Global Climate Report. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov). July 2019.

It’s summer, and it is hot out there; but if it feels like record-breaking temperatures are becoming more common globally, they are. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and European Copernicus Climate Change Service announced that July 2019 was the hottest month across the globe ever measured since measurements began, in 1880. Global temperatures averaged 16.73°C in July, which is 0.95 °C higher than the 20th-century average of 15.78°C . Average Antarctic sea-ice coverage was 8.5% below the 1981-2010 average. And sea ice coverage was 10.5% below the overall average, which is based on records beginning in 1979. The scientists also released geographical data, showing that the regions where temperatures varied furthest from averages, were Alaska, Central Europe, Northern and Southwestern parts of Asia, and certain regions in Africa and Australia. These findings corroborate scientific predictions regarding the effects of man-made climate change. Human activities, primarily from burning fossil fuels, emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. Increasing greenhouse gas emissions are associated with warmer global surface temperatures. The planet’s 10 hottest years on record have all fallen in the past two decades. Scientists and policymakers around the globe are also feeling this heat.

Unless significant measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions are adopted, scientists expect temperature records to keep falling. Scientists say global temperatures could increase by at least 3°C this century, which will create conditions on Earth that have not been seen in more than 2 million years. Given the notable trends in higher temperatures and natural disasters, we might be pushing the climate system toward states that we haven’t seen in our societal experience – and even in our species’ experience.

Manipulation of brain circuits using smartphone-controlled device

Qazi R et al. Wireless optofluidic brain probes for chronic neuropharmacology and photostimulation. Nature Biomedical Engineering, August 2019.

Scientists recently designed a device that can regulate brain circuits using a tiny brain implant controlled by a smartphone. This bluetooth-enabled device utilizes replaceable lego-like drug cartridges to target neurons with drugs and light. Existing methods to deliver drugs and light to the brain typically involve metal tubes and optical fibers. These tools are rigid and can substantially damage the brain’s soft tissue over time. Moreover, this bulky equipment often limits the patient’s movement because of the wired connections, making them unfit for long-term use. To achieve chronic remote-controlled drug delivery without exhaustion and evaporation of drugs, scientists invented a neural device with a replaceable drug cartridge, which could allow neuroscientists to study the same brain networks for several months without depleting the drug supply. These “plug-n-play” drug cartridges were integrated into a brain implant for mice with a soft and ultrathin probe (about the thickness of a human hair), which consisted of microfluidic channels and tiny LEDs (smaller than a grain of salt), for unlimited drug doses and light delivery. The implant is regulated via a smartphone, allowing researchers to trigger precise combinations and sequences of drug and light delivery. In animal models, these stimuli can be triggered with the target outside of the laboratory, allowing researchers to wirelessly instill changes in the animal’s brain while in its natural habitat. Using these neural devices, researchers are now able to perform fully automated animal studies where the behavior of one animal could positively or negatively affect behavior in other animals by conditional triggering of light and/or drug delivery. This device will allow researchers to better dissect the neural circuit basis of behavior and how specific neuromodulators in the brain tune behavior in various ways. In addition, the device can be utilized in complex pharmacological studies to develop potentially new therapeutics for pain, addiction, and emotional disorders.

The secret weapon of E.Coli 

Melson E. at al. The sRNA DicF integrates oxygen sensing to enhance enterohemorrhagic Escherichia colivirulence via distinctive RNA control mechanisms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 2019.

