In 1965, Gordon Moore predicted that processing power should double every eighteen months.1 Traditionally, this rapid growth has been achieved by shrinking distances between transistors and shortening the distance that information needs to pass through.1 However, the miniaturization of processors and transistors will soon reach a physical barrier.2 With this knowledge, researchers have begun searching for new computing systems that take different approaches to achieving greater efficiency. Many possible computing models have been explored, including optical computing, quantum computing, and perhaps most interestingly, biological computing.

Biological computing is an altogether very new and very different approach. Rather than attempting to increase the speed of each individual operation, biological computing uses components of living organisms to perform computing tasks faster through massive parallelism, a technique that uses a large number of elements each performing smaller tasks.1 Many recent advances have demonstrated the potential of biological computing, even though research has only begun. For example, Adamatzi and Selim Aki at Queens University demonstrated the ability of slime molds to determine the most efficient paths across networks, and Swiss researchers have successfully programmed human cells to perform binary operations.3 Currently, the preeminent developments in biological computing have occurred in DNA computing. DNA fragments of varying lengths are placed in a solution along with ATP to power the reaction, and the results are analyzed by determining the length and sequence of the output DNA molecule.4 DNA computing allows for the storage of data in a four letter code – “A,” “T,” “C,” and “G” – which is capable of storing far more data more compactly than the binary digit storage of electronic computers.4 In a brilliant example showcasing the potential of DNA computing to revolutionize man-machine interactions, Ehud Shapiro at the Weizmann Institute harnessed DNA computing to diagnose cancerous activity from within the cell and then release an anti-cancer drug based upon the resulting output.4

Advances in biological computing foreshadow a massive revolution in computing technologies by removing physical limitations, improving parallel processing, increasing energy efficiency, and reducing toxicity.1 First, while traditional computational development has relied upon reducing the sizes of and distances between transistors, techniques that will soon face physical limitations, biological computing rapidly increases speed by using more effective parallel processing, which is able to perform 100 times more operations per second than conventional measures.1 Second, biological computing is more energy efficient, relying on energy stored chemically in ATP instead of conventional energy supplies.1 Third, the use of biological components greatly reduces the price and toxicity of computing components, as most biological components are readily available and non-toxic.1 And lastly, biological computing allows for a completely new approach to problem solving: rather than approaching problems sequentially like traditional computers, biological computing is a unique data structure focused upon parallel operations.4 Revolutionizing the computing industry would have groundbreaking impacts in all fields of science, research, technology, and society since computers are crucial for scientific advancement for all scientific and engineering fields.

The decreased toxicity, increased availability, and greater energy efficiency of biological computers may lead to massive benefits for the environment. Traditional computers are major contributors to our carbon footprint; by 2020, the carbon emissions from data centers and Internet services is expected to increase four-fold, surpassing even the carbon footprint of the aviation industry.5 In addition, the production of traditional computers requires enormous amounts of natural resources. A single silicon chip requires 1.6 kilograms of fossil fuels, 72 grams of chemicals, and 32 kilograms of water to manufacture, which is all together over 700 times the weight of the final product.6 The disposal of traditional computers is further complicated by the heavy metals they contain, especially lead, mercury, and cadmium, which can easily leak into and contaminate the environment.6 By replacing the need for silicon and other inorganic materials with readily available organic materials, biological computing can help reduce resource strain. Furthermore, the decreased toxicity allows for safer production, storage, and disposal than silicon-based computers. Finally, the improved energy efficiency of biological computing can allow for a decrease in global energy consumption, reducing the strain on fossil fuels and decreasing the amount of pollutants released into the environment due to energy production. This could help reduce damage to ecosystems, decrease biodiversity loss due to toxicity, and combat climate change by decreasing energy consumption.

In addition to advancing computing, biological computing also allows for unprecedented advances in medicine and biology by allowing closer integration with living material. Biological data is already used to control the chemicals synthesized by various organisms; the development of organic data processing and memory storage greatly compounds this synergy.1 As demonstrated by the earlier research done by Shapiro on cancer diagnoses and treatment, biological computers could provide a means to treat and diagnose genetically based illnesses from within living organisms.1 For instance, Adamatzky Aki, a leading researcher in DNA computing, has suggested the use of a biological implant to detect and treat breast cancer.3 In addition, biological computing could be used to link silicon-based computing and living organisms. Studies on eels have demonstrated that living things can be linked to robots and controlled, providing the ability for humans to study organisms in unprecedented ways and allowing for advances in interactive prosthetics.1  Biological computing could also allow the introduction of computing in harsher natural environments by mimicking the adaptive strategies of resilient life-forms.3 Overall, these advantages could radically change our ability to garner data for a variety of fields, including biology, animal behavior, and studies in extreme environments. In addition, intimate integration with biological tissue could revolutionize the treatment of cancer and other diseases, transform health care, and pave the way for artificially constructed or controlled organisms that create new opportunities in fields ranging from farming to prosthetics.

References

1. Fulk, Kevin. “Biological computing.” ISRC Future Technology Topic Brief. 2002.
2. Junnarkar, Sandeep. “Tomorrow’s Tech: The Domino Effect.” CNET News. October 24, 2002.
3. Baer Adam. “Why living cells are the future of data processing.” PopSci. November 5, 2012.
4. Tagore, Somnath; Bhattacharya, Saurav;  Islam, Ataul; Islam, Lutful. “DNA Computation: Applications and Perspectives.” Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics. June 29, 2010: 234-243.
5. Kanter, James. “The Computer Age and its Carbon Footprint.” New York Times. June 13, 2008.
6. Locklear, Fred. “The Environmental Impact of Computing.” Ars Technica. Nov. 12, 2002.

Brandon Yang is a student at The Harker School. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

In January 2012, the discovery by stem cell biologists Joanne Loring and Oliver Ryder published in Nature resembles the backstory of a sci-fi movie like Jurassic Park. The two main players, the northern white rhino Fatu and the drill monkey Loon, both face extinction in the next couple of decades.1 Loring aspired to obtain stem cells from these endangered species that could be used in the future to preserve their genetic diversity after they die out. The magic behind stem cell technology is the idea that stem cells can be reprogrammed to develop into any tissue in the body (also known as Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells or iPS cells), including gametes, which could be then used in vitro to fertilize an egg and reproduce a new individual. The main impediment to this rather challenging endeavor was obtaining stem cells from sources other than already fertilized embryos. Scientists at University of Kyoto broke the deadlock by discovering that human adult cells could be reprogrammed to return to their embryonic-like state by turning on a special set of genes. As noted in Nature, to Loring’s surprise, these human genes could also be used to reprogram animal cells to IPS, which eventually led to Loring and Ryder’s breakthrough in reprogramming Fatu’s cells and preserving them for the future generations in a so called Frozen Zoo. Fatu and Loon’s story is indeed revealing as to what stem cell technology can achieve and more importantly, what the motivation behind scientists’ research is.

However, unlike Spiderman where one can simply walk out of the movie theater and forget about the incredible mutations and ethical issues that the movie hints at, the issues that current stem cell research brings up cannot be overlooked. Even though technological advances may help save endangered species, the issues of stem cell research make it costly and controversial. Eco organizations and laws like the Endangered Species Act have an immense impact on daily life and the amount of resources put in environment-friendly programs. It is worth assessing the effect of humans on the environment, and whether it is within our powers to alter the course of evolution. After all, species come and go, and any meddling with these natural processes by resurrecting extinct animals in petri dish can be considered an even greater crime than the damage that already has been done by human activity. If one species is brought to life after being wiped out, the populations of other species could become endangered as a result. This could lead to a disturbance in the entire food chain and cause a mass extinction on the scale of that observed when dinosaurs died out in the beginning of the Mesozoic period. In addition, the adversaries to preservation programs point out that the official lists generated are rather ambiguous, as they generally list “large, spectacular, or high profile species”2 and neglect those that are not as “cute”3 and appealing to the general public. For instance, there are 200 endangered species Tasmanian Hydrobiid snails whose saving would hardly receive any attention because snails are considered not as interesting compared to some other species and people would not really care if they go extinct or not.2 The large amount of money raised and spent to save one species could be used more efficiently to prevent twenty others from becoming endangered in first place.3 Being aware of the facts that preserving the habitat and taking the measures to save species cost so much, we are left to decide about the future of stem cell technology that costs even more money and certainly does not guarantee success.

According to Loring, the biggest advantage of stem cell research is that it can be used to preserve the diversity of the animals even after they are eliminated from their natural habitat.1 However, developing technologies that will allow the reproduction of new embryos using these stem cells is also a very costly endeavor. Even in the scientific community, many are skeptical as to whether this stem cell frozen zoo project has any future at all. William Holt, a biologist at the Zoological Society of London and also involved with the project, has been dubious as to how the new discovery would be implemented in practice. He points out that it is not enough to have the cells reprogrammed, but also that the reproductive biology of the endangered species should be studied extensively before attempting any in-vitro reproduction. However, biologists know very little about an endangered species and having less than ten individuals as in the case of Fatu would decrease significantly the chances of success. Having this in mind, and knowing all the costs that come with the possible implementation of this project, we are left to decide how much we want to get involved in determining the future of other species. It is our responsibility to recognize that technology can improve living conditions of many endangered animals, but that it should be done in a way which would not cause a blunt disturbance in ecosystems. In the end, it comes to realizing that it is already too late to change today, but that we can always look for a better tomorrow, for us and for all those animals that carry the lethal sentence “endangered”.

