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Researchers use Twitter tweets to measure moods

July 30, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

(Reuters Life!) – Twitter is for more than just tweeting.

Using millions of Twitter messages, or tweets, from the popular social networking site, researchers at Northeastern University in Boston have created a Twitter Mood Map to measure the moods of the nation.

People are happiest in the morning and in the evening, with happiness peaking on Sunday morning and dipping Thursday night, they found. Twitter users appeared most gloomy at mid-afternoon, shifting to better moods in the evening.

Not surprisingly, people appeared happier on the weekends, with residents of California, Miami and southern states among the most content, they learned.

A colorful time-lapse video on the website here shows the happy moods pulsating from the U.S. east coast to the west coast and back again.

The researchers are the first to admit the findings are not terribly scientific — Twitter users tend to be tech-savvy, live in large cities and are a fraction of the total population — but according to the results they have potential as a tool for providing real-time analysis of critical issues.

“Even though individual tweets are pointless to anyone besides your followers, in aggregate there is a lot of meaningful information that can be an instrument to see how people feel about things, whether it’s public reaction to a politician’s speech or a consumer attitudes about a brand,” said Sune Lehmann, one of the researchers.

Lehmann and others used a psychological word-rating system to analyze key words in some 300 million Twitter messages as happy or sad. They then created maps based on the location of the messages and the general moods they evoke.

The map could be useful not only to collect public opinion but to mobilize users quickly, such as in a drive for emergency relief donations.

“The potential there is tremendous, on both an individual and societal level,” said Johan Bollen, a computer scientist at Indiana University not involved in the project. “It’s absolutely crucial to have real-time indicators about how the public feels, not in months, but in a matter of hours and days.”

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New obesity compound shows promise in mice

July 28, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

(Reuters) – A compound similar to Sanofi-Aventis’ once-promising weight loss drug Acomplia helped obese mice lose weight and lower their blood fats and blood sugar without causing psychological side effects, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

Like Acomplia, the drug targets cannabinoid receptors that become active after smoking marijuana, but the team tinkered with the compound to keep it from crossing over into the brain, reducing the risk of depression, anxiety or other neurological problems seen in the original drug.

While obese mice do not lose as much weight on this new compound, it was just as effective as Acomplia in reducing obesity-related metabolic changes, researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Northeastern University reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

“It does cause weight loss in diet-related obesity, but less than the other compound, which is not the only problem in obesity,” Dr. George Kunos of the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, said in a telephone interview.

Obesity has become an epidemic in the United States, leading to a huge increase in diabetes and a host of related health problems. But many potential weight-loss drugs have either failed or been abandoned due to safety issues.

Acomplia had to be pulled from the market after it was linked to several deaths and hundreds of adverse drug reactions in Britain.

The drug, known generically as rimonabant, never won U.S. approval after a panel of experts rejected it amid fears it may cause suicidal thoughts.

Rimonabant targets the protein CB1R, the same molecule that controls the effects of marijuana. CB1R is present both in the brain and in organs such as the liver and pancreas and fat tissue.

Kunos and Alexandros Makriyannis of Northeastern University in Boston tested a more selective drug that only blocks CB1R in peripheral organs, but cannot get into the brain.

They found mice that become fat from eating too much lost about 12 percent of their body weight on this new formulation, compared with 21 percent in similar mice that had taken rimonabant.

But Kunos said the other effects — reduced blood fats that can cause heart disease and lower blood sugar that can affect the risk of diabetes — were about the same with both the new and the old drugs.

Kunos said the drug had no effect on mutant mice that were obese because they lacked the appetite-suppressing hormone leptin.

“In obesity, mice and humans lose their sensitivity to leptin. This drug restores that sensitivity,” Kunos said, offering a possible explanation for the difference.

He said the next step is to do tests to see if the drug is toxic to humans. Eventually, the hope is that the drug will be tested as a new anti-obesity treatment.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Acomplia, Adverse Drug Reactions, bethesda maryland, Blood Fats, Cannabinoid Receptors, depression anxiety, drug targets, Effects Of Marijuana, journal of clinical investigation, Metabolic Changes, National Institutes of Health, neurological problems, northeastern university, Obese Mice, peripheral organs, Psychological Side, related health, Sanofi Aventis, smoking marijuana, Weight Loss Drugs

Transforming waste plastic into an alternative fuel

May 16, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, May 16 (ANI): Northeastern University student researchers have come up with an apparatus to convert plastic waste into clean energy without releasing harmful emissions.

Under the leadership of Yiannis Levendis, distinguished professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, a team of undergraduate and graduate engineering students developed a waste combustor, which breaks down non-biodegradable plastics to create an alternative source of fuel.

Their prototype was featured at the fifth annual MIT Energy Conference this past March.

Self-sustainability is the key to the double-tank combustor design. Plastic waste is first processed in an upper tank through pyrolysis, which converts solid plastic into gas. Next, the gas flows to a lower tank, where it is burned with oxidants to generate heat and steam. The heat sustains the combustor while the steam can be used to generate electric power.

