Capuchins Don’t Settle for Any Monkey Business

Wednesday, September 17th, 2003

Sarah Brosnan, a researcher at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University in Atlanta, recently discovered that capuchin monkeys have a strong sense of fairness. From Capuchins Don’t Settle for Any Monkey Business:

She and her colleague Frans de Waal uncovered the sense of fair play in a study of the small brown primates from central and South America while giving pairs of monkeys who knew each other well jobs to perform.

They received food in exchange for doing a certain task. But each partner did not always get the same quantity or quality of food for equal amounts of effort.

‘We showed the subjects compared their rewards with those of their partners and refused to accept a lower-value reward if their partners received a high-value reward,’ said Brosnan.

If both members of the pair did not get the same reward, the monkey that was short-changed refused to accept it or threw it away, in a reaction similar to that of humans.

‘That active response toward reward is really unusual. They were clearly not pleased with the way things were going,’ Brosnan added.

Naturally, this points to our own sense of fairness having evolved:

She believes the findings, which are reported in the science journal Nature, settle the question of whether a sense of fairness is something that is taught or an evolved behavior.

“Finding this in capuchin monkeys does indicate that a sense of fairness has evolved. Clearly it is an extremely beneficial behavior,” Brosnan added.

Posted in Animals, Economics, Science | No Comments »

K Street Cred

Wednesday, September 17th, 2003

I enjoyed Julian Sanchez’s take on HBO’s new K Street, in K Street Cred — particularly this bit:

The promise of camera-hungry politicos doing unscripted cameos had Beltway junkies feverishly dreaming of an unholy Crossfire/Temptation Island hybrid that would make Dr. Moreau blush.

He nails one of the show’s problems:

What we see on the screen is a second-order simulacrum — people playing out ultra-self-conscious reproductions of public personas that are already elaborate constructs. The result is not only unconvincing, but vaguely eerie. In one scene, Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) is supposed to be at least mildly peeved to learn that James Carville, an analyst at a consulting firm Nickles employs, has taken on a pro bono gig prepping Howard Dean for the Democratic primary debate. Yet even the lines in which he’s meant to be voicing his severest displeasure are delivered in unnaturally serene, modulated tones, and he manages to keep a wide shit-eating grin plastered on his mug the whole time.

I also strongly agree with another issue: “There’s also an enormous amount of inside baseball here.” I don’t “breathe politics,” so most of the subtext was lost on me.

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Avocado/Soybean Product May Help Treat Osteoarthritis

Wednesday, September 17th, 2003

I may have to eat more guacamole (and an occasional soybean). From Avocado/Soybean Product May Help Treat Osteoarthritis:

Osteoarthritis, which is caused by wear and tear on the cartilage that lines joints, appears to improve with a novel French product containing elements of avocado and soybean oils.

In an effort to find out how the product, known as A1S2 or Piascledine, works, Dr. Yves E. Henrotin from University Hospital in Liege, Belgium, and colleagues studied its effects on cartilage-producing cells — chondrocytes — taken from the joints of patients with osteoarthritis.

As the researchers report in the Journal of Rheumatology, A1S2 significantly enhanced the production by chondrocytes of aggrecan, a key component of cartilage, beginning after 9 days of treatment and increasing through day 12.

The individual avocado and soybean components worked as well as A1S2 in boosting aggrecan production.

However, A1S2 but not the individual components, also restored aggrecan synthesis blocked by an inflammation-causing compound called interleukin-1-beta, which is present in arthritic joints. In fact, A1S2 reduced levels of several inflammatory factors produced by the chondrocytes.

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SPACEWAR – Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums

Tuesday, September 16th, 2003

I stumbled across a copy of a Rolling Stone article from 1972, SPACEWAR – Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums, describing the first video game (Spacewar, from 1960) and early “computer bums”:

I’m guessing that Alan Kay at Xerox Research Center (more on them shortly) has a line on it, defining the standard Computer Bum: “About as straight as you’d expect hotrodders to look. It’s that kind of fanaticism. A true hacker is not a group person. He’s a person who loves to stay up all night, he and the machine in a love-hate relationship… They’re kids who tended to be brilliant but not very interested in conventional goals. And computing is just a fabulous place for that, because it’s a place where you don’t have to be a Ph.D. or anything else. It’s a place where you can still be an artisan. People are willing to pay you if you’re any good at all, and you have plenty of time for screwing around.”

The hackers are the technicians of this science — “It’s a term of derision and also the ultimate compliment.”

Timeless — and yet so very, very dated.

I love the description of how Spacewars came to be:

“We had this brand new PDP-l,” Steve Russell recalls. “It was the first minicomputer, ridiculously inexpensive for its time. And it was just sitting there. It had a console typewriter that worked right, which was rare, and a paper tape reader and a cathode ray tube display, [There had been CRT displays before, but primarily in the Air Defense System.] Somebody had built some little pattern-generating programs which made interesting patterns like a kaleidoscope. Not a very good demonstration. Here was this display that could do all sorts of good things! So we started talking about it, figuring what would be interesting displays. We decided that probably you could make a two-Dimensional maneuvering sort of thing, and decided that naturally the obvious thing to do was spaceships.”

Naturally?

“I had just finished reading Doc Smith’s Lensman series. He was some sort of scientist but he wrote this really dashing brand of science fiction. The details were very good and it had an excellent pace. His heroes had a strong tendency to get pursued by the villain across the galaxy and have to invent their way out of their problem while they were being pursued. That sort of action was the thing that suggested Spacewar. He had some very glowing descriptions of spaceship encounters and space fleet maneuvers.”

“Doc” Smith:

The Boise leaped upon the Nevian, every weapon aflame. But, as Costigan had expected, Nerado’s vessel was completely ready far any emergency. And, unlike her sister-ship, she was manned by scientists well-versed in the fundamental theory of the weapons with which they fought. Beams, rods and lances of energy flamed and flared; planes and pencils cut, slashed and stabbed; defensive screens glowed redly or flashed suddenly into intensely brilliant, coruscating incandescence. Crimson opacity struggled sullenly against violet curtains of annihilation. Material projectiles and torpedoes were launched under full-beam control; only to be exploded harmlessly in mid-space, to be blasted into nothingness or to disappear innocuously against impenetrable polycyclic screens.

— Triplanetary (1948)

Check out this early ARPA Net history:

The next (and current) director at ARPA-IPT was Larry Roberts, a brilliant researcher who had developed the first 3-D vision programs. His major project has been getting the ARPA Network up. (“Up” around computers means working, the opposite of “down” or crashed.) The dream for the Net was that researchers at widely separated facilities could share special resources, dip into each other’s files, and even work on-line together on design problems too complex to solve alone.

At present some 20 major computer centers are linked on the two-year-old ARPA Net. Traffic on the Net has been very slow, due to delays and difficulties of translation between different computers and divergent projects. Use has recently begun to increase as researchers travel from center to center and want to keep in touch with home base, and as more tantalizing, sharable resources come available. How Net usage will evolve is uncertain. There’s a curious mix of theoretical fascination and operational resistance around the scheme. The resistance may have something to do with reluctances about equipping a future Big Brother and his Central Computer. The fascination resides in the thorough rightness of computers as communications instruments, which implies some revolutions.

Twenty major computer centers…

Posted in Games, Science, War | No Comments »

Liberal Pieties

Tuesday, September 16th, 2003

Joann Wypijewski starts Liberal Pieties, her review of McGreevy’s Catholicism and American Freedom: A History and Jenkins’ The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice, with an eye-opening piece of history from McGreevy’s work:

John McGreevy begins his book with an emblematic story. The year is 1859; the place, Boston. The public schools, dominated by the Protestant elite who also write the law, start each day with obligatory reading of the King James Bible and recitation of the Ten Commandments. Glorious as the King James version is, it is not taught as literature but, with the commandments, is intended to build moral fiber in the students, a great many of whom are Catholic. It disturbs twenty-first-century assumptions to imagine Catholics opposing school prayer, but the church doesn’t subscribe to the Protestant Bible, or to private Bible reading in general, and was even more hostile to it in the nineteenth century. Nor are Catholic and Protestant versions of the Ten Commandments the same, the latter proscribing ‘graven images,’ an affront to the whole Catholic rococo of crucifixes and icons, Virgin shrines, reliquaries and sacred art.

Returning to our story, one day a 10-year-old Catholic boy at the Eliot School, Thomas Whall, is instructed to recite the commandments. He refuses. Days of urgent meetings follow, but the school committee decides it will not compromise. Again the boy is asked to read the commandments and again refuses, upon which an assistant to the principal declares, “Here’s a boy that refuses to repeat the Ten Commandments, and I will whip him till he yields if it takes the whole forenoon.” A half-hour later the child’s hands are ripped and bleeding from the blows of a rattan stick; by one account he faints during the torture. All boys unwilling to recite the commandments are ordered out of the school; hundreds leave. Because they had been urged in church to resist Protestant conformity, to “recite their own Catholic prayers” and “not to be ashamed,” they are seen in some quarters as mindless slaves to priestcraft. The most important Republican Party newspaper in Boston (Republicans were the liberals then) editorializes: “We are unalterably, sternly opposed to the encroachments of political and social Romanism, as well as to its wretched superstition, intolerance, bigotry and mean despotism.” When Whall and his father sue the assistant for excessive force, the court vindicates school authority, ruling that the child’s disobedience threatened the stability of the school, hence the foundation of the state.