References

1. Ewen Callaway, “Could stem cells rescue an endangered species.” Nature(Sept 4,2011), Accessed Nov 19, 2012, doi:10.1038/news.2011.517.
2. CheckBiotech(2002), “Scientist Bias Helping Cause Mass Extinction,” Accessed Nov 30,2012
3. Jason,”Stem Cells Saving Endangered Species or Wasting Money,”TechNYou, Accessed Nov 19,2012,  http://technyou.edu.au/2010/06/stem-cells-saving-endagered-species-or-wasting-money/.
4. Image credit (Creative Commons): Waschefort,Hein.”White rhino and its young.”. In: Wkimedia Commons. Last modified  August 18,2012 [cited 2012 December 3].

Maria Karapetkova is a junior at Johns Hopkins University majoring in Biomedical Engineering. Endangered species have always been an interest of hers, and she finds it fascinating that biomedical engineering technology cannot find solutions for this major issue. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

The new year was welcomed with fireworks, celebrations and a striking unconventional public protest: a virtual demonstration. A massive demonstration without a physical presence, but instead with crowds of websites, most notably Wikipedia, Wired and Google US, restricting their content as an illustration of what might happen should the US Government’s proposed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) legislation come into force. The online technology news website Wired took a very visual interpretation of the “blackout” by replacing all of its images and text with blacked out rectangles as if their whole site had been “redacted”, a common form of censorship.

Screenshot of Wikipedia during the blackout

For 24 hours, web users worldwide frantically struggled to find ways to access Wikipedia’s content, as the online encyclopaedia has become the de facto source of information for millions of students and the general public.

The actions of these websites and the thousands of users behind it were a response to SOPA and PIPA that were going through the US congress at the time. However, a major issue raised was not with the efforts of the government to Stop Online Piracy, but instead with proposals in these bills to fundamentally alter the mechanics of the web. It is these mechanics that have enabled sites like Wikipedia to become so successful in such a short time.

One of the mechanisms of the Internet that makes Wikipedia’s user base so large is that of free access. Wikipedia is just one example of how the technology industry has upset many long-held business models of industries such as publishing, music, video and games. Wikipedia provides an ever-updating encyclopaedia, with accuracy comparable to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, yet online, searchable, and free. When Skype became popular, it threatened the traditional telephone model by offering free calls over the internet to anyone also using Skype. BitTorrent and other P2P (peer-to-peer) systems allowed the sharing of any type of file,. These technologies have undermined the profits of the entertainment industry, and as a result, groups such as RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) have fought back through legal action in courts and also in changing legislation. These industries have eventually adapted to the new reality, although often they have had to share their profits with companies like Apple and Amazon for their content distribution service.

Another key mechanism is universal access. With the exception of restrictive countries such as Syria, North Korea and China (with its infamous “Great Firewall”), anyone with a device which has an internet browser can visit Wikipedia, either as a reader, an author, or even both. This has enabled collaborative editing and sharing on an unparalleled scale. However, both SOPA and PIPA propose methods for dealing with online piracy which aim to undermine universal access. It may seem at first glance that these acts may turn America into one of those restrictive countries, which although sad, does not affect users in Western Europe or elsewhere. However, this could not be further from the truth. Canadian company Bodog had their domain name (Bodog. com) taken over by U.S. authorities. This was legally possible because all hostnames ending in .com, .net, .cc, .tv and .name are controlled by VeriSign, which is a U.S. company. While it is possible for companies to take their websites over to other domains, such as .co.uk, or more exotic places like .tk, this also makes it harder for users to ascertain the legitimacy of the websites they visit. It is partly because of the regulation of the .com and .net domains that people trust them more than other domains, but now the regulation provides an expectation of web security also coupled with protection of the profits of the entertainment industry.

Another key internet mechanism is search. Search engines such as Google and Bing, as well as news aggregators like digg.com, have become essential in allowing us to meaningfully access so much data. PIPA threatens the integrity of such tools by forcing them to block websites deemed to be illegal from showing up in their results. This means that even if a website were to move over to a domain outside of U.S. jurisdiction, unless you knew the address, you would not be able to find it.

These bills would also have had an impact on the Domain Name Service (DNS), which is the directory service for the Internet. One of the key challenges of the internet is to connect two systems, which may be on the same computer, in the same room, or even on the other side of the world. To do this, every computer (including laptops, phones, tablets, and so on) is given a unique IP address. It is a testament to the growth of the internet that the current naming system, called IPv4, is quickly running out of addresses. Its successor, IPv6, is slowly being rolled out, but the switchover is not likely to happen for a while.

The designers of DNS decided that they needed it to be a distributed system, built to cope gracefully with failure. As a result, they mandated that there would be many servers that held small portions of the address book all around the world. This address book is very important practically, because humans are generally not good at remembering lists of numbers but are happy remembering www.ebay. com.

In order to interact with the DNS system, internet devices usually ask their ISP to make the request for them. As a result, the websites that are accessible to us are restricted based on what our ISP allows us to see. SOPA has been heavily criticised for its proposed changes to the DNS, which would allow the Attorney General to force ISPs to block or filter DNS requests for certain websites, thus breaking the key element of trust in the DNS system. In this scheme, users would no longer be able to distinguish between websites that were blocked, or websites that no longer existed. Furthermore, these websites still may exist, thereby forcing desperate users to keep and even propagate lists of mappings themselves, which circumvents the purpose of DNS.

That itself will create a dangerous environment for users, since these lists cannot be trusted and may be directed to replicas (with criminal intent). However, the greatest threat of the legislation is to DNSSEC. This is a new extension of DNS that provides greater security. DNSSEC provides cryptographically signed mappings from hostnames to IPs which criminals cannot alter without being detected. Under SOPA, this gives the Attorney General the legal right to sue any entity which attempts to circumvent the blocking order. Part of the DNSSEC requires web browsers to search many DNS servers (even looking overseas) until they find an authoritative DNS server which can return the correct IP address. The browser’s repeated searching can easily be interpreted under the legislation as an attempt to circumvent the blocking order. This will force browsers to not use DNSSEC, despite it being a key next step towards improved security for the internet.

On January 12, 2012, after much protest, the portion of the bill related to DNS redirection was taken out of SOPA in an attempt, some might say, to the keep the bill alive. The battle between proponents of the bill and its opponents continues. However, just as PIPA was a re-write of an earlier bill, the Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act (COICA), many expect similar bills to emerge in due course.

References

1. BBC Technology Team. Wikipedia joins blackout protest at US anti-piracy moves [Internet]. 2012 [updated 2012 Jan 18; cited 2012 Apr 10]. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16590585
2. David Kravets. Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable [Internet]. 2012. [updated 2012 Mar 6; cited 2012 Apr 10]. Available from: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-sites/
3. Darren Pauli. Pacific atoll a phishing haven [Internet]. 2011. [updated 2011 Apr 27; cited 2012 Apr 10]. Available from: http://m.zdnet.com.au/pacific-atoll-aphishing-haven-339313909.htm
4. Maurice de Kunder. The Indexed Web [Internet]. 2012. [updated 2012 Apr 2; cited 2012 Apr 10]. Available from: http://worldwidewebsize.com/

This is an excerpt of an article that was originally published in The Science in Society Review, a sister publication of The Triple Helix Online. Wing Chan is a student at Cambridge University. Contact us to read the original article, and follow us on Facebook.

The lack of organ donors is not a new issue, and people have been growing increasingly desperate to find ways to encourage more people to register as donors, most of which have not achieved an inordinate amount of success.  The newest strategy turns to a method that we all know and love: Facebook.  On May 1, 2012, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg announced that the social media giant now gave you the opportunity to add organ donor status to your timeline.  If you are not a registered organ donor, you can follow links directly from that page to sign up.2 The idea behind this is to encourage people to proudly display the fact that they are organ donors, and through this, to encourage others to register as well.

The initial response was overwhelming: 100,000 Facebook users declared that they were organ donors, 33,000 of whom were newly registered.3 All of the hype and media attention surrounding the addition had spurred thousands of people to act.  However, according to NPR, those high numbers of newly registered organ donors went back down to their pre-Facebook announcement levels as soon as the publicity died down.4 This is rather unsurprising, given the short public attention span for new phenomena.  Even though the Facebook setting is a way to publicly declare one’s support for organ donation, this personal display isn’t exactly a dynamic way to encourage others to donate.  In addition, this setting only applies to people who have registered to be organ donors in case of death, with no account for any sort of living organ donation.  Since the most common organ needed by far is a kidney (often obtained through living organ donation), this poses a rather serious problem.1

While Facebook’s public attempt to spur organ donors can be seen as mildly disappointing, many individuals have found success through another pathway.  A simple Facebook search for “kidney for” produces hundreds of pages of people seeking donors for themselves and loved ones over the Internet.  According to a study from Loyola Medical Center, which studied 91 Facebook pages for people from ages 2-69, 12% received a kidney for transplant, and 30% reported that potential donors had come forward. Facebook pages for organ donation can be incredibly effective because of the powerful emotional appeals, and it’s no surprise that pages requesting organs for children are the most responded to.5 As a last resort, appealing to potential donors via social media can be a worthwhile attempt, with a decent chance at success.  However, attempting to find or donate an organ via Facebook comes with a fair share of risk, as well.

