bluprnt 4 rvolution: Science

Hum of earth generated in CANADA!

its true. well not really. but its AMAZING.

they located the hum of the earth!

its too low for human ears, 10 millihertz.

but it's detectable by seismometers. wouldnt it be lovely to have a seismometer?

so the hum is in fact a reflection of certain waves all along the ocean floor.

allarently, "the hum is caused by the combination of two waves of the same frequency travelling in opposite directions. The waves alternately cancel out and amplify each other so that the sea surface goes from wavy to flat to wavy. This creates a standing wave that "goes thump, thump, thump on the ocean floor at twice the frequency of the waves you started off with, driving the hum", says Webb."

also the hum is strongest on the coast of vancouver. which makes me feel special for some reason. also echart tolle lives in vancouver. i just learned that.

i shoudl mention that this is all from New Scientist.

Collasal Squid Beak!

3 years ago, in an "abyssal environment down in Antarctica," the Mesonychoteuthis hamiltonim was dregdged up by trawlers. it is bigger than the giant sqid and thus dubbed, "collassal." its the biggest sqid ever found and only a sub-adult. it's a viscious creature acording to bbc reporters with swivelling hooks on the clubs at the ends of its tentacles!

interestingly enough, the vast majority of the massive sqids found are in the bellies of sperm whales. easily one of the most amazing fights to ever go down.

happy valentines day!

What IS Food?

The latest from the incresing celebrity of Michael Pollen. It is very long and very good.

It boils down to this:
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

How to survive the cold

In the wake of that poor man freezing to death trying to save his family, the New York Times was awesome enough to print a guide to recognizing and protecting yourself from hypothermia.

How to avoid it:

When in the cold, stay dry: cold water accelerates heat loss 25-fold.
Have a windproof layer: wind will whisk the heat away from your body.
Keep old people in 70 degree heat: they, like babies don't have the ability to shiver and keep warm. Babies also have a high surface area to body mass ratio, making them extra volnerable.
Stay sober, alcohol is somehow bad, even though it may make you feel warm.
Mittens will keep your hands warmer than gloves.

How to recognize it:

Signs to look for include: confusion or sleepiness; slowed, slurred speech; shallow breathing; weak pulse; stiffness of the arms or legs; poor control of body movements; and slowed reactions.

What to do about it:

Tragically, there are other things to try before getting naked in a sleeping bag.
A person suffering from hypothermia must be gradually rewarmed, essentially from the inside out. Remove the victim's wet or cold clothing and wrap the person in layers of dry, warm clothes or blankets. Apply warm (not hot) compresses to the neck, chest wall and groin area.

Then, if nothing else is available, try transferring your body's heat to the victim: remove your clothes and lie naked against the naked victim, covering both of you with whatever is available. Be sure to cover the victim's head.

Do not use direct heat, like hot water, a heating pad or heat lamp, to warm the victim. Do not rub the victim's arms or legs, which can send cold blood to vital organs and make matters worse. If the person is conscious and able to swallow, provide something warm to drink. But never give beverages containing alcohol or caffeine, which can increase heat loss.

Keep the victim awake and handle the person gently. Avoid moving the victim except for safety reasons or to gain shelter.

And don't assume someone found motionless in the cold is already dead. Many victims of hypothermia can be revived.

If you do get stuck in a car in the cold, here is what to do (some of it makes no sense to me):

Remove anything you might need from the trunk and get back in the vehicle. While seated, move your arms and legs often to maintain circulation and generate warmth. Run the motor with the heater on for 10 minutes once every hour, leaving one window open slightly (but first make sure the exhaust pipe is not blocked).

There you have it. Be careful

Poison birds!

From Stu:

There are five species of pitohui birds and one ifrita in Papua New Guinea that contain homobatrachotoxin, particularly in their skin and feathers. This is the same toxin that is found in poison dart frogs. Apparently the same deadly poisonous alkoloid evolved twice independently.

Jack Dumbacher discovered this while he was a grad student working in Papua New Guinea. He tasted a feather and noticed that it made his mouth go numb. This bird was widely known and collected, but noone else had tasted it before. He then made the discovery of the first poisonous bird known to western science.

Anecdotal gustatory exploration...

Lab grown bladder implant a success

I just can't get over this. Scientists grew bladders in their lab and implanted them 4 years ago and they're functioning fine. Apparently they made a biodegradable "bladder-shaped scaffold" and put the muscle and bladder cells on it, let it cook for two months, and - viola! - bladder.

They're currently growing a heart and a pancreas as well.

The science of sparklers

This is the most useful infomration I've read in ages and I feel it will make me more popular by far. Hooray for NewScientist!

Sparklers appear to draw lines in the air because of the phenomenon known as visual persistence. The human eye does not react instantly when its view changes, but keeps the old image around for a few milliseconds. This is what enables us to perceive films or television images as moving pictures when they are in fact a sequence of still images. The persistence of the eye causes each image to merge into its successor, creating the illusion of movement.

If the changing image contains very bright objects against a dark background - such as a sparkler at night - the persistence lasts longer, so the light from quite a long period of time can be added together to appear as a single streak.

There are numerous gadgets that exploit this effect by using strips of fast-moving LEDs to apparently create writing in the air. Persistence can also be seen in the coloured spots left in your vision after a camera's flash has gone off.

The sparks from the sparkler are produced by burning flecks of a metal such as magnesium or aluminium flung off from the from the firework. Initially only their outer layer of metal burns, but after the fleck has burnt down to a critical size the core becomes so hot that it explodes. The sub-flecks from the explosion then burn out quickly and brightly in a distinctive star.

Snail Sex!

I am going to make the assumption that every single person who reads this blog like the scene in microscosmose when the snails had sex the best. Which is great because i have even MORE information on snail sex for you from NewScientist:

Apparently, male snails fire "love darts" into females before mating. They don't know exctly why, but they think it's because snails are promiscious and the dart coudl stop females from producing enzymes to kill sperm.

I am confused though because I thought snails were hermaphordites.

Article is as follows:

'Love darts' double snail's chance of offspring

Love's arrow may have helped Cupid's match-making, but it was never slathered in mucous. Yet to double their chances of paternity, some male snails fire slimy darts at their would-be female mates.

“Snails that hit their partners with a dart are able to father more babies,” explains Ronald Chase of McGill University in Montreal.

The so-called love darts are wielded by a number of molluscs, including the brown garden snail (Cantareus aspersus) where it sits on the right side of its body, adjacent to a mucus-producing gland.

A male snail passes approximately 5.5 million sperm to its partner in a single mating, Chase says. But he adds that only about 1400 sperm of these millions survive the attacks of enzymes, which digest the sperm within the female. Furthermore, snails mate promiscuously, so one sperm donation does not ensure fatherhood.
Hacked off

Chase and colleague Katrina Blanchard set up an experiment to test the idea that pricking a mate with a dart raises a male's chances of siring offspring. This involved 38 female brown garden snails, each paired with two male partners that had each had their darts surgically removed – the darts take a week to grow back.

Before mating with one partner, the female was injected with inert salty water, and before mating with the other an injection of the mucus associated with snail love-darts.

The researchers used genetic analysis to reveal that males who mated shortly after the mucus injection were twice as likely to sire offspring as those who mated following the saline injection. This was true regardless of the order of injections or mating.

Chase and Blanchard found the mucus appears to cause certain ducts in the females to contract, and they think this could stop the delivery of the enzymes that digest the sperm. But the substance within the mucus that does this remains a mystery.

Cult of personality

The funny part about this article is that they're discussing how animals have personalities.

The fascinating part is that people didnt know that animals had personalities before dudes in lab coats told them. Its just funny what science had to prove before peopel accept it as fact. It's sort of endearing actuallly. Like an autistic boy...anyway, this article chronicles some amazing squid stories and talks about the history of the recognition on an "official" (read: superego) level.

"Personality theory started showing up in the writings of Ivan Pavlov and Sigmund Freud as a somewhat vague, broadly drawn concept. It has only been in the last 60 years or so that the modern science of human personality began to emerge, a system of assessing distinct personality traits that has its roots in World War II, when the U.S. government assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of today's C.I.A.) the task of identifying which individuals had the right traits to be spies.

"A number of different personality-mapping methods and traits-assessment tests have been developed over the years, all of them pivoting around the principle that certain traits can be consistently observed in individuals across time and different situations. The most widely applied test today uses the categories defined by what is known as the Five-Factor Model (F.F.M.): openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Under each of these broad dimension headings are so-called clusters of recognizable traits: an extroverted person, for example, is more sociable, outgoing and assertive; a neurotic one, more anxious, moody and stressed."

According to the article personality has to not only be distinct reactions to stimuli, but also the consciousness of those reactions. "temperament is always invoked as a purely biological, inherited quality, whereas personality is thought of as a "higher order phenomenon" that grows out of the interaction of our inherited temperaments and our experiences."

Interestingly enough, "In the late 19th century, animal emotion and behavior were integral aspects of the newly emerging science of human psychology. Charles Darwin devoted much of his time after the publication of "The Origin of Species" to researching "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," published in 1872...animal studies figured prominently in standard human psychology textbooks well into the 1940's. And then, steadily, the animals began to disappear."

And now they're back. So there's this 60 year lull in which animals were not considered worthy of individuality. Maybe that corresponds with the rise in factory farming or something? Industrialization?

In addition, " a recently published human-personality study of 545 people by Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in England shows a strong parallel with some of these recent animal studies. It found that the more extroverted and outgoing people were, the more sex partners they tended to have, an evolutionary edge that was mitigated by the fact that these were the same people who were most likely to end up in the hospital because of stupid risk-taking behaviors."

This is a great quote from a paper from the 60's: "The farther removed an animal is from ourselves," Dethier writes, "the less sympathetic we are in ascribing to it those components of behavior that we know in ourselves. There is some fuzzy point of transition in the phylogenetic scale where our empathizing acquires an unsavory aura. Yet there is little justification for this schism. If we subscribe to an idea of a lineal evolution of behavior, there is no reason for failing to search for adumbrations of higher behavior in invertebrates."

Our brains are amazing!

This is the best article I've read all month and I swear it will be the last one from the NYT for a while. It's on mirror neurons, cells in our brains that fire when we think of doing things but aren't actually doing them.

It all sort of seems liek someone's found a great new name for some old thing, but the article is fascinating nonetheless.

They write, "The human brain has multiple mirror neuron systems that specialize in carrying out and understanding not just the actions of others but their intentions, the social meaning of their behavior and their emotions."

"Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others not through conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation. By feeling, not by thinking."

"Most nerve cells in the brain are comparatively pedestrian. Many specialize in detecting ordinary features of the outside world. Some fire when they encounter a horizontal line while others are dedicated to vertical lines. Others detect a single frequency of sound or a direction of movement.

"Moving to higher levels of the brain, scientists find groups of neurons that detect far more complex features like faces, hands or expressive body language. Still other neurons help the body plan movements and assume complex postures.

Mirror neurons "fire in response to chains of actions linked to intentions."

"When you see me perform an action - such as picking up a baseball - you automatically simulate the action in your own brain," said Dr. Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies mirror neurons. "Circuits in your brain, which we do not yet entirely understand, inhibit you from moving while you simulate," he said. "But you understand my action because you have in your brain a template for that action based on your own movements."

He continued: "And if you see me choke up, in emotional distress from striking out at home plate, mirror neurons in your brain simulate my distress. You automatically have empathy for me. You know how I feel because you literally feel what I am feeling."

Until now, scholars have treated culture as fundamentally separate from biology, she said. "But now we see that mirror neurons absorb culture directly, with each generation teaching the next by social sharing, imitation and observation."

Amazing.

Cuteness

An article from the NYT on Cuteness as an evolutionary trait.

So what is cute? "bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others."

As you may have imagined, "Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense." Our babies are so vulnerable, we are attracted to even the slightest indication of them.

"The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession."

They also say how babies did not evolve to be cute but we evolved to find them cute. So companies like disney take into consideration what is cute and put it on nonhuman things like ducks. So they give ducks forward facing eyes even though it makes no sense.

And like all good things in life, "New studies suggest that cute images stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain aroused by sex, a good meal or psychoactive drugs like cocaine"

Also, the whole cuteness thing in Japan has a name! "kawaii." Amazing.

Observing Observers

This is a funny story from the NYT abou thte feelings of the Ariaal, this tribe in Africa, who have been much studied by scientists due to their historical distance from "modern" culture.

''I thought I was being bewitched,'' Koitaton Garawale, a weathered cattleman, said of the time a researcher plucked a few hairs from atop his head. ''I was afraid. I'd never seen such a thing before.'' ...They have spat into vials to provide saliva samples. They have been quizzed about how often they urinate. Sometimes the questioning has become even more intimate. Mr. Garawale recalls a visiting anthropologist measuring his arms, back and stomach with an odd contraption and then asking him how often he got erections and whether his sex life was satisfactory. ''It was so embarrassing,'' recalled the father of three, breaking out in giggles even years later.

On their observations of the observers:

"The Ariaal note that foreigners slather white liquid on their very white skin to protect them from the sun, and that many favor short pants that show off their legs and the clunky boots on their feet. Foreigners often partake of the local food but drink water out of bottles and munch on strange food in wrappers between meals, the Ariaal observe."

However, in one fascinating study, "Dr. Campbell also found that Ariaal men with many wives showed less erectile dysfunction than did men of the same age with fewer spouses."

Martian Lichens!

A new study as thrown lichens into space for two weeks and found that they can totally survive. In fact, they seem ecologically capable of living on mars.

Here is an article on the mater. The best part is where they describe lichens as "a very simply ecosystem."

selective hormaonal excrution

This is amazing. Elephants have this gland between their eyes and ears that discharges this phermone called frontalin from their temporal lobe. As if that wasn't cool enough, there's two types of frontalin mixed in their come-hither concoction. They are called minus and plus.

Young males have more of the plus frontalin.
But as they mature, the mixtures of plus and minus even out.

So, when the elephants are young, the plus frontalin does nothing for them.
But the even mixture attracts females and repulses males.

It was also cool because they said it's easier to study this in elephants, rather than rats, because when elephants respond to something, it's easy to tell what they think.

Elephants are amazing.

Artists have more sex

Acording to thisthis study, professional artists and poets averaged 4 to 10 sexual partners, while other (British) people averaged only 3.

Aside from both being surprisingly low, this is interesting because it backs up a theory I've always abhored. One Dr. Miller decided that men developed artistic ability in order to woo females. Like bower birds. And females developed the ability to appreciate art so that we could better pick a mate. Booo.

I guess to test the theory, one could see if artists had more babies than others. But still, I think I will automatically hate all theories in which females just evolved things because males were evolving them.

Also interesting, "Volunteers were also assessed for character traits associated with schizophrenia which has previously been linked to creativity. "

The Legacy of Dr Franz Mesmer

A neat article from the NYT on the history and scientific basis for hypnosis. Apparently I'm in the very small percentage of people who cannot be hypnotized, which is strange given how readily I submit to mob mentality.....Anyways, full article in "more"

3, 2, 1: This Is Your Brain Under Hypnosis

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE (NYT) 1706 words
Published: November 22, 2005

Hypnosis, with its long and checkered history in medicine and entertainment, is receiving some new respect from neuroscientists. Recent brain studies of people who are susceptible to suggestion indicate that when they act on the suggestions their brains show profound changes in how they process information. The suggestions, researchers report, literally change what people see, hear, feel and believe to be true.
The new experiments, which used brain imaging, found that people who were hypnotized ''saw'' colors where there were none. Others lost the ability to make simple decisions. Some people looked at common English words and thought that they were gibberish.