Her review then turns into something Ellsworth Toohey might write:

Fascinating as that all is, ultimately McGreevy does something more valuable: prompting a meditation on power, and its shadow, marginality; on freedom, and its inevitable price, unfreedom; on faith, particularly the kind dressed up as secular rationalism.

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Blast Kills Three in Japan Hostage Incident

Tuesday, September 16th, 2003

Japan’s financial crisis has led to disputes over money — disputes resulting in hostage-takings! Blast Kills Three in Japan Hostage Incident:

Three people were killed and 34 injured in an explosion after a man, wielding a knife and cross bow and demanding back pay, took hostages in an office in the Japanese city of Nagoya on Tuesday and set the area alight.

Paper and glass flew and screams could be heard as the blast ripped through the third floor office of a delivery firm in the industrial city, 170 miles west of Tokyo.

Public broadcaster NHK said the three dead were the hostage-taker, the manager of the office and a police officer.
[...]
Media reports said 52-year-old Noboru Beppu, thought to be a contract driver with the firm, had stormed into the office about three hours before the blast, doused the area with a liquid and threatened to set the building on fire if he was not paid three months’ wages of about 250,000 yen ($2,129).

He then used a sofa and desks to barricade himself in the office along with eight hostages, all but one of whom were released before the explosion.

When the man set off the explosion by setting fire to the liquid, fire fighters, police and television crews were already on the scene.

By the way, it looks like he was plenty dangerous without a gun.

Posted in Business, Policy, War | No Comments »

Rats Train in Tanzania to Sniff Out Mines

Monday, September 15th, 2003

I find these stories endlessly fascinating. Rats Train in Tanzania to Sniff Out Mines:

Far from the outbreak of monkeypox that shed light on a worrisome increase in exotic pets in the United States, Mathias and his African pouched rat pals are hard at work in rural Tanzania learning how to locate land mines.

In their little red, black and blue harnesses, they look like miniature sniffer dogs. But their trainers at Sokoine University of Agriculture say the giant rats can do a much better job.

“Rats are good, clever to learn, small, like performing repeated tasks and have a better sense of smell than dogs,” said Christophe Cox, the Belgian coordinator of the rat training project.

When they succeed, they get bits of ripe bananas.
[...]
Some 30 trainers put the rats through their paces in the simulated minefield where anti-personnel and anti-tank mines have no detonators.

“People are happy when I tell them I am working with the rats because they think I will help to eliminate them,” project veterinarian Mwambewe Martin said. “But when I tell them I am training them, they don’t understand how rats can be trained.”

Harnessed rats are hitched to a sliding rail mounted on a metal grid about 3 feet high and 20 feet wide.

Two human handlers roll the grid over a suspected minefield. When a rat scratches and sniffs at a mine, the handler activates a clicker and pulls the rat over to the side by his lead to reward him with a banana bit.

When fully trained, the rats sniff out a mine, then sit and scratch at the spot until they are rewarded with food. A human de-miner destroys the mine. The rats are not heavy enough to detonate active mines.

Posted in Animals, War | No Comments »

AEI – News & Commentary

Monday, September 15th, 2003

AEI – News & Commentary lists some of the findings of American Enterprise magazine’s survey of the Iraqi people:

  • Iraqis are optimistic. Seven out of 10 say they expect their country and their personal lives will be better five years from now. On both fronts, 32 percent say things will become much better.

  • The toughest part of reconstructing their nation, Iraqis say by 3 to 1, will be politics, not economics. They are nervous about democracy. Asked which is closer to their own view”Democracy can work well in Iraq,” or “Democracy is a Western way of doing things” — five out of 10 said democracy is Western and won’t work in Iraq. One in 10 wasn’t sure. And four out of 10 said democracy can work in Iraq. There were interesting divergences. Sunnis were negative on democracy by more than 2 to 1; but, critically, the majority Shiites were as likely to say democracy would work for Iraqis as not. People age 18-29 are much more rosy about democracy than other Iraqis, and women are significantly more positive than men.