To begin with, many feel that Facebook doesn’t offer enough information about organ donation to enable people to be properly informed.  When going to register as an organ donor via Facebook, all that’s shown is a link to the actual registration itself.  In order to find any other information, potential donors would have to actively seek it out.  Since this setting only applies to organ donation after death in the first place, it’s not as important as the live donor appeals on Facebook pages.  According to the Loyola study, only 5% of the kidney donation pages studied mentioned the risks associated with donation.1 This problem is far more serious, since it’s fairly easy to sign up to test as a donor in a moment of emotional sympathy, only to regret it in light of the potential risks.  A scenario such as this is unfortunate not only for the donor, who might be a match, but also for the patient, who may have hope taken away from him or her.

Perhaps the most serious problem with social media and organ donation is the number of pages offering to sell organs to those in need, a practice that is illegal in the United States.  A Facebook search for “kidney sell” turned up several pages offering to sell kidneys, most from third-world countries.  Naturally, this raises several issues.  Firstly, a black-market organ trade could mean some sort of illegal exploitation in the country of origin, not to mention the possibility that the organs could be tainted.  Secondly, there’s always the possibility that a desperate family could be taken in by a scam via one of these pages.  Both of these concerns pose serious ethical problems, and both add a rather perilous dimension to seeking out organs over social media.

The lack of organ donors today poses a serious problem, and it’s one that has no clear solution.  While social media does seem to provide a somewhat promising solution, responses so far have been lukewarm, and it seems unlikely that Facebook can solve our donor deficit.

References

1. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.  2012. “Data.” Last modified October 26.  Accessed November 3, 2012.
2. Sandberg, Sheryl and Zuckerberg, Mark.  2012.  “Organ Donation: Friends Saving Lives.”  Facebook Newsroom, May 1.
3. O’Reilly, Kevin B.  2012.  “Transplant experts question impact of Facebook’s organ-donor registration push.”  American Medical News, May 28.
4. Schultz, David.  2012.  “The ‘Facebook Effect’ on Organ Donation.”  NPR Shots, September 20.
5. Greenemeier, Larry.  2012.  “Insides Trading: What Impact Will Facebook Have on Organ Donations?” Scientific American, May 29.  Accessed November 3, 2012.
6. Image credit (Creative Commons): McGowan, West. 2010.  ”Facebook.” Flickr, June 11.

Katherine Oosterbaan is a first-year student at the University of Chicago majoring in Biology and Chemistry. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

The research in this field has also achieved some momentous milestones. The basis of connecting the human cognitive processes to a computer chip has already been achieved in multiple ways. The most famous example is of Project Cyborg 1.0 conducted in the University of Reading by Professor Kevin Warwick and his colleagues in the department of cybernetics.1 Warwick was actually the subject of the first study that required him to undergo an operation to surgically implant a silicon chip transponder in his forearm. This surgery, conducted on 24th August 1998, enabled a computer to monitor Warwick’s activities in the premises of a university. The computer, and Warwick by extension, were able to “operate doors, heaters, and other computers without lifting a finger.”1

The next major experiment was also conducted by Warwick and was entitled Project Cyborg 2.0. In March 2002, Warwick underwent another surgery that implanted a “one hundred electrode array” into his wrist.1 Not only was this second implant able to control more advanced machines such as an electric wheelchair and an artificial hand, it was also able to communicate with a similar implant in Warwick’s wife, Irene’s, hand. The implant that connected to Irene’s nervous system was able to send signals, through a computer, to the implant in Warwick’s wrist and thus create an artificial sensation–”a sudden shock down his left index finger.”2 In the most general terms, their nervous systems were speaking to each other.

An independently run project in 1996 by physician Phillip Kennedy resulted in the creation of the first ever human cyborg Johnny Ray. Before conducting human trials, Kennedy had developed a device called Neurotrophic Electrode that could amplify neural signals. This device was basically a “tiny glass cone…filled with a mix of nerve growth factors, and two fine gold wires,” which, when inserted into the skull, allowed neural cells to grow through the implant and thus establish a solid electric connection.3 When this same process was applied to Ray, a victim of stroke who could no longer operate any part of his body except for some muscles in his face, Kennedy was successful in connecting Ray’s neural signals to the computer. He could basically control the mouse with his brain and was thus able to spell out his thoughts.3

As with the previous instance, the development of cyborg technologies have grave medical applications. One of the main advantages, according to neuroscientist Lee Miller of Northwestern University is the possibility of “helping the paralyzed walk, reach, and grasp.” The signals emitted by the electrodes could be routed to the paralyzed limb and thus enable it to move again.3 Another comparable technology is that which allows the very same types of electrodes to control mechanized devices. This could allow for the creation of more advanced prosthetic limbs whose behavior closely matched that of a regular human limb.4 To take it even further, more severely affected individuals with greater brain and motor damage could have the opportunity to reinvent their lives.

Beyond the medical applications, cyborg technology will pave the way to more advanced human beings. One of the popular beliefs of the contemporary world is the idea that robots will eventually outsmart the humans and take control of the world. Stephen Hawking attests this fear and suggests that humans need to mechanize as fast as possible “so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it.”2 Kennedy supports this path of development as it would create an entirely new species of human with unlimited memory, unlimited calculation ability, and instant wireless communication ability. This type of human would have unsurpassable intelligence, he claims. Just like his colleagues, Warwick envisions a world in which everything could be remotely controlled by the brain and humans could link themselves to external machines or even each other.2

With the rise of computers and cell phones, the transition to cyborg is already half complete as humans rely on these machines to the point that they become mere extensions of their body.5 The research being conducted now, though, is working to weave machines into human lives even more permanently. This new technology will create more advanced forms of homo sapiens and thus facilitate the rise of the cyborgs.

References

1. Warwick, Kevin. The University of Reading, “Professor Kevin Warwick.” Accessed November 19, 2012. http://www.kevinwarwick.com/index.asp.
2. Stonehouse, David. “The cyborg evolution.” The Sydney Morning Herald, , sec. Technology, March 22, 2003.
3. Baker, Sherry. “The Rise of the Cyborgs.” Discover Magazine, September 26, 2008.
4. Espingardeiro, Antonio. “When Will We Become Cyborgs?.” Automaton (blog), March 24, 2010.
5. Case, Amber. “We are all cyborgs now.” TED Talks. Recorded January 2011. TED Conferences, LLC. Web.
6. Image credit (Creative Commons): Carlosramirex. “Neil Harbisson Cyborg.” Wikimedia Commons, 2011.

Yogisha Dixit is a student at Cornell University. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

Society has often stereotyped video games as an anti-social activity. Often, the term “gamer” refers to a solitary individual who hides in their basement, quietly tapping away at their controller. However, Sherry et al. concluded that video games may not be a diversion from people, but actually a method of communicating with others. In fact, current findings in research demonstrate that video games and social isolation do not appear to be associated with one another. Video games may create shared play space when children meet up with one another to play games, even if they are not multiplayer games.1

In fact, the social learning experience does not disappear even if there is no one in the room for the gamer to interact with. Thanks to the internet, individuals who play video games are able to connect with other players no matter what the hour. Many online games, such as the iconic EverQuest, encourage interactions with other individuals. In order to complete quests and do well the game, it is often necessary for players to join groups. In EverQuest for example, players create avatars which have special skills based on their race and class. Since each combination of traits comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses, gamers often seek out other individuals with different abilities in order to make up for their own flaws.2 As a result of interacting with other players, the individual is able to bridge what Vygotsky termed the “zone of proximal development” described as “the distance between [an individual’s] current levels of comprehension and levels that can be accomplished in collaboration with people.”3 Players are bound together by their determination to achieve a common goal. As a result, author and avid gamer James Paul Gee argues that players are encouraged to work together. By doing so, gamers are able to gain three types of knowledge—extensive knowledge, or knowledge of the entire process of completing a task, intensive knowledge, or knowledge of one’s own special skills and how they contribute to the group, and distributed knowledge, or how to obtain information from outside sources such as rule books or forums supplying advice or cheat codes. Gee even argues that video games encourage social cooperation, a necessity in our connected world, in a way that many public school systems do not.3

But gamers are not just online trading cheat codes or discovering the best way to obtain piles of virtual treasure. Communication is also occurring on a more personal level, specifically in breaking down social differences. Gee argues that online games may help bridge the generational gap between young players and the older generation, because online there is no difference between a fifteen year old and a forty year old player.3 Individuals with physical disabilities may view video games as a haven, because people will not judge them based on how they look.2 Older individuals could use video games as a means to combat feelings of isolation.4 Video games may also play an important role in boosting the self-esteem of young girls. In some societies, women may be assigned the status of the “lesser sex” because of their gender, but Brown argues that this distinction is not made in online gaming because female characters do not receive “stat reductions” due to their gender.2