''The idea that perceptions can be manipulated by expectations'' is fundamental to the study of cognition, said Michael I. Posner, an emeritus professor of neuroscience at the University of Oregon and expert on attention. ''But now we're really getting at the mechanisms.''

Even with little understanding of how it works, hypnosis has been used in medicine since the 1950's to treat pain and, more recently, as a treatment for anxiety, depression, trauma, irritable bowel syndrome and eating disorders.

There is, however, still disagreement about what exactly the hypnotic state is or, indeed, whether it is anything more than an effort to please the hypnotist or a natural form of extreme concentration where people become oblivious to their surroundings while lost in thought.

Hypnosis had a false start in the 18th century when a German physician, Dr. Franz Mesmer, devised a miraculous cure for people suffering all manner of unexplained medical problems. Amid dim lights and ethereal music played on a glass harmonica, he infused them with an invisible ''magnetic fluid'' that only he was able to muster. Thus mesmerized, clients were cured.

Although Dr. Mesmer was eventually discredited, he was the first person to show that the mind could be manipulated by suggestion to affect the body, historians say. This central finding was resurrected by Dr. James Braid, an English ophthalmologist who in 1842 coined the word hypnosis after the Greek word for sleep.

Braid reportedly put people into trances by staring at them intently, but he did not have a clue as to how it worked. In this vacuum, hypnosis was adopted by spiritualists and stage magicians who used dangling gold watches to induce hypnotic states in volunteers from the audience, and make them dance, sing or pretend to be someone else, only to awaken at a hand clap and laughter from the crowd.

In medical hands, hypnosis was no laughing matter. In the 19th century, physicians in India successfully used hypnosis as anesthesia, even for limb amputations. The practice fell from favor only when ether was discovered.

Now, Dr. Posner and others said, new research on hypnosis and suggestion is providing a new view into the cogs and wheels of normal brain function.

One area that it may have illuminated is the processing of sensory data. Information from the eyes, ears and body is carried to primary sensory regions in the brain. From there, it is carried to so-called higher regions where interpretation occurs.

For example, photons bouncing off a flower first reach the eye, where they are turned into a pattern that is sent to the primary visual cortex. There, the rough shape of the flower is recognized. The pattern is next sent to a higher -- in terms of function -- region, where color is recognized, and then to a higher region, where the flower's identity is encoded along with other knowledge about the particular bloom.

The same processing stream, from lower to higher regions, exists for sounds, touch and other sensory information. Researchers call this direction of flow feedforward. As raw sensory data is carried to a part of the brain that creates a comprehensible, conscious impression, the data is moving from bottom to top.

Bundles of nerve cells dedicated to each sense carry sensory information. The surprise is the amount of traffic the other way, from top to bottom, called feedback. There are 10 times as many nerve fibers carrying information down as there are carrying it up.

These extensive feedback circuits mean that consciousness, what people see, hear, feel and believe, is based on what neuroscientists call ''top down processing.'' What you see is not always what you get, because what you see depends on a framework built by experience that stands ready to interpret the raw information -- as a flower or a hammer or a face.

The top-down structure explains a lot. If the construction of reality has so much top-down processing, that would make sense of the powers of placebos (a sugar pill will make you feel better), nocebos (a witch doctor will make you ill), talk therapy and meditation. If the top is convinced, the bottom level of data will be overruled.

This brain structure would also explain hypnosis, which is all about creating such formidable top-down processing that suggestions overcome reality.

According to decades of research, 10 to 15 percent of adults are highly hypnotizable, said Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford who studies the clinical uses of hypnosis. Up to age 12, however, before top-down circuits mature, 80 to 85 percent of children are highly hypnotizable.

One adult in five is flat out resistant to hypnosis, Dr. Spiegel said. The rest are in between, he said.

In some of the most recent work, Dr. Amir Raz, an assistant professor of clinical neuroscience at Columbia, chose to study highly hypnotizable people with the help of a standard psychological test that probes conflict in the brain. As a professional magician who became a scientist to understand better the slippery nature of attention, Dr. Raz said that he ''wanted to do something really impressive'' that other neuroscientists could not ignore.

The probe, called the Stroop test, presents words in block letters in the colors red, blue, green and yellow. The subject has to press a button identifying the color of the letters. The difficulty is that sometimes the word RED is colored green. Or the word YELLOW is colored blue.

For people who are literate, reading is so deeply ingrained that it invariably takes them a little bit longer to override the automatic reading of a word like RED and press a button that says green. This is called the Stroop effect.

Sixteen people, half highly hypnotizable and half resistant, went into Dr. Raz's lab after having been covertly tested for hypnotizability. The purpose of the study, they were told, was to investigate the effects of suggestion on cognitive performance. After each person underwent a hypnotic induction, Dr. Raz said:

''Very soon you will be playing a computer game inside a brain scanner. Every time you hear my voice over the intercom, you will immediately realize that meaningless symbols are going to appear in the middle of the screen. They will feel like characters in a foreign language that you do not know, and you will not attempt to attribute any meaning to them.

''This gibberish will be printed in one of four ink colors: red, blue, green or yellow. Although you will only attend to color, you will see all the scrambled signs crisply. Your job is to quickly and accurately depress the key that corresponds to the color shown. You can play this game effortlessly. As soon as the scanning noise stops, you will relax back to your regular reading self.''

Dr. Raz then ended the hypnosis session, leaving each person with what is called a posthypnotic suggestion, an instruction to carry out an action while not hypnotized.

Days later, the subjects entered the brain scanner.

In highly hypnotizables, when Dr. Raz's instructions came over the intercom, the Stroop effect was obliterated, hesaid. The subjects saw English words as gibberish and named colors instantly. But for those who were resistant to hypnosis, the Stroop effect prevailed, rendering them significantly slower in naming the colors.

When the brain scans of the two groups were compared, a distinct pattern appeared. Among the hypnotizables, Dr. Raz said, the visual area of the brain that usually decodes written words did not become active. And a region in the front of the brain that usually detects conflict was similarly dampened.

Top-down processes overrode brain circuits devoted to reading and detecting conflict, Dr. Raz said, although he did not know exactly how that happened. Those results appeared in July in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A number of other recent studies of brain imaging point to similar top-down brain mechanisms under the influence of suggestion. Highly hypnotizable people were able to ''drain'' color from a colorful abstract drawing or ''add'' color to the same drawing rendered in gray tones. In each case, the parts of their brains involved in color perception were differently activated.

Brain scans show that the control mechanisms for deciding what to do in the face of conflict become uncoupled when people are hypnotized. Top-down processes override sensory, or bottom-up information, said Dr. Stephen M. Kosslyn, a neuroscientist at Harvard. People think that sights, sounds and touch from the outside world constitute reality. But the brain constructs what it perceives based on past experience, Dr. Kosslyn said.

Most of the time bottom-up information matches top-down expectation, Dr. Spiegel said. But hypnosis is interesting because it creates a mismatch. ''We imagine something different, so it is different,'' he said.

meditation = bigger brains

More from the realm of sciene that everyone knows already, but it's nice to have on hand at dinner parties with nonbelievers: A new study documents scientis' surprise to find that meditation acutally helps you focus emmensly. It helps you perform better and quicker on tests, especially if you've had little sleep the night before. The study was done with people who were not weathered practitioners so I bet your brain is even better if you've been at it for a while. It's also just a good thing to remember before going into an exam or meeting of any sort.

ALSO, the most intersting part: experienced meditators also GROW parts of their brain that they use while meditating. Amazing.

Oestrogen makes you pretty

This article falls into the catagory of things I just don't know what to do with. It claims that the more oestrogen you (being female) had in your body during puberty, the prettier and healthier you will look as a woman. They did a study of 59 women and said there was a "very strong coorelation" with the 30 guys and gals who judged beauty.

But I just can't believe it! That one hormone would govern such a complicated affair as beauty. It's social! And political! And has a lot to do with diet! Just one hormone is far too simplistic. And scarey! What happens when New York socialites get their hads on this stuff for their pre teen daughters? I guess it was bound to happen....

sperm shopping

This is a fascinating article about the history of sperm shopping and the man who took it upon himself to beg genuses to masturbate into cups in order to save humanity.

Super natural selection.

Darwin would have fainted.

Hitler would have jumped up and down and clapped his little leather hands together.

In the end it's about marketing. How to sell the stuff of life.

The "godiva of sperm, prime cuts of American man."

Beast Master

It's always been a dream of mine to walk through the woods and be able to hear birds calling in alarm to alert each other of my presence.

An amazing new study from a man at the University of Washington, has decoded chickadee-chirping to the extent that he can tell what they are harping about.

He put all sorts of predators in the realm of chicadees and listened to their calls. Apparently, the higher the level of danger, the more "dee"'s were elicited from the birds.

"The biologists also found that the more dees in an alarm cry, the larger the mob of other chickadees that formed to attack the intruder and the closer they approached in their attacks."

Ever so slightly more information at Discover .

big brains = more evolved

People make fun of it all the time, and wonder, perhaps with their massive brains, if brain size makes one smarter. But apparrently there was a study just done that says it's important.

But, where all the drama will be focused, is that big brains are from this one specefic gene cruzing around and being selected for. And apparently, more Europeans and Middle-Easterners have it that those from sub-Sahara Africa. So we're right back to the "small headed black people" days of 50 years ago.

Funny that they don't mention Asians. It will be interesting to see what they have to say about Asians because 50 years ago when this happened, white people thought Asains were this barbaric race, not white, primitive. And now our cultural perspective on Asians has completely shifted. They are smart. Very smart. And productive. So maybe this will be reflected in the scientific establishment....

it's going to be a huge media blow up once the Times gets ahold of it. And it will be fascinating to see who believes it. "But this time we have scientific evidence!" Like we didn't before when we were measuring heads? It's just hard to keep a perspective.

But, at the same time, it's really compelling. I sort of believe it. I mean there IS evidence....

And it's nice to see evolution still in motion despite our fucked up culture.

Bizarre Hairworm Reproduction Strategies

First of all, I would just like to say that I knew about this ages ago and if you're interested in finding out even more about the hairworm and other strange organisms, JUST YOU WAIT, becasue "Even More Bizarre Earthlife Reproduction Strategies" by yours truely and Stuart Crawford will be out any day now, that is, any day we get around to starting it....but it will be done soon, by Christmas.

So, the worms, they are aquatic, but they infest grasshoppers, no one knows how, and they slowly eat them and grow and grow. They somehow create protines that cause the grasshopper to only eat what it wants the grasshopper to eat. THEN, when the grasshopper is but a head and an exoskeleton, and the worm is litterally four times the length of the grasshopper, the worm causes the grasshopper to jump into a body of water, so the worm can escape, which it does, and the grasshopper drowns. AMAZING! You can see the grasshopper poised for suicide in the picture.

They also mention another awesome reproduction strategy, that of a wasp that parasitizes an orb-weaving spider in Costa Rica.

"The night before the wasp larva kills its host, it somehow reprograms the spider's web-building activity so that instead of its usual temporary web, the spider constructs a durable platform ideal for the larva to pupate on.

Somehow the larva reprograms the spider into executing, over and over again, just the first two steps in a five-step subroutine from the early phase of web-building.

If the larva is removed just before it can kill its host, the orb weaver will spin a platform-style web that and the following night, but revert to its usual web on the third night, as if it has shaken off some mesmerizing chemical the wasp has injected into its nervous system."

The purpose of gossip

An interesting article from the NYT on the inherent value of talking about each other behind our backs. I've been waiting for this for years! I kid. But I also talk a lot of shit. So it's nice to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of human evolution where it belongs.

I actually saw a documentary a few years ago which claimed up to 80% of human interaction could be qualified as gossip, i.e. talking about other people.

"Gossip not only helps clarify and enforce the rules that keep people working well together, studies suggest, but it circulates crucial information about the behavior of others that cannot be published in an office manual."

It's also "important in policing behaviors in a group and defining group membership." And let's not forget that it's very useful for making sure that fat girl doesnt make the cheerleading squad because she's really a total slut.

A great mental image for the alpha girls of highschools everywhere: "When two or more people huddle to share inside information about another person who is absent, they are often spreading important news, and enacting a mutually protective ritual that may have evolved from early grooming behaviors."

Sex and biology

This is an article from the NYT on the various differences between male and female brains, as well as their links to autism. Interesting points are listed below:

BUT, let us keep in mind that these differences appear when you look at GROUPS. INDIVIDUALS are widely varried and could fall on either side of the spectrum.

* the average man's cerebrum (the area in the front of the brain concerned with higher thinking) is 9 percent larger than the average woman's.

* men also have a larger amygdala (an almond shaped structure in the center of the brain involved in processing fear and emotion), and more nerve cells.

* In women, the connective tissue that allows communication between the two hemispheres of the brain tends to be thicker, perhaps facilitating interchange.

* This may explain why one study from Yale found that when performing language tasks, women are likely to activate both hemispheres, whereas males (on average) activate only the left hemisphere.

* On average, males finish faster and score higher than females on a test that requires the taker to visualize an object's appearance after it is rotated in three dimensions. The same is true for map-reading tests, and for embedded-figures tests, which ask subjects to find a component shape hidden within a larger design.

* Males are over-represented in the top percentiles on college-level math tests and tend to score higher on mechanics tests than females do.

* Females average higher scores than males on tests of emotion recognition, social sensitivity and language ability.

* girls tend to talk earlier than boys, and in the second year of life their vocabularies grow at a faster rate.

* One-year-old girls also make more eye contact than boys of their age.

* On average, at 24 hours old, more male infants will look at a mechanical mobile suspended above them, whereas more female infants will look at a human face. [I am suspicious of this one.]

* the amount of prenatal testosterone, which is produced by the fetus and measurable in the amniotic fluid in which the baby is bathed in the womb, predicts how sociable a child will be. The higher the level of prenatal testosterone, the less eye contact the child will make as a toddler, and the slower the child will develop language.

* Males obviously produce far more prenatal testosterone than females do, but levels vary considerably even across members of the same sex. In fact, it may not be your sex per se that determines what kind of brain you have, but your prenatal hormone levels.

man breasts on the rise

From Grist:

Estrogen exposure blamed for upswing in male chest-reduction surgery

British men are flocking to clinics for surgery to reduce their man mammaries. Here we pause a moment to savor that sentence ... OK, done. U.K. doctors blame increased exposure to female hormones for a reported doubling over one year of the number of operations for gynecomastia, a condition in which men grow bosoms similar in structure and composition to those of women -- as distinct from the mere fat deposits adorning portly TV-sitcom husbands. A society of U.K. plastic surgeons reported that members performed about 53 male chest-reduction surgeries apiece in 2004 compared to 22 in 2003. Likely causes of the estrogen exposure include traces of women's contraceptive pills in the water supply and hormones fed to animals raised for human consumption. Increased female hormones in the environment are also blamed for falling sperm counts in British men, whose ongoing emasculation is raising world schadenfreude to levels not seen since the Thames flooded with raw sewage almost a year ago.

Article.

Surgens actually "found mammary gland tissue usually found only in women."!

Aborting 1/4 of people

This is amazing. An article on abortion stats that says for every 1,000 pregnancies that did not result in a miscarriage in 2002, there were 242 abortions. Effectively, we are aborting 1/4 of people in the US. Apparently that number has been dropping since the 70's but still.

And you said evolution had stopped! Talk about selection!

More interesting facts:

· 47% of unintended pregnancies are aborted.

