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is coupled with the general wisdom that anti-ageing therapies can only stretch out the years of debilitation and disease which accompany the end of most lifetimes. De Grey contends that by repairing the pathologies of ageing we will in fact be able to eliminate this period completely, postponing it with new treatments ... |
the damage caused by their ageing. To get over our collective 'trance' it is worth realising that this meme has made perfect psychological sense until very recently. Given the traditional assumption that ageing cannot be countered, delayed or reversed, it has paid to make peace with such a seemingly immutable fact, rat... |
de Grey's rationale that the body is a machine that can be repaired and restored, we have to accept that there are potential technologies that can effectively combat ageing, and thus the trance can no longer be rationally maintained. Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequences which cap the ends of chromosomes, protecting t... |
buffers, much as the plastic aglets at the end of shoelaces prevent fraying. Each time a cell divides, the telomores get shorter as DNA sequences are lost from the end. When telomeres reach a certain critical length, the cell is unable to make new copies of itself, and so organs and tissues that depend on continued cel... |
telomeres plays a large part in ageing (although not necessarily a causal one), and so advocates of life extension are exploring the possibility of lengthening telomeres in certain cells by searching for ways to selectively activate the enzyme telomerase, which maintains telemore length by the adding newly synthesized ... |
more telomerase, the theory goes, we will be able to live longer, healthier lives, slowing down the decline of ageing. Every moment we're fighting a losing battle against our telomeric shortening; at conception our telomeres consist of roughly 15,000 DNA base pairs, shrinking to 10,000 at birth when the telomerase gene... |
in length at a rate of about 50 base pairs a year. When some telomeres drop below 5,000 base pairs, their cells lose the ability to divide, becoming unable to perform the work they were designed to carry out, and in some cases also releasing chemicals that are harmful to neighbouring cells. Some particularly prominent ... |
telomeres include the endothelial cells lining blood vessels leading to the heart, and the cells that make the myelin sheath that protects our brain's neurons. Both brain health and heart health are bound to some degree to the fate of cells with a telomeric fuse. The correlation between telomere length and biological a... |
to prevent and perhaps reverse the effects of replicative senescence by optimally controlling the action of telomerase. The complexity of synthesizing proteins for specific purposes is so great that predicting the amino acid sequences necessary to generate desired behaviour is a huge challenge. Mutations far away from ... |
an enzyme can have a large impact on its catalytic efficacy – a key concern for engineers creating proteins for industrial applications. Even for a small protein of only 100 amino acids long there are more possible sequences than there are atoms in the universe. What this means is that an exhaustive search through the ... |
for a particular purpose is essentially unachievable, just as a complete search through all possible chess games to decide the absolutely optimal next move is computationally impractical. This is true both for scientists and for nature. This means that even though evolution has been searching the space of all possible ... |
only a minute corner of all possible variations. All evolved solutions are likely to be 'good enough' rather than the absolute optimum – it just so happens that the ones already 'discovered' are sufficient to create and maintain the diversity and richness of life on planet earth. New ways of efficiently searching this ... |
have never before existed in the natural world, and which will hopefully provide answers to many of our most pressing problems. Directed evolution not only provides a faster way of searching this space than many other methods, but it also leaves a complete 'fossil record' of the evolutionary changes that went into evol... |
offer insight after detailed study into the relationship between protein sequence and function. Unlike natural evolution, directed evolution can also explore sequences which aren't directly biologically relevant to a single organism's survival, providing a library of industrially relevant proteins, and perhaps one day ... |
processes. Our genetically engineered organisms have already neo-evolved – shortcutting traditional evolution to produce desirable results without the costly time-delay of selection over hundreds or thousands of generations. Higher-yielding and insecticide-resistant crops have been engineered through the painstaking mo... |
already alive, will perhaps one day bring the benefits of this new type of evolution to our bodies. At the moment, we simply do not understand how DNA sequences encode useful functions, and so genetic engineering remains a tremendously costly and laborious process. It cost $25 million and took 150 person-years to engin... |
an antimalarial drug, and commercial production has yet to begin. The amount of time and money required to effect a beneficial result through genetic engineering – even if it involves relatively simple changes to only a dozen genes – is so costly that the transformative idea of neo-evolved humans has been kept at a saf... |
might make the possibility of too-good-to-miss genetic enhancements in humans a reality before long. Earlier this year, for instance, the National Academy of Engineering awarded its Draper Prize to Francis Arnold and Willem Stemmer for their independent work towards 'directed evolution', a technique which harnesses the... |
not found in nature. Rather than attempt to manually code the strings of individual DNA letters necessary to effect a particular trait, directed evolution and its associated 'evolution machines' take a prototype 'parent' gene, create a library of genetic variants from it and apply selection pressures to screen for the ... |
