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Ignorance May Not Be Bliss, Brain Response To Information About The Future Suggests
New research demonstrates that single neurons in the reward center of the brain process not only primitive rewards but also more abstract, cognitive rewards related to the quest for information about the future. The study, published by Cell Press in the July 16 issue of the journal Neuron, enhances our understanding of learning and suggests that current theories of reward should be revised to include the effect of information seeking.
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Study Shows Decreased Risk Of Death From Opportunistic Infections With Earlier Antiretroviral Treatment
HIV-positive people with opportunistic infections who receive earlier antiretroviral treatment lower their risk of death compared with people who delay treatment, according to a new study conducted by the Stanford University School of Medicine and published in PLoS One, the San Jose Mercury News reports. The findings could lead to changes in recommendations for antiretroviral treatment protocol, specifically for patients diagnosed with HIV at an advanced stage, the Mercury News reports. The study included 262 HIV-positive participants at 39 health care sites across the U.S., and 20 participants in South Africa. During the yearlong study, the researchers found that among the participants who were treated promptly after developing an opportunistic infection, 14% died or developed another infection. The researchers also found that 24% of participants who deferred treatment for an average of 45 days died or had a decrease in health outcomes. According to the Mercury News, the question of when to start HIV-positive people on antiretroviral treatment remains unclear because of issues such as the high cost of medicines, side effects, and drug interactions or resistance. Andrew Zolopa, head of Stanford University School of Medicine"s division of infectious diseases and lead investigator of the study, said that physicians often treat HIV-positive people for an "acute crisis, then follow up later with treatment for HIV." He continues, "But that answer is wrong. The study shows very clearly that there is no safety downside to doing this -- and the benefit is quite substantial, reducing death by 50%." "Even in San Francisco, one of the first epicenters of HIV in the United States, we still find that many people present late in the course of their illness with an opportunistic infection," Mitch Katz, director of San Francisco"s Department of Health who was not involved in the study, said. He added, "This study shows that it is lifesaving to treat those persons with antiretroviral drugs while they are still in the hospital." Katz said that the results could lead to changes in HIV/AIDS practices worldwide. The International AIDS Society, CDC and the British AIDS Society have developed guidelines recommending that early antiretroviral treatment be considered in patients with opportunistic infections, Zolopa said. In addition, NIH is considering an international study to examine earlier initiation of antiretroviral treatment involving more than 9,000 people from both developed and developing countries (Krieger, San Jose Mercury News, 5/15).
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Some Strategic Limitation On Individual Knowledge Could Improve The Performance Of A Large And Complex Group, Ant Study Suggests

In a study released online on July 22 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, researchers at Arizona State University and Princeton University show that ants can accomplish a task more rationally than our - multimodal, egg-headed, tool-using, bipedal, opposing-thumbed - selves. This is not the case of humans being "stupider" than ants. Humans and animals simply often make irrational choices when faced with very challenging decisions, note the study"s architects Stephen Pratt and Susan Edwards. "This paradoxical outcome is based on apparent constraint: most individual ants know of only a single option, and the colony"s collective choice self-organizes from interactions among many poorly-informed ants," says Pratt, an assistant professor in the School of Life Sciences in ASU"s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The authors" insights arose from an examination of the process of nest selection in the ant, Temnothorax curvispinosus. These ant colonies live in small cavities, as small as an acorn, and are skillful in finding new places to roost. The challenge before the colony was to "choose" a nest, when offered two options with very similar advantages. What the authors found is that in collective decision-making in ants, the lack of individual options translated into more accurate outcomes by minimizing the chances for individuals to make mistakes. A "wisdom of crowds" approach emerges, Pratt believes. "Rationality in this case should be thought of as meaning that a decision-maker, who is trying to maximize something, should simply be consistent in its preferences." Pratt says. "For animals trying to maximize their fitness, for example, they should always rank options, whether these are food s, mates, or nest sites, according to their fitness contribution." "Which means that it would be irrational to prefer choice "A" to "B" on Tuesday and then to prefer "B" to "A" on Wednesday, if the fitness returns of the two options have not changed." "Typically we think having many individual options, strategies and approaches are beneficial," Pratt adds, "but irrational errors are more likely to arise when individuals make direct comparisons among options." Studies of how or why irrationality arises can give insight into cognitive mechanisms and constraints, as well as how collective decision making occurs. Insights such as Pratt"s and Edward"s could also translate into new approaches in the development of artificial intelligence. "A key idea in collective robotics is that the individual robots can be relatively simple and unsophisticated, but you can still get a complex, intelligent result out of the whole group," says Pratt. "The ability to function without complex central control is really desirable in an artificial system and the idea that limitations at the individual level can actually help at the group level is potentially very useful." Pratt is a member of Heterogeneous Unmanned Networked Team (HUNT), a project funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to enable to development of bio-inspired solutions to engineering problems. What do these findings potentially say about understanding human social systems? "It is hard to say. But it"s at least worth entertaining the possibility that some strategic limitation on individual knowledge could improve the performance of a large and complex group that is trying to accomplish something collectively," Pratt says. This study was supported in part by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Margaret Coulombe Arizona State University


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