I am happy to say that I grow up in an environment which told me I could become (nearly) everything I want. Of course there were still bad man-woman ratios in many jobs, but mainly I was told that if I really want it and train hard I could become (nearly) everything. Maybe this is the reason why I hesitated for days in putting this paper online. What do Roderick E. White, Stewart Thornhill and Elizabeth Hampson tell us? What you become may depend on your biology. More concrete, they found out that there is a correlation between testosterone level and business people. To make a long story short: testosterone, the “man” hormone, makes you accepting more risks and this is important for business. Of course they also point out in the paper that it doesn’t mean that your success in business can be predicted by measuring your testosterone level. However, they claim to have found a correlation. I always try to avoid open criticism in this blog, because it is not fair when a person from a different field of science tries to judge a paper which was written for a different community. I just want to leave this link of a funny website here, and what you conclude from its content, is your choice. http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations "Entrepreneurs and evolutionary biology: The relationship between testosterone and new venture creation."
Roderick E. White, Stewart Thornhill, and Elizabeth Hampson. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 100.1 (2006): 21-34.
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As you may now, biological cells consist of a variety of “walls” (membranes) which form the outer borders and separate internal compartments (“rooms” for energy production, reproduction, transport,…). In these walls there are “doors”/tunnels (channels, pumps,…) which allow molecules to pass through. However, in order to guarantee the function of the cell, it is important to control the flux of molecules and therefore many tunnels are selective for a certain type of molecules. Meaning: just certain molecules can cross through the tunnel and other molecules can not. How is this achieved? Even if there is just the right molecule around, the probability of that molecule to find this tunnel by random motion is quite low. However, in the biological cell there are thousands of different types of molecules. So the probability of the tunnel to “find” the right molecule and let it pass to the other side of the “wall” should be even lower. No! Anton Zilman et al. (2010) found out (with the help of a theoretical model and proved by experiments) that the transport probability of the tunnel-specific molecules can actually increase in the presence of non-specific molecules. To understand this, it is important to remember that the molecules move random. Inside the tunnel they may attach to it which allows them to “stay in place” for a short time, but every molecule will move at sometime in a random direction. Therefore, entering the tunnel doesn’t mean that the molecule will “walk” through the tunnel and left it on the other side of the “wall”. Another important point is that the space in the tunnel is limited. Meaning, every “spot” in the tunnel just has space for a fixed number of molecules attaching to it. The point with the selectivity is then controlled by the difference in how long a molecule can attach to the tunnel. So tunnel-specific molecules can attach longer and so can “stay” longer in the tunnel before they move randomly compared to non-specific molecules. Anton Zilman et al. (2010) created a model for the tunnel and simulated the movements of two competing molecule types (one better attaching to the tunnel than the other). The tunnel itself was divided in “spots”… so a longer tunnel has more “spots” a molecule has to cross on its way than a short tunnel. A molecule just moves to a neighboring spot when there is a free place (as said before, the “diameter” of the tunnel restricts how many molecules can be on the same place at the same time). The better attaching moecules can stay longer on a spot than then non-specific molecules. So what is happening: If the non-specific molecules have a really short attaching time, because the binding between molecule and tunnel is weak, then it does not affect the transport of the strong binding (long attaching) molecules because it has already problems to reach the entrance. In the other hand, when both molecules have strong binding, the “wrong” (non-specific) molecule can block the entrance and the transport of the specific molecule is decreased. However, if the non-specific molecule has an intermediate attaching time, it can enhance the transport of the specific molecule. The intermediate binding strength allows the non-specific molecules to enter the entrance. This hinders the return of the specific molecules which are already in the channel and so the latter “has to” go in the right direction and cross the tunnel instead of going backwards. A little bit counter intuitive, isn’t it? Just imagine there is a real tunnel and there are two types of people: one type is really fascinated by tunnel walls. They love to look at it in detail and so spend a lot of time in the tunnel while walking slowly in a random direction (because they are so distracted that they don’t know in which direction they are walking). Now you add a second type of people: people which are not afraid of tunnels and are curious but they are not so fascinated and so are moving much faster and defer to the type one people regarding a spot in the tunnel. The fascinated people will go deep in the tunnel while the hectic people stay near the entrance. The hectic people in the entrance do not hinder the fascinated people to enter the tunnel. However, as the hectic people are crowding the entrance, it is much easier for the fascinated people to walk through the tunnel instead of returning to the entrance. Therefore, more fascinated people are walking through the tunnel as it would be without the hectic people. Enhancement of Transport Selectivity through Nano-Channels by Non-Specific Competition
Anton Zilman et al. PLoS Comput Biol 6.6 (2010): e1000804. You are old, have high blood pressure and too much fat in your body? Don’t worry. The high blood pressure and the fat may increase your life span. What is unhealthy as young person may be beneficial in older age. At least, medical studies show that decreasing blood pressure in very old people does not increase life time but maybe shortens it and the statistic shows that old people with more fat are living longer than thin old people. Just think about it: more fat means more energy reserves if the person gets ill and higher blood pressure enables blood flow also when the resistance of the arteries is increased because of deposits etc. "Adaptive senectitude: the prolongevity effects of aging."
David G. Le Couteur and Stephen J. Simpson. The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences 66.2 (2011): 179-182. |
IdeaI love to increase my general science knowledge by reading papers from different fields of science. Here I share some of them. Archiv
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