Let’s start a new day
“The human body has a so-called alarm-clock gene that wakes up even if one hasn’t set the bedside alarm, U.S. researchers say.” United Press International reports. “Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., said the gene is responsible for starting the body’s biological clock from its restful state every morning. Discovery of the new gene and the mechanism by which it starts the clock every day may help explain the genetic underpinnings of sleeplessness, aging and chronic illnesses, an institute release said. … ‘The body is essentially a collection of clocks,’ Salk researcher Satchidananda Panda said. ‘We roughly knew what mechanism told the clock to wind down at night, but we didn’t know what activated us again in the morning.’ ”
A sale on sperm?
The world’s largest sperm bank has announced it’s no longer accepting donations from red-headed men as there just isn’t enough demand. But Cryos, a Danish company, says there will still be sufficient stocks for Scotland and Ireland, reports The Sunday Times of London. “Clinic bosses are so desperate to get rid of the backlog of unwanted sperm,” adds The Sun, “they are now offering 15-per-cent discounts to Scottish couples.”
Luxury winter driving
“Ferrari has a crash course for high rollers looking to brush up on their winter driving skills,” reports The Denver Post. “The luxury Italian car company announced [last] week it will conduct a driving school in Aspen this winter. The two-day tutorial costs $11,300 [U.S.]. … You can bring along a roommate, which includes meals and one lap around the track, for an additional $950. One more thing – you must own a Ferrari to participate.”
Earliest kindergarten?
“Stone-age toddlers may have attended a form of prehistoric nursery where they were encouraged to develop their creative skills in cave art, say archeologists. Research indicates young children expressed themselves in an ancient form of finger painting. And, just as in modern homes, their early efforts were given pride of place on the living-room wall,” reports The Guardian. “Archeologists at one of the most famous prehistoric decorated caves in France, the complex of caverns at Rouffignac in the Dordogne known as the Cave of a Hundred Mammoths, have discovered that children [in the Paleolithic age, an estimated 13,000 years ago] were actively helped to express themselves through finger fluting – running fingers over soft red clay to produce decorative crisscrossing lines, zigzags and whorls. … One chamber is so rich in flutings by children it is believed to be an area set aside for them. The marks of four children, estimated to be aged between 2 and 7, have been identified there.”
Lying is hard work
“[T]he human mind, despite its impressive abilities, has limited capacity for how much thinking it can handle at any one time. So piling on demands for additional, simultaneous thought – or cognitive ‘load’ – compromises normal information processing. Because lying is more cognitively demanding than telling the truth, these compromised abilities should be revealed in detectable behavioural clues. … Because you’re worried about your credibility, you’re most likely trying to control your demeanour, and ‘looking honest’ also saps mental energy. And you’re not just monitoring yourself; you’re also scanning [the interrogator’s] face for signs that he might be seeing through your lie. That’s not all. Like an actor, you have the mental demands of staying in character. And finally, you have to suppress the truth so that you don’t let some damning fact slip out – another drain on your mind’s limited supply of fuel. In short, the truth is automatic and effortless, and lying is the opposite of that. It is intentional, deliberate and exhausting.”
A new physical reality?
“Subatomic particles have broken the universe’s fundamental speed limit, or so it was reported last [month],” says the New Scientist. “The speed of light is the ultimate limit on travel in the universe, and the basis of Einstein’s special theory of relativity, so if the finding stands up to scrutiny, does it spell the end for physics as we know it? The reality is less simplistic and far more interesting. ‘People were saying this means Einstein was wrong,’ says physicist Heinrich Pas of the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany. ‘But that’s not really correct.’ Instead, the result could be the first evidence for a reality built out of extra dimensions. Future historians of science may regard it not as the moment we abandoned Einstein and broke physics, but rather the point at which our view of space vastly expanded, from three dimensions to four, or more.”
Thought du jour
“Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t.”
Pete Seeger (1919-), U.S. folk singer
