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neurosciencestuff:

Computer Simulations Shed New Light On How The Immune System Works
Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have developed computer simulations that better explain how a person’s immune cells can detect foreign antigens and fight infections.
In an effort to determine exactly how the body’s natural defenses are able to sort through large amounts of similar-looking proteins in order to locate and eliminate harmful invaders, physics professor Paul François and graduate student Jean-Benoît Lalanne used computational tools to study how the process works.
They discovered that the antigen-fighting process is related to the phenomenon of biochemical adaptation – a mechanism that enables organisms to cope with a variety of different environmental conditions. According to the authors of the study, their work could prove essential insight into AIDS and other immune diseases.
“For immune cells, singling out foreign proteins is like looking for a needle in a haystack – where the needle may look very much like a straw, and where some straws may also look very much like a needle,” François said. “Our approach provides a simpler theoretical framework and understanding of what happens” as the immune cells sort through that “haystack” in search of foreign antigens and to trigger the body’s immune response.
The researchers’ computer simulation used an algorithm that was inspired by Darwinian evolution, the university explained. The algorithm randomly creates mathematical models of biochemical networks, and then scores them by comparing their properties to those of an actual immune system. The highest-rated networks are duplicated in the next generation and mutated, a process that is repeated until the networks achieve a perfect score.
“Our model shares many similarities with real immune networks,” explained François. “Strikingly, the simplest evolved solution we found has both similar characteristics and some of the blind spots of real immune cells we studied in a previous collaborative study with the groups of Grégoire Altan-Bonnet (Memorial Sloane Kettering, New York), Eric Siggia (Rockefeller University, New York) and Massimo Vergassola (Pasteur Institute, Paris).”
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Human Frontier Science Program provided funding for the research, which was published in a recent edition of the journal Physical Review Letters.

Computer Simulations Shed New Light On How The Immune System Works

Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have developed computer simulations that better explain how a person’s immune cells can detect foreign antigens and fight infections.

In an effort to determine exactly how the body’s natural defenses are able to sort through large amounts of similar-looking proteins in order to locate and eliminate harmful invaders, physics professor Paul François and graduate student Jean-Benoît Lalanne used computational tools to study how the process works.

They discovered that the antigen-fighting process is related to the phenomenon of biochemical adaptation – a mechanism that enables organisms to cope with a variety of different environmental conditions. According to the authors of the study, their work could prove essential insight into AIDS and other immune diseases.

“For immune cells, singling out foreign proteins is like looking for a needle in a haystack – where the needle may look very much like a straw, and where some straws may also look very much like a needle,” François said. “Our approach provides a simpler theoretical framework and understanding of what happens” as the immune cells sort through that “haystack” in search of foreign antigens and to trigger the body’s immune response.

The researchers’ computer simulation used an algorithm that was inspired by Darwinian evolution, the university explained. The algorithm randomly creates mathematical models of biochemical networks, and then scores them by comparing their properties to those of an actual immune system. The highest-rated networks are duplicated in the next generation and mutated, a process that is repeated until the networks achieve a perfect score.

“Our model shares many similarities with real immune networks,” explained François. “Strikingly, the simplest evolved solution we found has both similar characteristics and some of the blind spots of real immune cells we studied in a previous collaborative study with the groups of Grégoire Altan-Bonnet (Memorial Sloane Kettering, New York), Eric Siggia (Rockefeller University, New York) and Massimo Vergassola (Pasteur Institute, Paris).”

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Human Frontier Science Program provided funding for the research, which was published in a recent edition of the journal Physical Review Letters.

(via emergentfutures)

Evolution is one of the central themes of this book, as of all my books, for the simple reason that it is the central, enabling process not only of life but also of knowledge and learning and understanding. If you attempt to make sense of the world of ideas and meanings, free will and morality, art and science and even philosophy itself without a sound and quite detailed knowledge of evolution, you have one hand tied behind your back.

Daniel Dennett. 2013.

(Title: Intuition Pumps)

Knock it off. Knock off counting how much money you have and start thinking about what you’re doing with it. What you’re doing with your money and time is a lot more important than how much money and time you have.

Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton in four reasons we’re still obsessed with money and one loud call to quit it. (via fastcompany)

nprfreshair:

Neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin, author of Permanent Present Tense, talks to Terry Gross about whether it was frustrating to work with Henry Molaison, a patient who had almost no memory:

“The only thing that was a teeny bit annoying for researchers was if they heard the same story over and over and over again. So, you know, we used to pick up him up at his nursing home and drive him up to MIT and then take him home again, and these car rides were a couple of hours. There were certain billboards along the way that [would] evoke the same story over and over again. Howard Eichenbaum had a funny experience where he had a coffee cup from McDonald’s in his car and every time Henry looked at this, he talked about his friend named so-and-so McDonald, and so after a while Howard got so sick of listening to the story that he put the coffee cup under his seat. But, you know, it was just funny. It wasn’t frustrating or annoying. It was amusing. And this was Henry being Henry. This is what he did. So we just accepted it.”

image via Wikipedia and The Guardian

Buddhist practice pulls both ways. From one perspective, it is a discreet activity, something we do. From another perspective, one which tends to emerge more clearly with time, it seems less something we do and more something we are; less a piece of life and more all of life. No wonder we, like Franny Glass, get confused, getting things back to front, chasing the carrot and fleeing the stick, assessing our progress as we move from here to, well, here. The good news may be precisely that our lives will never “work out,” no matter how well we arrange the pieces or play the game, whether of career, relationships, or indeed practice. Buddhist practice is especially recalcitrant; it just won’t “do” what we want, at least not for long, because what we want is the problem.

Novelist and poet Henry Shukman on how we learn by looking in the wrong place.

Read “A Matter of Misdirection”

(via tricycle-tumbles)

fastcompany:

“The laser gazer: Stares intensely into one’s eyes while he talks. Listeners either feel he is trying to dominate the conversation or find the intense gaze creepy.”

The Wall Street Journal dissects eye-contact etiquette

fastcompany:

The most creative people have a way of relaxing the inhibiting, self-critical parts of the brain when they’re in the flow of performance. Research shows that a moderate amount of alcohol can do much the same. Drinking decreases your working memory—impairing your ability to focus and hemming in your interest in the things happening around you—and increases your creativity.

This is serious. Does drinking beer make you more creative?

Why Music Makes Our Brain Sing →

When a song triggers both anticipation and reward, it moves us like nothing else.

How Not to Be Alone →

Technology may make it easier to communicate electronically, but more difficult to do so emotionally.

Wonder, silence, gratitude: The guesthouse →

ashramof1:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness
comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
…