CW: IT professionals give students the facts

As a journalist at Computerworld Australia:

A Victorian initiative aimed at attracting secondary school leavers to careers in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is inviting students to a series of interactive sessions with recent graduates and industry figures.

Launched last Thursday in the Eastern Melbourne suburb of Box Hill, the campaign, titled "Upload Your Future", incorporates another 11 sessions to be held at locations across metropolitan and regional Victoria.

Representatives from companies such as Cisco, Telstra, Panduit, Computershare, Microsoft, Master Foods and IBM will be present at the events. Speakers from education providers will also be available for any questions.

Upload Your Future has been organized by an industry group that includes representatives from the technology sector, the Victorian government, all nine Victorian universities and several TAFEs.

The campaign's organizers hope that each of the sessions will provide students and their parents with the opportunity to learn about technology courses and careers from those already in the industry.

"The outcome we're looking for at this stage," said Rebecca Spiteri, spokesperson for the Victorian government, "is a step towards stemming declining enrolments in ICT, with ideally an increase in the number of students preferencing tertiary study in ICT for 2007."

According to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations' July 2006 Vacancy Report, ICT skills are now in high demand across the country. The industry is now concerned that university and TAFE enrolments are not reflecting the high demand for ICT graduates in the workforce.

"Research suggests that misconceptions about the ICT industry, including low awareness about the number of jobs and diversity of work available to people with these skills, may be leading students otherwise interested in ICT to choose other options for tertiary study," Spiteri said.

"These events are designed to help students get a real sense of what course and career options are available in ICT, demystifying the sector and providing them with the facts to make well thought out decisions about their futures."

The next event to be held in Melbourne will be at Victoria University on August 7.

PCW: Home broadband users will finally get upload boost

As a journalist at PC World Australia:

Maximum upstream speeds in Australia are expected to more than double within the next three months, as Internode finally breaks through a year-long negotiation process with the Australian Communications Industry Forum over ADSL2+ Annex M.

Driven by a growing demand for sharing photos, music and video over the Internet, the new technology will provide speeds as fast as 2.5Mbps.

With the existing ADSL2+ Annex A, upstream speeds are currently limited to 1Mbps. However, as ADSL2+ is still a non mainstream broadband technology, the majority of Australians are signed up with plans where 256Kbps - dubbed "fraudband" by some -- is the norm.

A 3MB audio file that would typically take two minutes to upload on "fraudband" takes a mere 12 seconds on Annex M, and 24 seconds on Annex A.

Annex M obtains its greater upstream capacity by sacrificing some downstream speed. For a 1Mbps increase in upstream speed, it loses the same amount downstream, resulting in a slightly slower download speed when compared with that of Annex A.

"It's literally just turning the direction around on some of the channels that ADSL uses," explained Simon Hackett, managing director of Internode, expecting that the loss of downstream will be insignificant, especially in light of the upstream speed gained.

One megabit is only 4 per cent of Annex A's 24 megabit per second download speed.

"From a consumer standpoint, we are finally hitting the era of publishing information from home," Hackett said.

The increased upload speed is expected to appeal to: businesses that communicate via Virtual Private Networks over several branches or with employees working from home; to information producers such as Web site managers; and to schools requiring greater computing capability for their students.

Because the two are essentially the same technology, retuned, the transition from ADSL2+ Annex A to M will be achieved with a surprisingly simple "flick of a switch", said Hackett. Internode's two-year-old Annex A infrastructure has long been capable of also supporting Annex M.

Consumers may expect to pay a little more to upgrade from Annex A to M. They also may need to update their ADSL routers, as ADSL routers with Annex M capabilities have only been available for less than a year.

When Annex M is fully ratified for use in Australia, it will be available to those on Internode's Annex A business plans (SOHO and above), for no extra charge.

In the meantime, Internode has called for participants to take part in a national ADSL2+ Annex M trial. The trial, which was announced on a forum (http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=559405) last week, will be carried out in most capital cities, and some rural deployments in South Australia. Participants will be handpicked from an already large pool of volunteers for a good sample of geographical locations and line lengths.

"We want a good spread of people in real world situations to get a realistic expectation of speed... to try a variety of lines and different links to make sure it all works nice and smoothly."

Participants in the trial are expected to cover the cost of their own routers, for which Internode has negotiated an exclusive supply agreement with Billion (www.billion.com.au). In accordance with the agreement, which will expire in three months time, Internode will sell 7404VGP-M routers.

