Teeth Or Claws?


Countries like national symbols. The flag is, of course, the prime one, but after that comes music, plants, and animals. Anyone wanting to make changes is usually playing with fire. Feelings can run high and quiet, polite people can become quite blunt in their views of those in the opposing camp.

The latest can of worms to be opened is lodged firmly in the Canadian Senate (1). The label on the can is the national emblem. For those out there who don’t keep up with national decisions from around the world, Canada adopted the beaver as its national animal emblem way back in 1975.

The BBC reports (1) that Senator Nicole Eaton wants to kick the beaver into touch and adopt the polar bear instead of that destructive rodent. She sees the polar bears’ “strength, courage, resourcefulness and dignity” better suits Canadian aspirations than does “the dentally defective rat”.

Beavers are not without admirers though. Pat Martin MP accepts that “polar bears are cool” but that is not enough. She points to the rush to hunt down the beaver for its fur as being the reason that Canada was explored in the first place. Academics are coming to its side too. Professor Runtz of Carleton U is quoted as reminding us that “Beavers are like Canadians. Their demeanor is very pleasant and polar bears inspire fear.”

One is left to wonder if Canada is evolving and will no longer be peopled with hard working individuals with that pleasant demeanor (I haven’t noticed large yellow teeth), but by ruthless, savage, predatory types who are clinging to a shrinking world as an endangered species and who are only cuddly when they are very, very young.

My faith in the Canadians is not shaken, however. I’m sure that they’ll make a wise decision.

  1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15503106

An Un-Social Network


Networks involving people have been around since the dawn of civilization. The apparent democratization of the social network scene is an interesting demonstration of how far reaching they can get, as daily global contact is simple and cheap. But global networks are not new and they can have strong effects on us even though we haven’t signed up.

Large global corporations have grown larger in both wealth and power and the illusion is that each corporation has a global network competing with a large number of other similar independent networks. Now, a recent paper by Vitali et al from Zurich and published in the Public Library of Science has taken a peek inside the kimono of the global corporate control network built up from a group of 43,060 trans-national corporations (1).

It’s not a pretty sight. Like any network, some nodes are bigger than others, but in this case we need to think in terms of ownership/control ties. There is a strong core in this network that contains three-quarters of all the nodes and represents 94% of the operating revenue.

More explicitly, the topology has the classic “bow-tie architecture” with very few inputting control to the core, which in turn controls a very large number of entities. The core consists of 147 global corporations and they control 40% of the economic value of all of the world’s global corporations, but it is important to note that 75% of the core are financial intermediaries (those sleek investment bankers).

The authors suggest that this small strong core is an “economic super-entity” and, as this is the first time that this type of global analysis has been done, our policy makers should broaden their outlook.

It is nice to see the anatomy of this global control network laid bare and confirm our intuition, but the real question now is “how are we going to merge the universe occupied by the guys in the control of the core with the one that the rest of us live in?” Are we going to need a financial black hole to warp the structure sufficiently to bend what were parallel tracks so that they merge?

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025995#pone.0025995.s001

The Money Game


Our social psychologist friends love to play games to see how we behave. One of the games of choice used to study social cooperation is known as the Dictator Game. The game shows how benevolent your dictatorship is going to be. The player is offered an asset and asked if they would care to share it and how much of it they would care to share. Of course, the social psychologist is looking at average group responses and not just you or me, so they can draw broad expansive conclusions that help with our stereotyping.

Nettle et al from England’s old Geordie city of Newcastle upon Tyne have turned their social psych’s magnifier on their hometown (1). They chose two areas of the city, one comfortably off and the other somewhat deprived and offered to send them a £10 note through the mail if they filled in a survey.

This is where they turned to game play and asked if they would like to give some or all of it away. It could be to an anonymous person, a friend or a charity, but the recipient had to live at another address. Note that each “Dictator” had only one type of “Recipient” to consider. They had no choice. As sweeteners, those who had a charity choice were offered a matching donation from the organizers. For those that could be generous to friends, if they donated the whole amount, their friend would receive £20.

The results? Well, to me the big surprise was that there were 40 people who had the “help your friend” offer out of the 118 who played the game and they didn’t do a deal with their friend to share £20 in a 50/50 split.

In fact, in the comfortable neighborhood, the average donation to a friend was the lowest of the three donations at about £4 compared to almost £5 to a stranger and nearly£8 to a charity.

In the deprived area, giving cash to a stranger didn’t seem a good idea – maybe a cup of tea, but probably not. About 50p to a friend was average and about £3 to charity was about it.

What conclusions can we draw? If you’re on hard times, you don’t throw your money about, but you can still have your arm twisted for charitable purposes. If you’re sitting comfortably in Geordieland, you’d give more to a stranger than a friend. Maybe your “friends” are your competitors? But, the big question, the elephant in the room, is why didn’t the Geordies get together with their friends and share a £20 dinner?

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0026922

Just One More Cigarette


The more we delve into our DNA, the more we find that we are predisposed to some disease, condition, or behavior. The latter predisposition is the most difficult one to get to terms with as it can suggest an excuse or lack of responsibility for that behavior.

So what about habit forming behaviors such as smoking? Well, a predisposition to smoking does seem to lurk along those twisted strands of amino acids. Verde et al took 206 Spaniards and unraveled their DNA. 126 of these were regular smokers in the age range 20 to 84. Half were women. Nearly half of the smokers were diagnosed with lung cancer, so they certainly shouldn’t have been smoking. The 80 controls were people who had never smoked, ever.

After sifting through lots of candidate sections of DNA, the common thread appeared as the gene that is responsible for the metabolism of nicotine through the production of the enzyme nicotine C-oxidase. A deficiency of that enzyme correlated with the smoking behavior.

Interestingly, the variations around the genes affecting the brain that interact with nicotine, serotonin, opioids or cannabinoids are not correlated with smoking status. It is just our difficulty in metabolizing it that makes us open the pack.

Maybe cursing the polymorphism of our CYP2A6 phenotype might help salve our conscience short term when we yield to temptation, but it will weaken rather than strengthen our resolve.

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0026668

Teen Drinking– One Can A Day Is Too Much


Kids fight, sometimes, and some high school kids fight more than others. Some new research by Solnick and Hemenway has shown that with Boston public high school students, the degree of violence correlates with their drinking habits (1,2).

Not alcohol, of course, as they are high school students, but their tendency to down cans of soda. For example, those just hitting a level of 5 cans a week were more likely to be violent with their peer group and were more likely to be carrying a weapon.

The survey size was 1,800 students, so not a small number. Those that had carried a weapon at some time in the past year, had chosen a knife or a gun. Only 23% of those who had one can or less of full-strength soda, not that wimpy diet stuff, said that they had carried a weapon, but for those hitting the 5+ can mark, the percentage rose to 43%.

Numerous other studies have linked bad behavior to nutrition (2), and there are some indications that glucose metabolism problems may be a major factor. There is a legal precedent from 1979 in a San Francisco court where a homicide charge was downgraded to voluntary manslaughter due to the defendant washing down his junk food with Coke (2).

I will have to take care next time I visit a bar. Myer’s rum and Coke, or a Plymouth gin and tonic may lead to less than my best behavior. The synergism between the ethanol, glucose and, maybe caffeine, will have to be carefully monitored. The study could take some time!

  1. http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/early/2011/10/14/injuryprev-2011-040117
  2. http://news.discovery.com/human/soda-violence-teens-111024.html