Brain data:Scanning, scraping and sculpting the plastic learning brain through neurotechnology

Neurotechnology is an advancing field of research and development with significant implications for education. As 'postdigital' hybrids of biological and informational codes, novel neurotechnologies combine neuroscience insights into the human brain with advanced technical development in brain imaging, brain-computer interfaces, neurofeedback platforms, brain stimulation and other neuroenhancement applications. Merging neurobiological knowledge about human life with computational technologies, neurotechnology exemplifies how postdigital science will play a significant role in societies and education in decades to come. As neurotechnology developments are being extended to education, they present potential for businesses and governments to enact new techniques of 'neurogovernance' by 'scanning' the brain, 'scraping' it for data and then 'sculpting' the brain toward particular capacities. The aim of this article is to critically review neurotechnology developments and implications for education. It examines the purposes to which neurotechnology development is being put in education, interrogating the commercial and governmental objectives associated with it and the neuroscientific concepts and expertise that underpin it. Finally, the article raises significant ethical and governance issues related to neurotechnology development and postdigital science that require concerted attention from education researchers

Old World megadroughts and pluvials during the Common Era

Climate model projections suggest widespread drying in the Mediterranean Basin and wetting in Fennoscandia in the coming decades largely as a consequence of greenhouse gas forcing of climate. To place these and other “Old World” climate projections into historical perspective based on more complete estimates of natural hydroclimatic variability, we have developed the “Old World Drought Atlas” (OWDA), a set of year-to-year maps of tree-ring reconstructed summer wetness and dryness over Europe and the Mediterranean Basin during the Common Era. The OWDA matches historical accounts of severe drought and wetness with a spatial completeness not previously available. In addition, megadroughts reconstructed over north-central Europe in the 11th and mid-15th centuries reinforce other evidence from North America and Asia that droughts were more severe, extensive, and prolonged over Northern Hemisphere land areas before the 20th century, with an inadequate understanding of their causes. The OWDA provides new data to determine the causes of Old World drought and wetness and attribute past climate variability to forced and/or internal variability

The thing about pain: The remaking of illness narratives in chronic pain expressions on social media

In this article, we analyse chronic pain narratives on Flickr and Tumblr. We focus on how, by incorporating visual and multimodal elements, chronic pain expressions in social media significantly extend and challenge the logic, function and effects of traditional ‘illness narratives’. We examine a sample of images and blogs related to chronic pain and formulate a typology of chronic pain expressions on these sites. Flickr brings a form of narrative immediacy, making the pain experience visible, eliciting empathy and marking chronicity. Tumblr lends itself to more networked forms of interaction through the circulation of multimodal memes, and support communities are built through humour and social criticism. We argue that new forms of mediation and social media dynamics transform pain narratives. This has implications for our understandings of the forms and formats of pain communication and offers new possibilities for communicating pain within and beyond clinical contexts

Expansion of the Gene Ontology knowledgebase and resources

The Gene Ontology (GO) is a comprehensive resource of computable knowledge regarding the functions of genes and gene products. As such, it is extensively used by the biomedical research community for the analysis of -omics and related data. Our continued focus is on improving the quality and utility of the GO resources, and we welcome and encourage input from researchers in all areas of biology. In this update, we summarize the current contents of the GO knowledgebase, and present several new features and improvements that have been made to the ontology, the annotations and the tools. Among the highlights are 1) developments that facilitate access to, and application of, the GO knowledgebase, and 2) extensions to the resource as well as increasing support for descriptions of causal models of biological systems and network biology. To learn more, visit http://geneontology.org/.National Institutes of Health/National Human Genome Research Institute [HG002273] awarded to the PI group formed by (alphabetically) Judith A. Blake, J. Michael Cherry, Suzanna E. Lewis, Paul W. Sternberg and Paul D. Thomas, as well as additional funding awarded to each participating institution. For more details please visit: http://geneontology.org/page/go-consortium-contributors-list. Funding for open access charge: National Institutes of Health/National Human Genome Research Institute [HG002273]

Scientific merits and analytical challenges of tree-ring densitometry

R.W. was supported by NERC grant NE/K003097/1.X-ray microdensitometry on annually-resolved tree-ring samples has gained an exceptional position in last-millennium paleoclimatology through the maximum latewood density parameter (MXD), but also increasingly through other density parameters. For fifty years, X-ray based measurement techniques have been the de facto standard. However, studies report offsets in the mean levels for MXD measurements derived from different laboratories, indicating challenges of accuracy and precision. Moreover, reflected visible light-based techniques are becoming increasingly popular and wood anatomical techniques are emerging as a potentially powerful pathway to extract density information at the highest resolution. Here we review the current understanding and merits of wood density for tree-ring research, associated microdensitometric techniques, and analytical measurement challenges. The review is further complemented with a careful comparison of new measurements derived at 17 laboratories, using several different techniques. The new experiment allowed us to corroborate and refresh ?long-standing wisdom?, but also provide new insights. Key outcomes include; i) a demonstration of the need for mass/volume based re-calibration to accurately estimate average ring density; ii) a substantiation of systematic differences in MXD measurements that cautions for great care when combining density datasets for climate reconstructions; and iii) insights into the relevance of analytical measurement resolution in signals derived from tree-ring density data. Finally, we provide recommendations expected to facilitate future inter-comparability and interpretations for global change research.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Securing the Anthropocene? International Policy Experiments in Digital Hacktivism: A Case Study of Jakarta

