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Laughter may have shared origins with apes
Attempts to find water on the Moon
Better sleep means better academic
performance
Prof Yash
Pal
This Universe
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Laughter may have shared origins with apes
Humans and apes both like a laugh and their giggles may have a common origin, scientists say. Human laughter has a long ancestry and it can be traced back between 10 million and 16 million years, when humans and great apes shared a common ancestor, the researchers said.
Marina Davila Ross, from the University of Portsmouth, tickled the palms, feet, necks and armpits of 22 young apes from four species, as well as three human babies, to build up a library of 800 acoustic recordings of laughter that she was able to analyse scientifically for their similarities and differences. “Our results on laughter indicate its pre-human basis. It is likely that great apes use laughter sounds to interact in similar ways to humans,” Dr Ross said. The study found that the similarities and the differences in patterns of laughter sounds in orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and humans corresponded closely to the genetic relatedness of the species, indicating that laughter in both apes and humans had a common origin in a shared ancestor.
— By arrangement with The Independent |
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Attempts to find water on the Moon
The wealth of data made available by Chandrayaan-I, India’s maiden probe orbiting the moon is being analysed by a team of Indian and American scientists for clues on the presence of ice water in the polar region of the moon.
The Chandrayaan-1 has not yet provided negative data on water or ice on the moon, says Chandrayaan-1 project director M. Annadurai. Neither, he adds, is there any proof to confirm the existence of water on earth’s nearest celestial neighbor. The Moon Mineralogy Mapper, the American payload onboard Chadnrayaan-1, which makes use of the spectroscopic observation for mapping the lunar mineral resources, is known to have suggested patches in the moon’s polar region. These patches, researchers believe, could provide clues to the presence of water or ice. Another American payload onboard Chandrayaan-1, the 6.5-kg Mini Synthetic Aperture Radar developed by the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the Naval Air Warfare Centre, is also designed to look for water and ice in the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar poles. “Cometary debris and meteorites containing water bearing minerals constantly bombard the Moon” , says
Annadurai. “Although most of this water is lost in space, even if a water molecule finds its Data from the American Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter planned for launch in June would help confirm the finding of Chandrayaan-1 to provide definitive clues to the presence of water in the moon’s polar region. Incidentally, two earlier missions have hinted at the possibility of water ice existing on the moon. The Clementine mission launched by NASA in 1994 had suggested that the smooth areas in the craters in the southern polar region of the moon could harbour ice. In 1998, the Lunar Prospector, sniffed hydrogen at both the poles of the moon. All hopes are now on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter designed for providing a detailed picture of the lunar regions believed to harbor water. Clearly and apparently, the presence of water on the moon holds the hope of setting up human habitations on this satellite of earth. Water on the moon will boost the idea of using it as a base for launching an expedition to Mars.
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Better sleep means better academic
performance
Washington: A new study has shown that getting more high-quality sleep positively impacts academic performance, especially in maths. The study says that higher maths scores were related to greater sleep quality, less awakenings and increased sleep efficiency.
Lead researcher Dr. Jennifer C. Cousins, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said that higher English and History scores were associated with less difficulty awakening. Also, increased sleep-onset latency over the weekend was associated with worse academic performance. “Sleep deficits cause problems for adolescents, but students differ in their personal resources and in how chaotic their sleep-wake schedules are. The more regular and predictable their sleep is, the better they are likely to do when confronted with short-term sleep deficits. Therefore, participants with better sleep overall may be affected differently in a sleep condition compared to those who have a more varying sleep/wake schedule,” said Cousins.
— ANI |
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This Universe
While reading a book, Basic Physics, by Kenneth W. Ford, I came across this paragraph quoting Alfred North Whitehead who wrote: ‘It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking about what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilisation advances by extending the numbers of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.’