The online game Second Life has proven to be an effective method of cultural exchange. With seventy percent of its users hailing from outside the United States5, the virtual platform provides a way for players to interact with individuals throughout the world. Because so many of its players are from non-Western countries, digital diplomats Joshua S. Fouts and Rita J. King argue that Second Life is an ideal way for individuals to learn about people who practice different religions, specifically Islam. Because these conversations are not occurring in person, Second Life becomes a way to share and learn about other religions while avoiding physical violence.5 During their “travels” in Second Life, Fouts and King found that they were able to “ask the hard questions” about Islam that may have proved impossible in real life. In one case, they were able to interview a Jewish woman who had entered a virtual representation of the Hajj in order to learn about Islam. The woman said that she would not have been willing to walk into a mosque in the real world for fear of persecution, but in Second Life she would be able to communicate with others about their faiths without difficulty.5 Even individuals from different religious sects may be able to communicate more easily through online games. In one virtual mosque, cyberactivist Yunus Yakoub Islam frequently witnesses players from the Sufi, Salafi, Sunni and Shia Islamic sects discussing their faiths, an interaction that he claims may not happen offline.6 The willingness to exchange cultural information online seems to increase quite rapidly. Researchers discovered that high schoolers who played the interactive game REAL LIVES expressed excitement to learn more about other cultures and experienced global empathy after a mere two hours of play.4

Even academic learning can occur online, and more educators are using video games as methods to share information. Across the virtual land of Second Life, teachers and researchers alike are creating virtual dioramas in order to provide information about important topics such as history, genetics and health care. Highlights include a version of Ancient Mesopotamia created by the Federation of American Scientists7 and representations of the sea floor that avatars can explore created by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration5. HealthInfo Island, a Second Life project funded by the United States government, is a virtual island where visitors can learn about health care issues and mental illnesses—visitors even gain trial access to the EBSCO database.8  The vague boundary between teachers and students, what Gee calls the “ongoing learning principle,” is another aspect that may make virtual worlds an important aspect of future teaching methods, since educators do not have a position of authority and are able to work cooperatively with their students.3

The opening learning environment is also useful as a means of learning about one’s own identity through self-expression. Because players are hidden behind the screen, they are able to express aspects of their identity that may be impossible in real life. Gee argues that the “psychological moratorium” allows players to take risks without real world consequences, which may include trying out new identities.3 Foust and King discovered that the way one “dresses” in virtual worlds is one commonly used method—for example, Islamic women who were required to wear burkas in real life often chose to do without them in Second Life, and vice versa. In both cases, players claimed that they wanted to try out an identity that seemed unavailable in real life.5 The result of such experiments, as well as the increased amount of realism in many video games has made many researchers question where one draws the line between “real” and “virtual” identities.

It is clear that video games have immense value because they allow for a player to gain social, cultural, academic and self knowledge.  With the increased use of technology across the world, educators may have no choice but to utilize these now considered “alternative methods”, because virtual life is encroaching on the real world with every passing day. Edward Castronova claimed that thirty million people “inhabit” virtual worlds.2 In his survey of 4000 EverQuest players Castronova discovered that 58% want to spend more time playing, 22% want to spend all of their time playing the game and 20% said they lived in the game and merely “traveled” to the outside world.2 Virtual currencies are often traded against the dollar, and “loot farms” have been created in countries such as China and Mexico, where individuals are paid to collect items which are then sold for real currency on sites such as eBay.2 Raphael Foster even created a “Declaration of the Rights of Avatars” which stated that avatars are not just extensions of people, but actual people with rights.2 Educators may have no choice but take advantage of the resources these “virtual playgrounds” have to offer, because soon these video games may be games no longer.

References:

1. Newman, James. Videogames. London, Routledge, 2004.
2. Brown, Harry J. Videogames and Education. New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 2008
3. Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
4. Bachen, Christine M.,  Pedro F. Hernández-Ramos  and Chad Raphael. “Simulating REAL LIVES: Promoting Global Empathy and Interest in Learning Through Simulation Games. Simulation Gaming 43 (2012):L 437-460. Accessed December 6, 2012 DOI: 10.1177/1046878111432108
5. “From Soap Operas to Avatars: Digital Diplomacy and Making Fiction into Fact, ”  Neil Harvey, Bioneers.org.
6. Crabtree, Shona. “Finding Religion in Second Life’s Virtual Universe.” The Washington Post, June 16, 2007. Accessed December 6, 2012.
7. Fouts, Joshua. “Understanding Islam Through Virtual World: Collaboration, Culture and  Community.” YoutubeVideo , 8:42. January 31, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr2Scu-vQp4
8. Boulos, M. N. K., Hetherington, L. and Wheeler, S. (2007), Second Life: an overview of the potential of 3-D virtual worlds in medical and health education. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 24: 233–245. doi: 10.1111/j.1471-1842.2007.00733.x
9. Image Credit (Creative Commons): Mauro Monti. “Ps3 Controller.” Flickr. Last modified 18 Feb. 2007.
10. Image Credit (Creative Commons): John Lester. “Avatar-Based Marketing: What’s the Future for Real-Life Companies Marketing to Second Life Avatars?” Flickr. Last modified 24 Jun. 2006.

Sara Stavile is a sophomore at Emory University majoring in International Studies and Creative Writing, with an interest in French. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

With the constant advances in communication technologies, the comprehension and understanding of these scientific revelations and breakthroughs are no longer limited to those with a few college courses. The past few years have seen major developments in social media and technologies, making network access more convenient, and generating an ever-increasing audience for interest based scientific education. Now there exist entire online communities devoted to creating content tailored specifically for a lay viewership with little to no prior knowledge. The epicenter of this cultivation and popularization of scientific education is YouTube, home to the most connected and prolific of these online communities.

YouTube houses hundreds of channels devoted entirely to making science captivatingly clear. Many of these channels focus primary on digesting large, technical journal articles and publications put out by research institutes, and presenting the essence in interesting and easily understood videos with links to related topics. The video makers take remarkable developments, cut them to their core concepts, and provide an explanation of the idea, alongside the context and relevancy. Some of these institutions have channels themselves, such as theroyalinstitution1  for the Royal Institution of Great Britain and University of Michigan’s michiganengineering2. Others, such as SciShow3, are run by an individual, for whom running the channel and creating content is their full time job.

Often, these channels fulfill two purposes at once—reporting and entertaining. Many channels, including the aforementioned SciShow, pose questions to themselves, and upload the entertainingly informative answers. A prime example is MinutePhysics4, a channel that’s garnered over 50 million views since its inaugural upload. MinutePhysics creator Henry Reich tackles concepts as involved and complicated as quantum mechanics and neutrinos, strips them of their intimidating status, and offers the bare-bones concepts as an appropriately paced, engagingly fun two-minutes of drawings and voice-over. Many other channels do the same, through different means, adding their own flavor and style to this trend in scientific entertainment. Dr. Derek Miller, of Veritasium5, asks people on the street of Sydney seemingly simple questions, and then proceeds to debunk common misconceptions in biology and physics.

Although these types of videos are great for piquing the interest of a wider audience, they are essentially educational sound bites. However entertaining they are, three- to five-minute long explanations of electromagnetic induction cannot do much for improving general scientific literacy. Luckily, the very nature of this trend provides a rather simple solution. The increasing prevalence of online “academies”, coupled with a growing body of subject-specific refresher courses, has created a virtual vault of engaging online lectures. For someone lacking the relevant background, building a foundation of essential scientific knowledge has never been more accessible.

Most of these lecture-style channels are structured very similarly to Salman Khan’s Khan Academy6. In the typical format, “students” choose an area of study and watch a progressive series of lectures that build on specific concepts. By this process, the channel CrashCourse7 has created a series of ten-minute videos for biology, world history, ecology, and literature. Like most academic channels, these series aim to develop a working understanding of the fundamental events, nomenclature, and theories that compose their respective subjects. Keeping with this educational movement, most major universities have some sort of online media meant for audiences extending past their student population. In just the past three years, Harvard University alone has released hundreds of hours of course lectures online.

On their own, it is difficult to imagine these academies and online series moving beyond a general conceptual awareness. Although they provide entertaining contexts and presentations of significant ideas, YouTube videos are simply another, albeit more engaging, way to deliver information. Like most lecture-based learning systems, self-directed online education lacks many of the components composing an effective teaching method. Typically, we remember best the lessons learned through active involvement—contributing to shared experiences, exploring problems, and experimenting firsthand8. As neatly packaged sets of facts, lectures cannot compare to the benefits of a participation-based education.

However, most traditional classrooms heavily employ the same lecture-based teaching strategies to provide uniform instruction to students9. But in classrooms full of students learning at their own individual paces and with unique conceptual gaps, the lecture format’s blanket of information may be an ineffective teaching method. In an educational system without flexibility from a set curriculum, joining the worlds of face-to-face and online educational tools has great potential. A blended curriculum (one consisting both online and face-to-face elements) in the setting of an in-person classroom is considerably more effective than either alone10. Combined with the human component of traditional settings, the plasticity and breadth of online broadcasting produces a program that incubates scientific literacy in terms of social media.

Already, the line between online entertainment and scientific education in schools is blurring. The Summit charter school, located in San Jose, CA, offers an example of the blend between scientific and digital literacy11. Here, the online lectures and accompanying problem sets of Khan Academy make up the primary curriculum. Students move through topics at their own pace, independently pausing and rewinding as they need. An instructor, present and in-person, facilitates the class by encouraging the students, assisting them with individual inquiries, and managing the coursework. Across the country, more and more schools are employing similar techniques. Online content such as TED talks and YouTube EDU are finding a place into classrooms, as teachers employ available videos to create more engaging lessons12,13.