batch until the strongest remain. This was first evidenced in 2009, when geneticist Harris Wang used directed evolution to create new proteins in E. coli bacteria that would produce more of the pigment that makes tomatoes red than was previously possible. To achieve this genetic modification without manually fine-tunin... |
the pigment, and multiplied them in his evolution machine. After repeating the process 35 times with the results of each cycle fed into the next, he produced some 15 billion new strains, each with a different combination of mutations in the target pigment-producing genes. Of these new strains, some produced up to five ... |
entire biosynthesis industry had ever achieved. The process took days rather than years. There are three distinct possibilities for how technological and medical advancement will impact future human evolution. The first contingency is that the human species will undergo no further natural selection, because we may have... |
otherwise have been removed by natural selection; evolution no longer has a chance to select. As a species we already control our environment to such an extent that traditional evolutionary pressures have been functionally alleviated – we adapt the environment to us rather than the other way around. Indeed, local mobil... |
the isolation necessary for evolution to take place may in fact already no longer possible. The second possibility is that we will continue to evolve in the traditional way, through inexorable selection pressures exerted by the natural environment. The isolation necessary to allow the impact of any environmental change... |
by colonization of distant space. The third possibility is that we will evolve in an entirely new way, guided not by unconscious natural forces but by our own conscious design decisions. In this neo-evolution we would use genetic engineering to eliminate diseases like diabetes, protect against strokes and reduce the ri... |
thousands of years into single generations, making evolutionarily advantageous adjustments ourselves. From an economic perspective, cheating is a simple cost-benefit analysis, where the probability of being caught and the severity of punishment must be weighed against how much stands to be gained from cheating. Behavio... |
they can be influenced. In one study, Ariely gave participants twenty maths problems with only five minutes to solve them. At the end of the time period, Ariely paid each participant one dollar for each correctly answered question; on average people solved four questions and so received four dollars. Ariely tempted som... |
paper, keep the pieces and tell him how many questions they answered correctly. Now the average number of questions solved went up to seven; and it wasn't because a few people cheated a lot, but rather that everyone cheated a little. Hypothesizing that we each have a “personal fudge factor”, a point at which we can sti... |
Ariely ran another experiment to examine how malleable this standard was. Before tempting participants to cheat, Ariely asked them to recall either ten books they read at school or to recall The Ten Commandments. Those who had tried to recall the Commandments – and nobody in the sample managed to get them all – did not... |
those that could hardly remember any of the Commandments. When self-declared atheists were asked to swear on the Bible before being tempted to cheat in the task, they did not cheat at all. Cheating was also completely eradicated by asking students to sign a statement to the effect that they understood that the survey f... |
such code. In an additional variant of the same experiment, Ariely tried to increase the fudge-factor and to encourage cheating. A third of particpants were told to hand back their results paper to the experimenters, a third were told to shred it and ask for X number of dollars for X completed questions, and a third we... |
for X tokens. For this last group, tokens were handed out, and the participants would walk a few paces to the side and exchange their tokens for dollars. This short disconnect between cash and token encouraged cheating rates to double in this last group. Putting these results in a social context, Ariely ran yet another... |
react when they saw examples of other people cheating in their group. Subjects were given envelopes filled with money, and at the end of the experiment they were told to pay back money for the questions that they did not complete. An actor was planted in the group, without the knowledge of the other participants. After... |
that he had finished all of the questions. He was told that the experiment was completed for him, and that he could go home (i.e. keeping the contents of the envelope). Depending on whether he was wearing a shirt identifying him as from the same university as the rest of the students in the test or not, cheating went e... |
Carnegie Mellon students would cheat more if he was identified as a Carnegie Mellon student, whilst cheating would decrease if he was identified by a University of Pittsburgh shirt. Ariely's results show that the probability of getting caught doesn't influence the rate of cheating so much as the norms for cheating infl... |
to cheat as well. If a person from outside of your group cheats, the personal fudge factor increases, and the likelihood of cheating drops, just as it did with the Ten Commandments experiment, reminding people of their own morality. The stock market combines a worrying cocktail of features from these experiments. It de... |
many steps removed from real money, and for long portions of time. This encourages cheating. Any enclaves of cheating will be reinforced by people mirroring the behaviours of those around them, and this is precisely what happened in the Enron scandal. Here is a syllogism that is deeply embedded in Western society. Welf... |
maximizing choice. Welfare increases with more choice. Supermarkets are an embodiment of this belief. They are symbols of affluence and empowerment conferred through their superabundance of choice. The range of products they offer is dizzying. So disorientingly so, in fact, that too many options have paralyzing effects... |
