Having trouble discovering extraterrestrial life? Then you might consider evolving your own.
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Ryan Norkus/DigitalSpace
A concept view of an artificial protocell forming in the EvoGrid.
In October, a small team of Silicon Valley researchers plans to turn software originally designed to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life to the task of looking for evidence of artificial life generated on a cluster of high-performance computers.
The effort, dubbed the EvoGrid, is the brainchild and doctoral dissertation topic of Bruce Damer, a Silicon Valley computer scientist who develops simulation software for NASA at a company, Digital Space, based in Santa Cruz, Calif.
Mr. Damer and his chief engineer, Peter Newman, are modeling their effort after the SETI@Home project, which was started by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, program to make use of hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected computers in homes and offices. The project turned these small computers into a vast supercomputer by using pattern recognition software on individual computers to sift through a vast amount of data to look for evidence of faint signals from civilizations elsewhere in the cosmos.
The EvoGrid goal is to detect evidence of self-organizing behavior in computerized simulations that have been constructed to model the first emergence of life in the physical world. Pattern recognition software on home computers would seem a perfect tool.
The project is a new effort in the field of computer-based artificial life research, which generated great interest among computer scientists and biologists in the 1980s and ’90s but waned as rapid progress was made in synthetic biology. In the past decade researchers have begun modifying genetic material for applications like drugs and the growth of fuels. Many scientists believe the field stands close to synthesizing biological life from basic materials.
Digital artificial life research is based on the original work of Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann at Los Alamos Laboratory during the 1940s. Von Neumann posed the idea of a cellular automaton, essentially an array of cells, like the squares of a checkerboard. Each cell could represent simple states like on and off, creating an ever-changing lattice that could be programmed with simple rules in a computer.
Later artificial life researchers created programs to take advantage of the growing power of computers to model evolution in simple, abstract universes. Tierra, in particular, first developed by the ecologist Thomas Ray in the early 1990s, drew a great deal of attention. The program, which ran on more than 100 workstations, demonstrated the mutation of digital forms and elementary aspects of evolution. More recently, Spore, from Will Wright, popularized many of the aspects of artificial life in a game that is now widely available on desktop computers, videogame consoles and even iPhones.
Yet despite widespread interest, the field has had difficulty escaping the critique that modeling such “toy universes” may be intellectually interesting but is unlikely to create digital forms with the incredibly complex properties of biological life.
“Every 10 years somebody revives these systems,” said George Dyson, a science historian, who worries the EvoGrid may be reinventing the wheel.
The project also has its defenders.
“My attitude is, let’s give the strong artificial life hypothesis a chance,” said Richard Gordon, a radiologist at the University of Manitoba, who has written widely on the subject and is an adviser to the project.
Answering skeptics, Mr. Damer said that by coupling far more powerful computing systems than previously available, with potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of PC-based observers, the EvoGrid could make it possible to detect emergent behavior. “The main challenge,” he said, “is not the generation of some kind of novel molecular interaction. Rather, it’s the analysis and trying to see what’s going on.”
To quickly build the EvoGrid, the researchers are relying on two open-source software projects.
Boinc is a system financed by the National Science Foundation that uses the Internet to permit scientists to take advantage of free computing cycles available on network-connected computers. Last week, for example the system was composed of more than 500,000 computers that generated an average of almost 2.45 petaflops of computing power. By contrast, in June of this year, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, built by I.B.M. at Los Alamos National Laboratories, produced 1.1 petaflops.
To simulate digital evolution, the EvoGrid will use a second program, Gromacs, developed at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, to model molecular interactions. EvoGrid researchers hope to create a computer model that replicates the early ocean and then use it as a virtual “primordial soup” to quickly evolve digital forms.
Software simulations that can model evolution could be used by human designers, Mr. Damer argued. “We can’t build cars and airplanes or even toys these days without computer modeling and simulation,” he said. “So why not biochemistry?”
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
BOINC power
Computing power
Top 100 volunteers · Statistics
Active: 328,939 volunteers, 585,073 computers.
24-hour average: 2,927.70 TeraFLOPS.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RS__ is contributing 2,809 GFLOPS.
Country: United Kingdom; Team: Team England (Boinc)
Comment
There are over 500,000 computers involved in these various projects. Imagine what could be accomplished if there were ten million computers involved!
Top 100 volunteers · Statistics
Active: 328,939 volunteers, 585,073 computers.
24-hour average: 2,927.70 TeraFLOPS.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RS__ is contributing 2,809 GFLOPS.
Country: United Kingdom; Team: Team England (Boinc)
Comment
There are over 500,000 computers involved in these various projects. Imagine what could be accomplished if there were ten million computers involved!
AQUA@home
What it's all about: This project, launched in 2008, is run by D-Wave, a Canadian company trying to build a quantum computer. D-Wave's stated goal here is "to predict the performance of superconducting adiabatic quantum computers on a variety of hard problems arising in fields ranging from materials science to machine learning." The company's current focus is trying to determine how an adiabatic quantum computer's running time scales with the size of the input problem, says Dr. Kamran Karimi, D-Wave algorithms researcher. "We want to go to 200-qubit and 240-qubit problems," Karimi says.
Comment
I know NOTHING about quantum physics, and this is what this project sounds like. I was, and am, horrible at physics. i volunteered for this project because they needed more modern computers and chips to do their work, and I just happen to have a pretty good chip and computer.
Comment
I know NOTHING about quantum physics, and this is what this project sounds like. I was, and am, horrible at physics. i volunteered for this project because they needed more modern computers and chips to do their work, and I just happen to have a pretty good chip and computer.
