Measuring elusive solar neutrinos flowing through the Earth, physicists learn more about the sun

ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2011) — Using one of the most sensitive neutrino detectors on the planet, an international team including physicists Laura Cadonati and Andrea Pocar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are now measuring the flow of solar neutrinos reaching earth more precisely than ever before. The detector probes matter at the most fundamental level and provides a powerful tool for directly observing the sun's composition.

Pocar, Cadonati and colleagues report in the current issue of Physical Review Letters that the Borexino instrument has now measured with high precision the flux of the beryllium seven (7Be) solar neutrino, abundant, low-energy particles once below the observable threshold. With this advance, they can now precisely study the behavior of solar neutrinos with kinetic energy below 1 megaelectron volt (MeV). Borexino scientists also recently reported the first observation of neutrinos produced in a little-studied solar nuclear process known as proton-electron-proton, or pep, and set of stringent limit on reactions involving carbon, nitrogen and oxygen (the CNO cycle) in the sun.

Cadonati says, "Borexino is the only detector capable of observing the entire spectrum of solar neutrinos at once. Our results, the culmination of 20 years of research, greatly narrow the observation precision. The data confirm the neutrino oscillations, flavor changes and flow predicted by models of the sun and particle physics."

Of particular interest, Pocar and Cadonati note, is the Borexino instrument's ability to more thoroughly test neutrino oscillation parameters, allowing an exploration of their characteristic non-zero mass, which does not fit the Standard Model of particle physics. "Our data can tell us about fundamental micro physics at the particle level," says Cadonati. "Borexino is using neutrinos to explore the interior of the sun, looking for new, exciting clues to the mysteries of the universe we cannot see." Pocar adds, "Our detector provides stringent tests of the three-neutrino oscillations model."

Solar neutrinos are produced in nuclear processes and radioactive decays of several elements during fusion reactions at the sun's core. As many as 65 billion of them stream out of the sun and hit every square centimeter of Earth's surface [or 420 billion every square inch] every second. But because they only interact through the nuclear weak force they pass through matter unaffected, making them very difficult to detect and to distinguish from the trace nuclear decays of ordinary materials. The weak force is one of the four fundamental forces of nature, with gravity, electromagnetism and the strong force. It is responsible for the radioactive decay of unstable subatomic particles, with a short range of influence, about 1 percent of the diameter of a typical atomic nucleus.

The Borexino instrument, housed far beneath Italy's Apennine Mountains, detects neutrinos as they interact with an ultra-pure organic liquid scintillator at the center of a large sphere surrounded by 2,000 tons of water. Its great depth and many onion-like protective layers maintain the core as the most radiation-free medium on the planet.

There are three neutrino types, or "flavors": electron, muon and tau. Those produced in the sun are the electron type. As they travel away from their birthplace, they oscillate, or change from one flavor to another. A detector like Borexino can observe all three types in real time and measures each one's energy, but it cannot distinguish between them. It's more sensitive to the electron type so they are more likely to be seen.

The 7Be neutrino flux now being detected by Borexino is predicted by the standard solar model to make up about 10 percent of solar flow, Cadonati says. Earlier instruments in Canada and Japan designed to detect higher-energy neutrinos had already observed evidence of their flavor oscillations, probing 1/10,000 of the solar neutrino flux and their oscillations as they travel through solar matter. However, without data in the low-energy range as scanned by Borexino, physicists were not able to confirm the specific energy-dependent effect of solar neutrino oscillations. Borexino has now filled this gap and for the first time observed evidence of neutrino oscillation in vacuum, as they travel between the sun and Earth.

Pocar says that from the astrophysics angle, Borexino's ability to conduct "precision physics" experiments and collect a large number of observations, with concomitant higher statistical power, is yielding data that show how our sun works. As for the possibility of discovering a new kind of neutrino coming from the sun, which is allowed by some theoretical extensions to the Standard Model of particle physics, he adds, "You always have the hope of seeing surprises, some small deviation from the expectations. And this you can only have if your accuracy and precision are good enough to see very small variations."

