Enrique Rivero

One of the most important health problems in the United States is the failure of patients with chronic diseases to take their medications and do all that is necessary to control their illnesses.

In a study published in the current Journal of General Internal Medicine, UCLA researchers and their colleagues suggest that physicians take a serious look at tools and strategies used in behavioural economics and social psychology to help motivate their patients to assert better control over chronic diseases. Breaking large goals into smaller, more manageable parts, for example, may help patients manage diseases such as diabetes better, the researchers say.

Diagnosing diseases and discovering effective treatments are not the only challenges facing health care professionals in the United States, said Braden Mogler, the paper’s lead author and a third-year medical student at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.

Helping patients understand why treatment is important and how to follow it

‘One of the big challenges is simply finding ways to help the many patients with chronic diseases understand why treatment is important and how to follow it,’ Mogler said. ‘Many doctors often lack effective tools to encourage patients in these ways. There is a lot of research from the social sciences on human behaviour and encouraging individual change, and this paper shows how that research can potentially be applied to doctor–patient interactions.’

In the study, the researchers highlight the shortcomings of some approaches frequently used to try to get individuals to control their diseases, such as scaring patients, overwhelming them with technical information, and focusing on consequences that are far in the future.

They then identify several tools used by psychologists and behavioural economists that can change behaviour but which have not been employed often in medical care, and suggest that research on such alternative approaches is an urgent need. These approaches include:

•Helping patients form very specific plans to achieve their health goals  -  for example, identifying the time when they will take their medicines, having them determine what they will do if their prescriptions run out and they don’t have a doctor’s appointment, and giving them a place to record whether they took the medicines.

•Breaking big goals into smaller tasks that get patients to their ultimate goal step-by-step  -  useful for goals like extreme weight loss, adhering to medication regimens and checking blood sugar every day, or exercising several times a week.

•Using cash payments to patients as a motivator to get them on track but supplementing that with strategies that will increase their desire to stay healthy and live longer.

Helping people to change to achieve their goals can pay off in health care

If studies show these techniques make a difference, they might improve health and decrease health care costs, said co-author Dr. Martin Shapiro, chief of the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

‘Helping patients get their chronic diseases under control sometimes requires changing medications but mostly comes down to helping patients understand why treatment is important and how they can follow it in their busy lives,’ Shapiro said. ‘There is a lot of exciting research on how we can help people change to achieve their goals in other fields, and we believe translating those ideas to health care is an important next step in medical research.’

The study’s authors found that some of these techniques are being used to a limited degree in health care settings  -  helping patients quit smoking by settling on an exact quit date, for instance, has proven more effective than speaking in general terms about quitting soon. Still, many other potentially effective techniques have not been studied in medical settings, and the authors stress the need for clinical trials to evaluate their effectiveness.

Patients with chronic diseases need to take their medications and do all that is necessary to control their illnesses. (Image: Dvortygirl, via Wikimedia Commons)

Source: UCLA

UCLA infectious diseases doctor played key role in finance strategy for therapy.

Rachel Champeau

A new international program, conceived in part by a UCLA physician, has rapidly transformed access to lifesaving anti-malarial drugs by providing cheap, subsidised artemisinin-based combination therapies in seven African countries that account for a quarter of the world’s malaria cases.

The first independent evaluation of the Affordable Medicines Facility–malaria (AMFm) program was recently published in the journal The Lancet. The program is based at the Global Fund in Geneva, an international financing institution dedicated to disbursing funds to prevent and treat infectious diseases. The evaluation shows that the program improved access to key artemisinin combination therapies, or ACTs, which offer broader protection and less antibiotic resistance than anti-malaria medications currently available in those African nations.

The 31 October Lancet study was accompanied by an editorial by a panel of some of the world’s most eminent scientists in this field, which praised AMFm’s ability to reach critical populations but also warned that despite the program’s success, its future funding could be threatened.

‘An unnecessary tragedy‘

‘Losing African children to malaria is such an unnecessary tragedy,’ said Dr. Claire Panosian Dunavan, a clinical professor of infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, who was one of eight co-authors of the Lancet editorial. ‘Now that the global subsidy for ACTs has been proven to work through AMFm, I would hate to see the program end.’

