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Smart Monkeys According to a new report in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes (vol. 27, p316) baboons demonstrated a cognitive ability thought to be only human. In a novel experiment conducted by researchers in the U.S. and France, two adult guinea baboons were trained to recognize analogous links, demonstrating ability for abstraction. This discovery may force a revisit to our thoughts regarding animal intelligence. (Motluck 2001) A Human Clone? What can we say? We have been writing about it for some time. Well, it's done. We could say, "We told you so." The human embryo has been cloned. The very fundamentals of our moral valuing systems (axiology) are now more than on that proverbial "slippery slope." Is the embryo life or just a rich source of stem cells? Is it okay to use cloned embryos for fertilization? Is it good science to develop embryo farms? The answer to these and the whole host of issues given rise to by this new technology may be self evident to some, but they're deeply troubling to others. Say what? Now that human genome project is complete, scientists are turning to proteins. The term for this is called proteomics. Proteomics seeks to uncover all of the proteins and their functions. Genomics deciphered the genes in an organism. Genes are simply the blueprints for proteins. It is obvious that proteomics will become the new "darling" of the drug industry, as John Cohen put it in his article appearing in the October issue of Technology Review. (Cohen 2001) No hocus-pocus-it's homeopathy. German chemist Kurt Geckeler and colleague Shashadhar Samal have made a chance discovery that may explain the benefits often found in homeopathy. They discovered that certain molecules dissolved in water do not spread further and further apart as a solution is diluted. Indeed, fullerene particles clustered into aggregates 5 to 10 times as large as in the original solutions. This work does not explain nor replicate the earlier research (1988) of French scientist Jacques Benveniste who found that continued dilution eventually led to what he called "imprints" in the water, or commonly, water memory. According to an article in New Scientist by Debora MacKenzie, Fred Pearce of University College London, believes that the less dilute homeopathic remedies may work precisely because the "large clusters and aggregates might interact more easily with biological tissue." (MacKenzie 2001) Inheriting your IQ Researchers in the US and Finland have found that genes strongly influence the development of the brain, in particularly, those areas in the brain that govern our cognitive ability. So, you didn't just get the big nose or the male pattern baldness and so forth from Ma and Pa-you also got your IQ. However, as Paul Thompson at the University of California at Los Angeles puts it, "That doesn't mean your intellect is set in stone." (Motluk 2001) Perspiration kills bacteria If you have ever wondered why human sweat was considered socially unacceptable, you have even more reason to wonder now. According to Birgit Schittek at the University of Tubingen in Germany, there is a small antibiotic protein called dermicidin in sweat. "This is the first antimicrobial compound in sweat ever to be described," says Schittek. The researchers hope to use the dermicidin gene to develop new antibiotics. (Randerson 2001) Memory storage a matter of waves According to neuroscientist Anthony D. Wagner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, synchronously oscillating waves generated by adjacent brain areas, the rhinal cortex and the hippocampus, pave the way for remembering. Further, the synchronized electrical bursts are more important in memory storage than the strength of the neural activity. (Bower 2001) Carl Pribram and David Bohm teamed up a few years ago and the result led to models of the brain as holographically storing memory. Waves and interference patterns-ala, holography. Despite the criticism that Pribram's work has met with especially in recent years, I suspect we'll find it's more holographic than electrical or chemical substance per se' based. Bower, B.
(2001). Brain may forge some memories in waves. Science News. 160: 294. |
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