Scientists have revealed how E. coli (Escherichia coli) bacteria seeks out the most oxygen-free parts of your colon to cause the worst infection possible. E. coli normally live in the intestines of healthy people and animals. Most varieties of E. coli are harmless or cause relatively brief diarrhea. But a few particularly nasty strains can cause cramps, diarrhea, vomiting – even kidney failure and death. Children are particularly at risk. A new study uncovers how this foodborne pathogen knows where and when to begin colonizing the colon on its way to making you sick. Bacterial pathogens typically colonize a specific tissue or organ in the host. Therefore, as part of their infection strategies, bacterial pathogens precisely time deployment of proteins and toxins to these specific colonization niches in the human host. This allows the pathogens to save energy and avoid detection by our immune systems and ultimately cause disease. The researchers in this study identified how E.Coli detects low oxygen levels in the large intestine and then produces proteins that allow it to attach to host cells and establish infection. Oxygen actually diffuses from the intestinal tissue into the gut, and there are comparably higher levels in the small intestine than the large. Remarkably, E. coli specifically waits until it has reached the-low oxygen large intestine before striking. E. coli controls this process via a small form of RNA that activates particular genes when oxygen levels are low. This is the point when the infection really gets established and the bacteria are able to begin to manufacture harmful Shiga toxins. The researchers predict that other bacterial pathogens, such as Shigella and Salmonella, likely utilize a similar control mechanism. Researchers suggest that if we can find a way to block oxygen sensing, we may be able to prevent the infection by allowing E. coli to pass harmlessly through the body.

Our hearts are broken today” said the President Obama after the school shooting in Connecticut on December 14, 2012. These words reflected most concisely the emotions all of us felt that tragic day, as our minds and hearts failed to grasp how possibly this could have happened, how come a seemingly human being could go this much lower than the wildest beasts. One of the ideas that was proposed to explain this murky situation was that the gunman had an Asperger’s syndrome, which was immediately refused by experts. “First and foremost, our thoughts go out to the families,” says Lisa Goring, vice president of family services for Autism Speaks. “We are all searching for answers, but it can be so irresponsible to label autism as the cause of this because we endanger totally innocent kids” (1). This article aims to explain what the Asperger’s Syndrome is about in an effort to save especially kids with this syndrome from another stigma that they have to deal with on top of so many other things.

Thirty years ago, only 4 or 5 Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) cases were reported per 10,000 people. Today, however, approximately 1 in 150 children across the U.S. is diagnosed with it; so chances are, you know someone affected either directly or indirectly by these disorders (2). This being the case, the debates, advocacy, and awareness activities are on the rise. Individuals with ASD show abnormal social interactions, language difficulties, repetitive or restrictive behaviors, and special interests. ASD includes Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorder and Asperger’s Syndrome (3).

Asperger’s syndrome was first recognized by Hans Asperger in 1944 and the term was popularized by English psychiatrist, Lorna Wing, in 1981. The incidence of this syndrome is not well established, but experts in population studies estimate that two out of every 10,000 children have the disorder. It is more common in boys. They are three to four times more likely than girls to have Asperger’s syndrome (ninds.nih.gov). However, the prevalence in females might be lower because of the fundamental lack of awareness of what Asperger’s Syndrome looks like in females. A female with Asperger’s Syndrome might be considered as shy, quiet, perfect at school, tomboyish, moody, overly competitive, aloof, Gothic, depressed, anxious, or a perfectionist (disabled-world.com).

It is always challenging for people with Asperger’s to lead a normal life in spite of it because this disorder makes it hard to develop social and conversational skills. Affected people display socially and emotionally inappropriate behavior, limited facial expressions, body gestures and inability to recognize nonverbal signals. They lack interest in other people; however, they are obsessively interested in unusual and specific subjects. In addition, they prefer to follow repetitive routines or rituals because they cannot cope with unexpected changes.

Children with Asperger’s Syndrome

A child with Asperger’s syndrome may have the listed signs and symptoms (kidshealth.org):

• inappropriate or minimal social interactions
• conversations almost always revolving around self rather than others
• “scripted,” “robotic,” or repetitive speech
• lack of “common sense”
• problems with reading, math, or writing skills
• obsession with complex topics such as patterns or music
• average to below-average nonverbal cognitive abilities, though verbal cognitive abilities are usually average to above-average
• awkward movements
• odd behaviors or mannerisms
• lack of eye contact

Parents usually sense there is something abnormal about a child with Asperger’s by the time of his or her third birthday, and some children may exhibit symptoms as early as infancy. Their early language skills retain but motor development delays (for example, crawling or walking late, clumsiness) are sometimes the first indicator of the disorder (ninds.nih.gov).

