Ah, The Broth Of A Bear!



Way back, before St. Patrick banished the snakes from the Emerald Isle, brown bears roamed from bog to bog and had a rare old time. Climate fluctuations brought changes in neighbors and all sorts of opportunities for shenanigans.

Just like today, that shining white, pillar of society, Ursus maritimus, was stamping his image across country. A study covering the last 120,000 years by a huge international team is published in the early edition of the Journal of Current Biology (1). They have been ferreting out the truth through the matriarchal lines using analysis of mitochondrial DNA.

Like so many of our US presidents, our current population of polar bears have Irish ancestors. With their liking for seals and cold weather, they left the Emerald Isle for where? – well Greenland, of course.

Currently, they are having to move south and are bumping into Grizzlie neighbors in Northwest Canada, where they have been getting up to their old Don Juan-like tricks. Some Grolars have been spotted wandering about the place.

  1. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.05.058

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

Burpless Jumpers


With the Fourth of July holiday weekend here at last and all those barbies fired up, converting carbon into carbon dioxide while we cook our burgers, we will temporally forget about the carbon footprint.  While contemplating the downside consequences of digging into the beans on the side of your plate, you’ll remember that even the uncooked burger has a big C-footprint from the gaseous eruptions of the cow it came from.

Now, cow-burps are not to be taken lightly. The UN Food & Agriculture Organization reckon that our livestock is responsible for 37% of the world’s methane emission and 9% of its carbon dioxide. I’m just glad that cows don’t drive cars and that milking parlors are no smoking zones.

Well brought up cows eat grass. The microbes in their stomachs are working their socks off to break down the cellulose into sugar so that the happy cows can skip around their meadow. Those hard-working primitive little single celled creatures give off the methane. However, all ruminants aren’t the same. Morrison has been leading a large international team to see why the kangaroo family is methane free (1).

Tammar wallabies were the focus for a burpless ruminant study. They are a handy little pocket variety being less than 18 inches tall and are a favorite in the lab. We don’t know when they went methane free, or if it was because of the hot summer fire hazards in Australia, but they have their own brand of pre-digestion bacteria which are non-gas producers. Until the work of Morrison et al, it was a closely guarded secret, but now all is revealed. The name of the resident in the secret sauce is member of the Succinivibrionacae family. As its name implies, this bacteria family produce succinates as their waste product,  not methane, and are thus gas-free.

The blue skies suggestion is that perhaps we could train cows to use these instead of their existing gut population to break down the grass. There might be a fair bit of genetic engineering required but I was glad that there was no suggestion of crossing the hosts. The idea of cows hopping around the fields or of milking kangaroos for a living was way outside my imagination paygrade.

Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1205760

Happiness, The Prime Objective


Everything else being equal, if we feel happy, we live longer. Of course, everything else is usually not equal, but never mind, we need to maximize our feeling of wellbeing if we can. Other primates have similar problems with longevity. A large number are living in our zoos and so it is easy to check up on them. We have a choice about which zoo we live in. They do not.

Weiss, Adams and King from the Us of Edinburgh and Arizona (1) have followed a large number of Orangutans in zoological housing for a 7-year stretch. First of all, 174 of them were numerically rated as to their wellbeing.

This was necessarily a little subjective as it was based on the answers to a questionnaire. The BBC reports (2) that they had help from their caregivers at the zoos who were asked how happy they thought that they would be as an orangutan in their zoo for a week. They were also asked to fill in the questions on each orang’s personality and how much time they spent happy and enjoying themselves.

Over the 7-year period, 31 of the group died. In the wild they live to about 30, but in the zoological environment, 60 is more typical. The results of the study showed that the happiest ones lived about 11-years longer than the awkward, miserable ones.

Clearly we should take this message to heart. We already know that living in our highly developed human zoos, we have a much greater life expectancy than those living in the third world. But are we grinning enough? How do our keepers rate our wellbeing? Can you imagine the answers that they would write down when filling in our questionnaires for us? Maybe the next time we vote, we should think not just about life and liberty, but should also be upfront with the pursuit of happiness. You can’t pursue anything very effectively after you been well and truly screwed by the oligarchs, can you?

  1. http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/06/10/rsbl.2011.0543
  2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/13925983

Those Turkeys Getting You Down?


We have relied on working animals for thousands of years and we feel a particular affinity for them, especially if we are their handler. It is a little sad to read that a new venture into working animals in Germany has hit some snags. The BBC picked up the report from Der Spiegel today (1).