maximizing choice has unqualified beneficial effects. If we finally do manage to make a decision and overcome this paralytic effect, too much choice diminishes the satisfaction that can be gained compared with choices made between fewer options. This is because if the choice you make leaves you feeling dissatisfied in ... |
have been better. These imagined alternatives, conjured from the myriad real alternatives, can induce regret which dilutes the satisfaction from your choice, even if it was a good one. The wider the range of options, the easier it becomes to regret even the smallest disappointment in your decision. A wider range of cho... |
alternatives that have been rejected, once more diminishing the sense of satisfaction with the chosen alternative. This phenomenon is known as the opportunity cost, the sacrificial loss of other opportunities when a choice is made: choosing to do one thing is choosing not to do many other things. Many of these other ch... |
less attractive, no matter how good it really is. The maximization of choice leads to an escalation of expectations, where the best that can ever be hoped for is that a decision meets expectations. In a world of extremely limited choice, pleasant surprises are possible. In a world of unlimited choice, perfection become... |
there is only one choice on offer, the responsibility for the outcome of that 'choice' is outside of your control, and so any disappointment resulting from that decision can safely be blamed on external factors. But when you have to choose between hundreds of options it becomes much easier to blame oneself if anything ... |
as choice has proliferated and standards have risen in the past few generations, so has the incidence of clinical depression and suicide. What this means is that there is a critical level of choice. Some societies have too much, others patently too little. At the point at which there is too much choice in a critical pr... |
longer improved. Too much choice is paralytic and dissatisfying, and too little is impoverishing. We don't want perfect freedom and nor do we want the absence of it; somewhere there is an optimal threshold, and affluent, materialist societies have probably already passed it. Our uniquely large pre-frontal cortex enable... |
these simulations. The difficulty in deciding which of several simulations we prefer arises because we are surprisingly poor at analyzing what makes us happy. Seemingly obvious questions such as 'would you prefer to become paraplegic or win the lottery?' are obscured by the extraordinary fact that one year after each e... |
alternative over another can be measured in its ability to confer happiness, and, contrary to all of our impulses, there can be no rational preference in this example when considered over a sufficiently long time-period, as there is no reported qualitative difference between the two levels of happiness after a single y... |
emotional simulator to overestimate the intensity of future emotional states, making you believe that the difference in two outcomes is greater than it really is. In short, things that we would unthinkingly consider important, like getting a promotion or not, passing an exam, or not or gaining or losing a romantic part... |
much lower duration than we expect them to have. Indeed, in an astonishing study published in 1996, it was found that even major life traumas had no effect on subjective well-being (with very few exceptions) if they had not occurred in the past three months 1. The reason for this remarkable ability is that our views of... |
better about whatever environment we find ourselves in over a period of time. Everything is relative, and we make happiness where we would otherwise believe there to be none. To truncate a well-known quotation from Milton, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell”. Daniel Gilbert, Professor o... |
differs from 'natural' happiness in that natural happiness is what we feel when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we (eventually) feel when we don't get what we wanted. The mistake we make is believing that synthetic happiness is inferior to natural happiness. This mistake is perpetuated by a socie... |
that getting what you want makes you happier than not getting what you want ever could. We can resist this falsehood by remembering that we possess within ourselves the ability to synthesize the commodity that we always pursue, and that we consistently overrate the emotional differences between two choices. - 1. Suh, E... |
Events Matter." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70.5 (1996): 1091-102. Print. Optical illusions are a visual proof of a built-in irrationality in the way we reason. In some illusions we can be shown two lines of equal lengths and yet perceive one to be longer than the other. Even when we see visual proof t... |
it's impossible to overcome the sense that the lines are different – it's as if we cannot learn to override our intuitions. In the case of optical illusions, our intuition is fooled in a repeatable, predictable fashion, and there is not much we can do about it without modifying the illusion itself, either by measuring ... |
Ariely, a behavioural psychologist currently teaching at Duke University, reminds us that optical illusions are a big deal. Vision is one of the best things that we do – we are evolutionarily designed to be good at it, and a large part of our brain is dedicated to being good at it, larger than is dedicated to anything ... |
such consistent mistakes, and are repeatedly fooled by optical illusions should be troubling. If we make mistakes in vision, what kind of mistakes will we make in those things that we have no evolutionary reason to be any good at? In new and elaborate environments like financial markets, we don't have a specialized par... |
a convenient visual illustration with which to easily demonstrate the mistakes we make. Is our sense of our decision making abilities ever consistently compromised? Ariely suggests that we are victims of decision making illusions in much the same way we are victims of optical illusions. When answering a survey, for ins... |
decisions in fact lie with the person who designed the form. This is strikingly shown by the disparity in the percentage of people in different European countries who indicated that they would be interested in donating their organs after death, as illustrated by a 2004 paper by Eric Johnson and Daniel Goldstein. Consen... |