· Six in 10 women who had abortions in 2002 were mothers. "Despite the common belief, women who have abortions and those who have children are not two separate groups," said Finer.

· A quarter of abortions occur among unmarried women who live with a male partner, putting this group at elevated risk of unintended pregnancy and abortion.

· The majority -- 56 percent -- of women who terminate their pregnancies are in their twenties. Teenagers between 15 and 19 make up 19 percent of abortions, although this percentage has dropped substantially in recent years.

· Less than 1 percent of abortions are done after 24 weeks

· The number of abortion providers declined by 11 percent between 1996 and 2000, to 1,800. In 2000, one-third of women aged 15 to 44 lived in a county that lacked an abortion provider.

· Sixty percent of women who had abortions in 2000 had incomes of less than twice the poverty level --below $28,000 per year for a family of three, for example. This is in part because "low-income women have lower access to family planning services" such as contraception and counseling provided by health departments, independent clinics or Planned Parenthood, Finer said.

Penis on the brain

From New Scientist:

AT LAST we know where the penis is represented in the male brain.

The genitalia's location on the "homunculus", the brain's map of body parts, has been in dispute since the 1920s. Now Christian Kell at the University of Frankfurt in Germany has put eight men into an MRI scanner to help settle the question. Using a soft brush, Kell stroked parts of each volunteer's body while recording brain activity.

Each man's penis was represented in the same place - flanked by the areas for the toes and abdomen - Kell told the Organisation of Human Brain Mapping annual meeting in Toronto. "The only depressing thing," he says, [...wait for it...] "is that the representation is very small."

microwave plastic = smaller penis

Phthalates are released when you microwave plastic so DON'T! They also seap into your water when you leave your plastic water bottel in the sun. There are tons of people out here in hippie land who do their best never to touch plastic and, which I think they are going too far, it's really something we all need to be weary of.

In a side note, I think it would be funny to respond to someone like Rush Limbaugh saying the liberal media is feminizing men by saying "Ah...actually it's your plastic water bottles."

From Grist:

Well, That's One Way to Shrink the Population
Studies link common chemicals to reproductive harm

Stronger evidence that a class of ubiquitous chemicals called phthalates -- found in a wide variety of plastics, nail polishes, fragrances, and other products -- are linked to adverse effects on the human reproductive system was made public Thursday. A study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found a strong correlation between the level of phthalates in the urine of 85 pregnant mothers studied and abnormal genital development in their infant sons, in particular (because we know you want the particulars) smaller penises and scrotums and a higher frequency of incompletely descended testicles. Says lead author Shanna Swan, "These changes are seen at phthalate levels below those found in one-quarter of the female population of the United States." A separate study released this week found that lab animals exposed to levels of the chemical bisphenol A many times below the U.S. EPA's "safe dose" during pregnancy had babies with impaired mammary glands, associated with a higher risk of breast cancer in humans.

San Francisco Chronicle, Jane Kay, 27 May 2005

Los Angeles Times, Marla Cone, 27 May 2005

Scientific American, Sarah Graham, 27 May 2005

Sour grapes on female orgasms

This woman, Dr. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, has decided that, because the clitoris is made up of the same tissue as the penis in males, and because all women don't have G-spot based orgasms every single time they have sex, that the female orgasm is a left over remnant of male-based evolutionary biology and serves absolutely no evolutionary purpose, akin to the male nipple. (the full article is in "more")

I feel bad for her.

Let's figure out why she's wrong.

* Women who have more orgasms want to have sex more and would have more kids. Plane and simple.

* Just because the cervix has contractions during the day does not mean that those a woman has after an orgasm and during sex could not serve to pump sperm towards the egg and, as I've heard, alter the Ph of the acidic vagina, which can be toxic to sperm.

* I don't get what she means by saying the clitoris was "left over" from male evolution. Is she assuming males evolved, hung out for a while, and then females evolved from them, out of a rib perhaps? No. I've heard also that all fetuses are first female, and then morph into males if hormones/chromosomes dictate it.

* This is a perfect example of why evolutionary biologists are so absurd. You simply CANNOT take such a complex thing as the female orgasm, and its absense in the lives of many unfortunate women, and look at it from a physical and evolutionary aspect alone. You must consider the social context. MAYBE there is a lot of bad sex out there? Huh? Dr. Lloyd? Know anything about that? Maybe there are a lot of women who have been trained by our culture to think of their sexuality as scary and sort of bad and simply do not have the comfort levels necessary to have an orgasm.

* If anything female orgams have *driven* a massive amount of evolution. As they alluded to in the article, it does seem that it is far easier to orgams from partners one has a relative level of comfort around. If we're going to look at sociobiological evolution, then we must assume that emotions are also the cause and result of a lot of evolution as well. And emotions play a huge role in whether or not that orgasm occures. Which can tell a women a lot (consciousoly or subconsciously) about compatability and reliability of a partner.

* Women also relased tons of endorphens when they orgasm. Some scientists have even gone so far as to speculate that they are one of the driving hormonal factors behind love.

* As women get older, they have more and more orgasms. This could be behind a drive to have sex as the ideal repruduction time dims.

* Think of your own and post it in the comment section!

May 17, 2005
A Critic Takes On the Logic of Female Orgasm
By DINITIA SMITH
Evolutionary scientists have never had difficulty explaining the male orgasm, closely tied as it is to reproduction.

But the Darwinian logic behind the female orgasm has remained elusive. Women can have sexual intercourse and even become pregnant - doing their part for the perpetuation of the species - without experiencing orgasm. So what is its evolutionary purpose?

Over the last four decades, scientists have come up with a variety of theories, arguing, for example, that orgasm encourages women to have sex and, therefore, reproduce or that it leads women to favor stronger and healthier men, maximizing their offspring's chances of survival.

But in a new book, Dr. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, a philosopher of science and professor of biology at Indiana University, takes on 20 leading theories and finds them wanting. The female orgasm, she argues in the book, "The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution," has no evolutionary function at all.

Rather, Dr. Lloyd says the most convincing theory is one put forward in 1979 by Dr. Donald Symons, an anthropologist.

That theory holds that female orgasms are simply artifacts - a byproduct of the parallel development of male and female embryos in the first eight or nine weeks of life.

In that early period, the nerve and tissue pathways are laid down for various reflexes, including the orgasm, Dr. Lloyd said. As development progresses, male hormones saturate the embryo, and sexuality is defined.

In boys, the penis develops, along with the potential to have orgasms and ejaculate, while "females get the nerve pathways for orgasm by initially having the same body plan."

Nipples in men are similarly vestigial, Dr. Lloyd pointed out.

While nipples in woman serve a purpose, male nipples appear to be simply left over from the initial stage of embryonic development.

The female orgasm, she said, "is for fun."

Dr. Lloyd said scientists had insisted on finding an evolutionary function for female orgasm in humans either because they were invested in believing that women's sexuality must exactly parallel that of men or because they were convinced that all traits had to be "adaptations," that is, serve an evolutionary function.

Theories of female orgasm are significant, she added, because "men's expectations about women's normal sexuality, about how women should perform, are built around these notions."

"And men are the ones who reflect back immediately to the woman whether or not she is adequate sexually," Dr. Lloyd continued.

Central to her thesis is the fact that women do not routinely have orgasms during sexual intercourse.

She analyzed 32 studies, conducted over 74 years, of the frequency of female orgasm during intercourse.

When intercourse was "unassisted," that is not accompanied by stimulation of the clitoris, just a quarter of the women studied experienced orgasms often or very often during intercourse, she found.

Five to 10 percent never had orgasms. Yet many of the women became pregnant.

Dr. Lloyd's figures are lower than those of Dr. Alfred A. Kinsey, who in his 1953 book "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" found that 39 to 47 percent of women reported that they always, or almost always, had orgasm during intercourse.

But Kinsey, Dr. Lloyd said, included orgasms assisted by clitoral stimulation.

Dr. Lloyd said there was no doubt in her mind that the clitoris was an evolutionary adaptation, selected to create excitement, leading to sexual intercourse and then reproduction.

But, "without a link to fertility or reproduction," Dr. Lloyd said, "orgasm cannot be an adaptation."

Not everyone agrees. For example, Dr. John Alcock, a professor of biology at Arizona State University, criticized an earlier version of Dr. Lloyd's thesis, discussed in in a 1987 article by Stephen Jay Gould in the magazine Natural History.

In a phone interview, Dr. Alcock said that he had not read her new book, but that he still maintained the hypothesis that the fact that "orgasm doesn't occur every time a woman has intercourse is not evidence that it's not adaptive."

"I'm flabbergasted by the notion that orgasm has to happen every time to be adaptive," he added.

Dr. Alcock theorized that a woman might use orgasm "as an unconscious way to evaluate the quality of the male," his genetic fitness and, thus, how suitable he would be as a father for her offspring.

"Under those circumstances, you wouldn't expect her to have it every time," Dr. Alcock said.

Among the theories that Dr. Lloyd addresses in her book is one proposed in 1993, by Dr. R. Robin Baker and Dr. Mark A. Bellis, at Manchester University in England. In two papers published in the journal Animal Behaviour, they argued that female orgasm was a way of manipulating the retention of sperm by creating suction in the uterus. When a woman has an orgasm from one minute before the man ejaculates to 45 minutes after, she retains more sperm, they said.

Furthermore, they asserted, when a woman has intercourse with a man other than her regular sexual partner, she is more likely to have an orgasm in that prime time span and thus retain more sperm, presumably making conception more likely. They postulated that women seek other partners in an effort to obtain better genes for their offspring.

Dr. Lloyd said the Baker-Bellis argument was "fatally flawed because their sample size is too small."

"In one table," she said, "73 percent of the data is based on the experience of one person."

In an e-mail message recently, Dr. Baker wrote that his and Dr. Bellis's manuscript had "received intense peer review appraisal" before publication. Statisticians were among the reviewers, he said, and they noted that some sample sizes were small, "but considered that none of these were fatal to our paper."

Dr. Lloyd said that studies called into question the logic of such theories. Research by Dr. Ludwig Wildt and his colleagues at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany in 1998, for example, found that in a healthy woman the uterus undergoes peristaltic contractions throughout the day in the absence of sexual intercourse or orgasm. This casts doubt, Dr. Lloyd argues, on the idea that the contractions of orgasm somehow affect sperm retention.

Another hypothesis, proposed in 1995 by Dr. Randy Thornhill, a professor of biology at the University of New Mexico and two colleagues, held that women were more likely to have orgasms during intercourse with men with symmetrical physical features. On the basis of earlier studies of physical attraction, Dr. Thornhill argued that symmetry might be an indicator of genetic fitness.

Dr. Lloyd, however, said those conclusions were not viable because "they only cover a minority of women, 45 percent, who say they sometimes do, and sometimes don't, have orgasm during intercourse."

"It excludes women on either end of the spectrum," she said. "The 25 percent who say they almost always have orgasm in intercourse and the 30 percent who say they rarely or never do. And that last 30 percent includes the 10 percent who say they never have orgasm under any circumstances."

In a phone interview, Dr. Thornhill said that he had not read Dr. Lloyd's book but the fact that not all women have orgasms during intercourse supports his theory.

"There will be patterns in orgasm with preferred and not preferred men," he said.

Dr. Lloyd also criticized work by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, who studies primate behavior and female reproductive strategies.

Scientists have documented that orgasm occurs in some female primates; for other mammals, whether orgasm occurs remains an open question.

In the 1981 book "The Woman That Never Evolved" and in her other work, Dr. Hrdy argues that orgasm evolved in nonhuman primates as a way for the female to protect her offspring from the depredation of males.

She points out that langur monkeys have a high infant mortality rate, with 30 percent of deaths a result of babies' being killed by males who are not the fathers. Male langurs, she says, will not kill the babies of females they have mated with.

In macaques and chimpanzees, she said, females are conditioned by the pleasurable sensations of clitoral stimulation to keep copulating with multiple partners until they have an orgasm. Thus, males do not know which infants are theirs and which are not and do not attack them.

Dr. Hrdy also argues against the idea that female orgasm is an artifact of the early parallel development of male and female embryos.

"I'm convinced," she said, "that the selection of the clitoris is quite separate from that of the penis in males."

In critiquing Dr. Hrdy's view, Dr. Lloyd disputes the idea that longer periods of sexual intercourse lead to a higher incidence of orgasm, something that if it is true, may provide an evolutionary rationale for female orgasm.

But Dr. Hrdy said her work did not speak one way or another to the issue of female orgasm in humans. "My hypothesis is silent," she said.

One possibility, Dr. Hrdy said, is that orgasm in women may have been an adaptive trait in our prehuman ancestors.

"But we separated from our common primate ancestors about seven million years ago," she said.

"Perhaps the reason orgasm is so erratic is that it's phasing out," Dr. Hrdy said. "Our descendants on the starships may well wonder what all the fuss was about."

Western culture is suffused with images of women's sexuality, of women in the throes of orgasm during intercourse and seeming to reach heights of pleasure that are rare, if not impossible, for most women in everyday life.

"Accounts of our evolutionary past tell us how the various parts of our body should function," Dr. Lloyd said.

If women, she said, are told that it is "natural" to have orgasms every time they have intercourse and that orgasms will help make them pregnant, then they feel inadequate or inferior or abnormal when they do not achieve it.

"Getting the evolutionary story straight has potentially very large social and personal consequences for all women," Dr. Lloyd said. "And indirectly for men, as well."

Dangerous men are cool.

Yet another "duh' article from New Scientist. Well, sort of, I guess. It's not big surprise that men preform for each other. Feminists wrote about this decades ago with the whole "homoerotic triangle" thing: the idea being that much of male womanizing is for the sake of other males, rather than the woman in question. All you have to do is watch men look at each other for approval and you can see what's happening.

But part of me distrusts the article. No rational woman would say "yes, I think it's hot when a guy does a backflip off a swing." but you've got to admitt that it's cool when you see it. And you can't help but be impressed. Or, I can't, I guess.

But then again (watch, as rebecca argues with herself in blog form), in one particularly blissful event in my recent past, I was surrounded with 5 guys, all hot, all wanting to make out with me, as we swang on the swings under the stars at a park in Victoria. One of them showed us all how to do backflips and we all tried and it was lovely. And then we had a contest to see who could jump the farthest off the swings. Except one guy didn't participate in this plumage flaunting, was thuroughly disgusted by the whole affair, and let me know it the next day. We dated for 6 months. So maybe there is some truth to it.

But for the record, I could jump the farthest.

"WHETHER it's driving too fast, bungee-jumping or reckless skateboarding, young men will try almost anything to be noticed by the opposite sex. But a study of attitudes to risk suggests that the only people impressed by their stunts are other men.

Futile risk-taking might seem to have little going for it in Darwinian terms. So why were our rash ancestors not replaced by more cautious contemporaries?

One idea is that risk-takers are advertising their fitness to potential mates by showing off their strength and bravery. This fits with the fact that men in their prime reproductive years take more risks. To test this idea, William Farthing of the University of Maine in Orono surveyed 48 young men and 52 young women on their attitudes to risky scenarios. Men thought women would be impressed by pointless gambles, but women in fact preferred cautious men (Evolution and Human Behaviour, vol 26, p 171).

“Men thought women would be impressed by pointless gambles, but women in fact preferred cautious men”Reckless thrill-seekers might be trying a more subtle route to women's affections. Men say they prefer their same-sex friends to be risk-takers, and women prefer high-status males. "So if he has higher status among other men, women might like him for his status, even though they don't like the risk-taking in itself," Farthing says."

