Drastic tactics to save oceans

THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

Share on print A University of Queensland scientist is involved in an international collaboration that has proposed a new strategy for marine conservation, which involves unconventional, proactive tactics, in a paper published in Nature Climate Change. Current actions identified in national and international policy to counter the impacts of CO2 emissions are proving inadequate, according to the authors, Greg Rau (Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz), Elizabeth McLeod (The Nature Conservancy) and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland). “It's unwise to assume we will be able to stabilize atmospheric CO2 at levels necessary to reduce or prevent ongoing damage to marine ecosystems,” said Professor Hoegh-Guldberg. “A much broader approach to marine management and mitigation options, including manipulating the environment around corals and considering the translocation of reef-building corals, must be evaluated,” he said. Marine conservation options may include: - Using shade to protect corals from the heat stress which leads to coral bleaching and death, albeit at small scales. - Actively assisting biological resilience and adaptation through spatial planning, protective culturing and possibly selective breeding - Maintain or manage ocean chemistry by adding globally abundant base minerals such as carbonates and silicates to the ocean to neutralize acidity, and improve conditions for shell formation in marine creatures - Convert CO2 from land-based waste into dissolved bicarbonates that could be added to the ocean to provide carbon sequestration and enhance alkalinity. Investigating such approaches in terms of their cost, safety and effectiveness must be part of ocean conservation and management plans in the future, according to the paper's authors. They believe more ideas need to be solicited and further research is required to determine which if any of these ideas could form the basis of safe and cost effective marine conservation strategies. “Many of these ideas may only prove practical and effective at a local or regional scale,” said Professor Hoegh-Guldberg. “However, they may still be important to local businesses that may value patches of coral reefs.” he said. “In lieu of dealing with the core problem – increasing emissions of greenhouse gases – these techniques and approaches could ultimately represent the last resort. I hope we don't end up in the position but we must at least be prepared.” Rather than waiting for damage to occur, the authors suggest that research and evaluation of non-passive measures to preserve marine communities must be undertaken before more costly and less effective restoration from CO2-related impacts is needed. According to the paper, if current trends continue, by 2050 atmospheric CO2 is expected to increase to more than 80 per cent above pre-industrial (pre-1750) levels, with the corresponding devastation to marine environments putting trillions of dollars at risk globally. From tropical to polar oceans, the magnitude and speed of the changes expected as a result of climate change and increasing ocean acidity is likely to exceed the ability of numerous marine species to adapt and survive. This rate of increase has few, if any, parallels in the past 300 million years of the Earth's history. According to the authors, some species may be able to adapt to the expected changes by migrating deeper into the ocean or further away from the equator. However, such events are rare and difficult. For example, the Great Barrier Reef would have to migrate south at the rate of 15 kilometres a year to keep pace with the predicted increases in ocean temperature while at the same time preserving its tourist and fisheries values. This seems highly unlikely given the complexity of the reef ecosystem. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

Neuromarketing

VIRGINIA MILLEN, SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY VENTURE MAGAZINE

Share on print It's our emotions, not facts, that influence our purchasing choices, and marketers are now tapping into this fact to create smarter advertisements.  Image: aluxum/iStockphoto How do you decide which running shoes to buy? Why do you prefer the iPhone over all other smart phones? Why did smokers crave a cigarette after watching an ad designed to turn people off smoking, while non-smokers were disgusted by it? These are the questions advertisers, marketers and market researchers are constantly faced with and Swinburne Neuroscience Professor Richard Silberstein has some of the answers. Neuromarketing or consumer neuroscience is a relatively new area of research that combines neuroscience with market research. It uses brain-measuring technology to find out what consumers really think of advertising. Until recently, market research companies had access to limited methods to assess the effectiveness of an ad. According to Professor Silberstein, these methods rely on assessment using the right hemisphere of the brain, which focuses on details and specifics, to explain why we did or didn’t like an ad. “Basically, the current research tools that people are using for market research are good for fact-based ads, but they are no good for advertising that is more creative and emotional, which we are getting more and more of,” he says. “More and more advertising is directed at emotion. People are very poorly aware of their emotional processes and it’s even harder to vocalise or express them.” Brain-measuring technology Research is proving that emotions are the most powerful drivers of our decision-making. But there’s another reason why advertising is working to appeal to our emotions. And that is due to heavy competition between brands that have little to set them apart, except for our emotional connection to them. Take a tube of toothpaste, for example. Why do some people buy Colgate Total White Stripe over Macleans Ultimate White Ice Sensation? Professor Silberstein explains we make these decisions based on emotion, not fact. It is important to note, however, that there are some cases when rational processes come in to play. People will often choose a home loan, for example, based on the lowest interest rate a bank can offer. Professor Silberstein’s company Neuro-Insight uses a technology invented at Swinburne called Steady State Topography (SST) to measure the effectiveness of a piece of commercial communication by tracking rapid changes in the speed of neural processing in different parts of the brain. “When a part of the brain becomes more active it tends to process neural information faster. SST is probably the only technology that can measure that particular feature of brain response,” he says. “The right hemisphere of our brain is concerned with imagery, but also with the emotional connection and that’s the one that’s hard to get at by using traditional market research methodologies.” SST can measure if an ad is being stored in our long-term memories – probably the most important aspect of judging whether an ad is effective or not. “One of our measures for advertising effectiveness is if there is a high level of memory encoding during either the key message of the ad or during the branding of the ad,” says Professor Silberstein. The company can also measure whether the subject likes or dislikes something, their engagement with the ad, and emotional intensity experienced while watching an ad. “When you put all of that together we can give a profile of psychological processes and we can see how they change on a second-by-second basis. “We can give an insight into the mind and emotions of the people a company is trying to communicate with. We can tell not what are people thinking, but how people are thinking,” says Professor Silberstein. Your decision-making personality Swinburne’s Dr Joseph Ciorciari has been working in the same area, but specialises in how the biology of personality and thinking style impact decision-making. Through their joint research, Dr Ciorciari and Dr John Gountas, from Murdoch University, recently found that there is a neurobiological validation for the four broad personality types Dr Gountas believes each of us lean towards when making decisions. These four personality types are logical, pragmatic, emotional and imaginative. “When we make a decision we have a dominant personality [thinking style] and we may shift to another depending on the impact our environment is having on us,” says Dr Ciorciari, a senior lecturer who has taught in the biomedical sciences, biomedical engineering and psychophysiology undergraduate, honours and postgraduate programs, and is the program coordinator for the undergraduate psychology/psychophysiology course at Swinburne. Targeted advertising Examining consumer behaviour through the prism of these personality types allows marketers to better target advertising. Dr Ciorciari and Dr Gountas have done studies on advertisements designed to curb the road toll. “We did a couple of studies on young men watching these ads, using an EEG technique called LORETA, which looks at the source of where the electrical activity is emanating from the brain. It gives you a better estimation of which region is involved in decision-making,” says Dr Ciorciari. The research showed that certain ads caused young men to completely switch off. “The ads had absolutely no impact. We didn’t find memory systems activating. We saw systems working because they were watching, but the information wasn’t getting in.” However, one ad shown to the men took a completely different approach. “It pulled on the heart strings, it gave the young men who were watching it an opportunity to see the suffering of those who were left behind. It was extremely effective,” says Dr Ciorciari. The ability of consumer neuroscience to determine whether an ad is effective is the reason more corporations, including Google, Coca-Cola and General Motors are using it to influence consumer attitudes. “If you want to put together a better ad, you can work out where the negative bits are, based on neuroscience. You can then better construct the ad to help maintain attention, to make it more effective,” says Dr Ciorciari. This technology and research is illuminating the human mind and our decision-making processes. It offers insight into the most effective ways companies can communicate with us and helps scientists and advertisers to understand what resonates, and therefore what is most powerful. It is shaping advertising. Editor's Note: Original story from Swinburne's Venture magazine can be found here.