Hans Asperger called the children with these behaviors “little professors” because they could talk continuously and in great detail about their favorite subjects. These little professors may have an amazing ability to recall dates, names, and events. One parent laughs about how her ten-year-old knew the scientific name of everyday things—from the sugar in the kitchen to the trees in the backyard. He would keep discussing things using the scientific classification (yourlittleprofessor.com).

Most children with Asperger’s syndrome have difficulty interacting with their peers due to the problems in understanding figurative language and tendency to use language literally. Children with this syndrome do not recognize non-literal language that includes humor, irony, and teasing. They struggle just to understand common social cues so they are mostly loners and may display odd behaviors. A child with Asperger’s, for example, may spend hours each day preoccupied with counting cars passing on the street or watching only the weather channel on television. Children with Asperger’s syndrome are also at risk for other psychiatric problems including depression, attention deficit disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (aacap.org).

While the more obvious symptoms of autism are usually at their most florid in early childhood, the symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome may only become noticeable with the social and functional demands of adolescence (autism.net.au). Luke Jackson, a thirteen-year-old boy with Asperger’s Syndrome from England, wrote a book named Freaks, Geeks and Asperger’s Syndrome: A User Guide to Adolescence. He wrote this informative, sincere and entertaining book about complicated topics such as bullying, friendships, when and how to tell others about Asperger’s syndrome, school problems, dating, relationships and morality (4).

The idea that every child with Asperger’s syndrome is a potential genius can put excessive pressure on a child with Asperger’s syndrome (yourlittleprofessor.com). Luke Jackson, for example, complains that he is always watching television about high functioning autistic people who can do things like play the piano brilliantly without taking lessons, draw detailed renditions of buildings they had only seen once or add numbers in their heads like Rain Man. “I find these television programs depressing,” he says. “I got all the nerdiness and freakishness but none of the genius.”

Seeing a child struggle socially and emotionally can be particularly heartbreaking for parents. Children who had seemed to be developing in normal and delightful ways suddenly retreat into their own world, excluding their loving moms and dads in the process after being diagnosed with ASDs. Learning more about ASDs can help parents take charge of their child again and find treatments and therapies that work (specialchildren.about.com). In some states, expanded services are available through public school programs. The most valuable service might be “parent in-home training” with a behavior specialist sponsored by the school. Moreover, parent education and skill building groups organized by some hospitals or health centers can be helpful for parents of youth with ASDs.

Speculations about famous people with Asperger’s Syndrome

There are many famous people for whom there is a lot of speculation that they had Asperger’s Syndrome (5 and 6), such as Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare and Ibn al-Haytham. We may never know for sure if all these people have been affected by Asperger’s syndrome. However, most of the listed geniuses focused on something which interested them and their works were not disrupted by the everyday interactions that take up so much time for the rest of us. This might be the key factor behind all their great inventions. Then we can think of their Asperger’s syndrome as a blessing for humanity, because it does give certain strengths and brilliance to these scientists or pioneers that others do not have. In brief, Asperger’s syndrome is not a handicap, but rather a collection of strengths and challenges. If Asperger’s individuals are supported as they explore their capabilities, they can build on their strengths; they can even be the most successful people in history.

