The decision-making process of honeybee swarms mimics how our brains choose between two options.
HoneybeesThomas Seeley For honeybees, there’s no place like home. And every year, they must find a new one. Now, a study publishing today (December 8) in Science suggests that the honeybee swarms use inhibitory signals when house-hunting, paralleling the human brain’s decision-making process.
“It’s just another lovely example of the amazing sophistication in the honeybee population,” said University of Sussex apiculturist Francis Ratnieks, who was not involved in the study. It also shows a “commonality in the decision making processes between a brain and a swarm,” he added.
Every spring, about two-thirds of the honeybee colony split off from the group to form a new swarm, but until they find a roomy, hollow tree to call home, the thousands of bees wait in a tree branch as a few hundred scouts explore new prospects, said mathematician Mary Myerscough of the University of Sydney in Australia, who was not involved in the study.
After canvassing one potential home site, each scout returns to the group and reports the quality of the site by doing a waggle dance on the swarm surface, literally dancing on a platform of bees. Individual bees don’t compare multiple sites, but visit only one and instinctively know the difference between a so-so spot and “a bee five-star mansion,” Myerscough said. The better the digs, the longer and more vivaciously they dance, thereby recruiting more bees to their site. The scout who recruits a certain threshold number of bees wins, and the swarm heads to that bee’s scouted location to set up shop.
But if two nests are equally cozy, the bees risk a deadly stalemate. The swarm has only one queen bee, after all, so it can’t split up, and thus must agree one a single nest site. To find out how they avoid deadlock, bee biologist Thomas Seeley of Cornell University and his colleagues set up two identical nest boxes on a remote Maine island, then released a swarm of honeybees. Scouts who visited one nest box were painted with a yellow stripe, while those who visited the others were painted pink.
Then, the researchers watched the scout bees jockey for one nest or the other. The scouts waggled for their sites, but they also took time out from dancing to stop other bees from doing their jigs—by head-butting them and emitting a high-pitched beep, Seeley said.
Using these inhibitory signals allows the bees to break deadlock and decide on a home faster, because once one site gains even the tiniest edge over the other, there are more bees on the winning nest side to stop the other side’s waggling, accelerating the inequality and allowing the bees to choose a site more quickly. “It amplifies differences in the support for the two sites that are actually equal in quality,” Seeley said. While prior research had shown that bee head butting could warn bees away from risky foraging situations, this is the first time it’s been shown to hasten the consensus-reaching process.
The bees’ waggling standoffs parallel how primate brains process information, Ratnieks said. To determine which side a sound came from, for instance, neurons from the left and right ear might both initially fire. But neurons will also suppress the firing of neurons from the other ear, and once a threshold level is reached, the brain concludes that the sound came from the left.
The findings could also have implications for artificial intelligence and some crowd-sourced decision-making systems. In the US primary elections, for instance, votes are aggregated from many individuals to make a decision for the group, and only one candidate can prevail in the end, Seeley said. In theory that could potentially benefit from some built-in negative signaling, he added.
“That’s not something we humans are entirely fond of because we don’t really like negative campaigning,” he said.
T. Seeley, et al, “Stop Signals Provide Cross Inhibition in Collective Decision Making by Honeybee Swarms,” Science, doi: 10.1126/science.1210361, 2011.
Source: The Scientist
http://the-scientist.com/2011/12/08/how-bees-choose-home/
“It’s just another lovely example of the amazing sophistication in the honeybee population,” said University of Sussex apiculturist Francis Ratnieks, who was not involved in the study. It also shows a “commonality in the decision making processes between a brain and a swarm,” he added.
Every spring, about two-thirds of the honeybee colony split off from the group to form a new swarm, but until they find a roomy, hollow tree to call home, the thousands of bees wait in a tree branch as a few hundred scouts explore new prospects, said mathematician Mary Myerscough of the University of Sydney in Australia, who was not involved in the study.
After canvassing one potential home site, each scout returns to the group and reports the quality of the site by doing a waggle dance on the swarm surface, literally dancing on a platform of bees. Individual bees don’t compare multiple sites, but visit only one and instinctively know the difference between a so-so spot and “a bee five-star mansion,” Myerscough said. The better the digs, the longer and more vivaciously they dance, thereby recruiting more bees to their site. The scout who recruits a certain threshold number of bees wins, and the swarm heads to that bee’s scouted location to set up shop.
But if two nests are equally cozy, the bees risk a deadly stalemate. The swarm has only one queen bee, after all, so it can’t split up, and thus must agree one a single nest site. To find out how they avoid deadlock, bee biologist Thomas Seeley of Cornell University and his colleagues set up two identical nest boxes on a remote Maine island, then released a swarm of honeybees. Scouts who visited one nest box were painted with a yellow stripe, while those who visited the others were painted pink.