GPUGrid.net
What it's all about: GPUGrid.net stands apart from a lot of older volunteer computing projects in that it relies on graphics processing units from NVIDIA graphics cards and PlayStation3 systems. The project uses the processing power to perform simulations aimed at better understanding proteins and other molecular events.
Comments
Proteins are the switches that turn our metabolic processes on and off. In cancer one of the switches gets stuck in the replication phase and it cause the cells to multiply indefinitely. Finding the protein to turn that switch off will be critical in the solving of the cancer disease.
Comments
Proteins are the switches that turn our metabolic processes on and off. In cancer one of the switches gets stuck in the replication phase and it cause the cells to multiply indefinitely. Finding the protein to turn that switch off will be critical in the solving of the cancer disease.
SETI@home
What it's all about: SETI stands for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. This project, hosted at UC Berkeley, celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. The SETI@home team last year expanded on the traditional SETI@home search for narrowband signals via the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico to look for broader-band, short-time pulses, via its Astropulse application. At last count, SETI@home had about 180,000 active volunteers and nearly 290,000 active computers doing work.
Comment
Another HUGE undertaking that will take all the computing power that can be recruited. I volunteered for this project for years, but really prefer to contribute to something more directly beneficial to people, like finding a cure for cancer.
Comment
Another HUGE undertaking that will take all the computing power that can be recruited. I volunteered for this project for years, but really prefer to contribute to something more directly beneficial to people, like finding a cure for cancer.
Quake-Catcher Network
What it's all about: This one is different from the other projects in that it's not really exploiting processing power, but rather, built-in accelerometers in laptops as a distributed seismograph. The idea is to provide a better understanding of earthquakes, give early warning to schools, emergency response systems and others (a big emphasis of the project is getting K-12 science teachers involved). While desktop systems don't have accelerometers, they can be outfitted with USB-based sensors to partake in the network. The smallest earthquake detected by the network so far measured 3.1 in southern California and the largest has been a 6.4 in Japan. The project, which has about 1,000 sensors in action (though the number varies week to week), is the brainchild of researchers from the University of California, Riverside and Stanford University.
Comment
I imagine a couple MILLION sensors would be better! Especially in high danger areas, like California.
Comment
I imagine a couple MILLION sensors would be better! Especially in high danger areas, like California.
Climateprediction.net
Climateprediction.net
What it's all about: Climateprediction.net, based at Oxford University and the Open University in the U.K., describes itself as "the world's largest climate forecasting experiment for the 21st century." This distributed computing project is designed to produce predictions of the Earth's climate up to 2080 and to test the accuracy of climate models. Experiments include estimating the possible effects of climate change mitigation strategies and an investigation of the possible impact of human activity on extreme weather risk.
Related stories
Donate Your PC's Spare Time to Help the World
Tap the Power of Your PC to Fight Cancer
PC Grid Powers Search for Smallpox Cure
Comment
I contribute my unused computer cycles to this project as it analyzes the effects of global warming. This article itemizes 12 charitable projects to which you can contribute YOUR unused computer cycles to. Some are looking for extra-terrestial life, others are looking for a cure for cancer. The ten bucks a month it costs me to leave my computer on all night with the BOINC programs running is my little contribution to mankind. I wish we could get all the computers in business, colleges, and schools involved, as they have thousands of computers, maybe millions, that could be used for a good thing. It does seem to be a good place to spend some stimulus money, as it directly facilitates research.
What it's all about: Climateprediction.net, based at Oxford University and the Open University in the U.K., describes itself as "the world's largest climate forecasting experiment for the 21st century." This distributed computing project is designed to produce predictions of the Earth's climate up to 2080 and to test the accuracy of climate models. Experiments include estimating the possible effects of climate change mitigation strategies and an investigation of the possible impact of human activity on extreme weather risk.
Related stories
Donate Your PC's Spare Time to Help the World
Tap the Power of Your PC to Fight Cancer
PC Grid Powers Search for Smallpox Cure
Comment
I contribute my unused computer cycles to this project as it analyzes the effects of global warming. This article itemizes 12 charitable projects to which you can contribute YOUR unused computer cycles to. Some are looking for extra-terrestial life, others are looking for a cure for cancer. The ten bucks a month it costs me to leave my computer on all night with the BOINC programs running is my little contribution to mankind. I wish we could get all the computers in business, colleges, and schools involved, as they have thousands of computers, maybe millions, that could be used for a good thing. It does seem to be a good place to spend some stimulus money, as it directly facilitates research.
The Buddy System: How Medical Data Revealed Secret to Health and Happiness
The Buddy System: How Medical Data Revealed Secret to Health and Happiness
By Jonah Lehrer 09.12.09
Obesity: Fat By Association
Smoking: Together We Quit, Divided We Fail
Happiness: Joy Is Contagious, Offline and on the Net
Download the PDF (1.9 MB)
A revolution in the science of social networks began with a stash of old papers found in a storeroom in Framingham, Massachusetts. They were the personal records of 5,124 male and female subjects from the Framingham Heart Study. Started in 1948, the ongoing project has revealed many of the risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease, including smoking and hypertension.
In 2003, Nicholas Christakis, a social scientist and internist at Harvard, and James Fowler, a political scientist at UC San Diego, began searching through the Framingham data. But they didn't care about LDL cholesterol or enlarged left ventricles. Rather, they were drawn to a clerical quirk: The original Framingham researchers noted each participant's close friends, colleagues, and family members.
"They asked for follow-up purposes," Christakis says. "If someone moved away, the researchers would call their friends and try to track them down."