In a companion paper, the Borexino team says their 7Be solar neutrino flux measurements show no flow differences between day and night. Some had hypothesized that one might exist because neutrinos pass through Earth's bulk at night. But Pocar says, "The traverse through the Earth seems not to change neutrinos' flavor."

In the future, the researchers hope to identify the origin of every neutrino type coming from the sun, particularly to assess the relative levels of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen there, to deepen understanding of how the sun evolved and how its workings are related to that of larger stars.

Borexino is an international collaboration funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) which manages the Gran Sasso labs and similar organizations in Germany, Russia and Poland.

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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Journal Reference:

G. Bellini, J. Benziger, D. Bick, S. Bonetti, G. Bonfini, M. Buizza Avanzini, B. Caccianiga, L. Cadonati, F. Calaprice, C. Carraro, P. Cavalcante, A. Chavarria, D. D’Angelo, S. Davini, A. Derbin, A. Etenko, K. Fomenko, D. Franco, C. Galbiati, S. Gazzana, C. Ghiano, M. Giammarchi, M. Goeger-Neff, A. Goretti, L. Grandi, E. Guardincerri, S. Hardy, Aldo Ianni, Andrea Ianni, V. Kobychev, D. Korablev, G. Korga, Y. Koshio, D. Kryn, M. Laubenstein, T. Lewke, E. Litvinovich, B. Loer, F. Lombardi, P. Lombardi, L. Ludhova, I. Machulin, S. Manecki, W. Maneschg, G. Manuzio, Q. Meindl, E. Meroni, L. Miramonti, M. Misiaszek, D. Montanari, P. Mosteiro, V. Muratova, L. Oberauer, M. Obolensky, F. Ortica, M. Pallavicini, L. Papp, C. Peña-Garay, L. Perasso, S. Perasso, A. Pocar, R. Raghavan, G. Ranucci, A. Razeto, A. Re, A. Romani, A. Sabelnikov, R. Saldanha, C. Salvo, S. Schönert, H. Simgen, M. Skorokhvatov, O. Smirnov, A. Sotnikov, S. Sukhotin, Y. Suvorov, R. Tartaglia, G. Testera, D. Vignaud, R. Vogelaar, F. von Feilitzsch, J. Winter, M. Wojcik, A. Wright, M. Wurm, J. Xu, O. Zaimidoroga, S. Zavatarelli, G. Zuzel. Precision Measurement of the 7Be Solar Neutrino Interaction Rate in Borexino. Physical Review Letters, 2011; 107 (14) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.141302

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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Measuring elusive solar neutrinos flowing through the Earth, physicists learn more about the sun

ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2011) — Using one of the most sensitive neutrino detectors on the planet, an international team including physicists Laura Cadonati and Andrea Pocar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are now measuring the flow of solar neutrinos reaching earth more precisely than ever before. The detector probes matter at the most fundamental level and provides a powerful tool for directly observing the sun's composition.

Pocar, Cadonati and colleagues report in the current issue of Physical Review Letters that the Borexino instrument has now measured with high precision the flux of the beryllium seven (7Be) solar neutrino, abundant, low-energy particles once below the observable threshold. With this advance, they can now precisely study the behavior of solar neutrinos with kinetic energy below 1 megaelectron volt (MeV). Borexino scientists also recently reported the first observation of neutrinos produced in a little-studied solar nuclear process known as proton-electron-proton, or pep, and set of stringent limit on reactions involving carbon, nitrogen and oxygen (the CNO cycle) in the sun.

Cadonati says, "Borexino is the only detector capable of observing the entire spectrum of solar neutrinos at once. Our results, the culmination of 20 years of research, greatly narrow the observation precision. The data confirm the neutrino oscillations, flavor changes and flow predicted by models of the sun and particle physics."

Of particular interest, Pocar and Cadonati note, is the Borexino instrument's ability to more thoroughly test neutrino oscillation parameters, allowing an exploration of their characteristic non-zero mass, which does not fit the Standard Model of particle physics. "Our data can tell us about fundamental micro physics at the particle level," says Cadonati. "Borexino is using neutrinos to explore the interior of the sun, looking for new, exciting clues to the mysteries of the universe we cannot see." Pocar adds, "Our detector provides stringent tests of the three-neutrino oscillations model."

