Weird Science: Smells Like Team Spirit

Freda Liu: At the furthest reaches of science, things start to get very strange indeed. This is why Matt Armitage back with stories about soft drinks, relationship advice and personal hygiene.

Freda Liu: Where is our weird journey taking us this week.

Matt Armitage:

• Last week we spoke about hybrid retail and how it’s reshaping the way we experience the things we buy.

• This first story links to that.

• But first I have to ask you a question:

• How much coffee or other types of caffeine do you drink or eat every day?

Freda Liu: [replies]

Matt Armitage:

• I mentioned on the last show that I used to have a doom-shopping problem.

• Browsing in bed and buying stupid things late at night.

• Well, I should point out that with the exception of dark chocolate.

• And if you aren’t eating chocolate with no sugar and 100% cocoa, then you aren’t doing it right.

• I stopped taking caffeine years ago:

• You know those sci fi movies where someone is given a stimulant and the screen goes all weird?

• It looks like the character is rushing down a tunnel.

• That’s how I feel after drinking decaf coffee, let alone anything stronger.

• But it looks like it might have saved my wallet a fortune:

• A recent study published in the Journal of Marketing suggests that consuming caffeine before or during shopping increases your risk of impulse buying.

• Those measures of caffeine include coffee, tea and energy drinks amongst other sources.

• The study was led by Dipayan Biswas, a Professor of Marketing at the University of South Florida.

• And concluded that people are likely to spend 50% more money, and buy around a third more items if they consume caffeine before of during shopping.

Freda Liu: How rigorous was the study?

Matt Armitage:

• This wasn’t a case of a grad student hanging outside a 7-11 at midnight on Saturday night.

• In the first phase, the physical retail component, researchers gave out free drinks to more than 300 participating shoppers at retail stores in France and Spain.

• Half were given coffee, the other half were given water or decaf.

• I think the participants were random – they were simply shoppers at the store who agreed to share the receipts of their shopping trip.

• In the second phase, which covered online shopping, 200 business school students were recruited.

• Half avoided caffeine all day, the second half didn’t.

• They were then asked to select purchases from a list of 66 items to buy online.

• And the results were broadly similar to the physical retail group.

Freda Liu: Were there differences in the types of goods bought by the two groups?

Matt Armitage:

• Yes, it wasn’t just the amount spent and number of items bought that differed.

• And that seems to be linked to the way caffeine stimulates our nervous systems.

• It heightens our senses and makes us feel more alert. And it gives us a dopamine rush.

• That rush can in turn increase our impulsivity and decrease our self-control.

• So the control groups that stayed away from caffeine, either completed their purchases as originally intended,

• Or bought items that were more practical.

• The caffeinated groups would buy things on impulse rather than need.

• Sticking with the senses:

• I don’t know how many of our listeners know the Monty Python sketch about the funniest joke in the world?

• My dog has no nose. How does he smell? Terrible.

• I’m going to ask you another question: what do your friends smell like?

Freda Liu: [replies]

Matt Armitage:

• I know it’s a weird question. But it’s not random.

• Last week during the hybrid retail show I mentioned the way brands use signature smells as one of the defining factors of their stores.

• Like the cookie dough smell you get at Famous Amos, for example.

• Or signature scents that are used by some beauty and wellness brands.

• Because smell plays a much stronger part in our lives than most of us recognize.

• So when I asked you what your friends smell like, it wasn’t a creepy, weirdo question.

• I mean… well, anyway…

• New research by the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel suggests that smell plays an important part in the way we build friendships.

• And that we’re more likely to form friendships with people who smell like us.

Freda Liu: It still sounds creepy…

Matt Armitage:

• I know it comes across like it’s some kind of garlic lovers’ appreciation society.

• But it seems to be much deeper and a lot more primal.

• I found this story on NS btw.

• Inbal Ravreby at the Weizmann Institute was interested in why we form those sudden strong relationships with people.

• People you feel you instantly click with and wondered, as you do,

• If it had anything to do with body odour.

• She knew that previous research had found evidence that we subconsciously sniff other people when we meet.

• We might do something like sniffing our hand – do we really do things like that?