Christakis and Fowler realized that this obsolete list of references could be transformed into a detailed map of human relationships. Because two-thirds of all Framingham adults participated in the first phase of the study, and their children and children's children in subsequent phases, almost the entire social network of the community was chronicled on these handwritten sheets. It took almost five years to extract the data—the handwriting was often illegible—but the scientists eventually constructed a detailed atlas of associations in which every connection was quantified.
The two researchers thought the Framingham social network might demonstrate how relationships directly influence behavior and thus health and happiness. Since the study had tracked its subjects' weight for decades, Christakis and Fowler first analyzed obesity. Clicking through the years, they watched the condition spread to nearly 40 percent of the population. Fowler shows me an animation of their study—30 years of data reduced to 108 seconds of shifting circles and lines. Each circle represents an individual. Size is proportional to body mass index; yellow indicates obesity. "This woman is about to get big," Fowler says. "And look at this cluster. They all gain weight at about the same time."
Obesity: Fat By Association
In 1948, fewer than 10 percent of Framingham residents were obese. By 1985, 18 percent were, and today about 40 percent are. What changed? Social norms of diet and physical appearance. "A bunch of people discovered fast food at the same time," social scientist Christakis says. "Then the network took over."
Obese person*
Nonobese person*
Friendship/marital connection
Familial connectionUnlike a flu epidemic, which starts with one infection, the scattered cases of obesity on early network maps indicated a multicentric contagion.Obesity radiated outward from clusters of overweight people.The condition's virulent infection rate led to dramatic clumping as weight classes self-segregated.Having an obese spouse raised the risk of becoming obese by 37 percent. If a friend became obese, the risk skyrocketed by 171 percent.Lean individuals surrounded by obesity were rare.*Circle size corresponds to body mass index
Images based on graphics created by James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis
There's something strange about watching life unfold as a social network. It's easy to forget that every link is a human relationship and every circle a waistline. The messy melodrama of life—all the failed diets and fading friendships—becomes a sterile cartoon.
But that's exactly the point. All that drama obscures a profound truth about human society. By studying Framingham as an interconnected network rather than a mass of individuals, Christakis and Fowler made a remarkable discovery: Obesity spread like a virus. Weight gain had a stunning infection rate. If one person became obese, the likelihood that his friend would follow suit increased by 171 percent. (This means that the network is far more predictive of obesity than the presence of genes associated with the condition.) By the time the animation is finished, the screen is full of swollen yellow beads, like blobs of fat on the surface of chicken soup.
The data exposed not only the contagious nature of obesity but the power of social networks to influence individual behavior. This effect extends over great distances—a fact revealed by tracking original subjects who moved away from Framingham. "Your friends who live far away have just as big an impact on your behavior as friends who live next door," Fowler says. "Think about it this way: Even if you see a friend only once a year, that friend will still change your sense of what's appropriate. And that new norm will influence what you do." An obese sibling hundreds of miles away can cause us to eat more. The individual is a romantic myth; indeed, no man is an island.
In September, Christakis and Fowler published their first book for a general audience, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. Although their research is filled with abstruse equations, the two seem most excited when describing the grand sweep of their work. "The story of modern science is the story of studying ever smaller bits of nature, like atoms and neurons," Christakis says. "But people aren't just the sum of their parts. I see this research as an attempt to put human beings back together again."
Once upon a time, social interaction was bounded by space; we met only in person. But then communication became mediated by technology. From telegraph to telephone to email to Twitter, each innovation fed the same anxieties, as people worried that traditional forms of community were being destroyed. The telephone was ruining family life; we're neglecting our real friends for our so-called friends on Facebook.
But does technology actually change the nature of the social network? Or does it simply extend it? It has long been recognized, for instance, that the human capacity for close friendship is remarkably consistent. People from cultures throughout the world report between four and seven bosom buddies. "The properties of our social networks are byproducts of evolution," Christakis says. "The assumption has been that our mind can handle only so many other people."
On Facebook, though, the average user has approximately 110 "friends," which has led some scientists to speculate that the Web is altering the very nature of human networks. For the first time in history, we can keep track of hundreds of people. The computer, they say, is helping to compensate for the limitations of the brain.
Smoking: Together We Quit, Divided We Fail
In the early '70s, 65 percent of Framingham residents ages 40 to 49 smoked regularly. By 2001, only 22 percent consumed one or more cigarettes daily. But the smoke didn't clear at random: Friends and family had a decisive influence. "People quit together," Fowler says, "or they didn't quit at all."
Smoker*
Nonsmoker
Friendship/marital connection
Familial connectionSmokers were evenly distributed throughout Framingham's social network.Smokers and nonsmokers intermingled freely, and many of the town's most excessive tobacco users had plenty of nonsmoking friends.Clusters of smokers persisted, but many were socially isolated.Entire coveys of smokers stopped in unison.When smokers quit, their friends were 36 percent more likely to follow suit. The effect tapered with each degree of separation, becoming insignificant at four degrees.*Circle size corresponds to daily cigarette intake
But Christakis and Fowler were skeptical of such claims. They knew that social habits are stubborn things. So they persuaded a university to let them analyze the Facebook pages of its students, devising a clever way to distinguish between casual friends and deeper emotional connections. Close friends, they hypothesized, would post pictures of one another on their Facebook pages, since the relationship wasn't purely virtual.
After analyzing thousands of photos, the scientists found that, on average, each student had 6.6 close friends in their online network. In other words, nothing has really changed; even the most fervent Facebook users still maintain only a limited circle of intimates.
"On Facebook, you've got a few close friends and lots of people you barely know," Fowler says. "Because the cost of information transmission is so low"—that is, the site makes it easy to communicate—"we end up staying in touch with more acquaintances. But that doesn't mean we have more friends."
