Do human Pheromones Actually Exist?

Can human pheromones really influence our attraction to others? A new study says two putative pheromones cannot.

You may have seen the ads: Just spray a bit of human pheromone on your skin, and you’re guaranteed to land a date. Scientists have long debated whether humans secrete chemicals that alter the behavior of other people. A new study throws more cold water on the idea, finding that two pheromones that proponents have long contended affect human attraction to each other have no such impact on the opposite sex—and indeed experts are divided about whether human pheromones even exist.

A pheromone, a hormone secreted or excreted, is a chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting outside the body of the secreting individual to impact the behavior of the receiving individuals.

The study, published today in Royal Society Open Science, asked heterosexual participants to rate opposite-sex faces on attractiveness while being exposed to two steroids that are putative human pheromones. One is androstadienone (AND), found in male sweat and semen, whereas the second, estratetraenol (EST), is in women’s urine. Researchers also asked participants to judge gender-ambiguous, or “neutral,” faces, created by merging images of men and women together. The authors reasoned that if the steroids were pheromones, female volunteers given AND would see gender-neutral faces as male, and male volunteers given EST would see gender-neutral faces as female. They also theorized that the steroids corresponding to the opposite sex would lead the volunteers to rate opposite sex faces as more attractive.



That didn’t happen. The researchers found no effects of the steroids on any behaviors and concluded that the label of “putative human pheromone” for AND and EST should be dropped.
“I’ve convinced myself that ‘AND’ and ‘EST’ are not worth pursuing,” says the study’s lead author, Leigh Simmons, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Western Australia in Crawley.

Simmons belongs to a camp of researchers that believes human pheromones likely exist, but none has yet been identified. He sees ‘AND’ and ‘EST’ as an unfortunate distraction, pushed forward in part by science’s “file drawer problem,” which relegates negative results to the laboratory filing cabinet.

A push to publish more negative findings has led to studies like these emerging to question long-held views, says Tristram Wyatt, a pheromone researcher at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom who was not involved with the work. “It’s an Emperor’s New Clothes kind of moment.”

Yet Wen Zhou, a behavioral psychologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, contends that ‘AND’ and ‘EST’ may well be human pheromones. “My major concern with the experiments in this study is that they were not rigorously designed and conducted,” she wrote in an email to Science. Zhou, who in 2014 published a study finding that ‘AND’ and ‘EST’ do indeed influence whether participants judge walking dot figures with “genderless gaits” to be men or women, doubts the faces used were truly “gender neutral.” She’s also concerned that tape used to affix steroid-soaked cotton balls to participants’ faces may have covered up the chemicals.



Martha McClintock, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Chicago in Illinois who is widely credited with (and sometimes criticized for) elevating ‘AND’ and ‘EST’ to pheromone fame, along with the heavily contested idea that women living together will sync their menstrual cycles, says the findings only really negate an overly simplified view of ‘AND’ and ‘EST’ having an almost mystical ability to attract partners. She still thinks the compounds can affect behavior—just in a much more nuanced way than most people think. Her most recent research, for example, has examined how inhaling ‘AND’, perhaps from another person’s sweat, might influence someone’s emotions. “There’s no doubt that this compound, even in tiny amounts, affects how the brain functions,” she says.

Wyatt, who is convinced the new work is solid, hopes that investigators will now re-evaluate how they search for human pheromones. Studies focused on sex and attraction, are exploring a complicated realm, he says, as human sexual behavior is not well understood. Instead, he argues, scientists should examine babies, who have not developed confounding associations with smells, but seem to respond to pheromonelike substances from any mother’s areola gland secretions, which cause them to stick out their tongue and suckle.
Source: Lindzi Wessel

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The Internet and your brain are more alike than you think

Salk scientist finds similar rule governing traffic flow in engineered and biological systems. Credit: Salk Institute

A similar rule governs traffic flow in engineered and biological systems, reports a researcher. An algorithm used for the Internet is also at work in the human brain, says the report, an insight that improves our understanding of engineered and neural networks and potentially even learning disabilities.

