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April 28, 2020 ~ brucelandonblog ~ Leave a comment

Two-person-together MRI scans on couples investigates how touching is perceived in the brain

An MRI in each other’s arms shows how physical contact alters the brains of couples

AALTO UNIVERSITY

Researchers at Aalto University and Turku PET Centre have developed a new method for simultaneous imaging brain activity from two people, allowing them to study social interaction.

In a recent study, the researchers scanned brain activity from 10 couples. Each couple spent 45 minutes inside the MRI scanner in physical contact with each other. The objective of the study was to examine how social contact activates the brain. The results were published in the theme issue Social Interaction in Neuropsychiatry of the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry.

“This is an excellent start for the study of natural interaction. People don’t just react to external stimuli, but adjust their actions moment-by-moment based on what they expect to happen next,” says Riitta Hari, emerita Professor at Aalto University.

Ordinary magnetic resonance imaging is used to scan one person at a time. In the device developed at Aalto University, the head coil used for regular brain scans was divided into two separate coils. This new design allows for simultaneous scanning of two brains, when the individuals are positioned close enough to each other inside the scanner. During scanning, the participants were face-to-face, almost hugging each other.

When instructed by the researchers, the subjects took turns in tapping each other’s lips. Looking at the brain scans, the researchers could see that the motor and sensory areas of the couples’ brains were activated.

Studying the fundamentals of human interaction

“During social interaction, people’s brains are literally synchronised. The associated mental imitation of other people’s movements is probably one of the basic mechanisms of social interaction. The new technology now developed will provide totally new opportunities for studying the brain mechanisms of social interaction,” says Professor Lauri Nummenmaa from Turku PET Centre.

“For example, during a conversation or problem solving, people’s brain functions become flexibly linked with each other. However, we cannot understand the brain basis of real-time social interaction if we cannot simultaneously scan the brain functions of both persons involved in social interaction,” Riitta Hari says.

https://www.wired.com/story/a-brain-implant-restored-this-mans-motion-and-sense-of-touch/

April 28, 2020 ~ brucelandonblog ~ Leave a comment

A Brain Implant Restored This Man’s Motion and Sense of Touch

After his accident, Ian Burkhart didn’t think he’d ever be able to move or feel his hand again. A small chip in his brain changed everything.

PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES

IT WAS THE summer of 2010, and Ian Burkhart was sizing up the waves as he swam in the ocean off the coast of North Carolina. He had traveled there on a vacation with a group of friends to unwind after wrapping up his freshman year studying video production at Ohio University. He prepared to dive into an oncoming wave and tumbled into the water. Burkhart was a capable swimmer, but the ocean is unpredictable. The wave slammed him into a sandbar—and that’s when he realized he couldn’t feel his body.

Unable to move, Burkhart was at the mercy of the ocean. His friends quickly realized something was wrong and pulled him from the water. He was brought to a nearby hospital where he underwent emergency surgery. Once he was stable, the doctors gave Burkhart the bad news: His spinal cord had been severed. He could no longer walk, the range of motion in his arms was limited to his shoulder and bicep, and he had almost completely lost his sense of touch.

After spending years working to adjust to his new reality, Burkhart enrolled in an experimental program called NeuroLife at Battelle, a nonprofit research organization in Ohio. The plan was to implant a small computer chip in his brain and use it to improve the range of motion in his arms and to artificially recreate his sense of touch. It was a long shot, but Burkhart says the potential upside was worth it. “It was a lot to consider, but paralysis wasn’t something I was ready to settle with,” he says. Now, six years after starting the study, Burkhart is able to feel objects and has enough control of his arm to shred on Guitar Hero.

Burkhart’s brain-computer interface, or BCI, was surgically implanted at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center in 2014. Not much larger than a grain of rice, the chip monitors electrical signals from Burkhart’s primary motor cortex, the region of the brain responsible for voluntary movement.

pAfter suffering a severe spinal cord injury in 2010 Ian Burkhart had a chip implanted in his motor cortex that relays... — After suffering a severe spinal cord injury in 2010, Ian Burkhart had a chip implanted in his motor cortex that relays electrical signals from his brain to a computer.

A severe spinal injury impedes the signals from the brain that tell the limbs to move and sensory feedback from the limbs. In Burkhart’s case, the severity of his injury meant that there should have been a complete disconnect between his brain and his arms and legs. But recent neuroscience experiments suggest that in many “complete” spinal cord injuries—perhaps as many as half of them—a few wisps of spinal fiber survive. “Even that small contingent of fibers can lead to a reasonable signal in the brain,” says Patrick Ganzer, a neuroscientist at Battelle. Still, though the electrical signals corresponding to touch and motion are traveling to and from the brain, they’re too weak for a paralyzed person to consciously notice. They don’t feel anything, and their arm doesn’t move.

For Ganzer and his colleagues at Battelle, this raised an interesting possibility. If you extracted those weak signals from the brain, decoded their meaning, and relayed them to the limbs, you could bypass the spine and reconnect the brain and body. Researchers from other groups have demonstrated that it is possible to restore motion using a robotic hand and even send touch signals back to the user by directly stimulating their brain. But doing both at once, and with a person’s own arm, remained elusive.

The problem, says Ganzer, is that the signals for touch and movement are jumbled together in the brain. Each movement or touch generates a unique signal, and the chip in Burkhart’s head takes in around 100 different signals at a time. “We’re separating thoughts that are occurring almost simultaneously and are related to movements and sub-perceptual touch, which is a big challenge,” adds Ganzer.

pWhen Ian Burkhart thinks about moving his right hand it generates electrical signals in the brain that are processed by... — When Ian Burkhart thinks about moving his right hand, it generates electrical signals in the brain that are processed by a computer and then sent to an array of electrodes on his forearm that stimulate his muscles and allow him to execute the movement.

To make it happen, Ganzer and his colleagues used an elaborate setup that connects Burkhart’s brain to a computer. The chip in his motor cortex sends electrical signals through a port in the back of his skull, which is delivered through a cable to a nearby PC. There, a software program decodes the brain signals and separates them into signals corresponding to intended motions and signals corresponding to a sense of touch. The signals representing intended motions are routed to a sleeve of electrodes wrapped around Burkhart’s forearm. The touch signals are routed to a vibration band around his upper arm.