Panosian Dunavan, an expert in tropical diseases, is also one of the original authors of the 2004 Institute of Medicine report ‘Saving Lives, Buying Time,’ which first proposed a global subsidy for modern anti-malarial drugs and led to the development of the AMFm program.

‘Over the last 10 years, I’ve learned a lot from my economist colleagues,’ she said. ‘Leveraging private markets to deliver lifesaving treatments to the global poor is indeed possible, as this global subsidy for malaria drugs has now demonstrated.’

Panosian Dunavan worked closely with economist and Nobel laureate Kenneth J. Arrow, Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan of the Centre for Disease, Dynamics, Economics and Policy, and others in writing the original financing report and the Lancet editorial.

In their comments, the editorial authors write, ‘In November 2012, the Board of the Global Fund will vote to either continue AMFm in a modified form after December 2013, or terminate the program. There is a strong push from donors (though not from countries) to integrate AMFm into the regular Global Fund model, whereby countries would choose how much of their country budget envelopes, which are already committed to other priorities supporting the public sector, to reallocate to AMFm. We believe that this approach will create instability in artemisinin demand, lower the number of ACT manufacturers, increase ACT prices, and abandon the millions who depend on AMFm-subsidised ACTs.’

Facing an uncertain future

Worse, they say, ‘With the world’s largest global health funder [the US President's Malaria Initiative (PMI)] expressing unremitting opposition, even after the positive independent evaluation, the program’s future is uncertain. PMI has yet to suggest an alternative that would come close to the access afforded by AMFm in the private sector.’

The Lancet study evaluated national AMFm pilot programs in Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania (including Zanzibar) and Uganda.

‘Africa is home to 80% of malaria cases, yet most of the population do not have access to affordable ACTs’, said Kara Hanson of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, one of the lead authors of the evaluation study. ‘Access is restricted by unreliable public health facility supply, high prices and limited availability in the private sector, where most people go to buy medicines. Cheaper, less effective anti-malarials currently dominate the market. Worryingly, artemisinin mono-therapies (artemisinin alone, rather than in combination) are also widely available in some countries, and use of these medicines can encourage development of resistance to ACTs.’

A dramatic effect

Changes in availability, price and market share were assessed in each country using nationally representative surveys of public- and private-sector outlets that stock anti-malarial drugs  – both before the introduction of subsidised quality-assured ACTs (QAACTs) and supporting interventions, such as communication campaigns, and six to 15 months after their introduction.

Between August 2010 and the end of 2011, more than 155 million doses of QAACTs were subsidised by AMFm. QAACT availability more than doubled in five countries, and market share more than doubled in four. The effect of AMFm was more limited in Niger and Madagascar, where AMFm ACT orders were lower.

AMFm had a particularly dramatic effect on the private sector, where QAACT market share increased in all pilot programs, with the increase exceeding 30 percentage points in five. What is more, private, for-profit QAACT prices fell substantially (by up to 80%) in six countries, with the decrease ranging from US$1.28 to US$4.82 per dose.

The market share of artemisinin mono-therapies also experienced large declines in Nigeria and Zanzibar, the two countries where their presence on the market was highest at the start of the program.

A word of caution

Although AMFm had less impact on public health facilities’ ACT supply, the study authors point out that there were substantial delays in ordering drugs and implementing the full program in some countries.

‘But not all of the changes observed can be attributed to AMFm,’ the authors cautioned. ‘There was some evidence from two countries that prices had already begun to fall before AMFm started and the market share of ACTs had started to increase, although most of this increase occurred in the public sector.’

According to study, author Hanson, ‘It is clear that tapping into the private sector distribution chain can have a major influence on which anti-malarial treatments are available and their price and quality in just a few months. But more information is needed about whether the subsidised drugs are reaching those most in need and on how diagnostics can be scaled up in the public and private sectors.’

Dr. Claire Panosian Dunavan. (Source: UCLA)

Source: UCLA

Transforming the chemistry of catalysis

Cobalt, a common mineral, holds promise as an industrial catalyst with potential applications in such energy-related technologies such as the production of biofuels and the reduction of carbon dioxide. That is, provided the cobalt is captured in a complex molecule so it mimics the precious metals that normally serve this industrial role.