Although we spend a lot of our time online nowadays -- streaming music and video, checking email and social media, or obsessively reading the news -- few of us know about the mathematical algorithms that manage how our content is delivered. But deciding how to route information fairly and efficiently through a distributed system with no central authority was a priority for the Internet's founders. Now, a Salk Institute discovery shows that an algorithm used for the Internet is also at work in the human brain, an insight that improves our understanding of engineered and neural networks and potentially even learning disabilities.



"The founders of the Internet spent a lot of time considering how to make information flow efficiently," says Salk Assistant Professor Saket Navlakha, coauthor of the new study that appears online in Neural Computation on February 9, 2017. "Finding that an engineered system and an evolved biological one arise at a similar solution to a problem is really interesting."
In the engineered system, the solution involves controlling information flow such that routes are neither clogged nor underutilized by checking how congested the Internet is. To accomplish this, the Internet employs an algorithm called "additive increase, multiplicative decrease" (AIMD) in which your computer sends a packet of data and then listens for an acknowledgement from the receiver: If the packet is promptly acknowledged, the network is not overloaded and your data can be transmitted through the network at a higher rate. With each successive successful packet, your computer knows it's safe to increase its speed by one unit, which is the additive increase part. But if an acknowledgement is delayed or lost your computer knows that there is congestion and slows down by a large amount, such as by half, which is the multiplicative decrease part. In this way, users gradually find their "sweet spot," and congestion is avoided because users take their foot off the gas, so to speak, as soon as they notice a slowdown. As computers throughout the network utilize this strategy, the whole system can continuously adjust to changing conditions, maximizing overall efficiency.

Navlakha, who develops algorithms to understand complex biological networks, wondered if the brain, with its billions of distributed neurons, was managing information similarly. So, he and coauthor Jonathan Suen, a postdoctoral scholar at Duke University, set out to mathematically model neural activity.



Because AIMD is one of a number of flow-control algorithms, the duo decided to model six others as well. In addition, they analyzed which model best matched physiological data on neural activity from 20 experimental studies. In their models, AIMD turned out to be the most efficient at keeping the flow of information moving smoothly, adjusting traffic rates whenever paths got too congested. More interestingly, AIMD also turned out to best explain what was happening to neurons experimentally.

It turns out the neuronal equivalent of additive increase is called long-term potentiation. It occurs when one neuron fires closely after another, which strengthens their synaptic connection and makes it slightly more likely the first will trigger the second in the future. The neuronal equivalent of multiplicative decrease occurs when the firing of two neurons is reversed (second before first), which weakens their connection, making the first much less likely to trigger the second in the future. This is called long-term depression. As synapses throughout the network weaken or strengthen according to this rule, the whole system adapts and learns.

"While the brain and the Internet clearly operate using very different mechanisms, both use simple local rules that give rise to global stability," says Suen. "I was initially surprised that biological neural networks utilized the same algorithms as their engineered counterparts, but, as we learned, the requirements for efficiency, robustness, and simplicity are common to both living organisms and the networks we have built."



Understanding how the system works under normal conditions, could help neuroscientists better understand what happens, when these results are disrupted, for example, in learning disabilities. "Variations of the AIMD algorithm are used in basically every large-scale distributed communication network," says Navlakha. "Discovering that the brain uses a similar algorithm may not be just a coincidence."
Story Source:
Materials provided by Salk Institute.

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Are we closer than ever to a timeline for human evolution?

Dating when our ancestors split from Neanderthals and other relatives has long been a puzzle, but DNA advances are making our evolutionaNeanderthalsy journey clearer

Anthropologists and geneticists had a problem. And the farther back in time they looked, the bigger the problem became.

For the past several years, there have been two main genetic methods to date evolutionary divergences - when our ancestors split from Neanderthals, chimpanzees, and other relatives. The problem was, the results of these methods differed by nearly two-fold.

By one estimate, modern humans split from Neanderthals roughly 300,000 years ago. By the other, the split was closer to 600,000 years ago. Likewise, modern humans and chimps may have diverged around 6.5 or 13 million years ago.

Puzzled by this wild disagreement, researchers with diverse expertise have been studying it from different angles. Their combined discoveries, recently reviewed, here, have shed light on how genetic differences accumulate over time and have advanced methods of genetic dating.



And if you’re in suspense, yes, they’ve also pinned down important events in our evolutionary timeline. Everyone alive today seems to share ancestors with each other just over 200,000 years ago and with Neanderthals between 765,000-550,000 years ago.