Solar neutrinos are produced in nuclear processes and radioactive decays of several elements during fusion reactions at the sun's core. As many as 65 billion of them stream out of the sun and hit every square centimeter of Earth's surface [or 420 billion every square inch] every second. But because they only interact through the nuclear weak force they pass through matter unaffected, making them very difficult to detect and to distinguish from the trace nuclear decays of ordinary materials. The weak force is one of the four fundamental forces of nature, with gravity, electromagnetism and the strong force. It is responsible for the radioactive decay of unstable subatomic particles, with a short range of influence, about 1 percent of the diameter of a typical atomic nucleus.

The Borexino instrument, housed far beneath Italy's Apennine Mountains, detects neutrinos as they interact with an ultra-pure organic liquid scintillator at the center of a large sphere surrounded by 2,000 tons of water. Its great depth and many onion-like protective layers maintain the core as the most radiation-free medium on the planet.

There are three neutrino types, or "flavors": electron, muon and tau. Those produced in the sun are the electron type. As they travel away from their birthplace, they oscillate, or change from one flavor to another. A detector like Borexino can observe all three types in real time and measures each one's energy, but it cannot distinguish between them. It's more sensitive to the electron type so they are more likely to be seen.

The 7Be neutrino flux now being detected by Borexino is predicted by the standard solar model to make up about 10 percent of solar flow, Cadonati says. Earlier instruments in Canada and Japan designed to detect higher-energy neutrinos had already observed evidence of their flavor oscillations, probing 1/10,000 of the solar neutrino flux and their oscillations as they travel through solar matter. However, without data in the low-energy range as scanned by Borexino, physicists were not able to confirm the specific energy-dependent effect of solar neutrino oscillations. Borexino has now filled this gap and for the first time observed evidence of neutrino oscillation in vacuum, as they travel between the sun and Earth.

Pocar says that from the astrophysics angle, Borexino's ability to conduct "precision physics" experiments and collect a large number of observations, with concomitant higher statistical power, is yielding data that show how our sun works. As for the possibility of discovering a new kind of neutrino coming from the sun, which is allowed by some theoretical extensions to the Standard Model of particle physics, he adds, "You always have the hope of seeing surprises, some small deviation from the expectations. And this you can only have if your accuracy and precision are good enough to see very small variations."

In a companion paper, the Borexino team says their 7Be solar neutrino flux measurements show no flow differences between day and night. Some had hypothesized that one might exist because neutrinos pass through Earth's bulk at night. But Pocar says, "The traverse through the Earth seems not to change neutrinos' flavor."

In the future, the researchers hope to identify the origin of every neutrino type coming from the sun, particularly to assess the relative levels of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen there, to deepen understanding of how the sun evolved and how its workings are related to that of larger stars.

Borexino is an international collaboration funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) which manages the Gran Sasso labs and similar organizations in Germany, Russia and Poland.

Recommend this story on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google +1:

Other bookmarking and sharing tools:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Journal Reference:

G. Bellini, J. Benziger, D. Bick, S. Bonetti, G. Bonfini, M. Buizza Avanzini, B. Caccianiga, L. Cadonati, F. Calaprice, C. Carraro, P. Cavalcante, A. Chavarria, D. D’Angelo, S. Davini, A. Derbin, A. Etenko, K. Fomenko, D. Franco, C. Galbiati, S. Gazzana, C. Ghiano, M. Giammarchi, M. Goeger-Neff, A. Goretti, L. Grandi, E. Guardincerri, S. Hardy, Aldo Ianni, Andrea Ianni, V. Kobychev, D. Korablev, G. Korga, Y. Koshio, D. Kryn, M. Laubenstein, T. Lewke, E. Litvinovich, B. Loer, F. Lombardi, P. Lombardi, L. Ludhova, I. Machulin, S. Manecki, W. Maneschg, G. Manuzio, Q. Meindl, E. Meroni, L. Miramonti, M. Misiaszek, D. Montanari, P. Mosteiro, V. Muratova, L. Oberauer, M. Obolensky, F. Ortica, M. Pallavicini, L. Papp, C. Peña-Garay, L. Perasso, S. Perasso, A. Pocar, R. Raghavan, G. Ranucci, A. Razeto, A. Re, A. Romani, A. Sabelnikov, R. Saldanha, C. Salvo, S. Schönert, H. Simgen, M. Skorokhvatov, O. Smirnov, A. Sotnikov, S. Sukhotin, Y. Suvorov, R. Tartaglia, G. Testera, D. Vignaud, R. Vogelaar, F. von Feilitzsch, J. Winter, M. Wojcik, A. Wright, M. Wurm, J. Xu, O. Zaimidoroga, S. Zavatarelli, G. Zuzel. Precision Measurement of the 7Be Solar Neutrino Interaction Rate in Borexino. Physical Review Letters, 2011; 107 (14) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.141302

