school, good times or lost loves. However, the mechanism within the brain that allows this to occur is relatively unknown. Traditionally, the fields of music and biology have not overlapped, and a deep understanding of the neurological effects of music still awaits us. One of the problems is that the emotional effect of music is very subjective – one song can be experienced in many different ways by many different people. Some may associate memories with the song, the environment in which it is played effects how people respond, and simply the personality and mood of the listener may make them predisposed to feel a certain way about certain pieces of music and musical styles. In summary, songs that affect some people, may not affect others – there is a cultural effect.

Notwithstanding this, a researcher at the University of New South Wales has worked out a few basic mathematical features of music that influence our mood.

“'Among other things,” said Dr Emery Schubert, “loudness, tempo and pitch have a measurable impact on people’s emotional response to music,'”

His study involved 66 volunteers who listened to four classical compositions and moved a mouse over a computer screen to indicate how they felt when they were listening to the songs. He found that arousal is associated with a composition’s loudness and to a lesser extent its tempo. Schubert stated that along with the idea that songs written in a major key are happy songs, and those in a minor key are sad songs, happiness is associated with a rising pitch and an increased number of instruments.

However, Schubert is aware that he has only highlighted a number of broad factors that contribute to music’s effect on our emotions.

”While we know that some musical parameters predict some emotions with a degree of certainty, musical features interact in complex ways, as do listener responses. Before we can compose musical emotions by numbers, we need to convert human experience and cultural knowledge variables into numbers, too. It will be some time before we can do this. What we've shown is that it is already possible to locate and quantify some of these emotions with some precision.”

Dissonance is another factor that is unpleasant to listeners and can create feelings of fear. It may also be intrinsic to music as infants as young as 4 months old show negative reactions. It has been found that varying degrees of dissonance causes increased activity in the paralimbic regions of the brain, which are associated with emotional processes.

Another recent experiment measured the brain activity while listeners were played music they chose that made them feel good and had emotional value for them. Activity was seen in the reward/motivation, emotion, and arousal areas of the brain. This result suggests a connection between the pleasure of music and the pleasures induced by food, sex, and drugs, which target these same areas.

Music can also effect hormone levels within the body, lowering levels of cortisol (associated with stress), and rising levels of melatonin (associated with sleep). This suggests music can help with relaxation. It also causes the release of endorphins, which help relieve pain.

Everyone has felt chills up their spine when listening to a piece of music. Emotions stimulate a region of the brain called the hypothalamus. Neurobiologist Jaak Panksepp found that people more often feel chills or goose bumps when listening to music when the music evokes a sad feeling or is compounded by a sad memory, as opposed to happy feelings or positive memories. He thinks this may be due to evolution – this response may be similar to those our ancestors felt when they heard the cry of a lost loved one bringing about a desire for close physical contact and keeping families together. It is known that songs mimicking the sounds of mourning and waling evoke feelings of sadness.

Cementing the fact that music has a powerful effect of the brain is a disorder called musicogenic epilepsy. People with this condition are mentally deficient, yet most are excellent musicians – some are even known as “musical savants” who have extraordinary musical talent. On the other hand, less than 1% of the population suffer from amusia, a condition that means that they can literally not recognise a melody, no matter how simple is it.

So however music works on us, it seems that it must have an important function, otherwise it would not have evolved. Perhaps an appreciation of music, like broad shoulders, may demonstrate fitness to a potential mate – singing or playing an instrument well requires dexterity and good memory. Or perhaps it is something we need to keep our brain stimulated with its complex patterns. Whatever its reason and however it works, music is fundamental to our society and something for us all to enjoy, even if we don’t all enjoy the same stuff.

Listen to this show here

Look into my eyes, look into my eyes, not around the eyes....

Ever seen people clucking like chickens, pretending to be Michael Jackson or doing other outlandish things, supposedly under the influence of a hypnotist? Does staring at a swinging watch really make you fall into a trance-like state where you are so susceptible to suggestion that you think onions taste like apples or that you can see everyone in the room naked? And does hypnotism have anything to do with zombies?

The topic of hypnosis is a controversial one. Some scientists charge that hypnosis is simply pseudo-science with no credibility, whilst many therapists use it for medical reasons, and evidence exists for its use in pain relief. People have been pondering and arguing over hypnosis for more than 200 years, but science has yet to fully explain how it actually happens. What we do know is that it is a process by which a person induces an altered state of awareness in another person. It is not the same as sleep, however, and you do not lose control over your mind or feelings. Despite popular belief, you do not weaken or surrender your will to any other person. You are fully conscious, but you tune out most of the stimuli around you, as you do when intensely reading or driving.

In conventional hypnosis, you approach the suggestions of the hypnotist as if they were reality. If the hypnotist suggests that the onion you are eating tastes like an apple, you’re brain will think that it does indeed taste like an apple. If the hypnotist suggests that you are drinking a beer, you'll taste the beer and feel it cooling your mouth and throat. But the entire time, you are aware that it's all fake, like when you’re watching a movie. You tune out your normal worries and doubts and become engrossed in what you are seeing. You are also highly suggestible, however a hypnotist can’t get you to do anything you don't want to do.