Dating with the molecular clock
Go back in time and you’ll find a population of Homo sapiens who were the ancestors of everyone living today. Go back farther and our lineage meets up with Neanderthals, then chimps, and eventually all primates, mammals, and life.
In order to date these evolutionary splits, geneticists have relied on the molecular clock - the idea that genetic mutations accumulate at a steady rate over time. Specifically this, concerns mutations that become neutral substitutions, or lasting changes to letters of the genetic code that do not affect an organism’s chances of surviving and reproducing.



If such mutations arise clocklike, then calculating the time since two organisms shared common ancestors should be as easy as dividing the number of genetic differences between them by the mutation rate - the same way that dividing distance by speed gives you travel time.

But you need to know the rate.
For decades, anthropologists used fossil calibration to generate the so-called phylogenetic rate (a phylogeny is a tree showing evolutionary relationships). They took the geologic age of fossils from evolutionary branch points and calculated how fast mutations must have arisen along the resulting lineages.

For example, the earliest fossils on the human branch after our split with chimps are identified by the fact that they seem to have walked on two legs; bipedalism is
the first obvious difference that distinguishes our evolutionary lineage of hominins from that of chimps. These fossils are 7-6 million years old, and therefore the chimp-human split should be around that age. Dividing the number of genetic differences between living chimps and humans by 6.5 million years provides a mutation rate.

Determined this way, the mutation rate is 0.000000001 (or 1x10-9) mutations per DNA base pair per year. Applied to genomes with 6 billion base pairs, that means over millions of years of chimp and human evolution, and there have been on average six changes to letters of the genetic code per year.

Why archaeology needs to come out of the cave and into the digital age
This rate can be used to date evolutionary events that are not evident from fossils, such as the spread of modern humans out of Africa.



But genetic dating got messy in 2010, when improvements to DNA sequencing allowed researchers to determine the number of genetic differences between parents and their children. Known as pedigree analysis, this provides a more direct measurement of the current mutation rate within one generation, rather than an average over millions of years.

Pedigree analysis counts 60-some mutations every generation; that converts to a rate approximately half the phylogenetic estimate—meaning evolutionary events would be twice as old.

The erratic molecular clock
Resolving this disagreement propelled researchers to reassess and revise their starting assumptions: How accurately were they counting the small number of differences between genomes of parents and children? Were fossils assigned to the correct branches of the evolutionary tree? And above all, how constant is the molecular clock?

It turns out that among primates, the molecular clock varies significantly by species, sex, and mutation type. A recent study found that New World monkeys (i.e. monkeys of the Americas like marmosets and squirrel monkeys) have substitution rates about 64% higher than apes (including humans). Within apes, rates are about 7% higher in gorillas and 2% higher in chimpanzees, compared to humans.



But even among humans, mutation rates differ, particularly between the sexes with age. As fathers get older, they gain about one additional mutation per year in the DNA they can pass on to children. Mothers, on the other hand, accumulate considerably fewer mutations with each passing year.

These species and sex differences make sense when you consider how mutations form. Most heritable mutations occur from mistakes when DNA copies itself in the germline, or cells leading to eggs and sperm. The number of times germline DNA has to copy itself depends on developmental and reproductive variables including age at puberty, age at reproduction, and the process of sperm production.
These traits vary across primates today and certainly varied over primate evolution.

For instance, average generation times are six years for New World monkeys, 19 years for gorillas, 25 years for chimps, and 29 years for humans.

And those extra mutations as fathers get older? Sperm are produced continuously after puberty, so sperm made later in life are the result of more rounds of DNA replication and opportunities for replication errors. In contrast, a mother’s stock of eggs is formed by birth. The small increase with maternal age could be due to mutations from DNA damage, rather than replication errors.

Ways forward for dating backwards
It’s now clear that one mutation rate cannot determine the dates for all divergences relevant to human evolution. However, researchers can secure the timeline for important evolutionary events by combining new methods of genetic dating with fossils and geologic ages.

Innovative computational methods have incorporated reproductive variables into calculations. By taking into account ages of reproduction in both sexes, age of male puberty, and sperm production rates, researchers have estimated split times that accord with the fossil record.



Another new approach has analyzed mutations that are mainly independent of DNA replication. It seems that certain classes of mutations, related to DNA damage, do behave more clocklike.