  • Asked to name one country they would most like Iraq to model its new government on from five possibilities — neighboring, Baathist Syria; neighbor and Islamic monarchy Saudi Arabia; neighbor and Islamist republic Iran; Arab lodestar Egypt; or the U.S. — the most popular model by far was the U.S. The U.S. was preferred as a model by 37 percent of Iraqis selecting from those five — more than Syria, Iran and Egypt put together. Saudi Arabia was in second place at 28 percent. Again, there were important demographic splits. Younger adults are especially favorable toward the U.S., and Shiites are more admiring than Sunnis. Interestingly, Iraqi Shiites, coreligionists with Iranians, do not admire Iran’s Islamist government; the U.S. is six times as popular with them as a model for governance.

  • Our interviewers inquired whether Iraq should have an Islamic government, or instead let all people practice their own religion. Only 33 percent want an Islamic government; a solid 60 percent say no. A vital detail: Shiites (whom Western reporters frequently portray as self-flagellating maniacs) are least receptive to the idea of an Islamic government, saying no by 66 percent to 27 percent. It is only among the minority Sunnis that there is interest in a religious state, and they are split evenly on the question.

  • Perhaps the strongest indication that an Islamic government won’t be part of Iraq’s future: The nation is thoroughly secularized. We asked how often our respondents had attended the Friday prayer over the previous month. Fully 43 percent said “never.” It’s time to scratch “Khomeini II” from the list of morbid fears.

  • You can also cross out “Osama II”: 57 percent of Iraqis with an opinion have an unfavorable view of Osama bin Laden, with 41 percent of those saying it is a very unfavorable view. (Women are especially down on him.) Except in the Sunni triangle (where the limited support that exists for bin Laden is heavily concentrated), negative views of the al Qaeda supremo are actually quite lopsided in all parts of the country. And those opinions were collected before Iraqi police announced it was al Qaeda members who killed worshipers with a truck bomb in Najaf.

  • And you can write off the possibility of a Baath revival. We asked “Should Baath Party leaders who committed crimes in the past be punished, or should past actions be put behind us?” A thoroughly unforgiving Iraqi public stated by 74 percent to 18 percent that Saddam’s henchmen should be punished.

Posted in Policy, War | No Comments »

Mold Outbreak Plagues New England Schools

Monday, September 15th, 2003

Evidently, this has been a very moldy year — at least on the east coast. Mold Outbreak Plagues New England Schools:

An unprecedented mold outbreak, following the region’s rainy, humid summer, has delayed the opening of school for thousands of youngsters across New England and left some districts with six-figure cleanup bills.
[...]
“Mold growth has been at a rate that we have never seen in history,” Condon said.

The tiny spores, nurtured by a soggy and steamy July and August, also have vexed homes and other buildings across the Northeast. For classrooms left vacant for weeks, all the fungus needed to multiply into big problems was a leaky roof, a loose window, condensation from an air conditioning system or a section of shampooed rug left damp.

In healthy children, mold typically causes no more than hayfever-like symptoms in the eyes, nose and throat, but those with asthma and other breathing difficulties and immune system problems can be affected more severely, Condon said.

A spritz of household bleach or a good scrub with detergent will clean mold from hard surfaces, but cleaning other materials is a difficult, expensive task for districts already strapped for cash.
[...]
New construction techniques aimed at reducing noise, such as carpeting and dropped ceilings, have made schools more difficult to clean than when walls were plaster and floors were tile, Condon said.

Posted in Education, Science | No Comments »

Sexual Frolics Spark Massive Police Hunt

Friday, September 12th, 2003

This story starts off bad and gets worse. Sexual Frolics Spark Massive Police Hunt:

The sadomasochistic sex games of two Germans prompted a massive police hunt involving over 40 officers and fire services after witnesses mistook their frolics for a violent crime, authorities said on Thursday.

Police in the western city of Duesseldorf began a search for a black Porsche after alarmed callers reported seeing a man in the car battering a blindfolded person on her hands and knees with a stick. By the time police arrived, the car was gone.

Fire services and a police helicopter assisted in the hunt until police tracked down the car’s owner, a 31-year-old man.

‘The interview with the ‘suspect’ revealed he had met with a woman and that the two indulged their sexual appetites together in the Porsche,’ police said in a statement.