Billion, Open Networks and Cisco will also be releasing new ADSL2+ Annex M routers over the next three months.

ARN: Market ripe for the next wave of wireless

As a journalist at Australian Reseller News:

Rapidly declining mobile call rates and an increase in landline-mobile bundled offerings are driving mobility technologies in the business market, a new IDC report has found.

According to the analyst firm's survey on Australian business wireless usage, one in five business calls made within the office is from a mobile, rather than a landline. The survey also revealed organisations are replacing about one in every 10 landline calls on their mobile.

The report suggested mobile carriers and solution partners should move away from price competition and offer innovative products based on the emerging technologies, such as fixed mobile convergence.

Devices such as the Blackberry are part of a first wave of mobile solutions, aimed at increasing the efficiency of a business by replicating some office functionality while on the move.

According to the IDC study, emerging second-wave enterprise mobility is now centered on business processes led by CRM, field and sales force automation.

IDC associate mobile and wireless analyst, Jerson Yau, said telecom providers were leading the charge into second-wave mobile devices.

Yau highlighted several market verticals, including utilities, transportation, logistics, wholesaling and manufacturing, as also driving the push towards mobile offices.

He predicted a third wave of mobile solutions would bring businesses a competitive edge by allowing them to respond to queries from colleagues and customers in real-time.

Last year, Australians spent $8.6 billion in mobile services, including voice calls and data calls. By comparison, 2004 saw a spending of just past $8 billion.

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COSMOS: Live offspring created using artifical sperm

As an intern at COSMOS Online:

Six live mouse pups were recently born of artificial sperm grown from embryonic stem cells. The study reveals promising information about cell development that may one day be used in treating male infertility.

The study was reported in the U.S. journal Developmental Cell on Monday. According to its authors, results indicate the success of embryonic stem cells in normal fertilisation, and provide further insight into mammalian reproduction – much to the delight of the scientific community.

"The findings are incredible in the sense that it may open a door for reproductive therapies that, until now, were science fiction," said reproductive biologist Orly Lacham-Kaplan of the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development. "It is great proof to all scientists working on this topic that we are [heading in] the right direction."

A team led by Karim Nayernia, professor of stem cell biology at the University of Newcastle, U.K., isolated stem cells from blastocysts, which are early-stage embryos only a few days old.

From these cells were extracted those that would go on to form sperm, known as spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs). The SSCs were then cultured in the laboratory, and when some developed into sperm, they were injected into female mouse eggs and grown into early-stage embryos. The embryos were transplanted into the wombs of surrogate mothers.

"This research is particularly important in helping us to understand more about spermatogenesis, the biological process in which sperm is produced," Nayernia said. "We must know this if we are to get to the root of infertility.

"If we know more about how spermatogonial stem cells turn into sperm cells, this knowledge could be translated into treatments for men who are unable to produce mature sperm, although this is several years down the line.

"For example, we could isolate a patient's spermatagonial cells using a simple testicular biopsy, encourage them in the laboratory into becoming functional sperm and transplant them back into the patient."

While hundreds of mouse eggs were injected with the artificial sperm, only 50 began to develop as embryos. A mere seven of these survived to birth, with one of the pups dying shortly afterwards. None of the remaining six pups lived a full two years - the expected lifespan of a laboratory mouse - they all had truncated lives, dying within five months.

"The latest findings highlight that these processes in the test-tube are far from perfect as the mice that were born by this process were abnormal," said Harry Moore, professor of reproductive biology at U.K.'s University of Sheffield. "We therefore have to be very cautious about using such techniques in therapies to treat men or women who are infertile due to a lack of germ stem cells until all safety aspects are resolved. This may take many years."

Clearly, more research is needed before the full potential of SSCs can be established, as Nayernia noted.

However, according to medical ethicist Anna Smajdor of the Imperial College London: "Sperm and eggs play a unique role in our understanding of kinship and parenthood, and being able to create these cells in the laboratory will pose a serious conceptual challenge for our society.

"Who is the father of offspring born from laboratory sperm? A collection of stem cells in a petrii dish? The embryo from which the cells were derived?

"The answers to these questions are not clear, but they go to the foundations of our sense of identity."

Lacham-Kaplan, who has encountered her share of opposition to her research, is of the mindset that "everyone is entitled to their opinion".

