Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press -- Women with more testosterone tend to behave more like men when taking financial risks, according to a new study. "Women with higher levels of testosterone turn out to be less risk averse, more willing to take risks," Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago said in a telephone interview. Known as the male sex hormone, testosterone occurs in both men and women, but at higher levels in men. It has long been associated with competitiveness and dominance, reduction of fear, and with risky behaviors like gambling and alcohol use. Co-author Paola Sapienza of Northwestern University noted that women in general are less likely than men to take financial risks. "For example, in our sample set, 36 percent of female MBA students chose high-risk financial careers such as investment banking or trading, compared to 57 percent of male students. We wanted to explore whether these gender differences are related to testosterone, which men have, on average, in higher concentrations than women." Previous research in England showed that higher levels of testosterone seem to boost short term success at finance. Researchers there tested male traders morning and evening, and found that those with higher levels of testosterone in the morning were more likely to make an unusually big profit that day. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 13199 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Stoners may be trading sexual highs for the chemical kind. Males who smoke marijuana daily are four times more likely to have trouble reaching orgasm than men who don't inhale, finds a new study of 8,656 Aussies. Other smokers had the opposite problem, experiencing premature ejaculation at nearly three times the rate of non-smokers, find a team led by Marian Pitts at La Trobe University in Melbourne. Her team analysed data collected as part of a 2005 telephone survey of 16 to 64-year-olds. Overall, 8.7 per cent of respondents said they had gotten high in the last year, with twice as many men (11.2 per cent) admitting to marijuana use as women (6.1 per cent). People under 36 were more likely to smoke marijuana than older participants. Even though many male smokers experienced sexual problems, they reported more partners than non-smokers. Marijuana users were twice as likely to have had two or more sex partners in the previous year than men who didn't smoke pot. Smoking in bed Pitts' team found an even stronger trend for increased sexual activity among female smokers, who were also seven times more likely to have been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection in the last year than non-smokers. However, female smokers had no more problems in the bedroom than abstainers, Pitts' team found. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13198 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Nora Schultz BRAIN regions key to cognition are smaller in older people who are obese compared with their leaner peers, making their brains look up to 16 years older than their true age. As brain shrinkage is linked to dementia, this adds weight to the suspicion that piling on the pounds may up a person's risk of the brain condition. The brains of elderly obese people looked 16 years older than the brains of those who were lean Previous studies suggested that obesity in middle age increases the risk of dementia decades later, which is accompanied by increased brain shrinkage compared with leaner people. Now brain scans of older people have revealed the areas that are hardest hit, as well as the full extent of brain size differences between obese people and those of average weight. From brain scans initially carried out for a different study, Paul Thompson from the University of California in Los Angeles and colleagues selected 94 from people in their 70s who were still "cognitively normal" five years after the scan. This was to exclude people with disorders that might have confused the results. The researchers then transformed these scans into detailed three-dimensional maps. People with higher body mass indexes had smaller brains on average, with the frontal and temporal lobes - important for planning and memory, respectively - particularly affected (Human Brain Mapping, DOI: 10.1002/hbm.20870). While no one knows whether these people are more likely to develop dementia, a smaller brain is indicative of destructive processes that can develop into dementia. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Obesity; Brain imaging
Link ID: 13197 - Posted: 06.24.2010