Here is the original idea. Recall all those old westerns with the flock of vultures circling in the distance over the villain coming to a bad end in the desert or, perhaps, a massacred wagon of settlers making their way westward. The Hanover police enrolled three turkey vultures to spot bodies and gave them the names Sherlock, Columbo and Miss Marple.

Sherlock was the first to go into training to become a winged police dog and search for bodies on Luneburg Heath. Vultures search by sight and also have a good sense of smell, so looked like a good addition to a rural police force. Sherlock was being trained on a resurrected burial shroud which has a good strong smell.

Training has not been going well. Sherlock is a little lazy and instead of flying around to locate the shroud, he prefers to stroll nonchalantly over to it. A dog can of course cover much more ground than a laid back vulture.

Bigger problems loom though. He is quite content to concentrate on animal remains. You see he is a little shy and timid and humans scare him so that he walks off and hides in the woods.

Sherlock was the elder statesbird of the three and was scheduled to help teach Columbo and Miss Marple the job. That’s not going well either. It’s not just Sherlock’s fault though. Columbo and Miss Marple don’t get on and are squabbling too much to pay any attention.

Do turkey vultures taste good with cranberry sauce?

  1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13956581

Caught By A Cookie


While working hard using my favorite software, I clicked a command to open a plug-in and a window popped up to let me know in a helpful fashion that an upgrade was currently available. The message implied that the upgrade was free, I think but I can’t be sure because I can’t resurrect the pop-up. Always eager to be up to date, I downloaded the latest version of the add-in and then the hand-basket to hell arrived at my door.

When requested, I hit “Install” and navigated to a screen asking for my product key. Eventually I unearthed my latest receipt. Please note that I’d purchased the same software three times already due to combinations of computer and software upgrades over the last few years. Armed with the product key, I confidently filled in the form and was told that it was not a valid key.

After going through the usual somersaults, thinking that I’d mistyped or got a download corruption and then doing everything again, again and again, I emailed the support guys.  A few days later the reply arrived. The key was a valid key and I should be careful about my typing and watch out for Oh instead of Zero and all the usual. Being a good customer, I tried again – no joy.

Shrugging my shoulders, I went back to using the old stuff. Horror! A pop-up told me to close the main software, uninstall and start over. Time to reach for the phone for clear instructions. Re-install the main program? Re-install the plug-in? Try removing the plug-in from the main software and plugging it back in or what?

Fortune smiled – I got a person immediately. On my own dime, there being no 800 numbers in sight. Had I tried the 30-day trial? No, I was trying the upgrade and had a product key. I read out the key and a few seconds later I was told it wasn’t valid. Protests and minutes clocking up, of course. I would have to buy the latest version. I explained that wasn’t my problem, I was sticking with my old version that wasn’t working now.

After getting the same message as the last pop-up that I should un-install and re-install, my coherence was less than perfect, but of course, always polite. There was a disbelieving tone in the inquiry that I received “haven’t you ever un-installed software before?” Well, I was now working alone. After digging through the most unlikely files associated with the plug-in, I managed to get everything back on.

Important lessons here. I had got sloppy in not making sure that my cookie jar was empty. Mustn’t do that. We’re all susceptible that that sweet offer when we’re relaxed and don’t have our sales-resist coat on. Another lesson was the reminder that most of us just want to use software with the minimum of effort, but to those with the software as their baby, its complexities are what makes it beautiful and, if we purchase it, we must also see this beauty and want to spend time playing with it, trying this and that to see what it likes best and spending money frequently to make sure it is in the forefront of fashion.

Today, Tuesday is Tau Day


There is a growing movement, started by Dr. Palais of U of Utah, and fronted currently by Dr. Hartl who wrote the Tau Manifesto, to discredit Pi as an un-natural addiction (1). I say an addiction because there are still people endeavoring to claim records. Fabrice Bellard, who spent 131 days in 2009 watching his desktop computer calculate Pi to 2.7 trillion digits, holds the current record (2). It is rumored that he was on hold to his cable supplier.

Now Tau is simply two helpings of Pi. Why is it useful? The first thing that came to mind that what these avid mathematicians and physicists are exercised about is the current trend in western society of our growing rotundity. These occupations require a lot of butt in chair work. Our tape measures give us a circumference and we are informed that it is simpler to divide by Tau and double the answer to get the width of chair that we must order than to divide by Pi and get flummoxed by the lack of factors of 2. I don’t have that problem, I just choose a big-ass chair and wriggle around in it – it helps me think.