References

1. The Royal Institution .”The RI Channel – YouTube.” YouTube.  (accessed January 4, 2013).
2. Michigan Engineering.”Michigan Engineering – YouTube.” YouTube. (accessed January 4, 2013).
3. SciShow. “SciShow – YouTube.” YouTube. (accessed January 4, 2013).
4. Minute Physics. “MinutePhysics – YouTube.” YouTube. (accessed January 4, 2013).
5. Veritasium. “Veritasium – YouTube.” YouTube. (accessed January 4, 2013).
6. Khan, Salman. “Khan Academy.” Khan Academy. (accessed January 4, 2013).
7. CrashCourse. “Crash Course!- YouTube.” YouTube. (accessed January 4, 2013).
8. Rogoff, Barbara, Ruth Paradise, Rebeca Mejia Arauz, Maricela Correa-Chavez, and Cathy Angelillo. “Firsthand Learning Through Intent Participation.” Annual Review of Psychology 54 (2003): 175-203. (accessed January 1, 2013).
9. National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. “National Board for Professional Teaching Standards: The Five Core Propositions.” The Five Core Principles. (accessed January 4, 2013).
10. U.S. Department of Education Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development. “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies.” U.S. Department of Education. (accessed January 4, 2013).
11. Sengupta, Somini. “Online Learning, Personalized.” The New York Times (New York City), December 4, 2011. (accessed January 4, 2013).
12. Strom, Stephanie. “YouTube Subtracts Racy and Raucous to Add a Teaching Tool.” The New York Times (New York City), March 9, 2012. (accessed November 23, 2012
13. Image Credit (Creative Commons): Korosi, Rego. “Youtube logo.” Flickr.Last modified April 1, 2010.

Alana Darcher is a freshmen majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

This threat is all encompassing. The privacy of one’s own computer is threatened as much as the security of scientific research and business. In 2009, President Obama declared that the “cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation”, and that the future of America’s economic prosperity hinges on the effectiveness of cybersecurity.  The 2009 Cyberspace Policy Review looked at the federal government’s work on the defense of the nation’s information infrastructure, outlining two major strategies for improvement in the country’s preparedness to manage and defend itself against a cyberattack. Since the publication of the review, there have been numerous failed bills, such as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 and the more recently debated Cyber Security Act of 2012. With time as a key factor, the threat only becomes more real. Each day, technology’s grasp on society tightens with the release of new computers, software, and other products that inevitably have security flaws within.

On August 15, 2012, the threat was actualized in a full-fledged cyber attack against one of the world’s most valuable companies, Saudi Aramco, a Saudi state-owned oil company. While over 55,000 Aramco employees were home preparing for one of Islam’s most sacred holidays — Lailat al Qadr, or the revelation of the Koran to Muhammad — a computer virus was unleashed into the company’s network. The virus erased data on 75% of Aramco’s corporate computers, and replaced the documents with the image of a burning American flag.  Although not named publically, Iran has been named the culprit of this attack by U.S. intelligence and defense officials. Three months later, Aramco is still feeling the effects.

Throughout the week of September 19th, several more attacks we launched directly against the U.S. Iran was also blamed for cyberattacks against The Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.  High-powered applications directed towards the targeted banks overwhelmed their servers. They were affected by slowdowns and were periodically unavailable for many customers. Although these attacks were relatively minor, not all are. The ease with which these servers were infiltrated has shown our vulnerabilities to the world, and few will hesitate to exploit them.

What must be kept in mind is that these attacks were relatively simple to execute. Instead of the typical perceived technological threat of China or Russia, it is continually Iran who threatens the U.S. Despite having relatively elementary informatics abilities, Iran has still been able to execute two of the largest cyberattacks in history over the past five months. In addition to attacks led by states themselves, there is one international group that cannot be ignored: Anonymous. The “hactivist” group is not tied to one entity at large, but rather numerous websites and communities around the world. They often work to defend against internet censorship and surveillance. In January 2012, Anonymous briefly shut down the websites of the US Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The following month they successfully hacked the Central Intelligence Agency’s website, with denial of service attacks.

This month, Anonymous has wielded its influence against the ongoing Israeli military operation in Gaza. Since the start of Israel’s current operation on November 14, there have been more than 44 million cyber attacks to impede the efforts of various Israeli government websites. Anonymous claimed to have attacked 10,000 Israeli websites, and one was successful. Chief Information Officer at the Finance Ministry stated that the attack shut down a small unit of one of the ministries, but did not report further. Over the past few years Israel has developed a strong computerized defense system, and the investment has clearly paid off with only minor disturbances thus far. However, if such precautions had not been taken, the results could have been disastrous. Thousands of governmental databases would have been liable for disruption.

Across the globe, the rising threat is taking hold in the minds of government.  Europe simulated cyber war in an exercise named Cyber Europe 2012 on October 4th. The European Network and Information Security Agency ran the test two years after their 2010 cybersecurity exercise. What has changed is that they are no longer only testing in the public arena, but also in the finance sector, internet service providers, and governmental sectors that operate online, all of which are private. Like Europe, the U.S. is testing defense capabilities, but it is lacking in the actual implementation of regulations. The U.S. is testing, researching, and gathering data. But, what should be done is acting on the real and growing threat with legislation that can make a substantial difference.

Internationally, it seems that there is more progress as of late. On November 8th, the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (IMPACT) and the cybersecurity organizations of the United Nations, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the General Secretariat of the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), joined forces in an unprecedented step forward in cybersecurity by signing a “Cooperation Agreement” at the 81st INTERPOL General Assembly.  With the Agreement, IMPACT and INTERPOL are able to freely exchange information and expertise in the enhancement of the organizations’ understanding, as well as implement strengthening activities for the public and private sectors and civil society to create a more secure global population.  This is a monumental commitment in contrast to the long-standing tradition of private, separated, and withheld information maintained by the organizations at hand. The positive advancements with such a treaty is great, but the possible negative repercussions should not be ignored. Although the idea of working together toward a common good is rational, it could feed the cybersecurity problem. With the interconnection of so many states, it may only make it easier for one hacker to access the information of not one, but hundreds of countries’ private information.

The U.S. will benefit from this treaty alongside nearly 150 other countries, but for the U.S. it is not enough. They cannot only do what everyone else is doing; the country must do more. As expressed through the sentiments of the National Security Agency (NSA), despite the technological capabilities the U.S. has to protect national networks, it is useless until Congress moves on critical cybersecutiy legislation, such as the Cyber Security Act of 2012, which calls for enhanced security and resiliency of cyber and communications infrastructure. In May, the Department of Defense expanded their pilot program first instituted in June of 2011. It is now a permanent program that runs on a purely voluntary basis, offering its resources to only 8,000 eligible firms of the hundreds of thousands in America. Of those, it is estimated that only 1,000 will be attracted.  The failure in public awareness of the problem feeds the threat of cybersecurity, as seen through this ineffectual sharing program. Director of the NSA and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, Gen. Keith Alexander, stated that the largest obstacle in improving the nation’s cybersecurity is the nation’s insufficient knowledge regarding the actual size of the threat and how networks operate.  Hopefully, with the end of the election season, the government can turn its attention to the passage of bills that will improve the nation’s security by implementing mandatory security standards and educating the public of the real and growing threat of cybersecurity.

References

1. Barack Obama, Remarks by the President on securing our nation’s cyber infrastructure (The White House, Washington, DC, May 29, 2009).
2. Nicole Perlroth, “Cyberattack on Saudi Oil Firm Disquiets U.S.,” The New York Times, October 4, 2012, A1.
3. David Goldman, “Major banks hit with biggest cyberattacks in history,” CNNMoney, September 27, 2012.
4. Kala Pakiri and Philip Victor, “Interpol Partners with ITU-IMPACT Landmark Cooperation Agreement signed at INTERPOL’s General Assembly in Rome,” (PRWeb, Rome, Italy, November 9, 2012).
5. Kala Pakiri and Philip Victor, “Interpol Partners with ITU-IMPACT Landmark Cooperation Agreement signed at INTERPOL’s General Assembly in Rome,” (PRWeb, Rome, Italy, November 9, 2012).
6. Department of Defense, “Fact Sheet: Defense Industrial Base (DIB) Cybersecurity Activities” (May 11, 2012).
7. Jared Serby, “On cyber defense, U.S. ‘stuck at the starting line,’ “ Federal News Radio, (November 8, 2012).
8. Image credit (Creative Commons): UK Ministry of Defence, “Cyber Security at the Ministry of Defence” (February 17, 2012).

Leslie Sibener is a first year student majoring in neuroscience and writing seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

While accountability is a crucial part of environmentalism, this negative focus tends to turn people away and does not produce results that are at a large enough scale to create significant changes. Instead, environmentalism has the potential to be, and in many cases, already is, positive, ambitious, and incredibly creative. We should not pursue environmental goals as a desperate last defense. They should represent a step forward, towards attaining greater efficiency and utility in everything we do. Environmentalism should aid us, not stand in our way, of becoming greater than we have ever been before.

