General Blog – Page 9 – Prof.Dr Lakshman Madurasinghe Chairman's Secretariat

Pathways to Wisdom

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Intrusive Thoughts: When Having a Great Imagination Seems Like a Curse

At any given time I can bring to mind a fatal accident. Something violent and tragic is upon me, and it’s going to happen any second.

Riding in the car — a vehicle will suddenly crash into the back of us and send us careening off the freeway. Walking the dog — a larger animal will come out of nowhere and eviscerate my pet. Blowing out the candles on my birthday cake — a gas line will explode. Sitting in front of an open window — someone will reach inside and hit me over the head.

I don’t know what came first, my anxiety or my vivid imagination. Certain unthinkable things have happened that seem to substantiate my anxiety. It has gotten worse since I put my home back together after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the same year my brother suffered the onset of schizophrenia. The following year my parents divorced, the recession left me unemployed, and my brother relapsed into active psychosis.

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High Levels of Formaldehyde in E-Cigarette Vapor

Researchers found that e-cigarettes operated at high voltages produce vapor with large amounts of formaldehyde-containing chemical compounds.

This could pose a risk to users who increase the voltage on their e-cigarette to increase the delivery of vaporized nicotine, said study co-author James Pankow, a professor of chemistry and civil and environmental engineering at Portland State University in Oregon.

“We've found there is a hidden form of formaldehyde in e-cigarette vapor that has not typically been measured. It's a chemical that contains formaldehyde in it, and that formaldehyde can be released after inhalation,” Pankow said. “People shouldn't assume these e-cigarettes are completely safe.”

The findings appear in a letter published Jan. 22 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Health experts have long known that formaldehyde and other toxic chemicals are present in cigarette smoke. Initially, e-cigarettes were hoped to be without such dangers because they lack fire to cause combustion and release toxic chemicals, a Portland State news release said.

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Why Greece’s Spillover Across Euro Area Will Probably Be Contained This Time

Greece‘s flirtation with an exit from the euro in 2011 and two cliffhanger elections in 2012 prompted the darkest days of the debt crisis, halted only by the European Central Bank‘s pledge to save the currency come what may.

Now, with the collapse of another Greek government, Europe’s leaders, its more vulnerable economies and financial markets are better prepared. While euro in-or-out threats will echo through the Greek election campaign, the spillover across Europe this time is likely to be contained.

“We’re looking at a Greece problem — the euro crisis is over,” Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank inLondon, said by phone. “The euro crisis was all about contagion risk. I do not expect markets to seriously contest the contagion defenses of Europe.”

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World economy: Past and future tense

A FINANCIAL crash in Russia; falling oil prices and a strong dollar; a new gold rush in Silicon Valley and a resurgent American economy; weakness in Germany and Japan; tumbling currencies in emerging markets from Brazil to Indonesia; an embattled Democrat in the White House. Is that a forecast of the world in 2015 or a portrait of the late 1990s?

Recent economic history has been so dominated by the credit crunch of 2008-09 that it is easy to forget what happened in the decades before. But looking back 15 years or so is instructive—in terms of both what to do and what to avoid.

Dec 18, 2014Aug 21, 2015

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Mind Controlled Robot Arm Project

Using mind control, woman with quadriplegia moves robot arm and hand in ’10D’.

In another demonstration that brain-computer interface technology has the potential to improve the function and quality of life of those unable to use their own arms, a woman with quadriplegia shaped the almost human hand of a robot arm with just her thoughts to pick up big and small boxes, a ball, an oddly shaped rock, and fat and skinny tubes.

The findings by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, published online today in the Journal of Neural Engineering, describe, for the first time, 10-degree brain control of a prosthetic device in which the trial participant used the arm and hand to reach, grasp, and place a variety of objects.

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The Economics of Brains

The idea that understanding the brain can inform economics is controversial but not new; for 20 years, behavioral economists have argued that psychology should have a greater influence on the development of economic models. What is new is the use of technology: economists, like other researchers, now have at their disposal powerful tools for observing the brain at work. The most popular tool, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has been around since the late 1980s; but only in the past few years has it been used to study decision-making, which is the crux of economic theory.

Dec 8, 2014May 10, 2018

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UNDERSTANDING OF BASIC BRAIN PROCESSES

In Experimental Psychology, emotions and economic behaviour are being investigated in the context of gambling tasks, using lesion studies to identify links between pre-frontal cortical lesion damage and decision-making impairments. This research is being complemented by fMRI studies of temporal discounting and impulsivity, identifying different neural correlates for early versus delayed rewards. Researchers in Physiology, Development & Neuroscience (PDN) are analysing, under real conditions, the steroid responses of male traders in the City of London, identifying a link between heightened testosterone levels and risky behaviour, and between cortisol levels and adverse memories of trading performance.