In work published on 26 November in the international edition of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists report the possibility of replacing the normally used noble metal catalysts with cobalt. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201208739/full)

Catalysts are the parallel of the Philosopher’s Stone for chemistry. They cannot change lead to gold, but they do transform one chemical substance into another while remaining unchanged themselves. Perhaps the most familiar example of catalysis comes from automobile exhaust systems that change toxic fumes into more benign gases, but catalysts are also integral to thousands of industrial, synthetic, and renewable energy processes where they accelerate or optimise a mind-boggling array of chemical reactions. It is not an exaggeration to say that without catalysts, there would be no modern industry.

A drawback

However, a drawback to catalysts is that the most effective ones tend to be literally precious. They are the noble metal elements such as platinum, palladium, rhodium, and ruthenium, which are a prohibitively expensive resource when required in large quantities. In the absence of a genuine Philosopher’s Stone, they could also become increasingly expensive as industrial applications increase worldwide. A push in sustainable chemistry has been to develop alternatives to the precious metal catalysts by using relatively inexpensive, earth-abundant metals. The chemical complexities of the more common metals have made this research a challenge, but the Los Alamos paper holds out hope that the earth-abundant metal cobalt can serve in place of its pricier relatives.

Cobalt, like iron and other transition metals in the Periodic Table, is cheap and relatively abundant, but it has a propensity to undergo irreversible reactions rather than emerging unchanged from chemical reactions as is required of an effective catalyst. The breakthrough by the Los Alamos team was to capture the cobalt atom in a complex molecule in such a way that it can mimic the reactivity of precious metal catalysts, and do so in a wide range of circumstances.

The findings of the Los Alamos team have major ramifications and suggest that cobalt complexes are rich with possibility for future catalyst development. Due to the high performance and low cost of the metal, the cobalt catalyst has potential applications in energy-related technologies such as the production of biofuels, and the reduction of carbon dioxide. It also has implications for organic chemistry, where hydrogenation is a commonly practised catalytic reaction that produces important industrial chemical precursors.

Transforming the chemistry of analysis. (Image: Los Alamos)

Source: Los Alamos

Damaging biocides can be detected on old wooden sculptures, hidden wall paintings can be made visible again and the layered structures of pieces of art analysed. Using terahertz scanners restorers will soon be able to identify quickly, and completely non-destructively, what is happening with an object of art.

It was a special moment for Michael Panzner of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden, Germany and his partners: in the Dresden Hygiene Museum, the scientists were examining a wall picture by Gerhard Richter that had been believed lost long ago. Shortly before leaving the German Democratic Republic the artist had left it behind as a journeyman‘s project. Then, in the 1960s, it was unceremoniously painted over. However, instead of being interested in the picture, Panzer was far more interested in the new detector that was being used for the first time here. Using it, the scientists gained important information about the layered structure of the wall and the structure of the picture area being examined.

According to Panzer, the special thing about the terahertz (THz) scanner is that ‘In comparison with traditional processes, such as X-ray scanners, it works without causing any damage whatsoever. In addition, it does not require a special permit, as in the case of harmful X-rays. This is because the scanner only generates a radiated power of less than 1µW. For comparison: under less than ideal conditions, cell phones emit up to 2 watts. Furthermore, the process  provides concrete data on the structure of the individual layers or of potential hollow areas. In this way, the device also indicated in the Hygiene Museum that in one area the plaster on the wall had evidently been repaired – a valuable clue for the restorer.

The scientists used short electromagnetic pulses that penetrate the various materials almost without attenuation, whereby some materials display characteristic absorption lines, which can be used to identify them clearly. In previous tests, however, the system had reached its limits, for example with behind-the-wall paintings on uneven, very structured walls. For this reason, the scientists at IWS continued to develop the detector head by modifying the THz optics together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM. The application spectrum of the scanner was also expanded.