And some researchers have focused on ancient DNA. Comparing human fossils from the past 50,000 years to humans today, suggests a mutation rate that agrees with pedigree analysis.

At least one evolutionary split was pinned down in 2016, after ancient DNA was extracted from 430,000 year-old hominin fossils from ‘Sima de los Huesos’, Spain. The Sima hominins looked like early members of the Neanderthal lineage based on morphological similarities. This hypothesis fit the timing of the split between Neanderthals and modern humans based on pedigree analysis (765,000-550,000 years ago), but did not work with the phylogenetic estimate (383,000-275,000 years ago).
Where do the Sima hominins belong on our family tree? Were they ancestors of both Neanderthals and modern humans, just Neanderthals, or neither?

DNA answered this definitively. The Sima hominins belong to the Neanderthal branch after it split with modern humans. Moreover, the result provides a firm time point in our family tree, suggesting that the pedigree rate works for this period of human evolution.

Neanderthals and modern humans likely diverged between 765,000-550,000 years ago. Other evolutionary splits may soon be clarified as well, thanks to advances brought about by the mutation rate debates. Someday soon, when you see a chimp, you may be able to salute your great, great… great grandparent, with the correct number of “greats.”
Source: Biology News

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Human Trafficking in a Time of Crisis

How exaggerated media reports misconceive the realities of migration and displacement.

The current refugee crisis in Europe has once again sounded alarms about increased human trafficking. This is nothing new! Trafficking—or the recruitment, transport and harboring of people for severe exploitation, such as forced labor, debt bondage, prostitution, pornography or the unlawful removal of organs—is a recurrent concern during armed conflicts, earthquakes, cyclones, health pandemics and even sporting events. It is worth noting that Western media, taking clues from Western advocates, tend to misconceive the realities of human trafficking during crises. Western journalists often use isolated incidents to suggest catastrophic scale of trafficking. We need to better understand the dynamics of mobility during and in the aftermath of crises. We cannot conflate migrants’ desire for safe and secure environments where livelihoods might be more viable with organized crime taking control of the trade in people. Our understanding of migration, smuggling and trafficking has to be grounded in empirical data. Advocacy, even the best intentioned, cannot be developed in an empirical vacuum.

Scholarly literature on trafficking in persons during armed conflict is robust in terms of policy and legal analysis but very limited regarding empirical data on actual cases of trafficking. Reports issued by human rights groups and humanitarian assistance organizations working in conflict and post-conflict situations tend to discuss risks for trafficking related to perceived vulnerabilities, mainly of children, and do not provide reliable statistics on the prevalence of trafficking during and immediately after conflict, although there is some evidence of the increased demand for sex workers by military and peacekeeping personnel.



The question remains whether these reports conflate intensified demand for sex workers with an increase in trafficking for sexual exploitation. Scholars of sex work such as Ronald Weitzer, for example, argue that the oppression paradigm depicts all types of sexual commerce as institutionalized subordination of women, regardless of the conditions under which it occurs. In reality, there is a broad constellation of work arrangements, power relations and personal experiences among participants in sexual commerce. Victimization, exploitation, choice, job satisfaction, self-esteem and other factors differ between types of sex work, geographical locations and other structural conditions. Commercial sexual exchange and erotic entertainment are not homogenous phenomena, stresses Weitzer. The UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, known as the Palermo Protocol, also makes a rather clear distinction between sex work and trafficking for sexual exploitation.



In the current refugee context, the label “trafficking” is often used where smuggling would be more appropriate or where a more nuanced discussion about gender inequalities and exploitation of vulnerable women would be warranted. Men’s inability to protect women and women being forced into situations that they would never have considered if it had not been for war is seen locally—in Syria or Iraq—as a breakdown of moral authority and of male and family protection, as well as exploitation, but not as trafficking. Don’t get me wrong, smugglers can be ruthless, they often charge migrants exorbitant fees for their services, but they do not force refugees onto their boats. Refugees undertake risky journeys out of fear and desperation. Without smugglers, many asylum seekers would have died crossing the Mediterranean. Smugglers are a necessary evil for many refugees fleeing conflict. For some, smugglers can be saviors.