References

1. http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/why-asperger-8217-didnt-cause-sandy-hook-school-164900109.html
2. Delaney T. and Madigan T. 2009. The Sociology of Sports: An Introduction. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
3. Llaneza DC, DeLuke SV, Batista M, Crawley JN, Christodulu KV, Frye CA. 2010. “Communication, Interventions, and Scientific Advances in Autism: A Commentary.” Physiol Behav. 100, 268-276.
4. Jackson, L. (2002). Freaks, geeks and Asperger syndrome: A user guide to adolescence. Philadelphia, PA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
5. Steffens, B. 2007. Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist (Profiles in Science). Greensboro, NC: Morgan Reynolds Publishing.
6. www.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3766697.stm

All the organs functioning in your body have a direct or indirect relationship with me. I can be compared to a kind of “chemical brain.” All metabolic activities are among my duties, including the control of excretions, digestion, and the composition of blood. You would be stupefied if I listed every single function I carry out, but let me tell you this much: biochemists have discovered that I am directly included in more than 80 different activities and related to more than 5,000 chemical reactions taking place in your body. Surprised? But this is only what they’ve learned so far; you do not know me in detail yet. My plain appearance is in contrast with my numerous functions. My size is about one-tenth of the body of a six-month-old fetus; now that you have become a young man, I weigh about one fiftieth of your body weight. Since I am the largest excretory organ in your body, I am firmly strapped with mesentery so you can run, jump, and make other movements without trouble.

Most people see me merely as a bile-producing organ, which happens to be among the simplest of my duties. Let me explain it another way: the heat I produce while working is equal to one-third of the heat your body produces while resting. I have a special circulatory system. Since I am located at a “junction,” the blood coming from the intestines which bear nutrient molecules come to my vein first together with the blood from the spleen, before joining the rest of the bloodstream. It can be compared to an obligatory customs check. The amount of blood I supervise within 24 hours is about 2,000 liters. With every heartbeat, almost 28 percent of the blood being pumped passes through me.

I adjust the level of blood sugar in a very sensitive balance. If you eat desserts or pastries I convert excess sugar into glycogen (animal starch) and store it. If your blood sugar decreases from hunger, I break down glycogen into sugar (glucose) and come to your help so that you do not come to a halt, like a car out of fuel.

I use various protein molecules to synthesize numerous enzymes. I also play a role in blood coagulation, red blood cell production, and storing the iron you need. You know, nothing is wasted in the divine system of nature. So how can I waste anything? When the aged red blood cells die, I help the spleen to break them down and store the iron they contain. My job in fat metabolism is no less important. Thanks to the bile I produce, the fatty food you eat is broken down to smaller molecules to be absorbed in a way similar to detergents remove oily remnants from dishes. Naturally, the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) are also absorbed along the process. I store the excess of both these vitamins and fats. Fats are an important fuel particularly for your heart muscles. I excrete an average of 600–700 grams of bile a day. Two minutes after oily foods pass to duodenum the walls of my gallbladder are operated. Through contractions of 2–6 times a minute and a pressure of 25–30 mmHg, the bile is passed to duodenum in a time span of 15 to 90 minutes. What gives bile its yellowish-green color is the substance named bilirubin, which appears with the breaking down of the old red blood cells and disposed of through the bowels.

The Kuppffer cells—as you name them—have the duty of checking out newly produced blood cells one by one in addition to producing antibodies against germs. If any ill-formed blood cells come up, I must detect and destroy them. Otherwise they corrupt your blood. Thanks to the Kuppffer cells, the ill-formed blood cells are destroyed as soon as they are detected.

The average longevity of my cells varies between 150-180 days (220 days maximum). New cells are produced immediately to replace the dying ones and the system works smoothly. In each of these cells there are 1,000-3,000 mitochondria and millions of ribosome. An average of 180 new ribosome are produced every second. Although none of my cells have consciousness or intelligence, thousands of them come together to form little lobes resembling hexagons. The number of these lobes varies between 50,000 to 100,000.