Caution, contaminated art

Currently, many museums cannot present valuable exhibits to the public because they are contaminated with biocides. The reason for this is that in the 1970s, with the best of intentions, antique textiles or wood sculptures were sprayed with pesticides to keep them from being destroyed. Today it is known that these agents are hazardous to health and a number of different measurement and decontamination processes are being tested. IWS, together with further partners, now wants to set up a project with the aim  of examining the possibilities and limits of the THz technology for organic biocides. ‘In contrast to the current X-ray fluorescence analysis which works on an element-selective basis, THz scanners recognise substances on the basis of the molecular bonding structure. Organic biocides, in particular, could be differentiated in such a manner,’ explains Michael Panzner.

To date, such expensive examinations are often only possible in well-equipped laboratories. In the future, the tests are to be feasible on-site using a mobile scanner. However, a more research is still required until small, portable devices are available that are suitable for such purposes. Above all, close communication and cooperation with restorers and monument preservationists is required for the continued technological improvement of the THz measurement system.

The terahertz scanner not only finds hidden wall pictures, but can also prove the presence of biocides on pieces of art. (Image: HfbK)

Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

Major data centres and supercomputers will soon be more cost and energy efficient, and at the same time will be even more powerful. Fraunhofer scientists and 17 partners from business and research in the European Union have set themselves this ambitious goal in the ‘PhoxTroT’ project. The key is optical data transmission. Over the next four years, the project partners will be studying synergies between existing solutions as well as developing new technologies and strategies.

Gigantic data centres of cloud providers consume energy at an extraordinary rate. For example, Google’s server farms process many petabytes of data and they consume 260 million watts, enough power for a city of 200 000 households. The need to save energy is equally powerful. These facts led the European Union to initiate the PhoxTroT project, coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM in Berlin. The goal is to cut the energy consumption by at least 50%, while simultaneously doubling the capacity of data connections to 2 terabits per second (2Tb/s). This would also significantly reduce costs.

Very energy-efficient

Data transmission using light consumes only a fraction of the energy that conventional methods need. The technologies for photonic transmission already exist and have been thoroughly researched. ‘The novelty of the PhoxTroT project is that we are now researching the synergies between the various technology components and are combining them with each other in a new research plan based on the ‘mix-and-match’ principle,’ explains project coordinator Dr Tolga Tekin from IZM.

By the end of the project, entirely new technologies are expected to emerge that can guarantee a photonic data connection that remains constant across hundreds of kilometres. For this purpose, the project partners are developing three prototypes for various hierarchy levels. They will realise the optical transmission on a printed circuit board (‘on-board’), ‘board-to-board’ and also ‘rack-to-rack’. By combining these interfaces, it will also be possible to bridge longer distances within the foreseeable future.

In a further step, the project partners will engineer single-mode solutions that integrate optical chips onto one circuit board. This allows for signal transmission via one optical path, instead of multiple paths as before. Thus, these technologies are particularly well suited for the transmission of extremely high data rates across long distances.

PhoxTroT: A major project

The European Union is providing €9m funding for the four-year research project, which began in October 2012. Eighteen companies and scientific installations from all over Europe are involved, and coordinating this project is a major task for IZM, as Tolga Tekin reports: ‘The greatest challenge is coordinating partners from a wide range of disciplines. On the one hand, for example, there are the technology experts, and on the other hand, systems experts. We have to bring them all to one table, establish an understanding between them and guide the communications into the right channels.’ This is comparable with dancing, which requires coordination, creativity and stamina, so it is appropriate that the project is called PhoxTroT.

The project partners include Fraunhofer IZM, Fraunhofer HHI, Vertilas GmbH, Xyratex Technology Ltd., ams AG, Meadville Aspocomp International Limited, AMO GmbH, National Technical University of Athens, DAS Photonics SL, Phoenix B.V., Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, Compass Electro Optical Systems Ltd., Bright Photonics BV, Computer Technology Institute and Press – ‘Diophantus’, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, University of Southern Denmark, Universitat Politècnica de València, Interuniversitair Micro-Elektronica Centrum vzw.

Optical data transmission only needs a fraction of the processes that prior systems require. (Image: Fraunhofer IZB)

Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

This composite image shows the most distant X-ray jet ever observed. X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in blue, radio data from the NSF’s Very Large Array are shown in purple and optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope are shown in yellow.