First, Ganzer and his colleagues focused on restoring motion in Burkhart’s arm without the sensation of touch. Burkhart says the progress was slow at first and required him to learn how to think about moving his arm to generate electrical signals that could be picked up by the computer. “Just being able to open and close my hand was challenging, because before my injury I never had to think about what I’m actually doing to make my hand move,” he recalls.

But within a year he had partially restored movement in his hand. It wasn’t long before he had enough control over his arm to play a modified version of Guitar Hero, one that required pushing the finger buttons on the neck of the guitar, but not strumming with the other hand. “Playing a video game that requires that type of multitasking— listening to the song, watching the screen for timing cues, and executing thoughts related to single finger movements—adds another level of complexity,” says Ganzer.

Burkhart says that having the ability to move objects was “fantastic,” but he was limited without a sense of touch. Without this feedback, grabbing objects required his full attention. Unless he was looking at it, he couldn’t say whether he was holding something or not. “That’s really challenging, especially if I want to grab something that’s behind me or in a bag,” Burkhart says. Even when he could see the object, the firmness of his grip was out of his control, which made handling delicate objects difficult.

Adding a sense of touch into the system proved more difficult. Neuroscientists have successfully reproduced the sensation of touch in quadrepeligic people by relaying data from sensors in a robotic prosthetic hand to a chip in the user’s brain. The problem was Burkhart’s BCI wasn’t designed for that kind of input. It wasn’t even located in the right place. Touch is registered in the somatosensory cortex, which is located behind the motor cortex, where the chip was installed. Yet Ganzer says the somatosensory cortex can be a “noisy neighbor” and some of its signals were picked up by the chip. It was just a matter of finding out what they meant.

To tease out the unique signals corresponding to touch, Ganzer and his colleagues began doing targeted stimulations on Burkhart’s thumb and forearm, parts of his limb where he still had a very weak sense of touch. By observing how Burkhart’s brain signals changed when pressure was applied to his fingers and hand, they were able to identify the weak touch signals against a background of much stronger movement signals. This meant a computer program could split the signals coming from Burkhart’s BCI so that motion signals went to the electrodes around his forearm and touch signals to an armband on his upper bicep.

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Burkhart’s upper arm was also one of the few parts of his body that still had sensation after the accident. This meant that the weak pressure signals relayed from his hand to his brain could be converted into vibrations that would let him know he was touching an object. During tests with the armband, Burkhart could tell when he was touching an object with nearly perfect accuracy, even if he couldn’t see it.

At first, the Battelle touch band was a simple, on-off vibration device. But Ganzer and his colleagues further refined it so that it changes its vibration based on how hard or soft Burkhart grips an object. It’s similar to how videogame controllers and cell phones provide feedback to users, but Burkhart says it took some getting used to: “It’s definitely strange. It’s still not normal, but it’s definitely much better than not having any sensory information going back to my body.”

Robert Gaunt, a biomedical engineer at the University of Pittsburgh’s Rehab Neural Engineering Labs, contrasted Battelle’s system to the approach being developed in his own lab, where a BCI controls a robotic limb and sensors on that limb return signals that stimulate the brain to artificially recreate a sense of touch in a person’s hand. “What they’re doing is a little more like sensory substitution, rather than restoring touch to his own hand,” Gaunt says. “We all have the goal of developing devices that improve the lives of people with spinal cord injuries, but the most effective way to do that is totally unclear at this point.”

Now that Ganzer and his colleagues have demonstrated the technology in the lab, he says the next step is to improve the system for everyday use. The team already has shrunk the electronics used in the system to a box the size of VHS tape that can be mounted on Burkhart’s wheelchair. The bulky system of electrodes has also been reduced to a sleeve that is relatively easy to take on and put off. Recently, Burkhart used the system for the first time at home, controlling it through a tablet.

Given the invasive nature of BCIs, which have to be surgically implanted, it may be a while before these sorts of systems see widespread use among quadriplegics. Noninvasive BCIs that don’t require surgery are an area of active research, but it’s still very early days for the technology. Ganzer is working on a project that is funded by Darpa to develop a BCI that uses a special type of nanoparticle to wirelessly send signals to and from the brain. But none of this technology would be possible without people like Burkhart who volunteer to show what’s possible.

“My goal is to get this into the hands of other people with paralysis and see how far we can push the technology,” says Burkhart. “The biggest thing that’s motivated me is this hope for the future.”

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/n7jap8/allostatic-load-is-the-reason-you-feel-anxious-stressed-from-isolation

April 28, 2020 ~ brucelandonblog ~ Leave a comment

‘Allostatic Load’ is the Psychological Reason for Our Pandemic Brain Fog

This is why you’re exhausted just from being alone.

By Emily Baron Cadloff

Apr 27 2020, 7:12am

7:00 a.m: Wake up.

7:30 am: Online yoga class.

8:30 am: Take dog for a hike.

10:00 am – 12:00 pm: Settle in for two uninterrupted, solid hours of work before a healthy lunch.

This was the schedule I envisioned for myself a month ago, when I started isolating at home. I thought about all the time I would have, the meals I would lovingly prepare, the books I would read and movies I would watch. By a month in, I thought I would have enriched myself in a thousand wonderfully understated, eminently Instagrammable ways.

7:00 a.m: Wake up by reading Twitter, scream internally for 15 minutes.

7:30 a.m: Just kinda stare off into space for a while.

8:30 a.m: Throw on leggings, gamely allow the dog to lead me around the neighborhood.

10:00 a.m: Do I want to nap on the couch or back in bed? Trick question! I will not make it to the bed.

My days have been reduced to the bare minimum. I work in drips and chunks of time, keeping my energy up with M&Ms and frequent Youtube breaks. I scrounge together leftovers for lunch, creating what I ambitiously call Grazing Plates. In reality, it’s a pear hacked into pieces and four olives piled on a handful of dry Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I have done yoga twice, and I felt undeniably smug about it. I’m doing so much less than I’m used to, and I’m so tired.