There seems to be a considerable difference between what media and advocates in the global North stress and what reports originating in the global South emphasize. Trafficking stories became attached to disaster narratives in the context of the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. Western media reported that criminal gangs were befriending children orphaned by the tsunami and selling them to sex traffickers, that organized syndicates were exploiting the crisis in Aceh province and sending SMS messages to people throughout the region offering children for adoption. These reports were contradicted by experts who said that there was no increase in verified incidents of human trafficking in countries hit by the tsunami. Later assessments of media reporting of the disaster commissioned by UNICEF noted that local newspapers in Indonesia and Sri Lanka were very suspicious of stories of child trafficking from the very beginning.

The reporting about the effects of the tsunami on children tended to be more positive, focusing on the resilience of local people, on the rebuilding of schools and on strategies to normalize children’s lives as best and as soon as possible. After cyclone Negris hit Myanmar in 2008, a UNICEF spokesperson said that the organization had no reports of an increase in trafficking. He hastened to add that if there were such reports he would be cautious about using them since there are no accurate figures on the numbers of people who were trafficked on a regular basis before the cyclone.



In Haiti, fears over vulnerable children increased in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Haiti is home to a large number of ‘restavèks’, extremely poor children who are sent to other homes to work as unpaid domestic servants. Unfortunately, many of the trade networks have links with the international adoption “markets.” The association of child trafficking with intercountry adoption might strike some readers as obvious, others as offensive, but in the aftermath of the earthquake it provoked exaggerated stories of child kidnapping for international adoptions. The “good intentions” of Laura Silsby of the New Life Children’s Refuge (NLCR), an Idaho-based Southern Baptist charity, who attempted to rescue Haitian orphans from collapsed orphanages in Port-au-Prince and bring them to a refuge in Cabarete, Dominican Republic, fueled such stories even further.

It is worth noting that the alarmists’ fear that the earthquake would spark a tidal wave of child trafficking portrayed all Haitian children as passive victims vulnerable to increased abuses during crises. This conceptualization did not take into account children’s motivations and maneuvers in their lives, including their working lives. The child trafficking discourse has only recently appropriated ‘restavèks’, to the detriment of discussions about long-standing patterns of poverty, social inequality and lack of employment for young people that deprive them of ways to make their livelihoods.



Interestingly, other natural or manmade disasters have sparked few concerns about human trafficking, showing that there are inconsistent assumptions about which crises and populations are most vulnerable to trafficking. The 2012 nuclear disaster in Japan, for example, did not cause speculation about trafficking. On the other hand, the Frontline documentary Sex Slaves includes a story of a young Ukrainian woman who became a sex worker in the hope of earning money to pay for medical care for her brother who suffered from cancer related to the 1986 Chernobyl explosion.

There is no doubt that there is a profound disconnected and at times collision between the anti-trafficking discourses found in the global North and global South. Narratives about crises found in many Western media are often framed by hegemonic representations of “us” and “them”, and focus mainly on death and destruction, on survivors’ misery and suffering. Narratives found in locally produced reports present the insiders’ point of view and focus on courage, resilience and generosity under duress.

These differences complicate the story even further. The human trafficking discourse is becoming globalized. The UN, the European Commission, the Council of Europe, Interpol, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and international organizations such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) have all launched policies and programs aimed at combating trafficking through efforts to prevent trafficking, protect victims, prosecute traffickers and form partnerships for more effective action (the four Ps). While the Palermo Protocol recognizes human trafficking as a human rights violation, different agencies regard the trafficking phenomenon within different frameworks, including organized crime, migration management and forced labor, to name a few examples.



Given the lack of empirical knowledge about human trafficking—including during crises—what drives the globalization of the trafficking discourse and the international anti-trafficking movement? Is this global discourse simply forced upon less powerful actors? Do less powerful actors have their own motivations for adopting the global anti-trafficking discourse? What effects does this discourse have locally? In Nepal, where I have done a lot of work on human trafficking, the government’s strategy to prevent trafficking of women was to ban migration of females under the age 30 to the Gulf States for domestic work. This decision de facto stripped young women of a basic human right: the right to migrate. Officials acknowledged the ban had increased illegal migration and subsequently heightened migrants’ risks to exploitation; however, the government viewed these policies as temporarily necessary to protect (sic!) female migrant workers while formulating safe migration guidelines. In Laos, the anti-trafficking discourse is deployed to keep Lao youth from cross-border migration to Thailand simply because migration poses a threat to the construction of a Lao national identity.



