By Bruce Bower Chimpanzees don’t knuckle under like gorillas, and that may explain how people ended up walking on two legs, a new study suggests. Tracy Kivell of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthopology in Leipzig, Germany, and Daniel Schmitt of Duke University in Durham, N.C., find a new explanation for a set of wrist-bone traits traditionally thought to signal knuckle-walking on flat surfaces by modern apes and ancient hominids — members of the human evolutionary family. These wrist traits actually reflect two types of knuckle-walking that evolved independently in gorillas and chimps, the researchers say. Modern chimps and gorillas both walk on their knuckles, but in different ways. Chimps walk flexibly with bent wrists, giving them added stability on tree branches but putting substantial stress on angled wrist joints, the anthropologists report in a paper published online Aug. 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As a result, chimps’ wrist bones include tiny ridges and depressions that keep their wrists from bending too far. Gorillas stride with arms and wrists extended straight down and locked in an elephant-like stance, the scientists say. This puts minimal stress on gorillas’ forelimb bones, which are stacked one on top of another. Consequently, their wrist bones display no modifications for stabilization during movement, the scientists assert. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 13151 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Carolyn Y. Johnson To dog owners, their pet’s “arf, arf, arf’’ means “let’s play!’’ To neighbors, it can be annoying noise. But to scientists, barks are an evolutionary puzzle. Why, they wonder, do dogs bark, and bark, and bark, sometimes seemingly for no reason? Researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hampshire College have offered a new explanation for the bark: The rigors of modern canine life trigger a primordial behavior that once helped dogs’ ancestors fend off predators. Animals - including dogs, deer, monkeys, and birds - bark when they feel a conflict, the researchers believe. For example, should an animal run away or defend her young? In the wild, that bark draws the attention - and the barks - of other members of the group, which could scare away the predator. But in domesticated dogs - confined to crates, yards, and houses and beset by passing cars, unfamiliar dogs, and mailmen - such internal conflicts go into overdrive, and so does the barking. The research, published in the journal Behavioural Processes last month, is the latest volley in an ongoing scientific investigation of barking. One question researchers are trying to answer is whether dogs are actually saying something, and, if so, what. The reasons for barking might seem like a frivolous research topic. But to scientists, barking should not be overlooked, considering that it is one of the most conspicuous behaviors displayed by an animal that lives in 40 percent of US households and is often treated like a member of the family. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Language; Animal Communication
Link ID: 13150 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Ingrid Wickelgren If your hands and arms quiver when you write and do other tasks, you may have a common neurological condition called essential tremor (ET). As many as 7 percent of adults older than 65 suffer from ET, which may also affect the head and voice. In severe cases, it can be disabling. The cause of such shaking has long been mysterious. But researchers are beginning to uncover a biological explanation for the problem: they have found a gene that may contribute to its development as well as a pathological signature of the disorder in the brain. Researchers knew that genetic factors underlie ET, as half or more of the cases run in families. But no one until now had succeeded in nabbing any of the responsible genes. To find such a gene, scientists at deCODE genetics in Iceland compared DNA blueprints from hundreds of tremor patients and thousands of unafflicted residents. In each person’s DNA, researchers looked at 305,624 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), sites where the identity of the chemical unit (the pair of molecules that makes up each building block of a strand of DNA) commonly varies among people. Out of that analysis emerged one SNP that consistently differed between the patients and the others. The same chemical unit also turned out to be tied to ET in populations of patients whom the researchers recruited from Germany, Austria and the U.S. The newly fingered SNP lies in a gene for a protein called LINGO1 that is present only in the brain and spinal cord—a distribution consistent with a role in neurological disorders, says neurologist Dietrich Haubenberger of the Medical University of Vienna in Austria, one of the study’s authors. The protein, which straddles the cell membrane, is thought to govern interactions among cells and to thereby influence neuronal integrity as well as function. LINGO1 also has been implicated in multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, but its precise role in these disorders and in ET is unclear. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 13149 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By David Jay Brown As the source of the most powerful natural hallucinogen known, salvia is drawing scrutiny from U.S. authorities who want to restrict this Mexican herb, now used recreation­ally by some. But neuro­scientists worry that controlling it before studies have determined its safety profile is premature and could hamper research of the drug's medicinal value. Increasingly, evidence is piling up that it could lead to new and safer anti­depressants and pain relievers, as well as even help in improving treatments for such mental illnesses as schizophrenia and addiction. The plant, formally known as Salvia divinorum, has a long tradition of shamanic usage by the Mazatec people of central Mexico. Salvinorin A, the primary psychoactive component, is part of a class of naturally occurring organic chemicals called diterpenoids, and it affects neural receptors in the brain similar to those that respond to opiate painkillers such as morphine—but without euphoric and addictive properties. That is because salvinorin A binds mostly to only one type of receptor (the so-called kappa opioid receptor) and not significantly to receptors that could lead to addiction (such as the mu opioid receptor). As the popularity of salvia has risen over the past 16 years—its psychoactive properties were discovered in 1993 by Daniel Siebert, an independent ethnobotanist based in Malibu, Calif.—calls to treat the plant as an illegal drug have grown louder. Twelve states have recently placed S. divinorum in their most restrictive controlled substance category, and four others have laws restricting sales. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has listed salvia as “a drug of concern” and is looking into the drug to determine whether it should be declared a Schedule I controlled substance, on par with heroin and LSD. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13148 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Greg Miller Decades after the 1918 influenza pandemic, epidemiologists noted an uptick in the number of people with diminished mobility and other neurological symptoms reminiscent of Parkinson's disease. But despite this and other hints, the idea that viruses can trigger neurodegenerative disease has remained controversial. Now researchers report new evidence for such a link: Mice infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus lose the same dopamine-releasing neurons that are destroyed by Parkinson's disease. The new study was inspired in part by video footage of chickens, geese, and ducks collected in Laos by researchers working with the World Health Organization's surveillance program, says senior author Richard Smeyne, a developmental neurobiologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. "The birds looked like they had Parkinson's disease," Smeyne says. "They were tremoring, falling side to side, and having difficulty with movements." So far there have been no reports of Parkinson's disease in human survivors of the H5N1 flu, Smeyne says, but because only a few years have passed since the first cases were reported, it's too early to know whether those infected are at increased risk. To learn more about the virus's effect on the nervous system, Smeyne and colleagues sprayed a solution containing the virus into the noses of 225 mice. All of the mice developed tremors and movement difficulties. Using an antibody that binds and labels a specific viral protein, the researchers tracked the virus as it first infected nerves in the gut 2 or 3 days after the nasal spray and then successively appeared in the brain stem and midbrain and ultimately infected much of the rest of the brain within 10 days. By 21 days, mice had cleared the virus. But at the end of the 90-day study, the brain regions that had been infected still exhibited signs of inflammation and had elevated levels of phosphorylated alpha-synuclein, the main ingredient in the abnormal clumps of protein that are a hallmark of Parkinson's and certain other neurodegenerative diseases, the researchers report online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers also report that the number of dopamine-releasing neurons in the substantia nigra--the neurons that die off in Parkinson's disease--declined by 17% in the infected mice. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 13147 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Balter If you're a female horse, it pays to have a few girlfriends. Mares who form stronger social bonds produce more and healthier offspring, according to a new study. The finding adds to the growing evidence that friendship is an adaptation with deep evolutionary roots. Numerous human studies, especially of women, have found that friendships lead to better health--and healthier babies. The effect seems to also hold for other animals: In 2003, a research team led by anthropologist Joan Silk of the University of California, Los Angeles, reported that female baboons with close social ties to unrelated females produce infants that survive longer. Similar effects have even been claimed for house mice, but it's been unclear how widespread the benefits of friendship are to nonprimates. The new study, led by zoologist Elissa Cameron of the University of Pretoria in South Africa, focused on 55 adult mares in the hills of New Zealand's North Island. The mares are part of a group that has run wild since the mid-1800s, and they all belong to the same "band"--a stable breeding group consisting of one to four stallions and many more unrelated mares and their offspring. Cameron and her co-workers observed the mares, which they could individually identify by facial markings and other signs. For nearly 3 years, they gathered evidence of social bonding such as mares grooming each other or coming into close contact (less than two body lengths away). The team also noted "harassment" of the mares by stallions apparently asserting their sexual dominance, which earlier work had suggested diminishes reproductive success. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Stress