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

View the original article here

How to learn a star's true age

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2011) — For many movie stars, their age is a well-kept secret. In space, the same is true of the actual stars. Like our Sun, most stars look almost the same for most of their lives. So how can we tell if a star is one billion or 10 billion years old? Astronomers may have found a solution -- measuring the star's spin.

"A star's rotation slows down steadily with time, like a top spinning on a table, and can be used as a clock to determine its age," says astronomer Soren Meibom of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Meibom presented his findings May 24, 2011 in a press conference at the 218th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Knowing a star's age is important for many astronomical studies and in particular for planet hunters. With the bountiful harvest from NASA's Kepler spacecraft (launched in 2009) adding to previous discoveries, astronomers have found nearly 2,000 planets orbiting distant stars. Now, they want to use this new zoo of planets to understand how planetary systems form and evolve and why they are so different from each other.

"Ultimately, we need to know the ages of the stars and their planets to assess whether alien life might have evolved on these distant worlds," says Meibom. "The older the planet, the more time life has had to get started. Since stars and planets form together at the same time, if we know a star's age, we know the age of its planets too."

Learning a star's age is relatively easy when it's in a cluster of hundreds of stars that all formed at the same time. Astronomers have known for decades that if they plot the colors and brightnesses of the stars in a cluster, the pattern they see can be used to tell the cluster's age. But this technique only works on clusters. For stars not in clusters (including all stars known to have planets), determining the age is much more difficult.

Using the unique capabilities of the Kepler space telescope, Meibom and his collaborators measured the rotation rates for stars in a 1-billion-year-old cluster called NGC 6811. This new work nearly doubles the age covered by previous studies of younger clusters. It also significantly adds to our knowledge of how a star's spin rate and age are related.

If a relationship between stellar rotation and age can be established by studying stars in clusters, then measuring the rotation period of any star can be used to derive its age -- a technique called gyrochronology (pronounced ji-ro-kron-o-lo-gee). For gyrochronology to work, astronomers first must calibrate their new "clock."

They begin with stars in clusters with known ages. By measuring the spins of cluster stars, they can learn what spin rate to expect for that age. Measuring the rotation of stars in clusters with different ages tells them exactly how spin and age are related. Then by extension, they can measure the spin of a single isolated star and calculate its age.

To measure a star's spin, astronomers look for changes in its brightness caused by dark spots on its surface -- the stellar equivalent of sunspots. Any time a spot crosses the star's face, it dims slightly. Once the spot rotates out of view, the star's light brightens again. By watching how long it takes for a spot to rotate into view, across the star and out of view again, we learn how fast the star is spinning.

The changes in a star's brightness due to spots are very small, typically a few percent or less, and become smaller the older the star. Therefore, the rotation periods of stars older than about half a billion years can't be measured from the ground where Earth's atmosphere interferes. Fortunately, this is not a problem for the Kepler spacecraft. Kepler was designed specifically to measure stellar brightnesses very precisely in order to detect planets (which block a star's light ever so slightly if they cross the star's face from our point of view).

To extend the age-rotation relationship to NGC 6811, Meibom and his colleagues faced a herculean task. They spent four years painstakingly sorting out stars in the cluster from unrelated stars that just happened to be seen in the same direction. This preparatory work was done using a specially designed instrument (Hectochelle) mounted on the MMT telescope on Mt. Hopkins in southern Arizona. Hectochelle can observe 240 stars at the same time, allowing them to observe nearly 7000 stars over four years. Once they knew which stars were the real cluster stars, they used Kepler data to determine how fast those stars were spinning.

