Word comes to the Weekender Science Desk that chimps have better memories than humans.
This isn’t much of a surprise; one species spends its time running around, screaming and throwing its mess all over the place, with violent threats and confrontations in an ever-changing pecking order in which the top echelons rule by power and fear, taking their pick of the best food, mating with whoever they wish whenever they wish and generally being objectionable.
The other species is the chimpanzee, which has been proven to have a working memory way superior than us shaved apes. The American Association for the Advancement of Science showcased this with the antics of Ayumu, who Tetsuro Matsuzawa, a researcher at Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute, showed remembering a random sequence of nine numbers exactly in sequence. There’s no way humans can hope to get to that complexity and it’s postulated that this working memory enables chimps to survive in the wild, navigating branches and making decisions on what to do in tribal confrontations.
Worry not, humans, because our spectacular technological skills have enabled us to fire lasers at honey to see if it’s counterfeit. We didn’t know it was possible either, but apparently pollen can be removed from honeys to mask its origin. This is done, Slate magazine said, because import tariffs are heavy in certain countries. So Rutherford Appleton’s laser was put into action. Originally, this was designed to identify isotopes in space – specifically, carbon isotopes on Mars which would indicate the presence of life. But, yeah, we use it to check honey instead.
Sorry, rats
Talking of detecting stuff, we can now get an eye implant which will detect infra-red light. Again, this was showcased at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. So far, Dr Miguel Nicolelis and his team from Duke University in North Carolina have used this to create a ‘new sense’ in rats who can ‘see’ infra-red light which was previously out of their range. It’s going to be hell when someone switches the TV channel using a remote, though.
Poor old rats are getting it from all angles this week after researchers at Waseda University in Tokyo created a WR-3 ‘ratbot’ which chases, attacks and smacks real rats around specifically to drive them into depression. Then they test human antidepressant drugs on these poor little creatures. That said, the knowledge of this fact is hardly going to assist anyone in their recovery is it.
Finally, killjoy researchers led by UCLA bimolecular engineer Yunfeng Lu and USC biochemist Cheng Ji have packaged enzymes inside a nontoxic, nanoscale polymer shell that mimic the body’s natural alcohol-processing activities, reports io9. In layman’s terms, this means instant sobriety. These pills have been shown to dramatically and very quickly reduce blood alcohol levels in beered-up mice, who were probably drinking to forget about being chased by robots in the first place.
Can’t help thinking it might be better to put Caesar from Planet of the Apes in charge for a bit. We seem to be making rather a bad hash of all this science stuff.
Related Videos