Link ID: 13146 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Most people get happier as they grow older, studies on people aged up to their mid-90s suggest. Despite worries about ill health, income, changes in social status and bereavements, later life tends to be a golden age, according to psychologists. They found older adults generally make the best of the time they have left and have learned to avoid situations that make them feel sad or stressed. The young should do the same, they told the American Psychological Association. The UK is an ageing nation - in less than 25 years, one in four people in the UK will be over 65 and the number of over-85s will have doubled. And it is expected there will be 30,000 people aged over 100 by the year 2030. According to University of California psychologist Dr Susan Turk Charles, this should make the UK a happier society. By reviewing the available studies on emotions and ageing she found that mental wellbeing generally improved with age, except for people with dementia-related ill health. Work carried out by Dr Laura Carstensen, a psychology professor at Stanford University, suggested why this might be the case. Dr Carstensen asked volunteers ranging in age from 18 to mid-90s to take part in various experiments and keep diaries of their emotional state. She found the older people were far less likely than the younger to experience persistent negative moods and were more resilient to hearing personal criticism. They were also much better at controlling and balancing their emotions - a skill that appeared to improve the older they became. (C)BBC

Keyword: Emotions; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13145 - Posted: 08.08.2009

LONDON - Psychopaths who kill and rape have faulty connections between the part of the brain dealing with emotions and that which handles impulses and decision-making, scientists have found. In a study of psychopaths who had committed murder, manslaughter, multiple rape, strangulation and false imprisonment, the British scientists found that roads linking the two crucial brain areas had "potholes," while those of non-psychopaths were in good shape. The study opens up the possibility of developing treatments for dangerous psychopaths in the future, said Dr Michael Craig of the Institute of Psychiatry at London's King's College Hospital, and may have profound implications for doctors, researchers and the criminal justice system. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here "These were particular serious offenders with psychopathy and without any other mental illnesses," he told Reuters in an interview. "Essentially what we found is that the connections in the psychopaths were not as good as the connections in the non-psychopaths. I would describe them as roads between the two areas — and we found that in the psychopaths, the roads had potholes and weren't very well maintained." The scientists cautioned against suggestions the study could lead to screening of potential psychopathic criminals before they are able to commit crimes, saying their findings had not established how, when or why the brain links were damaged. Copyright 2009 Reuters.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 13144 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Cassandra Willyard As winter turns to spring, the days grow imperceptibly longer. These subtle cues may be lost on us, but birds somehow keep tabs, monitoring the passing of the seasons so that they know when to mate. Now, after decades of searching, researchers report that they have finally identified the protein that enables birds to know when spring is here. In the bird world, timing is everything. Rooks, for example, must breed in February or March to ensure that the soil will be moist enough for them to easily dig out worms to feed their babies. Goldfinches, on the other hand, breed several months later, because they feed on seeds that aren't available early on. "It's the increasing day length in early spring that triggers all these reproductive responses," says Russell Foster, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and lead author of the new study. But how do birds sense these longer days? Experiments in the 1930s showed that the key lies not in a bird's eye, as one might expect, but in the hypothalamus, a region deep in the brain. To demonstrate this, a French scientist inserted thin glass rods into the hypothalamus of blinded ducks in order to artificially illuminate only that part of the brain. Exposing the ducks' brains to springlike day lengths prompted testicular growth. Winter day lengths had no effect. In many ways, it makes sense that a seasonal sensor would reside deep in the brain, Foster says. Bird's skulls are so thin and their brains are so small that light can penetrate to cells in the interior. Furthermore, the sensor is "close to all those bits in the hypothalamus that are regulating the reproductive system," he says. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Vision
Link ID: 13143 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Virginia Morell On the morning of 3 July 2004, more than 150 melon-headed whales rushed into Hanalei Bay off the Hawaiian island of Kauai, apparently bent on beaching themselves. The whales milled about for most of the day and night in an agitated manner, tail-slapping and vocalizing. A rescue team organized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) herded the whales back to sea the next day, though a calf died. One study blamed the incident on U.S. Navy sonar, but another blamed the moon. Now, researchers believe they've finally gotten to the bottom of this attempted mass stranding. NOAA was the first to probe the incident. In 2006, the agency concluded that naval sonar was the most plausible cause, as U.S. and Japanese submarines had been conducting training exercises nearby that same morning. Robert Brownell, a cetacean biologist at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Pacific Grove, California, says that although scientists aren't sure how sub sonar harms whales, he suspects that the noise "forms an acoustic barrier, and they want to escape." Because the ships involved in these exercises are normally moving parallel to the coast, the whales cannot flee out to sea, and in desperation they end up stranding. The U.S. Navy argues that the risk to whales from sonar is not as great as many scientists and conservationists believe, and it has fought to continue training exercises. The Navy's case got a boost when researchers reported that another group of melon-headed whales (Peponocephala electra) had nearly stranded themselves on the same day as the Kauai incident but almost 6000 kilometers away on the island of Rota in the western Pacific Ocean. Some scientists concluded that the two events were related and fingered lunar cycles, particularly the full moon, as the culprit. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Hearing; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 13142 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Problems processing visual information may stop those with autism interpreting body language, harming their ability to gauge others' emotions, a study says. Researchers say people with autism have problems recognising physical displays of emotion, but also general difficulty perceiving certain sorts of motion. They suggest in Neuropsychologia this may contribute to problems with social interaction, characteristic of autism. The National Autistic Society said the UK study was an interesting one. A team from the University of Durham studied 13 adults with autism and found the patients had difficulty identifying emotions such as anger or happiness when shown short animated video clips. The characters had no faces, nor did they speak, so the participants were asked to judge the emotion based on the body language of the figure alone. Along with 16 adults with no autism diagnosis, they were also shown a number of dots on a computer screen and asked which way they were moving. A proportion of dots moved noticeably to the left or right, while the others moved randomly. The performance of the autism group was significantly below that of the others in both tests, leading researchers to speculate that there may be serious differences between the ability to process visual information. They point to an area of the brain needed for the perception of motion called the superior temporal sulcus, and cite previous research which has found that this area responds differently in people with autism. "The way people move their bodies tells us a lot about their feelings or intentions, and we use this information on a daily basis to communicate with each other. We use others' body movements and postures, as well as people's faces and voices, to gauge their feelings," said Anthony Atkinson, who led the research. (C)BBC

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 13141 - Posted: 08.07.2009

By David Crary NEW YORK - The American Psychological Association declared yesterday that mental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments. Instead, the APA urged therapists to consider multiple options, which could range from celibacy to switching churches, for helping clients whose sexual orientation and religious faith conflict. In a resolution adopted on a 125-to-4 vote by the APA’s governing council, and in a comprehensive report based on two years of research, the 150,000-member association put itself firmly on record in opposition of so-called “reparative therapy,’’ which seeks to change sexual orientation. No solid evidence exists that such change is likely, says the report, and some research suggests that efforts to produce change could be harmful, inducing depression and suicidal tendencies. The APA had criticized reparative therapy in the past, but a six-member task force added weight to this position by examining 83 studies on sexual orientation change conducted since 1960. Its comprehensive report was endorsed by the APA’s governing council in Toronto, where the association’s annual meeting is being held this weekend. © Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13140 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tara Parker-Pope Nobody likes going to the dentist, but redheads may have good reason. A growing body of research shows that people with red hair need larger doses of anesthesia and often are resistant to local pain blockers like Novocaine. As a result, redheads tend to be particularly nervous about dental procedures and are twice as likely to avoid going to the dentist as people with other hair colors, according to new research published in The Journal of the American Dental Association. Researchers believe redheads are more sensitive to pain because of a mutation in a gene that affects hair color. In people with brown, black and blond hair, the gene, for the melanocortin-1 receptor, produces melanin. But a mutation in the MC1R gene results in the production of a substance called pheomelanin that results in red hair and fair skin. The MC1R gene belongs to a family of receptors that include pain receptors in the brain, and as a result, a mutation in the gene appears to influence the body’s sensitivity to pain. A 2004 study showed that redheads require, on average, about 20 percent more general anesthesia than people with dark hair or blond coloring. And in 2005, researchers found that redheads are more resistant to the effects of local anesthesia, such as the numbing drugs used by dentists. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13139 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Wisconsin researchers have released a free software tool that could help web surfers susceptible to certain seizures. An estimated one in 4,000 people has photosensitive epilepsy and could suffer a seizure when exposed to bright colours and rapidly flashing images. The condition gained prominence in 1997 when more than 800 Japanese children were hospitalized after viewing a cartoon. Since then, television directors, video-game makers and others have tested their content to make sure it doesn't reach seizure-inducing thresholds. Web developers, though, didn't have simple ways to run such tests. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison set out to change that. "On the web you really never know what's going to pop up on the screen until it does, and one second later you could be having a seizure," said Gregg Vanderheiden, the centre's director. Web developers can use the Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool, or PEAT, to determine how fast an image blinks, for example, and let developers know whether it poses a seizure risk. Content that doesn't pass the test isn't always risky. Researchers say flashy content that doesn't fill at least 10 per cent of a screen isn't a danger. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 13138 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Harmon In the months after he had surgery to fix his defective heart valve, Bruce Stutz didn't feel quite the same. It wasn't his physical fitness that was subpar, although that did require some post-op retraining, but rather his mental capacity. "I couldn't muster the concentration to deal with the problem," he wrote in a 2003 article for Scientific American. During surgery, Stutz had been hooked up to a heart–lung machine, also called a cardiopulmonary-bypass pump, for the two-hours of a procedure to keep his blood oxygenated and flowing while his heart was stopped. He found that he was not the only one who, after time on the pump, had felt their brains bogged down by simple tasks. A 2001 study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that of 261 heart disease patients who had been kept alive during surgery with the pump, 42 percent showed cognitive decline five years after the surgery, even after adjusting for age. "Interventions to prevent or reduce short- and long-term cognitive decline after cardiac surgery are warranted," the authors, led by Mark Newman of the Duke University Medical Center, concluded. And a study published earlier this year in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, led by James Slater, a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Mid-Atlantic Surgical Associates in Morristown, N.J., supported the previous findings, showing that lowered levels of oxygen in blood flowing to the brain during surgery did correlate to increased risk of suffering from the mental impairment dubbed "pump head". © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 13137 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Michael Torrice No one would confuse the pain of a bee sting with the itch of a mosquito bite. But neuroscientists have had a hard time figuring out how the body makes these distinctions. Now researchers have identified a previously unstudied set of spinal neurons in mice that communicates only itch. The discovery could lead to novel treatments for the irritating ailment. Prevailing theory suggests that pain and itch are linked in the nervous system. In fact, doctors often prescribe pain medication to patients with chronic itch. But some neuroscientists favor a "labeled-line" theory, in which itch signals have their own neural circuits--or lines--to the brain. In 2001, researchers supported this idea by claiming to find itch-only neurons in the spinothalamic tract (STT), a set of cells that travel up the spine to the brain's thalamus. Subsequent studies, however, revealed that these neurons also respond to the burning pain of capsaicin--the spicy chemical in chili peppers. Now, neuroscientist Zhou-Feng Chen of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, and colleagues believe they have found the most compelling evidence yet for an itch labeled line. Two years ago, the group discovered a gene necessary for itch, but not pain, called the gastrin-releasing peptide receptor (GRPR). In the new study, Chen and colleagues tried to figure out if cells expressing GRPR were the long-sought itch-only neurons. So they selectively killed GRPR cells in mice spines with a toxin called saporin tethered to a peptide that targets GRPR proteins. After 2 weeks, they had destroyed more than 75% of GRPR neurons. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 13136 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A nurse-led behavioral intervention can reduce the incidence of depression in stroke survivors, according to the results of a study published in the recent issue of the journal Stroke. The intervention, called Living Well with Stroke (LWWS), provided individualized counseling sessions aimed at increasing pleasant social interactions and physical activity as a way to elevate mood, and was designed to be used alone or in conjunction with antidepressant medications. This study was funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A stroke occurs when the blood supply to a part of the brain becomes blocked or interrupted, leading to brain damage in the affected area. Stroke survivors can experience a range of aftereffects, including impaired mobility or paralysis, pain, speech and language problems, and altered cognition. As many as one-third of stroke survivors also develop post-stroke depression (PSD), which may include intense feelings of loss, anger, sadness, and/or hopelessness. Compared to stroke survivors without depression, those with PSD tend to have a poorer response to rehabilitation, a longer delay in returning to work, more social withdrawal, and increased use of health care services. They are also at higher risk for subsequent strokes, cardiac events, and death. While antidepressant medications have shown varying degrees of short-term efficacy for PSD patients, few studies have examined non-pharmacologic interventions or long-term outcomes.