Although the scientists are fascinated by the online world—"Facebook could become a revolutionary data set for people studying networks," Fowler says—their central research tool remains those handwritten papers salvaged from the Framingham Heart Study. In the four years since Christakis and Fowler built their first social map, they've published several groundbreaking papers documenting the network's influence on everything from cigarette addiction to happiness. In some cases, they've found that the impact of networks disappears abruptly after three degrees of separation. (In other words, if a friend of a friend of a friend stops smoking, then we are also significantly more likely to quit. But more-distant relationships have no effect; they are beyond the "social frontier.")
Although Christakis and Fowler have begun to study the variables, such as genetics, that determine a person's place within a social network—whether we're in the well-connected center or exiled to the fringe, which reflects popularity—they emphasize that there is no ideal social location. During a flu epidemic, the periphery is the safest place, since people with fewer connections are less exposed to the virus. But being on the fringe also reduces access to gossip and resources, which radiate out from the center. Because networks transmit the stuff of life—from happiness to HIV—evolution has generated a diversity of personality traits, which take advantage of different positions within the group. There are wallflowers and Wilt Chamberlains, shy geeks and "super-connectors." According to Christakis and Fowler, there is no single solution to the problem of other people. Individual variation is a crucial element of every stable community, from the Aborigines of Australia to the avatars of Second Life.
And because we're social primates, such communities are essential. When we're cut off from our network, we slip into a spiral of loneliness and despair, which severely affects our health. "Your friends might make you sick and cause you to gain weight," Christakis says, "but they're also a source of tremendous happiness. When it comes to social networks, the positives outweigh the negatives. That's why networks are everywhere." People, in other words, need people: We are the glue holding ourselves together.
Happiness: Joy Is Contagious, Offline and on the Net
Studying the self-reported moods of Framingham subjects, Christakis and Fowler found that happy people have happy friends (and unhappy people, unhappy friends). Examining smiles in Facebook portraits, they found the same pattern: Even online, social networks gather around joyful expressions.
Happy Unhappy
Each happy friend increased an individual's probability of being happy by 9 percent. An extra $5,000 in income raised it only 2 percent.Even perfect strangers three degrees of separation away—friends of friends of friends—exerted a significant uplifting influence.Unhappy people at the center of the network are more likely than those at the periphery to become happy in the future.On average, smiling Facebook members reported 15 percent more close friends than their dour peers.According to an analysis of Facebook, people who smiled in their profile photos tended to cluster with other smilers.Emotions spread especially well through the online network, so it's a good bet this person will eventually post a smiling portrait.
Contributing editor Jonah Lehrer (jonah.lehrer@gmail.com) wrote about the neuroscience of magic in issue 17.05.
See All Comments
Posted by: Raghuvansh1
4 days ago1 Point
How can you came to conclusion on happiness, health from random survive one of the bogus social net work just like Face Book?These and other social net work arise from shallow lifestyle of American psyche.From very beginning American psyche was shal...
Permalink
Posted by: samagon
21 days ago1 Point
the human body needs exercise, we can't sit around all day and assume we won't get fat, fat is energy stored in our body for use, and if we don't use it we will be fat and shitty. good health is simple, exercise, no special diet, no water diet, no at...
Permalink
Posted by: williamthrilliam
28 days ago1 Point
It's simple, stop eating crap. Lean meats, veggies, nuts, berries, and oils. This means zero sugar and zero grain products (bread, Twinkies, you name it). You will loose weight, yes it is healthy. I have been doing this for about a year and I hav...
Permalink
Posted by: Agent037
29 days ago-1 Points
i cant believe i just wasted 5 minutes of my life reading this shit
Permalink
Posted by: jeffg1
29 days ago1 Point
it took you 5 minutes to read a half-page of text? maybe you should have put the big mac down.
Permalink
Posted by: schauhan
29 days ago1 Point
Ha ha, and another minute typing up your response :-)
Permalink
Posted by: luckyray
29 days ago1 Point
THis map shows visual of how contagious obesity is!! Hmm, I wonder if this is a virus or other harmless infection. This type of obesity caused by external agents has long since been suspected and partly proven with fair amount of skepticism. I strong...
Permalink
Posted by: ideazones
27 days ago1 Point
Virus is a metaphor. The contagion is social influence, not physical. You hang around with drug users long enough, you will use. You hang with large eaters, you will eat more. It is really pretty simple. Get it?
Permalink
Posted by: richardsr
20 days ago1 Point
Uh, actually.... http://www.physorg.com/news11898.html
Permalink
Posted by: Davidicus
29 days ago0 Points
I think is comes down to how you enjoy life, and what is expected of you, and some of us do not adjust to an aging body too well, diet habits need to change as we grow older, we have to be more conservative, when I think the opposite happens because ...
Comment
I did my Masters paper on the effects of social support on nurses. The criteria I used was a Burnout questionaire and a Depression questionaire. It turns out from my study that burnout and depression overlap. I had my subjects indicate how much social support they gave, and received, at home and at work, on a 0-10 scale. Depression is seen as a personal experience, while burnout is a professional happening. The main traits in depression are helplessness and hopelessness, along with a strong dose of negativity. Burnout is a gradual process also where one goes from emotional work exhaustion, to depersonalization (an emotional withdrawal from the patients), to a sense that you arent doing as good a job as you should be (and have done in the past). Theoretically one goes thru the stages of burnout gradually and smoothly, but that didnt happen in my study, as some were emotionally exhausted but didnt withdraw from the patients. Those were the 45 hospice nurses. They indicated pretty severe depression and emotional exhaustion but did NOT withdraw from their patients! The other 43 nurses were hospital nurses who worked with otherhealth professionals every day. Hospice nurses reported little and no support from their supervisors. They work in the patient homes individually most of the day and have little contact with other nurses or supervisors. It was also interesting that the hospice nurses that reported themselves as being the most spiritual reported less burnout, as they felt like they were helping the patients to a better place. Social support is very important in Nursing, as in most human endeavors.