They found rotation periods ranging from 1 to 11 days (with hotter, more massive stars spinning faster), compared to the 30-day spin rate of our Sun. More importantly, they found a strong relationship between stellar mass and rotation rate, with little scatter. This result confirms that gyrochronology is a promising new method to learn the ages of isolated stars.

The team now plans to study other, older star clusters to continue calibrating their stellar "clocks." Those measurements will be more challenging because older stars spin slower and have fewer and smaller spots, meaning that the brightness changes will be even smaller and more drawn out. Nevertheless, they feel up to the challenge.

"This work is a leap in our understanding of how stars like our Sun work. It also may have an important impact on our understanding of planets found outside our solar system," said Meibom.

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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

View the original article here

Robots learn to share: Why we go out of our way to help one another

ScienceDaily (May 4, 2011) — Using simple robots to simulate genetic evolution over hundreds of generations, Swiss scientists provide quantitative proof of kin selection and shed light on one of the most enduring puzzles in biology: Why do most social animals, including humans, go out of their way to help each other? In the online, open access journal PLoS Biology, EPFL robotics professor Dario Floreano teams up with University of Lausanne biologist Laurent Keller to weigh in on the oft-debated question of the evolution of altruism genes.

Altruism, the sacrificing of individual gains for the greater good, appears at first glance to go against the notion of "survival of the fittest." But altruistic gene expression is found in nature and is passed on from one generation to the next. Worker ants, for example, are sterile and make the ultimate altruistic sacrifice by not transmitting their genes at all in order to insure the survival of the queen's genetic makeup. The sacrifice of the individual in order to insure the survival of a relative's genetic code is known as kin selection. In 1964, biologist W.D. Hamilton proposed a precise set of conditions under which altruistic behavior may evolve, now known as Hamilton's rule of kin selection. Here's the gist: If an individual family member shares food with the rest of the family, it reduces his or her personal likelihood of survival but increases the chances of family members passing on their genes, many of which are common to the entire family. Hamilton's rule simply states that whether or not an organism shares its food with another depends on its genetic closeness (how many genes it shares) with the other organism.

Testing the evolution of altruism using quantitative studies in live organisms has been largely impossible because experiments need to span hundreds of generations and there are too many variables. However, Floreano's robots evolve rapidly using simulated gene and genome functions and allow scientists to measure the costs and benefits associated with the trait. Additionally, Hamilton's rule has long been a subject of much debate be-cause its equation seems too simple to be true. "This study mirrors Hamilton's rule re-markably well to explain when an altruistic gene is passed on from one generation to the next, and when it is not," says Keller.

Previous experiments by Floreano and Keller showed that foraging robots doing simple tasks, such as pushing seed-like objects across the floor to a destination, evolve over multiple generations. Those robots not able to push the seeds to the correct location are selected out and cannot pass on their code, while robots that perform comparatively better see their code reproduced, mutated, and recombined with that of other robots into the next generation -- a minimal model of natural selection. The new study by EPFL and UNIL researchers adds a novel dimension: once a foraging robot pushes a seed to the proper destination, it can decide whether it wants to share it or not. Evolutionary experiments lasting 500 generations were repeated for several scenarios of altruistic interaction -- how much is shared and to what cost for the individual -- and of genetic relatedness in the population. The researchers created groups of relatedness that, in the robot world, would be the equivalent of complete clones, siblings, cousins and non-relatives. The groups that shared along the lines of Hamilton's rule foraged better and passed their code onto the next generation.

The quantitative results matched surprisingly well the predictions of Hamilton's rule even in the presence of multiple interactions. Hamilton's original theory takes a limited and isolated vision of gene interaction into account, whereas the genetic simulations run in the foraging robots integrate effects of one gene on multiple other genes with Hamilton's rule still holding true. The findings are already proving useful in swarm robotics. "We have been able to take this experiment and extract an algorithm that we can use to evolve cooperation in any type of robot," explains Floreano. "We are using this altruism algo-rithm to improve the control system of our flying robots and we see that it allows them to effectively collaborate and fly in swarm formation more successfully."