This article analyses security discourses that are beginning to self-consciously take on board the shift towards the Anthropocene. Firstly, it sets out the developing episteme of the Anthropocene, highlighting the limits of instrumentalist cause-and-effect approaches to security, increasingly becoming displaced by discursive framings of securing as a process, generated through new forms of mediation and agency, capable of grasping inter-relations in a fluid context. This approach is the methodology of hacking: creatively composing and repurposing already existing forms of agency. It elaborates on hacking as a set of experimental practices and imaginaries of securing the Anthropocene, using as a case study the field of digital policy activism with the focus on community empowerment through social-technical assemblages being developed and applied in ‘the City of the Anthropocene’: Jakarta, Indonesia. The article concludes that policy interventions today cannot readily be grasped in modernist frameworks of ‘problem solving’ but should be seen more in terms of evolving and adaptive ‘life hacks’

Spatio‐temporal patterns of tree growth as related to carbon isotope fractionation in European forests under changing climate

Aim To decipher Europe-wide spatiotemporal patterns of forest growth dynamics and their associations with carbon isotope fractionation processes inferred from tree rings as modulated by climate warming. Location Europe and North Africa (30‒70°N, 10°W‒35°E). Time period 1901‒2003. Major taxa studied Temperate and Euro-Siberian trees. Methods We characterize changes in the relationship between tree growth and carbon isotope fractionation over the 20th century using a European network consisting of 20 site chronologies. Using indexed tree-ring widths (TRWi), we assess shifts in the temporal coherence of radial growth across sites (synchrony) for five forest ecosystems (Atlantic, Boreal, cold continental, Mediterranean and temperate). We also examine whether TRWi shows variable coupling with leaf-level gas exchange, inferred from indexed carbon isotope discrimination of tree-ring cellulose (Δ13Ci). Results We find spatial autocorrelation for TRWi and Δ13Ci extending over up to 1,000 km among forest stands. However, growth synchrony is not uniform across Europe, but increases along a latitudinal gradient concurrent with decreasing temperature and evapotranspiration. Latitudinal relationships between TRWi and Δ13Ci (changing from negative to positive southwards) point to drought impairing carbon uptake via stomatal regulation for water saving occurring at forests below 60°N in continental Europe. A rise in forest growth synchrony over the 20th century together with increasingly positive relationships between TRWi and Δ13Ci indicate intensifying drought impacts on tree performance. These effects are noticeable in drought-prone biomes (Mediterranean, temperate and cold continental). Main conclusions At the turn of this century, convergence in growth synchrony across European forest ecosystems is coupled with coordinated warming-induced drought effects on leaf physiology and tree growth spreading northwards. Such a tendency towards exacerbated moisture-sensitive growth and physiology could override positive effects of enhanced leaf intercellular CO2 concentrations, possibly resulting in Europe-wide declines of forest carbon gain in the coming decades

Mitochondrial Dysfunction Increases Oxidative Stress and Decreases Chronological Life Span in Fission Yeast

Background: Oxidative stress is a probable cause of aging and associated diseases. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) originate mainly from endogenous sources, namely the mitochondria. Methodology/Principal Findings: We analyzed the effect of aerobic metabolism on oxidative damage in Schizosaccharomyces pombe by global mapping of those genes that are required for growth on both respiratory-proficient media and hydrogen-peroxide-containing fermentable media. Out of a collection of approximately 2700 haploid yeast deletion mutants, 51 were sensitive to both conditions and 19 of these were related to mitochondrial function. Twelve deletion mutants lacked components of the electron transport chain. The growth defects of these mutants can be alleviated by the addition of antioxidants, which points to intrinsic oxidative stress as the origin of the phenotypes observed. These respiration-deficient mutants display elevated steady-state levels of ROS, probably due to enhanced electron leakage from their defective transport chains, which compromises the viability of chronologically-aged cells. Conclusion/Significance: Individual mitochondrial dysfunctions have often been described as the cause of diseases or aging, and our global characterization emphasizes the primacy of oxidative stress in the etiology of such processes.This work was supported by Dirección General de Investigación of Spain Grant BFU2006-02610, and by the Spanish program Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Grant CSD 2007-0020 to E.H