Buffett donates another $1.78bn

8 July 2011 Last updated at 01:20 GMT

  Warren Buffett is worth an estimated $50bn Billionaire US investor Warren Buffett has donated another $1.78bn (£1.1bn) to several charities, with most going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Mr Buffett has given the charity run by the co-founder of Microsoft 23.31 million shares in his investment company Berkshire Hathaway.

The shares were passed to the foundation on Wednesday, when they closed trading at $76.52.

Mr Buffett, 80, plans to give away 99% of his wealth.

He first announced this in 2006, and this week's giant donation is his sixth since then.

Other shares transferred on Wednesday have gone to four charities run by his family.

These include the Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation, which was named after Mr Buffett's late first wife, and charities run by their children, Howard, Peter and Susan.

Mr Buffet has now donated more than $11bn of shares in Berkshire Hathaway.

Described as the "Sage of Omaha" because of his investment acumen, Mr Buffet is the world's third-richest person, worth an estimated $50bn.

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Editor's Selections: Computer as Therapist, Nicotine and Body-Mass, and Another DSM-5 Proposal - Gambling Addiction

Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week.

To start us off this week, Neuroskeptic discusses a new study that attempted to use a computer to translate therapists' notes into psychiatric diagnoses. Could it be that certain language used by therapists or their clients could predict the severity or duration of a mental illness? The study has problems, but it's an interesting idea to consider, more generally. Machine-Readable Psychiatry. It is well known, according to Daniel Ocampo Daza of the Ego Sum Daniel blog, that "smokers tend to have a lower body-mass than non-smokers, and that smokers who quit have a tendency to gain weight." Until recently, the mechanism behind the relationship of body-mass and nicotine addiction was unknown, but some new studies shed some light. Nicotine, Appetite, and the Brain.Here's the next in our continuing coverage of new proposals for DSM-5. Dirk Hanson at Addiction Inbox discusses the proposal for the inclusion of a "problem gambling" diagnosis.

That's it for this week... Check back next week for more great psychology and neuroscience blogging!

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