Thorny Problem


The elephant in the room has become one of those well-used expressions that we throw around without picturing what it would be really like to have to share your living space with a hungry pachyderm. Not everyone is so fortunate, though. The Kenyan farmers have to face this actuality more and more frequently.

Elephant conservation measures and the restrictions on the ivory trade have allowed the elephant population to increase, which is great news. However, elephants like to go where they like, and if you’re a farmer, the elephant in your field is not something that you can ignore. Even the accolade of three “trunks up” on the quality of the crop turned elephant fodder, won’t assuage your bank manager's ire at not getting paid interest on your loan.

Thick, thorny hedges are the usual answer, but not a very efficient one. Conservationists and farmers are working hard to come up with effective solutions at the same time as increasing elephant numbers is increasing pressure on normal elephant forage. King et al report an innovative solution to this elephantine problem at Turkana in the African Journal of Ecology (1).

A new type of fence has been devised. It consists of a mile and a half of fence with hanging bar-frame beehives at frequent interval. You see, elephants are afraid of bees and deliver a specific alarm call to tell their friends and family to take care. This new fence was only breached once by a single bull-headed bull elephant. At the same time, the thorn fences were breached 32 times by all and sundry.

The sweet ending is that 106 kg of honey were harvested as well as having protected, well pollenated crops.

  1. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2028.2011.01275.x

School For Scandal?


If you put a crowd of young people together, as in school or university for example, we can watch the courting process in action. Of course, the teaching challenge is to make the subject of the moment more interesting than the object of the moment sitting a few feet away. Not always easy. The larger the group, the more difficult it is, but even in small groups the tension is there regardless of the fact that while we are dispensing our pearls of wisdom, we are happy in our illusion of holding our students attention. If not rapt, then at least focused.

Apparently, as it is with well brought up children, it is with well-bred horses. In a recent study, Janczarek and Kędzierski evaluated the heart-felt response of young horses training in single sex and mixed groups.  These were 2½-year old Arabian colts and fillies who were being taught to get their workouts on a horse-sized treadmill. Half were trained in single sex groups and the other half in mixed sex groups.

On checking their pulses when going to and from their workout location and stables, the mixed group of colts and fillies were rather more excited. We don’t know who was whispering what in who’s ear, but there was definitely something going on. Their pulses were distinctly faster. The authors conclude that it’s not a good idea to train young horses in mixed classes, but that there should be separate classes for fillies and colts.

This conclusion has a distinct retro feel about it. There wasn’t evidence that the fluttering of the heart strings in going to class or back to their stables had any effect on their learning attainments. It might even have made them more eager to go to class if they knew that they could flirt on the way. Before making a definitive judgment, perhaps we should wait and take a look at their final grades.  

  1. I. Janczarek and W. Kędzierski, J. Appl. Animal Welfare, Sci., 14, 211, (2011).

It's Not In Your Genes


As faster and cheaper genomic analysis rushes forward, we see more and more groups checking for genome correlations with particular conditions. Some of these have been spectacularly successful. Others have not. Sometimes I’m glad that this is the case.

Clearly, that you may have a predisposition to develop breast cancer, can ensure proper monitoring and that is a good thing. To know or not to know is then a personal choice. The knowledge can weigh heavily.

The studies that I’m glad don’t give good correlations are ones such as the enquiry into a genetic link to criminal violence, for example.

The latest good news is from the study by the large team of Lewis et al from the UK. They looked at the genomic analysis of a little over 2,000 patients suffering from depression. They were classified in terms of suicidal behavior to see if a genetic predisposition to suicidality was present.  The classification went from suicidal thought, through to attempts and finally completion.

The great good news is that there isn’t a clear genomic set-up that means that we should stay away from tall buildings, high cliffs or train lines. A genetic predisposition for suicide would be enough to bring on a bout of depression and make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once we think that we may be programmed, it is easy to slip into a fatalistic frame of mind.

I see these negative answers as a most positive result and as important as the ones that do come up with correlations. We have enough trouble moving towards equal opportunity, as it is without having to be reading our genome like the astrology pages.

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0020690


Thinking Your Way Uphill


New technology is exciting, usually. It is also good to see some big corporations encouraging the small guys out there rather than gobbling them up like piranhas in the amazon. Toyota, famous for their engineering process outlined in their book The Toyota Way, are running a series of Toyota Prius Projects. Prius Project number 11 is all about the concept bike (1).

Putting aside the idea that the Prius will become very expensive to run if gas prices keep escalating and that Toyota might be thinking about moving into bikes, the part of this project that caught my attention was the effort from Deeplocal of Pittsburgh.

The innovation here was to get rid of that business of having to change gear by fiddling with levers or twistgrips. The first step was to set up the gear change by radio control (2). The controller was your smartphone (or your competitors if they’ve hacked your phone.) Coming to a hill and fumbling for your phone, then swiping and thumbing it doesn’t sound easy, but it’s certainly an unusual idea.

Before I seem to be knocking it, let me rush to say I’m open minded and recognize a steppingstone in the route forward when I see it. The next step that they took was closer to my heart. It was to put the whole thing in the helmet and then we’re back to the computer brain interface (CBI) that I’ve posted about recently. The CBI is being actively used to control things like wheelchairs.