"I think that anything that is done to allow a man and a woman to have their desired child is OK, as long as it is safe and there will not be abnormalities associated with the outcome," she said – adding that she is personally opposed to reproductive cloning.

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COSMOS: Genes function differently in males and females

As an intern at COSMOS Online:

What makes someone male and another female? A new genetic study looks past the clothing, body parts and behaviour to reveal the real gender divide.

Thousands of genes have been found to behave differently in the same organs of males and females. The difference had never before been detected to this degree, and may explain differences in how males and females respond to certain drugs and their susceptibility to certain diseases.

A research team led by Xia Yang of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, scrutinised more than 23,000 genes in the brain, liver, fat and muscle tissue from mice, with whom humans share 99 per cent of our genes.

"We previously had no good understanding of why the sexes vary in their relationship to different diseases," Yang explained. "Our study discovered a genetic disparity that may explain why males and females diverge in terms of disease risk, rate and severity."

The study aimed to find genetic clues related to mental illnesses, diabetes, obesity and atherosclerosis by focussing on ‘gene expression', which is the process by which a gene's DNA sequence is converted into cellular proteins. While individual genes were observed to function similarly in both sexes, the team was surprised to find a direct correlation between gender and the amount of gene expressed.

"Males and females share the same genetic code, but our findings imply that gender regulates how quickly the body can convert DNA to proteins," said Yang. "This suggests that gender influences how disease develops."

Gender consistently influenced the expression levels of thousands of genes in the liver, fat and muscle tissue. The effect was slightly more limited in the brain, where hundreds, not thousands of genes showed different expression patterns. Affected genes were typically those most involved in the organ's function, suggesting that gender influences important genes with specialised roles, not the rank-and-file.

The gender differences in gene expression also varied by tissue.

In the liver, for example, the expression of genes involved in drug metabolism differed by sex. The findings imply that male and female livers function the same, but work at different rates.

"Our findings in the liver may explain why men and women respond differently to the same drug," said Jake Lusis, co-investigator and professor of human genetics at the same university. "Studies show that aspirin is more effective at preventing heart attack in men than women. One gender may metabolise the drug faster, leaving too little of the medication in the system to produce an effect."

Researchers say that their results support the importance of gender-specific clinical trials.

"Many of the genes we identified relate to processes that influence common diseases," said Yang. "This is crucial, because once we understand the gender gap in these disease mechanisms, we can create new strategies for designing and testing new sex-specific drugs."

The study will be published in the August 1 issue of the international journal Genome Research.

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COSMOS: Biofuels over-hyped as a replacement for petroleum

As an intern at COSMOS Online:

While biofuels have significant environmental advantages over petroleum, they cannot be expected to solve the world's energy problems any time soon. A recent analysis of the costs and benefits of biodiesel and corn ethanol has revealed that while biodiesel is more than 3.5 times as efficient a fuel as ethanol, neither can be produced in sufficient quantities to replace much petroleum without affecting food supplies.

A viable fuel alternative, according to David Tilman of the University of Minnesota, U.S. who led the study, must satisfy a number of conditions: it should have environmental benefits over fossil fuels; provide a sufficient energy gain; be economically competitive; and be producible in quantities large enough to make a meaningful impact on energy demands.

Here's where both biodiesel, made from soybean, and ethanol, made from corn grain, fail. The study found that only 11 per cent of gasoline demand and 8.7 per cent of diesel demand would be satisfied, even after dedicating all U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels.

"Current food-based biofuels can only supply about two per cent to five per cent of our transportation energy needs without significantly impacting food prices," Tillman said.

"Because global demand for both food and energy are likely to more than double in the coming 50 years, food-based biofuels are not a good long-term solution to our energy needs. It would be unwise, and expensive, to have food and energy crops compete for the world's limited supply of fertile soils."

The researchers suggest mixtures of native plant species as alternatives to food-based biofuels. Native plants may be grown on otherwise barren land and periodically harvested for conversion into energy fuels.

"Our results show that biofuels can be greatly improved by using biomass grown with low inputs of energy and agrichemicals," Tilman said. "Reducing energy use in conversion of biomass into biofuels is also of great importance. These results can help guide us to the next generation of biofuels."

Tilman mentioned two methods by which the biomass of plants can be converted into fuel. In the first method, plant cellulose is digested into sugars, which are then fermented to form alcohol. Alternatively, the plants are heated in a process called gasification to produce synthetic fuels such as gasoline and diesel.

