Bees recognize human faces using feature configuration

Going about their day-to-day business, bees have no need to be able to recognise human faces. Yet in 2005, when Adrian Dyer from Monash University trained the fascinating insects to associate pictures of human faces with tasty sugar snacks, they seemed to be able to do just that. But Martin Giurfa from the Université de Toulouse, France, suspected that that the bees weren't learning to recognise people.

'Because the insects were rewarded with a drop of sugar when they chose human photographs, what they really saw were strange flowers. The important question was what strategy do they use to discriminate between faces,' explains Giurfa. Wondering whether the insects might be learning the relative arrangement (configuration) of features on a face, Giurfa contacted Dyer and suggested that they go about systematically testing which features a bee learned to recognise to keep them returning to Dyer's face photos. The team publish their discovery that bees can learn to recognise the arrangement of human facial features on 29 January 2010 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

Teaming up with Aurore Avargues-Weber, the team first tested whether the bees could learn to distinguish between simple face-like images. Using faces that were made up of two dots for eyes, a short vertical dash for a nose and a longer horizontal line for a mouth, Avargues-Weber trained individual bees to distinguish between a face where the features were cramped together and another where the features were set apart. Having trained the bee to visit one of the two faces by rewarding it with a weak sugar solution, she tested whether it recognised the pattern by taking away the sugar reward and waiting to see if the bee returned to the correct face. It did.

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It's interesting to try and teach a single bee to learn a single person's face, but what about a whole colony and teaching them to learn multiple faces? Teaching bees to learn peoples faces would be nice to make honey harvesting possible to average people.

http://www.physorg.com/news183963606.html

"Stopping Schizophrenia Before It Starts"

Adult "schizophrenic" rats (middle) have larger lateral ventricles than those of normal rats (left), but become smaller after preventive treatment with clozapine in adolescence (right). (Credit: Image courtesy of Tel Aviv University)

Schizophrenia is believed to be triggered by an infect but takes many years for the systems to be develop according to Prof. Ina Weiner of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychology. The symptoms occur in early adulthood. "Pharmacological treatments for schizophrenia remain unsatisfactory, so clinicians and researchers like myself have started to dig in another direction," says Prof. Weiner. "The big question asked in recent years is if schizophrenia can be prevented."

Studies were done to look for cues that the disorder would occur before the actual disorder occur. Prof Weiner and her collaagues Dr. Yael Piontkewiz and Dr. Yaniv Assaf. They used neuro-imaging to see if they would be early to track any early-onset in the brain of laboratory animals. Experiments included giving pregnant rats a viral mimic that is known to induce the schizophrenia-like behavioral disorder in the offspring. Thus stimulating maternal infection in pregnancy which is a well known risk factor for schizophrenia. This proved that the rats where normal at birth and during the adolescence stage but as previous studies has shown during early adulthood the symptoms occurred.

While looking at the brain scans and behaviors exhibited by the rats the results where "abnormally developing lateral ventricles and the hippocampus in the rats with the schizophrenia." After the results that they rats where at high risk for the condition they where given treatment. The treatment was using risperidone and colozapine which as two drugs commonly known to be used in the treatment of schizophrenia. Brain scans showed that the abnormal developing of the lateral ventricles and hippocampus retained a healthy size. By using the drugs during adolescence several months before full maturity is reached this can arrest the development of deterioration of the brain. Normally clinics use the drugs to prevent an onset of schizophrenia.

Currently only anti-psychotics are prescribed when a patient exhibits the symptoms are present. "Prof. Weiner believes that an effective non-invasive prediction method (looking at the developmental trajectory of specific changes in the brain), coupled with a low dose drug taken during adolescence, could stave off schizophrenia in those most at risk."

Further research is underway to see at what point the changers occur in the brain and how early they can be detected.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100128142145.htm

Leukemia Cells Metabolize Fat to Avoid Cell Death

Leukemia cells, like most cancers, are addicted to glucose to generate their energy, but new research shows for the first time that these cells also rely on fatty acid metabolism to grow and to evade cell death.
Research has shown that Leukemia cells like fat and make it hard to kill the Leukemia cells. This research also shows that shutting off fat oxidation makes the cells vulnerable to self-destruction. With this fat oxidation may become a way to treat Leukemia patiences.
In non-cancerous cells the processing of fatty acids leads to production of ATP, which is a source of energry for the cell. The researchers shows that fatty acid oxidation in leukemia cell mitochondria drives cellular oxygen consumption and inhibits the activity of proteins that are vital to apoptosis, the programmed death of defective cells that begins in the mitochondria.
With this finds that may have been the reason why Leukemia cells were not dying, because they were living off the fatty acids.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127152458.htm

New Age Tree of Life

Since we were talking about the Tree of Life today in class, I thought I would take a look and see what I could find. Though this picture comes from Wikipedia  I thought it did a good job of showing how science has evolved from the literal looking tree to this almost complete circle. I wonder what it will look like in another million or two years.

Similar DNA in bats and dolphins

Recently, scientists have located a gene in which both dolphins and bats possess. Both are able to use echo location as a hearing tool. It is unique to see two very different enviornment based animals possess the same gene.

The gene has even mutated in the same in both animals. There is still an on going search to fully understand echolocation and how animals can hear such high frequency sounds. Humans have, over time, lost the ablity to hear these frequencies.

This article seemed very interesting seeing as how we were just discussing evolution in our last lecture. This article helps to support the idea of evolution. I also found it interesting that both bats and dolphins have the same amino acid in their genes to use acho location the same way as one other seeing as how one lives under water.

Color of Dinosaur Feathers Identified

A paper that was recently published in the magazine 'Nature', reports that for the first time, we can identify the color of some feathers on dinosaurs and early birds. This discovery has helped resolve a debate about the original function of feathers. The fact that the discovery was made on dinosaurs that existed before winged creatures roamed the earth acknowledges feather were not originally used assistance in flight. Also, the feathers were not in sufficient quantity and location on the dinosaurs to indicate that they would have been used for insulation purposes. This leads us to the conclusion that the original function of feathers was as a display feature. Melanosomes are color-bearing organelles, buried within the structure of the feathers, which have survived for hundreds of millions of years due to their rugged construction. These melanosomes are the key to the discovery of feather colors and patterns on these ancient creatures. This fantastic step forward in science has created a link in our understanding of nature that will allow us to discover the steps of the feather over its long evolutionary travel.

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