Now we can have a truly hands-free riding experience! I can see a much brighter future here, though, than just changing gear with your arms folded.

Picture your real Prius concept bike with an electric motor as well as pedals. Its speed and gearing are controlled by your thoughts and as you go down hill and pedal, the battery is charged. So gravity and pedals do the equivalent job to that of gas in the Prius.

  1. http://www.toyotapriusprojects.com/#/011
  2. http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/01/toyota-prius-projects-concept-bike-lets-you-shift-gears-with-yo/

Sticks And Stones


Accurate throwing and speech require excellent timing, as those who have been unfortunate enough to indulge in energetic spousal debates will know well enough. The same structures in the brain are involved in both of these activities. This is discussed in a recent paper by Zhu and Bingham (1). They point out that just as our speaking abilities make us human, so does our ability to throw things long distances. Indeed, put these two things together and we have the start of an army, or a hunting party at the very least.

We have built in perceptual biases that help us make sense of the baby talk that we hear from admiring adults. The concept proposed by Zhu and Bingham is that we have perceptual biases built in which help us find the right stone to throw at, well, we had better restrict it to prey.

From a very early age we learn to associate size and weight and if we had wanted to knock over our woolly mammoth, we would have chosen a large heavy stick (sharp of course.) This size-weight judgment is so strongly ingrained that we assume bigger things to be heavier, even when they aren’t. Apparently this goes right back to our bias which helps us find the optimal thing to throw.

We learn to throw early, as we learn to talk early. These days we are usually discouraged from indulging this passion too widely. Pitching a baseball or throwing a javelin on the sports field is acceptable, but leaves us with a fairly limited choice and keeps us civilized. There are no such restrictions on our use of speech, though. On occasion, it seems difficult to not use the former in response to the latter.

  1. Q.Zhu and G.P.Bingham, Evolution & Human Behavior, 32, 288, (2011)

Only The Lonely


With the US Independence Day holiday well under way and with the sun shining down on us all, it is a good moment to take time out from the celebrations and contemplate our continental solidarity. At these times we feel a connection with our fellows as we dig into our barbecue, or sit back and watch the fireworks. The warmth is both interpersonal and physical as we stand in the yard, slathered in sunscreen, downwind from the smoke, chatting with our friends and neighbors.

It is interesting to note that feeling warm decreases any feelings of loneliness according to Bargh and Shalev in the most recent issue of the journal Emotion (1), they describe how physical warmth can enhance the feeling of social warmth, but the inverse is also true. Shivering in your apartment over the winter holidays will take your feelings of being lonely and abandoned to great heights.

The authors of the study record that those people with a marked feeling of chronic loneliness had a greater tendency to take lots of hot baths or showers. Their participating subjects were scored on their feelings of loneliness, cooled off extensively and re-scored. Their loneliness had increased after they had been left clutching large cold packs for a while.

After being asked to think back to their big rejection experience in their life and rate how they felt thinking about that, they were allowed to cuddle a warm pack for a bit. They felt comforted. Their feelings of loneliness caused by the rejection subsided. Hugging your dog will likewise help you come to terms with your feelings after being dumped.

In their final study, they showed that people did not associate taking lots of warm baths with loneliness. Of course being all scrubbed and smelling nice will make you a welcome guest at the barbecue. If you’ve been working hard and haven’t bathed for a week so that you overpower the smell of cooking from the grill, you may end up in the corner with an acute attack of loneliness.

doi: 10.1037/a0023527

Bred In The Bone


A large number of species form monogamous pair bonds. It may not be until death does them part, but for a while anyway. The evolutionary advantages look simple and clear, as jobs such as defending their patch and bringing up offspring are shared. But not everything is as straightforward as it appears on the surface.

In many of these harmonious families, males outside the pair have fathered a considerable number of the offspring. Forstmeir et al from the Max Planck in Seewiesen have been watching the surreptitious dalliances of female zebra finches with various birds about town (1). This behavior doesn’t appear to hold any advantage for the females. Indeed, it could be disadvantageous to the bond.

The research has shown that there is a hereditary element. The propensity of the finches to get together outside the pair is in the genes of both sexes and then a fraction of the young males will have a positive selection to grow up to be Latharios with a very persuasive manner.

The genetic basis of choice of mate took on an additional flavor with the work of BeBruine et al from the Us of Aberdeen and Stirling (2). Apparently women with brothers make different mate choices than women without. Not, I hasten to add, because of approval or otherwise from the brother(s). Having a brother makes the woman feel less attracted to a man who has any resemblance to herself, thus, helping her to hook up with someone right outside the family.

Having a younger brother is a greater safeguard against inbreeding than an older one. Yes, well, younger brothers are always a pain, aren’t they? Women without brothers don’t have this pressure. They can be as narcissistic as they wish.

The perception of trustworthiness is not effected, however. Perceiving a man who looks like you as being trustworthy is not a function of having a brother or not. So I guess that, on balance,  a younger brother might be a good thing for a girl to have.

  1. http://www.pnas.org/content/108/26/10608
  2. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/06/23/1105919108.abstract