Of the 14 billion litres of diesel consumed in Australia every year, perhaps 15 to 20 million litres of that is biodiesel, according to Brian Stewart, Corporate Affairs Manager of the Australian Biodiesel Group (ABG). ABG's biodiesel is produced from used cooking oil, tallow (animal fat) and vegetable oils such as those derived from canola.

"In Australia," Stewart said, "the view with any alternative fuel sector is that a mix of fuels will be part of the solution going forward as oil declines.

"I don't think anybody would ever say that biofuels will entirely replace fuels derived from oil at the present time, but they do certainly support a significant percentage."

But Tilman says his research serves as a warning against overly optimistic forecasts for biofuels.

"Current short-term expectations for biofuels are much too high," Tilman explained, anticipating "a bubble of over-investment" into current technologies.

"Its a major new industry – we should expect some serious bumps along the road. In the long-term, I believe that biofuels have great potential to give us both energy and environmental wins.

"In combination with various strategies for aggressive energy conservation, it is plausible that biofuels, once fully developed, could help allow the world's greenhouse gas emissions to hold steady, and not to double as has been projected. This would be a major step toward controlling global climate change."

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COSMOS: Mathematically mapping music

As an intern at COSMOS Online:

That the piano, despite its simple, linear appearance, is really a gateway to a non-Euclidean space may come as a surprise. But that's just what music is – and a complicated geometrical space known as an orbifold could provide composers with a logical way of exploiting the mathematics behind chords and melody.

Composer Dmitri Tymoczko of Princeton University compressed the many facets of music into a geometrical space and found the mathematical rules that seem to govern Western music. Tymoczko suggests that famous composers have traditionally valued a kind of harmonic consistency that relates to keeping within a local region of the orbifold. However, he is reluctant to have his study viewed as the be all and end all guide to successful musical composition.

"I'm not in the business of laying down 'rules' or telling people what's good and bad in music," he said. "What I'd like to do is to be able to say: ‘if you want to achieve this musical effect, then you should try this technique'."

In the orbifold, the notes C to B are pitch-wise numbered from zero to 11. Chords, which are clusters of notes, are then multisets of pitch classes, while the musical terms ‘transposition' and ‘inversion' are translate to the mathematical terms ‘translation' and ‘reflection' respectively.

If a chord divides an octave into equal parts it is termed tranpositionally symmetrical (T-symmetrical). Inversionally symmetrical (I-symmetrical) chords, meanwhile, are defined by having an equal number of semi-tones between notes of, for example, a three-note chord. If there are multiple voices playing the same note in a chord, then it is labelled permutationally symmetrical (P-symmetrical).

Perfect symmetry generally produces a dissonant sound. Perfect T-symmetry, for example, results in a tritone (e.g. C F-sharp), which is an eerie chord once denounced by the medieval Church as ‘the Devil's interval', and these days is favoured by heavy metal bands.

However, Tzmoczko found that nearly T-symmetrical chords include those traditionally considered to be most pleasing to the ear, such as the perfect fourth and fifth.

"This has to do with the fact that our sense of pitch is logarithmic with respect to fundamental frequency," he said.

Nearly T-symmetrical chords also lend themselves to efficient 'voice leading', which is a contrapuntal technique favoured by traditional Western music. An example is a round where several people sing the same melody starting at different times. "Row-row-row Your Boat" is a round familiar to most school-children.

Nearly P-symmetrical chords similarly accommodate voice leading. These chords contain notes that are clustered close together (for example, E F G-flat) and are characteristic of modern atonal composition, such as the music of Georgi Ligeti, whose dramatic work featured in the soundtrack to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Nearly I-symmetrical chords are often also nearly T-symmetrical (as in the case of the C-major chord, C E G), or nearly P-symmetrical. 19th century composers such as Schubert, Wagner and Debussy tended towards near-I-symmetry.

"My geometric models show us that there are important strands of commonality running throughout the last thousand years of music," Tymoczko said. "I think these strands have, to some extent, been overlooked, largely because we didn't have a very good vocabulary for talking about the relation between harmony and counterpoint."

The report was published in the July 7 issue of Science. According to a press release by Princeton University, it is the first paper on music theory to appear in the U.S. journal in its entire 127-year history.

