The Power of Habit
February 21, 2012
Brit Trogen
"Researchers have figured out how to stop people from habitually overeating and biting their nails. They can explain why some of us automatically go for a jog every morning and are more productive at work, while others oversleep and procrastinate. There is a calculus, it turns out, for mastering our subconscious urges." - Charles Duhigg
Most of us may not realize the power that our habits have over our everyday lives. It's habit. Something that occurs without awareness, something that we don't even think about it...
As it turns out, there may be more truth to this than we realize. We don't think during habits, or at least, not with the same portions of our brain that we use for decision-making. As MIT researchers are discovering through studies in rats, mental activity actually decreases when we're acting out a habit, whether running through a maze after a hunk of chocolate, or flipping on the TV when we sit down on the couch.
In a fascinating new book on the influence of habit, Charles Duhigg has tied together these fascinating findings:
"The process within our brains that creates habits is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future. Over time, this loop — cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward — becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving emerges."
This is even more important when you consider the real level of power habits hold over our lives:
"One study from Duke University estimated that habits, rather than conscious decision-making, shape 45 percent of the choices we make every day, and recent discoveries have begun to change everything from the way we think about dieting to how doctors conceive treatments for anxiety, depression and addictions."
Read the fascinating first account of this phenomenon here. And prepare to never look at your life in the same way ever again.
Sleep Tight
February 17, 2012
Rheanna Sand
There are three important things I've learned since moving to the Big Apple:
1. The yellow ones don't stop.
2. New Yorkers aren't as mean as you think they are.
3. Bed bugs are a real problem!
Yes, bed bugs, or "chinches" as they are called in Spanish, are a growing problem in large cities like New York, and not just in slums and gross hoarder houses. Middle- and upper-class homes are just as likely now to be infested, as well as your local five-star hotel. No one is safe!
These apple-seed-sized pests of the species Cimex lectularis have been around for thousands of years, feeding primarily on humans but also on other animals like cats, dogs, guinea pigs, and rodents. Similar to the tick, these blood-feeders have a proboscis that can penetrate the epidermis without being noticed, since they inject a small amount of anesthetic when they bite. Engorged with your blood, they go and hide in your mattress, in your baseboards, in your dresser drawers, or in any other hiding spot that is thinner than the edge of a credit card.
And get this - they know to hide during the day near your bed, but even if they end up in your basement or attic, they can survive for up to a year without food and a year and half without oxygen! So, in other words, if Newt's moon colony becomes a reality, they'd better keep their luggage off the floor.
So what can be done to prevent this awful scourge? We are following one simple rule: no second-hand furniture. Other deterrents would be putting glue boards under the legs of your bed, filling in any cracks or crevices in the walls, super-heating your mattress with a heat gun, and just plain good housekeeping.
It is NOT true that sleeping with the lights on, or spraying yourself with pesticides before bed, can prevent being bitten. But it would prevent any kind of social life and sense of sanity, I'm guessing. I'll just stick to the cleanliness and common sense, thank you very much.
Survival of the Clickest
February 16, 2012
Eva Gusnowski
Darwin is one of our favorite scientists. And he must’ve been a pretty patient guy to watch so many birds for such a long time. But now you (yes, YOU!) can be just like Darwin.
The “Darwin Evolution Game” on Discovery's website lets you select a set of closely related species of…something…and see if your set or organisms can survive the elements and environmental changes that occur over a million years. This game takes into account the diversity of your chosen population and the process of natural selection.
So now you just have to ask yourself one question…can you click your way to survival?
FYI: I survived on my first try. I guess that’s what 2 genetics degrees will get you. That and nothing else.
Eva ftw….F. T. W.
If You This Can Read...
February 14, 2012
Brit Trogen
Dyslexia is the most common learning disorder in the North America, affecting 15% of Americans, so it's no wonder we spend a large amount of research trying to understand it. But while dyslexia may bring to mind visions of inverted words and letters, some researchers are now focusing on another aspect of the disorder: the ways it actually improves perception.