Dear Peter, you intake various toxic substances together with the foods you eat. You don’t even realize that food has been corrupted by bacteria and fungi until its taste changes. Frankly, you should not have lived very long with so much toxic intake; Providence has given me an important duty to protect you from such harm. I capture these toxic compounds released into your bloodstream and neutralize them. The same goes for different medicines you take; I try to neutralize their toxic effects as well. But I have my own limits of tolerance; if I am faced with more toxic substances than I can handle, then I give signals of danger. You wonder how. Well, I shout “help” through red spots in your hands and itchy spots on your skin. You should be more careful about what goes down your throat.

Given that I fulfill various important functions, the littlest failure in me reveals itself as a health problem immediately. Hepatitis is among the common diseases heralding my failure. Excessive increase of bilirubin in your blood causes the white of your eye and your skin to turn yellow. I fear viruses most. Particularly hepatitis B and C viruses destroy my tissue. And alcohol, as you know, is my sworn enemy. I have to exert myself to neutralize even a tiny amount of alcohol. And if the hepatitis virus is added, I become knocked down and contract cirrhosis. It does not happen suddenly, though. Along the process which you know as liver failure I give various signals: skin eruption, digestion problems, sleepiness, and headache after meals, and so on. Since these symptoms are not serious problems, most people ignore these signals I give. Due to my various functions, the lab tests about me are more than a hundred.

Talking about my enemies may have upset you a bit, but it’s not all doom and gloom. After all, I am the organ with the highest capacity to renew itself. Sounds good, right? Otherwise I would have been finished off long ago, so this ability is a real blessing. Let me give you an example: although 90 percent of my cells are destroyed during hepatitis, I can help you survive with the remaining 10 percent if you rest well and control what you eat. If you ignore the disease, it might lead you and me to the grave. Do not ever believe those who take this lightly and say: “This doctor says that a small amount of alcohol is good for health.” Tell it to the marines. Those who say that should visit hospitals first. I’m sorry, Peter, but it really gets on my nerves. If they could only appreciate a work of art like me. Anyway, that’s all for now, please take good care of me.

In his Models of My Life, social scientist Herbert Simon stated that science’s purpose is to find meaningful simplicity in the midst of disorderly complexity. Although the systems in nature and society seem to be very complex, we need simple theories to understand them. The key to finding these simple rules or principles, which Plato called perfect form and thing-in-itself and Kant described as a kind of untouchable essence behind physical things or systems, is mathematics.

Mathematics and social science

One of mathematics’ main challenges is its uses in social sciences. But does mathematics, which is considered rigid and restrictive and the best tool for explaining matter, have laws for human life? The latest studies in sociology, biology, and epidemiology show that such laws and meaningful patterns do exist and can be discovered. One of the great achievements of mathematics and physics in sociology is explaining the six degrees of separation (i.e., the small world) phenomenon.(1)

Almost everyone has met someone far from our home who is a friend of a friend. This is so common that it has become a clich: It’s a small world “ even though there are now more than 6 billion people. Even more surprising is the structure of social networks, the map of who knows whom, which shows that all people are closely connected.(2)

A social network is a collection of people, each of whom is acquainted with some subset of others. This can be represented as a set of points (nodes) denoting people, joined in pairs by lines (edges) denoting acquaintance, in a company, university, or even a global community. Social scientists have studied such networks, both empirically and theoretically, for at least 50 years.

A revealing experiment

One of the first and famous empirical studies was conducted in 1967 by Stanley Milgram, a Harvard psychology professor: the small world phenomenon. He asked: Starting with any two people in the world, what is the probability that they will know one another? In a large social network, although X and Z might not know each other, they might have a mutual acquaintance. Moreover, X might be linked to Z by a series of links. In other words, X knows a, who knows b, who knows c … who knows y, who knows Z. But how many intermediate acquaintance links are needed, on the average, to connect X and Z?

According to Milgram (3), this phenomenon raises the issue of a certain mathematical structure in society, one that often plays a part in discussions about history, sociology, and other disciplines. For example, during western Europe’s Dark Age, cities became isolated because inter-city communications broke down and thus severely limited the network of individual acquaintances. Thus, social disintegration was expressed in the communities’ growing isolation and people’s infrequent contact with non-local people.