Cultures as species

An interesting article from Discover on how human cultures could (have) be(en) subgroups splitting off in the process of becoming other species before massive gene mixing and unifying from the likes of Europeans traveling all over and killing and unifying the many smaller groups.

Yes, this gets a big "Duh," but he has an interesteing theory that the more resources a place has (Central America, Australia), the more seperate cultures it can accomodate. That there is some innate aspect of humanity that will attempt to split off if the resources allow for it. Seems to make sense, like cancer.

Remote Control Animals

Crazy article on humans out of control with frankensteined flies:

"The 18th-century Italian anatomist Luigi Galvani found that a spark could make a frog's leg kick. His experiments established that electricity was the hidden force nerves used to control the body. Now researchers at Yale have done Galvani one better. They can make fruit flies walk, leap or fly by shining a laser at the insects, setting off certain neurons inside them.

It's possible, at least in theory, that this method could someday be developed into a sort of animal remote control. "

WOAH! "Decapitated flies can survive a day or more without their heads, although they spend that time standing motionless. "

Yes, it's in the New York Times. So it must be true. Please be advised that Blueprnt for Revolution does not advocate the decapitation of flies to test this. Well, more than one fly, I guess.

"But when the flies were injected with ATP and then zapped with a laser for a fifth of a second, they jumped up and began flapping their wings in 60 to 80 percent of the trials.

"When we saw these headless bodies flying away, we were absolutely stunned," Dr. Miesenböck said" NO KIDDING! Mad scientists....

How to avoid cancer (yeah right)

My ex and I used to talk about what we would do when we got cancer. I pretty much accept it as an innevitability. But here are ways to hold it off from New Scientist. (No, they're not paying me.)

The cancer prevention diet
YOUR DIET SHOULD BE...

high in starchy, unprocessed cereal foods, such as maize, wheat and unpolished, unrefined rice; roots and tubers, such as potatoes and sweet potatoes; and pulses such as beans and lentils

high in fruit and vegetables, at least five portions a day. A portion can be: 1 large banana, 1 medium apple, 3 plums, 2 satsumas, 2 kiwis, half a fresh pepper, 2 spears of broccoli, 3 heaped tablespoons of sliced carrots. The Greek government and the US National Institutes of Health recommend nine portions a day

high in foods that are as fresh as possible. Mouldy food produces aflatoxins, which are known carcinogens

low in saturated fat (down to 30 per cent from 40 per cent), particularly reducing saturated fat in meat or dairy products

low in red meat - a maximum of 80 grams per day - lots of fish or white meat (no limits but keep to average daily female/male calorie intakes: 2000/ 2400)

low in salt - no more than 6 grams per day

little or no alcohol. Despite evidence that wine is good for the heart, it is linked to breast cancer. Maximum 1 or 2 units per day

low in meat and fish cooked at very high temperatures - barbecue-style food, in other words - as this produces carcinogenic chemicals called heterocyclic amines

YOU SHOULD ALSO:

avoid being overweight. Aim to have a body-mass index of 20 to 25

take exercise. If your life is sedentary, walk briskly for an hour daily and take vigorous exercise for an hour very week

END OF WORLD! (pg. 15)

My dad pointed out how hillarious it was that the following report by over 1,000 scientists, about the fact that humanity's time on earth is coming to an end was on PAGE 15 of the New York Times and relegated to 3 paragraphs while Teri Schivo was all over the front page. And you wonder why we're at risk...

It's also funny that there's one of those ads for the HUGEST TURCK IN THE WORLD, romantically driving over nature right underneath the article.

I went to hear William Reese (Ecological Footprint guy) speak last year and he talked about societies that had limited resources and didn't pay any attention to sustainable living until it was far too late and they got wiped out (Easter Island, for example). So it's funny to see the warning signs all around us and watch people ignore them. Or even just not care. Fatilism is a growing trend (I must admit it is seductive) and more and more of my friends seem to feel that "Eh, humanity's demies is a good thing. Why try to stop it?"

But I also think we're just wired for optimism. If one person is smart and presents a view of the future that requires work and is not so positive (say...John Carey) and another completly lies and says everythign is awesome and will be that way forever (like W.) I think people liek to sway to the positivity regardless of reality. Which only backs up my theory that happy people are stupid.

Here is a good article on the study from the Guardian. And interesting points are below:

* An estimated 24% of the Earth's land surface is now cultivated

* Humans now use between 40% and 50% of all available freshwater running off the land

* An estimated 90% of the total weight of the ocean's large predators - tuna, swordfish and sharks - has disappeared in recent years

* An estimated 12% of bird species, 25% of mammals and more than 30% of all amphibians are threatened with extinction within the next century.

* Since 1980, about 35% of mangroves have been lost, 20% of the world's coral reefs have been destroyed and another 20% badly degraded.

* The value in US dollars of the Earth's natural processes is $33 trillian a year.

Bird assholes

Anthopomorphization runs wild!

I think it's funny that there was that study of bird personalities a while ago and now they've discovered that there are bird assholes. "In conclusion, it is our observation that the male great grey shrikes are complete assholes."

Just kidding of course! I'm resisting, RESISTING, the urg to bring my morality into the animal kingdom...but it's so hard. Anyway, I wonder if they found any male birds who decided to stay at their nests with their lovely wives and not leave them for younger birds with firmer breasts....

Real diamonds for the mistress...
(From New Scientist)

IT IS not just human males who seduce prospective paramours with expensive gifts while bringing home cheap trinkets for their long-term partners. Some male birds do it too.

Great grey shrikes mate for life and raise offspring each breeding season. But the males also sneak away and mate with other females. To charm both long-term partners and mistresses the males offer gifts of food.

To test whether the males put more effort into their dalliances than their "marriages", Piotr Tryjanowski at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, and Martin Hromada at the University of South Bohemia in Ceské Budejovice, the Czech Republic, recorded gifts made by 22 male shrikes to their partners and mistresses. They found that the average energy content of a gift to a mistress was 75 kilojoules, while gifts given to partners averaged about 19 kilojoules. Males often caught lizards, voles and other birds for their mistresses, which required six times as much effort to catch as the insects that they gave their partners (Animal Behaviour, vol 69, p 529). "It is like a saying in Polish," says Tryjanowski. "Artificial jewellery to the wife and real diamonds for the mistress."

The sexiness of oyseters and clams

From New Scientist:
Oysters may deserve their sexy reputation

FABLED for its power to turn ordinary mortals into sex gods, nothing beats the oyster as the prelude to a night of passion. And no, it's not all hype.

High levels of a chemical that boosts libido have been found in clams, a close relative of the oyster, suggesting that their reputation is not undeserved.

Even their texture is enough to turn some people on. "Oysters are so sensual just in their nature," says Diane Brown, the Los Angeles-based author of The Seduction Cookbook, "They have that slippery, slurpy sensation when you eat them that makes them very seductive."

Raul Mirza at Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida, and his colleagues compared levels of the amino acid N-methyl-D-aspartate in Mediterranean clams and other animals. Previous studies in animals have shown that the chemical affects sex drive by raising testosterone production. The clams had around double the level found in rat brains, the team told the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in San Diego, California.

People who look like nuns

Remember last week when I said that study on how finger length in males was dubious at best? Well, I'm a complete hypocrite.

This is a study about how religious tendencies are 40% genetic and I couldn't agree more. I grew up around a lot of nuns (long story) and I feel like many nuns just look like nuns. Facially. They have that nun look (even without the habit). Sometimes I meet people who are not nuns but look like nuns, only to find out that they are extremely religious. So I think that certain facial characteristics might correlate to the same genetic factors that make up religious fervor. I'm not sure it's anything specific (thin lips, nose, etc), and I'm well aware that I'm getting a bit carried away here, but its definitely something I noticed well before my emersion within the realm of physiology.

They did the study by looking at twins separated at birth. Those handy separated twins...You know, I've never really been comfortable with the idea of twins, but I guess they are good for certain things...

Fairness and punishment

A neat article from NewScientist on human cooperation. We cooperate with those who are not genetically similar to us and that makes us unique in the world. Old theories suggested that we cooperate because it makes things better for both parties even when they are enemies, like the prisoner's dilemma. But they also talk about how people only want to cooperate when things are deemed "fair."

I was a grade school Phys. Ed. teacher for a summer and, let me tell you, children spend pretty much their entire time playing games, trying to cheat, and then complaining when other people cheat because things are not fair.

They also discuss how (adult) humans will often act against their self interest in order to cooperate with others, which trashes just about every working theory of capitalist economics...

Part of the article is quite sad, and has unfortunate implications for Bonobos:

"So if many people really are true altruists, as it seems, why haven't greedier, self-seeking competitors wiped them out? One possibility...is that evolution actually is wiping these people out - it just hasn't finished the job yet...humans evolved to cooperate when our ancestors lived in small, isolated groups of hunter-gatherers. In this setting, they learned through repeated interaction with others that cooperation generally pays because it induces other members of the group to return a favour in the future...true altruism is what evolutionary biologists call a "maladaptation". Evolved to respond in a certain way to a given situation, we find it hard to act differently in the changed circumstances of the modern world."

I would like to say "dont worry, it has a happy ending in which cooperation was shown to be advantagous to large groups" but that's only when those who do not cooperate are punished, and those who do not punish are also punished. It's always seemed to me that punishment is so primitive, and I guess there are reasons for it to be.

What else his ring finger says

This NYT article claims that if a man's ring finger is longer than his index finger, he's more physically aggressive. But I honestly have a lot of problems with this sort of study. They interviewed 298 males AND females and *asked* them about their tendancies and then measured their fingers. So it really should say that "males with longer ring fingers tended to think they have more aggressive tendancies."

Plus they say that "a statistically significant number of males" bla bla bla. I just recently learned what this meant. Very little. Don't believe the hype!

Just for the record, my ring finger is the same length as my index finger.

Social evolution of sociobiology

It's is really truely amazing to watch the social evolution of the paradigm of sociobiology spread. Appropriate too. Even Dan Savage said something about how guys had evolved to want to violently have sex with as many women as possible last month. Suddenly, it's an explination for everything. Which I'm not against. I do it myself. It's quite a lot of fun actually. To look at this new lense through which to view the world: why do we do this and want that and such, why would it have evolved? Those are fun questions to answer. But I still think it's important to see this for what it is: an emerging paradigm. Replacing psychology. Which replaced religion or whatever came before it.

These evolutionary explinations for behaviour simply would not have been acceptable or even spoken a decade ago. I remember some aging scientist made a speach in which he mentioned how thin women were more nervous because they had to always be on the hunt for food. Everone gasped! The university apologized! People smirked at the crazy old man. But today people would think, "Huh, I could see that."

Here is a New York Times article on how people are looking at the evolution of human personalities by studying birds (incidently, they are called "the great tit"). It is funny that they say they've had to do tests to see IF animals have personalities.

Interesting points are pasted below:

"Certain traits tend to go together," Dr. Gosling said. "We find that people who are energetic also tend to be talkative. It needn't be that way, but that's how it tends to be." The flip side is true as well: less energetic people tend to be less talkative."

"Breeding experiments revealed that these traits had a strong genetic basis. Over just four generations, the researchers could produce significantly bolder and shyer birds. "About 50 percent of the variation you find in avian personalities is due to differences in genes," said Dr. Kees van Oers of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany."

"Each year the birds fight for territory where they can feed and breed. Bold birds are more aggressive than shy ones, and that sometimes helps them win territory. But the scientists have found that when bold birds lose, they are slow to recover. They end up at the bottom of the hierarchy, and in many cases just fly away. "They go to other places to try to become No. 1," Dr. Drent said."

"In a survey of 545 people, Dr. Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in England found that the more extroverted people were, the more sex partners they tended to have had. That might give them an evolutionary edge, but Dr. Nettle found that they were also more likely to wind up in a hospital. "

Baby booms and busts

You can get $14,000 to have a baby in Italy.
Their population is in such decline: 1/3 decrease by 2050. Not a bad deal...

Meanwhile, in the entire rest of the world, populations are exploding.

Current world pop: 6.5 billion
2050 world pop: 9.1 billion (increase of 40%)

Current US pop: 298 million
2050 US pop: 394 million (mostly from immegration)

Interestingy enough, in places like Africa and India where people are dying at alarming rates from AIDS and other ailments, the birth rates are enormous.

"The world's 50 poorest countries will see their numbers more than double. At the same time, life expectancy in southern Africa has declined from 62 years in 1995 to 48 years in 2000-2005, and is projected to hit a low of 43 before a slow recovery. That means Africans are being born and lost to AIDS at a rate almost incomprehensible to comfortable Westerners."

My friend Stu says this is always the case: anytime populations are seriously threatened, they start reproducing like crazy. It's just biologically hard wired. A last attempt at life. I think this is interesting because anytime you see a plane go down in the movies, everyone decides to have sex. And ask people what they would do if the world would end tomorrow, and they say they would have sex.

Even my cacti get in on the action. They best way to get them to flower (i.e. display their sex organs for other sexy plants to get it on with) is to stop watering them. One last harrah.

Evolutionary basis for perversity

From NYT article: "Neanderthals may have seen their first modern Homo sapiens some 100,000 years ago in what is now Israel....The question is "Did Neanderthals and modern humans do it?"

DUH! That's all I have to say. Well, no it isn't.

Recently I came up with a theory to explain modern perversity: There exist humans who want to fuck anything, quite litterally. Animals, fruit, little kids, their own kids, bottles and just about anything else with a hole in it. I really have no idea if these perversions are universal but they do seem so wide spread. Men seem born with this "what can I stick my dick in?" sort of natural curiosity. Lord knows half of the appeal of Star Trek was the idea of having sex with aliens.

So I think this makes sense as far as evolution goes. In dire situations, we have the ability (and desire) to keep reproducing by having sex with whatever happens to be lying around. Yes, those desperate selfish genes could be behind all those rural people supposidly having sex with their families and farm animals.

So yeah, duh, Homo sapiens and Neadrethals had sex. But the article makes a good case against them ever reproducing.

Full article in "more."

For Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, Was It De-Lovely?
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Published: February 15, 2005

he scientists did not get around to the nitty-gritty question until the fourth hour of a two-and-a-half-day symposium on Neanderthals, held recently at New York University.

A strong consensus was emerging, they agreed, that the now-extinct Neanderthals were a distinct evolutionary entity from modern humans, presumably a different species. They were archaic members of the human family, robust with heavy brow ridges and forward-projecting faces, who lived in Europe and western Asia from at least 250,000 years ago until they vanished from the fossil record about 28,000 years ago.

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Neanderthals may have seen their first modern Homo sapiens some 100,000 years ago in what is now Israel. The two people almost certainly came in contact in Europe in the last centuries before the dwindling Neanderthal population was replaced forever by the intruding modern humans.

Taking his turn at the symposium lectern, Dr. James C. M. Ahern, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wyoming, acknowledged: "Neanderthals are different. The degree of difference is relatively vast, but that is not the most interesting question out there."

The question was, he continued, "Did Neanderthals and modern humans do it?"

There it was, out in the open again, the question that has persisted since the first fossils of these people were discovered in the Neander Valley of Germany in 1856. Could the two people with a shared distant ancestry and family resemblance have interbred? Is there any evidence that Europeans today carry some Neanderthal genes?

For the international gathering of scientists, the issue exposed the uncertainty over the definition of species. Its conventional meaning is a group of interbreeding creatures that are reproductively isolated from others. Hybridization of species is rare in mammals. One common example is the mating of an ass and a mare, producing the sterile mule.