By mimicking nature’s design principles, engineers and scientists are creating products that are perfectly adapted to solve problems we face today. Over billions of years, evolution has driven forms to fit their functions. The silk that spiders secrete to spin their webs is the perfect example. It is capable of withstanding the force of wind, the forces exerted by insects trapped in the web, and more1, thereby facilitating the spider’s unique existence. Many of the needs served by nature’s elegant solutions are shared by us, in the human world. The science of biomimicry aims to imitate nature and yield materials and products that are both more green and better performers than their conventional alternatives. In the future, artificial spider silk could be a component of cars, causing dents created by accidents to spontaneously disappear.2 The possibilities are limitless.

Of all the biomimicry projects undertaken, the creation of the artificial leaf is arguably the most imagined and the most anticipated. The concept behind it is simple. An artificial leaf, like its natural brethren, uses sunlight to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen.3 Either the energy produced by the process or the resultant hydrogen gas can be used to generate fuel. While burning fuels such as coal and gasoline produces carbon dioxide, the consumption of hydrogen fuel only produces water vapor, a cleaner alternative. Companies such as Toyota have already designed viable hydrogen-fueled cars.4 Until now, however, obtaining inexpensive hydrogen gas has been problematic. With the development of the artificial leaf, the production of hydrogen could become very practical, leading to a larger market for hydrogen-powered vehicles.

At the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2010, Dr. Tongxiang Fan and his colleagues at Shanghai Jiotang University introduced a prototype for an Artificial Inorganic Leaf. The design mimics the structures of the natural leaf that are involved in focusing solar energy and guiding it through the parts of the leaf that harvest the energy.4 Titanium dioxide, a hydrogen photocatalyst, or compound capable of stimulating the synthesis of hydrogen gas in the presence of sunlight,5 was introduced into the plant Anemone vitefolia in place of its natural photosynthetic pigments. This compound was able to replicate the structures responsible for light-harvesting in the leaf, and is estimated to be able to produce three times as much hydrogen gas as commercial photo-catalysts available today.  In addition to titanium dioxide, nanoparticles of platinum were embedded into the leaf’s surface, to increase its activity. By “biotemplating” titanium dioxide and platinum within a natural leaf, the scientists aim to use “human ingenuity to modify the principles of natural systems for enhanced utility.”4

In a paper published on September 30, 2011, Dr. Daniel Nocera of MIT revealed that he had taken the idea even further by creating the first practical artificial leaf. While the leaf designed by Dr. Fan’s team modified an existing organic leaf, this artificial leaf is composed entirely of three inorganic components. The base of the “leaf” is a thin silicon wafer, which converts sunlight into an electric current, much like a solar cell.6 This electric current also results in the production of “holes” or electron vacancies that travel through the system. These holes use the second component of the artificial leaf, a cobalt-based catalyst, to strip electrons off water molecules, decomposing water into hydrogen and oxygen.7 Oxygen is released out of the side of the wafer on which the catalyst is bound. The other side of the wafer contains a nickel-molybdenum-zinc alloy, which releases hydrogen gas through the other side. These reactions can occur when the artificial leaf is placed in a glass of ordinary water.6 In order to harness the energy produced, a barrier can be constructed separating the two sides of the cell, so that hydrogen ions can stream into one side and oxygen ions the other. Therefore, hydrogen and oxygen can be stored separately, and recombined to generate electricity in a fuel cell.7 While the splitting of a molecule of water is an endothermic reaction that requires energy, the synthesis of water is an exothermic reaction, which releases energy for us to use.

In nature, sunlight absorbed by a leaf results in the photoexcitation of electrons, which leave behind regions of electron vacancies, the holes. These holes are then captured by the oxygen evolving complex to oxidize water and reduce nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) into nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide hydride (NADH). Nocera’s artificial leaf uses the cobalt-oxygen evolving catalyst as a functional model of a leaf’s photosystem II10 , thereby mimicking photosynthesis. Similarly, the recombination of hydrogen and oxygen in a fuel cell can be compared to respiration, where the flow of hydrogen ions down their electrochemical gradient results in both the release of energy and the formation of water.

The most amazing aspect of Nocera’s artificial leaf is how practical it is. The leaf is only made of non-corrosive, earth-abundant materials, such as silicon and cobalt. Furthermore, it is about the size of a poker card,9 lightweight, and requires no wires or external circuits. In the laboratory, the artificial leaf has been able to generate power continuously for 45 hours without a drop in performance, partially due to the self-healing nature of the cobalt catalyst, which reforms its cobalt oxide clusters whenever they are degraded by the reactions. Not only could the leaf one day combat the threat of global warming; it could also make energy both affordable and accessible. If the technology works the way it is expected to, rural villages in remote areas of developing countries will be able to power their homes with ease, just by placing the artificial leaf in a gallon of water in bright sunlight and connecting the system to a fuel cell. This could result in dramatic transformations. Easy access to electricity gives rise to an increased standards of living, as well as access to information through communication devices like cell phones and computers.

Nocera and the Tata group, an Indian multinational conglomerate, have signed an agreement aimed at commercialization.10 Nevertheless, the question of whether the artificial leaf can be useful still remains. An analysis commissioned by the US Department of Energy has determined that the leaf is capable of producing solar hydrogen at a lower cost than an array of photovoltaic panels connected to catalyst-coated electrodes.11,12 Therefore, the main challenge facing the artificial leaf is not the cost or feasibility of production, but instead, how efficiently the system can use solar energy, while keeping costs low. The artificial leaf is more efficient than a natural leaf, which only converts 1% of the sunlight it receives into energy, but not by much. Nocera reports an efficiency of 2.5% without wires and 4.7% with wires.12 Commercial solar panels, on the other hand, display efficiencies upwards of 10%.5 The semiconducting solar cell, not the catalysts, are responsible for most of the energy loss, and in order for Nocera’s catalysts to have any impact in terms of photoelectrical hydrogen production, better semi-conductors must be used. However, better semi-conductors are expensive and will significantly drive up the cost of producing the artificial leaf. Currently, Nocera’s team is testing a higher quality crystalline silicon for the semiconductor. They also plan on improving efficiency by increasing the conductance of the surrounding solution and punching small holes in the semi-conductor to facilitate proton flow.12 Without a great increase in efficiency that brings the number reported into the teens, the artificial leaf will never be able to meet the needs of an American home, though it might be able to power energy-light homes in third-world countries.

Systems to collect, store, and use both the oxygen and the hydrogen gas produced by the artificial remain to be developed,5 indicating that the technology is only in its infancy. However, both Nocera and Fan’s artificial leaves are tangible steps in the right direction, and could lead us into a bold new age. One where there are no soaring gas prices. One where we can save nature by paying her the greatest complement: imitation.

References:

1. M. Baels, L. Gross, and S. Harrell, “SPIDER SILK: STRESS-STRAIN CURVES AND YOUNG’S MODULUS,” Tiem, last modified 1999, http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~gross/bioed/bealsmodules/spider.html.
2. Brian Handwerk, “Artificial Spider Silk Could Be Used for Armor, More,” National Geographic, January 14, 2005, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0114_050114_tv_spider.html
3. American Chemical Society, “Blueprint for ‘artificial leaf’ mimics Mother Nature,” ScienceDaily, March 25, 2010, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100325131549.htm
4. Darren Quick, “Drawing Inspiration from Mother Nature in Designing an ‘Artifical Leaf,” Gizmag, March 26, 2010, http://www.gizmag.com/artificial-leaf-blueprint/14630/
5. David L. Chandler, “‘Artificial leaf’ makes fuel from sunlight,” MIT news, September 30, 2011, http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/artificial-leaf-0930.html
6. ScienceNow, “Artificial Leaf Moves Two Steps Closer to Reality,” Wired, September 30, 2011, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/artificial-leaf-solar-fuel/
7. Dinca, Mircea, Yogesh Surendranath, and Daniel G. Nocera. “Nickel-borate oxygen-evolving catalyst that functions under benign conditions.” PNAS 107, no. 23 (June 2010): 10337.
8. Daniel G. Nocera and Matthew W. Kanan, “In Situ Formation of an Oxygen-Evolving Catalyst in Neutral Water Containing Phosphate and Co2+.” Science , August 22, 2008.
9. Ben Coxworth, “Scientists unveil ‘world’s first practical artificial leaf,” gizmag, March 28, 2011, http://www.gizmag.com/worlds-first-practical-artificial-leaf/18247/
10. Admin. “MIT’s Daniel Nocera Announces Artificial Leaf With Goal To Make Every Home a Power Station, Signs with Tata.” Free Energy Times, March 28, 2011.
11. James, Brian D., George N. Baum, Julie Perez, and Kevin N. Baum. Technoeconomic Analysis of Photoelectrochemical (PEC) Hydrogen Production. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/pec_technoeconomic_analysis.pdf
12. Noorden, Richard Van. “Secrets of artificial leaf revealed.” Nature News, September 29, 2011. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110929/full/news.2011.564.html
13. Image: EMSL. “Molecules Frozen Stiff.” Flickr, December 3, 2010. http://www.flickr.com/photos/emsl/5416820160/
14. Image: Yikrazuul. “Manganese cluster.” Wikimedia Commons, May 15, 2009. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Manganese_cluster.svg

Prathima Radhakrishnan is a second year student from the University of Chicago majoring in the biological sciences and biochemistry and minoring in creative writing. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

While willpower has long intrigued psychologists, groundbreaking research in recent years has changed our basic understanding of it. Psychologists now say that willpower depends on a limited but replaceable source of energy.1 According to this idea, known as ego depletion, our willpower becomes drained as we work through demanding tasks and decisions. This new understanding of willpower comes at a time when technology is redefining our experience of willpower.