By Jonah Lehrer 09.12.09
Obesity: Fat By Association
Smoking: Together We Quit, Divided We Fail
Happiness: Joy Is Contagious, Offline and on the Net
Download the PDF (1.9 MB)
A revolution in the science of social networks began with a stash of old papers found in a storeroom in Framingham, Massachusetts. They were the personal records of 5,124 male and female subjects from the Framingham Heart Study. Started in 1948, the ongoing project has revealed many of the risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease, including smoking and hypertension.
In 2003, Nicholas Christakis, a social scientist and internist at Harvard, and James Fowler, a political scientist at UC San Diego, began searching through the Framingham data. But they didn't care about LDL cholesterol or enlarged left ventricles. Rather, they were drawn to a clerical quirk: The original Framingham researchers noted each participant's close friends, colleagues, and family members.
"They asked for follow-up purposes," Christakis says. "If someone moved away, the researchers would call their friends and try to track them down."
Christakis and Fowler realized that this obsolete list of references could be transformed into a detailed map of human relationships. Because two-thirds of all Framingham adults participated in the first phase of the study, and their children and children's children in subsequent phases, almost the entire social network of the community was chronicled on these handwritten sheets. It took almost five years to extract the data—the handwriting was often illegible—but the scientists eventually constructed a detailed atlas of associations in which every connection was quantified.
The two researchers thought the Framingham social network might demonstrate how relationships directly influence behavior and thus health and happiness. Since the study had tracked its subjects' weight for decades, Christakis and Fowler first analyzed obesity. Clicking through the years, they watched the condition spread to nearly 40 percent of the population. Fowler shows me an animation of their study—30 years of data reduced to 108 seconds of shifting circles and lines. Each circle represents an individual. Size is proportional to body mass index; yellow indicates obesity. "This woman is about to get big," Fowler says. "And look at this cluster. They all gain weight at about the same time."
Obesity: Fat By Association
In 1948, fewer than 10 percent of Framingham residents were obese. By 1985, 18 percent were, and today about 40 percent are. What changed? Social norms of diet and physical appearance. "A bunch of people discovered fast food at the same time," social scientist Christakis says. "Then the network took over."
Obese person*
Nonobese person*
Friendship/marital connection
Familial connectionUnlike a flu epidemic, which starts with one infection, the scattered cases of obesity on early network maps indicated a multicentric contagion.Obesity radiated outward from clusters of overweight people.The condition's virulent infection rate led to dramatic clumping as weight classes self-segregated.Having an obese spouse raised the risk of becoming obese by 37 percent. If a friend became obese, the risk skyrocketed by 171 percent.Lean individuals surrounded by obesity were rare.*Circle size corresponds to body mass index
Images based on graphics created by James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis
There's something strange about watching life unfold as a social network. It's easy to forget that every link is a human relationship and every circle a waistline. The messy melodrama of life—all the failed diets and fading friendships—becomes a sterile cartoon.
But that's exactly the point. All that drama obscures a profound truth about human society. By studying Framingham as an interconnected network rather than a mass of individuals, Christakis and Fowler made a remarkable discovery: Obesity spread like a virus. Weight gain had a stunning infection rate. If one person became obese, the likelihood that his friend would follow suit increased by 171 percent. (This means that the network is far more predictive of obesity than the presence of genes associated with the condition.) By the time the animation is finished, the screen is full of swollen yellow beads, like blobs of fat on the surface of chicken soup.
The data exposed not only the contagious nature of obesity but the power of social networks to influence individual behavior. This effect extends over great distances—a fact revealed by tracking original subjects who moved away from Framingham. "Your friends who live far away have just as big an impact on your behavior as friends who live next door," Fowler says. "Think about it this way: Even if you see a friend only once a year, that friend will still change your sense of what's appropriate. And that new norm will influence what you do." An obese sibling hundreds of miles away can cause us to eat more. The individual is a romantic myth; indeed, no man is an island.
In September, Christakis and Fowler published their first book for a general audience, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. Although their research is filled with abstruse equations, the two seem most excited when describing the grand sweep of their work. "The story of modern science is the story of studying ever smaller bits of nature, like atoms and neurons," Christakis says. "But people aren't just the sum of their parts. I see this research as an attempt to put human beings back together again."
Once upon a time, social interaction was bounded by space; we met only in person. But then communication became mediated by technology. From telegraph to telephone to email to Twitter, each innovation fed the same anxieties, as people worried that traditional forms of community were being destroyed. The telephone was ruining family life; we're neglecting our real friends for our so-called friends on Facebook.
But does technology actually change the nature of the social network? Or does it simply extend it? It has long been recognized, for instance, that the human capacity for close friendship is remarkably consistent. People from cultures throughout the world report between four and seven bosom buddies. "The properties of our social networks are byproducts of evolution," Christakis says. "The assumption has been that our mind can handle only so many other people."
On Facebook, though, the average user has approximately 110 "friends," which has led some scientists to speculate that the Web is altering the very nature of human networks. For the first time in history, we can keep track of hundreds of people. The computer, they say, is helping to compensate for the limitations of the brain.
Smoking: Together We Quit, Divided We Fail
In the early '70s, 65 percent of Framingham residents ages 40 to 49 smoked regularly. By 2001, only 22 percent consumed one or more cigarettes daily. But the smoke didn't clear at random: Friends and family had a decisive influence. "People quit together," Fowler says, "or they didn't quit at all."