The conferees debated, but never resolved, the possibility that Neanderthals could have been an evolutionary and anatomical species, distinct from Homo sapiens, but not strictly an isolated biological species. That is, the two species may have been enough alike to mate and produce fertile offspring.

Again, Dr. Ahern encapsulated the issue, "How much difference is too much" for viable interbreeding to occur?

Dr. Chris Stringer, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, noted that some species apparently less close than Neanderthals and modern humans can interbreed and produce hybrids. Dr. Stringer is a leading proponent of the theory that modern Homo sapiens emerged in Africa as early as 150,000 years ago and then spread to Asia and Europe, replacing the remnants of archaic humans they encountered there.

Dr. Erik Trinkaus, a Neanderthal expert at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not at the meeting, contends that the 24,500-year-old skeleton of a young boy found in Portugal appeared to be a Neanderthal-Homo sapiens hybrid. The interpretation has so far been viewed with skepticism.

Dr. Mark Stoneking of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said that he and colleagues had looked for answers in the patterns of genetic variation in contemporary human populations and the analysis of ancient DNA from fossils of Neanderthals and early modern humans. Neither approach, he said, provided any indication of interbreeding between the two species.

"That does not rule out some genetic contribution" from Neanderthals to Europeans' ancestry, Dr. Stoneking said.

Dr. David Serre of McGill University in Montreal described the analysis of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA found in 24 Neanderthals and 40 early modern human remains. The results seemed to exclude any significant contribution of Neanderthal genes to Homo sapiens, perhaps less than 1 percent. Therefore, he concluded, they were "two distinct biological species."

Dr. Katerina Harvati, also of the Planck Institute in Leipzig, recently conducted research applying a "quantitative method" to determine the degree of anatomical difference that justifies classifying specimens as different species. She and colleagues examined the variation of specific parts of the craniums and faces of modern humans and Neanderthals as well as 12 existing species of nonhuman primates. The two living species of chimpanzees, for example, appeared to be more closely related to each other than Neanderthals are to humans.

Dr. Harvati and Dr. Terry Harrison, a paleontologist at N.Y.U., organized the symposium, "Neanderthals Revisited: New Approaches and Perspectives."

More than species differences may have kept Neanderthals and humans sexually apart, if indeed that was the case. Their opportunities may have been limited.

Dr. Ahern said in an interview that it was "surprising how little overlap there was" between the two species in Europe." It had been thought that modern humans from Africa began arriving in Europe about 40,000 years ago and so could have competed with and mingled with the local population for at least 12,000 years. But the dating of fossil and archaeological evidence is now being revised, leaving much less time when the two species could have had close contact.

"It's a real scientific problem," said Dr. Randall White, an archaeologist specializing in European ice age culture at N.Y.U. "How to interpret the overlap of Neanderthals and modern humans, their interactions and cultural exchanges, the causes of Neanderthal extinction, all depends on what are the real dates of their possible contact."

Some of the most solid evidence for overlap, the researchers said, does not appear until toward the end of the Neanderthals' known existence, when their populations were probably sparse.

Dr. Stringer said some explanations for Neanderthal extinction were being re-examined. Perhaps the technological superiority of modern humans was "not as clear-cut as some of us thought," he said. Perhaps Neanderthals, though adapted to a cold climate, could not survive the rapid and repeated changes of cold and warm periods of that time.

"It was not bad genes but bad luck for the Neanderthals," Dr. Stringer said. "Modern humans may have had no direct effect on Neanderthal extinction. They actually walked into empty spaces where Neanderthals had already disappeared."

Dr. Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History was not entirely joking when he suggested that few genes were exchanged because "no self-respecting Neanderthal female would fancy a Homo sapiens male."

In making a case for the distinct differences between the two species, Dr. Tattersall showed slides of upright skeletons of the two. But skeletons are unrevealing of Paleolithic desire.

Martian Ice

Image from the European Space Agency. Just beautiful.

Men who smoke are dumb?

Apparently nicotine makes the brains of women who smoke it behave more like men:

I'm not sure they meant to say this but the study "found that one of the drug's major effects was to make women's brains work more like men's."

And then, "When the subjects were given nicotine, these differences diminished greatly: brain metabolism decreased among women and increased in men."

So effectively they're saying that when women's brains slow down, they're more like men's....

bug face

Very very cool photos.

Blue food is better for you

Neat article from my sister about what the different colors of vegetables mean as far as nutrition goes and why they're good for you. It's really neat and the gist is that you should eat more blueberries because they will make you smart and thin.

See through brains

Yet another article stolen from the Disinfo email list: it sums up our curent state of knowledge as it regards brain scans. SO fascinating, the extent to which we can tell things about people's thought processes by watching the blood flow in the brain.

"They" can now tell if you are racist, if you're an extrovert, all these amazing things you might not even know yourself. The article goes over some potential misuses of the technology, especially for advertising as this firm of completly godless assholes has chosen to do. Please send an email to the aforementioned assholes at Brighthouse Neurostrategies Group to tell them to get the fuck out of our brains: neurostrategies@brighthouse.com. Thanks.

Sea Urchins live forever!

This is a *great* article about red sea urchins and how they can live for 200 years! In fact, a sea urchin who is 100 years old is *more* likley to reproduce than a sea urchin that is 10 years old. Apparently they don't seem to die of natural causes.

Plus they seem to keep growing forever, only very slowly. AND this biggest one ever (19 cm) was found off my very own Vancouver Island.

I'm doomed

This article from the NYT reports on a study claiming men are attracted to women who are less powerful, smart, and gainfully employed. They keep falling for their secretaries and maids and such.

"The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise. "

The study likes to imagine it's all biological. They say it's because evolution has selected for men who like lesser females so that there's less of a risk of infidelity and they won't have to raise other men's children. Which is dubious at best. I seriously doubt we could find a correlation between powerful women and infidelity. Although it would be an interesting study.

I think a better sociobiological hypothesis would be male's subconscious desires to marry women who would raise offspring well rather than be their partner in crime. I consider this tragic but it seems to be a complete trend in my life that my smart male friends go out with hot dumb girls who don't make them think and might even suck in bed. I call this the "pet girl" scenario. And do the men care? no. Why? because they suck. And they also might be inclined that way biologically.

But that is only part of the picture. To deny there are social influences on a dynamic like this in a society like this would be absurd. American society was/is patriarchal, or at least there are impressions of it still floating around. And feminism was a huge ball buster for so many men. You could totally read this as a backlash. A retreat into cozier times and paradigms. You can see it on TV with all the fat ass dumb ass guys married to hot women who treat them like babies - the Homer scenario.

Also no one mentions that perhaps smarter women are choosing themselves not to marry. Maybe they consider their carreers before having kids. This seems like an obvious omition.

Although in reality, I totally understand it. I just don’t think a pet boy would entertain me for long enough to sustain a long term relationship. I guess it just means I have to date brilliant men....sigh....

Full article in "more"

January 13, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Men Just Want Mommy
By MAUREEN DOWD

ASHINGTON

A few years ago at a White House Correspondents' dinner, I met a very beautiful actress. Within moments, she blurted out: "I can't believe I'm 46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women."

I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took up with the young women whose job it was to tend to them and care for them in some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight attendants, researchers and fact-checkers.

Women in staff support are the new sirens because, as a guy I know put it, they look upon the men they work for as "the moon, the sun and the stars." It's all about orbiting, serving and salaaming their Sun Gods.

In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was the snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting. Moviemakers these days seem far more interested in the soothing aura of romances between unequals.

In James Brooks's "Spanglish," Adam Sandler, as a Los Angeles chef, falls for his hot Mexican maid. The maid, who cleans up after Mr. Sandler without being able to speak English, is presented as the ideal woman. The wife, played by Téa Leoni, is repellent: a jangly, yakking, overachieving, overexercised, unfaithful, shallow she-monster who has just lost her job with a commercial design firm. Picture Faye Dunaway in "Network" if she'd had to stay home, or Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" without the charm.

The same attraction of unequals animated Richard Curtis's "Love Actually," a 2003 holiday hit. The witty and sophisticated British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, falls for the chubby girl who wheels the tea and scones into his office. A businessman married to the substantial Emma Thompson falls for his sultry secretary. A writer falls for his maid, who speaks only Portuguese.

(I wonder if the trend in making maids who don't speak English heroines is related to the trend of guys who like to watch Kelly Ripa in the morning with the sound turned off?)

Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into selfish narcissists and objects of rejection, rather than affection.

As John Schwartz of The New York Times wrote recently, "Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame."

A new study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggests that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors.

As Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study, summed it up for reporters: "Powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less-accomplished women." Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them.

"The hypothesis," Dr. Brown said, "is that there are evolutionary pressures on males to take steps to minimize the risk of raising offspring that are not their own." Women, by contrast, did not show a marked difference in their attraction to men who might work above or below them. And men did not show a preference when it came to one-night stands.

A second study, which was by researchers at four British universities and reported last week, suggested that smart men with demanding jobs would rather have old-fashioned wives, like their mums, than equals. The study found that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to get married, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise.

So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? The more women achieve, the less desirable they are? Women want to be in a relationship with guys they can seriously talk to - unfortunately, a lot of those guys want to be in relationships with women they don't have to talk to.

I asked the actress and writer Carrie Fisher, on the East Coast to promote her novel "The Best Awful," who confirmed that women who challenge men are in trouble.

"I haven't dated in 12 million years," she said drily. "I gave up on dating powerful men because they wanted to date women in the service professions. So I decided to date guys in the service professions. But then I found out that kings want to be treated like kings, and consorts want to be treated like kings, too."

Cell phones and brain tumors

This is from an article in London, where cell phones are insanely popular. The results from this study made one company cancel its plans to market a phone at 4 to 8 year olds....good lord.....

Acoustic neuromas are benign tumours of the acoustic nerve

A study in Sweden has shown that they are twice as common in mobile phone users

They were also four times as common on the side of the head where the phone was held

Acoustic neuromas occur in 100,000 people a year and can cause deafness

They can be treated by surgery. In most cases the patient’s hearing is saved

Brain tumours affect about 4,700 new patients a year in Britain

They are becoming more common — the UK Brain Tumour Society says that incidence has increased by 45 per cent in 30 years

The causes of primary brain tumours are unknown, so it is hard to identify specific risk factors

Secret lives

This article is making a lot of sense of ex boyfriends:

"But in a series of experiments over the past decade, psychologists have identified a larger group they call repressors, an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the population, who are adept at ignoring or suppressing information that is embarrassing to them and thus well equipped to keep secrets, some psychologists say.

Repressors score low on questionnaires that measure anxiety and defensiveness - reporting, for example, that they are rarely resentful, worried about money, or troubled by nightmares and headaches. They think well of themselves and don't sweat the small stuff.

Although little is known about the mental development of such people, some psychologists believe they have learned to block distressing thoughts by distracting themselves with good memories. Over time - with practice, in effect - this may become habitual, blunting their access to potentially humiliating or threatening memories and secrets...

In a famous paper on the subject of double lives, published in 1960, the English analyst Dr. Donald W. Winnicott argued that a false self emerged in particular households where children are raised to be so exquisitely tuned to the expectations of others that they become deaf to their own longings and needs.

"In effect, they bury a part of themselves alive."

Tsunami from satallite

from a satallite image site.

Forget lavender... it's breast milk!

This is a great little snippet from New Scientist that claims that the smell of breast milk to women without children increases sex dive by 24% and fantasies by 17%!!! Amazing!

The logic is that there's a chemical cue in the milk that encourages women to conceive when times are favorable (because other women could do it). BUT, I disagree with the chemical cue part. The article says that they can't locate the chemical responsible and I think this might be one of those things that are partly social and partly biological.

Acording to studies I've read in the past, the biggest turn on smell for women is baby powder. At first it's sort of perverse, but it's serving the exact same function as breast milk. It's reminding women of babies and the smell means that other women are able to have them so conditions must be favorable. And there's obviously no chemical cue in baby poweder that triggers brain activity in women, but through social mechanisims, we've come to associate baby poweder with babies, so it can serve the same function. Which is interesting: that a smell with a socially derived meaning could have biological responses.

After that, I've heard that women also get turned on by lavender and men get turned on by licorace so go figure.

Your brain in love

Anterior Cingulate - This section of the human brain shows the Anterior Cingulate Cortex activated. This part of the brain is known to be involved in responding to synthetic drugs that induce feelings of euphoria. It is associated with happy states, attention to one's own emotional state, and especially social interactions which involve assessing one's own emotions as well as the emotions of others.

Medial Insula - This section shows the Medial Insula activated from a section of the brain viewed from the top. This area of the brain is related to a variety of emotional functions. The appearance of lesions can indicate severe emotional consequences, among them are those related to the interpretation of visual input.

Putamen and Caudate Nucleus - This is a rear view of the brain. It shows three of the love hotspots activated: the Putamen, the Caudate Nucleus, and the Medial Insula. The Putamen and the Caudate Nucleus both lie deep within the brain and are two of the most commonly activated areas with regard to both positive and negative emotions.

These fMRI brain scans were done by Professor Semir Zeki and his team at University College London (and come from the Discovery website). They tested women and men by showing them images of the person they were in love with and then showing them pictures of others, then recorded increased blood flow to these areas of the brain.

Professor Aron at State University in New York found that a way to induce love and attraction in both partnerships and total strangers is to stare into the other person's eyes for 4 minutes straight without blinking. Also, he claims that we can missattribute emotions of fear and excitements as love, so it makes sense to watch scary movies and such. Here is an interview with the Professor. He says kindness is the strongest indicator in having a successful long term relationship and that makes me think he's hokey, but who knows.

The endless search for love and oxytocin

One of the main ideas behind sociobiology is that human emotions and morals are the result of evolution rather than learned social behavior. Or, rather, that what we think of as social evolution, is the same thing as biological evolution. Of course, there is a push and pull but basically emotions like love and feelings like disgust have evolutionary advantages, which cause the person with the trait to have more kids or spread that trait to others.

This is becoming more and more apparent as MRI's are used to see how brains work. The subject is placed into a strong magnetic fieldand and then one can see the precise areas of the brain that are operating at any time by measuring changes in the blood flow -- and thus oxygenation -- of the subject.

This article claims that romantic love evolved from maternal love, as the same areas of the brain lit up when women gazed at loved ones as when they gazed at their babies. What is interesting is that is says when one is in love romantically, the parts of your brain that are used for thinking critically are hampered, and you can't make "social assessments." The author suggests, "The findings suggest that once you fall in love, the need to critically assess the character and personality of that person is reduced." (love is blind, you get it).

More literal sexual selection

I guess no one should really be surprised by the fact that now American's can go pay thousands of dollars to have the sex of their next child determined by science. It does raise very interesting evolutionary questions about the future, especially if all of the estrogen mimickers in the ecosystem continue to increase and humans start to have more and more female babies...these processes could be used to even out sex distribution.

I really like how the doctors who are providing these services keep referring to it as "all american" and somehow a human right.

Martian terrain

This is just beautiful.

It's an image mosaic taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera and made available by NASA.

Gorilla Wake

This is amazing!
It's about gorillas in a zoo and when one of them dies, they all file in one by one to inspect the body and seemingly pay respects. It had been recorded before in the wild and at one other zoo. Hopefully, the days where we see animals as non thinking and feeling on deep levels will soon be over.

Handsome men have better sperm

This is an extremely fascinating article that I forgot to post from months ago. It pretty much says that men who were rated most attractive by women (i.e. most symmetrical according to the latest research) have the most healthy and fast sperm.