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COSMOS: Chunk of Australian continent found to have snapped off 60 million years ago

As an intern at COSMOS Online:

A large chunk of the Australian continental crust that broke off and sank millions of years ago has just been discovered, providing new clues to the slow geological ballet that formed Australia.

Marine geoscientist Neville Exon working with a team from Geoscience Australia dragged what he calls a "bucket with a big chain bag" along the Ken Plateau – a 140,000 square kilometre area located about 450 kilometres off the northeast Australian coast. The material they collected from 3.5 kilometres down was analysed and found to be remnant of the mainland continental crust.

The plateau broke off from the mainland about 60 million years ago, following plate tectonic changes that started in Victoria 35 million years earlier. The Ken Plateau, which was next to the Bundaberg region in Queensland at the time, moved about 300 kilometres to the northeast, pirouetting 30 degrees anti-clockwise over the next nine million years.

The same tectonic shift formed the Lord Howe Rise to the southeast of the plateau.

Exon's exploration of the Ken Plateau mapped the final region of terra incognita (unknown territory) in offshore Australia, revealing the nature and long-term resource potential of the area.

Efforts to map Australia's vast offshore territory began shortly after the Second World War. However, high-quality, detailed mapping was only made possible in the last 15 years, after the development of multibeam sonar systems.

It will take another 50 years to collate a detailed map of our entire offshore area.

"A comprehensive map of the ocean floor will be a starting point for full assessment of tectonic movement," Exon said, explaining that this would add to our understanding of the offshore and onshore history of Australia.

"There's also a biological interest and mineral interest," he added. "The questions are: what are these blocks made of; where do they come from; and is there petroleum potential."

There is no evidence of petroleum in rock samples from the Ken Plateau, he said.

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COSMOS: Science validates Mum’s heat treatment

As an intern at COSMOS Online:

Despite the mountain of anecdotal evidence for the effectiveness of hot water bottles on pain relief, heat treatment has often been regarded with scepticism at best. Well, here's news that will make your mum proud: the old wives' tale that heat relieves abdominal pain has now received scientific backing.

Physiologist Brian King of the University College London led a study that proved, on a molecular level, that heat provides up to an hour's relief from internal pains such as stomach aches, colic or menstrual cramps.

King explained that abdominal pain commonly occurs when hollow organs, such as the bowel or uterus, either receive insufficient blood or become bloated. These events lead to local tissue damage and, consequently, the production of a chemical called ATP. Receptors called P2X3 sense the presence of ATP, triggering what doctors call nociception, and what we lay-people call a tummy ache. The pain is thought to be how the body warns of cellular damage in an effort to reduce any future harm.

In the study King and his team found that heat receptors known as TRPV1 deactivate P2X3 when triggered near the site of injury. TRPV1 responds to temperatures greater than 40 degrees Celsius.

"Heat doesn't just provide comfort and have a placebo effect," King said. "It actually deactivates the pain at a molecular level in much the same way as pharmaceutical painkillers work.

"The problem with heat is that it can only provide temporary relief," he said. "The focus of future research will continue to be the discovery and development of pain relief drugs that will block P2X3 pain receptors. Our research adds to a body of work showing that P2X3 receptors are key to the development of drugs that will alleviate debilitating internal pain."

Sounds like a good excuse to stay in bed with a nice hot water bottle.

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COSMOS: Electrical tissue engineering delivers organs on spec

As an intern at COSMOS Online:

A new technique that uses electricity to engineer human tissue may have the potential to tailor-make bone marrow.

The technique uses electric fields to build up layers of cells to form a tissue. It is based on a phenomenon called dielectrophoresis, which is essentially the electrical equivalent of the attraction of iron filings to the poles of a magnet.

"The use of electricity enables greater control over the position of the cells than conventional techniques," said Gerard Markx of the University of Manchester, who is developing the technique.

Conventional tissue engineering typically involves either creating a polymer scaffold onto which cells are grown, or starting with a liquid suspension of cells that later hardens to form a gel. There is little control over the position of the cells, which is a significant drawback in engineering multicellular tissues in which cells have to be specifically positioned.

Markx and his team use a "bottom-up" approach, in which tissues are painstakingly built up in layers. Each layer is designed using dielectrophoresis; cell positioning is controlled by an electric field that is stronger in some areas and weaker in others. The electric field is supplied via microelectrodes measuring between 50 to 250 microns in size, and is dispelled once the cells are suitably placed.