They have a better argument when they measure angles in radians rather than degrees. It helps their hard sums to use radians. So going round in a circle, we have turned 360 degrees or Tau radians instead of 2Pi radians. That factor of 2 gets them every time.

The claim is that circles are not about diameters but about radius signifies that they have spent more time with a pair of compasses than a chainsaw. Out here in the Pacific Northwest we like our chainsaws and would never take about trees in terms of the radius of their trunk. I like my diameters, but in the interests of mathematical integration will take my two helpings of Pi today.


  1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13906169
  2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8442255.stm

Executive Decisions


The executive control mechanism in our brains refers to our ability to switch tasks and adapt to immediate demands stemming from our environment and our needs. Good executive control means that we are flexible in that we can switch very rapidly from working on one thing to working on something else with minimal general cost.  By general cost we mean loss in response time for that task and increase in error rate.

When it comes to cognitive tasks, we may often claim to be multi-tasking, but we aren’t really doing that. We are just breaking the tasks in small chunks and switching back and forth between them in an effort to keep them all moving. The general cost can be high as switching occurs frequently, adding to the costs each time.

Many jobs involve us doing repetitive things, but with making decisions on taking one action or another depending on what appears in front of us. This can be as simple as rejecting unsatisfactory items on a production line or as serious as counting votes in an election. How often have we heard the comment that “they could train monkey to do this?” While complaining that we’re being paid peanuts for the work, we miss the irony.

This is meat and drink to the cognitive neuroscientists who will quickly ask “do monkeys make model human beings?” Caselli and Chelazzi of the Us of Verona and Parma have waded into the discussion with a comparison of task switching costs between a pair of macaques and eight young people. Only one of the eight humans was recorded as male – does that mean that jobs that demand frequent switching from one repetitive task to another are mainly done by women in their neck of the woods?

Down to the experiments. A lever had to be pushed to the right or left depending on the color and orientation of an image of a stripe. The participants, willing and coerced, were given a visual clue as to whether they had to choose between color or orientation as the instruction, just prior to seeing the image for a second. There was verbal feed back about the correctness of choice for each of the participants and, in addition, the two monkeys got a shot of juice if they were correct.

Results are everything when it comes to executive decisions.

Monkey One was more thoughtful and so slower to respond than the humans or his friend. Monkey Two was eager to get juiced up with his next shot and beat all the humans to it. Unfortunately his error rate was four and a half times as high as the humans as he only got an 82% test score, while his thoughtful friend was down to three times as wrong with an 88% score. People weren’t perfect though, with only a 96% correct rate. Good you may say, as long as it not about decisions into whose bank account to deposit your paycheck.

The authors come to the conclusion that “monkeys appear to be less competent than humans in managing task-switching-situations.” However they do propose monkeys as a good model for studying human executive decision making. While watching some of the decisions being made by the good and the great, I suspect that they may be right.

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0021489

Turtle In The Soup


On the home stretch of my peregrinations to scoff coffee, I spotted a turtle in the grass alongside the sidewalk. When I enquired what she was doing there, she looked up at me as though I should mind my own business. Her striped face indicated that she was a painted turtle. Not an endangered species but one under pressure.

As we gazed at each other, I noticed that she had churned up the grass into mud. It looked like she was trying to continue her journey to cross the sidewalk and then the road, but when carapace hit concrete-edge, progress came to a standstill. I gave her a lecture on the foolishness of leaving the pond to cross the road, but that didn’t go well. With one last look she pulled her head in and waited for me to shut up and leave.

As with any red-blooded do-gooder, leaving things alone was not an option. I picked her up and took her across the grass to place her on the downward slope towards the pond. The muddy patch she left by the sidewalk was big enough to suggest that she might have been planning to lay eggs there. A very bad idea, as people frequently walk on the grass, as I explained to her, but she was still turning a deaf ear. I described my vision of twenty to thirty little hatchlings running out into the road with a great subsequent scrunching as the traffic rushed by. She took no notice.

Another animal in the soup this weekend is the Emperor from the Antarctic who visit New Zealand. I wrote about him in last Wednesday’s post. Well, his penchant for eating wet sand instead of snow in order to keep cool has got him into trouble. He is now clogged and has had two work overs by local plumbers – Plumb Quick or Drain Doctor, perhaps  – and is now sitting in an ice-bath, stoically waiting another visit.

Why, I wonder, didn’t someone offer him some ice cream? Isn’t that what you’d offer a guest on a sunny beach? The good news is that a local businessman has offered to take him back home to the ice flows if he comes through the latest clean out of his pipes. I’m sure we all have our fingers crossed.