I've recently been thinking about how people with stereotypically hot faces most often have stereotypically hot bodies and why that it. I guess this pretty much explains it: when you're genetically awesome, all features of you are more attractive, face, body, voice, all of it.

But at the same time, it important to remember that diverisity is an evolutionary strategy as well and we are not all attracted to the same things.

Space honey

Evidence of the Theory of Relativity was found a few months ago.

"In the early 20th century, Einstein theorized that the gravity of large bodies such as the Earth distorts space and time, much the way a bowling ball would stretch a rubber sheet held aloft on all four corners.

Frame-dragging occurs, he said, because the Earth's rotation pulls space-time along with it. Salamon likened the effect to dipping a spoon into a cup of honey and turning it. Close to the spoon the honey twists, but the effect dissipates with distance."

Stupid people

we ARE in trouble

I hope we're all comfotable with the whole gender bending thing....
Article from Washington Post in Grist today.

POTOMAC DADDIES
Male bass in Potomac River laying eggs

Male bass in the South Branch of the Potomac River in West Virginia are laying eggs. This is not behavior that people in the know typically expect from male bass. While researchers assume that pollutants of some sort are responsible, this particular stretch of the Potomac does well on the usual water-quality tests. "It's counterintuitive to think we would have this type of problem out there," said Patrick Campbell of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. The culprit may be "emerging contaminants" -- caffeine, hormones, prescription drugs, endocrine disruptors -- that are not typically tested for, either in river water or drinking water. The U.S. EPA has set no standards for these pollutants, saying more research is necessary. Scientists have only recently developed equipment sensitive enough to detect them. Says researcher Vicki S. Blazer, "We really don't know what's going on."

I guess I AM a gay man...

Yet another fascinating article that very well might be complete bullshit from the New Scientist claims that "researchers discovered that women tend to have more children when they inherit the same - as yet unidentified - genetic factors linked to homosexuality in men. This fertility boost more than compensates for the lack of offspring fathered by gay men, and keeps the “gay” genetic factors in circulation. "

And what does Simon LeVay have to say about it? “We think of it as genes for ‘male homosexuality’, but it might really be genes for sexual attraction to men. These could predispose men towards homosexuality and women towards ‘hyper-heterosexuality’, causing women to have more sex with men and thus have more offspring.”

I personally think Simon LeVay is a total boob, in the worst sense possible of the word. He's the mastermind behind both the Gay Gene and the Lesbian InnerEar. Plus he has an AOL webpage. Can we take a scientist seriously who uses AOL? I didn't think so. Plus he lives in Hollywood and the Gay Gene study that made him famous only used ten men as his sample! Although I am not averse to the idea of individuals being predispositioned genetically towards inclinations that might trigger them into the homosexual realm, I'm still a big fan of polymorphous perversity (it's also fun to say).

Evolution Osmosificated

Awesome article from Wired. I know I'm such a hippie, but I really love the idea that I have my own personal fauna...

"Most of the cells in your body are not your own, nor are they even human. They are bacterial. From the invisible strands of fungi waiting to sprout between our toes, to the kilogram of bacterial matter in our guts, we are best viewed as walking "superorganisms," highly complex conglomerations of human, fungal, bacterial and viral cells. "

"More than 500 different species of bacteria exist in our bodies, making up more than 100 trillion cells. Because our bodies are made of only some several trillion human cells, we are somewhat outnumbered by the aliens."

Invisible Suit!

Yes, it has problems, but DAMN! Very cool. Think of of the ninja possibilities... black is SO 500 AD.

Survival of the Weakest

Think, lap dogs....

Humans Affecting Evolution of Other Species (Article from CSM)
Lay scientists tend to think of evolution as a glacially slow process, with changes measured in hundreds of thousands of years, not decades. However, growing collaboration between ecologists and evolutionary biologists is highlighting a phenomenon called "contemporary evolution" -- and it ain't pretty. Turns out, by culling the largest, healthiest, and most robust specimens from a species, human beings can precipitate a sort of rapid devolution, an evolutionary trend toward smaller, weaker populations that works over generations, not centuries. The phenomenon can be observed across the animal world -- for example, hunters have left mountain sheep in Alberta, Canada, shrinking, along with their horns -- but it is particularly perspicuous in the world's fisheries. Some scientists trace the precipitous decline of the cod population to fishing practices that value the largest fish; the result has been a population of fish that mature earlier and smaller, are unable to produce robust offspring, and lack the genetic diversity to breed their way out of trouble. Researchers recommend a broad rethinking of practices for protecting endangered species and managing wildlife habitats, fisheries, and hunting ranges.

Boys won't be boys

This is an article from The Globe and Mail from GRIST months ago about this band of natives in BC are having more female births than male. They think it's due to chemicles that mimic female hormones, which is a HUGE problem that not many people are paying attention to yet. Many insects and crustations in lakes are being born female due to estrogen human females take that then travel down the sewer. On average, 90% of medications we take end up in the environment adn then back in our drinking water, even things like Prozac... It's as though people imagine their toilets to be black holes, in which everything flushed enters another dimension from which it cannot return...

Canadian Native Group Near Chemical Plant Has More Female Births
In most developed countries where such things have been studied, the ratio of girls born to boys born has been slowly and steadily rising for decades. Those unimpressed with the results of male world domination to date might find this heartening news, but the details aren't pretty. Some researchers suspect that environmental pollutants are behind the feminization of industrialized countries -- particularly chemicals, like dioxin, PCBs, and hexachlorobenzene, known to mimic female hormones. The plight of Canada's Aamjiwnaang First Nation seems to lend credence to the theory. The Aamjiwnaang live surrounded by chemical plants, smack dab in the middle of an industrial area that contains 20 percent of Canada's refineries. For the last five years, the band has produced nearly two girls for every boy; in addition, women report a higher number of miscarriages and schools report more learning disabilities. No definitive link to chemical exposure has been established, but the band is pushing for further study.

Evolving Evolution

This is an interesting articel from Wired magazine that chronicles the debate over Darwinism and Intelligent Design evolutionary theory in USA public schools.

If you're unfamiliar with it, the ID theory concludes that natural selection can't explain the "irreducible complexity" of molecular mechanisms like the bacterial flagellum, because its integrated parts offer no selective advantages on their own, so there must be a designer. Apparently people point to both God and Aliens; both seem somewhat logical to me. Why the hell not? I just can't imagine that science has all the answers. And the article doesn't even attempt to refute ID theory, just pretty much states that the followers are all inase, which they very well might be. But obviously science and the methodological materialism are missing something big in the way they look at humans. I'm not a biologist and can't grasp the concepts of chaos well enough to comprehend the complexity of random mutations. And as yet, no biologist have been able to explain it well enough to me. Plus I like believeing aliens begat humanity. Convince me otherwise, if you wish.

Make believe world

This is a really long yet fascinating look at how psychoanalysts can fabricate memories in the minds of their patients. Apparently there is a growing trend for adults with superficially healthy relationships with their families to go into therapy and suddenly remember parental sexual abuse.

"Therapists used hypnosis, sodium amenthol, guided imagery, dream interpretation, relaxation exercises. These are very dangerous techniques to use if undertaken in the expectation you can excavate historically accurate memories.”

"In an extra-credit homework assignment, for example, Loftus’ students went home and said to younger siblings things as simple as “Hey, do you remember the time you got lost in the mall when you were 5 years old?” and then recorded the ways in which the “memory” would take on a life of its own in the succeeding days, becoming more vivid, more detailed, with each conversation. At a more advanced level, using research subjects in a lab, students successfully created memories of mildly traumatic childhood experiences — such as being temporarily separated from one’s parents — that never actually occurred... In another experiment, to make sure they were dealing with false recollections rather than real ones, research assistants created memories about meeting Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, who, in reality, couldn’t possibly have been in the theme park. The purpose of these mind games is to show that even the most vivid memory is not necessarily an accurate representation of past reality."

I went to a presentation on snail memory formation last year and was blown away. Apparently memory formation is slowed by coldness. They tested this by polking the snail with a stick when it came up for air a few times then freezxing some snails and seeing which ones remembered not to come up for air. Apparently the ethics committee doesnt think highly of gastropods but it was really fascinating regardless.

The Earth Hates Your Lawn

This is a blurb and article set from Grist about the environmental destruction of lawns. So many of them are so dumb. They're not big enough to really do anything on and just serve as decorative. I used to do landscaping and the women I worked for told me that lawns were originally seen as a status symbol because you were showing that you had land you didn't have to farm to survive. Also, it gets into that whole "taming of nature" thing. Dumb.

SO LAWN, FAREWELL
The Earth Hates Your Lawn

We're sorry to keep harping on this, but: the lawns, people, the lawns. Quit with the lawns! There are 30 million acres of green lawn in the U.S. Some 54 million people mow their lawns each week in the summer, using 800 million gallons of gas a year. More than 5 percent of urban air pollution comes from gas-powered lawn widgets. Seventy million pounds of pesticide get spewed on home lawns, trees, and shrubs a year, polluting groundwater and sending phosphates and nitrates into lakes and streams, where they generate algae blooms that choke other plant life. Precious urban freshwater is being used by the millions of gallons -- in some cities two-thirds of available freshwater goes on lawns. Native plant species are being displaced. Birds are being poisoned. Angels are losing their wings. So quit it with the lawns, would you? Or at least go organic.

straight to the source: The Knoxville News Sentinel, Joan Lowy, 10 Aug 2004

Greener pastures -- the grass can be greener on your side of the fence

Leeches and Leaves

"The Motherly Love of Leeches "
Leeches are actually loving parents, according to evolutionary biologist Fred Govedich of Monash University in Australia. His discovery places the Australian leech (Helobdella papillornata) among the few invertebrates to actively care for young into maturity.

Despite their reputation as opportunistic bloodsuckers, these slimy critters show surprising consideration for their offspring, carrying them around and feeding them for up to six weeks after hatching. These pillars of parenthood even go so far as to transport their broods to suitable habitat before saying good-bye for good.

This sophisticated behavior complicates the question of how parental care evolved. Usually found in mammals and birds of a particular sex, this type of attention is unheard of in the invertebrate world, let alone in hermaphrodites like leeches.

"Climate Change Shaped Modern Plant Leaves"
Anyone who's enjoyed the shade of a maple or elm should be thankful for an ancient climate shift. According to new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, climate change triggered the development of broad plant leaves.

Instead of wide solar-collecting blades, plants 400 million years ago sported stick-like projections known as microphylls. Microphylls persisted for 20 million years before more photosynthetically efficient broad leaves appeared. Now researchers in the United Kingdom say they can explain the delay. In the high temperatures and carbon dioxide levels of the Devonian, plants could easily collect enough carbon dioxide for respiration using the few pores on their narrow leaves. The scientists' computer model shows that a larger leaf surface area would have overheated the leaf cells.

Then carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures fell 370 million years ago. Larger leaves with more pores were necessary to gather sufficient carbon dioxide. The model shows the plants would also have to have increased the density of their stomata to promote cooling — a trend supported by the fossil record.

ocean curents

cool.

Where the boys aren't

This is terrifying. It's an article on how chemical pollutants are altering hormones so that embryos become females. This is actually a huge problem. My friend at school here is studying how estrogens in waste make insects and fish all female as well. The body only typically absorbs 10% of medications, and the rest gets flushed into the sewer system and out into the environment. People really need to start thinking about what they put in their toilets. These estrogens are also produced when you microwave plastic, and then they seep into your food. So only microwave glass, ok? The full article is in "more."

Where the boys aren't

Living with constant pollutants emanating from a dense concentration of chemical plants, a native band struggles to understand why women are giving birth to a disproportionate number of girls

By MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
Saturday, July 31, 2004 - Page A3

SARNIA -- Over the past five years, the Aamjiwnaang First Nation on the outskirts of Sarnia has had nearly two girls born for every boy, an unusual run of female births.

Last year, it was nine boys to 19 girls. The year before it was 10 boys to 21 girls. And the year before that, only six boys to 15 girls. In the band's registry, baby girls began dominating around 1993, but the trend to female births has become most pronounced in recent years.

After a decade of a girl-baby boom, boys often complain of not having friends nearby to play with, and it's never a problem to fill a girls sports team.

But the long string of female births is starting to cause deep unease. Many women have also reported multiple miscarriages, and in local elementary schools, a large number of children have been identified as having developmental delays.

"We're in almost a period of denial right now. This can't be. There are too many things wrong, it can't be true," Darren Henry, a band member, says.

His wife, Kim Henry, who works as a native counsellor at one of the schools, fears that living so close to many chemical plants is affecting the reserve's children. "Are our kids going through all of this because of all the chemicals here and the leaks that are happening?" she asked.

At the reserve, there usually isn't much doubt about what sex a child will be these days. Lisa Joseph has had four girls and one boy, all under 10.

"I have the one and only boy in my part of the family," she says.

Two of her sisters have had six girls between them and a third sister is now pregnant. "She is probably going to have a girl," Ms. Joseph says.

In Canada, and in most industrialized countries where sex ratios have been studied, the percentage of boys born has been in a slight, long-term decline for reasons that are not entirely clear. This trend began in Canada around the start of the 1970s.

Some researchers suspect that environmental pollutants, many of which act like female hormones, could be a factor. Several chemicals, including dioxin, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and hexachlorobenzene, a chemical used in rubber manufacturing, have been associated with excess female births.

Samples taken from around a creek that winds through the reserve have been found to be contaminated with both PCBs and hexachlorobenzene, among other chemicals.

"There is certainly growing evidence that environmental chemicals, even at fairly low levels, can alter sex ratios," says Shanna Swan, a professor in the department of family and community medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who has conducted research linking poor sperm quality to pesticide exposure.

Fertility drugs, such as clomiphene citrate, also lead to more girls being born.

The normal state of affairs in the human sex ratio has been for a slight surfeit of males, with about 106 born for every 100 females. At the time of conception, the ratio is even more dramatic, with about 120 males for every 100 females.

That more boys generally are conceived and born is thought to be the way humans evolved to compensate for the higher fragility of male fetuses and the higher mortality rates among males once they are born.

"It's a feedback mechanism that protects against excess male attrition," says John Jarrell, a gynecologist at the University of Calgary, who helped compile the study showing the decline in the ratio of male births in Canada.

At Aamjiwnaang, the expected situation -- slightly more male births than female -- prevailed among the band's approximately 1,500 members from 1984 to 1993.

It is not clear why the ratio suddenly tipped the other way.

Ada Lockridge, one of the band's councillors, suspects chemical exposure and says one major incident occurred around the time of the change. She shows visitors an article from the local paper about an evacuation that took place at the reserve in December of 1993, after a fire and chemical release at the nearby Suncor plant.

Sarnia's chemical valley has been built literally to the edge of the reserve, with a who's who of major companies often just across the road or around the corner. Besides Suncor Energy Inc., the neighbours include Imperial Oil Ltd., Shell Canada Ltd., Dupont Canada Inc., and Dow Chemical Canada Inc. Residents say they have watched workers protected by space suits go about their jobs, while they stand watching from the reserve.

The native community was granted its land at the southern edge of Sarnia in 1827. Much of the 14-square-kilometre reserve remains forested and is dotted with suburban-style homes, an incongruous sight in the middle of a sprawling industrial complex that has 20 per cent of Canada's refineries and produces about 40 per cent of its petrochemicals.

The reserve is also located just downriver from where the so-called Sarnia blob of dangerous chemicals was found on the bottom of the St. Clair River in the 1980s.