Turns out, I’m not alone. Nancy Sin, assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, says that in stressful situations like this, there are physiological responses in our bodies. “Our stress hormones increase. We prepare to fight or flee,” said Sin. And as this pandemic continues and isolation drags on, “we’re having a lot of these physiological adaptations, each time we feel stressed, each time we feel worried. And over time, these repeated hits, physiologically and psychologically, can accumulate.”

That accumulation is called the allostatic load, essentially the damage on our bodies when they’re repeatedly exposed to stress. And while it feels like I’m doing nothing most days, my brain is still dealing with the anxiety and strain of this pandemic. I’m exhausted not because my body is working hard, but because my brain is.

In my regular life, I would see dozens of people a day. I commute to work, I get lunch, I meet up with friends, I go to the gym—and all of those little interactions are cues to my brain that I’m OK, and part of a larger social network. But when I’m alone, I’m more vulnerable, and my brain is working overtime trying to protect me.

As George Slavich, director of the Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research at UCLA explained, humans are like pack animals, and when we go into isolation, we get lonely.

“That’s really important in terms of the body’s assessment of risk, because being alone means you’re much more vulnerable to threats,” Slavich said. “Your brain needs to be on high alert to make sure that you quickly identify any threats in the environment, because you’re compromised.”

So my brain is working to identify those threats in the only way it can right now: by reading the news. And that takes up way more energy than I think.

“You need a lot of physical energy for your cognitive work,” said Sin. “We’re doing so much worrying and rumination…there’s a lot that’s going on that’s kind of sucking up our energy.”

Sin’s team is conducting a study, tracking how respondents are dealing with the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ve had more than 5000 responses so far, with people reporting sleep disturbance, anxiety, agitation, and depression.

Unfortunately, the stress of lockdowns and shelter in place orders are likely to continue for a while longer. How much longer? No one is sure, and that’s part of the problem.

“Uncertainty is one of the biggest elements that contributes to our experience of stress,” said Lynn Bufka, the senior director of Practice, Research, and Policy at the American Psychological Association. “Part of what we try to do to function in our society is to have some structure, some predictability. When we have those kinds of things, life feels more manageable, because you don’t have to put the energy into figuring those things out.”

So how do we all get back to those feelings of predictability? First, in true therapy speak, feel your feelings. “This is unprecedented,” Bufka said. “There’s no judgment here that you feel stressed about it, you don’t like it, [you’re] feeling angry, whatever. Acknowledging those emotions and then going past it is where we’re trying to get to.”

And the second step? Well, that’s considerably harder to do when our collective energy levels are plummeting. But exercise, eating well, and trying to keep to a regular sleep cycle will help.

“If you’re not moving your muscles, you are also probably gaining a little bit of fat around those muscles,” said Slavich. Our immune cells tend to hang out in excess belly fat, and they can increase inflammation. “It’s really inflammation that’s the primary driver in feeling fatigued. Inflammation can change how we think and sleep, and make us much less interested in pleasurable activities.”

Which means, if I can pull myself off the couch to that long-abandoned yoga class, it will likely make the rest of my day easier. Of course, I’ll have to see if I can fit it into my schedule first.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/04/27/2022604/0/en/Proxy-Acquires-Smart-Ring-Startup-Motiv-Sparking-Paradigm-Shift-in-How-People-Use-Wearables-to-Interface-with-Physical-World.html

April 28, 2020 ~ brucelandonblog ~ Leave a comment

Proxy Acquires Smart Ring Startup Motiv, Sparking Paradigm Shift in How People Use Wearables to Interface with Physical World

Digital identity signals on smart ring form factor ignites important new era for wearable devices

April 27, 2020 11:00 ET | Source: Proxy

photo-release

Proxy bringing digital identity signals to wearables

Proxy’s acquisition of Motiv allows it to bring digital identity signals to wearables for the first time, and revolutionize the way people use technology to interact with the world around them.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 27, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Proxy, creator of digital identities for the physical world, announced today that it has acquired Motiv, maker of the world’s most popular smart ring, to bring digital identity signals to wearables for the first time and revolutionize the way people use technology to interact with the world around them.

“Wearables have yet to reach their full potential. They have been relegated to fitness and sleep tracking, when there are more profound purposes we should be aiming for,” said Denis Mars, co-founder and CEO of Proxy. “The existing wearable space is analogous to the flip phone days of the smartphone world. With the acquisition of Motiv, Proxy is igniting a paradigm shift in how people use wearables to interface with the physical world, so they can do and experience things they never have before.”

Proxy is known for its digital identity signal technology, emitted from mobile devices to replace the multitude of keys, cards, badges, apps, and passwords people typically need to interact with physical objects in the world around them. Motiv produced the stylish and innovative smart ring, featuring miniaturized circuits that biometrically authenticate users and connect the rings with devices around them. In the past two years, Motiv shipped approximately 80,000 of its rings to customers worldwide.

“We named our company Proxy because our identity signal technology acts as a person’s proxy in the physical world,” added Mars. “We started off providing identity signals via smartphone, because just about everyone has one. With the acquisition of Motiv, we are entering the next phase of advancing our identity signal technology towards wearables and beyond.”

Proxy’s interest in smart rings stems from the fact that the ring form factor, coupled with the biometric sensors packed into it, is constantly in physical contact with the person wearing it, providing a distinct advantage over smartphones. This opens up new ways to augment humans in the physical and digital worlds, create powerful new experiences, and change the way people interact with their environment. Motiv had invested over $25M in developing its smart ring technology, said Mars, and it is best in class. “Proxy had planned to expand into wearables,” he said. “This acquisition helps accelerate our timeline to do that by at least a year.”

Proxy and Motiv were connected by their mutual investor Kleiner Perkins and originally discussed a technology partnership before deciding that an acquisition made more sense. Tejash Unadkat, CEO at Motiv, said, “We’re proud that Motiv’s technology lives on as the core of Proxy’s wearables strategy. Proxy has compelling plans for this space that bring the innovation in wearables to a completely different level. We’re excited to see how this space evolves in the coming months.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Proxy has acquired Motiv’s entire technology portfolio including patents and will retain the majority of Motiv’s employees. Motiv’s founders and CEO will stay on in an advisory capacity.