Smoker*
Nonsmoker
Friendship/marital connection
Familial connectionSmokers were evenly distributed throughout Framingham's social network.Smokers and nonsmokers intermingled freely, and many of the town's most excessive tobacco users had plenty of nonsmoking friends.Clusters of smokers persisted, but many were socially isolated.Entire coveys of smokers stopped in unison.When smokers quit, their friends were 36 percent more likely to follow suit. The effect tapered with each degree of separation, becoming insignificant at four degrees.*Circle size corresponds to daily cigarette intake
But Christakis and Fowler were skeptical of such claims. They knew that social habits are stubborn things. So they persuaded a university to let them analyze the Facebook pages of its students, devising a clever way to distinguish between casual friends and deeper emotional connections. Close friends, they hypothesized, would post pictures of one another on their Facebook pages, since the relationship wasn't purely virtual.
After analyzing thousands of photos, the scientists found that, on average, each student had 6.6 close friends in their online network. In other words, nothing has really changed; even the most fervent Facebook users still maintain only a limited circle of intimates.
"On Facebook, you've got a few close friends and lots of people you barely know," Fowler says. "Because the cost of information transmission is so low"—that is, the site makes it easy to communicate—"we end up staying in touch with more acquaintances. But that doesn't mean we have more friends."
Although the scientists are fascinated by the online world—"Facebook could become a revolutionary data set for people studying networks," Fowler says—their central research tool remains those handwritten papers salvaged from the Framingham Heart Study. In the four years since Christakis and Fowler built their first social map, they've published several groundbreaking papers documenting the network's influence on everything from cigarette addiction to happiness. In some cases, they've found that the impact of networks disappears abruptly after three degrees of separation. (In other words, if a friend of a friend of a friend stops smoking, then we are also significantly more likely to quit. But more-distant relationships have no effect; they are beyond the "social frontier.")
Although Christakis and Fowler have begun to study the variables, such as genetics, that determine a person's place within a social network—whether we're in the well-connected center or exiled to the fringe, which reflects popularity—they emphasize that there is no ideal social location. During a flu epidemic, the periphery is the safest place, since people with fewer connections are less exposed to the virus. But being on the fringe also reduces access to gossip and resources, which radiate out from the center. Because networks transmit the stuff of life—from happiness to HIV—evolution has generated a diversity of personality traits, which take advantage of different positions within the group. There are wallflowers and Wilt Chamberlains, shy geeks and "super-connectors." According to Christakis and Fowler, there is no single solution to the problem of other people. Individual variation is a crucial element of every stable community, from the Aborigines of Australia to the avatars of Second Life.
And because we're social primates, such communities are essential. When we're cut off from our network, we slip into a spiral of loneliness and despair, which severely affects our health. "Your friends might make you sick and cause you to gain weight," Christakis says, "but they're also a source of tremendous happiness. When it comes to social networks, the positives outweigh the negatives. That's why networks are everywhere." People, in other words, need people: We are the glue holding ourselves together.
Happiness: Joy Is Contagious, Offline and on the Net
Studying the self-reported moods of Framingham subjects, Christakis and Fowler found that happy people have happy friends (and unhappy people, unhappy friends). Examining smiles in Facebook portraits, they found the same pattern: Even online, social networks gather around joyful expressions.
Happy Unhappy
Each happy friend increased an individual's probability of being happy by 9 percent. An extra $5,000 in income raised it only 2 percent.Even perfect strangers three degrees of separation away—friends of friends of friends—exerted a significant uplifting influence.Unhappy people at the center of the network are more likely than those at the periphery to become happy in the future.On average, smiling Facebook members reported 15 percent more close friends than their dour peers.According to an analysis of Facebook, people who smiled in their profile photos tended to cluster with other smilers.Emotions spread especially well through the online network, so it's a good bet this person will eventually post a smiling portrait.
Contributing editor Jonah Lehrer (jonah.lehrer@gmail.com) wrote about the neuroscience of magic in issue 17.05.
See All Comments
Posted by: Raghuvansh1
4 days ago1 Point
How can you came to conclusion on happiness, health from random survive one of the bogus social net work just like Face Book?These and other social net work arise from shallow lifestyle of American psyche.From very beginning American psyche was shal...
Permalink
Posted by: samagon
21 days ago1 Point
the human body needs exercise, we can't sit around all day and assume we won't get fat, fat is energy stored in our body for use, and if we don't use it we will be fat and shitty. good health is simple, exercise, no special diet, no water diet, no at...
Permalink
Posted by: williamthrilliam
28 days ago1 Point
It's simple, stop eating crap. Lean meats, veggies, nuts, berries, and oils. This means zero sugar and zero grain products (bread, Twinkies, you name it). You will loose weight, yes it is healthy. I have been doing this for about a year and I hav...
Permalink
Posted by: Agent037
29 days ago-1 Points
i cant believe i just wasted 5 minutes of my life reading this shit
Permalink
Posted by: jeffg1
29 days ago1 Point
it took you 5 minutes to read a half-page of text? maybe you should have put the big mac down.
Permalink
Posted by: schauhan
29 days ago1 Point
Ha ha, and another minute typing up your response :-)
Permalink
Posted by: luckyray
29 days ago1 Point
THis map shows visual of how contagious obesity is!! Hmm, I wonder if this is a virus or other harmless infection. This type of obesity caused by external agents has long since been suspected and partly proven with fair amount of skepticism. I strong...
Permalink
Posted by: ideazones
27 days ago1 Point
Virus is a metaphor. The contagion is social influence, not physical. You hang around with drug users long enough, you will use. You hang with large eaters, you will eat more. It is really pretty simple. Get it?
