5
POPSCrows smarter than Chimpanzees Not-so great apes To investigate further, the team presented the crows with a wooden table, divided into two compartments. A treat was at the end of each compartment, but in one, it was positioned behind a rectangular trap hole. To get the snack, the crow had to consistently choose to retrieve food from the compartment without the hole. A recent study of great apes found they could not transfer success at the trap-tube to success at the trap-table. The three crows could, however. "They seem to have some kind of concept of a hole that isn't tied to purely visual features, and they can use this concept to figure out the novel problem," Taylor says. "This is the most conclusive evidence to date for causal reasoning in an animal." Three of the crows did fail at both tasks, however. The team plans further work to investigate why. Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2008.1107)
1
POPSNemo's nose helps find way home They discovered some of the scents that attracted the clown fish to to the reefs that provide a suitable habitat. The scent from the leaves of one coastal plant Xanthostemon, a kind of myrtle attracted them. They also found scents, such as the leaves from the Melaleuca Nervosa, a kind of paperbark which is another type of myrtle, that repelled them. They say this could have implications regarding tree planting and reforestation near marine habitats.
0
POPSLabour's respect for the Forces
How many other people have the courage to say to this Liberal effetism that it is not the dykes and the shirtlifters who are fighting Labour's wars, but family people, men and women with children and a sense of responsibility. When you have an MP, as in Blackpool South, whose record is clearly biased towards efforts to promote homosexuals, then what chance have ordinary folk got? Not a lot. In a world where there have to be priorities, the broadening of division between straights and gay can only lead to resentment on behalf of the majority. The widening of society is being brought about by an over zealot majority in Parliament who actively appear to be promoting everything homosexual, against the normality of human relations. Beware, it is these same misguided groups who want and promote the bringing down of laws which have been put in place to protect children, by advocating the bringing down of the age of sexual consent for children. No doubt Gary Glitter would approve.
2
POPSPill may put women off 'Mr Right's' scent In the last few years there have been great discoveries regarding the role of scent or pheromones, in sexual or physical attraction. We are only just beginning to learn how important they are. They recorded a difference in preferences, but the preferences tested were limited to genetic potential. They can't be sure how this factor extends to other elements of a relationship.
10
POPSMake Sense... the more the senses and other parameters of perception will be detailed and explained the faster an alternative which is cheap and competitive will appear...
7
POPSWhere size makes a difference :) "To further confirm their model the researchers calculated the daily bone marrow production of HSC in several mammals to find that the number of cells found by them were compatible with those obtained by directly working in animals, with the number of cells produced by a mouse during its lifetime (around 2 years) similar to the ones produced by humans in one day, and cats in a week. "
33
POPSMe, Myself and I The generally accepted linguistic explanation for the capital “I” is that it could not stand alone, uncapitalized, as a single letter, which allows for the possibility that early manuscripts and typography played a major role in shaping the national character of English-speaking countries. So what effect has capitalizing “I” but not “you” — or any other pronoun — had on English speakers? It’s impossible to know, but perhaps our individualistic, workaholic society would be more rooted in community and quality and less focused on money and success if we each thought of ourselves as a small “i” with a sweet little dot. There have, of course, been plenty of rich and dominant cultures throughout history that have gotten by just fine without capitalizing the first-person pronoun or ever writing it down at all. There have also been cultures that committed atrocities even while capitalizing “you.”
2
POPSDinosaurs Diversified Over Time, not Suddenly During this epoch of riotous biodiversity, flowering plants, social insects, butterflies, modern groups of lizards, mammals, and possibly birds, too, all emerged. Some experts have suggested that dinosaurs were also part of the show, as so many weird fossils, such as duckbilled hadrosaurs, horned ceratopsians, pachycephalosaurs and other wonders, date from this time. But a new study, published on Wednesday in a British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, says that dinosaurs were less than a sideshow in the DNA spectacular. Researchers led by Graeme Lloyd of the University of Bristol, western England, devised a "supertree" of dinosaur evolution, patiently analyzing how more than 450 species -- about 70 percent of the known finds -- developed.
2
POPSDino diversity earlier than first thought Maybe there is the idea that species including the dinosaurs were trying to deal with conditions brought about by the meteor, so many adaptations arose, but nature loves nothing more than competition, even when times are good.
5
POPS"Haughton's Drop", Hanging, Dublin Zoo, Darwin, Wallace, history Haughton House in Dublin Zoo is being restored to its ancient glories in honour of the great patron and scientist. On a visit to Bronx Park, New York he became a bit bored by the record of perfection which he received on all sides, so he enquired about the financial aspect of the institution: how did they pay for their obviously princely expenditure? So-and-so, he was told, but of course the main source of income was gate-money. “What ?” asked Haughton, “do you mean you charge people to get in?” “Of course; don’t you?” “Oh! no - we let them in free; then we enlarge one of our celebrated lions and charge them to get out! We do better that way.”
1
Pops
Newest Clips
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Print
Save
Turn on live update