In March 2020, Proxy announced a $42M Series B round of funding intended to help the company expand its solution set and global footprint. Its move into wearables is an important element of that.

In the coming weeks, Proxy is adding support for Proxy identity signals to the next generation of the rings, to enable touchless workplace experiences for Proxy customers using either a smartphone or the ring. Longer term, Proxy sees tremendous potential beyond the office for the wearable form factor.

About Proxy
Proxy is a startup dedicated to empowering all people with digital identities for the physical world. By securely emitting digital identity signals from smartphones, Proxy can give people touchless access to any space or device, similar to a universal single-sign on for the physical world. Today, large enterprises like Doordash, Dropbox and Accenture enable their employees, visitors and tenants to use Proxy signals for frictionless smartphone-based access through secured doors, elevators, turnstiles and check-in, and to create personalized experiences throughout the workplace. Learn more at www.proxy.com or follow @proxy.

Michelle Faulkner
+1 617-510-6998
michelle@big-swing.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/bd837780-8533-411b-bdc7-64383161e35d

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-light-based-deep-brain-relieves-symptoms.html

April 28, 2020 ~ brucelandonblog ~ Leave a comment

Light-based deep brain stimulation relieves symptoms of Parkinson’s disease

by Ken Kingery, Duke University

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have used deep brain stimulation based on light to treat motor dysfunction in an animal model of Parkinson’s disease. Succeeding where earlier attempts have failed, the method promises to provide new insights into why deep brain stimulation works and ways in which it can be improved on a patient-by-patient basis.

The results appear online on April 20 in The Journal of Neuroscience.

“If you think of the area of the brain being treated in deep brain stimulation as a plate of spaghetti, with the meatballs representing nerve cell bodies and the spaghetti representing nerve cell axons, there’s a longstanding debate about whether the treatment is affecting the spaghetti, the meatballs or some combination of the two,” said Warren Grill, the Edmund T. Pratt, Jr. School Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke.

“But it’s an impossible question to answer using traditional methods because electrical deep brain stimulation affects them both as well as the peppers, onions and everything else in the dish. Our new light-based method, however, is capable of targeting just a single ingredient, so we can now begin teasing out the individual effects of activating different neural elements.”

In Grill’s metaphor, the meatballs are the neurons that make up the subthalamic nucleus, a small component of the basal ganglia control system that is believed to perform action selection. While its exact function remains unknown, research suggests that it holds muscular responses in check. The spaghetti in the bowl represents long nerve fibers called the hyperdirect pathway that extend into the region from neurons in the cerebral cortex, the thin outer layer of neurons responsible for most of the brain’s information processing. And the peppers, onions and other ingredients are the various types of support cells found throughout the brain.

As Grill suggests, teasing out the role all of these various types of cells plays in mediating the effects of deep brain stimulation is nearly impossible using traditional methods. Individual types of cells cannot be singled out by electrical stimulation, and the electric pulses blind researchers’ sensors for a crucial millisecond directly after firing.

In 2006, a team of researchers attempted to use optogenetics to skirt these issues. Optogenetics is a method of genetically modifying specific cells to express light-sensitive ion channels, allowing researchers to control their activity with flashes of light. The researchers embedded these light-sensitive ion channels into the subthalamic nucleus “meatballs” in rats and flashed pulses of light at the same rate used in deep brain stimulation. The treatment, however, failed to alleviate any of the rats’ physical symptoms, leading the researchers to conclude that stimulating the subthalamic nucleus on its own is an inadequate treatment approach.

But the study never sat quite right in Grill’s mind.

“Neurons being stimulated with optogenetics don’t generally respond very quickly, and it seemed to me that the researchers were flashing their lights faster than the neurons could keep up with,” said Grill. “The data bore this out, as the neurons appeared to be responding randomly rather than in sync with the flashes. And previous research that we conducted showed that random patterns of deep brain stimulation are not effective at relieving symptoms.”

It took more than a decade for Grill to be able to test his theory, but two recent developments allowed him to follow his hunch. Researchers developed a faster form of optogenetics called Chronos that could keep up with the speeds traditionally used in deep brain stimulation. And Chunxiu Yu, a research scientist with expertise in optogenetics, joined Grill’s laboratory. Also contributing to the work in Grill’s laboratory were Isaac Cassar, a biomedical engineering doctoral student, and Jaydeep Sambangi, a biomedical engineering undergraduate.

In the new paper, Yu embedded the Chronos optogenetics machinery into the subthalamic nucleus neurons of rats that have been given Parkinson’s disease-like conditions in one-half of their brains. This model helps researchers determine when a treatment is successful because the resulting physical movement symptoms only occur on one side of the rat’s body. They then delivered deep brain stimulation using light flashes at the standard 130 flashes per second.

As Grill first suspected nearly 15 years ago, the technique worked, and the rats’ physical symptoms were substantially alleviated.

According to Grill, their result has several important implications. One is that researchers need to consider the kinetic properties of how rapidly optogenetic approaches can act when designing their experiments and pay close attention to performance in their studies. Another insight was the way that other neurons outside of the subthalamic nucleus responded to the treatment. While there was not a large difference in their average activity levels, there was a dramatic shift in the pattern in which those neurons fired, which offers clues as to how deep brain stimulation works.

But perhaps the most important result is simply that the technique worked at all. Besides offering a much clearer look at neural activity by removing electrical artifacts, the ability to deliver deep brain stimulation to precise subsets of neurons should allow researchers to begin probing exactly which parts of the brain need to be stimulated and how therapies might be tailored to treat different motor control symptoms on a case-by-case basis.

As their next experiment in this line of research, Grill and his colleagues plan to recreate this same study but in the hyperdirect pathway—the spaghetti instead of the meatballs—to see what its individual contribution to relieving symptoms might be.

“This is very important because somewhere in that big bowl of spaghetti are some elements that are responsible for treating symptoms and some elements that generate side effects,” said Grill. “And if we can figure out which is which, we can design electrode stimulation geometries and patterns to target the elements that suppress symptoms while leaving the others alone.”