The jet was produced by a quasar named GB 1428+4217, or GB 1428 for short, and is located 12.4 billion light years from Earth. The shape of the jet is very similar in the X-ray and radio data.

Giant black holes at the centres of galaxies can pull in matter at a rapid rate producing the quasar phenomenon. The energy released as particles fall toward the black hole generates intense radiation and powerful beams of high-energy particles that blast away from the black hole at nearly the speed of light. These particle beams can interact with magnetic fields or ambient photons to produce jets of radiation.

As the electrons in the jet fly away from the quasar, they move through a sea of background photons left behind after the Big Bang. When a fast-moving electron collides with one of these so-called cosmic microwave background photons, it can boost the photon’s energy into the X-ray band. Because the quasar is seen when the universe is at an age of about 1.3 billion years, less than 10% of its current value, the cosmic background radiation is a thousand times more intense than it is now. This makes the jet much brighter, and compensates in part for the dimming due to distance.

While there is another possible source of X-rays for the jet – radiation from electrons spiralling around magnetic field lines in the jet – the authors favour the idea that the cosmic background radiation is being boosted because the jet is so bright.

The researchers think the length of the jet in GB 1428 is at least 230 000 light years, or about twice the diameter of the entire Milky Way galaxy. This jet is only seen on one side of the quasar in the Chandra and VLA data. When combined with previously obtained evidence, this suggests the jet is pointed almost directly toward us. This configuration would boost the X-ray and radio signals for the observed jet and diminish those for a jet presumably pointed in the opposite direction.

This result appeared in the 1 September 2012 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

(Image: X-ray: NASA/CXC/NRC/C. Cheung et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA)

Source: NASA

Courtesy of the University of Edinburgh and World Science staff

Researchers have found a gene that they say helps explain how humans evolved from apes.

Called miR-941, it seems to have played a crucial role in brain development and may shed light on how we learned to use tools and language, the scientists say. They add that it is the first time a new gene, carried only by people and not by apes, has been shown to have a specific function in the body.

‘This new molecule sprang from nowhere at a time when our species was undergoing dramatic changes: living longer, walking upright, learning how to use tools and how to communicate,’ said Martin Taylor of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who led the study. ‘We’re now hopeful that we will find more new genes that help show what makes us human.’

The gene has been found to be highly active in two areas of the brain that control our decision-making and language abilities. The study suggests it could have a role in the advanced brain functions that make us human.

The human genome compared; and the gene is unique to us

A team at the university compared the human genome to 11 other species of mammals, including chimpanzees, gorillas, mouse and rat, to find the differences between them. The results, published in the journal Nature Communications, indicate the gene is unique to humans. The researchers say it emerged between six and one million years ago, after the human lineage had branched off from apes.

Most differences between species occur because of changes to existing genes, or the duplication and deletion of genes. But scientists say this gene emerged fully functional out of non-coding genetic material, previously termed ‘junk DNA,’ in a startlingly short time in evolutionary terms.

In this illustration, are pictured DNA (green) and RNA (yellow). (Image: Fdardel, via Wikimedia Commons)

Source: World Science, http://www.world-science.net

Courtesy of the University of Chicago and World Science staff

A type of oddly dim, exploding star is probably a sort of dud – one that could nonetheless throw light on the nature of the mysterious ‘dark energy’ pervading space, astronomers say.

The seemingly failed outbursts are said to come from variants of exploding stars called type Ia supernovae, which are found by the thousands.

Most type 1a supernovae look similar to one another. For this reason, they are used as cosmic distance indicators. If you saw many lamps at many different distances, but knew they were all of same type of lamp, you could use their differing brightnesses to figure out the distance to all of them just by knowing the distance to one. To astronomers, type Ia supernovae serve as such lamps, or ‘standard candles.’

However, these blasts reveal more than distances: data on their brightness has also persuaded astronomers that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Scientists have dubbed the unknown cause behind this acceleration ‘dark energy.’

About 20 type Ia supernovae look peculiar, though.

