News in Brief: Humans

Humans and Neandertals may not have interbred, after all, the backlash of selfishness and more in this week's news

No Neandertal hanky-panky
New mitochondrial DNA analyses indicate that Neandertals didn’t occasionally interbreed with Stone Age humans, as proposed in a recent study of Neandertal nuclear DNA, say evolutionary biologist Guido Barbujani of the University of Ferrara in Italy and his colleagues. Barbujani’s team analyzed maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA from European Neandertals, Stone Age Europeans and living Europeans. If nuclear DNA lines leading to Neandertals and Europeans are older than corresponding mitochondrial DNA lines, then a long period of shared ancestry could explain why Neandertals and today’s Europeans share some nuclear DNA, the researchers propose online August 24 in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. —Bruce Bower

Psychling dynamics
Although cyclist Alberto Contador won the 2009 Tour de France, he was criticized for defecting from his teammates and sprinting ahead when tactics demanded patience. A new analysis suggests that criticism was on mark. When strong riders break away from their companions, it helps the defector but hurts the team, researchers report in an upcoming issue of Complexity. University of Colorado at Boulder scientists and a sports psychologist from a professional team developed a bike racing model incorporating variables such as cooperation, defection, speed, distance and effort. The model nicely captures real racing dynamics: below-average riders fare better as defectors, above-average riders as cooperators, and when a strong rider does defect, it really screws his team. —Rachel Ehrenberg

Depression-fighting beliefs
Strong religious and spiritual beliefs may defend against recurrences of depression, especially if this mood disorder runs in a person’s family. Among individuals tracked for 10 years, those who considered religion and spirituality important in their lives displayed a markedly lower rate of major depression than those who didn’t, say psychologist Lisa Miller of Columbia University in New York City and her colleagues. Religion’s protective effect was greatest for those who had depressed mothers, the researchers  report online August 24in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Most of those high-risk individuals had been treated for bouts of depression before the study began. —Bruce Bower

Neandertals’ varied menu
Often portrayed as meat-obsessed big-game hunters, Neandertals may have had broader tastes. Neandertals that lived in southern France between 250,000 and 125,000 years ago ate fish, birds and starchy plants as well as wild cattle,  deer and wild horses, two anthropologists report online August 24 in PLoS ONE. Microscopic residue and edge-wear patterns on Neandertal stone tools previously unearthed at a French site called Payre reveal a varied diet that may have been missed in previous studies of butchered animal bones, say Bruce Hardy of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Marie-Hélène Moncel of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. —Bruce Bower

Found in: Humans

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News in Brief: Humans

Prehistoric assembly lines, a trigger for riots and more in this week's newsWeb edition : Monday, August 22nd, 2011

Early start for advanced tools
Large-scale production of sophisticated stone tools, using standardized assembly steps, emerged a surprisingly long time ago. Between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, unidentified members of the genus Homo regularly made slender, sharp-edged blades and other animal-butchery implements at Qesem Cave in what’s now Israel, say archaeologist Ron Shimelmitz of Tel Aviv University and his colleagues. Analyses of thousands of Qesem stone artifacts, and experimental reproductions of these finds, indicate that the implements were made in stages requiring as much planning as Neandertal tools that didn’t appear until 200,000 years ago, the researchers will report in the Journal of Human Evolution.  —Bruce Bower

A fate worse than death
Patients in persistent vegetative states often get tagged as having less mental capacity than the dead. Ending up in biological limbo is also regarded as a fate worse than death, say psychologist Kurt Gray of the University of Maryland in College Park and his colleagues. Religious and non-religious participants alike attributed less mental activity to vegetative patients than to the dead, due to afterlife beliefs and a tendency to assume that deceased but unseen people still have minds, the scientists will report in Cognition. Religious people also usually advocated life support for vegetative patients despite regarding such states as worse than death. —Bruce Bower

Food fights
Violent protests in North Africa and the Middle East in 2008 and 2011 coincided with large spikes in global food prices, a new study shows. The analysis, which spans January 1990 to May 2011, suggests that high global food prices are a precipitating condition for social unrest, say Yaneer Bar-Yam and colleagues at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Mass. Their study, posted at arXiv.org on August 11, also calculates a food price threshold above which vulnerable populations typically find themselves in desperate straits. This indicator could help guide policy interventions.—Rachel Ehrenberg