This research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Euro-pean Commission ECAgents and Swarmanoids projects, and the European Research Council.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Public Library of Science, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

Markus Waibel, Dario Floreano, Laurent Keller. A Quantitative Test of Hamilton's Rule for the Evolution of Altruism. PLoS Biology, 2011; 9 (5): e1000615 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000615

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

View the original article here

Robots learn to share: Why we go out of our way to help one another

ScienceDaily (May 4, 2011) — Using simple robots to simulate genetic evolution over hundreds of generations, Swiss scientists provide quantitative proof of kin selection and shed light on one of the most enduring puzzles in biology: Why do most social animals, including humans, go out of their way to help each other? In the online, open access journal PLoS Biology, EPFL robotics professor Dario Floreano teams up with University of Lausanne biologist Laurent Keller to weigh in on the oft-debated question of the evolution of altruism genes.

Altruism, the sacrificing of individual gains for the greater good, appears at first glance to go against the notion of "survival of the fittest." But altruistic gene expression is found in nature and is passed on from one generation to the next. Worker ants, for example, are sterile and make the ultimate altruistic sacrifice by not transmitting their genes at all in order to insure the survival of the queen's genetic makeup. The sacrifice of the individual in order to insure the survival of a relative's genetic code is known as kin selection. In 1964, biologist W.D. Hamilton proposed a precise set of conditions under which altruistic behavior may evolve, now known as Hamilton's rule of kin selection. Here's the gist: If an individual family member shares food with the rest of the family, it reduces his or her personal likelihood of survival but increases the chances of family members passing on their genes, many of which are common to the entire family. Hamilton's rule simply states that whether or not an organism shares its food with another depends on its genetic closeness (how many genes it shares) with the other organism.

Testing the evolution of altruism using quantitative studies in live organisms has been largely impossible because experiments need to span hundreds of generations and there are too many variables. However, Floreano's robots evolve rapidly using simulated gene and genome functions and allow scientists to measure the costs and benefits associated with the trait. Additionally, Hamilton's rule has long been a subject of much debate be-cause its equation seems too simple to be true. "This study mirrors Hamilton's rule re-markably well to explain when an altruistic gene is passed on from one generation to the next, and when it is not," says Keller.

Previous experiments by Floreano and Keller showed that foraging robots doing simple tasks, such as pushing seed-like objects across the floor to a destination, evolve over multiple generations. Those robots not able to push the seeds to the correct location are selected out and cannot pass on their code, while robots that perform comparatively better see their code reproduced, mutated, and recombined with that of other robots into the next generation -- a minimal model of natural selection. The new study by EPFL and UNIL researchers adds a novel dimension: once a foraging robot pushes a seed to the proper destination, it can decide whether it wants to share it or not. Evolutionary experiments lasting 500 generations were repeated for several scenarios of altruistic interaction -- how much is shared and to what cost for the individual -- and of genetic relatedness in the population. The researchers created groups of relatedness that, in the robot world, would be the equivalent of complete clones, siblings, cousins and non-relatives. The groups that shared along the lines of Hamilton's rule foraged better and passed their code onto the next generation.

The quantitative results matched surprisingly well the predictions of Hamilton's rule even in the presence of multiple interactions. Hamilton's original theory takes a limited and isolated vision of gene interaction into account, whereas the genetic simulations run in the foraging robots integrate effects of one gene on multiple other genes with Hamilton's rule still holding true. The findings are already proving useful in swarm robotics. "We have been able to take this experiment and extract an algorithm that we can use to evolve cooperation in any type of robot," explains Floreano. "We are using this altruism algo-rithm to improve the control system of our flying robots and we see that it allows them to effectively collaborate and fly in swarm formation more successfully."

This research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Euro-pean Commission ECAgents and Swarmanoids projects, and the European Research Council.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Public Library of Science, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

Markus Waibel, Dario Floreano, Laurent Keller. A Quantitative Test of Hamilton's Rule for the Evolution of Altruism. PLoS Biology, 2011; 9 (5): e1000615 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000615

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

View the original article here