Using a device called a tachistoscope, a mechanical shutter, researchers at MIT found that dyslexic individuals have superior peripheral vision compared to most readers. By flashing a row of letters across the subject's field of vision, they found that while non-dyslexic people have greater focus on the middle of the row, dyslexic individuals are better at identifying letters at the outer edges of vision. It also seems as though this tendency means that dyslexic people have an increased ability to absorb the "visual gist" of a scene, quickly taking in a whole picture without focusing to heavily on the details.
There's a down-side to this, of course, because focusing on the periphery and overall picture means that focus on details is lost, making reading extremely difficult. But there are advantages, too. When viewing impossible objects like the necker cube, dyslexic people are faster in realizing their impossibility, something other viewers might take longer to do by focusing on single details.
In fields like science and design, dyslexic individuals may also bring unique skills. One study shows that they can more quickly identifiy the characteristics of black holes in radio-wave emissions, a skill that requires absorbing huge amounts of visual data.
Of course, there are countless difficulties associated with dyslexia. But as Oliver Sach's wrote in An Anthropologist on Mars: "[disorders] can play a paradoxical role by bringing out latent powers, developments, evolutions, forms of life that might never be seen or even be imaginable in their absence." Perhaps that is true in this case, as well.
Going Herbal...
February 13, 2012
Torah Kachur
Traditional Chinese medicine has often gotten away with absurb and unfounded claims like shark fins for immune boosting and bear bile for reducing cholesterol, or the famous NanoEnergy Pants for, well, so you can say you are wearing NanoEnergy Pants - but what if, occassionally, they get it right?
Researchers from Harvard Dental School published in Nature Chemical Biology that a Traditional Chinese Medicine strategy of using hydrangeas for malarial treatment actually has a molecular basis. The active ingredient in the flowers found mostly in Tibet and Nepal is halofuginone (HF) which has now been shown to block development of a particularly damaging immune cell called Th17 cells.
Th17 cells are thought to have a major role in autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. The Th17 cells are the nasty little bastards that cause inflammation as your immune system attacks yourself, instead of foreign invaders. The halofuginone from flowers seems to block the development of these cells. The active ingredient seems to block a recently discovered cell communication pathway that can trigger Th17 cell formation, as well as other cellular effects. The full downstream effects haven't been fully elucidated yet, but you can bet that BigPharma is going to be touting a HF cure-for-everything pretty darn soon.
So, Chinese Medicine Practitioners might take these results as proof that all their treatments are valid and scientifically proven, except of course the hydrangeas were being used to treat malaria - not, in fact, what the active compound is at all good for.
Keller, T., Zocco, D., Sundrud, M., Hendrick, M., Edenius, M., Yum, J., Kim, Y., Lee, H., Cortese, J., Wirth, D., Dignam, J., Rao, A., Yeo, C., Mazitschek, R., & Whitman, M. (2012). Halofuginone and other febrifugine derivatives inhibit prolyl-tRNA synthetase Nature Chemical Biology DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.790
The High Line
February 10, 2012
Rheanna Sand
I've been a resident of New York for almost a whole week now, and after wading through immigration procedures, HR documents, housing agreements, utility contracts, and banking arrangements, I'm ready to explore the big city and all the science-y things it has to offer.
You would think I would start at the Museum of Natural History or the Academy of Sciences, but that's way too obvious. Instead, I was brought to an incredible example of urban re-purposing that aims to bring nature and serenity back into the Big Apple.
The High Line park is a 22-block-long elevated freight train track that was built in response to an epidemic of train-car wrecks in the early 1900s. In fact, so many people died from train collisions that 10th avenue was called "Death Avenue" for a time. The elevated tracks, which ran through the middle of blocks rather than over the traffic, made life on the West Side of Manhattan much, much safer.