TUNA dive fast and deep twice a day because they use an internal compass to navigate, a new study suggests. It has long been known that tuna dive around dawn and dusk but no one has been quite sure why. To find out, Jay Willis at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia, and colleagues attached tags to 21 southern blue fin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) and used them to monitor water temperature, time, depth and light levels for 135 days (Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, DOI: 10.1007/s00265-009-0818-2). The team found that the tuna initiated these "spike dives" when the sun was precisely 6 degrees below the horizon, 30 minutes before dawn and 30 minutes after sunset. At this time of day magnetic interference created by the solar wind is at its lowest. Since some fish can detect and navigate using magnetic fields, Willis thinks that diving at this time may help tuna to get a clearer magnetic signal. As surface wind and waves also cause interference, Willis suggests that they dive deep to "fine-tune their personal compass". Others are not so sure. "There may be other reasons besides geolocation at work here, namely keeping track of food," says Molly Lutcavage of the University of New Hampshire in Durham. She points out that tuna's prey migrate to depth at around the same time. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 13196 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Memo to zoo visitors making faces at the chimps and gorillas on the other side of the glass: they know what you're thinking. Or, more precisely, feeling. The extent and limits of ape intelligence is a hot area in science, but most of the research has focused on cognition. Now a team of scientists has turned the spotlight on emotions, and how well apes can read the human kind as displayed in our facial expressions. Earlier studies had shown that apes understand people's goals and perceptions. But whether apes understand our emotional expressions was pretty much a mystery, even though there are striking similarities between the facial expressions that we and our more hirsute cousins make, as researchers as far back as Darwin noted. Both human babies and newborn chimps make a pouting face to get mom’s attention, for instance, and bare their teeth in something like a smile in order to make nice—or "achieve social bonding," as primatologists put it. A cool paper in the September issue of the journal Developmental Science describes studies on 17 chimps, five bonobos, five gorillas and five orangutans from the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center in Leipzig, Germany. In the first test, a researcher sat at a table on one side of a plexiglass panel while an ape sat on the other side. Two opaque boxes rested on the table. The scientist opened one box (making sure the ape could not see inside) and smiled with pleasure. He next opened the other and made a disgusted face. The ape was then allowed to reach through one of the holes in the panel and pick one box. Which would he choose? © 2009 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 13195 - Posted: 06.24.2010

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Thirteen-year-old Andrea Levy ticked off a mental list of rules to follow when her guest arrived: Greet her at the door. Introduce her to the family. Offer a cold drink. Above all, make her feel welcome by letting her choose what to do. ''Do you want to make pizza now or do you want to make it later?'' the lanky, raven-haired teen rehearsed in the kitchen, as her mother spread out dough and toppings. This was a pivotal moment for Andrea, a girl who invited just one acquaintance to her bat mitzvah. Andrea has autism, and socializing doesn't come naturally. For the past several weeks, she's gone to classes that teach the delicate ins and outs of making friends -- an Emily Post rules of etiquette for autistic teens. For Andrea, this pizza date is the ultimate test. The bell rings. The door opens. Can she remember what she needs to do? More important, will she make a friend? Even for socially adept kids, the teen years, full of angst and peer pressure, can be a challenge. It's an especially difficult time for kids with autism spectrum disorders, a catchall term for a range of poorly understood brain conditions -- from the milder Asperger's syndrome to more severe autism marked by lack of eye contact, poor communication and repetitive behavior such as head-banging. Copyright 2009 The Associated Press

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 13194 - Posted: 08.24.2009

By Matthew Perrone WASHINGTON - Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline used a sophisticated ghostwriting program to promote its antidepressant Paxil, allowing doctors to take credit for medical journal articles mainly written by company consultants, according to court documents obtained by the Associated Press. An internal company memo instructs salespeople to approach physicians and offer to help them write and publish articles about their positive experiences prescribing the drug. Known as the CASPPER program, the paper explains how the company can help physicians with everything from “developing a topic’’ to “submitting the manuscript for publication.’’ The document was uncovered by the Baum Hedlund PC law firm of Los Angeles, which is representing hundreds of former Paxil users in personal injury and wrongful death suits against GlaxoSmithKline. The firm alleges the company downplayed several risks connected with its drug, including increased suicidal behavior and birth defects. A spokeswoman for London-based Glaxo said the published articles made note of any assistance to the main authors. “The program was not heavily used and was discontinued a number of years ago,’’ said Mary Anne Rhyne. According to the memo, which dates from April 2000, the CASPPER program was designed to “strengthen the product positioning and overcome competitive issues.’’ © Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 13193 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALICE DREGER The only thing we know for sure about Caster Semenya, the world-champion runner from South Africa, is that she will live the rest of her life under a cloud of suspicion after track and field’s governing body announced it was investigating her sex. The I.A.A.F.’s process for determining whether Caster Semenya, second from left, is a woman will involve at least a geneticist, an endocrinologist, a gynecologist and a psychologist. Why? Because the track organization, the I.A.A.F., has not sorted out the rules for sex typing and is relying on unstated, shifting standards. To be fair, the biology of sex is a lot more complicated than the average fan believes. Many think you can simply look at a person’s “sex chromosomes.” If the person has XY chromosomes, you declare him a man. If XX, she’s a woman. Right? Wrong. A little biology: On the Y chromosome, a gene called SRY usually makes a fetus grow as a male. It turns out, though, that SRY can show up on an X, turning an XX fetus essentially male. And if the SRY gene does not work on the Y, the fetus develops essentially female. Even an XY fetus with a functioning SRY can essentially develop female. In the case of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, the ability of cells to “hear” the masculinizing hormones known as androgens is lacking. That means the genitals and the rest of the external body look female-typical, except that these women lack body hair (which depends on androgen-sensitivity). Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13192 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower In one scene of the 1999 movie The Blair Witch Project, three film students searching for a legendary creature hike for hours only to end up at the spot where they had started. Their misfortune is not just a suspenseful twist in a fictional world, says psychologist Jan Souman of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany. Given no external cues to direction, people trying to walk straight over unfamiliar terrain end up doing intermittent loop-de-loops, Souman and his colleagues report in a paper published online August 20 in Current Biology. Circular walking occurs when people have to rely solely on bodily cues, such as rotational shifts and joint movements, to estimate the location of “straight ahead,” Souman hypothesizes. As random errors in bodily feedback accumulate, a person eventually drifts to one side or the other. A walker dependent on bodily cues may first make a circle to the right, drift back to a straight-ahead direction, start to zigzag and then make a circle to the left. “You may think that you’re walking in a straight line, but in fact the direction you’re walking in is drifting more and more away from straight ahead, making you walk in circles,” Souman says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 13191 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jenny Lauren Lee Nostrils usually get along great. But when they smell conflicting scents, those nose holes become deadly rivals. When one nostril smells something different from the other, the brain chooses between the two scents instead of combining them, researchers report online August 20 in Current Biology. The authors argue that their study is the first to demonstrate this phenomenon, which they call two-nostril, or binaral, rivalry. Studying the rivalry between the nares may help scientists understand how the brain processes smells, says study coauthor Denise Chen of Rice University in Houston. “It’s an interesting article,” says neuroscientist Jay Gottfried of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. “It shows something that has not been appreciated much before.” Scientists have known about rivalry between the eyes and between the ears for years. When a subject’s right eye views an image that is incompatible with the image that the left eye views, the subject reports seeing the images alternating rather than superimposed upon each other. Similarly, in two-ear rivalry, when each ear hears a different tone, the brain switches back and forth between them. To test whether the same phenomenon exists for smell, Chen and Rice University colleague Wen Zhou exposed12 volunteers to two different scents, one in each nostril. One nostril was connected by a tube to a bottle of phenylethyl alcohol, which smells like rose petals. The other was connected to a bottle of n-butanol, which pongs of marker pen. During each whiff, the volunteers breathed in both scents. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 13190 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Harmon Humans have long enjoyed crowing about their intellectual superiority in the animal kingdom. But just as some studies—of tool-wielding birds and language-discerning rodents—have begun to chip away at our cognitive place in the sun, others have set their sights on two human groups whose intelligence might have been underestimated—the very young and the very old. Babies first: "Generations of psychologists and philosophers have believed that babies and young children were basically defective adults—irrational, egocentric and unable to think logically," Alison Gopnik, author of The Philosophical Baby (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009), wrote in a New York Times editorial last week. But her research—and that of others—has gone on to show that rather than being one crayon short of a full box, "In some ways, they are smarter than adults," she says. Gopnik's research at the University of California, Berkeley, has shown young children (of the 5-and-under set) to be fully capable of reasoning and assessing probability. But babies' tendency to be interested in just about everything has led many adults to assume their lack of focus is indicative of unintelligence, Gopnik noted. "Babies explore; adults audit," she says. On the other end of the spectrum, even older adults without an impairing disease such as Alzheimer's are often assumed to have experienced some cognitive slippage. While that may be true in some respects, new research is proving that seniors are perfectly competent in learning new concepts—and remembering them. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13189 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Carl Zimmer Some of the common words we use are frozen mistakes. The term influenza comes from the Italian word meaning “influence”—an allusion to the influence the stars were once believed to have on our health. European explorers searching for an alternate route to India ended up in the New World and uncomprehendingly dubbed its inhabitants indios, or Indians. Neuroscientists have a frozen mistake of their own, and it is a spectacular blunder. In the mid-1800s researchers discovered cells in the brain that are not like neurons (the presumed active players of the brain) and called them glia, the Greek word for “glue.” Even though the brain contains about a trillion glia—10 times as many as there are neurons—the assumption was that those cells were nothing more than a passive support system. Today we know the name could not be more wrong. Glia, in fact, are busy multitaskers, guiding the brain’s development and sustaining it throughout our lives. Glia also listen carefully to their neighbors, and they speak in a chemical language of their own. Scientists do not yet understand that language, but experiments suggest that it is part of the neurological conversation that takes place as we learn and form new memories. If you had to blame one thing for the mistaken impression about glia, it would have to be electricity. The 18th-century physiologist Luigi Galvani discovered that if he touched a piece of electrified metal to an exposed nerve in a frog’s leg, the leg twitched. He and others went on to show that a slight pulse of electricity moving through the metal to the nerve was responsible. For two millennia physicians and philosophers had tried to find the “animal spirits” that moved the body, and Galvani discovered that impetus: It was the stuff of lightning.

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 13188 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Constance Holden Nerds of the world, take heart. Brainy male birds have more luck with females than do their less-intelligent counterparts, according to a study of the Australian bowerbird. Researchers claim this is the first study to show a link between smarts and mating success in any species. It's hard to find a bird with a more complex and energetic courtship behavior than the bowerbird. At breeding season, males build a special platform, or bower, on the forest floor to lure females, and they decorate it with rare objects such as blue feathers and shiny bits of glass. They accompany this with varied vocalizations, hopping, and tail-bobbing. These behaviors help male bowerbirds attract mates, but are the females also looking for a guy with brains? To find out, researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park, mucked with about 30 bowers they found at Wallaby Creek in Australia. Graduate student Jason Keagy took advantage of males' dislike of having red objects in their bowers (they much prefer blue, apparently because of its rarity in natural settings). In one test, he placed a red plastic battery terminal cover in a bower and covered it with a transparent box that the birds had to tip and drag off; in another, he fixed red tiles in the bowers with screws, forcing the birds to try to cover them up with leaves and twigs. The team then used automated video cameras to monitor the bowers. The best problem-solvers scored the most copulations, the team reports online this month in the journal Animal Behaviour. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Intelligence
Link ID: 13187 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Kathleen McGowan Rita Magil was driving down a Montreal boulevard one sunny morning in 2002 when a car came blasting through a red light straight toward her. “I slammed the brakes, but I knew it was too late,” she says. “I thought I was going to die.” The oncoming car smashed into hers, pushing her off the road and into a building with large cement pillars in front. A pillar tore through the car, stopping only about a foot from her face. She was trapped in the crumpled vehicle, but to her shock, she was still alive. The accident left Magil with two broken ribs and a broken collarbone. It also left her with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a desperate wish to forget. Long after her bones healed, Magil was plagued by the memory of the cement barriers looming toward her. “I would be doing regular things—cooking something, shopping, whatever—and the image would just come into my mind from nowhere,” she says. Her heart would pound; she would start to sweat and feel jumpy all over. It felt visceral and real, like something that was happening at that very moment. Most people who survive accidents or attacks never develop PTSD. But for some, the event forges a memory that is pathologically potent, erupting into consciousness again and again. “PTSD really can be characterized as a disorder of memory,” says McGill University psychologist Alain Brunet, who studies and treats psychological trauma. “It’s about what you wish to forget and what you cannot forget.” This kind of memory is not misty and water­colored. It is relentless.