‘A little odd’

They are ‘a little bit odd,’ said George Jordan, a computational scientist at the University of Chicago. Comparing odd type Ia supernovae to normal ones may let astrophysicists more precisely define the nature of dark energy, he added. Jordan and colleagues have concluded that the peculiar type Ia supernovae are probably ‘white dwarf’ stars that failed to detonate.

‘They ignite an ordinary flame and they burn, but that isn’t followed by a triggering of a detonation wave that goes through the star,’ Jordan said. These findings were based on simulations on Intrepid, the Blue Gene/P supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory. Details are to appear in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Type Ia supernovae are blasts that happen to white dwarfs – stars that have shrunk to Earth size after having burned most or all of their nuclear fuel. Most or all white dwarfs occur in binary systems, those that consist of two stars orbiting one another.

The peculiar type Ia supernovae are anywhere from 10 to 100 times fainter than normal ones, which are brighter and therefore more easily detected. Astrophysicists have estimated that they may account for some 15% of all type Ia supernovae.

A comparatively recent discovery

The first of the dim supernovae was discovered in 2002, noted Robert Fisher, a physicist at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and co-author of the paper. Called SN 2002cx, it is considered the most peculiar type Ia supernova known. The dimmest of the lot, however, was discovered in 2008. ‘If the brightness of a standard supernova could be thought of as a single 60-watt light bulb, the brightness of this 2008 supernova would be equivalent to a small fraction of a single candle or a few dozen fireflies,’ Fisher noted.

Scientists have been simulating type Ia supernova explosions for years based on a scenario called ‘gravitationally confined detonation.’ A white dwarf starts to burn near its centre. The ignition point burns outward, floating toward the surface like a bubble. After it breaks the surface, a cascade of hot ash flows around the star and collides with itself on the opposite end, triggering a detonation.

‘We took the normal GCD scenario and asked what would happen if we pushed this to the limits and see what happens when it breaks,’ Jordan said. In the failed detonation scenario, the white dwarf experiences more ignition points that are closer to the core, which fuels more burning than in the detonation scenario.

No big bang

‘The extra burning causes the star to expand more, preventing it from achieving temperatures and pressures high enough to trigger detonation,’ explained co-author Daniel van Rossum of The University of Chicago’s Flash Centre.

Therefore, instead of blowing apart, the white dwarf remains mostly intact, though some pieces burn away. This failed detonation scenario looks quite similar to the peculiar type Ia explosions, the researchers said. The simulations, they added, resulted in phenomena that astronomers now can look for or have already found in their telescopic observations. These phenomena could include white dwarfs that display unusual compositions, asymmetric surface characteristics and a kick that sends the stars flying off at speeds of hundreds of kilometres per second.

‘No one had ever suggested that white dwarfs could be kicked at such velocities,’ said Hagai Perets of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, a collaborator in the work.

Normal type Ia supernovae look fairly uniform, but the asymmetric characteristics of their peculiar cousins means the latter would often look much different from one another, depending on their viewing angle from Earth. The asymmetric explosion also produces the kick, the researchers said, which may be powerful enough to free the white dwarf from a stellar companion’s gravity or even from its home galaxy.

‘I had never heard of such strange white dwarfs,’ Perets said. However, when he conducted a literature search, he added, he found reports of white dwarfs with properties that this irregular composition could explain.

This image, based on supercomputer simulations, shows the asymmetric surface characteristic of a white dwarf that fails to blow up. (Image: Brad Gallagher, George Jordan/Flash)

Source: World Science, http://www.world-science.net

Courtesy of Public Library of Science and World Science staff

Though a parrot might not understand any words it is saying toward you, there is a good chance its aim is to address you individually, new research suggests.

A study indicates that at least some parrots’ talent for mimicking sounds, which underlies their ‘talking’ skill, functions in nature to let them communicate with individual parrots they encounter.

Thorsten Balsby of the University of Aarhus, Denmark and colleagues from the University of Copenhagen studied one parrot species, the orange-fronted conure.

In the wild, these birds live in dynamic flocks where individuals flit in and out, so each parrot encounters many different individuals daily, the researchers noted. Each bird also has its own unique call.