Keyword: Depression; Stroke
Link ID: 13135 - Posted: 08.07.2009

Malcolm Ritter, Associated Press -- From the goose that laid the golden egg to the race between the tortoise and the hare, Aesop's fables are known for teaching moral lessons rather than literally being true. But a new study says at least one such tale might really have happened. It's the fable about a thirsty crow. The bird comes across a pitcher with the water level too low for him to reach. The crow raises the water level by dropping stones into the pitcher. (Moral: Little by little does the trick, or in other retellings, necessity is the mother of invention.) Now, scientists report that some relatives of crows called rooks used the same stone-dropping strategy to get at a floating worm. Results of experiments with three birds were published online Thursday by the journal Current Biology. Christopher Bird of Cambridge University and a colleague exposed the rooks to a 6-inch-tall clear plastic tube containing water, with a worm on its surface. The birds used the stone-dropping trick spontaneously and appeared to estimate how many stones they would need. They learned quickly that larger stones work better. In an accompanying commentary, Alex Taylor and Russell Gray of the University of Auckland in New Zealand noted that in an earlier experiment, the same birds had dropped a single stone into a tube to get food released at the bottom. So maybe they were just following that strategy again when they saw the tube in the new experiment, the scientists suggested. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 13134 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway As wind instruments go, folded vegetation seems a little on the primitive side. Orang-utans have been found to blow through leaves to modulate the sound of their alarm calls, making them the only animal apart from humans known to use tools to manipulate sound. The orang-utan's music, if you can call it that, is actually an alarm call known as a "kiss squeak". "When you're walking the forest and you meet an orang-utan that not habituated to humans, they'll start giving kiss squeaks and breaking branches," says Madeleine Hardus, a primatologist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, who documented the practice among wild apes in Indonesian Borneo. She contends that orang-utans use leaves to make kiss squeaks to deceive predators, such as leopards, snakes and tigers, as to their actual size – a deeper call indicating a larger animal. Baritone squeaks Orang-utans also produce kiss squeaks with their lips alone or with their hands. To determine if the leaves make a difference, Hardus's team recorded a total of 813 calls produced by nine apes, and then measured the pitch of the different kinds of kiss squeaks made by each animal. Across all nine orang-utans, the unaided kiss squeaks came out with the highest pitch, followed by calls produced when the apes put their hands over their mouths. But leaves lowered the high-pitched calls the most, Hardus' team found. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 13133 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Stephen Smith Just the other day, a man weighing 470 pounds lumbered into Dr. Caroline Apovian’s office at Boston Medical Center. He was young - only 32 years old - but already, his heart had begun to fail him, a legacy of his extreme obesity. Maybe, he asked Apovian, I should have weight-loss surgery. She told him that first, he would need to alter what he eats - and drinks, especially the 2 liters of sugary soft drinks he drains every day. “I gave him a high-protein, low-fat diet,’’ Apovian recalled. “Everything was fine until I said, ‘No soda.’ And he said, ‘You don’t understand. The soda calls to me.’ ’’ Last week, federal disease investigators reported that the cost of treating obesity has doubled in the past decade, and they pointed to sugar-laden beverages - sodas, energy drinks, fruity libations - as a prime culprit. Three months earlier, one of the nation’s premier nutrition specialists, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, embarked on a personal crusade to persuade consumers to forgo sugary drinks. Research conducted by Willett and other Boston scientists has shown that women who quaffed more than two sweetened beverages a day had an almost 40 percent higher risk of heart disease than those who rarely touched the drinks. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Obesity; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 13132 - Posted: 06.24.2010