It's difficult to imagine a single-celled miroorganism planning for the future, but according to a paper by two research teams in Isreal that's exactly what some bacteria are doing.

\

The paper, which appears in the June issue of Nature, describes E. coli who are conditioned to pre-respond to their environment. E. coli in the gut are exposed to the same sugars, in the same order, over and over agian. When the bacteria are exposed to lactose they know they will see maltose next. In preparation for this they kick on maltose digestion genes. They are conditioned to associate one the presence of one sugar with the expectation of another. it's a little reminiscent of Pavlov's dogs salivating in response to a bell.

If the cells are removed from this conditioning environment and grown under circumstances where the presence of lactose is not followed by maltose the cells will eventually lose their conditioning. Eventually they will not turn on maltose digestion genes in response to maltose. Pavlov saw the same effect when he stopped feeding his dogs every time he rang the bell.

While a conditioned response may not be the same as planning ahead it seems pretty stunning that it can occur in a single cell.

To read the paper, click here.

In December of 2008 an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad. The American public had a mixed reaction. Some people were offended, while others found it hilarious. Leffrey Lin and fellow researchers at the University of Washington, may have been the only people who felt encouraged.

Lin and colleagues were studying the visual system. They hypothesized that humans operate on a dual vision system. One controls action and the other controls perception. The action vision system can allow a person to react to an object that is coming at them befre the eyes have time to percieve the object. The authors believe that Bush and the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki provide a perfect example of this in the youtube video in which Bush dodges the flying shoe.

The action system kicks in and Bush dodges the shoe. Next to him, and safely out of the line of contact, Nouri al-Maliki doesn't even process the show until much later.

Does this suggest two systems for processing what we see? Does it explain action before reaction?

Is the youtube footage convincing evidence for the dual system hypothesis?

To read the paper from the June issue of Current Biology, click here

To watch the youtube video of the shoe sailing news conference, click here.

Are you optimized for peak performance?

Does biology play a role in "clutch" performance? Protein interactions in the brain could help predict who will rise up when the pressure is on and who will fold. A review recently written by Martin Paulus and colleagues takes a deeper look at the studies that have investigated high pressure performance in order to see what can be taken away from the data collected.

The authors posit that optimized stress response in the brain may contribute to high performance in intense situations and environments.

What do you think? Is performance in intense situations biological? Does training, motivation or personality play a role?

As many of you are probably already aware, during his inaugural speech Obama said he wanted to "restore science to its rightful place". This has sparked many people, including scientists and science enthusiasts, to post their views about where science belongs. I thought it might be worthwhile to start a similar discussion on mySDscience.com.

I'm curious about your ideas on what the rightful place of science is. But I'm even more curious about ideas on how we get science to that rightful place and how it got pushed out in the first place.

As sceintists I think one of the keys to addressing this is re-engaging the public. Getting people informed about science is starting to become an important goal in science, as evidenced by the San Diego Science Festival help last April. What other efforts will get people involved in science? Any ideas?

Let me know what you think on any of these issues.