Both in the wild and in the researchers’ experiments, parrots that heard an imitation of their own calls responded more often and faster to the calling individual than parrots that did not hear this imitation, according to the scientists.

‘I’m talking to you!’

Based on these observations, they suggest that the parrots may have evolved their abilities as mimics so they could start ‘conversation’ with a specific individual by mimicking their call. The findings were published on 21 November in the research journal PLoS One.

‘Given that orange-fronted conures frequently communicate within large communication networks with many potential receivers, which may be from several different flocks, the ability to selectively address specific individuals may be of particular importance’ to them, the scientists wrote.

‘Many species of parrots live part of their lives in social flocks and vocal imitation in parrots may, therefore, have evolved, to enable addressing of specific individuals in communication networks with high turnovers involving many different individuals.’

Balsby and colleagues also noted that a few animals, including dolphins and spectacled parrotlets, have been found to possibly ‘label’ or ‘name’ companions using signature calls. However, such a skill might have limited value in the conures’ social system because these birds interact with too many different individuals, including strangers, the scientists proposed. In contrast, for the conures, vocal imitation affords a flexibility that ‘allows for the addressing of specific individuals with which the addressor has only a limited knowledge,’ they argued.

They added that ‘the hunter-gather life style of early humans’ may have had some similarities with the shape-shifting social structure of the conures, suggesting one possible reason why sophisticated communication evolved in both species.

An orange-fronted conure. (Image: Thorsten Balsby)

Source: World Science, http://www.world-science.net

Courtesy of the University of Lincoln and World Science staff

Dogs relate words to objects very differently than humans do, new research claims: whereas we relate words for objects primarily to their shapes, dogs relate these words to sizes and textures.

Many pet owners marvel at their dog’s ability to fetch different objects such as toys on instruction, taking this as evidence that the dog ‘understands’ these words in a similar way to us.

The new findings, published in the online research journal PLoS One, may help to advance understanding of the foundations of human language and the critical differences with other species, the researchers said.

Young children generalise names to new objects on the basis of shape, and continue to do so as adults – a tendency known as ‘shape bias,’ the scientists explained. This is key to language development because it enables children to assign new objects to pre-established classes – for example, to recognise that a tennis ball and a football both belong to the category ‘ball.’

The researchers worked with a dog and found that when he was introduced to new words to refer to new objects, he first generalised based on size, then on texture, but not shape.

‘A number of recent studies have suggested that the domestic dog’s word comprehension is human-like,’ said Emile van der Zee from the University of Lincoln in the UK, who carried out the research with two colleagues. Some have disputed that claim but there has not been clear experimental evidence, he added. ‘Our findings bring a fundamental new insight into this discussion and add to our understanding of the cognitive equipment necessary for true human word learning.’

Four challenges

Van der Zee and two colleagues worked with a five-year-old border collie called Gable who had shown remarkable abilities to learn new object words. They devised four different challenges for Gable.

On a number of occasions, a selection of 10 different objects known to Gable was placed in an out-of-sight enclosure, and he was then given a verbal instruction to fetch one object from the 10. Initial tests confirmed Gable could easily distinguish between toys he knew well. However, when the researchers introduced new words and novel objects of varying shape, size and texture Gable began to reveal the absence of shape bias in his choices.

He appeared to make distinctions based first on object size, then, when he had longer to become familiar with the new objects, on the basis of texture, the scientists explained. Shape seemed to have no influence.

‘This would suggest that an important factor in the natural structuring of the mental lexicon may be the way in which sensory information is organised in a particular species,’ van der Zee said. ‘The human visual system is tuned to detect object shape for the purpose of object recognition. In our experiments, we excluded Gable using scent cues. It seems that his visual system and sensory cues linked to his mouth region are focused not on shape, but on size and texture. Only future experiments will reveal what role scent plays for the dog in generalising words. It is only by comparing other species with humans that we can find out more about the neural and genetic foundations of word reference in language.’

The findings may also inform refinements to animal training programs, the researchers added.

Gable and toys. (Image: University of Lincoln)

Source: World Science, http://www.world-science.net