Exaggerated reports of trafficking are quite damaging because they divert attention away from structural problems underlying increased exploitation of migrant workers. There is a need for more dialogue between members of the anti-trafficking movement and workers’ rights advocates because much trafficking in persons boils down to the exploitation of different types of workers. Finally, existing critiques—particularly evidence-based ones—of the shortcomings of the four Ps have to be taken on board and applied as lessons learned in the times of crises and calm.

Elżbieta M. Goździak is research professor at the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University. In the Fall of 2016 she will serve as the George Soros Visiting Chair in Public Policy at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. She received her PhD in anthropology from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland in 1984.

Living Robot with 'Human Brain'

Close to the creation of Super-Computer with AI

COMPUTER scientists attempting to electronically replicate the human brain are close to creating a 'living PC'.

Engineers at the University of Massachusetts are developing microprocessors which mimic biological synapses - the nerve cells which pass messages across the human body.

The science fiction-style project is being undertaken by Joshua Yang and Qiangfei Xia, professors of electrical and computer engineering at the US college.

Their work focuses heavily on ‘memristors’ - a computer component which could change science forever, switching the focus from electronics to ‘ionics’.

Ionics, unlike electronics, is not dependent on a power source. It essentially has a memory, so even if it loses power it can remember what it was doing before and continue the action.



“The computers will send messages in the same manner of the human brain”
This means computers of the near-future will be able to shut on and off like a lightbulb, not losing any data or files in the process.

Different researchers and developers, including Mr. Yang and Mr. Xia, are now racing to be the first to harness this technology and use it to create a new generation of computers.

Professor Jennifer Rupp said: “I think there is a race going on. There is a strong driving force, but at the same time it's very important that there are players like HP, because they want to get to the market, show everyone that this is real.”

Mr. Yang and Mr. Xia explained the process in more detail in their report, explaining the process behind neuromorphic computing - computers which mimic humans.

Computers will soon have memories and be able to operate without power
They said: “Memristors have become a leading candidate to enable neuromorphic computing by reproducing the functions in biological synapses and neurons in a neural network system, while providing advantages in energy and size”.

“This work opens a new avenue of neuromorphic computing hardware based on ‘memristors’”.



“Specifically, we developed a diffusive-type ‘memristor’ where diffusion of atoms offers a similar dynamics and the needed time-scales as its bio-counterpart, leading to a more faithful emulation of actual synapses i.e. a true synaptic emulator”.

“The results here provide an encouraging pathway toward synaptic emulation using diffusive ‘memristors’ for neuromorphic computing."
Source: Joey Millar

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The first Head transplant in a human being

An Italian Surgeon will perform delicate operation
A Russian citizen, Valery Spiridonov, will be the first person to have full body transplant if operation goes ahead.

Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero is set to announce more details about his controversial head transplant surgery in September 2016. His first patient, Valery Spiridonov, 31, spoke about the operation during a press conference held by Russia's Rossiya Segonya news agency.

"I continue the dialogue with Canavero, we exchange the information and as far as I know, he is preparing a portion of news this September," he said.

At present, Canavero is planning to carry out the world's first head transplant in December 2017. However, details of the operation have been lacking and many experts have heavily criticized the plan, saying it is not possible – or ethical.



Spiridonov, a computer scientist, suffers from Werdnig-Hoffman disease. This is a rare form of spinal muscular atrophy that causes his muscles to waste away and for which there is no cure. He was speaking at a conference to present his latest wheelchair project – an autopilot system that aims to improve the lives of people with disabilities.

Spiridonov said his and Canavero's projects complement one another, adding head transplant surgery will never be widely available: "We will obviously develop his [Canavero's] project as well, but we do understand that what he offers can work in individual cases, and this will never go to masses. I want to help as many people as I can with the technologies that do not raise doubts and debates. So that I hope we at least complement each other."

If and when the head transplant surgery will take place is not clear. Since first announcing his plan in February 2015, Canavero has given a brief outline on how the surgery would work. The patient's head would be cooled down to about -15C. Both heads (patient and the dead donor) would then be severed and the patient's would be attached to the donor. The spinal cords would then be fused together. Muscle and blood supply would be established.