Explore further

Novel brain network linked to chronic pain in Parkinson’s disease

More information: Chunxiu Yu et al, Frequency-Specific Optogenetic Deep Brain Stimulation of Subthalamic Nucleus Improves Parkinsonian Motor Behaviors, The Journal of Neuroscience (2020). DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3071-19.2020

Journal information: Journal of Neuroscience

Provided by Duke University

https://hellogiggles.com/lifestyle/enneagram-personality-type-test/

April 27, 2020 ~ brucelandonblog ~ Leave a comment

This personality test can help you figure out how to deal with challenges

Kristin Magaldi

April 22, 2020 11:07 am

As we continue to weather a global pandemic, any insights into coping strategies or methods to approach hardships can be useful. One option? Getting to know your Enneagram type. You may be new to Enneagram, but once you take the test and find out your dominant type, you can gain in-depth insights into your natural behaviors and reactions when it comes to handling challenges.

The Enneagram is a personality-typing system that finds patterns in how we conceptualize our surroundings and our emotions by separating people into nine distinct sections. According to the Enneagram Institute, it derives its origins from psychology, cosmology, metaphysics, and spirituality, and was first used in the 1970s as a way to help people attain self-realization. The nine personality types are derived from a person’s “ego,” or their personality developed before birth, and they’re based on Plato’s idea of the nine divine forms—a theory that claims that there are nine main qualities of existence that are interconnected but cannot be broken down into further parts. Most commonly, the Enneagram (which has a nine-pointed symbol) has been used in business to predict and unpack workplace dynamics, but it can also be used in spirituality practices to help users gain self-awareness.

Every person has one dominant type, represented by the numbers one through nine; that type is based on the pure essence of who they are, unaffected by the environment in which they grew up. The system posits that while your dominant type never changes, the type you most identify within on a day-to-day basis can, as you experience new emotions and new circumstances.

According to Stephanie Hall, certified Enneagram coach and founder of Nine Types Co., knowing your dominant Enneagram type can help you learn more about what drives you. “Often, we walk through life unaware of how we’re feeling, how others are experiencing us, and what is motivating us to move forward,” Hall tells HelloGiggles. “The Enneagram helps us wake up to those things that often stay covered in our typical personality patterns. Once we begin to grow our awareness, we become more empathetic, more connected, and more able to tap into our core purpose.”

This can include how we cope with difficult situations, like right now. To get more intel on how each personality type deals with challenges, we asked two Enneagram experts—Hall and Sarajane Case, founder of Enneagram & Coffee—to break it down.

1. The Reformer

If you’re a type one, represented by the first point in the Enneagram symbol, then you may be a rational thinker and somewhat of a perfectionist, which can come into play when you’re faced with a crisis. “Type ones tend to become very black-and-white thinkers,” Hall says. “You can get laser-focused on structure, order, and fixing everything you can.”

This can be a positive, she adds, but if you try to exercise too much control over a situation, you can wind up giving yourself more stress. The key for you is to harness your orderly energy without going overboard. “You can help yourself by discerning what you can control and letting everything else go,” Hall explains.

Case adds that your inherent generosity and propensity to work hard can offer others a lot in difficult circumstances. “In a season of crisis, others can look to you as an example of what guidelines to follow and how to maintain standards for being a good person, even when things are hard,” she says.

2. The Helper

Being “the Helper” is pretty self-explanatory; according to Case, “type twos are giving, loving and a safe place to land.” In a time of crisis, she notes that you’re probably the one “going above and beyond” to make sure everyone else is okay. But constantly being there for everyone else and not showing up for yourself can leave you feeling resentful or depleted if you’re not careful, so Hall says it’s all about finding a balance. “You can help yourself by turning your attention to your own needs and feelings and caring for yourself as you would a friend,” she explains.

To save your energy, you can use your connections to help people find other external resources they may need in the moment.

3. The Achiever

Case says that if you’re a type three, you’re likely “inspiring, driven, and motivated.” In a hard situation, she notes, you may be the one lifting everyone else up and making sure they’re thriving. Hall adds that your need to be productive can also come out during a crisis, which is something to be conscious of because it can lead you to neglect processing the emotions at hand.

“You can help yourself by giving yourself permission to rest and taking a break from your productivity,” she advises. “You can then help others by lending some of your natural ‘can-do’ attitude to those around you who need a little encouragement that they’ll make it through.”

4. The Individualist

Type fours are typically known as introspective, expressive, and creative. If you’re “the Individualist,” Hall says you might find yourself drawn inward to contemplate your emotions during a rough patch. You might also get nostalgic about the past, which can cause you to mentally live in a time that no longer exists.

Fortunately, if you notice yourself withdrawing from reality, there are actions you can take. “You can help yourself by connecting to the world outside your mind and creating something with your hands,” Hall suggests. “You can then help others by using your creative brain to find an out-of-the-box way to remind people of the beauty in crisis.”

5. The Investigator

Like Type Ones, Type Fives are likely rational, observant, and informed, Case says. People will come to you during rough periods if they’re looking for “a logical perspective when they’re having a hard time getting out of their feelings,” she says.

You’re also likely to absorb as much information as you need to rationalize your experience and prevent any anxiety, Hall adds. However, you may create more anxiety if you’re denying yourself feeling any level of stress. She says to fight this instinct by doing something active, like exercise or cooking, to help you “return to your body and experience the physical world.”

6. The Loyalist

If you’re a Type Six, you may notice that your dedicated, responsible, and security-oriented personality comes through for people in your life. “Others can trust you to have thought through all possible scenarios and to have a plan of action in mind,” Case says, adding, “you are the person they go to when they need help thinking of what they might be overlooking.”

That being said, Hall notes that Type Sixes can gravitate between fearing the worst of a situation and preparing for that circumstance. If you find yourself spiraling, your best bet is to find activities that help you think less. “[Get] some fresh air, call a friend, or do something active will help you let go just for a moment,” Hall advises.

7. The Enthusiast

According to Case, it’s your optimistic and engaging attitude that can help others get out of a negative mindset and see the positives in future possibilities. “You can also help to come up with lots of fun games to play when all else feels lost,” she suggests.