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 13186 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bats, birds, box turtles, humans and many other animals share at least one thing in common: They sleep. Humans, in fact, spend roughly one-third of their lives asleep, but sleep researchers still don't know why. According to the journal Science, the function of sleep is one of the 125 greatest unsolved mysteries in science. Theories range from brain "maintenance" - including memory consolidation and pruning - to reversing damage from oxidative stress suffered while awake, to promoting longevity. None of these theories are well established, and many are mutually exclusive. Now, a new analysis by Jerome Siegel, UCLA professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Sleep Research at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the Sepulveda Veterans Affairs Medical Center, has concluded that sleep's primary function is to increase animals' efficiency and minimize their risk by regulating the duration and timing of their behavior. The research appears in the current online edition of the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience. "Sleep has normally been viewed as something negative for survival because sleeping animals may be vulnerable to predation and they can't perform the behaviors that ensure survival," Siegel said. These behaviors include eating, procreating, caring for family members, monitoring the environment for danger and scouting for prey. "So it's been thought that sleep must serve some as-yet unidentified physiological or neural function that can't be accomplished when animals are awake," he said.

Keyword: Sleep; Evolution
Link ID: 13185 - Posted: 08.22.2009

By BENEDICT CAREY The safest and most effective treatment for hard-core heroin addicts who fail to control their habit using methadone or other treatments may be their drug of choice, in prescription form, researchers are reporting after the first rigorous test of the approach performed in North America. For years, European countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands have allowed doctors to provide some addicts with prescription heroin as an alternative to buying drugs on the street. The treatment is safe and keeps addicts out of trouble, studies have found, but it is controversial — not only because the drug is illegal but also because policy makers worry that treating with heroin may exacerbate the habit. The study, appearing in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, may put some of those concerns to rest. “It showed that heroin works better than methadone in this population of users, and patients will be more willing to take it,” said Dr. Joshua Boverman, a psychiatrist at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Perhaps the biggest weakness of methadone treatment, Dr. Boverman said, is that “many patients don’t want to take it; they just don’t like it.” In the study, researchers in Canada enrolled 226 addicts with longstanding habits who had failed to improve using other methods, including methadone maintenance therapy. Doctors consider methadone, a chemical cousin to heroin that prevents withdrawal but does not induce the same high, to be the best treatment for narcotic addiction. A newer drug, buprenorphine, is also effective. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13184 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns boost their brain power through meditation and prayer, but even atheists can enjoy the mental benefits that believers derive from faith, according to a popular neuroscience author. The key, Andrew Newberg argues in his new book "How God Changes Your Brain," lies in the concentrating and calming effects that meditation or intense prayer have inside our heads. Brain scanners show that intense meditation alters our gray matter, strengthening regions that focus the mind and foster compassion while calming those linked to fear and anger. Whether the meditator believes in the supernatural or is an atheist repeating a mantra, he says, the outcome can be the same - a growth in the compassion that virtually every religion teaches and a decline in negative feelings and emotions. "In essence, when you think about the really big questions in life -- be they religious, scientific or psychological -- your brain is going to grow," says Newberg, head of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania. "It doesn't matter if you're a Christian or a Jew, a Muslim or a Hindu, or an agnostic or an atheist," he writes in the book written with Mark Robert Waldman, a therapist at the Center. © Thomson Reuters 2009