Closely related to ego depletion is decision fatigue – the idea that we make poor decisions when willpower runs low. The effects of decision fatigue can be startling. A well-known study of parole appeals found that prisoners’ chances of gaining parole fluctuated wildly over the course of the day.2 At the beginning of the day, judges granted parole to prisoners 65 percent of the time. Several hours later they granted parole to only about 10 percent of prisoners. The rate shot back up to 65 percent right after lunch and dinner breaks.

This unnerving pattern can be explained by glucose concentrations in the brain. Researchers suggest that willpower relies on glucose as a limited energy source, rising and falling with glucose levels.3 The judges were receiving a burst of glucose from meals, but the mental work of analyzing case after case gradually depleted their reserves. Similar effects have been witnessed in many psychological experiments. In one experiment, subjects drank regular or diet lemonade and then performed a decision task.4 The people who drank sugar-free lemonade were much more likely to make impulsive decisions. Because of lower glucose levels, they displayed a diminished ability to engage in effortful decision-making processes.

Experiments like this have led some psychologists to describe glucose as a sort of brain fuel for willpower. While this biochemical account of willpower appeals to us for its reductionist explanation, it carries unsettling implications. It seems to absolve us of blame for lapses in self-control. Is it really my fault if I fail to resist delicious cupcakes, or do something worse?

Perhaps it is. Recent experiments indicate that cognition heavily influences willpower. Specifically, our beliefs about willpower – whether we conceive of it as biologically limited or not – immensely influence our self-control.5 Researchers at Stanford University examined people’s beliefs about willpower prior to subjecting them to a battery of self-regulation tasks. People who viewed willpower as biologically limited displayed substantially less self-control than those who viewed willpower otherwise. The phenomenon extended outside of laboratory experiments to long-term behaviors like dieting. The researchers assert that ego depletion depends on our implicit theories of willpower, rather than glucose concentration. While these results do not necessarily conflict with the limited energy model, they demonstrate that willpower cannot be reduced to mere glucose concentrations.

While the scientific understanding of willpower expands, our daily experience of it continues to evolve. We have to exercise self-control in response to new stimuli. We grapple with tempting influences like YouTube that did not exist prior to the Web. Willpower is after all a relatively modern notion: Google’s Ngram viewer shows that use of the word took off starting around 1960.6 YouTube, along with companies like Facebook and Amazon, continue to expand rapidly. YouTube now streams over four billion videos every day.7

YouTube targets users’ willpower through its advertising and content presentation. Much like a supermarket, YouTube’s interface barrages users with choice. Go to a typical video page and there are nearly 30 links to promoted and related videos. Finish watching a video and the screen flutters with 12 more links. The temptation to watch additional video and sheer amount of choice facilitate ego depletion and decision fatigue. Ego depletion makes it harder to leave the website and attend to other priorities.

Companies and marketers have a strong incentive to present their advertising and content in ways that weaken their audience’s willpower. But media sites like YouTube are uniquely positioned to target their users’ willpower – the amount of choice they present is virtually unlimited. While the typical supermarket carries around 50,000 distinct products,8 the presentation of choice remains limited by physical factors. YouTube, on the other hand, can create dynamic and interactive experiences that target users’ willpower more selectively. Personalized content is huge here. YouTube and many other websites harness personal data to tailor content to our interests. Personalized content is more tempting than plain content and more effectively challenges our self-control.

Willpower remains an elusive animal. And expanding access to YouTube and other technologies continue to reshape our everyday experience of willpower. But research in the last several years has greatly developed our understanding of willpower, enabling us to get a better sense of our impulses. Can future findings reconcile the limited energy model with the evidence that willpower stems from cognition? Should we regard willpower as something controlled by brain chemistry or shaped by mindset? In any case, our experience of willpower will continue to evolve with technological change – and so will our scientific understanding.

References

1. Gailliot, Matthew T., and Roy F. Baumeister. “The Physiology of Willpower: Linking Blood Glucose to Self-Control.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 11 no. 4 (2007): 303-27.
2. Danziger, Shai, Jonathan Levav, and Liora Avnaim-Pesso. “Extraneous Factors in Judicial Decisions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 no. 17 (2011): 6889-92.
3. Gailliot, Matthew T., Roy F. Baumeister, C. Nathan DeWall, Jon K. Maner, E. Ashby Plant, Dianne M. Tice, Lauren E. Brewer, and Brandon J. Schmeichel. “Self-Control Relies on Glucose as a Limited Energy Source: Willpower Is More Than a Metaphor.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 no. 2 (2007): 325-36.
4. Masicampo, E.J., Roy F. Baumesiter. “Toward a Physiology of Dual-Process Reasoning and Judgment: Lemonade, Willpower, and Expensive Rule-Based Analysis.” Psychological Science 19 no. 3 (2008): 255-60.
5. Job, Veronika, Carol S. Dweck, and Gregory M. Walton. “Ego Depletion—Is It All in Your Head?” Psychological Science 21 no. 11 (2010): 1686-93.
6. Google Ngram Viewer. Accessed February 2, 2012. http://books.google.com/ngram
7. Oreskovic, Alexei. “YouTube hits 4 billion daily views.” January 23, 2012. Accessed February 1, 2010. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/23/us-google-youtube-idUSTRE80M0TS20120123
8. “Supermarket Facts.” Food Marketing Institute. Accessed January 24, 2012. http://www.fmi.org/facts_figs/?fuseaction=superfact
9. “Just Another Computer Addict.” Flickr. February 2, 2010. Accessed February 14, 2012. http://www.flickr.com/photos/peter-repeater/4325173849/
10. “What Makes Apple Apple. Digital image.” Flickr. December 22, 2011. Accessed February 14, 2012. http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/6555465931/in/photostream

Michael Begun is a second-year student at the University of Chicago majoring in computer science and minoring in linguistics. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

Source: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It is difficult for young people today to imagine a time without text messaging and internet surfing. The current generation of college students in particular have literally grown up with the internet, and are often more technologically literate than their parents and professors. Studies have shown that young people’s frequent use of the internet affected their brain development,1 a finding that gives rise to the question of how education today is affected by students’ different ways of thinking and studying.  Furthermore, are the internet-minded students at an advantage or disadvantage regarding their education and their ability to retain what is taught? The answer appears to be two-sided: while too much use of the internet can lead to addiction and shorter attention spans, it has also been shown that being internet-minded gives people the potential to learn even more. Of course, for that to happen, it is necessary to have educational systems that embrace how young people think today, and cater to their particular needs.

Few would argue against the internet being a revolutionary force that has changed society significantly in the past few decades, but surprisingly little research has actually been done on how it is affecting our brains and the way people think.2 Researcher Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University is one of the few who has looked at the internet’s effect on cognition. She found that people were much less likely to remember particular facts if they believed that the information would be accessible to them in the future.3 When presented with random facts, participants in the study who believed the information would be lost after they read it scored much higher on the quizzes that asked them to recall the facts than those participants who thought they could access the information later. Interestingly, she also found that most people immediately turn to the internet when they are presented with a question to which they don’t know the answer.2 Furthermore, she noticed that people prioritize remembering where certain information can be found over the information itself.3 In an interview for Columbia University, Sparrow explained that the internet has become today’s primary source of transactive memory, or memory that uses external sources to store and to retrieve information.2 The idea of transactive memory is nothing new; how many times have we not bothered to memorize a certain recipe because we knew we could simply ask our mothers when we needed it? Today, it is the other way around- individuals first turn to the internet, then consult others, so the former reduces people’s need to remember details by always serving as a go-to source for our questions.2 One implication that Sparrow’s research has on students therefore is that they might not be as detail oriented in their studying. However, as Sparrow also notes, not being burdened with details but instead forming the bigger picture gives people the capacity to learn so much more, and has the potential to make humans smarter on the whole.

Other studies have enlightened us of the more negative effects of the internet on cognition and learning. Two recent articles by the NYT discuss how constant stimulation by email, text messages, and online video games create a profound obstacle to the focus and productivity of both young people and adults.1 Furthermore, young people are particularly disadvantaged by the technology because their growing minds are more susceptible to developing a short attention span in response to the stimuli. Even without the internet as a distraction, many young people struggle as is to manage time wisely and resist impulsive behavior. The concern is that the younger generations will be ‘wired’ differently than the older generations, and that they will be at a disadvantage. For example, the idea of “internet addiction” has been increasingly discussed in psychiatry as a growing issue.4 Constant stimulation, perceived as exciting, can trigger dopamine release in the brain, without which one might begin to feel bored. In this way, a person might come to seek distractions via the internet.5

With different studies highlighting both the positive and the negative ways that the internet affects cognition, the relevant question becomes whether the internet spells doom or success for today’s students. Some believe that it is not a question of internet use, but a question of teaching methods.6 It is clear that the students of today and their baby-boomer generation professors grew up in very different academic environments, disconnecting them. For example, the average college student today has grown up in an environment of constant stimulation, leading them to process information in a very different way than older graduates. Yet, the format of most college classes has changed very little in the past few decades. Lectures and long reading assignments, both still common, may be more challenging to today’s student because they are not as interactive and stimulating.6 However, many educational institutions are making an effort to make the format of homework and lectures relevant to the internet minded student of today. A greater emphasis on multimedia and kinesthetic experiences, group projects or online collaborations, and also learning management systems (such as Blackboard used at the University of Chicago) are all ways in which universities are trying to incorporate the internet and create new types of learning more suited to today’s students.6 It has been proven repeatedly that when students are engaged and stimulated in a way they find interesting, the results can be impressive.1 This is why it can often be the case that the same students who struggle to remain focused during a long reading assignment can easily spend hours building a website or editing a video project for a class; those kinds of interactive assignments appeal to young people, and also allow the students to instantly see the products of their work, generating the same instant gratification- which is what makes video games appealing.1

With the rapidly evolving nature of the internet and technology associated with it, it is difficult to tell what the future will bring. It is possible that the problem might fix itself as the students of today become the professors of tomorrow; alternatively, new inventions might bring more challenges in educating generations who have grown up influenced by different technology. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that knowing the effects of influential technology on cognition is key if education is to achieve its maximal level of success with each generation.