Freda Liu: [replies]

Matt Armitage:

• The Israeli team recruited 20 pairs of same sex friends who said that they had clicked as friends in this way.

• 10 male pairs and 10 female.

• They then used an electronic nose to sniff clothing that had been worn by each subject.

• And as a control, they randomly reassigned the pairs and repeated the tests.

• And the results showed that the friend pairs smelled more alike than the random pairings.

• Then they took their hypothesis and recruited 17 further subjects who hadn’t met before.

• They took turns playing a non-verbal game with other subjects of the same sex.

• And the results were the same: participants tended to click with people who smelled more like them.

• I know this sounds very strange, but the study builds on previous research that suggests each of us has a set of social fingerprints that guides us in forming friendships and relationships with people.

Freda Liu: Like a signature genetic rule book?

Matt Armitage:

• Yes – I’m not going to go into it too deeply.

• If you are interested there’s a great article on the New Scientist website by the evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar.

• It’s titled the hidden rules that determine which friendships matter to us.

• In it he discusses concepts like our ceiling limit for friendships.

• That thing about most of us having 150 people as friends.

• The concept has been around for a while – it’s also know as the Dunbar number after this guy.

• Things like the 30 minute effect – that friendships work best when you don’t have to travel more than 30 minutes to meet that person socially.

• I’m about an hour away from most people, so that probably explains my social circle.

• But by and large, Dunbar’s research shows that our friends are generally very similar to us.

• In terms of gender, education, outlook, interests etc.

• You have shared hobbies and interests. The same sense of humour.

• Which also explains my social circle.

• Interestingly, in it you also see quite a few of the ingredients that have helped to build the echo chamber effect over the past few years.

• We’re shocked when other people don’t think or see things like we do because all the people and information that social media exposes us to echo our beliefs and standpoint.

• And now we can add smell to that list!

• Shall we have another smell-related story?

Freda Liu: Replies

Matt Armitage:

• This one is very relevant for us in Malaysia.

• According to researchers at the Tsinghua University in China, people who have had mosquito-borne diseases like dengue and zika.

• Are more likely to be bitten by mosquitoes in the future.

• It’s been known for a while that diseases like malaria alter our body odour.

• The malaria parasite trigger a change in our body odour that attracts mosquitoes,

• Who then carry the parasites and infect other people they bite.

• So it’s a propagation method. The Tsinghua team wanted to see if the same was true for Zika and dengue.

Freda Liu: Do we know which compounds seem to attract the mosquitoes?

Matt Armitage:

• Yes. So the research team first tested the hypothesis with mice infected with zika and dengue.

• Compared with a control group without the diseases, they found that those with the viruses were twice as likely to be bitten by mosquitoes.

• They then analysed all the compounds found on the skin of the mice.

• Which they also repeated with a group of human subjects.

• Some of whom had had either of the viruses and some who hadn’t.

• They then isolated those compounds and tested them by putting them on the backs of the mice, and on the back of human hands.

• The compound that most seemed to attract the mozzies was acetophenone which seems to be more prevalent in people who have had the disease.

• It wasn’t so much that they were surprised by the result – I think they were expecting to find something like this.

• But that they were able to isolate a single compound that attracts the flying vampires is a major breakthrough.

Freda Liu: How does this help us to reduce the risk of people being bitten in the future?

Matt Armitage:

• Well, the next step is to find ways to reduce that production of acetophenone.

• Early indications from the Chinese team are that a common acne medication called isotretinoin,

• Which causes the body to increase production of antimicrobial peptides.

• Peptides are strings of amino acids.

• That isotretinoin, by stimulating the production of the body’s antimicrobial defences, suppresses that production of acetophenone.

• Their tests showed that subjects treated with the drug were no more likely to be bitten by the mosquitoes than anyone else.

Freda Liu: After the break, a crypto fugitive and a racist robot.

BREAK

Freda Liu: Are we done with the smell related stories?

Matt Armitage:

• Yes. This next one takes us further into the exciting world of gut biomes! I imagine they smell, too.

• But we don’t have to explore that today.

• Although I did read a story this week that said we should be preserving our poop.