Permalink
Posted by: richardsr
20 days ago1 Point
Uh, actually.... http://www.physorg.com/news11898.html
Permalink
Posted by: Davidicus
29 days ago0 Points
I think is comes down to how you enjoy life, and what is expected of you, and some of us do not adjust to an aging body too well, diet habits need to change as we grow older, we have to be more conservative, when I think the opposite happens because ...
Comment
I did my Masters paper on the effects of social support on nurses. The criteria I used was a Burnout questionaire and a Depression questionaire. It turns out from my study that burnout and depression overlap. I had my subjects indicate how much social support they gave, and received, at home and at work, on a 0-10 scale. Depression is seen as a personal experience, while burnout is a professional happening. The main traits in depression are helplessness and hopelessness, along with a strong dose of negativity. Burnout is a gradual process also where one goes from emotional work exhaustion, to depersonalization (an emotional withdrawal from the patients), to a sense that you arent doing as good a job as you should be (and have done in the past). Theoretically one goes thru the stages of burnout gradually and smoothly, but that didnt happen in my study, as some were emotionally exhausted but didnt withdraw from the patients. Those were the 45 hospice nurses. They indicated pretty severe depression and emotional exhaustion but did NOT withdraw from their patients! The other 43 nurses were hospital nurses who worked with otherhealth professionals every day. Hospice nurses reported little and no support from their supervisors. They work in the patient homes individually most of the day and have little contact with other nurses or supervisors. It was also interesting that the hospice nurses that reported themselves as being the most spiritual reported less burnout, as they felt like they were helping the patients to a better place. Social support is very important in Nursing, as in most human endeavors.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Newest Professions, Growing Salaries
12 Jobs That Didn't Exist Until Recently
by Larry Buhl
The latest directory of job titles from Occupational Information Network (O*Net) features a variety of new entries that many people have never heard before.
Some of these jobs -- at least the duties -- have been around in some form for a while. What's new is a "professional pathway" for these careers, according to employment expert and author Laurence Shatkin. "O*Net officially recognizes job titles once there is a critical mass of workers in those jobs and a clear road map for attaining the positions," he says.
Green Energy
There are many new green-collar job titles on O*Net, which is developed for the U.S. Department of Labor. The number of new green jobs is not surprising, given the federal government's active role in building a green economy.
Even before the federal stimulus dollars kicked in, wind energy was big and growing. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reports that the wind industry grew by 45 percent in 2007 alone. Civil engineers who work on various aspects of the wind farm now have their own job category: wind farm engineers. These engineers work on performance of turbines and the overall performance of the wind farm and also oversee aspects of construction and mechanical development. They usually have a B.S. in engineering with a focus in construction or civil or structural engineering. Some technical colleges now offer degrees in wind farm engineering. AWEA pegs the average salary at $80,000.
Solar thermal technicians design, develop, install, and maintain solar thermal systems used to heat water and produce energy. Renewable energy plants, companies that install solar panels for domestic use, construction companies, consulting firms, and hotel chains use these technicians. A degree (2- or 4-year) in mechanical engineering or electronics is helpful, but some apprenticeship programs exist as well.
Salaries vary widely and will increase if demand continues to outstrip supply. Solar thermal technicians can expect to start at around $40,000 a year or $20 an hour, according to Red Rocks Community College in Colorado. The upper salary limit is a moving target, as the job category is emerging so quickly.
Health Care
Nursing informatics is a nursing specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice. Informatics nurse specialists are registered nurses trained in graduate level informatics. Salaries start at $60,000 but can more than double after a few years' experience.
"Most often they are liaisons between clinicians and information and computer science people. These jobs are growing because information technology is now becoming a major tool in health-care settings," says Stacey Prince of the American Nurses Association.
Anesthesiologist assistants work under the direction of a licensed and qualified anesthesiologist in hospitals. They perform preoperative tasks, support therapy, recovery room care, and intensive care support. They do well money-wise: around $90,000 to start and more than double that with 10 years of experience, according to the American Medical Association. A master's degree in nursing and certification by the National Commission for Certification of Anesthesiologist Assistants are required.
Business and Management
The roles of IT professionals continue to splinter and become more specialized as new technologies dominate businesses. Business continuity planners are responsible for developing plans to recover from cyber attacks, terrorism, or natural disasters. They also may be responsible for scaling IT as a company grows (from regional to national, for example), duties that used to be handled by information systems managers. A bachelor's degree in business, management, or disaster management is the minimum requirement. The median salary for disaster recovery managers, who have a similar job description, is $100,000, according to salary.com.
America's interest in getting healthy has led to a growing business specialization of spa managers, who are employed by resorts, health clubs, and other facilities offering sports and wellness activities. The median income for spa managers in the U.S. is $56,000. A college degree is not mandatory, but a high school diploma or GED and at least five years experience in the managing a related area are usually required.
Education
Distance learning, which provides instruction to students who are not on-site, is booming. O*Net now recognizes distance learning coordinators, who prepare and run online courses at colleges, trade schools and secondary schools. A master's degree instructional design, curriculum design, curriculum development is usually required, as is a strong understanding of Web-based technologies.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't yet recognize distance learning coordinators as a job category, but an analysis of job openings shows a range from the upper $30s to the low $60s for a coordinator with at least two years' experience.
Entertainment and Media
Video game designers have been around for a while, but as the $9 billion interactive entertainment industry matures, new specialties are emerging, such as user experience designer, which focuses solely on improving the user interaction. Designers can also move up to be creative directors as well. A college degree is still not mandatory everywhere, however, strong skills in computer programming, computer engineering, software development, computer animation, graphic design, and computer graphics -- or all of them -- are helpful.