The man said he had met the 51-year-old woman on the internet. The woman confirmed his story, police said.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Sugar May Extend Life of Blood Platelets

Friday, September 12th, 2003

Sugar May Extend Life of Blood Platelets reports on a life-saving discovery:

A little dab of sugar may double the shelf life of blood platelets, a lifesaving clotting component that is in chronic short supply because of spoilage.

Harvard University researchers report this week in the journal Science that laboratory tests show that putting a small amount of galactose, a type of sugar, into isolated platelets allows the blood components to be refrigerated and usefully preserved for at least 12 days.

That more than doubles the shelf life of the current routine, which is to store the platelets at room temperature for only five days. Because of spoilage, more than 25 percent of all platelets taken from donated blood must be discarded. Extending the shelf life of platelets would significantly improve the supply, experts say.
[...]
Once they are separated, platelets are very fragile. If they are refrigerated, as whole blood is, the platelets undergo a chemical change that makes them the target of macrophages, one of the body’s immune cells. When chilled platelets are transfused, they are engulfed and killed by the macrophages. For this reason, platelets are stored at room temperature and become useless after five days.

Room temperature storage also causes bacteria to grow in warm platelets. Refrigeration, if it was possible, would prevent this.

A team of researchers at Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have found that platelets can be refrigerated and remain useful for about 12 days if they add a small amount of galactose.

Dr. Karin M. Hoffmeister, first author of the Science study, said macrophages attack chilled platelets because the immune cell targets another type of sugar on the surface of the transfused cell. Adding galactose covers up that other sugar and protects the platelets from the macrophages.

I’d like to point out that (a) galactose sounds like an interstellar tyrant, and (b) chilled, sugar-coated platelets sound like a tasty treat.

Addendum: My brother made a good point:

In reference to point (a), the interstellar tyrant should, of course, be known as Galactose the Intolerant.

Posted in Science | No Comments »

Study Suggests Smallpox Vaccine May Fight Aids

Friday, September 12th, 2003

Smallpox and AIDS appear to infect cells by the same pathway. Study Suggests Smallpox Vaccine May Fight Aids:

A team at Virginia’s George Mason University said they had shown, in lab dishes, that blood cells from people vaccinated against smallpox were four times less likely to become infected by the AIDS virus.
[...]
A study published in 1999 showed that a relative of smallpox, called the myxoma poxvirus, uses the same cellular doorway — the CCR5 receptor — to infect a cell as AIDS does.

Posted in Science | No Comments »

Poets & Writers

Thursday, September 11th, 2003

Poets & Writers opens with an amusing anecdote:

When Michael Dirda was in seventh grade, someone told him that Crime and Punishment was a mystery. He liked mysteries, had read the Hardy Boys, among others, so he went to the library in search of Dostoyevsky’s tome. He checked it out and read it — in three days. “I couldn’t put it down,” says the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic. “I just thought it was the best book I’d ever read in my whole life. I still think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.”

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Barbie Deemed Threat to Saudi Morality

Wednesday, September 10th, 2003

Shouldn’t this be in The Onion? Barbie Deemed Threat to Saudi Morality:

The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, as the religious police are officially known, lists the dolls on a section of its Web site devoted to items deemed offensive to the conservative Saudi interpretation of Islam.

‘Jewish Barbie dolls, with their revealing clothes and shameful postures, accessories and tools are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West. Let us beware of her dangers and be careful,’ said a poster on the site.

Jewish Barbie dolls? Yeah, clearly she’s Jewish.

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Japan Soon to Have 20,000 People Over Age 100

Wednesday, September 10th, 2003

Perhaps we should all smoke more and work longer hours; the Japanese are doing something right. Japan Soon to Have 20,000 People Over Age 100:

In a fresh sign of the rapid aging of Japan’s population, the number of people aged 100 or older is expected to reach a record high of 20,561 by the end of September, the Health Ministry said Tuesday.

Women will account for 84 percent of the number of Japanese centenarians, which is expected to top the 20,000 mark for the first time since the government began compiling the data in 1963, the ministry said in a report.

Japan is home to the world’s oldest woman and man. Kamato Hongo, a woman from Japan’s southern island of Kyushu and the world’s oldest person, turns 116 next Tuesday. Yukichi Chuganji, 114, who is also from Kyushu, is the world’s oldest man.

Japan has the world’s highest life expectancy, at 78.07 years for men and 84.93 for women.

According to some estimates, Japan will have roughly one person over 65 for every two of working age by 2025, a higher dependency ratio than any other major industrialized nation.

The rapid aging of society and a tumbling birthrate have raised concerns that pension obligations may become unmanageable.

Posted in Science | No Comments »

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