But over the years, trains were replaced by trucks, and by the 80's, the tracks were entirely train-free and in danger of being completely torn down. Enter the "Friends of the High Line," a group of conservationists who thought there might be a more noble fate for the tracks: an urban parkway. City officials eventually saw it that way too (although they were ultimately convinced by the tax revenue it would bring in), and voila! In the 2000-ies, the High Line Park was officially opened. The first phase opened in 2009, and the second in 2011.
Photo by Walking Geek (Flickr)
While not terribly lush this time of year, the High Line does bring a sense of peace and serenity to the bustling meat packing district. Parkland juxtaposed with parking lots. Trees and shrubs where trains used to be. Green space above the grey. The hard streets of New York softened by waving blades of grass. I, for one, will be a frequent visitor once spring rolls around.
PB & Royal J
February 9, 2012
Eva Gusnowski
How do you make a queen a queen? England seems to think it’s some crazy “crown” business. Maybe it's Bohemian Rhapsody. I like the way the honey bee does it. With goo.
Bee colonies have an interesting structure. The queen is the only fertile female, and is diploid, meaning she has two copies of the genome. The other members of the colony are a thousands of females (FYI, they’re the workers of the hive) generated from the regular sexual reproduction (i.e. sperm meets egg, craziness ensues and a worker bee is produced), however these females have non-functional sex organs. The left-over unfertilized eggs become the males (these are called "drones") whose main purpose is to provide sperm to the queen.
This queen definitely is the champion, my friends.
Sometimes the queen dies or gets tired. After squirting out so many bee eggs to maintain a colony, who wouldn’t? In this case the hive needs to make a new queen or else no new generations can be produced. To make a new queen, the worker bees make a goopy substance called “royal jelly” that can be placed in the honeycombs of some larvae. This jelly causes the development of ovaries and allows the generation of a newly fertile queen.
Some royal jelly for your next PB&J?
Interestingly, royal jelly isn’t just for royal generation. Royal jelly has medical implications as well, and has been found to aid in the healing process of foot ulcers in diabetic patients. Soon enough, we might all be wearing crowns.
So if it’s good enough for diabetics, should we slather up the new princess sometime soon? I mean, how else is she going to become a bona fide queen, through legal channels? Lame...let’s slime her.
A New Chapter
February 3, 2012
Dr. Rheanna Sand
In just over 24 hours, I will be a freshly-minted New Yorker. Yep, I'm moving on from Life in Northern Town. After seven long years as an underpaid, overworked graduate student, it's time to start my new life as an underpaid, overworked post-doc. But when you're new employer is Cornell University, and you're going to be living on the next Science Island, being underpaid and overworked doesn't seem so terrible.
What do I mean by Science Island, you ask? Well, if you haven't heard, in December Mayor Bloomberg (lookitme, calling him "Mayor Bloomberg" already) announced that Cornell University won the bid to build the next big tech school to rival the likes of MIT or Silicon Valley - and they will be building it in my new backyard, on Roosevelt Island, a two-mile strip of land in the East River.
Roosevelt Island with the lovely backdrop of Queens. (Photo by Jonathan Laventhol)
Cornell already has a campus in NYC - duh, I'm going to be working there - but it's a medical school, and relatively small compared to other facilities in a three-block radius, like Rockefeller University or the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Center. But this new Cornell graduate school will be a state-of-the-art, energy efficient, carbon-neutral campus gleaming with trapezoidal glass buildings filled with brand new centrifuges and computing grids. With the help of Israel's Technion Institute, the new Cornell NYC Tech will focus on three multi-disciplinary aims - a healthier life, our built environment, and connective media. By 2017 the first phases should be up and running, meaning that I will literally be able to watch while this campus is built from the ground up.
See? Literally in my backyard. (Photo from Cornell University website)
I just hope the construction noise doesn't disturb my beauty sleep. HEY, SHUDDUP, I'M FRIGGIN' SLEEPIN' OVER HEEEYA! (I'm working on my NY accent… or was that a bit too Jersey?)