• So that when we’re older we can use it for faecal transplants as a way to update and reset our gut flora.

• And I read another story that suggested that faecal transplants can alleviate the symptoms of conditions like IBS for up to 3 years.

Freda Liu: replies

Matt Armitage:

• It’s ok, I’ll keep it sanitary.

• I found this story on IFL science.

• Intermittent fasting has emerged as one of the most popular weight control methods over the past few years.

• With the idea that limiting our consumption of calories to certain windows of time,

• Say eight hours a day. Can help us to lose weight, and a whole host of health benefits including reducing the risk of some cancers and metabolic diseases.

• There are lots of variations on the approach but that’s a basic method.

• A new study published in the journal Nature suggests that intermittent fasting may also help us heal damaged nerves.

Freda Liu: What treatments do we currently have for nerve damage?

Matt Armitage:

• Almost none. That’s why we hear that dreaded phrase ‘permanent nerve damage’ so often.

• The only method is surgical reconstruction of the nerves. Which is only possible for certain nerves and has a relatively small success rate.

• The study by Imperial College London took previous findings that intermittent fasting aided wound repair and stimulated the growth of new neurons.

• The discovery is linked to a metabolite in our gut called 3-Indolepropionic acid, known as IPA, which we produce naturally.

• And this metabolite is crucial in regenerating axons – the tendril-like strands at the end of nerve cells that send out the electric signals from the nerve and communicate with the rest of the body.

Freda Liu: So, in a sense you could think of nerve damage a bit like turning the Internet off?

Matt Armitage:

• A little bit.

• All the websites are still there, sitting on their servers, but without the Internet to connect them they’re not much use.

• So the question then becomes how can we get more IPA into our bodies.

• I know IPA is also a beer – that route definitely won’t work.

• One way is to stimulate our own natural production of IPA. Exercise is one way.

• And intermittent fasting seems to be another.

• In tests on mice, the Imperial College Team found that those who were put on a time restricted diet regenerated axons,

• …those nerve endings, at a 50% higher rate than mice whose diets weren’t restricted.

• The next step is to move towards to human clinical trials and the team is that as our knowledge of gut flora expands,

• We will also find other bacteria or metabolites that will help us to protect and heal the body.

Freda Liu: ok. You can do AI now. Otherwise, we’re likely to go somewhere really unpleasant

Matt Armitage:

• Ok, so on a completely different topic.

• This is another story from NS.

• An algorithm that claims to be able to predict where and when crimes are likely to take place, with an accuracy rate of 90%.

• Very Minority Report – and we know how well that turned out.

• But predicting crime is not just big business – it’s one of those unicorns of modern policing.

• We’ve covered attempts to use AI in policing a few times over the years.

• The results so far haven’t been great.

• Police and probation service AIs have had an unpleasant tendency to amplify systemic biases.

• Usually racial ones.

• There was the probation service AI that would indicate that risks of recidividism were higher if you lived in traditionally black neighbourhoods.

Freda Liu: And that would be irrespective of their criminal background?

Matt Armitage:

• Precisely.

• So someone convicted of a minor, first offence could be signalled at greater risk of repeat offending if they lived in a black neighbourhood…

• …than someone with multiple, more serious offences who lived in a traditionally white neighbourhood.

• We’ve talked about the AI-based facial recognition system that London’s Met Police had to abandon after it created multiple false-positive suspect identifications for black men and women.

• The NS article flags a Chicago police system that aimed to predict who would be most likely to be involved in a shooting, either as a victim or a perpetrator.

• The data it was based on was initially withheld. After the city was forced to reveal it, it turned out that 56% of the city’s black men aged 20 to 29 were on it.

• This new system was also based on data from Chicago – it’s the work of a team at the University of Chicago.

Freda Liu: Is this a live model or a historical one?

Matt Armitage:

ed using historical data from: 2014

• But the idea is for it to become, if not a street level predictive tool,

• Then at least one that can inform citywide strategies and priorities.

• So heading for live predictions.

• In the model, the city was divided into squares roughly 300m across.

• And it predicted where certain crimes were likely to be committed a week in advance.

• That’s the difference I think with a lot of previous systems – its targeting locations, rather than individuals.