Big employers like Microsoft and Electronic Arts snag a large chunk of new designers, but smaller companies are starting to offer competitive wages and career tracks as well. Designers earn $50,000 and $80,000 annually, and the highest reported salary was $200,000, according to the International Game Developers Association.
Social media is a specialty field of public relations that uses the growing social networking technologies, including RSS, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. A few years ago, social media duties were performed by marketing managers or communications directors. Now there is a social media career track.
An entry-level company blogger can earn less than $20 per hour (and many blogging jobs are part-time). A director of social media, the top of the social media chain, can pull in $70,000 or more. In the middle, a social media manager, can expect to earn around $50,000. A bachelor's degree is usually required, and job seekers should possess strong writing abilities and a keen understanding of online marketing, public relations, and new media
by Larry Buhl
The latest directory of job titles from Occupational Information Network (O*Net) features a variety of new entries that many people have never heard before.
Some of these jobs -- at least the duties -- have been around in some form for a while. What's new is a "professional pathway" for these careers, according to employment expert and author Laurence Shatkin. "O*Net officially recognizes job titles once there is a critical mass of workers in those jobs and a clear road map for attaining the positions," he says.
Green Energy
There are many new green-collar job titles on O*Net, which is developed for the U.S. Department of Labor. The number of new green jobs is not surprising, given the federal government's active role in building a green economy.
Even before the federal stimulus dollars kicked in, wind energy was big and growing. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reports that the wind industry grew by 45 percent in 2007 alone. Civil engineers who work on various aspects of the wind farm now have their own job category: wind farm engineers. These engineers work on performance of turbines and the overall performance of the wind farm and also oversee aspects of construction and mechanical development. They usually have a B.S. in engineering with a focus in construction or civil or structural engineering. Some technical colleges now offer degrees in wind farm engineering. AWEA pegs the average salary at $80,000.
Solar thermal technicians design, develop, install, and maintain solar thermal systems used to heat water and produce energy. Renewable energy plants, companies that install solar panels for domestic use, construction companies, consulting firms, and hotel chains use these technicians. A degree (2- or 4-year) in mechanical engineering or electronics is helpful, but some apprenticeship programs exist as well.
Salaries vary widely and will increase if demand continues to outstrip supply. Solar thermal technicians can expect to start at around $40,000 a year or $20 an hour, according to Red Rocks Community College in Colorado. The upper salary limit is a moving target, as the job category is emerging so quickly.
Health Care
Nursing informatics is a nursing specialty that integrates nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice. Informatics nurse specialists are registered nurses trained in graduate level informatics. Salaries start at $60,000 but can more than double after a few years' experience.
"Most often they are liaisons between clinicians and information and computer science people. These jobs are growing because information technology is now becoming a major tool in health-care settings," says Stacey Prince of the American Nurses Association.
Anesthesiologist assistants work under the direction of a licensed and qualified anesthesiologist in hospitals. They perform preoperative tasks, support therapy, recovery room care, and intensive care support. They do well money-wise: around $90,000 to start and more than double that with 10 years of experience, according to the American Medical Association. A master's degree in nursing and certification by the National Commission for Certification of Anesthesiologist Assistants are required.
Business and Management
The roles of IT professionals continue to splinter and become more specialized as new technologies dominate businesses. Business continuity planners are responsible for developing plans to recover from cyber attacks, terrorism, or natural disasters. They also may be responsible for scaling IT as a company grows (from regional to national, for example), duties that used to be handled by information systems managers. A bachelor's degree in business, management, or disaster management is the minimum requirement. The median salary for disaster recovery managers, who have a similar job description, is $100,000, according to salary.com.
America's interest in getting healthy has led to a growing business specialization of spa managers, who are employed by resorts, health clubs, and other facilities offering sports and wellness activities. The median income for spa managers in the U.S. is $56,000. A college degree is not mandatory, but a high school diploma or GED and at least five years experience in the managing a related area are usually required.
Education
Distance learning, which provides instruction to students who are not on-site, is booming. O*Net now recognizes distance learning coordinators, who prepare and run online courses at colleges, trade schools and secondary schools. A master's degree instructional design, curriculum design, curriculum development is usually required, as is a strong understanding of Web-based technologies.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't yet recognize distance learning coordinators as a job category, but an analysis of job openings shows a range from the upper $30s to the low $60s for a coordinator with at least two years' experience.
Entertainment and Media
Video game designers have been around for a while, but as the $9 billion interactive entertainment industry matures, new specialties are emerging, such as user experience designer, which focuses solely on improving the user interaction. Designers can also move up to be creative directors as well. A college degree is still not mandatory everywhere, however, strong skills in computer programming, computer engineering, software development, computer animation, graphic design, and computer graphics -- or all of them -- are helpful.
Big employers like Microsoft and Electronic Arts snag a large chunk of new designers, but smaller companies are starting to offer competitive wages and career tracks as well. Designers earn $50,000 and $80,000 annually, and the highest reported salary was $200,000, according to the International Game Developers Association.
Social media is a specialty field of public relations that uses the growing social networking technologies, including RSS, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. A few years ago, social media duties were performed by marketing managers or communications directors. Now there is a social media career track.
An entry-level company blogger can earn less than $20 per hour (and many blogging jobs are part-time). A director of social media, the top of the social media chain, can pull in $70,000 or more. In the middle, a social media manager, can expect to earn around $50,000. A bachelor's degree is usually required, and job seekers should possess strong writing abilities and a keen understanding of online marketing, public relations, and new media
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