Because the technique relies predominantly on the structure of the electric field, it may be applied in wide range of tissue engineering. According to Markx, "as long as you can get the cells in suspension, you can use the technique to build tissues with them".

"In theory, it is possible to make reactors in which blood is produced," he said. "This could be useful for example for the production of rare blood types or cell types."

The team has already built tissue of up to 200 microns thick and created some basic haematon structures in the laboratory. Haematon is a multicellular structure found in bone marrow with the ability of creating all types of blood cells that can be found in the body, and is thought to be dysfunctional in patients suffering from bone marrow diseases like leukaemia.

The success of tissue engineering will allow organs to be grown on spec, avoiding waiting lists for organ donations, as well as problems from immune reactions towards transplanted organs. The creation of haematon may also answer a number of questions about stem cell biology.

"We have shown that we can recreate [haematon] with dielectrophoresis," Markx said. "The next step is to vary the composition of the haematon, and the position of the cells in particular, to find out how this affects stem cell development."

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CW: Local software directory launched

As a freelancer for Computerworld Australia:

A new directory launched this month aims to provide organizations large and small with the premier business software listing service in Australia.

The Australian Business Software Directory, a subsidiary of the twenty-month-old software-consulting agency Software Choice, claims to be the largest single source of its kind in Australia. It currently lists details of 655 vendors representing 1068 products, which range in function from accounting, to engineering and design, to databases and operating systems.

"It's something that I really believe we need to have," said Meredith Thompson, director of Software Choice and one of its two current employees.

"I couldn't find any [other Australian directories] that covered all industries, all market sectors, and, more importantly, that list everyone, regardless of whether they want to pay for advertising or not."

Access to the directory is free for businesses in search of software, as well as for software vendors. Most of the current product listings were taken from Software Choice's consulting database, but the company soon hopes to start attracting more vendors through search engine marketing and media coverage.

The directory is searchable by keyword, industry, business size and software type. According to Thompson, a well-executed search typically yields about 10 to 15 results. Consumers can then either sort through these options on their own, or have them evaluated by Software Choice's consulting service for a fee.

"The purpose of the directory is not to help [businesses] choose; it's just so that they know what's there," Thompson said. "My philosophy is that there's the right software for the right business. The first step is finding out what's available - there are a lot of ways to evaluate it beyond that."

Several more features are currently in the works. Within the next three months, vendors will be able to log in and maintain their own listings, and those who opt to pay for upgraded listings will be given more space for images, event listings, white papers, and product brochures. By December, the directory will incorporate a Wiki-type community portal and advanced search options, including flags that allow businesses to search specifically for open source software.

"We're really looking for feedback from both vendors and visitors as to what sort of things they would like to see," Thompson said. "We're trying to be very comprehensive without being too cluttered - it's a very hard line to follow sometimes."

COSMOS: Researchers say mice feel empathy with peers

As an intern at COSMOS Online:

The mere observation of a familiar mouse in pain has been found to affect the observing mouse's own pain sensitivity. This behaviour, say researchers, suggests empathy, a trait that is thought to be unique to higher primates, and possibly to humans alone.

Mice were subjected to a ‘writhing' test, in which they were injected with 0.9 per cent acetic acid, which caused abdominal pain. The pain response of a mouse caged with another, familiar mouse, also in pain, was markedly higher than that of a mouse housed individually, and higher still than that of a male mouse observing an unfamiliar, unaffected mouse.

"We were following up a previous finding suggesting mice were communicating with each other, and that this sort of social interaction could modulate pain," said Jeffery Mogil, Professor of Pain Studies at the McGill University in Canada, and lead author of the paper that was published on Friday in Science.

"When all the data was collected, empathy was simply the best explanation for what we observed," he said.

The observations of Mogil and his team could not easily be explained by stress, imitation or conditioning. However, Mogil asserted that the study does not claim that mice have ‘sympathy' or ‘altruism', both of which are higher forms of empathy. Instead, mice are being attributed with what he called "the lowest level of empathy: emotional contagion".

Emotional contagion is the tendency to express and feel emotions similar to those perceived in others. It is the phenomena responsible for 'contagious yawning' in humans.

These findings imply the communication of pain between mice. Further experimentation revealed that pain was communicated visually.

The study may shed light on the effect of social interactions on chronic pain behaviour in humans, as well as the behaviour of animals.

"If mice have empathy, it stands to reason that all mammals should," Mogil said.

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