‘Switch’ for birth defects found

WALTER AND ELIZA HALL INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH

Share on print Without the Moz gene, Tbx1, a gene responsible for normal heart development, did not work properly, the researchers have found. Image: cosmin4000/iStockphoto The discovery of a ‘switch’ that modifies a gene known to be essential for normal heart development could explain variations in the severity of birth defects in children with DiGeorge syndrome. Researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute made the discovery while investigating foetal development in an animal model of DiGeorge syndrome. DiGeorge syndrome affects approximately one in 4000 babies. Dr Anne Voss and Dr Tim Thomas led the study, with colleagues from the institute’s Development and Cancer division, published in the journalDevelopmental Cell. Dr Voss said babies with DiGeorge syndrome have a characteristic DNA mutation on chromosome 22 (22q11 – chromosome 22, long arm, band 11), but exhibit a range of mild to severe birth defects, including heart and aorta defects. “The variation in symptoms is so prominent that even identical twins, with the exact same DNA sequence, can have remarkably different conditions,” she said. “We hypothesised that environmental factors were probably responsible for the variation, via changes to the way in which genetic material is packaged in the chromatin,” Dr Voss said. Chromatin is the genetic material that comprises DNA and associated proteins packaged together in the cell nucleus. Chemical marks that sit on the chromatin modify it to instruct when and where to switch genes on or off, making a profound difference to normal development and cellular processes. The research team found a protein called MOZ, the ‘switch’ which is involved in chromatin modification, was a key to explaining the range of defects seen in an animal model of DiGeorge syndrome. “MOZ is what we call an chromatin modifier, which means it is responsible for making marks on the chromatin that tell genes to switch on or off,” Dr Voss said. “In this study, we showed that MOZ regulates the major gene, called Tbx1, in the 22q11 deletion. Tbx1 is responsible for heart and aortic arch development. In mouse models that have no Moz gene, Tbx1 does not work properly, and the embryos have similar heart and aorta defects to those seen in children with DiGeorge syndrome. We showed that MOZ is crucial for normal activity of Tbx1, and the level of MOZ activity may contribute to determining how severe the defects are in children with DiGeorge syndrome,” Dr Voss said. Dr Voss said the study also showed that the severity of birth defects in DiGeorge syndrome could be compounded by the mother’s diet, particularly if the MOZ switch is not working properly. The research team showed that reduced MOZ activity could conspire with excess retinoic acid (a type of vitamin A) to markedly increase the frequency and severity of DiGeorge syndrome. “In our mouse model, we saw that retinoic acid exacerbated the defects seen in mice with mutations in the Moz gene. In fact, in mice that had one normal copy of MOZ and one mutated copy, the offspring look completely normal, but if the mother’s diet was high in vitamin A, the offspring developed a DiGeorge-like syndrome. This suggests that MOZ, when coupled with a diet high in vitamin A (retinoic acid), may play a role in the development of DiGeorge syndrome in some cases. “This interaction between the chromatin modifier MOZ, the Tbx1 gene, and retinoic acid in the diet gives a rare insight of how the environment and genetic mutations can interact at the chromatin level to cause birth defects.” The work is supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, British Heart Foundation, Australian Stem Cell Centre and the Victorian Government. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.