Similarly, Hall says that as a Type Seven, you have a knack for reframing a crisis, so your first instinct when things go awry may be to find silver linings to the situation. But it’s important to recognize that forcing a positive, instead of letting yourself process the negative, can eventually become unhealthy. “Accept all the real feelings of what is happening and lean into stillness and solitude,” Hall says. “Once you’ve found a healthier baseline, you can offer some of your trademark humor and fun-loving attitude to do what you do best: gather people (virtually) for a game night or party.”

8. The Challenger

As a Type Eight, Case says you’re likely the one who leads others when chaos arises. “You take action with confidence and can be a great teammate in any crisis.” Your need to control and protect can be beneficial to yourself and those around you, Hall adds, but your desire to not feel helpless can prevent you from feeling anything at all. “Recognize that intense control is actually you preventing yourself from processing your true emotions—which might sneak up and surprise you later,” she says.

Channel your inclination to lead by lifting up others and organizing support systems, but give yourself space to feel your own feelings, too.

9. The Peacemaker

“The Peacemaker” of the Enneagram types knows how to be diplomatic and laid back during hardships. You’re the one to let the little things go, Case says, and “help others gain perspective, to remind them that it’s all going to be okay.”

“You focus on securing the practical necessities to remain untouched by the chaos of the world,” Hall adds, which, in some cases, can mean isolating yourself to minimize the emotional toll a crisis takes on you. As hard as it might be, accepting that your inner peace may be off-kilter for a while can help you. “Move forward with the inner strength of knowing you will survive even if it’s uncomfortable,” Hall says.

By discovering your Enneagram personality type, you can learn more about your weaknesses and strengths, which can serve your growth and coping strategies during a crisis. “We can also begin to see the flaws and strengths in others so that we can interact with compassion and communicate more clearly,” says Hall. Now, you’ll be more equipped to show up for yourself and others when things get difficult.

By Kristin Magaldi

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/rice-genetically-engineered-resist-heat-waves-can-also-produce-20-more-grain

April 27, 2020 ~ brucelandonblog ~ Leave a comment

Rice genetically engineered to resist heat waves can also produce up to 20% more grain

By Erik StokstadApr. 21, 2020 , 1:10 PM

As plants convert sunlight into sugar, their cells are playing with fire. Photosynthesis generates chemical byproducts that can damage the light-converting machinery itself—and the hotter the weather, the more likely the process is to run amok as some chemical reactions accelerate and others slow. Now, a team of geneticists has engineered plants so they can better repair heat damage, an advance that could help preserve crop yields as global warming makes heat waves more common. And in a surprise, the change made plants more productive at normal temperatures.

“This is exciting news,” says Maria Ermakova of Australian National University, who works on improving photosynthesis. The genetic modification worked in three kinds of plants—a mustard that is the most common plant model, tobacco, and rice, suggesting any crop plant could be helped. The work bucked conventional wisdom among photosynthesis scientists, and some plant biologists wonder exactly how the added gene produces the benefits. Still, Peter Nixon, a plant biochemist at Imperial College London, predicts the study will “attract considerable attention.”

When plants are exposed to light, a complex of proteins called photosystem II (PSII) energizes electrons that then help power photosynthesis. But heat or intense light can lead to damage in a key subunit, known as D1, halting PSII’s work until the plant makes and inserts a new one into the complex. Plants that make extra D1 should help speed those repairs. Chloroplasts, the organelles that host photosynthesis, have their own DNA, including a gene for D1, and most biologists assumed the protein had to be made there. But the chloroplast genome is much harder to tweak than genes in a plant cell’s nucleus.

A team led by plant molecular biologist Fang-Qing Guo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences bet that D1 made by a nuclear gene could work just as well—and be made more efficiently, as its synthesis in the cytoplasm instead of the chloroplast would be protected from the corrosive byproducts of photosynthetic reactions. Guo and colleagues tested the idea in the mustard Arabidopsis thaliana. They took its chloroplast gene for D1, coupled it to a stretch of DNA that turns on during heat stress, and moved it to the nucleus.

The team found that modified Arabidopsis seedlings could survive extreme heat in the lab—8.5 hours at 41°C—that killed most of the control plants. The same Arabidopsis gene also protected tobacco and rice. In all three species, photosynthesis and growth decreased less than in the surviving control plants. And in 2017, when Shanghai exceeded 36°C for 18 days, transgenic rice planted in test plots yielded 8% to 10% more grain than control plants, the team reports this week in Nature Plants.

The shock was what happened at normal temperatures. Engineered plants of all three species had more photosynthesis—tobacco’s rate increased by 48%—and grew more than control plants. In the field, the transgenic rice yielded up to 20% more grain. “It truly surprised us,” Guo says. “I felt that we have caught a big fish.”

Veteran photosynthesis researcher Donald Ort of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, says the group presents credible evidence of plant benefits, but he’s not yet convinced that the D1 made by nuclear genes could have repaired PSII in the chloroplast. “Anything this potentially important is going to be met with some skepticism. There are lots of experiments to do, to figure out why this works,” he says.

Guo plans further tests of the mechanism. He also has a practical goal: heftier yield increases in rice. The productivity boost his team saw in modified Arabidopsis was the largest of the three species—80% more biomass than controls—perhaps because the researchers simply moved Arabidopsis’ own D1 gene. Guo thinks rice yield might also burgeon if it could be modified with its own chloroplast gene rather than one from mustard—further heating up these already hot results.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a32221995/google-automl-zero-evolve-algorithms/

April 27, 2020 ~ brucelandonblog ~ Leave a comment

This Is How Algorithms Will Evolve Themselves

Google is borrowing from Darwin to make a seismic leap in automatic machine learning. It could spell out the end of most human bias.

BY COURTNEY LINDER

APR 23, 2020

Google’s AutoML-Zero is capable of creating brand-new algorithms from scratch, through a Darwinian-style evolution process.
Scientists working for the tech giant believe this leap in automatic machine learning research (AutoML) will revolutionize the field, opening up machine learning capabilities for non-experts.
Last month, they posted their work to the preprint server ArXiv, which means the research has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Machine learning is hard. Algorithms in a particular use case often either don’t work or don’t work well enough, leading to some serious debugging. And finding the perfect algorithm–the set of rules a computer should follow to perform an operation–can be a tall task. You can’t just pick the perfect algorithm if it doesn’t exist, and some solutions simply aren’t intuitive to the human mind.