Please illustrate Whitehead’s point with some examples of your own “thoughtless” use of mathematics and machines. What is the answer to this question? Could you also comment on this book if you have read it. I tend to agree with Alfred North statement to the extent that many new things come to you while you are not thinking about them doggedly. They just fall into the plate. We do not know how you got to them. I will tell you a couple of things that came my way. One of them is connected with this activity of trying to answer random questions of people for many many years through this paper and many other interactions. This is not a chore but a continuous source of stimulation. Why do I think so? Some years ago I got involved in thinking about the National Curriculum Framework for School Children. I am not very learned in the field of education. I made statements such as “Knowledge is not delivered, it is constructed and created”. I was surprised that several forward looking educationists seemed to agree with me. I made a statement, “We should learn from children what to teach them”.
And finally, “Children are the stem cells of society”. All of these have not yet got into the mainstream of our education activity but some motion is visible. A somewhat similar thinking has percolated into our report on ‘Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education’. My central thesis is that chance encounters of people from very different disciplines often leads to unforeseen enrichment of both. If we put disciplinary activities in compartments insulated from each other we might achieve some mundane linear successes, but we might also deny them a chance of fertilisation that might be path breaking. Random genetic connections have been responsible for much of the wholesome diversity on the planet. Such thinking has prompted the feeling that IITs and IIMs must also teach other disciplines, including humanities. Almost thirty years ago I was the Director of the Space Applications Centre at Ahmedabad. A chance discussion with an archaeologist friend, DP Agarwal, and a colleague, Baldev Sahai, started us thinking about the possible existence to the lost Sarswati River and its course. A few month’s activity lead to a paper and a fairly definite assertion that the wide bed of the Ghagar river was probably the paleo channel of the Saraswati. Several other studies by many experimenters gave us some confidence. The point I am making that we were not linearly thinking of solving this problem. It just happened and the methods and supporting data from various quarters just came. I refer to one more occurence in my life. I was working at TIFR when I was one day introduced to Dr SM Chitre,a new joined astrophysist. During our conversation I told him about a proposal in a new paper by George Gamov I had just read. There was a suggestion that the electron charge might have been changing since the beginning of the universe. While walking down the stairs it had occurred to me that one could put a limit on this change by comparing the ages of the earth as determined by two different methods. One of them depended of the rate of alpha decay of Uranium and the other on electron decay in Rubidium Stronsium system. Chitre liked the idea and we got to work immediately and within a week we were able to disprove the possibility of Gamov’s proposal.
Neither Chitre nor I had spent a lot of time on this problem earlier.
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Trends
Tokyo: With recession plaguing Japan, a local university and a company have jointly developed a “thermometer for the mind” which will alert people on their own stress levels on their cellphones and personal computers. Called the “Fish Bowl Index” of mental health, it alerts people to their own stress levels by representing their answers to a checklist of questions with visual imagery on their cellphones and personal computers. Devised to help prevent suicides, the system uses images of red and black goldfish, a bowl and a cat to illustrate a person’s mood. For example, the red goldfish represents users themselves and gets more and more injured depending on the level of physical stress a user reports. The black goldfish becomes more and more aggressive depending on the level of stress the user reports in relationships with others. The cat indicates social stress and tries to eat the goldfish if its levels rise while the bowl shows stress at home and cracks if stress levels increase. — PTI New techniques ‘cut radiation exposure from cardiac scans’ Washington: Scientists have developed new techniques for reducing radiation exposures from the scans used to diagnose heart disease. Researchers said the use of these radiation-lowering strategies did not affect the quality of images gleaned from cardiac computed tomography angiography (CCTA), an increasingly popular weapon in the war against heart disease. Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death in the developed world and rates are increasing among developing nations. As rates have increased, health care systems are under pressure to find cost-effective means of diagnosing coronary ischemia, or insufficient blood flow through the arteries. CCTA has the potential to be a part of the solution, researchers wrote. Unlike other means of diagnosing coronary artery disease, such as cardiac catheterisation, CCTA is non-invasive.
— ANI |