One theory of how hypnosis works has to do with your subconscious. In your everyday life, you are only aware of what’s going on in your conscious mind – like thinking of the right words to say to that cute girl, thinking about a problem at work or how much pepper to put in your stir fry. But your subconscious mind is also helping you make these decisions by doing all the behind the scenes thinking. It accesses a vast reservoir of information stored in your brain that helps you solve problems. It puts together plans and then takes them to your conscious mind for a decision. When a new idea comes to you out of the blue, it's because you already thought of it unconsciously.

Your subconscious also takes care of all that stuff you do automatically, like breathing. Your conscious mind could not handle it if you had to think of having to breathe all the time. Also, you don't think through every little thing you do while driving a car – a lot of that is left to your subconscious.

Psychiatrists theorise that hypnotism can calm the conscious mind so that it takes a less active role in your thinking processes. In this state, you're still aware of what's going on, but your conscious mind takes a back seat to your subconscious mind. Effectively, this allows you and the hypnotist to work directly with your subconscious. Without the conscious mind to think through everything you do, you may be open to the suggestions of the hypnotist.

But what of zombies, creatures apparently risen from the dead and desperate to eat brains? There have been sightings of zombies across the world, and one theory was that these were people so hypnotised that they had lost complete touch with reality. It may defy belief however, but zombies have been actually proven to exist in real life, but their hypnotism is the result of some incredibly potent drugs and not the work of a hypnotist.

Zombies have been discovered on the Caribbean island of Haiti. They are people who have been almost killed by a mixture of toad skin and puffer fish, which makes the victim soon appear dead, with an incredibly slow breath, and an incredibly slow and faint heartbeat. In Haiti, people are buried very soon after death, because the heat and the lack of refrigeration makes their bodies decay rapidly. So you have to dig them up within eight hours of the burial, or else they'll die of asphyxiation.

When raised from their burial spot, they are made mad, by being force-fed a paste made from Datura, or Jimsons Weed, which breaks your links with reality, and then destroys all your recent memories. So you don’t know what day it is, where you are or who you are. The zombies are in a state of semi-permanent induced psychotic delirium. They are then sold to sugar plantations as slave labour.

Thankfully, your local doctor can’t put you into this type of state with everyday hypnosis!

Listen to this show here

Love is a many splendored thing

Love has inspired painters, songwriters and artists for centuries. Singers have cried that love will tear us apart and that love will lead us back together, that love can be tainted, and that the look of love is something to be desired. Some cultures have more than 10 words for love. But now scientists are starting to get interested in this fundamental human emotion, and this week on Mr Science, we will start a series of shows looking into this crazy little thing called Love.

The scientific understanding of love is still in its early stages, however when it comes to those warm tingly feelings inside us, it seems that our biochemistry is to blame. Right from the moment we are born, chemicals in our brain effect how much we bond with those around us. The love of a mother for a child is perhaps the most fundamental of loves, and scientists are now starting to understand that this love is cemented by a hormone called oxytocin. Late in pregnancy, the number of oxytocin receptors in the brain increases because of heightened levels of oestrogen. During childbirth, the hypothalamus gland releases high levels of oxytocin that then bonds to the many receptors, thus making the mother effectively “addicted” to her child. This makes evolutionary sense, as a strong bond between mother and child is essential for the child to survive.

Oxytocin is also thought to be associated with long lasting intimate relationships between adults. Oxytocin is released during intimate physical contact between partners, and boosts trust between partners whilst also helping people overcome “social fear” when getting to know each other. A study of “investors” and “trustees” at the University of Zurich suggested that with just a sniff of oxytocin, those playing the role of investors would hand over all their money to phoney anonymous trustees without any guarantee of its return. Those in love would recognise the thought that your partner can do no wrong.

But whilst oxytocin cements close relationships, other chemicals get us to that stage. Lust is driven by testosterone and oestrogen. These hormones encourage us to get out there and meet people, and cause the initial attractions. After lust comes attraction, and this is the stage that most people regard as being love-struck. You are unable to think about anything else and you spend hours daydreaming about that special person. Sometimes you don’t even need to eat or sleep. A group of neuro-transmitters called monoamines are to blame here. You are the victim of dopamine, which is also activated by smoking, adrenaline, which makes you sweat and your heart race, and serotonin, which has been shown to be associated with mental disorders. It would seem that you would have to be mad to be in love. Indeed, studies in Italy have shown that some people recently in love suffer some symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Some even suffered depression!

Another interesting chemical in the brain associated with long-term commitment is called vasopressin. The amount of vasopressin in the brain seems to determine whether or not a couple will remain monogamous. Monogamy, or having only one partner, is not as common among mammals as one may think. Although having monogamous parents could help in child raring, less than 5% of mammals have only one partner. Nature provides a good example of how vasopressin can determine monogamy. The Prairie vole bonds very closely to its mate, whilst its relative, the meadow vole, is promiscuous. It seems that the difference between these species is the amount of vasopressin receptors in the brain. In the prairie vole, when the hormone is released during physical intimacy, there are many receptors with which it can bond, and the deep monogamous relationship is cemented. In the meadow vole, there are very few receptors, and so the feelings of love are not generated and the meadow vole moves on to its next partner.

So it would seem that we are at the mercy of our biochemistry, and that love may indeed give us a mental disorder. In the next few weeks on Mr Science, we’ll have a closer look at what we look for in our perfect partners, and also how to best scientifically woo your lover. We’ll also take a look at internet dating.

Listen to this show here

What are Dreams?

Why do we dream? Do they mean anything? Can we control them?

Listen to this show here