That means the process of choosing and refining algorithms is iterative and somewhat monotonous. It’s a perfect storm for automation.

Enter automatic machine learning, or AutoML, a branch of research exclusively devoted to methods and processes that automate machine learning so that non-experts can also reap its benefits.

Google believes a team of its computer scientists has come up with a new AutoML method that could automatically generate the best algorithm for a given task. The new research is outlined in a paper posted to the preprint server ArXiv. It’s also been submitted to a scientific journal for review and could be published as early as June.

The premise goes like this: A new system, called AutoML-Zero, can adapt algorithms to different types of tasks and continuously improve them through a Darwinian-like evolution process that reduces the amount of human intervention required. Since humans can introduce bias into systems—and thus program their own limitations—that limits the results you ultimately get. So Google is trying to create a scenario where a computer can roam free and get creative—or take the red pill and the blue pill, so to speak.

Esteban Real, a software engineer at Google Brain, Research and Machine Intelligence, and lead author of the research, offers this metaphor:

“Suppose your goal is to put together a house. If you had at your disposal pre-built bedrooms, kitchens, and bathrooms, your task would be manageable but you are also limited to the rooms you have in your inventory,” he tells Popular Mechanics. “If instead you were to start out with bricks and mortar, then your job is harder, but you have more space for creativity.”

Removing the Humans—and the Bias

In the past, AutoML research has heavily relied on human input. Neural architecture search, for example—which automates the design of a neural net, as its name suggests—relies on sophisticated, expert-built layers as building blocks for the new neural net. These are basically hand-coded instructions, or programs, that tell a computer what to do.

By contrast, Google’s new AutoML-Zero uses mathematics, rather than human-designed components, as the building blocks for new algorithms. Programming languages—from COBOL, to Python, to Ruby on Rails—make the act of building a program simpler. Machines understand numbers, specifically binary code, and the languages act as a buffer between the programmer and the machine. That way, humans don’t have to spend all day breaking down commands into a bunch of 1s and 0s.

But that choice of language and representation in the programming languages allows bias to creep in, says Armando Solar-Lezama, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who isn’t affiliated with the work. He leads MIT’s Computer Assisted Programming Group, which focuses on automating the programming process.

Solar-Lezama tells Popular Mechanics the new Google paper is about seeing how far you can push a simple, mathematics-based language “so that the things you discover are not biased by your choice of language.” In this case, bias means limiting your options.

Going back to Real’s house metaphor, imagine you’re building your home out of whole rooms, and all you know is Roman style. “Then your house would be full of columns, atria, and impluvia; you wouldn’t be able to come up with the Empire State Building or the Sistine Chapel,” Real says. “If you use bricks and mortar, then you’re not limited to a specific style.”

Real and his coauthors Chen Liang, David So, and Quoc Le acknowledge there’s still some remaining bias in the program, despite their best efforts. For example, even the specific math operations they’ve chosen can contain implicit bias based on the researchers’ pre-existing knowledge of machine learning algorithms.

Genetic Algorithms

To discover new algorithms, AutoML-Zero starts with 100 random algorithms, generated through a combination of mathematical operations. Then, the system zips through the algorithms to find the best ones, which carry onto the next step, akin to the process of humans passing down favorable genes over time in a game of “survival of the fittest.”

a flow chart showing the process google researchers used to mutate algorithms

ARXIV

From there, the algorithms complete some sort of machine learning task, like identifying motorcycles from trucks, as you might do in one of those RECAPTCHA tests that checks to see whether or not you’re a robot. AutoML-Zero uses the tasks to score each algorithm’s effectiveness in completing a certain objective and then “mutates” the best ones to begin another round.

These new “child” algorithms are compared to the original “parent” algorithms to see if they’ve gotten better at the task at hand. The process is continually repeated until the best mutations win out and end up in the final algorithm.

In the end, the system could search through 10,000 possible models per second, with the ability to skip over algorithms it’s already seen. The researchers used a small dataset as a proxy for more complicated amounts of information, making the work a proof-of-concept.

“THE LONGER THE PIECE OF CODE YOU’RE TRYING TO GENERATE, THE EASIER IT IS FOR AN ERROR TO SNEAK IN.”

To do this, AutoML-Zero uses what are known as genetic algorithms, which have been around since the 1980s, but have fallen out of use for the most part, Solar-Lezama says. That’s because they’re usually best in unstructured environments, “where nothing else works,” and they often lead to unreadable code that’s difficult to reverse-engineer. Plus, they produce really long pieces of code.

“The longer the piece of code you’re trying to generate, the easier it is for an error to sneak in,” Solar-Lezama says. “It can be the difference between a piece of code that does exactly what you want, and one that doesn’t work, and it could be one character. This is a general problem in program synthesis.”

Still, genetic algorithms make sense in this case, because you don’t want to hamper the computer’s options.

The Problem with Scaling

Google has already developed its own programming language, called Cloud AutoML, which makes it easier to train machine learning models with minimal human expertise. But AutoML-Zero looks like a step toward even less human involvement.

Scaling this method, however, will be a challenge, Solar-Lezama says. Because AutoML-Zero uses arithmetic, rather than higher-order programming languages, there aren’t any instructions to help the system quickly approach a problem it’s encountered some version of before. Instead, it will have to reinvent the wheel each time, which isn’t optimal.

To get past the scaling issue, Solar-Lezama says the researchers could take on a “divide and conquer” mentality in future work. By decoupling one part of the program from another portion, AutoML-Zero could find success. In addition, it’ll be vital to find the right balance between the abstract arithmetic as building blocks and more substantial instructions that can do more work, but that could introduce bias.

If Google does scale up the system and let the machines really build the algorithms, it could mean way faster app development, language translation, video processing … everything, Solar-Lezama says. It could even empower small-time developers and small businesses to take advantage of machine learning capabilities without having to hire or outsource a whole data science team.