over 99%, whilst the UK, Germany and Denmark all had rates of below 20%. This huge difference didn't arise due to strong cultural differences, but through a simple difference in the way the question on the form was presented. In countries with a low consent rate, the question was as an opt-in choice, as in 'Check the b... |
the organ donor programme'. People didn't check the box, leaving the form in its 'default' state. Those presented with the inverse question, an explicit opt-out rather than explicit opt-in, also left the box unchecked. Both groups tended to accept whatever the form tacitly suggested the default position was. The two ty... |
the countries, separated by nearly 60% as a direct result of how the question was phrased. This is just one example of how we can reliably be led into making a choice that isn't a choice at all, suggesting that our awareness of our own cognitive abilities isn't quite as complete as perhaps we would like. Recognizing th... |
Algebraic reasoning in grades two through five: Effects of teacher practices, characteristics and professional development Algebra is a gatekeeper (Moses & Cobb, 2001). Long before students enter an Algebra I course in the high school, the foundations for algebra are being developed in elementary school through algebra... |
Chiang, and Miller, 1997) confirms a direct correlation ( r=.03, p=.05) between teachers' content knowledge and student achievement in the learning and understanding of mathematics. The need for teachers to be well equipped to develop students' algebraic reason is apparent (Lambdin, 1999, Ma, 2000).^ This study explore... |
characteristics, and professional development relate to student achievement and; thereby, gain greater understanding and awareness of the role algebraic reasoning performs in teaching and learning at the elementary school level. The following two research questions directed this study: (1) To what extent and in what ma... |
achievement on problems involving algebraic reasoning be explained by teacher practices, characteristics and professional development? (2) What teaching practices focused on algebraic reasoning have the greatest impact on student achievement?^ This study utilized a mixed method research design that examined classroom p... |
N=1550 students in 17 urban and suburban schools in Rhode Island. Data were gathered through a participant questionnaire utilizing a 1-5 point Likert-scale survey instrument developed by the researcher. Following the collection of the data, focus groups, n=18, were conducted with volunteer participants. The qualitative... |
groups were analyzed by generating themes and patterns to describe the findings. Descriptive statistics (frequencies, percents, and means) were computed for each variable. Multiple regression analysis was use to determine the magnitude of the relationship between teaching practices and professional development related ... |
revealed the variables, teaching practices and professional development, used to calculate multiple regression (r=.055, p=.70) were not found to be significantly related. In addition, current professional development on algebraic reasoning is not meeting the needs of the teachers and the connections between teacher kno... |
findings emanated from the focus groups and from the open ended questions on the questionnaire suggested teachers are not equipped to teach algebraic reasoning. These findings have recently been collaborated in the National Math Panel Advisory Panel (2008) report. Recommendation are made as well as suggestions for addi... |
specific to professional development and algebraic reasoning.^ Education, Mathematics|Education, Elementary Judith A Lundsten, "Algebraic reasoning in grades two through five: Effects of teacher practices, characteristics and professional development" (January 1, 2008). Dissertation & Theses Collection. |
By David Houle, Special to CNN Editor’s note: David Houle is a futurist and author of the blog Evolution Shift. He is the author of “The Shift Age”, "Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education" and "Entering the Shift Age." He has been a contributor to Oprah.com. Houle is futurist-in- residence at the R... |
+ Design in Sarasota, Florida. (CNN) - When people find out that I am a futurist, they ask me what that means. In speaking and writing, I act as a catalyst to get people, the market and the world to think about the future, then facilitate a conversation about it. There’s one area that’s desperately in need of that conv... |
education. In the next decade, there will be more transformation at all levels of education than in any 10-, 20-, or perhaps 50-year period in history. Generational forces at play will accelerate these changes. The aging baby boomers - who I call the “bridge generation,” as they have bridged education from the middle o... |
are retiring in ever increasing numbers. They have held on to the legacy thinking about education, remembering how they were taught. Their retirement opens up the discussion about transformation. At the same time, we have the rising digital natives as the students of tomorrow. This generation, born since 1997, is the f... |
computer in the house, high-speed Internet, parents with cell phones and often a touch screen app phone as their first phone. They are the first generation of the 21th century with no memory of the 20th. They are the first generation born into the information-overloaded world; for them, that’s simply the way it is. The... |
prior generations and need new models for education. Let’s take a quick look for all levels of education to see what some major transformations will be: A child born in 2009 is one of the younger digital natives. In upper-middle class households, they are the first children for whom all content can be found on screens.... |
screen and other interactive computing devices starting as early as 2, and therefore walk into the first day of preschool or nursery school with a level of digital skills. This will spark greater use of digital devices and interactive learning at this first level of education. Classrooms will increasingly have interact... |