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The 17 most corrupt countries in the world

Transparency International has published its 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which ranked 175 countries and territories based on how corrupt their administrative and political institutions are perceived to be on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to a 100 (very clean).

Compiled from a combination of surveys and assessments of “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain,” the CPI is the most widely used indicator of corruption worldwide.

Here are the 17 most corrupt countries, according to the index:

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Kofi Annan calls for the tackling of depression to be made a global priority

The former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan has called for the tackling of depression to be made a global priority, with mental health incorporated into a new UN Millennium Development Goal after the deadline for achieving the current goals passes in 2015.

“The failure to tackle depression undermines the fundamental human rights of millions and millions of people,” he said. “This begins with the denial of even the most basic levels of treatment and support.”

Annan said the collective failure to confront the condition, which affects almost 7% of the world’s population – 400 million people – was not a result of a lack of knowledge about treatment, but a failure to recognise the scale of the problem and put in place resources to overcome it.

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What Peter Drucker Knew About 2020

When PwC released its annual survey of corporate chief executives for 2014, it was immediately obvious that change is on leaders’ brains: “As CEOs plan their strategies to take advantage of transformational shifts,” the consultancy reported, “they are also assessing their current capabilities – and finding that everything is fair game for reinvention.”
It’s no wonder why.

“Every few hundred years throughout Western history, a sharp transformation has occurred,” Peter Drucker observed in a 1992 essay for Harvard Business Review. “In a matter of decades, society altogether rearranges itself – its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, its arts, its key institutions. Fifty years later a new world exists. And the people born into that world cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born. Our age is such a period of transformation.”

Sep 22, 2014Oct 13, 2014

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How To Quickly Turn Your Emotions Up or Down

Whether you are feeling really good or really bad, emotions are felt more intensely when the ambient lighting is brighter, according to recent research.

Since many decisions are made under strong lighting conditions, turning down the lights may help you make less emotional decisions.

The study, published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, also has implications for those experiencing depression, as Alison Jing Xu, the study’s lead author explained:

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Sleep Disorders Widely Undiagnosed in Individuals with Multiple Sclerosis

In what may be the largest study of sleep problems among individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS), researchers at UC Davis have found that widely undiagnosed sleep disorders may be at the root of the most common and disabling symptom of the disease: fatigue.

Conducted in over 2,300 individuals in Northern California with multiple sclerosis, the large, population-based study found that, overall, more than 70 percent of participants screened positive for one or more sleep disorders.

The research highlights the importance of diagnosing the root causes of fatigue among individuals with MS, as sleep disorders may affect the course of the disease as well as the overall health and well-being of sufferers, the authors said.

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Zebrafish Model of a Learning and Memory Disorder Shows Better Way to Target Treatment

Using a zebrafish model of a human genetic disease called neurofibromatosis (NF1), a team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has found that the learning and memory components of the disorder are distinct features that will likely need different treatment approaches. They published their results this month in Cell Reports.

NF1 is one of the most common inherited neurological disorders, affecting about one in 3,000 people. It is characterized by tumors, attention deficits, and learning problems. Most people with NF1 have symptoms before the age of 10. Therapies target Ras, a protein family that guides cell proliferation. The NF1 gene encodes neurofibromin, a very large protein with a small domain involved in Ras regulation.

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Where Original Ideas Come From

Revolutions are seldom solo efforts. Isaac Newton was the greatest scientist of his age and not one known for his false modesty, but even he had to admit, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Thomas Kuhn made a related point in his classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He argued that precedence in science is somewhat arbitrary—a matter of perspective rather than fact—because new discoveries are rarely tied to the work of just one person or team.

Yet, while very few ideas are truly original, there are exceptions. Sometimes an important new idea seems to have no precursor or precedent, but springs forth whole from a single mind and completely alters our perception of how the world works. Although these are rare, they have a lot to teach us about how to become more creative ourselves.

Sep 8, 2014May 10, 2018

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Researchers Demonstrate Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication in Human Subjects

Advanced neuro-technologies including wireless EEG and robotized TMS enable first successful transmission.

In a first-of-its-kind study, an international team of neuroscientists and robotics engineers have demonstrated the viability of direct brain-to-brain communication in humans. Recently published in PLOS ONE the highly novel findings describe the successful transmission of information via the internet between the intact scalps of two human subjects – located 5,000 miles apart.

“We wanted to find out if one could communicate directly between two people by reading out the brain activity from one person and injecting brain activity into the second person, and do so across great physical distances by leveraging existing communication pathways,” explains coauthor Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD, Director of the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. “One such pathway is, of course, the internet, so our question became, ‘Could we develop an experiment that would bypass the talking or typing part of internet and establish direct brain-to-brain communication between subjects located far away from each other in India and France ?’”