Then, the researchers watched the scout bees jockey for one nest or the other. The scouts waggled for their sites, but they also took time out from dancing to stop other bees from doing their jigs—by head-butting them and emitting a high-pitched beep, Seeley said.
Using these inhibitory signals allows the bees to break deadlock and decide on a home faster, because once one site gains even the tiniest edge over the other, there are more bees on the winning nest side to stop the other side’s waggling, accelerating the inequality and allowing the bees to choose a site more quickly. “It amplifies differences in the support for the two sites that are actually equal in quality,” Seeley said. While prior research had shown that bee head butting could warn bees away from risky foraging situations, this is the first time it’s been shown to hasten the consensus-reaching process.
The bees’ waggling standoffs parallel how primate brains process information, Ratnieks said. To determine which side a sound came from, for instance, neurons from the left and right ear might both initially fire. But neurons will also suppress the firing of neurons from the other ear, and once a threshold level is reached, the brain concludes that the sound came from the left.
The findings could also have implications for artificial intelligence and some crowd-sourced decision-making systems. In the US primary elections, for instance, votes are aggregated from many individuals to make a decision for the group, and only one candidate can prevail in the end, Seeley said. In theory that could potentially benefit from some built-in negative signaling, he added.
“That’s not something we humans are entirely fond of because we don’t really like negative campaigning,” he said.
T. Seeley, et al, “Stop Signals Provide Cross Inhibition in Collective Decision Making by Honeybee Swarms,” Science, doi: 10.1126/science.1210361, 2011.
Source: The Scientist
http://the-scientist.com/2011/12/08/how-bees-choose-home/
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Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
“One is looking at the arena and the city with amazement. Their mind and eyes are so attracted to that place that they cannot even blink.” (Janaki Mangala, 12)
Janaki’s svayamvara wasn’t a rock concert, the performance of a dramatic play, or even the forum for a grand speech. Rather, the rangabhumi in question was holding a contest, one requiring immense strength. There was a famous bow belonging to 
Janaki was no ordinary woman. She was found while as a baby in the ground that Janaka planned to plough for a religious sacrifice. He was childless at the time, and since he harbored such great affection for her, he took her in as his daughter. He didn’t run the risk of taking someone else’s baby because at the time of finding her, a voice in the sky came upon the scene and told Janaka that this girl belonged to him in all righteousness, or dharma.
What Janaka didn’t initially know was that his daughter was the goddess of fortune herself, Lakshmi Devi. Think of the Supreme Lord’s most confidential associate, someone who gives Him the most pleasure. That person is Lakshmi, who has many different expansions and forms in the spiritual world. To coincide with her husband’s descent to earth as the hero of the Raghu dynasty, 
Both attachment and aversion can be purified when they are used to further one’s real position as servant of God. With Janaka, his initial aversion to material life kept him on the straightened path. He was Brahman realized, so he knew that the spirit soul is the essence of identity within all forms and that to act out of obligation to uphold righteousness is the right way to behave. He did what was prescribed for his order, not caring for the results of action either way.
Figure 1: After two weeks of treatment with ScaleA2, the mouse brain is transparent enough (left) to be readily traversed by the light from a laser beam (right).
Areas of the brain (Neanderthals on the left and modern humans on the right) that show differences in the sizes of temporal lobes (important for cognitive functions like language) and olfactory bulbs (for sense of smell).
“Is it possible that Sita - the princess of Videha who hails from Mithila and is the daughter of King Janaka - is together with that wretched Ravana after being forced by him? I think that maybe when the Rakshasa was taking away Sita, fearing Rama’s arrows he flew up so quickly that it caused her to fall.” (Hanuman, Valmiki Ramayana, Sundara Kand, 13.6-7)
What kind of thoughts should we never even entertain? With 
Though she was a female and thus at the time not formally trained in Vedic principles and concepts, Sita still acquired the same attribute of dispassion found in her father. Born in a family known for its chivalry, righteousness, and detachment from sense gratification, Sita Devi was essentially a yogi in every respect. Of course the true source of her mystic abilities was her undying love and affection for the Supreme Lord, whom she would receive as a husband when she reached the appropriate age.
In the above referenced verse from the 
Anyone who finds themselves in distressful situations can follow the path laid down by Sita and Hanuman. In fact, if we concentrate our minds on their remembrance of Rama, their constant hope of being reunited with Him and seeing a smile on His most beautiful face, there is every chance at succeeding. Sita and Hanuman humble even the proudest person through their practically impossible to believe love for the Lord of the universe. Their pastimes and characteristics would not be believable were it not for the visual evidence that is the exhibition of divine love by the sadhus following in their line. The 