We have discovered more about the working of the brain and for the sake of this level of education the development of a child’s brain in the past 20 years than in all time prior. It will become clear that, to the degree that we can bring this knowledge into pre-K education, we can more fully develop the minds and |
learning of young children. The elevation and integration of digital interactivity is soaring in K-12 education. School districts are setting up cloud computing to provide always-available information for always-connected education communities. Schools that used to make students turn off cellular devices during the sch... |
If all of the world’s knowledge and information are just a few keystrokes away, why make the classroom the only unconnected place students experience? Self-directed learning - the interaction of the student with learning courses on a computer - will accelerate education and provide more students with the opportunity to... |
ever more into the classroom and will allow for the grammar school and the high school to be more involved in the local community and the larger global community. Higher education is approaching bubble status. The costs have risen rapidly, beyond the ability of most families to pay. Debt is being taken on at unpreceden... |
climate that is not providing the high-paying jobs necessary for that debt to be retired. At the same time, employers complain of a skills gap: the inability to hire employees with the skills needed to perform these new technologically demanding jobs. Given these challenges, I can see three major changes coming to high... |
will be a dual level of degree granted. The traditional path, costing more than $100,000 with four years of being on campus, will continue. The nontraditional one, perhaps initially a certificate rather than degree program, will cost perhaps $10,000 to $20,000 and will rely on the taking of video and online courses and... |
the student a financially viable choice, the university with a new revenue stream and the employer with a comparative choice for hiring. It will also open up higher education to a vastly greater number of people, young and old. Second, this comparative choice will drive the educational institutions to increase efficien... |
model is centuries old and in need of transformation. This is about to happen. Third, the two-year associate degree from a community college will become more exalted. This will provide trained job applicants who are less worried about being educated and more concerned with up-to-date training that will provide immediat... |
The 14-year education will become more respected as our society becomes ever more technologically based. We’re already beginning to see some of these changes, in the rise of MOOCs - massive open online courses - and the integration of tablet technology and cloud computing in the classroom. In the past two years, I have... |
creating fundamental change at the local level. Such local leadership will increase dramatically in the coming year, while, in higher ed, the consumption of high quality MOOCs will double. The year 2013 will bring about the first steps in a transformation that, by 2020, will leave education at all levels profoundly dif... |
I’ve been looking for a good, easy to read document outlining the latest climate science research and putting it in context for Copenhagen and I think I’ve found it. Today in Sydney, the Climate Change Research Centre, a unit of |
the University of New South Wales, released The Copenhagen Diagnosis. It’s free to download or view online in a nice rich text format so credit to the centre for making it accessible in multiple attractive formats. But most praise has |
to be reserved for the 26 contributing authors who have laid out the science to make it easy to understand for a layman like myself. Chapters cover aspects of climate science including “the atmosphere”, “permafrost and hydrates” and “global sea |
level”. Throughout are scattered common questions about climate change and answers designed to clear up confusion. An example: “Are we just in a natural warming phase, recovering from the ‘little ice age?‘. The document, once pictures and the reference section |
is including is a slim 50 pages. If you want something to get yourself up to speed on the science ahead of Copenhagen this could well be the document to download. Its even better if you have a colleague willing |
to run across the road and get it bound for you as I have! The executive summary of the Copenhagen Diagnosis, which I’ve excerpted below gives the basics you need to know if even 50 pages is too much to |
handle as we head into the highly-stressful (for everyone other than academics) end of year period. The diplomats and politicians soon to board flights to Denmark could do worse than slip a copy of The Copenhagen Diagnosis into their cabin |
luggage. The most significant recent climate change findings are: Surging greenhouse gas emissions: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40% higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilized at present-day levels, |
just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2°C, even with zero emissions after 2030. Every year of delayed action increases the chances of exceeding 2°C warming. Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-induced warming: Over |
the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.19°C per decade, in very good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases. Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues |
to be one of warming. Natural, short-term fluctuations are occurring as usual, but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend. Acceleration of melting of ice-sheets, glaciers and ice-caps: A wide array of satellite and ice measurements |
now demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990. Rapid Arctic sea-ice decline: Summer-time melting |
of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. The area of sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models. Current sea-level rise underestimated: Satellites show recent global |
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