“The prototype can be scaled up to drive a large power plant, which could connect to a plastic recycling center for a constant flow of fuel,” said David Laskowski, an undergraduate student working on the team.

Levendis, who has pursued research on the combustion of plastics and other post-consumer wastes for the past 20 years, is currently focusing on the concept of vaporizing solid plastic waste, which would reduce levels of harmful emissions during the combustion process.

“The inspiration behind my research is the quest to develop clean, cost-efficient power sources in the face of dwindling fossil fuel reserves,” Levendis said. “It will also help get rid of unsightly, non-biodegradable plastic waste that cannot be recycled.” (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: alternative fuel, Biodegradable Plastics, Combustor, Consumer Wastes, David Laskowski, Double Tank, Efficient Power, energy conference, engineering students, Fossil Fuel Reserves, Graduate Engineering, harmful emissions, Lower Tank, northeastern university, Plastic Recycling, Pyrolysis, Recycling Center, Student Researchers, undergraduate student, Upper Tank

One more step towards cultivating bacteria in the lab

March 27, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 27 (ANI): Taking a major step to grow previously uncultivable bacteria in the lab, scientists at Northeastern University have come closer to developing a new generation of highly effective antibiotics.

The researchers examined bacterial communities enveloping particles of sand and identified chemicals — called siderophores — produced by cultivable bacteria that act as growth factors for distantly related strains of uncultivable bacteria.

When the two types of bacteria were placed in close proximity in a Petri dish, the uncultivable bacterium grew.

The finding, “opens a new chapter in the century-old quest to access a major source of biodiversity on the planet,” said Professor of Biology Kim Lewis, who led the research.

The discovery represents the first identified mechanism governing the growth of uncultured bacteria in the lab, said Lewis.

“This provides us with a general approach to finding other types of growth factors that will give us access to additional classes of uncultured bacteria,” he added.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg and could lead to the development of new ways to treat bacterial infections,” said Anthony D’Onofrio, the paper’s first author and postdoctoral research associate at the ADC.

The study has appeared in the latest issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology. (ANI)

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Gratitude shapes decisions towards social good

September 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sept 20 (ANI): When it comes to money, grateful people are likely to act virtuously not just for the people who caused them to feel grateful in the first place but for community as well.

According to a conventional belief, individuals tend to act out of self-interest and a drive for personal profit.

However, David DeSteno, Northeastern University associate professor of psychology claims that emotions actually equip individuals to make decisions that foster long-term communal financial gain, even over immediate self-interest.

During the study 85 participants undertook an arduous task. Once it was done, half of the participants were told that, because of a computer glitch, they had to perform the task a second time.

At that point, a “volunteer” (actually one of the study’s researchers) seemed to fix the computer, meaning the task did not have to be repeated and creating a sense of gratitude among the individuals in that group.

The other half of the participants-the control group-did not experience the computer glitch.

In the second experiment, both groups played a game in which individuals chose an amount of money they would give to another.

The study showed that participants who felt grateful in the wake of the computer “help” gave away 25 percent more money than those in the control group, leading to a greater shared profit.

Moreover, they did so regardless of whether they had ever met the people, with whom they were playing the game, indicating that their giving was not a simple function of liking or feeling a debt toward others.

“It shows that gratitude shapes decisions toward communal profit, or the social good, even at our immediate expense,” said DeSteno.

“We are fair and generous with others not because we think we should be, but because we feel an impulse in our gut that, in the long term, leads to greater stability in social networks.

“In essence gratitude leads to virtue in financial decisions. It makes you pay it forward,” he added. (ANI)

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Soon, ‘robobees’ that mimic bees’ behaviour

September 14, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Sep 13 (ANI): A Northeastern University neurobiologist is collaborating with Harvard University researchers to develop micro flying robots that will emulate the bees’ brain, body and collective behaviour.

Biology professor Joseph Ayers would create robots, called the robobees, which would mimic the communal feeding behaviour of bee colonies.

The project will draw on the knowledge of computer scientists, engineers, and biologists to construct an electronic nervous system, a supervisory architecture and a high-energy source to power the innovative robots.

“This project will integrate the efforts and expertise of a diverse team of investigators to create a system that far transcends the sum of its parts. We expect substantial advances in basic science at the intersection of these seemingly disparate disciplines to result from this effort,” said Ayers.

Inspired by the biology of the bee and the insect’s colonial behaviour, the project aims to advance miniature robotics and the design of compact high-energy power sources.

The project would also spur innovations in ultra-low-power computing and electronic “smart” sensors that mediate biomimetic control.

In addition, it would refine coordination algorithms to manage multiple, independent machines.

Ayers is widely known for his work in biomimetics- the science of adapting the control systems found in nature to inform design of engineered systems to solve real-world problems-including the development of RoboLobster and RoboLamprey.

The autonomous, biomimetic underwater robotic models emulate the operations of the animals’ nervous systems using an electronic controller based on nonlinear, moving models of neurons and synapses.