The patient would be kept in a coma for about a month to prevent any movement, while their spine would be stimulated with electrodes to strengthen nerve connections. Canavero estimates the patient would be able to walk within a year of the operation.
Many of Canavero's critics say a successful head transplant is still far from becoming a reality for a multitude reasons – the main one being the fusion of the spinal cords. However, earlier this year a team of surgeons in China claimed to have successfully carried out a head transplant on a monkey.

Xiaoping Ren, from Harbin Medical University, has a long history of carrying out head transplants on mice – but this was believed to be the first time the operation had been successfully performed on a monkey. Canavero announced the findings and released an image that appeared to show the monkey with its head stitched onto another body. Researchers said there was no neurological damage and that it survived for 20 hours before being euthanized.

The team did not, however, attempt to connect the spinal cord.



In a press release sent to Motherboard, Canavero said: "A full monkey head transplant has been successfully accomplished by Prof Ren's group in China with the goal of testing cross-circulation and hypothermia as an effective neuroprotective strategy. The first studies on human cadavers have already begun in China and will be expanded shortly."

Further to the practical problems Canavero and his team face, the ethical implications, of carrying out such a procedure are wide ranging. In an interview with China's Xinhua news agency, Alberto Delitala, president of the Italian Society of Neurosurgery, said: "Our association's stance is very clear: the central theme in the scientific method is that any new technique must be based on experimental tests submitted to an international scientific community before being applied to human beings. But Canavero has never been able to prove that he has succeeded in a head transplant on an animal.

"If Canavero really had found a revolutionary technique to reconnect the spinal cord, then why not apply it to people with spinal cord injury before attempting a head transplant? ... I think that Canavero's proposal is an escapist flight of fancy which unfortunately today is not possible."



Source: IBT - ibttimes.co.uk

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Dante’s Inferno and the Modern Human Experience

By: Alexandria Addesso -

For nearly 800 years Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy has been read and praised by people from different eras throughout the world. It is considered the pinnacle of Italian literature and is celebrated as one of the most popular epic poems internationally. Of the three sections it contains within itself; Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradiso, the Inferno has always seemed to be the most read. But why?

Many come to the conclusion that the Inferno is most loved because it is the most thrilling, the imagery described as Dante descends through the nine circles of Hell is so descriptively gruesome that it makes any horror film pale in comparison. Yet the Inferno is not read solely by fans of gore, contrarily it is often read by literature lovers, philosophers, and religious alike.



Other than its eloquent use of poetic language, the Inferno draws in so many readers because of its allusions to humanity. While the whole Divine Comedy deals with the human condition, the Inferno in particular focuses on the corruption and shortcomings of humans and society as a whole. In each Canto Dante finds and speaks to “shades”, the non-corporal entities of those suffering in Hell. Among them he finds famous poets, politicians, and members of the clergy. Even his guide Virgil, is based on the famous ancient Roman poet damned to the first circle of Hell where those who were worthy but lived before Christianity or were unbaptized remained.
While the whole work has obvious religious overtones and follow a Catholic idea of sins, the gravest offenses which corresponded to the most devastating tortures in the deepest parts of

Hell are those dealing with corruption and malignance towards others and society in general. The seventh circle holds those who committed violence against others, property, and themselves (suicide). The eighth circle contains 10 pouches of torture for those who commit fraud ranging from panderers and seducers to flatterers and fraudulent counselors to the sowers of scandal and schism in the ninth pouch and falsifiers in the tenth.



The final circle of Hell, where Satan remains, is reserved for those who committed treachery. Everything are encased in a frozen lake, the depth of submergence depending on the level of severity of the act of treachery. Treachery can be highly detrimental in and human relationship, community, and society as a whole. It is as rampant now as it was in Dante’s own time. When the state partakes in acts of deception and violations of the trust of its inhabitants, even though it may seem common ground in modern times, the results are devastatingly devaluing to all. If human beings cannot overcome the doomed deeds of treachery, then we only further incase ourselves in our own Hell on Earth where no one can be trusted.

“O you possessed of sturdy intellects,
Observe the teachings that is hidden here
Beneath the veil of verses so obscure.”

(Dante Alighieri. Inferno. Canto IX, verses 61-63)

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