Milgram asked his test subjects, chosen at random from Nebraskan and Kansan telephone directories, to get a letter to one of his Boston stockbroker friends. The letters were to be sent passing them from one person to another, but only if both parties were on a first-name basis. Since it was unlikely that the letter’s initial recipient and a Boston stockbroker would be on a first-name basis, their best strategy was to pass the letter to someone whom they felt would be socially or geographically closer to the stockbroker.

A moderate number of the letters eventually reached their destination. Milgram discovered that the average number of steps in this process was about six. This is usually considered evidence of the small world hypothesis: Most pairs of people, even in a very large population, can be connected by a short chain of intermediate acquaintances.

Milgram’s work passed into folklore and was immortalized in John Guare’s 1990 play Six Degrees of Separation, where Ouisa claims: Everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. The president of the United States. A gondolier in Venice…. It’s not just the big names. It’s anyone. A native in a rain forest. A Tierra del Fuegan. An Eskimo. I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people. It’s a profound thought…. How every person is a new door, opening to other worlds.(4)

Watts and Strogatz used this model to explain the six degrees of separation in society- and nature-based networks.(5) Their model employs mathematical graph theory, which consists of nodes (people) and links (acquaintance). They modified the regular network, in which every node has short-range fixed number of connections, by adding long-range connections to the regular network to simulate the short path length between nodes. This model is now used in such areas as networks connected with biological metabolism, genomes, proteins, the Internet backbone, power grids, companies, and the stock market.

Research on social networks has helped health professionals understand how epidemics spread. Epidemiological models help them to predict how fast a disease will spread and to develop small world theory strategies to combat them, for scientists now realize that this social network property is a main cause for the outbreak of epidemics. This network offers a super-connected web of stepping stones for infectious diseases. After analyzing the social network’s structure, public health specialists can devise new vaccination strategies to slow or stop the epidemic. The small world theory also explains the rapid spread of news, rumors, fashions, and gossip.

Other types of systems show similar properties: networks of actors involved in the same movie, scientific collaboration networks of scientists who coauthor an article, and even the Internet, where millions of web pages are connected via mutual links. Recent research shows that in all of these networks, there are only a few steps between one node and any other node. The average shortest path between a network’s nodes, is 3.5 for the actor network and 9.5 for the scientific collaboration network. Despite the Internet’s more than 800 million nodes, there are, on average, only 19 steps between one web page and any other.(6)

Conclusion

The small world theory is a great success of the theory of complexity in nature and social life. It reveals an underlying dynamic of interconnectedness that expresses itself indelibly in who we are and how we think, behave, and communicate. Such close interconnectedness reveals one important fact for constructing a peaceful and beneficial world: There are no strangers, for everyone is one of our friends’ or neighbors’ friend or relative. The key element in understanding people is communication. Mutual love and good relations continue as long as we understand each other. We are loyal and faithful to the extent that we share our friends’ troubles, because ignorance only builds an impenetrable wall between us.(7)

Hasan Guclu is a doctoral student in the field of very large complex systems, such as computer networks, social networks, epidemics, and surface growth.

Footnotes

1. See, respectively, A. L. Barabasi, Linked (Perseus Publishing: 2002); D. J. Watts, Small Worlds (Princeton University Press: 1999); and M. Buchanan, Nexus (W. W. Norton: 2002).
2. D. J. Watts and S. H. Strogatz, Collective Dynamics of Small World Networks, Nature 393 (1998):440-42.
3. S. Milgram, The Individual In A Social World (Addison-Wesley: 1977).
4. J. Guare, Six Degrees of Separation: A Play (Vintage: 1990).
5. Watts and Strogatz, Collective Dynamics.
6. A. L. Barabasi, Linked.
7. F. Gulen, Pearls of Wisdom (The Fountain: 2001).