“Being able to find an algorithm that is well-tuned and well set up for a particular application that you’re dealing with … it can be a very powerful thing,” he says.

https://www.livescience.com/black-hold-bends-light-like-boomerang.html

April 27, 2020 ~ brucelandonblog ~ Leave a comment

Black hole bends escaping light ‘like a boomerang’

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has revealed an extremely powerful magnetic field, beyond anything previously detected in the core of a galaxy, very close to the event horizon of a supermassive black hole.

Light escaping from a black hole may “boomerang” its way to freedom, new X-ray images reveal.

Researchers found this odd behavior while reviewing archival X-ray observations of a black hole that’s approximately 10 times as massive as our sun. Located about 17,000 light-years from Earth, the black hole siphons material from a partner star; together, the black hole and star are known as XTE J1550-564.

Things can get pretty weird around a black hole. These exceptionally dense cosmic objects exert such a powerful gravitational pull that even light can’t resist their attraction. And scientists recently found that light behaves even more strangely around a black hole than once thought. Light in a black hole’s accretion disk — a spiraling, flattened cloud of dust and gas that circles the edges of a black hole — can sometimes escape into space. But the departing light from the XTE J1550-564 black hole didn’t follow the predictable path. Instead of escaping directly from the disk, the light was instead pulled back toward the black hole and then reflected off the disk and away from the black hole “like a boomerang,” researchers reported in a new study.

They modeled the black hole’s accretion disk and its corona — a lower-density gas zone very close to the black hole — using data captured by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, a now-defunct NASA satellite mission that investigated black holes, neutron stars and other X-ray emitting objects between 1995 and 2012.

“Typically, what we study is light that comes from that gas” — the corona — “and it bounces off of this disk that’s spiraling toward the black hole,” said lead study author Riley Connors, a postdoctoral researcher in physics at the California Institute of Technology’s Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pasadena, California.

Normally, the team studies light “coming from that corona and hitting the disk, bouncing off, and then arriving at our telescopes. That’s something we’ve been studying for a long time,” Connors told Live Science.

This time, however, some of the light bouncing off the black hole’s disk appeared to originate in the disk itself rather than in the corona; it was then dragged back toward the black hole before bouncing away.

“The thing that we found, that was predicted in the 1970s, is that you could see light that comes from the disk bent all the way back onto itself,” Connors said.

Light from different regions around the black hole has distinctive X-ray signatures that tell scientists where the light came from. When the study authors looked at the data for XTE J1550-564, they saw light that was reflected from the black hole but had emission “fingerprints” that didn’t quite match those in light that came from the corona, Connors said. The researchers then turned to computer models to explain the anomaly.

This illustration shows how some of the light coming from a disk around a black hole is bent back onto the disk itself due to the gravity of the black hole; the light is then reflected back off the disk. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)/R. Connors (Caltech))

Putting a new spin on black holes

This discovery could help scientists confirm other elusive aspects of black holes, such as how fast they spin. Researchers already understand how an accretion disk around a black hole behaves. By adding this boomeranging light to their computer models, astrophysicists can then calculate a black hole’s rotation speed based on how much of the light is bending and bouncing back, Connors explained.

“It’s perhaps a more reliable way for us to measure how fast the black holes are spinning,” he said. ‘”

Though this phenomenon has been documented to date only in the XTE J1550-564 system, this is likely not the only black hole where light performs these unusual gymnastic feats, Connors said.

“We’re starting to look at data from other black holes; we have data from multiple X-ray satellites for dozens of these systems in our own galaxy,” he said. “We think that we should see this in many other sources.”

The findings were published online March 20 in The Astrophysical Journal.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dm7xa/these-stunning-genetically-engineered-plants-glow-bright-green

April 27, 2020 ~ brucelandonblog ~ Leave a comment

These Stunning Genetically Engineered Plants Glow Bright Green

Scientists are envisioning a future of flowers that glow like alien flora, and just took a big step forward with the brightest glowing plants ever genetically engineered.

By Becky Ferreira

Apr 27 2020, 8:38am

IMAGE: PLANTA

Bioluminescence, or the ability for life to emit light, shows up in the transient flares of fireflies, the auroral glow of oceanic plankton, and the eerily bright lures of predatory animals. Plants, however, have never evolved bioluminescence in the wild, though scientists have tried to engineer them to shine for many decades.

Now, a team of researchers has reached a breakthrough on that front by creating “glowing plants that are at least an order of magnitude brighter than was previously achieved,” according to a study published on Monday in Nature Biotechnology.

Tobacco plants, injected with DNA from bioluminescent mushrooms, emitted more than a billion photons per minute, achieving a “self-sustained luminescence that is visible to the naked eye,” said the study’s authors.

The plants were developed by a team of scientists in collaboration with Planta LLC, a biotech startup based in Moscow, Russia, that seeks to commercialize glowing plants. While plants have been previously tweaked to emit light using bioluminescent bacteria, the new study unveils the brightest genetically engineered plants to date.

The tobacco plants were able to attain such high wattage (metaphorically speaking) thanks to caffeic acid, which was recently identified as a core molecular driver of light emission in the bioluminescent group of Neonothopanus fungus. Since caffeic acid is also present in all plants, the team decided to introduce this fungal DNA into the genomes of tobacco plants to see if its light-emitting pathways would be replicated in a botanical host.

The technique culminated in gleaming “autoluminescent” plants that are able to produce their own light at every stage of their life cycle. Not only did the fungal DNA cause the plants to outshine their precursors, it also shed literal light into the internal processes occuring inside these leafy species.

“As plants developed, luminescence increased at the transition zone between the root and the stem,” the researchers said in the study. “Young shoots were brightest at the terminal and axillary buds and at the upper part of the stem; older parts of the shoot dimmed as plants matured.”

Likewise, aging leaves dimmed due to reduced caffeic acid content, though “some leaves displayed waves of intense light emission during the final stages of senescence,” the team said.

The team used tobacco plants because they grow fast and are well-studied, but in principle, the same technique could illuminate popular household flowers such as periwinkle, petunia, and rose.

Stunning visions of bioluminescent plants have become popular in science fiction and fantasy, but it might not be too long before you can plant glowing greens in your own garden.

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