Found in: Humans

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A robotic cat ears for humans, a test of the ears

To me the robotic Cat ears--publicly, no less!(Credit: James Martin/CNET)
After viewing, dog or cat, tail wagging or arched backwards, you can immediately tip you can into the animal's mood. The technology enables as easy to read people?
This is the idea behind Necomimi, a pair of brain-wave sensors and a robotic Cat ears by the Japanese company Neurowear. Fuzzy ears sheets are built atop the headset technology created by based on San Jose, Calif. NeuroSky. Is based on Electroencephalography from a single sensor, mounted on the forehead to read a person's brain waves and communicates with a PC or Mac with USB plug-in wireless network to determine if a person is focused and relaxed. If the user is focused, the attached ears stay preparation. When relaxed ears face down.
Earlier this year Neurowear made a video of the ears which cutesey became a hit for small Web generate views of 1,6 million (many people can probably identify as a girl in the video, check out the attractive guy and intolerable robotic ears). Neurowear in the original intent was to make only one pair, but when it was so much online, gimmick, the company decided to produce a line of robotic ears.

Related links
• Controlling these ears Cat robot with your brain
• Moving objects from a Mattel's reading Mindflex brainwave
• Controlled brain games on board planes coming soon?
• Headphones: this is your brain on music

Tansy Brook, Advocate of NeuroSky, visited CNET, based in San Francisco earlier this month show beyond the third prototype of ears and give me a chance to try them.
Naturally, my first question was, "these things work?" Headset NeuroSky MindWave I clipped to my ear, to place the sensor scans of the brain, the reader against My forehead. (Petal earlobe picks up ambient noise alone, as the head, so the ear clip is used for the purpose of cancelling noise). In the theory of brain State can be detected by measuring brain activity patterns. This gadget claims to measure brain waves as an indicator of the mood: If a person is brain waves will concentrate, in the range 12 to 30 Hz, says NeuroSky. If they're relaxed, the brain waves to measure from the scope of 8 and 12 Hz.
In my case, the headset does not match, so the sensor had trouble picking a stepwise mood. However, when I get closer to the sensor to my forehead is used to create a stronger, ears seemed better reacts. In most ears stayed in preparation which apparently meant that I was focused. I tried, the rest going to the ears, but found difficult to stay in control. Probably fully RESTful afforded me during the interview because it was attempting a concurrent. Stephen Beacham, television producer, CNET, try to use the ears and had a much easier time of their positions. He even spin with her ears (impressive!).
Of course, that the work is one thing the ears. Whether people will ever wear them in public is another.
When I had a furry ears on the street, people stopped and stared, probably wondering if I was some wannabe cyborg Playboy Bunny. When I asked them to try their ears hesitated. Apparently this sort thing is more accepted in Japan--where the function of fuzzy cat ears in otaku subcultures centered on anime and manga wydarzenaimi--than it did on the streets of San Francisco.
The technology used in funky ears represents the known technical advanced course; After an expensive and large brain scanning devices are becoming smaller and cheaper. And that opens the door to potential new uses of the consumer.
EmSense, another company of San Francisco Bay Area, makes the headset which can be measured, how consumers respond to content such as games and advertising. But mobile brain waves with gadgets go beyond pelvic enthusiasm of the consumer. Another, based on California, the company uses equipment Neurovigil named iBrain sleep patterns to the record. Can quickly be used as a term many neurological conditions, as well as.
Any user can modify the headset NeuroSky; If you don't like Cat ears, you can build one of the devil ears. But designers and companies were significantly more creative with their hacks Brook said, adding that the headset is now used in toys Mattel Mindflex and is used by over 150 universities in the world for educational purposes.
Meaning that the headset can be used to help people perform better. For example, if you're the lekkoatlety training programme for the coming competition or student want to measure how well it is concentrating on the job, you can use the headset to track mental state. My collection to add is that the ears are interesting, but perhaps the reason that people don't have, tails twitching. In fact, we don't want people could read our mood at a glance.

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