Residents complain there is almost always some sort of stink in the air. Sometimes it's like rotten turnips. Other times it's like rotting eggs. Each corner of the reserve has a slightly different stench.

Being hemmed in by big chemical complexes means any exposure to harmful compounds is likely to be far greater than in Sarnia itself, where most residents live kilometres away from the plants.

There are about 20 chemical plants or refineries in the area whose emissions are large enough that they must be reported to Environment Canada's national registry of pollution releases.

Earlier this year, Ontario sent its environmental SWAT team to Sarnia because of the high number of chemical spills. The St. Clair River near Sarnia is also one of the sites where federal environmental scientists have found male wildlife species with blurred sexual characteristics.

Finding explanations to the puzzling birth trend will require a major study comparing the reserve to other similar native communities that don't have such high chemical exposure, according to Dr. Jarrell.

On the ground in the reserve, Mr. Henry, who helped coach teams, says girl squads were easier to assemble. "I know it was a lot, lot easier to raise a team of girls to play sports than it was for boys. It just seemed like there was a whole lot of girls here."

Edna Cottrelle, who lives about 10 houses down from the Suncor plant, says her son Nodin, 11, finds the shortage of boys acute. "There are no boys his age along the river," she says. "He's always complaining."

Physics history

From the Disinfo email today, it's a paper on the 100 most influential physica papers. But what is cool is that they find a positive coorelation between the number of citations a paper gets and the age of those ciatations. I never knew anything about citations till quite recently, but to get cited in the science world is like academic currency. That's how papers are judged. Are you refered to...

Hormonal

According to this article, the birth control pill Provera has been shown to inhibit sexual desire and increse anxiety and aggression in female macaques.

--> So fake estrogen makes women angry, anxious and not want sex.

According to this article, progesterone, the "female" hormone promts male mice to be excessively aggressive and threaton their pups. In a natural setting, male mice generally committ infanticide, but when progesterone receptors were blocked, they started acting like "good dads."

--> So real progesterone can make men want to kill their offspring.

Nurture

This is a fascinating article on how nature and nurturing work together. Apparently there was a study done in New Zealand starting in 1972, which showed that children were much more likely to grow up to be aggressive and antisocial if they had inherited a "short" version of a gene called MAOA. This short version is worse at breaking down neurotransmitters like serotonin than the long version.

But the kids in the study only went ballistic (as they were genetically pre-disposed to do) when they had some crisis in their lives. The article is about a duplicate study done on monkeys.

Possible results of the study are "prenatal screening tests which ensure that infants at risk receive optimal mothering in their first two years of life." I can't imagine what they would have in mind.....

But I think this whole thing is fascinating because it is really making me think about the extent to which our state of mind controls our entire body on a very physical level.

I also think it's funny how they only look at the level to which the monkeys have been "mothered" as thought the presence or absense or potentially violent disposition of a father would have no effect...

Hawking takes it back

Apparently Hawking was sort of wrong about this theories on black holes. He says that when they stop radiating, there is somehow informaition one can extract from them...I don't get it. But apparently he'll explain it soon.

Save the penis.

Woo hoo! That anti-circumcision movement is growing! It really blows my mind that this continues to be an acceptable practice (beware, the pictures are totally graphic). Honestly, I've wondered in the past if it doesn't have anything to do with the penile obsession of so many men. I mean, if the first thing that happens to you is your parents chopping of part of your penis, you're GOING to be phallocentric for the rest of your life. I think it's pretty funny that Freud thought castration fear came from sex when there's such an obvious source in circumcision. Although I doubt Austrians were getting chopped in the 1920's....

There's even a documentarycoming out about it.

HIV Nation.

38 million people world wide are infected with HIV according to a new UN study. That is larger than the size of all of Canada (about 35 million).

Khan Spawn

Apparently there's now a resturant in London where you can test to see if you're related to Genghis Khan while you eat.

brain scans for profit

This is a FASCINATING article on how the mind works and the simple fact that humans are not robots.

"Mind Reading: The new science of decision making. It's not as rational as you think The fMRI captures the interplay of fear, anger, greed and altruism in our reporter's money matters"
By Jerry Adler

NewsweekJuly 5 issue - Flat on my back, my eyes shrouded with LED goggles and my ears encased in headphones, I was trundled into the maw of an fMRI machine in a basement lab at the California Institute of Technology. The business end of an fMRI is a giant cylindrical magnet, similar to the MRI machines doctors use to diagnose tumors, but with the added ability to show changes in brain activity as they happen—hence the "f," which stands for "functional." In the magnet's powerful field, blood sloshing back and forth inside my head reveals its presence control room next door are Steven Quartz, a Caltech neuroscientist, and Colin Camerer, an economist, who are looking inside my brain to help understand some of the most vexing problems in postmodern society—irrational market bubbles, intractable Third World poverty and loser brothers-in-law who want to borrow $5,000 to open a franchised back-rub parlor. My brain was helping science explain why, despite centuries of progress in economic theory since Adam Smith, actual human beings so often refuse to behave as equations say they should.

For all its intellectual power and its empirical success as a creator of wealth, free-market economics rests on a fallacy, which economists have politely agreed among themselves to overlook. This is the belief that people apply rational calculations to economic decisions, ruling their lives by economic models. Of course, economists know that the world doesn't actually work this way; if it did, you wouldn't need Jane Bryant Quinn to remind people once a month to save for retirement. But until recently the anomalies were chalked up to the pernicious influence of emotions, emanations from the primitive regions of the brain, a kind of mental noise interfering with the pure, rational expression of economic self-interest. The new paradigm sweeping the field, under the rubric of "behavioral economics," holds that studying what people actually do is at least as valuable as deriving equations for what they should do. And when you look at human behavior, you discover, as Camerer and his collaborator George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon have written, that "the Platonic metaphor of the mind as a charioteer driving twin horses of reason and emotion is on the right track—except that cognition is a smart pony, and emotion a big elephant." The fMRI machine enables researchers in the emerging field of neuroeconomics to investigate the interplay of fear, anger, greed and altruism that are activated each time we touch that most intimate of our possessions, our wallets.

Economists have many ways of demonstrating the irrationality of their favorite experimental animal, Homo sapiens. One is the "ultimatum game," which involves two subjects—researchers generally recruit undergraduates, but if you're doing this at home, feel free to use your own kids. Subject A gets 10 dollar bills. He can choose to give any number of them to subject B, who can accept or reject the offer. If she accepts, they split the money as A proposed; if she rejects A's offer, both get nothing. As predicted by the theories of mathematician John Nash (subject of the movie "A Beautiful Mind"), A makes the most money by offering one dollar to B, keeping nine for himself, and B should accept it, because one dollar is better than none.

But if you ignore the equations and focus on how people actually behave, you see something different, says Jonathan D. Cohen, director of the Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior at Princeton. People playing B who receive only one or two dollars overwhelmingly reject the offer. Economists have no better explanation than simple spite over feeling shortchanged. This becomes clear when people play the same game against a computer. They tend to accept whatever they're offered, because why feel insulted by a machine? By the same token, most normal people playing A offer something close to an even split, averaging about $4. The only category of people who consistently play as game theory dictates, offering the minimum possible amount, are those who don't take into account the feelings of the other player. They are autistics.

The fMRI machine shows how all this works inside the brain. A low offer stimulates activity in the brain's insular cortex, a relatively primitive region associated with negative emotions including anger and disgust. This appears to compete with the more highly evolved prefrontal cortex, the locus of the rational impulse to take the dollar and go buy a soda with it. The more activity in the insular cortex, the more likely subjects were to reject the offer. This is a big step toward being able to see on a screen what people actually want, rather than what they say in focus groups or interviews. Would brain-scan-assisted matchmaking or employee headhunting be more efficient than the way these have been carried out until now? Or would the fMRI merely ratify the judgments of intuition? Psychologists can hardly wait to find out.

And for their part, economists can hardly contain their glee at the research horizons this opens up. "Imagine if you could go on the floor of the stock exchange and see what was going on in traders' brains," says Camerer. "We kept hearing during the bubble that people were behaving as if they were in a delusional state. Well, were they or weren't they?" People don't save enough for their retirements because of a phenomenon known as forward discounting: they value money more in the here and now than 20 years down the road. If we could understand how this process works in the brain, says Paul Glimcher, a leading neuroscientist at New York University, we would have a head start on figuring out how to overcome it. Much of Glimcher's work is with monkeys, which can be implanted (safely and painlessly, he stresses) with electrodes that can detect in real time the firing of a single neuron. By contrast, the fMRI only indirectly tracks brain function by measuring blood flow. This is an im-precise indicator both spatially—it deals with regions of hundreds of thousands of neurons—and temporally, since it lags several seconds behind the neural activity it reflects. Monkeys, obviously, don't save for their retirements, and you couldn't expect them to grasp the rules of the ultimatum game. But they do have a rudimentary concept of economic choice, and researchers have discovered a medium of exchange—Berry Berry fruit drink—that can usefully stand in for money in a monkey's mental life. To illustrate how monkeys make economic decisions, Glimcher's former colleague Michael Platt, now at Duke, has investigated how they value status within their troop. Male monkeys have a distinct dominance hierarchy, and Platt has found they will give up a considerable quantity of fruit juice for the chance just to look at a picture of a higher-ranking individual. This is consistent with field observations, Platt says, which have found that social primates spend a lot of time just keeping track of the highest-ranking troop member. It isn't known exactly why monkeys do this, but the finding might help explain the behavior of human beings who pay $1,000 just to sit in a hotel ballroom with the president. You can draw whatever conclusion you choose from Platt's finding that there is no quantity of juice sufficient to get a male monkey to look away from the hindquarters of a female in estrus.

Glimcher is trying to piece together the building blocks of economic choice in the brain, starting at the most basic level of a single neuron. In weighing options—a gamble on a roulette wheel, say, or the purchase of a bond—economists invoke the concept of "expected value." It is the potential payoff of a given course of action, multiplied by the chance of collecting it. Hence the expected value of tossing a coin to win $1 is 50 cents. A more sophisticated mathematical function called "expected utility" takes into account most people's inborn aversion to risk, and appears to more accurately reflect how people actually make these choices. Tossing a coin for $10 million or getting a guaranteed $5 million both have the same expected value, but a different expected utility—and most people who aren't already millionaires would take the sure thing. (Or so economists believe. No one has come up with the funding to test the hypothesis.) In his monkey research Glimcher has isolated individual neurons that fire in response to the expectation of getting a drink of juice. By manipulating the odds of getting the drink and the size of the drink, he has shown that the rate at which these neurons fire is proportionate to the expected utility of the juice payoff. The implication is electrifying, especially to economists: an abstract, mathematically derived formula appears to be literally hard-wired into the primate brain.

And that, in turn, is a step toward the holy grail of marketing: being able to figure out how people will make choices that haven't been offered yet. The same tools that can answer deep questions about primate behavior can also be used to get people to sign up for more cell-phone minutes than there actually are in a month. A handful of researchers in the United States and Europe are already using fMRIs to test how product brands are represented in the brain. The goal of every consumer marketer is to have people "identify" with a brand, to develop the kind of loyalty that goes far beyond a utilitarian preference for, say, one kind of pickup truck over another. Emory University psychologist Clint Kilts scanned subjects as they looked at a variety of products, from cars to soft drinks, and found that this sense of brand identification elicited a strong response in the medial prefrontal cortex. This is the brain area associated with what psychologists call the "sense of self," one's self-constructed identity. His insights are now being offered to the corporations of the world through the BrightHouse Neurostrategies Group in Atlanta, a pioneer in the emerging field of neuromarketing. "There's a pretty big gap in our understanding of consumers, which neuroscience can help close," says Justine Meaux, a researcher at BrightHouse. But—well aware of the Orwellian implications of this work—she hastens to add that "there's no 'buy button' out there to be found. We're not going to subvert free will. This isn't about screwing the consumer."

Glimcher has thought about these questions, too. Based on his research into choice and preference, he says, "If a corporation came here and said, 'We want to be able to tell the lowest salary a candidate will accept for a job,' I wouldn't do it. But given six months or a year, I think it would be possible." Of course, he admits, you couldn't scan people's brains, practically or ethically, without their knowing it. So they would have to voluntarily submit to an fMRI scan. Would they? Well, Glimcher says, "how badly do you want the job?"

Inside the scanner at Caltech, I played a version of what economists call the "investment game." Quartz, in the next room, watched images of my brain while I manipulated a thumb switch and studied choices on fiber-optic goggles. At the same time his collaborator Read Montague was overseeing a subject inside a similar machine in his laboratory at Baylor University. The game is played thusly: at the start of each of 10 rounds, I am given an imaginary stake of $10. I can keep it all, or "invest" some or all of it with my opposite number at Baylor. Anything I invest gets tripled, and the other player then has the option of returning any portion of that amount back to me. If I keep $5 and invest $5, the other player has $15 to divide between us. He can keep it all and send me nothing if he chooses, but since in this version of the game we play for 10 rounds—there are also one-round variations—he obviously has an incentive to keep my trust. This game investigates one of the hottest topics in behavioral economics: interpersonal trust. Observing that some societies are consistently richer than others, social scientists have invoked such ingenious explanations as "the Protestant ethic" (of working and saving for the future) or "the resource curse" (when an elite controls a valuable natural resource, such as oil, and has no incentive to encourage political and economic modernization). One of the newest explanations is "trust," which varies widely between societies and is strongly correlated with economic growth, says Paul Zak, an economist at Claremont Graduate University. Trust encourages savings and investment, and reduces the "transaction cost" of investigating the people you do business with. But, compared with well-studied behaviors such as aggression, relatively little is known about the biological basis for trust. (Zak's own research is not on brain function directly, but on oxytocin, a hormone that seems to promote trust. It is usually studied in relation not to the stock market but to lovemaking and breast-feeding.)

"If we knew what creates trust and could intervene to encourage it, we could do a lot of good for the world," says Camerer. Hence the investment game. Because the participants have no outside force to keep them honest, it represents an unusually pure test of interpersonal trust in a laboratory setting. And I was determined to ace it! I didn't get a seat on the subway to work for 39 consecutive days last year by trusting the other passengers to leave one for me.

My approach, it turns out, is consistent with some of the findings coming out of Quartz and Montague's research. The cingulate cortex, which processes both emotions and abstract thinking, becomes especially active after one player betrays the other by cutting back on how much he shares—as if the brain, or at least this crucial part of it, is "hypertuned" to detect betrayal. Quartz has also seen intriguing differences between men and women in the scanner. Men's brains tend to shut down after they've made their decision, awaiting a reply from the other subject. But women don't relax so easily; they show continued activity in at least three areas—the ventral striatum (the brain's center for anticipating rewards), the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (which is involved with planning and organizing) and the caudate nucleus (a checking and monitoring region, sometimes associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder). Women, says Quartz, seem to obsess more over whether they did the right thing—and how the other subject will react to them.

There's one other intriguing discovery coming out of this work, which has even the scientists baffled: with approximately 85 percent accuracy, the subjects, separated by the distance from Los Angeles to Texas, can guess whether they're playing against a man or a woman. They appear to be picking up on subtle clues in the interactions that the scientists themselves haven't identified.

So here was my strategy. In total defiance of the social norms that should incline me toward cooperation and trust, I pursued the single-minded goal of amassing as many points as possible. Recognizing that the more I invested the more money there would be for both of us to split, on each round I sent all 10 dollars to my counterpart, who routinely returned $16 (of $30) to me—just enough over half to keep me going.