• And another seven cities were analysed in the same way, with similar results.

• Suggesting that the tool is capable of adapting to the policing requirements of diverse towns and cities.

• But, the authors do note that the model is likely to repeat or reflect biases in the data.

Freda Liu: Typically, why do we see these biases?

Matt Armitage:

• That would be a whole series of episodes to explain fully.

• In the facial recognition system example – a lot of the early facial recognition systems were trained using commercial photo data sets.

• Which overwhelmingly skew white and male.

• So the systems – or at least early ones – had a lot of data to build up a picture of the differences between different faces.

• As long as they were white and male.

• So the accuracy rate drops off precipitously if you fall outside of those parameters.

• I don’t usually interrupt one story with another…

• Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta recently published the results of a study in biases.

• They built a virtual robot running a neural network from OpenAI called CLIP.

that OpenAI flagged CLIP in a: 2021

Freda Liu: How susceptible did the research team in Atlanta find it to be?

Matt Armitage:

• As a white male, a little worrying might be the way I describe it.

• To anyone who isn’t a white male: potentially terrifying might do it?

• The robot was trained with images of people. Different genders and ethnicities.

• Its task was to answer questions by putting the people it thought most likely to represent the answer to the question into boxes.

• Black men were 10% more likely to be selected when the command was to pack the criminal in a box.

• Latina and black women were preferred when the question was identify homemakers.

• And the system favoured men over women when asked to identify doctors.

Freda Liu: Don’t questions like that provoke bias?

Matt Armitage:

• Of course. That was the point.

• The researchers were looking to exploit and identify areas of bias.

• Ideally you want a system where the dataset is normalised to discourage those biases.

• Or it’s smart enough to realise that the results are skewed, or that the question is designed to elicit bias.

Freda Liu: Going back to the Chicago crime model. Wouldn’t data that is based on the police’s own records be more accurate?

Matt Armitage:

• Not necessarily, the NS article quotes Lawrence Sherman, an expert of policing, from the Cambridge Centre for Evidence Based Policing.

• And he points out the difference between reactive and proactive data.

• Or to put it another way – the difference between people reporting crime and the police going out and actively looking for it.

• For example, those zero crime policies where police target neighbourhoods and clamp down on any and all violations in those zones, no matter how minor.

• So a location-based system like this could potentially be open to bias simply because police are already concentrating their efforts and attention on that particular area.

• In this instance, though the research team has admitted that the tool has the potential to be biased,

• Because of that it can be used to expose and overcome those biases.

• For example, they discovered in their analysis of the Chicago data that crimes committed in wealthy areas were more likely to result in arrests than crimes committed in poorer neighbourhoods.

• Which could potentially indicate that police devote more resources to solving crimes committed against richer residents.

Freda Liu: What would you like to end with?

Matt Armitage:

• We might as well stick with crime.

• This is the news that Ruja Ignatova, known as the Cryptoqueen, has been added to the FBI’s List of 10 most wanted fugitives.

• Ignatova is or was involved with a Bulgaria based proto-cryptocurrency called OneCoin that US prosecutors allege is at the centre of a $4bn fraud.

she disappeared from view in: 2017

• In the criminal probe into the company, a corporate lawyer called Mark Scott has already been found guilty by a Manhattan court of laundering $400m.

• OneCoin has been described as one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in history.

Freda Liu: What was OneCoin? A pump and dump scheme?

Matt Armitage:

• It seems it was far more elaborate.

• The coin itself was never launched.

• It used MLM techniques to sell its product, recruiting sellers and networks.

• Who sold, if I remember correctly, training courses, that came with tokens that could be converted into OneCoin when it launched.

• The entire story is quite incredible.

• There’s a great podcast called the Missing Crypto Queen that was produced by the BBC.

• It’s well worth a listen if you’re into true crime and or all things crypto and blockchain.

natova has been missing since: 2017

• The FBI puts people on its Most Wanted List when they believe the public can help to bring that person to justice.

• Which may suggest that she’s reseurfaced and that they have leads suggesting where she might be.

• So we might soon get a season 2 of the Missing Crypto Queen!