“Animals have evolved to occupy every environmental niche where we would hope to operate robots, save outer space. They provide proven solutions to problems that confound even the most sophisticated robots, and our challenge is to capture these performance advantages in engineered devices,” said Ayers. (ANI)

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Your cellphone can tell who your friends are

August 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Aug 18 (ANI): The cellphone in your pocket can reveal who are your real friends, and how you interact with them, according to a five-year-long study.

The study has opened new possibilities for social scientists, epidemiologists, and other researchers to understand how people connect and interact socially.

Nathan Eagle of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and his colleagues Sandy Pentland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and David Lazer of Northeastern University in Boston handed out cellphones to 94 volunteers at MIT.

The phones were modified with software that logged the volunteers’ calls, and used Bluetooth to detect when another of the phones was close by.

They looked for simple patterns in the logs of calls and times when phones were close together, and found that it was possible to predict who the volunteers would identify as their friends with 95 per cent accuracy.

For example, being nearby on campus during work hours meant little, but if two phones were close together for several hours on a Saturday evening their owners were likely to be friends.

“You can think of it as a behavioural signature,” New Scientist quoted Eagle as saying.

The scientists could also link the phone data to the volunteers’ satisfaction at work.

They found that people who reported themselves to be less satisfied were less likely to have friends in close proximity, and more likely to call friends during work hours.

The phones proved more accurate than the volunteers themselves at measuring how much time they spent physically near to others.

It was found that people typically overestimated how much time they spent close to friends, and underestimated how much time they spent with more casual contacts.

Although some of these findings may sound obvious, the study has offered an important proof of principle – the gadgets we carry day-to-day can accurately record the nuances of our relationships.

Using cellphones for social science research could replace interviews, which are laborious and sometimes unreliable, to find out about people’s lives.

The cellphone approach may also have immediately practical applications such as helping epidemiologists predict how swine flu will spread from person to person.

The study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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Cell phone viruses poised to reach epidemic proportions

May 22, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 22 (ANI): Unlike computer viral epidemics, no major outbreaks of mobile phone viral infection have been reported to date. Ever wondered why?

Well, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, director of the Center for Complex Network Research at Northeastern University, says that it is because a highly fragmented market share has effectively hindered outbreaks thus far.

He warns that cell phone viruses will pose a serious threat once a single mobile operating system’s market share grows sufficiently large, and that that may not be far off considering the 150 percent annual growth rate of smart phones.

“We haven’t had a problem so far because only phones with operating systems, so-called ‘smart phones’, are susceptible to viral infection,” said Marta Gonzalez, one of the authors of a study report published in the journal Science.

“Once a single operating system becomes common, we could potentially see outbreaks of epidemic proportion because a mobile phone virus can spread by two mechanisms: a Bluetooth virus can infect all Bluetooth-activated phones in a 10-30 meter radius, while Multimedia Messaging System (MMS) virus, like many computer viruses, spreads using the address book of the device. Not surprisingly, hybrid viruses, which can infect via both routes, pose the most significant danger,” Gonzalez added.

The experts reckon that Bluetooth viruses eventually start infecting all susceptible handsets.

Given that human behavioural patterns have been restricting the spread of such infections thus far, the experts believe that there should be sufficient time to deploy countermeasures like antiviral software to prevent major Bluetooth outbreaks.

Although human behavioural patterns do not restrict the spread of MMS viruses, they are still constrained because the number of susceptible devices is currently much smaller.

The experts say that the unprecedented challenges will surface once people become increasingly connected.

They think that studies categorized as computational social science are necessary to understand group behaviour and organization, assess potential threats, and develop solutions to the issues faced by our ever-changing society. (ANI)

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Pride can foster chances of individual success

March 5, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 5 (ANI): Considering pride to be the seventh deadly sin may not reflect pragmatism anymore, for Northeastern University scientists have found that pride has the potential to foster the likelihood of individual success.

The researchers have found that pride not only leads individuals to take on leadership roles in teams, but also fosters admiration, as opposed to scorn, from teammates.

“We found that pride is quite undeserving of its negative reputation,” said David DeSteno, associate professor of psychology and co-author of the study.

“Pride actually constitutes a functional social emotion with important implications for leadership and the building of social capital,” he added.

Woking in collaboration with lead author Lisa Williams, DeSteno designed an experiment including individual and group activities.

For the individual activities, certain participants were induced to feel proud. The participants next interacted cooperatively on a problem-solving task, and were asked to evaluate their partners’ leadership and likability.

The researchers observed that the participant who had received the pride induction took on a dominant role, and was perceived as the most “hands-on” during the activity.

They also found that the members of such participants’ team viewed them as more likable than the other participants.

“These are some of the first findings that show functional outcomes of pride within the context of actual social behaviour. Although when taken to extremes, pride can certainly be maladaptive, this research demonstrates the emotion’s potential for fostering successful interpersonal interaction,” said Williams.

The authors believe that these findings hold implications for successful management and team dynamics, especially in the context of organizational behaviour.

“Pride can play an integral role in enhancing team functioning by fostering confidence and admiration,” they note.

A research article describing the study has been published in the journal Psychological Science. (ANI)

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