That is, until the ninth round, when, I calculated, the other subject could come out ahead by keeping the whole $30. So I got there first: I "invested" zero. I did the same on the last round and cleared a hypothetical $148 ($16 times eight rounds, plus $10 times two rounds) to her (or his) $112 ($14 times eight rounds). And I pulled off one more coup: I figured out, correctly as it happened, that I was playing against a woman. I reasoned that a man would have been just as competitive as I am, and guessed that I was going to betray him on the ninth round—so he would have kept all $30 to himself on the eighth round. At least, most of the ones I know would have, although maybe a sample consisting mostly of journalists isn't entirely representative. Out of such tiny insights, scientists are constructing a model for some of the most intricate and sophisticated decisions a fully evolved human being can face in the modern world. And maybe, in some small way, if Camerer and his colleagues are right, making the world a more trusting and cooperative—and peaceful—place.

With Mary Carmichael

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

Ubermensch!

This article would have us believe that a boy with super strength was just RANDOMLY born in Germany. OH YEAH.....like it was all some big coincidence, it had NOTHING at all to do with decades of eugenics.... He's only 7 months old but I bet they're harvesting his sperm as we speak....

Hmmm, I wonder if he's blond or not? you KNOW the gestapo is dancing in the streets. I bet they're bad dancers....quite ridged....

Lenin and Syphilis

This is totally making me think I have syphilis...

June 22, 2004
A Retrospective Diagnosis Says Lenin Had Syphilis
By C. J. CHIVERS

OSCOW, June 21 - Whispers have circulated for decades that Lenin, founder of the Bolshevik Party and the totalitarian Soviet state it ushered to power, was afflicted with syphilis throughout his career. Now a new study turns that speculation into a retrospective diagnosis.

In an article this month in The European Journal of Neurology, three Israeli physicians sift through historical references to build what they regard as a probable diagnosis that Lenin contracted the sexually transmitted disease in Europe years before he led the October Revolution in 1917. Not long after the socialists' victory, the authors write, the illness strengthened its grip, leading to an agonizing decline and, in 1924, his death.

The idea is not entirely new. Despite the former Soviet Union's efforts to preserve a near theology around its central political figure, Lenin was long rumored to have suffered from the disease. The new thesis is not so much a breakthrough as a historical rumor revived and reframed.

To do so, the authors quote the journals of doctors who treated Lenin in Europe and the Soviet Union and review materials related to his medical condition and autopsy, which they suggest was a propaganda job.

They ask a question of enduring importance to civic life. Do modern societies know enough about the health of their political leaders? In Lenin's case, they strive to show, the answer is a resounding no.

"If you take Lenin's case and you cancel Lenin's name on the file and you give it to a neurologist who is an expert in infectious disease, the expert will say, 'Syphilis,' " said Dr. Vladimir Lerner, head of the psychiatry department at the Be'er Sheva Mental Health Center in Israel and an author of the study.

Reviews have been mixed. Some scholars of the early Soviet period are skeptical, saying the talk of syphilis circulated for decades, to little effect. "There has been a vague rumor of this," said Dr. Robert Conquest, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. "But of course in Russia, as you know, you have rumors about most everything."

Dr. Gregory L. Freeze, a professor of history at Brandeis, was direct. "They don't have the smoking gun," he said.

The study's authors concede this point but insist that they have a strong circumstantial case. They also propose a possible way to settle the question, further testing of Lenin's brain material, which is stored in Moscow.

" 'Skeptical' is a healthy position," said another author of the study, Dr. Eliezer Witztum, a professor of psychiatry at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. "But the point is that there are a lot of medical questions that have to be answered."

Lenin was 53 when he died, after battling an erratic but progressively debilitating illness. His death has been variously attributed to cerebral hemorrhage, stroke, syphilis, exhaustion or cerebral arteriosclerosis, which had killed his father.

The difficulty with a diagnosis of syphilis is that the symptoms are common to other ailments, so much so that it is called "the great imitator."

The infection, caused by a bacterium called the Treponema spirochete, first appears as an ulcerous sore, from which it spreads throughout the body, including the brain. Fever, an extensive rash and malaise typically follow. After initial infection, a syphilitic can spend years alternating between bouts of illness and apparently fine health.

When they occur, symptoms can be severe, including headaches, nervous disorders and gastrointestinal, muscle or joint pain.

In late stages, often 20 or more years after infection, the victim can experience mood swings and bursts of creativity, as well as depression, lethargy and dementia. Cardiovascular damage can lead to paralysis, aneurysm or stroke.

Until the advent of therapeutic penicillin in World War II, the disease was incurable.

Lenin's illness at least mimicked the progression of syphilis, afflicting him for months with occasional seizures and excruciating headaches, as well as bouts of nausea, sleeplessness and partial paralysis. As Stalin plotted for control of the Communist Party, Lenin was alternately lucid and incapacitated. Sometimes, he was unable to walk without assistance or to speak.

The worst spells were horrific. According to "Lenin: A Biography," by Dr. Robert J. Service, professor of Russian history at St. Anthony's College, Oxford, he twice asked for poison with which he might end his life, remarkable requests from a man whose name was synonymous with struggle.

Communist Party orthodoxy required suppression of the deterioration, and many details were kept secret. But time has unlocked some of the confidences, and the authors combed the disparate evidence, some from archives available only after the collapse of Communism, to render their diagnosis.

Among the supporters of their conclusion is Deborah Hayden, author of "Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis" (Basic Books, 2003).

"A number of Lenin biographers have reported that the doctors attending him at his death suspected syphilis, but until this article no one has pulled the relevant information together in one place," Ms. Hayden wrote in an e-mail message. "The authors argue convincingly that Lenin was suffering from meningovascular syphilis on his deathbed."

Ms. Hayden, who playfully calls herself a "syphilographer," said she was impressed by evidence that prominent syphilis specialists examined Lenin. And she noted that in previous work, listed in the footnotes, the authors found that Lenin was briefly treated with salvarsan, a drug that was used specifically to combat the disease. Salvarsan had powerful side effects. In a telephone interview, Ms. Hayden said there would be no reason but syphilis to give it to him.

Dr. Frances Bernstein, an assistant professor at Drew University who specializes in sexuality and public health in the Soviet period, also called the theory plausible. "I think the science does support, or could support, a diagnosis of syphilis," she said.

Dr. Bernstein pointed to a potentially curious context. Venereal disease was an acute problem under the tsars. After the revolution, the Soviet Health Ministry reversed the imperial position of suppressing sex education and launched a campaign to treat syphilitics and ease the stigma of the disease.

In light of that campaign, Dr. Bernstein said, "it would have been the height of irony if Lenin died of syphilis."

Disagreement over the merits of the theory seems unlikely to end soon.

Dr. Freeze found two factual errors in the article that he said undermined its credibility. Lenin survived an assassination attempt in 1918, not 1919, as the authors wrote, and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, not 1992. (Dr. Witztum said the errors came from sources quoted in the study.)

Dr. Freeze also described Lenin as a dynamo of activity in the years after the October Revolution and added, "The massive amount of documents he wrote in that period do not suggest a man who was suffering from syphilis."

Ms. Hayden said that many syphilitics did not lapse into full paralysis or dementia and that some experienced intense periods of creativity not long before dying. "People think that if you have syphilis you get to be feeble minded, but the opposite is true," she said.

Although Lenin's stature has been eroded by the terror he relied on to build the Soviet state and by its eventual collapse, he remains a colossus. Eight decades after his death, his corpse still lies in state outside the Kremlin. In some circles, reverence clings to his name.

Importantly, for those seeking an answer to the syphilis question, his brain tissue remains at the Moscow Institute of the Brain, where in early Soviet times it was sliced into wafers in an effort to find anatomical explanations for genius.

The authors end their article by suggesting that an examination of the tissue might find the DNA of syphilis and yield a definitive answer. Dr. Freeze said he would support a conclusive test. "That would settle it," he said.

But like much of the discussion, the suggestion is subject to disagreement. A representative of the brain institute declined even to discuss syphilis last week.

"We don't have any wish or time to discuss this," he said, adding that the theory had been reviewed in the past and proved wrong. "We simply don't want to rake over the dust and ashes of the past."

Ms. Hayden also cautioned that even if tests were conducted, the results might not close the case. In late-stage syphilis, she said, the spirochete was not always found in the brain.

What is in your toothpaste?

This is an amazing site from the Environmental Working Group. The gist is that you type in whatever type of product you are using (from makeup to toothpaste) and it tells you what types of chemicals are in it that are proven to cause cancer, harm to unborn children, and other health risks. Given that products deemed “not ingested” by the FDA don’t have to be approved by them, this site is absolutely necessary.

Turing gets a blue plaque

There was a blue paque put up to commerate Allan Mathison Turing. Hardly enough to commerate such a cool guy who killed himself so poetically (eating a poisoned apple) after he couldn’t curb his homosexual desires. He pretty much invented the computer and if you’ve read Cryptonomicon, you’ll know all about it.

The world is not fair

Higher Social Status leads to a longer life.

kickboxing shrimp

U.K. Warned `Kick-Boxing' Shrimp Found at Coast, Telegraph Says
2004-05-12 01:55 (New York)

By Chris Peterson
May 12 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. officials warned bathers to take care after a rare species of shrimp able to deliver a punch at the speed of a small-caliber bullet was found off the south coast, the Daily Telegraph said, citing marine wildlife experts.
The three-inch long mantis shrimp, known as the ``kick-boxing'' shrimp, can lash out with one of its limbs and shatter the shell of a crab as well as give a painful lesson to anyone who tries to pick it up, the newspaper said.
Two were caught in a fishing net off the south English resort of Weymouth and marine biologists say there may be a colony there; the bright orange creature is typically found in the Mediterranean Sea or tropical areas around the Equator, the newspaper said.
``It has the swiftest, and perhaps the most brutal, strike of any predator,'' biologist Sheila Patek of the University of California told the Telegraph.

Xylem apoptosis

Today I just learned about Xylem, the tissue type in plants that create a pathway for water. Aside from being totally beautiful, the Xylem are neat because their function is in being dead. They grow to be the right size and get to the right place, then die and hollow out so that water can pass through them. So that "maturity" for this tissue is actually death. Which is interesting, that something organic could serve it's purpose in life only when dead.

BONOBOS!

such wonderful animals, ravaged by war. Full article below:

May 3, 2004
KINSHASA JOURNAL
The Gentlest of Beasts, Making Love, Ravaged by War
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

INSHASA, Congo - Upstream from this dog-eat-dog capital, where the Congo River spills its tendrils into the belly of the equatorial rain forest, lies the jungle home of one of mankind's closest cousins and one of the most endangered primates on earth: the bonobo.

Genetically, humans and bonobos, a species of chimpanzee, are more than 98 percent similar. Socially, it is another matter. Matriarchal as a rule, bonobos eschew conflict. They do not fight over territory. They do not kill. Any small friction they resolve through sexual contact: a playful rub, oral sex, full intercourse.

Peace-loving they may be, but during Congo's latest war, the bonobos' jungle habitat fell smack on the front line between fighting factions.

Fishing and farming all but ground to a halt during the war, which officially ended last year. Civilians and soldiers alike turned to the forest to fill their bellies.

More and more, the bonobos turned up as supper. Their smoked remains showed up at riverine markets. Babies were orphaned, which is to say they were more or less destined to die: the bonobo infant, accustomed to staying on its mother's back for the first several years of life, has great trouble making it on its own.

So it was that the bonobo orphans of the central African rain forest found themselves hurtling hundreds of miles down the Congo River to this gritty metropolis and into the arms of a redheaded Frenchwoman called Claudine André.

Ms. André recalls it as love at first sight. More than 10 years ago, after a famous, ruinous pillage of Kinshasa, Ms. André, then a businesswoman, went to the ravaged city zoo and chanced upon a bereft infant bonobo. He looked as though he wanted to die, she recalled. She named him Mikano, took him home and became, in her words, his surrogate mother.

When the war came, more orphans trickled in. She kept them on the grounds of an elite American school. Then, last year, when peace came, she opened Lola Ya Bonobo, a sanctuary for orphaned bonobos on a 75-acre patch of green on the fringes of the capital.

Infants are paired up with surrogate mothers. There is an endless supply of bananas and sugar cane (bonobos have an incurable sweet tooth). An electric fence encircles the park, so as to keep the apes from scampering out of the woods and into Kinshasa's traffic. The park is open to visitors.

On a Sunday afternoon not long ago, the park's 31 young charges did what young bonobos do: chewed on blades of grass, swung from palm fronds, kissed, frolicked and fondled.

"It's the hippies of the forest," Ms. André said, taking their wrinkled hairy hands in hers. "When they feel anxious, when they are afraid, they have sex. And they calm down."

As if on cue, a big bonobo mounted a small bonobo. They rolled around on the grass, rubbed against each other and went on their merry ways.

Bonobos are not proprietary about mates, and sex is not always about procreation. Homosexuality is au courant, and sexual play begins when they are barely a year old, though intercourse must wait until they are teenagers. Much to Ms. André's delight, a teenage orphan, a male, arrived recently. Hopefully, she said, mating will soon begin.

"It's really make love, not war," Ms. André said of the bonobo way of life. "It was so sad to see such a pacific animal so destroyed by war."

The plight of the bonobos, a species found only in Congo, is a window into the repercussions of war on the ecology of the Congo River Basin, one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world and home to more than 400 species of mammals. Mining, logging and a sustained trade in bush meat have all put the squeeze on their habitats.

War having made vast swaths of the country inaccessible to researchers, it is impossible to know precisely how these creatures have fared. Certain habitats may have been left untouched, others devoured.

In the Virunga Highlands near the border of Uganda and Rwanda, the mountain gorilla population has grown, according to a census by the Wildlife Conservation Society. By contrast, in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, the eastern lowland gorilla's population has fallen by 70 percent to fewer than 5,000, according to Conservation International. The elephants in the same park may well have vanished.

As for the bonobo population, scientists have no reliable numbers but fear the species may be nearing extinction. Late last year, the United Nations Environment Program reported that the bonobo, along with the gorilla, chimpanzee and orangutan, could disappear in 50 years.

Peace is likely to present a new challenge to forest dwellers: Congo's rain forests have once again opened up to logging companies, and today the first batches of timber can be seen floating downriver from Équateur Province to the port here in Kinshasa. With blessings from the World Bank, 150 million acres of rain forest could be opened up for logging.

As the World Bank sees it, timber concessions could pour hundreds of millions of dollars into government coffers. Environmentalists fear that the logging could also endanger the habitat of the Pygmy people, who have eked out a living in the forest for centuries. The bonobos are sometimes called Pygmy chimpanzees, because Pygmies too are averse to conflict; they too prefer to hunt and forage in the forest rather than fight one another for territory. United Nations investigators suspect that some of them had been eaten during the war too.

smart music

Molecular basis for Mozart effect revealed!

HAPPY AS A CLAM: Prozac Ingredient Found to Accumulate in Fish

Antidepressants relax fish in somewhat the same way they relax people, said toxicologist Bryan Brooks, who led the study. "Maybe it makes you a happy fish and you're kind of hanging out," Brooks said. "But how does that influence your ability to capture prey?"

purple frog!

A new *purple* frog was discovered in India.

Totally cute:	here's another picture:

Space elevator

so rad. you know people could sneak on it too...not that i'm implying
anything...

oh, if you dont have a password or user name: rebalex, rebalex

mars attacking

i'm sure everyone's seen this already, but if not, keep an eye out:

Close Encounter With Mars

Mars in Opposition: One for the Record Books