References:

1. Richtel, Matt. “Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction.” New York Times. Nov. 21, 2010. URL.
2. Sparrow, Betsy. Columbia University. Interview, 3:08. July 14, 2011. URL.
3. Sparrow, Betsy et al. “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips.” SCIENCE, 333 (2011): 776-778. URL.
4. Block, Jerald J. “Issues for DSM-V: Internet Addiction.” American Journal of Psychiatry, 156, no 3. (2008): 306-307. URL.
5. Richtel, Matt. “Attached to Technology and Paying a Price.” New York Times. June 6, 2010. URL.
6. Baker, Russell, Erika Matulich, and Raymond Papp. “Teach Me In the Way I Learn: Education and the Internet Generation,” Journal of College Teaching and Learning, 4, no. 4 (2007): 27-32. URL.
7. Miles, Stuart. “Child Working on Computer” (2011). FreeDigitalPhotos.net. URL.

Fili Bogdanic is a second-year student at the University of Chicago majoring in Biology and minoring in English. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook.

Harnessing the Cognitive Surplus

By James Scott-Brown

How do you spend your free time? If you were an average American, you would spend 20 hours a week watching television, and another 3 hours playing games [1]. Clay Shirky has written about how, after the Second World War, enormous changes in society occurred, so that “society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time”, creating a vast “cognitive surplus” [2]. How can this surplus be effectively exploited? One approach is to take advantage of people’s leisure time and enjoyment of computer games to solve real problems, by creating games in which players complete tasks that computers cannot yet. This has been done for the problems of image tagging (the ESP Game/Google Image Labeler), locating objects in images (Peekaboom), collecting common-sense facts (Verbosity), predicting protein folding (Foldit) and improving the design of electronic circuits (funSAT). Alternatively, mundane but essential tasks can be modified to have useful side-effects (reCAPTCHA).

The work of Luis von Ahn is a good example of harnessing the human “cognitive surplus” using both approaches. He began by developing the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), which distinguishes humans from computers by asking them to complete a task, usually typing letters from a distorted image. This allows websites to prevent computer programs from automatically creating multiple accounts, sending large numbers of spam messages, or making many attempts to guess a user’s password. The initial paper describing CAPTCHA suggested that, as well as helping to distinguish between computers and humans, the tests could encourage work on improved text recognition algorithms, jokingly saying that this was ‘how lazy cryptographers do AI’; however, the time humans spent completing them was wasted [3]. A subsequent refinement, reCAPTCHA, uses the process of completing a CAPTCHA to decipher words in scanned documents that are too distorted or smudged to be recognised by a computer [4]. This is done by present- ing the user with images of two words simultaneously: an “unknown word”, and a known “control” word selected randomly from a list of more than 100,000. If a user types the control word correctly, they are assumed to be human, and their attempt at typing the unknown word is recorded. Once three people have provided the same response to the “unknown word” image, they are assumed to be correct, and their transcription is added to the list of control words. Thus, the number of transcribed words increases as reCAPTCHAs are completed. reCAPTCHA has been an enormous success: by September 2008, it was being used by more than 40,000 websites, and had transcribed over 440 million words [5].

Von Ahm has also developed a series of what he calls “Games With a Purpose” (GWAP) [6,7]. Several of them award points for agreeing with other players: in the ESP Game and popVideo, a group of players see the same image or video, and must submit keywords that could describe it; in Matchin, players are presented with a pair of images, and asked which one they prefer; in Squigl, players are shown an image and must draw an outline around a named object. Others rely on describing an object to a partner, and understanding their description: in TagTune, players describe what they hear to their partner and, based upon each other’s descriptions, guess whether they are listening to the same tune; in Verbosity one player has to describe a word by what it “is” – “is a type of”, “looks like”, “is about the same size as”, “is the opposite of” and “is a kind of” – while the other has to guess what it is [8]. By collecting human responses to questions, these games teach the computer specific facts, either about the meaning of words (Verbosity) or about particular images, videos, or pieces of music. All of them are useful in some way: tagging media with keywords allows search engines to produce more relevant results; the facts collected by Verbosity may be useful for Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing projects; and by rating how attractive images are, Matchin could lead to computer systems that select the prettiest images to present to users.

The main reason that these games are fun is that players must try to guess what other players are thinking. In the ESP game, for example, users are told which of their suggested tags matched those of their partner, which can influence their future suggestions. By adding this social interaction, boring tasks like tagging images or music are made fun. Additionally, users are actively encouraged to refer their friends to the site by bonus points. The competitive element extends beyond recruiting friends, as at the end of each game, players are told how many more points they need to match the day’s high-score, encouraging them to start another game. Players who receive specific numbers of points are awarded skill levels, and those with the highest scores appear on a leaderboard. During a game, continual encouragement to play on is provided by a sound playing (and, in some games, motivating text appearing) whenever a match occurs. Fixed time limits for each game maintain interest, forcing players to think quickly, so that the games are more challenging – and hence fun. One player apparently claimed that the ESP game was “like crack”: arguably, with its flashing lights and beeping noises, the game has more in common with a casino [9].

Both reCAPTCHA and the GWAP games are very easy to learn – it takes just seconds to read and understand the rules – which has surely contributed to their success. However, such simplicity is not essential, and many players have been attracted to the much more complicated game Foldit, in which players attempt to manipulate predicted proteins structure to produce more likely (i.e. lower energy) structures. Since it is not immediately obvious how to interpret or alter the protein structures, help is provided by a series of in-game tutorials. A separate wiki explains the relevant biochemistry, in-game controls and strategies [10]. Most of the top players in sheets). Players can thus produce better predictions of protein structures, which are important not only to the understanding of basic biological processes, but also to the rational design of drugs targeting specific proteins in disease.

So why do people choose to play these games? Perhaps they are enticed by invitations to “contribute to science” (Foldit) or claims that “You’re helping the world become a better place . . . you’re training computers to solve problems for humans all over the world” (GWAP) ‐ which the games do fulfill. When Foldit players were asked their motivation for playing, about 40% of answers referred to the scientific purpose of Foldit; 35% to a feeling of immersion in a task; 20% to a feeling of achievement; and the remainder to social involvement in the game [11]. Players of the more casual GWAP games are likely to be motivated less by the higher purpose of the games, and more by a sense of fun and com‐ petitiveness. Together, GWAP and Foldit have shown that people can be persuaded to perform useful tasks that cannot be automated, by presenting them in the context of a game, with rules, goals, and scores. In this way, otherwise idle minds can achieve what computers cannot.

References

1.US Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey 2009, Tables A-2 and 11

2. Clay Shirky. Gin, Television, and Social Surplus. Talk given by Clay Shirky at the Web 2.0 conference, 2008 Apr 23. Transcript available from: http://www. herecomeseverybody.org/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html

2. reCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Read Books [Online Homepage]. http://www. google.com/recaptcha

3. Von Ahn et al. CAPTCHA: Using Hard AI Problems For Security. Proceedings of Eurocrypt 2003; 2656:294-311

4. reCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Read Books. http://www.google.com/recaptcha

5. Von Ahn et al. reCAPTCHA: human-based character recognition via Web security measures. Science 2008; 321(5895):1465-8.

6. Gwap.com [Online Homepage]. Available from: http://gwap.com

7. Von Ahn and Dabbish. Designing Games With a Purpose. Communications of the ACM 2008; 51(8):58-67

8. This is similar to Burgener’s 20Q game, in which users train a neural network, so that it is able to distinguish between objects by asking fewer than 20 questions. 20Q.net Inc. [Online Homepage] http://20q.net

9. Thompson, Clive. For Certain Tasks, the Cortex Still Beats the CPU. Wired Magazine. Issue 15.07. Accessible from: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/ magazine/15- 07/ff_humancomp

10. Foldit wiki. [Online Homepage] http://foldit.wikia.com/wiki/FoldIt_Wiki

11. Cooper et al. “Predicting protein structures with a multiplayer online game.” Nature 466(7307):756. Supplementary Figure 3 shows the biochemical experience of players; Supplementary Figure 4 shows motivations for playing the game

12. CASP8 Results. Available from: http://fold.it/portal/node/729520

This article was originally published in The Science in Society Review at the University of Cambridge by The Triple Helix Inc. Follow The Triple Helix Online on Twitter and join us on Facebook