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 13183 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Many people do not realise drinking alcohol can disturb a good night's sleep by interfering with the brain, a government-funded poll suggests. Almost half of 2,000 drinkers surveyed reported fatigue the day after drinking more than the recommended daily limit. But some 58% of those questioned were unaware that sleep problems could be caused by exceeding the limit. The survey by YouGov was carried out for the Know Your Limits campaign, started three years ago. Men are advised to drink no more than four units a day - the equivalent of two pints of regular-strength beer, and women no more than three units - the equivalent of a large, 250ml glass of wine. According to the poll's findings, many people did not know that the dehydration caused by drinking could interfere with their sleep. Alcohol stops the brain from releasing vasopressin, a chemical which tells the kidneys to reabsorb water that would otherwise end up in the bladder. Without this signal, the drinker needs more frequent trips to the toilet. The loss of this water can also lead to a headache emanating from the inner lining of the skull. In addition, alcohol disrupts the "REM" stage of sleep, which is thought necessary for a deep and effective slumber. After drinking the body tends to fall straight into a deep sleep, and only enters the REM stage once the alcohol has been metabolised. As the body wakes more easily from REM sleep, many drinkers find they stir early in the morning without feeling as if they have slept properly. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Sleep
Link ID: 13182 - Posted: 08.20.2009

by Veronique Greenwood In a famous set of experiments in the 1970s, children were observed trick-or-treating in the suburbs. Some were asked their names and addresses upon arriving at a door, while some were asked nothing. All were instructed to take just one piece of candy from the bowl, but as soon as the owner of the home retreated into the kitchen, the children who hadn’t provided their names and addresses shoveled the candy into their bags, sometimes taking everything in the bowl. Psychologists posited that anonymity made the children feel safe from the repercussions of their actions, an effect they call deindividuation. Moral psychologists have since constructed myriad experiments to probe the workings of human morality, studying how we decide to cheat or to play by the rules, to lie or to tell the truth. And the results can be surprising, even disturbing. For instance, we have based our society on the assumption that deciding to lie or to tell the truth is within our conscious control. But Harvard’s Joshua Greene and Joseph Paxton say this assumption may be flawed and are probing whether honesty may instead be the result of controlling a desire to lie (a conscious process) or of not feeling the temptation to lie in the first place (an automatic process). “When we are honest, are we honest because we actively force ourselves to be? Or are we honest because it flows naturally?” Greene asks. Greene and Paxton have just published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that attempts to get at the subconscious underpinnings of morality by recording subjects’ brain activity as they make a decision to lie. Under the fMRI, subjects were asked to predict the result of a coin toss and were allowed to keep their predictions to themselves until after the coin fell, giving them a chance to lie. As motivation, they were paid for correct predictions. ©2005-2009 Seed Media Group LLC

Keyword: Emotions; Stress
Link ID: 13181 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Marc Hauser * Charles Darwin argued that a continuity of mind exists between humans and other animals, a view that subsequent scholars have supported. * But mounting evidence indicates that, in fact, a large mental gap separates us from our fellow creatures. Recently the author identified four unique aspects of human cognition. * The origin and evolution of these distinctive mental traits remain largely mysterious, but clues are emerging slowly. Not too long ago three aliens descended to Earth to evaluate the status of intelligent life. One specialized in engineering, one in chemistry and one in computation. Turning to his colleagues, the engineer reported (translation follows): “All of the creatures here are solid, some segmented, with capacities to move on the ground, through the water or air. All extremely slow. Unimpressive.” The chemist then commented: “All quite similar, derived from different sequences of four chemical ingredients.” Next the computational expert opined: “Limited computing abilities. But one, the hairless biped, is unlike the others. It exchanges information in a manner that is primitive and inefficient but remarkably different from the others. It creates many odd objects, including ones that are consumable, others that produce symbols, and yet others that destroy members of its tribe.” “But how can this be?” the engineer mused. “Given the similarity in form and chemistry, how can their computing capacity differ?” “I am not certain,” confessed the computational alien. “But they appear to have a system for creating new expressions that is infinitely more powerful than those of all the other living kinds. I propose that we place the hairless biped in a different group from the other animals, with a separate origin, and from a different galaxy.” The other two aliens nodded, and then all three zipped home to present their report. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 13180 - Posted: 06.24.2010